The 28th of February was a real topsy-turvy, roller-coaster of a day. It started off with me getting excited about the Villa/Man United league cup final. We had my brothers and their other halves, our friend Liam and my eldest daughter all come round and watch it. The atmosphere was a good one, we all drank (except for my daughter, who's too young for that sort of thing. Legally, anyway.) wore Villa related clothing, including big foam claret-and-blue hands with 'Come On Villa' on them, complained about the uselessness of both the referee and Emile Heskey, cheered like mad when we scored, shook our heads and tutted and said 'fuckin' hell!' both the times they scored. We lost, but all in all, it'd been a fun afternoon.
Later that night, however, I got the news that my Granddad had passed away. He'd been seriously ill with a lung complaint for a long time. He'd been diagnosed as terminal about a year ago, but he hung on for as long as he could, as he's always been a tough old bugger. It put being disappointed about a stupid football match into its proper context; although he had been ill, and we'd been expecting and dreading the news for a long time, it still came as an almighty shock.
He was a great bloke, my granddad. It was a privilege and a pleasure to have been his grandson. I remember going to see him not that long ago, he was in bed, breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank, and he said to me, in that broad Dublin accent of his (which he never lost despite living in England for sixty years) 'Jaysis, I've lost some weight, haven't I? I've been pickin' my nose with my wrist!'
Even when he was seriously poorly, he never lost his sense of humour. A particularly unique sense of humour which all of us Trimbles have inherited from him. Even the day after he passed, a big chunk of the family (there's a lot of us) was at my Nan's house we were laughing as we swapped stories about him. There was lots of crying as well, we're all going to miss him.
He was the funniest guy I ever knew, and his heart was , as my nan would say, as big as a bucket. There are hundreds of great stories I could tell you about him, but I think that's for another time. It's his funeral this Wednesday, which is St. Patrick's day, which he would've appreciated. There's literally hundreds of people going, it's going to be the closest thing to a state funeral Erdington's ever seen. He deserves a good send-off.
It's true what they say, though. No-one's ever really dead as long as people remember you. He's going to live on in my heart and memories. Bless you, Gramps. Love you.
(This is a picture of my Granddad, my Dad, me and my brothers at my brother Marc's (second from right)wedding. It's the most recent picture I have of him and it was from a happy day, and it's how I want to remember him.)
Blimey, the gaps between posts are getting longer and longer. Michael Jackson was still warming up for his O2 gigs last time I posted anything, and Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden and Mollie Sugden were similarly all still breathing. It's been mental around here lately, mostly because of my girlfriend getting swine flu. This meant I couldn't go onto the internet because this disease is so contagious and deadly that anyone reading my blog would die almost straight away (yes, I have been reading the hysterical national press.) and I didn't want the death of those three people on my conscience. Anyway, my other half's okay now (mostly) , so, unless I contract the pig flu myself, expect more regular posts soon. I'll wrap up the Rome stuff soon, so keep popping by!
Bit of a change of tack, this post. Because I've been off work with my crippled shoulder, I've been watching quite a lot of movies, more often than not, big dumb action movies. And one of the things I like about big dumb action movies (especially the ones from the '80s, I've found) are the big ridiculous deaths that happen in them. I likes me an inventive death! (Only in movies, you understand. Seeing anything at all like this in real life would almost definitely disturb me!) So I've decided to make an open-ended list of what I think are the best deaths in movies. It's pointless sticking to a 'top-ten' or 'best 100' because I might think of more good 'uns, or get bored and never post about it again, or some new good 'uns might come along and grab my attention. Each post will feature one of these gruesome demises, and hopefuly, a clip, if YouTube has them. And there's no particular order of merit, I like them all equally for different reasons. So, enough waffling. Here's What A Way To Go-part one:
Kananga (Live and Let Die, 1973)
as you all know by now, I'm a Bond nerd, so I thought I'd start with a Bond death. Gruesome and inventive dispatches of bad guys have been part and parcel of the Bond franchise from day one. Dr. No was boiled alive in super-heated water (in the novel, however, he was buried alive in a mountain of bird shit; much more inventive!). Goldfinger was sucked out of one of Air Force One's windows. Hugo Drax was shot with a tranquiliser dart then shot out into outer space. Elliot Carver was chopped up by a giant industrial drill, and so on. (The thing I've noticed about the Bond films is that, generally the henchmen get the cooler deaths and the head honcho just gets quickly offed. I recently watched Licence To Kill (probably the most extreme 007 movie in that respect) again and the henchmen are killed in many unusual ways, eaten to death by maggots, electrocution by eel, head exploded in a decompression chamber, chopped up in a grinding machine, which all make the main bad guy's demise, being burned alive, seem a bit of a let down.) However, by far and away the most memorable demise in a 007 movie is indeed that of the main villain in Live And Let Die. What makes it so great is the sheer ridiculousness of it. He is forced to swallow a compressed air bullet which makes him expand like a big balloon until he flies up into the air and bursts into a million pieces. Fantastic. Since when have compressed air bullets been practical? The film says the gun is designed to kill sharks. Surely normal bullets would do the trick just as well? How is blowing them up with compressed air more practical? Especially when you consider Bond is trying to sneak onto the island without raising alarm. Surely sharks suddenly flying into the air and then exploding is going to surprise even the most stupid henchman into action. This is a Bond movie, more importantly, this is a Roger Moore Bond movie, so a certain amount of disbelief-suspension is required. Maybe nearly being eaten by a shark in Thunderball back when he was Sean Connery traumatised Bond so much that he went back to Q branch and asked them to come up with something that would absolutely obliterate the pointy-nosed fuckers. What also makes Kananga's death so great is how badly it's done. It looks rubbish. I'm sure that even back in 1973 it looked shit, but that adds to its charm. Also there's not a drop of blood to be seen, or no flying guts. This was as gruesome as they allowed PG-rated (or it's equivalent back then) films to get back then. Even the obligatory post-kill quip is a bit rubbish; 'He always did have an inflated opinion of himself' is an awful joke, but that adds to its charm too. ( I reckon 'I think he got the point' from Thunderball is the best death quip in the entire series.)All this, as well as the fart sound effect all add up to you laughing at someone's horrible and undignified death! It's a ridiculous, fun, tongue-in-cheek demise that suited the tone of the movie. Roger Moore wasn't the best Bond, and LALD certainly isn't the best movie of his tenure, but it still had a sense of fun that was severely lacking in Quantum Of Solace. (don't get me wrong, I liked QoS, but it wasn't 'Bond' enough for me.) Anyway, enough of me waffling on. Watch and enjoy:
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'.
Today sees the passing of a true Villa legend; Johnny Dixon. A winger and inside-forward (remember when there were such positions as 'inside-forward'? I don't!) who signed for Aston Villa in 1944 and spent seventeen years at Villa Park as a player, and a further six as a youth team coach. He will always be remembered by the claret-and-blue half of Brum as the captain of the F.A. cup winning team of 1957 (where we beat Manchester United's Busby Babes 2-1; albeit by flattening their goalkeeper!) which, sadly, was the last time we lifted the cup. Hopefully, we can win it this year as a tribute to the great man. (Actually, winning anything would be nice! We've got as good a chance as we've had a very long time this season, though.) So long Johnny, thanks for your contribution to the history of the mighty Aston Villa!
Yesterday saw the passing of Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of The Prisoner. He did lots of other stuff, but Number Six is how we'll all remember him. The Prisoner was a weird and wonderful series which made a hell of an impression on me. I'm obviously too young to have seen it when it first aired in the late Sixties, but I saw it when Channel Four repeated it when I was at an impressionable age. If you've never seen it, check it out. It's a wilfully weird and dark fairy tale, an evil Alice In Wonderland. McGoohan's turn as Number Six is a fantastic performance, and a cool character, a man unwilling to give in and conform, always one step ahead of his captors and defeating the new Number Two but never quite making his escape. The show looked great too, the Portmerion location adding another layer of strangeness. And who can forget the odd holiday camp-type clothes they all wore, the pedal cars, and of course there was Rover, the malevolent weather balloon. I remember catching an episode not so long back, on ITV4 or something, and I had my children with me. I told them to watch it as it's brilliant. Unfortunately, the episode was Fall Out, the very last one and possibly the strangest hour of telly ever broadcast on ITV. My kids shook their heads and left when a character started singing 'Them Bones, Them Bones' muttering something like 'this is crap'. Ah well, their loss.
TV's tried to do similar things since, but they just tend to go for 'weird', but there was more to The Prisoner than that. It's an allegory, especially that last episode when there's the big reveal of the bad guy, the ultimate evil, Number One, and it's Number Six's face we see. The ultimate evil is oneself, the whole series is Number Six fighting his own dark side. The people who put him there obviously want him to use his dark side in their service, and so were a bit peeved when he quit. That's what I think it's about, anyway, but I'm sure there are lots of interpretations of what this show was about.
What is strange now, looking at it from today, is that ITV ever made a show like this. The ITV of today churns out pap like X Factor and I'm A Celebrity..., but back in the Sixties it made fantastic shows like The Avengers, Thunderbirds, The Saint, Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) and many others which made the BBC's output at the time look a bit tame and old-fashioned. It intermittently tries to come up with fun genre shows these days, but it's shit like Primeval and Demons, and gives up the ghost and goes back to Simon Cowell for another load of talentless hopefuls who will ruin TV and the charts too, for good measure.(That said, it's currently remaking The Prisoner with Jim Caviezel as Number Six and Ian McKellen as Number Two. I reckon it's a totally pointless exercise, myself.)
Anyway. So long, Patrick. Thanks for making British TV a hell of a lot more interesting than it was before you came along. We could do with you around now.
Ever since Septic Isle came out, I've been guilty of putting my name into Google to see what people have been saying about the book and my artwork. I think it's known as 'Googlebating', but it does throw up some interesting results. Besides trudging though loads of listings about articles about David Trimble written by a journalist called 'Mick', I've found out that there's another Mick Trimble who used to play bass in a band called Iluvatar. Maybe he also puts his (our) name into Google and only finds criticisms of my 'wobbly linework'!
There are other interesting finds, such as this: The Trimble Funeral and Cremation Centers. You can now say goodbye to a dear departed loved one in that special Trimble way. This might mean less swearing than if you booked me personally, and that can only be a good thing, right?
I've also found out that there are 'Trimble tribute bands'. Excellent! You can book them here. While I have visions of four blokes dressed like me rocking out, it's just that these are bands who are from, or operate in Trimble County, Kentucky.
I think it's brilliant that there's a Trimble county! Maybe I should go and live there, claim my throne and live like the king I should! Maybe I can get my technically American lovely girlfriend to take me and help translate. (She's been complaining lately that I haven't mentioned her on this blog for ages. Happy now, Heather?) The main reason to go to Trimble county, however, is to see the magnificent Trimble Knob. Lots of people have marvelled at the magnificence of the Trimble knob, they want to go and sit on it. But only if it's a nice day and they can take a picnic.
This video, as you may expect, contains some rude words, so be careful if you're at work or near children. If you're within earshot of a Christian fundamentalist, please play at maximum volume. The world's a much poorer place now George Carlin's gone.
Yesterday saw the passing of a comics art legend. Dave Cockrum, co-creator of the modern X-Men is now, sadly, no longer with us. He and Len Wein relaunched X-Men, (which was still in publication but had been just reprints for years. It's easy to forget these days with the massive popularity of the x-books that it had been all but cancelled due to its unpopularity) which didn't really reach its supreme popularity until John Byrne's stint on the book, but Cockrum paved the way, with his character designs (among them Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus) up there with the best of them. R.I.P. Dave. You won't be forgotten.
The homunculus 'Micktrimble' was hatched in 'No Hope' hospital, Sutton Coldfield in spring '74. As Sutton Coldfield was slowly dying, the homunculus' progenitors put their creation into a rocket and fired it at nearby Erdington. A primitive place, but it was thought that the creature would blend in; his talents hidden. He spent his young life endlessly doodling and honing his skills at moaning. At the end of his first instar, he spawned two more homunculi. He is now shedding his skin ready for his second instar and sketching childish doodles for publication in journals for similarly weak-minded fools.
