Competition time!

July 22nd, 2010

Due to matters of my concerning my own incompetency I have bought the same comic twice. My automatic thought process in events of this nature are now

“Well, I’ll give it away on Twitter”

Lots of fun has come from this, so I presume it will for this to. I thought about it for a little while and realised I had a few other good comics I wouldn’t mind giving away. So…have decided to throw a…

Follow Friday competition!

Yes! a follow friday competition! I’ve been occupying my creative side in recent weeks by making more and more ornate follow fridays and I have decided to extend the challenge to you.

The rules are

  • Make a follow friday thing, it can be a video, a picture, some music, anything!
  • You can only suggest 5 people who you feel are under followed and can brighten the lives of their fellow twitterers
  • You can’t suggest me as I have more than my fair share of followers already
  • You have until midnight on the 23rd of July 2010 (tomorrow)

Make me aware of it and I’ll pick which one makes me smile the most. Now go! create! for narnia!

Note: I shall update this to be a proper blog later tonight, I just wanted to get this out there.

Posted in Follow Friday, Twitter | No Comments »

Toe Punt: My Life in Football – Part 1, The Springtime of Youth

July 6th, 2010

I love football. I always have. It has been a sizeable part of me since I was a diddy thing. There are so many things I could talk about, par example:

  • The 2010 World Cup
  • My new sense of football perspective
  • Podcasts
  • My beloved Southampton’s chances of promotion from League One
  • My steadily declining opinion of the Premier League
  • Whether or not to buy a season ticket for Fulham this year

But this is pub talk. If I tried to cover everything then I’d cover nothing. Plus, this kind of stuff can get really quite boring for those who don’t care about football, they do exist you know, weirdos. With this in mind I have decided to write about a facet of my football life that is at least mildly accessible

My football playing career

Oh yes! and what a career it was. Dizzying highs, sickening lows and bog standard middles. First of all, we should get one thing clear

I am awful at football

Mmhmm. I was one of those kids. Loved the game, couldn’t play it for toffee, not properly anyway. Any skill I had was attained via sheer dogged persistence rather than any natural flair for the game. I was Rock Lee.

The Springtime of Youth!

The story of my career starts (and ends) in Netley Abbey. The village I grew up in. Netley Abbey is a lovely spot, situated in the suburbs of Southampton. Home to the world famous Abbey Ruins, which despite what you might think is actually an old ruined Abbey. And lest we forget the Royal Victoria Country Park, site of the old military hospital during World War II. If you’re looking for a quiet village for a holiday this summer then look no further than Netley Abbey, that’s Netley Abbey. Sorry, I seem to have wandered a tad.

I lived on a middle of the road estate called Ingleside. It’s really quite a charming name now I think about it, kinda took it for granted when I was an idiot (child). All of my friends lived in and around Ingleside so games of football would start ad nauseum. I was very lucky because I lived right next a nice large patch of grass about half the size of a normal football pitch. Now it did have a footpath carving its way through the middle of it, but that only served to make things more exciting. Slide tackles were like Russian Roulette. Well they would be if I did them but being a total wuss I never really commited to a challenge.

The pitch, such as it was, was surrounded by people’s back fences. For us they were actually very robust goal nets. We would regularly smash people’s fences to bits in the name of the beautiful game. It was never intended, just collateral damage. I did a blog a while ago about our adventures smashing people’s property so I’ll refer you to that (link!) and move on.

This pitch was where my fledgling career began. Chasing the ball around, no guile, no grace. But hey, we were 9, bugger off. We spent the majority of our time playing a game I can’t remember the name of, but it involved 1 goalkeeper and a bunch of kids taking shots. We’d set it up so there were two professional teams playing and we’d imagine a game, shouting the names of our favourite players and such. It was brilliant.

As we played we kinda sussed which players we were most like. For example the little kid Stew emerged as Andy Townsend. This was mainly because he just tackled people. He was quite good at it but that was it. Tackle tackle tackle. I don’t know what Stew is doing now but I don’t think he’s an ITV pundit. He could probably do it, the only qualification necessary that I can see is to have a face.

Anyway, for some reason it emerged that I was

Teddy Sheringham

Terry Shedingham

Now our rationale at the time was that I had a tendancy to toe punt the ball and subsequently hit it fucking hard. Now I really don’t why it was Teddy Sheringham. He was quite a cultured player and never one to just lamp it. On reflection I think I’m more like

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

That's me. Definitely.

That’s more like it. He was pretty good, didn’t do *that* much but in the words of Alan Partridge “had a foot like a traction engine”. On numerous occasions I would get frustrated and or bored and just leather it. It didn’t always (or often) go in but by christ it went somewhere far away. Over a fence normally. Though it’s a do or die mentality, if a shot of that raw brutal power goes in from distance, it’s a thing of beauty. I seemed to be pretty good at crossing too. Well sort of. Not really.

That’s how it was for what seemed like decades, in a good way. We played football pretty much every available second of our lives. Kicking balls over fences and into bushes, scoring screamers and such, happy days. If I gave those years to Peter Kay, he’d get a good 25 minutes of material out of it. But it didn’t stay this way, back off Peter.

Up until now I’d only played casual football. You know, small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Rush goalie. Two at the back, three in the middle, four up front, one’s gone home for his tea. Beans on toast? Possibly, don’t quote me on that. Marvellous. But being a football fan you know there is more to it than that. Not much mind, but a bit.

Occasionally we would play on full size pitches, rarely with goalposts and perish the thought, A NET. Once you get a taste for that you can’t go back. We would always have silly knock around football but we all yearned for something a bit more. Something with rules and scores and numbered shirts and oranges and shouting parents. It was time to join a team.

I realise now that this blog is quite a bit longer than I thought it would be, so I’ll wrap it up for now and continue the next chapter (Going Pro) in the not too distant future. If you’d like to go on holiday to Netley Abbey, then go here for more details. You never know, you might bump into me. *

* You won’t bump into me, I live in London.**

** If you do live in London you might bump into me, I’m always looking at my phone while I walk. I’m a danger to myself. Beware.

Posted in Football, Me | 1 Comment »

You’re having a Giraffe

May 16th, 2010
me

Jason - Aged 27

Sometimes you tweet something and you could never guess the consequences of your idle warblings. I’ve already blogged about the Giraffe thing but I felt the whole adventure was also note worthy. I’m no stranger to the power of getting people enthusiastic about an idea. The whole #ratm4xmas thing was the perfect example of that and I blogged about it at the time. As per usual, this all occurred on twitter, where fun stuff always happens.

Twitter tends to work like the ocean. The sea ebbs and flows with the tide, occasional blips will stir up a storm or two. Whatever starts will eventually fade away into forgotten memory. We people sit on the beach and react differently to these developments. Some get on their surfboards and ride those waves while they can. Some have a paddle in the shallows dipping in every now and then. Some will be in a meteorological office plotting maps of the occurrences, comparing them to old occurrences. And some sit on the beach laughing at everyone else. I’m kinda a mess of all of the above. I can be quite reactionary/band wagony which I’m trying to address. More often than not some wise older than me thing will point out the wider issue and I’ll be left looking like a puppy covered in mud. I want to be wise old labrador. Maybe one day…

Recently a storm started which didn’t stop for so long that I’ve forgotten when it started, it’s only just falling away now. I refer of course to the UK general election. Twitter was ablaze with election based jabber for weeks. Links, jokes, hash tag games the whole shebang. This whole thing has been quite good for me because it finally helped me breach the world of politics and gain a better understanding of the whole process. It showed me why it was important to vote and all that.

The problem for me was the doom laden inevitably of it. If I was of the tory way of thinking it might have been better but due to my silly beliefs in compassion and such like it wasn’t to be. Thing about twitter is you tend to gravitate towards people who think similarly to you, unless you like looking for an argument, but I don’t. Consequently, most of the people I follow were lefty types and were all getting very down about the numbing inevitability of an impending tory government.

This really reached critical mass on election day and it was all getting a bit much. I could see that people needed a little distraction, just a little reminder that even on days like this of enormous consequence, we can still have a giggle. It could have been anything, just something to take your mind of the thing that had dominated your thoughts for so long. So I had a quick think and then it just popped into my head.

Draw a Giraffe

It was obvious to me immediately how it would work. No competitions, no talent requirement, nothing that would make it stressful or competitive, that was the last thing everyone needed. People just needed a little release, a little sunshine. So I tweeted a request for people to draw Giraffes and off we went. I drew mine first and people got onto it straight away. The seed had been planted. All you need is about 5 other people to have a go and the inspiration spreads like a forest fire. As time rolled merrily forward over the course of the day the entries were rolling in. Each one a thing of beauty. You could see in each picture how much fun they’d had drawing it.

Just as quickly as it had started it had finished. I wasn’t going to press the issue as there didn’t seem to be any point. It was always intended as a little distraction and on those terms it was very much mission accomplished. By the end of the day the collection stood at 125 giraffes! I was so proud of everyone. I made a little gallery for them and thought that was that. But there was one last thing…

People ask me about twitter a lot but I’m never able to truly explain why it’s brilliant. I guess it’s brilliance is the sum total of the people you follow and interact with. I follow the best bunch of guys in the world so everyday is a joy for me. The one thing I will say to people is this

You get out what you put in

I tweet a lot, I make very few apologies for this as it has given me so much. This Giraffe thing was no different.

A guy I’d met a little while ago, Mike (@mikewinship, follow him), was at a festival called ATP. The special curator (or something) of the event in question was none other than Matt Groening. Anyone who knows me, knows that the Simpsons is truly one of my favourite things in the world. No matter what it does now, nothing can spoil the memory of the golden age. You can imagine my excitement when Mike tweets me this:

@mixmasterfestus Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to get Matt Groening to draw a giraffe. This is a good plan, yes?

Now, Mike was delirious with Giraffe fever and had declared he was going to attempt to get a Groening giraffe. I didn’t want to get my hopes up so I wished him all the good luck in the world and watched with eager anticipation. It was like chinese water torture for me so I can’t imagine what it was like for him. Here’s how it went down:

@mixmasterfestus @mapsadaisical I’ve been in the signing queue twice now & he’s stopped before I got to the front. Won’t fail again… (1:32 AM May 9th)

Waiting in line to try and get Matt Groening to #drawagiraffe – he’s not here yet tho… #ATP (3:43 PM May 9th)

@mixmasterfestus @mandrewb have been told he’s not signing til 6. Queue disbanded. I now have no purpose for an hour or so. (4:29 PM May 9th)

Then nothing, until 2 hours later…

7th from the front for signing… #drawagiraffe happening real soon! (6:39 PM May 9th)

Then it happened…

Matt Groening: “Giraffes are hard!” #drawagiraffe http://twitpic.com/1mh5g0 (6:55 PM May 9th)

:O:O:O

Mission accomplished!!! #drawagiraffe http://twitpic.com/1mh5v4 (6:56 PM May 9th)

Mike Winship, a king among men

I was so proud. To think a single tweet could reach so far only goes further to prove how much fun can be had on this earth. It was the best end to this saga I could have possibly hoped for. It was perfect. We should all thank Mike for his dogged persistence and for just capturing the spirit of this whole thing so brilliantly.

Now all that remains is the question of what to do with these Giraffes. People have suggested donating them to the marvellous Onemilliongiraffes.com project. Thing is I can’t donate them as they aren’t really mine. This whole thing wasn’t about drawing them for me, they were about drawing them for yourself. The One Million Giraffes thing seems like a nice idea, but it’s not my place to just giveaway other people’s lovely pictures, that’s their decision.

People have suggested making a book of the pictures or something. At first I thought I might be stepping on the Onemilliongiraffes chap’s toes but he’s doing this for a bet whereas I’ve been doing it for no real reason whatsoever. I’ve come to think thats there plenty of room for Giraffe based hijinx so it would be fine for me to do something with the election collection, as long as it’s a force for good it doesn’t matter. If they find their way into the million too, all the better. I’ll pitch it to the guys who drew them and see if they can think of anything cool. Something might come of it, who knows?

So there you have it. This whole thing has gone to prove that it’s really not that hard to enjoy yourself. People can be great fun when you give em a chance.

You can find the gallery here: http://www.thinktanktoybox.com/2010/05/drawagiraffe/

You can find the One Million Giraffes project here: http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/

Posted in Madness, Twitter | 1 Comment »

#drawagiraffe

May 7th, 2010

What with the election going on, there’s been a lotta gloom about. I was getting a bit fed up of it so decided to ask people to draw giraffes. I thought it would cheer them up and it seemed to work.

Look how pretty they are!

(Press play on the audio player first and hover your mouse over the bottom of the slideshow to see the names)

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Posted in Follow Friday | 3 Comments »

Spice

May 5th, 2010

In the world of film and certain corners of television, there exists a cosmic force known as fan service. Fan service is usually reserved for films based on books or comics and is the process of remaining true to the source content and revelling in it.

It can come in a variety of flavours, emulating something note for note, dropping easter eggs into the background, stuff like that. The key point of fan service is presenting things in a fashion that fans will go nuts for (when done right). It is a very odd phenomenon indeed.

I watched Iron Man 2 recently and it has left me dwelling upon fan service, it’s application and consequences. I’ve thought about it for a while and I think I’ve figured out what fan service is like.

Fan service is like spice

Adding spice to food can make it better but the more you add, the more people you exclude from it’s appreciation. It’s exactly the same for fan service. The more you add, the more specific the medium in question becomes, relevant to only the select few who are passionate about the it.

Now it’s not like adding salt & pepper. That is a decision you make. Fan Service is grounded in the core ingredients used by the chef. If you don’t like it there’s very little you can do about it. But if you do like it, YOU’LL LOVE IT.

Through the this thought process I’ve been able to establish a scale of Fan Service based on an episode of the Simpsons. The episode in question is

El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer

An episode from the golden age of the Simpsons where it was truly unbeatable, keep your Family Guys and dare I say it South Parks, when The Simpsons was this good it was unrivalled. We’ve all seen it a million times. Homer engages in a search for his soul mate after eating chilli so hot it makes him violently hallucinate. It guest stars Johnny Cash as a talking Coyote and has this scene with a dog barking which I find staggeringly funny and….sorry. Look what you made me do?

Anyway, the scene is question is the chilli cook off. Homer, as a veteran chilli enthusiast, is only satisfied with the very hottest chilli Springfield can provide. You see where I’m going with this?

The three different chillis that Homer samples can be compared to a film that implements fan service and how it turned out.

Firehouse Ned’s Five-Alarm Chili

Daddy? are you going to jail?

Homer’s first stop is Firehouse Ned’s Five-Alarm Chili. As it transpires it’s not five alarm at all

“Oh, I admit it. It’s only two-alarm, two-and-a-half, tops. I just wanted to be a big man in front of the kids.”

A chilli that was made for all the wrong reasons, to be a big man. Showing a lack of understanding about why a chili is great, you think you can make any old chili and people will like it. Chili doesn’t work like that.

The best example of Firehouse Ned’s Five Alarm Fan Service was the colossal turd that was…

Two alarm tops...

Yes, Spiderman 3. I could rant at length about how crap this film was. When I left cinema having watched it, I was trying to talk myself into not hating it as I felt I’d invested so much anticipation, I couldn’t face the reality that it was terrible. As time passed I’ve come to dislike it with Venom (see what I did there?). Too many cooks spoiled this broth, trying to fit at least 2 films worth of story into one bloated, diluted mess. It was an utter shambles.

Sony tried to harness the power of fan service whilst showing a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes the content so loved among the faithful. The symbiote and Venom are very very strong Spiderman storylines and if done right could have been the something truly special, but instead they shoe horned it in there with 3 other half arsed storylines to get as many faces in there as possible. It was a cynical joke.

I don’t blame Sam Raimi for this as when left somewhat to his own devices he made Spiderman and Spiderman 2 which were gorgeous films. But the level of studio intervention in Spiderman 3 was glaringly obvious. So much so that when 4 was going the same way he walked away. Fair play to you, Sam.

Spiderman 3 was fan exploitation dressed up as fan service. The thing about fan service is you have to want to do it. With Spiderman 3 they didn’t want to do it, they didn’t care. They tried to exploit it and went horribly horribly wrong. Shame on you Ned Flanders.

Moe’s Chili Bar

Poor Moe...

The next stop for Homer is Moe’s Chili Bar. Once again Homer is not impressed.

“A bland, timid entry, suitable, perhaps, for patients recovering from surgery”

This showed a very basic understanding of chili. A chili that Adrian Chiles would be happy to eat and recommend to his elderly grandmother. A middle of the road, simple, accessible chili that anyone can enjoy. Anyone that’s not Homer of course. A good example of a meal from Moe’s Chili Bar would be

Timid Entry

Xmen 2. Yes. It was alright I guess. It just didn’t mean anything. They put just enough spice in to say they put spice in. In fan service terms it did the bare minimum to get people interested. There was nothing inherently bad with it really, it was just dull.  It’s perfectly fine to do something like Xmen 2. But to the proper fans such as they are, each one of these films is an opportunity missed.

There are countless films like this where trying to appeal to broader spectrum of viewer has bleached out the potential for something good by the fans. With such a rich universe to plunder you’d think they’d go for something a with bit more gravitas. But with this comes the risk of alienating “normal” people and this isn’t a risk producers generally want to take. Cowards.

They don’t owe us anything really but this is a point I shall cover later. Next!

The Merciless Pepper of Quetzalacatenango

Care for some chili?

Homer’s final stop was to be his undoing. He severely underestimated the power of this one

“Grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.”

This chili was made to be so spicy that only the choicest few could possibly enjoy it. Made in a fashion that completely ignored and almost poured scorn on those that didn’t understand hot food. Taking fan service to an unknown extreme that challenges even the hardcore. It’s like “you want fan service? we’ll give you fucking fan service”.

There aren’t many that achieved this level of fan service but one springs to mind immediately.

Whats a Bahamut?

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The key point of this film is, if you don’t like/haven’t played Final Fantasy VII, this film makes absolutely no sense. It goes so far out on a limb for that only it’s most loyal fans can possibly enjoy it.

This takes it to the level of ultimate fan service. Where they gear the content to the fans so much that effectively say fuck off to everyone else. That’s quite a statement to make. Now as a fan of Final Fantasy VII, I love this stance and that’s kind of the point.

By making something like Advent Children, we (Square Enix, yeah I’m taking credit for it, ha!) you cement the love of the fans and they’ll turn up in droves for whatever you do. Remembering and treasuring it forever.

And now…the point

Brought to by the good people at AC/DC

I originally thought this was gonna be a review of Iron Man 2, but the nature of the film has lead me to consider fan service as it encapsulates for me everything about the film and the driving force it is a part of. I think what Marvel Studios is treading perilously close to the Merciless Pepper of Quetzalacatenango with what they’re doing and I really saw this in Iron Man 2.

To be honest if you look at Iron Man 2 as a film, it’s pretty tame with a distinct lack of consequence. I don’t wanna blab about it too much because I don’t like spoilers but if you’ve seen you might agree with me. Iron Man and War Machine aren’t put under any massive pressure throughout it’s all about setting things up.

It was an establishing film just like the first one was. Nothing of any true weight happens. It felt exactly like reading a short graphic novel, like a 6-10 comic run.. It showed a patience that I’ve not seen before.

The reason for this is peppered throughout the film including a lovely (and I don’t care what @Twistedlilkitty says :P) little nod to the next film right at the very end. Marvel Studios are building all this as part of the Avengers project. Bringing together Iron Man, Captain America, Thor etc etc for something which stands to be pretty amazing if they do it right. The good thing is they are doing it right.

Now I’ve been saying that Iron Man 2 is patient and not a massive amount happens like it’s a bad thing. But as a fan, who loves fan service, it’s completely the opposite. This is possibly the most well done fan service saga that could ever be. Each of the films building to this glorious whole. Taking the time to bed characters in so when it all comes together and kicks off, it could be truly truly stunning. So while I’m watching Iron Man 2 I can just see how its spanning out, enjoying them taking the time get things right.

“Never Compromise. No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise” – Rorschach

Now the argument is there that this stuff should be made accessible but I just don’t agree. As a idiot fanboy type, I love this kind of selfishness. There are plenty of films out there for everyone. A compromise in this situation would be an awful thing. Spiderman 3 proved that. This project should be made for the fans, they made Marvel what they are. Enough people love it to show there is a treasure trove of fine characters and stories out there for people to enjoy and these movies should be an introduction to that.

I love what Marvel Studios is doing. It knows what its fans want and it knows how to do it. They’ve been pleasing us with this daft stuff for decades in the comic realm and I really can’t see them messing it up now. The idea of studio intervention to make it more accessible just doesn’t exist because they are the studio. It really does make me smile to know that everyone can be pulling in the same direction for something like this.

So there you go. Iron Man 2 is quite a spicy film but I bloody love spicy food so I adore it.

Note: I couldn’t find room in my analogy for this picture so I’m just chucking it in there because it’s brilliant.

Well, Chief, don't quit your day job... Whatever that is.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

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