One of the reasons I always enjoy watching Glastonbury is that it introduces me to music I wouldn't normally listen to. Friday night, I settled down and watched the BBC2 late night show, not knowing what I was going to see but unsurprised that I found so much to like. Though they're not a band I've ever listened to except, perhaps, at a previous Glastonbury, Florence and the Machines surprised me with a fantastic set. It might have been a bit happy clappy for my tastes and all that nonsense about grabbing the person next to them sounded like the prelude to charges of public groping but, as headlining acts go, it was impressive. Florence earned an extra fan on that performance alone and should clearly be promoted to a proper headline slot at a future festival.
Even more impressive, to my ears, were the bands that came after. Wolf Alice really seriously impressed me with their thick grungy sound. I then found myself doing a Google search for Sharon Van Etten after a good solo performance on the BBC stage. Hot Chip were good but I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to buy an album but the opposite is true of the Kasai Allstars. The Allstars were sublime and precisely the kind of thing that sticks in my mind as being the very best of Glastonbury. Not sure what it says about Glastonbury being a music festival when they performed to a relative small crowd but they made a fantastic sound and conveyed real passion for their music that transcended language. Definitely a highlight of the festival so far.
Not performing to a small crowd last night was Kanye West. I'd read somewhere that Ron Mael (of Sparks and currently FFS) said that he was a fan of West. I couldn't tell if Ron was serious or not but I thought this was a chance for me to see what West is about. I went into it not knowing a thing about West except that he's married to a Kardashian about whom I know even less except for the 'break in the internet' photo of last year. I have never ever heard Kanye West's music. I don't know his back story except that I know that he has a high opinion of himself and some people have protested his invite to Glastonbury.
I watched the entire Kanye set and, I confess, it was a struggle. The person I was watching it with even had to leave the room after I said I'd like to see it through to the end. The performance was making her so angry. I shared the sentiment but I knew I wanted to write something about it today and it seemed only fair to watch the entire thing before making a judgement.
It began well. Visually the single figure of West under the bank of lights was striking. West's backing tapes (no sign of any musicians in any of this) were catchy but that was true throughout. Perhaps I'm not postmodern enough to appreciate this but I'm not entirely sure you can claim to be a musical genius when the best parts of your act are samples ripped from catchy songs of the past.
After a strong beginning, the performance settled into a pattern and really didn't develop. The lights would change occasionally but the whole thing was either a muffled rap or a middle of the road soulful croon. The crooning was better than the rapping but I wish I could say something about the lyrics which were largely incomprehensible to me and hard on the ears. Nearly everything was pushed through some kind of vocoder, which too often made him sound like a dolphin farting in a bathtub. Occasional phrases stuck out but it was usually the word which caused Jeremy Clarkson no end of trouble when he was thought to have barely muttered it a year or so ago. Last night, the BBC delighted in the fact the word was broadcast a few hundred times and at one point was being chanted by the crowd. It's a point that's not always picked up and I do wonder if critics are right when they argue that West is given a far easier time by a largely white press who are so desperate to emphasis their liberal credentials they won't condemn a performer who is crass, disrespectful of his audience, and utterly unworthy of praise.
Not that bad language bothers me and I've heard much worse. Yet what really bothered me was the sheer banality of the performance. The worst thing you can do as a Glastonbury headlining act is be boring but Kanye West was precisely that. I've never been so bored watching a so-called 'superstar'. Perhaps I'm just old but I doubt if that's it. I like difficult sounds. I embrace challenging music. This wasn't even that. It was just bad music and far below the standards of Glastonbury, which elsewhere is a serious music festival for people serious about their music.
One other point: I've never seen such a grumpy person in the business of entertaining people. He stopped songs perhaps two or three times, occasionally muttering rebukes to his team. He seemed constantly unhappy yet at the same time believing that he really is the 'the greatest living rock star on the planet'. I hope to God he was saying that with his tongue firmly in his cheek because, in truth, he wasn't even the greatest living rock star at Glastonbury. I'm not even sure he was the greatest living rock star on that stage.
The whole evening was perhaps best summed up when the gawping fool Gemma Cairney came back on screen and was breathless with praise for what we'd just watched. She praised him for being unpredictable (being hoisted into the air on a cherry picker being an example of that) but what I saw was a performance only remarkable because it was completely unremarkable. If you want stage presence and invention, go watch the last song of the Kasai Allstars' set as they all mount an invisible motorbike and dance off the stage.
I've written before about Cairney being the most high profile representative of a new brainless BBC but her performances at Glastonbury usually sets a new standard for being witless. I'm sure she has equally witless defenders inside the corporation who believe she appeals to an important demographic but any demographic that identifies with Cairney is a demographic that needs immediate remedial help and checking for brain leaches. She splutters and gasps and groans in the place where you'd hope for words and each appearance makes you seriously wonder if the BBC aren't suffering an outbreak of the living dead. If you do a Google search for her videos, you come up with her playing 'Innuendo Bingo' on Radio One, which I'd not seen before but pretty much sums up this lamentable side of Aunty Beeb's attempts to appeal to 'yoof'. It involves two people, mouths filled with water, poised over a dustbin. The presenter then plays clips from shows containing filthy double entendres and the point of the game is to avoid laughing. Of course, the player who doesn't laugh will get the other person's mouthful of water spat into their face.
Spitting water in somebody's face is about the level of Gemma Cairney's skills as a presenter. She might be ideally suited (and, indeed, I think she is) to children's TV, but anybody over the age of 13 must get slightly pissed off at her infantile style. 'Gormless' is the phrase that keeps coming to mind when she speaks. She has a wide eyed passion for everything, as though seeing everything for the first time, but it quickly turns into a spluttering inarticulate shower of stupidity and I find it hard not to turn it off.
She's the worst aspect of the BBC's otherwise superlative coverage. They don't cover any event with quite the same brilliance as they do Glastonbury. They have presenters like Jo Whiley, Mark Radcliffe and Lauren Laverne who are simply stunningly good at their job because they match their knowledge of music with genuine wit and a relaxed presenting style. Yet the whole thing is brought to its knees by Cairney who seems to be there only because the BBC are desperate to get the affirmation of the dumbest segment of its audience. If the BBC ever lose the license fee, it will because people like Cairney have radically undermined what the BBC should represent. The license fee can only be justified if it's a tax we pay to produce a cultural product that sets a higher standard for thought and action than would be possible when striving to be competitive in the commercial marketplace. Cairney doesn't even aspire to a mediocre standard for thought and action. She makes you resent putting money in her pocket. Her inverted donkey laughter is like the death knell of the BBC. It leaves you wondering how much the BBC pay this fool and how we can demand a portion of our license fee back.
Now, I'm off to finish watching today's set by Patti Smith. So far she's been everything that Kanye West wasn't last night.
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Monday, 22 June 2015
ABC's New Series of Battlebots: Reviewed Through English Eyes
I geeked myself out tonight, though I had to scour the web to do it in a way that was probably a little bit wrong. I got to glimpse the first episode of Battlebots, the returning ABC show that will probably never get shown here in the UK. From what I've seen, they have four fifths of a remarkable show and one fifth of something that deserves to be dumped somewhere mid-Atlantic.
The great four fifths are the robots, the robot builders, the crowd, and the arena. Look closely and these are people who love robots and the technology behind robots. I say with a note of pride that these people are geeks. They're the kids who didn't fit in at school because they were in love with servo motors and engineering schematics. These are the kids who organized their own tournaments and then went home to watch Mythbusters and other shows made specifically for them. They are, in other words, my kind of people. They're the people that the website Tested is built for and it was over at Tested that I first learned about the new series of Battlebots. I'd watched Norman Chan's interviews with all the builders and I was as excited to see the first episode as I was also frustrated to know that I might not see it.
Thankfully, in the dark corners of the web, ghosts of these shows persist long enough that non-Americans can see them if we look hard enough and, like I said, I loved four fifths of what I saw.
Yet that leaves one fifth of the show I've not mentioned. That one fifth is the presenters and they really do bring the whole thing down.
I don't understand why a show aimed at geeks and powered by geeks should be hosted by what, in the American vernacular, are 'jocks'. These are the most anodyne of American TV presenters, more bull than brains. They are drivel-spouting cliches of the worst kind. One (Kenny Florian) is an 'MMA Star', whatever the hell that means but I'm guess it means that he beats people up for a living. Not very 'geek' at all. Another is Chris Rose, apparently a professional sports presenter, which explains why he's so big, loud and grating. He only needed to say 'they've poured blood, sweat and gears into this' before I wanted to attack my own forehead with an electric drill.
This for me is the sad part of what could be a great show. The first episode had the robot Plan 9, built by Lisa Winter who I remember from robot battles of the past when she was a precocious young gear-head driving a bug shaped robot. Since then, Lisa has grown up. Her hair has turned pink and she's now covered by tattoos. So, okay, I'm not a fan of tattoos myself but I can sometimes make an exception when it's part of that West Coat hipster vibe. I don't like tattoos on anybody but I like people who are themselves and unique. Even if you could argue that the hipster look is itself now derivative, the people who have it tend to be interesting, articulate, and intelligent. Winter is no different. When she speaks, she does so without resorting to scripted banalities. She is a great representative of the culture from which battling robots has emerged. It's one of the parts of the America I love. It's the good bit of a sometimes terrifying and depressing nation.
Sadly, that erudite, witty, individual culture is here being enveloped by something that's utterly mainstream and as ugly as hell. The main host is Molly McGrath who is as far from Lisa Winter as you could get. McGrath is toned and tanned to TV perfection. She's got a great smile and legs that go well past her knees. She articulates her phrases unlike anything you hear in real life. She knows how to stand in the highest high heels and her dress is slightly transparent so you can really see how far those leg go. She's a geek's dream girl, stunning yet in a totally artificial way you've seen a thousand times before and which means that, really, she isn't stunning at all. Lisa Winter is stunning because Lisa Winter is individual and creative and representative of a younger generation doing their own thing in the outlands beyond the mainstream.
And that's what I take from the first episode of Battlebots. It's a geek festival being taken over and ruined by the professional athletes and the professional presenters, who were the very people the geeks of the world wanted to escape back when they went off to do their own thing in high school. Even more than the sound of metal upon metal, the most grating thing about Battlebots is that somebody somewhere thought we needed those meatheads to justify the competition. It's the corporate mainstream glitz and misguided 'professionalism' that actually brings Battlebots down from the lofty heights it might have reached had it a little self-awareness. Perhaps it's just because I'm English that I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of overly produced American TV but had Battlebots been on the BBC, with the same people and the same production values, it might not have had quite so many flashing lights and braying asses for hosts. It might have had a few more wits and, like Top Gear, it might have taken over the globe and List Winter would rightly be its star. I'll definitely try to catch the rest of the series but, geek though I am to the last fibre of my being, a lot of this is really not for me.
The great four fifths are the robots, the robot builders, the crowd, and the arena. Look closely and these are people who love robots and the technology behind robots. I say with a note of pride that these people are geeks. They're the kids who didn't fit in at school because they were in love with servo motors and engineering schematics. These are the kids who organized their own tournaments and then went home to watch Mythbusters and other shows made specifically for them. They are, in other words, my kind of people. They're the people that the website Tested is built for and it was over at Tested that I first learned about the new series of Battlebots. I'd watched Norman Chan's interviews with all the builders and I was as excited to see the first episode as I was also frustrated to know that I might not see it.
Thankfully, in the dark corners of the web, ghosts of these shows persist long enough that non-Americans can see them if we look hard enough and, like I said, I loved four fifths of what I saw.
Yet that leaves one fifth of the show I've not mentioned. That one fifth is the presenters and they really do bring the whole thing down.
I don't understand why a show aimed at geeks and powered by geeks should be hosted by what, in the American vernacular, are 'jocks'. These are the most anodyne of American TV presenters, more bull than brains. They are drivel-spouting cliches of the worst kind. One (Kenny Florian) is an 'MMA Star', whatever the hell that means but I'm guess it means that he beats people up for a living. Not very 'geek' at all. Another is Chris Rose, apparently a professional sports presenter, which explains why he's so big, loud and grating. He only needed to say 'they've poured blood, sweat and gears into this' before I wanted to attack my own forehead with an electric drill.
This for me is the sad part of what could be a great show. The first episode had the robot Plan 9, built by Lisa Winter who I remember from robot battles of the past when she was a precocious young gear-head driving a bug shaped robot. Since then, Lisa has grown up. Her hair has turned pink and she's now covered by tattoos. So, okay, I'm not a fan of tattoos myself but I can sometimes make an exception when it's part of that West Coat hipster vibe. I don't like tattoos on anybody but I like people who are themselves and unique. Even if you could argue that the hipster look is itself now derivative, the people who have it tend to be interesting, articulate, and intelligent. Winter is no different. When she speaks, she does so without resorting to scripted banalities. She is a great representative of the culture from which battling robots has emerged. It's one of the parts of the America I love. It's the good bit of a sometimes terrifying and depressing nation.
Sadly, that erudite, witty, individual culture is here being enveloped by something that's utterly mainstream and as ugly as hell. The main host is Molly McGrath who is as far from Lisa Winter as you could get. McGrath is toned and tanned to TV perfection. She's got a great smile and legs that go well past her knees. She articulates her phrases unlike anything you hear in real life. She knows how to stand in the highest high heels and her dress is slightly transparent so you can really see how far those leg go. She's a geek's dream girl, stunning yet in a totally artificial way you've seen a thousand times before and which means that, really, she isn't stunning at all. Lisa Winter is stunning because Lisa Winter is individual and creative and representative of a younger generation doing their own thing in the outlands beyond the mainstream.
And that's what I take from the first episode of Battlebots. It's a geek festival being taken over and ruined by the professional athletes and the professional presenters, who were the very people the geeks of the world wanted to escape back when they went off to do their own thing in high school. Even more than the sound of metal upon metal, the most grating thing about Battlebots is that somebody somewhere thought we needed those meatheads to justify the competition. It's the corporate mainstream glitz and misguided 'professionalism' that actually brings Battlebots down from the lofty heights it might have reached had it a little self-awareness. Perhaps it's just because I'm English that I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of overly produced American TV but had Battlebots been on the BBC, with the same people and the same production values, it might not have had quite so many flashing lights and braying asses for hosts. It might have had a few more wits and, like Top Gear, it might have taken over the globe and List Winter would rightly be its star. I'll definitely try to catch the rest of the series but, geek though I am to the last fibre of my being, a lot of this is really not for me.
Saturday, 20 June 2015
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Celebrating Uwe Boll Day
I'm celebrating World Uwe Boll Day but perhaps you don't recognise the festival. Perhaps you don't even recognise Uwe Boll.
Boll is a film director who is widely regarded as one of the worst in the business.
Of course, that's a lazy assumption to make simply because it's such a popular assumption. Very few people who actually criticise Boll have probably seen a Boll movie. Yet they say he's bad and laugh at him because that's currently very much in vogue.
Yet even if Boll deserves his reputation, I sometimes suspect he might actually be quite a good director but other reasons make his films so bad. Possibly one reason is his ego. He makes low budget movies despite having ambitions that match those of James Cameron. Boll has tended to make films where he's somehow managed to snag the rights to a popular video game, meaning that audiences recognise the title of their much beloved game and then wonder how the hell the results could turn out so bad. 'Alone in the Dark' was a great series of computer games but Boll's 'Alone in the Dark' the movie is something else entirely. He made the film version of the notorious video game, 'Postal', a nasty little game in which you play the role of a postman going 'postal'. However, the film version is supposedly a dark satire on modern culture and some people rate it.
The thing is: when a film is as low budget as Boll's films tend, it isn't really all that significant when they get low scores like 3 and 4 on IMDB. Most low budget films do. They simple can't compete with Hollywood. The significant thing is when they actually get scores around 6 or above.
Yet the question of Boll's talent are often set aside because Boll is something more than just a film maker. He's an internet meme. He's a symbol of something that the masses can mock without mercy. He is the struggling hack or artist (the distinctions are sometimes hard to see) whose efforts can easily be ridiculed. This is largely down to Boll's character. Boll is very vocal and that ego I mentioned has no qualms about attacking his critics. He famously challenged any critic to a round of boxing a few years back. He's also notorious for his regular attacks on the Hollywood machine.
Now, even though I've never sat through a Boll film, I do have some sympathy for the guy because he genuinely seems to love what he does. His ego is a hardened bulwark against which the world's critics smash themselves with delighted fury. Uwe Boll is the easy target and, in that sense, I even admire him for being so solid despite the attacks. I don't know what the ratio is of critics to creators but I should imagine it's pretty high. The world is full of critics.
Yesterday, I saw the videos that Boll has recorded in response to his latest Kickstarter attempt to get funding for a new film. The thing is: people laugh at Boll and mock him but, I think, what Boll is expressing should be familiar to anybody who struggles to get recognition for their work. Hell, it's how I feel most days as I put long hours into what I believe are genuinely worthwhile projects. Perhaps it wasn't wise of Boll to say those things on camera but that lack of restraint is the very reason why Boll has become notorious. These videos will further enhance his reputation as a person worthy of people's scorn. To me, however, they make me feel sorry for Boll because I feel sorry for anybody who tries to be creative hard in this world and is routinely turned on (or simply ignored) by the masses who have never once tried to be creative.
As we're seeing across the Middle East, it takes only a moment to destroy something that has taken another person a lifetime to create. It seems to very unfair and terribly one sided. It actually makes me thankful that Uwe Boll is there as an example of resilience and self-belief. Don't get me wrong: he's wrong about a lot of things. He was just dumb to single out George Clooney who, despite the media's obsessions with his good looks, is actually turning into a very fine writer and director. Where Boll isn't wrong, however, is in being passionate. In a world of cynics, naysayers, and general indifference, we probably need a few more Uwe Bolls to stand up and say they believe in what they're doing. The alternative is a bland singularity of corporate messages and rehashed franchises.
Boll is a film director who is widely regarded as one of the worst in the business.
Of course, that's a lazy assumption to make simply because it's such a popular assumption. Very few people who actually criticise Boll have probably seen a Boll movie. Yet they say he's bad and laugh at him because that's currently very much in vogue.
Yet even if Boll deserves his reputation, I sometimes suspect he might actually be quite a good director but other reasons make his films so bad. Possibly one reason is his ego. He makes low budget movies despite having ambitions that match those of James Cameron. Boll has tended to make films where he's somehow managed to snag the rights to a popular video game, meaning that audiences recognise the title of their much beloved game and then wonder how the hell the results could turn out so bad. 'Alone in the Dark' was a great series of computer games but Boll's 'Alone in the Dark' the movie is something else entirely. He made the film version of the notorious video game, 'Postal', a nasty little game in which you play the role of a postman going 'postal'. However, the film version is supposedly a dark satire on modern culture and some people rate it.
The thing is: when a film is as low budget as Boll's films tend, it isn't really all that significant when they get low scores like 3 and 4 on IMDB. Most low budget films do. They simple can't compete with Hollywood. The significant thing is when they actually get scores around 6 or above.
Yet the question of Boll's talent are often set aside because Boll is something more than just a film maker. He's an internet meme. He's a symbol of something that the masses can mock without mercy. He is the struggling hack or artist (the distinctions are sometimes hard to see) whose efforts can easily be ridiculed. This is largely down to Boll's character. Boll is very vocal and that ego I mentioned has no qualms about attacking his critics. He famously challenged any critic to a round of boxing a few years back. He's also notorious for his regular attacks on the Hollywood machine.
Now, even though I've never sat through a Boll film, I do have some sympathy for the guy because he genuinely seems to love what he does. His ego is a hardened bulwark against which the world's critics smash themselves with delighted fury. Uwe Boll is the easy target and, in that sense, I even admire him for being so solid despite the attacks. I don't know what the ratio is of critics to creators but I should imagine it's pretty high. The world is full of critics.
Yesterday, I saw the videos that Boll has recorded in response to his latest Kickstarter attempt to get funding for a new film. The thing is: people laugh at Boll and mock him but, I think, what Boll is expressing should be familiar to anybody who struggles to get recognition for their work. Hell, it's how I feel most days as I put long hours into what I believe are genuinely worthwhile projects. Perhaps it wasn't wise of Boll to say those things on camera but that lack of restraint is the very reason why Boll has become notorious. These videos will further enhance his reputation as a person worthy of people's scorn. To me, however, they make me feel sorry for Boll because I feel sorry for anybody who tries to be creative hard in this world and is routinely turned on (or simply ignored) by the masses who have never once tried to be creative.
As we're seeing across the Middle East, it takes only a moment to destroy something that has taken another person a lifetime to create. It seems to very unfair and terribly one sided. It actually makes me thankful that Uwe Boll is there as an example of resilience and self-belief. Don't get me wrong: he's wrong about a lot of things. He was just dumb to single out George Clooney who, despite the media's obsessions with his good looks, is actually turning into a very fine writer and director. Where Boll isn't wrong, however, is in being passionate. In a world of cynics, naysayers, and general indifference, we probably need a few more Uwe Bolls to stand up and say they believe in what they're doing. The alternative is a bland singularity of corporate messages and rehashed franchises.
Tuesday, 9 June 2015
Did somebody forget about Sir Barry Humphries?
So it's confirmed. It's going to be Sir Lenny Henry.
Oh, give me a break! If Henry is worthy of a knighthood then I guess the Chuckle Brothers get peerages.
Seriously: the worst comedian in the UK gets one of the highest honours? Put that into context: Armando Iannucci has an OBE but Lenny Henry will soon have a knighthood. The man who brought us 'The Thick of It' and 'Alan Partridge' is less acclaimed by the (supposed) nation than quite possibly the most derisible comedian we've seen since the heyday of crap comedians back in the 1970s.
What about the truly great comedians we have eligible for that award? Barry Humphries only got a CBE in 2007 when he deserves a hell of a lot more. I mean: it's BARRY HUMPHRIES, for Christ's sake!
Poor Spike Milligan (one of our truly great comedians) had to hit 82 before they knighted him. And what about the Pythons? Any one of them is more worthy, though I hear that Cleese once turned down a peerage. What about making Terry Gilliam a 'Sir' for services to cinema, comedy and the general state of the nation's mental health?
I won't be calling Lenny Henry a 'sir' any time soon. It's almost as ridiculous as 'Dame' Joan Collins.
It reminds me why I'm really glad to have quit public blogging. The British public clearly have different tastes to me.
Oh, give me a break! If Henry is worthy of a knighthood then I guess the Chuckle Brothers get peerages.
Seriously: the worst comedian in the UK gets one of the highest honours? Put that into context: Armando Iannucci has an OBE but Lenny Henry will soon have a knighthood. The man who brought us 'The Thick of It' and 'Alan Partridge' is less acclaimed by the (supposed) nation than quite possibly the most derisible comedian we've seen since the heyday of crap comedians back in the 1970s.
What about the truly great comedians we have eligible for that award? Barry Humphries only got a CBE in 2007 when he deserves a hell of a lot more. I mean: it's BARRY HUMPHRIES, for Christ's sake!
Poor Spike Milligan (one of our truly great comedians) had to hit 82 before they knighted him. And what about the Pythons? Any one of them is more worthy, though I hear that Cleese once turned down a peerage. What about making Terry Gilliam a 'Sir' for services to cinema, comedy and the general state of the nation's mental health?
I won't be calling Lenny Henry a 'sir' any time soon. It's almost as ridiculous as 'Dame' Joan Collins.
It reminds me why I'm really glad to have quit public blogging. The British public clearly have different tastes to me.
Friday, 5 June 2015
Were my readers ever real?
Over the past few months, I noticed certain trends on this blog. I notice certain 'people' visiting regularly and it gave me a reassuring sense that some of you were real. Of course, I never heard from many of those 'regulars'. I'd just look at my stats and think 'oh, that person from Eastern Europe is visiting again' or 'it's the reader in Paris' or 'the Ukraine'.
I decided to move to a private blog hoping that those regulars would come visit and become new regulars over there. A couple have but not that many. Certainly, not enough to justify the existence of this blog but enough to justify the existence of that other blog, which is written solely for real people to enjoy. I'd rather entertain one person I know that a 1000 people who might be specters of the web, robots, spiders, web scrapers...
What's odd is that despite not blogging here for days, I still see the hits coming from those 'regulars', which makes me wonder if they really ever existed. Might they just be machines, programmed to hit the blog, for reasons unknown? It's like they have a routine which doesn't adapt to my disappearance.
On days when my private blog is quiet, I miss having those regular hits but, the truth is that I don't miss having fake regulars. I don't want to be speaking only to machines. I wanted people who actually thought this blog was worth reading.
I suppose I always wrote this blog out of a sense of despair, even loneliness. I genuinely relish having human contact with intelligent people. I want to share the things I do with real people of a similar mind. Well, sod it. I've issued an invite and anybody who asked, got the password to the new blog. The thing is, you specters of the web: I really am blogging privately. Everything that used to go here for all is now behind a wall. Knock on the door if you're real. Otherwise, I refuse to believe that you even exist.
I decided to move to a private blog hoping that those regulars would come visit and become new regulars over there. A couple have but not that many. Certainly, not enough to justify the existence of this blog but enough to justify the existence of that other blog, which is written solely for real people to enjoy. I'd rather entertain one person I know that a 1000 people who might be specters of the web, robots, spiders, web scrapers...
What's odd is that despite not blogging here for days, I still see the hits coming from those 'regulars', which makes me wonder if they really ever existed. Might they just be machines, programmed to hit the blog, for reasons unknown? It's like they have a routine which doesn't adapt to my disappearance.
On days when my private blog is quiet, I miss having those regular hits but, the truth is that I don't miss having fake regulars. I don't want to be speaking only to machines. I wanted people who actually thought this blog was worth reading.
I suppose I always wrote this blog out of a sense of despair, even loneliness. I genuinely relish having human contact with intelligent people. I want to share the things I do with real people of a similar mind. Well, sod it. I've issued an invite and anybody who asked, got the password to the new blog. The thing is, you specters of the web: I really am blogging privately. Everything that used to go here for all is now behind a wall. Knock on the door if you're real. Otherwise, I refuse to believe that you even exist.
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
Blogging is fun again...
... but I'm not blogging here. If you're a regular and still wonder where I am, I'm elsewhere. My invite is still open to regulars who want to drop in but I need to send you a password to allow you past the snarling guard dogs. Email me. Introduce yourself if I don't know you already.
Tuesday, 26 May 2015
The Art of Cheating At Caricature
Really too tired tonight to make this a polished blog post full of clean prose. Besides, the following was an experiment; the kind of dumb exercise I often find myself attempting over a bank holiday weekend.
It began on Saturday afternoon. I'd been browsing the web and I followed a link that took me to the webpage of a fairly well-known illustrator. I had a look through his celebrated caricatures, which were all truly brilliant, yet I'd also noticed something strange about them. I though I recognised a few of the faces.
Now, that shouldn't be odd. He was drawing famous people so I would obviously know the faces. Yet it's wasn't that I knew the faces as much as I recognised the faces as they'd been originally photographed. A few minutes of googling later and I'd confirmed my suspicion. They might have been pulled and squeezed a little but they were exactly the same as the original photos. I was pretty sure that the bugger cheats!*
I couldn't be certain, of course, and I'm still not certain. However, having spent a little time looking into the work of other digital caricaturists, I realised that cheating might not be as uncommon as I first suspected. There are dozens of the little buggers out there making a nice little fortune by using this technique. I therefore set myself a challenge. Not having done anything like this before, I set out to cheat.
I began by spending Saturday afternoon painting a caricature of Michael Gove. After a couple of hours, I had this... And believe me when I say that I hand painted every single detail. Click the image to see it bigger. You can see my brush stokes and the places I missed.
Now, I didn't have time to finish the tie and, frankly, wasn't sure what to do with it at this point. So I thought I'd try another, this time of Syria's Assad, which I finished sitting in a hospital cafe this morning. Yes, it really is that basic a technique. There's really no skill involved. With the Assad picture, I was much less careful about colouring in the patches. I rushed it with no concern for the 'art'. I just wanted to test the method. This is the result:
Normally I don't really care too much about using technology to help the process of creating something. I use spell checkers when writing and (much to the disgust of Stu), I use tippex when drawing cartoons in ink. Yet these two paintings genuinely make me feel so ashamed that I haven't (and won't) even bother signing them.
But let me explain the method, though it's so obvious and straightforward that you've probably figured it out already. I found two high quality images on the web and loaded them into Photoshop. I then applied the Liquify filter and followed the usual rules of caricature to distort the faces. In the case of the second, I then created a standard mock up of Assad with a noose around his neck and lifted the hand from Austin Powers (no more than ten minutes work). I then load it into a painting program and use the colour picker to pick the colour of an area which I then painted over with not much care. Rinse and repeat for a couple of hours and bingo. You get results like the above. In the case of the Assad, I used a blending tool to smooth out the patches. I also added the background myself after the original proved too difficult to copy. It accounts for the fact that it's the most amateur bit of the painting.
Now, some people would say this isn't cheating but I beg to differ. Is my effort of a few hours that much different to my simply applying a Photoshop paint-effect filter to my original composition which took about ten seconds?
Yet I guess people will say that I'm being harsh and perhaps I am. A few of the people who I suspect of using this technique do so as a start and their finished results can look spectacular to the point that they can take your breath away. And perhaps that's all that matters. Teller & Penn (the director should get the first credit, I think) made a brilliant documentary last year called 'Tim's Vermeer' which detailed how a non-artist could create 'great art' using a relatively simply mechanical process. Do people say Vermeer was any less talented an artist simply because he copied directly from nature?
Having said that, I personally don't like it. I know I could improve the technique if I invested more time into it. I could adapt it to produce more 'painterly' or stylized effects. Yet I can't help but feel that whilst they look impressive, they're somehow hollow once you know how they're done. In future, I think I'll stick to drawing my caricatures the way I've been learning for the past few years. I'd rather fail trying to learn the techniques of Gerald Scarfe or Al Hirschfeld than succeed by turning myself into a copying machine. I prefer my results won by hard work, trial and error, and plenty of mistakes. I just know that the next time I see one of those amazing caricatures you often see on the cover of magazine and newspapers, I'll be a little more suspicious about how they came into existence.
* 'Cheating' is, I know, a strong word. Perhaps you feel like it's also the wrong word but, for me, I think it's correct. Unless you admit to painting over a photograph, you are giving people the belief that you've achieved your results through your own skills. That's not to say none of the finished product is without skill but the 'likeness' is the caricaturist's most prized 'skill'. Getting a likeness is the hardest part of the artist's craft, especially when pulling the face into contorted shapes. Gerald Scarfe is a genius because he can do that more than any other artist. If you're achieving the same through a mechanical process,** then I think it's correct to call it 'cheating'. If you're not cheating but producing amazing results, then congratulations: you really are a true artist.
** Of course, there's a second question. What constitutes a mechanical process? Does beginning with a grid count as mechanical? Well, I guess it does but this is about scale. All art is (or should be) about the craft and a craft is a mechanical process. A grid can still go wrong. It takes skill to make it work. Even a lightbox takes some effort to produce reasonable results. However, simply painting over a painting, using a colour picker to ensure exact colours is something else entirely. A machine could do it and often does it when applying filter effects. The only difference between that and a person doing it is that the human brings a degree of incompetence to the copying, producing a more random effect, which makes it look hand drawn. It's our human inexactitude that makes the deception all the greater.
It began on Saturday afternoon. I'd been browsing the web and I followed a link that took me to the webpage of a fairly well-known illustrator. I had a look through his celebrated caricatures, which were all truly brilliant, yet I'd also noticed something strange about them. I though I recognised a few of the faces.
Now, that shouldn't be odd. He was drawing famous people so I would obviously know the faces. Yet it's wasn't that I knew the faces as much as I recognised the faces as they'd been originally photographed. A few minutes of googling later and I'd confirmed my suspicion. They might have been pulled and squeezed a little but they were exactly the same as the original photos. I was pretty sure that the bugger cheats!*
I couldn't be certain, of course, and I'm still not certain. However, having spent a little time looking into the work of other digital caricaturists, I realised that cheating might not be as uncommon as I first suspected. There are dozens of the little buggers out there making a nice little fortune by using this technique. I therefore set myself a challenge. Not having done anything like this before, I set out to cheat.
I began by spending Saturday afternoon painting a caricature of Michael Gove. After a couple of hours, I had this... And believe me when I say that I hand painted every single detail. Click the image to see it bigger. You can see my brush stokes and the places I missed.
Now, I didn't have time to finish the tie and, frankly, wasn't sure what to do with it at this point. So I thought I'd try another, this time of Syria's Assad, which I finished sitting in a hospital cafe this morning. Yes, it really is that basic a technique. There's really no skill involved. With the Assad picture, I was much less careful about colouring in the patches. I rushed it with no concern for the 'art'. I just wanted to test the method. This is the result:
Normally I don't really care too much about using technology to help the process of creating something. I use spell checkers when writing and (much to the disgust of Stu), I use tippex when drawing cartoons in ink. Yet these two paintings genuinely make me feel so ashamed that I haven't (and won't) even bother signing them.
But let me explain the method, though it's so obvious and straightforward that you've probably figured it out already. I found two high quality images on the web and loaded them into Photoshop. I then applied the Liquify filter and followed the usual rules of caricature to distort the faces. In the case of the second, I then created a standard mock up of Assad with a noose around his neck and lifted the hand from Austin Powers (no more than ten minutes work). I then load it into a painting program and use the colour picker to pick the colour of an area which I then painted over with not much care. Rinse and repeat for a couple of hours and bingo. You get results like the above. In the case of the Assad, I used a blending tool to smooth out the patches. I also added the background myself after the original proved too difficult to copy. It accounts for the fact that it's the most amateur bit of the painting.
Now, some people would say this isn't cheating but I beg to differ. Is my effort of a few hours that much different to my simply applying a Photoshop paint-effect filter to my original composition which took about ten seconds?
Yet I guess people will say that I'm being harsh and perhaps I am. A few of the people who I suspect of using this technique do so as a start and their finished results can look spectacular to the point that they can take your breath away. And perhaps that's all that matters. Teller & Penn (the director should get the first credit, I think) made a brilliant documentary last year called 'Tim's Vermeer' which detailed how a non-artist could create 'great art' using a relatively simply mechanical process. Do people say Vermeer was any less talented an artist simply because he copied directly from nature?
Having said that, I personally don't like it. I know I could improve the technique if I invested more time into it. I could adapt it to produce more 'painterly' or stylized effects. Yet I can't help but feel that whilst they look impressive, they're somehow hollow once you know how they're done. In future, I think I'll stick to drawing my caricatures the way I've been learning for the past few years. I'd rather fail trying to learn the techniques of Gerald Scarfe or Al Hirschfeld than succeed by turning myself into a copying machine. I prefer my results won by hard work, trial and error, and plenty of mistakes. I just know that the next time I see one of those amazing caricatures you often see on the cover of magazine and newspapers, I'll be a little more suspicious about how they came into existence.
* 'Cheating' is, I know, a strong word. Perhaps you feel like it's also the wrong word but, for me, I think it's correct. Unless you admit to painting over a photograph, you are giving people the belief that you've achieved your results through your own skills. That's not to say none of the finished product is without skill but the 'likeness' is the caricaturist's most prized 'skill'. Getting a likeness is the hardest part of the artist's craft, especially when pulling the face into contorted shapes. Gerald Scarfe is a genius because he can do that more than any other artist. If you're achieving the same through a mechanical process,** then I think it's correct to call it 'cheating'. If you're not cheating but producing amazing results, then congratulations: you really are a true artist.
** Of course, there's a second question. What constitutes a mechanical process? Does beginning with a grid count as mechanical? Well, I guess it does but this is about scale. All art is (or should be) about the craft and a craft is a mechanical process. A grid can still go wrong. It takes skill to make it work. Even a lightbox takes some effort to produce reasonable results. However, simply painting over a painting, using a colour picker to ensure exact colours is something else entirely. A machine could do it and often does it when applying filter effects. The only difference between that and a person doing it is that the human brings a degree of incompetence to the copying, producing a more random effect, which makes it look hand drawn. It's our human inexactitude that makes the deception all the greater.
Electric Trains Hit The North
I’m on the first of two days of having to sit in a hospital coffee shop waiting for those closest to me have scans of one sort of another. However, today, once the scan was complete, we could escape and decided to head into Manchester. Nothing notable about that. It’s on the same train line and it has the best restaurant and bookshop in the form of Waterstones on Deansgate where I’m typing this, rather blissfully, if the truth be told.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the day was my first voyage on an electric train. Well, perhaps not my first if the Tube trains are electric and I suspect they are. However, for the North West, electric trains have been a long time coming. For years we’ve been putting up with engineering work on our main line between Liverpool and Manchester, all in the promise of a better service.
The better service arrived this morning and it felt largely horrible. Not that there wasn’t plenty of room because there was. As a taller than average bloke, I appreciated the legroom. The seats seemed oddly low but that’s a minor thing. Yet the train stank like an old radio that had overheated. It’s hard to describe except as ‘ cooked electrics’. What was worse was the noise. Jesus on a moped! It was like having your ears drilled by the Highland regiment of bagpipes and cat stranglers. I suppose the positives were more acceleration out of every station and once the speed was up, the horrible whine disappeared. But was it worth the years of waiting? Was it really work being unable to get into or out of the cities at night except by a slow plodding replacement coach service?
Well, I suppose it was. It’s cleaner and it felt quicker. Yet it also felt refurbished. I believe these new trains are refurbished, with ‘new’ for the North meaning what was too old for the south. London always seems to get new trains. We get something that looks a bit bolted together. In our carriage, there was an ugly post stuck right in the centre of the carriage. I guess it was conducting something (perhaps the juice from the overead lines) down into the undercarriage but really not that good on the eye. The whole thing felt second rate.
On a better note, Manchester Victoria station looks amazing. It’s long been considered one of the worst stations in the country but it’s had an almost complete rebuild and it’s breaktaking. Open, light, elegant. Just a shame about the bloody trains...
[Update: Too knackered to write anything polished but thought I should add that the train home changed my opinion somewhat. This time there was no smell of burnt radios. The new electric trains seem to be much longer and therefore have many more seats. Made for a pleasant change from the usual cattle trucks I've been used to in the past. They're also *fast*. The acceleration is a bit of a punch in the kidneys and once they get going they seem to really fly. However, there's still that 'whine'. Perhaps I'll get use to it.
The bad part is still the interiors which are pretty shoddy for 'new' trains. They're not a patch on the supposedly 'old' trains being run by Arriva on the North Wales line. Given a choice, I'd probably choose Arriva but it's tighter than it used to be. I like the new Victoria station (I think it will be genuinely spectacular when finished) and I might be tempted to take the electric line simply to get there quicker and to be closer to Waterstones when I arrive. Yet I still think that after years of promises, the new electric trains are a bit of a disappointment.]
Perhaps the most notable thing about the day was my first voyage on an electric train. Well, perhaps not my first if the Tube trains are electric and I suspect they are. However, for the North West, electric trains have been a long time coming. For years we’ve been putting up with engineering work on our main line between Liverpool and Manchester, all in the promise of a better service.
The better service arrived this morning and it felt largely horrible. Not that there wasn’t plenty of room because there was. As a taller than average bloke, I appreciated the legroom. The seats seemed oddly low but that’s a minor thing. Yet the train stank like an old radio that had overheated. It’s hard to describe except as ‘ cooked electrics’. What was worse was the noise. Jesus on a moped! It was like having your ears drilled by the Highland regiment of bagpipes and cat stranglers. I suppose the positives were more acceleration out of every station and once the speed was up, the horrible whine disappeared. But was it worth the years of waiting? Was it really work being unable to get into or out of the cities at night except by a slow plodding replacement coach service?
Well, I suppose it was. It’s cleaner and it felt quicker. Yet it also felt refurbished. I believe these new trains are refurbished, with ‘new’ for the North meaning what was too old for the south. London always seems to get new trains. We get something that looks a bit bolted together. In our carriage, there was an ugly post stuck right in the centre of the carriage. I guess it was conducting something (perhaps the juice from the overead lines) down into the undercarriage but really not that good on the eye. The whole thing felt second rate.
On a better note, Manchester Victoria station looks amazing. It’s long been considered one of the worst stations in the country but it’s had an almost complete rebuild and it’s breaktaking. Open, light, elegant. Just a shame about the bloody trains...
[Update: Too knackered to write anything polished but thought I should add that the train home changed my opinion somewhat. This time there was no smell of burnt radios. The new electric trains seem to be much longer and therefore have many more seats. Made for a pleasant change from the usual cattle trucks I've been used to in the past. They're also *fast*. The acceleration is a bit of a punch in the kidneys and once they get going they seem to really fly. However, there's still that 'whine'. Perhaps I'll get use to it.
The bad part is still the interiors which are pretty shoddy for 'new' trains. They're not a patch on the supposedly 'old' trains being run by Arriva on the North Wales line. Given a choice, I'd probably choose Arriva but it's tighter than it used to be. I like the new Victoria station (I think it will be genuinely spectacular when finished) and I might be tempted to take the electric line simply to get there quicker and to be closer to Waterstones when I arrive. Yet I still think that after years of promises, the new electric trains are a bit of a disappointment.]
Friday, 22 May 2015
Dolly Mixtures
So, I was researching something I was thinking of writing and my fruitless search for information had come up with bugger all. However, I did come across the name of a band called 'Dolly Mixture', which struck me as being a particularly bad name for a band, especially one that's labeled post-punk/new wave. It's a name that's overloaded with meaning and, for me, is a bit off putting. I mean dolly mixtures were a bag of toffees you'd be bought as a child and the name evokes too many memories good, bad, but mostly sweet. They were basically an the more sugary alternative to licorice allsorts but without the promise of a good bowel movement.
And then I started to listen to the band of the same name and I began to wonder again how talent can so easily go missed and unrecognised. Somebody has posted their entire Demo Tapes on Youtube and I think they're worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wjqbC5UzYg
Maybe I just don't know good music but I wonder if they'd had a better name and had been American, they'd have been bigger and I'd have already heard of them. Dolly Mixture feels like a name plucked from the 1960s, when female bands had to have clever quirky names like The Liverbirds and The Debutantes. Call them the 'Razor Blades' and you'd have had a different perception of the band going into your first listening.
And then I started to listen to the band of the same name and I began to wonder again how talent can so easily go missed and unrecognised. Somebody has posted their entire Demo Tapes on Youtube and I think they're worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wjqbC5UzYg
Maybe I just don't know good music but I wonder if they'd had a better name and had been American, they'd have been bigger and I'd have already heard of them. Dolly Mixture feels like a name plucked from the 1960s, when female bands had to have clever quirky names like The Liverbirds and The Debutantes. Call them the 'Razor Blades' and you'd have had a different perception of the band going into your first listening.
Wednesday, 20 May 2015
Does anybody know the weight of the average duck?
I need to know but my duck research hasn't gone well.
New ink!
Well, I have a day of deep nozzle cleaning ahead of me, which sounds like the sort of thing a man should either enjoy or fear. The reality is much more banal. New ink arrived for my printer which has not tasted ink in a very long time. I used to use the printer daily but, for various reasons, the old beast has been slowly gathering dust on the end of my desk.
I am now in the process of trying to wake it up. Initial print test patterns look good but I'm having trouble with the nozzles on my cyan.
There is a chance that none of my efforts will get the old printer working again but the alternative is to buy a new printer and that way madness lies.
Printers come in two types: cheap and expensive. If you buy a cheap printer, you will usually end up paying a fortune for ink over the course of its lifetime. Not sure if printer ink is still as expensive as gold but it still comes in at ridiculous prices for small amounts. Yet if you buy an expensive printer, then the ink will usually be cheap, which says to me that printer ink is essentially a scam. The trick, I think, is to buy cheap ink unless you really want your documents to be 'archive quality'. I've never bought original ink for any of my printers and I've generally not had much trouble. This Canon MP620 has been running years on the kind of ink that the manufacture would tell you would bring it to its knees. (Apropos of nothing: electric shavers. I bought a shaver years ago and the instructions told me to change the blades every few months. That was years ago and it's still cutting the stubble every day or two. So what game where they playing, expecting me to fork out £20+ every few months? So much in the world seems to be a scam.)
Back to printers: Epson have a new 'tank' system which looks clever as hell but is also expensive as hell up front. [Dear Epson. Any chance of a test model to review?] It claims to come with two years of ink which, when I get printing in heavy duty mode, would save me about £100 (though that's buying really cheap non-OEM ink from Inkredible). Yet £100 off the £250 still makes it an expensive printer to buy.
But as I type that, another sheet emerges from the old Canon MP620. Colours seem to be clean and solid. Cyan is working! I can proceed with my plan. That machine is a beast!
New ink in my printer is only part of the reason I have a new 'private' blog, which is now alive and open to regular readers. Not that this now becomes my 'old' blog. This is still my main blog, where I'll continue to post the occasional bit of work. However, maybe not as many cartoons. Day to day, I want to live over there where things will be grubby and disorganised and, more importantly, 'unpublished'. Only a crazy fool gives all his best work away for nothing and I'm tired of being a crazy fool. So, if you do read regularly and want to come look in, send me an email or leave comment. You are most welcome.
Monday, 18 May 2015
Going Dark
I have a secret private blog which I've not updated since Friday, 17th June 2011 and I hadn't looked at since... Well, possibly, Friday the 17th June, 2011. Tonight I opened it and started to read.
It's really strange going back to a blog you had largely forgotten about. Yet, at the same time, it's my favourite blog. I had more fun writing that one blog than any of my blogs. I guess it's because it was more of a real blog, I was completely myself among friends and it dealt with an interesting period. I wrote the blog for about two years and there are nearly 1,400 posts, most of which contain a cartoon or graphic. It covered the writing of about three or four projects and most of the work there I'd simply forgotten about.
Not all of it was particularly good. The blog is really as much a catalogue of my failure as it is my success. I can see now that I was desperate for success. I was also learning to draw and I was jumping between book ideas too rapidly and my energy wasn't matched by my skill with the pen. I was drawing too much too quickly and there's more failure there than there is success.
Yet, oddly, not all of my ideas were crap. It's just that I seemed to latch onto my worst ideas and see them through to the end.
Anyway, this is one of the oddities I found. A reader of the blog went on holiday and took this picture.
I'm as embarrassed today as I was the moment I saw it.
Good times...
Which brings me to the reason for looking at the blog. I'm seriously thinking about 'going dark'. I gain nothing by putting all my work on show. I'm thinking about retiring back into a private realm where I can work and post things which I might later try to get published. I have two ideas that I'd like to try out but, obviously, not for public eyes. Yet I like getting feedback and, hopefully, some of you might enjoy watching me stumble about in the dark.
I'm not entirely sure if I'll do this (or how I'll do this) but should you be a regular reader and think you could stomach becoming a little closer to the daft things I do, then email me. If I have a few readers willing to follow me, I might consider giving this a try. I might just turn on this blog's registered users section. I might create a new blog here. I might simply invite you to the old private blog and let you see the 1,400 posts. Yet, part of me just wants to start afresh.
Anyway, that's my thought. Might or might not happen. I just feel that I need to change my routine.
It's really strange going back to a blog you had largely forgotten about. Yet, at the same time, it's my favourite blog. I had more fun writing that one blog than any of my blogs. I guess it's because it was more of a real blog, I was completely myself among friends and it dealt with an interesting period. I wrote the blog for about two years and there are nearly 1,400 posts, most of which contain a cartoon or graphic. It covered the writing of about three or four projects and most of the work there I'd simply forgotten about.
Not all of it was particularly good. The blog is really as much a catalogue of my failure as it is my success. I can see now that I was desperate for success. I was also learning to draw and I was jumping between book ideas too rapidly and my energy wasn't matched by my skill with the pen. I was drawing too much too quickly and there's more failure there than there is success.
Yet, oddly, not all of my ideas were crap. It's just that I seemed to latch onto my worst ideas and see them through to the end.
Anyway, this is one of the oddities I found. A reader of the blog went on holiday and took this picture.
I'm as embarrassed today as I was the moment I saw it.
Good times...
Which brings me to the reason for looking at the blog. I'm seriously thinking about 'going dark'. I gain nothing by putting all my work on show. I'm thinking about retiring back into a private realm where I can work and post things which I might later try to get published. I have two ideas that I'd like to try out but, obviously, not for public eyes. Yet I like getting feedback and, hopefully, some of you might enjoy watching me stumble about in the dark.
I'm not entirely sure if I'll do this (or how I'll do this) but should you be a regular reader and think you could stomach becoming a little closer to the daft things I do, then email me. If I have a few readers willing to follow me, I might consider giving this a try. I might just turn on this blog's registered users section. I might create a new blog here. I might simply invite you to the old private blog and let you see the 1,400 posts. Yet, part of me just wants to start afresh.
Anyway, that's my thought. Might or might not happen. I just feel that I need to change my routine.
Reboot
Last week is now a strange blur. I built the new website for 'The What and the Why' in a record time of about three days, including transferring over all the posts and comments from the old site, and getting a new server up and running. It was hard work and very long hours but all utterly pleasurable. It's strange now looking at it, since unlike any of my own websites, it's a website that actually gets traffic.
I have a zero success when it comes to traffic. I have never written a site or blog that generated much in the way of regular readers. My sister ran a news website for a few years and it had huge readership. It was back when the internet seemed new and exciting. However, she ran afoul of her own good conscience. She actually paid for every photograph she published on the site and supported it with a small subscription model. Another site stole all the photos and pretty much put her out of business.
I know my lack of success lies with me and I'm just about coming to terms with that. This week, I want to reboot myself and think more carefully about what I'm doing. A certain person has also reappeared in my life. All I'll say is that I've been writing letters...
I also want to keep drawing more cartoons for myself. So, if you find that you don't like my daily cartoons, please try to remember it's because they're drawn to my own warped tastes and not because I hope they'll ever be published in a magazine.
I have a zero success when it comes to traffic. I have never written a site or blog that generated much in the way of regular readers. My sister ran a news website for a few years and it had huge readership. It was back when the internet seemed new and exciting. However, she ran afoul of her own good conscience. She actually paid for every photograph she published on the site and supported it with a small subscription model. Another site stole all the photos and pretty much put her out of business.
I know my lack of success lies with me and I'm just about coming to terms with that. This week, I want to reboot myself and think more carefully about what I'm doing. A certain person has also reappeared in my life. All I'll say is that I've been writing letters...
I also want to keep drawing more cartoons for myself. So, if you find that you don't like my daily cartoons, please try to remember it's because they're drawn to my own warped tastes and not because I hope they'll ever be published in a magazine.
Sunday, 17 May 2015
Where Prince Harry can stick his National Service...
Bleary eyed, I read the morning headlines and saw that Prince Harry believes we should bring back National Service. Even half asleep, I could immediately spot the problem with this bleary brained nonsense.
His argument is based on the fact that he believes he would have 'gone off the rails' if it hadn't been for the army. Let's assume that it's true and that youthful Harry would have become even more synonymous with having a good time than he's already become. Yet isn't it a bit of an overreaction and just a mite selfish to force the entire nation into conscription just to keep him off the front pages of the tabloids?
And since when should the rest of us measure our worth on the slightly bent would-be ruler that is Prince Harry? I never went off the rails. I imagine quite a few of you who read this blog didn't go off the rails. In fact, I'd guess that most people didn't come even close to going off the rails in their youth. So why the hell should we be stuck doing laps on a parade ground simply to save the skin of some thick necked Palace dodo?
What worries me more is what National Service would have done to me. Oh, I like to think that I'd have taken to it like the proverbial water-bound duck. Inside a month I'd have been leaping from aircraft with a dagger between my teeth and a backpack full of fury. The reality, I think, is that it would have broken me. If I hadn't become 'Private Pyle' in Full Metal Jacket, complete with the 1000 yard stare, I'd have just gone off the rails, which is precisely what the experience of army life was supposed to save me from. I'd have rebelled and caused myself all kinds of grief. So, whilst Prince Harry would be enjoying rugby (a game I detest) with the lads, I'd have been trying to climb the electrified fence or caught trying to flee into Belgium or some much more enlightened country where I could just go sit in a corner with a coffee and a good book.
Not that there's any chance of National Service coming back but we do have a government led by a leader who has repeatedly proven that he's not immune to dumb ideas thrown casually into the public domain by celebrities. Given that the government have a problem with the size of the army and that they're never above forcing people into cheap labour, I'd be slightly worried if you are young and the thought of living in barracks appals you. Or perhaps they'll just make it a condition of entry into the UK. You can come in but you have to do three years in the military. Inside a couple of years, we'd have armed the entire youth of Eastern Europe who would turn on us and take the country by force...
These are crazy days filled with stupid ideas. National Service begins to look sensible compared to the breakup of the Union, petitions for the North of England to join with Scotland, and Britain leaving the EU.
There's just too much madness about today and I've not even finished having my breakfast.
His argument is based on the fact that he believes he would have 'gone off the rails' if it hadn't been for the army. Let's assume that it's true and that youthful Harry would have become even more synonymous with having a good time than he's already become. Yet isn't it a bit of an overreaction and just a mite selfish to force the entire nation into conscription just to keep him off the front pages of the tabloids?
And since when should the rest of us measure our worth on the slightly bent would-be ruler that is Prince Harry? I never went off the rails. I imagine quite a few of you who read this blog didn't go off the rails. In fact, I'd guess that most people didn't come even close to going off the rails in their youth. So why the hell should we be stuck doing laps on a parade ground simply to save the skin of some thick necked Palace dodo?
What worries me more is what National Service would have done to me. Oh, I like to think that I'd have taken to it like the proverbial water-bound duck. Inside a month I'd have been leaping from aircraft with a dagger between my teeth and a backpack full of fury. The reality, I think, is that it would have broken me. If I hadn't become 'Private Pyle' in Full Metal Jacket, complete with the 1000 yard stare, I'd have just gone off the rails, which is precisely what the experience of army life was supposed to save me from. I'd have rebelled and caused myself all kinds of grief. So, whilst Prince Harry would be enjoying rugby (a game I detest) with the lads, I'd have been trying to climb the electrified fence or caught trying to flee into Belgium or some much more enlightened country where I could just go sit in a corner with a coffee and a good book.
Not that there's any chance of National Service coming back but we do have a government led by a leader who has repeatedly proven that he's not immune to dumb ideas thrown casually into the public domain by celebrities. Given that the government have a problem with the size of the army and that they're never above forcing people into cheap labour, I'd be slightly worried if you are young and the thought of living in barracks appals you. Or perhaps they'll just make it a condition of entry into the UK. You can come in but you have to do three years in the military. Inside a couple of years, we'd have armed the entire youth of Eastern Europe who would turn on us and take the country by force...
These are crazy days filled with stupid ideas. National Service begins to look sensible compared to the breakup of the Union, petitions for the North of England to join with Scotland, and Britain leaving the EU.
There's just too much madness about today and I've not even finished having my breakfast.
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Exhausted
Exhausted.*
* Yes, I release that's a bit short for a blog post but what's a man to write when he's completely lacking in energy. It's been a mad four days since I agreed to build the website late on Tuesday evening. However, it's been damn fun. Intend to get back to proper blogging tomorrow, perhaps even draw something tonight.
Of course, if I had the energy, I'd make this footnote long enough to prove that I do have the energy to blog. But I don't. I'm knackered.
* Yes, I release that's a bit short for a blog post but what's a man to write when he's completely lacking in energy. It's been a mad four days since I agreed to build the website late on Tuesday evening. However, it's been damn fun. Intend to get back to proper blogging tomorrow, perhaps even draw something tonight.
Of course, if I had the energy, I'd make this footnote long enough to prove that I do have the energy to blog. But I don't. I'm knackered.
Friday, 15 May 2015
Sorry sorry sorry...
Been working. Constructing a new website (not mine) so I've been burning the oil around both midnight and dawn.
I'm glad to be busy and too busy to draw or write. Pretty depressing reading the day's papers. Not much of a fan of Chuka Umanna (a bit too slick for my tastes) but Labour seem to be going into meltdown at the moment. This isn't helped by the media who seem to enjoy the sight of the Labour Party going into meltdown. What I find shocking, though, is the extent to which the news and political news is dominated by people wanting to stick the boot into Labour.
Since when was news media meant to attack the opposition party mercilessly and leave the government alone? I intend to write more about this in the coming days but last night's Question Time was a perfect example. Jeremy Hunt spent the entire show looking slightly smug and barely saying a word, whilst the audience attacked Nigel Farage and Tristram Hunt. Both, incidentally, acquitted themselves well and all the nonsense spoke about Farage's leadership status seems ridiculously overblown. Not a UKIP supporter by any means but, damn it, they hold quite valid political positions, which aren't breaking any laws. Seems like they have the right to express themselves just like everybody else and these attempts to shout them down only aid their cause.
Urgh. Need to get cracking. Deadlines to meet.
I'm glad to be busy and too busy to draw or write. Pretty depressing reading the day's papers. Not much of a fan of Chuka Umanna (a bit too slick for my tastes) but Labour seem to be going into meltdown at the moment. This isn't helped by the media who seem to enjoy the sight of the Labour Party going into meltdown. What I find shocking, though, is the extent to which the news and political news is dominated by people wanting to stick the boot into Labour.
Since when was news media meant to attack the opposition party mercilessly and leave the government alone? I intend to write more about this in the coming days but last night's Question Time was a perfect example. Jeremy Hunt spent the entire show looking slightly smug and barely saying a word, whilst the audience attacked Nigel Farage and Tristram Hunt. Both, incidentally, acquitted themselves well and all the nonsense spoke about Farage's leadership status seems ridiculously overblown. Not a UKIP supporter by any means but, damn it, they hold quite valid political positions, which aren't breaking any laws. Seems like they have the right to express themselves just like everybody else and these attempts to shout them down only aid their cause.
Urgh. Need to get cracking. Deadlines to meet.
Thursday, 14 May 2015
Hurray! Harry Shearer is leaving The Simpsons
No cartoon today. Last night I was putting in some long hours on a website. However, time this morning to quickly write about the news that Harry Shearer is leaving The Simpsons.
Normally I’d greet such news like I’d trapped my thumb in the dentist's door. I was and still am a big fan of The Simpsons but, truth be told, I’ve not been a regular viewer in a long time. It’s easy to say that The Simpsons isn’t what it once was yet I don’t necessarily think that’s true. The times I have seen it recently, the show has still been strong. What it is, perhaps, is too familiar. I watch so very little TV these days that it takes something special to make me move outside of my usual routine. There are lots of shows I love but I don’t get around to seeing. I’ve not seen the new series of Mythbusters, Veep, or even the new Vic and Bob comedy for the BBC. I’ve guess I suffer a bit from the increased fragmentation of TV in the UK. I don’t have the time to study the thousand channels to spot when my favourite shows are being broadcast.
However, one thing that did make me move out of my usual routine and search the channels was last year’s Nixon’s The One. Nixon’s The One is the main reason I’m not too upset that Shearer is leaving The Simpsons. Shearer is better than The Simpsons and has always been better than The Simpsons.
Of course, people usually nod when you say something like this and say ‘Spinal Tap’ but Spinal Tap isn’t my favourite Shearer moment. My favourite Shearer moment is the close of The Mighty Wind, a film I prefer over Spinal Tap simply because the songs are so damn catchy. He’s great too in the other Christopher Guest movies he’s been in but it was the Nixon show last year that made me hope for more from him. Nixon’s The One might well have been my favourite show of last year. It was a very odd little drama but so compelling. Shearer was astonishing it it too and seemed to have channeled the spirit of Nixon.
Leaving The Simpsons might be the sign that it could happen. He must be as wealthy as Elon Musk’s nanny’s butler and able to afford to make anything happen. It’s bad news for fans of The Simpsons but Harry Shearer fans should probably be happy today.
Normally I’d greet such news like I’d trapped my thumb in the dentist's door. I was and still am a big fan of The Simpsons but, truth be told, I’ve not been a regular viewer in a long time. It’s easy to say that The Simpsons isn’t what it once was yet I don’t necessarily think that’s true. The times I have seen it recently, the show has still been strong. What it is, perhaps, is too familiar. I watch so very little TV these days that it takes something special to make me move outside of my usual routine. There are lots of shows I love but I don’t get around to seeing. I’ve not seen the new series of Mythbusters, Veep, or even the new Vic and Bob comedy for the BBC. I’ve guess I suffer a bit from the increased fragmentation of TV in the UK. I don’t have the time to study the thousand channels to spot when my favourite shows are being broadcast.
However, one thing that did make me move out of my usual routine and search the channels was last year’s Nixon’s The One. Nixon’s The One is the main reason I’m not too upset that Shearer is leaving The Simpsons. Shearer is better than The Simpsons and has always been better than The Simpsons.
Of course, people usually nod when you say something like this and say ‘Spinal Tap’ but Spinal Tap isn’t my favourite Shearer moment. My favourite Shearer moment is the close of The Mighty Wind, a film I prefer over Spinal Tap simply because the songs are so damn catchy. He’s great too in the other Christopher Guest movies he’s been in but it was the Nixon show last year that made me hope for more from him. Nixon’s The One might well have been my favourite show of last year. It was a very odd little drama but so compelling. Shearer was astonishing it it too and seemed to have channeled the spirit of Nixon.
Leaving The Simpsons might be the sign that it could happen. He must be as wealthy as Elon Musk’s nanny’s butler and able to afford to make anything happen. It’s bad news for fans of The Simpsons but Harry Shearer fans should probably be happy today.
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
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