[I apologise in advance to readers who never watched Homicide: Life on the Street¹ for the following post. Those who watched the show will know where I'm coming from.]

Seen in an article by Nate DiMeo about the perils of audiobook casting:

Genre fiction can make for great audiobooks. Detective novels come to life when read by a well-cast, hard-boiled narrator, and the smoky-voiced actresses of Great Britain are kept very busy these days by the demand for erotic audiobooks. But producers get flummoxed when a title bumps up against the confines of genre. Take Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon's nonfiction account of the year he spent shadowing the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit. Simon's remarkably well-observed account is written in matter-of-fact prose that destabilizes the reader who has previously encountered city police only through Hollywood stereotypes. The audiobook is read by actor Reed Diamond, a regular on the TV series inspired by Simon's book. Diamond's tough-guy noir narration is dissonant with the text: The dismal reality of Simon's work gets undercut by the unreality of Diamond's heavy-handed line readings.

Presumably Andre Braugher, Richard Belzer, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor, Daniel Baldwin, Jon Polito, Ned Beatty, Michelle Forbes and Clark Johnson were all busy that week.

Still, it could have been worse: they could have ended up with Jon Seda or Michael Michele.

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

1. a.k.a. 'The Best Damn Show on Television.' ↩

As seen taped to the door of a Burger King.

[Via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century]

An apology from an unintentional stalker.

It was late. We happened to be walking on the same path. I knew you were nervous–I would be too if I was a petite female, walking alone on a desolate and dark city street at 1:00 a.m.

You were about fifty feet in front of me. I was going to turn right. You turned right. Soon, I was going to turn left. You turned left. I tried walking slower to let you get ahead of me. Unfortunately, you decided to walk slower at the exact moment I did. I then decided to start walking very fast, so that I could pass you by, let you be in control of the situation by being behind me. You started walking fast at the exact moment I did. [...]

[Via Why, That's Delightful!]

Ex-Formula 1 star Riccardo Patrese takes the wife out for a spin: hilarity ensues.

I suspect the producers of Top Gear will be taking notes for next season. Do they send some poor woman round each week with Jeremy Clarkson, or will we be seeing the likes of Messrs Mansell, Coulthard and Hill driving their spouses round the bend? (Better yet, get The Stig to take his partner out for a spin.)

[Via Nothing to do with Arbroath, via GromBlog]

Language is no barrier to enjoying this TV advert for a Dutch insurance company.

[Via Progressive Gold]

Ed Caesar interviews Kevin Costner:

In Los Angeles, Costner is, like Bernard in Death of a Salesman, "liked, but not well liked". He was, says the bellboy at my hotel, "famous, like, 20 years ago", but that's unfair. He was hot 20 years ago. Indeed, Costner's gilded period between 1987 and 1992 – when The Untouchables, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK and The Bodyguard drew huge worldwide audiences – made him, briefly, untouchable. But nobody remembers the good times. When people mention Costner now, it's the turkeys they talk about: Waterworld, The Postman, Wyatt Earp. They do so because it has become an accepted Hollywood narrative that Costner has fallen from grace.

I saw Silverado on TV the other day; it's difficult to get my head round the notion that that cocky young guy is now in his mid-50s and commonly regarded as washed up.

If you look at his filmography alone and ignore his personal life, Costner's career doesn't seem that different to that of other stars of his generation like Mel Gibson or Jodie Foster: a few pretty good films, a few flops, the odd film where they were behind the camera to varying degrees of acclaim. I'm not a huge fan of Costner's westerns, nor of his attachment to the idea that a film isn't worth watching unless its running time is somewhere around the three hour mark, but as an actor when he's good – especially in sporting roles, like Tin Cup or Bull Durham – he's well worth watching.

[Via 3quarksdaily]

Henry Porter reminds us not to blindly trust the promises of politicians:

Police officers keep on insisting that [powers of surveillance] will not be abused, but revelations made by another FOI request last week show that the police use surveillance techniques to bully and harass citizens. In Wales, a team of 11 officers took part in a surveillance operation against a 49-year-old police dog handler who claimed he was suffering from depression, a fact established by the Police Medical Appeal Board. Officers from two forces watched his home for months and filmed him at a cost of £100,000.

But remember, folks: if you've nothing to hide then you've nothing to worry about.

Wise words from datadog, posting to a comment thread at Apropos of Something:

I guess a username is like a tattoo. It seemed like a good idea ten years ago.

Robert A Heinlein's form letter response to fan mail:

( ) You say that you have enjoyed my stories for years. Why did you wait until you disliked one story before writing to me?

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

Nine Inch Fails.

[Via GromBlog]

LOL!

In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic, and Mosaic called itself NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1), and Mosaic displayed pictures along with text, and there was much rejoicing.

And then things got a bit complicated…

[Via Daring Fireball]

John Warner has formulated a number of theories explaining why John McCain picked Sarah Palin:

3. John McCain believes himself to be an indestructible superhero who cannot die.

John McCain’s campaign slogan is "Country First." In the primaries he famously lambasted Mitt Romney for working for profit rather than patriotism. Several times during the campaign he has implied (or outright declared) that Obama takes positions out of political expediency, rather than what’s good for the country (as McCain does). Clearly, this is a man of principle, and not someone who thinks it would irresponsible to put someone so manifestly unqualified as Gov. Palin in his "break glass in case of death" container. The only way McCain would feel comfortable doing this is if he absolutely knew that he would be serving out his full term. And the only way a 72-year-old man could possess this confidence is if he knows that he is a superhero, or at least like Bruce Willis in that M. Night Shyamalan movie that wasn’t nearly as good as The Sixth Sense, but not nearly as bad as anything that’s come since. In McCain’s defense, he has survived multiple jet crashes, being shot down in Vietnam and an extended stay in a tiger cage, not to mention a couple of bouts with melanoma, so you can’t blame the guy for being a little cavalier vis-à-vis his own mortality. The good bottom-line budget news is that if this is indeed true, we can save a lot on Secret Service protection.

Christopher Hitchens on English eccentrics:

In 1933, Dame Edith Sitwell decided to publish a study called The English Eccentrics. I can't think what gave her the idea. Her father, Sir George Reresby Sitwell (son of Sir Sitwell Sitwell), maintained a country retreat named Renishaw Hall, near the Derbyshire town of Eckington. A sign at the entrance made the following heartfelt request: "I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night." This atmosphere of mild – if pronounced – megalomania was dimly policed by a faithful butler, unimprovably named Henry Moat: a christening that would not have disgraced a P. G. Wodehouse manservant. The imperturbable Moat saw quite a few things in his time, which included his master's invention of a miniature revolver for the special purpose of shooting wasps.

The Field Guide to 10 Common Frontman Styles:

Fronting a band is no easy feat, and once you've 'hit the bigtime' you have to decide which role (and essentially, game) you want to play. Do you want to use your powers of fame for good by spreading the gospel of philanthropy and fierce fashion? Or spiral out of control and make headlines by acting mouthy and unpredictable? Or maybe you want to forge a genuinely deep connection with your fans night after night? I mean, some singers defy classification or bleed from one category to another (Liam Gallagher's both a Pseudo Diva AND a Stoic), but you can pretty much lump most leading men (and ladies!) into one of these categories.

[...]

3. THE ECCENTRIC
"The Eccentric" is a fashion mogul of sorts, but, far from being a trendsetter, his or her regalia is so over-the-top outrageous that it appears to hail from a parallel earth where the history of the world progressed such that Elton John circa 1973 represented the pinnacle of cultural evolution. The Eccentric has oodles of confidence and panache and is in no way body conscious or introverted, which can be a boon or a hindrance depending how you look at it. Think skintight paisley bodysuits a la Lovefoxx (CSS), Bjork's floral facial accessories or Patrick Wolf's knee socks, body glitter and angel wings. Every public appearance is like a Kinder Surprise Egg, except with better chocolate and sometimes, the toy is kind of questionable.

Other Eccentrics: Sabina Sciubba (Brazilian Girls), Cher

[Via Fourth Edition]

SpyBook:

When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.

But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

"It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. [...]

Presumably when someone takes you off their Friends list on this system the result will be a wet job, a body bag and an unmarked grave.

[Via The Morning News]

It looks as if we might have to wait quite a while for another Hellboy sequel: Guillermo del Toro is going to be busy.

Many top film directors have no idea what their next movie is. But Guillermo del Toro is now booked through 2017. And maybe beyond.

[List of post-The Hobbit projects snipped to save space]

[Re Hellboy 3:] "We laid the groundwork to have a magnificent third act. I'd like to return to an action franchise with 60-year-old actor Ron Perlman, because he'll be scratching at that age when I get to it."

I adored both Hellboy films and I do think that del Toro's direction helped make the films such fun, but assuming that the studio is interested in making a third film in the series I'd much rather see him hand off the project to a director who will be available to make the damned film well before the second decade of the 21st century draws to a close.

The Slow Death of the Instrumental charts the proportion of US number one singles featuring male, female and mixed lead vocals.

The dearth of instrumental chart-toppers post-1986 is, for my money, the least interesting statistic: it's the gradual jump in the number of female vocal hits that's really fascinating IMHO.

It'd be interesting to see a similar graph using UK singles chart data. I suspect that we'd see the proportion of number ones featuring female vocals peak a few years later than that 1996 spike in the US data: they had Madonna, Alanis, Mariah and No Doubt at number one that year, but I'd be amazed if between them the Spice Girls and All Saints didn't rack up at least as many weeks at number one over here over the course of the next few years.

[FX: John starts downloading lists of UK Number 1 Singles, fires up OpenOffice. Watch this space...]

[Via fimoculous]

So cute. Be sure to watch right to the very end.

[Via swissmiss]

While on holiday, Matthew Paris spotted a neat idea that could encourage charitable giving:

Colombia, whence I've just returned, has cash machines like ours. They work fine with British cards, paying out in Colombian pesos. The procedure's the same, except that before pressing the final proceed key you are asked on-screen whether you wish to donate the equivalent of about (a) 30p; (b) 60p; or (c) 90p, to a listed charity; a sum that would not be deducted from your cash payout, but charged on your monthly statement. To indicate your decision you press a key.