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Poppy Z. Brite: Iron Chef
"If anything, when Liquor began being shopped to U.S. publishers, it ran into problems that were the opposite of Exquisite Corpse--that is, it wasn't extreme enough. It's not at all like my previous work, and publishers hate that--once you've had some success in a particular genre, they want to keep you there forever. I ended up changing literary agents, because my previous agent, while very good, was also very dedicated to genre fiction and thus uncomfortable with the direction my work is taking. My new agent has been able to get the book in front of editors who didn't have so many preconceived ideas about my work, and consequently understood it on its own merits rather than expecting it to turn into a psychosexual horror story halfway through."
Dotcom Deathwatch
"Although there were early tremors, the NASDAQ crash of 14 April 2000 even caught Bill Gates and George Soros by surprise (Cassidy, 2002: 285, 287, 289). Gates had spent most of the late 1990s fighting a protracted antitrust lawsuit (Auletta, 2001; Bank, 2001) and fighting "the dance of blind reflex" caused when Microsoft's internal management became "burdened by unmanageable complexity." (Bank, 2001: 98). Soros promoted his "reflexivity" model of why financial markets oscillate between extremes (Cassidy, 2002: 249) before his Quantum Fund was 'burned' and he refocused his attention on philanthropic activities. Many other dotcom analysts and employees were to endure 'course corrections.' Merrill Lynch reached a public settlement of $100 million on Henry Blodget's forecasts. Both he and Mary Meeker faced lawsuits from angry investors (Cassidy, 2002: 310). A 'mini-cycle' of dotcom schadenfreude became popular (Kaplan, 2002). Dotcom requiems were sudden: when "Silicon Alley servers went dark, the companies quickly faded, and so did all of the creative content they once housed." (Kaitt and Weiss, xii). Failing Webzines warned of the demise of original content (Honan, 2002a; Honan, 2002b; McKinnon, 2001; Morton, 2002), despite the growing popularity of personal blogs.
The first explanations of its demise focused on the 'New Economy' as a contemporary mass hysteria. This explanation is too trite for a $5 trillion economic loss, too prosaic for thousands of ruined lives. It would be more realistic to describe it as a form of 'consensus reality' (Tart, 1986: 86, 90-105) akin to group autohypnosis, a period that promised individual growth whilst paradoxically being an obstacle to it. Individual variances in perceiving the environment had converged to group expectations. (Sherif, 1966: 138, 128). Even so, the NASDAQ crash was a future Wild Card that should have been considered and prepared for (Petersen, 1995; Petersen, 1999). Some forward-looking individuals made it through the gate in time (Rushkoff, 2001)."
The Greatest Band You've Never Heard Of: The Story of Happy The Man
"On meeting Scott, Kennell says now: 'When we were discussing 'shoot for the moon' dream producers, we made a list of our favorites, in order. Ken Scott was #1 as we were all blown away with the sound and intensity of the Birds of Fire album Ken had done for Mahavishnu Orchestra, and of course his involvement in the Beatles White was also mind blowing to us (not to mention Jeff Beck, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Supertramp, David Bowie, Elton John etc. etc. etc.) Arista sent our tape to Ken and he was knocked out. He was on the phone to us the same day and set up a live audition the following week.'"
Disinformation: The Interviews: Annihilating Reality (Genesis P-Orridge)
"An excerpt from Richard Metzger's new book Disinformation: The Interviews: "cultural engineer" Genesis P-Orridge talks about COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, Aleister Crowley, performance art and 21st century metaphysics."
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