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21 June 2002
[history] Richard Nixon’s Last Secret — audio archaeologists go after 18 minutes of conversation deleted (by Nixon?!) from a Watergate Tape … ‘The fact that the tape contained as many as nine separate erasures contradicts any notion that it was caused by an accidental press of the Record button. The culprit was either very anxious to protect the president or was a mechanical klutz. Both descriptions, Watergate scholars have noted, fit Richard Nixon. The 37th president was laughably inept when it came to technology. Haldeman recounts in his now out-of-print book, The Ends of Power, that Nixon struggled with the most basic functions of cassette recorders. The Army Signal Corps supplied Nixon with the simplest recorder available so that the president could dictate memos in the evening. But even then, the various buttons had to be marked so Nixon could use the machine without mixing things up. Put a man like that in front of a reel-to-reel, and it’s easy to see how a simple erasure could turn into a clumsy mess.’
[Related: Nixon Resigns] 20 June 2002
[comics] Fake Memo about Superman’s Vision … old article from McSweeney’s … ‘Superman #102: Superman manages to resolve what would appear to be an intractable set of simultaneous crises (including a Doomsday machine, Lois Lane being held hostage, and a Kryptonite hailstorm), by using what are referred to as his “Defeating-His-Enemies Vision” and his “Hail-Reversing Vision.” This sort of thing is quite unsatisfying for the discerning reader, and, to put it bluntly, can only be attributed to laziness at the story-construction level.’
[people] A couple of celeb profiles / interviews I’ve looked at recently … - The golden rage of Superbrat (retd.) — John McEnroe … ‘Tennis’s long-overdue code of conduct was in no small measure implemented with McEnroe in mind and it duly snared him at the Australian Open in 1990, when he became the first player in 21 years of open tennis to be disqualified at a Grand Slam. By then McEnroe was 30, on the wane and, strangely, gaining in public popularity. “The more I lose, the nicer the crowds get,” he observed.’
- Jack the Lad — Jack Black. ‘…the idea of seeing the D in concert could almost lure me to a Kid Rock concert. Even if someone held me at gunpoint and made me watch the headliner, it’d be well worth it to see Jables (that’s Black’s alter-ego) crooning in earnest the chorus to the tender, Journey-esque ballad, Fuck Her Gently: “I’m gonna hump you sweetly/ I’m gonna ball you discreetly…” ‘
[tags: People][ permalink][ Comments Off on John McEnroe / Jack Black Profile] 19 June 2002
[comics] Inventing Comics — Dylan Horrocks on Scott Mcloud’s Understanding Comics …  ‘The problem with comics isn’t that they are crude, poorly drawn, semiliterate, cheap, and disposable kiddie fare (although most of them are). The real problem is that people think that’s all they are.’
[tags: Comics][ permalink][ Comments Off on Dylan Horrocks on Scott Mcloud’s Understanding Comics] 18 June 2002
[comics] Challenging comics writer Grant Morrison true to form in ‘The Filth’ — brief backgrounder on Morrison and The Filth. ‘…he says, at heart, he is not some wildly perverse writer who happened to fall into the comics field. Despite what you read from him, he says he cannot be identified through his writing. “I’m really a man who likes to be alone and quiet,” he says.’
17 June 2002
[distractions] Limber Tongue Gallery — unusual things you can do with your tongue. What can you do with your tongue? :)
[music] Mad For It — interview with Liam Gallagher … ‘…’I’d like to be in a big house in the south of France,’ he decides, staring wistfully up at the stairs that lead towards the pub’s exit, ‘with a deckchair. And the deckchair is outside and I’m in the deckchair just chilling right out. Forever.’ He says he’s looking forward to being 60 in that deckchair in the south of France. Age is not a fear for him. If he’s in that chair outside that house, he says, he won’t even mind going bald. ‘I’ll moan about it, but I won’t be getting a wig. I will not be getting an Elton John. I’ll just get a skinhead and have it large with a goatee, get meself a part in EastEnders where I can shag the barmaid.” [Related: Vaughan likes Stop Crying Your Heart Out]
15 June 2002
[blogs] Don’t Read This — transcript of an Instant Message conversation from Chris at Do You Feel Loved? … ‘If Osama Bin Laden was gonna drop a nuke into the earth’s core and said “The only way to stop me is… to suck off this monkey!” I’d just be like “Dude, that’s it? Whatever” and go to town.’
14 June 2002
[tv] You ask the Questions… Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen … ‘Changing Rooms was the only thing left in the schedules on 11 September. We had the most phenomenal post bag as a result. People had been through one of the worst days of their lives, and for many that half an hour of the most irrelevant stuff – like me worrying about what shade of green to paint a breakfast room – was exactly what they needed.’ [Related: LLB’s Website, Changing Rooms Website]
[tags: People, TV][ permalink][ Comments Off on You ask the Questions… Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen] 13 June 2002
[film] A couple of interviews with Willem Dafoe … Webbed feat … On his Green Goblin Action Figures: ‘Yeah. How about that? Now that I’ve made this movie, there’s a little bit of a, “What have I done?” thing. I’ve never made movies that kids could see, and now I’m ruing the day some little kid in the grocery store freaks out, “Mommy, it’s the Green Goblin!”‘Dafoe’s Role as Green Goblin Isn’t the Stretch It Might Seem … On Comics: ‘”Growing up, I was aware of the Marvel superheroes, but I wasn’t much of comic-book reader,” concedes Dafoe. . “It wasn’t as if I was against reading them, it’s just that I wasn’t doing it. My introduction to comic books was through Zap Comix and Zippy the Pinhead. Those are the images I’d see when I visited my older brothers and sisters at the University of Wisconsin.”‘12 June 2002
[comics] Grant Morrison.com updates — New Column, new Digital Ink… Scripts for the aborted Invisibles TV Series … Episode 1: Malcolm’s in the Invisibles classroom, combing his hair in front of a mirror. With only a few little changes, he’s turned his 70s teacher look into Jason King. Shirt open, he picks up a groovy 70s jacket. Checks out the window where a beautiful blonde in a sports car waves up to him. The full Invisibles team is assembled here but they’re little more than vague presences in the scene. Ragged Robin is laying out tarot cards. Tarot trump 20 – the Aeon, which represents the Crowned and Conquering Child of the coming Aeon of Aquarius/Horus. Malcolm slings his jacket on.
MALCOLM : The ball’s in your court now, young man.
KING MOB : These things happen.
He picks up his gun.
KING MOB : When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up and find myself living in a 60s spy series.
Pause. He smiles a dangerous smile.
KING MOB : Funny how things work out, isn’t it ?
Close shot of magazine slamming into the handle of King Mob’s automatic.
Tarot card close up as it snaps down on the table – Trump 16 – The Tower. 11 June 2002
[football] Japanese Phase of the Day from Channel 4 News … 10 June 2002
[comics] Spiderman Bursts out of the Page — profile of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spiderman … ‘Realising the tremendous value tied up in old Marvel titles should have been easy. But the company managed to botch the job, selling the Spider-Man film rights to three different parties. Even now, argues Win Wiacek, the company is taking little advantage of the Spider-Man film hype to promote its comic books. Selling Spidey figures made in the Far East is more profitable in the short term. For Spider-Man, a successful future is more likely to be scripted in Hollywood than New York.’
[books] Strange ramblings in Woody Creek — interview with Hunter S. Thompson thirty years after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas … ‘I have a photographic memory and a very visual way of working and thinking. Christ, the cops at the [narcotics and dangerous drugs] convention is a scene that will never leave me. And I somehow remember the [Mint] gun club and going out there [for the Mint 400]. I remember long boulevards and cruising them in those convertibles, really just looking for action. That’s what we were doing. When you’re working on a story, you don’t have to manufacture the action, but you look for it with a keen eye. You know, something that will strike a spark.’ [via WEF] 8 June 2002
[bb3] Meanwhile, in the Big Brother House … ‘Jade – “I love you chipstick”
PJ – “I’m not gonna lie to you Jade.. about this girl outside that I like.. if you didn’t have a boyfriend it would be different… cause I’m not with anyone.. this girl outside, no matter how much I care for her.. she has a boyfriend… I really do I really really really do care for her… if she hadn?t a boyfriend I would definitely get off with her now.”
Jade – “shut up…”
PJ – “well I would if you didn’t have a boyfriend…”
Jade – “shhhh”
PJ – “dirty git”
Jade – “I should just keep my mouth shut…”
They go quiet for a good ten minutes. Probably busy just fiddling around.
They whisper. Jade says “I love you” several times.
PJ pushes her out of bed.’ 7 June 2002
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Filthy Mind [ Part 1] [ Part 2] [ Part 3] … A Newsarama Interview. ‘The Filth is ostensibly very different from something like The Invisibles – there’s no drugs, magic, pop culture references or tantric sex in this book, at least not so you would know. The Filth is immense, however, and builds to some rather disturbing conclusions about who we are and what we’re for. In some key ways, fans will recognize this book as something of a photo-negative of The Invisibles. The Filth is determinedly uncool, unfashionable and anti-stylish as a reaction to a lot of the more superficial glamour aspects of The Invisibles. The Filth is all ugly people and broken things, but shot in the most incredible colors and light.’
[underground] Tube Map — Cal’s been busy again… ‘I know about 374 connections between 272 stations.’
6 June 2002
[comics] Crack!Comicks — a new site from Grant Morrison … About The Filth: ‘It’s bigger, wilder, uglier and more heart-rending than the best summer blockbuster movie and if, like me, you love the awful smells of failure, shame, male pattern baldness and seedy compromise, then you’re sure to revel in the squirming twists and turns of this exotic international spy-fi thriller, where games of identity, madness and planetary hygiene combine with perverted sex, kitchen sink realism and ultra-technology to blind the mind’s eye and infect the soul forever. Sights to scupper the sanity! Philosophies to burst the frontal lobes! People with combovers having sex!’ [Related: Filth Trailer from DC]
[film] That’s Militainment — a look at what Jerry Bruckheimer’s is currently up to… a new “Reality Soap” set in Afghanistan. ‘Interested to see just how highbrow Bruckheimer is prepared to go, I spin him a hypothetical scenario. Ingmar Bergman is on the phone. He’s making a new film about an old woman who suffers a crisis of faith at a remote cottage in Sweden. He wants Jerry to produce it. “I’d have a problem with that,” Bruckheimer admits. What, even if it starred Liv Ullmann?’
5 June 2002
[comics] Gibbons Puts Two Hats On — Dave Gibbons is doing a new Graphic Novel for Vertigo called “The Originals”. The preview art looks incredible …  Gibbons: ‘If I was going to spend a year or more on a single project, it was going to have to be something I had a real emotional investment in, something that related to the real world I’ve lived in. Not a science fiction story, although The Originals is not set in mundane reality. Not a tedious real-life autobiography or a thinly disguised philosophical treatise, but a piece that communicated aspects of life that had been overpoweringly important to me when I was growing up.’ [via Barbelith] 4 June 2002
[books] Narnia books attacked as racist and sexist — Philip Pullman on C. S. Lewis, Narnia and the “Republic of Heaven” … ‘Asked about his concept of a republic of heaven, Pullman said: “When it was possible to have a belief about God and heaven, it represented something we all desired. It had a profound meaning in human life. But when it no longer became possible to believe, a lot of people felt despair. What was the meaning of life? It seems that our nature is so formed that we need a feeling of connectedness with the universe. If there is no longer a king, or a kingdom of heaven, it will have to be a republic in which we are free citizens. We ourselves as citizens have to build the republic of heaven.”‘
[comics] An interview with Neil Gaiman [ Page 1] [ Page 2] [ Page 3] … On Sandman: ‘The point about Sandman is it’s the single largest body of work I’ve done. It was about 10 years of actual work. I started working on it in ’87, and finished it in ’96. That was a solid nine years, for eight of which it was coming out in the public, but for one of which was just me. Sandman’s 2,000 pages long. It was 4,000 pages of script. It was done over nine years and it came out every month. It’s still 10 volumes long. […] The only reason I survived Sandman, frankly, is that it was coming out every month.’ [via Sore Eyes] 3 June 2002
[phones] How I became a ‘call’ girl — What it’s like to work on a phone sex line … ‘”Did you have any particular fantasy in mind tonight?” purred Jade.
“No,” the caller mumbled.
“What do you feel like talking about?”
“I dunno.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Lying down,” he answered.’
[tags: Life, Sex][ permalink][ Comments Off on What it’s Like to Work on a Phone Sex Line]
[comics] Couple of articles about Comic Movies in the wake of the Spider-Man Film … Angst in his Pants ‘As Ang Lee begins making his film of The Incredible Hulk, the hero of which is a personification of tormented male hostility, it seems inconceivable that twenty-first-century audiences would ever take to their hearts the kind of hero who soared through the clouds in Superman The Movie (1978). That picture looks now like a snapshot of innocent times every bit as nostalgic and obsolete as the images of gay abandon in the 1980 Village People musical Can’t Stop the Music. A Superman with that side parting, blemish-free morality and crisply chivalrous manner would be laughed off the screen today.’How Superheroes took over the Cinema … ‘Last September changed the world. Even the escapist world of the comic book. Spider-Man the movie is replete with heartstopping scenes in which the superhero saves New Yorkers tumbling from burning or bombed skyscrapers, attacked by the flying Green Goblin, a one-man technologically enhanced al-Qaida. Haunting my pleasure in Raimi’s screen fantasies is the question: “Where was Spider-Man when New York really needed him? Why didn’t he, or some other superhero, intercept those madmen – or at least rescue their victims?”‘ [thanks Kabir] 2 June 2002
[bb3] Meanwhile, in the Big Brother House … PJ – “aww the games kicked off! … say 10 mins gone… Beckham, has he got his boots on?”
Lee – “you realise… this is like missing Wrestlemania.”
[comics] Preview of Grant Morrrison and Chris Weston’s “The Filth” — Looks Good … ‘”She-Male Nurse”. Best for Wank, Eh? Best of Both Worlds, Some Men Say.’ [via I Love Everything]
[royalty] Putting his best foot forward in the shadow of the Queen — amusing, positive profile of Prince Philip … ‘He is said to view the Prince of Wales as “precious, extravagant and lacking in dedication and discipline”. He disapproved strongly of Charles sleeping with Camilla Parker Bowles after she married. And when Diana came on the scene, Philip felt Charles was toying with her, by continuing to see Camilla. “He told Charles to marry her or leave her alone,” one of Philip’s friends said. “He assumed Charles would drop her but the silly ass proposed and then went on later to claim his father bullied him into marrying Diana.” The rift between the heir to the throne and his father has never properly healed.’
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