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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 30 January 2002
[uk blogs] Meanwhile in UKBloggerland… (in the style of Graybo and Cal) …
While we are on the subject of UK Blogs… the GBloggies. ‘Most likely to fantasize about Thatcher’ [via Graybo] 29 January 2002
[people] A couple of interesting articles from The Independent:
[wtf?!] The Heroes in Spandex Gallery! … ‘Everybody likes to dress up in costume, especially if there’s lots of spandex and superheroes involved! This is the place to show the world your new outfit! ‘ [via Metafilter]
 28 January 2002
[books] Dæmon Geezer — Robert McCrum profiles Philip Pullman … ‘Pullman himself makes an unlikely demon. In person, he is thoughtful, good-natured and passionately interested in what the world has to tell him. Like his admired predecessors, he is only giving back to his audience the stories it has already vouchsafed in a thousand unguarded moments. First and foremost a teller of tales, he acknowledges “the absolute preciousness” of reality in all its chaos and discomfort. “Here is where we are,” he told The Observer, “and now is where we live.”‘
[funny] Peace Activist Has To Admit Barrett .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Is Pretty Cool … ‘"Look, I realize that the use of this instrument of destruction, even in wartime, is morally reprehensible, and I don’t see how anyone with a conscience could justify owning one," said Robinson, 31, a University of Vermont graduate student in sociology and president of the campus chapter of Amnesty International. "But you have to admit, it’s pretty wild to think that it’s capable of throwing a half-inch bullet into a man-sized target 1,500 meters away."’
[film] Jack the Rip-Off — Iain Sinclair looks at the From Hell movie … ‘What Moore proposes, and what the film necessarily refutes, is the belief that the past is unknowable. ‘In all our efforts to describe the past, to list the simple facts of history,’ he wrote in his introduction to the From Hell scripts, ‘we are involved in fiction.’ There can be no anachronisms when time is a plural concept. Nobody knows, or will ever know, or should know, who Jack the Ripper was. Jack is. Sustained and incubated by tour guides, crocodiles of sombre or giggling pilgrims processing around the locations where the bodies were found, the Ripper lives on. An invisible earner. A waxwork vampire.’
27 January 2002
[blogs] Anti Bloggies 2002 … ‘Like the Bloggies, but bribes are accepted – nay, encouraged.’
[books] A couple more Philip Pullman articles …
[obit] He was a Crook — Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary for Richard Nixon from 1994 … ‘If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.’ [via Metafilter]
26 January 2002
[young ones] The Complete Guide to Rick’s Poetry … Rick’s Teen Anguish Poem:
oh god, why am I so much more sensitive than everybody else? why do I feel things so much more acutely than them, and understand so much more. I bet I’m the first person who’s ever felt as rotten as this. could it be that I’m going to grow up to be a great poet and thinker, and all those other wankers in my class are going to have to work in factories or go on the dole? yes, I think it could.
[comics] Newsarama talks to Alan Moore about Marvel Comics, ABC and Watchmen 2. On Watchmen 2: ‘That wouldn’t be interesting at all. It would be really fucking boring. I’ve got no interest in re-creating the 1980s. […] With all respect to the fan audience, I’m sure that Charles Dickens never got people writing, asking when he was going to do A Tale of Three Cities. That’s not how I work. It may be how the industry works, but I’m not really interested in revisiting things that are fifteen years old.’
25 January 2002
[comics] Interview with Dan Clowes … On Young Dan Pussey the “nerdish cartoonist superstar”: ‘I was telling my publisher that I wanted to take that book out of print because it?s so mild compared to the reality of the situation. At the time I did it was supposed to be a caricature of the business. Now there are so many more stories that are so much worse that I hear on a daily basis about the comic book business. It just seems pointless to have that book in print.’ [Related: Clowes Bio, link via the WEF]
[blogs] Credo Of The Web Log Writer — the rise and fall of a weblogger… ‘I will write poetry and buy a webcam. I will only link to other ‘A-List’ Web Log Writers and ignore wannabe’s who link to me. Other Web Log Writers will do what I do, only worse. I will ignore or quit my real job since my loyal readership will support me via PayPal and my Amazon Wish List.’ [via 2002 Bloggies]
[books] An honest American Psycho — Fay Weldon reviews American Pyscho in 1991 … ‘Our yuppie hero kills an abandoned dog, slices it with a knife, walks on. No one cares. Women get their kicks from bondage. Yuppie goes too far, the women get to bleed a bit, but they get paid. That’s enough for them. The whole world’s into bondage. Altzheimers or Armani, spermicidal lubricant or Ralph Lauren, everything on the same level. So he goes further. What’s the odds? Not a nice book, no, not at all, this portrait of psychotic America, psychotic us. Just enough to touch a dulled nerve or two, get an article or so written.’ [Related: Bio of Bret Easton Ellis, Geocities Fan Page]
24 January 2002
[war] Back to hell — Mark Bowden – author of Black Hawk Down – on a possible US return to Somalia … ‘Because it is so wild, and because most of its residents are Muslims, Somalia seems a logical destination for al-Qaida and Taliban leaders fleeing the rout in Afghanistan. With the longest shoreline of any African nation, with its lack of government, navy, army or police, there is nothing to stop international outlaws from coming, provided they can run the international patrols in the Persian Gulf and Indian ocean. But once in Somalia, there is nothing to stop the US and its allies from coming after them. “We’ll go wherever we need to go in Somalia,” said one American general who asked not to be named. “It’s not likely that we’ll be asking permission.”‘
[comics] Lego Spider Jerusalem … ‘Being a Lego bastard WORKS’ [via WEF]
23 January 2002
[comics] Yet another long interview with Alan Moore covering pretty much all aspects of his career …. On writing From Hell: ‘Ten years wading through the material, the literature, not just Jack the Ripper but all of these fuckers. All these miserable little apologies for human beings. They’re not supermen. They’re not supermen at all. They’re not Hannibal Lecter. You know, they’re Peter Sutcliffe, they’re a bloke with a dodgy perm. And some horrible screw-up in his relationship with his mother or something. They’re little blokes.’ [via Ink Stains]
[books] Epic children’s book takes Whitbread — Philip Pullman wins the Book of the Year Award … ‘He admitted that the judges fretted about giving the £25,000 top award to a children’s book. “If I am honest, the wind was against Pullman at the very beginning. We did worry about giving such a literary prize to a children’s book, but then we thought of CS Lewis and that was that.” The comparison with Lewis and his Narnia books has been often made of Pullman, who has never shied from tackling the big issues of love, belief and death.’ [Related: Extact from The Amber Spyglass]
22 January 2002
[911] A Dream in Ruins — interview with Leslie Robertson – one of the designers of the World Trade Center … ‘He had agreed 18 months earlier to speak at a meeting of the National Council of Structural Engineers in New Hampshire in early October and went ahead with the engagement. He was astonished later to see a report of the meeting in the Wall Street Journal. Robertson was asked: “Is there anything you wish you had done differently in the design of the building?” Instead of answering, he wept. “I guess I thought I was a sturdier person than I am,” he says now. “The thing that keeps you awake at night is the people in the building. Pretty much every night.”‘
[comics] Larry Young looks at how many comic book publishers feel about internet users … ‘Many comic book publishers hold you in disdain. It’s true. Secretly (because, really, how would it look if this got out?), many of the folks who toil daily to bring you your comic books really could not care less about what you think. And by “you” I don’t mean the “audience,” because entertainers need an audience to entertain. Almost by definition. If you’re producing something for public consumption, chances are you wouldn’t mind hearing some applause now and then. No, by “you,” I mean “Internet users.”‘ [via Neilalien]
[distraction] This is Me by Georg Bush … ‘i have the most guns and planes in the world’ [via BenHammersley.com]
21 January 2002
[film] The Greatest Movie Stanley Kubrick Never Made — Salon on Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon biopic … ‘In the midst of preparing his adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Shining,” and noting the success of the large-scale miniseries “Roots,” Kubrick began investigating the possibility of turning his Napoleon project into a 20-hour television production, with Al Pacino in the lead role. He revealed his plans in an interview with French writer Michel Ciment. But Kubrick’s friend Senior believes the suggestion was probably nothing more than a joke. “My God,” Senior exclaimed in a recent interview, “can you imagine Stanley Kubrick actually doing a miniseries?”‘ [via Bitstream]
[tv] Go on, Take a Pop — interview with Pop Idol’s Simon Cowell … ‘He seems much more vulnerable than when we first met. I tell him that he surprised me when he said not much in life has made him happy. “I am quite miserable because I’m never satisfied with what I’ve got. You’re always looking for that next high, and that is what I would define as happiness. I go through mood swings and the highs don’t last very long.” He says he gets bored and dissatisfied easily – with women, with work, with life.’
[books] First Chapter of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen … ‘She was looking for a letter that had come by Registered mail some days ago. Alfred had heard the mailman knock on the door and had shouted, “Enid! Enid!” so loudly that he couldn’t hear her shouting back, “Al, I’m getting it!” He’d continued to shout her name, coming closer and closer, and because the sender of the letter was the Axon Corporation, 24 East Industrial Serpentine, Schwenksville, PA, and because there were aspects of the Axon situation that Enid knew about and hoped that Alfred didn’t, she’d quickly stashed the letter somewhere within fifteen feet of the front door. Alfred had emerged from the basement bellowing like a piece of earth-moving equipment, “There’s somebody at the door!” and she’d fairly screamed, “The mailman! The mailman!” and he’d shaken his head at the complexity of it all.’
20 January 2002
[politics] Hey, I’m Doing My Best — Christopher Hitchens on George Bush’s first year … ‘The moral and political universe turns on the axis of 11 September. And that date is a day that Bush would no doubt like to have back again. Unlike any of his predecessors in a time of disaster, he was actually live on camera when the news hit. We saw him squatting on a small chair in a Florida schoolroom, smirking condescendingly at a junior class, when his chief of staff came hurrying in. And then we saw him no more, as the stupid doomsday routines of ‘national security’ hid him. The official excuse for this – that he had been overruled by his guards – was more panicky and pathetic than the reality. So the Mayor of New York became leader of the free world for a whole week.’
19 January 2002
[comics] John Buscema Obit from The Independent … ‘His professional career was launched in April 1948 at Timely Comics, later better known as Marvel Comics, home of Spider-Man. Hired as an artist at a salary of $75 a week by the editor Stan Lee, he joined a small army of artists and writers churning out a stream of five-to-eight-page stories. In 1950 disaster struck: a forgotten storage cupboard disgorged a mountain of unpublished stories and artwork in the Timely offices, whereupon the entire artistic staff was sacked. Over the next eight years, as a freelance comic artist, Buscema was to turn his drawing hand to stories in every genre (except, ironically, superheroes) for a legion of comics publishers.’
18 January 2002
[movies] Are you having a good war, Ewen? … profile of Ewen Bremner. ‘In moments of panic, of which Black Hawk Down has plenty, Ewen Bremner’s brow folds into a deep and spectacular crease, which raises his eyebrows into his hairline, lifts his chin into his mouth, and seems to hollow out his already emaciated face. No, since you asked, he doesn’t look like a movie star. He is the first to admit it. Of his role in Pearl Harbor, in which he played a goofball with a speech impediment, he has remarked: “I’m just making Ben Affleck look good.”‘
[distractions] Destiny’s Alf … ‘…coz I depend on meat…’
[quotables] Ali’s words speak for themselves … Muhammad Ali — the quotes. On Life: ‘I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.’
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