Showing posts with label parody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parody. Show all posts

Saturday, 15 November 2014

Ed Miliband and the Kim Kardashian Factor




And here's my Not Safe For Work video and my spontaneous rant about Kim Kardashian's arse, Dr Matt Taylor's so called 'sexist' shirt, Ed Miliband's leadership, culture, populism, art, and the lack of real debate around the Ched Evans story. Partway through the video, I repeat a section of video, so you' not going mad if you think you've seen that before. In the final part of the video, I make comments about the Ched Evans story which I wouldn't wish to be seen as a defense of Ched Evans. I merely ask why celebrity should have any bearing in our forming a decision in any kind of moral debate.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

It's A Sparks Show

Coming soon... It's A Sparks Show: Part 2...


[caption id="attachment_2166" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Sparks - Ron and Russell Mael Click to enlarge[/caption]

This was a comic strip idea that had been rattling around in my head for a long time so I’m glad to have finally sat down and drawn it out. I think drawing this was some kind of penance for once writing to Ron Mael as Stan Madeley (movie frogman) offering to teach him how to scuba dive. He never replied but I can hardly blame him.

I’ve been a big fan of Sparks, possibly from early childhood but, on a conscious level, since I discovered the 'Gratuitous Sax' album yet I consider myself to be far too sane to be one of those 'super fans'. I stood next to a few of them outside Manchester’s Ritz last October when I saw Sparks play live. It was a birthday present otherwise I would have probably missed the tour and missed standing in line with one scary woman who was ready to throw body parts onto the stage if Russell Mael had only looked in her direction. Rather than stand at the front, I crept up to the balcony and, as fate would have it, got one of the few seats in the house (video here). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sparks will come back to Manchester around October when they do another live tour later in the year. The evening was sublime.

Next to seeing the Ralph Steadman exhibition or going to the Fringe to see Stuart Lee and Baconface, a Sparks concert could be another highlight of that fantasy year when I actually earn money for my cartoons/books and can actually afford to see all the things I want to see.

Looking back at this strip, there are things I could have done much better. I mainly read underground comics so I love roughly framing, though, doing this again, I perhaps  wouldn’t make it quite as rough. Some of the crosshatching was also rushed. Yet there are parts of this I really like. Learning to draw cartoons is all about constant practice. I didn’t want to spend too long on this, though I’ve not drawn two A4 sheets for quite a while. Anyway, success or failure, this is one of those things I draw for myself. The monkey at the end amuses me enormously and I've not stopped smiling all day.

Saturday, 25 May 2013

The Verbal Diarrhoea of Russell Brand

Russell Brand

Written very late last nightas a response to the sensible people criticising Brand for his inability to write and the fools who think he’s some kind of literary genius.

Avast, ye scurvy naughtlings! What bilious envy do you pontificate over the writings of that fine mustard of a man? Why, Mr Brand’s idiomatic yarns are but the simplest to unpick. Like a flea in th’codpiece, it is but a scratch and a wiggle before the meaning ‘tis squished between finger and thumb. Consider: ’tis one part fine manly prose, loquacious with an ear for the rambling uppings and downings of our linguistic land, another part which devolves thusly into a kind of streetwise strutting of the ordinary, you know, speech, winkle-picked and ready for the shell-like, with bits that just hang, like, off the drooping end…

For each questing for the lingual Jabberwock, as if to demonstrate ample learning of the English vernacular, we shall have one mention of a wookie, won’t we, and of sagely Alec Guinness, using the Force, giving it a good old go for Blighty and all that. And with this light-sabre thrust of pop culture, we show like Russell is one of the lads, which he is, ain’t he?

That odd old bird Anthony Burgess would have trilled most lively at words put into most periphrastic utterances of bubbling froth. Ah, sweet Russell, so long as the dirty rozzers don’t feel your collar for suspected homicide of the mother tongue, you shall find much riches, like dosh, in this handbill, this flyer, this chip wrapper of the morrow’s morn! Like a modern Beckett (Samuel) or Joyce (James), you shake the tree and the most chucklesome fruit does land on your bonce and having read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ one too many times, words spring forth like large ladies in Spandex doing interpretive dance in aid of the lactose intolerant. Does anybody see your trick? Do they bonkers like for ’tis a merry jest signifying, like Dame Bonnie last week, nil points or as near to nil as make a good old bird warble!

Lastly, The Guardian should be lauded for giving use to you in these meaningful issues of the day, for employing a geeza who sprachen our language, know what I mean? Well it is, aint’ it? The ladies love him too, his tight pants swollen hot like some well-busty member of Corrie, which I don’t watch but you’ve got to mention to inculpate one’s loyalty to soapland. But I fear I ramble on too far, though that too is the charm of our liege lord of the ringlets and curls, for he writes at lengh cos it’s a protracted old trajectory from Beverley Hills, swimming pools, movie stars, a reference, if you were twigging, to that old TV periodical, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, which (note to self), Russell should remake, but Cockney-like, perhaps playing young Ned in tight white jeans, sexy full of the honey for Miss Jane Hathaway, who was a proper plain bird but he wouldn’t mind having a go if it were played by Keira Knightley who he of course fancies.

But enough! Unlike some bewhiskered types I could eyeball, this humble player is not paid a dime a word. Nor can he find favour in the right places to put his skills to use. Alas, alack, and cor blimey!

 

Tuesday, 5 June 2012

Fergie in 'Squeaky Bum Time'



Okay, so I'm still new to this stuff. Learning to draw is a lot easier than learning to animate. It might seem that I abandoned this blog for a week but that’s the time it took me to get this working. It's my fourth attempt at an animation and probably involved far too much time and energy given the end result but it's definitely a process of trial and error. I’m also spending so much time learning to get things moving on the screen, that the script is probably a little basic. So apologies if you expected high satire. There are a few parts of this I’d like to do again (the movements of the body are a little rough) but I want to move on to try something new and with a little more wit.