My buddy Aaron the Alligator is celebrating his birthday tomorrow with a brand-new sport.
Serious news coverage can be found here.
It will be ridiculous but we have tried to make it legitimately playable at the same time. If you’re in the Hutt, come along to Trafalgar Park at 5pm.
“Mmp” is the sound you make when you’ve been gagged and tied to a chair by a villainous smuggler and your kindly aunt is standing unknowingly just outside the door and you wish to alert her to your presence so she can free you and help you thwart the smugglers.
MMP is the proportional electoral system we use in NZ. There’s currently a massive consultation underway. The team that have set this up have done a really amazing job – there’s clickable ads all over the NZ web, and lots of real-world notices too. The website has lots of useful information divided up into small, understandable questions, and you are encouraged to respond to those same questions (though more extensive responses are welcomed of course). This makes it really easy to look at this hugely important issue and give some input.
And it is a hugely important issue. Just look at the debacle in the UK right now, or the last few decades of US governance, for some clear evidence that your electoral system has a huge impact on your society’s welfare.
I’ve said before on here (somewhere or other) that the biggest problem with participation in our democracy is that it’s a pain in the butt to do anything more than vote every few years. This is the first time I’ve seen something that shows it doesn’t have to be this way. Kiwis, I implore you to check it out & have your say.
Right, on with the rest of the linky:
Jennifer Connelly’s audition for Labyrinth.
That’s via Dangerous Minds, who also embedded the entirety of the first ever version of the Muppet Show, a test-run special titled “Sex and Violence” that aims for a more adult tone. Kermit is not the presenter; Floyd has a major role; it’s the Muppets but not as you know it. Coincidentally, the AV Club wrote about this episode a couple weeks back.
Back on the subject of Labyrinth – Original Pope of this Blog, Mr David R., alerted me to the splendid Bowiesongs Blog’s analysis of the Labyrinth soundtrack as a hidden Bowie album. Neato.
Hmm. I wonder, which would have launched more puberties: gold bikini Leia or tightpants Labyrinth Bowie? Suggestions for methodology and funding welcome.
Batman vs. that famous pick-up artist Mystery
Downton Abbey dialogue anachronisms
Here’s U.S. highways mapped like the London Underground. Yes yes it’s a cliche but this one actually works.
Interesting article taking the parasites-can-affect-behaviour research another step – why your cat can make you crazy
What scientific concept would improve everyone’s cognitive toolkit? Many many smart people respond. Includes the usual suspects (Dawkins, Brand, Lakoff, Shirky) and names I didn’t expect (Rudy Rucker, Brian Eno) and many more I’d never heard of. The entries I read were all great (one inspired suggestion: kayfabe). Well worth your time; I’m gonna come back to this.
Jamas has found the entirety of GET LAMP, a documentary about interactive fiction/text adventure games, is available to watch online. Yay!
Using police identikit techniques and descriptions in text, making images of novel characters (e.g. Lisbeth Salander, Daisy Buchanan)
Via Dylan H: Alan Moore explains, in 90 seconds, why he worships a glove puppet.
And finally… food on my dog
No Friday linky this week on account of my brother having a wedding on Saturday. Much to do!
Oh okay, just one linky, via Jack Elder: an interesting easter egg in every YouTube video
Two interesting projects have come to light today, both on the Bleeding Cool news website. They are both ideas I have talked about several times in the past: “someone should do this,” I have said. Now someone is.
The first is a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted 1970s film adaptation of Dune. I learned about this film through my interest in the making of the 1979 film Alien, which was in many ways born out of the ashes of the failed Dune project. The designs I’ve seen for the film are fascinating, and the weird visionary style of Jodorowsky would have been a fascinating match for Frank Herbert’s dense science fiction epic. The sheer talent involved alone makes this one of the great untold stories of filmmaking, and one I’ve long thought demanded a telling; but now that I’ve seen this first clip, I realize Dune could have been even more of a game changer, perhaps the only real followup to Kubrick’s 2001. This one promises to far exceed my hopes. I’m very excited about this.
The second one has not been confirmed, but strongly hinted: Mark Gatiss is apparently working on a TV drama about the creation of Doctor Who in the early 60s. I am a lot more cautious about this project. While Gatiss is a huge fan of the show and a highly successful TV creative (best known at the moment for Sherlock), he is… not at his strongest working with female characters. (At least, so argues Andrew(Bartok), quite convincingly.)
This matters because the version of this story I have always wanted to see (and have wanted to write, had I the time and airfare budget to research it properly) isn’t about the origins of Doctor Who at all, but instead about the early careers of two remarkable women: Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire. Both of them were pioneers (in television production and electronic music, respectively, although that undersells their impact) and both of them were young women in overwhelmingly male work environments. DW was where their trajectories crossed, and they both had a huge part to play in making the show an icon of British culture. There is plenty of other fascinating incident in the origin of DW, and of course the men involved were all quite singular, but to me the Lambert/Derbyshire parallel story has a potential that the rest doesn’t match.
So I’ll watch for more news of this one with caution.
(The first scene of my version of the Lambert/Derbyshire story pretty much writes itself.)
Linky named in honour of the rye whiskey that broke inside the Alligator’s bags en route to the Hutt Valley. We did not drink you, rye whiskey, but we inhaled your aromas.
Some linky then:
Modernist Journals, complete in PDF. Includes, for example, all three issues of The Blue Review (1913) edited by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Quite, quite wow.
Retronaut has some colour photographs of WWI. (Presumably using the autochrome process?)
The Star Tours ride is gone – but it has been recreated. By a fan. In both 2D and 3D.
Top 10 relationship words not translatable into english
Via Susan H, New Scientist looks at flow – that state when you’re totally in the zone.
The death and return of Superman, as goofy film. Marvellous. I used to describe this storyline as “DC using up all public goodwill in order to give Superman a mullet.”
Mrs Meows discusses the plight of the Disney starlets.
Photos of shrines in teenage bedrooms
And finally, the logical end of all those Sh!t People Say videos
The great shift of medium for the comic form, from paper to digital, passed its tipping point sometime in the last few years. Over the same period, the market for “literary” comics-as-books has grown enormously, the economics that supported the popular “pamphlet” comic book format have utterly collapsed, and (with ironic timing) the primary content of those dying pamphlets has become the biggest moneyspinner in the Hollywood arsenal. This makes for some interesting times.
Consider:
Popular webcomic “Order of the Stick” is running a crowdfunding campaign to gather $60K to fund a *reprint* of a print collection of its freely-available online strips. As I write, it has beaten its goal sixfold, and there are almost three weeks still to go.
Wholesome all-American Archie Comics, one of the few pamphlet-style lines that seems to be in decent financial health, has not just introduced a gay character, they put a mixed-race gay military wedding on the cover. And the latest news is that Archie will be covering the Occupy movement. It wasn’t so long ago that the Archie characters were spouting God’s word on-panel, and spun off a whole sub-line of Christian comics where the Archie gang learned about prayer, scripture and the fires of hell.
The Avengers film is going to launch a new trailer during the Superbowl, the most expensive advertising spot there is. It will do huge numbers at the box office (+ more if it’s any good). Probably 99.5% of viewers will never have read an Avengers comic book, and never will afterwards either. (The real secret of success here: Comics people teaching Hollywood how to do a crossover with film properties. Comic books figured out how this works back in the 30s. Hollywood never did until Aliens vs Predator – which was of course a comics adaptation.) (Although Freddy vs Jason came out first.) (And no, those Abbot & Costello films don’t count.) (True fact: Hollywood has never really understood IP, even while it fights furiously to defend it.)
Comics from around the world, particularly Europe and Asia where the medium is thriving in print as well as digital, are also more available to the English-speaking world than ever before. Two Euro examples:
Billy pointed at this marvellous strip that takes advantage of screen presentation in an absolutely stunning way, and tells a heck of a story as well.
And various comics types have been delightedly sharing this amazing 24-hour comic by Boulet – created from nothing to completion in (just over) 24 hours. Fantastic!
Every single one of these items is just amazing to me. (I won’t talk about Before Watchmen, because after six months of rumours I’d already resigned myself to its existence. And besides, the Alan-Moore-devised role-playing adventures provide all the prequel content I need…)
Maire just found a neat bit of research on what happened to that slave who wrote a letter to his old master. (Here’s that letter – really, really worth a read.)
This one’s been popping up all over, because it’s marvellous: a girl who can say words backwards. I love this video not just for the party trick itself (which is lovely and fascinating) but for the details: the girls in the back seat conferring as they try to come up with the hardest words they can, the guy looking around for inspiration and naming everything he can see which tells you a lot about where they are, the fact they are in a car in the first place, and best of all the way the video ends. (Oh crappers.) It’s all so damn genuine.
What’s wrong with “First Word Problems” (Via Ms Scarlet)
ALIEN linky now: Jones the cat’s view of Alien (Via qarl) and the wonderful ALIEN AGE 11, which is a comic adaptation of Alien made by an 11-year-old who had only read the novelisation and never seen the film (via dritchie).
Shakespeare in the original pronunciation transforms the work & reveals previously-hidden puns. Great! (via Sonal)
Lance Reddick from Fringe and The Wire reveals a new side of himself.
Classical concert performer interrupted by ringtone, and handles it very well indeed
Your wow photos for the day: Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival
And finally, via Mike Sands: cats 4 gold