"Frankenstein never scared me..."

Hello. How long have you been standing there? Crickey. Sorry old chum. Been a bit busy. Still am. Not only does my job ask a lot of typing-time, but I'm wrapped up in at least three-other-sit-down-and-writes. The hours I should be calling mine to waste on Gunsmith Cats and Guitar Hero, I'm lending to projects and progress. Someone had to suffer, and I'd rather it was you.

This one is going to be fairly stream-of-consciousness. Not much by way of proof-read, or point. One of the old-fashioned beat-blogs I used to churn out in the goodoledee.

If you're like the vast majority of British kids of my generation, the following image probably means very little to you.

It might be you don't recognise him at all. It might be you can say, 'One of those Action Force lot, yes?'. It might be you recognise him as Snake Eyes, and good for you. And if you think anything like 'Fuck yeah' when you see this guy, then brother, we're on the same page.

The bulk of my classmates coming up played Transformers, or M.A.S.K., but being as pedantic then as I am now I found both lines to be flawed. M.A.S.K. worked on the principle that these were awesome fighting machines disguised as regular vehicles. A Chevy '57 could turn into a six-wheeled battle tank that dispensed mines. A 4x4 would suddenly cleave open and an armoured motorboat would launch from within. The only problem is they were typically the only vehicles you had to use. Miles Mayhem might not suspect that one vintage saloon when it's idling in traffic. But if it's the only car in the playground, then he's going to shoot the shit out of it whether it converts into a APC or not.

In M.A.S.K.'s favour, one of the henchmen, Floyd Malloy, was clearly modelled on Billy Idol.

Transformers confused me even more. You had two robots of about equal size. One turns into a gun, the other a truck, of about equal size. 'Robots in Disguise', sure, but isn't a semi-automatic the size of a one-bedroom flat kinda conspicuous? Wouldn't a giant robot be easier to explain than a handgun that only has to fall on you to kill you? Add to this the robots that aren't about equal size, the jet planes smaller than the ambulance, cassette players bigger than the jet plane...and, a couple of robot dinosaurs and mechanical insects too (it's a weird mark of adulthood that I can embrace the awesomeness of robot dinosaurs fighting a cassette player that ejects A PANTHER now, but I couldn't then. The same way I thought Lockjaw was goofy and Wolverine cool. Today I would so buy a Lockjaw comic over the myriad of Weapon Xers.)

Action Force, Or GI Joe, on the other hand made perfect, well better sense. All of them to scale, (and compatible with the Kenner Star Wars vehicle, a welcome bonus) all of them operating on a principle I could handle. Specialist commando badasses jump in a bunch of helicopters and hovercrafts and go guts and glory against a terrorist threat that could shake the world. There was no need for civilian bits and pieces. No other cars in traffic. No innocents in peril. You made whatever you had into a battlefield and then these guys met, and blood was spilled.

I was playing Action Force right up until I was about 14, I reckon. I was never all that clued in on the comic book mythology - I read a few newsagent Magazines, that stitched together strips and threw in posters and factfiles and what have you. I remember the silent issue, and one where Sci-Fi and a few others (Deep-Six maybe?) where on a crippled Killer W.H.A.L.E. stalked by a lone Rattler. It aped Jaws and even ended with a "Smile you son of a..." as Sci-Fi shot it's fuel tank or a missile or something. (the sound of an exploding Cobra fighter plane? "BITCHOOM!")

The comics, and the line itself owed something to an old Marvel Comics pitch about Nick Fury (Hawk) and his son (Duke) taking on HYDRA (Cobra). The Saturday morning cartoon had another mythology, a lot goofier than the comics, and one with which I'm more familiar. In it Cobra Commander was a cowardly incompetent (akin in sound and manner to Star Scream), everyone shot lasers and never died and Cobra only ever stole momunents or hypnotised people with rock bands. The movie went one better and decided to marry military expertise with Lovecraftian horror as GI Joe discovered the origins of Cobra in a pre-hyborean civilisation called Cobra-la (the writers called it that, a simple riff on Shangri-la, hoping they'd come up with a better name later. Hasbro said 'Fuck it. It's going in.') lead by Burgess Meredith in a flying ball.

None of this really mattered to me, my brother and my Joes.

Our battles were our chance to fudge together as many elements from action movies as we could manage. In many ways this was as much the birth of me as a storyteller as anything going on in school. It was all theft, mind you, but that's where the art starts.

The plot would run something like this:

Cobra would steal a pair of nukes (Thunderball, Broken Arrow). A handfull of trusty Joes, like Barbeque and Dusty, old guard types, would intercept one of the bombs on a relatively easy mission, only to get ambushed and one of the bombs go off. Sacrifical lambs, because what's a story without a revenge element, right?

Blizzard would stumble across Cobra's mountain-top (of the stairs) base on a recon mission. He'd get chased by Fangs as he skiis down the banister (A View to a Kill), and he'd get a signal back to Joe HQ. The gang would mount up. Snake Eyes would parachute in first to disable anti-aircraft batteries - usually an AT-AT, opening things up for a crack squad of Joes in a Tomahawk. Then things go a bit You Only Live Twice as the Joes wreck the base. The narrative trick is to get Snake Eyes out of the way, or else he'll do the whole damn thing single handedly. GI Joe the movie has him captured by a tree. A trained Ninja AND commando, dispatched by a big bunch of vines. FAIL. In the recent Warren Ellis penned animation GI Joe: Resolute, he gets it right. Same device me and my brother called upon. Honour. Snake Eyes would have to break away from the main conflict to confront half-brother and Cobra ninja Storm Shadow (much like Luke can't join in the Battle of Endor)

Jesus Christ this thing is geeky. Like so geeky. There needs to be a regular footnote that just says 'Yes. I have had girlfriends and sex, even.'

A Forero Rocher box filled with water becomes a trap for Flint, as Destro has been told to capture him as a trophy for Cobra Commander (I didn't have a CC figure, so he was always the Blofeld to Destro's Emilio Largo.) At the last minute Tunnel Rat would knock one of the Dreadnoks - let's say Road Pig into the trap, and then he and the watery tomb would go in the freezer, where the cold would then damage the joints or the rubber in the figure and when I next defrosted him, he'd probably lose his leg from the knee down, or even snap at the waist. These figures would later become SFXs of sorts, blown apart by grenades.

Destro would see his plan start to fail, and try and escape. By underground train...wow, I riff on Mission Impossible for this next bit, which means I was playing with these guys as late as, what '95? I'm 15? I lose my virginity in the next 12 months. Christ.

Anyway. A polysterene box that once held my ghetto blaster doubles as Destro's secret railway. Dial Tone, who has defused the nuke sees Destro try and make his escape, and manages to get onboard the train just as it starts whistling down the tracks. It needs to be Dial Tone for the next bit. A Flint, a Hawk a Snake Eyes...they're just too heroic, too capable, too strong. Dial Tone was a good figure, but he seemed like a bit of an underdog, a nerd. Facing up to Destro would scare him.

As Metalhead flies Destro's experimental VTOL Stealth Bomber - made out of an old Y-Wing, down the tunnel, after Destro, to try and save him. Dial Tone, and the metal-faced warlord would battle on the roof of the train. Then it would all crash, and in a bit of a fudge, the underground train would find itself balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff (Cliffhanger). Destro and Dial Tone would have a fistfight, and Destro would lose his footing and fall to a watery grave (A View to a Kill again, or, if Dial Tone kicked him, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.) Just when Dial Tone thought he was safe, Metalhead would emerge, and threaten him once more (the henchmen in most 007 movies), until Flint comes to the rescue by...and this was a certainty...flying a jetplane right into Metalhead.

Mark Millar has done the crash the jetplane into the baddie in both The Authority and The Ultimates. It's a great pay off. Falling is the better pay off, though. It's the Die Hard pay off. I absolutely love the fight at the end of A View to A Kill. An airship, on the Golden Gate bridge. Christopher Walken climbs out and tries to kill Roger Moore with an axe.

Imagine for a second Walken pitching that. His voice.

"Airship. On the Golden Gate Bridge. I...try to...KILL...Roger Moore. With an axe. But, then, I fall. To my doom. And Roger Moore escapes. With Tanya Roberts." (The italics indicates the squinty-eyed throaty voice he does.)

You should watch this.

Stephen Sommers will piss all of that into cocked hat.

Ok. Updates. As this blog thing is dying, I'm going to try and give you something in return. Something ugly, for now, as the medium, the format, isn't quite right.

Monsterwork Comic Books

Also I've added new links up on the sides there. "If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger..." is a really good blog to dip in and out of. I recommend it.

Right. Sleep.

Les temps de souveniers

I'm not going to do my usual Valentine's Blog. I don't feel half as bitter as previous years. I feel 'jaunty'. Yes.



I spent it eating desserts (Fruit Cocktail Trifle) and watching DVDs (I gave Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a second chance. It's very comic booky, but still far from perfect) for a change. No eloping to Paris, or last minute mystery rendezvous in the Bahamas. Quite the contrast to previous years.



So here's a picture of my guardian angel Francoise Hardy. And to the hope one day, when I'm racing along La Cote D'Azur in my Alfa Romeo, I will look over to the passenger seat and see the smile of a singular beauty, before she puts some big sunglasses on.









Yes. I would let her have some Fruit Cocktail Trifle too.

Gotta love...#1

Gotta love Robert E. Howard.






"Once I killed, with an iron sword I had forged with my own hands, that most terrible of beasts - old sabre-tooth, which men today call a tiger because he was more like a tiger than anything else. In reality he was almost as much like a bear in build, save for his unmistakably feline head. Sabre-tooth was massive-limbed, with a long-hung, great, heavy body and he vanished from the earth because he was too terrible a fighter, even for that grim age. As his muscles and foreocity grew, his brain dwindled until at last even the instinct of self-preservation vanished. Nature, who maintains her balance in such things, destroyed him because, had his super-fighting powers been allied with an intelligent brain, he would have destroyed all other forms of life on earth. He was a freak on the road of evolution - organic development gone mad and run to fangs and talons, to slaughter and destruction." - The Valley of the Worm.

"Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. It means what's up. So what the fuck's up?"

Yes.

2008. Numbers you shouldn't be seeing on the front of your diary, Girls Aloud Calendar or bus pass. It's in the bank. On the shelf. Done and done. Hell, even the Chinese have moved on. We're well into the future.

I hope I'm good to 2009. I did it's older brother a disservice and moped around a great chunk of it, running myself right up until the final hours and thinking there was a lot of sadness there. But I was wrong. The year sure started off sour, but it ended up being incredible. Probably the most monumental year of my adult life. It kinda is where my adult life began. I accomplished almost everything I set out to do and I met a bunch of awesome people along the way. And yeah, the love thing never got fixed and I still think there's nothing more important to a person's life. But hey, I will gladly accept where I am right now for second place.

Love can wait. Hollyoaks can't.

So thanks to everyone who rolled around in 2008 with me.

I know I worked hard getting here, which will account for the lack of blog and probably accounts for why I only saw about twenty films this year. So you are about to read my favourite 50% of movies released in 2008 what I saw. It won't inspire, but there's YouTube embeds, and they're always fun.

Monsterwork's Favourite 50% of Movies Released in 2008 what He Saw.

10. Cloverfield.
A fascinating experiment. A YouTube Godzilla. United 93 if it was about the cast of Gossip Girl trying to escape a Lovecraftian doom. I did feel a bit betrayed by it. The dedication to the 'real' felt fudged by an obvious narrative, certain formulaic tricks. There shouldn't have been a money shot. The monster should have been glimpsed and too big to ever fathom. More than that, I felt there was an end I could buy, a cruel, unresolved end - and then the camera got picked up again and something close to resolution played out. That felt like a compromise to me. Nevertheless it was a pretty rollercoaster and there was no disputing the effectiveness of certain scenes - namely the news footage watched by the looters and the first rumble. I love first rumbles. If I made a film I think I'd start with five minutes of black and a bass hum. Then I might show a chessboard, with the pieces shaking. I love me one of those shots.







9. Street Kings.
Ayers and Ellroy. That's good. We had Harsh Times on the list however long ago. That dirty testosterone feel Ayers is perfecting, married with the blunt trauma Ellroy plotting (minus the trademarks cinema always struggles with - the period element, for better or worse, and the psycho-sexual hang-ups. See DePalma's fumble on Black Dahlia.) Keanu surprises as a meaty, sleazy cop in the Lloyd Hopkins/Dave Klein vein, kicking off the film with casual racism and hardcore violence. It builds, like a lot of Ellroy to an almost superhuman contest between one man and the growing conspiracy. It was a refreshing bit of raw pulp.








8. Quantum of Solace.
The only film I saw twice this year. Largely because I took a girl the first time and she started talking about ice cream at the start, but also because of the pace of it, I really wanted to go back and take more in, now I knew what to expect. From the unconventional opening (I was thrown by the lack of gunbarrel, but now I absolutely love that build from edit and score to the point where the action goes action) and the rest of the stylistic choices (the opera, the location titles) it is certainly the most interesting Bond to look at. I suppose my only regret was it had been sold as a sort of revenge story, but it wasn't. Bond isn't really after Greene (to be fair there is a line in the trailer saying he using him to get to someone else) he's just after the first lead that can take him to Vesper's mysterious Algerian boyfriend. After all he went through for Felix Leiter's leg you'd expect mayhem for the supposed love of his life. The dish served cold doesn't really happen, but the action is there and in spades and little time is wasted. If anything they could have done with a bit more time, Giancarlo Giannini is wasted and there's a bit with two policemen and a trunk that's very 'what?...why did?...I don't get it.' And I realise I'm going to get nothing but Olga-this hooting from the back, but Gemma Arterton is stunning, absolutely beautiful.








7. Iron Man
You know what I liked best about the first Spider-Man movie? All the bits without superheroics in it. All the stuff about his friends and the emo bullshit that a lot of people didn't have the patience for. Iron Man's got great action in it, don't get me wrong, but the dialogue is stellar. Downey Jr.'s chemistry with everyone and everything - he's got rapport with a hydraulic arm, even - is what sells this movie. The climax is weak, it's got that against it. But not by much. There's a lot of detail to enjoy. His HUD and the virtual design tech was all very comic-book cool. It's all out fun, and for the month or so before Incredible Hulk came out, made me think an Avengers movie could be as good as I want it to be (give it to JJ Abrams, please).







6. The Mist.
You know I have a friend who switched The Mist off just after the spiders. Said it was boring. They didn't watch to the end. THEY DIDN'T WATCH TO THE END. I'm not saying or showing anything here about the movie. Trust the pedigree. Trust me. It's good.







5. The Dark Knight
It felt like a violent dream. I came out feeling like I'd survived it. I'm not sure what else I can compare it to. The tension just builds and builds, aided by that dissonant siren in the soundtrack. Ledger is rarely funny, always unsettling. The whole thing came with an ambiguity - was he totally in control, super-sane as it were, and just dedicated to a nihilist ideal? Or was he a dog barking at cars? A bleak, brave film, that still found time to squeeze in a bit of Seventies Secret Agent Batman in the skies above Hong Kong.







4. El Orfanato
Another horror, so I'm reluctant to say much in case it tips expectations the wrong way. It starts off a bit same-old with creaky houses and a spooky mask. Then the heartbreak kicks in and then, then, then...the proper scares. The poop. In the theatre, when I saw it, the audience looked around at one another in disbelief, stopping short of 'Is this film shitting you up as much as it is me?'
I'm not even going to show the trailer (The U.S. market one sucks anyway..."Therrre arrrre childrrrennnn...") Here, watch this safari clip, if you've never seen it before. It's mad.







3. There Will Be Blood
Read something someone educated has to say about this film. Don't look to me. I want to say 'elemental' but I'm sure that's a word I got from The Guardian. At the time I saw it I thought there was a lot of me in Daniel Plainview, and it troubled me. He sits and stares like a dog, full contempt for other people. He also drinks your milkshake.







2. No Country for Old Men

As good as the novel? It just is the novel. Astonishingly so. Looking back at my diary for that day, I wrote 'flawless'. The Coens nailed the humour, the suspense, the violence, the poetry, the visceral impact of the story. It was astonishing. I guess I've got to go back to Cormac and process how a story that you could say is as genre as a David Morrell paperback, with Michael Myers leading the manhunt, is somehow elegant, moving and real.







1.


is....



...not Wall*E. I didn't see it. Didn't see Transporter 3, either...







Pineapple Express is the shit. It's a movie where I kept wanting to go back and see that bit again. I laughed til I choked the whole time. It made me miss my friends, made me miss pot, made me smile from start to finish and it had a big Joel Silver shootout at the end. You want it to magically turn into a dude at the end so you can go hang out some more. I anticipate, much like School of Rock, it will stand up to infinite repeats. Pineapple Express, it's boss lid.


The misfires...well, aside from all that business with the fridge, I thought Indiana Jones' big flaw this year is he didn't really stop anything from happening, y'know? The russkies set out to find something, and although they were pretty thin in number by the time Dr. Jones had tussled, they still found the thing. It just turned out the thing was mental. There wasn't much iconic about it. The narrative was all over the place and John Hurt and Ray Winstone didn't bring any of the richness you got from John Rhys Davis or Denholm Elliot. It was entertaining, and some of the set pieces were good. I imagine I would have liked it more if the lady next to me hadn't just gone 'Uhhhhhh' regardless of whether a moment was funny, exciting or scary.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army was the biggest let down for me. It's odd, given Mignola's involvement and Del Toro's fanboy stance how they could fudge it. It's just not the Hellboy character. Not as I read him anyway. He a morose, kinda lonely guy (he goes drinking with ghosts) who has no problem with the spirit world, he just doesn't like evil. I felt the Perlman version was a bit of a brash bully. It lacked the sadness, and Victorian spookiness I enjoy about the books.


Music.

Crap. Now I've got to think if I bought five albums that came out this year.

Yes. I did.

Kinda.



Monsterwork's Top Five Albums he bought that came out in 2008. Kinda.

5. Justice - Cross

Yes. I know. It came out in 2007. Well I wasn't cool enough for 2007. I had to wait until March or something before I knew. Before I caught up with this. And it's ace. It's only at number five because it's a cheat. It's the best record I heard this year, but like I said, I've arrived late. It might even be the best dance album I've heard, if we call Entroducing a hiphop record. If Fat of the Land had sounded like this, the future would have arrived much sooner.











4. Last of the Shadow Puppets - Age of the Understatement.

I've gone on before about giving Indie rock a wide berth. This might have been an easy sell. It's sort of the Artic Monkeys, sure, but with all the boisterousness taken out and replaced with sixties strings and melody, by way of Scott Walker and John Barry. I don't have to worry about the sweaty fringe and youthful bopping. It's more in keeping with the cardigan comfort I look for.










3. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV.

One of two, cheap download albums released by NIN this year, the other being The Slip, Ghosts I-IV collects four EPs of instrumental doodles from Trent Reznor's brainpan. They're a mix of Mogwai-ish piano-y fuzzspells, Brian Eno-style ambient wanders and the angry bleeps and beats you've come to expect in the recent Halo## catalogue. At 36 tracks it's a big record and there's a lot of invention and action in there. And it kinda doesn't have to cost you much (unless you like to hold what you own in your hands, like me. But then if you're like me you might tear the sleeve trying to get the inlay card out.)













You can download/order the whole thing here

2. NEON NEON - Stainless Style.

I think this is the album Mike Patton's Peeping Tom project should have been. The alternative pop album. It's fun as fuck, silly but respectful. 'I Lust U' just kills, how did it not exist before? Because the cosmos wasn't ready. A concept album about John DeLorean. A. Concept. Album. About. John. DeLorean.










1. Do I even have to tell you?

I'll admit, I have an advantage here, in that I paid attention. I'd seen them twice during this record's gestation period, so I'd heard some stuff well in advance. I knew we weren't looking towards Appetite with this record. We knew that back in 1991 when for every AFD-sounding Dust N' Bones or Don't Damn Me, there was a bloated Axl indulgence like Estranged or Civil War. This was always where he was headed. And I love it. My favourite Gn'R song is Coma. I love the Axl Rose show. He's one of those fat, nut-job control freak geniuses that I think makes art a bit more interesting. And this isn't a knee-jerk automatic response. I really do like listening to this record. I love 'I.R.S.', 'There Was a Time', 'Better'...the album is tinged with this weird regret/stubborness, Axl knows a great melody, he really does, and the shredding on some of the tracks is ace. The record could have done with more Buckethead and less of the dozen other guys. 'Sorry' sucks outright, but even with one 'never-listening-to-that-again' track in the mix, I still give it my fullest. If only it had come out in 2002 when I first heard most of this stuff...







And I'm going to throw that Buckethead Night Train solo in again because I love it.





Books is where I'll struggle now. I don't think, oh no wait, I read one book printed in 2008 - Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow, an excellent Surf Noir about a private eye on the California coast. It contains the mantra 'Everything tastes better in a tortilla' - the most true truism ever. I did have a bookshelf where all the titles I read this year were lined up but when I moved that running order got messed up, and now I'm not sure. Best opening line goes to David Goodis' Black Friday:

"January cold came in from two rivers, formed four walls around Hart and closed in on him."

That's hard-boiled. You put an egg in a kettle and leave it going for two weeks, and you still won't come close

As I'd paired down on comics early in the year, I missed out on the big x-overs and whatnots. Just realised I missed a Fantastic Four last month even. Getting sloppy. FF has been ace. Ennis' goodbye on The Punisher was a bold move, almost half of it was text, a semi-fictional examination of the Vietnam War with its bitter eyes locked firmly on W. Bush era. Not sure what else set me on edge...Brubaker's Criminal's been strong...uh...wow, I really cut back on comics. What the hell do I read?

Anything else? Best food product? That Rochester Ginger Drink they do in Holland and Barratt. Best item of clothing? My Plastic Man T-shirt from Pull and Bear. Christ, I dunno. You ask, I'll answer.

Damn. I just re-read all this post. It's lame. Where's the wit? Or originality? I guess writing all day for a living really sucks it out of you. I didn't really discover anything. I took albums from the chart wall and went to my multiplex. Gee...what was I up to?

I got my name on the telly. How ace is that? My name was on the telly today. Stuff I did was on the telly today. My ideas. On your telly. Today. Tomorrow. The next day. Fucking mad/amazing.

So, to the year that's begun; Hello. How do you do?
If I can keep my job and keep my friends for another 12 months, I think I'll feel pretty damn rich come two-thousand-ten, Odyssey 2. If I can start 'Ponies Are Not Horses', get words in mouths, and hit up a beach, I'll be an emotional millionaire. If I can make you smile, then golly-gosh, I'll take a bow.

Sharpening the Axe

Back when we took ownership of the new millennia, finished with the last, Playboy published a list of the sexiest stars of the last century. With the exception of one or two silent film stars, and studio era bombshells it was largely a list of the sexiest celebrities since 1950. I don’t lend a lot of credence to committee or public voted lists. It’s an entirely subjective system, and so where I might like to know who, say, my friend Tom James thinks are the ten, fifty, hundred sexiest of all time, I’m less interested when FHMs genepool organise their catalogue of white birds off the telly. It’s often frustrating to see which of the least ‘In The Name of The Rose’ looking Eastenders cast makes the cut, over a myriad of exceptionally beautiful, but less-well-known faces. I’m disappointed by the lack of research.

Anyway, if my memory serves me correctly, number one was Marilyn Monroe, number two was Jane Mansfield and the rest of the top five, I think was Cindy Crawford, Racquel Welch and Pamela Anderson, but in which order I can’t remember. With the top two, the editor posed a question. Had Marilyn Monroe never been discovered, would Jane Mansfield have the number one spot, or would she not be on this list at all?

I honestly prefer Mansfield over Monroe. The iconic heavy lidded eyes of Monroe don’t translate to beauty with me, and while there’s no denying she had charm, I’m happier with the cheaper, bustier, somehow more fun-looking Mansfield. The innocence and vulnerability in Monroe feel a bit manipulated and manipulative. But in the record of thing, Mansfield will always seem like the knock-off Monroe. Dannii to her Kylie.

In 1992 Megadeth released their fifth studio album ‘Countdown to Extinction’. It hit shelves just a short while after Metallica had released their fifth studio album, the commercially successful ‘Metallica’. (Which sometimes gets called ‘The Black Album’. I’ve always called it ‘Metallica Metallica’, but on the odd occasion someone came into my old record shop and asked for that Jay-Z album, I would have come back to them with a shiny disc of Bay Area Thrash. For the purposes of this post, I’m also going to call it ‘The Black Album’.)

The Black Album is widely recognised as one of the benchmark metal albums of all time. A critical and commercial success. The trendsetter for years to come. But had it never come out, or come out later, would it have been overshadowed by Countdown to Extinction, a record I feel eclipses the Black Album?

I can see this quandary instigating absolutely zero debate amongst my peers. Perhaps only inviting the unhelpful and inaccurate ‘Black Album sounds like Bon Jovi.’ After last week’s cuntgate it’s probably best I don’t court controversy here.

I don’t dispute the next decade or so of reigning champions. There’s no argument that Korn’s ‘Follow the Leader’, Marilyn Manson’s ‘Antichrist Superstar’ or Slipknot’s ‘Subliminal Verses’ are the pinnacle of Metal at the time, and all spawn numerous imitators (have to say, I think ‘Take a Look in the Mirror’ is the better Korn album, but it’s only them perfecting what they start with FTL). There are other significant albums that come out that have a monumental effect on the metal world, but I wouldn’t actually call metal. So Nevermind, Angel Dust, The Downward Spiral, Rage Against the Machine and Parabola all change the landscape, but I don’t think any of them were metal by design.

In the same year as ‘Countdown...’ Pantera unleashed (that’s a metal word) ‘Vulgar Display of Power’, which is easily more important than both ‘The Black Album’ and Megadeth’s offering combined. From that point onwards almost all of metal sounded like Pantera. If you think you can give me shit about Machinehead, Biohazard or Sepultura being better, you are gravely mistaken. ‘Vulgar Display...’ is a monster.

But that’s not what I’m talking about, really. I don’t think so anyway. It’s this Monroe/Mansfield balance that, for one album at the very least, could have been tipped the other way.

When people ask me what type of music I like I almost always say metal, but it’s not the truth. Metal is the town I grew up in, but I don’t live there anymore. I listen to hardly any metal at all these days, and even back in the day it was just a select few bands on heavy rotation. Like comics and action movies, the bulk of metal is indistinct and shit. Today I will still play Alternative Metal acts like Faith No More, Nine Inch Nails and Tool, and they are the guys I’d call my favourite bands. But Slipknot, Down, Pantera, Slayer, Sabbath even...unless they turn up in the shuffle, they don’t much airplay. Clutch and Gn’R are Hard Rock, right? I still got times for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Metallica. I’ve seen them, now five or six times. Never seen Megadeth once. Metallica are gods in my eyes. Untouchable, unstoppable, unbelievable. But ‘Countdown...’ is a badass record. A seriously fast, heavy, savage dog of metal, that would maul ‘The Black Album’ in a one on one.

If ‘The Black Album’ was maybe three or four tracks shorter, this might be a different contest. The arrangement of the songs almost serves to highlight the lesser numbers. Once you get past ‘Of Wolf and Man’ the anthems are over, but the album carries on for the good/ok trinity of ‘The God that Failed’, ‘My Friend of Misery’ and ‘The Struggle Within’. Had these tracks been tucked between the ‘Sad But True’s or ‘Wherever I May Roam’s the record might fare better on repeat. ‘Countdown...’ trumps it by being all killer, no filler. ‘Nothing Else Matters’ Metallica’s first rock ballad, isn’t a bad song. It’s metal’s only decent love song, and it’s a great live moment for putting your arm around someone. But it’s a weak spot when Megadeth are pulling no punches.




It’s unlikely you don’t already know, but I should recap anyway. Megadeth’s troubled frontman Dave Mustaine, used to play in Metallica before they made it big. He got kicked out, reputedly for being an asshole even by Metallica’s standards. (Hetfield today might be a cuddly, reformed rocker, but back then he and drummer Lars Ulrich were jerks much like anyone in any hugely successful metal band was.) He went on to form Megadeth, and although the band have been seen as rivals ever since, Metallica have become the Roman Empire, to Megadeth’s little village in Gaul.

Metallica have had some changes to their line up over the years. Cliff Burton died, Jason Newstead quit. That’s been about it for the bulk of their career. Megadeth’s tourbus has been a lot more unstable – making it a lot more like Dave Mustaine’s band than a band itself. ‘Countdown...’ was the second album from what was their deadliest line-up; Dave Mustaine/David Ellefson/Nick Menza/Marty Friedman. Marty Friedman is the biggest gun in that box. The shredding you’ll find on ‘Countdown...’ makes Kirk Hammett’s work on ‘The Black Album’ stand outside in the corridor. Luckily for Kirk he’d already got solo’s like ‘One’ and ‘Battery’ in the bank. So whereas The Black Album sort of fizzles out, ‘Countdown...’ let’s rip with a dizzying, all-or-nothing exhibition of Mustane/Friedman fretwork. You only need listen from 02.55 onwards.

Ashes in Your Mouth

Kerpow. Hetfield and Hammet between them normally have the edge on Riffs/Solos, but the planets were aligned on the day ‘Countdown...’ was born. Metallica eases you into ‘Enter Sandman’ and from there the album itself. Megadeth don’t want you to put on your seatbelt. They want to smash you through the windshield (I’m trying to channel classic Kerrang hyperbole here. I wish I really did talk like this though). Ignore what Dave waffles on about. The album comes in on that first drum roll.





It’s not a nasty little record, ‘Countdown...’ It’s bloated with concepts and messages, more so than ‘The Black Album’ with its werewolves, nomads and cosmic musings (I first listened to the album on my walkman, reading Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘2010 Odyssey 2’ a book that scared the shit out of me as a kid – the bit with the moss and the bit with the multiplying monoliths are two of the most chilling sequences I’ve ever read – so the ‘Black Album’ and ‘Through the Never’ in particular are inextricably linked to thoughts about space and horror.) Megadeth go all out with nuclear apocalypse, schizophrenia, critiques on canned hunting and Reagan-era economic policy, suicide and in ‘Psychotron’ an unexpected tribute to Marvel Comic’s zombie commando Deathlok. You’ve got to love metal for the stories it tries to tell. Megadeth seem to have more fun, there's more humour on this record. Mustaine's barbed-wire-strangle vocals lends itself better to mockery, than po-facedness.

And...crap. I’m running out of things to say. I struggle writing about things I like. I’m an articulate complainer, which leads most people to think I live only to hate. Not true. I just tend to say ‘awesome’ for the things I think are awesome and essay the things I disagree with. I’ve written some fifteen hundred words on Megadeth now and I’m in danger of saying ‘bitchin’ or ‘gnarly’ because I just can’t write about music. This is kind of a facetious entry anyway. With blogs clogged by Beatles, Brian Wilson and Dylan, I thought the world could use a wake up to the Buzz Aldrin of metal, Megadeth’s ‘Countdown to Extinction’. It's got bigger breasts than the 'Black Album'. That's what I'm saying.

If I keep writing I might forget what weekend this is.


Anyway. See us out, Dave.










Oh. There is a bit in ‘High Speed Dirt’ where Mustaine shouts he’s a ‘dirt torpedo’. It sounds like he’s yelling ‘I’m a dirty paedo’. It’s ace.

Rough Beats

Now, if I’d had a spare ticket would I have taken a girl, or a wingman?

I’m sitting at my desk, beating things out in Arial size 14 when one of the Producer’s secretaries, Linsey, approaches. She’s smiling at me. That’s already made my day better. But it seems like she wants to say something. I flick off the iPod (Pursuit at Port Au Prince – David Arnold) and get ready for what I assume will be a quip about how I looked, or what I got up to, on Halloween. Linsey says “I feel like Willy Wonka. How would you like to go to the MTV Awards tonight?”

The tickets are like Sears Snaggletooth. I’m being offered one at the eleventh hour because several months ago MTV came to us at the eleventh hour and said we could film a segment there. I contributed a pitch and sat in on the ideas meeting and ended up story-lining ten beats or so that got shoe-horned into the corresponding episode (Monday 10th November 18.30 – my first screen credit). Obviously producers and the cast were given their pick of the tickets initially offered. Someone’s great kindness meant that when this spare turned up, it was offered to me and not someone who’d get column inches.

I dash home. By bus, which isn’t any kind of dash at all, but I can tell I’m not relaxing into the evening like I should. If I can be back at work by 17.10 I can catch a minibus with the cast and walk up the red carpet. So I’m watching my watch and getting adrenalized. I’m going to go with a suit. I contemplate suit jacket, shirt and jeans but I feel like my cock is hanging out whenever I try it on in the house even. It’s not my uniform. I book a cab, shower, get into the suit and then run into Liverpool One to find a belt. All I’m doing is getting more hot under the collar. No one does a belt I think it going to work, so I go to my flat and then discover the belt I have does fit the loops on my trousers. I’m not sure when or why I thought different. Good. The cab is here.

The driver gives me a bit of Liverpool history. This is where the prostitutes used to be. He offers me gum and when I say ‘Ta’ he tells me I’ve gone native. He doesn’t know why Scousers say it or where it comes from. I give it some thought. In Denmark “Thank you” is “Tag”. I put that forward as theory – given the Scandi influence in the area (Scouse comes from Lobscouse/Labskaus, a Nordic meat stew.) He seems satisfied with that. He tells me the origin of the remark ‘When dick docks.’ He also shakes off two black Alfa Romeos shooting at us and supernaturally gets me back to Lime Pictures with ten minutes to spare. A hearty tip for you, my good man.

I let the office weigh in with tie/no tie decision making. I go with tie. Back down in reception I meet up with the producer Bryan and I’m kindly introduced to Natalie Emmanuelle who plays Sasha Valentine. I’ve already gone on the record with him as saying she’s the most beautiful girl in the show, so that’s Christmas sorted for me. She tells me something to the effect that it’s good I’m going in a suit and not casual. It takes a certain quality of man to pull off a suit with style. Or words to that effect. It takes a certain kind of girl to pull off butterfly long false lashes and black leather gloves, and she is the first and only girl I’ve met who falls into that category. I’m smitten.

The buses come. I end up riding with Bryan and some reality TV kids. I think the cast want to stall and arrive a little late so they get another bus. I probably shouldn’t mention anything I overheard from my lot. You come talk to me personally if you want my opinion on this one.

When I get to the Echo Arena I liaise with a PR girl from MTV and find myself handling all the flash of this big money pit with the professional distance of a veteran PA. I just get things done. It might come from being on Bryan’s arm. I pocket my Red Carpet pass and head along the fenced off walkways to the VIP entrance. Schoolgirls and Slapparazzi press their bodies against the railings at the suggestion of celebrity traffic. As I pass I overhear:
“Who is it? Who is it?”
“It’s no one.”

Don’t forget which side of the chicken wire you are on, petal.

It’s quite refreshing to see how the others react to it all. The cast are a bit giddy. It’s overwhelming for some of them. My reaction is a mixture of warzone detachment, and imposter syndrome. My senses de-tune everything that isn’t right in front of me. Much like when I’ve been on stage or done brief stand up, I develop a very useful blindness.

I pretty much run up the red carpet. Great, forceful strides like I’m Roger Moore leaping from crocodile head to crocodile head. The cast know to stand and pose. The lights have already cooked great sheets of long-term memory off my brain. The names of school friends have bubbled away like butter in a pan. Nobody took my overcoat from me, so I perhaps looked like their minder. I can live with that. I think I might have also looked like Bryan’s bit on the side. But hey, all publicity is good publicity.

In the VIP room I listen in on the cast banter. There’s some sniping about panto and Dancing on Ice and other in-jokes. I fail completely at making anything beyond safe chit chat with Nathalie. I’m surprised I could make words. Looking around the room I don’t really recognise anyone. There’s one, no two Atomic Kittens...hmmm...that lot could be the cast of Croatian Big Brother...I’m told he plays for Everton...the fittest girls in the room are the ones that bring the food. Skewered prawns and glazed chicken goujons, spinach samosas and tuna sushi. The bar is free.

When we go to take or seats I learn that my ticket is with the mob and not with the limelight. Easy come easy go. At lunch I had none of this. I shuffle into the arena and look down on what is about to happen.

One Hit Wonder Katy Perry turns up and sings. Then when she’s done with that she stands around hooting like a manatee. This is all she does for the rest of the night, except for change outfit. I don’t recognise one word she says. Still, she’s far less annoying than vacant-eyed pretty boy Jared Leto. I can understand what he says; he’s following the script – but saying it all with disdain. That means he’s still cool right? No. He’s still a pretend, grunge-puppy, dickless puke, who sells records because he was the cute (illiterate, retarded) one in My So Called Life.

Metallica are nominated for two awards. They are beaten by 30 Seconds To Mars and some Joe Nobodies called Tokio Hotel. I think I’m more well known than them. My respect for the voting system dies in two strokes.

Some big names come out and perform some of the lousiest songs in their back catalogue. I’m still tickled that I saw Take That so I don’t mind what track they chose, but Beyonce’s latest single is a turd and Pink is wasting my time with that particular number. The one-hit wonders do better – Estelle and Kanye and The Ting Tings do something you want to hear live; the only thing you’d ever ask of them. The Killers are ok. Kid Rock is essentially saying ‘Aren’t Skynyrd awesome? Don’t I suck ass in comparison?’ I do go a bit giddy when Grace Jones presents an award. She doesn’t read out the year because she doesn’t observe time. I love you Grace Jones.



Bono comes out and like a Spitting Image parody of himself manages to include potatoes, the Pope and St. Peter in his dedication to Sir Paul. It’s beyond parody. He prattles on for an age, and his hyperbolic, overlong introduction confounds the Beatle himself, who comes out early, trips on a step and then is shown back to his hidey place by a woman with a headset on. Eventually when U2’s emissary shuts up, Macca takes his award, air guitars for a bit and then limps away.

As jaded as I sound, I found the whole thing bizarrely joyous. Maybe because the showbiz world is so carnival like, that there’s something to be said for just looking at all the colours and noise and – so long as you never take it seriously – swimming in the madness a bit.

When the show was done I shuffle out again and find out the chap I was relying on for my aftershow party ticket has gone home and the man now in charge of it won’t return my calls. It’s a bit of a bum note. I spot one of the lads from the show and I get a brief reprise as he drags me to a blue double decker bus and we are ferried to another VIP entrance. I lose him when he jumps off the bus early, fed up with traffic. He probably gets in on face value alone. Without wristband I am back where I belong. Little people. Luckily my flat is two blocks away. I stroll home still feeling elated. The club looked cramped, I still had my pirate coat on. The cast had splintered off into different cells in different bars and without at least one flicker of recognition I would have floundered inside of ten minutes. I tell myself these things in between kicking myself that I didn’t try and get someone to take a photo of me while I was there. But the whole thing was so short in my expectancy that I didn’t feel disappointed with how it turned out at all. It came out of the blue and then was done.

So it wasn’t an Entourage moment. It was very touristy. But how was your day at work on Thursday, hmm? Oi! Bagel for lunch? Fit girl on the Victoria Line, reading Michael Chabon? Got out five minutes early? Oh humdrum. I knew you once.

Anyway, I should get back on with my fifty hour weeks and rewrite deadline sweat sessions.

I'll probably get back to proper blogging soon enough, once I run out of "Hey, look at me" brag-wanks.

Dodici

Hallo darlings.

My temporal awareness is all wonky. I work in blocks, three week cycles. I haven't really appreciated that months have elapsed. It's all so disjointed. I feel like I just storylined Christmas, now I storyline March. Events like Pancake day happened 'in week three' of a block since gone. The future is already over.

Where did I leave you all? I can tell you I've safely moved into a swank little white box not far from The Albert Docks.(I can see them from my balcony, don't you know.) and I'm still a busy bear on Hollyoaks. None of my episodes have gone out and as there's not much ownership to celebrate on them you probably won't hear any fanfare here when E4 ships them out to you one Sunday morning. It took a while for me to organise broadband and the thing about writing for ten, eleven, twelve hours a day is you kinda like to just play with your pants when you come in. I crash in front of Entourage with a vodka tonic. I'm a writer, sweetheart.

Anyhoo, I'm well. I'm in good spirits. I like where I'm at.

This blog is a brief one. We Can Rebuild Him set the challenge of a list of 12 films you haven't seen, but want to. It had come to him from a bunch of other highbrow blogs, and he's described it as a 'meme'. Internet Simon Says.

Of course he'd know about ones so obscure that they can only be seen when you look down a special telescope they keep in the Vatican. All of mine had YouTube clips and I'm pretty sure I could just stroll into Zavi and buy at least one of them. There's more than one Criterion Colection here. But I've Badlands tried Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid to Fistful of Dynamite leave Dog Day Afternoon out Rio Bravo the Touch of Evil really Kiss Me Deadly obvious.

No order. If there's overlaps or patterns that's just mojo magic.

12. Blast of Silence.
Dirty, cheap, cynical, pitch black New York Noir from '61.



11. Charley Varrick.
Look at that cast. And it's Don Siegel. And Mattahau capsizes a plane on Joe Don Baker. Because he's 'a genius' I think this gets a DVD release in a few weeks.



10. Le Mans
Not obscure. It's McQueen doing brooding, cool, daredevil masculinity in a car. My sometime lover Francoise Hardy is in it. Steve's got a slick watch.



9. CQ
It looks pretty and silly.


8. L'Arcidiavolo
A sex comedy about satan in medieval Italy. With the most desirable woman in all of history (Oh Domino...). And Mickey Rooney as monkey. An evil monkey. Trovajoli scores.



7. La Decima Vittima
When I feel my time here is done, I'm going to arrange the exact same exit (albeit with a different, younger girl.)



6. Modesty Blaise
I've one of the novels. It was entertaining enough, a bit of light, Flemingian fluff. Fantastic cover to the paperback. Film doesn't look all that much like Peter O'Donnell's pulp. But it does have Terrence Stamp singing.



5. Drunken Master 2.
I'm not sure how I missed this. I watched fucking hundreds of Jackie Chan movies when I was a teen. I even watched that one that doesn't seem to have any martial arts in it, where he fights ghouls in World War II.



4. Rolling Thunder.
Pushed. Too. Far.



3. Le Cercle Rogue
Melville! Delon! What exactly am I supposed to write about a film I've never seen?



2. House of Bamboo.
I'm big on the idea of men, men's men, back in the day when they were men, and they wore suits and skinny ties and manliness was there in the jawlines and short back and sides. Boy, I wish.



1. Casanova di Federico Fellini.
This is what the I imagine history looks like. Decadent and grotesque, but somehow attractive. I'd have loved to have seen Vincent Ward's wooden planet Alien 3.



Ta ra la. You big mef.

Rametep, Rametep.

There are now two new chapters over at Devil His Due.

http://plomo-and-plata.blogspot.com/

Sorry it is taking so long to reprint these. You would think it'd be easy just typing out from an old paperback, but it's actually quite exhausting. Like how long train journeys can knacker you even though all you've done is sit down for two and a half hours. Plus my job involves a lot of writing, as opposed to stamping and stacking, so I might just want to take off my shoes and sip some Morgan's Spiced when I come home.

You can look at my cripple legs if you don't want to read.

You'll Never Walk Alone? I'm surprised I ever walked in the first place. I've unfolded paperclips into shapes I'd trust more than those two skinny things.

If my heart is a war, its soldiers are bleeding. If my heart is a war, its soldiers are dead.

Like two weary boxers....

So Blackdog vs. Ice Cream comes back to you. Which must mean life and I are done with our great cosmic punch up and have come to a settlement. Up there on the moon we fell apart, bloody and exhausted. Waving white flags with our swollen, broken hands we called a truce. Life gave me another go on the merry-go-monsterwork, because he likes the flavour of my fuck ups, and he’s had his fill of the last one.

My return isn’t quite like the one I had planned. Months ago, before I stopped writing even, I hit upon an idea. I liked it, hoped to go through with it, and perversely thought about how I’d blog it when I did.

You were going to get a video clip. A simple web-cam, direct address. I was going to start off with a bit of context. Explain that about eight years ago I had gone out with a girl. I’d admired her from a far for a few years and a fluke had put us both in similar places enough for us to go out one summer. I was very much in love. Knew I would be, as I’d fallen for her pretty much the first time I’d ever laid eyes on her back in college. I’d even made friends with a guy just to get an introduction, and then sent him to Coventry the second I’d said my ‘pleased to meet you.’ She came over to listen to Led Zep in May and things went from there. Before the summer was over we had broken up. University beckoned for her, her old boyfriend retained some gravitational pull, we weren’t built to last. It broke me just a bit.

I went a bit funny. I shaved off all my hair and vowed never to be nice to anyone ever again. The same way I’ve run for a bus a few times in my life and then promised never to bother again, it was a waste of my energies, I deliberately made myself look more unattractive and switched from what used to be a fairly meek and understanding personality to one of practically zero tolerance for anyone. Being nice and making the effort to look my best hadn’t paid off that summer, so it wasn’t going to happen again.

It wasn’t sound logic. I was just upset. I kept my head shaved for a few years, and then grew it back. My personality balanced out a bit (sadly after I’d been an asshole to my long-suffering next girlfriend) but having tapped that inner bastard, he never ever went away. Time healed, and other problems reared their ugly heads. The world kept turning, and heartbreak got lost behind my next epic complaint.

I didn’t disguise it all that well in my last posts, but if you aren’t up to speed, 2008 was ushered in by heartbreak beyond anything I’d encountered before. And I went a bit funny.

So my face was going to be here. Explaining most of what I’ve just written. Then my face was going to tell you he’d moved to Cardiff.

“Why Cardiff?”

“It’s by the water, it’s far away. It’s got a bit of history. And I’m a big fan of Echo and The Bunnymen....(beat)What’s that? Sorry, did I say Echo and the Bunnymen? I meant U2.”

That was a gag my face was going to make. It’s not even a very good one, but I include it here simply to introduce why I can’t use it anymore.

I now live in Liverpool.



And even as a joke, I’m not going to say I’m a fan of the Stereophonics.


I’m getting ahead of myself. Yes. I was going to run off, to Wales, and not tell any of you until my face turned up here on the BdvsIC to explain why I can’t come out and watch Wanted, or go to The Partridge. I’m a bit of a shit friend sometimes.

I went to visit Cardiff back at the start of April, had a wander round by myself. Went out to Llantwit Major and drifted along the coast for some five hours. Found the secondhand bookshops and gentle cafes I hoped to make my local haunts. It was all a bit hopeless. I was trying to find another Bristol – a place I’d visited a lot before Loki smote me – and recreate a fraction of happiness.

I was getting ever more pathetic. So I changed tact. Rather than do some knee-jerk gesture and run away from myself I put my efforts where they might be better spent. I got on with writing, and between then and now I’ve done something that has frankly surprised me. I’ve achieved an ambition. I got what I wanted – two things, even, and two things I didn’t idly dream about, but instead got on with trying to accomplish. I’d told a good friend I wanted to be living in a new city and writing for a living by April 2009. It’s in the bag for June 2008.

For me, that’s something, I tell you. I can see one of the reasons I did it. I really wanted the start of this year to have ‘happened for a reason’ like folks will say when they optimistically paint the crappy moments. I wasn’t going to just let time heal. I wanted to pour my vitriol and frustration into the fight and come away with something I felt was close to a fair trade.

I’m painting switching jobs out to be something that makes Helm’s Deep seem like buying a Twix.

Last week I was offered a job as a Storyliner on Hollyoaks. I’d completed a trial storyline over the previous weekend and they’d gotten back to me saying they liked what I’d done and was I willing to take a six-week placement on their team. I took a night to think about it, just to run it by my folks, and then the next day told my work I was leaving and that I could work three days out of what should be one month’s notice.

It’s come at the perfect time for me. I’d just moved out of my flat, and so all of my belongings were with my parents – freeing me to just pack a suitcase and go. My previous employers were sharpening the knives, as it was plain to all that invoicing had nothing to do with me or what I’m good at. Liverpool might not have been my first or fifth choice for a new city, but I was fed up with London and it was in my blood that I had to go somewhere else.

It is a little overwhelming. Back when I was feeling funny, I really wanted to isolate myself, but today I do feel a pang at being so far away from my best friends. I know one person in Liverpool, who has given me his spare room until I get my act together. I’ve so far paid him a plate of Daddy Bear’s Comfort Cajun and a cigar for his troubles.

It was only my second day today. Yesterday I got taken on a tour. I don’t know how much detail I should bother with, as I don’t think any of my regular readers drink in Phil Redmond’s Chester-set soap. I got to stand in The Loft, walk by Evissa, where I’d seen a fake bomb threaten baby Charlie’s life only the day before. I went in the Dog, the Ashworth’s, MOBS. I got to see Mercedes and Tina and Jean-Paul and Myra all chatting in their kitchen. There’s a weird Philip K. Dick sensation to it all. I was watching continuity up until Sunday. Then I had to read everything to bring me up to October and the plots being worked on now. A document of the futures. Beyond that I read specs that haven’t become scripts – the futures of the futures still embryonic and unformed, and in conference today heard potential realities put forward, several futures all competing like sperm to be the actual physical outcome. The gospel on E4 sometime over Christmas. The holy Canon. The weirdness is compounded when Michaela is on a stairwell telling my friend that Ste is a Spanner because he walks like a mong, or Warren Fox is behind me at lunch ordering the same meal as me (roast leg of pork, with crackling, braised cabbage, mashed potato and stuffing.) I’m not star-struck as such (maybe for Jennifer Metcalfe) just taken by not knowing how to react to people who do and don’t exist. Seeing them out of their timeline, their fixed surroundings. Twice already I’ve felt my face register recognition to someone I don’t actually know. They just play someone I know on TV.


It’s weird to go from talking about external invoicing to gay romance and murder, with the same seriousness applied to both. To sit in an office and put a professional effort into teenage kisses and stolen drug money, when just last week it was audio accounts and mic hire.

I find I’m thinking in Scouse. I reckon it’s a slight psychic thing. I can’t do the accent even if my dick depended on it, but I can think in that voice. There isn’t an accent in the world better for saying ‘Dickhead’ The phonetics is great. Dicche’gh.

Right. Hopefully stuff will happen here enough for me to keep the blog beating. Right now I need sleep.





I used to wear the old Crown Paints kit, back when I did.

Remake Remodel

*updated 9.4.8*


Cough.


You know, I wrote a post for here but my dog ate it.


I have actually had a go. There's two half-dones sitting as drafts, trees falling in the woods with no one around to read them. I gave up because I just don't like my voice at the moment. I can't honestly say that it is any more self-indulgent or miserablist than I've been before, I'm just in no mood to even hear myself like that. I'd rather not sound so and as a consequence I'm going to go on hiatus for a while.


I will eventually sound more like I want to. I know, because I want to sound different, if you follow my reasoning. When I feel like that, and I'm a bit more objective, I might publish the driftwood blogs as a little history lesson. Perhaps.

See, life and I have had a bit of a falling out and we need to come up with a better living arrangement.

LIFE

MONSTERWORK

(shown actual size)

It will be settled by a big fight in a scrap yard, where car crushers, cranes and pools of hydrochloric acid are all in plentiful supply. You always wanted to fly, Monsterwork. Well now's your chance.

I'm angling for my life to be reset and for me to live in Italy in the Sixties, where I can howl like a Tex Avery cartoon at Sophia Loren and she won't mind one bit.

Need to de-clutter. Purge.

You know what I'm thinking of doing? Quitting comics.

I'm not sure if I should see some arcs out to the end and maybe settle on no more than five titles. Or simply stop now, right where I am and give up. And then trade-in the bulk of what I own.

Sure, I'll keep the TPBs and some complete sets. But just deep-six whatever else is hanging around. Restore some of that disposable income I don't have. Trade them with some paperbacks and plastic unwanteds in for vouchers and get some other paperbacks, some cds...I think the Notting Hill vouchers are good across all their branches so maybe even some paper can get splashed on a vintage polo shirt or something.

Way I feel right now, I'd rather have a good pair of sunglasses than find out who Red Hulk is and why Rick Jones is the Abomination. I guess it's like when I cut off my beard, or sold my Star Wars or stopped buying Playboy. I just come to an understanding. Maybe I'm selling out. I do think the £50-£75 I spend on monthlies is becoming habit rather than joy. I can't honestly say how the last issue of Avengers: Initiative ended. I think I can handle not knowing what comes next in Ultimate Human.

Might clear out more than that. I'm restless. Itchy.

So anyway, don't expect any noise on here for a good while. When I come back I'll herald it on the Facebook and the MySpace and if you actually know me as a skin and juice and hair person, then I might flap some words at you and you'll learn that way.

Ciao.

*Bang.

So I took all this.

Boxed it up like so...

...carried it to Notting Hill and they magicked it into £80.00's worth of store credit. Which I turned into this...

Sure. It's neither much, nor particularly dramatic. I had an image in my head of me buying a red lamp and a pair of vintage tortoise-shell shades and that being all my money right there. I did get a better price than I expected. But yeah, turning comic books into some TV series, a vintage shirt and a couple of paperbacks doesn't smack as being all that different. I guess not. But it does help me see how disposable some things are. I can afford to give up so much. I'm the king of clutter, but what for? Weirdly only a handful of the comics I sold were anything I would call bad. The Mighty Hercules and Avengers Initiative are two of the best ongoings Marvel have in print right now. I guess my issue (heh) is with the 'ongoing'. I've drawn a line and the stuff I've kept has starts and finishes or at least is within a few issues of a definitive conclusion. Which is why All Star Batman didn't get sold, but all of the last year or so of Captain America did. I did a re-read test. If I could remember what happened in an issue or series then I'm guessing it was either good or I read it more than once. If I couldn't, I ditched it.

I've lost enough this year. I feel like I can give the rest away and it won't matter. Somewhere free from all the accoutrements is a licorice stick thing called me and I want to see it and discover if it needs fixing. To find it, I need to move things around, so I can see what is me and what is my surroundings. That makes sense right?

No, I didn't get that out of a self-help book. I haven't even started it yet.

"a little discipline, rent an opinion..."

Cheerio.