Nick's Blog
Action Blog With Gripping Hands
24/4/2008 @ 09:52
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I bought a book last weekend. One that was highly frivolous with no literary merit, obscure content and at the risk that people who see it at my house will think the worst of me...but I love it!
It's called "ACTION MAN: ON LAND, AT SEA AND IN THE AIR" by N.G. Taylor and it's a series of photos of the world's most popular poseable action figure (note, it was never a doll!) in all his outfits. It's all there; from the basic model, frogman, Colditz guard, Sabotage officer, Blues and Royals cavalryman plus the mountaineer adventurer. You name it, it's there.
What I really like about the book is the way each Action Man figure is posed in a "realistic" setting in his different outfits. So mountaineer action man is seen climbing Yes Tor in Dartmoor or Life Guards Action Man is seen in front of a suspiciously out of focus stately home...could it be Buck House? No....could it? COULD IT? Or could it?
It's all glossy and lovingly done, although it does seem that Action Man has been reduced to a catalogue model and in some of the photos, he's posing like one. Although there is text accompanying each photo describing what is in each outfit or equipment pack, I wished it was more like a real clothes catalogue:
"Combat tunic and trousers. Hard wearing, water repellant and just the thing for crawling around back gardens this summer. 3 tiny popper studs, available in sizes very small. Colour: Olive Drab."
This book is great to look at and it brings out the little boy in me again: Forget the fact that Action Man had difficulty standing on his own two feet or that his hands didn't quite grasp pistols properly, he was a poseable action figure for 2 generations and he was NOT A DOLL!
March to the Sound of the Blogs
21/4/2008 @ 10:41
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I was at Britain's biggest wargames convention, Salute, this weekend and a jolly nice time I had as well. Needless to say, it was primarily filled with men of ample proportions and beards...many of whom were called Dave.
However, it was not wholly a male environment...there were some women there as well but before any wargamer starts to think that gender barriers in the hobby are breaking down and that their chances of winning the hand of such a woman have increased I must warn them: There are two distinct type of females that attend a convention like Salute.
The first is the Bored Significant Other. She's there to accompany her partner. Chances are she's a girlfriend and seeking to reassure him that she's not bothered by his hobby. Wives are rarer at these events because they've got their man and can think of 1001 other things to do with their time. The BSO really does look bored, limply holding their boyfriends' hands whilst gazing off with a look of confusion and revulsion at the 20 stone beared man who obviously hasn't washed that week and who's chuckling at how good his Scythian cavalry are doing in the game. Loudly. To everyone in earshot.
The other type of of female at Salute is the Stall Dolly. She's been hired or roped in to help run a trade stall and, natch, is there to rope in the wargamers by looking vaguely attractive. This is achieved either by wearing bondage gear or the uniform of a popular science fiction show. The routine is simple: Wear something scanty, preferably involving pvc and fishnets, waft a leaflet at the passing wargamer, speak to them (and wargamers are generally happy to respond because they can look at their friends and say "I done talk to a girl!") and then WHAM! Sign them up to a 10 year subscription to Warlock Grenadier magazine and convince them to spend £200 on a complete game system involving 20 rule books, a starter pack of 50 unpainted miniature figures, a paint set and brushes and part of a model kit to which the remaining parts aren't available yet until August.
Can I just point out that that didn't happen to me...I only spent £75 pound at that stand and it was money well spent. AND I done talk to a girl!
Blue Remembered Blogs
11/4/2008 @ 11:31
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It's time for another of my occasional series when I rant against a cultural sacred cow...this time it's:
SACRED BLOGS #3: DENNIS POTTER
The liberal intelligensia worship this man and his work. "The greatest television writer the world has ever seen" and other such epiphets trail whenever his name is mentioned but I'll let you in on something...are you listening very carefully? HE'S SHIT! His work is a huge pile of self-indulgent wank disguised as high art. In a classic case of "The Emperor's New Clothes" his every work was lauded with cheers, plaudits and fawning admiration from critics who I swear didn't actually watch his stuff...if they had done so without their rose tinted specs on, they would have seen his work as annoying and irritating at best.
Take "Blue Remembered Hills" for example: A TV play where adults act like children. A neat idea for a short film or a comedy sketch but not for 90 FECKIN' MINUTES! The joke wears off very quickly and not only does it outstay its welcome, it takes up squatters rights.
And as for "Pennies From Heaven", "The Singing Detective" and "Lipstick on Your Collar", that gimmick of breaking into badly mimed song in the middle of the story was pure wank. Pure irritating wank. I particularly hated that device because the actors were instructed to look hatefully into the camera lens at the audience and mime an old song. They seemed to say "F you, audience" and that's one of my other problems with Potter: He always seemed to me to hate the audience.
It comes through not only with those hateful little looks Michael Gambon, Bob Hoskins or Peter Jeffrey would shoot at me through the TV screen, but in the writing itself where it all got so self indulgent to the point that the audience was somehow an annoyance. I think it reached its peak with his last work, Cold Lazarus, which gave us a fictionalised Potter, now reduced to a frozen head in the future despairing at having to produce new material for the public.
But to talk about Dennis Potter, one must also talk about his clear obsession: Younger women. In practically everything he wrote, there's a man who lusts after a young sexpot. Sub-Freudian images of penises, snakes, vaginas, snakes turning into penises and entering vaginas, it seemed like a pseudo-intellectual teenager's fantasy and there on my TV screen. It was so obvious that Potter was wanking on our screens for his pleasure and casting himself as these besotted dirty old (or young) men lusting after very stunning but barely acting women. There's a name for this kind of writing in the fan fiction fraternity: Gary Stu, where a fictional character has all the informed attributes of the writer but all at super, can never do anything wrong, and irresistable to women levels.
But I will take my hat off to Potter for one thing: He was able to do this over a 30 year period and get hailed for it as well. He had to be doing something right: I just can't figure out what though.
The Miracle of Childblog
08/4/2008 @ 16:58
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I am very much in tune with my feminine side...but not in the ways that you'd normally associate. I can't co-ordinate furnishings and decorations, I don't go around sharing and confiding my thoughts and frankly I don't cry that often but I can show women how to give birth effectively...so it seems.
Wifey and I are currently doing Ante-Natal classes and we were shown how to adopt good positions for childbirth. No, it's not lying on your back, it's on all fours, or over a birthing chair or crouched over a bean bag if you must know. Wifey was having some difficulty "assuming the position" so I stepped in and showed her the correct technique as taught and even did the hip gyrations that assist in labour and help reduce pain.
Then, I tried out a TENS machine for her. This is a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator which also helps relieve pain in childbirth. Wifey didn't want to use the one we'd been leant so I looked over it and before I know it she's attaching the electrodes to my body and switching it on.
It functions much like -hngh- an electrical stimula -hngh- tion machine that -hngh- sends pulses through -hngh- through -hngh- through the body cau -hngh- sing it to tingle and stimulate the nerves that -hngh- relieve -hngh- pain. On low levels it tingles and on higher levels OH MY GOOD LORD SWITCH IT OFF WOMAN! It's like having someone stab you in the back with a stilletto.
So, men of Britain, don't let your wives try anything you're not prepared to do yourself! Except actually giving birth.
Please Blog Generously
04/4/2008 @ 15:47
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Anthropomorphism: The assigning of human characteristics onto animals. Made popular by Beatrix Potter and Walt Disney who gave us small animals, dressed them up in doody human clothing and had them attending to various domestic chores and tasks.
Of course, we're all used to talking animals in comics, movies and TV. We think nothing of a troupe of animals, led by a frog and starring a pig (who are also conducting an affair that has to cross not only a colour divide, but an entire phylum as well), who run a variety show. Or a cowardly dog who investigates the paranormal in between making huge sandwiches.
But I draw the line at anthropomorphising critters in order to promote charities. If you're watching TV at the moment, you'll have seen adverts that run like this:
"Hello, I'm Patches. My original owners didn't love me and they use to lock me in the boot of a car with milk that had gone just past its best by date and drive me down to the slaughterhouse to tease me. I was saved by the Con Hardie Trust and now I'm with a family who loves me so much and showers me with treats and worships me like a god but there are thousands of other little widdle biddy puppies just like me who don't have no famiwy to pway with and who shiver in cold rooms in black and white."
These adverts are usually voiced by Neil Morrissey who somehow manages to be Patches, Milo, Rex and Montmorency PLUS the voice of Pablo, the mistreated donkey whose pleas and cries for mercy under the relentless punishing sun of Spain whilst helping cart bricks to build the pyramids (or so the advert tries to tell us) either make your heart break or have you reaching for a bucket.
These days, charities are really twisting the screws to get money for their work and I'm not knocking the efforts of animal charities to help them, but I do draw the line at giving a voice to a creature that's probably thinking "need food...would like a cuddle...want to chase stick...need food..." as if their case is comparable to the NSPCC traumatised child adverts. It's all blatantly manipulative and cringeworthy and something within me resents supporting a charity that would go to that length. Just tell me straight: "Animals being abused, we need help" and I'll be more impressed.
"Please support Con Hardie House, because pets like me need friends"
Friends never base their relationship on you providing money, Patches.
