Diary of an up and coming sociopath

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any non-microblogging, but then it’s increasingly rare I’ve got anything I want to discuss. Except, today I have, because someone is trying to take 6Music away from me, and frankly, that cannot stand. I will now do my small part in trying to keep 6Music/Asian Network going, by telling you how you can do the same.

Most importantly, we must all take part in the consultation process. This is the very reason the consultation process exists - to get the public’s opinion, not to simply rubber-stamp the proposals. The full consultation review details can be read on the BBC site.

Things to consider:

DO e-mail the BBC trust. Unlike voting for the government (SATIRE!) your voice matters.
DO encourage others to do the same. A massive response is what’s needed.
DO emphasise that these stations cannot/do not compete with commercial broadcasters.
DO mention that you think the stations justify the license fee.
DO Listen to the stations. Preferably on iPlayer, where I imagine the BBC can see the stats themselves.

DON’T make pointless threats about boycotting the BBC - it isn’t going to happen.
DON’T try and suggest that they cut something more expensive instead. As much as we’d all love to see the back of BBC3, this decision isn’t being made by the accountants.
DON’T swear, use too many exclaimation marks or generally make yourself look like a tool. Your e-mail will presumably be read by a grown-up.
DON’T just cut and paste the e-mail below. Add some of your own thoughts and reasoning.
DON’T accuse the BBC of bowing to political pressure. It’s probably true, but it won’t help.

Here’s a template e-mail, based off the one posted by my good friend Seb Patrick. You should download the cover note from the BBC site, fill it in, and attach that to your e-mail, which should be sent to: srconsultation@bbc.co.uk

(NOTE: the e-mail address trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk is also going around on Twitter - this appears to be a general contact address, whereas srconsultation@bbc.co.uk is specifically given on the consultation page, so I’d use the latter.)

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to address proposals announced this morning which suggest the possible closure of BBC 6music and the BBC Asian Network.

As a loyal supporter of the BBC and the licence fee, it is my belief that, contrary to the stated aim of closing these stations, they each fulfil a remit that commercial broadcasting cannot, and indeed, one that it has repeatedly shown no interest in fulfilling.

I understand that these proposals have to be considered and approved by the BBC Trust before any cuts are made, and so would like to add my voice to those requesting that the Trust strongly consider rejecting the call to close these stations. Their very existence proves the validity and necessity of both the license fee and the BBC, especially in an age when commercial pressure on broadcast media is stronger than ever.

Kind regards,
[YOUR NAME]

Feel free to customise and repost this however and whereever you like. The more people that send e-mails, the better. Note: Early support is vital, but don’t think it’s too late to e-mail just because it’s been a few days. The consultation period lasts until 25th May.

What next?

For a start, you can also fill out the consultation questionnaire.

You can also try signing the petitions at 38 Degrees and Petition.fm

Jeanette also suggests below that “it may also be good for as many people as possible to contact Radio 4’s Feedback this week as it covers listeners’ views on BBC radio programmes and policy, so may reach a wider audience of avid radio fans.” You can do so here

If you want to discuss this situation with like-minded individuals, there’s a Save 6Music Facebook Group.

Finally, if you’re so inclined, Twitter Hashtags you can use when discussing the matter include:

#save6music
#saveBBC6music
#saveBBCasiannetwork

I think that’s everything. If there are any other suggestions/ideas or if you think I’ve got any of this wrong, please let me know in the comments.

Hello friends, I am me. Remember? This being bank holiday weekend, Nikki and I felt that three days inside doing nothing would be one too many, so we decided to find something to do.

Even so, it’s actually a bit of a novelty for us to have a bank holiday in August, because most of the time we miss it by going to Reading. For reasons I’ve explained elsewhere, we didn’t do that this year. I do miss going, though. I know it’s overcrowded and it’s full of twats, and ridiculously expensive and Latitude infinitely better, but… it’s still Reading. And Radiohead were headlining. The fact that, by all reports, it was pissing down during their set does make me feel a bit better because watching bands in the rain is hard to enjoy, but I still feel like I’ve missed out. Reading is usually the summer’s last hurrah, for us, so without it things feel… unfinished.

But anyway, we decided that we’d spend the day getting some use out of the Prince Charles Cinema, because I’ve held a membership there for over 2 years but only been once. We picked two films that we were both interested in seeing and brought Ian along for the ride. I will now describe the films for your enjoyment:

The first was Sunshine Cleaning, which was an Indie (capital I) film about two women who set up a business cleaning up crime scenes. It’s an offbeat light comedy, which in practise means it’s about as funny as your own life but involves a situation you’d never actually find yourself in. It’s a bit quirky, a bit funny, a bit optimistic and a bit depressing, and the end result is that it’s only a bit good. The actors all carry the material well and it’s inoffensive and watchable, but it really feels like it needs to pick a genre or conceit and actually commit to it, instead of just presenting a string of indie moments. It’s perhaps a little too sentimental for me - I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either, and only Emily Blunt’s character felt like she went on any interesting journey, emotionally speaking.

The next was Moon, which was far more up my street. It was influenced by 70s and 80s sci-fi in a very good way. With its small cast and limited amount of locations, it felt like a cheap episode of the Outer Limits, albeit the best, most polished version of one. The exteriors, while punched up with CGI, were clearly model shots which added to the retro charm, and meant that even the slow panning shots of vehicles driving about the moon were hypnotising. The film’s mysteries unravels slowly and brilliantly, as Sam discovers some uncomfortable truths about his employment, while GERTY, his Kevin Spacey-voiced robot servant, manages to invoke and subvert the usual sci-fi robot cliches by not going on a killing spree at any point.

Ian and I both guessed the twist before it happened, at roughly the same point, but it was quite refreshing that the film doesn’t actually dwell too much on the details, assuming enough intelligence of the audience that they can understand what they’re seeing without someone telling them. Without spoilering too much, the dangling thread of Sam’s mortality did feel as though it could’ve done with some resolution. I did construct an optimistic interpretation of things in my head, but for such a major issue, it did feel under-addressed, if not necessarily under-explained.

Still, regardless of the quality of the films, it was a nice way to kill off a day. Before Sunshine Cleaning, we went to the Palm Court Brasserie on King’s Street for lunch. Finding a decent sunday roast at a non-ridiculous price in Soho is virtually impossible - the only two choices on offer appear to be “£22.50 swank-fest” or “£3.99 wetherspoons heat-lamp special”. Palm Court’s efforts were enjoyable enough, but as someone who really appreciates a good roast, they didn’t exactly bowl me over. The meal was decent, but it was no better than, say, Brown’s. And as someone who obsesses over the details, I’d like restaurants to take note: for £13 a meal, I want a Yorkshire Pudding that’s made from scratch, thanks. Do you really think we don’t notice? Dessert was much better, and the service was excellent, but when the main course is merely adequate it puts a damper on everything else, no matter how above average it is.

Also I ate a bunch of parsnips while thinking “these potatoes aren’t very nice at all” and I resent that I was unable to tell the difference by sight alone.

I did very much enjoy the fact that we could book online, though. Perhaps it’s because I vividly remember the days when the Internet was good for nothing but Star Trek, Porn, and Star Trek Porn, it amazes me that the real world and Internet can actually interface in an efficient way. I typed my details into a website, and when we got to the restaurant it was all sorted. We’re yet one step closer to my dream society, where no-one has to talk to anyone they don’t want to, and robots will show us to our table then e-mail the order direct to the cook. Although it’s possible these robots might rise up and enslave us, let’s be honest, there’s no guarantee the existing waiters wouldn’t try to do that too.

I’m vaguely aware that this is massively out of date now, but what the hell, I thought I’d finish it off. Originally, I was going to do this old-skool, but approximately 1000 words in we hadn’t actually even made it to the festival site yet, so I’m going to appeal to the Twitter fans in all of us and do this as briefly as possible. Which, by my standards, still means a couple of thousand words.

I should warn anyone who’s potentially interested that this is well long, but if you don’t want to read it all, at least read the bit about Tescos being irritating at the start, then skip to the end and read about Pappy’s Fun Club so that you might know what damage they did to us.

Thursday 16th July:

We left the house at 11:30, picked up Daniel and Joey, and hit the North Circular. Things were going well until the car broke down on the A12. And not in a way that can be easily fixed. My Dad’s foresight in getting me RAC coverage meant we could get the car towed back to Ealing, and after doing so, we packed up Joey’s Kia about as fully as any car can legally be packed, and set off again. This time, we made it to Tescos in Ipswich for planned shopping trip, but alcohol purchases were “hilariously” scuppered by the “Think 25″ policy that meant because Nikki had no ID, we were all banned from buying alcohol. Despite a combined age of substantially over 100. Daniel screamed angrily in the Manager’s face and we all had to hold him back while he tried to punch her stupid, Hitler-esque face into a bloodied, oozing mess of blood and plasma. I managed to sedate him by wrapping a plastic bag around his airway and we bundled his unconscious form back into the car, then went to find another Tescos and pelt it with our own shit, but then spotted a Sainsburys on the way. This time we left Nikki in the car, and went in to buy the goods. The woman at the checkout didn’t ask our ages, despite a “Think 25!” banner being openly visible. When challenged, she claimed it wasn’t necessary because she recognised us.

“But,” said Daniel in a baffling display of hubris, “I’ve never been here before in my life.” The checkout drone half-spoke, half-coughed a reply in an Ipswich drawl that added years to her already nicotine-ravaged features.
“He has.” She nodded at me. “He comes in here all the time. I never forget a face.” The unspoken sentiment hung in the air. Yes, we thought, and sometimes you remember ones you’ve never seen.

We arrived at the Latitude site well after dark. Sam came and met us, and he and Lorna had performed admirably to find and protect enough space for us to pitch our tents despite us turning up some 7 hours later than planned. Of course, as if the day hadn’t seen enough horror, the rain began just as we were starting to pitch the tents. And not just rain. Thunder, too. Thunder and Lightening is usually an awesome prospect that excites everyone, but when it’s creeping over the horizon when you don’t have any shelter, it’s just a little bit concerning. I don’t know if you’ve ever pitched a tent in the dark as a storm begins to drop its payload on top of you, but let’s just say the urgency is challenged only by the impracticality.

Employing a level of efficacy honed over years of festival-going, we managed to pitch the tent literally a matter of minutes before the 3 hour thunderstorm began pelting us with raindrops the size of grapes. Despite the inhospitable conditions, our work had been frankly fantastic. I don’t think we’ve ever pitched our tent as well as this, and the way it resisted the weather conditions over the weekend where lesser tents crumpled to Thursday’s rain and Friday’s wind was a monument to the way pressure can improve performance.

As if to mock our pride, my head had no sooner hit the pillow when the guy in the tent directly next to us began snoring. And snoring in such a way that people several tents over could hear him. And so it continued, at all bizarre hours of the day. I’m fairly sure that the few times he stopped snoring, it was only because he’d stopped breathing entirely. By the end of the weekend, I was considering slipping a note into his tent that read “Your snoring is a serious medical condition. Please seek treatment.”

Friday 17th July:

Awoke full of piss and vinegar. Mainly piss. After braving festival toilets, I found the Muller yoghurt store that was giving out free yoghurts, nabbed one, and went to the supermarket to buy orange juice and a copy of the Guardian. After all, we were at Latitude. I sat at Sam and Lorna’s camping table and ate the yoghurt, savouring every free, promotional mouthful of toffee-esque gloop. Then I practised my conversational business and politics Italian phrases, as provided by the Guardian supplement that day. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling they might come in useful later that weekend. They didn’t.

We started the day in the comedy tent watching Early Edition. Taking the piss out of The Sun and the Daily Mail in front of a crowd of Guardian-readers is a ridiculously easy way to entertain people, but it was worth the hour just to hear the hastily-improvised song about pagan constabulary. You had to be there. When it was over, we bought the first of many Shaken Udder milkshakes, then I went to see Adam Buxton do his BUG show while Nikki went to see the Late Greats. It seems a bit stupid to go all the way to Latitude to see a show Buxton does at the BFI, but then it was worth it just for the video to “Gifted” by NASA. Although Buxton’s own “Ratatouille” song about the Pixar film (a 90s-style ragga-inspired Drum & Bass track) and a breakcore music video (Bad Ketchup by Ladyscraper) made with stop motion animation of Wheeljack and Hot Rod (the Transformers) were equally brilliant.

After BUG I met Nikki and Ailsa at the Lake Stage, and had a chat with Mr. David Ford about his plans for a surprise performance somewhere over the weekend while watching the Agitator, a vocals-and-percussion outfit who, it has to be said, don’t have much appeal beyond their first song. Wandered up to the Comedy Tent and caught the end of Matt Kirschen (good-nature hilarity) and Stephen K. Amos (standard Lenny Henry jokes about growing up black in England, but what the hell, I like him.) Went to watch Of Montreal afterwards. Never been impressed with them on record, and to be honest, they were terrible live. Daniel assures me it was because the bass was way, way too high. They had some decent visuals, though, including this hilariously trippy Captain America graphic which at least kept me entertained.

After that, we headed back to the tent to for a rest, but I decided to run off when I noticed that there was a BBC Writer’s Room talk in the Literary Salon, which was a new addition to the festival this year. Imagine, if you will, a living room set up inside a marquee, and that’s about it. Sofas, cushions, about 12 people each talk held. It’s an oddly great setting for a festival environment, not least because sitting in a proper chair is always a welcome experience when you’re sleeping in a tent.

After that, it was back to the comedy arena. Last year, Mark Thomas was flogging his rather forced anti-Coca Cola book, so it was good to see him back doing proper political comedy this year. His new show, “It’s the stupid economy” is probably worth going just for the stop & search card, war on Jersey anecdotes and the hilarity of seeing an MP’s shrub purchased with public money being posted around the country. Although the manifesto-creation part of the process was a bit wearing and really killed the momentum of the material, which in itself is probably a political observation.

We watched Regina Spektor, who really belted out a performance while maintaining her anti-folk credentials with an (apparently) improvised song on the guitar which culminated in her admitting she didn’t really know how to play it. Nikki was feeling a bit rough on account of a horrendous Friday and probably not having much food/drink today either, so we went back to the tent again, where Daniel and Joey were drinking and listening to a 90s compilation. More fun was never had at a festival, especially when I left to watch Bat for Lashes, saw the Pet Shop Boys do 2 songs (Coldplay cover, and that one about lies) then came back to find Daniel and Joey still drinking and listening to a 90s compilation.

Saturday 18th July:

Then it was tomorrow. Saturday morning was quite weak on acts, so we got yet more free Muller yoghurt and then went to the piano in the woods to see David Ford do his guerilla set, which was a truly excellent experience. He described the set as being a “champagne breakfast”, which wasn’t entirely accurate, because it was lunchtime. He then produced a bottle of champagne which he then passed around the crowd. After the gig was over, we took to hanging around the comedy tent while a few unconvincing acts played, and eventually I went to watch Marnie Stern, who was excellent. After that, I went over to sneak into the comedy tent during Miles Jupp (who had been replaced with someone else, I think) so that I could watch Janine Garofalo from a good position.

Now, you might’ve heard, but Janine Garofalo sank like a fucking brick. I’ve seen comedians die before, but never to the extent where they just gave up and slunk offstage. After opening with a routine about David Caruso (sorry, wrong continent!) and stopping her “creationsts” routine before it even got started, she decided she was going to just bow out and leave the stage for the sake of the audience. Except the MC was using the toilet, so she had to plough on for another five excruciating minutes, during which time she read out the customs checklist before eventually making it offstage. It’s hard to see how she managed to do so badly in front of an audience that had been practically buzzing in anticipation of her appearance, but you couldn’t help but think of the Sarah Silverman Hammersmith Apollo debacle. Perhaps American comedians just don’t get the British audience. Why Garofalo didn’t just fall back on a “24″ Q&A session I’ll never know. All she really accomplished at this gig was to negatively raise the stakes for her Edinburgh show this year. Can’t wait to see how that goes. You can read the Chortle news story about it here, which anonymously reprints Sam’s Twitter update about the whole thing.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining and all that. I met up with Nikki and we found ourselves at the Literature tent watching Jonathon Coe, then hung around to watch Robin Ince’s Book Club, which on this occasion featured only Richard Shandling, Southend’s Kevin Smith-wannabe and VHS obsessive. Ince was off asleep, and hilariously wandered on stage just in time for the compere to tell him he’d missed it. We watched a bit of Afternoon Tea with Maconie which, to be fair, was a bit twee and tedious, so we got some food then shuffled our way into the Film Arena to watch Jeffrey Lewis’ Watchmen lecture. I’m a bit suspicious of Jeffrey Lewis and his comics for reasons too boring to go into, so I was interested in seeing how genuinely good his Watchmen knowledge was, but as it turned out, his lift had broken down and the talk was pulled. Possibly re-scheduled, though I missed it if it was.

Because of that, we decided to check out Vivienne Westwood. Without wanting to be too harsh, she is one deeply confused woman. Well-meaning and good intentioned, certainly, but completely batshit. There was a Q&A session, and I don’t think she managed to actually answer any of the questions, just ramble incoherently about whatever she was actually thinking about. Robin Ince turned up immediately after to host the “We Love Science” book club, and announced with typically incisive reasoning that the fashion designer’s talk on climate change had unfortunately overrun, meaning that the actual scientist’s talk on climate change would now have to be truncated, and Ben Goldacre apparently took Westwood’s talk rather badly, backstage.

After Book Club was over, we went up to the “In the Woods” stage and watched the end of Maps. While we waited for Passion Pit to start, we gave Sam a ring only to find him and Lorna sitting about 3 metres away from us. Daniel and Joey also showed up. I decided to go into the crowd for Passion Pit to get a good view of what was going on. Frankly, I was unprepared for the level of awesomeness I experiences. Passion Pit live are like a completely different entity from the recorded version. Undiluted, powerful stuff. Easily the best musical performance of the festival, for me. I only knew one song going in, but I came out determined to learn the rest and go see them. And my tickets for October are already booked as you read this.

Joey, Nikki and I then went back to the literature tent to watch Danny Wallace, though happily we also caught Robin Ince doing a set at the end of Political Animal, doing his anti-Kaplinsky rant, fantastically de-railed by the second-best heckle of the festival: “What are you angry about?”. The best heckle, though, came when Stephen Amos was pointing out how kids today have it easy and they used to put mercury in his generation’s teeth, and someone shouted out that mercury was “only poisonous in ionic form”. Apparently, that one’ll go in the set.

A little more Robin Ince’s Book Club followed - this time the “Crazed Preachers and Wierd Religious Nutjobs” iteration - and we were joined by Daniel, then watched Bernie Katz read stories about Soho in a nervous and confused fashion. To be honest, it took us a while to realise what was going on, because he didn’t actually get introduced, and by the time we’d figured it out he was ready to leave the stage anyway. Ah well.

Sunday 19th July:

Disappointingly, the free yoghurt had now run out. As any festival fan knows, Sunday is the day when the toilets stink the worst, and the overpowering scent of ammonia from the accumulated piss of several thousand people is a touch thing to deal with even in the comparatively hygienic setting of Latitude.

After sitting in on The Early Edition’s second and final performance, which wasn’t as good as the first (though, I suspect, largely because we were all buggered after several days of festival-partying) we hopped off to sit in the sun, as Thom Yorke gave a fantastic solo performance where he appeared to be (shock) actually having the time of his life, joking with the crowd and performing both solo and Radiohead tracks, including a new one called “The Present Tense”. I’m a Tru Sceen Phan so my favourite moment was when he did “Follow Me Around” which is one of those massively rare Radiohead tracks that’s been around for years but never had a proper studio version recorded. We had a wander around, I bought my last milkshake of the weekend, then we went to watch Frank Skinner do a reading and Q&A which was decent enough, though I’m not sure the idea of Frank Skinner masturbating in front of a woman fucking herself with a banana is one I ever wanted to actively pursue.

It started to rain intermittently during Frank Skinner, so we huddled inside, but when he finished we braved the weather to go and hang around the comedy tent. We were stuck outside watching Jamie Kilstein in the rain (though we did have adequate protection from the elements) when Daniel and Ailsa turned up, and the weather became nice and hot and dried us off during Brendan Burns. The biggest laugh, though, came from Nikki’s response to someone’s inquiry about her Cath Kidston poncho, when she said “It’s not that expensive, only £18!”.

At this point, Nikki and I went and had a look at “The Tree of Lost Things” which about the most hilariously soul-destroying thing I’ve ever seen. The idea was everyone wrote on a tag something that they’d lost, then tied it to a branch of the tree for other people to read. A few went for laughs, but most seemed to describe crushing personal tragedies of the kind you’d prefer not to imagine. A fair few from children barely old enough to write were particularly depressing, but I’m sort of inclined to believe they were jokes perpetrated by ironic twenty-somethings. It’s the kind of thing I’d do. Morbid curiosity alone kept us there a good 15-20 minutes. We then decided to try and find Nikki a place where she could buy a limited edition cup, which involved us wandering around all the bars looking for the specific one that was handing them out, until after searching everywhere, we eventually discovered it …obscured by a massive crowd. Probably should’ve noticed that, really.

We watched yet another Book Club, which this time was the “Mills & Boon” version, and as funny as it was, it wasn’t half as hilarious as watching the embarrassed yummy mummy sitting next to us trying to cover her children’s ears in the futile hope of protecting their dying innocence for a few more seconds. We were hoping to catch Lauren Laverne as a guest of Marconie’s, but she was a no-show, so we took our biscuits and decided go to watch the Cape Farewell project, which was horribly tedious and pious stuff. We all care about global warming, but showing excessively boring films about it doesn’t entertain or educate me. We left before Jarvis Cocker turned up, because it felt like a real waste of dwindling Latitude-time, and went to catch Jo Brand. Much like Bill Bailey last year, everyone was looking forward to her, but much like Bill Bailey last year, everyone came away a bit disappointed. Brand made it hard for herself by encouraging everyone in the comedy tent, where people normally sit, to stand up instead, thus obscuring the view of 95% of the audience. Then went on to work through her standard material, alternating exhausting her repertoire of aren’t men crap/I’m a fat ugly woman jokes.

I buggered off part-way through to go watch 65 Days of Static, who were decent enough, but really suffered by comparison to Passion Pit the previous day, and were hilariously quiet. A band like them need to be cranked up high, but it was probably the quietest set I saw all weekend. After, I met up with Nikki again, we caught yet more Robin Ince, avoided the rush of psychotic children heading for “Book at Bedtime”, then caught most of Nick Cave’s set, which was an appropriately fierce end to the weekend. Or so we thought. We got some food (too late in the weekend, I discovered an excellent mashed potato stand) so we decided to head back to the literature tent to eat and have a sit down. We watched a load of the Faber Pop Culture stuff, the highlight of which was a man in a gorilla suit reading from the Booker-nominated Me Cheeta, the faux-autobiography of the famous screen-ape.

After that, we had the final Book Club of the weekend, and it was the most fantastic ending to a festival I’ve ever seen. It seemed to go on forever, as a seemingly endless parade of comedians did short skits and monologues, and it was generally the most fantastic comedy experience I’ve ever had. At one point Luke, of Luke and Nadia, came out and insulted members of the audience individually using pre-written insults after prompting them to shout their names. Although the funniest was probably “Clement” “That’ll do!”, Nikki and I also got our own, worryingly plausible insults (”Nikki” “You laugh at the places in adverts that they want you to.” “James” “People only have conversations with you so that they can perfect their impression of you.”). As I may have mentioned, this was the book club in which we saw things we can never un-see, by which I mean, 3/4 of Pappy’s Fun Club completely naked. As Dave Gorman put it afterwards on his blog, their “Louie Louie” sketch is genuinely hilarious, and there’s no need for it to be conducted without clothing. A similar sketch involved two naked members of the troupe shouting into one another’s penises in Victorian accents while a third mimicked a scientist describing the new discovery that people actually hear through their ears. I’ll never forget those sketches, no matter how hard I try.

I think it was well past 1am when the book club finished, and unlike Reading, no-one felt the need to smash the place up after. We grabbed a few hours sleep, then the following morning, loaded up Joey’s car, and then spent a million years trying to leave the festival site. Luckily we had some awesome tunes to listen to, and once we got out of the site a mere 2 hours after we began the attempt, we had no trouble limping our way back home. At one point, we paused to brunch at a Little Chef which was populated entirely by Latitude-goers, including one Robin Ince, who had apparently not seen enough of us that weekend. I was well buggered by that stage of the weekend, so I can only praise Joey for getting us back home without driving us into a ditch. I read America Unchained while Nikki fell asleep. We stopped at services, then made a final push to get back to the comforts of home.

In case it wasn’t clear, it was an awesome weekend. Can’t wait to go again, and hopefully I’ll be able to drive us next time, because we really do owe Joey a lift now!

Even I was started to get annoyed with the amount of tweet-posts showing up on my livejournal and blog. In start contrast to blogs, tweets don’t have much re-readability, so I’m ceasing syndication of them on my livejournal and hiding them in my blog. It might even mentally free me up to write blog stuff more, but, er, we’ll see. Still feel too busy living life to write about it, more often than not.

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS.

This is last of three reviews I actually wrote for an intended project to review all the stories in the Project: Superior comics anthology, back in 2005.

Just to give you an idea of how far I actually got with this, all of the entries were written on June 25th 2005. So, I managed to spend a single night on it before never working on it again.

Story #3: Jeremy Tankard’s “The Costume”

The Costume starts off quite bleak. It’s about a young boy who gets his mother to make him a superhero costume, and how it affects his life when it emerges that he’s planning to wear it forever. Luckily, it has a relatively upbeat ending delivered in such a way that you can only expect in comics. It’s kind of an “origin” story for a hero, but bordering on meta-plot.

In the wider picture, The Costume can be seen as a tale about the importance of growing up and the point at where you stop being a child and start being an adult. It’s a good context to use for that sort of tale, a child who imagines he’s a superhero, and is eventually forced to confront the reality. It could’ve been far bleaker, but while it’s not exactly smile-time happy hour, you get a definite sense of hope from how it all finishes off. Tankard delivers a great plot in the space he has, and with an excellent sense of pacing and dialogue.

Tankard seems at home drawing everything from a woman at a sewing machine, to an asteroid being thrown at the earth. The cartoonish style conveys a wide range of emotions, and makes the fantastical stuff seem more believable in the universe of the story, because it’s drawn in the same style. It almost gives me a sense of early Disney work, actually, with its thin rounded limbs and exaggerated poses.

Ultimately, Tankard delivers a short story that relies less than most on a twist to make itself seem smart, and concentrates more on making the human element the focus of the ending. An enjoyable read.

Website: http://www.jeremytankard.com - Tankard’s site is utterly brimming with illustrations, and each one a feast for the eyes. Certainly worth a poke around, because there’s a lot to look at.

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS.

Presented without further comment, the second of three reviews I actually wrote for an intended project to review all the stories in the Project: Superior comics anthology, back in 2005.

Story #2: Brian Wood’s “The Watcher”

The second story in Project Superior is The Watcher by Brian Wood. Stylistically, it’s about as far away from the previous story, The Amazing Friends, as you can realistically get in comics. It contains no dialogue, barely any text at all, in fact, and there’s very little in the way of conventional plot or narrative. Unfortunately, there’s a price to innovative and unique, and in the case of this story, that price is making the story disappointing impenetrable.

Wood’s art is always glorious to behold, and this is no exception, though it’s actually hurt slightly by being coloured, compared to the monochrome sample available on his website. It’s rare that Wood both writes and illustrates a story, and it’s easy to tell that he’s got a talent for both. From his other work, that is. As a big fan of Brian Wood, I find The Watcher is something of a let down. It seems unclear what’s actually going on in the narrative, with too much left open to interpretation. I’m sure if that’s the case then it’s intentional, but I find it no more satisfactory to assume that, because it doesn’t change that I can get almost nothing out of reading it. Is the main character a hero? A villain? What’s he actually doing? Is he supposed to have powers? The more I think about it, the less hope I have that I’ll find any new way of interpreting it. I’m going to have to concede defeat on this one and just ask: What does anyone who’s read this think is going on?

Fact is, while I love Brian Wood, this is easily my least favourite thing out of everything he’s done. He recently took on the “indie comics do superheroes” concept in a 12-issue series of what he termed “graphic novellas” which was drawn by Becky Cloonan, and it’s fair to say that any single one of those issues is a vastly superior example of what heights can be achieved with the superhero genre if you give it to creators who can look at it sideways. The man’s one of my favourite writers, so it’s hard to be objective, but if I were to read this anywhere else I’d probably ignore it completely as a bad read and move on. If you like the artwork on this, though, it’s definitely worth checking out Channel Zero, which Wood also wrote and illustrated, and which has similar silhouetted photorealism and use of negative space. He is an artist unlike many others. Just, don’t make this story the only chance you give him, alright?

Website: http://www.brianwood.com - An up to date, constantly redesigned and totally jam-packed site contaiing information on his past, present and future work, and best of all, a livejournal where you can read his latest ramblings. The livejournal, in fact, which first pointed me in the direction of Project: Superior. Would that all comics creators were so dedicated and enthusiastic.

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS.

This entry was notes for a “best of 2006″ entry that never got written, which indicates my favourite stuff of that particular year. Had I finished it, there would’ve been a tad more discussion of my choices, and probably a lot of them would’ve been changed too. But here’s what I was thinking of writing about:

Top 5 tracks:
Sway - This is my Demo (This is my Demo)
Captain - Frontline (Welcome to Hazelville)
Sabaton - Attero Dominatus (Attero Dominatus)
Charlotte Hatherley - Behave
Basskniv3s - Weapons of Mass Media
Genius - DJ Yoda - The Amazing Adventures of DJ Yoda
Disappointing - Tenacious D - Pick of Destiny / Placebo - Meds

Comics:
Phonogram
Local
Civil War #2
Project: Romantic
X-Factor

Late to the party award: Scott Pilgrim

Best gig - of the obvious contenders - Radiohead at Hammersmith, YYYs at the Forum, Tenacious D at Hammersmith, and the Placebo instore, I’ll have to go with the second. I’ve been waiting years to see YYY’s live and while the rest were all good, there’s never the same magic when you’ve seen a band before. YYY’s didn’t disappoint, and I got some excellent moshpit fun to boot.

Remember 2006? Phonogram, Scott Pilgrim, a new Placebo album… not entirely unlike 2009 in that respect.

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS.

Presented without further comment, the first of three reviews I actually wrote for an intended project to review all the stories in the Project: Superior comics anthology, back in 2005.

Story #1: Martin Cendreda’s “The Amazing Friends”

The Amazing Friends is about a group of three, middle-aged men who dress as superheroes, fighting crime and preserve liberty, and receive all the attendant media glory. The thing is, it’s quickly evident that they only really do the first of those three, and instead of fighting crime or injustice, opt for the easier assignments, like rescuing cats from trees. Or claimng to have done. And even that’s in-between going to lapdancing clubs. Meanwhile, their pure-intentioned friend tries to become the fourth member of the team…and, a plot emerges.

It’s a comedy. Or tragedy. Depends on whether you’re concentrating on the jokes, or the overall plot structure. One of the strengths of indie creators is that they often examine things on an entirely human level, so in this case, rather than a story about superhero impersonators, you get a pretty sad story about self-sacrifice, those that make it because they’re genuinely trying to improve the world, and those that don’t because they’re only interested in themselves. Self-sacrifice is one of the driving elements of many superheroes, and it’s not unusual to find out that a key element of their stories is a focus what they lose out on in order to make way for the good they can do. Arguably, self-sacrifice is what makes a hero, and that’s more or less the point that Cendreda’s story is making.

Artistically, he has a mildly expressionistic cartoony style, and that’s not unusual in indie comics. His dialogue is pretty strong, especially the contrast between the wannabe-hero who speaks “in character” when he’s wearing his costume, using 50’s-style self-consciously fake phrasing such as “Tally Ho, Heroes!” while his friends speak, even dressed up in public, using a more realistic (and crude) manner that betrays their true attitude towards the superhero gig.

It’s a nice opener to the book, since it easily shows you the “indie creators take on superheroes” premise in an easily readable conventional way. You can tell it’s about superheroes, but you can tell from just looking at the art that it’s not going to be the normal take on them. I’ve wondered how they chose who went where in the book, but it’s fair to say however “The Amazing Friends” ended up at the start, it does a good job there.

Website: http://www.zurikrobot.com/ Lots of info on some of his other projects, though, it looks a little bit out of date at the time I’m writing this

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS. Yes, I have run out of self-congratulating taglines. Well, now I have.

I originally saw this quote on Wikipedia and it amused me so much that I put it in an empty post so that I could post it on my blog with the comment “Whoever said this has confused the meaning of the words ‘invaluable’ and ‘worthless’” in a hilarious satire of Wikipedia’s notorious unreliability.

“Wikipedia is an invaluable research tool.” — Anon.

Well, I finally did it.

This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS. If you think it’s boring to read, imagine how boring it was to write.

This was written on June 25th 2005. It was the introduction to my first ever attempt at a blog project, which is described in full below. I intended to use the project to get myself blogging again after losing a bit of steam now that I was working at Yahoo!. Clearly, that didn’t pan out, and I wrote 3 reviews before hitting a story I couldn’t wrap my head around critically, which stopped me dead in my tracks. My plan was to write up everything then post one once a day, but I never got anywhere near completing it. Here’s the introduction:

I mentioned buying Project Superior the other day. It’s a collection of 54 stories by around 45 indie creators, published by AdHouse all about superheroes (which, for all you philistines reading this, is something indie comics tend not to touch because it’s pretty overexposed in the mainstream) - thus, what you get is 288 pages of some really excellent short stories. Since they’re only a few pages long and all quite different in style and subject, I’m going to try and review one story a day for as long as it interests me to. Hopefully I’ll make it through the whole book, and in my own deludedly optimistic world, give a bit of exposure to something that deserves more interest that it’s been getting. I’m certain it’ll be a journey of discovery for us all. I’m less certain about the “one review per day” thing, but it’s a nice target at least. They’re only going to be short reviews, and hopefully I won’t ruin all the jokes by trying to write a synopsis. I might steal one or two, but I’m definitely going to avoid giving away the ending.

So you know when you come to buy it, this is what the cover looks like:

And now, the first instalment of your soon-to-be-regular feature.

Was that brazen optimism, or just foolish posturing at the end there? We may never now. At least it’s finally out there. I should say that if nothing else, I’m quite impressed that the free image-hosted image still works, this long after it was first uploaded.

I’ll be posting the few reviews I did actually write in the future, staggering them with stuff that’s different, if not necessarily more interesting.