breath of spring

You know (in fact I wrote this on my blog in 2010, I was looking yesterday for no particular reason) I am permanently besotted by Make Mine Mink, the 1960 film starring Hattie Jacques, Terry Thomas, Athene Seyler, Elspeth Duxbury, Billie Whitelaw, and some excellent cameos from Kenneth Williams, Irene Handl,* Penny Morrell, Freddie Frinton and others. Well... this is the play that Make Mine Mink was based on.

I haven't read it yet. But I'm already intrigued and a few pages in it's a very different kettle of fish but also a lot of the same lines but in slightly different contexts. The character Terry Thomas plays, Major Albert Rayne, is a Brigadier in the play, he was originally played by Michael Shepley. Duxbury and Seyler reprised their roles; Seyler is 'Dame Beatrice' but Duxbury's character was Elizabeth Hatfield in the play and referred to as 'Hattie' which wouldn't have done in the film as a real Hattie, Hattie Jacques, was playing the part of 'Nan' Parry in the film. So Duxbury became 'Pinkerton'. Hazel Hughes had played Nan in the play, 'a gaunt, enthusiastic lady who dresses peculiarly and has a deep booming voice'. Of course HJ was not gaunt, and didn't everybody always say so, but she is one of the gems of the film, and clearly plays Nan as a very mannish lesbian. One of my absolutely favourite moments in the film is when Major Rayne asks Nan, as Lily leaves the room, 'why does she walk like that?' and Nan says something like, 'can't imagine'. That she's eating an apple makes it all the more glorious. I will laugh if I have either misremembered or misunderstood that exchange, but I will still enjoy my interpretation. 

More on this if/when/as I actually read it. 

* Update 10/8 Handl not Handle you fucking idiot autocorrect

the actual walk

I was going to spend some time putting these in order but really is that necessary? Was it necessary to take them at all? It still happened whether I recorded it or not. 

This was the point at which the path stopped being asphalted and became, whatever you call it, a path.

This is the tributary to MPC which goes under the TV studios where Carmel and I went to see various Shawn Micallef shows. By 'various' I mean 'two'. Two different shows, twice each if I remember correctly. 

This is actually the point at which MPC hits the Yarra. You know that MPC is not really a C(reek), or at least, it is one now, but it was known for a long time as the Railway Canal and it is I think at this end a formal created canal, and further north, a stream kind of formulated from environmental behaviour (it used to be ponds, not a creek). 

Under the Tulla. 

Another view of that tributary. 

Once again, under the Tulla. 

Some bridge or other

Ron Barrassi Sr. Park 

If this barbecue could speak, what would it say? 

Which bit would it speak out of? 

so I needed to walk somewhere today so I decided it would be to the southernmost point of moonee ponds creek

don't stop till three or four hours after you get enough

I am not sure if you are sick of these constant graphic novel updates but I must admit I am pretty self-obsessed pleased with at least some aspects of the overall. I mean you're never going to get anything 100% the way you want it are you. But the overall has a certain appeal. I liked my off-the-cuff drawing of Impertinu addressing the crew of the tv show of which two are known (Raydot, the assistant or continuity person or something, and Ace, who I liked enough to bring back for one more brief appearance before he goes off to his own untold, unknown story) and two others - Alpine Hat and Sort of Hippy Sad Face. 

I still haven't done the lettering so I will make sure to get that done before the end of the night, it will take a couple of hours probably because I have to make it neat and smart looking (I've already revamped two pages because I did the lettering in a slapdash way that demeaned everyone). 

This was the only other thing today I did off-the-cuff, which I was pretty pleased with, though it's completely meaningless (maybe that's why I like it). 

mindhunter/motivationhunter

OK so ten pages in two days? I've done three pages in 24 hours. 

Last night I was listening to records but today I'm semi-watching Netflix, I've finally found an almost bearable tv show, called Mindhunter. Like the best police procedural/thriller shows-books, the murder is just the thread that keeps you focused, it's the 'world' that's the really fun bit. I have no idea of the relevance of the setting of this show (American non-places) but the time is way cool, 1977+. When I say way cool, I mean, it's a time period that the world hasn't quite entirely grappled with yet. Music in the background = 10CC's 'I'm not in Love', Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band's 'A Fifth of Beethoven', uh I forget what else. I am having trouble following it though because I'm really more interested in getting these pages done. And blogging to you about it. 

* update: it's now nearly 7pm and I have got five 'inked' pages, and seven pencilled pages, none of them have been lettered yet. But clearly I will get them done tonight, and that will bring my page count up to 25 contiguous pages, and about eight others from later on. That's not terrible, but still, I have two months left to do this, and it's not going to be straightforward (it's taken me, say, four months to get a third of the thing done). 

never ends

Of course I had grand plans for today to get ten pages done blah blah, but I didn't count on being pretty bored by having to do all this plot driven talky stuff which is no more fun to look at/read than it is to draw (although at least it's quick to look at/read). I had to draw another new character as well, who I'd forgotten about last night when I drew them up, it's Sherman's friend Ace. Little does Ace suspect that he had a much greater storyline once in an earlier version but I think this might actually be the only time we see him. He is a goat. I guess. 

So as it transpired I got two pages drawn today not ten but I will get more done tomorrow and get over this hump. It just has to be done. I am learning a lot about narrative from doing this, by the way, it is absolutely not a waste of time in the sense of developing a better perspective on explaining and revealing ideas as a writer. I think that's true. That's my spin anyway. 

10CC

I grabbed this album last weekend I think when Laura and I went to Goldmine in North Fitzroy - it's a blast. Of the records I bought that day, I would have to say this is the current favourite. I read a bit about 10CC and their precedents in Paul Hanley's book about ten Manchester songs,* and of course not having a strong Manchester connection of my own the finer points of it - the pride in it I guess - passed me by a bit but I found the story of 10CC as a supergroup pretty fascinating. This is actually the self-titled 10CC album but someone has decided to title it by the best-known song on it, but it's not the best song at all (I think that would probably be 'The Dean and I'.) But you know what really intrigues me about 10CC at this early (1973) stage is why they are so into doowop/50s (at a pinch early 60s maybe) American kitsch? So this is the same kind of thing that Ol' 55 (gosh, now I come to think of it if you half close your eyes and get a bit drunk and forget the difference between letters and numbers, Ol' 55 and 10CC are pretty similar names) were doing, it's also not a million miles removed from what Daddy Cool were doing a little earlier - like, the enthusiastic embrace of 50s pop but with a bit of extra greasy 'realism' on top of it, and then they will do more contemporary stuff on their albums - 'hey, we love the 50s and we can pastiche that shit till the cows come home, but we also play real music'. Ol' 55 had one main songwriter, so did Daddy Cool most of the time or at least in their heyday, but 10CC for some weird reason had four, like Queen, everyone was competing to bring songs. I wonder if they had fun together or they were all gritting their teeth 'four songs on the album is not fuckin' enough'. Anyway, it's a much better album than I expected and it also sounds pretty great, particularly the drums - I imagine, perhaps I read this, that a lot of the tracks were built up from drum sounds and beats, rather than some 'I have a riff, you play along' kind of thing. The fact that they owned their studio and spend a lot of time there obviously helped them. I mean that is partly what the Hanley book is about. 

*Leave the Capital (2017)

meaty plant proteins

As a vegetarian for over 35 years, I have to be pleased about this phenomenon, but also I guess I'm a product of my time, because (a) I don't really remember what meat tastes like and (b) while I've always, I suppose, tucked into meat substitutes, I'm not that into authentic textures. So I've tried a lot of these things and the closer they get to simulating gristle the more I'm grossed out. Oddly enough I can handle the fake luncheon meat stuff, and there are some sausages I don't mind if they're more obviously false, but I've never been able to handle fake chicken. What a snowflake! 

saab (so awful, absolutelyun bearable)

I am very hos before bros and also usually mainly cats before cars, but I do love my car. It drives nice and it looks nice, and it has good quirks. I don't treat it as well as I should but I do send it my thoughts and prayers. Anyway so I had a PhD consultation this afternoon which I drove to because I thought I would do shopping after, and I did, then imagine my distress when I got back from the supermarket at north melbourne (that is still a hilarious supermarket btw) to find my car key was basically bent in half. Serious! The picture above is me trying to straighten it out, in case somehow its molecules would mysteriously align and it would become straight and firm again but no. 

I took a cab back from NM with my shopping and I was racking my brain - did I have a spare key? I thought I did - but I also seemed to remember keeping it in my office at work, which I am not permitted to go to at the moment. Crazy. Well I could spin this story out in a clever way if I was so inclined clever but I'll just tell you. I actually had brought the spare home. I'd forgotten that I had but just once, just once, I'd actually done something in my own interest. Still, when I took the picture below, I was approaching my car again in the car park with trepidation because I was only 97.3% certain I had the spare, and only 89.9% sure that it'd work. It did though. So my dumplings didn't thaw (maybe they did a bit but I'm sure they'll refreeze fine) and my $1 pizza bases from Cheaper Buy Miles didn't turn into mouldy frisbees. THE END

I'm a regular Ub Iwerks

I have written my graphic novel script far in advance of what I've drawn, so tonight I conjured up the characters I've had in mind for some time now. Artur is the kind of apprentice tape op in the studio where we see Sherman making his 'serious' album in the 70s, the one where the Eagles are scheduled to come in and do harmonies the way they did for Randy Newman on Little Criminals. Steve is the producer. Amber and Aspic are Sherman and Grace's daughters, though tbh I'm not sure if we'll ever see them as adults. Piotr is the Polish narrator who describes all episodes of The Rest of Quiglet to Polish television viewers, who Elyse interviews for her PhD. I hope you got all that, but if you didn't, it's written down here so you can refer to it whenever. 

something

Last night I was walking back from my mother's house (she's fine thanks) and passing the cemetery (above for context, also, why are the gates open? But never mind) I saw something in the tree above the path. I thought it was an owl but then looking at it more closely I was like, no, it's a possum totally looking down on me. I could see its face and all the legs etc that were letting it stay in that frozen position. So I took a photo of it with a flash. 

Seriously not a possum, The only surprise was how my brain contrived to fill in all the bits so it could be one. Brain,  you're a dick. I'm just glad I'm not a rodent because I'd be a bunch of little bones in a nest by now. 

slowly but surely

It is what it is, and that's entirely the complete totality of what it is. I imagine that as it takes on a life of its own, and if I do actually get the two weeks off that I think I applied for a few weeks ago but which wasn't actually granted to me or if it was, I will take it in lieu in a week or two anyway, then maybe just maybe I'll get this thing done. But if a whole day of doing nothing but this results in only six pages (which I spent a lot of time tonight tarting up on the computer), then it's going to be tough. OK well that's my problem not yours. I'll think of something else to gripe about.

Telstra took over $500 out of my bank account today! I don't have a Telstra account. But this did happen. This was when I discovered that in fact it's nigh on impossible to contact Telstra, the shits. And to think i was seriously considering opening an account with them... but nah. I mean I'm sure they're better than Optus, but so would a hole in the road be. (Bendigo Bank assure me they can reverse the transaction tomorrow). 

and it proceeds apace but really freaking slowly

Writing is so much easier than drawing which is just t-i-m-e c-o-n-s-u-m-i-n-g I guess because you assume in writing that the person just stays in the same place and you don't have to reimagine them every time they say the dumbest little thing. I am not sure I have the concentration span for this - I kind of understand why people take drugs to do art though I am still of the opinion that a lot more people do art to take drugs. Maybe that's just what I've witnessed. Anyway, after about two hours I've done a page (no lettering) and pencilled another. I've also drawn up a third set of frames. I have a minimum goal of ten pages today. If I can't do ten pages in a day then I will not get this thing done by September. Oh, to be fair to myself I also rewrote a couple of pages (as in, wrote the script) linking sections 1 & 2. So I put some thought into the whole as well. This is the section where Napeel and Elyse are walking and talking and are interrupted by catcalls from Bobo and his friend. 

I already did an earlier version of this which took me half a day and I just drew it all off the top of my head (the best of it looks better than this tbh but the worst of it much worse) and in that one Bobo's friend was a cat, not a beagle but I decided that since I had introduced cats later in the narrative it might get confusing, someone might think the cat friend was significant or somehow related to the cats who appear later, whereas I had not intended him to be. So I made a beagle friend with the added enjoyment I got from the fact that, when you stand a beagle up on its hind legs, its front legs look like stupid little vestigial arms (actually a real beagle's arms would be longer but I'm minimising for my own entertainment). I like to think that Bobo is wearing a New York Dolls t-shirt and the image is of David Johansen as a duck, but that's just me. I made Napeel much more angry about Bobo's taunts than she was in the original as well to give a certain frisson of protectiveness to Elyse even though on the whole you get the strong sense that she doesn't give a loose root about Elyse (she may still not. Napeel is a complex individual, a fact that is not going to be in any sense revealed in this work).  

graphic novel more boring news

Tonight after a shitful day at work (but Fridays are always shitful) I designed Biltong's album of robot-themed songs which was a hit in some hypothetical past world. It was meant to be a tacky album of joke near-covers, so I had to get a lot of text onto the cover. I got this far with a version when I thought NAH

This is half way to a finished version which hopefully will look better when I rub out the pencil and add some greys. Biltong is a little generic and not doing anything on the cover but making her do something would actually I think have gone beyond busy and into overly complex terrain. My favourite of the joke song titles is 'This Wheel's on Fire', although 'I Want to Hold Your Handle' isn't bad. Happy birthday Paul McCartney by the way, 78 I think today.

It is my plan to do a lot more drawing tomorrow and I hope I can because I'm enjoying the results. 

(By the way I have had a lot of thoughts about whether all the writing in the graphic novel's world is that serifed text or not. I think it might be although as you can see (for instance in Biltong's name, and the handwriting on the record label logo in the top left) I kind of drifted away from my resolve.)

madonna dream

I wish I could remember more about the dream I had that Madonna was horrifically murdered at quite a young age and everyone either didn't know or had forgotten, and we all only remembered the great first few albums. This is definitely a dreamed belief because in my opinion the first album is/was great but Like a Virgin and True Blue (was that the third album?) are poor efforts and she didn't really come back as far as I was concerned - I'm aware my opinion is worthless here - until Music, Ray of Light etc. Also she wasn't murdered, but I semi-woke up and kind of dwelt on the awfulness of her death. I am glad she's OK because I actually really like Madonna and a lot of her work, and her existence, has given me a lot of pleasure. 

What inspired the dream? Don't know. Flame Fortune, who was actually murdered a few years after I knew her, was talked about as Australia's answer to Madonna for about two minutes, although she was not even Australian, so go figure. I was thinking about Flame yesterday or the day before. Also, I think I read a quick overview/review of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy film on its 30th anniversary - which Madonna is in - but I feel like I read that after the dream, who knows. 

By the way the dream was not of her murder, but of seeing her in a video for one of her very early songs, like 'Holiday' or similar, in a gritty, rained-on bluestone (?) street, and being reminded, via a voiceover or a comment from a random in the room, that she was dead within a year. Nasty. 

you wouldn't know me now

Yesterday I went to Sunshine to get my hair cut. I regretted the trip straight away because the traffic - even going westwards at 3pm - was diabolical and everyone's, you know, back in force on the roads but with a lot of time-wasting to catch up on. So it was a bit of a schlep. Funnily enough though I went through it all with a grim resignation to the idea that at the end of the trip I would have to wait forever at the barbers for my haircut but no. There was only one other person there.

Funny: the barber asked me how often I got my hair cut (it had probably been about five months because - like a lot of people - I was staying away from the hairdresser firstly because of the law and secondly because of the assumption they would be closed). I said usually, every couple of months. He said 'oh but you've been too busy, right?'

So many questions - principally, 'you mean you've been here cutting people's hair all along?' Actually I had this idea that if you had your hair cut in a way that looked professional the police might legitimately stop and question you about it!

Anyway I now have quite a severe haircut which is fine by me but just to add to the severity of my experience this morning Helmi jumped across my face (she really has no idea about these things, or maybe she does) and scratched my nose, evoking so much blood I had to get up and change the bedclothes. If she's capable of learning, she might learn not to cut me, because she is so distressed when I change the bedclothes - because the bed is her sanctuary and when it's bare she's like naked in the street. She meows, runs around, tries to (for instance) crawl under the fitted sheet, etc. It's pretty bizarre. When I finally made the bed she couldn't find out how to get in it, either, though I think she must have by now because I haven't seen her for 20 minutes. I mean yes I do lift up the blanket for her and she will go in but she can't stand the feeling of the covers coming down on her back so she comes out again. There's a very precise process here and it has to be followed.

Anyway, off to walk the dogs.

anything worth doing is going to give you grief

I decided it was the lettering in this section of the graphic novel, not the drawing, that was letting me down so I am trying to white it out but gee it's tough, some speech just won't be silenced. If worst comes to worst I can scan it and erase the text but that's an extra layer of hassle. I'll get there. The other day I had a total epiphany about big sections of the narrative that had baffled me previously and now I feel much more confident about producing something bearable.

The other issue I'm presently having is keeping everything in one place and knowing where I'm at. Also, I am uncertain about whether I should be thinking about the work in terms of tone/shade elements across each page eg should Billy's jacket be black (it's dark blue, in my mind) and should the carpet in Grace and Sheldon's condo (or whatever it is) be grey or black or - ? I think I might scan it in and make it grey, it's cheating a bit but I don't trust myself to execute a grey manually... or do I? Maybe I could get some grey paint of some description. Don't know how that would scan though...

1% incapacity, 99% perspicacity

Putting the pictures in photoshop to add tone is troublesome because there's just not enough greys in the world. All I really want is differentiation between masses here and it's difficult to get any of it right, in a way that is consistent.
This morning I'm reading my DeGaris book out loud to the cats just as a final fix up (Sophie and I found that with the Dogs in Space book it made a lot of sense to read chapters out loud to each other - which was time-consuming but every page you realised you were ironing out kinks). The DeGaris book was very effectively subedited by a person unknown to me, and I was really pleased to see what they caught, but there are still bits and pieces that could be better expressed or which are outright wrong - all the things I shake my head about with students' work and which I am guilty of all the time, particularly sentence fragments.
I don't know how you proofread a graphic novel, I think you would have to do weird stuff like look at every depiction of a character from frame to frame to make sure their clothes are the same colour/shade and so on. I admit I really feel some smug pleasure in doing in-depth detail, for instance a well-packed bookshelf, which becomes a busy but samey background. I am very likely though to give it four shelves in one frame and three in another. My grasp on perspective is limited to knowing what looks wrong, but not how to do it right (vague memories come back about locating the reader's eye view of lines to a distant and usually hypothetical endpoint, but other problems present eg the issues surrounding making a whole page of 5-8 pictures visually satisfying as a whole - I guess that's a secondary issue but still nice if it can be done).

i'm lost!

So the graphic novel is proceeding apace. If this comes off it will be the greatest random achievement of the universe: having scripted (over scripted?) chapters 1-4, I am now more or less making up chapter 5 as I go along (above) where Billy and Tabby, who do a pop culture fanzine, visit Grace and Sheldon in their extraordinary pad for the low down on the arcane minutiae on their sitcom from many years prior, The Rest of Quiglet. When you are drawing a graphic novel (I now perceive) as opposed to writing something you are basically stuck with what you've done because of the sequencing - unless you add in a whole extra page or stick a new frame over a mistake (which I'm reluctant to do because I think making it look natural will be harder than just doing the whole page again). That said, as seen above I am free with the liquid paper. I am having a lot of trouble, it would appear, with making people look at each other properly. Also, the only way I differentiate between Tabby and Billy (I think they're twins) in the face is that Billy has whiskers and Tabby has eyelashes, which might be appallingly sexist I don't know anymore, but drawing Tabby's eyes and eyelashes it's hard to make her not look like some kind of 1920s mascara'd horror show, so I keep having to do her eyes again. Of course you can't just liquid paper over something and then redraw it; it's not a smooth surface anymore. You have to go to officeworks and photocopy the whole page. It's a dr-a-a-a-g.

As for the actual narrative, god only knows. I really don't know what's happening or how it's going to end, except in the most basic way. I am torn between solving a mystery and keeping a mystery going. I have a strong sense that I should be patting myself on the back for going outside my comfort zone while at the same time feeling I am most likely setting everyone up for a letdown, myself included.

who still has a blog

So a lot can change in 15 years. I can't remember precisely when I started this blog but yeah it probably was about 2005, which seems simultaneously yesterday and also so long ago it's stupid. I have not lived at Lorraine Crescent itself since 2013 I think, so almost half of this blog's life its name has been partially a lie (names are just so weird. I remember when Michelle Cannane left the Cannanes in 1986? or when we broke up briefly in 1988? Both of those times, we were like - should we change the name then? I guess we didn't change it the first time because we thought she might came back and then we didn't change it the second time because we hadn't changed it the first time, and also by then we figured we had some cache - lol - and some records out, so to start again would be to build on a foundation of wet sand, but in hindsight that might not have been a bad idea, but also, we had some unsold records to flog or something... I dunno).

As you know, or at least, as you would know if you read everything posted here and took it on board, my posting declined a little because I was unable to get into this actual blog easily, for quite a few years, my own fault to the degree that it was difficult because I had changed the associated email address. But somewhere along the line magically this has been fixed, so it's super easy to get in, one of the reasons I'm here more frequently, also, I don't know why, I just feel more like writing here. I am possibly a little scared off by the toxicity of facebook (I'm not on twitter - technically I am - but that's a scary place. Even instagram is a little scary sometimes). But I do remember thinking, say, five years ago that a lot of things I would normally put up on this blog, were actually going to fb for the instant response. Sometimes that response would be amazing (sometimes horrible, sometimes damp squib).

I have probably mentioned this, but I can recall the first time I ever heard of facebook. It was on or soon after 14 August 2007, when Tim Howard wrote on the Sarsaparilla blog 'Intelligent cultural commentary will return to Sarsaparilla shortly - sooner if they shut down Facebook'. I am almost positive that I had never heard of this facility before that time, but perhaps I had heard of it in an abstract, off-stage sotto voce way that never really congealed or adhered. I then recall within a reasonable period of time - a year? 18 months? A friend announcing a birthday event on fb which I actually just didn't take seriously - it was like dreaming about a birthday event and then waking up and saying 'well that's not going to happen, it was a dream.' These days the only limit I observe to fb world is I absolutely refuse to put a crying emoji on the announcement of someone's death, although it might only be a matter of time.

rabbit rabbit