I have a new favorite place: Part 1

St. James Park

Originally I'd planned to hit the British Library and hole up to write as well as draw. But then today turned out to be beautifully sunny, so I thought I'd head down Embankment way and find somewhere I could write outside. Once there, I trekked down the river to Big Ben and turned right into Parliament square. Here I ran into the statue of Winston Churchill which had reminded me, during my last visit to England, that some people have a different perspective on history than those who were taught it in the Canadian school system.

Now, that is a pretty nice statue - no doubt. But I remember when I was first looking for it, two and a half years ago, that I basically expected something more akin to Queen Victoria's own monument (pictures of which come later!) and that perhaps it would have neon rims. This is because of the incredible focus on the events of World War Two that I remember from grade through high school, which basically made a pantheon out of the world leaders of that time. To this day I can still tell you more about World War Two than Canada's confederation, Louis Royale and the war of 1812 combined. So when I first saw this, comparatively, humble statue I was stopped right in my tracks. I remember sitting down in the square and thinking over why on earth there were assorted kings and other military leaders (such as good old Nelson) that had monuments which dwarfed Winston's.Thus a small layer of ethnocentrism was peeled away as I realized that though Winston certainly did his share for England, he didn't conquer great swathes of Asia, reform the church, drive out the French, beat Napoleon at Waterloo, create the house of commons or any number of other huge events in the history of a nation so..soooo much older than good ol' Canada. To be fair though, Winston does get his own museum. But I would like to point out that prior to my seeing his statue for the first time, I had just seen the statue of the man who invented Sunday school and it was about the same size!Besides, there's even some American guy with a larger monument!
From here you can also see and explore Westminster Abby - so I did, if only a little.
I rather liked the Dean's courtyard, though I'm not sure this picture does it justice. The grass is taped off to keep the public from grinding the grass to death under their feet - no major crimes have happened here in a few centuries.
I also checked out the gift shop and amongst the largely standard fare I found some really neat marble tile fridge magnets with pictures of central London on them. They really appealed to that part of me which enjoys seeing the present looking back from a far future, post-apocalyptic stance.
After this I headed on over to St. James Park - I'll post about that later today, a man can only sit in front of a computer so much on a sunny Saturday!

A pair of Parkour videos I've enjoyed

I'd suggest muting the music on the second one - just my personal taste though...

A Term For The Ages

I’m pretty sure I’ve used this term in a post or two, but today I’m going to try and encourage this as a new internet meme while making a game out of it.

The term I am referring to is something I coined (probably at the same time as twelve other people across the globe, since there are no exclusive or entirely new ideas) during my last visit with the notorious Andy Brown. We were in his kitchen serving up some frosty drinks and, in a desire to make them frostier still, Andy was wrestling to get some ice out of a tray.

Poor Andy. He only wanted a couple of ice cubes. But due to the manufacture of the tray, it was difficult for him to get out less than “way the hell too much” ice. Half-chuckling at the inanity of it, he began to complain, tongue-in-cheek, that ice trays need to be made so that it was easier to get a modest amount of ice out. Standing in the kitchen with it’s magical heat box, cold box, pre-chewing device and other marvels of the modern world…I felt the need to remark “Well, it looks like we’ve got a real first world problem on our hands here”.

I’m not sure how I said something in bold type, but I’m anxious to rediscover the secret.

Enjoying the term, we made a list (sadly lost since then) of First World Problems and it was a good provider of perspective as well as komedy laffs. Two prize ones from my past experience include...

"Aw man, I'm so full. I'm not going to be able to get full value for my money at this buffet!".

"God dammit, this stationary store has a custom ink stamp for every letter but the two I need for my initials!"

"The pricing schemes for Rogers cable packages are really annoying"

One of the best things about First World Problems is how often people complain about them while being unaware of how, in a global perspective, they are lucky to even have such a problem. I think that the best First World Problem should be a bit like a pun, making the listener or reader groan as much as laugh.

So I'd like to propose a game! In the comments section for this post (which, new readers, anyone can post in) I'd love to see the most First World Problem you can come up with - from the imagination or memory, from yourself or others you've overheard.

Points are awarded for creativity and you're encouraged to phrase it as it would actually be said. Pretty much anything to do with computers and the internet are easily put into this category, so you'll want to really put your back into anything from that quarter - like one my buddy Joe sent me this morning, which sparked this post, wherein he complained about all the Facebook friend requests he was getting from people he wasn't overly fussed about. He knew what he was doing though, as he included "First. World. Problem." at the bottom of the email.

Please, pass this along! If you're a member of a forum, start a thread and get people to reply with their own suggestions. Start a wikipedia article. Organize a flash mob where a large group of people converge on a daily talk-show set and yell "First World Problems!" really loudly for ten minutes before dispersing to the ether. If you're an artist I bet you could even do some really great illustrations to go with your own First World Problems!

Come on people, let's start a movement founded on mirth!

I wasn't going to post about this....

....I was going to finish a new, relatively comedic Bronze Age Sky God story. But I can't hold back any longer.

Tired of computer games that take up gigabyte upon gigabyte of memory?
Sick of any hobby that seems to demand hours and hours of obsessive-compulsive behavior?
Like Zombies, fleeing from or emulating?

Then check out UrbanDead.
You're in a big city, you move by clicking and have x amount of action points to spend running, hiding, fighting and looting (Survivors) or roaming, moaning, eating brains and breaking down civilization (Zombies). Bing, bang, boom.

Making a character takes literally 15 seconds. You play within the browser and since you get action points back by not playing (i.e. your guy rests), it actually discourages the usual obesessive-compulsive wasting of time that your average video game encourages. If you use up all your points, your guy falls asleep where he is (doing this in an unlocked building or out in the street is, of course, asking for it).

Set yourself a long-term goal (I'm trying to get to Giddings Mall to help keep it a haven for humans!) then voila, something you can have lots of fun with - yet it takes all the time of a daily email check.

It's fun, gosh darn it!

Plus, with less than two weeks until I take part in London's first Zombie invasion - I guess I'm just in that kind of a mood! If you join, keep an eye out for Max Punchbody (Scout - the closest thing to a Parkour athlete), currently in the northern most part of Starlington.

[Also: Hello the todays reader from Chile!]

For those of you who like to see a progression of art...

...John Allison ( of the most excellent Scarygoround) put up an "on this day" series of strips going back to 1999. It's really neat not only to see his art but his writing develop as well.

Peter Parkour

Parkour - if you’ve seen it anywhere, odds are you’ve seen it in the latest Bond - Casino Royale. Specifically the foot chase near the beginning, running through an embassy as well as a construction yard, in Africa. The man Bond was chasing was doing Parkour, while Bond was doing his best to catch up with more conventional means.

As part of my script for MySpace Man, I’ve been researching this strange new form of athleticism. Though I think I’d heard of it once or twice before, it didn’t really shoot into my consciousness until I watched the new Bond. In the film it is presented as being mostly about epic leaps from tall heights, but that is just the most camera friendly aspect and it turns out the majority of Parkour involves ground-level clearing of obstacles in a variety of ways. Meanwhile, if you are curious to see Parkour featured in another action film, Balieue 13 is a great French flick about a near future Paris which resembles the giant prison that New York becomes in good ol' Escape From New York. You can also catch a pile of clips uploaded by the Parkour community at this site.

A person who does Parkour is called a traceur and as I’m sure you’re beginning to guess, yes Parkour is French in origin. You can find a detailed list of Parkour moves, amongst other info, at it's reasoably well put together Wikipedia entry. Here I'd like to say that I honestly think this has the potentional to grip the public imagination and seep into youth culture the same way that skateboarding did in the 1980's. But I wouldn't be surprised if an element of Parkour, which has generally been glossed over everywhere I've seen it, will be lost along the way. I am referring to the philosphical aspect which is a large part of why Parkour resembles a martial art more than an XTREEEEEEME sport.

The majority of the philosophy behind Parkour was penned by it's founder, David Belle, who used specific military training used by French soldiers in the Vietnam war as a foundation for Parkour as a whole. It is a simple but elegant philosophy which extends the basic physical goal of Parkour (the surmounted of all obstacles put in one's path) to an outlook on life which emphasizes determination, an ability to adapt and an enhanced awareness of one's surroundings. Belle strongly encourages respecting the areas through which you practice Parkour and it is generally looked down upon if you cause damage (like, say, landing on a car roof from on high or yanking a signpost off its moorings while trying to gain momentum).

Though I gather there have been people who have forgotten this, in favor of performing impressive moves - thus prompting remarks from other members of the community.

As someone who will be contributing to the hullabaloo, I can honestly see Parkour having the potential to become more and more in the forefront of popular culture. Something to keep an eye on, I reckon.

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On an unrelated note, hello to my new Californian readers! Thanks for staying with me! If you'd like to read an excellent webcomic from your native state, I cannot endorse Achewood enough.

Some punchin' to go with all the readin' in the last post

Here is a fight scene that an old school chum brought to my attention via the portal of hedonism that is Facebook.



From the movie "The Protector", featuring Tony Jaa (of Ong Bak fame), this stedicam shot lasts over 3 1/2 min. To do all these stunts is impressive, but to do it in one take! Man....the description the original YouTube poser put up says it all, so I shall copy and paste it here for your perusal.

"The director calls this "the most dangerous long take scene ever." A 4 minute stedicam shot featuring a variety of martial arts.

The crew spent over 1 month preparing and choreographing before they were able to get a perfect shot. When it came time to shoot, they could only do 2 takes per day because of the set repairing and prop replacement that needed to be done. It took 5 takes to get it right. A foreign cameraman was needed because the stedicam mount was built for american / european operators who are typically much larger than asian operators.

The foreign operator they hired could only do two flights of stairs at a time and simply gave up. They decided to use a Thai stedicam operator who physically prepared for a month for this job.

The reason the shot is 4 minutes is because reels of 35mm film are only about 4 min in length.

They shot the first take which had a number of problems with stuntmen cues, and even a stuntman bumping into the stedicam operator. After choreographing more dynamic action, an increase of extras and improving the set, the next take they did was 17 days after the first take.

The second take was better but when the stuntman was supposed to be thrown from the 3rd story, the safety mattress was not completely in place yet so Tony Jaa stopped the shot and saved the stuntman's life.

The third take was just about perfect but just before Tony Jaa was supposed to bust through the last doorway, the film ran out. The director finally decided that instead of simply cutting there, they would try again for perfection.

They thought the fourth take was perfect but after review there were some parts that weren't as good as the pervious takes. They decided on one more try.

On the fifth try, it was almost perfect. But there were 2 miscues. On the 2nd floor, Tony Jaa slams a door into the head of a stuntman and the small glass window on the door was supposed to break. It failed to do so, so they used CGI to fix this. The 2nd issue was the fight just before the sink gets thrown. The timing was off as planned but the end result looked natural so they decided this was the take to use in the final film. Simply amazing."

Slow Food For Thought

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before how I feel strongly that my perception of times passing has ratcheted up a rather large notch since leaving University and perhaps another notch upon on my getting settled in England. It’s a scary thing to feel that almost as soon as you have planned what to do in a day, by merit of it having been planned it has now basically happened already and now you must plan the next day. The busier my life gets (and I am pretty bad for piling more onto my plate before I clear something else), the more this sensation intensifies.

Trying to think of a way to deal with this, while still doing the things I want do, my mind was drawn back to the Slow Food Movement. Started in Italy several years ago, the point form edition is that it entails…
- Trying to reverse the trend towards rushed lifestyles where families don’t eat together so much as nuke this and that, eating as a chore in-between tasks, instead of treating dinner time as its own entity.
- Taking pleasure from the process of cooking as much as the eating, often engaging in cooking meals that take several hours to prepare but which pay off for the effort expended. Superior satisfaction follows.
- There is also an element of environmentalism in that the Slow Movement encourages eating locally produced, organic goods instead of chemically sprayed vegetables trucked across half the globe.

I'd love to be able to fully engage in the Slow Food Movement but, like a lot of people, organic foods are a luxury item to me (on my less than epic budget) and I find that sharing a kitchen with house mates makes it very tricky to spend more than an hour on cooking and eating. So I just try to avoid more than one microwavable meal a week and I don't go buying apples from bloody Madagascar when I can get Empire Apples from within the country.

The name may also have something to do with why I purchase those apples, I admit!

From this we come to the lesser known umbrella under which Slow Food rests, the Slow Life Movement. Some of it can come off as what some would dub "fruity hippy crap" but I highly recommend persevering. Entire towns are being planned, on both sides of the Atlantic, around the Slow Movement principles. This grouping of guiding principles stress that you can still live a perfectly modern life and work the job you want while changing the way you engage your life, your job, so that you take greater pleasure from it while losing that terrifying feeling that the days are slipping through your fingers.

My apologies for not getting into a lot of the nitty-gritty, but as the movement seeps into all aspects in life (yes, there is even Slow Sex) I would have a lot of ground to cover if I tried to! So, aside from the web links, I shall direct you all to a great book which I bought Joe for Christmas last year. In Praise of Slow acts as a very good introduction to it all, written from the perspective of a convert as he chronicles the process of his induction to the different aspects of the philosophy. I remember being particularly gripped by the opening, wherein he states the event which made him think that he might be in need of Slow - the evening he seriously considered reading his children one minute bed time stories, so as to save time. I mean, screw bonding with your children when you could be making so many awesome Excel spreadsheets!

He also keeps a blog of new slow developments!

So okay, coming back to the focus - ME, ME, ME (and you, I guess!) - how to integrate any or all of this? Hard to say. I know I've managed to wean myself from looking at my watch while on the bus, train or tube - doing so and getting anxious won't actually get me where I'm going any faster! That I had to do during Uinversity and it seriously helped me get to class in a better state of mind for learning.

I also make a point of waiting until I have an hour to just listen to a new album I've purchased, instead of slapping it on while I write or whatever. That has resulted in some very enjoyable listens where I have definitely noticed subtleties which it might have taken months of background listening to find.

Other than those two, I've generally tried to cut down on multi-tasking and to tell myself that "I will spend x amount of minutes on this task before I consider working on another". Oddly, putting that kind of contstraint onto my writing, drawing etc has in fact left me better able to focus and more relaxed. Before, I found I would rush one task to get to the next and in the end have not lived up to my full capabilities in anything I had done!

Otherwise, it's something I'm still wrestling with and I suspect I'll be wrestling with it for some time, given the deadline driven nature of the film industry. Ah well. In closing, I'll recommend the second last issue (#69) of one of the few magazines worth more than the paper it is printed on - Colors. This particular issue is devoted to Slow Food around the world and, as with every issue, it has a lot of weblinks, books and phone numbers in the back to help readers further explore the topic as well as related topics. If nothing else, this magazine has some of the most beautiful and natural looking photography that I've seen in my many years of devouring media. For my Ottawa readers, you can buy it at Mags & Fags on Elgin St. while for all my other readers (Hello to my new reader in Tokyo!) I can suggest you follow my link to their website where they have scans of all their issues. That being said, do see if you can find an outlet to buy it in - this is the kind of magazine you keep on your shelf for years and find yourself coming back to more than once.

Plus, if you like Found magazine, then may I direct you to Colour's very impressive "1000 Extraordinary Objects" Book? Yes, yes I may.

Them folk on yonder island ain't so much like our folk
-This all reminds me...microwave meals (usually called "Ready meals") are ten times as popular in England as they are in Canada. They take up much more space in supermarkets and many of them are actually very high quality - though still pre-made food which has been stored for lord knows how long and it tends to have way too much salt in it. Certainly, there is a lot more temptation to pull you away from trying to live slow, to be sure.

-People from sleepy towns beware! A yellow light, even when the green man is still flashing underneath it, apparently signifies GO NOW NOW NOW to London drivers. This has resulted in a fair share of near misses on my part!

P.S. I have recently learned that if you read my site on an RSS feed then you only get the first version of a post. I often go back to add pictures or correct errors, so may I recommend that you bookmark the site instead? If only so I seem a tad more literate? This is important, I swear!

P.P.S. It is weird seeing people debate and discuss your possible identity.

P.P.P.S. Why the hell am I using post-scripts on a website? OH WELL, NO TURNING BACK NOW

Racially Charged Monday

I just thought this was great, especially the two guys who were the first heterosexual pair of guys to be married – just to spite people who can’t handle the idea of a black, Belgian registrar. Nice!

The 15-30-45 Challenge: Round One

Today I got a huge burst of energy for Archbrook, which I knew I had to pursue or risk the sweaty hands of regret pinching the backs of my ears and generally making me uncomfortable. So instead of finishing the Clive 30 and 45 minutes drawings, I wrote my first ever horror chase scene. Good fun, though it's ironic that writing a scene which will play out the quickest seems to be taking up the most paper and time.

All that being said, I did polish off the Devon page.The fifteen minute Devon was drawn entirely as the previous drawings have been done, using a mechanical pencil and naught but my own brain for reference. Well, almost. I did up a rough proportion guide for myself by using a ruler and eyeballing it. I'm one of those jackasses who likes to skip reading the manual and just figure out computer programs, furniture assembly and women all by himself. This is an instinct I've been able to get away with for the most part, but with drawing I am going to have to fight it every step of the way.




Knowing I had double the time for 30 minute Devon, I tried to be more ambitious and use a picture of a model for reference. This resulted in a less cartoony width to Devon which undercut the tall and thin build I want to use with her - I want her to be one of those women that remind you of gazelles, though that comes down as much to body language as dimensions. I also tried to make the pin stripe pants work a bit better by using more widely spaced lines, but in the end I abandoned the pattern.





By 45 minute Devon I not only gave up on the pinstripe pants, I decided I should try drawing her in her work clothes (remembering one cynical remark a former co-worker of mine made about the reason most superheroes are drawn wearing tights - it's easier to draw "naked" people). I didn't use model this time, but I did crib a little from the art of Pia Guerra for clothing and hair details. I figured that I could do worse than to have a look at the style of a woman who draws a world-spanning series with less than four male characters.

Meanwhile, I tried my experiment with overlaying a sketch on a photo and was generally disgusted. This is due entirely to trying to use a photo of a sketch instead of a high quality scan. So I checked with Professor Barnard Q. Budget and he said I could get a decent scanner/printer next weekend. Thanks Professor Budget, you're such a nice guy! Man, now I totally feel bad about hitting on your wife last week.