By the Picking of my Thumbnail

Hello friends/fellow students. As anyone who's subscribed to my YouTube channel might know, I've started a second one. And there, for the past four weeks, I've been reposting videos of me from 2020 tearing through the complete works of Shakespeare in lockdown in case giving Simon Goes Full Shakespeare its own channel made them easier to stumble across. I also added little introductions to the introductions, which I shared on my first channel too, which is why you might know. Here's the opener to the opener.

 

 Apart from these fresh intros, the only new material, if you don't count the compilations, or the date stamps (and you are absolutely welcome to count date stamps as new material, by the way... it's been an unhelpful old year for me so far in terms of the old fight-or-flight) are the new thumbnails. Ideally, your typical YouTube thumbnail contains both the presenter's likeness and some text, and after a series of botched cut and pastes...

 

Bold. But rejected.

 

... I realised the easiest – and also quite pleasingly Dave McKean-iest  –way to achieve this was simply to pause the introductions as they fade into the titles, and take a screenshot.

 

 "Ta-daaa!"

 

 The compiled Julius Caesar went out this weekend, on both channels, meaning that for the second time Season One is now done. But another reason I bothered to give this project its own channel is that, this second time round, I hope to get further into Season Two and beyond on its return. I've time enough anyway, and a room. And I'm still very proud of the whole thing... The only reason I haven't plugged it until now is that, as I learnt in my previous post, apparently it helps the algorithm find you an audience if you don't. But that hasn't thus far worked the same magic it did on The Sitting, maybe because that video's only sixty seconds long. I don't know. It's a learning curve.

 As a fat, four course taster then, here are the compiled introductions. The Two Gentlemen of Verona's features a new attempt to explain what I'm doing, plus archival bonus material of me seeing if it will work if I sing the songs rather than just reading them out, which it didn't so I don't know why I've included it.

 

 

 The compilation of introductions to The Taming of the Shrew features no new introduction, but bonus material of me going off into the kitchen to throw some pans around for some sound effects, which I did use.

 

 

 

 More foley work is included in the collected introductions to The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, where I cry like a baby. Donald Trump was President back in 2020, remember. It was a different time. Ha ha ha.

 

 

 

 And finally – inspired by this bit in an excellent documentary about the old BBC2 cult film strand Moviedrome in which Alex Cox reckons he got the gig because, as the only film director not living in London, he couldn't just film everything in his living room and so his Film Club pieces to camera looked much more dynamic...

 

 

...  I head out of the flat for the final compilation of introductions to Julius Caesar, and attempt to explain what I'll do next beneath the green man of Parkland Walk. (Some thumbnails are better than others. Like I said, it's a curve.)

 

 

 

 Now play them all simultaneously! And if you fancy taking your own tour of the new channel, you can like, share, subscribe, scroll, swipe, dive, run, push, bomb, and pet heavy HERE. I hope you're all doing tremendously.

Persona Non Grata weeks 8 & 9

 First they closed Woolworths. And I said nothing, for I was not a Woolworths...

 Then they closed Zavvi. And I said nothing, for I was not a Zavvi...

 And now here are the last two strips of 1996. The first I had originally intended to be a huge Dave McKean-type production number, but couldn't get any of the objects to stay on the paper.

Extra-curricular use of the white base and top hat

... wwwwwas made on Monday evening in the insensitively well-lit Crypt of Saint-Martin's-in-the-Field – Saint-Martin-in-the-Field's – Saint's-Martin's-in-the's-Fields's–whatever it is. Time was, I remember, you could pop down there for a coffee and barely see who you were talking to, but now it's lit like a prison. Or Ikea. Perhaps nobody had told that to the people at Bloomsbury when they chose it as the location for the launch of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, hiring a couple of actors to drift eerily past, disguised as Victorian ghouls. Still, it was packed. A bit too packed, as my opposite undead number Alice (who actually did look great in her sulky cowl despite the absence of candle light) pointed out. You couldn't really "drift" anywhere, you had to more kind of "barge" eerily. So mainly we stood still, and I decided to look a bit lost and pensive and hanger-onnish (I'd been generously invited that day to the Evening Standard Theatre Awards by Ella who'd just been nominated best newcomer – YAY – and guessed I'd be adopting much the same attitude) and I attempted to hold my hands in the manner of a Chris Riddell illustration. 

 And below is a lovely little film by one of the greatest illustrators ever to work in comics, Dave McKean, who was also at the launch, which made me very excited. And above is a little image from The Tempest film I made eleven willion years ago, which I realize now shows his influence puh-retty clearly. In the flesh Dave McKean looks like some extraordinary household spirit, or the patriarch and sole beard-owner of an arboreal race visible only to the drinkers of neat willow hooch. Also a lot like a trimmed Arvo Part. His son and I had a staring contest. And I got him and Neil Gaiman to sign the inside of my battered dungeon topper. I'm getting paid in books. Not a bad gig really. 

 

 

 

 (I think that last caption reads "God finds an important use for the third, and previously spare dimension".)