Misc. Items

A few things:

• I finally watched Dark City, which I liked pretty well. I particularly like the Roger Ebert commentary track on this DVD. There's a separate commentary track with the director and others, which I'll probably listen to tomorrow. One of the things I learned is that H.G. Wells hated the film Metropolis (which I love, and from which Dark City drew some elements) and wrote a scathing review of it. I'm going to try to track down the full text of that review, and if I find it, I'll post it.
• Here are the fundamentals of blogs as presented by Mark Glaser.
• Black Horror Movies-- From the site's FAQ: BlackHorrorMovies.com is the culmination of my life experiences as a black horror movie fan: seeing hundreds of black people stabbed, chopped up, and eviscerated without so much as a "rest in peace" or even a "sorry, my bad," and finding scant acknowledgment of the role of black people in horror films (Zombies anyone?). While the marginalization of black actors in other genres translates into undeveloped characters and storylines, in horror, it translates into something more concrete: death. Usually the painful kind.
• Xooglers, the blog for ex-Google employees, has this post today about Sergey's idea to have guest cartoonists play with the company's logo. Excerpt: So we went shopping again for a guest cartoonist. Susan had contacted Scott Adams in 2000 and he had politely referred us to his syndicate’s licensing agent. We tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes and Gary Larson of the Far Side. We deemed Gary Trudeau too political. Bill Amend of Foxtrot declined very apologetically. And we figured fat cats, giant sandwiches and little kids with guardian angels wouldn’t make the edginess cut. I decided to give Scott Adams a try again. It was two years later and Google’s audience and reputation had grown considerably. I had worked with him on a project while I was at the Mercury News (he donated an autographed drawing we deemed “The Mona Lisa of cubicle art” for a trade show event) and I knew he was willing to engage in extra-curricular activities that interested him. This time, he said yes.
• Please welcome several fellow bloggers to the sidebar: Kevin Kelly (author of the article I from the other day that I liked), Elizabeth Castro (whose book -- Publishing a Blog With Blogger -- I use often), The Radical Academy, Thomas "She Blinded Me With Science" Dolby, Steven Johnson (whose book I just finished and loved), blog historian Rebecca Blood, and literary ecdysiast Diablo Cody. (Sorry if I missed anybody.)