So I've finally finished Atlas Shrugged and my opinion is...

Children's Hospital and the Quick Comedy Question

Rob Coddry as Dr Blake Downs in Adult Swim's Children's Hospital

Recently, I’ve started watching the excellent TV comedy series Children’s Hospital. Ostensibly a spoof of the Hospital drama genre (ER, Grey’s Anatomy, you know the drill), it branches out rather quickly into being a wilfully silly exercise in absurdity and ripping apart the conventions of genre TV. There’s a doctor who was a cop who quit after 9/11. There’s a nurse who falls in love with her patient - who happens to be a 6-year-old with advanced ageing disease. There’s a doctor who tries to use the healing power of laughter, with results that aren’t quite so funny for the patients. Basically, it’s hilarious, and it’s yet another feather in the cap of the most inventive, creative comedy network going. 

Watching this show, I’ve come to realise that Adult Swim is probably my favourite comedy channel right now. I’ve always tended to like their shows, right from the days that they produced cheap off-beat surrealist animation - I can still remember stumbing across Aqua Teen Hunger Force on CNX (RIP) and having my puny teenage mind blown. I remember then watching Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and loving its sense of nostalgia-distortion (I even managed to fit my love of this into an essay at Uni). I remember watching Xavier: Renegade Angel for the first time and not being entirely sure what I’d just seen, and being simultaneously amazed and appalled by what followed. I’ve also greatly enjoyed their expansion into live action programming, be it the wilfully obtuse surrealism of Tim and Eric Awesome Show or the caustically absurd naturalism of Delocated, probably the best comedy that not enough people I know have watched. Children’s Hospital is the latest in a long list of programmes that have rocked my world.

Adult Swim appear to have a very appealing mantra: we’ll give you a very tiny budget in return for also giving you creative freedom. Obviously this system requires either extremely passionate workers or comedians who don’t have to worry about money per se, but it certainly must have a significant level of appeal considering the sheer quantity of the American alternative comedy scene who have been in their various shows. Sure, getting the monies is good, but getting to fulfil your comedic vision on your terms is something that rarely comes around. It almost certainly helps that the shorts are so short.

I’ve stated it before, but I’ll state it again: we all learned the wrong lessons from The Fast Show. Everybody seemed to think that overly-repetitive catchphrase comedy was the way forward. In fact, the only way that this was really inventive in The Fast Show was the way they would run it into the ground and completely overdo it (although they would be inventive in their callbacks, crossover of characters and their misuse and misappropriation of characters). What we should have been paying attention to was what could be achieved with comedy in short bursts. The clue was in the title. 

What's This?

Why, what is this? What could it be? What could it mean? All will be revealed... or will it?

(Yes. Yes it will. Pretty soon, hopefully). 

Number One

England won the Ashes in Australia on the 28th December 1986 in Melbourne. I was 1 year and five days old at the time. Naturally, this means that I don’t have particularly well-formed memories of this series, which in turn means that for the first two decades of my existence I didn’t really know what it was to see a great England cricket team. They were often good, but they’d quickly retreat back into the shadows of mediocrity. Within this context, it's been somewhat of a pleasant surprised to see England crowned this week as the best Test team in the world with their series-clinching 3rd Test victory against India. In the words of Tinchy and Dappy, they're Number One.

The late 90s were a not a fun time to follow English Test Cricket. My first memories of English cricket are of hearing about Brian Lara score 375 against England in a fairly poor test series for England, at what we can now see was the Windies’ last hurrah. The first test series I remember watching was the 1995 home series against the same opposition. England somehow managed to draw the series 2-2, but there was always the feeling that the West Indies were the superior team. They had Lara, and they had Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, perhaps the most feared opening bowling partnership of my time. England managed to scrape the odd result at home, but there was never any sustained success. The team seemed to have potential, but would always give it away and collapse. They’d beat India, but immediately lose to Pakistan. An English Cricket fan suffered from the disheartening combination that is most sports fandom of hopeful pessimism - hope that they could win, pessimism that it would all come tumbling down eventually.

Worst of all, however, were the Ashes, a biennial humiliation at the hands of our feistiest colonial offspring. I vaguely remember the trip to Australia in 1994-5, in which Shane Warne got a hat-trick. I vaguely remember Australia piling on the runs during the day of my Uncle’s wedding in the ‘97 series. I vaguely remember Australia running over England in 1998-9. If this all seems rather unspecific, it’s because it all merges into one prolonged ball of misery. England never had a chance against Australia, and what was worse it that they knew it. They were beaten before they even started the series. Between 1989 and 2003, Australia won eight Ashes series in a row, winning 28 Tests in the process. England won 7 tests, and only three of those were without the series already decided, and even for two of those the only other option was being able to draw the series. England lacked enough talented players, and they lacked the mental fortitude. Considering the luck of my birth, I only ever knew of Australia crushing England. Talk of glories past seemed like fanciful legend, names like Botham and Gower belonging to the myths of epochs past that parents past down to their children.

Things started changing with Nasser Hussain’s rise to captaincy. Clearly a stubborn, bloody minded type of fellow, he also refused to let England give in. Under his captaincy, England managed their first series win over the West Indies in . Even more impressive was the following winter, where England won not one but two series in the subcontinent, both in difficult circumstances. The Pakistan series is most remembered for England chasing down their total in the near dark, refusing to cede the draw. It was the best example of Hussain’s bloody mindedness working. The series against Sri Lanka was also impressive, where England came back from a shellacking in the 1st Test against a Murali in his prime to somehow win the next two tests and the series. Suddenly, it looked like England were on the verge of something. Then Australia turned up, destroyed England, and set everything back again. I remember being taken to the 2nd Test at Lords by my Dad. England were 163/4 in their second innings, still 51 runs behind Australia but poised to make a challenge. England collapsed in an epic manner, and we were home by lunch. What was most galling was how unsurprised we were.

If Hussain couldn’t continue the upwards trend, then the captaincy of Michael Vaughan that followed was probably the most enjoyable period of following English cricket up until this point. He took over during a rocky series against South Africa at home and managed to escape out of that with a draw. Then he won an extraordinary series in the Caribbean where England dominated in a manner hitherto not really seen from an England team. It proved to be just the start, as England managed to sweep all seven tests of the summer of 2004 against New Zealand and the West Indies, before somehow winning their winter series against South Africa. England were humming thanks to a newly found vigor in their pace attack, and with the arrival of a competent spinner in Ashley Giles. The batting, with Strauss and Trescothick at the top of the order with Vaughan and Thorpe to follow. The pieces were in place for a great team, and luckily all the players (and the fans) knew it. For perhaps the first time in my lifetime, English Cricket’s hope was turning into expectation.

2005 was the greatest summer English Cricket has ever had. England won perhaps the greatest Test series ever played, with at least four of the most stomach-churning games I’ve ever watched. It became obvious from the first over that this Ashes wasn’t going to be a rollover, when Steve Harmison hit Justin Langer on the elbow with the second ball of the series. A little while later, he hit Ricky Ponting on the helmet and drew blood. England managed to bowl Australia out for 190, and yet still lost heavily. Nonetheless, it felt different, like they weren’t going to capitulate. This proved useful during the next test, probably the most horrified I have ever been during a sporting event. I couldn’t even watch what turned out to be the final morning, where England came within two runs of letting Australia chase down what would’ve been the largest successful chase with two wickets remaining. Luckily, Michael Kasprowicz gloved Harmison’s bouncer (even if his hand wasn’t on the bat, technically meaning it wasn’t out), and a nation’s arseholes collectively unclenched. I was too scared of losing, which seemed more likely as that final morning spread out, because I could see that it would be too catastrophic a blow to come back from.

Instead, it turned out to be the catalyst for something great as it became obvious that this was no ordinary series. It somehow gripped the entire nation, something I had never seen cricket do, and something I had only really seen England’s abortive attempts in major football tournaments achieve. I specifically remember meeting up with a friend of mine who had just got back from his gap year in Central America and commenting how he had returned to a cricket-mad country. He couldn’t believe it either, and not being a big Cricket fan didn’t understand the appeal. The next time I saw him was after the Old Trafford test, which had apparently gripped his shit. I consider that Test the turning point of that series. Australia managed to escape with a draw but celebrated like they had won. It became clear that the tide had turned, and England took the decisive lead in the next test which featured two of the most remarkable bits of cricket I have ever seen: Andrew Stauss’s frankly insane catch of Adam Gilchrist, and Shane Warne’s dismissal of Strauss with perhaps the best delivery I have ever seen. 

  

When England survived the final test with a draw, we all thought it was the dawning of a new era of English cricket. We threw a celebration in Trafalgar Square, we considered this the best England side we had ever seen. We spoke too soon. Indeed, we had seen the peak of the Vaughan era. Injuries and motivation took their toll on England. They flirted with being great over this period, and proved more than able at home, but their away form was dubious. Losing away in the West Indies in 2009 was particularly poor, but the absolute nadir was the whitewashing in the 2006-7 Ashes, an ignominy even the mediocre sides of the 90s had avoided. Many of the players who had succeeded in 2005 had to leave, either due to mental issues (Trescothick), motivational issues (Harmison), injuries (Simon Jones) or loss of form (Geraint Jones). Of the side that won the Fourth Test in 2005, only three players remain: Strauss, Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen. For someone used to the nineties, this just seemed like a previous boom-bust cycle played out over a more prolonged period.

It took another five years or so, but England have finally fulfilled the promise of 2005, even if so few of the players are the same. Since Andy Flower took over as coach, England have yet to lose a Test series. Indeed, they’ve only drawn one in South Africa, which was quite an achievement in itself. Instead of collapsing, England are dominating proceedings. Sure, there’s been the odd blip (I still don’t understand what happened in the Perth Test last winter) but instead of moping about it, England now rebound in spectacular fashion. They have swagger and they have steel. They have ability and they have expectation.

So why are England so good all of a sudden? Well, to be trite about it, they bat and bowl and field well. England now post big scores. They have batsmen able to adjust their game depending on the pitch and the opposition. They have batsmen capable of scoring not only centuries, but double centuries (and had Alistair Cook not had a brain fart last Friday, triple centuries). They have a top line-up that can pile the pressure on the opposition and keep their lower order safe. Jonathan Trott currently has the second highest average of all time, and yet even he's been overshadowed in the last year. Alistair Cook has been ridiculous over the last year. I remember Michael Vaughan's ridiculous 2002, but even that paled in comparison with the accumulation of runs that Cook has undertaken in the last 12 months.

Most interestingly though, and especially hard to grasp for someone brought up understanding that few things were as predictable as an English batting collapse, they’re often okay if the top order fails as they have perhaps the shortest tail in Test Cricket. They were able to field a side in the last Test against India where the no.10 batsmen had multiple test fifties. They no longer have a true all-rounder like Flintoff, but they have a lot of bowlers capable of doing passing impressions of batsmen, which is the next best thing. 

As good as the batting has become though, I feel the improvement in the bowling has been exceptional. All of the great sides of the past tended to be defined by their bowling line-up, and England might just currently have the best in the world. Jimmy Anderson has over the past few years become the player we all hope he would become when he burst onto the scene, having finally discovered the art of control and ways of taking wickets on non-swinging surfaces. Stuart Broad adds some height and bounce to proceedings, and has bounced back from suggestions before the India series that he should be dropped with renewed vigor. IN Graham Swann, they have a spinner who can go on the offensive. The fact that England lost Chris Tremlett and dropped in Tim Bresnan without skipping a beat is the most telling thing about this all - England now have strength in depth. There’s that very happy balance between team stability and competition for places, and so whilst players don’t need to fear being rashly dropped and recalled at the whims of the selectors, they can’t coast either.

This England side are now officially the best side in Test Cricket. They don’t really have many strong contenders. Indeed, they’re in the process of absolutely pasting of one of the few potential challengers - it’s actually disappointing how India appear to have completely given up. Sri Lanka were also dealt with fairly comfortably as well. Australia, long the invincible destroyer, are now staving off a drop towards being also-rans, as England completely destroyed them last winter. That’s the most interesting thing about this England side - they only really play at their best when presented with a worthy challenge. They beat Sri Lanka, but they’ve crushed a superior India side. The only real challengers left are South Africa, who come over for what I imagine will be another tilt between the no.1 and no.2 sides in the world for the second summer running. It should be awesome.

And yet, the scars remain… even though all objective evidence points to the greatness of this England side, I can’t escape the fear that it’ll come crumbling down at some point. It’s the constant fear that I’ve been brought up with, the climate of imminent catastrophe. England look like world beaters now, so the slide back into mediocrity would be from a far greater height than before (and losing to South Africa is a very real possibility). There’s also the matter of limited-overs Cricket, where despite improvements England are still in that second tier. Nonetheless, I’m starting to accept that things are different now. For much of my life, the England Cricket team were something of a joke, a frustrating entity capable of extreme mood swings and plummeting new depths. Today, they’re something to be proud of. I’m going to enjoy it while I can.

You Can Tell All Cyclists Are on Drugs...

...because you'd have to be on some seriously heavy crack to want to cycle up the Pyrenees. I caught the end of Stage 14 of the Tour de France today and I got tired watching it, never mind actually doing it.

Cyclists show intense physical ability and mental fortitude, because you just know that they wanted to get off their bike and twat the slightly-too-close-and-intense crowd.

Hip Hop Hubris: 'Forever' by Drake et al

Last name: Ever
First name: Greatest
Like a sprained ankle
Boy, I ain't nothin' to play with
-Drake, 'Forever'

Hmmm. Last name: Ever and first name: Greatest. Well, that makes the name... Greatest Ever. Now, Drake, I don't think that's actually your real name, not when Wikipedia tells me that it's actually Aubrey Drake Graham. So if that's not your actual name, I assume that you're using it as some kind of braggadocio for something. But what?

Greatest Ever Drake? Sorry son, but I'm pretty sure that title belongs to Sir Francis.

Greatest ever MC? Well, that's a very bold claim. Three MCs I would consider his superior off the top of my head would be Kanye West, L'il Wayne and Eminem... totally coincidentally, the three guest stars on this  track.

Well, I've run out of ideas. Maybe he makes a mean chilli.

Of course, it's interesting this video is make in conjunction with brand LeBron (this song was on the soundtrack to More Than a Game, the documentary about LeBron's last high-school season). There's a lot of posturing by the two of them, a lot of needing to be constantly reminded by their support groups about how awesome they are. LeBron and Drake are totally friends, by the way.

(In the interests of fairness, Drake is totally right about sprained ankles. You definitely don't want to play on one of those. Take it from the guy who sprained his ankle and thought it would be okay to go out that same night if he shoved a bag of ice down his sock. Not my smartest move).

The Competitive Art

Yesterday, the great Darren Lockyer played in his last State of Origin game for Queensland. It being a momentous occasion worth celebrating, Channel 9 decided to pull out all the stops with its opening cinematic. In it, we got to see Darren at his old family home in Roma, Queensland, and get told about his idyllic youth that shaped one of the greatest rugby league players of all time. To the ongoing strains of Muse’s ‘Exogenesis Symphony Part 2” (a favourite of the NRL on Channel 9), Darren revealed to us just how special his childhood had been:

“Cricket in the summer, Rugby League in the winter, Squash, Basketball, Motorbikes and Crayfishing. Not once did we sit in the house playing computer games.”

I rolled my eyes so far back at this that I was practically looking back into my sockets. Really, Darren? I suppose the fact that Lockyer is one of the finest players of all time is no doubt down to the fact that he never played Street Fighter II with his brothers. It was such a pointless and unnecessary remark in a celebratory piece that stuck out like a neon signal of negativity. Now I know Australia doesn’t have the most enlightened attitude towards video games anyway, but even so it struck me as so… unnecessary.

Haye vs Klitcshko, Boxing and Bloodlust

Last night, Wladimir Klitcshko beat David Haye in a Boxing bout to unify the World Titles. Although there's been a lot of poo-pooing of the fight, I didn't think it was that bad. Wlad actually had to try for once, and it was nowhere near the debacle that Haye's previous fight with Audley Harrison was. However, it definitely left a sour taste in the mouth, and it's because the two fighters did so much trash-talking beforehand and instead of trying to kill each other, they settled for trying to outmanoeuvre each other with only limited success. After promising to deliver Boxing's grandest statement, the knockout, they both settled into trying to tag the other with limited power. Both fights forsook violence for victory, trading the ultimate glory for the consolation prize.

People often complain about Boxing being a barbaric sport, and wonder how it can be still considered a form of entertainment in this day and age to watch two men essentially try and kill each other. Aren't we supposed to be beyond that, as a species? There are many counter arguments to be made, such as Boxers being about as fine athletes as you can find, and the skills required being immense, and that it is perfectly possible to enjoy boxing on a tactical, skill level. There's some truth to this, but as last night showed, violence is a such massive part of Boxing's fabric that its absence becomes more upsetting than its presence.

The fact of the matter is that when people watch Boxing, they do want to see someone get hurt. As much as one plays up the tactical elements of the sport, or the appreciation of the skills and strategy on offer, it requires that bloodlust to fuel it. In many respects, combat sports are as pure as sport gets - just two men pitting their physical and mental selves against each other in a controlled environment (the controlled conditions of Boxing being the fine line that truly separates it from a street fight). Whilst it is perfectly possible to appreciate Boxing on a tactical, intellectual level, what makes it so compelling is that this chess match of the fists has to be played on the board of primal bloodthirst with the high-stakes currency of human well-being. It's what makes the sport such a high-pressure spectacle. It's no coincidence that at the highest level Boxers receive such insane paydays - they are effectively putting their lives on the line to deliver a spectacle for the masses. As a spectator sport, Boxing relies both on the human urge to see violence and also on the human fear of receiving violence. There's definitely an unedifying, morbid cloud that hangs over the sport of Boxing, but it is this very real sense of danger that makes it so compelling, and removing it takes away the element of fear and worry that it is intrinsically reliant on.

The Amazing Olympic Opening Ceremony Idea

I won't lie, I'm a little worried...

There's been a lot of pontification about the Olympics in London lately. Oh, I'm sorry, haven't you heard? The Olympics are taking place in London next year, and there's been a large outcry over the semi-bullshit methods of ticket distribution (Men's Basketball tickets FTW). I feel this has been distracting from the bigger issue, the one that's secretly weighing on a city's (and a nations's) mind - how stupid the Olympic ceremony will be.

I just have this horrible feeling that it's going to be some stupid attempt at being 'representative', 'artistic' and all those other superfluous buzzwords that ruin it for everyone. Basically, it's going to be a misguided attempt at being a 'worthy' spectacle, which is exactly what happened with the Millennium Dome saga. Look, we all saw the Beijing Olympic ceremonies, and they were pretty damn spectacular:

Why would we even try to compete with that? There's no way it turns out as impressive. No way in hell. For a start, the reasons to be skeptical made themselves known at the very end of the Beijing Closing Ceremony, when London made a little cameo. You may remember that we got this:

Leona Lewis out of the top of a collapsible double-deck bus. Wonderful. How representative. How tasteful. How awe-inspiring. No doubt the Chinese felt shown up on their own doorstep by this display of Britishness. Or not.

Look, we can't match the manpower or dedication of the Chinese, so why even bother trying? It's just going to look like a low-rent version of what's gone before, and that doesn't do anyone's image any good. I bet Danny Boyle, the Creative Director for the Opening Ceremony, knows this.

What we need is a different approach.

Now after the Closing Ceremony in 2008, my Dad actually had quite a good idea, inspired by Lewis' little-known backing guitarist that day, one Mr Jimmy Page: what if the Opening Ceremony was a Led Zeppelin reunion concert? You have to admit, that would be showing the world: look, we've provided the planet with a disproportionate number of the most kickass rock bands in history. Bow down before us! Alas, I don't think the Zep would be up for it, and we'd have to either blow a large portion of the budget on resurrection technology or find a replacement for John Bonham (no, his son is not acceptable. This is the Olympics, damnit!) . However, this idea did get me thinking about what could work, and eventually led me to a solution which is 100% foolproof:

THE 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY SHOULD BE A MASSIVE GRIME CONCERT

Bo Burnham - Shepherds Bush Empire (18/6/2011)

If you're reading this, chances are you're on the internet, and if you're on the internet chances are that you've heard of Bo Burnham. He's the prodigy of the comedy world, a 20 year old whose internet videos have won him worldwide acclaim and popularity. After a well-received run in Edinburgh last year, Burnham undertook his first UK tour, and I was lucky enough to be at the tour's final stop in London. 

Looking down at the crowd from my seat up in the rafters, I thought back to an interview I'd read with Burnham about his audiences in the UK, which he said would be more likely to consist of older patrons. Well, not this crowd - I definitely felt like an old man in this crowd, and I'm in my mid-20s. It seemed to be full of teenagers using their smartphones and their twitters right up to the start of the show (some even taking in the start of the show - thank you, YouTube).

And what a start it is - Bo's opening segment is a sprawling seven minute opus, starting off with an epic drone as Bo sets the faux-serious epic tone that he quickly dismantles as he hurtles into comedy lightspeed, taking in a tour of audience abuse (in an endearing way), bathetic undercutting of the intensely dramatic backing-track, and a tour of a fantasy-land with Bo proceeds to desecrate and and cut down, before ending in good-old innuendo. It's an opening that showcases two things that become recurring themes throughout the evening - the relentless pace with which he goes about working the stage, and the wide-reaching, quick-jumping approach he has to his material. 

Bo's songs tend to employ either clever wordplay or quick undercutting of tone, and a few of his songs end on abrupt punch-lines into staccato, just as they seem to be started. The storytelling within the musical element of the show is an interesting comparison with the stand-up part of his show, which consists mostly of quick-fire one-liners, which indicate a rather scattershot approach to his his comedy. He can seem like a demented ADD sufferer at times, simply unable to focus on one thing. It almost feels like he feels that he has to fill the space between the songs with whatever comes into his head.

The reason Bo has such a devoted following is his positioning himself as the mainstream outsider. He often refers to people not liking him and his not liking people. People feel that they can relate to his troubles and travails. In this context, his final piece, 'Nerds', is surprisingly moving - a thoughtful, restrained rap about being a nerd and the abuse that he received for it. It helps that he's a competent enough rapper, but it's delivered with a raw emotional conviction that makes it seem far more personal than the rest of his material, which since it tends to take a more attacking tone has to lie hidden behind the veil of persona. 

I think my highlight of the night actually preceded 'Nerds', when Bo quickly slipped off the mask of his stage persona and started to espouse his love of the UK comedy scene, namechecking people like Tim Key and Tim Vine, before waving his arms at the sky and screaming "WHY STEW, WHY??? WE COULD'VE BEEN FRIENDS!!!", a reference to the seeming discontent he appears to have drawn from UK comedy hero Stewart Lee (Lee had an article in the Financial Times on Friday feeling sorry for Burnham for being compared to him in the previous week's Guardian). I've always got the impression that Lee is more opposed to the idea of Burnham than anything else,

I took a friend to see Bo as a birthday present, and when we left the Empire we walked past the alley leading to the Stage Door. A crowd of  youngsters had already started forming, no doubt hoping to catch an autograph of the internet's biggest crossover star. I saw my friend looking down that alleyway, and could see that she was considering joining them, even though she had nearly a decade on the rest of the group, before evidently feeling I was guilting her into feeling too mature to stoop to that. I could see where she was coming from: Bo's an incredibly likable presence which allows him to get away with pushing pretty far into scathing attack. I think the kid's gonna do alright. 

Hip Hop Hubris: 'Empire State of Mind' by Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys

me i gotta plug Special Ed and i got it made,
If Jesus payin LeBron, I’m paying Dwyane Wade
 -Jay-Z, 'Empire State of Mind' 

Now this was quite a bold claim by Jay-Z when he first made it in 2009. I assume his meaning at the time was supposed to be that he was only slightly behind Jesus in terms of importance and ability to compensate NBA stars for their ability.

Then LeBron James decided to move to Miami and play with Dwyane Wade. Then they made the NBA Finals and Wade played significantly better than LeBron, who had an implosion on a scale rarely seen and rarely dissected by such media scrutiny (which admittedly was self-inflicted), and everybody had to re-evaluate the LeBron-Wade relationship. As Bill Simmons wrote on Grantland:

If you watched Games 3 and 4 in person, you knew Miami belonged to Dwyane Wade. That was the hardest thing to shake. We made so much fuss about LeBron these past two years and he's not even the most important dude on his own team.

Basically, what I'm trying to ask is this: did Jay-Z say he was better than Jesus? 

WEDDING FEVER

Apparently there's some sort of wedding on. Some couple have managed to shut down London AND THE NATION.

Apparently everyone's having a massive street party to celebrate what a joyous occasion this all is, and to show their solidarity with the Royal Family.

Apparently there is nothing else worth talking about today, at least according to EVERY NEWS CHANNEL ON THE PLANET.

Apparently, the Royals have done themselves some good by marrying into a family of commoners (at least I think that's how it works...).

And apparently, I've just fallen into its trap as well. I didn't even watch the fucking thing - I was too busy listening to Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla dissect Fast and Furious 5. I did watch the pre-game show where all the entertainment was likely to be had, but that proved to be a tad disappointing - simply a load of people chatting shit about a load of other people.

I must admit though, I have been mildly shocked by the numbers of people in Hyde Park. I just didn't think that many people cared. I'm not anti-monarchy as such, but I'm not really pro-Monarchy either. I just don't care, and that's the impression I got from most people I've barely talked to about this. Well, I guess some people care. As for the street parties... well, we Brits don't need much of an excuse to start a piss-up. The BBC had footage from a street party at what looked like Notting Hill, and to be honest it looked less crowded than it does every year for the Carnival (and admittedly less boarded up).

 Oh, and E! sent their cameras over, so it must've been big. I think Kate Middleton might prove to be right up their street.

Still, it's all over now. Peace at last.

SUITS

Suits is a webcomic that I write & draw (and colour and letter). It tells the tale of a group of three men who are hired by an established political figure to fight crime, and are aided by technologically advanced tailoring.

The three of them appear to be effective, but only in a clumsy, crude, rudimentary way. After a series of PR mishaps, their benefactor decides that they need a more feminine touch and hires a woman to join them, a move that does not go over well in the chauvinistic world of private-sector vigilantism.

Adding to their trials is that just as the new girl is starting, a mysterious weapons dealer is apparently having shady meetings with some businessman of questionable repute about a new venture. This venture is a little bigger than a few rifles off the back of a truck - in fact, it's more GIANT ROBOT sized. 

It is to my eternal shame that Suits has been going on at a snail's pace. I started it back when I was at university, and actually finished scripting it years ago - it's unfortunate that I'm a reluctant slow-coach artist. However, I have recently done Part 4, and I'm fairly confident about picking up the pace - just as long as life doesn't get in the way.

Anyway, the main site for it is here. The individual parts are posted below, check it out, and whenever I get around to getting further parts up I'll put it up on this blog.

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4

Limmy's Show

I can't remember the exact moment during Tramadol Nights that I started whispering to myself "It's over. Comedy is over. There's no coming back from this" but I'm pretty sure it was quite early on. It wasn't so much that the stand-up was mediocre, and clearly padded out with Boyle's 'banter' with the audience, or that pretty much all the sketches seemed to involve someone 'hilariously' being on some kind of drugs that they shouldn't have been that was pissing me off. It certainly wasn't the shameless attempts at controversy mongering that was rife from the first minute to the last. It was just the sense that this was Boyle's vision let loose(he made a big song and dance about Channel 4 giving him more creative freedom) and the best he could come up with was something so tedious and unimaginative. It seems somewhat odd, then, that another sketch show from a Glasgwegian comedian also produced by The Comedy Unit should offer a far more inventive, watchable, and indeed funny show that shows letting one man dictate his vision can be a good thing after all.

It's unlikely that you'll have heard of Brian Limond, AKA Limmy, especially if you don't live in Scotland. In fact, I've realised that my introduction to him was via a short cameo of his in The IT Crowd, playing an unintelligible window cleaner. Look, I even have proof:

Anyhoo, he's been building up quite the portfolio over the last few years, having done shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, appearing in Consolevania and Videogaiden (between them the greatest shows about video games ever made, by quite some way) and having done short pieces for The Culture Show. Probably his greatest achievement was Limmy's World of Glasgow, a collection of podcast monologues from a variety of characters in Glasgow. Many of the characters in World of Glasgow make their transition to TV with Limmy's Show (although some gems are missing, particularly Vijay, a well-meaning asian boy who somehow manages to cause trouble unintentionally).

There's no getting around it: Limmy's Show will never achieve a mass audience (and not just because it currently only broadcasts in Scotland). It's weird, it's offbeat, it strings together memes and motifs out of the most bizarre observations on modern life, and it's very influenced by 1980s culture and music. There are no catchphrases to cling on to. But it has such a different vibe running through it, and such a relentlessly fearless commitment to its ideas and its sense of innovation that it is hard to not at the very least admire it. I've heard a lot of people say they like it more than they find it funny, and I'll admit at times that it can stray too far into being 'clever', but there's more than enough quality gags running through the show as well.

If it's possible to say that there's a recurring theme to the show, it's that it likes to focus on the mundane, and even find the bizarre within. Limmy often turns up and gives us his own worldview, which can be bleak and world-weary, but then these are often offset by (or even lead into) flights of fancy. It often starts off looking like observational comedy, but turns into something very different. Limmy likes playing on our expectations and twisting them around on us.

But perhaps the thing I like about Limmy's Show the most is the pacing. The lesson every sketch show seemed to want to learn from The Fast Show (a seminal programme for me) was that if you have a load of characters who spout catchphrases, then the public will eat it up. The better lesson to learn was in the title of the show: if you keep up a rapid pace (or at least mix it up from time to time) you can get away with a lot more. So whilst there are longer, slower, more cerebral sketches (particularly those involving Dee Dee, a loafer with a wild imagination) they are punctuated with many shorter, sharper sketches. Keeping the audience disconcerted with the variations in pace means that you can catch them off-guard. I always like it when a comedy show surprises me and does the unexpected, and Limmy's Show is very difficult to second-guess. You could be stuck in an extended diatribe on the use of americanisms in British society one minute, then seeing John Merrick dance to David Bowie the next.

Basically, Limmy's Show is unlike any other show currently on British TV right now, and I can't really think of many shows like it from times past either. You can get the 1st series on DVD, and the 2nd series is currently on BBC2 Scotland right now. For those of us stuck down here in England, iPlayer will do the job, and most of it appears to be on Youtube as well. Still, I think it deserves a national audience, even a minimal one. C'mon BBC, you managed to find a time and place for Still Game and Chewin' the Fat in England, why not afford Limmy the same luxury?

10 Minutes at Alexandra Palace station

So I took the walk from Wood Green up to Alexandra Palace rail station the other day, up the hill along Station Rd. Just missed the train, much to my ire. I could've probably run for it, but I've got this weird principle about not running for public transport - especially when I'm probably not going to get on the train. I mean, it's quite a run from the top of the station.

Anyway, the service from Ally Pally has improved quite a bit over the years, and for some reason First Capital Connect run a really frequent service during the day (yet not so frequent in the evening) which meant that I only had to wait for 10 minutes for the next train.

10 minutes.

10 minutes, when you have nothing to do but wait, can be a long time. Especially on an exposed, open platform like Ally Pally. I mean, there's nothing particularly unpleasant about the place, but there's definitely nothing pleasant about it either. It's just so... bleak. So grey, so dull, so meh. Now I know most suburban rail stations in London fulfil those criteria, but the size of the station, the number of tracks running through it and to the side of it, it all adds a sense of scale and majesty to the level of mundaneness that seeps out of the place. Thanks to it all running through a trough through Haringey, you get minimal sense of the surrounding environs as well - it's its own little world, its own enclosed empire of humdrum.

I think people know this, because there's rarely all that many people on the platforms, which seems odd considering there are four operational platforms at the station. Given how crowded the line always is, there are very few people ever at this station. Perhaps people don't like standing in the oppressive enclave, the boredom punctuated frequently by the violent rush of express trains seemingly too close and too energetic.

And because I had 10 whole minutes to waste, and nothing else to occupy them with, I ended up thinking of all the times I've ended up at this concrete hole, and all of the times that I've waited here.

Like all the times when I'd get dropped off on Saturday mornings after playing football for school because there were no stations near whoever we were playing, and because Ally Pally was usually on the route home for my mate Dave, so his dad kindly would drop me here. Waiting on that platform, usually in school uniform (stupid pre-match attire regulations), usually despondent after a heavy defeat - a feeling amplified by the misery of the surroundings (and by the extra-long waits at the weekend on that line).

Or the times I'd have to wait at the station, because Ally Pally is the last stop before the line branches, and for some reason I'd consider it better to wait there than to miss a train at Finsbury Park even though the arrival time would be the same, probably just to trick myself into think that my journey was actually making progress.

Or the times that I'd waited on that platform drunk, what with our Rugby League team having occupied a residency at The Gate just opposite the main entrance to the station. I'd usually be a bit more cheery waiting then, not least of all because I was intoxicated which helped by to phase out the bleakness. It was either the station, or the walk back down the hill and a long bus journey. The station doesn't seem so bad then. Some good times.

It's weird how your sense of nostalgia can get tied up in places like this. Nothing particularly momentous ever happened to me in this not particularly momentous place, but even so it took very little to trigger a sense of remembrance. It's not even a question of remembering events either - I don't think I could even tell you about a specific time I waited at the station. It's all a memory of feeling, of experience, of things happening with no consequence at all. It's just a place where nothing happens, except waiting, and yet my life has intersected with it on so many occasions. Life is a series of nothings punctuated by the occasional something, and both have to happen somewhere - I guess Ally Pally is an accumulator of nothings. Perhaps when enough nothingness builds up, your brain converts into a something.

Then a train came. I got on it. Yet more nothingness for the collection.

It Begins...

What begins? Who knows?