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.

Horse-faced Lies.

I have to get something off my chest. It's been bugging me for a while now. The other day, whilst at the cinema, I was watching the trailers. As you do. One was for Hancock, a Will Smith movie. Now, Will might be a good actor, but I reckon he'll just look stupid in the black coat and homburg, and he'll have to go some to get the timing right of the classic line: 'A Pint? That's very nearly an armful!' Who have they got to play Sid James? Will Ferrell?
That wasn't what was bothering me, though. The next trailer was for the Sex And The City movie. Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!! I'm sick of seeing ads for this film. I'm sick of hearing about it, and I'm sick of flicking past articles about it in newspapers and magazines. They go on about this movie like it's the Second Coming. It's not. It's just a film about a horsey-faced skeleton and her four ropey mates sitting around a table and talking about men's cocks.
Now, I'm not claiming to have seen a lot of the original TV show. I did see a few episodes, though (the reasons why escape me, now) and they were all basically the same. Shergar or one of her mates gets a new boyfriend, or has problems with an old one. One of their boyfriends has a weird sexual kink, which they all have a good laugh about in a coffee shop.(They are all supposed to be successful career women, yet they all have employers that don't mind them fucking off for three-hour lunches every day.) They all buy shoes. Desert Orchid wears something that makes her look bleedin' ridiculous, the old one has a sex scene, and Red Rum sums it all up in a voiceover at the end.
This is not the great leap forward for feminism it thinks it is. I'm not claiming to be an expert on feminism either, but I have had my ear bent by a few of them in my time. SATC claims it shows modern women and relationships as they really are, but it basically tells us all women are interested in is shopping for shoes and big cocks. I suppose some are, but not the ones I know. (Just as well, really, considering my knowledge of shoes begins and ends with Doctor Marten. Can't really say I have a massive cock, either!) Also, in the episodes I saw, the men in it were either perverted or just useless. Or both. I find this offensive. Every bloke they met had something weird about them sexually, be it foul-tasting semen, or a prediliction for analingus or calling someone a bitch when they reached climax. And the four gorgons all found it a big laugh to share this intimate info about their boyfriends with their mates in a restaurant. I'd hate to be on the next table to them, about to tuck into a chocolate mousse when Trigger starts banging on about rimming. Lovely.
Can you imagine the furore if there was a TV show about four blokes sitting around a table in a cafe talking about how their girlfriend's fanny tasted disgusting? It would be criticised for being sexist. And so it should. Also, it should be noted that the SATC movie is written and directed by a man. Girl Power!
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't get it because I have a 'Y' chromosome. Maybe women like being stereotyped as cock-hungry fashion victims on telly and films. Or maybe it's because I've (hopefully) got a bit of intelligence and see this shit for what it is.

How to feel up women in shopping centres and get away with it.

This week, after being dumped (it's happening so often lately I may start saying 'splitting up with women' is a hobby of mine!) I was feeling down, totally lacking in self-esteem and confidence. But ITV tonight has shown me the solution! All I need is the right bra! After a trip to La Senza tomorrow I can face the world with a smile again, because I know my 'womble's noses' are properly supported!
I can't believe Trinny and Susannah strung out the fact that most women wear the wrong size bra to fill an hour's worth of telly. I was about to eat my dinner, and needed some shit to watch while I was ingesting, so I thought a programme about tits the ideal choice. It was basically an excuse for these two harridans to go round feeling women up in shopping centres. (It's better than my usual excuse, anyway!) At one point the skinny one (Trinny? I'm not absolutely sure. They don't always stand in alphabetical order like Ant and Dec do.) even put on a prosthetic pair of tits and did exercises and came to the conclusion that it felt strange for her. Well, I'm not a so-called style expert, but even I know that if I tried on a fake pair of plastic tits and jumped around in a park, it would feel pretty fucking strange to me and all!
The fact that I turned a programme about breasts off halfway through also feels strange. Kinda unnatural. Isn't prime-time telly these days a load of old shit, eh?

(This picture came from here. This site is brilliant. The art is so good I may now have to hang up my ink brush for good, as I have witnessed a perfection I cannot hope to match. And I've spent the best part of this year drawing Ray Winstone! I think I may have to start sketching with biros again. I used to do it all the time. This site has re-lit my fire!)

Pow! Biff! part 8.

This is the return of the occasional series that pokes fun at some comics' ridiculousness. It's been a while. If you click here you will be transported to a site which proves how rubbish Clark Kent's 'If I just put a pair of glasses on, nobody will realise I'm actually Superman' ploy is. I mean, I never wore glasses at school, but if I bump into an old schoolmate now, they instantly remember who I am. That might be because of the odour, though.

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!