Ah Neon, late nineties nostalgia and Graham Linehan.

Here's a boring tale for you all, it's about my magazine obsessions of the late nineties, when I used to do cartoons and comedy articles for magazines in Belfast and Dublin. It's a long post, but there's loads of pictures. Back before the Internet really happened* magazines were important for geeks like me living in rural Ireland and then Belfast. My favorites were Bizarre and Neon but then the Internet happened and the need for magazines like Bizarre went from 56 percent to 0 percent overnight.

Anytime I go home, I normally pore over my old Neons and on my most recent trip to auld Rockcorry I brought some over to read on the plane like some sort of time traveller getting all excited about the prospect of Leaving Las Vegas being made by Alex Cox. Neon really created an atmosphere of injokes and extreme filmic geekiness that was enthusiastic but was never afraid to say when films were total shite, or good when others thought they were shite. They always referred to Arnold Schwarzenegger as 'Arnolt', and were taking mericiless piss out of the Cruiser before it was fashionable.

Anyway, one of my vague claims** to fame was getting a letter published in Neon in the Vincent Gallo issue cover below(click all pics to enlarge):

Note how my friend Jimmy Hanley has written "[scribble] You Hanley, Hanley, Jimmy" on my most prized copy of Neon. I was angry at the time, but he also pissed on my best friend's head, so I think I got off lightly, plus it kinda looks like a cool tattoo on yon Ricci's arm. This was akin to my wee sister once spilling diluted orange juice on my copy of V for Vendetta whilst I had to play Scrabble, but as you grow older you realize this quirks make your copy different to everyone elses and make them more valuable in emotional terms.

My Letter(it's the first one):

What was the reason for the letter? well, Graham Linehan, who has recently been classed as a bone fide living genius and looks like this:

had been writing one of the funniest film columns I have ever read, "The Filmgoers Companion" and Neon had continued with the column without explanation and his name taken off it, what was the dillio? perhaps I'll never know.

Two columns that I'll never forget are this one about the Titanic

Especially this bit about the "Iceberg Desdemona"

In my memory, there was an elaborate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/ Leviathan style cut out drawing but that wasn't the case, must draw what I imagined the Desdemona to be. Even now, a mere mention of 'The Desdemona' will have my friends (well one in particular) in fits of laughter (well, I'll be laughing and he'd be there, yeah well I remember that)

The second great Linehan column was his Klaus Kinski adjusting to normal life one (which if you're read Kinksi Uncut, and you should, you'll understand)

Despite Linehan's involvement, they still get Ardal O'Hanlon's name wrong in this review of The Butcher Boy:

Here's some pictures of Mr. Kinksi to send you all peacefully to sleep...'I'm going to the cinema'...

*Hey the Internet, it's a good laugh isn't it? what will happened at the end? it's a great read isn't it? Great characters, twists and turns, I think what will happen at the end will be when we find out that we could have found aliens or gone to space with this technology but it was more important for us to watch a video of a chimp scratching his hole and sniffing his fingers and then falling out of a tree..


**Others include interviewing Mark Lamarr, Placebo, Gary Moore and Graham Fellows.