Year / 2007

by Edward Champion

C-C-Catch the Wave

So let me get this straight. Max Headroom, a major cyberpunk cultural item that aired for two seasons on ABC in the mid-1980s, is unavailable on DVD. Yet a handful of episodes are available for free on AOL? I don’t understand the logic behind this, but I know what I’ll be downloading very soon. There is also the V television series (as opposed to the more interesting miniseries), a smattering of Wonder Woman episodes, and even Freddy’s Nightmares, which I’m confident is an unintentional laugh riot. (via Fimoculous)

[UPDATE: Actually, it’s too good to be true: “Your PC is not running a supported Windows OS (Windows XP Professional x64 and Vista x64 are not currently supported). You can not buy and download videos.” To hell with AOL.]

by Edward Champion

Lydia Millet 2.0

Lydia Millet has relaunched her website. If you haven’t read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart or Everyone’s Pretty, there are now excerpts of these books for your enjoyment — as well as an assortment of other writings. And coming in September 2007 from Soft Skull Press: How the Dead Dream. You can also listen to a conversation with her, when I was still pretty green at this interviewing thing, at The Bat Segundo Show #12.

by Edward Champion

There’s Room Yet for Those Pesky Amateurs

New York Times: ” It is a difficult idea for research and development departments to accept, but one of his studies found that 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users. Citizen product design is still unsung, but it has already become a force in software, especially gaming software. ‘Counter-Strike,’ a player-created ‘mod’ (for modification to the original game) of ‘Half-Life,’ became as popular as the original game. Apache, the popular open-source Web server software, or the Firefox Internet browser, with its thousands of add-ons and plug-ins, also depend on users to develop innovations. Large companies like I.B.M. are increasingly turning to open-source techniques in their own software development”

by Edward Champion

Henry Miller Still Raising a Needless Ruckus

One would think that more than four decades after it was declared “not obscene” by the Supreme Court, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer would be on more or less solid ground in our enlightened 21st century. Not so. A 17-year-old Dallas student checked out the book out from the Hulsey Public Library, told her parents that she felt it was “inappropriate,” and has caused Miller’s name to be removed from a Terrell High School list of “approved authors.” It is unknown whether the student or the student’s parents actually read the book, but it’s worth noting that the city’s library director had “received no prior complaints about the novel.” You know, most reasonable people simply don’t read authors they aren’t interested in and let those who are interested in studying them do so without rancor. Henry Miller meant a good deal to me when I read him as a teenager. I’d hate to have had this reading experience uprooted by someone who found him “inappropriate.” (via Bookshelves of Doom)