Flailing your arms around wildly won't pay the rent or earn you recognition

Though I do acknowledge there are exceptions to the rule...

Right now I've hammered my list of projects down to...

1. ArchBrook Treatment/Script
2. Well Chewed Gum revision (A short script which could be considered a creative offshoot of "Tonight..."), finding some decent folk to make it with.
3. Webcomic development.

Everything else has to be shuffled into the "Whenever you need a break from the first three" bin. The webcomic, the most recent addition, may seem like a bit of an odd thing to throw into the mix when I am trying to focus, but here is the deal. Aside from a number of other reasons (I swear, I should just make pie charts to explain why I do everything, short of going to the bathroom or sleeping), it is the pressure to maintain regular updates that has pulled me back to the notion. I crave the structure and the deadlines for the steady rhythm and focus they would lend. Right now I am very pleased with myself in that I am writing on a daily basis but the reasons (personal enjoyment, fear of wasting my life) aren't good enough to sustain this level of output past a certain point. Without more visceral consequences, I know that one day (be it a month, a year or more from now) I will wake up and not have it in me to push out another story.

Because, let's face it, I could just lay down my writing etc any time at all and I'd still be able to feed myself, have friends, fall in love, travel the world blah blah blah blah. I actually would like consequences to my lulls in productive creativity. With a webcomic there would be the matter of maintaining readership and if things went really well, I could even wind up supporting myself off it in a modest fashion. Having to make rent etc. from the sweat off my brow may not sound appealing to most, but it is certainly more appealing to me than sleepwalking through my days at uninspiring jobs and then driving myself, half out of desperation, to maximise my every minute of spare time outside of that job.

So let's see what comes of this, then. As far as the progress on the concept and art, amongst the possabilities I've been sketching I seem to be getting pulled in towards something that resembles Max Fleischer cartoons - or at least the hazy vision of them which I've culled from memories of what I would get up at 6am to watch on television when I was quite little. Some drawings I've worked on yesterday and today are approaching palatability - if you cross your legs and wish real hard I may just post pictures of them later today.

Man! I gotta get a scanner!

A potential status quo buster

I gotta say, I really respect this. Check out the $100 Laptop project when you have a minute. There is both a website and a handy lil' video. Like a naked celebrity (pick your favorite), I'm in favor of this thing from every possible angle. Even if you're not "into computers", check it out - this is not a part of the Western culture of technofetishism.

Dudes in Seattle will not read about this in Wired Magazine, furiously masturbating with one hand and using the other to write a program in Perl that will help organize their WB Girl backgrounds in order of nipple length - desperately praying throughout the whole ordeal that they may one day figure out which DVD to buy that will give their lives meaning.

I...I'm not fond of those people.
I......I gotta go to bed!

The beginnings of a serial?

Clive pops up again, over at Bronze Age Sky God.

I've been listening to James Brown all day and you can't stop me

So it seems that by the time the new issue of CapitalMag was uploaded, my article was deemed too old to put up? My lil' review of Hot Fuzz can be found, at least, but I won't deny that's a little annoying. So for the hell of it, I've copied and pasted the article (final edit) at the end of this post. I've been told that in the future they will upload these kinds of event articles within a week of the event, instead of holding on until the next full issue, and that they hope I'll do more articles for them as this one was really well written - so I'm not giving up on them yet. Besides, I still appreciate the added impetus to get out in the world by wanting to write about it.

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ShortWave’s Brick Lane Broadcast

By Oliver Brackenbury

On the 11^th of this month a south of the river film collective, Shortwave, held what has been a bi-monthly exhibition of short films and bands from the London scene. The venue was 93 Feet East, one of several examples of gentrified bohemia to be found in Shoreditch along Brick Lane. The selection of short films, music videos and one documentary was admirable if only for its egalitarian approach to selection

Top fare included Spool Films' Blind Mans Alley, which brought a macabre element to the evening by revealing only enough details to make the audience desperately curious about a dehumanizing game of automotive Russian roulette. Rosie Escott’s You Are Here had a touch of glamour with a soundtrack provided by Ninjatunes own Fourtet. At the high end of the budgetary spectrum, this London IndieMedia offering tackled the revisionist approach we so often take to our memories of past relationships with a mixture of live action and animation. Other shorts showed comedy, art house impressionism and CGI wizardry.

The only real irritation of the evening came from a series of technical problems which delayed the film viewings by 45 minutes, rendered the sound on some shorts disjointed at moments and led to a very unfortunate failure to completely play North Of Ping-Pong’s excellent video for their new single, “What Goes Up”. Luckily the group performed live later in the evening and I was able to hear it in its entirety! It’s very tempting to compare N.O.P.P. to The Streets for their sense of humour, storytelling and subject matter, but these lads seem to be aware of that inevitable comparison and are making a strong effort to stand out on their own merits. Of the musical portion of the evening, they certainly left a more memorable impression in my mind than Imbeciles & The Poison Umbrella, Unit or Crack Village.

Despite the technical mishaps I shall be coming to the next Shortwave evening on April 8^th and I’d recommend you do the same. Several hours of entertainment, an insight into those who may be the big names of tomorrow and the rare treat of not knowing just what you’re going to get: not bad for a pound at the door.

Lil' update...

...is in no way related to Lil'Abner.

Meanwhile, I'm daring to be optimistic and have put an almost equally "Lil'" update over at Bronze Age Sky God - an idea I can see myself returning to soon enough.

The dreaded MySpaceUK experiment is proceeding apace, with some interesting film making characters cropping up amongst the infinity of fanpeople. I won't bother going into detail unless something much less ethereal comes about - but one thing I will mention is how more than one person has, upon seeing the ol' trailer, told me that they have found it refreshing to be approached by a writer who has gone out and done something.

For the rest of today I'll be spelling "Vindicated" O-L-I-V-E-R

My second watercolour painting (and the first I feel I can show!)

The webcomic style attempts came - but have yet to evolve into anything worth showing, yet. More on that as it develops.

But I did finish my painting of this photograph and with that I am most pleased. Now my apartment walls are moderately less spartan. I'm not sure precisely which photo I'll try painting next, but something which uses more colours than black, white, blue and a tiny amount of red & yellow....I've got plenty of paint tubes just sitting in the box, plump with potential and maybe just a bit of self-satisfaction at never having had their caps removed. Suggestions?

This Saturday I'll basically be making love to the internet, but without using a computer! Earlier in the day I'll be checking out the abominably named UK Webcomix Thing, partially to get a better idea of what the UK in general is producing (as I'm pretty much only up on the popular North American webcomics) but mostly to briefly meet John Allison of Scarygoround. I really admire the way he manages to deftly avoid the "gag-a-day" feel while producing interesting stories with humour and individual pages which stand up quite nicely all on their own-some. I stayed thrifty this past weekend so as to afford a book or two of his but also to have cash for the second part of my internet-without-a-computer day - the upcoming London SA Goon Meet.

For those of you who don't know what that is, no I am not going to meet up with a bunch of underlings that are regularly beaten up by superheroes and bad-ass cops with a heart of gold. The forums for Something Awful are rather epic in size as well as high in quality and organization. It has thousands of members from all over the world and so, sometimes, if only to get people away from their computers and out under the sun, someone will organize a meeting of various members for the express purpose of fun*. For reasons lost to the sands of time, their members are known as goons. I am one such goon, though not nearly as active as some. I reckon I'll go check this thing out - some of the members are heading to Fabric later, which I'd like to check out as I see flyers for their events all over the show.

*Drinking, dancing, nerdery and whatever else may come.

Yeah yeah, LINKS

Lately I've been finding that I feel just fine when I eat a bit less than the portions which fueled by pubescent rise to 6'2, 195 lbs and it's gotten my mind on food. Instead of rambling on about my diet, fascinating as that may be, I think I'll instead link to something genuinely interesting and tangentially related. This is a blog where an American fellow who actually wanted to get some idea of what it felt like to be poor, spent a month with a total food budget of only $30. I went into reading it a bit cynical, as tends to my way, but by the end I felt like I'd actually read an interesting and empathic exercise - not trite voyeurism. Topically enough, when related to my recent post, the same guy also tried to do a webcomic every day for a month - with less stellar results.