The Blog of Tom

Interview with Alan Moore on becoming a magician (not the kind with doves and cards).

monkeynonymous - Magic is afoot Part 1

According to the Guardian, Aaron Sorkin is working on Facebook: The Movie, which is just too hideous for words. Whether this is actually happening, is just a viral joke or I’m actually still asleep and this is just some horrible nightmare, there’s a page where Facebook users can get in touch with Sorkin (or ‘Sorkin’) and beg him to reconsider this hideous notion.

Christopher Hitchens’ article in Vanity Fair tells the true experience of being waterboarded. Not pleasant reading, but necessary.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808?printable=true&currentPage=all

Wired has an interesting look back at War Games, the proto-geek move that deluded a generation that messing around with an Amstrad would somehow change the world.

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars

Just a quick nod to the (relatively) new comic shop in Finsbury Park, Fantastic Realm. If you’re in the area, they’re just by Wells Terrace. They also have a nice website.

The new issue of Mustard is out now and features a long interview with Graham Linehan as well as other bits of silliness. I always find it a bit weird when black and white publications make the transition to colour (Pete Bagge’s Hate was never quite the same after the transition) so it’ll be interesting to see if Mustard retains its pep. Anyway, this issue is definitely worth picking up, if only for the Linehan interview and the comic strip which imagines the Elephant Man as a Victorian superhero.

Direct link:
www.mustardweb.org

It’s been a few years since I read Stephen Poole’s interesting (if a little pretentious) book about videogames, but given that he’s now giving it away as an e-book, it seems churlish not to mention Trigger Happy

Lifehacker posted this last week, but it’s worth mentioning thatYou Suck at Photoshop is what web tutorialsshould be like - instructional, informative and utterly deranged.

Comic-fuelled nostalgia made me do some research into a couple of BBC Radio plays I remembered from my youth - one Batman and one Superman piece, both produced by Dirk Maggs. While I was unable to find the meta-fictional “Superman On Trial” (which had Lex Luthor interviewing comic book writers and artists), I very happy to find Batman - The Lazarus Syndrome at The Radio Nostalgia Network. They’ve also got a good collection of classic superhero radio programmes from the 30s and 40s, but it was the Maggs radio play that I was particularly pleased to find as it’s a real stand-out memory from youth.

As it turns out, Dirk Maggs is a bit of a radio star. As well as the Batman and Superman pieces, he produced further radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide and his UK-based Independence Day spin-off sounds pretty good too. Any further links will be posted as and when they are found.

Direct link:
Batman - The Lazarus Syndrome
http://radiomemories.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=246130

Available now from Wayward Press.