Facts And Fear In The 21st Century

Information is everywhere. The spread of information now achieves speeds that would have unheard of even thirty years ago. The downside to this is the corresponding spread of disinformation. In an age when a couple of taps of a finger can send stories flying out across the internet, it’s becoming harder and harder to separate fact from fiction (which is not helped in a climate where some top public officials openly regard facts as an optional extra to any given discourse).

This week has brought us a resurgence of another case in point. It’s something that’s surfaced a few times over the years but has quickly flowed its way across mainstream news reporting and all through my social media feeds (as well as talk in the office) once again this week. It’s dubbed the “Momo challenge” and, for those of you unaware of it, it purports to (amongst the many variations and permutations of the story) be encouraging children to self-harm and harm others by the insertion of a disturbing image into kid-friendly YouTube videos. It took around a day or so for the articles pointing this out to be largely a hoax to emerge* but, by the that point, the original scaremongering stories had been widely shared, even to the point that schools were providing advice leaflets based upon the erroneous facts.**

So what do we do nowadays to combat these instances? Here’s my two penneth which, as always, you can feel free to disregard.

As A Journalist/Writer
Use some basic fact checking sites before you publish something. I realise we live in a time when print revenue has mostly dried up and generating clickbait titles in order to get ad-valuable eyeballs is both easy and tempting but I would like to believe there are still enough people out there interested in disseminating something that’s as close to factual as is possible. 
One of the best known and still most reliable sites for this is Snopes. It started out a long time ago in the early days of the online world as a page for checking urban legends but has broadened into a much more wide-ranging fact-checking website. Having been around for about 25 years, it’s one of the more respected sources for verifying online stories. There are also FullFact.org (UK-focussed) and FactCheck.org (US-focussed), both of which are independent sites.

As A Reader
Use those fact checking services yourself, particularly when it comes to any story that involves things that are supposedly happening as a result of something being prompted on the internet. Yes, we do live in a point in history when many people are happy to do many stupid and/or dangerous things in order to get some attention on social media but don’t assume that, because of that, anything that claims “The Internet Says” is true.

Is this infallible? Of course not and the overhead of going and fact-checking absolutely everything you read is somewhat prohibitive. However, if you are thinking about sharing something via social media that might well “transmit collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear” (the Wikipedia definition of mass hysteria there) then it’s worth, in my opinion, taking those extra few seconds to see if you can verify it first. 

There you go, that’s my soapbox moment over with, back to pop culture nonsense next time.

* Detailed Snopes article here - How Much of a Threat Is the Purported ‘Momo Challenge’ Suicide Game?; BBC version here - Momo Challenge: The anatomy of a hoax;  and Independent article here - The Momo challenge is nothing to be scared of – so why are these cyber hoaxes so popular? As a personal rule of thumb, I find if a link has the words “Daily” and “Mail” in it, you can probably discount it as bullshit. Just my personal view, of course.

** Parents were reporting it to schools based upon articles they'd read leading to schools responding to parents with their own fact sheets based upon articles reported to them by parents thus generating more articles about schools warning parents about it. The beginning of the snake-eating-its-own-tail of any good rumor/hoax. Fascinating as a psychological study of how fear is generated and spread but not overly helpful in terms of actual facts.

Hidden Treasures - Jabberwocky

Obviously, I don’t think you can count the Lewis Carroll poem as a hidden treasure; it’s very much a treasure that is clearly right out on display in the open and people rightly now (it’s one of the only poem’s that I used to know off by heart; much as I enjoy this whole writing lark, I struggle with a lot of poetry if I’m honest). Nope, while it may have its roots and influences in the work of the Reverend Dodgson*, it’s a very different work that I’m on about today.

Jabberwocky (1977)
Dir. Terry Gilliam  / Dur. 105 mins
Why Is Is Any Good? For me, this is a film that can be seen as the best of both worlds. It’s a transition out of the world of Monty Python (while still keeping some of the trappings) and a move into Terry Gilliam’s own skewed and twisted visions. It still has a lot of the feel of something like The Holy Grail (the authentically grubby medieval setting, the presence of fellow Pythons Michael Palin [starring] and Terry Jones and Gilliam himself[cameoing]) but it’s starting to introduce more of the themes that will become prevalent in later works (the ludicrousness of the minutiae of everyday bureaucracy, an everyday person being caught up in events beyond their control, the clash of the weirdly fantastic alongside the mundanity of everyday life). It’s also a bit of a who’s who of classic British comedians and comic actors with Max Wall, Warren Mitchell, John Le Mesurier, Harry H Corbett and Bernard Bresslaw to name but a few of those appearing. It has some gloriously silly moments too - the king and his daughter and major domo discussing alternatives to a jousting tournament while being increasing soaked with blood spatter only to settle on a hide and seek tournament as the best option being one of the highlights.
It may not be the best of Gilliam's film (for me, Brazil and Time Bandits are his best) but there's so much going on in this film, in both the foreground and the background, that it'll sweep you along for the ride anyway. For a debut solo feature, it's also remarkably confident in its look and feel.

Where Can I Find It? Criterion have released a 4K restoration of the film on BluRay (completed with the participation of the BFI) which looks great. Currently, it doesn’t seem to streaming anywhere in the UK. If you like Monty Python or Terry Gilliam or both and haven’t managed to catch this one then the chances are you’ll enjoy it. If you haven’t seen any of those but fancy a slightly silly medieval comedy about a monster then this will fill that weirdly specific film need.

* Yes, I am pretentious enough to obliquely reference Lewis Carroll’s real name in the hope of seeming slightly more literate than I am, well spotted.

Right First Time

In the world of serial television, sometimes a series takes a while to find its feet and sometimes it comes roaring out of the gate full pelt. Sometimes the ones that don’t hit it right first time can grow into something interesting or even great. Sometimes those that seemed so full of promise spectacularly fail to ultimately live up to that potential. Here are some series that had a great first episode - whether or not they continued to have great ones is up to you….

Quantum Leap
When viewed with the hindsight of knowledge of the rest of the series which is certainly enjoyable but for the most part relatively straightforward, it’s surprising how mysterious and eerie this first episode is. From an opening sequence where it’s clear that someone called sam is doing something that he shouldn’t*, we’re thrown into a situation where this “Sam” doesn’t look like himself, has everyone around him telling him he’s someone else and is being followed by an odd little man that only he can see and hear. It’s a great way to open the series and very few moments in the rest of the series (barring the last episode and one or two others) manage to capture that sense of you not knowing what’s going on as much as Sam.

Twin Peaks
What viewers probably don’t appreciate nowadays is just how different this looked to the rest of television at the time. We take for granted now that TV can be just as cinematic as something that you see on the big screen but this was really the first time that a recognised film director (David Lynch) had brought that cinematic sensibility to the small screen in a way that became a genuine pop culture phenomenon. Personally, I love the whole thing including the new series that aired the year before last but your enjoyment of the series probably depends on your willingness to be swept up in the weirdness.

Lost
It’s arguable that without the cinematic impact Twin Peaks (alongside the serial storytelling of Babylon 5), you wouldn’t have got something like Lost. At the time, this was one of the most expensive pilots ever made and it shows. Whatever your views on the series as a whole (and mine are decidedly mixed), there’s no denying that this was a pilot that made a big impact and, as pilots go, it’s a cracking piece of television.

The X Files
Another series that, to my mind, ultimately didn't fully deliver on that initial promise by largely going on for too long. The pilot however is very much a blueprint for what was to come with the overall, design, look and feel, interaction between Scully and Mulder, the iconic theme tune (which actually charted in the UK) and the alien/government conspiracy angle all in place from the beginning. Another series that became a bona fide pop culture phenomenon before fading back into something for the die-hard fans (as often happens with pop culture phenomena).

That’s just a few examples for you - feel free to come up with you own to add to this list! (Hey, it might just be a static page but that doesn’t mean that I can't encourage some interactivity…)

* And ignoring the vision of 1999 that involves everything from earrings and shoes to cars being covered in lost in flashing lights...

Hidden Treasures - The Tick (2001)

"A secret message... from my teeth!"

As a character, The Tick has been around for more than thirty years but has never quite hit the mainstream. Starting off as comic book character created by Ben Edlund, the Tick has made the leap to cartoon series (in 1994) and live action series (in both 2001 and 2016). All are great and have their own individual pluses and minuses that distinguish them from each other but I’m going to focus on just one version here…

The Tick (2001 TV series)

Why Is It Good?* There are many reasons why but let’s start with the main one - Patrick Warburton. Warburton’s portrayal of the Tick is, for me, the definitive one. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy Townsend Coleman (animated) or Peter Serafinowicz (2016 version) in their takes on it but there’s something about Warburton’s version that just feels absolutely right. There’s a strong hint of Adam West’s Batman in the cheesily cheerful and naively earnest way in which he behaves coupled with an air of other-worldliness as he apparently seems to struggle with everyday concepts like broken toilets, how fortune cookies work and non-secret-headquarters-transforming light switches. He’s not the only good thing, though - the other three characters rounding out the main quartet of the cast (Arthur, Captain Liberty and Batmanuel) bounce nicely off each other and each get their moments to shine. It’s genuinely funny with some crackingly quotable non-sequiturs from the slightly-tangential-to-reality Tick. As with the cartoon, a clear love of the tortured expressions of old school comic books comes through in his choices of phrasing.

Where Can I Find It? It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime (in the UK at least) alongside the new version that Amazon has been producing. It was cancelled pretty much before it even aired so there are only nine episodes to enjoy which is the only real drawback - just as it’s really getting going, it’ll be over. It was probably unfortunately ahead of its time - in 2001, the superhero boom was quite a way off. Had it been aired today, it might have had a different story...

* Ah yes, you’ll note that I’ve changed this from “Is It Any Good?” as that was a silly subtitle given that I’m clearly going to be recommending stuff that i reckon to be good. 

Disney Classics In Order - No. 3 Fantasia

In all honesty, it’s getting closer to three years at this rate before I get through them all. Don’t worry, it’ll pick up pace further down the line. This was a tough one to get through...

Fantasia (1940)
Dir. Samuel Armstrong; James Algar; Bill Roberts; Paul Satterfield; Ben Sharpsteen; David D. Hand; Hamilton Luske; Jim Handley; Ford Beebe; T. Hee; Norman Ferguson; Wilfred Jackson
Based Upon:- Well, music, really

The One Where
It’s completely unlike any other Disney ever made (with the obvious exception of Fantasia 2000 for anyone thinking of being a smartarse). It’s also the longest Disney movie ever clocking in at 124 minutes and, boy, does it feel every minute of that running time. It’s one of the few Disney films counted as one of their fully animated features that has live action sequences. Basically, it’s a selection of silent animations free from an overall narrative set to classical music with introductions by the orchestra. You know, for kids.

General Viewing Notes
It’s feels ahead of its time. Certainly in the 1960s, people like Jim Henson were experimenting with abstract animation set in time to music (although Henson’s preference was jazz rather than classical) but this feels like it was asking more than they’d bargained for from an audience expecting a follow up to Snow White and Pinocchio, even with the presence of Mickey for its most famous sequence, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. 

Disney Tropes
None at all. As I said, it’s so unlike the other two films released thus far that you can't really compare it. Even the animation styles for some sequences differ from the Disney norm, notably The Rite Of Spring and A Night On Bald Mountain. It doesn’t even have a title card until the intermission point halfway through and it ends without any credits whatsoever.

Things You Notice As An Adult
- Mickey’s hacking apart of the sentient broom in order to get it it stop is fairly brutal even though you do only see it in silhouette (the red flashes on the screen in time with the music for emphasis making it seem harsher). It seems violent in a way that’s a little out of character for Mickey.
- This is clearly aimed at achieving a measure of respectability amongst an adult audience. I can imagine that a vast number of kids, both then and now, would struggle to pay attention for the full two hours. I certainly did.
- The death of the dinosaurs in the Rite Of Spring (come on, it happened millions of years ago, that can't be considered a spoiler) is extremely bleak for a Disney film. Tonally, there are some elements in this film that you don’t normally get in Disney.
- This must be the only Disney film to use the word “Satan”. (Citation needed.)

Classic Songs - Are They?
Technically, they’re all classic(al) - ah ha ha. The music is, of course, lovely - the choices of music do fit the animation very well.

Any Good Then?
It’s technically an impressive achievement - the animation in its differing styles is certainly of a high quality and the level of experimentation on show in a Disney film is certainly refreshing. I’m just not sure that it makes for a satisfying experience overall, especially with such a long running time. It’s a curiosity piece and one for fans of animation as an art form but I don’t feel it works as a stand-alone entertaining feature film.

Next One Of These
An aerodynamically improbable big-eared pachyderm.

The Creepy Clock

I loved it. Whenever it was time for the song to start, I would rush to watch it. There was, however, something unsettling about it. Something that tugged at the back of my head saying, “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” I didn't care though. I still loved it. Besides, when had something being a bit weird stopped me from loving it? (Answer: Pretty much never, that’s when.)

Back in the dim and distant days known to people as the 1980s* (again), the main shopping centre in Lewisham wasn’t called “Lewisham Shopping Centre” in a startlingly functional way. No, it was known back then as the Riverdale Centre. I mean, there is a nearby river in Lewisham and I can see why they didn't name it after the river itself. After all, very few people are likely to go shopping in the Quaggy Centre. Doesn’t really give off that whole “come shop here” vibe.

In the shopping centre were shops (that much is a given for a shopping centre). Exciting as Woolworths, Our Price and WHSmith’s** were, there was one reason to go into the Riverdale. The clock. The clock with the people in it.

Not real people obviously. No, I think if there were a clock in a shopping centre that was inhabited by real people, that would elevate it much further beyond the realm of the merely creepy. No, these were a selection of exaggerated caricature style figures that were hidden behind alcoves covered by a curved door; a door that would slide on the hour while a song played to which would move around.

I don’t remember the specific figures (see picture below for the full terror of these supposedly family friendly horrors) but I do remember the crushing disappointment I would feel if there was a trip to the shops without us crossing the hour threshold so we could see them. I can only imagine how bored my parents and grandparents must have been at having to feign interest in them every time.

As with any shopping centre, Lewisham has undergone periods of renewal and regeneration and it was during one of these revamps that the clock was removed. I have to admit, there’s still a little part of me inside that feels a little disappointed whenever I venture inside and the clock is still nowhere to be seen.

* I mean, I guess they’d be known to animals as the 1980s as well if animals have any real sense of the concept of time as is familiar to humans.

** Only one of these is still going at the time of writing (2019).

The Popular Book Centre/Shop

There was always an aura of low lit gloom about the place. And a smell. A smell of old things. Not unpleasant, though. The sort of papery smell you get when you press together thousands of pages of old books in close proximity. A comforting sense of age delivered via the nostrils. This was a place that, in a single unified unit, cemented a love for two different yet similar papery things - comics and books.

It was called the Popular Book Shop or possibly Centre - the memory is getting somewhat hazy on this point; even if it was called Centre, I have it in my mind as Shop*. It exists in memory only now anyway as it is no longer there (having being replaced by a hair beauty salon many years ago) but it is a formative part of my childhood.

It was the first shop I went into to buy back issues of comics. This was, back in my pre-teen days, predominantly copies of 2000AD (of course) but I also used to pick up old issues of Mad Magazine too, promptly ruining them too but doing the fold-in on the back page as soon as I got them. Being at that point far more visually inclined, the comics were the only part of the store that I really paid any attention to. 

When I first started going in there, there were mainly two people working in there. A younger more friendly guy who specialised in the comics and an older chap who always seemed to be a little sterner (with that automatic distrust/suspicion of potential theft or damage that older people sometimes seem to have for feckless children). The younger of the two eventually branched out to his own comic shop but not before he not only secured me a copy of the first issue of 2000AD (for the princely sum of £5) but also delivered it directly to the house! Now that’s what you call customer service.

As I edged into my teenage years, the allure of the books side of the shop came to the fore (given that the comics had gone by this point, I didn't have a lot of choice). The books were all secondhand and they offered you half your money back as a trade in if you no longer wanted it once you’d read it! Bonus. Being a collector of bookish objects, it was a deal that I used infrequently but I did use from time to time - there are, after all, those occasions when you do happen to pick out a stinker from the pile which may as well return from whence it came. My choices were pretty much exclusively sci if with the occasional Stephen King thrown in for good measure.

After a while, the chain eventually folded and the Popular Book Centres/Shops were no more. I spent enough time there, however, that I can still picture it exactly. The selection of enticing titles in the window. The rows and rows of books arranged by genre and then alphabetically in order. The bit round the corner where all the rudey magazines were and the hawkish look on the stern chap’s face if he felt you were edging too near to that area. Happy book-filled days and, in all likelihood, the reason I find it almost pathologically impossible to pass any sort of secondhand bookshop now. I’m just popping in there for a quick look, I’ll be out in a mo. No, it’s OK, you go on, I’ll catch you up….

* A bit of a Google search seems to indicate that it was Centre so now you know.

Quantity Over Quality

It’s a numbers game, really. As I’ve heard a friend say on more than one occasion, “Throw enough shit at the wall and some of it’ll stick.” (Yes, it is a lovely turn of phrase, do feel free to drop it into everyday conversation yourself.) Some writers agonise over every word, only committing to what they are absolutely convinced is the correct word, phrase, sentence, paragraph to eternity once they are assured that it meets their criteria. This is an approach that absolutely works for some and has no doubt produced works of insight and beauty over the years. For me, though, it’s about making sure that I keep writing as, if I stop, it could well be six years before I start up again.

For me, writing is something that I have to keep doing otherwise I won't do it. Yes, I realise that sounds a little tautological but give me that one. It’s a momentum thing - once I’ve gathered enough speed and made it into a daily routine, I’ll keep going. Stop that forward motion and it’ll take me a long while to get going again. I guess my hope is that if I keep writing enough words, eventually there’ll be a selection of them in the right order that qualify as being “quite good”; the old “infinite monkeys producing the works of Shakespeare” technique in that there’s no real intelligence behind just a statistical chance of goodness.

All of which is to say that this is the technique that I am currently employing. Keep writing, keep plugging, produce the words, stick on the page, maybe it’ll be something, say something, mean something. If the content isn’t there, does it improve form? Can the form be the content? Can you consisting write about nothing in particular on and off for the best part of thirteen years and hope that people will keep reading? Well, to the three of you that are still persevering with this, thank you for your kind patronage thus far. I’ll keep sticking these letter based forms of communication down on the age if you keep using light and a sort of water and flesh-based lens to convert them into electrical signals in a meaty lump in your skull which creates meaning. All sounds a bit implausible when you put it like that, doesn’t it?

All of which is to say that it’s Friday evening so we should probably all go to the pub instead. Mine’s a pint if you’re buying.

Adam Buxton - BUG 58

I’ve been a fan of Adam Buxton’s work for quite some time now. I enjoyed the Adam & Joe Show (and particularly their BBC show Adam & Joe Go Tokyo) but I really became a massive fan during their 6Music show and, since then, have followed pretty much anything Adam’s done. His podcast is always good entertainment value and his BUG show on Sky Atlantic was criminally underlooked. The show itself was based upon on these live shows in which Adam curates a selection of interesting music videos along with some comedy interjections of his own.

I saw a BUG show at the Greenwich Comedy Festival last year; a version of the 10th anniversary show. It was probably slightly less representative of the usual show given that it was an anniversary and was geared more towards Adam’s comedy bits as it was part of a comedy festival. The show at the BFI last night (the first in a run of three that he’s doing this month) was my first attendance at a full BUG show.

The thing that shines through the most in this show is his genuine and abiding love of music and not just music that he’s familiar with but new, up-and-coming or less well known artists. The other thing that’s clear and that was reawakened in myself was an appreciation for the music video as an art form. As a teenager, I would spend many, many hours watching and re-watching music videos, to the point where I would recognise my favourite video directors and actively seek out their work (Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Anton Corbijn and Chris Cunningham were always high on the list*). 

Many of the videos last night brought back that joy in discovering a new piece of film. Highlights included Throwing Lines by Kelly Lee Owens, He’s Got His Mother’s Hips by John Grant, Dolly Said No To Elvis by Mark Nevin and Ottolenghi by Loyle Carner (which, as Adam pointed out, did have a definite Michel Gondry vibe to it). The themed segments presented a brief history of Talking Heads videos (I didn't realise Toni Basil was so heavily involved in their music and videos) and the whole thing was held together by Mr Buxton’s natural presenting presence, largely helped by his clear and genuine enthusiasm for the subject.

The only aspect that was lacking was Adam’s patented reading out of YouTube comments to accompany the video (which sounds very dry when you write it down like that but it genuinely very funny) but, as he explained, this was down to the current paucity of amusing comments and (despite an overheard complaint that he mentioned from a previous show) didn’t “detract from the whole experience”.

The remaining two shows this month are already sold out but if you see tickets listed in future and have a passing interest in music videos/short film, definitely get yourself tickets, it's absolutely worth it. In the meantime, you can find the entirety of his Sky Atlantic show on YouTube. Give it a look (and you’ll see what I mean about the comments).

* Often going on to be become feature directors, notably Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind; Be Kind, Rewind)

Nope

I’ve got nothing today. Oh, there are plenty of potential ideas on the list but today is one of those that none of them are quite coming together into the preferred combination of sentences which become paragraphs which become blog. I’m stubborn, though, and I’ve set myself the goal of writing something every (week)day so I’m going to sit here and stare at this screen until my fingers somehow magically fill it up with wordy goodness for you to pass your eyeballs across.

…


…


…

Still sitting.


…


…

Ah, fine. There isn’t anything today. That’s your lot. Come back next time when hopefully there will be words. Words worth reading. (Always good to aim high.)

Barely Remembered ‘80s Toys

I gave you fair warning the other day that there was cheap and lazy nostalgia to be done and here is some more of it. If you’re not interested in a whole posts worth of “Hey, weren’t those old toys weird/ugly/utterly bizarre” then prob best to give it a skip for today and come back later on.

There is a place were odd half-formed thoughts and partially regurgitated memories come bubbling up on a regular basis, sometimes to fade back away and sometimes to stick around for a little bit longer, like today. It’s called the shower and it’s where I do all of my best thinking.* This morning, an old toy just sort of popped into head and perched there, for some reason refusing to fade away...

Madballs
Way back in the dim and distant of the 1980s when hair was big and you could still find dried out white dog poos just lying on the street**, The Brother and I had a load of these weird toys. They were basically misshapen rubber balls with weird lumpy faces on it. They were largely functionless as, due to their lumpy nature, they were no longer aerodynamic and bounced erratically. Still that did not prevent us from coveting them as they were weird and gross-looking and, being in that respect fairly traditional children, we were naturally drawn to gross things (as our large collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards would demonstrate).

Thinking of these weird and functionless toys lead me on to…

M.U.S.C.L.E. Figures
I think these were pretty niche. These were weird little wrestling figures made of hard plastic, all in pink, that came in these little plastic dustbins of 10 or bigger boxes of 28. Some of them looked like relatively straightforward wrestlers but others were a bit more out there. One of them was basically an upside down pyramid with a square head on it. And by pyramid I mean that it appeared to be made out of brick too. A quick internet search just now has revealed that they were in fact based upon a late 70s Japanese manga so that probably explains a lot.

And finally my mind came to upon…

Boglins
Basically an ugly rubbery gobliny glove puppet. Maybe slightly more function as it was a glove puppet but I still feel that it’s main purpose was to “be an ugly toy”.

Do kids today still have weirdly ugly toys? Things that are gross for the sake of being gross? I guess with the ability to access pretty much anything disgusting via YouTube, there’s probably less need for gross-out toys these days. Or is it just that I’m not an 8 year old so don;t know what the latest gross toys are? It’s probably that one, I imagine.


* No, not when I’m sitting on the toilet. Thats reading time.

** To answer the question “oh yeah, why don’t you see white dog poo in the street anymore”, you didn't have to pick them up in the 80s so no one bothered hence they would lie around baking nicely in the sun

Mortified

A friend recently alerted me to the presence of a live event called Mortified (run by a friend of hers), in which adults share something from their youth (diaries, poetry, home movies) which would be mortifying to share in the public sphere. Given that I am pushing myself to make a daily go of publishing on here and inspiration is not always thick on the ground, I thought to myself, “Oho! I have some diaries from my teenage and university days. I could mine them for some cringe-inducing comedy gold and get myself a few days or more where I don’t have to write too much material. A lazy, recycling win-win scenario.”

So I dusted off the old notebooks and had a quick flick through to see if there were any immediate candidates for publishing. These wouldn't be completely unedited. I’d have to do some trimming to try and minimise any personally identifying information as much as possible (those in the know would probably still be able to work stuff out however).

I wasn’t expecting to cringe as much as I did. I knew that they would be largely unreadable but... oh boy. The writing is dreadful. Not even that amusing, just very poorly constructed and, in the vast number of cases, largely consisting of “i did/he said/she said” style banalities. It’s pretty boring too in most cases. A lot of the time, I was clearly just rushing to try and get stuff down on paper so that I can get it all out there.

I mean, I really get why these are called mortified. There is a part of me that wants to just chuck them on the fire as there is little worth to be gained from these things. The thing it has highlighted most starkly though is the fact that I don’t really recognise that person anymore. The things that he felt, thought and even did don’t really feel like the things I would think say or do anymore. It’s a little disorienting to have that spelled out to you. I genuinely can’t get into the mindset of the person that wrote most of those entries.

It does feel like a slightly trite observation (“hey, guess what, we change over time”) but it’s something that we all know but don’t really directly confront. If I met the seventeen to twenty one year old who wrote in those diaries, what would I think of him? Would I be surprised by the things he said and did, the way he behaved? Would I even particularly like him? 

I realise all of this is making it sound like there are juicy revelations in the diaries. There really aren’t - it’s all very mundane. It’s more the surprise of being confronted by the writings of someone who is ostensibly you and definitely has a certain number of similarities but isn’t really the you that you feel you are today. (Given the torturous nature of that last sentence, maybe my writing ability hasn’t increased at all over the years - to quote The Tick:- “I’m the you you always wanted to be. The only thing stopping you from being me is you.”)

In summary then, if you have some very old diaries, might well be best to just leave them be...

Hidden Treasures - Alferd Packer (or Cannibal): The Musical

This is a slight evolution, I suppose, of “Actually, I Like It” - not so much things that I like that are critically panned but more the things that I like that not many people have actually watched/read/heard. In an age of digital overload, there’s plenty of content out there to consume your time. It’s understandable then that many things will slip through the gaps. Allow me to take a (purely fictional and conceptual) torch out in order to shine a (purely metaphorical again) light on some of those things what I reckon should be more popular.

Alferd Packer*: The Musical (original title) / Cannibal!: The Musical (current title)

I love a good musical; we’ve established this before. I particularly love a comedy musical as it combines my love of comedy songs along with the aforementioned love of musicals. I was introduced to this one by a flatmate at university upon his return from a tour of Japan (he was in a band at the time) and I love dot from the off. It’s a comedy musical about the real life story of 19th century prospector who confessed to resorting to cannibalism after becoming trapped in the Rocky Mountains one winter. Exactly the sort of stuff that is ripe for comedy, naturally. This was a student film produced by two men that we’d never heard of at the time - Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The year after we’d watched it, a new animated sitcom produced by the pair launched - it was called South Park; I’m not really sure what became of that.

Is It Any Good? This might well be a redundant sub-heading. Given that I’m titling this thread Hidden Treasures, I’m clearly going to say “yes”. It’s an extremely low budget affair, given that it was a film they made when they were students, but you can see the beginnings of the humour that would influence South Park. The soundtrack features songs such as “Schapoinkle”, “When I Was On Top of You”, “Hang The Bastard” and probably the favourite of our little group who watched it obsessively “Let’s Build A Snowman” (about twenty years before Frozen) and you can see the sort of sensibility that would later inform their work on something like Team America. It has some nicely odd touches too - the group encounter a group of Native Americans who are clearly Japanese for no readily apparent reason and a ballet-style dance off involving love rivalry for a horse**. It’s scrappy, sure, as it is a student project after all but there’s enough of the Parker/Stone humour to carry you through. Difficult for me to be objective about it, though, as I watched South Park because of this rather than the other way round.

Where Do I Find It? Following the success of South Park, Troma bought the film and retitled it Cannibal!: The Musical to make it more commercial (and also did some minor editing including, for some reason, removing part of a song) which you can still find on DVD from some sellers. Fortunately, though, you don’t have to as Troma have very kindly put the whole thing on YouTube. Schpadoinkle!

* Yes, it is spelt Alferd, not Alfred (see above image).

** Side note - the treacherous horse Liane is named after Trey Parker’s ex-fiancee. Clearly didn’t end amicably...

Ephemera Of Days Gone By

Nostalgia. It’s an easy hit, a quick bit of shorthand and very much a lazy writing gimmick (“Do you remember…?”). Still, I’m trying to pump one of these out on a daily basis* so I’ll take the tried, cliched inspiration where I can get it. I also get that it’s a tired, cliched gimmick to kick off with an oh-so-clever disclaimer stating that you know how unoriginal this post is but, despite that, you’re going to do it anyway so I will refer you back to my previous point about trying to squirt these little brain guffs out on a regular basis. This level of barely adequate writing doesn’t come without an absolute minimal level of effort being expended upon it, you know…

So one of the books I was reading had a description of something that I hadn’t thought about for quite some time and it sparked off a pleasing memory which lead me on a trail, starting with...

Tube Platform Chocolate Dispensers
I will also freely admit that this nostalgia is very London-centric but this is where my memories have been made so this is where I’ll get nostalgic feelings. I’m not likely to get them for Birmingham, i’m afraid (no offence, Birmingham).
These were a specific type of vending machine. They had a selection of little drawers at the bottom for each type of chocolatey goodness contained within. From memory (and this is a little hazy so definitely take this with a pinch of salt or disregard entirely), the chocolate bars were sometimes shaped differently so as to fit neatly into the dispenser trays. I remember thinking they were quite pricey so the economics of vending machines doesn’t seem to have altered much.

This lead me to thinking about…

Cigarette Machines In Pubs 
Definitely a relic of times gone by especially once the smoking ban came into effect in 2007 (hard to believe that was 12 years ago, isn’t it?). Being a non-smoker type, I never used them (and, being a non-smoker type, I definitely don’t miss spending an evening in a pub or club** meaning that everything I was wearing would be stinking of cigarette smoke the next morning.) but they were a fixture of my formative drinking years.

Of course, thinking about spending time in pubs lead me to…

Those Bits of Cardboard With Peanuts Or Pork Scratchings On Them With A Picture Of A Topless Woman Underneath
The idea being that, as more and more people purchased nuts or scratchings from said board, it would gradually reveal the sort of picture that was, in those days, readily available on Page 3 of The Sun. This is the sort of thing that people bemoan as being “not allowed these days” when, in fact, it’s best consigned the 70s/80s where it belongs. This reminds me more of being in pubs as a youth rather than as a boozer in my own right.

So there you go. A simple nostalgic item in a book that sparked off a trail of nostalgic thoughts. Is it telling that the last item my brain wanderings settled upon involves an image of semi-naked lady? I’ll leave the psycho-analysing up to you...

* Weekday daily, that is

** And by “club”, I generally mean “rock club” or “place where a mate’s band was playing very loudly”

More Than Middle Earth, Not Just Westeros

Literary genres are a funny old thing. There’s a certain snobbishness around anything that isn’t traditional fiction, something set in the “real” world. A certain sense that it’s not worthy if it’s somehow set in a world that is fully created by the author (which feels a little hypocritical given that any fiction is, by its nature, not real). I can understand not enjoying a particular genre - personally, the majority of crime fiction doesn’t hold a lot of appeal (although I did enjoy the Christopher Brookmyre and Mark Billingham books I read) - but it feels as if “serious” literary critics tend to scorn anything that might be associated with the word “genre” (generally used by said critics to mean “of lesser quality”). 

Sci fi predictably suffers from this but some sci fi authors do at least achieve a modicum of literary recognition. The genre that really seems to be left at the bottom of the pile, however, is fantasy. A shame as there are some good fantasy authors out there, not just your Tolkien and George RR Martin who seem to have become the only acceptable fantasy authors. Here are just a few titles / authors that I’ve enjoyed over the years for anyone looking to branch out into some new reading opportunities but unsure where to start.

The Lies Of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
The first in the Gentlemen Bastards sequence, which introduces us to the world of master con man Locke Lamora and his gang of accomplices. The first book interweaves the cons he’s attempting to pull off while expounding upon his backstory, drawing you into a world with some magic (albeit used sparingly, much like in George RR Martin’s work) but very much human focused (no orcs, dwarves and goblins here). So far, there are three books in the series - I’ve read the first two so far.

The Name Of The Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Another series, The Kingkiller Chronicle - a trilogy this time with the first two parts currently available* - in which adventurer, magician and musician Kvothe is telling his life story to a chronicler. It’s in the adventure category and the main character is appealing if somewhat shallow. I enjoyed both books but they do suffer from slightly weak female characterisation - most of the female seem to be there to fall in love with the protagonist.

The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin
First in the Broken Earth series, I’ve just finished reading this and am on to the second book in the (of course) trilogy, The Obelisk Gate. Of them all, this is so far shaping up to be the best of the bunch. The world-building is compelling and the characters are interestingly flawed. The overall mysteries of the storyline, particularly surrounding stone eaters and obelisks, are also keeping me guessing. Jemisin has won several sci fi and fantasy awards for this and rightly so - I’m definitely going to be checking out her other books once I finish.

A couple of recommendations there if you're looking to get into a bit of fantasy writing and either have already read or aren’t ready to launch into Tolkien or Martin.

* This does seem to be a trait with fantasy writers - long waits between books. 

Zarjaz!

I was a wide-eyed and mop-topped youth of a mere seven years old when I was introduced to the many worlds of comic book 2000AD, home to such characters as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper and Nemesis The Warlock*. While I certainly was a fan of these main characters to varying degrees (Judge Dredd and Nemesis being top of the list with Rogue Trooper definitely lower; found him a bit repetitive), I also liked a lot of the lesser known, odder or one-off stories to pass through the pages of this weekly anthology. In the traditional style of this here place of run-off thoughts, here’s an expanded list of some of the ones that I like but which don’t always get the attention.

Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter
An action-comedy series in which downtrodden, cigar-chomping bounty hunter Sam Slade tracks down rogue robots, unably assisted by his idiot robot sidekicks Hoagy and Stogie (the talking cigar). The initial story, Verdus, is a relatively straight-forward action-adventure yarn but it really picks up once it discovers its sense of humour with the second serial, The Day Of The Droids. Also, regular artist Ian Gibson has a pleasing design aesthetic for robots that accents the humour nicely. It was later rebooted twice with one of the reboots being so reviled by fans that it has been pretty much ignored ever since.**

Ace Trucking Co
I absolutely loved this one as a kid. It was full of its own impenetrable lingo (inspired by the popularity of CB radio slang-featuring films such as Smokey And The Bandit), had character with great names like Ace Garp, Jago Kain, Fatty Arkl, Cap’n Evil Blood and Feek The Freek and featured some genuinely alien-looking beings courtesy of Massimo Bellardinelli.

The Stainless Steel Rat
Adapting storylines from three of the first five Harry Harrison books about an interplanetary and his equally deranged family, I read these before getting into the books. It features art by the incomparable late, great Carlos Ezquerra (to me, the definitive Judge Dredd artist - no one draws a chin like Ezquerra) and is a good fun intro to Harrison’s anti-hero.

D.R. And Quinch
Created by Alan Moore of Watchmen, V For Vendetta and The Ballad Of Halo Jones (another 2000AD classic), this is a big departure from pretty much all of his other work, relying largely on over-the-top excessive cartoon violence for comic effect. It really works though and has a real punk feel to feel it, accompanied by artwork from the always excellent Alan Davis.

Given that the comic’s been running for 42 years as of this year, there have been many other enjoyable stories passing through but, if you only seek out a few, give those ones a try.

* For those of you who don’t know what 2000 AD is, it’s one of the few surviving British comics that isn’t simply reprints of American ones. It’s been published weekly since 1977 with stories being told in parts of around 7-8 pages per week and has for the last 28 years been accompanied by a four-weekly Judge Dredd Megazine. Stories are all sci-fi themed. In the late 90s, the comic took a poll to see if it should change its name due to the upcoming arrival of the year 2000 (clearly weren’t expecting it to last that long when they launched it!) but the overwhelming feeling was that the name should stay.

** Said reboot being written by Mark Millar who would later create the comics that inspired Wanted, Kick-Ass and Kingsman so it worked out pretty well for him in the end...

WatchSeeLookView - Oscar Season

Yep, it’s that time of year when all the films get together and have a massive fight that was started by some bloke called Oscar many years ago to see who gets to say they’re the best in the playground (I think that’s what it’s all about anyway, I’ve not really been paying attention). This means that it’s the time of year where there are loads of films to watch that you’re supposed to think are the good ones because Oscar says so (again, I’m not up on the details). Let’s have a gander at some of those films, shall we? Rhetorical question - I’ve done all the gandering so you don’t have to.

(For the purposes of these posts, I’m taking in any film nominated in the following categories:- Best Picture, Best Director, Best (Supporting) Actor, Best (Supporting) Actress, Best Original/Adapted Screenplay, Best Animated Film, Best Foreign Language, Best Documentary Feature. That’s about 20-odd films to pick from, some of which I’ve already seen and talked about on here so will gloss over those ones.)

Green Book
In A Nutshell:- Real life odd couple road trip.
Any Good? It’s a film that is very much built on the strength of the two central performances of Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen as jazz pianist Don Shirley and his Italian American driver Tony Vallelonga. The pair of them are never less than entertaining in the roles and build a convincing on-screen chemistry. Narratively, it treads pretty well-worn territory and, while it does touch upon the race issues on the era, feels like it does so in a fairly lightweight way. Enjoyable certainly and a definite departure for Dumb And Dumber director Peter Farrelly but not one that is likely to linger in the memory.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?
In A Nutshell:- Struggling writer to a successful life of forgery.
Any Good? In a similar fashion to Green Book, another film that is carried on the strength of its two lead performances. Melissa McCarthy is on excellent form as struggling writer Lee Israel who finds herself drawn into forging letters from famous people to make ends meet as is Richard E Grant as her down-and-out drug dealing friend Jack Hock. Other than a slightly cheesy feeling monologue towards the end, it’s another enjoyable film, managing to succeed in making a difficult to like character fairly compelling.

The Favourite
In A Nutshell:- The Oddness Of Queen Anne
Any Good? Certainly is. I’m not normally a fan of period dramas but this has enough of a fresh feel to it to win me over. Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ previous films were pleasingly strange and stylised (to me, at least - I can understand why some don’t enjoy his work, it’s got the Marmite factor) but this is probably his most mainstream effort, although still retaining something of a sense of the strange and absurd. The cast are great too with entertaining supporting turns from the likes of James Smith and Mark Gatiss but, even with strong performances from Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, it’s very much Olivia Colman’s film. As always, she’s on top form. Of the three above. If you’re only gonna watch one of these films, go for this one.

Daniel Kitson - Keep

NOTE:- Here be spoilers - please do not read if you're planning to see it. Seriously, don't read on, just go and watch it.

I’ve only ever seen Daniel Kitson twice before and both times were as a compere at the Greenwich Comedy Festival, a role at which he excelled. For those of you that aren’t familiar with him, Kitson is a stand-up/storyteller/monologist who keeps clear of TV in favour of live performance. He’s often cited by other comedians as being one of their favourite comedians and, based on the strength of the show I saw last night, I can see why*.

Daniel Kitson - Keep

The premise for the show (which finished its run at the Battersea Arts Centre so I don’t feel like I’m spoiling it now) is that, in a departure from his usual comedy shows, Kitson has catalogued every single item within his house on index cards and will sit for two hours reading them out in order. And that’s it. There was certainly a moment of nervousness from the audience as he sat and read through the first book where it looked like this could be what we were in for. However, a reversed card with some other writing on the back disrupts the flow and the show begins to become something else, allowing Kitson to go off on some beautifully phrased tangents about life, love and property as well beginning to reveal another story going on within the show.

For me, I thought the craftsmanship behind the show was superb. Things that are made to appear like unplanned off-the-cuff remarks prior to the show come back around by the end to tie the narrative threads together. I love this sort of attention to detail that rewards you if you’ve been paying attention. There’s an impressive amount physical logistics that goes into the building of the show through the piecing together of cards scattered throughout the card index cabinet. It was also very very funny. Kitson has a lovely turn of phrase (for example his take on privilege being akin to a paper Christmas paper hat in that after a while you forget it’s there but it’s embarrassingly obvious to everyone else) and his musings on life are never less than entertaining.

Having now seen my first full Daniel Kitson show, this will definitely not be the last. He’s got a dedicated fanbase so tickets tend to sell out but if you can get hold of tickets to see one of his shows, I’d thoroughly recommend it.

* Big thanks to The Brother and The Sister-In-Law for the Christmas prezzie (which they also attended!)