This morning, bad luck hounded me. I could smell its feral breath and feel its bloody teeth brush my heels as I tried to stay one step ahead of the snarling beast. You probably know the sort of morning: you get up and drop the soap, put on your t-shirt backwards, pick out odd socks... They are small inconveniences which warn you that some rampaging evil is about to fall into your path. Well, all those things happened to me yet I still thought it would be a good idea to make the bike ride into town I'd had planned. The problems began when I grabbed my bike and discovered that the back wheel was flat. Deep sigh. Last week some local devil had been spreading two inch nails over the pavements and I'd found one embedded in my tyre. Clearly my repair hadn't held. I pulled off the tyre and inspected the inner tube only to discover that last week's patch was fine but there was a patch I'd put on some months ago which had peeled loose. I'd been trying a new kind of pre-glued patch and it was clear that the heat of the morning sun on the bike had softened the glue. So, off with the old patch, fixed the hole with traditional rubber solution and patch. Tyre back on and inflated. 75psi. Looks good. Off I go... All way going well for the first fifty yard. That was before there was one almighty explosion. I felt myself jump about half a foot in the air followed by the concussion of a pressure wave that knocked me off my bike, made pedestrians leap for safety into bushes, and red lights flash on some NORAD early warning command console. It became quickly apparent that my back tyre had blown like I've never known a tyre to blow. Chagrined, teeth clenched, ears still ringing, I wheeled my bike home. Some builders working next door were talking about the noise and wondering if they should get on their mobile phones to say goodbye to loved ones. They asked me if I'd heard the explosion. I said it had been my tyre. They laughed, clearly relieved that they weren't about to enter into a Mad Max scenario in which builders are doomed to roam a world where the skills of the plasterer are not in demand but there pale chubby bodies are. I also laughed like the poor naïve bastard I am… I pulled off the tyre to find that the inner tube now had a one inch split. Deciding not to risk it again, I grabbed a brand new tube, reassembled my wheel, inflated it, 75psi, but decided that I wanted a coffee before I set off again. I was sitting with my morning coffee, taking a moment to reflect on my bad luck, when a second explosion rocked the house. This one was even louder than the first. Doors rattled. Birds fell from the sky. I spilled coffee down my shirt. I ran out to discover that the brand new inner tube had gone the way of the last and I knew then that there was something going on that had nothing to do with punctures. That's when I found it. The wall of my rear tyre was shredded. This tyre was barely six months old and I'd bought from a proper cycle shop instead of the cheap wheels I usually buy from local supermarket. The weakness in the wall had probably been caused by the first explosion and then caused the second. Perhaps I'd had a pinched inner tube earlier that I hadn't noticed… So, now without a tyre and needing a new inner tube, I set off on the long walk into town, spend £20 on a new tyre and inner tubes, did a quick bit of shopping, thought of a few cartoon ideas (a relief since I hadn't had any in days) before I walked all the way back. Hot and tired, I arrive home and finally repair my bike. But this story isn't about tyres. It's about luck. Despite my general atheism, my belief in rational things, there's a part of me that believes that good luck and bad luck often come together. I want to think that we have bad luck so Fate can also gift us with some good. Imagine my delight, then, when I look at my inbox and discover an email from 'The Guardian' asking if they can publish one of my comments in their weekend edition. 'Great!' I think. 'Something I've written is actually going to get published! Doesn't this prove that sometimes bad luck is what you pay in order to get some good luck?' And it was immediately obvious to me which comment they'd want to use. I'd written 2000 words in the discussion on Frank Lampard's new book. I was proud of the way I'd defended my position and it had been a genuinely interesting debate. They were obviously going to use some of my scathing one-liners, my well-reasoned defence of author's rights… Just to be sure, I checked the link they'd sent to the comment they wanted to publish. That's when I had the fourth puncture of my morning. I felt a small hiss as excitement departed my body. My shoulders sank. The comment they'd picked out is possibly the single blandest comment I've written in my entire life. 'Great article and wonderfully written. This is why I read The Guardian.' Ye gods! Why do you mock me?
Monday, June 03, 2013
Bile: The Essence of the Rant
I had a slow uninspired Sunday and consequently don't have much new material for this morning. Searching through my old files, I came across this which I drew some time ago. If I were drawing it now, I think it would be cleaner and with stronger lines. I've never known quite what to do with it or why I even drew it. Comics don't seem to have an obvious outlet. I enjoy drawing them but they always seem a waste of effort. The eleven panels here could have been eleven single gag cartoons, eleven chances to get something published somewhere instead of just one. Incidentally, the woman with the large breasts was featured on 'This Morning' but a year or so ago when I originally drew this, so don't go looking for her on TV CatchUp... 
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Frankie’s Magic Bollocks: The Lampard Effect in Publishing
[caption id="attachment_1823" align="aligncenter" width="480"]
Click me[/caption] The blood boils. It sizzles in the veins and steams from the ears. No, not the situation in Syria or the government's austerity plans. I've been reading about Frank Lampard's new children's book, Frankie's Magic Football. What kind of hellish state are we in when these swine can appear in a quality newspaper publicising a book with such crass indifference to the poison-tipped spikes they are driving into the foreheads of struggling writers everywhere? I don't know what's more insulting: that these celebrities don't seem to care that they've not written their own books or that these shallow bastards actually think that skills elsewhere should transfer effortlessly into having some skill with a pen. Isn't there some law in the land we can invoke demanding that the 'author' of a book must have written at least 51% of the words or drawn 51% of the illustrations? Because otherwise, how can we judge them or call them an author? We don't accept horsemeat instead of beef so why should we accept this literary horsemeat posing as Grade A Rowling or Pullman? He might have had a few meetings with his ghost writer to hammer out a few ideas but let's cut the bullshit: the only significant contribution Frank Lampard will make to this book is by allowing his name to be used. It's marketing scam. It's a publicity wheeze. It's a sick indictment of our celebrity-obsessed culture. For make no mistake, it's not the grim-faced tyrants that will destroy us as a free society but the smiling celebrities who, in a very slick and clever way, make us think less and consume more. That they're selling their names to children worries me in the same way I've always been suspicious of McDonald's clown. Perhaps I overstate my case but there is a generally ignorant and indifferent section of the public who will buy into this type of onerous deal, not thinking what it does to the publishing industry. Because that is the bottom line: if it makes money, publishers will invest more into other celebrities having fiction ghosted under their name. How long before Beckham has a novel out? Jordan's done it with some success though, between her breasts and fingernails, I don't see how she could have got within five feet of a keyboard. Publishers will argue, of course, that the money they make from these celebrity deals will be reinvested into new authors. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that's one possible future where writers live like parasites feeding around the anus of some greater unthinking host. But I wish quality newspapers would expose the lie instead of treating their readers like fools. They shouldn't bow to the celebrity, give them an easy time when they should be ashamed to be in the room without asking hard questions about these odious little books. Make them feel the shame that they should feel for passing themselves off as an author. If I ran onto the pitch at Stamford Bridge and tried to dribble around Frank Lampard only to fall flat on my face, he'd rightly laugh at me. Then I'd be escorted from the ground with a lifetime ban and the media calling me a fool and a lout. Except for the bit where I get chased by overweight men in luminous jackets, how is that any different with what Lampard is doing here? Yet, of course, it doesn't matter what I say. In fact, people tend to disagree with me for picking on dear Frank. They say that the man has a right to make a living, that he's an intelligent business man, that the book might be good, and aren't I just a bitter under-published writer with an axe to grind. And, of course they are right. It is sour grapes and some jealousy. But what's wrong with that? I love words and laud people who write well. The high horse I'm currently riding is called Righteous Indignation. It might not be the favourite in the field but he's a stubborn plodder. I also find it remarkable that anybody could consider my defence of literary talent objectionable. I don't support Chelsea but I'd be the first to admit that Lampard is one of the finest footballers of his generation who deserved every penny he's earned from his skills. However, I reserve the right to criticise him, along with any other celebrity, who dabbles in publishing merely to make a few quid off the back of their name. As to Lampard's book: does it even matter if it is good? My point is let the true author of the book take the credit, do the interviews, and become a household name. I am interested to learn about them, not to read yet another tedious retelling of how Frank's scored a disallowed goal at the World Cup. Tell me about the illustrator too. I admire their talent but I'd be surprised if both author and illustrator don't feel some deep resentment that somebody else takes much of the credit for their work. I want the ghost writer to earn the royalties and have an advance as large any Lampard received. Simply, what's wrong with wanting to give credit to the person whose talents have created the book? Anything else is simply pandering to the people who believe that marketing, spin, hype, and branding are more important than depth, quality, passion, and individual talent. This was rewritten from the comments I wrote as 'UncleZippy' beneath yesterday's Lampard story over at The Guardian. You will probably disagree with most of this, as some people over there also disagreed. I don't give a damn because I know that I'm right.
Click me[/caption] The blood boils. It sizzles in the veins and steams from the ears. No, not the situation in Syria or the government's austerity plans. I've been reading about Frank Lampard's new children's book, Frankie's Magic Football. What kind of hellish state are we in when these swine can appear in a quality newspaper publicising a book with such crass indifference to the poison-tipped spikes they are driving into the foreheads of struggling writers everywhere? I don't know what's more insulting: that these celebrities don't seem to care that they've not written their own books or that these shallow bastards actually think that skills elsewhere should transfer effortlessly into having some skill with a pen. Isn't there some law in the land we can invoke demanding that the 'author' of a book must have written at least 51% of the words or drawn 51% of the illustrations? Because otherwise, how can we judge them or call them an author? We don't accept horsemeat instead of beef so why should we accept this literary horsemeat posing as Grade A Rowling or Pullman? He might have had a few meetings with his ghost writer to hammer out a few ideas but let's cut the bullshit: the only significant contribution Frank Lampard will make to this book is by allowing his name to be used. It's marketing scam. It's a publicity wheeze. It's a sick indictment of our celebrity-obsessed culture. For make no mistake, it's not the grim-faced tyrants that will destroy us as a free society but the smiling celebrities who, in a very slick and clever way, make us think less and consume more. That they're selling their names to children worries me in the same way I've always been suspicious of McDonald's clown. Perhaps I overstate my case but there is a generally ignorant and indifferent section of the public who will buy into this type of onerous deal, not thinking what it does to the publishing industry. Because that is the bottom line: if it makes money, publishers will invest more into other celebrities having fiction ghosted under their name. How long before Beckham has a novel out? Jordan's done it with some success though, between her breasts and fingernails, I don't see how she could have got within five feet of a keyboard. Publishers will argue, of course, that the money they make from these celebrity deals will be reinvested into new authors. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that's one possible future where writers live like parasites feeding around the anus of some greater unthinking host. But I wish quality newspapers would expose the lie instead of treating their readers like fools. They shouldn't bow to the celebrity, give them an easy time when they should be ashamed to be in the room without asking hard questions about these odious little books. Make them feel the shame that they should feel for passing themselves off as an author. If I ran onto the pitch at Stamford Bridge and tried to dribble around Frank Lampard only to fall flat on my face, he'd rightly laugh at me. Then I'd be escorted from the ground with a lifetime ban and the media calling me a fool and a lout. Except for the bit where I get chased by overweight men in luminous jackets, how is that any different with what Lampard is doing here? Yet, of course, it doesn't matter what I say. In fact, people tend to disagree with me for picking on dear Frank. They say that the man has a right to make a living, that he's an intelligent business man, that the book might be good, and aren't I just a bitter under-published writer with an axe to grind. And, of course they are right. It is sour grapes and some jealousy. But what's wrong with that? I love words and laud people who write well. The high horse I'm currently riding is called Righteous Indignation. It might not be the favourite in the field but he's a stubborn plodder. I also find it remarkable that anybody could consider my defence of literary talent objectionable. I don't support Chelsea but I'd be the first to admit that Lampard is one of the finest footballers of his generation who deserved every penny he's earned from his skills. However, I reserve the right to criticise him, along with any other celebrity, who dabbles in publishing merely to make a few quid off the back of their name. As to Lampard's book: does it even matter if it is good? My point is let the true author of the book take the credit, do the interviews, and become a household name. I am interested to learn about them, not to read yet another tedious retelling of how Frank's scored a disallowed goal at the World Cup. Tell me about the illustrator too. I admire their talent but I'd be surprised if both author and illustrator don't feel some deep resentment that somebody else takes much of the credit for their work. I want the ghost writer to earn the royalties and have an advance as large any Lampard received. Simply, what's wrong with wanting to give credit to the person whose talents have created the book? Anything else is simply pandering to the people who believe that marketing, spin, hype, and branding are more important than depth, quality, passion, and individual talent. This was rewritten from the comments I wrote as 'UncleZippy' beneath yesterday's Lampard story over at The Guardian. You will probably disagree with most of this, as some people over there also disagreed. I don't give a damn because I know that I'm right. Saturday, June 01, 2013
Does Nobody Care About The Dunnocks? Springwatch 2013
As another Springwatch tramps its muddy green Wellingtons through our living rooms, kettles across the land are left to boil dry as debates rage about the sex lives of garden slugs. Yet all is not well in the world of chirping chicks and reluctant badgers. Spring has come late this year and BBC producers are burning the midnight biofuel to rewrite the usual narrative of sex, eggs, chicks, grubs, moulting, beaks out the nest, and then the inevitable being gobbled up by a carnivorous squirrel during the season finale. Still only early into this year's run, she show has already proved to be one for horror fans. Three weeks of cooing over baby dunnocks was cut short on Tuesday night by the arrival of a weasel, clearly in the pay of ITV, who entered the nest and gave throat to all five innocents. Thankfully, Michaela Strachan was on hand to talk us through it with all the savoir-faire of Jay Rayner eyeing a continental cheese buffet. The message of this year's show has been that Spring has come late. We're told that, had it been a typical Spring, the baby dunnocks would have been bigger and wouldn't have gone down the weasel's throat without a good fight. Yet this is not the first time that nature has been out of kilter. Last year it was heavy rain that troubled the team and regular viewers will already have begun to wonder what is happening to our seasons. Some talk about global warming whilst others about a new ice age. Both might be right. I'm only here to present my theory that we've not had a decent Spring since the BBC pointed Bill Oddie in the direction of the potting shed. [caption id="attachment_1812" align="alignright" width="288"]
Click me[/caption] Call me alarmist but I suspect that we might have mistreated one of the ancient gods of the forest. Would it be too much of a stretch to see Oddie as the modern incarnation of Pan, the hirsute sax playing lord of mischief and high-pitched giggling? After all, it was Oddie who made this style of freeform wildlife television popular and his inexplicable loss from the show surely remains as significant as any late Spring or unseasonably heavy rain. It's now twelve seasons since Oddie hosted Autumnwatch 2009 and there definitely remains an imbalance in nature. Chris Pekham said the other night, and I'm paraphrasing, that 'there is no cruelty in nature'. In other words: nature is by its very nature just nature. It knows no pity. A weasel will rip into a dunnock chick's throat without a second thought and that is pretty much how I imagine it's like working for the BBC. It's never been properly explained why Oddie received the weasel treatment in 2010 but his presence still looms large over the show. It sometimes feels like there's a shadow on the sofa where Bill Oddie should still be sitting instead of touring shopping centres flogging millet. Now, I know that some people considered Oddie to be one of nature's blights and were glad to see him go but they were the kind of people to whom it is probably best not to listen. They complained at his occasional saucy remark. They wanted their wildlife clean, safe, devoid of smutty innuendo about rutting beetles (a line I can never write without wanting to make a joke about Ringo Starr). But isn't that what nature is all about? To dislike Oddie is to deny the very thing that makes nature so fascinating. It's not even his great enthusiasm I love as much as his wonderful indifference to the rules. He is a fertility god in dwarf form and, as his recent spoof nature documentary highlighting HSBC's funding of the desecration of forests reminds us, he still has more edge than any thousand graduates of the BBC's school of bland presenters. Meanwhile on Springwatch, they keep telling us that 'the wildlife writes the show' but I can't help but feel that the wildlife is beginning to get professional help. The whole thing feels too scripted, the segues too neat. What is missing is a good dose of British eccentricity that the BBC never managed to replace once Oddie left. Chris Packham's presenting style is that of an overly competitive father with psychological issues regarding human contact. His punk look has now gone and he has the cold, clinical detachment you normally only find in professional killers, proctologists, and Tesco delivery men. A lifelong obsession with Kestrels did not translate into a willingness to imitate the bird's call the other night. On the other hand, Martin Hughes-Games and Michaela Strachan combined well and try their best to form a kind of surrogate Oddie. As his name suggests, Huges-Games is game for anything and he was in his own little world as he began to squawk like a falcon in heat. Female kestrels listening would have been left feeling particularly broody and who could blame them? If only we could fit Strachan and Hughes-Games into one large body suit, Strachan providing the unscripted material and Huges-Games providing the hair, we might begin to re-establish normality. As it stands, Springwatch makes for great TV but it still feels as unbalanced as Spring itself. I say we need the little earth lord back, sitting on the end of the sofa. We need to return the show to the wild. We need to get the seasons working again for the sake of baby dunnocks everywhere.
Click me[/caption] Call me alarmist but I suspect that we might have mistreated one of the ancient gods of the forest. Would it be too much of a stretch to see Oddie as the modern incarnation of Pan, the hirsute sax playing lord of mischief and high-pitched giggling? After all, it was Oddie who made this style of freeform wildlife television popular and his inexplicable loss from the show surely remains as significant as any late Spring or unseasonably heavy rain. It's now twelve seasons since Oddie hosted Autumnwatch 2009 and there definitely remains an imbalance in nature. Chris Pekham said the other night, and I'm paraphrasing, that 'there is no cruelty in nature'. In other words: nature is by its very nature just nature. It knows no pity. A weasel will rip into a dunnock chick's throat without a second thought and that is pretty much how I imagine it's like working for the BBC. It's never been properly explained why Oddie received the weasel treatment in 2010 but his presence still looms large over the show. It sometimes feels like there's a shadow on the sofa where Bill Oddie should still be sitting instead of touring shopping centres flogging millet. Now, I know that some people considered Oddie to be one of nature's blights and were glad to see him go but they were the kind of people to whom it is probably best not to listen. They complained at his occasional saucy remark. They wanted their wildlife clean, safe, devoid of smutty innuendo about rutting beetles (a line I can never write without wanting to make a joke about Ringo Starr). But isn't that what nature is all about? To dislike Oddie is to deny the very thing that makes nature so fascinating. It's not even his great enthusiasm I love as much as his wonderful indifference to the rules. He is a fertility god in dwarf form and, as his recent spoof nature documentary highlighting HSBC's funding of the desecration of forests reminds us, he still has more edge than any thousand graduates of the BBC's school of bland presenters. Meanwhile on Springwatch, they keep telling us that 'the wildlife writes the show' but I can't help but feel that the wildlife is beginning to get professional help. The whole thing feels too scripted, the segues too neat. What is missing is a good dose of British eccentricity that the BBC never managed to replace once Oddie left. Chris Packham's presenting style is that of an overly competitive father with psychological issues regarding human contact. His punk look has now gone and he has the cold, clinical detachment you normally only find in professional killers, proctologists, and Tesco delivery men. A lifelong obsession with Kestrels did not translate into a willingness to imitate the bird's call the other night. On the other hand, Martin Hughes-Games and Michaela Strachan combined well and try their best to form a kind of surrogate Oddie. As his name suggests, Huges-Games is game for anything and he was in his own little world as he began to squawk like a falcon in heat. Female kestrels listening would have been left feeling particularly broody and who could blame them? If only we could fit Strachan and Hughes-Games into one large body suit, Strachan providing the unscripted material and Huges-Games providing the hair, we might begin to re-establish normality. As it stands, Springwatch makes for great TV but it still feels as unbalanced as Spring itself. I say we need the little earth lord back, sitting on the end of the sofa. We need to return the show to the wild. We need to get the seasons working again for the sake of baby dunnocks everywhere. Thursday, May 30, 2013
A Cartoon About Being Dead
Apologises if you can smell something This one still stinks with rejection from 'Private Eye'... I'm beginning to think they're just testing me, making me work even harder. One week they will say yes but I really thought this one stood a chance.
The Duck Controversy: A Cautionary Tale for Web Marketers
Grab a pen and jail tattoo this information on your elbow. I have a new email address for this blog. My new email address is thespineblog@gmail.com. I encourage you to use it immediately. I don't get enough emails from readers and I'm only about a third as evil as this blog would suggest. My previous email apparently wasn't working, though I wouldn't know that because emails have been going missing. So, if you've ever emailed me and it seemed strange that I didn't reply when I reply to everybody, the chances are that I didn't receive your email. 
The only emails that have been regularly getting through are from the people at Web Windows who keep asking me for £525 to advertise my blog in the national press. I wouldn't advise you to click the link. Before you know what's happening, you'll have a web chat window open with one of their sales people. It happened to me yesterday and the poor woman looked so lonely that I felt obliged to ask something. I asked if she could name the biggest duck in the world. As you can see, she foolishly suggested it was the Aylesbury. Unfortunately, the conversation didn't proceed any further, which was a shame since the next thing I was going to ask was the price of six months advertising in 'The Guardian'. For me the duck issue was the deal breaker. As you know, I'm actually a financial genius with billions in the pot ready for the right advertising deal to come along. 'Let's run this up the flagpole,' I was about to say as I stood at my desk with my hands-free on my head. I had already hitched up one leg, revealing my red cashmere socks as I gazed out over the London skyline. 'Damn it! I want ballpark figures,' would have been my next line followed by 'Let's close this sucker! I'm due in Paris tonight and want this deal put to bed.' Instead, I wrote them an email to let them down gently. I didn't want them to realise that they'd just let a reclusive and eccentric billionaire slip through their fingers. Naturally, there has been no reply.
The only emails that have been regularly getting through are from the people at Web Windows who keep asking me for £525 to advertise my blog in the national press. I wouldn't advise you to click the link. Before you know what's happening, you'll have a web chat window open with one of their sales people. It happened to me yesterday and the poor woman looked so lonely that I felt obliged to ask something. I asked if she could name the biggest duck in the world. As you can see, she foolishly suggested it was the Aylesbury. Unfortunately, the conversation didn't proceed any further, which was a shame since the next thing I was going to ask was the price of six months advertising in 'The Guardian'. For me the duck issue was the deal breaker. As you know, I'm actually a financial genius with billions in the pot ready for the right advertising deal to come along. 'Let's run this up the flagpole,' I was about to say as I stood at my desk with my hands-free on my head. I had already hitched up one leg, revealing my red cashmere socks as I gazed out over the London skyline. 'Damn it! I want ballpark figures,' would have been my next line followed by 'Let's close this sucker! I'm due in Paris tonight and want this deal put to bed.' Instead, I wrote them an email to let them down gently. I didn't want them to realise that they'd just let a reclusive and eccentric billionaire slip through their fingers. Naturally, there has been no reply. To Jenni Garford @ Web Windows Dear Jenni, Okay, I keep getting your grovelling emails and I think it's time we took this misunderstanding behind the kennel and put the poor bastard out of its misery. £525 for an ad in national newspapers might be nose money to you high-flying marketing types but that's the price of my left kidney on eBay. What kind of operation do you think I'm running? I'm not one of those bloggers doing the papers on Sky News and milking the Murdoch millions for some barely cogent ramble about the Duchess of Cambridge's chin. If you said '£5.25' then I might spit in my hand and offer to shake but even then I'd have to double check that I don't need to eat next week. Furthermore, do you realise how much of an insult it is when you suggest I might want an ad in the Daily Mail or Telegraph? I might have a small readership but it's a mighty powerful one. We're not talking about your C1 and C2 photocopier engineers and bathtub fitters. We're talking upper echelon A's with the occasional B to keep the gene pool fertile. These are CERN boffins, university types, lone wolves used to exploring the intellectual hinterland with nothing more than a compass and a splinter of rock. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph! We're not the type to get excited at the thought of Katie Price in a bikini or Lord Tebbit in a thong. Come back to me when you can get me coverage in The Guardian or The Independent. In summary, I write a small but excellent blog which is read by a very small but highly intelligent coterie, attracted to witty social commentary and drawings of hairy bottoms. If you could remove me from your list of easy marks, I would appreciate it enormously. Bless you, Pelinor Le Grew Editor and Proprietor The Spine
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
The Ralph Steadman Effect
Few things give me as much pleasure as Ralph Steadman's books yet they can also awaken certain feelings of self-loathing in me. When I was still signing my letters as Stan Madeley, the UK's top Richard Madeley lookalike, back when I was still hoping to get a second volume of letters published, I would very occasionally write one to some personal hero whose work I genuinely admired. I once wrote to Robert Crumb and sent him a bad parody I'd drawn of one of his Amazonian girls. I walked down the stairs one morning about three weeks later to see a large white A4 envelope sitting on the doormat. The handwritten address was a work of art in itself and almost as good as the drawing Crumb had enclosed: his own version of my version of one of his Amazonians. Days like that made the failures worth it. And there were plenty of failures... It generally didn't bother me when certain people didn't reply. I've bothered enough big names so that a rejection from Will Gompertz was never going to upset me too much, even if he did get one of my better cartoons. The exception is when a letter happens to be one of the few I've written which were special to me. Those were letters into which I'd usually put real effort, perhaps taken days to get the wording just right. I wrote to Ron Mael of Sparks who completely ignored me, as did Gerald Scarfe both of which were real disappointments. However, many others replied. I have letters from comedy greats such as Bob Newhart and Alan Alda, film greats such as Roman Polanski and Shirley MacLaine. John Landis sent me a CD and Martin Sheen a bag of whistles. Yet nothing quite matches my Steadman reply. I wrote to him when I was feeling particularly down one day. It was probably after another of the endless rejection emails from 'Private Eye' and I was really considering… Well, I might say 'giving' up but I'm not sure that's right. I love to write comedy and I love to cartoon. The thought of doing anything else... Well, I don't go there. Unlike my usual spoof letters, the letter I wrote to Steadman mixed humour in with genuine sentiment. I also sent him a copy of my book which he probably used on his log stove. I didn't expect a reply so I was over the moon when I received a handwritten letter two months later. I felt all kinds of stupid when he told me to sort myself out. Slapped by Steadman! It should be the title of a book… I present the original letter and reply here for the first time. You see before you one of my most treasured possessions. Both pictures are clickable in case you'd like to read them... 
But all that is back-story. I'm now sitting here wondering if I can make the STEADman@77 exhibition currently playing to lucky and no-doubt indifferent bastards at the Cartoon Museum in London. I'm itching to go but the small matter of a 400 mile round journey is getting in the way. The obvious answer is: if you really wanted to go, you'd find a way. Perhaps that's true but the cost of travelling between any two points in this fine country of ours is getting out of hand. I don't have a car and as much as I love cycling, I don't think my old Raleigh X1 (and my even older legs) could make it to London and back. The train is pretty quick but it's well outside the current finances of this humble pen scratcher. That leaves the coach... My six foot two inch frame does not sit well on National Express coaches for a five hour journey. Leaving Warrington at 6.40AM, I'd apparently arrive in London at 11.40. Assuming the travel sickness hasn't destroyed my insides by then, I'd have maybe five hours to find the museum, sob and drool over the Steadman exhibition, before I'd have to get the return coach that leaves at 6.30 and arrives home around 11.30. I feel nauseous just thinking about that trip. It was sheer hell the last time I travelled to London by coach but I'm beginning to feel like I'll have to do it again or never see this exhibition… When Londoners complain as they occasionally do on the rare occasion that an exhibition opens somewhere in the North, I wish they'd remember the thousands upon thousands of things we don't get and never will get. Not that there isn't adequate space to put on an exhibition. We have the damn Tate Liverpool which thrives on the abstracted junk they exhibit to American tourists and bored school kids. Last year they held an 'Alice in Wonderland' exhibition which ignored Steadman's superior version in favour of some graphic design college nonsense. There is plenty of gallery space in Manchester when it's not being used on some postmodern project that no bugger wants or visits. Would it be too much to hope that a collection by the UK's most respected illustrators and cartoonists of the late 20th Century might actually travel this far north? I mean, Steadman was born in Wallasey, for Christ sake! A mere fifteen miles from my front door… Get a bloody blue plaque put up there or in in Abergele in North Wales which is where he was brought up and then bring his work up here. I can be in North Wales inside forty minutes... However, it won't happen. I know I'll have to overdose on Dramamine in order to pay homage in London. If I wanted to engage in pilgrimage, I'd have bloody well become a Catholic. Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Eleven Reasons Why Nick Ross’s Testicles Are Not Like A Honda Civic
This is the slightly tongue-in-cheek article I wrote yesterday in response to this 'Comment is Free' piece ('Three reasons why a vagina is not like a laptop') over at The Guardian. I had hoped they might pick it up but, on reflection, I think my argument is too crazy yet also too sensible. It's a shame. I'm putting real effort into my blogging at the moment but this is all beginning to feel very familiar... I begin to work with enthusiasm, get nowhere, zero feedback in the comments, and I end up retreating into silence. Sarah Ditum's well-aimed barb, 'Three reasons why a vagina is not like a laptop' (The Guardian, 26th May, 2013), should have made for tough reading, especially for Nick Ross, whose argument from his new book, Crime, had already been reduced to an extract published in The Daily Mail before Ms Ditum then reduced it to an edited selection and further cut it down for her eye-catching title. But she has to be praised for approaching his argument via a classic example of reductio ad absurdum, even if, for some readers, the result was in itself so very absurd. As men know all too well, knee jerk reactions can be very painful, and this is especially true if, like Nick Ross, you're the man standing with your crotch at full stretch over the rapidly rising knee. The Guardian piece was definitely a forceful knee and Nick Ross's testicles took the impact like a Honda Civic dropped from the top of the Top Gear crane. Yet to compare Nick Ross's testicles to a Honda Civic is itself to trivialise the pain that a man feels when kicked in that most sensitive of places. I shouldn't have done it but, then, drawing analogies is always a business fraught with difficulty. Analogies can be made between any two things and it was right that Sarah Ditum pointed out the weakness of the analogy Ross's drew between a laptop left on show to a woman enjoying the freedom to express her own sexuality. His analogy carried with it all manner of overtone from the sin of objectifying women to that of comparing rape to theft. The issue then became a matter of deciding if those overtones were deliberate, accidental, or, as some would have it, inadvertently revealed some deeper truth about the way that some men think about rape as a 'taking' rather than an act of violence. Yet if it's always easy to play mischief and point out the problems with an analogy, as the novelist Samuel Butler once said, 'though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.' Analogies simplify in order to advance an argument but they should not be confused with the actual argument itself. Attacking Nick Ross's analogy is like destabilising a building by criticising the colour of the curtains. This is itself a pretty strong analogy but even that could be made weak, if, for example, you knew a building owner pathologically sensitive to criticism about her soft furnishings and had a way with dynamite. That's the problem with analogies: they always contain inherent differences, points of difficulty, and easy corridors of attack. A robin can be compared to a sparrow but it's also very different. If there were no difference, a robin would be a sparrow. I drew my own analogy between Nick Ross's poor battered testicles and a Honda Civic because it seemed to me that some arguments are very vulnerable to attack. It has become somewhat fashionable for female writers to author articles that mock men, masculinity, and male culture. Rape rightly remains the most sensitive subject about which any person can write, so it seemed perverse that when a man did attempt to address the matter in an appropriately sincere way, based upon what he felt were 'facts', that he became subject to selective quotation and ridicule. Is Nick Ross an easy target or was he simply naïve for attempting to discuss an issue that polarises opinion so strongly? Was it right to humiliate him with a sharp knee to the groin? Did Nick Ross's arguments really have all the structural integrity of a Honda Civic's crumple zone? I am in no position to judge but I hope my own argument doesn't rest on the strength of my chosen analogy. Frankly, I know very little about cars but a little research now tells me that the Honda Civic has the full five stars in the Euro NCAP crash safety tests. If Nick Ross's testicles were as strong as a Honda Civic, then any knee would shatter upon impact and my argument would be doomed. And that, really, is my point. Arguments rarely rest of the strength or weakness of their analogies but on facts, reason, and the force of what we might intuit as 'truth'. We can question his analogies but surely Nick Ross's points still need addressing in a proper way. From this Crimewatch viewer, the greatest indiscretion the suspect has committed thus far is that of drawing a woefully bad analogy, as, indeed, I drew a bad analogy at the start of this piece. Mock him, certainly, but then address his argument. But in the meantime, in the name of fairness, consider another ten important ways that Nick Ross's testicles are nothing like a Honda Civic. - The ability to handle Nick Ross's testicles in wet conditions is not something Jeremy Clarkson is likely to be found boasting about.
- You can't wrap Nick Ross's testicles around a lamp post though some might like to try
- You can't jump-start a bus from Nick Ross's testicles
- You can't carry four Royal Marines in the back of Nick Ross's testicles
- A Honda Civic has never bulged in blue polyester trousers on an edition of Crimewatch
- You can't scratch a Honda Civic from your trouser pocket
- You can't pick up a week's groceries with Nick Ross's testicles
- You rarely need to dig Nick Ross's testicles out of deep snow
- It's not obscene to ask an mechanic to give a Honda Civic a 10,000 mile tune up
- Kicking a Honda Civic in its front fender wouldn't make a feminist happy. You really do need Nick Ross's testicles for that.
Monday, May 27, 2013
How The British Bank Holiday Can Break a Man in 72 Hours or Less
Another piece sent to Comment is Free. No answer. I must be doing something wrong. They're clearly accepting humour articles, such as today's 600 worder: 'Three reasons why a vagina is not like a laptop'. I'm tempted to now go off and write '10 Reasons Why Testicles are not like a Land Rover'. It is a truth universally acknowledged among the swinish and brash that the first sun-blessed bank holiday of the year is the ideal time to pressure wash their garden decking, perhaps for hours on end, perhaps stopping periodically to mow their lawn or use a pneumatic jackhammer to chip a cherub from their imitation Trevi Fountain or a hair dryer to blow the winter dust from their atonal wind-chimes. What better time is there for homicidally-inclined couples to adopt vein-constricting swimwear over their jaundiced gooseflesh before they can argue with the force of an industrial sandblasting operation about who forgot to bring out the bleach or whether they should use deck cleaner on the stains from last year's wine? Only then can she call him some degenerate name and he can bark back a sequence of four letters that might or might not remind you of how Keats once described the summer as 'a sweet reprieve / From little cares; to find, with easy quest, / A fragrant wild, with Nature's beauty drest'. There is sadly no truth universally acknowledged that might arm you against the porcine hordes other than the advice I can give you now which is to lock your doors, fall to your knees, and mutter dark threats to whatever god or gods exist in your theology so they might bring autumn forward by six weeks. There exists no pair of noise-cancelling headphones that can cancel a British bank holiday, just as there is no law in the land that makes it possible to escape Mr Bacchus and Mrs Dionysus (he works for BT and she's a school dinner lady). There are only laws written by cowards and fools that prevent a man from pumping untreated sewage through a knot in his garden fence and the police hold nothing but a dim view of anyone who makes their point with a very long stick with a nail gorilla-taped to the end, even if that point happens to be into the side of a fifteen foot rubber swimming pool that quacks like a duck whenever it is filled. Yet I don't remember bank holidays always being this bad. When did holidaying Britain become a nation ruled by a vocal few who are, for want of an adequate description, snorting jackals driven insane by bad meat and brain parasites that have infected their prefrontal cortex leaving them wide-mouthed, unsociable, and flapping around their decking in their flip flops, their reddening flesh exposed so the world can see that selfishness does indeed run through the entirety of their soulless selves? There's not even an easy way to escape them. They follow you to the emptiest beach and choose a spot twelve feet from your Lilo to hold their own open air rock festival. A sunny bank holiday in the countryside is nothing if it's not a celebration of dirt biking, quad biking, and sticking a 4x4 through a butterfly meadow. If you're really unlucky, you'll meet them at the only time in the day when they do demand a little quiet, which is when they're pursuing the nation's most rapidly growing outdoor participation sport: dogging. Stop in the wrong spot and they'll either headlight-flash you into a catatonic state or grope you from the bushes. Is that the smell of summer in the air? No, it's just the Lynx Effect rising from the post-coital taxi driver now emerging through the hedgerow with nettle rash in his underwear. But enough tales of English fauna. You might be one of those poor bastards who actually hoped to enjoy your garden despite your neighbour's trampoline capable of propelling a mean-eyed delinquent higher than you can grow a hedge. Forget Amazon and Google and their taxes. Who would sell a garden hammock to a person who lacks the skills to drive it? You wouldn't put an infant in charge of a chainsaw so why give deck-chairs to people who believe that Genesis are as vital to a good tan as sunscreen and the new Dan Brown? Nothing – and I mean nothing – makes the blood run slower or colder than Genesis played loudly on a bank holiday. If your neighbours want a war, I say give them a war. Don't let them to outgun you with their middle-of-the-road banality. Hit them with The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, or, if things turn nuclear, The Velvet Underground's 'Black Angel's Death Song'. (Serious question: what is the best music to play during a summer music war? Crazy Horse or Wham? Tom Waits or Lady Gaga? Do you pursue victory through might or go for mutually-assured destruction? Those are tough questions that require cool nerves to answer.) Finally, when evening falls, the smell of overcooked meat fills the air. Your eyeballs weep at the smoke drifting in on the breeze from the neighbour's patio where they're roasting the last of the world's giant pandas on their B&Q barbecue. But it's too hot to close your doors and windows. Blinded, you sit in the gathering dusk, listening to the braying of deviant laughter. Her brother arrives packing the Tim Vine joke book and a Michael McIntyre box set. Wine is served and the jokes become coarser as the smoke thickens and casts a bloody pall over the light of their mock Victorian street lamp. A balloon pops as his overweight uncle performs Zorba's Dance before glasses smash to a roar of approval. Then it's time for the fireworks, the disco, a quick game of touch rugby, and then it's the midnight karaoke… Around 4AM, the party breaks up. There are familiar songs of farewell from the street below; confessions of love, comradeship, eternal loyalty. And then, as the last solemn 'god bless' echoes down the sleepless streets, you enjoy the blissful respite as silence finally falls for all of five minutes before the dawn chorus signals the start of another glorious day in our semi demi paradise.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Naked People on Motorbikes
It's a most beautiful Sunday morning of a bank holiday weekend. The sun is shining in a cloudless sky yet it's still not too warm. The air blowing in from the north still has a cut of freshness about it. Naturally, such fantastic weather has other benefits: outside there are some kids screaming, some kid crying, the neighbour is using a pneumatic hammer to demolish a wall, there's somebody using a petrol-powered strimmer further away, and from the fields beyond, there's the truest sound of spring: dirt bikes illegally cutting their merry way along the local nature trail. And who says we Brits can't appreciate good weather? In honour of the day, I've slapped my notebook down and scanned my morning doodle. I'm a great believer in predestination but not the Fall. If there was a Garden of Eden (and I'm pretty sure there wasn't), then our forefathers would have despoiled it long before they got to the apple tree. Blaming the snake sounds remarkably like how we go about things today except these days we have the media to take long lens photographs of the snake, interview other snakes that know him, snakes that have slept with him, and eventually the snake himself who would confess all for a six figure sum (donated to charity) and ask for forgiveness in one cathartic sob over Phillip sodding Schofield's collar followed by the lead role in some West End musical which would see his full rehabilitation. Saturday, May 25, 2013
The Verbal Diarrhoea of Russell Brand
Written very late last nightas a response to the sensible people criticising Brand for his inability to write and the fools who think he's some kind of literary genius. Avast, ye scurvy naughtlings! What bilious envy do you pontificate over the writings of that fine mustard of a man? Why, Mr Brand's idiomatic yarns are but the simplest to unpick. Like a flea in th'codpiece, it is but a scratch and a wiggle before the meaning 'tis squished between finger and thumb. Consider: 'tis one part fine manly prose, loquacious with an ear for the rambling uppings and downings of our linguistic land, another part which devolves thusly into a kind of streetwise strutting of the ordinary, you know, speech, winkle-picked and ready for the shell-like, with bits that just hang, like, off the drooping end… For each questing for the lingual Jabberwock, as if to demonstrate ample learning of the English vernacular, we shall have one mention of a wookie, won't we, and of sagely Alec Guinness, using the Force, giving it a good old go for Blighty and all that. And with this light-sabre thrust of pop culture, we show like Russell is one of the lads, which he is, ain't he? That odd old bird Anthony Burgess would have trilled most lively at words put into most periphrastic utterances of bubbling froth. Ah, sweet Russell, so long as the dirty rozzers don't feel your collar for suspected homicide of the mother tongue, you shall find much riches, like dosh, in this handbill, this flyer, this chip wrapper of the morrow's morn! Like a modern Beckett (Samuel) or Joyce (James), you shake the tree and the most chucklesome fruit does land on your bonce and having read 'A Clockwork Orange' one too many times, words spring forth like large ladies in Spandex doing interpretive dance in aid of the lactose intolerant. Does anybody see your trick? Do they bonkers like for 'tis a merry jest signifying, like Dame Bonnie last week, nil points or as near to nil as make a good old bird warble! Lastly, The Guardian should be lauded for giving use to you in these meaningful issues of the day, for employing a geeza who sprachen our language, know what I mean? Well it is, aint' it? The ladies love him too, his tight pants swollen hot like some well-busty member of Corrie, which I don't watch but you've got to mention to inculpate one's loyalty to soapland. But I fear I ramble on too far, though that too is the charm of our liege lord of the ringlets and curls, for he writes at lengh cos it's a protracted old trajectory from Beverley Hills, swimming pools, movie stars, a reference, if you were twigging, to that old TV periodical, 'The Beverly Hillbillies', which (note to self), Russell should remake, but Cockney-like, perhaps playing young Ned in tight white jeans, sexy full of the honey for Miss Jane Hathaway, who was a proper plain bird but he wouldn't mind having a go if it were played by Keira Knightley who he of course fancies. But enough! Unlike some bewhiskered types I could eyeball, this humble player is not paid a dime a word. Nor can he find favour in the right places to put his skills to use. Alas, alack, and cor blimey! Friday, May 24, 2013
Sally Bercow Responds to High Court Decision
I know I said I'd do no more Photoshopping but sometimes you just can't resist... Thursday, May 23, 2013
Want Some eBook Piracy? Join Here…
Sick days in the heart of London: a soldier butchered by home-grown thugs citing religion as a way to make their cowardice appear noble. The media, already spittle lipped over every gory detail, have turned into salivating beasts now they have film of one of the killers with his hands red with his victim's lifeblood. The far right are already stirring beneath their bed sheets stained yellow with their septic filth and bile. Politicians, those feral bastards, are already making political capital by claiming that they're not going to make political capital… These are bad times all around and I find myself not wanting to look out at the world today. Yet I thought I could do something. Perhaps raise a few smiles despite all this grim news. I've therefore decided to pirate an ebook, which is itself a sordid business to be into. However, in this case there is a modicum of decency because I also wrote the damn thing. For a limited time, you can download my last book from here. If it makes you laugh enough times, perhaps you'd consider supporting me by buying it from here (Amazon) or here (Dashwords). Either way, if you like it (or even if you don't like it), give it your friends, family, and random strangers. I'd even be grateful if you'd go stick it on some ebook piracy websites and Bittorrent it at your leisure. Hell, I'm not going to come after you. I'm just happy to be read. 
I must warn you that the book I'm giving away is high class erotica and I say that fully aware that I'm also lying to you even as I look you in the eye. It's actually five short stories written as parodies of high class erotica, with a deliberately 'bad' style, trying to imitate some of those awful books you see topping the Amazon charts with some bloke on the cover with muscles like the coast of Norway. The whole thing is meant to hang comically on the ear, with very poorly chosen comic metaphors to describe those heightened moments of sensuality. You'll quickly get the idea. I liked it enough to publish it as an ebook but after my week of rejections by 'Private Eye' and 'The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' (or, as I like to think of it, 'Comment is Unwanted'), I'm discovering that my sense of humour is probably a minority interest. So, if you like the book, perhaps you could even go out of your way and wave in my direction and say 'thanks David, I enjoyed that'. Today, I feel like I need it… As to the name: I'm obviously not called Felicity and I'm really in no mood to be groped. Perhaps later… The name was probably a bad choice, laden with sexual misconduct, and it's already attracted the hostility of some . I don't know why I've written yet another book under a false name except that I've always detested the cult of personality. Russell Brand, in my eyes, is perfectly named. That's what it all comes down to: logos, branding, promotion, marketing, TV. I've probably not done enough of that kind of things to make anything I'd done even a little bit successful but what kind of writer really cares about that kind of thing? Oh, right! A successful writer, you say… Well, that explains everything. I guess I'm too much in love the work and with the writing of men like William Donaldson, a much forgotten literary maverick, who created (among many others) the character of Henry Root, who wrote the famous Root letters back in the 1970s. He wrote other things under other guises and I've always admired writers to allow their work to stand on their own, devoid of attachment to some face. So, there you have it. Today's gift to you: a 30,000 word book. I hope it helps you get over these dark days. And if you liked any of it, please tell me. It's the small things that, to paraphrase the words of the great Ron Mael, 'keep me doing what I do in slightly askew ways...'
I must warn you that the book I'm giving away is high class erotica and I say that fully aware that I'm also lying to you even as I look you in the eye. It's actually five short stories written as parodies of high class erotica, with a deliberately 'bad' style, trying to imitate some of those awful books you see topping the Amazon charts with some bloke on the cover with muscles like the coast of Norway. The whole thing is meant to hang comically on the ear, with very poorly chosen comic metaphors to describe those heightened moments of sensuality. You'll quickly get the idea. I liked it enough to publish it as an ebook but after my week of rejections by 'Private Eye' and 'The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' (or, as I like to think of it, 'Comment is Unwanted'), I'm discovering that my sense of humour is probably a minority interest. So, if you like the book, perhaps you could even go out of your way and wave in my direction and say 'thanks David, I enjoyed that'. Today, I feel like I need it… As to the name: I'm obviously not called Felicity and I'm really in no mood to be groped. Perhaps later… The name was probably a bad choice, laden with sexual misconduct, and it's already attracted the hostility of some . I don't know why I've written yet another book under a false name except that I've always detested the cult of personality. Russell Brand, in my eyes, is perfectly named. That's what it all comes down to: logos, branding, promotion, marketing, TV. I've probably not done enough of that kind of things to make anything I'd done even a little bit successful but what kind of writer really cares about that kind of thing? Oh, right! A successful writer, you say… Well, that explains everything. I guess I'm too much in love the work and with the writing of men like William Donaldson, a much forgotten literary maverick, who created (among many others) the character of Henry Root, who wrote the famous Root letters back in the 1970s. He wrote other things under other guises and I've always admired writers to allow their work to stand on their own, devoid of attachment to some face. So, there you have it. Today's gift to you: a 30,000 word book. I hope it helps you get over these dark days. And if you liked any of it, please tell me. It's the small things that, to paraphrase the words of the great Ron Mael, 'keep me doing what I do in slightly askew ways...' Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Xbox One, Day One: The Confessions of an Antisocial Gamer
So here's my take on the way Microsoft think they'll take over your living room. For the uninitiated, there more on the Xbox One here. M
y pj's made a shock appearance on my doorstep at 7AM this morning. It was hellishly early, I won't deceive you, but I didn't want to miss my neighbour before she went off to work. 'Good morning!' I shouted over herbaceous divide. 'The new Xbox One has just been unveiled. Exciting times, aren't they?' Clearly impressed, my neighbour clutched her purse to her chest and quickly climbed into her Clio. The sound of the locks engaging encouraged me to wave my milk bottles but it was the screech of her tyres that told me that she too was very upbeat about the next generation of home games consoles. Last night, Microsoft threw a rug over Steve Ballmer and unveiled their newest class presidents who looked good on the eye and nothing like a Mel Brookes comedy monster. They also unveiled their newest games console, though, as I type that, I realise I've already made a beginner's mistake. We have to be very wary of mentioning games. Microsoft certainly was. Judging from the launch, the Xbox One is more about new ways of watching TV. And, no, that's not another mistake. You remember TV, don't you? It was that thing you used to watch before you discovered that games are actually much more fun… From what we know so far, Xbox One is the biggest and best TV guide that you've probably never wanted. You can change channels with your voice (cue Alan Partridge: 'Xbox, can you make pornography come on my telly please?'). You can access exclusive marketing hype about your favourite shows from within your favourite shows, thereby allowing you to miss your favourite shows. And because we are still very much in a post-Wii world where consoles are meant to be about families, connectivity, and being part of a larger social experience, the Xbox One will allow you to see what shows are 'trending' across the Xbox community. That's right: more chances for the big boys to tell you to watch whichever overhyped franchise they're currently selling. 'Only on Xbox will TV become social' was last night's promise and that's why, first thing this morning, I thought it best to grab a quick word with my neighbour. If we're going to sharing TV planners, I think it's about time we moved to first name terms and we shared cupcake recipes. Or perhaps not… Call me an unreconstructed dragon-slaying space marine with a Mario-complex but I've never really been that interested in connectivity, social networks, or having the family around to share an unfeasibly large sofa whilst laughing like escaped axe killers as we disco dance to Rihanna's latest. Kinect seemed like a terrible idea when it launched and the ability to bark orders at my TV has not changed my opinion. I also have a terrible blind spot when it comes to that place where social media lives with its cats that look like Hitler. I'd much rather be in a tavern in Skyrim's Tamriel filled with non-playable characters than any social hub where bright Californians can invent ways to allow my dog to Instagram me. And positively the last thing I want whilst playing an RPG set in some mystical land where I'm the only person able to communicate with dragons is to have notifications popping up to tell me that Alan Carr has just had his teeth fixed and 'bird flu' is suddenly trending on Twitter. If I'm honest: I'm not even all that interested in being social. I have the real world for that and the specs are pretty good: persistent 3D without glasses, haptic feedback. When it works, it's even better than the business of virtual befriending. When it doesn't... Well, isn't that why God/Peter Molyneux invented single player gaming? So, I suppose I'm not entirely sure why Microsoft wants to make an all-encompassing media hub so central to their future, or, rather, I think I do understand it but I resent their presumption immensely. Their presumption is in believing that you'll buy into this evolving world of new (usually chargeable) services, micro-transactions, and digital content stored on 'the cloud'. They've called the machine the 'Xbox One' because they want it to be your 'one' console, your 'one' media centre, your 'one' companion in the living room. That's pretty presumptuous in itself and we haven't even got to the gaming part... Because for 'gaming' you should actually read 'media consumption' and for 'consumption' think 'as aggressive as pulmonary tuberculosis'. Make no mistake, behind the friendly 'this is about you' message is a concerted effort to pull you into a cold business relationship that keeps you connected to their servers for as close to 24/7 as they can get. The advent of cheap 69p games on mobile devices has encouraged companies to look into dark places to increase their revenue streams. Forget the next Skyrim or Halo selling at £40 a time. The real money is down among the pennies where you find habit-forming devilry such as Candy Crush, games that might lack depth but wiggle deep into your brain like some South American blood parasite and encourage you to part with money in such small amounts that you hardly realise that they're feeding off you. Microsoft is going back to square one by realising that controlling the means on consumption is everything. 'Control' should really have been the byword of the evening. Control what you watch and what you play. These are big ambitious plans to control your living room and that's why Steve Ballmer's absence from the launch felt so incongruous. With the Xbox One, Microsoft seem to have virtualised their current leader: this machine is a big powerful personality that wants to push its way into your living room and change the way you watch TV, whether you like it or not. Myself, I can only speak as a long-time gamer who still treasures his Elite badge circa too many moons ago. I've seen great consoles fail (Dreamcast) and I've witnessed the Xbox 360 triumph, despite suffering possibly the most notorious design flaws of recent memory. I've also sat through enough E3 presentations to know not to get excited by 90% of the features the marketing people start whooping about. The bottom line is that I'm not sure that our viewing habits can be changed, even through a huge act of will on Microsoft's behalf. It feels ominously like Windows 8, which also fixed many things that never needed fixing and attempted to change the way we work. For Xbox One, somebody has figured out how to do something before they've figured out if that thing needed doing. All the social connectivity guff might be great if you're a fashionably chin-whiskered Californian cyberjock called Rick and you have hundreds of friends who you go meet in the coffee shop to play some ethical bluegrass banjo whilst drinking squashed coconut off the back of your Segway. If you're a surely northerner after a grim day working in Manchester, you'd probably want to lose yourself in a world free of hashtags. Consider that for a moment. One of the genuinely novel innovations that technology could yet offer us is the ability to simply disconnect. Nintendo understood that perfectly when they launched the 3DS. Glasses-free 3D is no gimmick when it presents possibilities of a paradigm change that takes you deeper into a game. The Xbox One, in contrast, seems utterly rooted in the familiar. It is also reminds me that consumers of technology exist in two discernible groups: those of us who genuinely love innovation and technology and people who think they love innovation and technology. Microsoft's unveiling felt like sitting watching 'Click' on BBC News 24 when I often start thinking: 'Do these people really understand what's exciting in technology? Do I really want to change my TV channels by winking or have restaurant menus emailed to my washing machine so it can be sure to use the right detergent with my underpants?' Microsoft has so far unveiled a great deal of gimcrackery and gimmickry, sock puppetry disguised as innovation. They must now begin to show us what we want rather what they want to sell us. And with that: 'Xbox off…'
y pj's made a shock appearance on my doorstep at 7AM this morning. It was hellishly early, I won't deceive you, but I didn't want to miss my neighbour before she went off to work. 'Good morning!' I shouted over herbaceous divide. 'The new Xbox One has just been unveiled. Exciting times, aren't they?' Clearly impressed, my neighbour clutched her purse to her chest and quickly climbed into her Clio. The sound of the locks engaging encouraged me to wave my milk bottles but it was the screech of her tyres that told me that she too was very upbeat about the next generation of home games consoles. Last night, Microsoft threw a rug over Steve Ballmer and unveiled their newest class presidents who looked good on the eye and nothing like a Mel Brookes comedy monster. They also unveiled their newest games console, though, as I type that, I realise I've already made a beginner's mistake. We have to be very wary of mentioning games. Microsoft certainly was. Judging from the launch, the Xbox One is more about new ways of watching TV. And, no, that's not another mistake. You remember TV, don't you? It was that thing you used to watch before you discovered that games are actually much more fun… From what we know so far, Xbox One is the biggest and best TV guide that you've probably never wanted. You can change channels with your voice (cue Alan Partridge: 'Xbox, can you make pornography come on my telly please?'). You can access exclusive marketing hype about your favourite shows from within your favourite shows, thereby allowing you to miss your favourite shows. And because we are still very much in a post-Wii world where consoles are meant to be about families, connectivity, and being part of a larger social experience, the Xbox One will allow you to see what shows are 'trending' across the Xbox community. That's right: more chances for the big boys to tell you to watch whichever overhyped franchise they're currently selling. 'Only on Xbox will TV become social' was last night's promise and that's why, first thing this morning, I thought it best to grab a quick word with my neighbour. If we're going to sharing TV planners, I think it's about time we moved to first name terms and we shared cupcake recipes. Or perhaps not… Call me an unreconstructed dragon-slaying space marine with a Mario-complex but I've never really been that interested in connectivity, social networks, or having the family around to share an unfeasibly large sofa whilst laughing like escaped axe killers as we disco dance to Rihanna's latest. Kinect seemed like a terrible idea when it launched and the ability to bark orders at my TV has not changed my opinion. I also have a terrible blind spot when it comes to that place where social media lives with its cats that look like Hitler. I'd much rather be in a tavern in Skyrim's Tamriel filled with non-playable characters than any social hub where bright Californians can invent ways to allow my dog to Instagram me. And positively the last thing I want whilst playing an RPG set in some mystical land where I'm the only person able to communicate with dragons is to have notifications popping up to tell me that Alan Carr has just had his teeth fixed and 'bird flu' is suddenly trending on Twitter. If I'm honest: I'm not even all that interested in being social. I have the real world for that and the specs are pretty good: persistent 3D without glasses, haptic feedback. When it works, it's even better than the business of virtual befriending. When it doesn't... Well, isn't that why God/Peter Molyneux invented single player gaming? So, I suppose I'm not entirely sure why Microsoft wants to make an all-encompassing media hub so central to their future, or, rather, I think I do understand it but I resent their presumption immensely. Their presumption is in believing that you'll buy into this evolving world of new (usually chargeable) services, micro-transactions, and digital content stored on 'the cloud'. They've called the machine the 'Xbox One' because they want it to be your 'one' console, your 'one' media centre, your 'one' companion in the living room. That's pretty presumptuous in itself and we haven't even got to the gaming part... Because for 'gaming' you should actually read 'media consumption' and for 'consumption' think 'as aggressive as pulmonary tuberculosis'. Make no mistake, behind the friendly 'this is about you' message is a concerted effort to pull you into a cold business relationship that keeps you connected to their servers for as close to 24/7 as they can get. The advent of cheap 69p games on mobile devices has encouraged companies to look into dark places to increase their revenue streams. Forget the next Skyrim or Halo selling at £40 a time. The real money is down among the pennies where you find habit-forming devilry such as Candy Crush, games that might lack depth but wiggle deep into your brain like some South American blood parasite and encourage you to part with money in such small amounts that you hardly realise that they're feeding off you. Microsoft is going back to square one by realising that controlling the means on consumption is everything. 'Control' should really have been the byword of the evening. Control what you watch and what you play. These are big ambitious plans to control your living room and that's why Steve Ballmer's absence from the launch felt so incongruous. With the Xbox One, Microsoft seem to have virtualised their current leader: this machine is a big powerful personality that wants to push its way into your living room and change the way you watch TV, whether you like it or not. Myself, I can only speak as a long-time gamer who still treasures his Elite badge circa too many moons ago. I've seen great consoles fail (Dreamcast) and I've witnessed the Xbox 360 triumph, despite suffering possibly the most notorious design flaws of recent memory. I've also sat through enough E3 presentations to know not to get excited by 90% of the features the marketing people start whooping about. The bottom line is that I'm not sure that our viewing habits can be changed, even through a huge act of will on Microsoft's behalf. It feels ominously like Windows 8, which also fixed many things that never needed fixing and attempted to change the way we work. For Xbox One, somebody has figured out how to do something before they've figured out if that thing needed doing. All the social connectivity guff might be great if you're a fashionably chin-whiskered Californian cyberjock called Rick and you have hundreds of friends who you go meet in the coffee shop to play some ethical bluegrass banjo whilst drinking squashed coconut off the back of your Segway. If you're a surely northerner after a grim day working in Manchester, you'd probably want to lose yourself in a world free of hashtags. Consider that for a moment. One of the genuinely novel innovations that technology could yet offer us is the ability to simply disconnect. Nintendo understood that perfectly when they launched the 3DS. Glasses-free 3D is no gimmick when it presents possibilities of a paradigm change that takes you deeper into a game. The Xbox One, in contrast, seems utterly rooted in the familiar. It is also reminds me that consumers of technology exist in two discernible groups: those of us who genuinely love innovation and technology and people who think they love innovation and technology. Microsoft's unveiling felt like sitting watching 'Click' on BBC News 24 when I often start thinking: 'Do these people really understand what's exciting in technology? Do I really want to change my TV channels by winking or have restaurant menus emailed to my washing machine so it can be sure to use the right detergent with my underpants?' Microsoft has so far unveiled a great deal of gimcrackery and gimmickry, sock puppetry disguised as innovation. They must now begin to show us what we want rather what they want to sell us. And with that: 'Xbox off…' So The Maplin Catalogue Arrived...
Every time I buy something from Maplin they ask for my postcode. 'So we can send you some vouchers,' says the chubby dreadlocked guy who looks like a Game of Thrones extra. But what Olaf the Pieeater really means is: 'So we can send you yet another of our sale catalogues.' And the most twisted part of this whole deal is that I actually look forward to the bloody thing arriving. The catalogue never varies, of course, which is perhaps why the Rainman part of me quite enjoys it. There are always bargains to be had on solar panels to power your caravan and glitter balls for your mobile disco. The last page will always have great deals on AA batteries and that satisfies me in a way that's really so psychologically deep that I can't really explain. It's like looking at pictures of the early Bardot sunning herself naked on the Cannes beach. I know the reality will eventually become either a far-right cat woman or my Sky remote packing up after only a couple of weeks but I love both with the same inexplicable passion. This month's exciting addition to the Maplin lineup is a Mobile IP Spy-Camera Tank. Why the hell I would want a Mobile IP Spy-Camera Tank I'm not sure except, perhaps, to recreate those scenes from the Moore-era Bond films when Q usually locates 007 lathering up a tall blonde Russian spy in a bathtub. However, since I'm lacking a blonde Russian spy, £109.99 seems a bit extravagant for a camera on wheels that would probably end up being used to annoy the neighbour's cat. I wouldn't pay more than £70 to annoy the neighbour's cat. Maybe £75… Apropos of nothing: I notice that they've got a new male model in this month's magazine. Facially, he's a bit Ross Noble but in the waistline he's more Peter Kay. What message does this send out? I'm not sure except I think they're acknowledging that the people who shop at Maplin might not spend very long hours in the gym, which makes the obsession with disco equipment all the more surprising... I just can't imagine this guy dancing disco. 
And apropos of something else: I still see they have the cheap Ultrasonic cleaner on sale. I sure fell for that 'better buy it before the sale ends' line that Sven the Pimpled sold me a few months ago. Not that I'm complaining. It's been a godsend unblocking my Rotring Isograph nibs and clean my dip pens… Sorry. That did sound a little too enthusiastic and I don't want to put you off from coming back... And I was doing so well disguising the fact that, yes, I have very little of interest to talk about today. I'm actually a bit 'written out' having dashed off 1,300 words with accompanying cartoon about the new Xbox One which was unveiled last night. Tomorrow, I'll post both the article and cartoon which this morning I sent to 'The Guardian' for possible inclusion in 'Comment is Free'. I really don't know why I put myself through that ordeal… Why do I put myself through that hell? Thoughts, please, in the comments below. As long as it doesn't include the word 'penis', 'pill' or 'pump', I'll publish them. Hell, I'll probably publish them anyway… In the meantime, he's a old cartoon from my notebook.
And apropos of something else: I still see they have the cheap Ultrasonic cleaner on sale. I sure fell for that 'better buy it before the sale ends' line that Sven the Pimpled sold me a few months ago. Not that I'm complaining. It's been a godsend unblocking my Rotring Isograph nibs and clean my dip pens… Sorry. That did sound a little too enthusiastic and I don't want to put you off from coming back... And I was doing so well disguising the fact that, yes, I have very little of interest to talk about today. I'm actually a bit 'written out' having dashed off 1,300 words with accompanying cartoon about the new Xbox One which was unveiled last night. Tomorrow, I'll post both the article and cartoon which this morning I sent to 'The Guardian' for possible inclusion in 'Comment is Free'. I really don't know why I put myself through that ordeal… Why do I put myself through that hell? Thoughts, please, in the comments below. As long as it doesn't include the word 'penis', 'pill' or 'pump', I'll publish them. Hell, I'll probably publish them anyway… In the meantime, he's a old cartoon from my notebook. 
Monday, May 20, 2013
Ten Jobs For Beckham: What Can David Do Now That He’s Retired From Football?
My nose twitched an inch from the card that read 'trainee gas fitter'. Something didn't smell right and it probably wasn't caused by a failed solenoid in a Greenstar boiler… I was in my local job centre perusing the latest opportunities to barnacle myself to the great listing hull of British industry when I'd felt a greater presence standing to my side. There was also a new sense of urgency in the room, as if somebody amongst us found a sudden determination to change the world and to change it quickly. I looked up and there he was: David Beckham. Carbon-monoxide poisoning was my first thought. I was clearly hallucinating some filthy manifestation of my fear of telesales jobs but, as the other symptoms failed to develop, I began to realise that this was indeed the great man: six feet of contemporary culture, tanned by history, and his impeccable hair held in place by the Brylcreem of gilded fate. The only things out of place were the tears running down his cheeks and his Hollywood eyes red and puffy. As would any true Englishman, I felt compelled to act. 'Pull yourself together, man!' I snapped as I grabbed Beckham in a headlock and began to jostle some sense into him. 'What are you? A metrosexual or a mouse?' That seemed to calm him. He slipped his larynx from under my knuckle, gave one last sob, and then blew his nose into his Adidas handkerchief as he looked again towards the 'Secretarial and Administration' vacancies. 'So,' he said, his voice that clipped falsetto that women seem to find adorable. 'This is what unemployment feels like, is it?' 'What it feels like, son, is like a long waterslide into a fetid pool ruled over by spastic colons. But don't let that stop you looking for work. Not until you've found something non-seasonal and at least minimum wage.' With that, I took my newspaper and I sat down on the Department of Work and Pensions seats with their green scotchgard covers that bring the rashes out on your thighs. From there I watched as David began to scribble job titles onto the small patch of skin on his left hand that wasn't already inked with religious tableaus and I began to wonder what was might be in store for the poor lad. Beckham has chosen a bad time to re-enter the jobs market. There were 15,000 more of us looking for work just last week, taking the total to 2.52 million. Only now it's 2.52 million plus a significant number 7 and I found myself wondering what David Beckham can do now that he no longer pretends to play football for a living. Luckily, having now observed his job hunt at close hand, I'm delighted to report that there were suitable jobs catching his eye. Perhaps smirking Osborne is right and that is the smell of economic upturn in the air. If a man with Beckham's limited qualifications and non-transferable skills can find a job, there may be hope for the rest of us. It might pay us just to consider his chances… 1. Boots Perfume-Counter Assistant The poor lad is certainly ambitious but, if he's going to start anywhere, I suppose he might as well start at the top. Competition is snarling down among the lip gloss and eyeliner booths and Beckham will have to fight like a self-tanned hellcat to get his chance and keep it. Some of those girls are Cherry Sunshine Red in both tooth and claw and they only take prisoners to experiment later with the cheap mascara. It's deviant work on the shop floor and you need the eyeballs of a beaked whale to withstand the pressure of all the perfume in the air but Beckham knows his moisturisers and his chances of putting the ball in the net are definitely a good 8 out of 10. 2. Puffin Census Counter Sticking your hand into the nest of a razor-billed herring addict might sound like tough work but Beckham at least has the arms for it. Imagine you're a puffin and an elaborately tattooed scene from Ovid suddenly descends into your nest. Faced by a tattoo of Cupid carrying Psyche up to heaven, the average puffin is likely to forget to peck and reach for the nearest edition of Brewers Phrase & Fable. 7/10 3. Spice Girl There's enough nepotism in the world but if Victoria's heart isn't into it and the others are keen to keep the Spice brand going, then what better compromise than have David take over the reins as Posh? Actually, this makes a great deal of sense. He's sportier than Sporty, looks younger than Baby, has gone into tackles with more malicious intent that Scary, and he'd probably carry off the ginger locks better than Busty Spice. 4/10 4. UK Ambassador to Hollywood With property in the area actually larger than the Embassies to most nations, Beckham would fit right into the social scene and now that he won't have as much use for his gym, he'll have plenty of space to run MI6 agents from his basement. His friendship with Tom Cruise will also pay dividends, especially if he can get access to that Mission Impossible hardware. 2/10 5. UKIP Councillor I noticed that his eyes lingered a little longer over this vacancy. I attribute that to the red, white and blue font the UKIP recruiters used. One of the most astute political operators in the game, David has never expressed a political opinion in his life which means that he's the stuff of dreams for Nigel Farage. A possible poster boy for UKIP, Beckham looks good in pinstripes, proudly wears his patriotism on his sleeve tattoo, and it's hard not to laugh whenever he opens his mouth. 5/10 6. Swivel-Eyed Loon It might sound a little too close to the previous job but this one comes with the added advantage of actually influencing Conservative government thinking. David has enjoyed having the ears of Prime Ministers and Presidents for decades so he seems aptly suited to this important role, if only he can finally find something useful to say in the ears of Prime Ministers and Presidents other than explaining how to do the Cruyff turn. 7/10 7. Minister for Education Gove's days are numbered so why not get somebody in there that teachers and pupils might actually listen to? Beckham as Minister for Education would bring proper emphasis to physical education, improving the current two hours of sport a week to a much healthier twenty two with extra classes after school to practice free kicks and penalties. There'd also be no foolish gaffes about using the Mr Men to teach about World War 2 when Beckham's in office. Not until Victoria has finished with the books so he can finally get a chance to see what all the fuss is about. 2/10 8. Spokesman for Google Beckham became quite animated at the prospect of putting all his training to some use. He can finally become the spokesperson for a global brand with a reputation for doing evil. He's worked for Boris and Seb Coe, so this should be like a walk in the Olympic park but without all the derelict buildings. 5/10 9. Prince of Wales I hate to throw a Republican note in here but isn't it about time we upgraded the current royal family? The Beckhams are the Charles and Camilla of the Now Generation: generally ill-informed about most things, never happier than when they're shaking hands and grinning, and happy to do it all for the knockdown price of ten million a year. I personally think it's a bargain but I suppose there are some who will complain that we could get Chris and Gwyneth for that kind of money. 1/10 10. National Lottery Compere We're finally in dream job territory with this one. The BBC has been careful to appoint no full time host for the Saturday night numbers. Now we know why. David has the looks, he has the ability to read from an autocue for up to twenty seconds at a time, and then there's that big red button he can press whilst beaming his life-affirming smile in the living rooms of the nation. He was born to make us millionaires. The chances of him bending one into the top corner: 9/10. Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Private Eye
The beauty of submitting cartoons to Private Eye is that you never know when in your day that message box will flash up in the corner of the screen and time will stop. I believe for a moment that my heart actually stops beating. I can taste the contents of my stomach. My eyes go bleary. I hear the sound of angels. If I have the strength, I might even move the mouse over to Thunderbird and open the email. Then reality zips forwards like it does in those dumb American films to highlight important plot points. And the main plot point for me is always the same: The Ed says: Sorry not to use. Thanks for sending. Well, I say it's always the same but I'm pretty sure it only used to read 'Sorry not to use' and that was it. It was the email equivalent of commando training manuals teaching the would-be assassin where to push the stiletto in order to sever the brain stem. Over the time (years) I've been submitting work to The Eye, the reply has got a little longer, though the message is always depressingly familiar. I don't know why the reply has changed but part of me wonders if there's some deeper hidden meaning. Does the reply get longer the more you submit work? Perhaps there will come a time when the reply will read: Hi there. Strobes here. Just had a chat with Ian and he loved your cartoons but I'm afraid we've got all we need this month. However, don't let this get you down. We really appreciate how much effort you've put into your cartoons and we're sure that there will come a day when we can use them. So, for now, chin up and keep on smiling. Your friend, Strobes. Of course, it will never happen. That's how I'd reply to somebody I'm letting down. The Eye know how to keep it bland. They'll have so many submissions that it's in their interests to discourage people from sending more cartoons. And it definitely works. At these moments, there is a large part of me that wants to give up. Then I'm reminded that I'm still learning the craft and I'm almost attempting the impossible. I don't know how many cartoons I draw a month but I only send a fraction to Private Eye. Even if there are other outlets for cartoons (though, in reality, very few still remain), it is Private Eye that I hold highest. In fact, I probably hold it higher than The New Yorker, often seen as the 'holy grail' for cartoonists. The Eye was home to Willie Rushton, whose work I have hanging over my desk along with an autograph I managed to find on eBay. It was also home to Scarfe and, for a period, Steadman. Bill Stott has been published there and it is still home to other great cartoonists who used to get published in Punch such as Michael Heath and Robert Thompson. Not that I remember, Punch. I'm too young, but my 'Best of Punch Cartoons' proves that there was once a halcyon age of cartooning. Then there is the work of Modern Toss who well, frankly, I don't really understand (I get the jokes, I just don't like the jokes and hate the drawing), but I guess even this proves that the Eye remains a broad church for cartoonists, even if there isn't room for me. In a day or so, I guess I'll be back, packing an email with three of four cartoons and for a brief period of time, I'll delude myself into thinking… Well, thinking that it will be this time. This time... Thursday, January 10, 2013
Monday, January 07, 2013
The Lapdance Cartoon
Have a cartoon. Nobody else wants it... Speaking of cartoons, more nonsense over at Stan's blog including the letter he once wrote to Silvio Berlusconi, some poems, and a cartoon about a tree. Go on. Give him a visit. Please don't make me beg you. Well, okay: ppplleeeaasssee go and visit.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Dead Cartoons
The man who redefines the meaning of sexy balloon-based cabaret is now updating his 'dead letter' blog with some of his 'dead cartoons', Today Stan Madeley also shares his letter to boxing promoter, Barry Hearn, in which Stan outlines his plan for the future of televised sport. I think it's worth the read. More after the link so please click.
Friday, January 04, 2013
Just Don’t Call It Spoof
There come days when you just have to shrug your shoulders and accept that you're having a crisis of confidence. Today was one such day. Another happened a few weeks ago when that poor troubled nurse killed herself and the media blamed the two Australian hoaxers who had pretended (rather badly) to be The Queen and Prince Charles when they rang the London hospital where the nurse had been working on the switchboard. Not that I believed for one moment that anybody would have killed themselves because they'd been hoaxed. As I've always said: there was something else going on and a system that had failed. However, I did (and do) understand the anger and when the spotlight was on the business of hoaxing, I definitely found myself thinking about everything I'd ever done. And the thing is: I don't consider myself a hoaxer and I've never considered what I do to be hoax. Yet, even as I say that, I know it's not an easy distinction to make. This is the first time I've even tried to put into words what I've been doing for these past few years. My letters are sometimes called 'spoof' but that's actually a lazy description, an easy way to sell them. I'm not even a fan of hoax letters and even the best, by Henry Root and Ted L. Nancy, probably never did enough (in my view) to reveal their true nature. Root was all about a certain sharp but pompous tone and Nancy too often plays a simpleton, with very bad English making his targets sympathetic towards him. And that's the thing with spoof letters: they are genuinely too easy to write because they tend towards the bland and the simplistic. I won't deny that I've written the occasional 'spoof' on rare occasions. I've had my weak moments when I was so desperate for a reply but my blandest letters have always been to people in positions where they wouldn't reply is they sensed that there was any kind of foolishness afoot. The dullest letter I ever wrote was to General Noriega. He sent me a postcard and I don't feel too guilty about it. Every one of my typical letters takes many hours to write and rewrite. They're like small short stories, 700-1000 words long, which are really invitations: broad, often bawdy invitations to play the fool with somebody willing to take the hits. The ultimate target of my letters is always Stan Madeley; his pretensions, ambitions, and his many failures which are generally indistinguishable from my own. I'm not embarrassed to send my best attempts at poetry, my cartoons, and even copies of my book to people even though it will invite ridicule. In fact, I embrace ridicule! The question of fake or real isn't even a question. I pretty much shout 'Of course it's fake' in every letter I write. My primary goal in any letter is to make the recipient laugh. I remember listening to the great Clive James about about there always being a moral purpose in art and the moral purpose of my art, if it's even an art, is in the laughter which I hope brightens a bad day. Of course, there is always a chance that the recipient of the letter will think: 'this is a spoof and I'm not playing'. There's also an ever worse likelihood that the person takes my words seriously and plays along inadvertently. In the latter instances, I feel terrible because, as I say, I lack the hoaxing gene and I always want to make the person aware of the nature of my letters. The somewhat more complicated truth is that I'm seeking a partner for a dance. I put a face bold and proud in the bottom corner of the letter in the hope they see it for what it is. I want it to be obvious from the very first word that I'm playing it for laughs and I want them to laugh along and respond in kind. And, in that respect, I've been very lucky that so many people have done just that. They had the humour and wits to understand the game. In fact, one of the harshest (and, I'd say, unfair) criticisms I've had is that there must have been some amount of complicity between me and the recipients of my letters; that they've already agreed to return with a silly reply. Well there never has been except for that big 'wink' implicit in the letters. Yet on bad days, I'm still haunted by the words 'spoof' and 'hoax'. It's something quite different to anything I do. The hoax is the meaning that's concealed from the reader but apparent to an elite audience who are 'in the know'. It's like the prank phone call: 'okay, listeners, this is what we're going to do so laugh along as our target makes a fool of himself.' I really don't see the point in that. I don't see the point in humiliating the weak and vulnerable. My motives are very different. It's about a sense of our shared humanity, all people laughing together and of proving that we can laugh together. I worked very hard over Christmas sending off about 25 letters, written and rewritten until I could get them more compact or funnier. In many I included original hand-drawn cartoons (they might be worth nothing but they are the product of my imagination, my hand, my labour) and some had copies of my book, inscribed to the recipient. One, to a very public figure for whom I'd been lucky enough to find an excellent address (office addresses mean PAs who filter everything), had a good letter, a book, a A4 comic strip which took me about two days to finish, as well as a hand drawn Christmas card. As of today: Twenty five letters out and one reply in return. Friends tell me that it's still early but I do wonder what happened to all that hard work. Was it discarded because people were too bored, busy, indifferent, or thought themselves too important to play my game? I think I'd rather have any of those just so long as they didn't simply think it was a 'hoax'.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Top Ten Ways to Excite An 86 Year Old Billionaire
Ah, 2013! So this is what it feels like. More rain and not enough coffee to get me going. If, like me, you emerged from your festive season a little groggy about the details but suddenly aware that you've married an 86 year old billionaire, you might be wondering what to do next. Well, wonder no longer. Stan Madeley helpfully treats us to his top ten ways to excite an 86 year old billionaire and if anybody should know how, it's definitely Stan who has certainly entertained a few elderly billionaires in his time. For more goodness follow the link. Saturday, December 29, 2012
A New Blog About Plywood Sex
Just an update to say that there's a new blog in town and today it's dealing with the very interesting matter of plywood fetishes. That's right: my very close friend and chief plywood fetishist, Mr. Stan Madeley, has just emailed me to say that he has returned to the blogging stage with his brand new, never before seen, morally questionable, highly enlightening blog called 'Stan Madeley's Dead Letter Box'. 
The blog contains a collection of letters that Stan has written over the years which never made it into book form, primarily because he never received a reply. However, as with most spoof letters, you read them for the original letters, not the dull replies which usually amount to a 'no thank you' or worse. So, please head on over and follow Stan daily. He reckons he has enough letters to print one a day for well over a year, so the blog should be around for a while providing he can find readers and get that arts grant funding he's been after all these years… As for me, I'm just busy rehashing old ideas until I come up with something new.
The blog contains a collection of letters that Stan has written over the years which never made it into book form, primarily because he never received a reply. However, as with most spoof letters, you read them for the original letters, not the dull replies which usually amount to a 'no thank you' or worse. So, please head on over and follow Stan daily. He reckons he has enough letters to print one a day for well over a year, so the blog should be around for a while providing he can find readers and get that arts grant funding he's been after all these years… As for me, I'm just busy rehashing old ideas until I come up with something new. Friday, November 30, 2012
Interview
I'll be on Radio 4's 'Saturday Live' tomorrow morning, sometime between 9 and 10AM, talking about Richard Madeley, Stan Madeley, comedy and spoofing. I did the interview yesterday afternoon with the wonderfully funny JP Devlin in the familiar surroundings of Nero, Warrington, so although it's my first radio interview, I was probably more relaxed than I would have been sitting in a studio in Manchester or Liverpool. That much said, I'll be hiding throughout the show, mainly because I'll probably come across as a babbling idiot but also because Richard Madeley will also be in the studio and responding to my last few years pretending to be him. After the show, I'll be changing my name, my sex, my fingerprints, and my shoe size, and moving to Paris where I'll be Mrs. Gloriana Sparburst dancing nightly in an erotic revue. Regular punters here just ask for at the door for Lulu and I'll give you a free dance.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
The Art of Dressage with Mitt Romney
By posting this today I hope I'll stop tinkering with it and move on to something better. As you'll see, it's hardly well directed satire and is really nothing more than a prolonged test bed for my first attempts at using dynamically generated cloth. Those experiments began with the reigns to the horse and then the form of a flag. The old man's coat came last and was a nightmare to figure out. Word to the wise: pre-cache your dynamic materials and turn them off completely when animating. Needless to say, I'm probably doing everything wrong but these two rules seemed to work for me. The ending isn't quite what I wanted but I haven't yet figured out how to make liquids create a reasonable spurt of blood. On reflection, it's probably best without it. Parts of this were rendered in software, others on the graphics card. iRay (the renderer I've grown to love in the past due to it using my CUDA card) doesn't allow you to tile textures. Seems like one the dumbest features to leave out of a rendering engine but what do I know? The whole thing just doesn't work (or doesn't work for me). Hence, I had to render all the city scenes in software, making the whole job more laborious than it should really have been and making for a noticeable difference in the look of the two parts. As for the film itself, it's a rambling mess poking fun at a target which is now probably beyond satire. Saying that, he'll probably win the Presidency and throw us into a new Ice Age where fundamentalist types force us all to wear nylon pantaloons and quote randomly from the Bible. Next up, I'm thinking of spending some time improving the quality of my models and texturing by rendering a still image. I can only render low detail animations on my machine but might be able to do something of more quality if I restrict myself to a single image. I really want to figure out subsurface scattering and realistic human skin.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
The Mitt Romney Puppet
After my previous attempt at doing David Cameron's voice (see below), I wanted a break from the voice acting. Besides, this was just meant to be a simple test of some rigging techniques that I had hoped would speed up my workflow. The main problem I have is with rigging a puppet once it's been modeled and painted. One of the shortcuts I'm trying is to reuse hands – always the trickiest part to rebuild. I've now created some hands with controls that I can easily manipulate to move individual fingers. I've used them on about three animations with increasing success. The only problem is that I had no idea how to connect them to the rest of the model when, in this instance, the character has his sleeves rolled up. I tried hand with attached forearms but that didn't work despite numerous attempts over the weekend. In the end, I've created separate forearms and stuck the hands on the end of the arm, leaving an unsightly join. I think I'll have to think of a better way – perhaps making the whole arm separate putting the join at the shoulder where it's less noticeable. I'm also getting to the point where I think I should try something a little more ambitious and make a proper short animation. The only problem is that I'm completely at a loss as to what I should try. My main interest is satire but anything I make with a satirical edge will probably be out of date by the time it's made…
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Door to Door...
One 25 hour render later and the result is in. Fewer mistakes this time, though the voice acting still hasn't improved. I also need to start spending more time on the script rather than recording the first words I scribble down. The main motivation for this cartoon was to see if I could get frosted glass to work in an animation. The rest sort of just followed on, using whatever models and textures I had lying around. The next animation I intend to make about George Osbourne, though I haven't done a jot of work towards that other than a rough caricature of the men and his nose in my notebook.
Monday, September 10, 2012
I Predict A Riot... A Pussy Riot
I have an hour before a render finishes so I thought I'd struggle to update this blog on a machine that's crying out in agony as it tries to render keyframes and keep up with my keystrokes. I've been quiet but busy. Perhaps too busy. Here is my latest effort from the teach-myself computer animation course I've been struggling with for the past few months. All I can say is that it doesn't look like the product of three week's work. There are still countless mistakes and problems with it – a hand passing through a microphone at one point, some spelling mistakes, the poor quality voice acting, the writing… However, this was another exercise in making mistakes and learning new tricks. Plus I got to mock Putin and his cronies for their criminal attitude towards dissent and their treatment of Pussy Riot. I've nearly solved the problem I had with animated clothing layers. The simpler way might have been to actually use a simulated cloth but that's far too advanced and I doubt if my computer could handle it. As it stands, Putin is wearing a very thick jacket and trousers and there are few problems with his body protruding through his clothes. I am however making improvements as I go along and I'm learning short cuts to make the whole process less elaborate. In fact, time permitting, my next effort might make it to this blog within the week. It's beginning to feel like many of the technical aspects of animating are solved. I know how to model a mesh, retopologise it, texture it, rig it, produce decent lip sync, and get it all rendered. My next task is to get to grips with the techniques of animating. I need to learn how to use f-curves to make movements feel more realistic, perhaps try some of the techniques outlined in animation manuals such as 'squeeze and stretch' method which is probably only half as less filthy as it sounds.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Robin van Persie... The Animated Tale
A new week and what better way than starting it than with the product of the old... In the end, the render time was probably closer to 40 hours than it was to 20 for the two shots in this oh-so-short animation. I'd already made many mistakes along the way before I felt the finished film could do with an opening shot to establish… well, not sure what I thought it needed to establish other than something to lead into the 'action'. I really need to rethink the way I'm going about this. Not just the rushed animation (I wanted this finished ahead of United's first match of the season) but also the quality of the render. The problem with these so called 'unbiased' renderers is that they don't take any shortcuts when creating the image. They throw light around the scene in all directions and map the results. Eventually, after the light has finished pinging around, a few of these virtual photons hit the virtual lens of the camera you set up and a pixel is recorded. After enough time, enough pixels are recorded to form an image. However, you need an unreasonably long time to completely fill in the black holes. It's the reason why the above animation has a slightly speckled quality. The solution is to move to one of the less accurate but speedy rendering systems out there but, for those, I need a new graphics card. I hear the GTX580 with 3GB of memory is ideal but they're astronomically pricey. Perhaps I might get away with something more reasonably cheap. The way it's going at the moment, I'm struggling to learn the basics of how to animate characters because the actual process of testing the finished renders make it impossible to learn from my mistakes and the longer animation I've been working on for about a week now has not moved forward since the PC has been taken up with rendering this. Anyway, it's done and I can move on, though I really don't feel too inspired to do much work. This morning's sad news of Tony Scott's death is utterly shocking, especially given the manner of it. Of course, the papers will be full of the usual blather about Ridley being the more acclaimed director but if Tony made fewer films loved by the critics, he definitely made more films loved by audiences and contributed more to my everyday happiness. 'Enemy of the State', 'Spy Game', 'Crimson Tide', 'Deja Vu'... It's strange but, looking back, I suppose there was a time, somewhere around 2001, when I started to look forward to Tony Scott films more than I did Ridley Scott films. Tony Scott's work improved as he got older, which made his death at such a relatively young age for a director so shocking and makes us feel like we've been robbed of something vital and important.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Heat
It's hell sitting by a hot PC in this weather, especially now there's no Olympic beach volleyball coverage to distract my attention. My trusty old six core Phenom II is only two hours away from finishing a mammoth 18 hour render to produce eleven seconds of animation. That will be 279 frames, which rendered at low quality (allowing myself only four minutes per frame) works out at 1116 minutes or 18.6 hours. Those are crazy numbers – though old hands at CG will say it's nothing compared to the many hours some of them devote to a single image – and I'm not sure how I'm going to progress now I'm seriously trying to animate a CG short film. It might have helped if I hadn't included physically accurate grass in my first shot (never again!) but if you'd told me two months ago that I'd be waiting 18 hours to see the results of my efforts at computer animation, I'd have thought you suffering from the heat stroke, had there been any heat around to stroke you. As it is, the summer has finally arrived and my PC is adding to the temperatures. I've also discovered a cruel fact about 3D animation and that is to produce seriously good renders, you need CPUs and lots of them. At the beginning, when I began, I was fascinated by the Blender Cycles engine and the results it can produce on a good CUDA graphics card. Since then I've moved on, tried other rendering engines, but finally coming back to the fact that I think that I really need to invest in a CUDA card. 18 hours waiting for renders to finish is crippling my workflow. I'm also beginning to wish that I'd stuck with the computer programming I did professionally a few years back. I never fully got into programming in C++ but I wish I had since Pixar have just released their source code for their new Open subdivision technology. There's a long presentation here worth watching but, it you're only interested in the results, check the ending where they animate a mesh inside Maya that has a subdivided geometry that contains more polygons than pixels on the screen. I think I'm just regressing to my earlier truer geekself.
Friday, August 03, 2012
Friday Night Fergie
My previous lip-syncing technique was proving useless so after a bit of research I've changed my workflow. I think this works better, or, at least, I think I've found a suitable trade-off between result and effort. The more I learn, the longer and slightly less amateur I hope these animations will become, though this one is suffering from more than a few problems, such as the label of the whiskey bottle being reversed and some ugly patches on the model, which is itself not the best. They say that a bad workman blames his tools so I won't blame a slow PC. I'll instead just confess that I'm still struggling to master the basics...
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