You can have fun with FX’s new big-budget SF show Falling Skies by playing spot the reference. It’s so stuffed with nods to other shows that it becomes a commentary on the state and visual style of filmed SF in the early part of this most scientifictional century.
(Spoilers ahead. Break left. Engage thrusters.)
After a couple of days working on The SEKRIT Thing That Won’t Be SEKRIT much longer, I’m back at work after two and a bit weeks off. And hoo boy, am I not ready.
I was clearly in denial about the whole prospect. I didn’t do a bag pack or a sort out of what I needed. Hence clattering round the house at half six this morning, waking up TLC by rummaging in cupboards and pockets for passes and tickets. Back into the house for my wallet after I’d locked up.
A hectic cycle ride to the station (road sense gone, nearly plowed into a pedestrian in headphones stepping off the pavement without looking) was capped off by the realisation that the key for the bike lock was back at home.
A return trip into a head wind, swearing all the way.
A stand-up train trip on tiptoes (yes, that busy) only made me more determined that an early train is the way forward. And do you people not SHOWER in the morning? (sidebar: after three bike runs, I probably wasn’t too fresh myself).
And yet I was still in work more or less on time. Shame there was no-one there to witness it, and the telecine’s not working. And I feel like a bag of swamp water and noodles now. Knackered before nine. Great start.
A new thread, in which I take a bit of time to cast an eye over some of the week’s newsworthy events and take the mick. Sort of like Have I Got News For You, with the downside of being less funny and the upside of having a much smaller dose of Ian Hislop.
I’m pleased, proud and excited to announce my involvement in one of the more interesting magazine projects around at the moment.
Dirty Bristow is, as the clever buggers who thought it up say, a project dedicated to resurrecting the magazine as a fetish object. That is, as something to both covet and collect. An object of desire. Beautifully printed on premium stock, DB is designed to be proudly displayed on your bookshelf.
Each issue takes a loose theme as the subject, which the contributors explore as they see fit. Issue 1 fittingly takes on the subject of birth, with articles on (to thinly scrape the surface) overpopulation, free-running, the creative process, architecture and stand-up comedy. Impeccably designed, deliciously illustrated, the thing is a joy to own.
Yes, of course I’m overegging it. Vested interest, donchaknow.
Aart from the cover price, the mag is funded through merchandising and live events, to make sure that you get a product free from ads. There’s no compromise, no sellout. Everyone who contributes to Dirty Bristow is free to say what they want, how they want. It’s an open forum, mixing the freedom of the small press with the production values of the glossies. The closest thing to it on the news-stands is probably Little White Lies, which has the same themed approach, attention to detail and love smeared thickly over every page.
Finally, finally, issue two is on sale. The theme is BEAST. Eighty pages of articles, thinkpieces, illos and fiction. And somewhere in there: me, with an article on the smallest and most important beast of them all. I’m chuffed to bits to be asked to contribute, and can’t wait to see how it looks.
Here’s the important bit. You can order Beast here. While you’re at it, Birth and badge and sticker sets are available too. And the call is now out for contributions to issue 3: BREAK. I plan to submit to that, too.
Further, the launch party for Beast is on July 23rd, at the Edge in Digbeth, Birmingham. Six quid gets you entry, a copy of Beast and all kinds of music and general frivolity. If you’re in the area, you should give it a go.
Dirty Bristow. The fetish object that you can show to your mum.
We are returned from The West, where everything is eventual.
However, there is a house to straighten and an awful lot of washing to be done, so updates will remain short and snappy for the interim.
In the meantime, please enjoy these images
and some light music.
Normal transmission will be resumed.
The Weather Gods finally grace you with a clear evening, so you hurry down to the beach, camera in hand.
The sun has touched the horizon line as you get there, and you begin to snap away. And then, you stop. This is something new, and not an event to be witnessed through a viewfinder.
The sun is sinking as you watch. Over thirty seconds it shrinks to a half-coin, a sliver, a dot, before the sea swallows it and it winks away. There is no record that you can show people of this. It doesn’t matter. You have it, warming a corner of your memory in coral pink and Florida orange. This one’s a keeper. This one is safe.
You walk back to your cottage in the dimming light, hand in hand with your wife.
And your heart is full.
The Storm Giants come at us from a thousand miles away. That’s one hell of a run-up. They hurl their fury at the coastline with brutal, unforgiving force, and also with a dreadful patience.
We can do this for millennia, the cannonade of the surf declares. Eventually, your castle walls will fail you.
But the defences at Bedruthen are strong, and built to last. Better yet, they are manned by invisible creatures, twice as tall as we are. The steps carved into the battlements are much too steep and wide for we puny humans. They fling rocks at the storm, and have done so for a very long time.
We are simple observers to a war that has raged since we first whispered around campfires. A war that will continue long after we are sketches and memory.
TLC and I have gone into the west, where stories bloom between the rocks like strange, glorious flowers, and all the beasts have TALES.
She sleeps, and her dreams are as green and deep as the earth she rose from. The wind through her branches gives her the deep, even breath of a maiden adrift on a sea of longing.
In winter, she would be blanketed in an even swan-white cover. At the height of summer, the day after the solstice, the sun warms her flanks with the heated touch of a lover.
Some say it is that touch and its fleeting nature that makes her seem so sad.
Meanwhile, in his bed along the copse path, her brother lies awake and plans out mischief.
Both these figures can be found in The Lost Gardens Of Heligan, a ten minute drive from St. Austell. Very heartily recommended.
We are in the west, walking strange paths and forgotten woods.
Here be Mythagos.
TLC and I are off into the west this week. I don’t think they’ve heard of the Internet where we’re going, and phone signal is sporadic. So updates this week will be intermittent and tersely worded at best.
Instead, I will be settling down to some good old fashioned reading and writing, without the distractions of yer TwitTwoos and Facebonks and an RSS feed that don’t ever seem to quit.
Serenity or madness await.
I clearly remember the first time I ever heard Clarence Clemons play sax. The Old Grey Whistle Test, that exemplar of taste and musical goofiness, regularly used to roll out a clip from the 1978 Winterland gig that’s one of the all-time classics for followers of the E Street Band. Bruce was still a skinny, hyperactive runt. They played Rosalita. The whole song is propelled by the Big Man’s horn, driving, adding drama and little points of thrill and beauty even as it revs behind Bruce as he tries to talk Rosalita into a night-time tryst. He’s massive in that clip, physically and musically. And boy, could he ever pull off that salmon-pink suit. The guy was always sartorially … adventurous.
There’s a lot of distraught fans out there posting Youtube clips of Clarence’s Jungleland solo. It’s one of his finest moments, I’ll grant you. But Rosalita shows how the Big Man was the bedrock of the E Street sound, the heart and yes, goddammit, the soul. I don’t mind admitting to you that I’m a tiny bit tearful about today’s sad news.
The angels are in for a treat tonight. Blow, Big Man.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 