ticket touts are bastards

I really hate ticket touts. I tried hard to get tickets for the upcoming Arcade Fire gigs in Glasgow with no luck. I look on ebay 5 hours later and tickets are on-sale for between 50 and 100 quid. Bastards!!!!!

Welcome to 2007!

A new year! Time to make resolutions about how to improve myself and stuff like that. I'll be 30 this year which is scary. I have one more big exam and I'll have to apply for my next job which could take me almost anywhere (although it would be cool to stay in Glasgow).

I guess I should spend the year trying to be a better person and stuff like that. That sounds noble. I should also try and have more fun.

Anyway, best wishes to everyone!!

Happy new year!

Happy new year!

The mighty boosh

I was given the mighty boosh boxset for christmas and I am coming to appreciate the surreal strangeness of the show. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone involved with the creation of the show must once have taken drugs or something. It's funny and freaky.

The show revolves around Vince Noir (the cool trendy Mick Jagger clone) and Howard Moon (the pseudo-intellectual jazzist loser) and their attempts to carve a career in the music business. The cast is filled out by Naboo the Shaman and Bolo the gorilla who regularly rescue our heroes from their latest crisis. It is very, very weird.

I guess the stand-out episode is 'the legend of old greg' which is well fucked up but it is all good. It's a musical comedy with some OK songs that have been written and played by the cast.

I am sure that everyone else in the world is much cooler than me and that you all saw this when it was on BBC3 but if not, check it out.

Join them on a journey across time and space. Old greg has something to show you........

Work at christmas

I hate having to work at christmas but I know that someone has to. My boxing day shift was horrible - a 13 hour slow motion apocalypse. Not fun.

Thankfully I'm off work till the 3rd now - paradise.

The execution of Saddam Hussein

I guess I knew it was coming but it was a bit weird to wake up this morning to hear that Saddam Hussein had hanged. It just didn't feel right.

I think that he was a bad man but I would have liked him to have been held to account for more crimes than he was on trial for. I feel that he should probably been kept a prisoner for the rest of his life to prevent him from becoming a martyr. It would be nice if his death led to increased stability for the people in Iraq but I do not think this will happen. I did not like the television footage of the moments leading up to his execution.

He was probably an evil man but I don't think this was the right way to go.

I'm away to hug a tree now.

Mistletoe and wine

Christmas has been good so far this year. I'm not at work; I'm at home with my parent which is exactly where I want to be today. I've had a decent meal and I saw a few old friends in the pub last night. I was able to get a taxi home without any hassle. Life is good.

People have kindly bought me some nice presents. There include the latest Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion which is not exactly full of seasonal cheer as well as a book based on the QI TV series. I have also been given a box-set of the Indiana Jones films as well as a set of the Mighty Boosh TV shows.

I have just finished watching a TV adaption of the Terry Pratchett Hogfather book which was OK and I plan to keep my nose in a book until the Doctor Who Christmas Special comes on this evening.

Sadly, I have a 13 hour shift at work tommorrow. That sucks.

Anyhow

Keep it loose

phunky

Phunk

James Brown is dead

James Brown, the godfather of soul, died today at the age of 73 from pneumonia.

His music changed the world.

I was lucky enough to see him play live once at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow in around 1997 or 1998. The tickets were expensive and I worked out that I had stacked shelves in Sommerfield for 11 hours to pay for the ticket. The show was spectacular and featured 13 dancing girls in different stages of undress as well as a magician. Brown jumped about on stage like a man possessed, screaming out his hit songs, dropping to his knees, playing drums and keyboards. I loved it.

He made many great records over the years including 'live at the apollo', 'black caesar' and 'the big payback'. Music would not be the same without him.

He did bad things in his life too. I hope the good things he did outweigh the bad in the grand scheme of things.

RIP

Another cool dead guy

funky

Merry Christmas everybody

HAPPY CHISTMAS

Understanding comics

As some of you may know, I'm a bit of a comic geek. I just love them. I love the art form.

Now that doesn't mean that I am sub-literate or a total social retard (ok, maybe a bit). It doesn't mean that I still have adolescent power fantasies or that I like looking at pictures of musclebound men in latex. It means that I enjoy the comic as a form of entertainment and I think it has as much artistic merit as a film or a book.

I first learned to read with Asterix and Tintin books bought for me by my parents. It was a good place to start and when I have kids I intend to pass them on. These books are well drawn and have good stories (although I admit that the Tintin books have some unfortunate stereotypes in them so my kids may end up just getting Asterix). After that I read the Beano and the Dandy as well as Battle. From there I moved onto American comics like the X-men and the UKs own 2000AD.

So I grew up reading comics for kids and action comics for boys but most people leave these things behind when they hit puberty and I guess I did, for a while. Somewhere I found out that comics could be different. I found books by Peter Bagge, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Robert Crumb, Evan Dorkin, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis and many, many more.

Comics have as much potential as films, books or paintings as a form of expression. I have recently read a very good book on the subject by Scott McCloud. It's called Understanding Comics and you can buy it on Amazon. Check out his website at http://www.scottmccloud.com/
He has also written an interesting follow-up called Reinventing Comics.

So, what comics are worth reading?

Well

1. Hate by Peter Bagge - the story of a loser in Seattle at the height of grunge. The best book to start with is Buddy does Seattle which costs less than a tenner on amazon.
2. From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell - a fictionalised version of the story of Jack the Ripper that was made into a film by Johnny Depp
3. Sin City or 300 by Frank Miller - film noir or spartan soldiers
4. Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis - start with book one - the story of Spider Jerusalem, a Hunter S Thompson style gonzo journalist in a dystopian future
5. Sandman by Neil Gaiman - for your inner goth. Start at book one
6. Y the last man by Brian K Vaughan - every male mammal on the planet dies except for one man and his monkey. Start with book one
7. Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon - very funny and very offensive.
8. Love & Rockets by the Hernandez Bros always gets good reviews although I don't like it that much.
9. Maus by Art Spiegelman is a classic. Spiegelman tells the story of his fathers experiences in a Nazi concentration camp using funny animals. Unsettling.
10. Palestine by Joe Sacco - a eye-witness account of the authors experiences in Gaza and the West Bank
11. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi - an autobiographical story of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran

That is a few to start with. Lots of good stuff is out there. If you have nothing to do one weekend pick up one of these books. You will get some of them in a decent bookshop like Waterstones or Forbidden Planet. If not, try Amazon

Funky