Something I didn't post about on Facebook was that we bought a car last week. For a couple of months now, I've been worried about the state of the car (which, my diary recalls, I bought back in 2017). It's been needing topped up with oil on a far too regular basis, and the brakes were shuddering whenever I slowed down. Oh, and it had over 150,000 miles on the clock. Given that, in 2020, we managed a year without driving anywhere at all, that's a pretty impressive 25,000 miles a year. As I took it in for its service on Wednesday I feared the worst.
Ironically, the car's last journey of any note was the previous day's trip to Coleford taking me to a Driver Awareness Course, which I was doing following a "56 in a 50" speeding fine. One ticket in 150,000 miles isn't bad, wouldn't you say? Sadly I just acquired a second one when I was going to a school in Beverley a week earlier.
The garage (Stellantis at Cribbs Causeway, formerly Robins & Day) took one look under the bonnet, charged me a few hundred quid for it, and explained how much work needed doing. It was, as has happened so many times before, new car time. So I looked round the used car lot, made a few phone calls to Hev, then began the process of buying the new car. Unfortunately, because of taking out the mortgage on the new house last year, I can't pay for the car on financing, so had to find the £11,063 (after measly trade-in on the old wreck) from savings and credit cards. Better keep myself busy to get it paid off, then, hadn't I? It's a lovely 2019 car, with a sunroof and a few more mod cons than the last, inc reversing camera, and the sensation of being able to brake without shuddering is still taking some getting used to.
*******
July 31: Sad to lose Paul (Pee Wee Herman) Reubens.
My abiding memory: we went to the USA for the first time in 1991, with high hopes of seeing Pee Wee’s TV show, about which we’d read so much.
The day we arrived, the headline was his arrest. The show got cancelled that very day!
A news vendor on Times Square was calling out “Pee Wee plays with his pee pee!” as he sold the papers.
*****
Hotel owners (or whoever enforced the safety regulations on them): What is the point of this light?
I’ve been kept awake by a green security light in my hotel room. No way of blocking it or turning it off.
I can see the reasons for it in some places, eg the corridor. But this is a ten foot square single room, on the ground floor. In case of emergency, if I stick my foot out one side of the bed I can almost touch the door, and if I stick my arm out the other side I can reach the window, which opens wide enough to jump out.
Just who is this light helping? And how?
Yes, you can look forward to this review appearing on Booking.com later.
*****
Aug 5: Georgie Grier cries in Tik Tok and sells out her Edinburgh show.
A heartwarming story, which every Fringe performer gets. I mean, a bit galling for the hundred other acts who are going “er, we only had two people in, too. I was in tears, too. I was just too upset to pick up my damn phone.” But a nice happy ending
Thinks: Will an old man crying to camera make the Kickstarter campaign for my new book go viral? NB: would have to pretend it’s not going well.
Am I the only person whose Facebook today is full of the gnashing of teeth from acts who had less than two in their audience this week, but didn't manage to go viral with it?
A friend just bemoaned that he's not a "hot, crying actress", which to be fair he isn't. (Though it seems a fault in the new app is to blame for his, and others, poor turnouts).
*****
Guardians Of The Galaxy 3
At last, a good Marvel film!
We greatly enjoyed Guardians 3 last night. The first Marvel movie I’ve completed this year, having bailed on a Thor, a Wakanda, and an Ant Man, all of which fell short of my expectations. Guardians was just quality throughout.
Almost a textbook Disney tearjerker, with touches of Bambi and Dumbo, as well as doing what Marvel used to do well. Very good comedy, well constructed drama, great design, not relying too much on CGI, just using it well.
It had the best qualities of sitcom, and the best quality of unpretentious fun comic books. A testament to the fact that some of the best movies are made from the least good source material. (I confess I’ve never read a modern Guardians comic, I only remember them from the days when the title was a byword for “comic most likely to keep getting cancelled”.)
Recommended.
******
Aug 8: Fellow hack artists: seeing this random ad for a random product (I can’t even work out what it does) begged the question; How often have you been asked to draw a superhero for an advert?
It is the most basic generic fallback and I’ve been asked over the years to draw superheroes (usually Captain Name Of Product) for an email protection programme, for some sort of sales campaign that even I can’t remember the product, for a disability charity, and for dozens of company Christmas cards.
Second to this has been “doing a Roy Lichtenstein” which I’ve done for a phone company and someone else, lost in the mists.
What similar derivative hack ads have you been paid for? Fess up.
*****
Aug 8: News story says that George Bernard Shaw threatened legal action against Superman, in the 1940s.
Yeah, George Bernard Shaw was like this when I launched my superhero who was half Pig and half Melon.
He was called Pig- well, you can see where that was going.
******
Aug 10: Anyone else ever got caught out by this JustPark parking app? (Prepare for me embarrassing myself here).
So I park in Newtownards, wanting to park for 7 hours. I park, and this wheel starts spinning round on the phone screen. I just want to type in "7 hours parking" and pay for it, but it keeps scrolling round, without explaining what it's doing. Looking closely I think I've worked it out, have you?
After my day of classes, I get to my hire car to find a parking ticket on the window. You, dear reader, have probably already spotted my error. But I, in the haste and flurry of rush hour early morning parking, certainly hadn't. This Just Park app wants you not to book your allotted time in advance, but instead it wants you to keep the app open, and running, in the phone in your pocket for the whole rest of the day. It then wants you to, when you return to your car, slide the button over. Then, and only then, telling them the length of time you wanted to park and then, and only then, paying for the parking. So instead of paying for 7 hours parking, I had paid for 7 minutes worth.
I now know.
Am I the only one?
******
Aug 12: Sad to hear about the death of Peter Vaughan Clarke, out of The Tomorrow People.
Fifty years ago I don't mind admitting that he was probably the first male actor that I had a bit of a thing for.
And when Blur appeared 15 years later, it was ages before I figured out that Peter (or rather Stephen out of the Tomorrow People, which was the only name we knew him by) was who Damon reminded me of.
Aug 13: Welcome to the future. I just got served breakfast by a robot. Literal not metaphorical.
******
Aug 14: Re Dexys Midnight Runner's Geno
“This man was my pharma, my dexys, my high”
It’s only taken me 43 to realise what that line is! I always wondered why he was singing about farmers!
This man (Geno Washington, who he’s watching in a club in 1968) was his pharmaceuticals, his Dexedrine (after which the band is named), his high.
Update: Oh great, I now look up the lyrics and find it says “bombers” not “pharma”. Thank god I wasted half an hour and not 43 years under that delusion.
Apparently I ran a kids cartoon competition, in collaboration with the local paper, to publicise my Captain Clevedon comic in 1994.
I had no memory of this.
The things you find in envelopes in your studio.
******
Aug 15: Anyone outside the Edinburgh bubble might care to get up to speed on our latest cause celebre. Last week it was a woman who cried on TikTok cos she'd only sold two tickets, this week we're piling in on a kid who's done fly-posting on top of someone else's poster.
In short, if you're not in Edinburgh, you can be reassured that everything is going on exactly as it always does. And next week we'll announce the winner of the Pleasance Comedy Awards. It's what we do.
*****
Aug 16: Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones struggle at box office.
Every story like this, about struggling movies, hammers home that we’re going through another big shift. And of course we’ve seen it before, and everyone predicted what would happen next and got it wrong.
I grew up being told how movies used to be big until TV came along in the 50s, worse through the 60s, then by the time I came along in the 70s they were all closing and becoming bingo halls. Apart from blockbusters like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake, and a Bond film every two years, movies were a legacy business, TV was the future.
Home video was going to be the final nail in the coffin. I remember that palpable feeling in the early 80s, and the news that cinema attendances hit an all time low in 1984.
Then, of course, we were proved wrong and VHS turned out to be the saviour of the movies. And, to all intents and purposes, through DVD and into the streaming era, the business stayed strong.
Now a mix of the pandemic and every broadcaster becoming a streaming service has broken the system again. Just like TV in the 50s, we’ve learned we can get for free all the stuff we used to pay for. Last time it took 30 years for the decline to end. Who knows what’ll happen this time?
*****
August 17: Henpocalypse
Well that was rubbish. Does anyone remember a show I used to run called The Sitcom Trials? We’d showcase new sitcom writing with the audience voting for their favourites.
This script (Henpocalypse, which started on BBC2 and iPlayer this week) is typical of the poorer scripts we would get (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to find this was one of our many rejects) replete with all their faults: Interchangeable characters with no discernible differences, doing lots of telling not showing, with inexplicable plot devices, incomprehensible passages of time , gratuitous sophomoric gross out language, and worst of all no actual comedy.
The most puzzling thing is the good reviews I keep seeing for it, including the one below. If you want to see similar subject matter done properly, I recommend Zomboat (as seen in my Top Ten favourite TV shows of 2019: http://kevfcomicart.blogspot.com/.../my-top-tv-shows-of...) Quite why both shows are set in Birmingham I don’t know, something about that town just makes you think of the end of the world I guess.
Avoid. (Henpocalypse that is. Seek out Zomboat if you can).
******
Aug 19: Who else is loving Traitors Australia? We’re on ep 10 out of 12 so no spoilers.
But after the disappointment of Traitors USA, this is a joy. I think we’re finding it even more gripping and fun than the original UK series.
The US series’ big fault, apart from using the same games as the UK series, was its casting. The US didn’t use ‘real’ people so much, filling their show instead with people who were famous from other reality shows. So they were already insincere and unloveable, and it was really hard to care. Also Alan Cumming came across as stagey and unengaging compared to the UK’s Claudia.
Australia has a cast of not only all real people but people well chosen, with backgrounds in law, journalism, ordinary jobs and even a - genius move - psychic.
If you’ve not watched it, I highly recommend.
The Traitors Australia - BBC iPlayer
*****
Aug 20: An interesting article (really just a book review) begs the question: whose art do you still want to enjoy, despite what they’ve done? My top ten would be:
Woody Allen (the early funny stuff)
Rock & Roll part 2 by Gary Glitter
The typography on London Underground (by Eric Gill)
The Cosby Show
Phil Spector’s Christmas Album
Everything by Hitchcock
Most of Michael Jackson’s work, especially Thriller
Top of The Popses presented by DLT and Jimmy Savile
Everyone’s Gone To The Moon by Jonathan King
I can take or leave Roman Polanski and Miles Davis, and you can keep Gaugin.
Can you still enjoy the work of villains, or must they be put away forever?
