Finally, another page!!

Hiya. Finally got back into the groove of producing drawings this week, after three weeks of putting up curtain poles ,buying tellies, cleaning cookers, being dumped, and so on. Here is one of the results. It's the eighth page of Septic Isle, which is a splash page(For the thick, that's a page that consists of only one big panel) depicting our bad guy's flat/Hitler shrine.

The room I draw in (I'm loathe to call it a 'drawing room', as that implies a far posher abode than the one I'm currently residing in, and a bit more middle class than I'm used to) is my favourite room in the flat. It's got all my comics in there (well, the ones I haven't left at the Ex's, anyway) and a CD player and my drawing board. That's kinda all I need to be happy at the moment. Well, a girlfriend would be nice, but they tend to muck up my work ethic and complain. If I carry on at this rate, by the end of the year I'll have more ex's than a pools coupon!

Also, this week, the Birmingham council Arts Champion vans that I designed the livery for turned up in a local paper, but it was in black and white, and would probably scan really shittily, so take my word for it. The article never mentioned me anyway, just the boring good work the Arts Champions are doing with the young people of this city. Bah!!

(Not really. It's a good scheme and I'm proud to be associated with it. Being paid by them kinda helps, too!)

Anyway, enjoy the picture of a neo-nazi's council flat. Until the next time...

Hear Him Roar!!

I don't know if I've declared my love (not in a gay way, of course) for the Yeti that is Brian Blessed before. He is a lunatic. His performance in Flash Gordon should've got an Oscar, yet the blinkered Academy didn't even nominate the powerhouse performance as Voltan. He is a true British eccentric, in the best possible sense. Found this on the internet today and felt the need to share:



Also, people who try to do Brian Blessed impressions always get it wrong by shouting 'GORDON'S ALIVE!!' it's probably the one thing he doesn't shout. I'm surprised that when he went up Everest he didn't come back down again riding in a shout-instigated avalanche. Anyway, this is how it's done.


This is Sir Brian in his day job as a traffic warden:


And here he is as a snooker commentator:


He is a national treasure and should be knighted forthwith. We knight tossers like Cliff Richard instead, a bloke who made a wet day at Wimbledon even worse!

Bullying! The Musical!

Monday was one of those nights when it's rubbish being a parent. My youngest is leaving primary school and will be going to what is called 'big school' . To celebrate this fact, her school put on a play that I was emotionally blackmailed into watching. The play was a cautionary taleabout kids going to secondary school and gettting sucked into gang culture and bullying. It was a musical!
My daughter was only in the choir, meaning she was shoved up the side of the hall where I could hardly see her anyway. I went with my other daughter, who thinks she's too cool for this kind of stuff, but if I have to sit through it, so does she. I'm an equal opportunities parent. It pissed down on the way, so I was soaked before I got there, and the hall we watched the play in was roasting hot, very humid and stuffy, so I quickly dried out and starting sweating. The kids have their dinner in the same hall, as well, so the place stunk of fish. It was either the lingering smell of old dinners, or one of the parents or staff had an intimate hygiene problem.
I hate school plays. I generally don't like anything where children are singing. Bugsy Malone is my idea of hell. I'm glad that fat bloke won Britain's Got Talent and not that gappy brummie child. Kids should be out playing on their bikes, not fannying around singing songs about a rat. I think, because I was a young parent, I'm not as far removed from bowel-emptyingly horrible times when I had to sing in public as a child, so I'm feeling embarassed for the kids. don't get me wrong, most of the kids sung their songs well, but some of them didn't. They were really bad. I felt bad for hating them, I felt bad for them. Mostly, I wanted it to be finished so I get my sweaty arse out of the hot halibut halitosis hall and get some fresh air.
Thing is, we had nothing like this when I left primary school, school plays and days out (my daughter went bowling with the school, as well)!) all I got was a brief 'ta-ra' or 'Haven't you fucked off YET, Trimble?' We don't half make a fuss over everything these days.

Mindless Scribble.

Another update from the Bus Stop From Hell. It's the bus stop situated outside the 'Custard Factory', which is supposed to be an arts complex but these days resembles a collection of empty shops. I've told you before about the mystery graffiti artist who scrawls racist shite all over the bus stop, especially if the advert on the bus stop has a non-white face. In fact, he once defaced an advert for 'Magnum' ice cream by writing 'N*****R SPUNK' on it. It just had a picture of the ice cream on it. I think the cretin was offended by it being dark chocolate. Generally, though, he just scribbles shite like 'Fuck Islam' and draws swastikas on the windows. Anyway, this has made the idiots from the other side (of the race divide, I mean, not the afterlife) write their shite on and around the bus stop. For example : "In Muslim countries there are no homos or lesbians and therefore no AIDS" (Strange to see the word 'therefore' in graffiti) and 'IN YEARS TIME NO WHITES WILL SURVIVE' (of course, 'whites' has been scribbled out and the 'P' word put in, only to be scribbled out again and the original 'whites' put back on', only for that to be scribbled out, and so on)
Anyway, during this Great War of scribble between two idiot factions there is one message that's like the Christmas Day football match. In the middle of all this race hate is the legend: 'BILLIE PIPER WANKER' ,which is so fantastically nonsensical and irrelevant compared to the rest of the drivel written there that I have to smile every time I see it. I'm funny like that. What's not funny is the fact that these idiots who think like that are out there, and the multi-cultural fully integrated happy town that Brum sells itself as is a myth.

A Roof With A View.

My new flat has a roof terrace. I say roof terrace, it's more like a bit of flat roof you can walk on and hang your washing out on. (But, at my peril, because I live next to a Chippy/kebab shop and three doors down from a Chinese takeaway, so if I'm downwind, my clothes will smell of deep-fat fryers. Lovely! No wonder the er, ahem, 'larger ladies' love me!)
I use it mostly for smoking cigarettes on. From where I am, I can see where the Chinese takeaway's outside bog is, and so I can hear when one of the staff is having a piss. Lovely. I can also hear them arguing with each other in Cantonese quite often. It's a shame I don't understand Cantonese, as the rows sound very entertaining indeed. Maybe it's because of all the old Golden Harvest/Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies I watched in my formative years that I imagine they're insulting each other's fathers, or the younger one is shouting "WHY DID YOU KILL MY TEACHER?!! WHY?!WHY?!WHY?!WHY?!!" I know it's not really the case, but one of of them does look a bit like Sammo Hung, so you never know. They're more likely to be shouting "WHY'S THAT CHUBBY BASTARD UP THERE EVERY TIME I GO FOR A PISS?! WHY?!WHY?!WHY?!WHY?!"
Also, behind the flat is a Catholic primary school, so if I'm home during the day having a fag, I feel naughty as a teacher might be watching me and itching to shout at me. (Saying that though, I'm kinda used to having a primary school teacher shout at me. Did I ever tell you what my ex does for a living?) She's probably pointing at me through the windows of her classroom and saying to her class,"See that man over there in the Daredevil T-shirt with the cigarette? That's what will become of you if you don't study harder!" The thing is, she's probably right.

T-Shite.(XL,mostly.)

Last night, the pile of black bags full of my clothes in what will become the kids' bedroom finally pissed me off. I'm between wardrobes at the moment. Not, literally, mind."Help! I'm trapped between these wardrobes! And they're fitted! Aaaarghh!" I do however, have some spaces left where I can stick some of my clothes. I was always of the opinion before that I never had any clothes. There's always something I need a new one of. Now I know I'm wrong. I must have about eleventy gazillion T-shirts. Going through them and folding them up last night, I realised what a sad geeky bastard I really am. The sad thing was, I'm geeky enough to count all the different types of T-shirts I've got. I have four Star Wars related shirts. I've two Daredevil shirts. Two of the Hulk. A Silver Surfer. A Punisher. Two Batman. A Captain America. A Bingo Bonanza (a small-press book I did a strip for. It qualified me for a free T-shirt at the last Brighton Expo). A Dalek. A Spidey. A replica of the shirt Sam J. Jones wore in the Flash Gordon movie. A fondue set. A cuddly toy.
How sad is that? I didn't include the loads of music T-shirts I've got, or the scores of Aston Villa related clothing. Thing is, there's a lot of these shirts I probably won't wear very often in case people spot me for the nerd I really am and attack my flat with pitchforks and flaming torches. (in the case of the Villa stuff, seeing as I live in a 'Bluenose' area, I walk around in Claret-and Blue, I will have my lungs handed to me by a group of dirty, tattooed knuckle-dragging Birmingham City supporting Cro-Magnons!) There's some old t-shirts that I've had since I was a teen that I refuse to throw out because of some stupid sentimental attachment, or "I'll keep them to do the decorating in, or summat", despite the fact they've got more holes in than Clyde Barrow, or my expanding beer gut means I can't wear tham without looking like a sack of shit tied in the middle. I really have to start geting ruthless with my hoard of old shite.

New Digs.

I know I said It'd be a while before I posted again, but I'm on what is now officially the ex's computer while I'm minding our kids.
I'm now moved in, the boxes all unpacked, the CDs no longer all over the floor, the stereo wired up, my graphic novels and comics have all been put away neatly. the room which is going to be my 'studio' (quite literally a 'drawing room'! Well, it will be, as soon as I get a chair to put in there!) now looks like a nerd's paradise, as it has my comics, graphic novels, reference books about comics and graphic novels, more books about Star Wars and 007 than I remember having, my Preacher vinyl figures set and last but not least, my die-cast Batmobile collection all on display. There's also an Aston Villa poster on the wall above my drawing board, courtesy of Randy Lerner's new publicity department, who sent it to me, free of charge, through the post. How times have changed; Doug Ellis wouldn't have given you the steam off his piss.
My very good friend Pete, bless him, helped me with the move, which was less stressful than I thought it would be, even though the flight of stairs which go up to my new flat was too steep and narrow to carry the big heavy boxes up without having a near embolism when we reached the summit. I think we skinned at least six knuckles between us. The weather, which has been cold all week, decided to be roasting on Sunday, which is lovely except for the times you're humping great fucking boxes of comics reference books about! Going up the steep stairs all the time may lead to me losing weight! God forbid! Just in case, there's a chip shop, a Chinese takeaway and an off-licence all within spitting distance, should I feel like I'm getting healthy! (Actually, Pete dodeca-dared me to phone the Chinese takeaway and get them to deliver a meal to my flat, which is about three doors away! Amusing as that would be, I chickened out and actually walked the twenty yards or so to the takeaway for my first meal in my new home.)
One thing, though, I need curtains. Last night I kept seeing the man in the flat opposite walk around in his pants, and today a bald man in a different flat opposite kept looking at me suspiciously above his net curtains. I won't be able to officially 'settle' til I put some drapes up. That means getting the poles as well, as there's nothing to hang the curtains on! And guess how I spent my high-flying exciting lifestyle-type day today? That's right- I cleaned all the congealed fat off the cooker that was left in an appalling state by the previous tenants. After I finished, I added some of my own as I had my first home-cooked bacon butty for about fourteen years. It was great!
It'll be a while before it feels like home, but I think I've made a good start. Thanks again for all the kind words, and the people that helped me pack, and shift the stuff. you know who you are, and you're all very much appreciated!