See, I get these ideas. They always seem so simple. Having lunch with docoDom at a riverside restaurant by the Design Museum on the South Bank of the Thames, I suddenly thought how nice it would be to keep going. At least as far as the Thames Barrier, which I had never seen up close. Dom, bless his heart, was up for it. It would be easy, I told him. Look, it’s only five miles. It says so here on Google Maps.
Famous bloody last words.
If, like me, you enjoy a nice ale from time to time, then the question of the perfect session beer has come up more than once in conversation. If, like me, you’re a wine and spirits drinker, then you probably have no idea what I’m on about. Allow me, dear Readership, to enlighten you.
The Dutch word for “father” is… VADER.
Which means that to everyone in Holland, the big reveal at the end of The Empire Strikes Back must have been no surprise at all.
Guess what the Dutch for “sister” is?
2012 marks the hundred-year anniversary of the first appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom stories. It’s fitting that 2012 should also see the first big-screen adaptation of the tales, brought to life by Wall-E director Andrew Stanton. At a preview event in London last night, X&HT were among the few to catch a proper first look at clips from the film, and a chance to chat to John Carter hisself, Taylor Kitsch.
Late last year I enthusiastically covered a Kickstarter-funded comics project by writer Alex DiCampi and artist Jimmy Broxton–a gritty SF tale called Ashes. The art and story looked great, and I happily put $30 down to support the book and snag a signed hardback when the work was done.
I wasn’t alone. Ashes hit its funding target with a week and a bit to spare, and earned another $6K in the process. It was a win for all concerned, a triumph of the self-funded, self-published model.
Yeah. About that.
Continue reading Comics Will Break Your Heart: the rise and fall of Ashes
I love a trip to Tate Modern. It’s always good to visit old friends like the brooding Room of Rothkos and my favourite Jackson Pollack. The curators are also good at refreshing the displays, so that if you visit a few times a year, you’re always certain to come across something new.
Staircase-III stopped us in our tracks. Do Ho Suh’s huge sculpture is a representation of the stairwell to his Manhattan apartment, hanging about ten feet off the floor. There are clear nods to Rachel Whiteread in the casting of an architectural feature, but the use of sheer cherry-red nylon gives the piece all kinds of different connotations. I pass a few staircases in Soho every working day that glow with that kind of colour.
But somehow there’s no feeling of threat or sleaze. Unlike most dark-lit stairwells, you can see exactly where this one leads. Dom called it a Stairway To Heaven, and you can see what he means. Don’t forget, in China the colour red signifies good fortune.
Staircase-III has a room all to itself and it was full of people, gazing up with smiles on their faces. I love this piece. It’s warm, optimistic and dare I say it–sexy?
To the Tate Modern yesterday. The core reason was to meet with young Dom to discuss his upcoming Big Boy’s Birthday. The conversation, as always, was wide in scale and rambled like the Rambling King of a nomadic tribe of Ramblers on a Rambling trip to the Lake District. If you were in the Bankside area of London yesterday and experienced sudden gusts of hot air–sorry, that was us.
A new year and a new logo. I can’t help myself, I’m afraid. Farting around with the look and feel of X&HT is one of my pleasures. The place is like a shed, and every so often I get the need to shift things around and clear out the cupboards. Inevitably, I’ll find a dead mouse somewhere in a dark corner, but that is the nature of spring cleaning.
I thought it might be nice to wander through the different logos I’ve designed for X&HT over the years, and something about why I made the choices that ended up on the site.
It’s typical behavior in Hollywood to take an outstanding foreign language film and hack out a mediocre rehash for the American market. David Fincher’s take on the Steig Larssen novel does nothing to buck the trend. More worryingly, it takes one of the strongest female characters to come out in years and does everything it can to dilute her power.
Continue reading A Tale Of Two Girls: X&HT watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Christmas decorations never last for long after New Year’s Day at X&HTowers. We never see the point in hanging about. Saturnalia is finished for another season, and there are things to be done. Yesterday was spent getting the house straight, and ourselves ready for the return to work.
A busy day, then, and a good meal was needed once the tinsel and tree were back in the loft. The eating would be simple and sustaining. There’s no point in trying to diet in the New Year. There are still too many treats hanging around. We have an untouched panetonne and a cupboard full of sweeties ready and waiting to blow any foolhardy resolutions right out of the water. But the rich dinners can be scaled back to something less epic, a little more nurturing.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 
