Kevin O'Neill interview

Kevin O'Neill is a great comic book artist with a unique style. He drew Nemesis the Warlock for 2000AD as well as Marshall Law. Most recently he has worked on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Alan Moore.

Here is a big interview with him from the Comics Journal website.

http://www.tcj.com/superhero/douglas-wolk-interviews-kevin-oneill-part-one-of-five

Good read!

Girls live at Stereo, Glasgow

Girls are an interesting band who are based in California. The lead bloke is apparently a survivor of some strange religious cult in America. That's probably where he started to listen to the Beach Boys.

The music of Girls is a mix of the Beach Boys, Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain. It's warm, fuzzy, poppy music of the sort that can easily find a place in my heart.

Stereo is a venue that I'm slowly warming to. It's a rocky basement behind Central Station in Glasgow. I've been to a few shows here and initially I didn't like it but it has grown on me. We had a fairly good view of the stage and the sound was better than before.

The support band were a bunch of local kids who tried hard but still have a bit of work to do. Girls look like sex-cult escapees. They played most of the stuff that I'm familiar with from their album and a couple of unfamiliar tracks that are probably B-sides. I guess my favourite track is predictably 'lust for life' but the whole show was worthwhile. The girl I was with liked it too.

The British Museum

As mentioned in the last post I was down in London staying next to the British museum at the start of the month. It's a nice part of the city, full of famous hospitals and impressive buildings. The course was fairly busy but I did get to spend an hour in the British Museum which was fairly impressive.

I'd never been to the Museum before and the sheer size of it impressed me. It's a beautiful building full of amazing things. I was also struck by the volume of stolen artefacts we have there. The UK has taken stuff from all over the world. It's great to see but I can understand why some countries might want the more iconic pieces back.

I only had an hour but I'll try and go back the next time I visit London.

Good comic shop in London

I was down in London at the start of the month and I was staying in a hotel in Russel Square. I had scouted the area out in advance and located a cool comic shop opposite the British museum.

This shop is GOSH comics.

http://goshlondon.blogspot.com/

I like GOSH because it is more on the arty side of comics than the adolescent sci-fi side (although I do love the adolescent sci-fi side too). GOSH also go a nice line in signed limited edition books. I picked up a couple.

If you're in London, check it out. Only 15 minutes walk from Euston station.

A Single Man - film review

I went along to see this film with a girl yesterday. It was good although possibly slightly different from the other films I've seen in the cinema in recent years.

The story revolves around an English (subject and nationality) professor at a Californian university in the early 1960s. His lover dies in a car crash and his world falls apart. The greatest sadness is that he is homosexual and society will not accept his lifestyle.

Colin Firth is great as the professor, disabled by grief, carefully planning and rehearsing his suicide. The film looks great and has a solid emotional impact. The harshness of society in '60s America is clear although I guess gay people in some places probably still need to live like that. In the end the film is probably uplifting and definitely worth seeing.

Advertising standards find Lifescan Ad to be unsuitable and state that it should not be shown again

Lifescan are a company who carry out 'health scans' in asymptomatic patients. They were referred to the advertising standards agency and found to be breaching advertising standards in several areas.

http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/Adjudications/2010/2/Lifescan-Ltd/TF_ADJ_48050.aspx

Hopefully now they will stop frightening the public into paying money for unindicated medical investigation.

Kickass the comicbook by Mark Millar

I've just read the last issue of 'Kick-ass' by Glasgow's own Mark Millar. It's pretty damn good. It's the story of a teenage boy who decides to become a superhero in the real world. It's violent and funny. On the back of 'Wanted' it was grabbed for cinema adaption before the comic was even finished.

Can't wait to see the film...

Homeopathy is pish

I'm sure most people realise that homeopathy is pure bollocks. As I passed though Central Station in Glasgow yesterday I saw an anti-homeopathy protest group. They were planning to take a mass-overdose of homeopathic medications to prove that these medicines have no effect.

Pretty cool idea.

You may think that all this homeopathy stuff is harmless but apparently the NHS spends £4million on this useless shite every year. That's £4million of my tax money. Bastards. I also object to private companies making a profit from the misery of people who don't know that they are being ripped off.

http://www.1023.org.uk/the-1023-overdose-event.php

Avatar film review

I was a bit cynical about Avatar when I first heard about it. It looked a bit shit. Why would I want to see a 3D remake of Ferngully? Who would want to see CGI smurfs?

Everyone that saw the film said it was good. It was doing well at the box office. I felt my life would be lacking if I didn't see it so I went last week. It was great.

I had to wear contact lenses so that I could watch in 3D. I'm glad I did because the experience was good. The film did look a bit cartoony at times due to the wall to wall CGI but the live-action CGI interface wasn't too bad and the 3D rocked. The story is a bit dumb but at least it has a solid anti-imperial and anti-capitalist message to it. Apparently the Awerican religious right are fucked off which is only good.

I'd go and see it again and I hope they do a sequel. As Avatar is noe the most successful film of all time they probably will.

Lax January

I've been a bit crap at writing my blog this month. There are a few reasons for that. I was a bit sick over new year with what I will describe as mind-stabbing painful exploding ass disease which the medical community would recognise as a perianal abscess. Being an idiot I didn't seek medical attention until after it exploded.

After that little adventure I had to spend a few days in bed with my friends flucloxacillin and metronidazole. Over the past six years I have prescribed these drugs to thousands of people. I think it's good to have some personal experience of these drugs. For what it's worth flucloxacillin gave me loose stools that had a funny smell and metronidazole gave me a headache and a funny taste in my mouth. They did seem to work.

Other than that work has been busy. I had some deadlines to submit a few academic things and we had a special drug trial patient that needed me to take pharmacokinetic blood samples at 3AM for a week. Life is fun as always.

Apparently 90% of blogs are never updated. I want this one to keep going for a while.

drphunk