[must read] Salon reviews James Ellroy’s The Cold Six Thousand … ‘Ellroy once called himself “the greatest crime novelist who ever lived,” and then wrote books like “The Black Dahlia,” “The Big Nowhere” and “L.A. Confidential” to prove it. Now he wants to sit with the grown-ups, and if they don’t make room at the table he’s going to tip it over. One way or another, he means to make it, and on his own terms. “Fuck being a crime novelist when you can be a flat-out great novelist,” he once told me — there never being a doubt in his mind that being either one was merely a matter of choice, of will. Ellroy took risks.’ [Related: Cold Six Thousand at Amazon]

[profile] Mum, this is my porn empire… The Independent profiles Benjamin Cohen — a young “dot.com whizz”. ‘He shows me his bedroom, where it all began. It is lime and turquoise, with a sweet little single bed and, still, Winnie the Pooh books in the bookcase. Have you had sex, Benjamin? “I’m not telling you that.” “Why not?” “Because I’m just not.” Benjamin, by the way, is a Tory, an admirer of William Hague who, yes, would one day like to get into politics himself. “Do you think the porn thing will be a hurdle?” he asks.’

[profile] Prophet of the new child order — Sunday Times profile of Michael Lewis… ‘It seems a curious moment to introduce his theory that technological advance is rocketing ahead too fast for most of us. Virtual reality is mostly stuck in amusement arcades, e-mail use is declining, dotcom companies are still on the ropes and silicon chips report falling profits. All this is irrelevant to the changes that are taking place under our noses, he claims. “The profit-making potential of the internet has been overrated and the social effects of the internet were presumed to be overrated. But they weren’t.”‘ Thank God for the Internet — Another article on Lewis at Salon. On Bill Joy’s view of technological change: ‘…what bothered me was that he had a political interest in reining in this process. Stopping it. Stopping change. This just seemed the height of hypocrisy to me. This is a man whose status in the society derives entirely from the society’s willingness to be very liberal in its attitudes toward technology and change and development and now that he’s on top he wants to control it. It just reeked to me of status anxiety.’

[internet] Taming the Wild, Wild Web — interesting article on Big Corporations growing discontent with the “unreliable, uncontrollable, unruly” Internet… ‘The business world’s discontent has increased as the Internet economy has unraveled over the last year. That’s not surprising, given that the network was first mapped out more than 30 years ago, when it was devised as a coast-to-coast system connecting universities working on projects financed by government grants. “The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn’t excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws,” said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. “The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn’t have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network.”‘ [via Digital Trickery]

[profile] The Independent profiles Heather Mills and wonders what exactly is it about her that people find unsettling? ‘What is it then, that causes us to hang back, to pause a little? The answer is Mills herself. There is something about her that is almost frightening. She seems too perfect, her story too colourful, too dramatic. Few people, say her critics, are as driven, as single-minded, as strong-willed as she. And we find that unsettling, hard to cope with. When her father comes out to say his daughter is not a gold-digger who hunts down rich men, there are some who wonder if he protests too much.’

[mindfucking] Taming the multiverse — New Scientist on Parallel Universes… ‘In classical physics, [Deutsch] says, there is no such thing as “if”; the future is determined absolutely by the past. So there can be no free will. In the multiverse, however, there are alternatives; the quantum possibilities really happen. Free will might have a sensible definition, Deutsch thinks, because the alternatives don’t have to occur within equally large slices of the multiverse. “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.”‘ [NOT Related: Crisis On Infinite Earths]

[politics] Time to reveal my “other” website: Darius Von Daniken Shrubsole says “I’m proud to be a Tory!” ‘If you are a conservative and you like my page, maybe we can be friends! Why not email me with your personal details. We can correspond about anything – I’m interested in more than politics. I like listening to Music (particularly Radio 2) and shopping for fashionable clothes at the Lakeside Shopping Center, which also has some marvellous architectural features. Of course I’ll only respond if you are voting for William on June 7th!.’ [via Clog]

[comics] Salon has A Conversation With Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes… ‘Collectors like us are usually all really troubled people who find solace in their dank apartments filled with decaying old stuff, and they’re often a trial to deal with. Of course, I live in my own little sanctum/sanatorium with all my books covered with Mylar. I collected a lot of sleazy ’50s and ’60s sex paperbacks and recently found one from 1968 called “Ding-a-Ling Broad.” It has the dumbest-looking woman that I’ve ever seen on the cover. It’s something that is an endless source of joy for me.’ [Related: Ghost World Movie Site, Salon Review, GW at IMDB, link via Seething Hatred]

[recession] Economics? It’s a piece of cake — are we heading for a recession? The Guardian does a number of totally unscientific tests to find out… ‘…Budd’s scientific method for testing the economic climate was to stand in the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex counting shoppers – fatally, he was fooled by their numbers into believing recovery was on the way, not noticing their sad noses pressed up against the glass gazing forlornly at the things they couldn’t afford.’

[comics] The Disappearing Comic Book — Why are comic books in trouble when comic book characters are strong in other mediums? ‘During the last 30 years, comics have become ghettoized, Munson says, turned into specialty items sold in persnickety little shops, located one per town, if that, and sold only to those who know the secret word. (Los Angeles, with dozens of shops and some of the best, is an exception.) A few popular titles are available at chain bookstores, but I had to squat and look beneath the bottom shelf on a Barnes & Noble magazine rack to find a copy of “Wolverine’.

[intersection] I Am Jack’s Younger Self — the unmistakable connection between Fight Club and Calvin and Hobbes… ‘Within the safety of the panel, Calvin is perpetually eight years old, terrible things can never happen, and no matter how crazy a stunt he pulls, everything always returns to status quo. Because of this, our hero is free to do as he wishes, free to chase his dreams as wildly as he desires, never having to worry about tomorrow because there essentially will never BE one — unless it’s part of a continuing storyline. This makes the reality of Fight Club all the bleaker, because it depicts what happens when you take someone weaned on dreams and limitless possibilities and jam him into a cramped cage confined by rules and regulations’ [via Metafilter]

[comics] Comics From The Underground — The New Yorker profiles Dan Clowes… ‘Clowes scowled. “I really hate this shit,” he said. Then he noticed a 1951 “Space Squadron”: on the cover was a squat red rocket and spacemen floating in bulbous suits. “That’s so great,” he said, and his huge gray eyes seemed to glow. “That unthreatening quaintness, that X factor of weird old men trying to draw for children. It’ll be panel after panel of inexplicably strange Freudian dogma.” Gesturing at the “Black Widow” and “Hellblazer” graphic novels below, he said, “This crap looks like it was airbrushed on the side of a van in 1973 by some surly young creep.”‘ [via Robot Wisdom]

[intersection] Journey’s End — was Michael Portillo’s political career ruined by Big Brother? ‘”Michael was very struck by Big Brother,” reveals a Tory frontbencher who supported his bid for the party leadership. “We discussed it at length. His whole speech to last year’s Tory party conference was inspired by it. “The thing about that programme was the people. Young people, easy-going in their attitudes. They seemed to be the face of apolitical modern Britain. Michael knew immediately that we had to reach out to people like that. Britain isn’t reactionary any more.” Maybe. But large sections of the Tory party are.’

[linkage] I’ve just noticed that the Sunday Times has finally put articles from it’s glossy magazine on the website… Bullitt over Broadway [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] Brief study of Steve McQueen… ‘He grew more insecure with each film. “He wasn”t sure of what he was doing – and he wanted to do a really good job. He wanted order. If a director showed weakness, he would be replaced. And he was very possessive,” remembers Claxton. “He was like a child – at lunch he would order way over what he needed: two cheeseburgers, three chocolate milkshakes, two bags of fries. His attitude was, “Get it while you can, before they take it away from you.” He purposely didn’t carry any money around; he was very tight. He wouldn’t even tip baggage handlers at airports. He’d say, “No – they need to learn that life is tough.” ‘ The Hot Ticket [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] Article about Tony Blair just before the last election… ‘Flying back from the Labour party spring conference in Glasgow, I am seated next to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, almost entirely deaf. He holds his nose and blows hard, instructing me to follow his step-by-step example. ‘No, no, no, not like that, like this.’I fear bursting an eardrum. He shrugs; his view is that unless you push on with a project it’s hardly worth bothering.’ The Talented Mr Ridley [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3] Interview with Ridley Scott… ‘He had not won the Oscar for best director. That had gone to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic. Ridley had been there before, with Thelma & Louise, losing on that occasion to Jonathan Demme, the director of The Silence of the Lambs. This time, he said, he had two flash moments, the first being relief that he would not have to do his acceptance speech, the second disappointment at having come so close again. Then he thought, oh bugger, he’d have a vodka instead.’

[tv] The Life of Chris — the Guardian profiles Chris Morris’ career.. ‘The animal rights campaigner Carla Lane is still disgusted, four years after her encounter with Morris (“Prison’s not good enough” for animal abusers, she told him. Morris replied: “Prison’s too good. So what about jail?”) “These trendy people seem to think what they do is very funny,” Lane says today, “but most of it is beyond the 40-year-olds who are looking for Only Fools And Horses or Are You Being Served.”‘ [Related: Cook’d and Bomb’d]

[politics] And Mother Makes Two — Old, slightly revealing interview of Ann Widdecombe by Gyles Brandreth… ‘Let’s face it, we are not a happier society as a result of the liberalisation of the Seventies. We have record rates of divorce, record rates of suicide, record rates of teenage pregnancy, record rates of youth crime, record rates of underage sex. We should invite people to recognise that the Great Experiment has failed. You cannot have happiness without restraint.’ [via Blogadoon]

[comics] Daddy, I Hardly Knew You — review of Chris Ware’s graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth…. ‘This is a finely crafted, complex book that gets better with every chapter: Ware seems to have matured both as an artist and a person in the years it took to complete. While so many similar projects are little more than strings of striking images, Jimmy Corrigan forces you to pause, flick back a few pages and read again, rewarding you with another insight, another overdue connection. It is a rare and uplifting example of an artistic vision pushed to the limits.’ [via Bugpowder]

[stuff] Linkage:

• I wonder what sort of Big Brother 2 housemate Paul from Digital Trickery would be? ‘The less I hear about this pleb-pleasing triviafest the better. I mean, why does anyone give a flying toss about it? ‘
• Adventure for the Atari 2600 — one of my favourite computer games ever… ‘Adventure also contained the first Easter Egg (hidden surprise) in a video game, which in this case was the author’s signature hidden in a secret room.’
• Friday’s Media Nugget was Ghost World. ‘Few movies have expressed the transition from teen to adult with such farcical honesty. An adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Daniel Clowes (who co-wrote the film), Ghost World beautifully retains the style and attitude of its comic book forebear. ‘
• New Order Website… True Faith Video. ‘When I was a very small boy Very small boys talked to me. Now that we’ve grown up together They’re afraid of what they see. That’s the price that we all pay And the value of destiny comes to nothing. I can’t tell you where we’re going I guess there was just no way of knowing.’
• Friday Night expressed as a link.
• Profile of Iain Duncan Smith…. ‘In background and style Tebbit and Duncan Smith could hardly have been more different, but they both held fast to key tenets of the Thatcherite canon – principally the supremacy of the nation state. Asked while electioneering what he thought of foxhunting, Duncan Smith was prevented from replying by Tebbit, who pointed to his colleague’s mouth and said: “Madam, these are the teeth of a killer. This man must have meat or die.”‘

[politics] The Undoing of a Bold Pretender — a postmortem on Michael Portillo’s Tory leadership campaign… ‘…after the final ballot last Tuesday, when most of the other MPs had gone to crack open Champagne or commiserate with colleagues, one senior figure in the party hung back. “The thing about Portillo is that he is arrogant, politically ambivalent and unaware of what the Conservatives really wanted or needed,” he said, a smile playing around his lips. Around the corner a new entrant to the Commons at the last election was not so sure. “We may have made the worst mistake this party has ever made,” he said, staring woefully at the floor. “And I didn’t even support Portillo.”‘

[politics] A On-line Petition: To Mr Big, Please make Lord Archer your Bitch. ‘Who’s the Daddy Now?’ [via Haddock]

[drinks] This sounds like an interesting drink — The Turbo Shandy. ‘Drink half the lager, empy smirnoff ice into recently vacated space, and enjoy…’ [via Boney Baloney]

[politics] The judge’s every word dripped with loathing and contempt — Simon Hoggart on the Archer Verdict. ‘Then the sentence and a speech from the judge which surely smashed into him as hard as the prison term. It must have been like being hosed down with sewage. Every word dripped with loathing and contempt: “As serious an offence of perjury as I have experience of, and as serious as I have been able to find in the books”. The judge spoke of the way he had preyed upon the weak and vulnerable to concoct his alibis; the way he had hurried along the original libel trial in order to tell his lies and spin his fabrications. It was a short speech, but lethal. Mr Justice Potts was about to take away his liberty, but first he wanted to strip off what shreds were left of his reputation.’ [Related: Archer’s Greasy Pole]

[comics] Uncle Joe loved a good joke — Stalin’s Politburo liked to doodle cartoons during meetings… ‘. Uncle Joe himself may have been a mass murderer, tyrant and scheming paranoiac, but he had his jocular side as well, even if his sense of humour was typically brutal. As revealed by an extraordinary buff folder marked Top Secret, containing drawings by senior Bolsheviks, he appreciated a good political cartoon as much as the next man.’

[politics] Hats off to Ken — The Guardian analyses Ken Clarke’s sense of fashion… ‘Yet it is precisely Clarke’s lack of fashionableness that may well prove to be his strength. Despite the horrified cry of Loaded’s Adrian Clarke – “Surely he should have an adviser to help him with these matters?” – this hat exemplifies the lack of spin in Clarke’s image. It is worn, pure and simply, to keep the rain off his head. ‘

[web] 20 Questions Ask Jeeves Can’t Answer. ‘Who’s your daddy?’

[movies] The trailer for Apocalypse Now Redux is up at the Apple Trailers Site. ‘Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program.’ [Related: Quotes, Apocalypse Now Tribute Site]

[comics] Long, fascinating interview with Bill Sienkiewicz… ‘I wanted to paint Elektra: Assassin at all costs. I wanted to do it so badly, that the rate for the coloring was like $40 a page. They didn’t have a painted page rate at the time. So I was doing all that work for essentially nothing because I needed to do it, I wanted to do it. From working with Frank’s scripts to laughing my head off to being inspired and excited and knowing that whatever he was going to throw back at me was going to inspire me further. It really helped to make it about the work… because it all got turned back into the storyline. It was a very creative environment.’ [Related: Sienkiewicz’s Website]

[politics] Welcome to the House of Usher — Simon Hoggart on the Tory Leadership Contest. ‘We will come out of this stronger and more united than ever!” Mr Ancram said. Oh, give it a rest, I thought. Only a hour or so ago, Nick Soames bellowed “F*** off!” at Michael Fallon. One Tory wife accused her husband – voting the wrong way, she thought – of “going through a midlife crisis and plunging his party into total oblivion”. There’s enough bitterness, wormwood and gall in the Tories now to keep an illegal absinthe distiller going for decades. And they haven’t even had the final round.’

[stuff] Linkage:

• Livia Soprano: ‘Why does everything have to have a purpose? The world is a jungle! And if you want my advice, Anthony, don’t expect happiness. You won’t get it — people let you down … and I’m not naming ANY names — but in the end, you die in your own arms’ [from Sopranos Sounds]
• Dylan Horrocks… Sketchbook and Website.
• Displacement Activity — ‘An activity shown by an animal that appears to be irrelevant to its situation. Displacement activities are frequently observed when there is conflict between opposing drives. For example, birds in aggressive situations, in which there are simultaneous drives to attack and to flee, may preen their feathers as a displacement activity.’
• Atari Lives! — Great article about how the Atari 2600 console lives on 24 years after it’s release…. ‘The programmers stretched the hardware to limits unintended and unimaginable even by the hardware designers! A lot of times while I’m programming, I’ll throw on some disco music, pretend it’s 1979 and imagine what the designers had to work with.’
• Last two days of MP3’s on Filepile…

[politics / tv] Portillo knocked out of the Tory Leadership Contest / Helen and Paul nominated in BB2… What an afternoon…