Proto-Papples

I’ve been digging around my old boxes of nonsense again because new content doesn’t find itself and bringing old things you’ve forgotten about back into the light is a good process. Right?

FYI, expect more of this over the next month or two.

This page was lurking at the front of one of the many notebooks I used to keep. It definitely wasn’t the genesis of the name ‘Papples’ because Chris and I definitely came up with that when I was visiting and we tossed off the idea of continuing the music making antics of The Office and recording an album. I must have been musing on the mythos, considering the chumblies and trying to develop a chart for people who didn’t quite understand.

It takes a while to comprehend both the genius of the name and the music of The Papples.

I’m not entirely sure why I was developing a gun of sorts to turn good apples to pap apples, then again I am an inventor so it must have come naturally (?). Let’s go with that.

One from the Archives – ‘You Don’t Weep’

(A cynical young man sits at a table judging, that’s you (Kevin), and two men walk past).

Chris: Look at that cynical young man there.
Ian: What’s he doing?

(Intense close-up of your (Kevin’s) face)

Chris: He’s judging fruit because even though it carries qualities that can assist with a sexy, varied diet, too much can still mess with your face podge.
Ian: Oh, THAT!
Chris: STOP JUDGING FRUIT, INFANT!
Kev: Leave me alone, let me judge in peace.
Ian: But don’t you realise that fruit doesn’t mean you any harm? It doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
Chris: It’s not out to get you.
Kev: I don’t care! Not enough people *cannot read what the bottom line says due to bad photocopying*
Ian: Look at the beauty of that lemon! It’s perfectly cylindrical, it’s smoothness, it’s balance of danger and sweetness. Doesn’t it make you want to…
Kev: CRY? No. NEVER!
Chris: Surely it must, sir. You are no golem.
Kev: No. I never cry.

(Shock horror: SEVERE GASP)

Ian: He doesn’t cry.
Chris: This imbalance will be bad, awful, awful bad.
Ian: Care to explain with the use of this delicate pulley system?
Chris: No. Follow me.

(Ian and Chris walk offscreen to a white board)

*Presumably Chris is talking* Man. Man doesn’t want to cry but he does. He has to or this happens.

(An explosion goes off)

Ian: What was that?
Chris: That’s what happens when you try to fuck with nature.
Ian: Oooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Chris: To put it like this, if man does not cry, the emotional chumblies vibrate and vibrate. If liquid is not spilt then they catch fire and the whole body explodes.
Ian: Science is mean!
Chris: It sure is, Timmy.
Ian: It’s Ian.
Chris: Okay.

(Back to Kevin) (?)

Ian: So this man needs to cry.
Chris: Exactly.
Ian: So how do we do that?
Chris: If science can cause a perfectly healthy individual to explode then science can also be harnessed for good.
Ian: Holy pickles!
Chris: What we need is…

(Quick shots: plunger, onions, copy of the film ‘Steel Magnolias’)

Then all we need to do is…

(Chris plungers the side of Kev’s head, then he rubs onions into his eyes, lastly he shows him a copy of ‘Steel Magnolias’ on the telly)

Ian: It sounds easy.
Chris: It’s already done (close up of Chris) Romeo Dunne.

(The cynical man is sat crying at his table)

Chris: Oh dear.
Ian: What’s wrong with him?
Chris: It appears as though the science was too much for him. He’s been turned into a jibbering idiot.
Ian: Is that why he’s sat crying over some knives?
Kev: (between sobs) They just… don’t get the same respect… as forks. It’s so upsetting.
Chris: We may need to think about this some more. He’s gone from one extreme to the other. I expect if you hold anything up in front of him he’ll cry even harder.

(Ian holds up a yo-yo, Kev weeps harder)

Ian You were right.
Chris: We need MORE SCIENCE!

(Quick shots: plunger, iron pipes, a copy of ‘Universal Solider’)

Chris plungers back tough back (?) into Kevin’s head, sticks the pipes down his back).

Chris: Not too much ‘Universal Solider’, Timmy, we don’t want him as cynical as he was before.
Ian: Ten four.

(Kev sits at a table)

Ian: How do you feel?
Kev: I’m not sure. I’m a little teary (pulls a face) but I’m also extremely pissed off at this Kinder Egg. The toy on it is crap.
Ian: Is that a result?
Chris: I guess it’ll have to do!

(Both Ian and Chris freeze in mid-hearty chuckle. Kev falls off his chair)

EPILOGUE

Chris: Crying is perfectly natural. Everyone does it, even pigeons and wolverines. They don’t do it in public but hidden behind those bushes and up on those high buildings they are bawling like bitches.
Ian: Here’s a tip, cry into a towel. It muffles the noise and catches the excess, thus removing the need for tissues.
Chris: Thank you, Timmy.
Ian: How often do you cry, sir?

(close-up of Chris’ face)

Chris: TWICE A DAY. THAT’S WHAT I SAY!

END!

Obligations

I’m a man of my word and let nobody say otherwise (unless it’s me stating I’m going to get new tyres for my car because I keep saying it and I still haven’t done it yet). It’s this simple principle that I stick to in order for people to believe and trust me as their brother, boyfriend, friend or tree surgeon.

When I recently returned home to visit family, my brother surprised me with the admission that they had been round the charity shops and my nieces had bought some video games for me. A lovely gesture, or course, and one which didn’t initially fill me with a sense of dread. It was only when I remembered the quality of video games available in charity shops that my stomach turned upside-down and inside-out: previous years FIFA games, cricket and other lame sports titles, shovelware Nintendo Wii games where the quality is the same as my arse.

I was handed four Nintendo DS titles and, boy, am I a lucky person. Four excellent condition clangers for my collection. I am not a snob, dear reader, for as the keen chef can tell the good fruit from the bad fruit I can let you know mostly what a good game is and what isn’t. This stack was given to me to review by my brother and that is exactly what I am going to do. I certainly don’t want to play them and you certainly don’t want to read what I have to say, yet this is how it’s going down.

It was either that or trade them in for 40p.

Growing on

Guys, there comes a time when it’s time to move on. It’s time to grow up. You have a choice: you can grow up, move on, move up or you can grow on. I have chosen to grow on.

During lockdown 1.0, to keep my spirits up and add a little structure to the meaningless days of worrying where i would buy rice, pasta and toilet paper from, I drew a drawing of something every day. It was usually some cartoon from my childhood or things Reuben and I would watch when he was younger. It was fun to begin with, I would put some music on and spend an hour drafting whatever that came to mind.

Four years have now passed. Whilst I am proud of my graphical efforts, some of the corners have started curling and the ones closest to the windows have faded due to sun damage. They’re not the vibrant illustrations they once were. I keep noticing the errors I made too, such as the extra line on the side of Dangermouse’s face, the awful hands of Steven Universe’s dad and the terrible pencil effects for Kermit the Frog. It is time to take them down and send them to the great recycling unit in the sky.

I will be keeping some of my favourites. The rest will be on sale at Sotheby’s in May. Bidding for each starts at £30,000 and plenty of interest has already been noted so you may want to register your own as soon as you can. Each one will be personally signed and framed by myself, and come with a free signed first edition of my new book, ‘Mind sorting: are you the you-est you that ever was?’ Available in stores now.

Expert analysis

… and in the end we had to chuck the fridge and finish the race in second place. I think it was worth it overall, especially considering the state of the floor.

Well, I can’t you lovely people here all night. I would like to thank you all for coming and listening. It’s not often that I get to speak on such a specialised topic, especially for a large group of people. We all need to remember that being an expert doesn’t always required three degrees and ten thousand hours of practise, sometimes it can be done without knowing, unwittingly even.

I trust you will take my words to heart and carry forth the message to those who couldn’t make it. There’s a plain black joggers wearing people in all of us. Thank you and goodnight!

‘Lord Winklebottom Investigates’ – mini review

Pip pip! Tip top! Absolutely, old boy. Bally tally ho!

After playing ‘Lord Winklebottom Investigates’ I can safely say that whilst I will never be a posho, I can talk like them if I need to. You may remember that back in May of last year I made a post here explaining how excited I was to play an adventure game featuring a Sherlock Holmes-esque giraffe detective. I have since purchased the game and played through it so here is my review in case you were still sitting on the fence.

It’s a great game. If you’ve ever played a point and click game then you will be very familiar with the user interface. You move the curser around the screen and it will show items of interest. You can look at the item and some you are able to pick up to place in your inventory, which appears at the bottom of the screen when the curser gets near it. Your job is to use the things around you to solve the puzzles you come across. Sometimes it’s a matter of putting two items together and sometimes it requires listening carefully to what the characters are telling you and using a bit of the ole’ imagination pipes.

The story, without spoiling too much, takes you away as Lord Winklebottom to a mysterious island to meet up with an old friend and along for the ride is his good colleague, Dr Frumple. When you arrive you unfortunately discover said friend has died under mysterious circumstances and it’s up to you to work out which of the colourful characters inhabiting his mansion were responsible. You’ll need to speak to everyone to make notes of their relationship to the deceased and their reasons for being there. There is a handy notebook which automatically records certain things that comes up in conversation so you can look back on them if needs be.

Everything about this game is ridiculous and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The dialogue is very funny at times, mainly due to Dr Frumple who is the best character in the entire thing. His innate Britishness seeps into every conversation and he never NEVER puts his cup of tea down. At one point I tried to take the toilet paper and he refused to do so on the grounds that it just wasn’t on. The graphics fit the narrative and atmosphere as you’d expect them to. You can’t half arse this kind of thing, it’s balls deep or nothing. The only part that was a little disatisfying was the music which lingered in the background not really doing much. Perhaps it was doing something however I can’t remember any of it.

It’s not the hardest game in the world. You won’t come across anything as difficult as the ‘goat puzzle’ from Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars or practically everything from Grim Fandango. There was only one part where I needed to soak up some grease from a pan (don’t ask, no spoilers) that took me a little longer than expected and even then the answer was staring me in the face the entire time. I managed to finish it in under five hours and what a five hours they were. I had to wait for a price reduction as thirty squids for a game this short wouldn’t sit well with me. If you can find it for anything under a tenner then I would say go for it, old bean!

ABOFB 33: Disappointing Things

After only 9 months since the last episode, and because Ian made me feel bad for that fact, here comes episode 33!
I’ve dredged out from the lockdown archives this gem, where we discuss:

Gigs
Gruff Rhys
Ignoring the question
Food

Do the splits

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the age of forty. After an uphill struggle through some difficult times you’ve made it and you’ve made it in one piece. Now all you need to do is sit back and enjoy the view through these novelty binoculars.

It seems as though I can’t go a few weeks without making a fool of myself. Last week I got lost driving back through Gateshead and almost drove into an industrial estate and then accidentally drove through a bus lane. That was fun. I don’t really have much of a defence other than it was dark and I was hungry so my hunger caused me to drive the wrong way. That’s what I’m going to write to Gateshead Council when they send me a letter asking to pay a fine for driving like a clown.

Let’s do something a little more contemporary though to really illustrate the fact that I’m potentially getting worse. Subjectively. Gingerly. Crimsonly.

It’s the end of the day and I am striding to my car. I don’t walk anymore you see I stride. I’ve got the prestigious job and the happy life so I take a manly stride to get me around places now. As I approach my car I see that the car next to me has parked a little too close because everyone is terrible at parking. I can open the driver door however it requires a bit of manoeuvring (I can never spell that word) to hold the door so I don’t smash it into the other car but also leave enough space to get my sorry ass into the seat. I manage to get my left leg in and I hear it, the sound that I have heard a few times before. I don’t feel as though I have lunged too far however by the sounds of things I have crossed a line and one that once crossed cannot be undone. I may as well have put my foot in the footwell of the adjacent car for what it’s worth.

I know the sound because it happened to me about a year or two ago. That is the sound of my jeans splitting. That is the cold air reaching my bare skin which up until recently was covered by my jeans. The material could clearly not take the isometric shapes my legs were making whilst trying to get into the car and now it’s all over. I still have to pick up some food on the way home and luckily I have some jogging bottoms in my gym bag, which is stashed on the back seat. In Asda car park I hide momentarily behind my door and pull them on over my now sagging jeans. Nothing left to do but stride around picking up what I need and head home like a grown-up, a grown-up wearing two pairs of trousers.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Ian