My friend Nicholas Cooke and I (Laurie Rowan) have begun our own comedy night in Brighton. I’ll be playing the part of Chapsom Bear, the resident compere and theatrically trained grizzly bear. We’ve build a suit and everything. God I hope people don’t find that too wanky to laugh at, the more used to the idea the more cynical I become.

It’ll be good. A lot of groundwork has gone into it, we’ve designed the flyers all nice (see below), picked a great venue with just the right level of faded glamour to it and constructed an elaborate bear costume for Chapsom. We’ve also got my friend, the wonderful Ed Briggs providing musical accompaniment on the piano between acts.  It’s all very novel.

That’s not even mentioning the acts we’ve got to come and perform, each one is genuinely exciting to have involved, we’ve got Naz Osmanoglu, Kieran Boyd, Keiron Nicholson, Will Ainsworth. Pete Armstrong and Viv Groskop. If you don’t know who they are, up your game.

Here’s the poster:

And here’s a little making of Chapsom’s head:

It’s got fur on it now and looks like the one in the poster, but I’m saving that for the night.

If you’re around you should come.

I’m also working on a polished version of my Belcham image from my 100 days project which will hopefully be finished and posted here soon.

Thanks,

Laurie

It was a summer’s afternoon when Jason Smendelflank decided uncharacteristically to leave the house for a stroll. Uncharacteristic mainly due to the town’s mistaken belief that Jason had been dead for the past 15 years. He wasn’t dead that’s not where this is going, but he wasn’t a long way off in his current state of health. Not that he was terminal but he’d just not been looking after himself was all.

15 years previous Jason had ventured up to the loft to have a dig around and find what he could find, and there was plenty to be found. It was a full loft, full of curiosity and clutter and Jason’s imagination ran rampant for some time, a few hours, 5 hours 13 minutes if we’re to be exact, and we shall, there’ll be no complacency in this tale. There were boxes of old Mad magazines, lampshades mascaraing as ships, bottled ships with the ship removed, old cassette tapes, teddy bears, jam jars, hair nets, a big Barbie head where you could brush the hair if you so wished, and he did, loads of stuff, some of it more exotic and intriguing than the things I’ve just listed but I’m employing artistic licence here, you can fill in the blanks yourself it’ll make for a better story.

It was a large attic, but not large enough to warrant what happened next. Once Jason had fulfilled his curious urges and was no longer feeling moved by the relics of his generally happy past he decided to leave the loft and return by way of the stairs to the floor below which contained the rest of his life and all the objects and people that constitute it. Fine, but no not fine because in his reminiscence filled haste Jason had not exercised caution in his placement of boxes and antiquated things and had rendered himself completely lost. He looked upon the discordant jumble of faded glamour magazines, knitting patterns and glow-worm toys and could no decipher left from right, up from down nor any another direction in relation to it’s antithesis. Some may shake off this moment of vacant insanity, reassemble their thoughts and work toward a solution, in fact not even some, most, most people or even animals would, real or fictional. But for the purpose of the narrative I’ve pursued, Jason didn’t, he sat and like the clutter around him was forgotten. The strangest part of this was that Jason didn’t live alone, he lived with his mother, father and two younger siblings (a brother and sister) most of which or at least those that were in the house knew that he had ventured up to the attic, he was always in the attic. But no one came looking and Jason didn’t not expel the energy to even attempt to find his way out. So he sat. One thing that could be said of Jason by way of a compliment if you fervently insisted on finding one positive of his sudden unaccountable mental illness was that he was adaptable and over time assembled a relatively ordered lifestyle from the nostalgic bric-a-brac that surrounded and combined with his lethargy, imprisoned him. He located a brevel toasted sandwich maker with the same energy input as the dangerously retro looking outputs that extruded from the attic wall. He experimented with his own unique brand of nouvelle cuisine and developed a rather refined pallet in completely his own terms. Always prepared on the brevel, sometimes open, sometimes closed, the majority of substances in existence passed over or were compressed by the Brevel and then consumed by Jason, noting as he went those that were palatable and those weren’t. He developed a refined selection from which he formed menus and a weekly rota, so to maintain balance, his lifestyle choice may have been questionable but in his own terms he was no fool and knew that spider, ring binder and 5 pages of Jilly Cooper did not constitute enough variety for three nights in a row. He discovered that penguin classic editions published between 1972 and 1976 were the best vintage, he had plenty of time to deliberate on such things and so after much consideration he proffered it was down the varnish-like finish of the sleeves that accounted for their succulence, bare in mind we’re talking about softbacks here, Jason very infrequently felt the need to digest an entire hardback.

Over time Jason settled into his particular ways. He became less active and conentrated most of his efforts on thinking, he became a sage-like figure, a philosopher embittered at the state of his one man society, he projected disdain at the lack of courtesy the contemporary youth displayed by their very non-existence, their all night raves that did not occur and their free wheeling attitude toward sex that seldom reared it’s ugly imagined head. He fretted for their salvation and became increasingly erratic in light of the moral quandaries they didn’t continually force in his face. It was for those reasons that one evening, he presumed (he’d lost all sense of time and no longer had any concept of natural light), he resolved he could no longer share his once tranquil attic and decided to leave and embark on a new adventure, whatever it be. He was flustered from a bad batch of Hemingway and a questionable serving of Breveled mothballs and so began his search for the hatch he distantly remembered tentatively. It was under a cushion.

He descended from the attic a bearded shroud of dust. The house was seemed empty, that or the other residents, presumably still his estranged family were in bed, had moved out or died. None of these things occurred to Jason, he was overtaken with the conviction that he was going for a walk and walking was all that was on his mind. So he walked. First through the house, then into front garden and then into the street, for the most part blinded by the daylight to which he had become unaccustomed.

He his eyes adjusted abruptly two hours into his obstacle ridden jaunt. He found himself in what he vaguely remembered as being a highsteet, full of bad typography and erratic aimless shufflers. His dust encrusted skin was almost blasted clean by the cacophony that greeted him. Not only, it turns out, do Icecream men and women (Icecream people) appear to be unionised, but today was the day they’d chosen for their demonstration. Approximately 50 icecream vans had picketed the street each chiming it’s own saccharin theme at top volume with no attempt to coordinate the music between one van and the next. In front of the infeasible row of vans was an undulating mass of angered Icecream peddlers, in such volumes their white catering caps taking on the semblance of militaristic berets. What had angered the Icecream people so? This was the question on Jason’s lips and compelled him to approach the nearest Icecream person, in this case an Icecream man, to ask his burning question. Upon the final moments of the approach, while pursing his lips to make his enquiry he found his words stifled and promptly realised he had not uttered a single word for the entire duration of attic bound existence which unbeknown to him was 15 uneventful years. He tried again but could only produce a self conscious gurgling sound, it seems from the Icecream man’s reaction that the gurgle contained enough of a question intonation that it performed it’s function and the Icecream man cautiously handed Jason a flyer. Jason held it two inches from his face as he tried to bring the lettering into focus, all the while standing uncomfortably close to the Icecream man.

It seemed the world had become a much different place during Jason’s self imposed exile and today was the manifestation of a new kind of fundamentalism that had come to grip, at the very least, the British nation. That of the Icecream People. Jason slowly deciphered the flyer in a state of disbelief and here follow his findings.

The group protesting that day were known as The Anti Divisive Icecream League and this is their message:

We, the pacifist democratic union of mobilised icecream vendors operating under the collective banner of the ADIL wish to call an end the civil unrest and violence between the warring fractions of the wider Icecream distribution community.

It is with great regret that we look upon our ravaged sector that only 13 short years ago was marred by only the inconsequentially mildest and most sporadic instances of competitive inter-van violence and occasional ritualistic killing. Today’s, alas, proves an infinitly more morose state of affairs with divisions becoming evermore deeply engrained and reports of Whippy related killings rising by approximately 16% per quarter. Is it not time that someone took a stand for reunification and basic common sense? We believe so and so promote the line; Disengage from the debate.

The documentation is no longer available and no conclusive answer can be drawn, only pure conjecture and here say most commonly disseminated in the interest of invested parties. The answer died with our forefathers and we no longer possess the adequate knowledge to settle this infantile debate. Does it really, fundamentally matter whether our core brand Whippy originally had the prefix of Mr or Dr? No. Does it change the content of the lifeblood, the soul of our enterprise, the Icecream? No it does not. Was Mr/Dr Whippy even a real man (or woman as some of our feminist fractions suggest)? Historical evidence based upon marketing practice of the time indicates that there was no individual baring the name of Whippy, but rather it was a jolly brand name engineered purely to humanise a comfort food, in many ways the antithesis of the use of the hideous characterture entitled ‘Kerry Katona’ created by the Labour government in the late 2000s to stem the flow of cultural and intellectual rape perpetrated by the concept of celebrity at that time.

How many more lives must be lost before Icecream people can accept the simplisticity and pure hearted logic that underlies these questions and our want to move on.

To paraphrase the great rapper Jay- Z; We’ve already got 99 problems, Mr/Dr Whippy need not be one, thank you for your time.

Buy one get one free on Fab lollies with this flyer. Offer only valid for duration of protest, flyer may not be used in conjunction with any other promotion or confectionery/violence based demonstration.

Here’s something I did last week as part of Illustrator and animator Matthew Reay‘s free Zines series.

Each zine is based on a single word topic and features a range of artists and their interpretation of that word. It’s lovely stuff. Each zine is given away free at Vets In Hong Kong gigs, the band Matt drums for.

Here are my entries for the last issue, the theme was Interior/Exterior.

‘Hey, hey boy!’ called the man in the booth. Kyle approached cautiously. He assessed the man’s bare emaciated arms, they resembled two clusters of broken knuckles bound together with a thin layer of cheap sausage skin, if you can imagine such a thing. Kyle considered this image and estimated a potential grab/stab/grope radius taking into account the length of the man’s torso and then stood approximately one foot outside of it. He waited silently for the man to justify his bellow, which he did at leisure. ‘You want advice?’ asked the man eventually. Kyle shrugged which served as enough encouragement.

‘Good boy,’ began the boothed stranger, ‘so, what troubles you lad?’

Kyle wiped a fleck of mucus from his nostril and shrugged again.

‘Be creative champ, come on,’ ventured the man to no avail, ‘ok, let me begin the process. This, brother, is a damned heavy world and each man, each man carries his share of the weight, it’s our birthright, we pop out, the doctor spanks our ass and the soul never stops weeping, so, what load are you carrying boy?’

It was a large ineloquently posed question for a small mind to decipher. Kyle swilled it around for a while, pulling his interpretation of a thoughtful expression (puckered lips and scrunched brow) as he tried to locate his as yet unlabelled notion of self.

‘Well,’ Kyle began, ‘I…’

‘Off load, come on, let’s work through this together, come on,’ encouraged the stranger.

‘Well…I lost my Casio driving watch last Saturday,’ began Kyle.

‘I see’ said the man leaning forward empathetically, Kyle recalculated the radius and took a step back.

‘It could go 30 meters underwater, my mum said she’d get me new one but she said she’ll only spend £20 on it, you can only get 20 meters for £20 and all my friends have 30,’ continued Kyle wistfully.

‘I see,’ said the man, ‘now, that is a pickle. It seems to me that you’re at a crossroads in your potential development. While your predicament centres around your ill fated Casio diving watch and the respect of your peers this all speaks to me of a deeper underlying problem. By begrudgingly accepting your mother’s kind offer to replace the watch with an inferior model you are in fact placing more value on the loose materialistic relationship you have with your ‘friends’ than the everlasting paternal bond you have with your mother. By subjecting her offer to scrutiny misses the central point; who lost the watch? Where does the responsibility lay? Where should reparations be sought? Perhaps you should be looking inward. We may be talking about a relatively cheap digital watch here but as your grow up you’ll find the same scenario repeating over and over and you’ll long for the day a simple Casio SGW-100-1VEF was at the centre of your troubles. Choose the right path now and you could spare yourself a lifetime of inaction and servitude.’

Kyle absorbed these words for a little while, then pointedly asked:

‘Why are you purple?’

The man appeared despondent.

‘Amazon.co.uk has got a sale on digital sportswear at the moment, you can get 50 meters for £17.50 for the next month,’ he disdainfully spat out. ‘That’ll be a quid.’

‘Fanks!’ said Kyle and ran off without paying.

‘Fucking kid,’ muttered the man as he lit his 20^th cigarette osf the morning, ‘why are you blue? You little bugger.’ Kyle was already out of earshot, tugging his mother’s arm, presumably saying something about Amazon.

Balloons

In response to the animation request on the 100 days site (http://www.hundreddays.net/) I’ve spent the day creating a mini loop-animation entited ‘Balloons’. Unfortunetly I can’t find a way to put it on my blogpage because wordpress doesn’t accept flash files, bit frustrating. So if you’d like to see it you’ll have to follow the link, there’s one up there at the top, or if you tend to scroll the cursor along as you read then here’s one for your benefit, here.

Here’s a still so the page doesn’t look empty. I’ll try and get the animation on the actual page when I can.

Thanks.

Imagine a pub setting, with lots of nautical trinkets adorning the walls and a plaster model of a fishermen in a yellow mac that was originally created with the intention of looking creepy outside a fish and chip shop. This story is set in such a place.

An almost visibly tangible smell of over ripe fish hung in the air, the kind of smell that forces involvement from the taste buds as well the nostrils. But that’s an aside. The pub is called ‘The Fisherman’s Anchor’, they serve food and it’s mostly fish based.

The Anchor attracts two very distinct sections of society; the young (sorry to resort to the stereotype, but) studenty type, maybe even A-level students, generally they’re attracted by the kitsch value, it dominates their pub banter and the trinkets are adopted into prop-based horseplay. This angers the other distinct section of society which on reflection isn’t that distinct at all, it’s just people who live near by, locals. But they all do tend to be middle aged men, a lot of bald spots and tan leather bomber jackets, just an observation.

One evening, one such man (the local demographic type) was stood watching a game of popular sport on the television. He had a tin of rusty brown ale in one hand and the other hung by his side, the fingers parted to the exact width of the cigarette that would have once smouldered there. Another local demographic man barged past leaving nothing but static between the pair. It caused the first man, Pete, to jolt and spill some drink. The second man, Chris, offered not one word by way of apology.

‘Manners cost nothing,’ blurted Pete at the back of Chris’s head. Chris stopped ploughing his way through the sparse, easily avoidable crowd, his neck visibly tensed and he turned to face Pete.

‘Manners cost dignity,’ grunted Chris as he walked back towards Pete, ‘and I’m not willing to waste mine by undermining myself by being subservient to you.’ He stopped and waited out Pete’s stunned silence.

‘Wha? Just say sorry, that’s it. You bumped into me, say sorry, you bloody, you dingbat,’ confrontation wasn’t Pete’s strong point.

‘No, I wont and not to cause offence, but if you’re offended, then, fine. But what you and a lot of people seem not to understand is that dignity is quantifiable, right. You only have so much and you’ve got to keep a balance. Chucking out apologies willy nilly does you no good,’ Chris finished his speech and awaited a response from an increasingly perplexed Pete.

‘Wha? No. What are you taking about? Quantifiable how?’ asked Pete, anger turning to intrigue.

‘Right ok, I’m glad you asked, I discovered this by myself. I haven’t always been the testament to good judgement and impeccable taste you see before you now.’ Chris had rehearsed this, ‘there was a time when I was a down and out. A laughing stock.’, he still was among the studenty types, they were laughing at him at that very moment, at his silly trousers.’The lower I sank I began to notice a pattern,’ He put the palm of his hand into Pete’s eyeline, ‘you see the line across the centre?’

‘Yes, that one?’ Answered and asked Pete obediently.

‘Yes,’ said Chris.

‘Yes,’ said Pete again, that one was unnecessary, but he was eager, no one had told him a story in a long time.

‘Right, yes. Well, as I was sinking into the depths of despair I noticed one day that the line was fading from right to left across my hand, each day there seemed to be a little less. I didn’t think much of it at the time. That was until I won a small claims court case against Burton’s, the clothing retailers, I made the claim that some trousers I’d purchased from them were not fit for purpose, not sturdy enough in the groinal region.’ he made a startling gesture as he delivered that line. ‘I had to physically prove that they couldn’t sustain prolonged lunges as well as their main competitor’s equivalent, actually in the small claims court. That was a long afternoon. My reserve had taken quite a beating and I must say I was devoid of dignity. I remember wiping the sweat from my face on lunge number 560, approximately, and noticing that the line had gone completely. I felt the energy drain from my body and knew that that moment that I had just extinguished the final reminisce of respectability that clung to the base of my wretched hollow soul. I was not in a good mood. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. I won the court case, unfortunately it took the sudden public exhibition of my scrotum to do so, but it was a small victory nontheless.’ Chris paused for breath.

Pete took the opportunity to say ‘wow’, his eyes were glazed in such a way as to suggest they were saying ‘please, do tell me more’, or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

‘… and I know it’s trivial, but a victory was what I needed right then. Upon leaving the courtroom, I treated myself to a pint on the way home. As I cupped my hand around the glass, it magnified the line across the centre of my hand, it had returned,’ Chris delivered that last part with a broad smile.

‘Wow,’ said Pete, again.

‘Yes, I know,’ agreed Chris, ‘and since that point I’ve looked to the line and let it guide my actions, I’ve learnt what it likes and dislikes and life has been good since.’

Pete mustered up a slither of courage.

‘That’s a good story, but is any of it actually true, really?’ asked Pete, squinting in anticipation of the answer.

‘True?’ repeated Chris, angered. He then grabbed a cluster of limp white hair that clung to the sides of his pointy head. He moves the hair across and fashioned a comb-over. He fixed Pete with an intense glare and once again showed him the palm. Chris watched in amazement as the line shrank to nothing.

His world had just been rocked.

He looked at his own palm and felt somewhat choked at the lack of any discernible line. Without words Chris corrected his hair and left Pete with his thoughts. After a few moments he clenched a fist, his eyes and furrowed brow danced with determination, again I can’t be certain of that, but that’s the way I read it. He moved from his spot by the television and marched up to the studenty group in the corner.

‘Right!’ He said in a stern commanding tone. ‘I’m in here most nights and you lot piss me off. You!’ he said pointing at the boy who hadn’t figured out hair straighteners properly yet, ‘every time you’re here you simulate sex with that big model of the fisherman and it isn’t funny. You!’ he said singling out another lad, ‘Your belly-button-piercing makes me feel physically sick when you pick it in public and you do that every time you’re here, then you eat peanuts from the bar, I love peanuts and I haven’t one for a year, not here anyway,’ the lad looked shamed, good, ‘and you! You!’ he said singling out his final victim, ‘I know that when you pull your trousers up your bumcrack and walk around on your tip toes that you’re doing an impression of me, you’ll be middle aged one day too and you’ll look ridiculous the current ‘cool’ generation, don’t think you wont because you’ve already got a widow’s peak. Grow the fuck up, all of you.’

Pete panted hard, calming himself, he hadn’t completely lost his composure but he was fired up somewhat. The lads said nothing. Pete walked from the table, the entire pub was silent, all bar three were smiling, some more subtly than others. Pete was as satisfied as he’d ever felt. He checked his hand. It wasn’t true.