Avatar Record covers

I was all set for writing a wonderful piece about the similarities between the symbolism of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain and brutal French cinema classic ‘La Haine’ when it dawned on me that I’ve had a pretty busy month and that perhaps I should take it easy for this last post.

I was tidying up the living room and came across a collection of 1000 record covers Mr. Merry gave me about 5 years ago. You know the type, a coffee table book with very little merit other than something to flick through when you’re waiting for a takeaway or someone to drop round. I had previously gone through it and put bookmarks in on certain pages, no doubt some genius plan to make a post in the future, so I did what I always do and made a collage to wow you all with.

The curious thing about ‘Last Kiss’ is that on the first pressing the girl had fake blood dripping from the girl’s face but there must have been some controversy about that and it was removed. So the rumour goes anyway.

I still can’t understand the logistics of Bobby Bland’s hair.

I can’t fathom why Hall and Oats would choose to call their album ‘Abandoned Luncheonette’.

Fanny. Americans, eh? When will they learn?

Avatar 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.

Avatar Murder cat

A children’s film, well as long as it’s not Watership Down (see previous post), is usually heartfelt, charming and full of whimsy and wonder. Japan’s Studio Ghibli has been making films for over forty years and they’re still going strong even if their last film was a beautiful mess and their best director is in his eighties. Play to your strengths I can understand, coming out of retirement because your company can’t work properly without you less so.

Studio Ghibli started off making marvellous fairytales before moving into stories more grounded in reality. ‘Whisper of the Heart’ is about a boy and a girl trying to encourage each other’s gifts, the former a violin-maker and the latter a writer. Shizuku discovers a figurine in an antique store called the Baron, an anthropomorphic cat dressed in a snazzy white suit, and decides to write a story about him.

As a statue he looks mischievous and playful. When he’s later animated in her dreams, he’s suave and has the benefit of being voiced by Cary Elwes.

I recently learned that a live action version of the film had been made a few years ago. When I caught a glimpse of the front of the blu ray I almost choked on my sandwich. The statue of the Baron has unfortunately been upgraded from mischievous to downright murderous.

He now has the look of a psychopath and, yes, he will cut your fingers off for a laugh and mail them to you at work.

Avatar Four Word Reviews: Strike

It’s that time again. Time to slide another unwanted CD into the player and see what fate has in store. This time around we are meeting The Baseballs, who are presenting us with their debut album “Strike!” from 2009. I hadn’t heard of this album, or this band, before, but a look at it and a bit of cursory research suggested this Four Word Review wouldn’t be too bad. Some are painful, of course, and others are just a bit of fun. I was dismayed to find, however, that this was a genuinely unpleasant experience, and in this review I’ll be attempting to work out why.

Read More: Four Word Reviews: Strike »

Avatar Beans: questions and mysteries – Ian’s phobia

You may look upon the eldest and mightiest member of the beans as some kind of god-like being. Whilst he displays the kind of chin that women weep over and hair that would soften the heart of any miserable grandma, there is a darkness lurking within. It is only now that we can exclusively reveal a secret that has remained hidden for all these years.

You cannot judge a book by its cover and similarly you cannot judge a person for what they’re scared of. Phobias come in all shapes and sizes. You could be scared of balloons, clowns, Mensa or the touch of a crimson glove and that’s it, you can’t do anything about it, that’s you for life until you accidentally pass a circus and come across a super smart clown holding a helium balloon wearing red latex and throw yourself into the Thames. This doesn’t scare Ian; he’s afraid of Michael Buble.

Looking at that tiny baby-faced Canadian you may think how could such a thing happen? How could anyone have a fear of Buble? A Fuble? That’s not a thing. Whenever he hears anything by Buble on the radio he almost crashes his car trying to turn it off. Whenever he has a new album out and he’s promoting it like mad, Ian has to place himself in a hyperbolic chamber, sealed off from the rest of the world, until Buble disappears back to his mansion with all his grubby money. When Asda hired Buble last year for their Christmas adverts Ian nearly bit off his own tongue and collapsed in a corner. It was too much, the stress of Christmas combined with a swingly Buble ad campaign? It was clearly too much. Many a TV was smashed in December.

So why is he so afraid of him? We can only put together little pieces of information given how secretive the boy is and how you can’t say the man’s name without Ian filling a bowl with custard and plunging his head into it. It seems to trace back to one of two instances: either a two hour drive with his dad with a broken stereo and the same Buble song on repeat the entire time or a dream, a very vivid dream of Buble on all fours like a dog chasing Ian down the street and when he finally catches up to him, cornered in an alleyway, Buble opens his mouth and another Buble, dressed like Worzel Gummidge, climbs out and beats him over the head with a pez dispenser.

All very weird if you ask me. Still, it’s a little more interesting than yet another person who’s afraid of heights or confined spaces. Yawn-a-reeno!

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Hi, welcome to Placeholder UK.

There’s a time and a place for ideas and innovation. That time is not 75 minutes before the end of the month and that place is definitely not on the sofa I’m sitting on.

Sometimes all you need is a little something something to get you through. Sometimes, however, you can’t even muster up that. It’s at moments like this you need Placeholder UK.

We’ve been filling in the blanks successfully for the last 20 years and we’ll continue to do so as long as people either can’t be bothered or aren’t ready to do so yet. It’s why we’re here, to buy you a little extra time to sort that exclusive award-winning website feature or perhaps a little picture of a funny duck.

To celebrate how well we’re doing, here’s a picture of a fist.

Avatar Seeds

Kate has been very much getting into gardening lately, and in particular, growing vegetables. Our back garden is on its way to becoming a vegetable garden. Last year we had home grown tomatoes, potatoes, rocket and carrots, and this year we’re being even more adventurous.

Since all this stuff is being grown from seeds, I am enjoying discovering that mundane vegetables have impossibly exciting names for their varieties.

Some tell you where it’s from, like our spring onions, which are White Lisbon, or the Brussels sprouts which are Evesham Special. Others tell you what the cultivator was hoping for, like Elegance salad leaves or Sparkler radishes or our yellow courgettes, which are called Gold Rush. I see what you did there.

We’ve got some flowers with descriptive names too; our sunflowers have been set up for greatness with the name Titan while the dahlias are Showpiece. We have high hopes for them both.

I don’t know what to expect from our aubergines now I know they are called Jewel Jet F1. But I am a big fan of the classical names. Our spinach is Apollo, and we have two varieties of parsnips, one called Palace and the other called Gladiator. I have checked the packet and Gladiator parsnips are a “vigorous hybrid” with “large, canker-resistant roots”. Just like real gladiators were.

Thrilled and exhilerated by all these names, I then turn to the packet of beetroot seeds, and see that they are Mixed. It had to end somewhere.