once for old time's sake.

The final push urgghaaahh

For those of you not on facebook and thus luckily spared the intense banal-o-drama of my life in visual detail,  here are the sights that have been accompanying me on the final writing up, where miniscule confidence meets sheer terror and sleep deprivation on a grand scale. So no blogging for a month or so. If your get bored, why not have a chat with my friends here, although these days all I'm saying to them is "I knew I shouldn'ta left yous in charge!!"

After all this, hoping to get Here, not everyone's idea of a weekend break but would be nice to be a pure comic geek again. 

Beaver Boys

shrimp and white wine

Some late night Saturday Spike Jones madness...just beacause

Spike Jones, fucking genius, his tracks can still stop a party in its tracks like Peaches, in the 'what the fuck is this' genre, always end up listening to him late at night.
P.S. he's the reason the other guy has a Z.

Quick believe in evoultion or else you'll shrink into nothingness!

From: Genesis 6 Giants

"Where did these giants come from and what was their connection with ordinary humans? Just who were they? What happened to these extraordinary creatures? Is it possible they could ever return? The last question I will answer right now - YES, they most definitely could return! And they have something much worse in mind for mankind."

One of the joys of facebook, yeah like no one has been mentioning it recently, is a group set up by my old employers of New York's premium abstract mine where us outsourced Irish writers were kinda like Victorian waifs and chimney sweeps sent up a big chimney papered with things like Ebony, Christianity Today and Model Railroader. I shouldn't knock Model Railroader too much becuase if the above diagram is anything to go by we'll be driving around in them in a couple of years, and using Star Wars figures as statues.

 

I love this pic, so by this  'logic'(sorry to misuse the word) God's like 200 foot tall and we will eventually get so 'modern' we'll keep shrinking until we evolve into nothingness like The Incredible Shrinking Man 

Abstract mine boss 'R' says it comes from this site * and adds: "You can read all about it here, if you have the time and leave your brain at the door. note: some of the text on the pages is very small, presumably because it is intended to be read by the more evolved among us, to whom it appears to be an enormous headline-sized font." 

More fun here: 

Obviously the people who lived contemporary with dinosaurs were intelligent, and the footprints indicate that they were quite human, as the large toe on primates is located close to the heel to facilitate clinging to branches.

So you all have a nice weekend, don't shrink and watch out for giants they may return to eat your giblets. 

*Apart from the overall bonkers quotient of the site, I love they way its opening sound bite is from The Wizard of OZ! not know for it's fundamentalist Christian fanbase. 

Frank Black on Vinyl Justice

your Frank Black Friday fun, classic clip from Adam and Joe's Vinyl Justice

Tales of the Gold Monkey - Opening Credits

i mean who lets a one-eyed dog fly a plane, it was acceptable in the 80s....

Tales of the Gold Monkey Balls....

Comics writer and blogger par excellance, David Campbell, of Dave's Long Box Fame has come up with a painstakingly 'scientific' way to discern which U.S. hour long adventure show were good and which ones were, let's be honest, pure balls, with his  

Nostalgiametrics: Science of Today for Yesterday's Crap

For me growing up, Tales of the Gold Monkey  (fan site here) was kinda like the Popeye movie (which I saw in a cinema in Bundoran), although I was sure I saw it at some stage the fact that no one seemed to remember it and the lack of any mentions in books or TV documentaries, had me unsure, did I dream it? Was it the produce of a demented brain pan like that famous Bangles versus Fuzzbox postapocalyptic wrestling show: "The Adventures of Tulula Fuzzbang in the Forbidden Dimension". I remember seeing only the first few minutes of Tales of the Gold Monkey that happened to start just before I god dragged off to mass at some novena or other, never got to watch it, yeah thanks God, another fuckup from you. 

Comics Britannia press/blog roundup, the Internet could explode....

Update: Jonathon Ross on Steve Ditko in The Guardian 

• The Times Top Twenty Superhero Movies
• Bryan Talbot's history of British Comics in the Guardian, scans at Fictions  originally from Lying in the Gutter
• Kim Newman on Comics Britannia
• Charlie Brooker on Comics Britannia
• Lew Stringer blog review
• Andrew Billen on Comic Britannia, the Times. 
  
• Down the Tubes British Comics Ning Network

also, The Times, "Sci-fi films are as dead as Westerns, says Ridley Scott"

and the new Iron Man Trailer. 

'There, all done' 

see what happens when 'google' yourself late at night....

You find out that you're not a hip comic academageek after all but a busted donkey with badly damaged ears...adopt me before it's too late from here.

Horray for BBC4! TV Documentary on Comics that doesn't suck shock!

Finally got round to seeing the Armando Iannucci-narrated BBC4 documentary "The Fun Factory" as part of their Comic Britainica strand.

Although there were a few niggling cliches of documentaries on comics, flippant title credits, e.g. Paul Gravett, referred to as a "Comics Brainaic", it was a genuine joy to find out more about artists like Ken Reid. Along with Leo Baxendale, he did provide a strange almost unsettling edge to occasionally twee British comics which I caught the tail-end of while growing up with "Sweeney Toddler" and "Calamity James". I suppose the U.S. precedent to a lot these artists' styles was Basil Wolverton, but they all share a seething madness breaking through the weekly grind of sometimes generic repeated storylines. There was a continuity between the crazier Baxendale strips and Oink and Viz. It was also interesting the way stuff like Baxendale's Thrpp! could fit effortlessly in with the anthology boom of more adult title in the early 1990s, Jimmny's personal peak of obsessive comic collecting where a cold sweat would ensue if McCawley's newsagent in Cootehill hadn't kept my reserved copies of 2000ad and Overkill.

Extensive coverage at the Forbidden Planet Blog here.

Next Up is Jonathan Ross in search of Steve Ditko.

Feck! bet you Lucas came up with that one....

Found here. Hey Speilberg you can let Lucas be in charge of the action figures and coffee/light snacks only, don't let him near the script for love of Jebus. You know what he's like, oh and no screaming wives either!

Irish 24 hour comics Day, Oct 20th 2007

Poster by Ztoical.  (thoughts are with you dude) 

24 hour comic days involve writing and drawing a 24-page comic in 24 hours and there's one coming up in Dublin that I have half a mind to get to, barring real-word/academic concerns of which I have many at the moment. It would be my idea of a perfect holiday, involving Guinness, sleep deprivation and comics. It would be also a good chance to meet a certain Bob Bryne and other Irish comics luminaries. 

Hale and Pace Vic And Bob - Comedy Auction

wait until the last 5 seconds! bizarre

Tim and Eric - Humpers

when was it a good time?...

New Anti-Piracy Ad (from The IT Crowd)

Can't Tell Me - Kanye West Will Oldham and Zack Galifianakis

Black Francis - Captain Pasty

some frank black for friday 'don't take your eyes off captain pasty'

Superdog's wee lad....

Friday Poetry corner: ah the old theme tune's coming back me:  

Look! down in the undercarriage, is it a walnut? is it a button mushroom? is it a nubbin? 

no!  

it's superdog's wee lad! 

superdog's wee lad! 

nestled next to... 

his wee nad....  

you'd think it'd make him glad,

to get to lick his wee lad

but it only makes him 

more sad 

poor superdog's wee lad

Hey robin, wanna ride the bejewelled batman dovemobile? c'mon, hop in, the downy feather's is warm :)...

Karl Whitney of Irish Man's Diary and Dumb Riffs fame* sent me this delightful sight from the streets of Paris some sort of Batman meets Liberace on Island of Doctor Moreau shit...climb aboard my downy bejewelled feathers kids?!....

*Plus he survived a particularly memorable paddy's day in Norwich 

Thanking Father Ted and other unlikely reads....

Can't stop laughing at this, via Monkey Fluids, kinda like Borin van Loon or Glen Baxter but with more swearing.

On Facebook they have this virtual bookshelf thing where you can pretend to be all intellectual like.  I try to keep my virtual book shelf, as my real one: one third academic, one third comics and one third sexual bizarreness and sleaze, Facebook as yet to adapt the app so that you can hide virtual flarn dvds within the virtual bookshelf. It's all based on an Amazon search thing that throws up funny results, like when I was trying to find the Father Ted scripts I got these gems: 

Thanking Father Ted  I think we'd all like to thank Father Ted, just not this one. 

Or we could just play rough for a while, yeah let's do that, Let's Play Rough

And after that we can have a go in Jezebels Spooky Spot

Still, I suppose there are worse things on Amazon 

Hollywood pap threatens civilsation as we know it....again

I love it when paper pundits deign to really comtemplete contemporary cinema and near shite themselves when they have to face up to its themes:
Joe Queenan in todays Guardian on Knocked Up:

I think women need to start their own film industry: this one isn't working.
It is anybody's guess what the female protagonist gets out of the relationship with Seth Rogen in Knocked Up.

(does he think women haven't made films before?)

Where is all this leading? It's leading to a future so dark that women will look back on the decade that brought them The Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding and My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a golden age.
I mean Knocked Up isn't as bad as Epic Movie or something, now really did threaten civilisation as we know it.

P.S. If you try google image searching for 'knocked up' without your results filtered, you'd see far worse things that posters for this film.

Jimmny on Tom Green....about 55 minutes in...on Skype...but it's still Jimmny talking to Tom Green and Scott Thompson