Random wonderful things

I’ve been bedridden for days, so my already active trawling of the web has really gone off the charts. Here are a few gems that I feel compelled to share:

  • The “I Can Read Movies” Series: these imaginary paperback novelizations of hit movies are so beautiful and mid-century perfect they bring a tear to my eye.

  • Comics Grammar & Tradition: I moan about some of the typographic conventions in comics, but I can at least acknowledge that many of them are at least reliable conventions. Here’s a good guide to what they are.

  • Paul’s Boutique, remastered: The Beastie Boys finally re-release one of my all-time favorite records, one that completely blew me away from the first instant I heard it. The accompanying site is Flash-heavy, but filled with good stuff, including a free commentary track of the B-Boys telling stories about the tracks as the entire record plays.

  • Chip Steele, R.I.P.: Chip Steele has been a bit of legend to me for a long-time, ever since my pal Dave went sky-diving with him. If you’re going to jump from a plane, you want a man named Chip Steele strapped to your back! Unfortunately, Steele had a fatal mid-air heart attack while giving a lesson to a young Army private, soon after uttering these now-immortal words: “Welcome to my world.” Pvt. Pharr then landed himself safely, but was unable to revive Steele. If I have ever heard a good premise for a bro-mantic action movie, this is it.

The Internet says I know something

It gives me a mild flash of nerdy glee to know that I am now cited as a source for information in not one but two articles on Wikipedia. If you ever have any need or desire to read about Microsoft’s Cambria typeface or the ubiquitous Times Roman, you will find sections of those articles that draw directly from my MA dissertation on typefaces for mathematics.

It’s flattering, of course, but it’s also the kind of thing that reminds me that while Wikipedia is exceptionally useful, articles you find there are not actually great citations in themselves. Information on Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable. That is, it should ideally point to another source to back up what it says there. In the case of my two citations, Wikipedia points to my dissertation (kindly hosted at Mark Jamra’s fantastic Type Culture site). Even that, though, is not a primary source, since everything I wrote is the result of research looking back to the actual primary sources. So the articles on Wikipedia are — in this case, and in many others — references to references to sources, not reliable information in and of themselves. They’re useful, sure, but just starting points if you’re really trying to get to the bottom of something.

Edwardian masher

While I’m on this Joe Orton kick, here’s another great bit from the diaries:

Saturday 15 April

Watched Doctor Who on television. Rubbish, but there’s a young boy in it who’s worth looking at; like an Edwardian masher at a Gaiety show, I mentally undress him. I’m sure the BBC would horrified if they realised that even a science fiction series can be used erotically.

Judging from the date, I’m assuming that the episode in question was part of “The Faceless Ones“, and that the alluring lad in question was probably young sailor Ben Jackson, played by Michael Craze.

Ben Jackson

“Edwardian masher at a Gaiety show” is my new favorite phrase, by the way. And though Orton is a good enough writer for that quip to feel very off the cuff, it’s actually the one instance in his diaries where I spotted him re-using an earlier joke. On the 24th of January, 1967, Orton paid a visit to meet Paul McCartney and Brian Epstein to talk about writing a script for the next Beatles movie. During the course of the evening, a pop group called the Easybeats drop by, about whom he says:

…about five very young and pretty boys trooped in. I rather hoped this was the evening’s entertainments. It wasn’t, though. …After a while we went downstairs. The Easybeats still there. The girl went away. I talked to the leading Easybeat. Feeling slightly like an Edwardian masher with a Gaiety Girl.

The Easybeats

ΩÖØ

Do you like the idea of using crazy characters in your blog posts or online profile headlines, but just can’t remember all those nutty character entities? Fret no more! This website is a tiny little thing that lets you copy and paste to your heart’s content. Of course, after all the time I’ve spent dealing with Unicode charts, I actually think they could have been a little more ambitious. How useful is it to include the interrobang (‽) but not mu/micro (μ) or the eth (ð)? We love the eth!

Battlestar Barbarella

Barbarella Galactica.

When worlds collide, eh? I love both Barbarella and Battlestar Galactica, but for very, very different reasons. Seeing them mashed together for a promo shoot makes my head hurt a teeny bit. If I were more of a straight persuasion, though, this would make me all tingly, though.

Of course, Apollo or Helo done up as Pygar would certainly do the trick.

Pygar

Barbarella — The Bob Crewe Generation

Pygar’s New Wings — The Bob Crewe Generation

How’m I Doing?

I just upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type, the software that runs all this. The interface at least is completely different, so I can only assume some stuff will break. If you spot anything funny going on, please . Thanks!