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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 20 March 2002
[film] The trouble with Harry — brief update on Harry Knowles… the “ultimate movie geek”. ‘…I don’t believe that their [Movie fan websites] opinions affect or alter the tastes of the moviegoing public. Far from it; most web geeks are so leadenly conservative that their opinions actually reflect and reinforce the lamest conventional tastes. “Fan”, after all, derives from “fanatic”, and fanaticism is rarely progressive, original or mould-breaking.’
19 March 2002
[war] He wants War. And he thinks he’s ready for it — profile of Saddam Hussein … ‘…he had two sons, Uday and Qusay, who today are his chief lieutenants. In official Iraqi paintings they are usually portrayed as young Arab horsemen loyally riding behind their father, the Sheikh. Family solidarity has been repeatedly shaken by Uday’s murderous rages. In 1988 he killed his father’s bodyguard and confidante during a drunken row at a party on an island in the Tigris river. For many years his power base, bizarrely, has been the Iraqi Olympic Committee which has a large, fortified headquarters in Baghdad with its own prison cells.’
[comics] Thrown to the Wolves — a review of my comic du jour… 100 Bullets. ‘The basic story-line is simple, but as I’ve indicated not without its complications. A highly secretive group of vengeance-seekers, the Minutemen, are locked in battle with the Trust, the obligatory nasties. The Minutemen operate outside the law, specializing in setting up victims of criminal wrongdoing with hard evidence of who did them wrong, along with a tasty firearm and one hundred untraceable bullets. The victims get to decide whether and how they are going to use the information and weaponry the Minutemen have dropped in their laps. Those who succeed in blowing the bad guy(s) away might then be approached to see if they have what it takes to join the ranks of the secret revenge society.’ [Related: 100 Bullets on-line comic]
18 March 2002
[tv] At home with Orville (and Keith) — interview with Keith Harris… the latest subject of Louis Theroux … ‘Certainly, I think Keith thinks he should still be on telly, as he was with his own show between 1982 and 1990. “Once you are off TV, people think you’re dead, think your talent’s disappeared. And you do lose status. You’re asked to be fourth on the bill to someone from Gladiators, and that does annoy me. Why? Because they are not as good as me. They can’t be. They don’t have my experience. Do I sound bitter?” Um. Yes?’
[massive distraction] Eight Days A Week — A totally addictive Beatles Fruit Machine… [from The Beatles Website]
17 March 2002
[celebs] Is Pete stalking Danny La Rue? ‘If you walk down Malett St and look up there’s a balcony of sorts with shrubs and trees. That’s where he lives. His front door is the one with the arm holding a hammer. I know this because someone told me.’
[911] Six Months that Changed a Year — an “absolute atrocity” special by Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci … Highlights include: ‘Julie Burchill: How I liberated Kandahar with the news that Tony Parsons is a bastard.’ [Update: Post on Metafilter]
16 March 2002
[tv] Keepin’ it Real, for Real — profile of Ali G … ‘His school reports also contain an intriguing hint about Ali’s secret life. Despite his often repeated boasts about his enormous membrum virile, his PE teacher confides that “he has, to my knowledge, only once been prepared to take a shower with the rest of the boys. Admittedly, certain cruel remarks from a few of them are probably a factor here…”‘
15 March 2002
[colon] LMG supports the campaign to pursuade Tom to irrigate his colon. [banner courtesy of Dave]
 ‘I’m as yet unconvinced by the idea of the sponsored defudging – but I’m open to persuasion.’
[books] Salon interviews Jon Ronson about his book Them: Adventures with Extremists … ‘The way I portrayed the people is accurate. Because they’re human beings and we have a kind of wonderful capacity to be absurd and ridiculous. It would be easy to portray them as one-dimensional demons, but I wanted to do the opposite. Just because they’re buffoons it doesn’t mean they can’t fly planes into the World Trade Center. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.’ [via I Love Everything]
14 March 2002
[nologo] America is not a hamburger — Naomi Klein on the “rebranding” of America. ‘…Beers views the US tattered international image as little more than a communications problem. Somehow America still hasn’t managed, in Beers’ words, to “get out there and tell our story”. In fact, the problem is just the opposite: America’s marketing of itself has been too effective. Schoolchildren can recite its claims to democracy, liberty and equal opportunity as readily as they can associate McDonald’s with family fun and Nike with athletic prowess. And they expect the US to live up to its claims. If they are angry, as millions clearly are, it’s because they have seen those promises betrayed by US policy.’
[blogs] nickdenton.org: ‘People like Doc Searls and Meg Hourihan are to the weblog as Oppenheimer and von Neumann were to the A-bomb. Gentle souls whose creation will be used by others more ruthless.’
13 March 2002
[logo envy] Feeling Listless has moved — which gives me an excuse to rip-off another one of those excellent logos …
 …and mention that he’s pretty popular with Middlesbrough football team… check out Stuart’s guest book: ‘Like your site. You must put a tremendous amount of effort into it. I spend most afternoons checking it out, after my morning’s training. I shall get more of my teammates to follow suit. The links are impressive. I only wish I had a laptop so I could access it from more places.’
[film] Salon looks at Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey … ‘…we see Bowman, now an old man, living out his old age like a zoo attraction in a feigned Louis XVI-style bedroom, assumedly created for him by the aliens. And then suddenly the creation theme continues as a giant fetus inexplicably rises over Earth. Although birthdays have noticeably been happening in the background all along (Poole, Floyd’s daughter), all bets are off as to the movie’s ultimate statement. At the film’s Hollywood premier in 1968, Rock Hudson walked out saying, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”‘
12 March 2002
[books] Excellent oldish interview with James Ellroy from 1995 … Ellroy on Oliver Stone’s JFK: ‘I was just enthralled for an hour and twenty minutes. Bravuro moviemaking, wonderfully layered and dense and jazzy, and then Donald Sutherland arrives to posit this preposterous theory, and it goes downhill from there. I think organized crime, exile factions, and renegade CIA killed Jack the Haircut. I think your most objective researchers do as well. When Oliver Stone diverged from that to take in the rest of the world (Lyndon Johnson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff), I lost interest. I went out and bought a copy of the video and I watch it right up until Donald Sutherland appears, then I turn it off.’ [via Book Notes]
[wtf?!] The Enema Within …
11 March 2002
[distraction] Rings — I find this oddly compulsive. Keep moving the mouse around the screen slowly. [via Haddock]
10 March 2002
[stats] 795,763 tonnes of building rubble — War on Terrorism statistics … ‘US planes have dropped 328,000 blankets, 3.4 million pounds of wheat and 2.5 million daily rations into Afghanistan. Ten thousand tonnes of bombs have fallen on Afghanistan since 11 September, half of what fell on London in the Blitz.’ [Related: Observer War On Terrorism Section]
[war] Does bin Laden matter anymore? … does the Pentagon care about ObL? ‘ Try as he may, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cannot seem to shake the dreaded “OBL” question – even coming from his wife, Joyce. “Every once in a while … as I get up about 5 o’clock and get ready to take a shower and head for the office, she says, ‘Don, where is he?’ ” Mr. Rumsfeld told a military gathering last week. “I tell her that if I want to bring up Osama bin Laden, I’ll wake her up and bring it up myself,” he quipped.’ [via Red Rock Eater]
9 March 2002
[machines] Why does it take so long to mend an escalator? — lots of escalators being replaced on the London Underground at the moment… ‘Why does it take so long to mend an escalator? As far as that goes I am willing to believe what I am told: that escalators are big, complicated machines packed into tight shafts and there aren’t many hours when you can work on them. More money wouldn’t remove those obstacles to seamless service, nor would improved logistics. In fact, a large influx of capital would, in the short term, increase time-outs – it takes longer to replace an escalator than to maintain it – even though the end result would be fewer maintenance sessions.’ [via Feeling Listless]
8 March 2002
[comics] Artbomb has a number of reviews of Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus along with some preview PDF comics…
‘The Cockscrew – A useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship and the gate of pleasant folly.’ — Bacchus quoting an unknown author. 7 March 2002
[comics] The Ultimate Writer — Sequential Tart interview with Mark Millar … How to “save” comics: ‘The formula is very simple and was utilized in microcosm in Marvel Knights; the best writer and the best artist you can find on a character and the audience will seek them out. This was then applied to the Marvel Universe itself and created the beginnings of the new boom we’re looking at. DC will hopefully follow the trend and add their considerable marketing and retail muscle to the boom. I don’t know if it’ll happen under the current administration, but history has a habit of sweeping aside anyone who’s standing still.’
[911] America more serious? You must be joking — Christopher Hitchens on America after 911 … ‘”Can we be funny?” the hosts of Saturday Night Live asked Rudy Giuliani when they nervously invited him on to the set a few nights after the immolation of the World Trade Centre. “Why start now?” was his mordant reply and, with that, frivolity resumed her reign.’
[film] Oh, I can’t bear it. I really can’t bear it — Nicole Kidman talks about her fascination with The Shining … ‘In The Shining, Kubrick made these ostentatiously smooth camera movements – relatively new to audiences – into a motif for the film. The steadiness of the camera movements mixed with the grisly subject matter into a mood of unease, especially when juxtaposed with the odd, often emotionless speech. “Stanley would tell us he was not interested in naturalness,” Kidman recalls. “He was not interested in a sort of documentary style performance. He liked it to be slightly odd, slightly off.”‘
6 March 2002
[comics] Judge Dredd in Links — the Guardian’s Net Notes celebrates 25 years of Judge Dredd … ‘Despite Dredd being the biggest draw for 2000AD, arguably the most media coverage the comic received did not have anything to do with him. It came in 1997 when it ran a satirical story called B.L.A.I.R 1, where the prime minister was turned into a bionic superhero.’ [Related: 2000AD Online, BBC News: Bambi overtaken by bionic Blair]
[politics] You Ask The Questions… Christopher Hitchens … Who is worse — Henry Kissinger or Mother Teresa: ‘With Kissinger, you can tell how many people he killed. With Mother Teresa, who only preached surrender to poverty, disease and ignorance and against family planning, we can’t be sure of the figures. But together they certainly make two out of the four pale riders of the Apocalypse.’
[blogs] Yesterday I asked Metafilter if this picture made them feel inadequate… lots of amusing responses. ‘…his hairstyle is horrid, his cock isn’t that big, and the expression on his face is ridiculous.’
5 March 2002
[tv] The Truth about me and Louis Theroux — a profile of Ann Widdecombe … ‘One thing does, however, leave the viewer still utterly dumbfounded by the end of the show. Widdecombe actually believed that Theroux would stick to his promise of not bringing up her alleged virginity, which, predictably, he does within the first five minutes. (Widdecombe famously threatened to sue a reporter who suggested to her that she wasn’t still a maiden.) “As you probably realised, there was a huge row off-screen,” she says. (There’s a pretty enjoyable on-screen humdinger, too.)’
[comics] Writer Cool with Unauthorized Use of Script in Cerebus — Dave Sim stirs up a controversy again (kinda… no misogyny or fistfights this time) … ‘When the Journal, disheartened, expressed the opinion to Sim that this seemed to be shaping up as one of the smaller Sim controversies, he responded, reassuringly, “When it comes to Dave Sim, there are no small controversies.”‘
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