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A Night Of Unnecessary DetailOn Monday night I headed off to see An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail, a night of New Stuff put together by the Festival Of The Spoken Nerd people. It was taking place in The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, which is not a venue I've been to before, and in a bit of London I'm not very familiar with, so wasn't sure how to get there. Rather wonderfully, as I was stood around trying to find a map in St Pancras station, I saw the mighty SUSAN, Totally Acoustic regular and all-round excellent gig-goer. walking past. "I bet she's going where I'm going", I thought, and LO! she very much was, and entirely knew the way, so we went together. This was GRATE not only because I GOT there, but also because I had someone excellent to chat to there and back - HOORAH!
When we arrived at the theatre we found Ms H Arney on the door. I haven't seen for AGES, and in the time SINCE I last saw her it appears that she and her colleagues have become Interweb Superstars with YouTube Channels and LITERALLY MILLIONS of Followers and Socials and BOOK DEALS and all sorts of things like that. It's always a bit weird to me when this happens as I tend to think "Oh look, there's Helen who does Totally Acoustic" whereas other people think "EEE! That's Helen Arney Off The YouTubes And Everything!" It's similar to how I think of Mr M Zaltz Austwick as Martin From Big Tim's Gigs And Also The Fire Marshal At My UCL Job" whereas since those days he and especially his wife Mrs H Zaltzman are GLOBAL SUPERSTARS who do gigs on FLIPPING BROADWAY for heaven's sake! It is all rather wonderful, but it does make me think that maybe I'm in the wrong line of work!
Anyway, we went in and got ourselves sat in the LOVELY Theatre, what was in The Traverse Style i.e. there were seats on three sides. We were on one of the aforesaid sides which meant I could see the semi-concealed TIMER that all the acts had, showing them how much of their 12 minutes were left. I flipping LOVE this, as it was similar to the timers at the wheelchair basketball last week. Apparently it is A THING with us SPECIAL PEOPLE that we like to know exactly how long an event or other appointment is going to last, and I think ALL shows should have something similar. Imagine how great it would be if a PLAY had a countdown running to the end - especially for SPECIAL PEOPLE like me who also have SPECIAL BLADDERS!
There were many INTERESTING and INTRIGUING topics covered, with my favourites being a talk about LIMPETS and another about CLOTHES PEGS. These were especially good because they were funny but also DEAD INTERESTING. I'm beginning to realise that one of the reasons I don't really like most stand-up comedy is because it tends to be POINTLESS - just someone SAYING things with the sole purpose of getting a LARF, whereas FACT-BASED COMEDY contains LARFS but usually leans towards THE FACTS being the point, with the LARFS coming along as a by-product, which appears to be how I prefer it.
I should also say that the BAR STAFF at The Cockpit were excellent - there was a HEFTY queue at the break which they worked through diligently and at speed. It may seem a trivial thing, but TOO MANY TIMES have I been to The Theatre and been ENRAGED by the vast incompetence of the way the bars are organised, but here it was GRATE!
It was a pretty GRATE evening all together I must say, and also pretty LENGTHY, so it was Quite Late when we me and Susan finally emerged and headed back to Edgeware Station. I've got a couple more of these sort of gigs to go to over the new few months, so I will monitor the FACT-BASED COMEDY situation closely and report further!
posted 11/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funday Times
On Friday last week I met with Mr John Dredge to record another episode of The Funny Comics Fanclub, and we did so in HIGH SPIRITS because John had just received news that we were going to be featured in The Sunday Times at the weekend!
Two days later, still EXCITED, I zoomed round to my local newsagents and bought The Sunday Times for the first time in about twenty years. It's been two decades because that's how long it takes to READ one issue, as it is GINORMOUS. but once I had ploughed through the multiple sections, pullouts and magazines I found our mention as promised, and it looked like THIS:
It was, I must admit, PRETTY FLIPPING EXCITING. That's us, right there, in The Famous Sunday Times! COR!
Perhaps most excitingly of all it drew us to the attention of Mr Chris Shaw of MY FAVOURITE PODCAST EVER I Am The Eggpod, who suggested we put some of the actual pages discussed on our socials. I have resisted doing this when other people have suggested it, largely because it involves using the scanner at work, but if Chris from Eggpod says it is a good idea then I am POWERLESS to resist, and so have gone and done exactly that - if you look on our twitter, bluesky or Facebook pages you should be able to see all of the relevant pages from episode one, with episode two to follow later this week and then similar on the day of release for future episodes. You can also find all of this stuff on our brand new INSTAGRAM page, what I set up yesterday and am still not quite sure if I did it right!
Meanwhile, thanks very much to everyone who's said nice things about the podcast so far. As you can probably tell, John and I are having a lot of funning making it, so it's good to know people are listening - ta!
posted 10/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Lemon Twigs
On Thursday night last week I met with Mr M Sutton and headed South to distant Brixton, there to go and watch The Lemon Twigs. Here is the executive summary of how it all went: AMAZINGLY.
A couple of years ago I asked for recommendations of New Acts to listen to, and the most popular reply was "The Lemon Twigs". I listened to their second album "Everything Harmony" and FLIPPING LOVED IT, as it seemed to have been hand-tooled from loads of bands I LOVE e.g. Simon and Garfunkel, early Paul McCartney and so on. When their new album "A Dream Is All We Know" came out it had also added a heavy dollop of The Beach Boys and Carole King, which obviously I ALSO loved, so I LEAPT at the chance to get gig tickets, not least because I was thinking "How on earth are they going to carry off that HUGE sound in The Live Environment?"
When they came on stage I was thus surprised to see there were only four of them, arranged in the super-traditional two guitars, bass and drums line-up. "Oh right," I thought, "they're going to do a stripped down live version that isn't really like the records. FAIR ENOUGH." The first song started with one of the brothers singing and all was as I thought... until it got to the chorus and they UNLEASHED THE THREE-PART HARMONIES. My GOODNESS but it was incredible, suddenly this GINORMOUS SOUND erupted and it was ASTONISHING. Me and Mark - and pretty much everyone else in the room - just LOOKED at each other in amazement. They sounded incredible!
The next song was the same, and the next, and pretty much onwards throughout the evening - every song sounded like THE MASSIVE HIT AT THE END, except there was always another one after it. There were also GTR SOLOS and TWIDDLY BITS and LUSCIOUS BASS and the whole SOUND was fantastic - we were a long long way from my early days of gigs at The Charlotte where everything sounded like DUB. The rather wonderful thing about it all was that DESPITE (I said DESPITE) the fact that they were all ludicrously talented at their instruments it was still loads of FUN, and also full of TUNES. Usually when people are even SLIGHTLY good at their instruments everything becomes IMMENSELY DULL and TUNELESS, but here not only did it remain exciting and catchy but also all the songs remained SHORT. They just rattled through song after song, each with 17,000,000 hooks but rarely over four minutes long.
It got a bit much half way through when they CHANGED INSTRUMENTS and were STILL GRATE at everything. The bass player went on keys, one of the singers went on drums and so on and so forth and then they ROCKED ON through three or four songs that way. It felt rather like SHOWING OFF at this point, but by now we were all in and AGOG so were powerless to do anything about it.
The first encore featured one of the brothers doing three songs on a Spanish Guitar which involved a) him checking the tuning by knocking off 30 seconds of AMAZING gtr playing b) performing a song he'd apparently written that day AND KNEW ALL THE WORDS ALREADY c) and then doing my favourite song off the second album with us all singing along. The band then came back for the second encore, and this culminated with them playing a cover of "Good Vibrations".
Good vibrations. The whole thing. With just four people. PERFECTLY. I mean, by now it was like they were DARING us to be FURIOUS at the amount of SHOWING BLOODY OFF that was going on. I have honestly never seen anything like it - I've been to AMAZING gigs and I've been to gigs where the ARTISTES were really good at it, but I've hardly ever been to see a gig where it was BOTH and definitely not one where everyone on stage appeared to be LARKING ABOUT quite so much while doing so.
We staggered out into the night BATTERED by what we'd seen, and also a bit worried that whatever we saw NEXT would seem to be a bit rubbish. On the way home we bumped into Former Fortuna Pop Supremo Mr S Price, who said that he'd seen them three times THIS WEEK, and we agreed that it had been GRATE. Because, in case it isn't clear yet, it really really had been. WOW!
posted 9/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Paralympics!
Earlier this week myself and the Agitos In My Logo got up very very early INDEED to go on a day trip to PARIS, there to go and see the ACTUAL PARALYMPICS!
It was all very exciting, also delightful, also GRATE. After an entirely pleasant journey on the Eurostar we rolled into Gare De Nord and found ourselves almost immediately confronted by a celebrity - for LO! The Paralympic Phryge was casually hanging around in the station, happy to have their photograph taken with anybody who happened to pass by. Including US!
With that completed to everybody's satisfaction we zoomed off to Gare de Lyon and then strolled round to The Bercy Arena, where we were due to watch the Wheelchair Basketball. It was a lovely sunny day and everybody seemed to be in a good mood, even the native Parisians who were MARKEDLY less grumpy than usual. It was all very similar to 2012 when an outbreak of GOODWILL spread across crusty old London Town, and reports were even heard of people chatting on the tube. It was fab!
We'd been forewarned that there would be no BOOZE in the arena so when we arrived at the Bercy we asked a Games Maker - un Créateur De Jeux, if you will - if there were any bars in the park next door. "No it is just a park" he said, so we went to the supermarket to get some cans. It was only when we went back that The Lager In My Tin pointed out that he'd actually been standing right in front of a bar in the park when he'd told us there weren't any! It all turned out for the best though as we got to sit in the sunshine drinking our Beer de Francais, soaking in the atmosphere as we watched hundreds and hundreds of French schoolchildren going into the venue.
As you can see, I was by this point going NATIVE!
After a while it was time to go in and we rattled through the queue, pausing only to say "Is that David Milliband" when we realised that Actual David Milliband was just ahead of us. Once inside we got sat down and THOROUGHLY enjoyed two games of Wheelchair Basketball - Japan vs USA women and Germany vs Canada men - which were both BRILLO. It was also quite EXHAUSTING as, apart from the break between the two matches, they did not allow a single second to go by without ENTERTAINMENT. There are GAPS between each of the four quarters of the game plus very brief stoppages for timeouts etc, and so these were all filled by either a roving host who kept getting everyone to SHOUT things, songs played that we had to sing along with (although these were mostly recent French pop songs so approx half the audience had never heard them before), dancers doing dance routines on the court, match commentators doing GAGS, and/or shots of people in the audience dancing, shouting or anything like that. It was all quite exciting but as someone whose experience of in-game entertainment doesn't extend much further than The Mick George Skip Challenge (kicking a football into a skip - literally) it got a bit KNACKERING!
In between the matches we bought some MERCH and also some Alcohol-free beer, which we drank on one of the nicest Smoking Terraces I have ever been on. We also got to see Official Officials sticking the Official Scores for the games on the Official Scoreboard, which felt VERY exciting. The whole thing was BRILLIANT - we were actually THERE!
Once the matches were over we left and went for a walk along the Seine, heading towards Notre Dame. It is a constant truth that Paris is REALLY BIG, and this BIGNESS is ALWAYS even bigger than you think it's going to be. London is also REALLY BIG but the bit in the middle, where all the famous SITES are, is pretty much all walkable, whereas Paris has everything spread out MILES apart so the MAP has to be smaller scale to fit everything in. We thus had a lengthy hike but it was worth it when we got there to see the Cathedral and the big exhibition outside explaining how they were mending it.
By now we were Quite Tired and so headed back via the RER again, which the French had cunningly hidden on a bridge - Paris was much more welcoming this time than I think it's ever been before when I've been there, but the public transport system was still a MENTAL MINEFIELD of incomprehensibility, including actually FINDING it in the first place! Eventually we DID get to the right platform and zoomed back to Gare de Nord where we were alarmed to find not a drop of BEER to be had anywhere. It was weird - there were no bars in the station, and the shops round about had no beer for sale either. We went into an actual French Supermarket and there was NO BEER! In a supermarket! IN FRANCE!!!
It was all very peculiar but somehow we bravely got through it and - eventually, after quite a lot of delays - we got onto the Eurostar and headed home. It was an utterly magical and wonderful day - we were there!!
posted 4/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club Episode Two: Attack Of The Crocs
The second episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club is out NOW, and available pretty much EVERYWHERE that you can get podcasts from. I mean, it might not be available if you get them from a dodgy bloke down the pub, but it should definitely be on Spotify, Apple and all those sort of things.
You can also find it right HERE:
This one sees myself and Mr John Dredge reading a copy of NUTTY from 1983 - yesterday it appeared to feature us talking about The Beano, but this was a freak time travel accident which broadcast an episode from the future by mistake, and definitely not just me uploading the wrong one. Anyway, it's definitely Nutty that's up there now and, as you will hear, we had quite a LOT to say about it, not all entirely complimentary. It's still very much full of DELIGHT though, including an in-depth discussion of Bananaman, an analysis of anthropomorphic CATS, and a surprisingly large number of CROCODILES. All this and more, and it's still only 16p!
posted 2/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Newsletter Of News
Let joy be unconfined around the land, for LO! it is the last working day of the month which means a) it is PAYDAY for those of us what gets paid upon this day and b) it is time for the latest edition of The Last Working Day Of The Month!
This month's newsletter is UNUSUALLY rich in content - or at least it is in terms of recent times. Many years ago, when I was in my full GIG POMP, the newsletter was always PACKED with forthcoming dates and recording details, but since COVID and so forth these have been rather sparse. I am thus DELIGHTED to say that this time around there are no less than FIVE (5) gigs listed, and not just in London neither.
Which reminds me - I have just started PRACTICING for these gigs (if you noticed THE MAN looking afeared this week, that's probably why) and have a LIST of about 30 songs to try and learn up. I will probably end up doing the same 8-12 songs at ALL the gigs as I usually do, but in this early period of OPTIMISM I am looking forward to trying out a few songs I have rarely - or even NEVER - done in public before. THUS if anybody has any songs they would PARTICULARLY like me to play (preferably at a gig you might be attending) do please let me know - it takes a minimum of about a MONTH for me to learn anything up, so get requests in early and I'll have a go!
In the meantime, do please have a look at the newsletter when you have a mo, it is full of loads of other stuff to READ and READ ABOUT, we may not see it's like again for quite some time!
posted 30/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Podcast Metric Number Stats Analysis Systems
One of the GRATE delights of The Funny Comics Fan Club (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE TODAY!) is that it involves lots of Rock Admin. Long-time readers of this here blog will recall that, back in my ROCK POMP, I used to thoroughly enjoy a bit of Rock Admin, so it is very nice to have some of it back in my life. I have spent the past few weeks Tinkering With Websites, Submitting To Podcast Databases and, most excitingly of all, Counting Page Hits.
Counting Page Hits is one of the great lost JOYS of the early interweb, back when we all had one of those COUNTERS on their page so that everyone could see how many times it had been visited. If I remember correctly they tended to start off with a capacity to have a THOUSAND people visit you, although it was mostly a THRILL to think you could ever get to a HUNDRED, for LO! that was about how many people were actually ON the interweb way back then. Nowadays the whole thing is a giddy mess of BOTS and SPIDERS and GOOGLE ANALYTICS and all of that so it is pretty much meaningless, and that early fun has gone off to the great Geocities in the sky.
HOWEVER, our Podbean page tells you EXACTLY how many people have downloaded each EPISODE, and so ever since we UNLEASHED the series I have been watching the counter very gently go up. I was doing exactly that on Monday lunchtime when I receievd a message from my colleague Mr John Dredge to alert me to the FACT that we were mentioned in that day's Podnews newsletter - John has MUCH experience of Publicising Podcasts from his Award Winning Podcast Enterprise The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE IMMEDIATELY!) and it was he what had sorted this out.
"How lovely", I thought. "Hopefully this will enable episode one to exceed the 50ish downloads that the trailer got!"
THUS throughout the day I very occasionally (only a few times an hour) went and clicked REFRESH on the website, and watched as the counter did indeed go past our initial 50... and then kept on going. It was WEIRD - it got to 100 downloads within an hour or so, and over the course of the day went up and up and up. It turns out that LOADS of people subscribe to that newsletter, so by close of play yesterday we'd had over SEVEN HUNDRED downloads!
Rather wonderfully I was able to impart this news to an otherwise unaware John Dredge that very day, for LO! we had arranged to meet up to record a new episode after work. We are stacking up quite a healthy back-log of shows, so that it was episode FIVE what we had gathered to record, and we began doing so in HIGH SPIRITS, buouyed not only by the aforesaid downnloads but also by the fact that we were talking about KRAZY COMIC, which (SPOILERS) is FANTASTIC.
However, our glee swiftly turned to HORROR when, forty minutes in, we noticed that the recorder had stopped and, on further investigation, FROZEN! We record on my little digital four-track, which I've had for MANY years and has never done anything like this before, so I've no idea what was going on. It had completely gone KER-PLUNK though, and in the end I had to take the batteries out just to restart it!
ALAS we had lost THE LOT and so we had to pick ourselves up and go right back to the start again, this time recording in shorter bursts and SAVING it. Weirdly it felt like it was all slightly BETTER the second time around, as it forced our MIGHTY BRANES to REPHRASE the thoughts we'd wanted to get across and then to think of NEW things to say, which I am very pleased to say we DID. I'm even more pleased to say that, when I got home and was able to fully CHECK, all these new segments had recorded properly and had WORKED, which was a huge relief!
If we stick to the PLAN of fortnightly episodes then, by my reckoning, this one will be out in OCTOBER, so who knows, by then we might be into QUADRUPLE listener figures. Watch out, G Linekar and R Stewart, we are coming for you!
posted 28/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Pearls Aloud
At the weekend myself and The Shows In My Listings had an extremely FRINGEY experience. This was partly due to going to see a show at The Camden Fringe, but also because a) it was in a room above a pub b) we were meeting some pals beforehand and we ended up in different pubs to each other c) one of those pubs had a big courtyard and d) most importantly, it was raining. We could have BEEN in Edinburgh!
However, where we actually were was The Hen And Chickens, there to meet the Mylands and see a show called Pearls Aloud which (SPOILERS) was GRATE. All I knew before going in was that it was about three things - Feminism, a chip shop, and Girls Aloud. Two of those are ALREADY among my favourite things and I was prepared to learn about Girls Aloud, so in we went.
I thought it was going to be a One Woman Show about Experiences In A Chip Shop, but the fact that four people came onstage right at the start disabused me of that notion. It was actually a MUSICAL using the songs of Girls Aloud to tell the story of four young women working in a chip shop, and it was ACE. There were MANY jokes, there was SINGING, there was DANCING, there were Entirely Plausible Character Arcs For Every Character, and there was a general air throughout of CARE and QUALITY. I love it when you go to see a show and feel like you are in SAFE HANDS, with people who have actually put some LOVE into the production, and that's what it was like throughout. It was ACE!
I think my only complaint was that the FLYER didn't tell me who had WRITTEN it. It didn't FEEL like a Devised Piece because of the aforesaid ARCS and STORY and all round SENSE, but then maybe it was? I do not know and would like to! Otherwise it was all GRATE, and we left the pub full of JOY, and with a feeling that we should maybe go and see 15 other shows one after the other, drink loads of BEER and then go to SNAX. Instead we went home and watched Girls Aloud At The BBC on the iPlayer, which wasn't, to be honest, quite as much fun as the show itself had been. Which was a LOT of fun!
posted 25/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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It's Yoko!
On Sunday myself and The Concepts In My Art went to Tate Modern to see the big Yoko Ono exhibition. It was AMAZING.
It started off brilliantly in the entrance area with the sound of a phone ringing, being picked up, and then Yoko saying "It's Yoko" (or sometimes the same but in Japanese). Personally I think "It's Yoko" would have been a better title than "Music Of The Mind", which is what it was actually called, because the whole rest of the exhibition was basically her saying "It's Yoko!" in the form of ART.
As we stepped into the first room we found lots of people looking Serious because it was Serious Conceptual Art, but as we went along from room to room everyone's faces very gradually changed as it became abundantly clear that Yoko is VERY FUNNY INDEED. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way at all - the more you saw the more it became clear that she has a COLOSSAL sense of humour and was inviting us all to join in.
She was ALSO inviting us to join in with lots of the exhibits too, and so we did. I had a go in one of the bags, we shook hands through "Painting To Shake Hands", hammered in nails, outlined shadows and so on and so forth, up to and including taking a piece of SKY near the end. It was BEAUTIFUL throughout, bouncing with ideas that were a) LOVELY and b) INCLUSIVE. So often when we go to these here conceptual art exhibitions the entire point seems to be for the ARTISTE to put out how much cleverer they are than we mere plebs who can't possibly understand the Serious Political Points they are making. Yoko was very much inviting everyone in to join her and it was ACE.
My favourite parts were the section about the exhibition she did at the Museum of Modern Art, which a) she didn't tell them about and b) she called "Museum of Modern (F)art", and the instruction for "Painting for a Broken Sewing Machine" which said "Place a broken sewing-machine into a glass tank ten or twenty times larger than the machine. Once a year on a snowy evening, place the tank in the town square and have every one throw stones at it." It made I LARF!
Weirdly, for me at least, the bits with AN ACTUAL BEATLE in were some of the least fun, especially the pictures of the Plastic Ono Band playing live, as you could FEEL the other musicians being grumpy. This was, I guess, partly understandable as she WAS someone from a whole other world stepping in as an equal with the person they all looked up to, but a lot of the coverage did demonstrate that the main thing was that she was a WOMAN and a FOREIGN one at that.
Some of that attitude still seems to be about - one of the main disappointments of Craig Brown's Beatles book of a few years ago was that it seemed to fully buy into the idea that Yoko was a laughable posho "artist" who broke up the Beatles - so it was wonderful to see her being appreciated this way, both by virtue of it being a HUGE exhibition in our biggest modern art museum and ALSO by the faces of the other people who were clearly DELIGHTED by it all. It was GRATE!
posted 21/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Get Your Comic On
Last week, as part of the general TUMULT of Talking About Doctor Doom, I recorded a podcast interview with Mr James Lister for the comics NEWS and VIEWS site Get Your Comic On, and we had a DELIGHTFUL time. Opinions roamed widely and we even came up with a solution for the problem of what Marvel are going to do with Robert Downey Jr's expensive FACE when he's playing a character who wears a mask.
The idea was that this would be used as part of their regular podcast, and I think that is still the plan, but I am very happy to say that James has gone "Oh sod it, let's stick the whole thing out" and has very much done exactly that, unleashing THE LOT on an unwitting world. THUS you can see for yourself the moment when we both realised that the RDJ FACE idea is a really good one, and witness us both getting ever so excited about the Doom news in general.
It was, as you can probably tell, REALLY GOOD FUN. If anybody else wants me to come on and yack at them similarly, now that I am PUBLICALLY RECOGNISED as The World's Leading And Only Academic Expert On Doctor Doom (citation NOT required), please do let me know. I am ready to enter THE PODOSPHERE!
posted 20/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The FCFC is GO!
Today I am DELIGHTED to showcase the UNLEASHMENT of the first episode of the new podcast from myself and Mr John Dredge, The Funny Comics Fan Club!
This is the first episode (not counting the trailer, which is more of an introduction) but we have TWO (2) more recorded and ready to go so far. We're planning to release them fortnightly on Mondays, so please update your social calendars accordingly, and it should be available everywhere you get your podcasts... except for Spotify. We WILL get it on there at some point, but we need to move on to the PAID version of our podcast site before that can happen, and we're not quite there yet!
Anyway, I hope you take DELIGHT in this offering and, if so, SUBSCRIBE. I think it's fair to say that John and I have had a GRATE deal of fun recording them so far, and there's a whole HEAP of GRATE comics and THORTS on same to come. As I will never tire of saying, ask you local newsagent to reserve you a copy every fortnight, and see if you can get them to write you name in pencil on the back too!
posted 19/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club
As mentioned the other week, myself and Mr John Dredge have been working away at recording a PODCAST that is called "The Funny Comics Fan Club" in which we discuss individual issues of funny comics. We've now got THREE (3) issues in the bank and are preparing to UNLEASH them on the world, but to kick things off we have done a TRAILER what you can listen to right HERE:
It is BRIEF but I think captures the TONE and also the APPROACH what we are going to take. I'm currently in the process of getting it linked up to FEEDS and whatnot so it may be a few days before it pops up on your favourite podcast APP, but hopefully it will all be sorted out by this time next week when we're planning to impose the first issue/episode upon a waiting world. In the meantime, why not ask your friendly local newsagent to reserve you a copy?
posted 14/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Abbey Road
On Saturday I zoomed across London town to distant St John's Wood, for an appointment at Abbey Road Studios!
It will surprise you to know that I was NOT there for a recording session, ENTIRELY LIKELY though that may be, but rather for the Stories In Sound tour/EXPERIENCE, what The Follicles in My Mop Top had got me for my BIRTHDAY. It was advertised as an "immersive experience" where you got to go inside ACTUAL ABBEY ROAD STUDIO and I have to say I got very immersed, and also EXCITED.
I mean, OBVIOUSLY as an International Rock Star I have been inside Abbey Road before - waaay back in 1998 the Fabians split-single got mastered there, when about 15 of us went down with Sorted Supremo Dave Dixey to be present at the "session". The engineer then seemed used to this sort of thing, and was quite calm about us all nipping out to go to the loo one after the other so we could sneak a peak into Studio 2.
THIS time however I was actually IN Studio 2, and it was AMAZING! They'd set the studio up for a LECTURE, with rows of chairs, a stage and a big screen, but before that started we were able to wander around and even go UP THE STAIRS and into the control room. My BRANE was going "ZANG! COR! OOH!" the entire time because I couldn't believe that I was actually THERE, in a place that I'd seen thousands of pictures of and had LISTENED to millions of times. Looking out of the window from THE ACTUAL CONTROL ROOM down to the studio floor I was picturing all of the photographs of The Beatles working there and it BLEW MY MIND. I also walked around and dutifully TOUCHED all of the many Famous Instruments they had in there, notably The Actual Mrs Mills Piano!!
After a little while I had to have a bit of an old sit down just so I could try and ABSORB the fact that I was really there, as it was all getting rather overwhelming. I sat for about twenty minutes thinking "I'M HERE!", after which the TALK started. It was FAB. The speakers were Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, authors of Recording The Beatles, a book which I am DELIGHTED to find makes mine look CHEAP! They did a 90 minute presentation on the history of Abbey Road Studios, with JOKES and FILMS and a hefty chunk in the middle all about The Beatles. Again, it was pretty mind-blowing to see an image on screen of a Famous Recording Session and then look over into the corner and think "But that's just over there!"
The whole thing was augmented by some live performances by a string quartet, pianist and guitarist, which was Quite Nice, but the BEST bit - the VERY best bit - was right at the end where they said "Usually we'd finish now, but we've got someone here who's IN some of these images" and GOODNESS ME but then KEN SCOTT came on stage!
KEN SCOTT! All right, I realise that that MAY not be a name which is overly familiar to people who DON'T have an entire bookshelf full of Beatles books, but for those of us who DO it was pretty flipping exciting, as he was not only the ENGINEER for the White Album sessions but worked on LOADS of Beatles sessions and a METRIC TONNE of others with all manner of famous artistes. However, he wandered on stage with the air of One Of Your Dad's Mates and then talked very modestly and lightly about working with THE BEATLES FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE and was all round lovely.
The whole event was pretty ruddy incredible, and all the way home my BRANE was going "That really happened! WOW!" When I got back I pulled out my beaten up old copy of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and looked at the photographs, thinking "But I was THERE!" Best birthday present EVER!!
posted 5/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Open Access Academia (About The Beano)
Phew, it's been a CONTENT RICH week this week, and we conclude with EVEN MORE content. For LO! I have had ANOTHER article published in an Esteemed Academic Journal and this time you can read it for FREE!
The article is called The three generations of Dennis The Menace and it has been published in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. It's all about the amazing RETCON that The Beano have carried out over the past few years which means that the CURRENT Dennis The Menace is NOT the same character as the one that most people my age will remember reading about in the 1970s and 1980s. THAT Dennis is the FATHER of the current one, and HIS Dad (the one with a toothbrush moustache and red pinstriped suit) was the ORIGINAL Dennis from the 1950s!
It is pretty MINDBLOWING stuff for anyone who read The Beano as a young person, and do believe me when I say that THAT is not even the MOST MINDBLOWING thing in the article. I will leave eager readers to find all that out for themselves, and rather wonderfully you can do so FOR NOTHING. The delightful people of the UAL Scholarly Communications Team agreed to use some of their FUNDS to pay for this to be Open Access, as part of a scheme to investigate how All That Sort Of Thing Actually Works, which means we all sat together on TEAMS a couple of weeks ago and filled in the many FORMS involved to make it happen. That bit was Quite Exciting for ME, and hopefully the results will be exciting for ONE AND ALL.
I was really pleased to get this paper out Open Access, as it's always a bit frustrating to spend MONTHS or YEARS working on something that most people can't actually READ (e.g. books that take YEARS to write but then cost NINETY QUID to buy). If you have ten minutes to spare do give it a read, I promise you that there is some AMAZING INFO in there for long-term and/or lapsed Beano fans!
posted 2/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Talking About Comics
Yesterday I mentioned having a MULTI-PRONGED plan to become a PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL but did not actually reveal ALL of the aforesaid PRONGS. For LO! I am not just trying to write articles about Doctor Doom or do GIGS about the general gist of my academic research, I am doing Some Other Things as well!
I have previously hinted that ONE of these things involves the marvellous Mr J Dredge, and it is this that I wish to speak of today. For a couple of months now we have been discussing doing some sort of podcast where we talk about old, funny, British comics, and earlier this week we got together to have a go at actually RECORDING one.
Cunningly I had managed to book a room at WORK, which anybody who works where I work will know is something of a TRIUMPH in and of itself. It was a lovely small room, and also a very HOT room - it may not be that hot most days, but here in the middle of a heat wave it very much was!
We sat down, sweated a bit, switched the recorder on, sweated a bit more, checked our notes, and then began approximately 45 minutes of talking about a comics and it was GRATE. John and I have worked on many things together over the years, including trying to write topical comedy gags for Radio 4 Extra, making some short films, and recording a series of EPs but, for my money, the BEST thing we did was meeting up every week for A Bit Of An Old Chat. John is not only EXCELLENT at having A Bit Of An Old Chat but also MOST AMUSING too, so it seemed like a good idea to try and do THAT as an Actual Thing.
This proved to be correct! We started off a little bit nervous, and listening back to the recording I seem to have said "Yeah yeah" every 2 seconds, but otherwise it sounds Dead Good. Obviously this is an EXTREMLY RADICAL concept for a podcast - two middle-aged men who are friends talking about something from their youth, with one of them an expert and the other a comedian - so I don't know if the world is quite ready for it yet, but all we can do is put it out there and see what happens!
There's still stuff to do before we're ready to UNLEASH it on the world - we've got to finalise a name, find a podcast delivery provider, and probably get at least one more episode recorded - but so far it is looking like a pretty good idea. If nothing else it gives me a GRATE excuse to read some old comics and hang around with Mr Dredge, I just hope future episodes aren't so SWEATY!
posted 1/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Public Intellectualisation
I have recently begun a MULTI-PRONGED attempt to become a PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL! Spoilers: so far it is going all right!
I use the term "public intellectual" because the mighty Dr S Cross used it last week when I had a MEETING with him. I thought he had plucked it out of his mighty BRANE, but it turns out it's an Actual Thing, meaning someone who tries to engage The Public with Academic-Type Stuff in an ENGAGING way.
I met up with Steve last week for a chat and my vague and nebulous big idea is to find ways to talk to people about MY research in an interesting - and if at all possible AMUSING - way, so "public intellectual" seems to fit. I was specifically talking to him about it because he is a TRAINER for people who do this sort of thing - INDEED he was originally going to be a MENTOR for my rejected Arts Council application but he had rather wonderfully agreed to talk to me FOR FREE anyway, which was very nice INDEED of him. THUS we met in my Suprisingly Nice Local for a conversation in which he divulged MUCH wisdom.
It was GRATE - he explained all sorts about the world of Science Comedy and other similar areas, but perhaps most REVALATORILY he pointed out that I already have a NETWORK for this general topic. It turns out that quite a few of the people I have GIGGED with over the years have gone on to DO Public Intellectualism (clearly I do a very classy type of gig), but I hadn't even THORT of asking them for ADVICE as well.
It was really nice of him to tell me all of this stuff, and I almost immediately LEAPT into action (it's not a good idea to IMMEDIATELY leap into action after a couple of hours in a Surprisingly Nice Local) and started PLANNING. I got it all nicely worked out over the following Saturday and on Sunday was ready to start working through it all... and then the situation changed somewhat with The Robert Downey Jr news!
As previously discussed I FLEW into action (which is one step up from LEAPING into it) and began contacting various people in THE MEDIA to say "Hello, I am a - if not THE - Doctor Doom expert and can comment WISELY upon this subject". I am DELIGHTED to say that this has already achieved results because - and I cannot believe this has actually happened - I got asked to write an article in the Radio Times!!!
The Radio flipping Times!! It was AMAZED, not least because it all happened so quickly - the editor of the Sci-Fi section replied with a lovely email suggesting a) a title and b) that I not be afeared of being "Too niche". I took that advice very much to heart, wrote a SOMEWHAT NICHE article and sent it off later in the day. She replied with a couple of changes (i.e. some better jokes!) and that was it. DONE!
I am fairly sure that the rest of this Journey To Public Intellectualism won't be QUITE this quick and easy, but I am very happy to have had SUCH a good start! Now I've just got to send out a few more emails and then it's time to - YIKES - see if I can get some GIGS about it! As ever, if anyone is aware of any places where I could bang on about Doctor Doom AND HAVE PEOPLE LIKE IT, of indeed RUNS such a place, please do get in touch!
posted 31/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Degas and Miss La La
It's the end of our Leave Year at work, so like approx 99.9% of my colleagues I have had several days off over the past couple of weeks to try and get it all used up. HENCE on Friday afternoon last week I had the day to myself and so decided to set off into London Town to see an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just for KICKS.
Unfortunately KICKS were not to be had there as the National Portrait Gallery was FULL. There was a big queue all down the road heading to it with some people in hi-vis with walkie talkies at sporadic points saying "At capacity" to each other. Happily there is an entirely other National Gallery - in fact, THE National Gallery - just round the corner so I went in there instead.
The Actual National Gallery is always worth popping into as it's FULL of dead famous pictures, but this time my eye was caught by an EXHIBITION called Discover Degas & Miss La La. It combined two of my favourite types of exhibition, in that it was FREE and also SMALL, so I went and had a wander round and it was GRATE. It was all about the painting Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando which is the one of someone dangling from a rope in the roof of a building - you will know it when you see it, go and have a look!
It is very much WORTH having a look because a) it is fab and b) it made the whole exhibition make sense. If I have one criticism of this exhibition - and I do - it was that they did NOT show a clear image of the painting right away, so the pre-amble about Miss La La herself and the circus etc didn't really make any sense until I went further in and saw The Actual Painting and said "OH! Right! THAT one!"
The Actual Painting was in the centre of the main exhibition, which was done in a circular arrangement a bit like a circus, with other paintings and sketches around the edges. This collected together the working versions what Degas had made, which was VERY interesting and exciting and dead good to have all in the same place. It also made me think "the pencil sketches look just like comics" which I ALWAYS think when I see such things but remains true.
There was lots of background on Miss La La herself, which was a brilliant idea as it made HER part of the story and not just all about Degas. Slightly annoyingly though all that stuff was at the start of the painting, so it did feel weirdly like she was still being excluded from The Actual Art - it was good stuff but I think it would have been better to put it in with everything else so it was on an equal footing.
Apart from that it was FAB, and I especially enjoyed spotting the same DOGS in the multiple pictures and posters of circus DOGS. There was also a full painting by another artist and photographs of the circus itself and this Having It All In One Place made you feel like you KNEW it and had been there.
I liked it a LOT, and it only took about 15 minutes to take in, even when walking round slowly with your hands behind your back trying to look CLEVER. It's on for another few weeks, so I'd highly recommend going and having a look - whether on purpose or because next door's busy!
posted 30/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Day Of Doom
I awoke on Sunday to discover that suddenly, out of nowhere, Marvel had changed the habits of at least a decade and FINALLY decided to put Doctor Doom in the MCU. Amazingly, they had not only gone and announced that he's the new main baddie for the next Avengers movies, but also that he's going to be played by Robert Flipping Downey Jr!
Crikey, who saw THAT coming? Very much NOT ME, and so I spent a large chunk of the rest of the day trying to ALERT the World's Media that I EXIST and am very much a Doctor of Doctor Doom. I even went and wrote a PRESS RELEASE about it, what you can read for yourself here:
Doctor of Doctor Doom makes his predictions for DoomsdayI also did a shorter version of this as a BLOG over on The Marvel Age Doom blog with LINKS to yet more blogs about each of the stories mentioned above. The general idea I think is to get my name linked with terms like "Doctor Doom", "expert", "academic" and so on in case MEDIA TYPES do a google search for such terms. If that is the case, and any such people are reading this now - I am VERY much up for talking about Doctor Doom!
Robert Downey Junior is returning to the MCU to play Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, and the world's leading (and only) academic expert on Doctor Doom has a few theories about which story it might be based on.
"Doomsday is a great story title for a character called Doctor Doom and so it gets used a lot", says Doctor Mark Hibbett, author of Data and Doctor Doom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the only person in the world to hold a PhD in Doctor Doom.
"The best known story called 'Doomsday' is probably the one from 1967's Fantastic Four #59, when Doctor Doom stole The Power Cosmic from The Silver Surfer". Doom used this mighty power to beat up his enemies and zoom around the planet causing mayhem, before crashing into a space barrier and falling to his apparent death. Spoilers: he did not really die.
"Julia Garner has already been cast as the MCU's Silver Surfer", says the Doctor of Doctor Doom, "so this one does seem likely, but there are plenty of other options."
One example is Doom's Day At The UN from 1976's Spidey Super Stories #9, in which Doom built an army of robot spider-men to trick the United Nations into making him King Of The World. Another is the Simon & Schuster novel Doomsday, in which he tried to use the power of Stonehenge to travel to the after-life and defeat a people's revolution in his native Latveria before apparently dying himself. Spoilers: he did not really die.
"These are all well and good, but my favourite is the very first time this title was used, in a 1966 episode of the Marvel Superheroes cartoon series," says Hibbett. In this story Doom shot the headquarters of The X-Men into the sun, fought Namor The Submariner in space, and was then hit by a meteor and apparently killed. Spoilers: he did not die.
Whichever of these stories gets adapted, Hibbett is excited to see Doctor Doom finally enter the MCU. "He's always been the greatest villain in Marvel Comics", he says, "so I'm thrilled to see how they bring him into the continuity of the movies. Whatever happens, I hope it ends with him apparently being killed and then - spoilers - not dying after all!"
I've spent the past eight years or so TRYING to talk about Doctor Doom but nobody has been hugely interested because he wasn't in any of the films, so I hope that this situation is about to change! If nothing else, it will save me time going "No, he's a baddie in The Fantastic Four. No, not the Famous Five, no, that's Doctor Strange." It would have made my stand-up set a couple of weeks ago a bit quicker for a start!
posted 29/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Arthur C Clarke Completed
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this year I have once again been on a mighty QUEST to plough through the whole of the Arthur C Clarke award shortlist. I am pleased to report that I have now COMPLETED my magical journey and would very much like to share my THORTS with an eagerly waiting world on a) what I thought of the final three that I read and b) which one I think will WIN.
The next book to read on my Virtual Pile was The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler, which was probably the MOST Arthur C Clarke-y of the LOT as it had several different IDEAS in it which it dutifully worked through. It wasn't quite as much FUN as Arthur C Clarke, verging on ponderous at times, but it was all right - the problem was that I've previously read Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children Of Time" series which also features (SPOILERS) Very Clever Octopuses but this time a) IN SPACE and b) much more excitingly, so it came off feeling not quite as good.
I then read Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner which I REALLY wanted to like but just could NOT get on with. It was at least TRYING to be amusing (which most of the other books on this list definitely weren't!) but there wasn't anything hugely engaging about it and behind all of that the characters were a bit boring. "Is this my fault?" I thought, "Can I not connect with The Young People?" (which is ridiculous because I have read and enjoyed several of the Mr Gum books and so am very much down with THE KIDZ) Happily, when the story finally got started about 25% of the way in I realised that it was a literary novel about a literary author who had won a literary award, written BY a literary author who had won a literary award. It was basically TWENTY FIRST CENTURY MARTIN AMIS, and so I felt no guilt in packing it in!
The final book on the list was Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which is advertised as "The Hunger Games meets The Handmaid's Tale" and GOLLY GOSH but that is certainly what it felt like... to start with, anyway. It took flipping AGES to get going as I had to read through page after page of RULES being explained and TERMINOLOGY, like it was a D&D manual or something, and for a long while it felt like a pretty basic attempt to DO ANOTHER HUNGER GAMES. However! HOWEVER! As it rolled on it gradually became clear that there was something ELSE going on, as footnotes got Increasingly Political and also the CHARACTERS became actual characters, rather than cyphers for EITHER The Rules OR The Message. By the time I got to the end I was sad that it had finished, and hoped for another volume. Yes, that's right, call me crazy but I think a SEQUEL to an existing science fiction book set in the same storyworld JUST MIGHT WORK!
So, with all that in mind I am sure you are thinking "But Doctor Hibbett," (thanks) "Which one did YOU think was the best and, if possible, which do you think will WIN?" These are two excellent and clearly very separate questions, so let's answer firstly with which ones I enjoyed the most, in order of preference THUS:
- Some Desperate Glory
- Chain-Gang All-Stars
- The Ten-Percent Thief
- The Mountain In The Sea
- Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
- In Ascension
- Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
- In Ascension
- Chain-Gang All-Stars
- The Ten-Percent Thief
- The Mountain In The Sea
- Some Desperate Glory
posted 23/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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To The Theatre. TWICE.
Myself and The Actors In My Cast List have been to the threate not once but TWICE over the past week and a bit, as we are DEAD SOPHISTICATED like that. Both shows were properly DIY and also GRATE!
The first outing saw us heading for distant PETERBOROUGH and its majestic LIDO, where Peterboroough Mask Theatre were doing their production of "Twelfth Night". To be clear, this was happening in an area NEXT to the swimming pool, not IN the swimming pool - this was perhaps the only improvement I could suggest in an otherwise EXCELLENT show.
For full disclosure, we had gone because it involved The Mylands, with Mr P Myland working on the production side and Mrs C Myland STARRING (because it IS starring) as Malvolio. I was thus all prepared for a night being proud of my PALS and not expecting much else but COR was I ever only half right. For LO! Catherine was AMAZING (weirdly despite knowing of her Thespian Tendencies for DECADES this was the first time actually seeing her in something) and the production was ACE, but then the whole rest of the play was GRATE. I was especially impressed with the LINE READING - I think that's the right term anyway, I mean the way that people spoke the Shakespearian LINES so that you could completely understand but without losing any of the POETRY. I have seen a LOT of Shakespeare plays over the years, including high-priced professional productions, where this has been very much NOT the case, so I was well impressed with that!
It also FELT great - it was lovely being outside watching the play take place between two mighty old trees with birds singing around, but more than that was the feeling of LOVE what had gone into it. As The Notes In My Programme pointed out on the way home, you could tell how much CARE had been poured into it by everyone, who were all doing it for the LOVE of it. It felt special to be there to watch it, and also wonderful that what they had come up with was so GRATE. The only downside was that we had to leave halfway through the second half to go and get our train, but on the other hand that did mean that everything was going JUST FINE for Catherine's character at that point, so we left with a happy ending for Malvolio!
The other show we saw was very similar in terms of LOVE, as it was a revival of "Verbal Diary", a play first co-written and performed by John Otway and Paul Bradley FORTY YEARS AGO. If you've ever read Otway's book Cor Baby That's Really Me you may remember, in amongst all the other adventures, the story of him taking a show to the Fringe featuring a massive book prop that somehow doubled as the scenery. I'd struggled to imagine how that would work, so was RUDDY DELIGHTED to see a new version in real life - a huge actual book where the actors turned the pages (and turned things INSIDE the pages) to create whole scenes in a fantastically creative and exciting way.
It was also great to hear a whole bunch of Otway songs that I'd never heard before, but which, as The Hits In My Hit Parade pointed out, were still distinctly Otway-ish even when performed by other people. The cast were GRATE, and Tom Johnson in the lead was especially ace, often CHANNELLING Otway, which must have felt odd because Otway HIMSELF was there as PROMOTER for the evening. We'd seen him arrive before the show and noted that two members of The Big Band were with him, which was VERY moving to see, and this feeling was increased at the end when it turned out that not only was the co-author Paul Bradley there but also the ENTIRE original cast and various members of the production team too! It says something about Otway that even forty years on he's still in touch with, and PALS with, the people he worked with all that time ago. There was quite a lot of Otway Love in the building (which was The Little Angel Theatre, an ACE venue I'd never been to before), especially at the end when Tom Johnson spoke about how Otway had inspired him. "Don't wait around for an opportunity, go and make your own" he said, and I must admit I shed a MANLY TEAR at this point because that is EXACTLY what Otway inspired in ME all those many years ago too, when I first read his book. It's all his fault!
It was a lovely end to the second of TWO lovely evenings, both full of people doing GRATE things just because they wanted to. Inspirational all round - HOORAH for The Theatre!
posted 22/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Survey Completed
Thanks very much indeed to everyone who filled in my Judge Dredd survey, which has just closed to submissions. I was hoping for about 50 responses but, what with one thing and another and some very helpful Internet Publicising by various delightful people, it ended up having just over 200! This is GRATE for Engagement and Information Gathering, though it does mean it's going to take me a while to do the DATA CLEANING, although this is not a bad problem to have!
When I first tried this out, gathering data about Doctor Doom a couple of years ago, one issue that cropped up at this stage was that people REALLY wanted to demonstrate how much they knew. On the one hand this is EXCELLENT because it means they're willing to fill in a form, but on the other it made life much more difficult for me because it meant I had loads of very long NARRATIVE answers to code e.g. instead of saying that Doom's appearance was "hood, mask, belt" or similar it would be more like "as far as I'm aware he has a sort of cloak or cowl, which is usually green, but that's not always the case. The first time I ever saw himn was..." and so on.
It's lovely that people want to share this sort of thing, but I was very conscious that it wasn't hugely useful to the data, and so they were spending time on it they didn't need to. Also, I didn't have time to read and/or ENGAGE with all of this on a personal level, so it felt slightly RUDE that I was just ignoring it. THUS this time around I moved the order around a bit, so people had a chance to demonstrate their awareness of Judge Dredd right at the start, and then gave examples of how they could answer the main questions that, I hoped, were clearer about the sort of thing I was after.
It didn't work at all! Looking through the answers there's a LOT of stuff there about what Judge Dredd means to them, people's opinions about various versions, and personal reminiscences - all good stuff, but again it makes me feel like the guy from Wendy's in the "Sir This Is A Wendy's" MEME. Actually, I've just looked this up to see if I've used the MEME correctly, and the SECOND example out of thousands is pretty much exactly what's going on!
All of which is to say THANKS again to everyone who took the time to fill in all of these responses, and APOLOGIES to all of those who wrote lengthy, well-considered, very interesting answers that I don't really have the time or ability to fully ENGAGE with. It's all going to be EXTREMELY helpful for the final work - I've just got to get on with it now and start CLEAING!!
posted 19/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The UK Science Comedy Festival
On Sunday, while the rest of the nation was building up to The Nice Young Men Doing Jolly Well Actually in The Football, I was gearing up for a day of SCIENCE COMEDY, for LO! I was booked to appear at The UK Science Comedy Festival!
This was an all-day event which was booked long enough ago for there to be little in the way of thoughts of England getting to the finals of the Euros... including by me! Unlike other, lesser, more cowardly, events, this one was very much still going ahead, so in the afternoon I set off for distant EUSTON and The Camden People's Theatre to IMBIDE some of the other performers before doing my own set later.
The festival was run by Dr Steve Cross of Science Showoff. The GRATE thing about Steve (well, one of them) is that he is not like my usual view of a comedy promoter or comedian i.e. he is a bit more in the ROCK AND ROLL vein of doing daft things (like putting on an all day festival of science comedy in direct competition with the England football team) for the FUN of it. Crucially, he's also someone who HELPS other people (he was helping me by booking me, for example, even though I have not really DONE this stuff much before) and, even more crucially, is not a COLOSSAL WALLY. The world of comedy, in my experience, is filled with Colossal Wallies so finding a NON-WALLY is something to be thankful for.
Also also he was having a BEER when I arrived which only increased my respect - I well remember doing a Very Big Comedy Explaining Show some years ago and receiving looks of HORROR when I was spotted backstage having a beer before I'd even been on stage. People who say "Comedy is the new rock and roll" have never met comedians!
ANYWAY, I had arrived in good time to see a whole BUNCH of other people, intending to take copious MENTAL NOTES on what they were up to- as previously discussed, I am very much thinking of DOING some of This Sort Of Thing in future, so it seemed wise to spend some time looking at what people who are ALREADY at it are doing. It was a mixture of people all along the Science Comedy spectrum from Basically An Academic Presentation With A Couple Of Jokes (I was probably the furthest along on this axis!) to Basically A Normal Stand-Up By Someone With A PhD. My particular favourites were Emily Howling doing a song about SLUGS - it was a proper SONG with IDEAS and excellent words and a POINT - and Iszi Lawrence, who told me a LOT about historical animals while also being very funny indeed. It was also noticeable that most of the people there were quite young - young enough to have their PARENTS their to pick them up afterwards in several cases - although old enough to be doing or HAVE done a PhD, rather than Seasoned Academics. Maybe all the Professors were at home with the football!
My bit was in the very final section, which coincided with half-time, so the audience was very much down to a HARD CORE by this point. I've been working on my set for MONTHS and PRACTICING it for nearly as long so it all went pretty well - there was one joke I forgot to do, but then sticking it in at the end went better, but otherwise I think I did it all correctly. As you can see from Dr Cross's photographs, below, I had a nice time!
I was HUGELY aware of time constraints though, so didn't really get a chance to properly relax into it, and had to SPRINT through the big at the end where I explained The Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Characters via the (excellent) audience suggestion of Doc Brown From Out Of Back To The Future. As is clear from the pictures it was a LOT of fun, but I did miss the freedom of my usual sets where I can have a proper bit of a chat with the audience - Steve, compereing this section, did an EXCELLENT job of exactly that sort of thing, and I must admit I was a bit jealous. That's the fun bit!
Despite DASHING through I did really really REALLY enjoy it, and it felt especially GRATE to be inflicting my RESEARCH on a brand new audience, even one who wouldn't NECESSARILY want to hear about it. Afterwards there were plenty of thoughts buzzing round my head about whether I'd want to do more of this (Executive Summary: yes I would) and where (Executive Summary: no idea as yet) but they all had to be pushed aside to place all my energy into SPEED WALKING through Quiet Streets of Even Quieter Curry Houses back to Saint Pancras to make sure I got home in time for at least a BIT of The Football. In this, I was successful!
It was, all in all, and apart from the END of said football, a GRATE day out, which more to think about it Moving Forward! Also: if we all promise to be well-behaved, could we have KLOPP next please?
posted 16/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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IGNCC 2024
I spent most of last week in distant NORWICH, there to attend the fifteenth annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference.
Well, I SAY I spent it in Norwich, actually I spent it on a weird concrete campus on the very outskirts of that fair city, as it was taking place at The University of East Anglia, or UEA as The Cool Kids call it. UEA is WEIRD (see above) as it is an entirely self-contained campus of JUST UNIVERSITY, and it was mostly built in the sixties in a brutalist style so is like an entire VILLAGE made up of lots of CAR PARKS. Also, it was EXTRA weird because it was out of term so there was hardly anyone around. ALSO also all the delegates were staying in the same student halls (which looked EXACTLY the same as the halls I stayed in in Edinburgh a couple of years ago) THUS you basically only saw the same fifty or so people everywhere you went - when I got home afterwards I felt like a medieval villager suddenly THRUST into the metropolis, surrounded by STRANGERS for the first time!
One consequence of our isolation was that almost all of our dietary needs were met at all points, as there wasn't really anywhere else to go. We had vouchers for breakfast in the cafe (which sat in a pretend street of other shops and cafes close closed for the summer), lunch brought out to us in the conference reception, and then our TEA was supplied at pre-arranged events. It was all very pleasant, but a bit STRANGE, like one long WEDDING RECEPTION.
The actual conference was dead good, and I saw several VAIR INTERESTING presentations, with my favourite - for purely intellectual reasons of course - being a WHISKY WORKSHOP that involved ACTUAL WHISKY. The downside of THIS was that on that day I was semi-sozzled by mid-afternoon and then went on to drink WINE at a conference dinner (in AVENGERS HQ!!) and then BEER in the pub afterwards which was ENTIRELY the wrong order. Luckily, my entire body was on hand to point this out to me the following morning.
To be honest the nicest thing was seeing everyone again. When I first started going to these conferences many moons ago it was TERRIFYING because, like all conferences that have been going for a while, it felt a bit like you were intruding on a reunion and that everybody else knew each other. Thankfully a) comics people are an extremely jolly bunch who make the effort to invite new people in and b) I have been there long enough now to BECOME one of the people being gleefully reunited, but I did have to keep reminding myself that other people were in the same situation I used to be, and invited THEM in too.
Sadly this had some downsides, such as when I ended up bringing forward Early Career Researchers to be BEATEN at POOL by some of our Senior Academics, but my heart was in the right place. Also, I paid for it by being drawn in - AGAINST MY WILL - to a succession of late night drinking escapades by certain of the above which lead to some VERY bleary mornings. Honestly, do they not even THINK of their duty of pastoral care??
Another GRATE highlight was walking into the reception area on the first day to find that Dr D Huxley had brough a MASSIVE pile of old British comics with him to give away for FREE, as part of his Clearing Out His Collection operation. For reasons which will soon become clear I have spent the past couple of weeks searching eBay for Old British Comics and paying sums of CA$H for one or two, and then suddenly I was presented with LITERALLY HUNDREDS of them, all for FREE! This was all very exciting, not just for me but for everybody else there too, and so at every break you would see people gathered around, saying "Oh, just a couple more then" and snaffling piles of comics. It was amazing!
On the last day myself and professional pool shark Dr I Horton gave our presentation about our planned Donald Duck project which seemed to go down all right, including some PERTINENT questions about the issue of STYLE, and also the aforesaid Dr Horton being traumatised by me saying "A lot of arts research is just people saying things". I didn't mean it like that Ian!
It was a lovely, though SLIGHTLY WEIRD, week amongst a whole bunch of lovely, and SLIGHTLY WEIRD, people, as it always is. The next one's going to be in BRUSSELS and I for one cannot wait, although my liver is already getting nervous!
posted 16/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Insufficient Tap Dancing
A week and a bit ago, back in the days when The Tories ran the country (remember them?) myself and The Seat Number On My Ticket went to the THEATRE!
We went to The Barbican to see Kiss Me Kate and it was JOLLY GOOD. I am a BIG FAN of the original movie version, having watched it about 17,000 times on BBC2 during school holidays and then many more since, so was EXCITED to hear the songs live but also mildly cautious because I knew it would not be exactly the same. This was WISE because it was NOT the same, although I must admit I did continue to struggle with this throughout.
Part of this was due to a complete lack of HOWARD KEEL who is UTTERLY GRATE in the original, but I eventually managed to get past this. As many will know I have TROD THE BOARDS myself on various occasions in the past and know full well that a different actor will bring a different INTERPRETATION to a piece darling, and Adrian Dunbar very much did that. NOBODY could do a Howard Keel (apart from Actual Howard Keel obvs) and he went nowhere near it, so all was well.
The problem, however, was one that is common to many aspects of life, both cultural and otherwise, and that was a lack of TAP DANCING. There are huge great LUMPS of "Kiss Me Kate" that call for tap dancing and weirdly that hardly happened. I could have BORNE this manfully if the production had not kept VEERING towards tap dancing and then giving up at the last moment. For instance, there were multiple occasions where SOME people started doing a bit of tap dancing but then the main characters DID NOT, instead just jiggling about a bit. The weirdest version of this was during "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" when the gangsters (who were BRILLIANT) gradually got more and more into doing a proper routine, with hats and canes and everything, building up and up to what was clearly going to be a big tap dance routine... and then didn't do it. It was WEIRD!
Lots of the rest was dead good though, and we had a LOVELY time. This was helped by the theatre itself, which had big comfy seats with plenty of legroom and a wide selection of bars. It DID have a ludicrously long walk to the TOILETS because a) there was some refurbs going on and b) someone had booked a private party in the middle of the building so you had to GO OUTSIDE to walk round it to get to the toilets, but in a funny way this gave everyone in the audience something in common to grumble mildly about. Also, we saw someone who LOOKED and DRESSED exactly like Larry David, which was a constant source of JOY!
It was, in summary, DEAD GOOD, although clearly I need to do some more work on Not Expecting Howard Keel if I ever go and see CALAMITY JANE!
posted 11/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The End Of Eggpod
On Saturday lunchtime I headed off to distant WEST LONDON to Holland Park, there to attend the recording of the last ever edition of I Am The Eggpod. For those who don't know this is a GRATE podcast series in which Mr C Shaw talks to people about their favourite Beatles album or sometimes just The Beatles generally. It is not a COMPLEX idea for a podcast but it has been a LOVELY one as Chris himself is a BRILLIANT interviewer and the whole thing gets carried along on an immense wave of ENTHUSIASM. When it comes to The Beatles, that is precisely the sort of attitude I prefer!
On my travels I got as far as Actual Holland Park park itself but then got a bit lost, and so was DELIGHTED to see, hoving out of the distance, a coterie of INDIE TYPES led by Mr S Love heading my way. I followed them round and through a GARDEN to the Holland Park Opera place, which turned out to be a vast TENT with luxurious seating. It really was very nice in there, you could actually stretch your legs out a bit and get by easily when you needed to go to the loo. I guess Opera Types demand this sort of thing!
The spacing turned out to be extremely handy because the audience was - HOW SHALL I PUT THIS - the sort of audience who would get a bit excited, have a beer beforehand, and then desperately need a WEE halfway through. FOR LO! as expected the vast majority of Podcasts About The Beatles enthusiasists turned out to be middle-aged men of a slightly INDIE bent. It has struck me before, and it struck me again here, that The Beatles is very much my generation's answer to what The Second World War was for the baby boomers - something that happened JUST before they were born that is endlessly fascinating and spawns hundreds of documentaries and especially BOOKS to be read on holiday.
I like this idea a LOT and was all ready to give of it if asked - when Mr R Manuel (for it was he) got the event started he asked everyone to prepare a BEATLES THEORY as he was going to come round and ASK people for them during the break, but alas I spent much of that time in the queue for the aforesaid LOO, looking around and thinking "Oh look, that's ..." as all sorts of people drifted by who I recognised from various aspects of TV, ROCK and comedy. It was a bit like Indietracks, but not as drunk!
The event itself was GRATE. In the first half Chris talked to Stuart Maconie, David Quantick and Laurence Rickard Out Of Ghosts, and it very quickly turned into a live action version of what I always imagined meetings of SELECT magazine would be like. At first I thought "I bet I'm the only person who'd think that" and then looked around and thought "No, no I'm not". The second half started with Samira Ahmed and Mark Lewisohn (who everybody had kept looking at throughout and saying "Have I got that right?") and then David Janson, who'd played the small boy in "Hard Day's Night". He was there because, in theory, everyone was meant to be talking about THAT, but as usual with Eggpod that was just the starting point for everyone to go "Aren't The Beatles GRATE eh?" which, as previously noted, is something I fully support.
At the end Chris thanked everyone and pointed out that the nicest thing about Eggpod was that it had made all of us Beatle-types realise that we weren't alone and that there was a whole WORLD of fans like us out there, and then it all got a bit EMOTIONAL as we all stood for a standing ovation and EYES became DEWY all around. It was all rather wonderful, and a fitting end (if it MUST have an end) to my favourite ever podcast! Thanks Chris!
posted 10/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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An Artists Against Success Presentation