February 29, 2008 12:28

Iain Banks: The Matter Interview

I've never understood why Iain Banks isn't famous-er in the U.S. I mean, I know he's well-known, but why isn't he a towering collossus? If you haven't read him, he basically writes space opera -- massive starships, bizarre aliens, ultra-advanced tech -- but with a hugely intelligent literary sensibility and dark Douglas Adams-y humor. I wrote a thing in Time this week about Iain Banks's new book Matter, the eighth novel in his Culture sequence. I think Banks is one of the best and most interesting living writers in any genre, and I got about 3 square inches in which to say why in the magazine, so I had to vamp a little at the end to fill it out, but you'll get the basic idea.

Fortunately I also got Banks's e-mail address from his publicist, and he consented to answer some questions over e-mail. I was going to try to ask clever literary questions, but I couldn't think of any, so I just asked a bunch of things I've always wanted to know:

Me: It’s been 8 years since LOOK TO WINDWARD, and I was worried that we’d heard the last about the Culture. What took you so long? And what made you come back?

Banks: I've shifted to writing a book every eighteen months now rather than every year, plus I took time off to write a book about whisky, then there was a non-Culture novel - The Algebraist - and then life got kind of complicated as my wife and I were heading toward breaking up and for a large part of 2005 I wasn't able to concentrate as I'd have liked. So, before I knew it, eight years had gone by. I guess I'll always return to the Culture though; I have too much fun there not to.

Say something about your interest in massive structures, like orbitals and shellworlds. What draws you to them? I often think of Niven’s Ringworld when I’m reading your books...

I was brought up with the Forth Bridge - the mile-long rail bridge that looks like the three of diamonds - right outside my bedroom window, so that might help account for it, but I suppose that must only have been speaking to something in me that had already pre-disposed me to a fascination with Big Stuff. Certainly Orbitals owe a lot to Larry Niven's Ringworld idea - itself a section of a Dyson Sphere - though I'd argue they're more elegant as they're shrunk to a diameter where the period of rotation itself gives you both a day-night cycle and an apparent gravity roughly the same as ours, and the fact they orbit their star like a planet means you can dispense with those awkward shadow squares. Of course, they do require considerable quantities of Unobtanium to build...

I remember Niven complaining about how after he’d introduced a certain amount of ultra-advanced far-future tech into his Known Space universe, he had trouble thinking of good plots, because people didn’t really have any problems anymore. Do you ever run into this problem? (No more Niven questions after this.)

Well, yes. (We're seeing this in a minor scale in reality already now that mainstream literature has to cope with the near-ubiquity of mobile phones; that makes a lot of plots trickier.) It's one reason many of the Culture stories are set on the barbarous peripheries, and/or in times of societal stress or even outright war, when a lot of the tech isn't working perfectly.

Do you think of the Culture as a utopia? Would you live in it, if you could?

Good grief yes, to both! What's not to like? ...Well, unless you're actually a fascist or a power junkie or sincerely believe that money rather than happiness is what really matters in life. And even people with those bizarre beliefs are catered for in the Culture, albeit in extreme-immersion VR environments.

You write better technobabble than anybody anywhere. I’ve actually used the phrase “stuttered tight-point transmission” from Excession and passed it off as a real thing in conversation. What’s the secret?

I suspect it's just the right balance of wide-eyed, totally fascinated enthusiasm for 'real' tech speak along with a healthy dose of cynicism regarding how easy it is to make up such stuff without really having any idea what in the hell you're talking about. I am happy to report I have both, in spades.

I read Look to Windward [a Culture novel involving a terrorist plot] shortly before September 11th, and I remember feeling chilled by the parallels: liberal-but-interfering technocracy screws w/ less wealthy, developed people, who respond w/ terrorism. Did that analogy strike you as well? Or maybe what I’m asking is, more broadly, is this what all the Culture books are about: bad stuff that happens when the 1st world interacts with the 3rd world?

The book was written before 9/11 so was in no way a response, but yes, the comparison struck me too. I think generally any parallels between our reality and the Culture are more often accidental - though maybe inevitable - rather than deliberate. I think bad stuff can happen in any unequal interaction, but it's normally the responsibility of those with the preponderance of power to ensure that the interaction is as smooth and injury-free - especially for the weaker party - as possible. So it's about damage limitation, in the end. The vital difference between Capitalism - Western or otherwise - and the Culture is that the latter is mercifully free from the imperative to exploit.

Douglas Adams. Not a question, but I wonder if you could say something about him, and whether he’s influenced your work. I feel like his presence hangs over so much British SF...in a good way...

A real cultural icon and seemingly a nice guy too (we never met). I wouldn't claim any direct influence but there could well be some subtle colouring of my work by his. I'd be quite happy if that were the case.

I find that SF writers tend to be either technology fiends or Luddites. What’s your relationship to present-day technology like? What kind of gear do you have in your office? If you even have an office? (Based on your sig, you’re already busted on using an iPhone...)

You got me. I love tech in general with a slightly pathetic, almost puppyish intensity. I call it my study cos I is a Brit, but I've got three Macs in there of various ages, plus another running Logic in the music room (I aim to astound the world one day with my compositional genius). I try not to be too early an adopter but I was in the Apple store in Glasgow last week stroking an Air and trying to think of a good excuse for buying one (maybe two - my girlfriend could use a lighter laptop too)...

February 29, 2008 11:29

New Iron Man Trailer, Now More Awesomer

It has been proven over and over again that good trailers don't guarantee good movies. Cough, Cloverfield, cough. But still: pretty cool. Anybody know who he's fighting there at about the 2:05 mark? Reminds me of a Big Daddy from BioShock.

February 28, 2008 4:37

Advance Look: The New William Shatner Memoir

It's called Up Till Now. It is not Shatner's first piece of autobiographical prose, but it is the first in his oeuvre that I have personally sampled. It's not out till May, but it's on my desk, and I don't recall signing anything saying I wouldn't blog about it. So.

It's interesting. It's not bad. There aren't any bombshells in it that I spotted in a quick, businesslike skim. There's a lot of stuff about his friction with Leonard Nimoy that I didn't know about. Like this one time, a magazine wanted to do a story about Nimoy getting his Spock make-up on, so there was a photographer in the make-up room, and Shatner didn't want anybody seeing him put his make-up on, so Shatner kicked the photographer out. Nimoy yelled at Shatner. Shatner smirked at Nimoy. More yelling ensued.

Yeah. So, O.K., or this one time when Spock had to do a mind-meld with the Horta, and Nimoy decided to go pretty big with the reaction -- "Pain! Pain! Pain!" -- and Shatner was all making fun of him -- like, "Can somebody get this guy an aspirin?"

Leonard did not think it was funny. He was furious. He thought I'd set him up and then betrayed him for the amusement of everyone else on the set. I had toyed with his commitment to his character and the show. For a laugh at his expense. An actor had betrayed an actor, the worst thing you could do. He told me later that he was done with me, that he thought I was a real son of a bitch. He didn't say a word to me for more than a week.

And so on. Like I said, not a lotta bombshells. But then again it's Kirk and Spock, which makes it de facto at least a little bit interesting. There's a good bit where you get the backstory to the making of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the one where they go visit God, particularly the ending. To be fair, Star Trek V has some very fine moments. But the ending isn't among them.

He talks about other cast members hating him -- Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, DeForest Kellley -- pretty much all of them, really. Thing about it is, Shatner cops to a lot of what was obviously going on. He cops to being jealous of all the attention Nimoy got -- the Emmy nods, etc. He cops to hogging the scenery. He's not a monster: he can make fun of himself. You can see why it was all pretty annoying at the time. But it's amusing to read about it now.

February 26, 2008 10:33

New Nerf Herder Album on Its Nerdy Way

In a bizarre, uncharacteristic moment of coolness I got my mitts on an early copy of the new Nerf Herder album, Nerf Herder IV, which is coming out April 29.

I have a long-term obsession with Nerf Herder, who are probably best known for doing the theme song to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (they played the Bronze in the final season), and second-best known for "Van Halen," a song calling out Van Halen for being great, then subsequently sucking ("Is this what you wanted, Sammy Hagar?") Both of which are great songs, though my real deep-diving, repeat-listening Nerf Herder habit began with "Sorry," which you can hear on their MySpace page:

Sorry I showed up at your party
Sorry I drank up all the Bacardi
Sorry I puked up on your bedspread
Sorry I wanted to be your boyfriend again

It continued on with songs like the incomparable "Mr. Spock":

You don't want a boyfriend
What you want is Mr. Spock
To come to your wasteland
And destroy the ro-oh-oh-oh-oh-bot

Basically they play tight, pure, spastic, elastic nerd power-pop larded with geek culture references. To hear Nerf Herder at their best is to wonder why any other kind of music exists.

February 25, 2008 11:09

Lots of Nerd News Out of WonderCon: Iron Man, X-Files 2, Caspian, Wall-E...

The legions of agents at Ain't It Cool transcribed every word uttered, written or thought at WonderCon (the poor man's Comic-Con) in San Francisco, then added thorough descriptions of each frame of video screened. A hasty, random guide to the take-away, plus links if you want the exhaustive treatment:

-- Iron Man: Jon Favreau showed the full flight-test sequence teased in the Super Bowl ad. There's a lot more humor there, things like Stark bantering with a squad of quirky helper-robots. No, really, it sounds like it works.

-- X-Files 2: Apparently Andersen and Duchovny were all chummy-flirty on their panel: "Gillian had a bad first couple of days at the beginning of the movie. She thought it was going to be easy to step back into the role, but she said she just sucked for the first 48 hours. She said it was only two scenes and she hopes that it’ll all kind of dissolve into the rest of the movie. Duchovny added, “Maybe you should tell them which scenes you sucked in.” Throughout the whole panel their back and forth was pure Mulder and Scully… he was light-hearted and there was a kind of flirt to it. It was pretty sweet."

There's also a YouTube clip of the trailer, which may not last long:

-- Prince Caspian: [The special effects guy, Howard Berger] looked at the first film and figured out what he wanted to change… he didn’t put it this way, but I got the impression that Caspian was an opportunity for a “do-over” on the creatures. He wanted a difference in age with the creatures… so this one we’ll see young creatures, old creatures and more wild beings, not so “coifed.”

-- Wall-E: "Short Circuit was brought up and [Director Andrew] Stanton said in all honestly he’s only seen that movie once and while it might have subconsciously had an effect on Wall-E’s design the main inspiration came when he was at an A’s game and someone gave him a pair of binoculars. He spent an entire inning just playing with them, moving them up and down. “Happy, sad, happy, sad…” He said you don’t need a mouth, you don’t need a nose to show emotion, just that movement.

-- Clone Wars: “It was very important to George (Lucas) that we explore a side of Anakin… you couldn’t call it the good side, but more of who was Anakin? What was he like?” Plus bonus stuff about 10,000 BC and Get Smart that you may or may not care about.

February 22, 2008 11:53

Risk: The Reboot

When I was 22 I moved to a small town in Maine where I knew nobody. My intention was to isolate myself the better to focus on my goal of writing the Great American Novel. Instead I focused on playing a lot of Risk on my Mac Classic. Wow, did I play a lot of Risk. I developed very intense feelings about Kamchatka.

Eventually I had to delete Risk. Even then I did not subsequently write the Great American Novel, or any great novel of any nationality.

I haven't played a lot of board-type games since then, except for a fitful Settlers of Catan habit. But a few days ago a package landed outside my office containing a sleek black box labeled Risk: Black Ops. This turned out to be a revamped version of the classic game, different in three major ways:

1. Everything is very black and serious and sexed-up-looking. You can see some pix at Gamers with Jobs. Also for some reason it smells kinda funny. That should dissipate with use.
2. There are now cities, and even capitals, as well as countries, and controlling them gives you better resources, i.e. basically more troops
3. There are other ways to win besides total world domination. There are "objectives," like "take over 4 cities in 1 turn," and "control Europe," and "control 2 enemy capitals" and such. Objectives come in major and minor flavors. Complete enough of them and a winner is you!

There are lots more minor wrinkles, but that's the basic idea. Anyway, it looks like a stylish and well-conceived rethink of a beloved classic, and I'm stoked to play. On to Kamchatka!

February 21, 2008 11:21

All-Purpose Omni-Post: Giant Frogs, Black Hole, Akira, Firefly, GoW2

-- once upon a time there was a really big frog

-- David Fincher -- Alien3, Zodiac -- is going to direct a movie of Charles Burns' fascinating, incredibly disturbing graphic novel Black Hole, about a bunch of teenagers who contract a sexually transmitted disease that causes them to become deformed in various ways. Yes -- finally Maximilian gets his sex scene! (What, it's my running gag.) (I notice on Fincher's IMDB page that he's also signed up to do Arthur C. Clarke's golden-age classic Rendezvous with Rama, with Morgan Freeman apparently playing all roles.)

-- also Leonardo DiCaprio is involved in a live-action Akira

-- Steven Brust has written a novel set in Joss Whedon's Firefly universe. It's called My Own Kind of Freedom, and he's releasing it for free as a download. Sample paragraph, from the first page:

Inside the vessel, even as her landing gear settled onto the rich dirt and
plumes of smoke were blown away from the side-thrusters on the outside, a
voice came over the intercom: "We're down. We have landed safely. Yes,
through a hailstorm of fire, once more, we have achieved landfall in spite of all
the obstacles of the heavens. We are delivered. We must kiss the ground. Yes, I
say, the ground, the holy ground we must, uh, kiss."

It's good to have Wash back.

-- in closing: geek out on this mini-lecture by a man with a slight speech impediment about the new improved graphics engine for Gears of War 2:

February 21, 2008 10:20

The Blob & Toad Report -- The Economic Stimulus Package

Greetings, horrible homo sapiens! It's me -- the marvelous mutant known as The Toad! I can't wait to get my $600 tax refund check from the government! To the Cherry Hill Mall I will hop in a hurry! First on my salacious shopping list -- a new leather jerkin, with a more magnificent Medieval neck piece! Then, perhaps a pernicious plasma TV from Terrible Tweeter Etc. will grace my condo wall. And if there's any fabulous funds left over, I will wrap my terrifying tongue around a Strawberry Banana Rendezvous Ice Cream Creation from Cold Stone Creamery! Thank you, Foolish Federal Government!

-

Oh Toad, it's you who is da fool! Don't spend yer moolah on that stuff! That's why the country is in da crapper -- people spend when dey oughtta save! You should use dat $600 smackers to pay down your Discover Card, or catch up on the lease on yer Acura. As any student of economic history can tells ya, an over-reliance on debt can blow up in yer face, and send global credit markets right up the wazoo! Dat is how we gots inta da Great Depression and what have you! I know Da Prez thinks us spendin cold cash will goose the economy, but dat guy's a maroon! I'm puttin my lettuce into a tax-deferrred 401K, so I won't be strapped for dough in my old age! Be smart and save... OR YOU'RE GONNA GET A POUNDIN' FROM DA BLOB!

February 19, 2008 10:53

Legendary DVD Jon Does Something I Actually Understand and Want

Jon Lech Johansen, a.k.a. DVD Jon, is an Internet legend for cracking the cryptography on DVD's and in Apple's FairPlay technology. He did this in a way that sounds totally great but which I am too stupid/lazy to really understand/use so feel safe mostly ignoring. Also he is Norwegian and like 16 years old. (Actually he's 24 now. But the DVD hack he worked on (and was unsuccessfully prosecuted for) was released in 1999.)

But check out this CNet article about the first product from the company Johansen co-founded, doubleTwist Ventures. I can't actually try it, because I'm living in OS X-ile, but if it does what it appears to do, it's the media Swiss Army knife the world has been longing for. What doubleTwist appears to do is:

a) find and reconcile all your media files (music, movies, photos, etc.), on whatever storage devices, in whatever formats, and beats them over the head till they interoperate

b) gives you the power to share said files with friends via Facebook (and also by other means that I don't really understand yet)

Also, it's free. Says doubleTwist co-founder Monique Farantzos, in a statement:

“When you receive an email, you can read it on your Blackberry, web mail, or Outlook. E-mail just works. With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it’s a jungle out there. It can be an hour-long exercise in futility to convert files to the correct format and transfer them to your Sony PSP or your phone. The digital media landscape has become a tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers. Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe.”

Yes, Monique, yes! A million times yes! I don't use my PSP anymore, but still: yes! This thing sounds unbelievably useful. God I hope it works.

(And did you see the byline on that CNet piece? Is there really a person who reports on digital media whose name is Erica Ogg?)

February 19, 2008 10:41

The Elusive Where the Wild Things Are Clip

This appears to be a leaked clip from the upcoming movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Apparently the studio (Warner Brothers -- hey, we're corporate cousins! Don't tase me, bro!) has been busting them wherever they appear, but here's one I swiped from Ain't It Cool. The dialogue is obviously scratch, but the visuals look pretty finished:

Thoughts? It looks beautiful to me. I'm getting a bit of a mushy, sentimental vibe off of the script (by excellent novelist/memoirist Dave Eggers), but that might just be because I'm not 8.

Update: D'oh. You can probably still see it at the fearless Gawker.

Update: It's back.

February 15, 2008 1:26

The Annotated "Husbands and Knives" -- Part III

Continuing a breakdown of interesting nerdy (to me) tidbits about the "new comic book store" plot of The Simpsons episode, "Husbands and Knives."

• One of the strengths of The Simpsons is our ability to get away with referencing extremely esoteric chunks pop culture. I'd been looking for a way to sneak Tintin on the show for a long time, and if didn't happen in his episode, it wasn't gonna happen. Instead of parodying a specific story, it was fun to create a fake book called "Tintin in Paris" (although you can see about ten actual Tintin covers in the background). Tintin is up against the Black Orchid gang (a Hergé-sounding creation I hope), when his Black Castle-type castle turns into the classic Destination / Explorers on the Moon red and white rocket. At one point, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and the Thom(p)son twins were seen on the Pompidou Center, but we cut this for time.

• Here's a goofy thing that makes the internet want to commit suicide. In this show, we are completely inconsistent about using parody superheroes and real ones. This show mentions dozens of actual superheroes, like Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as creating paper-thin imitations, like the Thung (the Thing) and the Mulk (The Hulk). (Originally conceived, the Thung and Mulk were supposed to be blue and red, but somehow they ended up classic orange and green.) For some reason, it delights us to no end to make our parodies of things the laziest parodies in the world.

Let's talk about our three comic book creator guest stars. For one, how f-ing amazing is it that we put Alan Moore, Art Spiegleman and Dan Clowes on network TV? This is an unmitigated triumph. Do most TV viewers know who these legends are? No. But who cares? The right people know. And maybe now a few more.

• Dan Clowes designed the utility belts you see in the animation. Those are his actual drawings. He doesn't look as old in real life as he does in the show. Sorry, Dan.

• When Lisa is in line to have her copy of Ghost World signed by Dan Clowes, the bearded dork standing behind her is a design based on me. Finally, I'm in the show, with my trademark purple shirt! (?) Later, alternative comic book icon Gary Panter is also standing behind Lisa. He has a white t-shirt, grey hair and a black soul patch.

• Art Spiegleman insisted that his character wear a Maus "mouse" mask when he turns into a superhero. This was not our idea, and if it had been, we would have been to scared to pitch it to Art.

• We recorded Alan Moore near his home in Northampton, England. He and his partner, Melinda Gebbie, were superb sports. Alan has a tremendous speaking voice, deep, dark and terrifying. I like to think that the rage he feels when Milhouse shows him the copy of Watchmen Babies was real.

I was proud to show Melinda's art from Lost Girls behind Alan. (Good thing Fox has no idea what Lost Girls is.) Alan also recorded a spoken word version of the entire Little Lulu theme song, in the stentorian tone of Caesar addressing his troops. An absolutely transcendent moment, I assure you. A great reason to buy the Season 19 DVD.

I could blather on and on about "Husbands and Knives" all day. It's just such a freaky, weird, insane, fun episode. (Duffman treadmill dancing to OK Go's "Here We Go Again"?) Special thanks to the show's heroically talented director, Nancy Cruz, all the crazy guest starts, our super nerdy writing staff, and to the legion of Simpsons fans who enjoy our dorky nonsense. This one was for you.

February 14, 2008 9:54

Trailer Alert: Indiana Jones and the Adjunct Professorship of Destiny!

The first Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer is up:

Lots of obligatory shots from the earlier movies, for the benefit of those who weren't born yet. (Through diligent archival research and expensive digital touch-ups they managed to salvage 6 watchable seconds from Temple of Doom.) Then on to wry, aging Indy! Plus skinny, fresh-faced Shia, and a ravishingly bewigged Cate Blanchett as some kind of Soviet dominatrix. (Sadly we don't get much of older but still-feisty Karen Allen, who I understand has been running a knitting business all these years. (Seriously, true fact -- she has a knitting business.))

The two themes that emerge seem to be: one, he's old now, and he's lost a step, but he's still tough and good-looking. Fair enough. Two, there's a clear interest in circling back to the first movie, with all that ancient Meso-American architecture in the mix, and the return to what appears to be the Ark warehouse, and the recurrence of Indy's actual day job as a professor. All of which feel about right. I'm feeling the luv!

February 13, 2008 12:26

Husbands and Knives, the Complete Episode

In case you missed it, here's the episode Matt's been annotating below:

Fear the power of Hulu.

February 13, 2008 11:46

Star Wars: A New Hope (and a New Despair)

Yesterday Jim Poniewozik, Time's TV and media writer-slash-Tuned In blogger, forwarded me a press release from the Cartoon Network that begins as follows:

After months of speculation throughout the television industry, Turner Broadcasting has landed the broadcast rights to the highly-sought-after CG-animated series, STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, from creator George Lucas. A new era of Stars Wars entertainment begins this fall when the television series premieres on Cartoon Network, followed by airings on TNT. The series will premiere following the North American theatrical release Friday, August 15, from Warner Bros. Pictures. Details regarding international television broadcasts will be announced shortly.

Did you see what they did there? North American theatrical release? I find this astounding. There will be something -- I don't know if I want to call it a movie, but a product -- bearing the Star Wars name in movie theaters this summer. The apparently unembeddable trailer is here.

I was going to blog about this immediately. Then I felt tired. Then I went out and drank four glasses of Maker's Mark and felt more tired. Then I got up and saw that Jim had blogged about it, and Dave gave me a hard time in comments about getting beaten out. So I'm blogging about it too. Are you happy now Dave? Is this what you wanted?

The trailer is pretty -- beautiful rosy-pink skies, decent voice acting, very dynamic camera movements. Though as Jim points out, there's a limit to how invested you can get in Anakin when you know he's going to grow up to kill a bunch of Jedi babies.

And to me, that stylized CGI approach has its limits. What I found amazing about Star Wars when it first came out -- and I can remember, at age 8, trying and failing to articulate this -- is how dirty and shabby everything looked. It wasn't like Star Trek, all gleaming white antiseptic surfaces. Everything looked used and lived in. The droids were dusty and dinged-up, the Millennium Falcon was scuffed and shabby and shaky. It's what made it all seem so real. I felt the same way, later, about the tech in Alien. I don't get that from CGI. It's all nice clean shiny bits and bytes.

But it's not like I'm not gonna watch it.

February 11, 2008 11:02

The Annotated "Husbands and Knives" -- Part II

Continuing a breakdown of interesting (to me) nerdy tidbits about the "new comic book store" plot of The Simpsons episode, "Husbands and Knives."

Let's talk about Jack Black. We've had a lot of amazing guest stars on The Simpsons. But Jack Black deserves a special place in the pantheon, for going above and beyond the call of voice-over. Here's why. Jack signed on to play the part of Milo, the hip, friendly owner of Coolsville -- the polar opposite of the unhip, unfriendly Comic Book Guy. Jack threw himself into the character with explosive Jack Black energy. He did take after take, peppering the character with hilarious ad-libs. (Jack's a bit of comic book dork, as well as a Meltdown Comics shopper, and knew every reference in the script, as well as adding a few of his own.)

To show how quirky and hip Milo was, his character was to sing a funny, Korean cover version of a 1960s pop song. The Korean pop song cover in the first draft of the script was "Goldfinger." It took Jack over an hour to perfectly sing the phonetically-translated lyrics to "Goldfinger" in Korean, doing take after take to nail both the tune and the unfamiliar language. Amazing.

Four months later, the rough black and white animation came back, and the scene was superb. But there was a problem. "Goldfinger," as we say in TV land, did not "clear." The owners of the song would not allow us to use it on our show. Was this something we should have known before making Jack Black imitate a Korean Shirley Bassey for over an hour? Big time. Oopsie. We begged the owners of "Goldfinger's" music rights to approve the song. We even overnighted them a copy of the rough animation of Jack Black's character hilariously singing "their" song. How could they say no to that? Very easily. They hated it. Never would they allow us to denigrate their precious song with our cartoon puffery. Dead end. So what to do? Pick another song, MAKE SURE WE HAVE THE RIGHTS TO USE IT, call Jack Black, and beseech him to sing a second phonetically-translated 1960 Korean pop cover.

Did he do it? Of course he did. He's Jack Black. A few weeks later, Jack was in a Fox soundstage recording "What's New Pussycat" (which, I would argue, is a funnier song in Korean than "Goldfinger") with his trademark Tsunami-level gusto. For a second time, he did dozens of takes of every line, never happy until he felt he had nailed the melody and the Korean. For a second time, he wanted the song to be outstanding. Did he complain about having to sing another song? No. He thought it was funny that "Goldfinger" didn't clear. He was a joy and an inspiration. He even improvised a set of lyrics about Pinkberry frozen yogurt not being actual yogurt that someday will make a sweet DVD extra. If you watch the show, Jack sings the entirety of Korean "What's New Pussycat" over the closing credits, with a funny ad-lib at the end. It's just great.

That's why, when people ask me who is my favorite guest star I've met on The Simpsons, the answer is always Thomas Pynchon. THEN, Jack Black.

STAY TUNED! MORE SELF-INDULGENCE TO COME...

February 9, 2008 5:38

The Annotated "Husbands and Knives" -- Part I

Sunday, February 10, at 8 PM, Fox is re-running the comic bookiest Simpsons episode ever to have my name on it, a show called "Husbands and Knives." The plot: the Springfield kids are sick of Comic Book Guy's abuse, but he's got the only store in town. Until -- a new comic book store opens across the street, run by a NICE comic book guy. The kids embrace the hip, friendly, fun comic book guy, voiced by Jack Black, and Comic Book Guy goes nuts. (This is just Act One. After that, Marge gets rich creating her version of Curves, called Shapes, Homer worries that Marge'll dump him for a sexy second husband, Homer gets gastric bypass surgery, Marge is grossed out by Homer's extra skin, Homer gets even more plastic surgeries and becomes a freak, Marge pushes him out of a bell tower, and it turns out that the second crazy surgery -- not the first, less crazy, surgery -- was a dream. I'm pretty sure they didn't do this story on How I Met Your Mother.)

The "new comic book store" story was, or course, a labor of love for nerdy me and the nerdy Simpsons writing staff. It's packed with references to our favorite nerdy stuff. Here are a few fun stories about the production of this episode:

• Bart peruses "The Death of Casper" comic book, which shows a dead (deader?) Casper the Friendly Ghost lying in an open casket, mourned by characters from the Harvey Comics Universe (Little Dot, Hot Stuff, the Ghostly Trio, Wendy the Witch, Baby Huey, and Little Lotta). Richie Rich, however, is not there. This is sort of a callback to the classic "Three Men and Comic Book" episode, in which where Bart and Lisa discuss whether Casper is the ghost of Richie. I like to think this is true, although the existence of various Casper/Richie Rich team-up stories would prove otherwise.

• The Simpsons design crew, the supremely talented artists who create the objects and backgrounds you see in the show, threw themselves into this episode with a nerdy passion. One of many great examples: on the back of the comic Bart is reading (our version of Frank Miller's Wolverine #1) is a parody of an old Atari 2600 ad. We didn't ask for it. It was just there. And it's terrific.

• The issue of World's Finest Comics #94, in which Superman moves to Gotham City, is not an actual issue. We made it up, thinking it was exactly the kind of hokey story those old Batman / Superman team-up comics would do. And, apparently, did. Our wonderful fans on the internet were kind enough to inform us of the existence of an issue of World's Finest with that same plot. And they were kind enough to be angry and indignant we didn't know that.

• The new comic book store, called Coolsville, was inspired by an actual store in Hollywood called Meltdown comics. Meltdown was a real breath of fresh air for comic shoppers weary of dusty old stores with only mainstream superhero stuff, endless boxes of back issues, and Punisher t-shirts. Meltdown embraced alternative comics, international comics, crazy toys, children's books -- a whole new universe of visual pop creativity. One day, when I was shopping there, I thought, Bart would love this place. And, he did.

STAY TUNED! MORE NERDYINESS TO COME...

February 8, 2008 12:41

Now in Paper-Vision: The Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

This week for Time I wrote a lengthy piece about Microsoft's attempt to acquire Yahoo. Originally I wrote it as a kind of fictional apocalyptic scenario, as a document recovered from a year in the hypothetical future (via a counterfactual-time-travel widget in development with Google labs) after the deal had gone through, and there was all this extra stuff in it about President Kucinich and a nuclear crisis in American Samoa. Then it dawned on me that it was kinda confusing and not that funny, so I cut all that stuff out and just tried to make two points:

1. Microsoft and Google are calling each other monopolistic bullies, and guess what, they're both a tiny bit right
2. the main lesson of the proposed deal (which I'm choosing will go through, since the chances of serious regulatory objections or a credible alternative suitor for Yahoo are both pretty slim) is that Microsoft is placing a huge bet on online advertising as an engine to drive growth for the company in the coming decade, and they're probably right, but it's really unlikely that they'll execute the way Google is executing

So that's that. But remember: American Samoa, we're watching you. This isn't over.

February 7, 2008 2:46

Alan Moore in Tripwire, a Magazine I Had Not Previously Heard Of

Something is wrong with the permissions on my hard drive, such that Word is no longer allowed to save files to it. In spite of this I am keeping an unsaved Word document open, with my to do list in it, because that is who I am and how I live, every day. Word then tries to autosave this file every 10 minutes and squawks when it can't. Ever. 10. Minutes. You'd think I'd close the file, or call tech support, or change Word's autosave preferences, or use a non-screwed-up text editing program (like TextEdit). You'd be wrong.

I recently got sent an issue of the magazine Tripwire, a British comics magazine I had not actually ever heard of. It's deeply nerdy. Above every article the byline reads "words:" and then the author's name, as if it were a comic and there were things other than words in the actual article. That's quality nerdiness.

There are great pieces in it about Constantine and Judge Dredd, but the one I particularly relished was a long interview with Alan Moore, who you always think is going to turn out to be some crazy crank, but then you read an interview with him and you realize that he's both a genius and really funny, and that you're the crazy crank, not him, and you should stop posting comments on YouTube and feed your 30 cats.

Some samples:

Moore on the future of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: "The next book will be called Tales of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and will have three separate stories in it.

"The first two stories will focus on one single character from the League's mythology, including ones that, if you haven't seen the Dossier, you won't have seen yet. And then a third will perhaps be detailing something Mina did in the sixties. We've got room after that to maybe do a series that would focus on one of the early manifestations of the League...

"We could do one that is set in the 30th century because we've got quite a few immortal characters amongst the main cast. As long as me and Kevin still feel we're doing something new with it, I can't think of any reasons why it should ever come to a halt." [This is a huge relief to me, because I figured after Black Dossier they were going to hang out in the Blazing World for all time, whatever time means in the Blazing World.]

On having done The Simpsons: "Apparently, at some point, I'm also going to get a personalized Simpsons jacket which you couldn't possibly wear outdoors without looking a complete c___ but, on the other hand, I can probably pose with it on in a mirror in a locked bedroom and feel kind of good about myself." [Yo Matt what about it the man needs a garment.]

On the upcoming Watchmen movie, directed by 300's Zack Snyder:

"Tripwire: I saw [Snyder] interviewed recently and he was quoted, "Worst case scenario—Alan puts the movie on his DVD player on a cold Sunday in London and watches and says, 'Yeah, that doesn't suck too bad.'"

Alan Moore: That's the worst case scenario? I think he's underestimated what the worst case scenario would be...that's never going to happen in my DVD player in 'London.' [Moore lives in Northampton.] I'm never going to watch this f___ing thing."

To be fair, that's not exactly what Zack Snyder said (he didn't say "worst case scenario," or "London") but still: zing.

February 6, 2008 10:13

The Unabridged Rules of Library Management

RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY A: The living room books ARE NOT the combined book collections of Matt Selman and his wife. (She may have read some of them, but who knows, really.) This is only the collection of Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY B: Writing in books on the living room shelves that Matt Selman has NOT read -- I) Indexes. II) The ending part of the author's acknowledgments that is just a list of names. III) Poetry that has been snuck into an otherwise interesting book. IV) Books written by my father that I told him I read. V) The super boring text in art books.

RULE #2 -- Actual book copies of audiobooks that have been listened to, but not actually read, MAY be placed on the living room library shelves, IF A) the audiobook listened to was UNABRIDGED, and B) the actual book copies of unabridged audiobooks have been looked through to make sure you didn't miss anything and to see the pictures. If anyone says "listening isn't the same as reading," get into protracted and unpleasant argument about it until they think you are insane and leave to visit someone whose bookshelves are full of a mixture of read and unread books -- A LIVING HELL.

RULE #2: COROLLARY A -- It is encouraged, but not mandatory, to "break-in" the listened-to-but-not-actually-read-with-your-eyes books by creasing the spines, dog-earing the pages, etc., so they "fit-in" with the read-with-your-eyes books.

RULE #3: NO BORROWING -- No borrowing of books is allowed under any situation.

RULE #3: COROLLARY A -- Books may be borrowed if it is a super super super awkward situation. (Like, a pregnant lady really wants something to read while on she's on bed rest, and your wife says, "sure you can borrow The Tipping Point, Matt won't mind, right honey?")

RULE #3: COROLLARY B -- If a book is allowed to be "borrowed," a replacement is purchased online as soon as the original leaves the house. No attempt is made to recover the "borrowed" book.

RULE #3: COROLLARY C -- DVDs may be borrowed at any time. Keep as many as you want as long as you want. Just don't take Time Bandits, Simon Schama's A History of Britain, The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, um... the original Die Hard, I guess. Eh, forget it... take 'em all. Why did I buy these stupid things at $20 bucks a pop? I wish I had that money back.

Tours of the library are available from 10-5 PDT, until the writers' strike is over. Proposed borrowing of book(s) will result in abrupt cessation of tour and re-direction to DVD closet or boxes of wife's books in the garage.

February 5, 2008 11:17

Mark Wahlberg is Maxy Max I Mean Max Payne

Mark Wahlberg is apparently getting ready to make a Max Payne movie. I don't know how to reconcile this information with accepted models of physics and probability, but you can't argue with the Internet: it's always right. And in other white-boy rapper video game movie news, Eminem apparently almost made a Grand Theft Auto movie.

I have no deep thoughts to distill from this cultural coincidence. So instead, watch this creepy trailer (also featuring Marky Mark) for the new M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening, which appears to be a high-end insta-remake of The Signal. It's almost certainly better than the actual movie.

Don't worry, at the end they all meet up at the makecorpsesintofood-atorium.

February 1, 2008 1:34

The United States of America vs. Wesley Snipes

Excepts from the Ocala, Florida tax fraud and conspiracy trial of Wesley Trent Snipes:

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The defense would like to call to the stand... Blade.

PROSECUTOR: Objection. Blade is not a real person, but rather Mr. Snipes in sunglasses and fake vampire teeth.

JUDGE: Overruled. I'll allow it.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Mr. Blade has many legitimate deductions here. For example, if you look at Defense Exhibit GG, page 45, he spent over $300,000 on silver stakes in 2002 alone. Your honor, these are perfectly valid business expenses for someone in his line of work.

PROSECUTOR: Objection. Vampire-killing apparatus is not deductible under the IRS Fiscal Code Section Five, Sub-section J, as Mr. Blade's vampire-killing business is registered as a State of Nevada Class C Corporation, not an S Corp.

JUDGE: Not an S Corp? Sustained.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Mr. Blade, you told the grand jury that you could not mail your tax return because the post office is only open during daylight hours, and since you are a vampire, you would burst into flames.

SNIPES/BLADE: Yes your honor.

PROSECUTOR: Objection. Let the record show that Mr. Blade is a "Daywalker." Mr. Blade's pregnant mother was infected with the vampire virus as she gave birth to him, resulting in a child who was a "Dhampir" or "Daywalker" -- a being with vampire powers but none of the weaknesses.

JUDGE: Is this true? Are you a Daywalker?

SNIPES/BLADE: Yes your honor.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Your honor, we would like to establish that as a Daywalker, Mr. Blade's eyes were extremely sensitive to sunlight.

JUDGE: Where are you going with this?

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: On April fifteenth of 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007, which were all very sunny days, Mr. Blade had lost his sunglasses.

PROSECUTOR: Objection. Do you really expect the court to believe that Blade only owns one pair of sunglasses?

COURTROOM: (LAUGHTER OF DISBELIEF)

PROSECUTOR: We've heard from a lot of witnesses over the past weeks. Abraham Whistler, Deacon Frost, the Bloodpack, several Reapers, as well as Blade, Blade 2, Blade Trinity, Willie Mays Hayes from "Major League," all of whom Mr. Snipes would have us believe are different people than himself. But what we haven't heard is why Mr. Snipes didn't pay his taxes. Which is why the People strongly urge that Mr. Snipes be sentenced to a prison term of not less than ten years, as well as payment of substantial penalties and all black taxes owed.

SNIPES: Did you just say "black taxes?"

PROSECUTOR: Um... maybe... no... I don't know...

SNIPES: Your honor! The lawyer just said "black taxes!" I told you! They're making me pay special taxes just because I'm black! The system is racist! Racist!

JUDGE: The court hereby declares a mistrial. Case dismissed. Mr. Snipes, you are free to go.

SNIPES: Always bet on Snipes!

February 1, 2008 9:33

Yahoo and Microsoft: Two So-So Tastes that Will Taste All Right Together

By now you've heard the news: Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion. But have you managed to get excited about it? No? Not yet? Come on: it would be such a satisfying end to their When-Harry-Met-Sally flirtation. Microsoft's got a massive war chest -- Ballmer recently boasted that he was going to start acquiring 20 companies a year -- and Yahoo's disappointing investors. It makes so much sense, you two!

But despite the dramatic size of the numbers involved, there's something weirdly uninteresting about the deal. Behold! Two Internet titans, united by their shared desperation and their vague and uninspired corporate strategies!

To be sure: Yahoo has enormous sentimental value to those of us old enough to remember the early days of the Web. Like Google, it was founded by two Stanford graduate students and featured a bare-bones, quick-loading, amateur-HTML home page. But Yahoo is slightly older than Google, and grew faster -- it came of age in the late 1990's, when the "portal" strategy was all the rage: load up your search engine with ancillary media content and services, become a mini-Web of content unto yourself, and watch the page views roll in. And Yahoo did. But being all things to all people tended to mean that Yahoo wasn't the best at anything, and on the Internet, the best is only a click away.

And while Yahoo was bulking up, Google, Yahoo's younger, sharper cousin, focused on only two things -- search results and ad-serving -- and became the best at them. Yahoo wanted users to stay on its site. Google wanted users to pass through as rapidly as possible. Guess which model worked? And guess which example Microsoft followed?

God knows, they still have big numbers these days -- Yahoo claims 500 million users globally, MSN 465 million. Yahoo Mail and and Hotmail are the two giants of web-based e-mail -- they dwarf Gmail in terms of users -- and Yahoo's purchase of Flickr in 2005 is turning out to have been sharp-eyed. And there would be significant economies if the two companies were to merge (and it's a good price -- take it, Jerry, take it.) But bottom line, that $44.6 billion won't buy either of them a dynamic strategy. Yahoo and MSN are ultimately brute-force plays, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, then locking users into restrictive interlocking registration systems to keep them around longer. No doubt you can do that, and make money off it, for a long, long time, especially if you've got Microsoft's highly profitable software business around to synergize with.

Just don't expect people to get excited about it.