Smashing Time

Lemon and McCartney

"The Goliath Window" here.
The fourth in Jonn Finnemore's beautiful "Double Acts" series (industry secret: The fourth episode of a series is always the best). SEE how much sleep I got the night before the recording like a proper professional not staying up late all excited like a chancer. HEAR all the lovely stupid sounds John wrote for me to make. WONDER whose bare flesh that is actually being slapped. (It's not mine, I know that - I was holding a script). KEEP up, as six-thousand perfectly selected words are delivered in just under twenty-seven minutes - surely a record! LISTEN to the others too - they're no Episode 4 obviously, but they're still gems and have people in it who are excellent and famous and probably got some sleep.

And on the subject of double-acts, and male modelling, and slapping flesh, and a thinky one and a punchy one, the Monster Hunters return with brand new Hallowe'en webcast "The Doll's House" here.

Featuring me as Sir Maxwell House (no relation... although very possibly a relation to Mark in The Goliath Window, let's face it... voices) and perfect for a Friday the 13th, this beauty features Sir Maxwell posing for a waxwork, lots of unnerving snickering in the dark, Lorrimer Chesterfield's flat getting further annexed by idiots, and Roy Steel facing the very real chance he might be losing his lady powers. Well, I mean, time moves on, Roy. It's won't be the seventies for ever. And what would the Monster Hunters look like in the eighties, eh?

Eh?.......................................

The most off-putting opening credits ever? 

 (If any of you do fancy braving the pilot episode, let me know in the comments below 
where in God's name you think the ZANY first scene is supposed to take place.)

Clean Shirt

"@slepkane has requested pictures of Don Draper illustrated with Mark from Peep Show quotes. Please encourage this."
I have my reasons.
Huge thanks to @Bright0nKath, @untiltheygo, and in particular to @MrJamesBachman, who did nearly all of these and came up with the hashtag #MadMenWithVen.
(And apologies, obviously, to Jez.)
 

Peepshow starts ending this Wednesday. You probably know that.
Mad Men - with its roads not taken, era-defining attention to detail, existential angst, heart-breaking sex addiction, trouser-wetting, office-shitting, lawnmower injuries, revenge vomit and aging child cast - was very definitely the American it.
But that ended.
And now Peepshow - which did it all first - is ending.
Or returning, depending on your POV.
I hope Jez gets that Honda account.

"There are a lot of television rules about story-telling that I didn't believe in... 

like, that you can't tell an internal story."

 Matthew Weiner

The Borrowers (1997) Movie Review

CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!

from JurassicGodzillaFan

What am I Where-ing?

 

Thanks for asking! I'm doing this at the Shaw Theatre tonight.
Tonight. In five hours.
And then Thursday and Friday.
We'll work out exactly what I'm doing nearer the time.
Can't wait!

Hoo... that post took a lot quicker to write than I expected.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 15

"Oh they go there, do they?"
"Waggee, look -"
"No!" Waggee butted in, "I understand your 'thing' with clothes, Zip. You like wearing clothes, I've accepted that. Which is precisely why I put the hook up... WHO THE FRARK IS SHE?!"

From "Zip Startrousers Swipes Right"

 Actual illustration by Tom Kidd

Going to see

 When you join the Labour Party you receive emails addressing you as "comrade" which is a bit hilarious. Now Corbyn's leader of the party, and a non-appointed front bench are resigning in droves, and it's still a bit hilarious. Here, anyway, is what I reckon...

"I see you, the media!"

 I genuinely don't think I'll forget that first TV debate. I'll never forget thinking "Well 'favourite' Andy Burnham's nobody's favourite now surely." But more than that, I won't forget the woman in the audience who asked why refugees should be given a home while she might lose hers, and how Corbyn scolded her and took this opportunity to attack the show "Benefits Street", and then how Yvette Cooper said she didn't want to see her lose her home either, and how I thought that that was important. Both Cooper and Kendall appeared to have a far greater understanding of the true importance of Social Security than their male counterparts. It was practical, not ideological. So why did I end up voting for Corbyn?

 Maybe it's because the next time I saw Yvette Cooper on television she was talking about how her policies were "for the future, not the past..." and I just couldn't take any more guff. "We need to send a clear message" - every candidate was saying that apart from Corbyn. Maybe it's because I found candidates campaigning for the party leadership on a platform of how attractive they'd prove to the opposing party off-puttingly bone-headed as a strategy: "Vote for me because I'll ignore you." Maybe it's because I wanted an opposition that opposed and didn't just abstain. Maybe it was because of that thing I wrote about wanting a Labour movement that engaged with the electorate as an energy to be harnassed rather than a market to be captured. Maybe it's because, horrible as this sounds, Cooper's husband couldn't even save his own seat so I found it very difficult seeing him on the steps of Number 10, even by association.

 Mainly though, I think I voted for him because I wanted him to win. To see. Just to see. That might strike you as irresponsible, and I take the passion of those on the Left who attack Corbyn as unelectable extremely seriously, but I just can't agree yet. Arguing that his leadership would condemn Labour to the political wilderness ignores the fact that Labour have lost two elections now, while Nigel Farage made a far larger dent in the political discourse than Miliband without even winning a seat. What exactly is a wilderness if not where Labour already was? There'll be voters at the next election who were born in 2002. Try warning about them about "the lessons of the '80s".

 

 

This image is included to fool people.

 

 And was the 1980's really such a wilderness? I remember that wilderness producing pretty much everything British that I loved about growing up: the television, the comedy, the music, the comics. So - however long Corbyn leads the party for - I look forward to some excellent art coming out of it.  The Great Consensus is over, maybe not for good, and maybe Corbyn will prove an immediate disaster in which case it will be back stronger than ever, but at least it will have earnt it. I'm very excited that we're finally going to see. And until that happens, let's not use the word "sensible" in a debate again. (Tony Blair argues that most "sensible" people recognise it wasn't the whole economy that broke, just a small part of it. The chain didn't break. Just the one link... Also, if we're going to discuss the National Economy in terms of a family making savings then let's shrink the banks down by the same degree and admit we're talking about a family that owes money to, at best, another family whose lives they saved... or if the banks are larger than this, admit that that's a problem. Focus, Simon.)

 

Likewise this image from Roger Quimbly.

Although what's not to like?

 

 And how long will Corbyn lead the party? I thought during those debates he'd have no taste for it - that he was a direction rather a director. But his often stirring and occasionally whiney acceptance speech yesterday showed me a man who was up for it. So we will see, won't we? Personally I'm worried about Tom Watson as deputy. He's a magnificent campaigner and there's much talk of him uniting the party BUT... he did call Michael Gove a pipsqueak. But you hate Michael Gove, Simon! Haha, yeah... No, yeah, I really do... but if there is a lesson from the 80's, I think it's also the lesson of 2010 and 2015, the lesson Obama learnt, helping him beat the far more centrist Clinton: it has never gone well for the political Left when it talks about Good and Evil. Do your job, focus on the facts, convince through competence, smile, be courteous, and let the Right go mental and out themselves.

  Speaking of security, an almost identical message found its way to me

as an email from CCHQ, somehow circumventing my spam filter.

 

 Nobody likes being told off. Let the artists handle the telling off. Corbyn needs to learn that immediately, and so does Watson. Which is pretty much where we came in, with Corbyn scolding a scared woman and Yvette Cooper trying to reassure her. Right! I'm off to see what I've missed in the past hour.

 Comrades.

 

"Does that make us targets for gunfire?" 

An example of excellent art.

The Book of Kirby

Source

Here's something to be adored: It turns out Jack Kirby talks exactly like the Bible - not the way Stan Lee thinks the Bible sounds, not full of "thee"s and thou"s - but an actual Genesis, with every event preceded by the thought that created it, every short sentence beginning with an "And..."
Just watch this glorious interview with the creator of the Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfer, etc. etc. - hear him declaim what's transcribed below and imagine what those comics might have been like if he'd been allowed to fill his own speech bubbles.

I see that story first.
I feel that story first.

I know those people first.
When I put them down they’ve already lived
And I put them down as I’d like them to live on those pages.
My stories are very sincere.
My stories are people stories.

My inspirations were the fact that I had to make sales

And I had to come up with characters that were no longer stereotypes.

In other words I couldn’t depend on gangsters, I had to get something new.
And of course for some reason I went to the Bible.
I came up with Galactus.

 

And there I was in front of this tremendous figure
Who I knew very well
Because I’ve always felt him.

And I remember in my first story I had to back away from him
To resolve that story.
And of course the Silver Surfer is a fallen angel.
And when Galactus relegated him to Earth
He stayed on Earth.
And that was the beginning of his adventures.

And they were figures that had never before been used in comics.
They were above mythic figures.
And of course they were the First Gods.

And I began thinking along those lines.
And the New Gods evolved from those lines.

And I began to ask myself:
“Everybody else had their Gods. What are ours?
What is the shape of our society, in the form of myth and legend?
Who are our Gods? Who are our Evil Gods?
And who are our Good ones?”
And I tried to resolve them in the New Gods.

And I came up with some very, very interesting characters.
And very good sales

Which satisfied me immensely.

Now I didn’t resolve the questions.
I’m a guy who lives with a lot of questions.
I say: “What’s out there?”
And I try to resolve that.
And I never can.
I don’t think anybody can.
Who’s got the answers?
I sure would like to hear the ultimate one.
But I haven’t yet.
And so I live with a lot of questions.
And I find that entertaining.

I find that entertaining.
And if my life were to end tomorrow
It would be fulfilled in that manner.

I would say: “The questions have been terrific.”