Rachel McAdams in Purple

There's an Amazon link above, FeedReader

One of my favorite possessions (which is not currently in my possession, but my friend's as he keeps forgetting to bring them when we get together) is the original run of Black Orchid. I haven't read it in almost twenty years (though figured I would when I got it back before reshelving it) but still remember Dave McKean's stunning artwork, the insane, foot long ears he put on Bats' cowl, and this one scene, early on with a bomb...

I won't spoil it. It was memorable.

Anyway, it appears that one of my favorite imports from the Great White North also has a soft spot for Black Orchid. Rachel McAdams told MTV that she'd like to play the titular heroine.

"I just read this book Black Orchid and it’s a really interesting character," the actress said. "She’s a superhero that’s a flower. I don’t know if that would work or the audiences would be interested in that, but she was kind of cool."

Not just a flower, but a plant/human hybrid able to alter her appearance and voice, regenerate — even fly. And one that, although relatively unheard of, comes with a pretty recognizable comic pedigree, McAdams reminded.

"I like all the Neil Gaiman stuff. It’s great," McAdams said of the comics god who reinvented the character with a limited series run in 1988. "I think it’s really visually so dynamic and would work really well."

Maybe instead of wasting money on another shitty Superman movie (Brandon Routh? Really?) or cobbling together a miscast, garbage Justice League movie in a frantic reaction to Marvel's upcoming Avengers flick, Time-Warner should do something good.

via Gaiman himself

Anansi Boys audio

It's only up for the next week, but here's a nice adaptation of Anansi Boys done by Mike Walker for the Beeb.

An audience of one

Odd thing happened today. The usual light traffic through here was lighter than normal - partly attributable to pre-weekend dropoff for sure, but it stood out to me as being particularly slow. Even some of my regular visitors hadn't come by in the morning. That was before lunch. Afterwards, my traffic increased to a few hundred percent above normal.

I'd been linked from Neil Gaiman's blog. (By the way, for those who might wonder which generates more traffic - a link from Gaiman or a link from Ken Levine - Morpheus wins the kewpie doll.) What I found especially odd about the link from Gaiman (odd, but nonetheless gratifying to my ego) was that in the post in question I'd done little more than quote Gaiman!!!

Sure, I'd juxtaposed an anecdote of his about infixing "fucking" with another post that appeared only a few days later doing the same, but I'd really brought nothing new to the table. It was all very strange to me. But it led me to think a little about one of the aspects about the new media paradigm that I've never seen anyone mention before.

Frequently (*still*, shockingly) wags will discuss the power in the hands of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard through the "power of the Internet". A lone underwear-clad blogger, his fingers stained permanently orange from Cheetos - like Will Leitch¹ - can challenge the authority, reputation, hegemony, and market reach of one of the most powerful media companies in history. Josh Marshall can build a new model for a media company in the flower district that regularly scoops and out-analyzes The Times, The Post, and the Weekly World News.² Limitless distribution is available to anyone with a connection to the Internet with a price that approaches zero. It's clear the old push model has to compete mightily and only retains its built-in advantage of authority.

However, that's not why I'm writing this.

Did I mention that Neil Gaiman linked to my lil piece o' crap site? Who the hell am I?

While I'm thrilled by the fleeting uptick in readership (pretty much all those people came and went without staying around, thereby missing anything funny, profound, or interesting I might have to say³) it doesn't mean nearly as much to me as this: Neil Gaiman linked to my site. Which means he read at least one post on my site, probably more (after all, he'd want to make sure I'm not completely bat-shit before sending his readers here.) This ranks up there with Levine making two distinct compliments about our team's quality of humor after our scene was performed at the Sitcom Room and telling me he was enjoying reading my blog posts from that weekend.

Yes, I'm that needy.

But it's a little more than that in this case. The paradigmatic change I'm talking about isn't that one person can be heard by many, but that a nobody like me⁴ can be read by some of his idols. Honestly, at this point you get Harlan Ellison to curse me out for ripping him off and I can die happy.

I suppose the sensation I have today must be the happy inverse to the one all the sports bloggers feel every time their hard work gets stolen by the WWL. The opposite feeling political bloggers feel when the MSM fails to properly credit their sources. A man I've been reading for over twenty years read something I wrote⁵. The key isn't that I can publish my thoughts for everyone to see; rather, it's that those thoughts might be seen by anyone. Even a giant in his field.

---

¹ I am, of course, kidding. I'm sure Will Leitch does his best work commando, with Dorito-stained fingers.
² Again, kidding. TPM may have broken the USA firing scandal, but they've never beaten the WWN to the punch on a Bat Boy story.
³ If nothing else, it's funny for me to imply I'm ever interesting, interesting for me to imply I'm profound, and profoundly arrogant for me to imply I'm funny.
⁴ Bwahahahaha! Sorry. Me playing the humility card...now that's funny!
⁵ Yes, I've not forgotten it was just a post of two block quotes and some connective tissue.

The Infuckingcredible infix

Nifty confluence of language posts this week. First, on Sunday Gaiman had this to say about infixing:

My favourite conversation about language and words was before we went on the air, when Ian told us not to swear (as Radio 3 is only allowed one serious swear word per show) and also not to answer any question with an enthusiastic "ABSOLUTELY!" (which is apparently what writers tend to do). And when I said that I thus presumed that "absofuckinglutely" was right out, Deborah Cameron (Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford) enthusiastically explained to me that swearing is the only example of infixing in the English language and I was happy, for I had learned something.

Then today on Mindhacks we get this aside in a post about Steven Pinker's new piece in TNR about the psychology/neuroscience of swearing:

As an aside, once, whilst drinking with a psycholinguist (say that after a few pints) I was taught a useful way of quickly working out the stressed syllable in any English word - something which is apparently called the 'fuck test'.

Simply insert the word 'fucking' into the word, as if you were using the swear word for emphasis, and the syllable that follows the 'fucking' is the stressed syllable.

For example, absolutely -> abso-fucking-lutely. The stressed syllable is the third: i.e. absolutely. It works for every multi-syllable word I've found so far.

Which just goes to show that psycholinguists are some of the coolest melonfarmers in the whole of cognitive science.

So not only is "fucking" the only word to be infixed in English, when it is we can determine the stressed syllable of the root word!

Stardust Friday

Neil Gaiman's getting a little antsy...

(If you're in two minds about Stardust, about whether or not to see it or even when to see it, please go and see it this weekend. Friday night if you can. Take friends. If necessary, take them at gunpoint. They will love the movie so much they will forgive you afterwards. And if they don't forgive you, you can dispose of them quietly -- you're the one with the gun, after all -- and you will have a wonderful time for the rest of your life with the new friends you made at the Stardust screening.)