The Comic Strip, Part 5 - Gone to Croatoan

"Summer School" - January 31st 1983

This one never made much sense to me, and now I know why. MTV edited the hell out of it.

The story:
A group of people sign up for a sociological research experiment: for the summer they are to live in a mock iron-age encampment that has been set up. With no preparation, no testing to make sure you are healthy, you just show up, sign up, change into a loincloth, hit the pub, and then make your way to the camp for the first time in the pitch black dark. Of course the last bit isn't as difficult as it might seem because the camp is IN THE MIDDLE OF CAMPUS.


Ok. Even with the hell not edited out of it, it still doesn't make much sense.

I'm clear on the concept - the humor lies in the way that all of the participants adapt to their surroundings. Some dive in so fast that they are talking like Thundarr the Barbarian before they finish getting their Armanis off. On the other side we get the ones who keep wearing aviator shades and sneaking martini breaks.

The concept is fine - I appreciate that I might not be making it sound that clever, but there are a lot of nice little moments. It's just that the plot is me-nuts-driving dumb.

It is a lot better than it was, though.

Bonjour, chat avec une tête de fromage!

A cat from Wisconsin wanders away from home. To France.

Excuse me for a moment while I crank up my nerd-o-meter to eleven

There is a new Harry Potter Clip available for viewing, with a glimpse of a character played by the New Doctor Who.

If you frequent either Harry Potter or Doctor Who discussion boards, brace yourself for a lot of discussion about what precisely a spoiler is.

When the news breaks - we fix it

Thanks to the Miers withdrawal a whole week of Doonesbury strips are made obsolete.

The Comic Strip, Part 4 - This is not Spinal Tap

"Bad News Tour" - January 24th 1983

In the summer of 1964, two groups of television executives came up with the same idea. "Let's have us a sitcom about a family of old time horror movie monsters who live in the suburbs." I sometime wonder about the state of their hearts as they looked at the other network line-up and saw that they were not alone. Also what was there to the zeitgeist at the time that made this idea so appealing?

Late 1982 was the time for fictional inept heavy metal bands in faux documentaries.

It's not hard to see why. While metal was big in the seventies, the eighties began with it on the wane, except for a small core who refused to give it up, not realizing the sense of increasing desperation that they were displaying. The big powerhouses (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, etc.) were collapsing of their own weight, and the newer bands were trying to distinguish themselves by either pushing the prog-art noodling to a newer and more absurd level (culminating in things like GWAR) or trying to strip down the artifice to become more of a particularly loud bar-band.

To put the two into context then, Spinal Tap is one of the seventies powerhouses, Bad News is one of the up and comers. With Tap, you see a group that is so used to their success that they are completely baffled when it starts to fall apart. Bad News is just starting out, they know what they are doing and they know how to go about getting it. They know how to work their image, they can banter with rock journalists about the limitations of Heavy Metal as a genre. They even argue with the documentary crew when they get moved around after a cut-away shot, because they know it will be a continuity error.

The only thing that they don't understand is that they are completely untalented. Tap is a musically talented band that has good melodies with horribly dumb lyrics over them. Bad News is just godawful noise.

There was a Bad News album released in the 'eighties, and I see that it is still available on Amazon UK. Scrolling down the list:

"Customers who bought music by Bad News also bought music by these artists:

• Spinal Tap
• Monty Python
• Adam & The Ants
• 10cc
• Vain"

God bless the British and their keen sense of irony.

The Comic Strip, Part 3 - "Walking on water wasn't built in a day."

"The Beat Generation" - January 17th 1983

What I recall of the Comic Strip is that the episodes tend to degenerate into utter chaos. At the time, I took that chaos to be a sign that the writers couldn't come up with a satisfying ending, so they just blew everything up and that was the end of it. Just as the intro is a cartoon bomb being dropped, the series was a set of bombs being dropped.

I've been kicking this one in my head for a while. Utter chaos is the only place this one can go. This episode is about the end of a scene compounded with the beginning of another one (it starts with a throwaway joke about the Beatles getting squeezed into the bottom of a variety show gig, because the little kids seem to like them and ends with the literal death of jazz.)

I remember enjoying this episode back in the day, because I thought the atmosphere was cool and there were just enough funny bits to keep my interest. I didn't think that this was one of the best that the series had to offer. Either I wasn't paying that much attention, or this is only going to get better.

It is 1960 and Desmond (Adrian Edmonson) is an enthusiastic beat aficionado. His parents have gone on vacation, leaving him the run of their country house, so he invites a crowd of beats to come for a weekend. The guests include established writer Alan (Peter Richardson), publisher Charles (Nigel Planer), American film-maker Anne (Jennifer Saunders), party girl Eleanor (Dawn French), rising (or imploding) star Jeremy (Rik Mayall) and "the most promising illiterate of your generation" Kix (Daniel Peacock).

The theme of this episode is the sense of "coolness." Desmond and Eleanor want it. Jeremy seems to have it but doesn't know that he has it yet. Alan and Charles drip with it and suffer from it in their own little ways. Everyone is swirling around, establishing pecking orders, trying to be as cool as possible.


I think that perhaps when I was watching this the first go around, I was more likely to be taken in by the cool. Now I have a better sense of how the little games were working. Before I was able to see that Desmond was horribly inept, and that Jeremy and Eleanor were subtly so. Now, I can see that Anne, Alan and Charles are also terribly sad figures, struggling to keep up with the illusions that they constructed for themselves.

They fooled me. Which is what, I suppose, they were meant to have been good at.

Online game fun

Guess the Dictator and/or Television Sit-Com Character

The point of the game is that you choose to be a Dictator and/or a Television Sit-Com Character. The site asks you questions and then takes a guess at who you might be.

My first time through I chose to be Gilligan. The site figured me out quite quickly.

The next time I chose to play as Margaret Thatcher. Result:

"I guess that you are Grandmama Addams from The Addams family! Am I right?"

And now, for your reading pleasure... Poorly Translated Public Domain Poetry!

TO JOHAN DAHL, BOOKDEALER
(ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY)


Our glasses we lift now and drink to our host!
"Hurrah!"
Give heed to our ditty, we sing you our toast!
"Aha!"
The first thing appearing is what he was nearing,
When uproar not fearing he came for a hearing
'Fore skerry-bred eagle
And Wergeland regal.
Oh! Ha!

He came like an innocent spring-lambkin ewe-born,
Oh, woe!
So neat and so fine in his guilelessness new-born
Like snow.
The flesh so delicious was chopped up to farce-meat,
And later by Wergeland found for a farce meet,
And gayly 't was swallowed,
And all the bones hollowed
And strown.

But swift as Thor's he-goats to life again skipping,
He sprang
Whole skinned together, and gave them a whipping
That rang.
This made him seem worthy to join the gay party,
At once they received him in fellowship hearty!
And soon was no other
More loved as a brother
Than Dahl.

The light from his shop spread afar and made brighter
Our day.
His drawing-room gathered so many a fighter
In play.
Our taste there was made and our critical passion,
The shop was a power, new Norway to fashion.
Though little, its story
Shall some time in glory
Be writ.

For what you have kindled, endured, and aspired,
Our thanks!
For hearts you have gladdened and souls you have fired,
Our thanks!
For all your good faith in your fervor and ranting,
Yes, for your whole-heartedness free from all canting,
You whimsical, queer one,
Old fellow, you dear one,
Our thanks!

----------------------------

From:

POEMS AND SONGS
BY BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON

(Nobel Prize in Literature, 1903)




TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
IN THE ORIGINAL METERS
BY
ARTHUR HUBBELL PALMER
Professor of the German Language and Literature
In Yale University

via Project Gutenberg

A duck walks into a bar

I had a look at this list of the top ten blog usability mistakes.

I break every single one of them.

Go, me!

Three cheers for market research

The promos for the current season of Smallville have been promising that this season you (the average Smallville viewer) will see everything that you (the average Smallville viewer) have been waiting for.

So far this has meant sex and Aquaman.

Now the folks behind the new revamp of Doctor Who have just unveiled their new series: Torchwood. It will be shown later at night, so that you (the average Doctor Who viewer) can see everything that you (the average Doctor Who viewer) has been waiting for.

So far this means sex. But if you(the average Doctor Who viewer)'re lucky there will be some Aquaman as well.

Another mystery solved

When I was at the Tate Modern, there was an installation in the process of being set up in the Turbine Room.

Here's what was going in.

Google Satellite maps slowly covers Norway!

Here's Vigeland Park.

For more on the park, look here.

Next week on Justice League Unlimited

Budvar (Budweiser in Europe - notice that they are now calling it "Bud") is running a new ad campaign featuring the adventures of superheros who have... well... had too much Budvar.

Simply Red Wine

Mick Hucknall owns a vineyard.

Couldn't resist the title there. Sorry.

Class time. Everyone take your seats.

Screenwriter John August spends a little time on his blog explaining why kids in movies don't have to behave like they're In a Disney movie.

Enjoy.

Coming up next on "Who's Carl This Time?"

We have a whole round right here.

Clamping down on foul mouthed pasta

It turns out that The New Yorker is editing some offensive language out of the captions in its cartoon bank service.

Time Out New York gets to the bottom of it.

The Comic Strip, Part 2 - HUNNNH! Good God, Y'all!

"War" - January 3, 1983

I thought that it would be quite a while before I got to an episode that I'd never seen before. Nope, here's War. It's only the second one, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I can think of several reasons for this:

1) I simply kept missing it. This is not at all impossible.

2) I did see it and completely forgot it. This is plausible, but unlikely.

3) It wasn't broadcast in America due to some legal reason involving ownership or contracts or something. I have found no mention of this anywhere.

4) It wasn't broadcast in America due to its excessive violence. This seems most likely to me, even though most of the violence portrayed consists of cutting to a close-up of another character as they make a face like they've been suddenly possessed by the Mac OS startup chime, and having a crew member either throw a pan full of giblets at them or fire a squirt-gun full of ketchup into their eye.

But I digress.

There isn't that much on-line in terms of Comic Strip Presents Appreciation Data extravaganza, but just about all the site that have an episode guide make mention of the Warsaw Pact.

So I had a quick study up on the Warsaw Pact.

This episode is not really about the Warsaw Pact.

The story: It is 1985 (the near future). England is at war and has been invaded. By everyone. Russians, Americans, Chinese (or Japanese, I couldn't quite sure) Australians, Mexicans, British, British pretending to be Mexicans. Everyone.

And they are all insane. Not just your standard "war is hell" shell-shock insane. We're talking Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs insane.


A young couple escapes the carnage of London to start over in the countryside, get separated immediately and spend the rest of the episode being passed along as various groups of international loonies kill each other and themselves.

That's all.

I suppose that the difference between 1983 and 2005, is that the concept that an armed invasion leads to horribly awful chaos and the only way to survive it is to become completely detached from reality is not as surprising now as it was then. Combatants in real life are capable of behaving just as erratically as they do here. They might not wear a Bozo wig, but that really isn't the point anymore.

Even though this episode was totally new, it brought back all of the elements that I enjoyed about The Comic Strip. Here all of the "regulars" show up, in multiple roles, acting (and overacting) their asses off. Some of the fun of having this as a companion to The Young Ones is watching and suddenly realizing "Hey, that's Rik! And that's Vyvyan."

I will now take this moment to say something that I have the impression I will be saying a great deal as this project continues: Nigel Planer is one of the greatest actors walking the planet.

Everyone in the main cast gets scenes that an actor would kill for: Rick Mayall's disengaged American General, Jennifer Saunders' fatalistic cafe waitress and Daniel Peacock (whatever happened to him?) and Dawn French as the stunned Londoners wandering about like New Romantic Candides. But it is Nigel Planer's Russian soldier, who shows up at the end and seems to be the only one of the entire lot that seems to actually understand the gravity of everything that is going on around him.

A quick note of farewell

The last bottle of my 2001 zinfandel is now gone. All that is left of that batch is roughly a gallon of what I will refer to as "an attempt at port."

The Comic Strip, Part 1 - Nostalgia is a double edged sword

"Five Go Mad in Dorset" - November 2, 1982

As an American I grew up completely unaware of Enid Blyton's Famous Five except for their portrayal in The Comic Strip. I had no idea that this episode (and its sequel) were based so closely on actual books - I thought it was a generic pastiche. I found out one Sunday evening in the dorm television room when a British exchange student was watching with us.

"Oh God no. This" (waving at the television) "is exactly like the real books. The woman who wrote them was a Nazi."

Not quite. But I wasn't to know that at the time.

What I did know was that I wanted to have a look at one of these books.

After years of failed attempts at getting myself to England, as well as countless instances of welcoming folks back and being greeted with "Oh yes, I knew you wanted something, but all I had written down was that you wanted five books."

And then my luck changed considerably. I went and married a Famous Five fan.

The Five in a nutshell: Three siblings (Julian, Dick and Anne) get together with tomboy cousin George to go camping or hiking or horseback riding and so forth. They then stumble upon some form of complex criminal activity and Scooby-Doo everything back to goodness and righteousness. One of the things that I never figured out until I saw the genuine article was that the fifth was their dog, Timmy.

These books are certainly "of their era." Some of the subtexts (in terms of race, class, country of origin, roles of women in society and so forth) are jarring to 2005 ears, as they were to 1982 ears.

I took a look and found The Enid Blyton Society and saw that their forum has a thread on this episode. The sense is that this episode was written with a certain amount of nostalgic affection, while the follow up (we will get to the follow-up in due time) goes perhaps in the wrong direction. My wife's reaction confirmed this: every few moments brought another cry of "they got that part from Five go to Spooky Gulch!" or the like. This didn't happen at the points in the episode where they had an innocent man arrested for "looking foreign" or had semi-self-aware conversations about their sexuality. Over and over.

In the same way that they were referring something that was antique when they were cutting edge, I was looking at something that had the cutting edge lost after twenty years of sitting in the drawer. It wasn't that it was badly done - some of the set peices still held up quite well and the cast was clearly having a great time putting this all together - it's just that with the shock gone the episode didn't escalate the way it once did, leaving a two-minute concept playing out over a half-hour. Sort of like they were given a barrel of fish and then spent the day shooting them until we were left with a barrel of fish confetti.

As the credits rolled, my wife turned to me and asked "this is really what you thought of the Famous Five?" My nostalgia for a television show and her nostalgia for a series of books had collided, in a strange and slightly uncomfortable way.

Further bits of trivia:
This episode was shown on the first night that the British Channel 4 was operational. There is a special guest star credit for Sandra Dorne (Aunt Fanny) who seems to have been a British pinup star of the fifties.

True story of me interacting with the undergraduates

Scene: I am walking down the street, around the corner from the campus medical building. I am approached by a disoriented-looking undergraduate.

DU: Dude! I've been looking all over for the medical building and I can't find it! Do you know where it is?

Me: (pointing at the medical building) Do you see that building there?

DU: The one with the ambulance in front of it?

Me: Yes.

(pause)

Me: That's it.

DU: Cool! Thanks!

The latest wonderful archival discovery

Early recordings of Tom Lehrer - including many songs that never showed up on his records.

The Comic Strip, Part 0 - I embark on a dangerous journey

Back in the Eighties when politics were overly simple and pants were astonishingly complex, many folks with minds similar to my own knew that however hard their weekends rocked (or how poorly it sucked), they could count on one constant to help them wind into the school/work week.

Every Sunday night for years and years and years, we got an episode of The Young Ones, followed by an episode of The Comic Strip Presents to give us one last blast of joy before Monday.

While the Young Ones was wild and anarchic fun, it was always the same anarchic fun. The Comic Strip was a different beast. Each episode was a self-contained film, and if it weren't for the little cartoon bomb going off at the beginning, there would be no clue that they had anything to do with each other.

In the swag from my last trip was a nine-disk DVD boxset of the complete comic strip. This consists 39 episodes (some of these episodes are actually full length films) and extras. MTV only showed ten or twelve of these - so most of this is completely uncharted territory for me. So here's my challenge for myself - watch them all in order and report back here.

When I finish I get a cookie or something.

Who's hungry now?

Me.

Sepia Mutiny has an informative, link-laden and mouth-watering post about the first ever British Curry Awards followed immediately by another wonderful post on London's first Indian Restaurant.

Very fascinating stuff. And it reminds me that the last time I ordered dinner in, they forgot the papadums. This shall be rectified.

UPDATE!!

They didn't forget the papadums! The papadum truck hasn't been stopping by! They've been out for weeks! There is a papadum shortage!

I blame the struggling petrol industry.

Luckily for me and my papadum jones, I remembered that I had some raw pre-fab papadums ready to heat up. They were tasty even though they smelled oddly of fish. In an edible sort of way, mind you.

Please sign him.

Not only is he a lefty



But he's a hairy rock star!



He fits right in. Match made in heaven, folks.

It's Cinnamon Bun Day!

But only in Sweden.

Apparently.

Scientists finally create a beer that I absolutely will not drink. Ever.

Nicoshot. 3 milligrams of nicotine per beer.

I'm sure it tastes swell.

Sarah Polley reminisces with Terry Gilliam about filming Baron Munchausen

She didn't have as much fun as she was letting on.

A riot is an ugly thing. And I think it's about time that we had one.

The Groovy Age of Horror is holding a month long debate to decide for once and for all the best film Frankenstein: The Boris Karloff Universal Studios version, or the Christopher Lee Hammer version.

Expect passions to fly.

And I'm staying on the fence on this one. Love 'em both.