Facebook trivia roundup

During a busy month of drawing comics, clearing out the office, then gigging for ten days in Denmark, I've still found time to write trivial nonsense on Facebook. Here's some of it.

Got to move out of the office, so putting my worldly (workly) goods in storage. Made a start yesterday. But blimey norah you build up quite the mountain of crap when you've been around this long, with a tendency to keep everything.

Every time I pack a box I'm going through the whole "Do I need this? Will I ever read this again? Should I put it on eBay? Who has time for that, I'll put it in a box again" process. Yesterday, for example, I boxed up 15 years worth of Q magazines (starting with issue 8 if you're interested. And no, they're going in storage cos they won the "It'll be worth something someday" debate.)

Anyone else thrown out 30 years worth of shit / stroke / put it all in storage, recently?

I'm puzzled about this Joe Sugg chap (off of Strictly). It says on Wikipedia that he's the author of a graphic novel. It then says "the writing is by Matt Whyman, with artist Amrit Birdi". So which bit is he the author of?

I, as far as most kids I teach are concerned, am the author of The Beano, by the way.

There's a film on Talking Pictures TV called The Scamp, with a young Australian boy in the lead. Whatever happened to him, you wonder? The answer is brilliant...

http://www.brothersgibb.org/reports-colin-petersen.html

Bloody hell Baldrick! I've just found the worst feature of the new iPlayer design yet. When you've finished listening to one show, it plays you the start of a totally different one, from a station you never listen to!

I went from an episode of Counterpoint to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, and now I've gone from an excellent documentary on 4 Extra to the morning show on Radio Leicester! Madness. (The above grab was from another occasion when it gave me a Welsh language show! It's also given me a Gaelic show. Madness.)

Jaws

When did you last watch Jaws? It's on Netflix and we watched it last night. Wow. It's a lesson in film making, and I can't imagine what it must have been like seeing it in 1975 when there hadn't been a film anything like it since Hitchcock more than a decade earlier. Exemplary.

You get touches of Hitchcock (eg the contra-zoom), bits of Mike Nichols (the realistic dialogue in deep-focus shots), and a few bits of Buster Keaton (the comic timing where you think you're safe, then you think you're in danger, then you're not, then you are). Then you get bits that are pure Spielberg (the end of the pier turns round in the water and starts chasing you and so many more).

If he didn't invent the techniques he uses, and he often did, Spielberg brought them back into use after years of neglect, and with Jaws set the mould for the modern action film that is still our expectation today. Everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to The Lego Movie can trace its stylistic origins to this movie.

It’s not Wagon Wheels that got smaller, it was the NME.

It’s only while chucking them out of my office I’ve realised the NME kept shrinking by an inch every couple of years right up until I, and everyone else, stopped getting it. Probably cos it was hidden behind some Wagon Wheels.

(The photo’s not clear, but the 1998 copies are 40cm tall, the 2008 ones are 30cm. )

In response to Vince's post asking for bands named after insects I wrote:

I am so pleased with my pathetic contribution to this thread, I couldn't resist sharing it. So, how many bands named after insects can you think of?

I got (with a bit of Googling, admittedly):
The Roaches
The Cockroaches
Moth
Bugs
Caterpillar
Centipedes
The Termites
Earwig
Silverfish
Scarab
Larva
Silkworm
WASP
B Bumble & The Stingers
The Butterfly Effect
Bee Band
Tse Tse Fly
WORM
Flat Worms
Insect Warfare
White Moth Black Butterfly
Alien Ant Farm
and Papa Roach

Your turn.

I'm currently in Aarhus in Denmark, and from my window can see Some Kind Of Tower. Last night I performed in the Cobblestone Alley area, tonight I think I'm near Crates & Cranes.

Earlier this year I was in Hannover which has the most Postcardy Old Town, made up from the few non-bombed pre-war buildings, which have all been moved from where they used to be, to create a square that looks like a quasi old town. At least here in Denmark they had the good sense to just be collaborators and so not get bombed to buggery by the Brits.

Happiness is managing to get proper comic strip drawing done on the table in your hotel room #comics #myactualjob