What I did in the school holidays, by Mick, aged 35.

Hello again! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a busy few weeks, mostly taken up with work, various trips around the country and spending time with my nippers during the school holidays.

If you're interested, these are a few of the things I've been up to. If you're not, well, you can stop reading, I suppose.


Nine Inch Nails/ Jane's Addiction

Blimey, this seems like ages ago now. Those of you that read this blog regularly, or actually know me personally (that does happen, sometimes) know that I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. Ever since I first saw them live way back in 1991 in a shitty little club here in Birmingham that isn't even there anymore. The American leg of this tour was called the 'NIN/JA' tour, which sounded cool. I can imagine Trent Reznor thinking 'Well, we're NIN, so we need someone with the initials JA to support us, just so we can have a cool name for our tour.' So, after Julie Andrews, and then Birmingham's own Joan Armatrading both turned him down, they asked the recently reformed again Jane's Addiction. ( I'm only kidding! I know Trent Reznor is a big fan of Jane's Addiction, even sampling Perry Farrell's screaming for 'Ringfinger', the last track on NIN's debut album Pretty Hate Machine, as well as using 'Sex Is Violent' on his soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.)

As I said, NIN/JA was the name of the US tour. By the time it got to th UK, it had changed its name to 'Wave Goodbye' as Trent Reznor had decided that NIN aren't going to tour anymore. So I can say now that I saw them on their first tour, and their last. I bet Trent saw me in the crowd and thought 'I'm glad Mick's here, it kinda bookends the whole touring experience for me.'

Anyway, the gig was in Manchester, at the MEN arena. The hotel me and my glamorous other half stayed in wasn't very good. Should've been, for the price, but it was awful. I'm not a big fan of Manchester anyway, I've been there four times now, and it's never impressed me. That said, each time I've been has only been a flying visit, maybe I'd enjoy it more if I stayed there a bit longer. (Did that sound diplomatic enough? Good.)

Because we left after work and drove straight up there, we missed about half an hour of Jane's Addiction, but what I did see was very good. I was slightly distracted by the vertical sweat stain that was on the back of the bassist's shorts, but the music was good. However, at one point, a couple of scary-looking women in front of us turned around and asked me if I liked it. When I said 'Yeah' they shook their heads and the scariest looking one said 'I just don't get it, me.' So, in summary, Jane's Addiction: Good, but not for everyone, especially if you resemble Morticia Addams' chubbier sister.

Looking around the stadium, I realised I was one of the oldest people there. Most of the crowd probably weren't even born when I saw them in 1991, which is a frightening thought. Anyway, when NIN came on, they were awesome. Their light show probably damaged my retinas forever (this was before the government's ban on filament bulbs) and even though this was their last ever tour, they didn't go for the standard 'greatest hits' setlist. They played songs that I'd never heard them play live before, as well as some of the old standards. It was, basically, a great night, and I'm glad I was there.

Banksy vs. Bristol Museum

My girlfriend's old friend Sarah came over from Amsterdam (She's not Dutch, she works there.) to visit and we all agreed that going to the Banksy exhibit would be good for a laugh, so we booked a night in an ibis (always fun!) and buggered off down to Bristol. This was the first time I've been to Bristol without being there for the Comics Expo. It was kinda strange not seeing any imperial stormtroopers or kids dressed as Wolverine milling about, but that was cool as I like Bristol. I've had many a fantastic time there. And, unusually for the Summer we've just had, the weather that weekend was fantastic.
We were told to expect queues, and by the time we got there on a Saturday afternoon, the queue was massive, and we were told that we were likely to be waiting for three hours, so we didn't go that afternoon. Luckily, unbeknownst to us before we got there, Bristol was holding its annual Harbour festival, which consisted of loads of boats, obviously, live shows, music and comedy and lots of barbecues and drinking. We watched some of the live show, but after watching some woman fanny around on a tightrope whilst some bloke sat by the side playing flamenco guitar, (It's supposed to be 'arty', but I call it 'bollocks'.) I thought it would be a good time to go to a pub. Then again, I always tend to think it's a good time to go to the pub. Thing is, because of the festival, all the bars were heaving, and they only served you drinks in plastic cups, which I'm not fond of.
So, after a few plastic pints (for me, anyway. The ladies had cocktails. That's because they're ladylike and posh, and I'm neither of those things!) we went for an overpriced al fresco dinner, which tasted nice, I suppose, but it was kind of ruined by the sight of a local teenage girl who was too pissed to stand up and throwing her ring up. We took this lesson about binge drinking to heart and then went for a few more plasticky pints in several of the dockside bars.
The next morning, we got up early, which isn't good if you have a hangover, had a mediocre breakfast and several coffees at the hotel , then headed up to the Bristol Museum an hour and a half before it opened. It sounded like a good plan the day before. Still, the wait was worth it. It was a fantastic exhibition. I've been to a few exhibitions before (including the ones I was a part of) and they tend to be dry affairs. Except for the ones where there were free drinks (which was the only reason I went to a few of them). Not this one. This exhibition was fun. Sick and twisted, but fun. No free drinks, but great nonetheless.

As you go in, you notice the Ronald McDonald figure stuck to the front of the museum, he's very high up, his make-up is tear-stained, and there's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels perched next to him, and it looks like he's about to jump. As you enter the exhibit, you walk past a burned-out ice-cream van, and behind it is a policeman on one of those kiddie's rides you see outside supermarkets, with distorted ice-cream van music, and the effect is eerie. Before you go into the exhibition proper, there's a painting riffing on the old Hansel and Gretel story, only it's Michael Jackson opening the door to the children. Out of respect, there was a candle burning in front of it. This set the tone for the rest of the show.

The main part of the exhibit focuses mostly on his graffiti stuff, most of which is very clever, although a lot of it is anti-police, and that gets a bit boring after the fifth image of coppers kissing each other or holding hands. The highlight of this first room was a giant painting of the House Of Commons, only the politicians have been replaced by chimps.

The second room was set out like a zoo, several cages with animatronic puppets in them, one with a caged ape painting an imagined sunset, one with chicken McNuggets hatching out of eggs, a rabbit putting make up on in front of a mirror, a Birdseye crispy fish-steak swimming around in a tank, and so on, all basically highlighting how awful the human race is to animals. Which is a fair point, but I reckon it's the animals' fault for being so damn tasty. My favourite part of this room was the cage with an aged, wretched-looking Tweety Pie in it. I could've stood there and watch that thing sigh all day.

That wasn't the end of it, either. Banksy had had a go at the rest of the museum, too, replacing pictures and exhibits with his own. So, you get what looks like a Constable, a country landscape, but this one has a car in it, with a visible bare arse in the windscreen , and it's titled 'Dogging'. It's not highbrow, but it's funny. There was another one where UFOs were attacking an old painting of a busy seaport. My favourite of these replaced paintings was this one, called 'Agency Worker':


This was a clever way of geting people to have a look around the whole museum, trying to find the bits Banksy had tampered with. There was all kinds of puerile things, including a dildo in the stalactite collection, a plate with a turd on in a cabinet full of ceramics, and one of those awful plates with a photo of kittens on it was put in a cabinet with fine china.
Anyway, we had a blast. It's the first time I've been to an art exhibition and come out laughing. I'd recommend you go, but I think it's finished now. Oh well, go to Bristol Museum anyway, it's a lovely building.


Other stuff.

I've also been on various trips around the Midlands with my offspring: Cadburyworld, West Midlands Safari Park, and Warwick Castle, which were all good fun, and I've also been down to Brighton for a wedding, but I'm knackered now. I just want a nice, relaxing stress-free weekend for a change. Oh, hang on, Villa play Blues this weekend! Aaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!!

Mick's BICS.

Well, Birmingham International Comics Show went by in a flash, didn't it? It's in its third year now, and it keeps getting better. It's certainly more slick and better organised , less malodorous and in a nicer venue than its Bristol counterpart, but it's still not quite got the vibe that the Brizzle expo has. Like Sting says, though, I'm sure it'll come eventually.

Andy Winter and I were there to flog Septic Isle, we got there fairly early on Saturday morning (after we'd had 'a night on the pop' on Friday) and discovered that our table was the first one people would see as they came in. However, we weren't in the main hall, so it turned out ours was the first table people would ignore as they rush past to go and meet John Cassaday. Just after we set up and had a coffee I got a phonecall from my friend and fellow MC2-er Laura Howell asking me if I could help them carry their stuff up from the car. I dutifully go down and offer my services and get roped in to carrying someone else's stuff, leaving Tim (Laura's partner) standing there in the car park like a spare prick. After I carried the other lady's stuff up to the exhibition hall, I rushed back down to see poor old Tim struggling with three big wooden boards and helped them carry it all up after all.

My good deed done for the day, I sat back down behind our table and got ready to meet the punters. We shifted a few copies of Septic Isle, but it wasn't exactly flying off the stand. Our stall was directly opposite a large projection screen, which, at about eleven o'clock, started showing an extended trailer for ITV2's crappy sitcom No Heroics. It showed it again and again and again and again. Not really helping us with sales. Jean-Paul Sartre once said that hell would be being stuck in a room with your friends for all eternity. Well, he was wrong. Hell is being sat opposite a loop of a really unfunny trailer (and besides, I like my friends. Most of them, anyway. I think you have to put Sartre's comments into context. His mates were French, after all.) The trailer was completely inappropriate anyway, as it was a room with quite a lot of young children in it, and the trailer had references to drug use, masturbation and someone said 'fucking' in it too. Andy, bless him, had a word with Shane (one of the organisers and a really nice bloke) about how annoying it was, he agreed with us and it promptly stopped. The sense of relief amongst the row of stalls we were in was palpable.

The other thing I've noticed after going to a few of these things in recent years is the change of the type of punters that are coming to the cons. When I first started going there were very few females attending, there are certainly more attending these days. Admittedly, a lot of them are girlfriends being dragged along by their nerdy other half (like my girlfriend, who I've not mentioned so far, but she did come along with me, bless her, despite us both being up to our eyes with our house-moving) but there are a lot of genuine female fans coming to the conventions.( I know there has always been genuine female comics fans out there, they just didn't seem to come along to conventions). There tends to be a lot more families coming along too, which is also a good thing.

But there are also the cosplayers. The ones at Brum tended to be of characters I'd heard of, the Bristol con tends to get the manga/anime freaks dressed as characters even I've not heard of, as nerdy as I am, and the costumes at Brum tended to be of a very high standard. There were some professional dresser-uppers there too, special mention must go to the guy dressed as the Heath Ledger Joker, as he did really look like him (or 'fucking creepy' as my lovely other half put it) and, though I wasn't looking, obviously, the lady dressed as Harley Quinn looked nice, too. There were also people dressed up as Dan Dare (although his eyebrows weren't the same distinctive shape as Dare's; things like that are important to me. I know, it's an illness, I can't help it!), Batman and some of the Thundercats.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa turned up a bit later, moaning about how poxy it is to get around Birmingham. Theresa rescued my girlfriend and they went off shopping. I later got a text from Heather telling me that Geri Halliwell was signing books in Selfridges. I asked one of the cosplayers who was dressed as Green Arrow (Connor Hawke, not Ollie Queen) sitting opposite us if he could actually use the bow he was carrying around and if he minded going to the Bullring to fire a few bolts at Ginger Minge. He looked at me like I was mental. He's dressed as Green Arrow and I'm the mental one. Figure that out.

Later on, my ex and my youngest daughter turned up, and I was shocked to discover it had cost them fifteen quid to get in. I reckon that's a bit steep. As good as the con was, there's not enough for the casual punter who is just there to buy stuff to look at or do that's worth that much money, and that got to hurt the stallholders if the punters are already a tenner lighter before they go in.

During a fag break (it took ages to get downstairs and outside for a smoke, the expo was three floors up) it was too windy for my poxy lighter to work, so I borrowed a lighter from another 'snoutcast' and got chatting to him about Brum's metal legends Sabbath and Priest, Bill Hicks and how us smokers are treated like criminals amongst other things. Then, on the way back up I found out that I'd been talking to the fairly famous artist Frazer Irving. He's a cool guy.

Generally, the Saturday's trade was steady, not spectacular, but it'd been a fun day, and it's always nice to meet up with the people you only see at these conventions.
After we all packed up for the night, we planned to meet up in town for a meal and a drink, so Heather and I headed back home so we could get changed (the thing I find weird about the Brum comics show is not staying at a hotel, it doesn't feel right going back home after a day at a comics expo) watched a bit of telly (still not sure about BBC1's Merlin) and headed back out to the city centre and met up with Jamie and Theresa, Andy and his old mate Rob, and Keith Burns (like me, a former StripSearcher and he's also the talented artist of Blood Psi) and we all went for for a big-ass burger at the Handmade Burger Company, which is on the canalside just behind the ICC. The meal was great, but the onions in it kept repeating on me and led to me doing foul rotten flesh-smelling mini-burps all evening. It's surprising how popular this makes you. Afterwards we decided to go for a pint or three, so it was up to me as the only Brummie to decide where to go. I plumped for the Tap and Spile, as it was close and doesn't have dance music drowning out any attempt at a conversation. The problem is, however, that particular pub is a bit of a dive. And it takes ages to get served. And you have have to listen to the other patrons talking about snuff movies at the bar while you're waiting. Besides that, though, it was okay and we all had a good evening. Whilst I was in there I bumped into two old schoolmates of mine and was cheered up by their distinct lack of hair. Okay, they might have better careers and all that stuff, but at least I can still ask the barber for 'a little off the top' and not worry about it!

At the end of the evening, Heather offered everyone a lift back to their hotels (she's poorly, bless her, so she decided not to drink and therefore could drive) so we traipsed through the little bit of Brum that most resembles Gotham City (Broad St.) to the car park at Brindleyplace (that's not a typo, it is all one word. When Birmingham City Council rebuild and rebrand stuff, they like to remove the spaces from names. The 'Bullring' is another example) where we were stuck in a logjam of cars. We waited nearly an hour to get out of the sodding place, but we had great fun bitching about all of the other drivers, who really were total cocks. Not so much fun were the rotting flesh belches, which are even less amusing in a car full of people. So, even though it took our friends over an hour to get to what was basically a ten-minute walk away, we were all in good humour (although I am slightly worried over one friend's admission that he fancies Rupert Everett. I think his wife might be, too) and looking forward to the Sunday.

After a very slow start (probably because of the weather. It was pissing it down as usual) Sunday was a good day for us. We sold loads more on the Sunday, very unusual as Saturday tends to be the biggie, normally. So much so, in fact, that all the initial print run of Septic Isle is now all gone. (Don't worry, there's about to be a second printing for our dispatch to shops and websites) I even managed to leave our table for a bit and have a proper look around and buy some tie-in tat as gifts for my offspring. The nice lady at the Forbidden Planet stall liked my T-shirt, it had cartoon versions of the characters from Monkey on it. She wasn't the first. I had comments about my T-shirt all day. I very rarely get nice comments about what I'm wearing from strangers, but I obviously impressed a few of my fellow nerds. Actually, whilst at the Forbidden Planet stall, a man passed by with the copy of Septic Isle he'd just bought, so I asked him if he wanted me to sign it for him. He checked the photo in the back to see if it was actually me that drew it, then he ran off to get a pen, and eventually I signed it. I always dreamed I'd be signing my comic books at Forbidden Planet; This was good enough for me!

I did a bit more sketching on the Sunday, and people seemed genuinely pleased to get my amateurish scribblings with their purchase of Septic. One bloke asked me to do a sketch, so I did him one of Marley, the protagonist from our book. He also asked me to write who it was, sign my name and date it, and he also took a picture of me doing it. As he'd bought our comic, I thought it was the least I could do. I reckon he was going to put the book and sketch on eBay('signed by the artist! photo verification!) I think he'll probably get about 12p. He obviously thinks I'm more famous than I actually am. Which is not very famous at all. Still, good luck to him. I just hope he doesn't spend all of the 12p in one go.

Other highlights from the Sunday include: My mate Jason getting work from DC after a portfolio review. That's great news, he deserves it as he's so talented. I finally got hold of the Frankenstein comic adaptation from Classical Comics, despite my own problems with that particular publisher, because my friend Declan Shalvey illustrated it, and it looks tremendous, and it's a good read, too. Had a chat with the FutureQuake guys, and it was good to see Dave 'Bolt-01'Evans telling off his son for being too nerdy. Bloody right too. The Joker looky-likey was back in a nurse's outfit on Sunday, and the girl who was Harley came back dressed as Lara Croft. she looked nice, apparently, but I wasn't looking, of course. Joining the professional dresser-uppers for the Sunday was a guy dressed as the Brandon Routh Superman. You know, the one with the burgundy cape and the too-small 'S'? He didn't really have the build for Supes, but fair play to him. My girlfriend told me how she shared the lift with him at one point, and at every floor, someone got on and said 'cape not working, then?'. On every floor. Brummie humour. Best in the world. Serves him right for not actually being able to fly.

Trade died a death after about half four so we decided to pack up. Heather went and asked around in the main hall to see if they had any spare boxes for our move. She got some too, so now, when I do move this weekend, I'll be carting my stuff round in boxes with 'Batman figural bank' and 'Sinister Six Vulture med statue' printed on them. Even my house move has become a nerdfest!

Still, it was a good convention. We had a great weekend, but now I have to turn my attentions to packing up all my various shite and shifting it to my new abode, so this'll be my last post for a bit, as I don't know when I'll next be online. I'll see you all on the other side of the move. Ta ra a bit!

Something In The Air?

We live in a crazy world where advertising execs seem to think that watching a gorilla play drums instantly makes us think of chocolate. The only brown stuff I associate with gorillas is the stuff they've pulled out of their arses and fling at you at the zoo. (This is a depressingly regular event at Dudley Zoo.) I also associate that same brown stuff with the soundtrack to this advert, a thought shared by lots of other people, as YouTube is full of redubbed versions of this advert, so I thought I'd share the best ones with you all.

First up is Bonnie Tyler's ridiculous power ballad:



Next is a simple soapy idea:


Here is the great ape rocking out to Pantera's excellent Walk:


The also-excellent Nine Inch Nails get an inevitable re-dub, this works because the drummer actually IS an animal:


And I've left the best until last:


Which kinda takes us back to Dudley zoo. One thing that's always bothered me is the fact that Cadbury's make a big deal of the fact that there's a glass and a half of milk in every bar, but exactly how much is a 'glass'? What recognised system of weights and measures are they using to quantify the amount of milk used? Maybe they should change it to 'a petri dish and a half of salmonella in at least 10% of our bars'.