Return to Eden, episode 2

What's particularly fascinating about Return to Eden episode two is how little really happens. I can't tell whether it's part of an extraordinarily clever artistic decision to let us relax on a deep tissue level between the traumatic attack/revenge of episodes 1 and 3, or whether it was originally only a two part drama and they were sitting around one afternoon and decided for the ubiquitous shits and giggles they'd make a middle episode, off the cuff as it were. 

Not to say that there isn't so much amazing stuff going on in #2, just that it seems so loose and random. The fashion shoot/fashion show scenes are a trip. The excruciating sequence, which must take about 20 minutes out of the 1.5 hours, where Tara spends a (curtailed) weekend with Greg at her own old mansion... 

Love Wendy Hughes' Jilly in particular but Chris Heywood as the gay-in-everything-but-his-deep-love-for-Tara photographer is a sensational type we don't see on our screens much anymore. But the whole thing. I bet all the time they were making it they were saying 'they won't make 'em like this anymore'. And I don't think they have. 

#39 Paula

Just wanted to mention I watched the third of the eps of Silent Number on youtube. By this time Steve Hamilton is living on his own - I can't imagine why, he doesn't seem to give a loose root about it which is bizarre considering only a few episodes earlier he and his wife, erm, Jean were tight as, and she was pregnant, but, well... anyway, he still has the silent number,* which I guess is the main thing, and in this episode a woman is murdered by a character played by Tom Oliver who is his usual Tom Oliverish self and then her flatmate is on the run, and keeps saying she wants to go overseas but has no money, and she has to be hidden away in various places with no absolute purpose to the hiding although I suppose there is some vague idea that the killer will be caught. Mucho non-sequiturs including when she tells Steve Hamilton she's falling in love with him, and gets a bit coquettish in hospital after she's been shot (don't bother caring about this) and he has a look on his face when leaving her hospital room like, 'should I get involved with this prostitute with a major drink, pills problem who's just been shot by Tom Oliver or the hitman sent to kill Tom Oliver? Should I?' Anyway, I loved every minute of it including the absolute overuse of cityscapes from a tall building. 

* Once again it is an important plot point, as his house is the best place to hide Paula as he has a silent number, but also, Tom Oliver's character finds the number anyway, to which someone accuses him of having a friend at the PMG.

 

christmas

Christmas comes but once a week for me. Every Friday I am so rooted I can do what I want and no-one can say anything about it because I have carved out my little Friday Christmas space and the world has no comeback. And I am always fine by Saturday.

However, actually I did get a lot done today and in fact returned to an old journal article that was rejected the first time around and yet probably only needs a bit of work to be submittable (I thought the word was submissible? but autocorrect changes it to submersible so I guess not). So the journal article will not be bad, whereas it was previously, because it was connected to a project I was working on before, and the connection was tenuous, but now freed from that connection, it no longer has to be bad. I'm into it.

However, research on that started me watching this tv show from the early 70s called Silent Number (I keep thinking Silent Witness, but I know that's a different show, and by the way even though I think the 'silent witness' of that show is a dead person, and I am not really sure what the title Silent Number means, except it makes me think that maybe 45 years ago the idea of having a silent number e.g. an unlisted/secret telephone number was awfully exciting - ? Either way it makes me think of the 'silent policeman' which ridiculously is what these things are sometimes known as:

So anyway Silent Number is a bit of a hoot, and fairly fast-paced and well-written, at least going by the 1.5 episodes I have watched (there are three on YouTube). Grigor Taylor is the best of two worlds - he is a police! doctor! (Couldn't he have also have been a chef, or a lawyer, or a saxophonist?) and he has a great relationship with his fabulous wife. 

Both episode 32 and 33 involve visits to universities, which I always find interesting. This one, #32, has just a plain old visit to 'the university'. I assume it's UNSW. Love the parking sitch. 

Don't be fooled, by the fact that this is a phone box, into thinking that this has anything to do with silent numbers. Great titles though. The 1.5 episodes I've watched have completely different opening credits/music. The music's excellent but the fact that it's uncredited leads me to suspect that it's just licensed studio music from De Wolfe or something. I'd love to be wrong. 

Someone I admire once said something funny about people getting sentimental about Channel 7, I can't remember who it was, but anyway, I got a semi-twinge of something, I don't know if it was sentimentality, when I saw this, yeah, the 9 logo and the words 'living colour'. I actually recall as a child thinking that fat tubular 9 looked a bit like a grimacing turtle head or something. I also recall thinking that less than a minute ago. 

Don't call it a crush thanks but I do happen to have a bit of an admiration for the excellent and deservedly beloved actor John Hargreaves. This is him playing a dumb idiot called Tom or Tim or Jack or something. Very cool. Not much nuance. The show is so low-budget by the way that they can't even break things, so we see Tomtim jimmying a door - cut away - cut back to the door open. Maybe that's his name, 'Jimmy'.

Here are the closing credits just in case you didn't believe me that it was John Hargreaves. 

 

Not sure I love Grigor Taylor's hair in this show but I do love his way of sitting on a desk with no pants on. (c) Laura Carroll 2020

All of the above pix were from #32 I just wanted to add this still from #33 because it's so rad how they just whipped up some typeset shizzle somewhere and stuck it randomly into a real newspaper to propel their story. I love that. the little bit of paper still sticking up under the S in 'surgeons', probably so they could remove the picture and caption with ease and return the newspaper to the shop and get their 2c back. Great times.

If I watch the rest I'll tell you what happens OK.

Best christmas ever. Except my feet have been cold all day then they got pins and needles. 

Update:

I woke up at 2am from a gruesome dream in which people explained how they had died in car accidents. The one I remember is a man who was parked eating multiple hamburgers when his car was rammed from behind somehow and it ploughed through a wall. He said something like 'of course, I was already dead by then...' Anyway I watched more of the second Silent Number which is about a NZ heart surgeon or doctor or something who is in Sydney for a few days and has his drink spiked by a woman in a bar as part of an organised 'rolling' operation. The production team really did put the newspaper above to good use:

I appreciate the good punctuation from the crooks (Don't, We'll). Also the surgeon, Fred, reveals the meaning behind the title of the show, where he proposes he stays with Stephen (Grigor Taylor's character) because he'll be uncontactable: 'you have a silent number, don't you?... I'll be very difficult to trace.'

The heart surgeon, Fred Cowper, is being blackmailed primarily because he had some letters in his wallet from an Australian air hostess he had an affair with, but the team also have pictures of him naked in bed with a woman, taken while he was drugged. Spoiler after the woman in question is shot he and Stephen operate on her and remove the bullet, and double spoiler one of the weirdest scenes I have seen on television in some time: the bullet held aloft between forceps, cross cut with Cowper's wife landing at the airport. There is precisely no question at any point that Cowper be called to account for his philandering ways, only that it is imperative his wife not find out and his behaviour not revealed to the Australian public (as this would undo all his good work). To be clear, I don't exactly have a moral issue here, mainly because no-one in the show exists, but I find it interesting. 

For people with a silent number though, I have to say they get a lot of phone calls. 

for my sins

You know that old shebang about you try to fix one problem and you create two more? Yeah. It's not really a saying so much as a real experience. Anyway, when I realised that part of Persiflage was slightly obscure because Sherman was in the room and then suddenly he wasn't, I realised I had to insert a page to have him leave the room. Steve said no problem but it has to be two pages - because all the chapters have to start on a right hand page. So. I wrote two more pages yesterday, and drew them last night and this morning. I put in a reference to a time when people might have heard the name Alice Cooper and thought Alice Cooper was a girl's name, I felt a bit daggy bringing up more music stuff but in context it had to be done and it's fine IMO because it's a stupid reference but leads to a better joke. Then I sort of fixed it all up this morning including this very complicated string of paper dolls which I actually made, photographed and photoshopped in. 

Then, I realised... I have Sherman leaving the house, saying he's working with the horn section that day but he's wearing something different in the studio scenes! Continuity problem! I rationalised it away, I thought... fuck it, he put on a cool shirt to be with the cool people in the studio, who cares, do you have to show everyone changing their clothes or whatever when it happens? Make a thing of it? No. So I decided to leave it. Then I looked at the next few pages and... what do you know, the scenes of him in the studio are not the same day, they're another day. But what the hell! I've just put in this panel where he says he's going into the studio to work with the horn section! And the next panel refers directly to a horn section too! And I've spent well over an hour photoshopping the paper dolls into the panel after that! 

So I spent some more time arduously patching together a non sequitur statement about horns out of existing lettering (my hand is too shaky, as previously mentioned, to use the photoshop brush to write new stuff; it looks like I did it on etch-a-sketch). It doesn't really make sense but it passes for jargon, you wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't told you. This really is like making a movie. I mean, it's more fun probably and I don't have to worry about using up anyone's money. I think I really have to put this to bed now though... any subsequent errors I'm just going to have to live with. There probably are some. There are probably heaps. 

cat dream

I dreamt I was in the lobby of a European (? international anyway) hotel just letting Nancy and Helmi have a wander around when other cats and at least one dog descended on us. The dog, which was a big grey hound, literally jumped down - or more like deliberately dropped - from the floor above. The cats came in more cautiously. I picked Nancy up but of course there's no way you can pick Helmi up so I just had to hope she'd find her way back to the hotel room, remembering that she had a collar with her name and my number on it (which by the way she doesn't).

This is the second dream I've had about picking Nancy up in a location of turmoil, joining my dream last week about carrying her down Flinders St. towards the station. I am glad to say that in both dreams she is reasonably controllable. 

80s

I remember reading about one of the Futurama festivals, possibly the first, which I think had the Human League and Soft Cell at it, breaking out as it were. It might have been assumed by the Futurama organisers that the brand was the main thing and that the acts they presented would go on naturally to be the next new, um, wave. My lame comment on the above post by, I gather, the person who used to edit, run or own the magazine Flexipop was that I'd only want to see Dislocation Dance and the Icicle Works and then I'd be home by late evening (never miss a chance to give a backhander to New Order, etc)* although I would also be interested to see the Stockholm Monsters the next day. But when it comes down to it - my main thought here as always is - this is not about 'things were great then' but 'I was young then'. I see it all the time, people on fb (obviously I choose to be in these groups) lauding music of 30+  years ago when all they're really saying is, 'I was just out of short pants and what a time that is to be alive', whether it's 1210BC or 1983. 

I thought about this because I was playing the Summer Flake album that came out last year and thinking how not one track on it misses the mark. I saw Summer Flake, or at least Stephanie solo, last year and it was amazing. I wouldn't swap that for any of this bullshit. 

Incidentally I'm surprised that the Futurama festival doesn't have a wikipedia entry because it was quite a thing in its day but maybe it's better this way. 

* I have integrity on this, kind of. I saw New Order when they came to Australia for their first tour in 1983 or whenever. When they played G-Mex in 1986 for that 10 years of punk festival I left before they came on. 

I don't know what my problem is with New Order actually and it's petty because they had some pretty great songs, and were really innovative in lots of ways, and I admire many things about them, but I just can't. I guess I feel that deep in my heart they feel the same. It could have been so much better. 

so

...then I remembered that I was of the opinion that if I was to do another graphic novel then I would probably opt to make it colour. The usual unease about the strengths and weaknesses of my drawing (colour makes everything better) but also it just makes the images more easily legible, faster. So I did a screen shot of the earlier ink drawing of Caleb and coloured it in and, well, it was probably a bad example to use, but it does look better. 

I have what some might call a romantic image of myself being like Jim Cairns in my later years except not selling my increasingly nutty self-published books at Camberwell Market, well, yes my increasingly nutty books but a different kind of nutty. 

This morning I went looking online for Racey Helps card games. Of course this selection of random Happy Families cards I found in someone's post brought back feelings for me but more feelings than memories, though I do remember them, but when we played with these cards we didn't spin out stories about the families except beyond 'I like Master Owl', etc (that was a hypothetical). Once again there is something slightly earthy about Racey Helps that stops him becoming utterly twee, mainly that the animals eat each other. He's fully fine with cute little mice balancing out the pictures of rabbits skiing or picnicking or whatever, but he's also fully fine with Mrs Owl making a mouse pie (the recipe page in the bottom right of her picture is de trop but maybe it was at someone's insistence lest it was misunderstood to be something even more disturbing). I mean I'm sorry but I just love the basic stupid (English?) humour of Miss Hedgehog loving (?) a cactus because she's spiny therefore she must love spiny plants, which makes as much sense as me having hair and therefore loving a hair shirt but maybe that's part of why it's funny.  

 

kingcup cottage

My family were all fans of Racey Helps, who wrote and illustrated at least 28 children's books, and we also had some great playing cards he designed, Happy Families and Old Maid, which I should suss out somewhere on eBay so I can play with them when I go into aged care. I always thought Racey was a girl's name but apparently he was a man and his first name was Angus in any case. 

There were a few good books and probably my favourite is Kingcup Cottage which as you can see my Auntie Kit sent me in 1968 when I was three, and I wrote my name and address in. Absent mindedly I have apparently left the 'i' out of 'Prick Hill Road'. 

There is a lot to love about this book and I am not going to spoil it for you except perhaps to tell you how it ends. But it is gloriously slimy, I'll say that for it. 

Every frog book has to have a hedgehog saviour doesn't it. But this one is funny because, well, the point of the book is Francesca decides to have a party, and sends out all these invitations but everyone who gets them either doesn't know how to read or doesn't want to go to her house because it's basically always flooded. 

A solution is found, and even though it does spoil the story if you haven't read it I can't help but show you this picture because I love it so much. 

DON'T EVEN SAY IT yes the jellies tasted of tadpole and YES that means frog babies alright that is NOT RELEVANT. It was a different time, let's just leave it at that. 

Meanwhile here is us. Helmi learning to enjoy sunshine, just in time for summer. Nancy has a slightly swollen lip for some reason which I don't understand so have to keep an eye on that. I found out something more about Helmi which I probably should have gleaned anyway - I was dozing on the couch with her on me when the postman knocked on the door and she disappeared in an instant. She went and hid in the bed. So, now I know for certain: she goes to bed during the day because she's scared. It makes sense, but it's finally proof. 

Incidentally if you're interested I have had a very productive day, working on a journal article in the morning and a book chapter in the afternoon. Not a waste of a day at all. 

various nothings

I have that occasional frisson of concern when I wonder how people in other countries are going to assume/ interpret aspects of Australia. This is an image from the Washington Post's article I think today or yesterday marvelling about how Daniel Andrews as a centre left politician with experience only of being a politician can maintain popularity despite his commitment to lockdownism. I was just annoyed at thinking that people reading the WP will be thinking 'oh my god, that's what bananas look like in Australia?' I have to remember that actually I don't give a flying fuck what people who read the WP think about Australia or anything. 

 

One of the things I love about history is it so often makes me/allows me to feel smugly woke. I actually saved this cartoon because I thought maybe I could use it in teaching next year. But like a lot of historical things it is meaningless if you don't consider the context, and that a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder. Your first take on this is sexist society but then again, it's also, kids are know-nothing shits, and sexist society acknowledged in a cartoon in a major newspaper. Is acknowledging the first step towards doing something about it? Not my place to say. This is a syndicated cartoon from 1962. 

Of course a lot of us in 2020 will be like, wow she got to leave the kids in the car without someone calling the police and putting her in jail and also wow, a parking space so close to the supermarket (also wow, why no shopping trolley? but I guess that's part of the cartoon exaggeration - I'm pretty sure shopping trolleys existed in 1962). (Also, often, teenagers to help you carry your bags to the car etc, I gather). 

The only other thing that happened today is that I tried out a little bit of ink drawing to see how I would go with my second graphic novel in ink (Helmi walked over it, and without thinking I committed the cardinal error of picking her up to put her on the floor, which is of course anathema to this little free spirit who struggled in outrage and flew across the room, but I don't think she got ink on the carpet, if she did, it's not noticeable - to me - yet). The difference is, an A4 page like this has the detail I could do in felt pen in 1/6 of a page. So either I would be doing my pages at A1 size (not easy) or perhaps doing what I understand Chester Brown does, or has done: composed his comic books out of individual panels which he has assembled on the page after the fact. 

I have a vague memory that, when I did the pages for Cut Snake I wanted them in some way to be holistic, although I have no idea (and there is no evidence, to my mind) how I thought this would manifest. But maybe this is the way to go, and I should just be more freeform about the ultimate result. I shouldn't put stuff like Chester Brown's work in close proximity to mine, only one of them comes off well. He is smartly economic though in putting totally black backgrounds etc, which not only focuses the reader's attention it also, let's be realistic, saves time and effort. But what's important is it looks great. There's no doubt he could/can draw a fabulous comprehensive background if he wanted to, it just doesn't suit the story. 

My next step might be to try and redo some actual pages from I Am Not... as ink drawings, big, with a view to reducing them and composing a page against a black (or other?) background. See how it goes. 

what next

This battle is so real to me. I am both cats in this image. And the bag. And the shiny blue mouse. 

I think I have changed my mind and will work on I Am Not Your Superstar next. The Cut Snake story is too much of an epic and I need to (re?)develop my drawing skills a bit more before I take that one on, whereas IANYS is a lot of talking in close-up and no action, I think. So it's a technical decision based on my storytelling skills such as they are and my artistic capacity such as it isn't. 

I can see this going in many directions, I suppose I should read some Jane Austen first. 

It is going to be a great challenge to make Desiree's adoration of Caleb in any way sympathetic or engaging and to at the same time make/keep her a character anyone can identify with, particularly since, I'm guessing, she is going to be in on the ground at all his creative decisions. She seems to have a kind of teenybopper attitude to him as a pop artist while also being a contributor to his output, not that a lot of women haven't done that over time. 

I guess like the player of a theremin or Harry Corbett I will also have to ensure that I maintain a proper even handedness between my protagonists and that, for instance, my resentment of Caleb doesn't get the better of me. One of the things I like best about Toast of London is that Toast is actually a huge success, in the scheme of things, even though he is not in any way competent or valid. Do we care what happens to him? Oh, and another question: why isn't Matt Berry already writing and starring in a series of hilarious and massively successful films? Anyway. It is now the 20 September which means I am unsurprisingly behind on my list of things to do, although I haven't visited this to-do list for a while and a few of the things are completed since:

I have done more things on that list than I have crossed off, but not the big things eg the papers of which there seem to be three (and in fact I have spent more time on one other that's not on the list, but still not in any way complete).* Also, another chapter on the IRs book (I wrote '2 chapters' but I'm letting myself off the hook that one of those 2 is the chapter already written, but substantially rewritten since). I haven't written 4 songs, but the real problem there is setting up the recording equipment again after a year +. Because I sat down yesterday with the guitar and in ten minutes because I'm a regular Ross fuckin' Ryan I bashed out two perfectly adequate tunes, now lost forever to the ages because I didn't record them but just to remind myself that there's no science or art to it. So put that on the list of 'eminently doable'. I have completed a painting, so there's that:

It's Sherman as Dave Ball. It's not quite finished yet. I have at least two others in progress. 

*So yes, there are four papers to do in the next ten days but only one of those is really to be completed by myself alone, the other three are collaborative, so all I really need to do is make progress on them and return them to my collaborators. Easy peasy lemon squeezy

McCartney

It's not long now before the complete resurrection and resuscitation of Wild Life if this album, so derided for so long by so many as a self-indulgent wank (the worst sort of wank) is now being non-ironically (albeit by McCartney's people) promoted as an epic. 

Don't get me wrong I love McCartney (more than McCartney II, tbh) but it's a slender work with some poor choices in it. Also, I pity the fool who would own this McCartney over the version I own with 'Suicide' on it. By the way have I told you about the double album version of Red Rose Speedway? Now that's a record. 

Anyway I think my work rescuing Paul McCartney's career is now done and I should turn my attention to another artist. I'm thinking maybe Kate Bush? Who remembers her? 

criminilarity

After loving Make Mine Mink for my entire adult life and more, I decided I'd watch some more ensemble films about funny criminals starring Terry-Thomas and scripted by Michael Pertwee. The Naked Truth (1957) is about a bunch of frankly awful people with terrible-ish past secrets who are being blackmailed by a tabloid journalist of sorts (more of a blackmailer, basically) who conspire to kill him with hilarious consequences. The black comedy aspects of The Naked Truth are upfront; it begins with some real suicides off-screen then our protagonists try to top themselves but fail amusingly. It's such a tangled farce it doesn't even really seem to have any 'acts' (not that I'm very scientific about these things) but just sprawls all over the place till suddenly it's done. But nicely done with Peter Sellers, Joan Sims, Peggy Mount, Shirley Eaton, Dennis Price and as mentioned T-T. I don't want to spoil the ending for you in case you ever see it but one of the oddest things about it is that the first twenty minutes provides frequent opportunities for a fabulous final line (the 'I'll see myself out' bit) which would have been so perfect in the final scene to the degree that I thought 'this is a ridiculously obvious set up' and... obviously no-one else thought so (or they just forgot). 

Too Many Crooks gives us George Cole, Sid James (as 'Sid' - yay!'), Joe Melia and Bernard Breslaw as the crooks and T-T as the rich man whose wife they accidentally kidnap. Full of famous comedic actors on the rise and, I suppose, decline. 

I often think we are spoiled in the 21st century where narratives are generally 'tied off' better and characterisation seems more full (though as per the gas on Venus, maybe you had to be there) and perhaps people in the late 1950s could hold onto a number of tropes that just made things make sense in the way they don't make sense 60 years later. In Too Many Crooks in particular we have the odd character of the wife Lucy who Terry-Thomas' character tells us early in the piece was rough and tough in the war but has since become meek and mild, for no reason except apparently (and illogically) she loves him. Once she realises he has left her to her fate with the blackmailers as he wanders around with one or a few blonde women (I actually couldn't tell if it was one or a few but maybe we weren't meant to care) she becomes a furious and calculating criminal herself and extorts most of T-T's money out of him. Sorry to spoil but what I really don't understand is why she then apparently reconciles with him at the end. It might be that it doesn't matter and it's just a funny film. Which it is.

Bernard Bresslaw actually gets the best lines in this movie - much better than Sid James or Joe Melia, who are both wasted here, and George Cole, who ineffectually plays someone ineffectual and is hard to care about either way. T-T (as Billy Gordon) is definitely the star and it's a joy seeing him being taken down more pegs than you thought imaginable. Brenda de Banzie as Lucy Gordon really relishes her bizarre two personalities (three, I suppose, counting the last scene).  

Old British films are depressing about humanity in ways it's hard to override but once you click into gear with the excellent character acting they often work. Both of these movies are presently on youtube (The Naked Truth in a compellingly out-of-sync version) and I recommend. Would like to know more about Mario Zampi, who directed both and was dead at the age of 60 within four years of making the second one. 

I went looking on AbeBooks to see if some bright spark had written a fabulous book about Mario Zampi I could order now to receive in May next year or something, but all I found was this, which would be fun to own but expensive at something like $150. 

(Later observation - the people who did these posters were remarkable. All these free components that could or were reassembled. If you have the crooks pointing their pistols in weird diverse directions it doesn't matter where Terry-Thomas or random blonde chick are running.)

cut snake

 

I discussed this a few weeks ago, and as mentioned below I have decided this tale should be called Cut Snake. Above is apparently page 3 of the story in which the four members of the household - Julian, Cherie (seen here reading a book called Cut Snake), the other woman whose name I presently don't remember, and Julian's son Dhani who he has part-custody of - are seen either dreaming or, well, reading a book. The whole thing is a bit rude, in a kind of passive way. I am not sure if Dhani's dream means he's wetting the bed or having a wet dream. The URST in the house, for which I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the massively hot Julian, is surely rubbing off on Dhani but it's difficult to be sure how old he is. 

So the main problem I have with this is there are, I now realise, pages or at least one page missing (I didn't help future me when I erased some of the page numbers, but I have some printed pages as well which suggest there were up to 12 pages, eight of which I have in printed copy, and two others in original). So the idea that I thought I would follow, of making this first chapter just a preliminary set in 2006 for a main story set in 2020+, is still doable but I am going to have to reconstruct the story from what I have before I go any further. But there's an upside to that, which is that I can possibly build into the reconstruction a bridge or two into the subsequent story, whatever the hell it may be.

The 'page 10' pencilled at the bottom makes clear that this (fig 2) is late in the first chapter. The drawing at the top right is confusing, though, because that looks like some kind of random sketch (of someone who as far as I know was not a character in the story, if that's important, which it probably isn't; basically, why is she there?!). What is happening in the storyline is that the boy Dhani has been abducted into the house of this awful couple, who clearly mean him harm. He has already shown himself to be living in a semi-fantasy world (I don't mean just dreaming of sprinklers) but when it comes down to it, he does actually escape (not just into the long grass/dry spaghetti of the backyard). I  see he is being told to get into a trunk with human (? humanish?) bones in it, which as he correctly states, is 'just melodrama'. 

If I remember rightly the story thereafter is that Dhani escapes entirely but does not return, although his father Julian believes/chooses to believe that he's 'in his room' when he's actually living in the bushes somewhere. But Julian's friend Basel is actually abducted. Back in 2006 I had Basel missing presumed dead, with no practical way of resurrecting him, but now I have other ideas and I think they might work. 

The early pages of this story were on huge - more than A3 - pieces of paper. Page 10 above was I think on a A4 size page, though I could be wrong (I called it an original but I lied. It's a photocopy from a sketchpad). 

What I was surprised to find worked for me assembling Persiflage was writing an actual script. I never would have imagined that would be effective. I guess that is my next step. I think it would be smarter to persist with this one (if I'm going to persist with something rather than start a new story from scratch) and so I guess I have to do what I did with Persiflage: transcribe the first X pages, identify what's missing and how I might do some infill, and then also how to move forward. 

The other thing I'm thinking might work is to move away from felt pens and into the world of ink. I have to admit the effect is better when it's done well, but I am still a little apprehensive of whether my drawing ability is up to the task. I guess you just have to keep doing it to know, right. 

😔I also just want to acknowledge the weird (?) aspect of both this character setup and I Am Not Your Superstar wherein both the characters of Cherie, and Desiree, are women with apparently all the awareness / tools of 21st century feminism who can't help but be besotted with a feckless man-boy who doesn't deserve any of their time. This might sound ingenuous but I was a massively different person in 2006 and I can't explain what that was about, and maybe I couldn't have explained it then. I would never say (because I would never think/feel/take the position that) feminists are really just silly girls who crave the toughness of a man, a stupid man or otherwise, and I am pretty certain that even in the deepest depths of my shallow soul, with all the taints and wounds of a half-century of life within the patriarchy always asking me to join it, join it, I would not believe in this as a social phenomenon; it's not 'real life' to me. Arguably I could have done the IANYS story as a man in a band with two girls, and he is hopelessly in love with one of them who treats him like shit. Hmm (that instantly gave me ideas). OK anyway I will work with my past self on this to an understanding. 

'i am not your superstar'

 

So as mentioned, my extraordinary success with finally completing a graphic novel made me go searching for a follow-up and this naturally led me to looking at a few I have embarked on in the past that generally never got far beyond a 'chapter one'. Hilariously, I have at least four others. 

This one from 2006, which for some reason I called I am not your superstar (it's definitely a quote from something, google suggests a Klaus-Kinski-as-jesus quote but I can't imagine that being in my wheelhouse 15 years ago as a quote worth quoting - possibly I was, though, quoting it from someone who quoted it, and I did not realise what the original source was) is actually quite promising, though also problematic. As I mentioned previously, I had two on the go at once in this year, and the main one - which I will henceforth refer to as Cut Snake, though I didn't call it that then, but should have, and I put the two of them in a little comic book which I think had two iterations under two titles but basically the same content. I'll come back to Cut Snake in a future post, and deal with IANYS now. 

As seen from the first page above, it is a story told in retrospect by fans of a short-lived indie group, who incidentally could not have possibly known most of the thoughts or words or even deeds of the people in the group. The group were two boys (Pablo and Domenic) and a girl (Desiree) on drums, the classic line-up, and the girl, Desiree (named I am sure in homage to a stunning girl who played footsies with me under the table in high school while I had absolutely no idea what to do with that, like an idiot, I 'already had a girlfriend'), was desperately in love with Dominic, lead singer/songwriter/guitarist, who was a piece of shit. She does not reveal her love, at least, not in the first chapter and he barely recognises that she exists.  

The scene above is the two boys in the band being driven to a show (via Dixon's) by an acolyte, Val(erie, I assume) who is clearly a complete fuckin' sycophant as well as being big-boned. I am not entirely sure where I was going with all of this, and who I hated most, although I guess I did not hate Desiree, but I was certainly putting her through her paces to the degree she was anything more than a poor little lost soul. Anyway, I can definitely see this story going places. I could make them go on tour, or I could make them always talk about going on tour but never do it. I think at a certain point I would have to get Dominic and Desiree to do it, though. 

Problems/issues I will face working on this one: (1) I will have to redraw the image of Val's car from the outside  - easily the worst drawing in this story, to the degree that I am too embarrassed to show it to you. (2) I will have to give Desiree some more muscle as a character because if all she is is drearily lovelorn that's a shallow rationale for a character, particularly an ostensibly sympathetic one (3) I might even have to make Domenic a slightly more rounded character (even though I, who shouldn't say things like this, find the last two panels above mildly amusing, I feel like Domenic is playing his hand too obviously - although of course the fact that he cares so little about Val's feelings that he can say this kind of thing, is the point - and perhaps he needs a bit of colour). Anyway, this is something I want to keep thinking about, thank you for indulging me.

This is as far as I got in the second part of this story, and I don't know what I was aiming for here... I guess what actually happened was I did these three panels and I ended up thinking, put this aside for a moment and get back to it later! And here I am, back to it later. 

 

gas

San Francisco Examiner 17 November 1912 p. 22

A few days ago it was announced that there was Venusian gas of a type commonly associated with life, and that it was hard to explain the gas without the presence of life. I felt my irritation level rise once again, as it so often does when exposed to the general fascination with this particular topic. The fact of the matter is, as far as I'm concerned, fuck off with your extraterrestrial life, or at least, start to care about the life presently here all around you first before you start bothering with that shitty Venusian gas. I get very exercised about this although like a lot of things it might be because I don't really understand why it's important. Why is it important? 

I actually got to thinking about this because for much of today I have been in bed. I felt sick, I think because of the food I got delivered last night although who knows (I almost always cook for myself; yesterday was a little treat). I lay here (yeah I'm still in bed as I write this) feeling pretty crummy most of the time,* and for a time Nancy came in - the first time she's got on the bed while I'm in it, since Helmi showed up (and Helmi was here too, under the bedclothes, down the end) and did her famous Nurse Nancy act which I always enjoy. Later, like about half an hour ago, actually I think because I felt to see if she was still there and found her paw, Helmi got up and sat around looking a bit dazed as well one might who has been asleep or cowering or something in between the entire day. And for a second I thought, do the cats wonder why I stayed in bed today? And if they don't care, how do they see it? How do they see my activities and behaviours? 

I can only imagine they don't care that I was in bed (except that they might have liked it, I think Nancy did anyway) and they certainly don't wonder why I ever do anything I do; the notion is not in their mental vocabulary. Life is not like that for a cat. Even if I trained them to know that every time I rang a little bell I would throw a tennis ball at them, so that before long the little bell would send them scurrying, they wouldn't wonder why, they'd just know that it was true. So screw your venusian gas. What does it have to offer us? What bugs the hell out of me with life on other planets is the incredible lack of imagination of all the people who imagine that it would be somewhat on a human level, seeing us as a contrast or a comparison. For god's sake. Cats live with us all day long and they engage with us but they can't understand us, and we can't understand them (nor do we need to). Humans and beings from other planets are as likely to have a commonality as an orange and a piece of chalk on a table. Can they get along? In the sense that (in this hypothetical scenario) they both exist in reality, yeah. 

It only just occurred to me to wonder (because as so often happens it turned up in my head as I started thinking about life on other planets) what the song 'Life on Mars' was about, so I read the lyrics (not that clear) and the wikipedia entry (a little clearer - explains it's surreal, impressionistic). Not important really, I suppose though for many in the early 70s this was Bowie's schtick, with the 'Space Oddity', 'Life on Mars' , Man who fell to Earth thing going on.

* I was very productive though, bunch of emails, wrote about a thousand words of a journal article and reconceptualised it quite well I think

what happens to humour

Because I have a plan (semi-flagged a few months ago on this blog) to write a journal article about Make Mine Mink, I bought a few cheap books online some time ago to help with a bit of colour. One arrived today - so long after I ordered it that, in fact, I had assumed that I had forgotten to buy it - Terry-Thomas' 1990 memoir, Terry-Thomas Tells Tales. It was published posthumously, in the year that he died, with an afterword by his co-author explaining that, although they had essentially completed the book in 1984, T-T got a bit obsessive about it and insisted he was going to pepper it with more amusing elements, but Parkinson's got the better of him. He kept the manuscript by his side for years, apparently, long after he lost the ability to speak, but could do nothing with it beyond a few amendments to the first third.

I am not going to go on and on about it or even attempt to pull together anything like a reflective overview of the book, mainly because it's so flippin' depressing. Every single joke, every anecdote and funny story, even every observation intended to amuse, doesn't just fall flat; it's from a universe that looks incredibly familiar, in fact a world I engage with in some way or another every day (via ideas from the 30s-70s, as absorbed-projected in films, tv, books, music etc) but in which the humour is just completely bleached out of the picture. T-T's world of entertaining ideas and concepts are not even banal, they're just like flavourless food. It's almost impressive for its ghastly shallowness, but it's also horrendous.   

What happens to humour? On facebook yesterday someone linked to a Stewart Lee clip, with a comment about whether they weren't sure if he was joking or not. I watched the whole ten minute clip (the 'playing the room as it's dealt' schtick) although I've seen it numerous times already, and marvelled at it. It's an extended riff on the audience's complicity in the comic's misery, and it's exceptionally clever. Terry-Thomas would presumably have barely understood it as comedy, I suppose (though it does mention Tony Hancock and T-T also talks about Hancock's, and other comedians', depressive phases). It made me think that, if and when Stewart Lee comes to Australia again (I've never seen him live) I think I might just go to as many shows as I can, perhaps even across a few cities, I'm that impressed by him. 

The T-T book on the other hand is the saddest thing, and not in a good way. Which is a shame because when he's good in a film, he's very good, although he's also (as he makes clear, unabashed about following the biggest-paying roles in any film, not out to make art) a hack, but I can admire a lot in hackdom. 

By the way one of the most interesting things in this pretty awful tome comes right at the beginning when T-T comes closest to self-awareness/analysis; he says that his parents had four boys, trying for a girl. He was the second-youngest (so presumably a disappointment) and when his sister came along he was no longer even the baby; so he played up for laughs, the only way he knew to retain his family's interest. That and the gap in his teeth, which was a quirk that presumably if nothing else made him self-conscious in good and perhaps bad ways. He says his sister had the same, incidentally. 

expanding

Steve said he wanted the chapter header pages to bleed to the edges so I had to make some of them bigger, which I have done. I won't say it wasn't easy, it was easier than I thought it would be, but it was a bit of a process. On the right hand here in particular I had to increase the image by, I don't know, from the far right elevator door to at least the outside of the elevator if not more. You'd think one could just bash this out in photoshop using the paint brush tool but actually that is not so simple, it's really hard doing that stuff with a track pad or whatever it's called, particularly because I'm quite shaky. I ended up doing a lot of cutting and pasting of existing lines (which are of course anything but straight) and patching them at the joins. Anyway I was not unhappy with this little task and I think it will improve the overall. I had to do four of these, this wasn't the trickiest one but it's the one I'm happiest with

 

just to clarify

I am actually in awe of real collectors, as long as their collecting doesn't get in the way of actual human relationships. In this instance, Billy is an obsessive (but so is Elyse, manifesting in a different way) but as will arguably be seen, it doesn't per se get in the way of their ability to have an actual (I hesitate to say human) relationship.

Part of my interest in owning (or at least having access to) actual artefacts, as opposed to reproductions etc, is that just like Hugo Weaving's character in Proof only nothing like him, I don't trust the conduit/enabler between the original and the facsimile to get every detail right that helps me understand. I have probably mentioned this numerous times herein the way that, by default or design, the gatekeepers to the tracks we tried to include on the Festival albums I was compiling a few years ago gave us the wrong source material or tried to push us in the direction of things they preferred, whether it was because it was easier for them or because they felt the things they were trying to get us to use were a better representation of how they saw themselves/their legacy. It's no big deal when it's minor but then one day it'll be a big deal because something major will be changed without anyone acknowledging/realising. Eternal vigilance! Old 80s music is a bad example in one sense. But in another (and this speaks to spotify, etc) when you take things out of their context it's harder to understand them. I guess collecting a specific artist/author is taking things out of their context, but a bit of context clings to them doesn't it. I guess that's why it's great to have anthology collections, you can look at the creator you're interested in and see who, at one stage at least, it was deemed socially valid to group them with.

Anyway, probably part of my beef with collectors is I'm terrible at collecting. I admire people who do it right. I've already said that. 

All in all, the above page - considering I never would have imagined it existing four hours ago - came out pretty well I think. Oddly, listening a lot to Blank Check the last week+, the occasionally expressed opinion on that show that auteurs do better when they have random (or very specific - e.g. budgetary) constraints imposed on them, works for me. I think this page adds to the whole, and if Steve now said 'no, I miscounted the pages there is no blank space' (or, 'and this creates a blank space') I'd then come up with something else to allow it to be retained. 

so close and yet almost there

So I finally got all the jpgs in order and sent the link to Steve who came back with the usual Steveish questions which were all eminently sensible and good examples of why he's the best editor I've ever had the pleasure of working with, by far (also the best publisher but that's not relevant at this point). One of his questions was: he wanted the chapters to each start on a right hand page and all of them 'naturally' fell as such except for chapter 5, so I thought, OK I'll add another page to chapter 4. 

In one sense I don't care if there's a blank space between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, but I think if you have no blank space up till then, the inclusion of a blank space looks like it's meant to mean something - 'pause for effect' or similar - and I don't want that. Also, I am kind of aware that the whole thing is kind of breakneck (if I do another one of these, I'm going to think a lot more about pacing) which maybe is not the worst thing in the world, but considering I'm creating a universe so to speak (as pretentious as that sounds) I could do worse than put some context in. So I decided to do a page explaining Billy's world as a Quiglet devotee, and have a little look at how he keeps the flame burning. 

To be honest this hurt a little because it leans somewhat towards an element of my own personality that I try to suppress. My father's father was a hoarder/collector, of a range of what now seems like a very unimaginative array of items (stamps, coins). I really feel a bit ashamed, sometimes, of my records and books, and many other things I continue to own only for sentimental reasons (usually, that someone I value gave them to me). I don't really have a lot of 'collector's items' kind of things, or if I do, they're just weird tchotchkes accumulated randomly and gathering dust. I was going to draw Billy dusting his Quiglet memorabilia but then decided it needed to be more everyday and not so fetishy. 

This page is I guess sometime in the early oughties (so for what it's worth Billy is in his mid-late 20s and Elyse, who he is now living with, is in her mid-late 30s). I spent two seconds worrying about what a  2000 (say) TV looked like and what a 2000+ computer looked like (but Billy is now using Elyse's old Apple Mac there, for some reason).* The bottom left panel is him writing an irate email or blog entry or something, in response to some idiotic mistake he's identified in the book he read in the top right hand panel. I don't think he's likely to be writing to the actual author, just an inchoate cry to the universe. 

Just to point out the bleeding obvious, the clock with Quiglet antlers for hands (I guess I will have to make the vertical hand bigger than the horizontal) looks kind of cool at 3 o'clock or 12:15 but most of the rest of the time it surely looks terrible, almost painful, imagine what 20 to 7 looks like, argh.

* I'm trying not to try hard to be true to a historical timeline, it's not that important, anyway, appliances/technological items have a lifespan. If Billy's using a 90s Mac in 2005, that's not ridiculous. I used a 90s Mac until 2001, 2002 or thereabouts, at least, I remember buying the replacement in 2001. 

re: helmi

No real point trying to make study of Helmi into a science. The day before yesterday, she spent the whole day in front of the heater in the spare room. Staring into it. Yesterday, she spent the day in bed again. Today, she spent it in front of the heater in the spare room. Yep, staring into it. She either likes staring into things or she thinks a computer is a heater. Why not. 

33 at 45 pt 2

I went a little further into my 'collection' (I hate that word) and found a few more bits and pieces, some of which I had referred to in the previous post but I can't be fucked doing a rewrite for something so mundane and not worth reading. You read right, NOT WORTH READING. The weirdest thing about this text, on the back of Elvis Costello's (twenty, count 'em, twenty-track) Get Happy, is the insane smallness of it, which is appropriate but insanely appropriately insane. 

I don't quite get the bit about 'people who've never bought a record made before 1967' but I assume it's tech talk - was there a change in practice after 1967 or is it about the kind of records, conceptually speaking, that were being made after 1967? Should probably investigate, there's probably someone much more nerdy than I somewhere on the internet who has a theory. 

(* update: not exactly but there is this discussion from which I learnt apparently there is a double album version of Get Happy with all sides playing at 45rpm and that the Imperial Bedroom album which came a couple of LPs later is apparently longer than Get Happy ffs!). 

Here's an interesting thing re: Utopia (phase II - the pop Utopia not the prog Utopia). My copy of what I believe is actually the second Utopia album to be called Utopia has this sticker on the front:

Note firstly it is not a 5-track EP but a 5-track LP (looking at the Wikipedia page I gather it was described as an EP in most territories and indeed in the UK and Europe the five tracks were pressed on a 7" 33rpm disc - !!!). But it's weirder than that. It's actually, once you get inside the cover, Side 3 of the album: you'd have to assume, the five tracks that no-one thought were good enough to go on the real album, so they're 'bonus tracks' for a limited time only. But the inner sleeve designs suggest this is a legit side 3, if it wasn't for the sticker on the front, you'd just think, yeah this is how it always was and always will be.

BUT it is stranger than that. Because flip that baby over (as the maternal and child health nurse says) and:

All the same tracks, on Side 4 as well. So I guess if you particularly love Utopia and particularly love side 3, you're in luck because it will wear out half as fast as the main (side 1 & 2) part of the LP, as long as you assiduously flip the extra disc when you're playing that side. Maybe I should compare side 3 & 4, maybe they're whole different versions or completely different songs with the same title or something. I mean it's kind of a waste of space, isn't it, but then again, it's not a waste of vinyl to press something into the vinyl... personally if I was in charge I'd be like 'let's turn the kids on to other things Utopia have done, by sticking a half-LP 'best of' on there' but I think they'd actually just signed to a new label so there probably wasn't much of a back catalogue. They could have given Todd a day in the studio to make a Mr Partridge style dub album... but oh yeah, Todd hates mixing. Damn it!!!

OK so I've milked that one, let's get back to Rip Rig and Panic just to finish off. Here are some selected labels, just in case you were in slack-jawed awe at the notion that those discs went at 45:

Wow they totally do. As you can see (? actually maybe you can't, but it is) my copy of I am Cold is a Japanese pressing, and I did that near-impossible thing of using the google translate camera to try and get some sense out of the text on the insert. I was surprised to glean that there is a whole 'user's guide to understanding who the fuck Rip Rig and Panic are' in there, explaining the group members' origins and the scene they came from. There's something in there about David Bowie being 'chesterish' which is a bit exciting and I also love that 'ring music is ringing now'. Anyway, I didn't get too much from this and all it really did was confuse me, all I can say with reasonable certainty is that nowhere does anyone say 'the reason the group chose to release their albums as two 12" 45s is...'

But also there is an ad for the God album on the insert of I Am Cold which describes it, in translation obviously, as '30 cm 45 rotation two sheets', which I get more out of than I really should. Note that below, the track which is somehow translated as 'Knee Dive in Sit' is actually called 'Knee Deep in Shit'. 

Bye! See ya later