Category: Entertainment

I’ve always been intrigued when I see the “like new” books on Amazon selling for as low as .01. The other day I was in Borders and saw that the mass market paperbacks for Neal Stephenson’s Vol. 1 and 2 of the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver and Confusion) were out. Each volume sells for US$8. I wanted the larger trade paperback versions, but they sell for $16 each. When I saw them on Amazon, being sold by a third-party vendor, for .01 each, I decided to take a chance. Of course, the shipping is US$3.49 each, so it was $7 for the two books. They arrived yesterday and are in near perfect condition (except for a remainder mark on the bottom). This large paperback edition is really nice. 1,776 pages of Stephenson for seven bucks. Steal of a deal.

Did you know that he hand-wrote these massive and dizzyingly complex historical novels with a freakin’ fountain pen on cotton paper? Gawd I hate a show-off.

If you didn’t see this on Boing Boing, you really should check it out. We love how scamming/goofing on the so-called 419 scammers has become something of a Net pastime. This guy convinced a Nigerian “Advance Fee” scammer that he was too busy administering a $150,000 scholarship fund for talented woodcarvers to collect the money of his unknown dead relatives assets. Through a series of email exchanges, he convinces the scammer to carve (or at least have carved) a replica of a Commodore 64 computer. Hilarity ensues.

On Friday, we brought you the news that Warren Ellis has been contracted to develop a TV show for AMC. More recent Ellis news is that, starting with issue 7 of his current comic series Desolation Jones, he’ll be working with a new artist, Danijel Zezelj, a relative unknown to the American comics market. The artist for the first six issues was the amazing J.H. Williams III. Look for a trade paperback of the Williams issues, entitled Desolation Jones: Made In England, this fall.

Newsarama has a fairly lengthy interview with Ellis on Desolation Jones, working with two very different artists, etc. If you were as big of a fan of Transmetropolitan as I was, you’ll want to check out Desolation Jones. I think it hits (and hits and hits some more) a similar vein.

Last September’s Mad magazine had a hysterical piece on the “50 Worst Things About Video Games.” The copyright-defying fiends over at Destructoid have put up page scans of the entire article. Some of our faves:

* Game designers who can’t understand why more women don’t play video games, especially since they feature such outstanding female role models as a globetrotting archeologist (with big boobs), world-class volleyball champions (with big boobs), and of course, easily murdered hookers (with big boobs).

* Video game magazines that spend months hyping a game as the second coming, lavishing it with praise and eagerly counting down to its release date, only to dismiss it when it comes out as third-rate, over-hyped crap.

* Racing through the Grand Canyon in a super-charged 350Z with ARC spoilers and HKS turbochargers… then turning off Gran Turismo 4 and driving to work in your 1988 Honda Civic with AM/FM radio and manual windows.

* Donkey Konga, which combines the ‘60s-era art of bongo drumming with none of the mind-bending hallucinogens that made it tolerable in the first place.

Comics and graphic novel juggernaut Warren Ellis has announced signing a contract with AMC cable to create a pilot for a half-hour “sci-fi/black comedy.” He writes on bad signal, his mailing list:

“As with all TV Things, everything could go horribly wrong. But this is the deal I’ve been waiting for, with people who understand the project and format I want to work in. And you know something’s going right when people in TV are telling you to go more experimental and take more risks. This isn’t your US network TV experience.”

Cool. We can’t wait to see what he dreams up.

I love some of the installation work people are doing with iPods/MP3 players. Popgadget brings us word of this one: R. Luke DuBois’ “Billboard” at the Bit Forms Gallery in New York. The Popsters write:

“DuBois took all the songs that reached #1 and aggregated them into one “song.” Weighted by the number of weeks the song was on the top of the charts, the average song got one second in the piece. The end result is an abstracted archive of the history of popular music from August 1958, when the list got started, up to today.”

Talk about a mashup! “Billboard” is running at the Bit Forms Gallery until July 17th. What? No BitTorrent?

If you’re Jurassic like me, you probably grew up marveling at the work of Gerry Anderson and the “Supermarionation” magic he worked on shows like Supercar, Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds, and Stingray. I’m sure these shows went a long way to rope-starting my lifelong fascination with space, science, gadgets, miniatures, and puppet sex (wait, scratch that last one). Andrew over at PuppetVision (I can’t vouch for him on the puppet sex thing), has posted a link to a vid for “The Making of Thunderbirds,” a short promo piece, done for UK TV, in 1964.

This is too funny (as long as it’s happening to somebody else’s overpriced Apple Cinema Display). This poor sap has a bug living INSIDE of his. He writes on his site:

I never realized that the image of what’s displayed on an LCD is actually projected onto the glass surface. The bug can crawl deeper into the picture, looking translucent and barely visible, or right up to the surface where it’s so noticeable that I fight the urge to swat it… I have no idea how to get him out, so for now I just have to hope that when he dies, he’ll die off-screen, Leo McGarry-style.

Thanks, Jay!

Here’s a funny (enough) spoof of Opus Dei, Da Vinci Code, and Apple. Nice to see Ellen, the stoner chick from the old Apple ads, still getting her props.

Thanks, Jay!

The rumored TiVo/Blockbastard partnership seems to be close to an announcement. Zatz is reporting that Blockbuster prematurely switched on the Web page promoting the deal. So what’s the skinny? Well that’s just it, it’s a much ado, basically a cross-marketing arrangement for TiVo subbers and Blockbusters’ NetFlix-like (but contract-dependent) DVD rental service. The deal would save dual-service monthly subscribers about US$8/month.

So, nothing really to text message your momma about. You’d think that TiVo would be burning the midnight conference room oil to come up with more market-compelling partnerships and product/service announcements than parental blocking software and $8/month discount coupons. And what about lifetime subbers? Are they SOL?