* I interviewed The Stand: American Nightmares artist Mike Perkins about the Stephen King adaptation’s upcoming all-Larry-in-the-Lincoln-Tunnel issue for Marvel.com. This is maybe my favorite Stand thing I’ve done, as it presented me with the opportunity to talk to Perkins about various horror-comic issues I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I hope you enjoy it.

* It had been a while since I read Cameron Crowe’s 1976 Playboy interview with Thin White Duke-era David Bowie, and I’d kind of glossed over just how amazing and hilarious it is. Seriously, it may be the best interview ever given by anyone ever. From homosexuality to Hitler, Mick Jagger to Elton John, the whole thing is one giant pullquote. It makes Grant Morrison sound like Billy Bob Thornton. I beg you to read it. (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* Speaking of Bowie, Matthew Perpetua did a great little piece for New York on why it’s tough to love Lady Gaga. Unsurprisingly, I’ve given a lot of thought to Lady Gaga, and my take is basically the same as Matthew’s: She’s admirable, but the music’s not there. In many ways she’s comparable to Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie, sans Bowie’s already extensive artistic past at that point (but complete with affinity for lightning-bolt face paint): a self-consciously arty weirdo trying to be subversive but also, equally importantly, determined to make giant hit records for the kids. Which is great! But the difference is, if you played “Hang On to Yourself” or “Moonage Daydream” to a theoretical me who didn’t know who recorded them and told me it was the Bay City Rollers, I’d still be interested, whereas if you took a Lady Gaga song and told me it was by Britney Spears, i’d get about halfway through and then be like “Okay, that’s enough.” I mean, they’re fine, but it’s her that makes them interesting, not the music itself.

* David Cronenberg on horror at MTV News. Covered: remaking his own movies, torture porn, Blair Witch, Scream. Via Jason Adams, who reposts some highlights.

* Here’s a semi-interesting interview with Lost masterminds Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, tackling 10 popular questions from the readers of Variety. Nothing you haven’t heard before, for the most part; what stuck out most for me is their continuing regret that they couldn’t do more with Mr. Eko due to the actor’s desire to leave the show after one season. (Via The House Next Door.)

* ADDTF blogfather Bill Sherman reviews The Monster Squad. They don’t make ’em like that anymore, man.

* So maybe Sin City 2 isn’t sticking with the Weinsteins? Who the fuck knows. I can’t imagine years of will they or won’t they regarding the making of the sequel augur well for its future regardless. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)

* Letterer Todd Klein’s posts on designing the Amalgam Comics logos strike me as pornography for a certain subset of my friends. There are more posts to come in the series, too! (Via Robot 6.)

* For a connection so obvious, this is underused, so I’m glad someone else made it, and even gladder they made it on a badass T-shirt. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Carnival of Horrifying Torture Revelations: Between the release of the CIA/OLC memos and the Senate Armed Service Committe’s report (conclusions here), we’ve learned that Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and other all-the-way-to-the-top Bush Administration officials personally approved torture. We’ve learned that the United States implemented, as policy, torture techniques reverse-engineered from the program used by the military to train soldiers how to handle being tortured, techniques that were in turn derived from the torture techniques used by the Communist Chinese on American prisoners during the Korean War for the express purpose of eliciting false confessions. With that in mind, perhaps, we learned that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld encouraged torture specifically to produce “evidence” of links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We learned that spiders were another phobia American torturers were encouraged to exploit Room 101-style. We learned that a galaxy of conservative stars openly applaud the use of torture and/or deny its existence, sometimes simultaneously and/or accidentally. I would like to apologize, once again, to everyone who read this blog from 2001-2004.

* Finally, let’s end on an up note: gorgeousness

and

gorgeosity.

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