Power Socket 2 "Your gondola's ready"

Computor sweat.
Reading this again I'm less sure now about Agamemnon's credentials as a Reed Richards-style brainiac, but I must have given him those grey streaks for a reason. Maybe he was supposed to be more of a gung-ho Hannibal Smith-type, but with a small tank instead of legs. Is that a tank? Also I seem to remember Changeling was supposed to be the suave one, yet here he is biting the head off a dinosaur. "It looks like an old bottle cap..." It's true, Digi-toc looks like the nipple of a water bottle, but I don't remember water bottles having nipples in the eighties, so who knows what the Mongrol means by this? And who knows what the accomplice was intended to accomplish, or how Digi-toc brought the weapons, or how they got from their converted toilet/bar thing in Sloane Square to the Pacific in a speedboat, or if Neanderthal is just this guy they let tag along with them or what? One thing I do know though is I really enjoy drawing the intermediary stages of a morphing. 

"Your death will be a slow one. You will rot in my cells." Ahhh, life... the slowest of all the deaths.
Be sure to join us next issue for that other never-fails standby, the "scare them to insanity" plan, still only 10p!

Sockets

While I sort out my dongles, and since the scanner's working, here's the first of seven and a half issues of a comic I tried selling at school in the mid-eighties over a period of probably two years or so. I'd seen someone in the year above do something similar and was clearly both impressed and inspired, a rare combination of emotions for me then as now - I think I'm more likely to be inspired by seeing someone else do something wrong. I know that by issue Power Socket's  seventh issue I was heavily into 2000AD, because that was the issue my Dad persuaded me to take along to the 1987 Annual signing to show Alan Moore, Kev O'Neil, Pat Mills and the like, which is a hell of a memory - but looking at these early issues which appear to be inspired more by Saturday Morning Cartoons, I'm willing to bet they came out a while before I was a friend of Tharg. I was, maybe, ten when I wrote issue 1, and never really into Superhero comics but I knew from the cartoons that you should have a robot, a tough cookie who says "sucker", a brainy leader, and beyond that my characterisation skills clearly faltered. These are scanned from photo-copies. The originals were rescued from the house fire but are a little crumbly. The signature "ZANY" is not something I stuck with. And Agamemnon was meant to be called Armageddon, but I rather fortuitously misspelt him. Let's go.

 Stay tuned!

Plugs

 I can't get my telephone to put photographs on my laptop.

 What I've done is put a wire into a hole in the telephone, and then the other end of that wire into a hole in the laptop, and made sure that the two ends of the wire have the right pictures on them and match the holes, and the little picture of the wire that becomes three wires appears on my phone and then... Well, something happens then, doesn't it? They're supposed to go "Hi" or "I've noticed you've stuck a wire into us, would you like to move stuff through that wire, like those photographs of tents or – You probably don't even remember what you photographed, do you, it's so long since you uploaded any of them."

 "Yeah but who's fault is that? I did my bit. I put the wire into you two guys. And it's the right wire, do you know how many wires I have? Now it's up to you to put the things through the wire."

 "What wire? Who are you even talking to, Simon? This conversation isn't happening. That's the problem, surely."

 "Yes. Good point. Thank you for being so understanding... Hello?... Hello? Helloooo? Looo booo? Mah. Just singing. Singing to myself – Oh yeah, photos– Oh no."

 And of course no photos means no blogging (I don't make the rules.)

 UNLESS, say, someone suddenly posted online a short sketch show in which I was asked to appear back in January, alongside many excellent people who have actually appeared in other, actual things.

That's me in the corner. No, the other corner.

 

 The invitation to be in "Spats" came from Ed Morrish, who also produces "John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme" (the third series of which we're recording at the moment) and look, there's John, and Maragaret Cabourn-Smith. And Dan Mersh in a moustache suddenly! My film work is far too scanty to convince me I actually know what I'm doing yet, but I'm happy at least with how I'm doing it wrong in this. Enjoyee. Right, I'm off bright and early tomorrow/today to Bristol, to appear in Hannah Ringham's "Ghostphone" in which, covered in paint, shouting a little, and armed with a baseball bat, I lug detritus around a chamber of strategically orchestrated abuse. Much more my comfort zone. And it's excellent to be working with Hannah again. Those of you reading this is in Bristol, why not come along and see it?

 Because you won't be getting any photos of it, I can tell you that.

Future Shock

Meaning "the physical and psychological distress suffered by one who is unable to cope with the rapidity of social and technological changes," the term was coined by Alvin Toffler in 1970. I've just found that out. I thought it was coined by Judge Dredd in 2000AD: the sufferers were called "futsies" and scooted around malls at knee-height in mink stoles with saucepans on their heads, swinging machetes. But how - I wondered back then in 1988 - did they know they were living in the Future? Why did they call it Future Shock? When I'm in the future, will I know? Will it feel like the Future? I liked the idea that I might - that I wouldn't take the Future for granted. And I've always had a taste since then for depictions of the present that focus on the jolt, which is what's posted below... Buster Keaton and The Twilight Zone - two of my favourite things! I found this last night. Apparently Richard Matheson's script originally consisted of nothing but a big chase, which would have been terrific. That's not how it ended up, and not all the episode is as good as this bit. But then, what is?

The full episode: "Once Upon A Time" is here.

This deleted scene from The Avengers is also beautiful on the jolt.

And parenthetically - this being the year 2013 - has anyone else noticed how many posters recently have completely done away with imagery? Just big phrases. It's grim. The year is 2013. And what the hell is a "Festival of Neighbourhood"?

David Shayler has other ideas.

What I really want to write about is Jon Ronson's "The Pychopath Test" - which first alerted me to the current state of former MI5 whistleblower Shayler's internal narrative let's call it - and Phillip K. Dick, and Brian Aldiss' thoughts on ECG testing, and all sorts of research for "Time Spanner" and modern epiphanies. But that's going to take ages so here, I'll just drop you right in this... God it's funny if you can forget it's actually happening to someone:

"When I first woke up I was told by Jesus that we would be hit by massive solar activity in 2012, and part of my mission was to gather together 2,000,000 children to sing "Greensleeves" to calm down the effects of this solar activity." And so on, and so on... Willy Mason said it so much better.

Jimmy Fallon has all the best ideas.

Or his writers do, I don't know, however it works. Obviously looking up old US talk-show clips on youtube isn't all I've been doing with my evenings (and afternoons*) but - you know how it is - the mind gets into a groove, you work evenings, mostly, and you've moved again so there's loads of conveniently out-of-the-way stuff in boxes to once again find less convenient places for and you feel at home finally but you've become so used to feeling displaced and so YES... I have been watching quite a bit of Jimmy Fallon AS IT HAPPENS.

The scope for unchecked, sloppy fun paradoxically afforded by the industrial-scale demands of a nightly American talk-show (as opposed to its weekly UK counterpart) is a contradiction I first fell for back watching The Larry Sanders Show nearly twenty years ago, long before youtube gave me access to the less fictional snippets of Conan, Jay, Letterman, Kimmell and Craig Ferguson (Craig Ferguson?!) which I now sort-of-I-guess-enjoy, but my enthusiasm for the theatrical and even pastoral responsibilities of the nightly hour-long telly treadmill has remained  undimmed and chipper. John Oliver has of course just taken over hosting duties on The Daily Show, I know, and yay! - but the political focus and consequence of that particular gig make it a bad example of what I'm trying to talk about here. This is what I'm talking about:

This is Jimmy Fallon. Until recently I knew him only as the corpsing drummer in that Will Ferrell sketch where Christopher Walken says "More Cow Bell" (good luck finding that online) but the more familiar I become with Fallon's talent the more convinced I am it's really Fallon's frivolity which turned More Cow Bell into something loved enough to gets its own T-shirt. His attention to the whole is seemingly instinctive, his care over detail is on a par with CERN's, and he has an ear and an eye unmatched by anyone else I can think of working in studio-based television. Take the sketch above: two boards are wheeled on, a filter's applied and suddenly we're in a movie - that's your joke, that's Love, that's Art. Seriously. Or when he plays Neil Young singing the them tune to "Fresh Prince" and is absolutely in it, it's the shadow cast by the hat over his eyes that means someone somewhere involved in this is a meticulous genius...

Or Steve Martin punching Death in the face, here...

Or the decision not to prerecord these twenties inserts, here...

Or everything about this even though I've no idea who Michael McDonald is...

I'm reminded of The Muppet Show, but with better jokes, or what Adam Buxton might make if he was given his own talk show, or indeed anything. Have you half an hour still spare? Join me.

Excellent idea.

 "Who's on first?" extended edition. Excellent idea.

 PeeWee Herman's "Dark Knight Rises". Excellent idea.

Spoofing this. Foolhardy, but an excellent idea.

Naming guys. Excellent idea.

Not raising interest rates on student loans. Excellent idea. And if Jeffrey Tambor, formerly of "Larry Sanders", happens to be a guest on your show, well this idea is...

Also excellent. To say nothing of "Let Us Play With Your Look", "At the bar with Roger Federer", Real Stars of "Guess Who?", "Mom Dancing with Michelle Obama", "Rap Histories", "True Facts of Truth", "Real People, Fake Arms" basically I've watched the whole damn channel.
I love him.

* and days.

G. reat B. ritish H. oliday

With the US release of "Sightseers" today or something, what better time to publish this glowing assessment from resident cineaste Mary Ann Sputnik? (Apart from when they released the DVD, or maybe when the film actually came out over here last year anyway it's here):

You'll have to see the film to understand how great a still this is.

Dark and noisy and lying in wait, movies side naturally with monsters. Road Movies aren't about driving, they're about Sex and Death, Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands and Five Easy Pieces (or, back in my day, Thelma and Louise, True Romance and Wild at Heart) - they're fantasies about turning your back on everything you've ever been given or had to take, following a plus-one into the wilderness, and then trying to hump and kill your way out of feeling like a trespasser. Also of course, they're movies about America. You couldn't set these stories in Britain - good old, naff, uncomplaining Britain with its not-massive cars, gun control, pencil museums and shaming dearth of deserts and peyote. The very idea of a British Road Movie is inherently comic, surely, which may be one reason Sightseers is billed as a comedy (although there are some outstanding jokes). But blow me if Sightseers isn't also the very first Actual British Road Movie.

The only stuff of Ben Wheatley's I'd seen previously was The Wrong Door, so nothing had really prepared me for the intoxicating wilderness he helped to serve up here. Holy cow, can he film! Places and faces. And those faces! Alice Lowe's tiny beams and frowns, Steve Oram's mug like thunder. And those places! When the killing come, as promised, it doesn't sneer as the trailer suggests. These aren't the killings of If... They don't denote a conquest. And they're not a judgment, they're arbitrary as Nature, a psychedelic framing of the question "What are people actually for?" As Chris and Tina conclude, "murder is green". I was reminded oddly of Dredd - another lean, mean exercise in fantasy violence unbound by the yucky dictates of orange and teal. I was also reminded of Four Lions, less oddly. In the end, the rage so happily submitted to comes as a relief. I left on a high.

Forbidden Corner, Tupgill Park Estate, Coverham as recommended in

"More Bollocks to Alton Towers - Far From the Sodding Crowd"

So there you go. You can always post nice words on twitter of course, but really that just looks a bit too much like you're saying "Hey, wow, I know these people". And I do know Alice Lowe, and Richard David Glover who's in it too, and is also brilliant, and I'm surprised I didn't mention him actually. I know them, and I was excited when Alice first spoke about this film, excited because a friend was making a film and that's exciting. But that excitement was nothing to what I feel now that I've seen it.