Holy heck

The blog is closed until the new year. Words do not come easy to me in December. We will meet again in 2006 and lace daisies into one another's hair. Until then:



War is over, if you want it!

Crooked grind

Apologies for the lack of posts this week. My many revolting old walls are being skimmed so I can sell my castle. Sadly this has only served to make the house extremely filthy in every way, and rendered most of my possessions inaccessible. Join me in praying that, a week from now, order will have been restored (at massive expense).

I did start work on an SGR skateboard. The idea was suggested to me before Chris Onstad introduced his, but only about two days before. The number of times this has occurred is high, real high, like a beanstalk. Onstad is always one step ahead - like a pixie.

Anyway, here it is, tall in every way:



It's urban, yet rural. Do you see?

Enjoy Christmas the right way

I like Christmas, for a number of reasons, but mostly because I like to pretend that it is the 1950s and I am only going to get a catapult and bag of nuts in my stocking. By the big day I am pretty bored with the season, but in November I get excited about getting my Christmas albums out and just digging the winter feelings on my own terms. So here are some good ones to get:

AUSTERE MORMON CHRISTMAS: Low, "Christmas EP"
Brilliantly spare, lovely music by the super-religious indie rock band. I am not much of a theologian but few people could argue with this thing.

PIANO JAZZ PLUS SINGING CHILDREN CHRISTMAS: Vince Guaraldi, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"
One of my favourite albums of all time. End to end brilliance that pretty much defines what this kind of record should be.

SIXTIES WALL OF SOUND CHRISTMAS: Beach Boys "Christmas With The Beach Boys"; Phil Spector, "A Christmas Gift For You"
The Beach Boys record is their 60s Christmas album teamed with a rotten, shelved 70s effort that fortunately contains 'Morning Christmas', a heart-stopping Dennis Wilson number. The Phil Spector record is "Sleigh Ride" and all that - peerless 60s pop.

LOOK FOR IT ON THE INTERNET CHRISTMAS: Sufjan Stevens "Hark! Songs For ChristmasVols I-III"
I found these unreleased gems by accident while looking for pictures of pandas on Google Image (lie). The indie folkster loves baby Jesus and delivers in spades.

I quite like the class-of-whatever-year alternative compilations that come out each Christmas. There are dozens of them but Xfm's "Cool Cool Christmas" is the best of a mixed bunch in the last decade. It even has a song by Lauren Laverne. Buyer beware, they always feature a couple of horrible songs (guilty party here: shame on you, the Flaming Lips!)

This year I want to get some good country Christmas albums in, as nobody does it better than Nashville. But since there are 17 million of them, feel free to help in the comments. I realise that country music is a dirty word (two words) in the image-led hipster world of blogs, but be brave.

Back to California where it's warm

The Brighton show was not fantastic. Some really nice people came by, including stalwart supporter Laura Kelsey (who bought a big ticket item), but mostly the show was ill-attended and far far too pricy to get into. Rather than write a show report, I drew a picture that sums up life on my table. My table was opposite the drugged-out hippie bargain book stall and the infernal hated dancing monkey.

In the picture The Duchess is putting a brave face on it but I am not.



Some watercolours still available etc!

I feel kind of nervous!

Here are the other two pictures that you can get in Brighton. Perhaps I will come home defeated with my tail between my legs (in which case you will be able to buy them off the website at a special, shame-face rate).




Wish me luck as I punch the sky on Friday! Air-planes are unnatural! My carbon footprint is huge!

Brighton Update

Due to our short-sighted bigamy laws, I am going to have work out which one of Brighton combo The Pipettes I most want to marry. Tune of the year (week)!

Brighton Comic Expo is on Saturday.

Goodness I do hope some people are going to come down and see me at this Brighton thing. Hell, Brighton is the south east's gateway to a watery grave; it's easily accessible by tram, goat and Shanks' Pony from ole London town.

I have finished making my new range of buttons, there are four different designs for people of all different moods. I'll also have some watercolours available (some depicted below) at what I can only describe as a "low" price. £25! Plus I'll have teatowels, all the books I still have in stock, and I will be accompanied by The Duchess, adding a unique flavour of Euro-glamour to my belt-and-braces Yorkshire convention approach.

The print-shop

Amy has a gig! It will be AWFUL! Are you going?



I thought this might make a nice print (on canvas).

The buttonman

I'm working on some new buttons for the Brighton Comic Expo later this month. I have my own button maker, it's a German machine that fills me with innocent joy as I operate its levers and pulleys. The only way it could be improved is if it had a steam whistle on top.



I won't be selling the buttons on the site (too much effort for too litte reward), but if you meet me in person at a show, I usually have all manner of these tiny weapons with which to impale your enemies.

Tshirt desperation desk

Sorry that there have been no new posts but I have been very busy trying to be good at drawing. Hopefully improvement is evident with each passing day. Some of next week's comics look pretty nice.

Designing tshirts is a rubbish job, especially when you would, personally, never wear anything with a "snappy" phrase on it - though I do like S Britt's shirts, where the words mean absolutely nothing. But a lack of supply is choking demand, and I must answer the call. Today's work in progress: society's easy little boxes. Finished colours may vary etc etc



Now, you and I both know that the second I can afford to, I will never make another tshirt ever again. That bitter dichotomy helps me keep quality high. But those boxes quite tickled me. One's a little tank!

More soon lest "Secret Scary Friend" enter its 17th year on sale. Feel free to make requests in the comments area of the blog.

Commercials

I've got an ad in the next issue of legendary alternative comic Love and Rockets. It's hard to be a huckster for yourself when you're not given to the art. Fortunately, following some consultation with a close ally, a compromise was reached.

Where we take things "nice and Keys-y"

Following my earlier cusses, I will cheer up with the good news that Danny Baker is back on BBC London (weekdays 3-5pm). He has always been the ultimate thing to put in my ears since small times, a shaping influence on the things I enjoy! My world would be infinitely poorer without having embraced his broad cultural brief, from S.J Perelman to Jake Thackray.

Where is my BBC Radio Player? One may "listen again".

Also much respect to Danny Kelly of course.

Webcomics on iPod/PSP/Kodachrome slide

I'm hearing a lot of talk these days about putting webcomics on iPod photos and PSPs to read. Maybe I'm a dangerous lunatic, but wasn't the great thrill of doing comics on the internet that you didn't have to cram them into the tiny space available in the newspaper? Is there some sort of irresistable push to make comics as unreadable (and un-enjoyable) as possible?

I can't believe it only took 29 years for me to become a dinosaur. But unlike the dinosaurs of the past, I have written a couplet to express my utter dismay:

Read your comics at a reasonable size
Then perhaps when you're 70 you'll still have EYES.

I would write more, but I have go and eat my dinner while looking at it through a microscope. I'm sure you understand.

Movie review time

OK, so last night I went to see "Serenity". I'm pretty sure that there are no spoilers in this review so read on unabashed.

Serenity is a movie where the bad priest guy from Buffy the Angel Slayer has somehow got in charge of a spaceship in order to get away from Buffy. The bad guy from the X Files is also in it (not a very popular bad guy) and a girl who is kind of weird in the brain. Anyway! It is like Battlestar Galacticas without Lorne Green. At some point there were bad, scary men who I assume are very disenfranchised because it is the future. Also there was a black man who was a Very Good Actor.

One thing about this movie that annoyed me was that they seemed to have stolen a lot of ideas from "Firefly" off the TV. But don't let that distract you from the fighting.

Watch this movie if: you like bad vicars in space kicking off some excellent fights.
Avoid this movie if: you are no fan of "entertainment".

Serenity: a good movie!

New auction reveals team spirit (steam spirit)

Click the picture for a low cost, fun auction for smile times!



That is all for now.

New ways

In an attempt to compete with the top comics of the internet, such as Questionable Contents and Sam and Fuzzies, all my comics will now be drawn on Pergo with Sharpie.



The day the world changed!

The greatest TV show of all time

was BULLSEYE!

Bullseye was a gameshow where people played darts. It was hosted by old-school comedian Jim Bowen. For some reason, a half-hour gameshow on Sunday evening where people play darts is about the most sublime thing in the world. The human drama on the faces of the dart-throwers was so plangent, and it all happens so fast.

We lambast modern television for dumbing down, which as any fule no is nonsense. Bullseye is no intellectual work-out. But somehow, it delivers on every level. From the knuckle-gnawing interchanges between contestants and Mr Bowen to the delicious celebrity round (where underperforming stars would frequently reach into their own pocket to boost the £75 they had raised for charity), not a second is wasted.

I was excited to discover that Challenge TV shows Bullseye - not that I had ever wasted more than 3 consecutive seconds on that channel prior to making the discovery. In fact, the day I found this out, my spirits were at a very low ebb. It's strange to think that 30 minutes of 20-year old light entertainment can be the difference between walking tall and throwing yourself under the wheels of a passing ice cream van. But I digress.

Seen both as a game-show and historical artifact, Bullseye exposes the eighties as a long-abandoned country. Lady contestants (who are probably younger than me) contrive to at least double their ages with high waisted trousers and aspirationally tall hair. The men all work in ironmongery or concrete works! Contestants who appear to have attended university are skittish dart-nerds, yet to drink of the confidence-boosting wealth of the coming information economy.

If you have digital TV, don't hang around, don't wait. Per-second, nothing (and I do not say this lightly) beats a bit of Bully.

T-shirt request workshop

Several readers (several, not the one I usually upgrade to "several" for the sake of these posts) have written to me asking for an actual "books rule" tshirt. Now, I have never said that anything "rules" out loud, outside of a strictly historical context. But this almost equates to a groundswell of support, so here goes:



Yes, that is a hamster and no, I don't know why. But it's a pretty good hamster.

Eagle revenge

Upon returning home from New York at 7am last wednesday, I should have been delighted to note that there had been no slug incursions in my absence, thereby proving my counter-measures to be wholly successful. If I'd really meant business, I would have coined a catchphrase, such as "slug free since 08/03". But alas, there had been an even more determined intruder than the pernicious garden slug.

When I forced my way past the pile of exciting mail (including: tax disc! Undelivered item notice! Pizza menu!) I witnessed a scene of devestation roughly equivalent to that following a middle-range earthquake. Pictures askew. Unexplained dirt everywhere (the kind that houses hide). Lampshade at a jaunty angle. This can only mean one thing, namely that a bird has flown down the chimney and commited acts of terror on my home.

Now, I don't know about you, but my first thought upon getting into trouble is not to defecate everywhere. That seems to me to be compounding the problem. Not so Mr Bird, who had spattered every available surface with yesterday's brunch. So now, when all my shaking body wanted to do was sleep, I had to try to find this miscreant in my home. The thought of going to sleep only to be awoken by talons raking my face (inevitable, I figured) did not appeal. After two hours of spirited effluvia removal, I gave up and collapsed.

(A note: OF COURSE I cleaned my house before I went away. So that burglars would not think the worst of me).

Later on, i found its sad little body behind a curtain in the spare room. I suppose a true blogger would have taken a photo of this, put it at the top of the post, and reminded us all of the pathos of life and death. Wheels within wheels. I just shoved the (thankfully cohesive) corpse into a shoebox and threw it in the bin. All the while, obviously, praying it would not come back to life in a damaged, screaming way. I don't mind admitting that I poked it with a stick a few times first.

Thank goodness for sticks. Thank goodness for shoeboxes! Thank goodness for Cif cream cleaner. Thank goodness.

Brooklyn

I am in a secret location in New York city which cannot be revealed at any cost. Already I have hatched some serious schemes and judged this great nation as only the Englishman can. The freedom eagle's belly is ripe for tickling, and I have a feather that is up to the task.