Hootiebits The Magic Owl

I hate the abbreviation LOL. I hate it for its scandalous geeky shorthand. I hate it for its stench of hipster exclusivity. I hate it because I have an awful sinking feeling that it was originally devised as TEXT SPEAK - and I deplore the way TEXT SPEAK is destroying our language.

I also hate it because it prevents me from saying that something made me laugh out loud without someone, somewhere thinking I'm saying LOL.

That said - fuck it. Ralph Kidson's latest small press comic made me laugh out loud till I burst something squishy inside. I wish I could explain what it is about Kidson's irreverent cartooning that amuses me so much, but god help us all if he ever calls it a day.

Hootiebits The Magic Owl ("For Adult Birds & Mammals Only") may well be Ralphie's magnum opus. It stars a magic owl who works for god, can travel in space and time (and under the sea) and occasionally kills people (but only 6 in 10,000 years so I wouldn't worry too much). Mostly he just hangs out with his friends, drinks sherry with the Elephant Man, gets drunk and wakes up in bed with Bill Oddie and then goes down the pub with a scented binbag for a ploughman's lunch. (One of his friends, on introduction, made me laugh so much that milk came out of my nose... and I haven't drunk milk since I was 5 years old and they gave it me at school and it made me throw up.)

In fact, I laughed so much I think I need to go read it again. If Hootiebits sounds like your kind of thing, pop on over to Paul Rainey's website where you'll find details on how to email Ralph for a copy of his comic. That might seem like an awful lot of effort, but it's worth every mouseclick.

Predators

Unlike many of my peers, I don't consider the original Predator an action classic... so why, you might ask, did I go see its latest sequel?

The truth is, I've been getting cinema withdrawal. With the exception of Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Orleans, which ran for about five minutes a couple of months ago and I missed because I was on holiday, there hasn't been one film I've remotely wanted to see at the pictures since Four Lions... and that was two months ago. I can't remember the last time I went two months without wanting to go the movies - what a truly dire celluloid summer it's been - what the hell is Hollywood playing at?

Anyway, in preparation for Chris Nolan's Inception, which by now we've probably built up far too much because there's so little else to look forward to, I was finally persuaded to venture back to the local multi-fleapit for Robert Rodriguez's latest reinvention. I kinda wish I hadn't bothered.

Predators isn't so much a bad film as a relentlessly dull one. It does nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before in this kind of movie, and it does so with very little imagination. The original Arnie vehicle just about worked because it offered a certain element of surprise. But once you know that the Predator is the ultimate hunting/killing machine, what else is there to discover? This time there's a bunch of them and some are even more predatory than we've ever seen before? Big deal.

The cast try their best. Adrien Brody is actually not half-bad filling Arnie's shoes, despite the fact that he could happily climb into one of Arnie's shoes and sail it to China. That crumply-faced Mexican-looking bloke who appears in all Rodriguez's films shows up and snarls a bit. Topher Grace is even more slimy than he was in Spider-Man 3. And then there's Walton Goggins...

We were watching Justified the other week (I think Louise has a thing for Timothy Elephant) and when they let Walton Goggins out of jail, and I cheered, Louise turned to me and said, "you love him, don't you?" I couldn't deny it. He was the best thing in The Shield, the best thing in Justified, and now he's the best thing in Predators. When it comes to being an utter sleazeball, Walton Goggins can do no wrong.



The same can't be said of Laurence Fishburne who brings so much ham to his cameo, one of the predators actually chokes to death on him. Which is a blessing for everybody.

Top Ten Television Songs

Well, I did radio, it only follows I continue with a list of my favourite songs about the idiot box...

Special mention goes to two bands names after TVs - Television Personalities and Television. If I ever do a Top Ten about tents, Marquee Moon will be number one.

For any Blur fans wondering where Graham Coxon's Coffee & TV is, I'm saving that for the Coffee Top Ten. No, seriously.


10. The Handsome Family - All The TVs In Town

You can’t see the stars
Above the city skyline
But sometimes the air shines like gold
Under the yellow street lights

The psychotics in the park
Howling up at the sky
And the silent airplanes
Slowly drifting by

Sometimes it all seems to glow
As bright as the lights
From all the TVs in town

But when I wake up scared
In those still summer nights
When the air hangs like snakes
Around flashing neon signs

It seems like there’s nothing
Along these broken roads
But blinking lights on creaking metal poles

Ah, Rennie Sparks. Lyrical poet.

9. I Am Kloot - 86 TVs

I really should pick up the new I Am Kloot album. The reviews seem to suggest they're finally ready for their Elbow moment (years spent flogging a horse that only a few people realise isn't dead... until said horse is reborn as a stallion).

8. Billy Joel - Sleeping With The Television On

I am the product of a misspent youth spent listening to Billy Joel records. See also 'Close To The Borderline' in which Billy sagely notes, "I don't change channels so they must change me".

7. Pulp - TV Movie

Without you my life has become a hangover without end
A movie made for TV: bad dialogue,
Bad acting, no interest.
Too long with no story & no sex.

See also Clem Snide's Made For TV Movie, Everclear's TV Show and Bruce's TV Movie.

6. Mansun - Television

Overblown, theatrical instrumentation? Check.

Pretentious lyrics? Check.

Every album a concept album> Check.

So why did Muse become massive and Mansun disappear? Paul Draper was robbed.

5. Airborne Toxic Event - I Don't Want To Be On TV

I don't.

I've worked with a TV crew twice in my life, recording two separate documentaries, and both times I've found them peopled by arrogant tosspots who thought everybody else existed purely to do their bidding.

Apologies if you work in TV and you're the exception to that rule.

4. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television

Music blogger Friend Of Rachel Worth over at Cathedrals Of Sounds has a regular feature in which he names Bands That Should Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles. I thoroughly agree with many of his suggestions, including Spearmint, Furniture and The Pearlfishers. Even if they'd never released a record, Ned's Atomic Dustbin deserve pop sainthood for their name alone.

3. Bruce Springsteen - 57 Channels (And Nothing On)

The early 90s is generally considered Bruce's creative nadir. Releasing two albums on the same day is always a sign that something's up (see also GnR - though Use Your Illusion I & II were slightly less disappointing than Lucky Town and Human Touch). This is probably the best track he recorded between Tunnel Of Love and The Rising, and the lyrics hint at just why his mojo went astray.

I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on

Never trust any artist who's so content the only thing they've got to complain about is "there's nowt worth watching on TV".

2. Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy - Television, The Drug Of The Nation

This was one of the toughest Top Ten decisions I've had to face. Which is the better television tune, the Disposable Heroes... or the track that - by toss of a coin alone - made it to Number One? Both are essential listening, and yet they're also somewhat surprising choices that venture a little further from my usual whiteboy indie/rock safety zone.

T.V. is the reason why less than ten percent of our nation reads books daily...

1. Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

No, the theme song will be written by Gil Scott Heron... and lo, it shall be genius.



So... which TV track would have you refusing to change the channel?

Thoughtballoons - Aquaman

This week's Thoughtballoons character is Aquaman. Yes, the guy who talks to the fishies. I feel bad for Aquaman. Nobody knows what to do with him anymore. They're always killing him off and resurrecting him for cheap drama with some ludicrous new power of something, the latest example of which is just one more cynically death-obsessed reason why I don't read DC superhero comics any more. So this story isn't so much a dig at Aquaman, but a dig at all the people who've dissed him over the years... and all the writers who can't think of anything interesting to do with our undersea champion (myself included).

Read my Aquaman story here. Then check out the other guy's 1-pagers... they've treated the King of the Seas with a little more dignity.

30 Songs - Day 10

Day 10 - A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep



Back in my early 20s, I went through the worst bout of insomnia I've ever suffered. I was working nights at the time, getting home at about 3am, then catching maybe a couple of hours sleep (if I was lucky) before dawn jolted me awake. This went on night after night for weeks on end. I went to the doctors, I chewed sleeping tablets like Opal Fruits, I did strange relaxation exercises involving lots of ommmmmms... nothing had any effect.

Then one night I put on Hats by the Blue Nile. It was, and probably still is, the most chilled-out record in my collection. I defy you to put this record on late at night and try to stay awake beyond this... the first...

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Funk

Some days you just wonder why you bother. The whole world seems against you and there's no point fighting it. Things you'd normally laugh off, or at least banish from your mind as inconsequential, rise up to become insurmountable. All effort seems pointless. You feel like you've wasted your life and it's too late to do anything about it. You feel old and worthless and tired, and you'd welcome armageddon as a relief. You stare blankly at the computer screen and know that nothing you type will ever make any difference to anybody. The flashing cursor is taunting you. None of your usual distractions bring any pleasure or relief. You want to crawl back into bed, pull the covers up over your head, and wish the world away.

What do you do, when you're in a funk? Do you have a guaranteed get-out-of-misery card to play whenever the tsunami of existential ennui crashes over you? Go on, clue me in. How do you get through to tomorrow?

I could do with a laugh.

Synchrony Four

The long awaited fourth issue of Andrew Cheverton's small press anthology Synchrony has recently slithered out into the world and it's an enticing bag of genre-leaping shorts, beginning with Auto-Lolita, the story of a pleasure-droid with an attitude that goes beyond sexy. Then Chev teams up with West colleague Tim Keable for a flower picking, rooftop swinging, zombie-avoiding adventure called The Scent Of Coriander. Chev loves him some zombies, but he's about far more than the head-shooting action, as this touching tale shows. There's more heart to be found in the breakdown fable Cracks, and Moon, a self-illustrated 1-pager that manages to say so much with so little. Finally Chev teams up with artist Dan Lester and takes aim for your funny bone with Rod Hull & Emo, of which Lee & Herring fans would surely approve.

I admire Chev's ability to tell such tales in so few pages - I struggle so much to keep my own PJANG page counts to single figures to satisfy those busy, busy small press artists who don't have all day to be drawing other people's scripts... Chev makes it look easy in this excellent, diverse and enthralling collection. Check out Synchrony #4 and some of Chev's other still-in-print books here. They're well worth your time and your pennies.