Memorabilia.

Last weekend, our good friends Jamie and Theresa travelled up from Southend-On-Sea to come and stay at our home here in The People's Republic Of The West Midlands. (If you read my blog regularly, you'll know Jamie, as he's the only one who leaves me any comments!)

It was Jamie's birthday on the Saturday (and might I say, he doesn't look bad for fifty! Only kidding, Jamie!), and after he opened his cards and presents, and still feeling the effects of the alcohol and Moroccan cuisine from the night before, Jamie and I headed out to the National Exhibition Centre for the Memorabilia show. His other half decided her time would be better spent mooching around Brum's shops, whilst my other half was at the theatre watching His Dark Materials with my eldest daughter.

We went to the NEC by train from the lovely, awe-inspiring New St. station, mostly because it's probably the quickest way of getting there, as it's only one stop, and the fact that parking at the NEC would cost at least eight quid. The problem with going to the NEC by train is that after you get off at Birmingham International, you think you're nearly there, but you're not. You're in a building that says it's the NEC, but it's a bloody long walk to the exhibition halls. You go up escalators, down escalators, down endless corridors, along several moving walkways until, about a week later (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly) you get to the exhibition halls. But that's not the end. The Memorabilia show was in hall 12, we were outside hall one, so we walk for another three days (I exaggerate again) until we get to our destination. If we weren't sure if it was the right place, the shitloads of blokes dressed up as stormtroopers and a couple of Jedi outside confirmed that this was indeed the Memorabilia show.

After being allowed to jump the queue because we were paying for our tickets with cash (Ten quid! Each! Bloody Nora!) we went into what was frankly a massive room stuffed to the gills with all sorts of cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a toy stall, selling lots of stuff similar to the things I had as a kid for shocking amounts of money. All of it was still boxed, and you weren't allowed to pick any of it up. I might've mentioned before that I collect models of the Batmobile (I know, it's a sickness, but they make the windowsill in my sketching room look a lot cooler) and I saw a Batmobile I'd quite like. It was from the 70s, made by the Mego company for their 7" action figures of Batman and Robin (not included) to sit in. We asked how much it was, because none of the items had prices on them. Probably because a little sticky price tag might damage the precious packaging. Anyway, the stallholder gets out a little folder that had all the prices in it, looks it up and then tells us that the batmobile would cost me £195. That was about £190 over my limit, so we thanked him and moved along.

We also saw, from the side looking in, Robert Vaughn doing a Q&A session, and he's a lot smaller than I thought he would be. Quite old, too. It's amazing, though, how he's kept his hair colour even though he's well into his seventies. More on him later.

One of the things that bugs me about this kind of event (comics conventions included), and it's only a recent phenomena, is the amount of cosplayers that turn up. I hate cosplayers. I know they're essentially harmless and they're only having a bit of fun but they do my head in. I reckon they give the rest of us nerds a bad name. People look at them and think 'what a bunch of sad bastards', and think all of us geeks are like that. There was a group of about ten teenage boys all dressed up as Doctor Who. All of them were the David Tennant Doctor, except for one who must have read the email incorrectly and turned up as William Hartnell. A fat, Asian, William Hartnell. Still, at least he was the only one who stood out. I saw all those young lads, with their brown full length coats, brown suits, Converse trainers and their hair all spiked up and I was reminded of the crowd scene from Life Of Brian; "Yes, we're ALL individual!"

There were also quite a few very young teenage girls dressed in not much, including one girl of about fifteen wearing a revealing corset, and this kind of thing brings out the dad in me. I say things like 'I bet her dad doesn't know she's wearing that' and 'there's no way any of my kids are going out looking like that!' even though I know, deep down, that if my girls did want to go out like that, there's not really that much I could do to stop them. There is such a thing as freedom of expression in this country, despite all of my objections!

Also, it's very stupid going to these things dressing up as the thing you love. If you're dressed up as Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars memorabilia dealer knows he can charge you a bit more because he know's you're a Star Wars nut and you'll pay it. I bet all the dealers with Doctor Who stuff rubbed their hands with glee the moment they saw the ten Tennants approaching them. Only under tens and the Fathers 4 Justice and those people who are paid to walk around these conventions dressed up are allowed to wear superhero or sci-fi costumes (I might make allowances for people press-ganged into going to a fancy dress party. I'm not a big fan of those, either!) the rest of you should stop. Really. Especially the ones that make their own costume out of bits of egg boxes and Lego. Honestly, it's like Paris Fashion Week for the blind and stupid.

Rant over.

The amount of stuff available here was amazing. If spare cash and spare space wasn't a problem I would've come home with shitloads of geeky stuff. Honestly, if you're a nerd like me, you would have had a field day looking at this cool stuff. There was some crappy junk as well, but it was mostly cool. Less cool, however, was the 'celebrities' charging you at least fifteen pounds for an autograph. Some of them are people the non-nerd has heard of (Stephanie Beacham, Robert Vaughn, Richard Briers-who was a bit of a weird choice, I can't really see loads of obsessed cosplaying fans turning up dressed in tweed and kilts asking him to sign their VHS copies of Monarch of The Glen, can you?) but a lot of them were 'third alien on the left' types from Star Wars and I don't think having the autograph from the guy who was 'Yak-Face' is worth fifteen quid, frankly. I'm not really sure whether these are actually who they say they are, anyway, considering that these people spent their moment of fame under shitloads of prosthetics. He could be lying and pretending he was Yak-Face, for all I know, just to get his hands on fifteen quid from a Star Wars freak who really should be old enough to know better.
Don't get me wrong, there were people there I would have liked to get autographs from. There were a few Bond alumni there, for example. There was Richard Kiel, the man mountain who played Jaws, who is absolutely fucking huge- he's probably wider across the shoulders than I am tall. It was sad to see his mobility scooter, though. I also would've liked Guy Hamilton's signature, as he directed Goldfinger, the quintessential 007 movie. (Interesting fact about Guy Hamilton: In the movie The Third Man, that famous shot where you see Harry Lime's shadow running away, that shadow actually belongs to Hamilton- who was Carol Reed's assistant director, because Orson Welles didn't bother showing up for filming that day, because he was a notorious pain in the arse and probably because the only running Welles ever did was away from the salad counter.) The thing is, if you ever happened to bump into these people in the pub, they'd probably give you an autograph for free (although it's unlikely Jaws ever drinks in Moseley, there are a few Yak-faces, though.) and that's the main reason I refuse to pay for it. The other main reason is I don't have that many spare fifteen quids at the moment! I was going to get George Lazenby to sign my picture (see last post) but he wasn't there, so stuff the lot of them.
Saying that, one of us did pay for an autograph, and it wasn't me. Jamie saw the bloke who plays PC Stamp from The Bill walk past us, and had a brainstorm. His dad is a big fan of the show, apparently, so Jamie thought it would be nice if he could get PC Stamp (don't know his real name, and I can't be arsed to Google it, either) to talk to his dad on the phone. Which he did, fair play to him, but the trouble is, he might be a well-known face on British TV, but he doesn't really have a distinctive voice like, for instance, Sean Connery, John Hurt or Michael Caine does. Jamie's dad didn't have a clue who it was that had phoned him up so the first five minutes of that phone call were really awkward. I don't know what was said on the other end, but I can imagine it was along the lines of 'Who the fuck is this?'
Anyway, when Jamie's dad realised who it was, the conversation went a bit more smoothly, but at one point, PC Stamp said to Jamie's dad something along the lines of 'Well, your son is going to buy you a nice signed photo for you' and from that moment on, Jamie felt obliged to buy a signed photo of a bloke from The Bill for fifteen pounds. He didn't really mind, it was a nice gift for his old man, after all, but I think Jamie, being a rabid Star Wars fan, would rather have spent that money on Yak-Face's autograph. I think I upset PC Stamp though, he asked if I'd got everything I'd came for, if I was enjoying it, the usual smalltalk, then for some reason, he sort of accused me of being a cosplayer. Probably on the basis that I was wearing a Silver Surfer T-shirt. Not only did he accuse me of being one of the things I hate most in the world, he suggested that I probably dress up as a superhero when I'm having sex with my girlfriend. I know he was only trying to be blokey and have a joke, but fucking hell, that's a bit much isn't it? I replied by asking him whether they let him keep his uniform (for sexual purposes) when he left The Bill.
"I haven't left, actually, but thanks for paying attention."
And that was the end of that conversation. Next to him was the German guy from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (another favourite movie of mine, but surely it's a favourite movie of everyone's.)whose face melted at the end, and I wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Ferrero Rocher 'Ambassador, you are spoiling us' advert, but I didn't have the courage so we went away and watched some wrestling instead.
Well, I say wrestling. It was a bit like wrestling. There was a ring, a referee and wrestlers, but it was all a bit, well, rubbish. For some reason, the wrestlers kept trying to get the crowd to clap along, but they didn't seem to realise that us Brummies don't really do audience participation. We have the attitude of 'I paid ten quid of my hard-earned cash to get in here, and you want me
to do your job for you? You entertain me! I don't ask you to come to my factory and polish my power press, do I?'
So there wasn't much clapping. Anyone who did clap along were either children, idiots or interlopers from beyond the Black Country. It was a bit like like wrestling used to be when I was a nipper- you know, World Of Sport and Kendo Nagasaki and Johnny Two Rivers and fat blokes with a woman's bathing costume on worn back to front, before we got slick, polished American wrestling shows imported to show us how it could be done if we could be bothered to put the effort in. To be fair, they were going for the American style of wrestling, the 'good guy' wrestlers had washboard stomachs and muscles (something the World Of Sport bunch couldn't be arsed with, they just bounced off ropes and belly-barged into someone with their beer guts) but the 'bad guy' was a bit weedy-looking and the actual bouts were unconvincing. I know wrestling is fixed, but you don't make it obvious. They were stamping on the floor when they 'punched' someone, for God's sake! I wanted one of them to slash his face with a razor, Mickey Rourke-style, that'd be cool, and it would really freak out all the five year olds watching. To be fair to them, though, they did throw themselves around with gusto, and their backs looked all red and sore, so it must hurt, and it's something I'd never do (probably because the sight of me running around in swimming trunks and bright green knee-high boots would turn the Memorabilia Show into the Projectile Vomit-Con 2009) so, my hat goes off to them. If I ever wore one. Which I don't.
At the end of the show, Jamie went up to one of the guys who organises the show and congratulated him on how good it was (Despite all my moaning above, I did have a good time. Moaning's just what I do.) and on the table in front of him was a load of large glossy prints of various people sitting next to Robert Vaughn. They apparently had a scheme where you pay to have your picture taken with the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you pick it up at the end, like you do when you get off a rollercoaster at Alton Towers. The weird thing was that the ex-Napoleon Solo (another intersting fact- Ian Fleming came up with that name. Also, my dad was such a big fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I was nearly given the name Napoleon Trimble. I'm glad he saw sense) had exactly the same facial expression in all of them. They might as well have taken one picture of him and photoshopped him next to all of those other people.
(Actually, I read in the Birmingham Mail the other day, that the next series of Hustle is being filmed up here in Brum, and that Robert Vaughn is looking for an apartment in this very city. Hopefully I'll bump into him and get an autograph and save myself twenty quid!)
And so, after about three hours of looking at cool stuff, and after trying and failing to get our picture taken with a bloke dressed as Iron Man, Jamie and I headed on the long, long walk back to the train station with our freshly-bought junk weighing us down. I got a few books and a few more batmobiles (one of which Jamie bought for me, bless him) and we'd had a good time. I'd definitely go again. It's a good laugh.

Oh, and the guy who plays PC Stamp's name is Graham Cole, apparently.

Snow joke and other updates.

Most of the blogs I've looked at today tend to consist of photos of peoples' gardens or streets covered in snow. Yes, it looks pretty, but it's a right royal pain in the arse.

It never ceases to amaze me how unprepared this country is for snow. It happens EVERY FUCKING YEAR, you think we'd have the mechanisms in place to deal with it by now, but no, of course we haven't. We can find untold billions to pay for missiles to rain down on Iraq, or to pay for the Olympics, but when it comes to dealing with snow, we're fucking hopeless. I bet Canada are laughing their bollocks off at us right now. I mean, our capital ground to a complete standstill, no buses, trains or planes at all. The 7/7 bombings never managed that!

This recent snowfall apparently cost the economy an estimated 1.2 billion pounds, and there's more on the way and we might run out of road salt. I'm not an economist, but surely spending a few million quid making sure we can deal with snow and making sure people can get to work and supplies are delivered, etc. will save us billions in the long run.

Still, at least the kids had a nice day off from school.



>Update on the previous post, my recent appearance on local and national news has now only bleeding gone online. See my full bell-endedness in glorious full colour. I apologise in advance for making you listen to Ace Of Base's (note the apostrophe!) 'The Sign'.



> My shoulder's still not brilliant, but it's a lot better, thanks for asking.


>Since Johnny Dixon passed away last week, two more Villa alumni have gone on to play for God's XI. Vic Crowe, former player and later manager of Villa died last week, and Monday saw the passing, at the very young age of 46, of Paul Birch. Birchy's death is particularly sad for me, because he's a player I actually remember, he was part of Graham Taylor's fantastic team of the late Eighties. I remember him marking Inter's Lothar Matthaus out of the game in our 2-0 win over them in the UEFA cup (the less said about the 3-0 defeat at the San Siro in the second leg, the better). I had an old Panini sticker of Birchy on the inside cover of my school hymn book (along with Gordon 'Sid' Cowans and Derek Mountfield and a posh foil sticker of our old round crest) He was a player from the time I used to go down to Villa Park regularly (those days are long gone! Can't afford it these days.) and though it's often claimed falsely that a player always gave 110%, Birchy always did, and that is why the Holte End still sing his name in our version of 'My Old Man'.

Punctuation.

Yesterday, I was on my way to get my children for the weekend, and on the way I was stopped by a BBC news reporter and a cameraman and asked my opinion on the day's burning issue: Apostrophes. Apparently, Birmingham City Council doesn't like Brummie place names having apostrophes in them, so places like Druid's Heath, King's Norton and King's Heath (where I live, and why I was asked my opinion, being a resident and all) will all lose their punctuation. Good to see they're not wasting my council tax on stupid schemes like better services, isn't it? Let's re-punctuate all the street signs instead. A much better use of resources.
However, directly across the road from where I was interviewed, an attempted armed robbery had taken place at a Nationwide building society, there were loads of police and the road was cordoned off. Surely that's a proper news story? Shouldn't the TV journalists be over there finding out what happened? Nope. Whether or not we keep apostrophes is far more important, apparently.
They did broadcast my response. On the BBC's regional news programme Midlands Today. My eldest daughter was doubly freaked out because her English teacher was also in the same feature. I was freaked out, too, by my big bloated unshaved pale face and my horrible voice. Surely I don't sound like that, do I?
I do?! Bloody hell.
Anyway, I don't approve of them removing the apostrophes. My response on the telly was something like 'removing the apostrophes just for the sake of making it easier to read is sorta like dumbing down'. I know, erudite, snappy and witty. I came across as a right bell-end.
Luckily, nobody 'phoned or texted me, so it looked like nobody I knew had seen it. Which was good, especially since I've been off work all week with a bad shoulder, 'phoning them up and telling them how crippled I am. Me appearing larger than life on the telly kinda makes me look a liar. And I'm not, my shoulder is royally fucked, I had to go and get my kids. But it looked like nobody had seen it anyway, so I was okay.
I thought I was, anyway. They broadcast it again, many times, today on BBC breakfast. and I'm getting texts and Facebook messages from all over the shop. My mate in Darlington saw it. So it was nationwide, then. The whole country saw what a bell-end I am. Fantastic. My colleagues have seen it. So I'm in shit at work, probably. Brilliant.
Damn you, Birmingham City Council! You and your diabolical schemes have ruined me!

Always Has Been, Always Will Be.

I read in the Birmingham Mail yesterday that some arsehole local councillor wants the mighty Aston Villa Football Club to change their name to 'Aston Villa Birmingham' and we should also replace the motto 'Prepared' on our badge with 'Birmingham'. He reckons that a lot of people don't actually know that Villa are from Brum and the name change will help raise the city's profile if the Villains win the UEFA cup.
Firstly, let's try and win the cup first. Secondly, we've been Aston Villa since 1874. It's been good enough for the last 134 years, why change it now? I mean, back in 1874 , Birmingham wasn't even a city yet, and Aston wasn't part of it.
Lots of football teams don't have the city they're from in their name, I mean, just off the top of my head, there's all of the London clubs, Everton, Port Vale, Lazio, Ajax, FC Twente, Espanyol, Benfica, Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, Queen Of The South and Juventus. There's probably loads more. Any proper football fan knows Villa are from Brum. Anyone who doesn't know probably isn't that interested in football, so how does Villa winning a trophy raise Birmingham's profile in their eyes anyway? The main reason this is a bad idea, however, is the fact that our local rivals and worst enemies are called Birmingham City. How is Villa incorporating the scum's name into our own going to be a popular idea? It's not our fault if the team actually bearing the name of the city aren't raising it's profile because they're a pile of wank is it?
If the council want to increase this city's reputation, how about they spend their time coming up with better ideas, such as cleaning up the shit bits, for example? (I reckon one of the main reasons Birmingham has a reputation for being a shithole is, ironically, because of football, as both Villa Park and St. Andrews are situated in dogholes, so visiting supporters go home with a bad impression) . I know this idea isn't going to come to anything, and it will all blow over, but it has bugged me no end. Football is all about history, and our name is part of our heritage, so leave it the fuck alone.

If you want to read about how we got our name, and also, if it wasn't for Aston Villa there wouldn't be a football league to start with, read this fantastic article from the Times Online.

And Finally....

Having lived in the People's Republic of the West Midlands for nearly as long as there's been a county called 'The West Midlands', I thought I'd be used to the stupidity and crassness of our local news bulletins by now.
It turns out I'm not. I'm still weirded out by what I witnessed on Central Tonight, tonight (funnily enough). This is the bulletin on ITV, and it's been presented by Bob Warman for what feels like forever. I think his first story for what was then ATV Today was something along the lines of 'Sabretooth tiger attacks Neanderthal in a cave near Bromsgrove', but I might be making that up. Because Bob's the elder statesman of news in the West Midlands, the news bulletin tends to be a bit more straitlaced when he's on it, because he doesn't understand the modern world or senses of humour. You can see he's uncomfortable with the friendly lightweight stories or the affable banter with the sports presenter covering the lack of transfer activity at Villa Park that day. And rightly so, in my opinion. News is for news, not for giving airtime for some local tit who's designed a new way of getting jam into doughnuts or something.
Anyway, Bob Warman was away today. It was instead presented by that woman with the Lego hair and that Scouse bloke whose face is far too small for his head. (I think it's wrong for a Scouser to read out Midlands news).This gave the editorial staff the chance to fanny about a bit. It went like this; the weather girl, Emma Jesson likes to do her daily reports from different locations, although it usually tends to be an ice rink or the Walsall arboretum. Today, however, it was neither of those exotic locales. She was, wait for it, in a living room in Sutton Coldfield! (I can sense you're all getting excited by that particular piece of prose!) She had a couple behind her who were both dancing, albeit slightly out of sync with each other and a bit rubbish. This carries on for a couple of minutes, the lovely Emma telling us it's going to piss down all week, with this man and woman acting like they're both dying for a wee in the background.
Then we found out why. They're practising for their elaborate first dance at their wedding, which they're going to film and put on YouTube. How original! To prove how original it was, Central Tonight then showed us a montage of all the other wankers who have done something similar and put it on YouTube. (Just put 'wedding dance' into YouTube, you'll see the kind of shit I mean.) Why do people do this? Why is it always to a shit song? Why don't they do something original? (I'd love to see a wedding dancefloor with a big circle pit and lots of moshing! That'd be cool! Maybe I'll have it at my own wedding, should any woman be daft enough to agree to become Mrs. Michael Trimble.) What happened to dignity? Why do they feel the need to show the fucking world how 'wacky' they are?
I know I sound like a miserable old fart, but for fuck's sake, the last thing I want to see at a wedding is a re-enactment of Dirty Dancing, which is probably the biggest crime-against-the-eyes shown in a cinema ever made. (This reminds me, actually, of a wedding my dad told me about. It was one of his mates from work, and it was about twenty years ago, when Dirty Dancing was first out, and they tried to recreate that scene where she jumps into his arms and he holds her aloft. Thing was, she wasn't the lightest bride, nor was he the soberest groom. She gets up on a chair when the song reaches its big chorus, there's no way she can actually jump from the floor without a block and tackle. He's ready with his arms out. All their nearest and dearest are all round them on the dancefloor in a big circle, to give them both room. She launches herself at him, and he catches her, but he's too weak and too pissed and after about eight seconds of sweating , straining and swaying they both crash to the floor in a heap of white lace and grey tails. Fantastic. Now that, I wouldn't mind seeing. Unfortunately this was before the internet, so it will just have to live on in oral tradition.)
Where will it all end? Divorcing couples having a West Side Story-type dance off at the custody hearing?
As you can see, I'm a hopeless romantic.

This bit of the news wasn't the weird bit, though. Afterwards, they cut back to the studio and Lego Hair and the Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head both remarked to each other how nifty the Sutton Coldfield couple's moves were. Then, and I shit you not , they went into a crappy dance routine of their own, which culminated in Lego Hair jumping into Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head's arms and he swung her around at waist level. Then the theme music and credits came on, and Lego Hair carried on shimmying around the set with all the grace of a three-legged tortoise, whilst Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head had a suitably shameful look on his face that was too small for his head. This was on the same show that had a big story about a poor bloke getting stabbed to death, and they looked like they were celebrating the news!
Local news, eh?