Lazy Boy

I knew I was lazy, but this is just ridiculous. I've been off work and the plan was to spend lots of time writing for my two blogs. Ahem... that clearly hasn't happened. I've not even commented on the X Factor final yet, and by the time I do, it will be so hideously out of date, that I'll have to make up some ludicrous excuse for why it's taken so long (look out for that gem in the near - or not so near - future).

So what have I actually spent the last couple of weeks doing? Well, lying in bed has taken up a HUGE percentage of the time. A fact I'm neither proud nor ashamed of. I've spent the last week praying that my new telly is delivered (latest news is that it's coming on Friday!). I went to see stand up comedian Stephen K. Amos on Sunday - I really should write a post about it but it will require another lame excuse for its lack of topicality. I've spent quite a lot of time mithering my cats; I think they'll be glad when I'm back at work. I've read a few books and not read a few others. But mainly it's been bed bed bed.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed soon.

Yours sincerely

Ste

What's in a Name?

Now, I'm sure that all of you reading this will be wondering, 'Hey! Where does the name "Pour Some Gravy On Me" come from?'. It might sound cocky that I'm so sure that you're interested, but the reason is not because it's such a fascinating conundrum, but because since no one is actually reading this blog, then technically everyone reading it is thinking that. Maybe. I don't know, I've kind of confused myself now. But then, that's the kind of big philosophical questions I like to ask.

Anyway. Originally, I was going to call the blog "An Audience of None", which should be pretty self explanatory. However, this was taken, and I had to think of something on the fly. It having to be something a bit memorable, I searched my other blog (PLUG ALERT), the amazing 'The World of Sherby57' for ideas. And one of those posts was called...

Pour Some Gravy On Me - The post is based on a story I heard, where someone thought it was extremely posh that someone they knew didn't know what gravy was. Personally, I'd call it a sign of stupidity, but then I really am a massive oik, and what would I know?

The title was just a play on the song title 'Pour Some Sugar On Me', by poodle haired Yarkshiremen Def Leppard. I thought that it was a pretty unique title until I googled it and found that some had put this on Youtube:



Anyway, that's all there is to this thrilling story, which was neither thrilling nor a story, but I do hope your curiousity is sated.

Take care gravy fans!

The Fantastic Four?

Seeing as I've already told you all that I like The X Factor, and since it it's Saturday, I thought I'd do a quick summary of the final four contestants.

Alexandra Burke is clearly the most talented of this years contestants, and if there is any justice will be the winner. One of the strongest auditionees, it wasn't until Candy Man that she really hit her stride in the live shows; and she's been pretty untouchable ever since. What I really think sets her apart (and not just in the current series) is her ability to deliver a performance; you could actually imagine her putting on a entertaining concert, which is a rarity. She also has the genetic advantage of looking like a pop star.

JLS are a classic type of X Factor group; they seem really impressive in the auditions and boot camp, and look like they could be genuine contenders. Come the live shows, however, and they seem to fade like a poster in a shop window. I can't help but feel that Louis Walsh's song choices have hindered rather than helped.

I'm pretty ambivalent about Eoghan Quigg, but I'm guessing I'm not really his target demographic. On his stronger weeks he's been pretty good, but has a tendency to get drowned out by his backing singers. I still think he looks like a badger foetus.

Finally there's 'marmite' queen, Diana Vickers. Diana was the red hot favourite until she missed a week with laryngitis, and has since lost all her momentum. I think that the love her or hate her tag is slightly misleading; for me it's more a case of she's brilliant or she's rubbish, depending on the week. When she's good, she makes the song completely her own, and that's a rare talent. When she's not so good, she sounds like Zed from Police Academy. I think if she worked on her own material, which played to her strengths, she could be really good.

Was there anyone else from the final 12 that should have made it this far? Well Daniel, Girl Band and Bad Lashes should never have got past boot camp. Austin and Rachel had two of the strongest voices in the competition, but struggled to connect with the audience, while Scott's lack of confidence got the better of him in the early weeks. Under different circumstances, these three had the potential to do much better. Laura was an early favourite, and while having a strong voice, the pieces of her jigsaw didn't seem to fit together. Which leaves Ruth, who clearly wasn't the weakest contestant last week and should be competing tonight.

I should end by predicting in what order I think the contestants will finish in... but I think it's virtually impossible. You could make a case for any of the acts winning, since it's a popularity as well as a talent contest. I will give you my list for how I think they SHOULD finish:

4) JLS
3) The Quigg
2) Diana
1) Alex

I'll be back after the final to see how accurate I was.

That's What It's Made For!

Earlier this week my poor little car suffered terribly with the cold snap and I needed to get a new battery.  After a jump start, I managed to get to Kwik Fit and had an enjoyable session staring in to space in the waiting room. 

After a while, I zoned in to a conversation going on between two of the other customers.  It was one of those delightfully random conversations you get when two chatty strangers are bored. Given the location, they ran the gamut of motoring topics, before focusing in on garages.  Like a bad observational comedy routine they talked about how they're full of bikes and other assorted junk, and how you can't get in them. Then I heard the following:

WOMAN: There's one woman in our street who actually puts her car in the garage....every night!

MAN: Unbelievable!!

NB:  The two exclamation marks don't do any justice to the incredulity in his voice.

Now, it's fair enough to say that most people don't use their garages for cars.  But is it appropriate to be amazed that someone is using something for its intended purpose? I really don't know what this country is coming to.

Get Arrested

For the last few months I've been a regular visitor of Springfield Punx blog, where its author, Dean, draws Simpsons-ized versions of characters from the worlds of TV and comics. This has the potential to be incredibly naff, but it's actually rather excellent; mainly because the drawings are so good that they might as well be done by the Simpsons artists themselves. 

This week saw the posting of all the characters from Arrested Development, one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I almost squealed with delight when I first saw them, but, being at work, I managed to suppress it.

I'd post one of the pictures here to show you, but I don't really think that conforms to blog etiquette, so follow this link to have a look for yourself:

http://springfieldpunx.blogspot.com/2008/11/huzzah-its-arrested-development.html

Hopefully he will release a range of t-shirts because I NEED a Simpsons GOB t-shirt.  I'd also like to see Simpson-ized versions of Frank Spencer and Alan Partridge, but then I'm guessing that would just be me.

Me Reading Comics RIP

I went in to the kitchen, at work last Friday, to make a drink, when I glanced over at a copy of the Metro someone had left lying around. I was instantly drawn to the picture of Batman on the front cover, not the movie Batman, but the real one from the comics. The story was reporting on the purported death of the caped crusader in the recently released Batman #681. I was hit with two emotions.

First came a sense of disappointment in Grant Morrison, for (allegedly) killing off Bruce Wayne. It's not easy to accept that one of your favourite writers has just murdered your favourite ever character. By rights, I should have been furious, but this was tempered by the fact that I haven't actually read any of the storyline in question. The second emotion that I felt was a sense of sadness at being so hopelessly out of touch with the comic book world. And it's the reasons I lost touch with them that I'd like to tell you about.

I fell in love with comics at the age of 2, when my dad bought me my first Batman Annual. I don't know why he thought it was a good idea to buy it for a toddler, or what it was that appealed to me at such a young age, but I was definitely hooked. I won't bore you with the entire history of my life in comics, suffice to say that as I got older and had access to more money, my comic consumption grew with it. By the time I started work, I was buying 40-50 comics a month and was in danger of becoming hopelessly addicted. However, within a few years it would all be over.

I offically gave up buying monthly comics in January 2002, and I know this because it coincided with buying my first house. Ostensibly, the reason was that I couldn't afford the £80+ a month when I had a mortgage to pay. And whilst that was true, it wouldn't have happened had I not been so fed up with buying comics. Please note that it was buying not reading them that I was sick of!

As a reader, I had always been a follower of writers rather than artists (which by my reckoning made me a DC-man rather than a Marvel-ite), and in those early years of the millenium there seemed to be more writers worth following than ever. With the dedication of an addict, my monthly reading list seemed to continuously grow, adding titles because I was scared of missing the next big thing. With the market how it was, the early issues of a new series would have low print runs, meaning that when it becomes popular, it's a real chore to try and catch up with the scarce issues. Even though it was annoying trying to keep track of so many different books, the thing that really killed my enthusiasm was the way that the comics were distributed.

Every month, each serious cusomer received a copy of Previews, a several hundred page catalogue of all comic book releases a couple of months in the future. It would be my job to scour the pages and detail all the titles I wanted, and then e-mailing this list my supplier; who would then post them to me when they were in stock. Now, if you give someone a list of 50 things you want from them in two months time, which they will then send to you in weekly batches, you should probably have a system to keep track of them. And I will hold my hand up and take my fair share of the blame for not keeping better tabs on my orders, but I will also point out that it was supposed to be entertainment, not a job in accountancy. Before too long, I had lost track of my orders, partly through being disorganised, and partly through a fundamental flaw in the industry.

It would be relatively simple to confirm if I had received what I ordered, if the comics were published when they were supposed to. However, it wasn't uncommon for individual issues to be delayed by several months, if not, in the odd exception, several years. The big companies, on the whole, were much better, but even they had their moments. You are then faced with the problem of trying to chase up comics that hadn't been delivered with no way of knowing if and when they will actually be published. If this was any normal industry, that had to cope without fanatical customers, then they would have gone bust years ago.

My perception for the cause of the delays was that one of the creators, more often than not a superstar penciller, is only able to complete a fraction of the pages needed for a monthly title. Now, I accept that you can't rush art, but if you can only produce five pages of finished pencils every month, then it might not be the best idea to accept a job on a monthly book. It also makes you wonder why the publishers don't move away from monthly formats for such artists. How long would you watch a soap opera for if you had to wait a varying number of weeks between episodes, and you weren't told in advance when it would be shown in the schedules? Well, even if you actually like the soaps, then I'd guess it wouldn't be for very long.

By the time I stopped buying them, I had no idea how many comics were owed to me that I never saw, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was in the hundreds. Yes, it was stupid of me to not challenge this more vigourously, but the situation definitely didn't help. When I received my last delivery, I was more relieved to draw a line under it all, than sad that there would be no more.

Maybe six years later, the publishers have their houses in order, I certainly hope they do. If not, they may well lose a lot more dedicated readers like they lost me; I still love my comics, but I'm not tempted to go back.

Emergency Beacon

WARNING WARNING! IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED WITHIN!

I had wanted to write a post a day on here.

You might have noticed that I haven't written a post a day.

I didn't realise how long it would take to write, even my amateurish articles, when you have to actually stop and proof read them. Since I've been working on the first draft of my next proper post for about 45 minutes, and it being still nowhere near finished, I thought I should do an emergency beacon post. This fulfills two vital functions:

1) Stopping my current posts looking quite so lonely. A blog really needs more than two posts.

2) To reassure my imaginary readers that I am actually working on this and haven't given up after two days.

MESSAGE COMPLETE.