The Good, the Bad and the Music review

The world of music reviews is pretty well covered by about a million other guys with sites like this. But since "London" specifically and "England" in general is the underlying theme of my lil' page here I think it is worth bringing up one group and one album. The name of both is The Good, The Bad and The Queen.

These guys qualify as a supergroup thanks to an astounding roster led by a man who continues to impress me more and more as the years go by, Damon Albarn. Most folk will recognize him from his front lining Blur and, later, the Gorillaz (under the cartoon alias of 2D). He's also been involved in a host of side projects. In the case of this group he has spearheaded it organizationally but it is hard to imagine him dominating the recording studio given the weight of musical input and talent from the other members of the band.

The next most recognizable member of the line-up is Paul Simonon who played bass for The Clash. Even if you don't think you're familiar with their work, odds are that if there is blood in your veins and a working pair of ears on your head that you've heard their classic tune "London's Calling" either on the radio or in one of any number of film soundtracks such as the one for The Royal Tenenbaums. Aside from his raw skill and years of experience, what makes Paul stand out as an interesting band member is his great interest in reggae and how that merges with Albarn's britpop roots. Not to mention the drummer...

Now I know it's sort of a running gag in the music world that the bass player is the least important or least recognized member of your average band, but for me it's always been the drummer. Though I appreciate what drums do for a song, I find that I'll generally pay the least attention to them and as a result give the least of a shit (this is a real phrase, honest!) about who the drummer is.

Tony Allen is seventy years old and has been drumming for basically his entire adult life, having first picked up a drum kit at eighteen. I was completely unaware of this man until I picked up this album but I'm glad it made me aware of him because now, for the first time in my life, I am wanting to dig into the back catalogue of a drummer. I've got my work cut out for me as this man has been frequently dubbed one of the fathers of Afrobeat and what he himself dubbed Afrofunk. The lion's share of his work would be the thirty albums he cut in the sixties and seventies as a part of the group Africa '70. Point is, this man comes from a very different musical background than the either Simonon or Albarn and is not only incredibly skilled but highly inventive. He steals the show on at least a couple of tracks on the album and I'm sure he had plenty to add during the recording session.

Simon Tong is probably the least remarkable member, having played lead guitar with The Verve during the last few years of the band's existence. That being said, when the least impressive member of a band was part of a seminal album like Urban Hymns - which featured the incredibly popular single, Bittersweet Symphony - then I think that is itself a powerful statement. His connection to this group came through Albarn who recruited him for a brief replacement stint in Blur as well as The Gorillaz.

So alright, this group has an epic lineup of mostly British talent. That's nice. But what makes it all worth mentioning here is that their first and only album so far (another is apparently due in September, these guys move quick given that the first came out earlier this same year) is a concept album about living in England in general and London specifically. It's more than just neighborhood name dropping (and what there is of that tends to be lesser known areas which I myself only recognized thanks to my time at Network Rail) and the subject matter manages to be more substantial than The Streets tunes about late night kebab runs and paying off your weed dealer, while remaining just as accessible - more so, really.

Obviously you don't have to have ever set within a hundred kilometers of London or England in order to enjoy the music. Their website is pretty generous with free video and song clips for all the sample. My personal favorite from the selection offered is "Herculean". May I suggest you check it out?

By and by, I wasn't going to include any band member pictures but Paul Simonon just looked too damn awesome not to include. I hope I can look not only that great but that interesting at fifty-five!

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Meanwhile the one child policy in China is having an interesting effect and science gains more valuable ground from the fairy kingdom of mysticism/religion.

Ta-da.....shucks

What can I say, we all get distracted. No comic tonight, I am afraid.

Some of us get distracted by The Great Happiness Space Documentary which chronicles the people who run and go to a Japanese Host Club.

It's a very interesting watch with far, far more to it than the "look at how those Japanese people do things which may not happen in your daily life!" angle. Mostly I found myself enthralled by listening to the way the people describe their interactions, social and financial, then seeing how the film editor contrasted them with what happens and what those on the other end of the transactions had to say.

Warning: It's also a good way to get very cynical about both genders! Just sayin'!

Ten Thousand People...

...live in Manila's one and only garbage dump. This five part series really helped me get in the post-apocalyptic "mood" for my script I just finished. As with the best documentaries, this one weaves a narrative through it's information and if only for that I highly suggest viewing all five parts (part one below).

Am I the only one...

...that finds this statement incredibly foreboding? "According to the latest estimates from the US Geological Survey, the North Pole region holds about a quarter of the world's oil reserves. As global warming continues to melt polar ice, access to the oil reserves should get easier."

St. Paul's Cathedral, also a cheery garbage eating device

As promised, I did a camera strafing run on St. Paul's Cathedral today. Odds are I'll come back to it as I certainly didn't cover everything in my limited lunch hour.

This is the front of the church......and here is the main front door. To give a sense of scale I swiveled left and grabbed a picture of this fella.Here we have the monument to Queen Anne which lay out front, along Cannon St.
Eventually I walked over to the Thames and sat down to eat. There I saw one of these things again...something about the exclamation mark in it's claim makes me want it to grow Thomas the Tank Engine style eyes and start nattering.Across from me was (and still is, I imagine) the Tate Modern. It's a great, free gallery - currently featuring a wealth of Salvador Dali - and arguably the first gallery which comes to most people's minds if asked. That's all for today, but when we get another sunny day this week (as you can see, today was pretty grey) I'll bust out the camera and grab some more shots.

"Twice" by Little Dragon is especially melodious.

Hey hey, it's a new comic at a reasonable time of the day! Fancy that.

After carefully consulting with MENSA, Al Gore, Stephan Hawking and several men in labcoats...I came to the conlusion that a smaller comic might result in a smaller file size.

I am a University educated man!

Between finishing this comic, getting a good start on the next and finishing my short post-apocalyptic script, I cannot help but feel productive! But do I feel like going on to write some corporate sponsored erotica? A little!

Meanwhile, Giles Peterson is in week two of his "Best of the year so far" series and the songs are just magnificent. If you want to try out some new music, I can't recommend this enough*.

*I probably could.

More on Manufactured Landscapes

Though highly effective, I can see how the trailer for Manufactured Landscapes might give the false impression of the film looking only at China. This clip from CBC's The Hour is worth a watch if only because they put geographical captions to the pictures which helps clear that up - making the message all the more poignant for Western viewers.

All them fancy phones etc

Recently a newspost by Posterchild reminded me about the excellent documentary Manufactured Landscapes and in turn got me thinking more about e-waste.

This fifteen minute news clip is a pretty informative introduction to the concept, brought to you by the viewer submission driven televsion network Current TV.

If you want to learn more, I'd highly recommend Greener Computing.

Okay Vancouver had it before London...

...but London is doing it up double.

Sorry for the drips and drabs folks, I'm in a bit of a script fugure at the moment...

Though I will quickly mention that I found out today, much to my glee, that I am currently working very close to St. Paul's cathedral and still pretty close to the Thames. I'll be bringing my camera with me again on Monday and I just might share the results.

Conan the Barbican

As promised, pictures from the Barbican area.

The view from the office. Note the BT telecom tower in the middle, in the distance. It right in the area south of Kings Cross, just west of Tottenham Court road and north of Oxford Circus. Generally it is an A+ landmark for knowing where you are in the areas just outside of The City (North of the Thames).By and by, do let me know if pictures like this bore all of "y'all". It ocurred to me today that one of the reasons English sights (and England in general) appeal to me so is that there is a strong element of nostalgia from my childhood trips here. Not everybody went to England several times while still at the hyper-impressionable stage!
Meanwhile, this notice is up in most every tube and train station in London. I haven't entirely settled on how I feel about it. To see it in Canada I'd dismiss it as a terrible mixture of paranoia and an attempt to undermine the public's trust in each other. Like a lot of things in London, it brings me back to 1984 and the government's work to undermine bonds of friendship and family. But then I think of the more legitimate failed terrorist attacks and the one sucessful one (in London) in recent years and the matter becomes a lot more blurred.

***

A little bit of luck has swung my way, cash-wise. That interview in Barbican was for some well-paying, short-term office gruntery. This works well to help keep my head above water while I wait to hear back from the copywriters (I was literally the first interview and so I've been told not to expect results for about two weeks, leaving a little over a week and a half to go) and continue to apply elsewhere.

But this dramatically clamped down on my free-time, of course, so I decided to use it to head down to Kings Cross and hit the British Library as I'd meant to last weekend. I'm on the cusp of completing the first draft of the minimalist, post-apocalyptic short and I'm getting further ahead on First World Problems. I'd like to make the leap to two updates a week soon, if I can.

Wish I'd brought my camera with me as during a fifteen minute walk around Kings Cross, to take a little break, I stumbled across two beautiful parks where the first had the largest and strangest looking tree while the second seemed to be an outdoors mausoleum. There were at least two dozen gravesites/monuments and though a few had wrought iron fences protecting them, most were left to the public's tender mercies. They must be well maintained as I saw no graffiti or garbage but it was something else to look across and see a couple of guys sitting on the tomb of some 15th century fella while slurping back tall cans of Kronenburg. It didn't feel disrespectful so much as "just the way of things" or "part of the circle of life"(?).

I will be sure to bring my camera with me to use on my lunch hour tomorrow as Barbican has some great buildings to see. It's also noteworthy as one of the few parts of London that lay outside of The City Of London with several skyscrapers. Walking out of the interview I honestly felt like I was back in North America for a moment, seeing apartment buildings taller than five stories.

I kind of wish I'd headed down to the eco-village protest on the edge of Heathrow. At first I felt a little guilty since I was putting my own career interests ahead of helping to spread the good word (plus I'm sure it would have given some of the protesters a little boost to have someone taking an interest in them). But thinking that way will drive you crazy in the end. Plus, it's not really the same thing as choosing not to recycle because the depot is three feet further than I can be arsed to walk or leaving the fridge door open while I cook a meal because "it's easier".

I suppose if I didn't feel any other great passions than it would be a simple matter for me to throw my all into the cause, but I do and so it comes down to finding a balance, I guess.

Meanwhile, the CIA has been dicking around with Wikipedia entries. That they've been caught fiddling with the entry for the President of Iran only serves to make this old Penny Arcade comic juicier still. I'm just sayin', maybe it isn't a source you want to be citing in professional papers!

Let's look back thirteen years...

...to a short clip of Dick Cheney which made my head come within inches of exploding. I don't generally like to post things which reinforce what we've all known for years about Bush Jr. and the gang, as that particular dead horse has been flogged until it's atomic bonds have come loose, but this was a doooooozy.

P.S. This found it's way to me from Gavin, thanks!(?).

A possible adventure?

I gotta admit, I really do admire the people who have set up a village along Heathrow airport where a fifth terminal is planned to be built. In typical English fashion, the police are overeacting - though they have yet to get all "Thatcher" on their asses.

I have an interview in Barbican tomorrow but otherwise my week is pretty free, as tends to be the way of the unemployed. It's a bit of a journey down to Heathrow but I have to say I'm curious to see the workshops they are displaying and I'd like to do a bit of amateur journalism with my trusty camera. There may very well be more on this later in the week...

Not why I named him that, but fun anyways.

On this past Saturday I was heading through the tube to The British Library so as to write and draw in seclusion. But the more I thought about the incredible weather I saw while on my way to the station, the more it felt like a crime to stay indoors all day. So I switched lines and popped out at trusty Embankment and took a leisurely stroll through Whitehall Garden, The Mall (where I made a great discovery) and around the Big Ben area before settling along the stream which lay in St. James Parks southern half. Luckily I had my camera with me.A monument to Florence Nightingale, no less.
Along The Mall I found something a Network Rail co-worker had pointed me in the direction of a ways back, The Institute of Contemporary Arts. It's a little bit like the BFI in that it is a repository for great films and film-related books (Like this Amos Vogel number I grabbed while I was there). Unlike the BFI it branches out into art, photography and music as well. As soon as I find steady employment, I do believe I am going to sign up for membership - if only for the discount on books. Mainly, though, I think a club which would regularly get me out to see new things and swim about with people with similar interests would be a pretty good idea. One good side-effect of my being unemployed is that it's forced me to see how insular I've been for the past couple of months! Moving on...
Though I was certainly less productive than if I'd been at the library, I think the state of mind which the park put me in was easily worth the price of my eventually doing a bit of a rush job on Clive in the last panel...and speaking of "Clive"...

A hoy hoy

New comic!

More tomorrah...now it is time to sleep.

"Look at all that gossip!"

Well I feel like the interview went pretty well yesterday. I even had a decent answer, which earned a good reception, when the dreaded "Where do you see yourself in X years?" question arose.
The editing and composing test was also nice in that it was an actual test of what I'd be expected to do on the job - so my internal spellchecker was able to function normally, unlike when I've been presented with a ten question "Do you spell the word this way or that way?" grade five style quiz. There's nothing like regressing to keep you sharp! (?).Not a whole heck of a lot to report today folks, alas.But I thought I'd bring in a couple of pictures from Broadstairs. The little pool is for crabs and the like to collect and then be enjoyed by small children and their patient minders.And finally we have me doing it up "Perez Hilton" style. Well, not quite, as I actually found this amusing (you may not?).
I'd hyperlink to his website but honestly, it's not worth the hype(rlink). A few people had told me it was basically a snarky, chubby gay guy with a teenage bathroom dye-job that spends twelve hours a day sitting at a Starbucks with his laptop and drawing pseudo-legible, funny captions on unflattering pictures of celebrities. "That could be amusing" I foolishly thought.

I felt pretty cheated by what I saw. Writing "FATT" on a picture of Lindsey Lohan does not a "guffaw" make. What the hell? Popular stereotypes had taught me that all gay guys had an inherent wit, particularly when it comes to catty remarks about celebrities! Also an impeccable fashion sense. Maybe....maybe being homosexual just means you desire the same gender as your own.

Maybe that's all it ever really meant?

Deep.

Anyways!

This kind of goes off the rails after the first two minutes but those two minutes sum him up very well.

Committed

Just thought I'd share a short film by my friend Gina, who wrote and directed this as her final project this year. I rather enjoyed it and if you feel the same while also being in posession of a YouTube account, then by all means please head over and give her a nice rating and/or comment.



Meanwhile, in my own film adventures, some of you may recall that I've been working on another, minimalist short to make with Myspace Man* while Momentum's arduous pre-production grinds away. For the past month I've been bashing my head against the laptop in trying to come up with a five minute comedy centered around a tennis match but luckily it turns out Mr. Man and I are both huge Fallout fans (and fans of the post-apocalyptic genre in general). After discovering that during a recent chat, the mini-short has now taken a decidedly different direction which seems to be massaging all the right brain meats for me to start cranking out pages at an appreciable pace. This is something we want to get working on asap and hopefully I will be able to flash it by y'all before the end of the year.

*For those of you recently tuning in, "Myspace Man" is my nom de plume for a fellow that I am collaborating on film projects with at the moment. Three guesses which poorly designed social networking website I met him on.

Terrible Cracking Sounds!

Broadstairs was wonderful and restful as always, now back to der hunt - I have an interview with a biomedical copywriting firm on Thursday that I'm looking forward to. Though not film work, it would be something where - gasp - I'd get to use my education. Oddly, the camera didn't get much of a workout...though later I might post short clip of a failed sand castle attempt, if it crosses the line from "personal trivium" to "something others may enjoy" upon a second viewing.

Meanwhile, good eye on one of the First World Problem readers for deciphering my scrawl in the second strip and realizing that "Flloyd Boastman" was based on my first impression of Loyd Grossman. She then passed along the following video clip of him being lampooned by British comedy duo Vic and Bob!

Enjoy!


P.S. My apologies to those who have written me lately and are still waiting for a reply. My wrist has been getting wonky and so I'm reluctant to spend more time on the computer than is absolutely necessary (re: continued job hunting). I will write to you all as soon as I can do so without terrible cracking sounds coming from my right hand.

What? No embedded video?

Since I am leaving my laptop at home while I'm away for the weekend, I think I'll just toss the new comic up now. John helped me figure out how to use Inkscape to make the linework much clearer and bolder, leading to what I feel is a huge improvement in general but also over the original version of the "Ben" strip.

Meanwhile, here is a really fun "Make your own Cat & Girl comic" flash widget I found in Dorothy Gambrell's extras section.

If you enjoy regional accents and have always wished there was a map you could click on, linking to different recordings of all the world's accents...then wish no more.

Anyways, I'm off to Broadstairs now - have a good weekend all! I'll be away from the internet until some time Monday, can you handle it?*

*Probably!

"I shoot all my employees"

Huzzah!

I got this week's comic done in plenty of time so I can spend some quiet moments during my weekend in Broadstairs getting ahead on the following weeks comic - which is longer and, judging by my thumbnail sketches, much more ambitious then what I've done so far. Eventually I'll probably cool out and settle into most strips being three to six panels instead of nine, but meanwhile I think it's worth the extra bit of struggle for the introduction of the main characters.

And for those who give a hoot and/or holler about the nitty gritty...

*The lines scanned a lot better this time around because I cowboyed up to a 2.0 pigment ink pen, only using the 0.5 for fine detail instead of everything.

*I think I'm going to stay with two pixels thickness for word bubbles but the search for good font continues. Until I find something better, I'm going to stand by what I used last strip - Kabel Dm BT 3.5pt

*I'm using the PNG format with the top level of compression (9) but what really made a difference in the size of the last strip was resizing it to be 800 pixels high (about a 50% reduction). Still, I feel like there is something I am missing so I'm going to experiment with other methods of image size reduction. The last strip was 474 kb - about a third of the first one - but I'd really like to get these down to at least the 150 kb range or even less, since I'm sticking with black and white at the moment.

I also think it's worth mentioning that the sense of accomplishment from drawing each panel has helped keep spirits flying much higher at Fort Brackenbury then they would if every single moment was spent job hunting. There is definitely something to be said for doing what you have to do to maintain a decent level of self-esteem while engaging in that particular grind - especially when there has been a long stint of "typical English weather". The boiling hot summer which I've been in fear of for months does not seem to be in a rush to arrive, which suits me just fine so long as there is a bit of sun while I'm inBroadstairs.

Basically what I am saying is that I want the weather to accommodate my needs and wants. All this being said, I should count myself fortunate not to be anywhere near the floods.

Finally, the title for this entry comes from the following VBS two-part series on bulletproof fashion.

Part One


Part Two