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Last Week: The Best of John Wyndham, Artemis Fowl, The Vast of Night, Journal of the Plague Year

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

The sun has re-emerged over the last weekend, albeit studded with lightning, but it means I’m happily back outside for work and well, whatever. Feels like a steadier week all over, though sleep is still quite patchy. I assume everyone else is drinking more booze during lockdown (please say “yes”) which doesn’t always play well with upping one’s sleeping tablets… There’s a balance to be found there I guess. I certainly had a few days last week where I just could not be fucked to get out of bed early enough to go and do exercise, which of course then makes everything harder. Self-discipline is harder than it should be. That ride out first thing in the morning is proving ridiculously important, not least because it gives me some hope of keeping up with my podcast backlog. No forty minute tootling round Attenborough Nature Reserve can compete with an hour and half daily commute, so I’ve been forced to be brutal with my subscriptions. I don’t feel good about dropping a couple of podcasts, but I’m finding I want to listen to much more of the banter and nonsense of The Weekly Planet than the BBFC Podcast. Once we’re finally back at work I’ll be upping my audio intake again.

In the meantime… Last week had some fun stuff in it. I’ve gotten into reading anthologies for possibly the first time in 25 years, and have cheerfully chewed through a couple in the last week. I’m hoping it’s gonna prime my brain for delving back into much longer fiction, but that also means I need to prise open the book cupboard, and that’s intimidating in all respects. In gaming news, I’m up to 86.6% in LEGO Star Wars – The Complete Saga, so that’s good news. Hit the 4 billion studs ceiling at last… We also ran a full virtual Gorilla Burger last Thursday in the MissImp Facebook group, after testing it out a month ago. It was really fun! But Zoom hosting is exhausting. I slept good and hard after finally chilling down afterwards. 

Reading: The Best of John Wyndham by, um, John Wyndham

This is a great collection of Wyndham’s works, selecting key stories in chronological order. I’m always struck by how damn readable Wyndham is. He’s got such a smooth and friendly writing style that I feel instantly engaged and warm towards it. Some of the stories feel a little dated, but I suspect that’s mostly because the themes and ideas have been explored in much greater depth and length subsequently – he’s still a hell of an innovator. Standouts include Pawley’s Peepholes in which future folks wreak havoc by treating a small town like a reality TV show, and their revenge is very pleasing; the rather stark coverage of racism in Dumb Martian feels very timely, as an human buys a martian bride to while away his time working in isolation in deep space… it does not end well for him; I’m very fond of The Man from Beyond, which features a pretty classic SF timeline twist as an earthman earnestly persuades venusians to avoid all contact with Earth, and the opening story The Lost Machine is a great account of an AI surviving 20th century humanity. Hell, they’re all good, ranging from fun to thought-provoking. What more do you want? Onward to Jizzle I think.   

Reading: Journal of the Plague Year: A Post-Apocalytic Omnibus by C B Harvey, Malcolm Cross and Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Sure, this is the perfect time to read about a pandemic that wipes out 99% of the global population. I thought as much. C B Harvey’s opening story Orbital Decay set on the International Space Station while the pandemic sweeps the globe, including the right wing nutters convinced that it and the space mission are all a hoax, was exactly what I wanted to read: tense, intriguing and has a perfect SF twist at the end. Of course, I’d totally failed to note that this is one of several omnibuses set in the same world of “the Cull” as the people name the disease, but was delighted to find all three stories set at different stages and places across the world. Malcolm Cross’s Dead Kelly covers the exploits of an Australian gangster returning from the bush to assert his authority on the dwindled survivors of a town. It’s pretty punchy, though it wasn’t exactly the “everyone’s dying right now” vibe I apparently sought. The omnibus finishes up with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Bloody Deluge shifts the action to survivors in Poland choosing either salvation with tolerant religious groups, or the rabid Nazi religious kind. Tough call! That too, is very tense and typically complex and interesting. It seems this is just stories #13-15 of the Afterblight Chronicles, so there’s plenty more to get into!

Watching: Artemis Fowl

Fucking hell. I know book to film adaptations are tricky, but you don’t have to fuck it up in every possible way. Suffice to say (lest I fall to ranting), this is almost the polar opposite in terms of plot and character for Eoin Colfer’s quite excellent YA adventures (which you should read because they’re lots of fun. I’ll be re-reading them to erase this ghastly brain stain). Instead of Artemis being a wickedly smart evil genius crimelord, his dad’s a criminal (except he’s not, he’s rescuing important artifacts, because why would the story be interesting or good?), and he’s a maudlin teenager directed in staggeringly poor fashion by Kenneth “The Worst Poirot Imaginable” Branagh. Just get fucked. It’s impossibly tedious and generic, failing both its source material and audience with incredible dexterity. From a story about a ruthless criminal mastermind discovering the secret faerie realm, kidnapping one of them and ransoming it to restore his family to its former fortunes, we go to a moody kid who has to find the bullshit object his dad has stolen from the fairies, but it’s in his house already, so there is no adventuring at all and instead of discovery and witty hijinks with the fairies, we get an interminable siege of his house, presided over by Judi Dench in her “Pete Postlethwaite in a condom-lampshade Aeon Flux“ follow up to Cats. I’d almost forgotten about the abysmal framing of the story with Mulch Diggums (the giant dwarf) telling the story while in prison. Its existence suggests they totally lost the plot and desperately reached for a prologue that should have been unnecessary, delivered by Josh Gads desperately straining his voice for deep and gravelly. Fucking hell. Watch the trailer, punch yourself in the face why don’t ya.

Watching: The Vast of Night

Recommended by a friend, this is an extremely low budget and vaguely Lovecraftian-vibed UFO story set around a telephone exchange and local radio station. The dialogue is mile a minute, in incredibly long takes, which is really impressive, and it’s really committed, well-written stuff. With its very low budget there’s not much in the way of aliens, till a nice reveal at the end. The mystery loops around a weird sound breaking into the local DJs music and chat show, noted by the girl working the telephone exchange. The mystery deepens when an ex-military caller recounts his experiences on secret missions where that sound was also present… The film accelerates really nicely, maintaining a general air of increasing tension and that something profoundly weird is happening. Expect no Independence Day action nonsense and you should be pleasantly surprised. There are also a few long and slow gliding shots through the town at near ground level (presumably camera on a bike or drone), which are absurdly tense and interesting. Watch it!  

Watching: Trinkets season one

Continuing our taste for absorbing every teenage coming of age drama on Netflix, Trinkets is exactly that, but with a trio of shoplifters. That’s pretty much it, except they’re very well cast and delivered, even if the material is quite familiar stuff. We liked it a lot, even though I can’t necessarily produce a lot to say about it. If you like this kind of show, you will like this show. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71gRutHEWkk

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Comedy Drop-In with Sophie Owen

Yet another really very good pre-recorded workshop for your enjoyment. This time we’ve got Sophie Owen talking about status; how to use it and some especially useful stuff about recognising it in the world around us.

Last Week: Upload, Friday Night Dinner, We Are What We Overcome and things I’ve forgotten about

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Somewhere, recently, two weeks have been misplaced… I’m pretty sure they happened, but I’m damned if I can tell you what I did that took up a whole fortnight. Oh well, that seems to be the way of things at present. I’ve been working from home for something like seventy-five days, which feels both completely normal and utterly insane. The only bit I’ve got any clear recollection of is the last weekend, and a half-arsed list of things I’ve watched. It’s possible I’ve only played LEGO Star Wars – The Complete Saga on our Wii and then gone to sleep. I’m failing to read, or to concentrate enough to read quickly. It’s frustrating as reading is my most relaxing activity. I’ve abandoned about three novels and picked up The Best of John Wyndham and am slowly, so very very slowly, working my through it. Totally Brewed continue to be my drinktrack (y’know, like a soundtrack, but with drinking!) to the pandemic with their end of the week deliveries. Fine, fine humans. I’ve also been idly flicking through the obscenely large and beautiful Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss featuring so many science fiction book covers I recognise, especially all those Asmimov and EE Doc Smith covers I still have on my shelves. Seriously, it’s a beast of a tome, and I’ll be browsing it for months to come.

What else? Well, while the world burns (more, I guess), I find I’m just dissolving into anxiety and distraction. I’m not pleased about the return of cold and rain which has driven me out of my garden office either. Still, some good things have definitely happened. I’ve been trying to get lost while cycling in the mornings, with some success. I’ve refused to look at maps of the area around Attenborough Nature Reserve, but it all seems very pretty. On Saturday, my sister invited me to teach a mob of Beavers how to talk like a pirate on Zoom. That was fun! There were some excellent homemade cutlasses and flags. In the evening I played my first ever roleplaying game, which was also great. I’m very grateful to our GM, Diarmuid, who invited me to play along in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, even knowing that I had no idea what was happening and thoroughly bumping me out of my comfort zone of drinking and watching TV; and to my fellow smugglers who were funny and exceedingly patient. Our one-shot game was called Scum, focusing on a gang of misfit smugglers (not intentionally misfit, but geez, once we we were set loose on characters…) with the job of jail-breaking a Hutt. I enjoyed playing a Tusken Raider, named Sahwa-wa, who saw his clan murdered by the rogue Jedi, Anakin Skywalker. My revenge was foiled when all the Jedi disappeared, leaving me seething and unable to do anything about it. I carry a dismembered protocol droid to translate for me, and my bantha lives in / fills my cabin. I blew a general’s head off! We did eventually succeed, and many people died. We had fun!

Watching: Upload season one

This is a curious little TV show, exploring the banal horrors of a digital afterlife. Programmer, Nathan, gets uploaded after being in a rare car accident. Only he’s been talked into it by his overbearing girlfriend, and may not have been about to die at all… Once in the horrendously expensive Lake View – because of course only the truly wealthy can lead the afterlife they really want to – he discovers worrying gaps in his memory about what his job was and that he might have been killed. It’s a funny show, with a rather cynical tone which appealed to me. The scene where they try to download the founder of digital afterlife, with catastrophic results is bloody and hilarious. The tedium of the hotel-based afterlife, the bug-filled digital world, the sometimes awful people Nathan is now stuck with, and a growing relationship with his living customer service rep all contribute to a genuinely delightful nightmare. Nathan’s existence is ultimately controlled by his (living) girlfriend’s whims, dressing him, denying him access to the endless microtransactions, and making his funeral all about her. Lovely brightly coloured dystopia.  

Watching: Friday Night Dinner seasons 3-4

This one might be more a matter of taste… I’ve really enjoyed this sitcom composed of the Friday night meals of a secular Jewish family. The cast is exceptional, featuring Tamsin Greig (who should already be a national treasure), with Paul Ritter, as mum and dad, with Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal. Very keen on slapstick and characters just this side of over the top, the foursome’s constant conflict is a real joy. A supporting cast including Mark Heap (another one who needs national treasure badging) makes this near-perfect. The last couple of seasons have featured a frozen fox, grandma marrying a total cunt, awful old college mates, vicious little blackmailing kids and so much more. “My nipples are boiling,” kinda sums this show up for me. 

Doing: We Are What We Overcome podcast – Mental Health Check-In

We’re still going! Our fortnightly Facebook Live things are becoming a thing in their own right, which is nice. We’re aiming to check in first and foremost, with a theme or discussion topic to focus our current experiences around. Last week we talked about anger, which feels fairly timely, to say the least. It’s a strange feeling, one that can destroy you or push you to achieve and create all sorts of things.  

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Drop-Ins (double this time)

First up, an amazing introduction to freestyle rap, which makes it almost seem possible…

Followed by the rather wonderful Twinprov and “Re-imagining the Virtual Space: Creativity and Connection Together, Apart“

Bootlego Baby Yodas

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

When I first saw the Child at the end of the first episode in The Mandalorian I was delighted, and very possibly in love. Disney managed the incredible feat of keeping the world from revealing that a baby Yoda was the show’s star, or at least it did for those watching Disney+ in the US. Thankfully I’d been watching along too, otherwise I’d have been unable to avoid the spoilers in the months before it became available in the UK and elsewhere. I’m so glad I did!

One of the most intriguing aspects of having maintained this spoiler-free state is that for months there’s no official baby Yoda merch. This isn’t surprising as licensing tends to result in tonnes of leaked images and spoilers, particularly for LEGO. Right now we won’t get a proper LEGO version of the Child till September when he becomes available only in the £119.99 set of The Razor Crest. At 120 quid, that’s a bit steep for a baby Yoda. It’s an expensive set, even by LEGO Star Wars standards, at 12p per brick. The Razor Crest looks OK, but as with many Star Wars sets it’s a big grey lump and doesn’t excite me much. In the gaping absence of official baby Yodas (because a pluralised “the Childs” just sounds weird), China’s bootleg factories have gone into overdrive. Collecting them has become a slight obsession… 

Basic Childs (see, reads horribly.)

The first one popped up quickly on eBay, before, I think we had any sight of the future LEGO version. It’s a basic (and quickly done) repaint of the existing LEGO babies mould (fucking creepy things), with ears stuck on. It’s not terrible, and is quite cute. His “basicness” feels a little like something LEGO might actually do. The little mini capes flap around quite annoyingly till you press them down firmly. He was my first, so he feels kinda special… he cost £2.95 with a Mandalorian minifigure at the end of January.

Number two popped up a week later. The body is identical, as are the pair of capes, one rectangular on the front and a rounded version on the back. This time he’s got a rather nicely sculpted head, much like the official LEGO Yoda, but scaled down and up-cuted. He was a bargain at £1.65! With the immovable arms I figured he was pretty close to what we’d end up with. 

Yoda Evolution

If there was one thing missing, it was the iconic space pram that baby Yoda follows Mister Shiny Helmet around in. I’d been looking at a few ways to build one, but then was spared by China coming through once again.  Number three cost a bit more – the bank-breaking sum of £3.99, but finally came with his little carriage.  Along with the space pram came a complete re-design. This chap’s larger, more lime green, and waaaaay angrier-looking. Clearly tired of LEGO’s somewhat freaky babies, this little chap has moveable arms (and indeed hands that plug into the wrist holes like regular minifigures) with a nice scarf accessory. The pram is quite neatly done, if a bit loose in its fitting. There’s an antistud on the base and four studs inside to choose whether you want the lid to close when the child is inside or not. I think it’s rather good, and although he is very angry, I find him rather adorable. The pram is of course MASSIVE though, as you can see when hes hanging out with Mando. Note that the first pic with Mando below is the official Din Djarin figure, and the second is the newer bootleg version with shiny beskar armour.

Then It Got… Hideous

At this point I lost all power to not buy these things. The next two that popped up showed up in mid April, just a few days after space pram boy. They were of somewhat lesser quality, but I was committed. First up, Child number three. He’s a repaint of the usual LEGO (knock-off mould) Yoda figure with mini-legs, and larger eyes literally coloured with marker pen, as far as I can tell, since they started rubbing off immediately. The head is also hard and spiky at the back, y’know, like Yoda’s… On the other hand, they’ve put some effort into the design, adding clothing patterns to all sides of the minifig body, legs and arms, which rather endears him to me more. This chap was the princely sum of £3.49!

And then this one happened. It looks OK at a distance, but close up or next to anything else and he’s a freak monster. This chap’s completely unarticulated, and he’s pretty much a single lump of horrifying plastic. But he does come with a mug, enabling him to empty his bone broth on the ground… Bizarrely for his outlandish size, he is still intended for LEGO system, four studs wide and three deep, allowing him to fit onto other plates with ease. Looks like he’s had a few too many plates of something. This monster was also £3.49, and I feel I’ve been repaid with nightmares.

Wait, You Must, for Good Things There Are 

Just a week later (I know, I know, this is getting ridiculous), possibly the best little dude ever appeared! For £3.95 (someone on eBay’s definitely seen me coming…). This little guy gives me the same feeling I did when the Mandalorian rescued baby Yoda from the Empire: intense fuzziness. He’s a bit bigger, but they’ve done a lovely job moulding his head to be super-appealing. He’s a smarter construction too – a regular size minifigure body, albeit with little custom arms and hands that can’t hold anything, plugged into a neat, um, I don’t know what to call this… body socket? with a ruff on top. Size-wise he feels more like the usual LEGO difference between an adult and child character, with lots of very nice detailing. Goddamn, he’s adorable.    

In Semi-Conclusion…

Obviously number six is the best all-round, but how close are any of them to what LEGO has planned? Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. Clearly, he fits into the usual LEGO sizing and design scheme, and has lovely big eyes and cute face, but after seeing so many other versions, I’m not that into him. I’ll almost certainly pick up a copy of him split out from the Razor Crest set.

You’ll be extremely unsurprised that I’ve got at least another two on the way… though they’re mostly for their space pram variants! I think the whole thing is a fascinating example of what happens when they’re a gap in licensing, and I’m oddly inspired by the resulting creativity.

I’ll do another post like this when I receive the others, and another one comparing the Mandolorian designs for Din Djarin himself. Do you have a favourite? Let me know!

Last Week: Hollywood, The Lock Artist, LEGO Attack of the Morro Dragon, Transformers vol 1, Never Have I Ever

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Another week, another near-sun tan. This week I’ve seen a friend in person (what the actual fuck?) and found a new direction for exercise. That sounds pretty good, right? It was extremely disconcerting to meet up with a person in real life – I’ve begun to feel a little like all my friends who have long assured me that they’ve met their best friends purely online – but three hours sitting in the local park in a government-approved triangle was lovely. I’ve been seeing others largely as things to be avoided as they blunder towards me, breathing heavily with no sense of physical distance. Apart from the postman and chin tilts to neighbours it’s the most human experience I’ve had of late. I also attended a properly fun Zoom birthday party too (thanks Mr Ben!), so clearly we’re getting used to these things.

Heading out in the direction of Dovecote Lane park eventually sent me that way on my bike too. I’ve found exercise really hard for the last couple of months. I’ve always relied on cycling to work (and the swim at the halfway point) for a few miles in each direction to keep me fit without feeling like I was doing exercise, and it’s been pretty good for keeping me fit and able to eat and drink what I like. Well fuck you very much lockdown, that’s been properly trashed. Cycling in an aimless circle round university park or Beeston has been quite cack, and while jogging on the spot clearly burns calories it’s too tedious. So I’ve started cycling out to Attenborough Nature Reserve. It’s not especially far, but I’ve rarely explored round there, so I’m enjoying heading off down a road with no clue where it goes. It’s not made me late for work… yet. Even when I didn’t sleep at all on Thursday night I got up and went for an explore before work. Must be good!

In between late night walks around Beeston, drinking too much and watching TV, we’ve continued our slow build of the LEGO Brick Bank. It’s quite lovely.

I’ve also finally returned to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on our Wii. I’m up to 30-something per cent and enjoying it enormously. I have discovered though that our TV really can’t handle proper dark contrast on a sunny day, so I’m dying a lot by falling off edges I can’t see. There have been a few levels where I’ve had to stand right in front of the TV (in sport mode), and just hoped I’d find the exit to a room. Still, I’ve got Indy and General Grievous to hop around and smash stuff, so I’m happy.

Oh yeah, and another bootleg Mando arrived this week – with shiny beskar armour! Baby Yoda will have his Mister Shiny Helmet. Nicely, he comes with a screwdriver accessory which I assume is supposed to be the tracking fob. There is something in me compelling me to acquire more of these guys… I’ve also just got the Armourer, but pics of her will have to wait till I’ve crafted a custom cloak. What is wrong with me…?

 

Watching: Hollywood

OK, so this should have been in last week’s post, but I’d forgotten that we’d watched it. That’s no indication of how good it is, everything belongs to the neverwhen at the moment. Plus we caned through it in three nights. This is a very strange show, offering us an alternate Hollywood of the 1950s in which the reviled minorities of the day can actually get a foothold in the industry. The show nails the golden era vibe, from movie producer boardrooms to the grim/delightful gas station gigolos. Over the first couple of episodes the show draws together the flailing careers of half a dozen interesting and purposely diverse young Hollywood hopefuls and then sets them together in a movie, despite, or perhaps because of, their race, gender and sexuality – all things that would have killed their careers in real Hollywood. It’s a very pleasing show; the acting is great, from the keen Jack Castello moonlighting as an escort from the aforementioned gas station (it and its owner, Ernie West, are an absolute highlight), aspiring black actor Camille, Archie the black and gay screenwriter who finds himself in a relationship with Rock Hudson (also a delight, and terrible actor in a fantastic screentest montage), and the awesome double act of Hollywood execs Dick Samuels and Ellen Kincaid, plus the quite distressing sleazy and manipulative agent Henry, played with soiled glee by Jim Parsons. 

It’s really good fun, and a moving story – each success feels wonderful, and Hollywood getting behind this gang is immensely satisfying, as is the acceptance and coming out of various characters at all levels of the business. For me, it remained jarring however, for just how unreal the situation is compared to Hollywood of the ’50s – it never escaped its own unlikeliness. Most certainly worth a watch.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome – Live Specials

We’re continuing to livestream every other Monday on Facebook, this time on trying to be aware of our mental health states, as well as that of others. I feel like we’re getting better at this live babbling thing. It feels less awkward now. We’ll be streaming to Facebook next on Monday 1 June, and you can watch em all right here.

Reading: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

I’ve been through another couple of weeks of struggling to read properly, or at least as quickly as I enjoy. After discarding half a dozen books less than one chapter in, I finally prised open my book cupboard and pulled out the first pretty thing I could find. It was this! A pleasing and sharply written story of a boy traumatised into silence by an event in his childhood (which is only fully revealed toward the end, and works very nicely),  a lad who discovers he has two talents, drawing and lock picking…  We’re given two main story threads to skip between: his life as the lock artist led by a series of pagers offering jobs that he responds to, and how he got into all this trouble in the first place. They’re both peculiarly endearing, and that’s partly down to the charming internal monologue which carries through all of his interactions, since he does indeed remain mute throughout. He’s funny, and sweet, enough of an outsider through his selective mutism to have a cynical eye, and yet through his silence other people just trust him. Including proper big bad criminal types. It all ends rather badly, but we’re told that from the beginning. His lengthy infatuation and distance romance via comic book pages that he and his sort-of girlfriend exchange is genuinely delightful. This is fast-paced and fun, with a harsh shade of real darkness in both his past and future.

Reading: Transformers vol. 1: The World in Your Eyes

This was a hard read for me. I’m a huge fan of IDW’s previous Transformers continuity, which ran for an extraordinary thirteen years (a feat that I don’t think any other Western comic series, still less one based on a toy line, has achieved), taking us from the brutal finale of the Autobot-Decepticon war through to peace time, with wonderful characters, alternating humour with dark political wranglings. This new reboot has quite a lot to live up to… 

We’re taken millions of years back to Cybertron pre-war, introducing us to the sights through the eyes of newly forged Rubble, who’s being shown round by Bumblebee. Of course, it’s the worst possible time to show a new kid round, as the tensions between the establishment and Megatron’s “Ascenticons” are just now bleeding over into violence. It’s a lovely Cybertron, one we’ve only glimpsed before in flashbacks (or, memorably, time travel), and it’s a thriving world with vast architecture, travel and commerce. A successful world, which for what feels like the first time, has organic alien races living alongside the Transformers. It’s sad to think it’ll all be ripped apart soon…

It’s a very pretty comic, but is incredibly slow moving, even for the first chapter introducing a rebooted world. I suspect I’m finding it hard going from the well-established characters of the last continuity to seeing them all reshuffled and now filling different roles. It’s a cool era to set the story in though, and I think it’s got promise.

Building: LEGO Ninjago 70736 Attack of the Morro Dragon

I love Ninjago’s dragons and the insane aesthics the range has pursued down the years, giving us both traditionalish ninjas and dragons, but also Mad Max dieselpunk, enormous mechs, and more recently Tron-style arcade stuff. Bonkers. Oh, and also the stunning Ninjago City builds and the even wilder designs from The LEGO Ninjago Movie.

This set’s a little older, and like most of the Ninjago line I only pick them up when they’re quite severely discounted. Obviously it was the glow in the dark colours that appealed to me most of all, and those lovely wings. It’s a satisfying assembly, with a mini temple build, sky bikes (or something, I don’t really follow the stories), a couple of ninjas and three more of these evil ninjas with transparent legs and heads. Oh, and two ghosts. I’ve already put them somewhere but it’s the dragon I was interested in.

This is actually a smaller set than I thought it was, and comes together very quickly indeed. Despite being larger, and having more pieces than Master Wu’s dragon (a fantastic LEGO set), it’s a shorter build all round. The construction is like many of the others, a combination of big crunchy joints and the little Mixels ones for legs, wings and tail. I always enjoy the design of the dragon head itself, which gives the beastie a lot of character. The chin horn is oddly satisfying! All the glow in the dark pieces give the dragon its lovely roiling curves, but leave it sadly inflexible. It’s a dragon I’d love to coil around a building, but that’s gonna take a severe re-engineering of its body. It’s rather striking, and I imagine this one will remain constructed for quite a while, at least until I want to plunder its glowing parts.

And just because I liked it…

Watching: Never Have I Ever 

We watched this in a single night… I’m always thrilled to stumble across shows with under half-hour episode lengths at present. This is a pretty straightforward US highschool outsider tale, from the somewhat unusual perspective of an Indian-American family. That’s a pretty familiar trope in UK TV, and was very welcome in the even-more-familiar US high school setting. I’m not sure that there’s anything exceptional here, but it’s warmly told, with a number of fun and occasionally over the top performances, all solidly conforming to our expectations of a high school drama. I had some trouble figuring out how old the characters were supposed to be as it’s the usual casting combo of girls who must be in their twenties, but look about 14, and guys who are plainly in their mid-thirties. No wonder kids are so confused these days etc. As usual it’s the vibe between the BFFs that makes this fun to watch, particularly drama-queen Ramona Wong (wonderfully and worryingly odd in the lamentably cancelled Santa Clarita Diet). As filled with diversity and coming out stories as you could hope for, this is plenty of fun, if not especially memorable. Oh yeah, and it’s narrated by John McEnroe. Yes, the tennis player. 

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Drop-In – “Specific and True” with Terje Brevick

Continuing our mission to bring you improv from everywhere, this week’s episode features Norwegian improviser, Terje Brevick, with fun games and a good reminder of the value of details and honesty in improv.

Last Week: Elementary s2, LEGO AT-ST Raider, COVID-19 test

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Oh no, I’ve left this too late in the week and now have no idea what happened a mere three days ago! Also, it’s now scorchingly hot and it’s cooking my brain cells. I’ve been thinking a bit about the gummy, elastic chrono-confusion I’m feeling. I think a lot of other folk are too, but figuring out other folks’ memories is definitely beyond me. I never know what day it is any more, and were it not for stopping work at 5.30 each day and those two weird days at the end of the working week when there’s suddenly nothing I’m supposed to do, I’m sure I’d just be working 24/7. That there is no need to get up and function is harrowing.

I’m mostly succeeding at dragging myself out of bed and doing exercise in the morning. Generally it’s running on the spot with weights in our front room (the amazing aerobic powers of Wii Fit) while watching Clone Wars episodes (subtitled) and listening to a handful of the podcasts I’d usually enjoy while cycling each day.  It’s profoundly unsatisfying, plus it makes me sweat, which is awful. I’ve been out for a few cycle rides, but I’ve never been a truly willing exerciser – all my cycling was just a cheaper, quicker way to get to work, with the sublime bonus of a swimming pool around halfway there. 

Once I start work, it’s mostly OK. Last week got a bit chilly again and drove me back indoors, but by Thursday I was desperate for a change of scenery and returned to my garden office. It wasn’t warm… But being in a different place helps, because I’m just not seeing enough different places. My friend Sophie (who thinks far too much about far too many things, many of them associated with improv) has ideas about how our lack of different environments, especially in using the same places for a wide range of activities normally in different places, fails to trigger important context switches in our brains. Without those usual changes, everything is just the same and none of it sticks properly. Makes sense to me, certainly at the moment. 

Watching: Elementary season two

This is proper comfort TV. I’m still surprised and pleased by the combination of Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Joan Watson. They perfectly nail the characters, Miller in particular truly captures Sherlock with a captivating performance: equal parts awkward, arrogant, and ferociously interested and invested in their work. Physically he’s gloriously contained and compact, irritating, irritable, witty and twitchy. Liu is the perfect foil. It’s also very reassuring to be back in 2013 era 23 episode seasons. It’s a splendid show, with long story arcs and rewarding character development looping through and around the episodic crime of the week format. It makes me really happy! For my money, this is so much richer and more faithful to Conan Doyle’s characters and feel than the cold, existential BBC drama. These are people I want to spend time with, and gloriously there are another five and a half seasons, making Miller and Liu the longest-running performers of these roles.

Testing: COVID-19 swab test

I know! I don’t know anyone else who’s had a test, whether they work in a hospital or elsewhere. I received mine because I use the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app to log my symptoms (or lack thereof) every day. They’ve allocated a bunch of tests to what’s effectively a control group of people like myself who they don’t think have the plague. So I got a test! Weirdly exciting, in the same way as receiving a postal vote. The instructions are impressively massive for a relatively simple process, and all the bits were included. First step: book the courier to pick it up using an online portal. Second step: register the test online. Third step: take the damn test. Two places are swabbed, with varying degrees of discomfort. First the back of the throat, pretty much where my tonsils would be had I not had em yanked out years ago (cue lots of gagging and drooling) Second as far up your nose with the same swab as you can, and swivel… That’s more unpleasant, and it did feel a bit like I was poking myself in the brain. But it’s fine, and nothing to worry about. A chap came to collect it on Sunday. I feel like I’ve contributed something concrete, which is rather nice. Oh, and my test came back negative. I’ve rarely been so happy to fail a test…   

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Drop-In

Another cool recorded workshop, this time an intro to musical improv. I fear it, yet this is a lot of fun. Good for pretty much anyone, of any age, no matter your imagined singing proficiency.

Reading: REDACTED by REDACTED

I can’t tell you too much about this one I’m afraid, but I spent a chunk of last week getting lost in the first of our Marvel novels to enter the Aconyte Books production line. All I can say is it features a popular and somewhat snarky female character, and explores her past and present. Vague enough for ya? It’s great though, funny and action-packed with a strong voice. I’m so pleased we’re making these novels!

Building: LEGO Detective’s Office 10246

After dismantling and washing this lovely modular build out in the sun the previous weekend, I’ve reassembled it! So many pieces just arrayed together on a tray is oddly intimidating, and it felt like it took me forever to re-assemble. It was worth it though. There’s a plethora of cool and cute features inside, plus some clever building techniques I’d love to master, or at least remember…

Building: LEGO AT-ST Raider 75254

I’ve been agonising over buying Mandalorian LEGO sets for a while. I love the show and I wantses the LEGO, but they’re pretty pricey. I can’t justify the Razor Crest – the only set with a legit baby Yoda – for £119.99 for a quite ugly grey set. This was my alternative, netting me an official Mando minifig, Cara Dune (one of my faves from the show) and a pair of grumpy Klatoonian raiders. 

Fractionally more colourful than most LEGO Star Wars sets, this is a joy to assemble. The cockpit is ingeniously assembled and has a lot of character. It takes plenty of stickers to make this such a pretty set, and I’m increasingly skilled at applying them (hello, samurai sword paperknife). The minifigs are lovely and detailed (though I’m actually favouring the knock-off Mando I think – more on that another time), and the guns are absurd. Just look at that lovely raggedy AT-ST!

Last Week: The Chrysalids, Happiness on The Improv Boost, LEGO fun, Agents of SHIELD s3

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Last week was very short as I managed to squeeze two days off into it. These have largely been spent outside in my garden office sorting and tidying LEGO. It’s very time consuming and satisfying, but does leave me slightly wondering where the time has gone. With a very warm and sunny Friday and Saturday I moved my watching of Agents of SHIELD outside along with dismantling and washing the LEGO Detective’s Office set. It’s a lovely little thing, but it had become very grubby. I’m now trying to rebuild it with a tray overflowing with parts. Inevitably, it’s becoming a quicker process the more of it I’ve built. Feels kinda exponential, as if by the end it will be assembling itself… Marilyn and I have also finally begun a shared build, the LEGO Brick Bank, which has been languishing on my “to be built” shelf for some years now… It’s pretty ace, and is a fine accompaniment to season two of Elementary.  

 

In dismantling the Detective’s Office, I re-remembered that I’d built a little half-modular some years ago, but they’ve been joined together for so long I’d somewhat forgotten that it wasn’t part of the set. I snapped a few pics from it before I dismantled it, for posterity, or whatever. The concept was a coffee shop on the ground floor and a bottle shop above. I’d do almost all of it differently now, of course, but I think it did look pretty good. I was very happy to use the Indiana Jones poster tiles to good effect!

We’ve started to enjoy strolling around Beeston late at night. I adore the peace and quiet (I’ve been watching bats in our garden!) and I’m in urgent need of more exercise. I’m looking at you, beer… We’ve met up with a couple of our pussy cats pals too, which has been especially lovely. Given the utter clusterfuck of Bojo’s latest update on the UK’s progress with coronavirus, I suspect I’ll be working from home, getting fat, and taking late night walks for some weeks yet.

Despite the week’s brevity, I seem to have taken part in two podcast recordings and read some books! Victory all round. 

Watching: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D season 3

Fuck me, I love this show more and more. We’re finally getting into the stuff I remember a little better. It’s getting so hard to summarise… I guess this season is properly focused on the fallout of the Inhuman explosion and on the truly epic and dark history of Hydra! First we have to recover Agent Simmons from the creepy monolith that whisked her away from Fitz’s arms at the end of season two. Turns out its part of an ancient Hydra tradition, who’ve been feeding the terrifying alien entity within on fresh young Hydra enthusiasts for centuries. Their ultimate aim is to unleash the monster on the world! The team do manage to rescue Simmons, but doing so reveals to Hydra that the doorway can indeed be bridged. There are some pretty tense moments, and Daisy/Skye gets to assemble her own team of Secret Warriors, comprised of some of the Inhumans now emerging. The first half of the season focuses on Hydra getting into the alien planet, with former agent Ward becoming the host of the Inhuman ancestor. That’s bad news for everyone… and gives us the second half, in which Ward sets about subsuming other Inhumans and advancing a plan to dominate the whole world. Bad guys with big plans! Mostly though, my heart continues to beat for FitzSimmons, and for Coulson and Agent Mae. Honestly, it’s hard to make any sense of this season if you haven’t seen the previous two, but if you have it really is a gift: long form deepening of relationships, expanding on the major MCU story threads from Civil War, and getting into the backstory of Hydra to a massive extent.

 

Doing: The Improv Boost “Happiness” podcast

All round lovely fella, David Escobedo, one of our It’s A Trap: The Improvised Star Wars Show cast members, and rabid user of social media for promoting improv in all its forms, invited me to join him and a few friends for a very short podcast talking about things we feel passionate about. The challenge was to narrow it down to a specific thing to expostulate on for eight minutes. LEGO would be too broad, as would Star Wars, so it sent me down a little rabbit hole of figuring out what I do especially enjoy, rather than the general everything of science fiction and stuff. One of my gateways into SF, or at least one that has cast a lengthy shadow, is the work of the great John Wyndham. Picking The Day of the Triffids was an easy next step. That’s why I read both the abridged US edition then the UK/Penguin edition in a week. The latter is about 10% longer, and just has a little more depth. It’s startlingly apt for our current situation, and I’d recommend it for anyone who finds reassurance in someone else’s words managing to neatly sum up existential and ethical crises. Also, triffids are ace, and plainly the ancestor of all zombie fiction. 

Alas, whatever software David was using to stream Zoom into Facebook fucked us over and we lost the last five minutes. Which means you get all of Jac’s enthusing about calculus (whatever the hell that is… :-} ) but lose Vanessa’s final thoughts on our topics which neatly wedded our themes together. Essentially (I think) we’re both talking about aspects of community and how people deal with the situations they find themselves in. Enjoy!

Reading: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Having cheerfully chugged down a double dose of The Day of the Triffids I moved straight on to what’s generally regarded as his “best” novel. It’s not my most favourite, but it’s quite a read. Far future post-apocalypse, humanity is struggling to rebuild itself after what appears to be nuclear catastrophe with radioactive fallout causing widespread genetic mutation. As a result, a renewed fervour for purity and the importance of the human (and all other creatures and crops) matching the design laid down by God / government. The consequences of deviation from the norm are severe: death, destruction, banishment to the badlands. None of it’s very appealing.

Our viewpoint is David, a perfectly normal boy: somewhat lazy, chafing a little under the religious intensity of his father and the demands of being in a small farming community in the newly reclaimed lands of Labrador. Only… he’s telepathic, and that makes him a very serious deviation indeed. In the novel we find a lot more of the social awareness and interest in community and individualism that Wyndham show’s in all of his work, and it’s very thought-provoking while being beguiling easy reading. It’s quite a neat trick to cover abominations and socially-mandated murder with such a breezy and familiar writing style. Ultimately, of course, David and his friends have to go on the run from their peers and family. When his younger sister, Petra, who turns out to be an incredibly powerful telepath makes contact with someone in “Zealand”, the whole of David’s world (and ours, since he’s our only view of it) is turned upside down. Moments of bleakness and fear fight with equally delightful epiphanies and hope for true acceptance. It’s great! Read it! 

Doing: We Are What We Overcome podcast Special Episode #3 Self Care

Our fortnightly Facebook Live podcast recordings continue to catch me unawares! Mondays are not a good evening for me to have my brain in gear, but I’m trying. Last week we talked about self-care some more. It’s really important to look after yourself at the moment. Divorced of much meaningful in-person human contact, I think we’re all fraying away at the edges. We talked about some of the things that frustrate the act of self-care, and some of the tools we use to keep ourselves as sorted as we can be.

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Drop-In: Duncan Carty – Artist’s Eye for the Improv Guy

This week we got a really special and different take on improvisation and creativity from our Duncan Carty, combining artistic expression, y’know, like drawing, with how we take inspiration for our scenes and performances. It’s a very good workshop, and I implore you to get out your crayons and walls and go at it. Phew, that’s the eighth improv workshop Emily has wrangled onto our website, and it looks we’re gonna be providing them for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!  

Last Week: Lovecraft Country, Derry Girls, Agents of SHIELD s2, The Politican, knock-off baby Yoda, The Day of the Triffids, The Voices! The Voices

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

That seemed like a nice gentle week, though sadly devoid of sun and the opportunity to work outside. I’m getting this post written early (I mean, on time) since I got way behind last week, and this week’s has things to do in it! Tonight me and my We Are What We Overcome compadres are recording again, via Zoom and Facebook Live – join us here at 7.30pm for some thoughts about self care, which is very important at the mo. Which reminds me, I really must post about the last couple of episodes we’ve released… And on Wednesday I’ll be recording with David Escobedo for a short podcast about Happiness. I’ll be talking about how much I love John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.

Here’s a gif of Pixie playing with her beloved feather-mouse.

Reading: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

A book that has been on my radar for some time, but only made proper sonar noises when it arrived at my house. This is a delight to read, combining the lingering dread of Lovecraftian horror with the ever-present horror of American racism. Set in ’50s Chicago, Lovecraft Country weaves together a series of short, deeply Lovecraftian stories revolving around one black family, the eldritch events that they’re constantly dragged into, and its close ties to their daily experience of racism. I found it a hell of a read – it’s ever kind of cosmic horror you want, but with the racism coming from the setting, not the author. Clever, funny, chilling and very thought-provoking.

Watching: Derry Girls season one

Fucking hell, this is hilarious. Made before Sex Education and a bunch of other sassy shows about teenagers, it has all the painfully sharp script and on-point performances I’m now kinda demanding from anything I watch. This is the ’90s in Derry, and it’s flawless. Funny, vicious dialogue, astonishing gurning and sulk-faces from the leads with generally ridiculous goings-on, against the backdrop of IRA bombings and British soldiers on the streets. A genuine delight and I’m deeply looking forward to season two arriving on Netflix. The trailer below totally misses all the savage sweary put-downs, scowling teenage angst, utter cunt of a granddad and more.

Gathering: Knock-off LEGO Baby Yodas 

I… can’t… help… myself… I’m genuinely fascinated by these. It’s a great example of what happens when merchandisers get into an IP too late. In this case, Disney so totally locked down The Mandalorian to prevent spoilers getting out (and successfully!), that even LEGO have no baby Yoda (yeah, yeah, “the child”, whatever) figures coming out till September, and then only in a set that costs £120. Bootleggers have filled in the gap, and I’m casually/obsessively picking them all up.

The first one was a basic repaint plus ears of the existing LEGO baby minifigure (centre front), pretty cute with a cheap paint job. But he also came with the Mandalorian himself. Next came the moulded head on the same body, with a cloak in addition to the fabric tunic. A definite step up in tooling and quality. At the same time we had hideous things like the chap on the far-right (possibly politically, who knows), which is a crudely repainted knock-off Yoda head mould) with a surprisingly detailed body and mini-legs paint job. Way too big, since obviously he’s the same size as Yoda himself. Next up, we finally get a space pram (which we have all been crying out for, for months now). This features a totally different figure build, with detachable poseable arms (and hands), with a collar and a great little face if rather angry. The pram itself is slightly flimsy, though you can open and close it, with studs inside for standing baby Yoda up, and an antistud beneath for putting on a base. Lastly, the fucking monster at the back. I couldn’t resist picking that up, even if he does seem better suited to the Mos Eisley Cantina, or LEGO Trolls. Immovable arms, gargantuanism and a brown mug are his primary attributes…

There are yet more being released, notably variations on the space pram. I’ll keep y’all updated… 

 

Doing: MissImp’s Weekly Virtual Drop-In with Marilyn Bird

Last week it was time for my other half, Marilyn, to give us some insight into the kind of character work she enjoys, focusing on voice and techniques for acquiring the vocal noises of others, and the fun characters that emerge from it. Fun!

Watching: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season two

I have so much love for this show it’s absurd. Once more, so much happens! At the end of season one, newly revealed Hydra agent/bastard Grant Ward dumped my beloved FitzSimmons into the ocean in a box, season two begins with Fitz recovering from oxygen deprivation affecting his memory and coordination, not unlike a stroke. It’s surprisingly heartbreaking – or it would be if I weren’t so deeply invested in the guy! His partner, Simmons, is away on a mission infiltrating Hydra, and in her absence poor Fitz is getting worse, hallucinating her presence and withdrawing from the team. Reader, my heart aches for them. Don’t worry though, he gets better, though not in a single episode. They make good use of the 22 episodes to bring in a host of new characters, adding the remarkably badass Bobbi,  Lance, and Mack to Coulson’s team. The season kicks off with an Agent Carter crossover, revealing Nazi/Hydra artifacts seized after WWII which will give us the main storyline of the Inhumans for this stretch. Mixed in are a second SHIELD’s (headed up by Edward James Olmos) attempted coup of Coulson’s directorship, Ward’s weird relationship with Agent 33 (bearing a scarred version of Mae’s face), a lovely Lady Sif episode, Kyle MacLachlan in splendid crazy-man mode as Skye’s father, Agent Coulson compulsively carving alien symbols as a result of his TAHITI treatment, and so much more. From a big plot point of view, we get the release of Terrigen – the stuff that flips the genetic switch for humans with alien genes to become Inhumans, and the powers that come with it. Skye is one of those affected and becomes properly badass, able to manipulate the vibration of all matter. Fucking cool. She finally meets her mum and dad too, which is quite lovely, even if they are insane in different ways… It’s all a big shake up for SHIELD and the world! A crushing ending though, for everyone who knows this show is only about FitzSimmons, as Simmons is sucked into anoter world… I’m so glad I was able to immediately start on season 3…

 

Reading: B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs vol. 1

I’m a devoted Hellboy fan, and I admire both the spare art aesthetic of the comics and the unusual storytelling which leans heavily on folklore (and the Cthulhu mythos) with a similarly sparse style. I particularly enjoy the many static panels slowly zooming in or out on the subject, and the frequent lack of dialogue. The Bureau for Paranormal Research & Development is a wonderful invention, having much in common with the Laundry (in Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series), and any other government department/CSI type investigators. That they’re dealing with paranormal and metaphysical threats is really fun. This massive omnibus takes off without Hellboy (I believe the whole 8 volume series continues like that), showing just how good Abe Sapien, Liz, Roger, Johann Strauss and others are without him. The main story is arc is the titular plague of frogs, but there are many sidelines into Sapiens’ back story and other small tales that fit in thematically.  I especially enjoy reading comics this way, it feels more like I’m reading something with the density and depth of a novel, and at 408 pages, it certainly feels like one too. A great story, and is only the beginning of a storyline that will shake the world itself. 

Reading: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

In preparation for going on David Escobedo’s Improv Boost “Happiness” series this Wednesday, I figured it would be a good idea to re-read it, since The Day of the Triffids is my chosen subject. Good job I did! I’d forgotten lots of it, and invented other content based on the slew of inferior TV versions that exist. Unfortunately I’ve also just realised I’ve made the ghastly mistake of reading the abridged American version, which probably explains why it was even quicker a read than I expected! Dammit. It’s a lovely little post-apocalyptic tale in which the world is suddenly blinded, with a handful of exceptions, and is then hunted to near-extinction by carnivorous walking plants, the triffids themselves. I’ve loved it since I read the book when I was quite young, followed by collecting (I think) everything he ever wrote under his many pseudonyms. It’s a fairly simple story of a fellow waking up in hospital, discovering that everyone else is blind, and his travels through a number of emerging communities struggling to survive in the total collapse of civilisation. It was probably the first post-apocalyptic book I read, and it’s remained with me ever since. The story is filled with sections that seem to so well describe stages of anxiety, isolation and moral confusion which are terribly applicable to today’s pandemic. An absolute classic that’s inspired so many subsequent stories, notably all zombie movies and especially 28 Days Later. I may now binge on Wyndham’s other great novels. 

Watching: The Politician season one

Taking all the tension and horror of House of Cards and sticking it in a US high school presidential race produces an impressively tense and chilling satire! This is really well done. From the hyper-ambitious sociopathic rich kids and their scheming, murderous antics, to the utterly disinterested voters, this is another perfectly assembled show. Watch it!

https://youtu.be/6-kdBlzCG7w

Last Week: The Human, Star Trek Picard and LEGO UCS Y-Wing

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Gosh time really does fly, while simultaneously flexing with all the integrity of sun-warmed chewing gum… so, yeah, it’s Friday already and I haven’t completed my sole personal task of the week – recording what the I’ve watched and done. Obviously I’ve done relatively little, except drunk spectacular quantities of beer and gazed listlessly at our blossoming lilac tree. That’s right: I’ve been outside! In fact, I spent most of last week outside. Work very kindly ordered us some desks in an attempt to aid good workspace habits, since I’ve been sitting on the sofa with my laptop on my knees for six weeks or so… It’s a nice little desk, but it does rather fill our front room. The brightening weather gave me ideas! After a day sitting under said lilac tree I got quite enthusiastic, ordering a WIFI extender thing (with antennae! Must be good.) and unfurling the gazebo. I even went so far as to lay out four of the concrete slabs that have been stacked in our garden for more than a decade, pending the creation of a patio. It was quite lovely. I spent my days in sunshine, watching the cats race around the garden, the gentle scent of lilac and roses wafting into my hardworking face. Pretty nice week all round really.

Reading: The Human (Rise of the Jain #3) by Neal Asher

I don’t often pre-order books (I know, as a publishing person I should know better…) but that’s mostly because by to-be-read stack both physical and digital is absurd. The coronavirus means I want things to look forward to! I’ve been reading Asher’s Polity books for years – fast-paced military space opera with great intergalactic conflict, high tech, terrifying aliens and engaging heroes. The set up… it’s an advanced human civilisation slowly taken over by the AIs we built, so that now Earth Central is a massively powerful AI who runs the whole show, and much better than we ever managed. The AIs do have a ruthlessly utilitarian slant though, and while mostly that means they do make life better for the majority, sometimes it means they sacrifice whole worlds to save the rest of the Polity… This is so far into the story that it’s near impossible to summarise what’s going on! Ancient alien technology – the Jain – enables nano-(and even pico-)engineering on a thrilling scale, but is horribly prone to taking over its user and sequestering every resource in sight, utterly destroying the civilisation that tried to use it. A vast array of active Jain tech has been swirling around the heart of a galaxy for millions of years. For the last few hundred years, Orlandine, a vastly upgraded “haiman”, half AI, half human who has seemingly tamed Jain tech for her own purposes, as well as the gnomic moon-sized alien entity, Dragon, have been preventing it from escaping and wreaking havoc.

That all went spectacularly tits up in the last book, and this is the final struggle to contain the Jain before it wipes out everyone. This installment really builds on the transhuman character development of Orlandine, the Polity AIs, the horrifying crab-like human-munching aliens, the Prador, and a host of other characters, many of them infected with Jain ambition among other things. It’s impossibly epic, with vast stakes, finally revealing the true dangers of the alien tech and a lot more about where it truly comes from. As a huge fan of the universe, I was delighted by this, even if the ending comes about a little quickly. Fear not though, there are plenty of hints at what is still unknown, and critical figures are conspicuously absent. Bring on the next trilogy please!   

Building: LEGO Y-Wing Starfighter – LEGO 75181

Ermagherd, is I believe, how the young folk express their fondness for a thing. It is how I should like to express my fondness for this splendid build! This is the first UCS (ultimate collector series) I’ve had the chance to assemble, and I’m pretty impressed. In truth, I nicked it from work (sliced open the box and emptied it into a rucksack, walks away whistling etc), and probably would not have bought it for myself. It’s Star Wars, so it’s huge and mostly grey. The Y-Wings are rightly iconic for getting blown to pieces above various Death Stars, but they look so damned cool. I’ve already got a LEGO Y-Wing, now that I think about it – the 1999 edition that came with a tie-fighter. It was rad at the time, but this massive set comprehensively blows it out of the water and vaporises the lake it was skimming over. At a mere 1967 pieces, I was confident that I could build it in an evening, but naturally failed. Instead it dominated an entire Saturday afternoon while I watched more of season two of Agents of SHIELD (which I’ve had to pause to watch Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Age of Ultron because the latter takes place around episode 20!). Rarely have I spent a Saturday afternoon so productively!

Like a lot of the larger LEGO vehicles I’ve built, there are plenty of time when I have no idea what I’m assembling. This one went through a canal barge to crucifix stage pretty quickly, and as soon as the cockpit clips in it’s instantly recognisable. That cockpit itself is loaded with clever building tricks to give it a smooth and curved underside as neat as the top, sneaky stuff to invert the direction of the studs. It’s stuff I’m terrible at in my own building and I’m keen to learn from it. The nacelles have simpler tactics for allowing intense greebling all the way round the square pillars. The greeblage is mighty all over the back and underside of the Y-Wing. One of the things I often admire about official LEGO sets is the masterful balance of detailing, whether it’s in a scatter of cheese slopes, a light touch in patterning brick colours, or in this – while there’s a lot of detailing, it’s not so insanely overdone that it detracts from the model at a distance. The Y-Wing looks fantastically good, such a nice version of the film designs. There are though a bunch of stickers to apply on the cockpit which stressed me out to apply neatly. Not half as much as the massive sticker for the info plaque though. It really shouldn’t generate such anxiety! Nevertheless, I think I got it on perfectly. 

The minifigs are great, as you’d expect, with a finely detailed Gold leader and a shiny silver R2-BHD astromech.  Yeah, I love this thing. It is way too big to put anywhere in our house, sadly, but it will come apart into three neat pieces for transporting back to work once all this is over. Lamentably, having assembled this one, I now find myself eyeing up the far smaller A-Wing that’s just been released. That’s definitely shelf-sized…

Watching: Star Trek: Picard

We’d been waiting for all the episodes to be released on Amazon Prime before we began this. Our preference is definitely bingeing hard, rather than the agonising wait till next week. I’ve not reflected much on the change in our viewing habits in the last decade, but I think I’m getting more enjoyment from being deeply embedded in a show for a couple of weeks than dipping in and out of several simultaneously. However, I fear I’m going to have to do a second watch of Picard, because unlike Discovery which I adored from beginning to end, I just don’t know what to think of this new spin-off. Perhaps we’ll find out while I ramble…

The character of Jean-Luc Picard is obviously great – Patrick Stewart made Star Trek: The Next Generation come alive, and even though a lot of it is barely watchable now, the interactions of Captain Picard and his close-knit crew are delightful. TNG set the ground for the vastly superior Deep Space Nine that followed, with its huge and rewarding story arcs advancing the previous episodic narrative. With the exception of the Borg episodes, TNG never got the opportunity to do that, and with the similar exception of First Contact, its follow up movies are dreadful, though none as bad at those of the original series. I’ve been without Picard since First Contact in 1996 (holy fuck, how long?!), though the aforementioned dodgy movies have continued. So, a twenty year or so wait to return, that’s pretty high stakes. 

Picard disabuses us pretty quickly of this being a high action show like Discovery. In a curiously similar vein to the new Star Wars movies’ Luke Skywalker story, Picard is long retired from Star Fleet, having been fired/quit when Star Fleet backed away from a commitment to help resettle the peoples of Romulus after their home planet got fried. He’s spent the rest of the time chilling in his vineyard home, tended by ex-secret service Romulans and generally doing fuck all but seethe that Star Fleet let him down. He’s run away from his responsibilities, having failed to be the man he thought he was. Enter a young (spoiler) human-passing android on the run from some dudes trying to kill her. She doesn’t know she’s an android but knows a lot of stuff, is super-fast and knows she needs to find Picard. It’s no shock to discover that she’s Data’s daughter, somehow. But she gets offed by some more Romulan spec ops bad guys, and Picard’s off on a mission to find her twin sister, save the galaxy, stop the Romulans etc. 

Since Picard’s no longer Star Fleet he has to assemble a rag tag crew (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) since Star Fleet really don’t like him any more. The pacing is glacial at times, and it’s hard to understand what they’re actually aiming for in this. It takes ages to get into space (which is all fabulously Star Warsy rather than the Trek we’ve seen before) where we finally catch up with a ruined Borg cube that’s being rehabilitated by Romulans (for reasons I honestly can’t recall), and on which the android twin is working, while dating an actual piece of shit Romulan secret secret secret service guy who’s part of an inner circle dedicated to wiping out all synthetic life. 

There is a lot of great stuff in here – Seven of Nine’s return is a delight, Riker!, learning that Romulan assassin folk are just feudal Japanese folk, complete with haircuts and robes is peculiar, but kinda fun, and eventually a lot of things happen, quite fast. Picard nearly dies, they find more androids, he saves the day. I don’t honestly consider that to be a spoiler! The whole show is soaked in nostalgia, which is only partly rubbing off on me. If there weren’t so many people involved, and such cool design work going on I’d write it off as a vanity project. It’s definitely more than that, but I don’t know what… Watch it, if you’re into Trek, otherwise I cannot imagine this having any appeal at all.  

Doing: Virtual Improv Drop-In with MissImp

Last week’s new improv workshop was with Stephen Davidson, who’s just the loveliest and most passionate guy. His workshop is a real delight! Enjoy.  

 

Last Week: The Obelisk Gate by N K Jemisin, Agents of SHIELD, LEGO Hagrid’s Hut

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

For all that most weeks are quiet now, last week seems to have been especially so. I imagine that’s in part from accepting the new terms of existence, and from it being another four day week with its concomitant blurring of time. I feel quite ineffectual a lot of the time, which I suppose is OK, since there’s damn all I can do about our situation other than moan about it.  I feel a lot like Hulk with tiny arms: full of emotions but unable to do anything with them.

It’s certainly taken me a few hours to finally sort all that washed LEGO back into their neatly sorted containers, and I’ve had Agents of SHIELD to accompany most of that. Much of the weekend was dominated by admiring the vast quantity of Easter chocolate my other half acquired at Tesco where they’re pretty much burning their excess stock. Eighteen pence for a bag of mini eggs?! We have many. And thus shall grow the belly further…

It’s been a nice weekend to spend time in the garden reading, and looks set to continue for a little while. I continue to be quite happy at home with my cats.

The most exciting thing of last weekend (apart from my parents’ peculiar psychic link causing them to both ring me at almost the same time) was a work thing – we’ve finally got the evidence that we at Aconyte Books have been doing something for the past year – we got books! Hurray! I can’t show them to you, because they’re awaiting appropriate fanfare, and won’t be in bookshops till September, but having our labours physically realised is really quite thrilling. These are the first books I’ve designed and laid out the internals and externals for (with a lot of support, approval, tsking and head-patting) so it’s a pretty big deal for me personally, as well as for the whole team. I don’t think showing the spines will get me killed, but I guess we’ll find out soon. 

Reading: The Obelisk Gate by N K Jemisin

At last, I’m a mere four years behind with reading the very best of modern science fiction and fantasy! This is the second of the incredible Broken Earth trilogy which won a Hugo Award for each installment. Like so many of my favourite SFF novels, Jemisin has blended aspects of science fiction and fantasy together, so that we explore a truly post-apocalyptic world, riven by irregular “Seasons” of environmental catastrophes, driving humans into their comms (communities) and hoping they have enough supplies to last the season. This has been happening for thousands of years, since some event split the Earth, leading to repeated collapses of civilisation and a species directed solely toward survival, at any cost. There’s delightful social commentary on how humans behave when facing these awful threats, with rivalries between comms and the complex psychologies of those living in them, with their dwindling knowledge and science. Supporting / protecting humanity are the Guardians with their enslaved orogenes – essentially geology wizards who can manipulate the earth itself – feared and despised for their awesome powers, despite being used as a protective shield against the unreliable Father Earth. This book follows the even more catastrophic events of The Fifth Season in which Alabaster, one of the most powerful orogenes (or “roggas” if you hate them), triggered a vast tectonic split to destroy the home of the Guardians. We travel with his apprentice/lover/friend Essun as she assists in bolstering a comm against the season her mentor has unleashed. He has a plan… for Essun to undo the appalling damage that the Earth suffered when it lost its moon. On the other side of the story we see Essun’s lost and estranged daughter being taught to develop her own powers of orogeny by someone who seems to be completely insane. There’s a tonne of fascinating detail on orogeny – science or magic? – and I find the characters completely captivating. The stakes are wildly high, all of the time, and the second-person storytelling is surprisingly engaging, though it took me a little while to get into it again. This is one hell of a series, especially for reading right now: maximum apocalypse, beautifully written!

Doing: LEGO 75947 Hagrid’s Hut: Buckbeak’s Rescue

I’ve no idea what part this set plays in the films or books (I gave up on em fairly early I’m afraid), but I was very much drawn to the hexagonal shacks, and the lovely little pumpkin elements. It was a pretty quick but satisfying assembly – the roofs and floor are neatly done to produce this shape, and it’s definitely something I’ll try to keep in mind for the next MOC I start on. It’s a slight shame they’re only half-hexagons, with their backs missing. I guess I could probably source the parts from my various boxes… Buckbeak the gryphon is rather nice, and I’m sure I’ll find a use for him. I also enjoy this odd-seeming executioner (?) who comes with the set. I’ll admit I haven’t even put together the Harry Potter minifigs, but this set is quite lovely with or without the brand association. The fetching doors use massive stickers which even with my trusty scalpel I found tricky to apply. That might just have been because I was drinking beer, watching Agents of SHIELD and lying horizontally on the sofa at the time. Who’s to say, eh. It is however, brutally expensive at £49.99, even with half a dozen minifigs with the cool poseable mini-legs. I got it waaaay cheaper than that without a box, otherwise I’d not have been building it at all.  

Watching: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season one

I can’t believe this started seven years ago, and only now am I rewatching it from the beginning. Hurrah for Disney+ and sitting in front of the TV for hours at a time playing with LEGO. I’m not entirely sure how far through the show I’ve watched, since its appearance on UK TV and streaming services that I use has been kinda erratic. I’ve definitely seen the amazing season where they’re in a virtual world run by HYDRA, but I haven’t seen them go into space… WTF? So I’m quite excited about catching up. Part of my confusion comes from this having full length TV shows – 24 episodes! It’s like being back in the nineties, and I love it. Those long seasons mean so much happens in season one. Can’t wait to reach the seventh and final season.

Agents of SHIELD brilliantly picks up after Avengers: Assemble with the surprising reappearance of Agent Coulson, who quite definitely died in that movie. But that’s a mystery for later… In the meantime we’ve got a team to assemble, and then deal with cyborg/jacked-up dangerous folks running around as part of Project Centipede, followed in short order by the collapse of SHIELD (following Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and the rise of HYDRA. It’s quite a ride! The cast is pretty delightful though, from the warm, tough and lovable Clark Gregson as Coulson, his badass kung-fu sidekick who will not smile, Agent May by the splendid Ming-Na Wen, mysterious hacker turned agent Skye (Chloe Bennet), the wonderful duo “Fitzsimmons”: Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge as Fitz and Simmons respectively, our ace scientists and darkly handsome agent Grant Ward, played by Brett Dalton. The vibe is so “NCIS with superheroes” it hurts: packed with banter, action and an unfolding season arc that I really thought lasted several seasons. The revelations of HYDRA’s subversion of SHIELD cut all the harder, with the betrayals and fear that follow – and all reinforced by having relatively recently seen all of the MCU. I’d vaguely remembered season one as being quite weak, but it isn’t – it’s just the first three or four episodes of them establishing characters before it all properly kicks off. Watch it! I’m already into season two…

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Drop-In

Last week we got a great workshop on science fiction and fantasy in improv from Philippa Stazicker, part of one of my very favourite shows Four Far Away. Well worth a look in whether you’re an improviser or not.

Last Week: Sabrina season 3, The Hanging Tree, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Collapsing Empire

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Short Week, Long Weekend – Does it Even Mean Anything?

I think I’ve fully adjusted to working at home now. Got my Wii Fit running on the spot for half an hour before starting work routine sorted. The cats come and sit with me for few hours, which is lovely. The lack of urgency is vexing, but I’m still getting things done. The evenings continue to be filled with LEGO and the usual TV watching or book reading. I’m beginning to wonder if this whole pandemic thing is just for me… being at home is kinda great.

Catching up with a bunch of the MissImp Thursday drop-in regulars was very reassuring – it’s my only specific evening of any week, and it was good to reestablish some kind of weekly calendar. I need to take some pics of the amazing LEGO Ideas Dinosaurs set that I’ve eked out over this week, they really are very pretty and need to be reviewed! I’ve also washed a lot more LEGO, so that’s news for anyone who needed it. Cleaned this whole box, and I reckon about 15% was Mega Blocks.  It took a lot more bags than that to dry out though! We’ve just started watching Star Trek: Picard, and I’m very excited.

Watching: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, season three 

I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be watching TV shows I don’t deeply care about. I have watched all of Sabrina, and I do enjoy it, but I’m damned if I can tell you what’s actually happening. This season it’s more of the same except that Sabrina’s heading for being queen of Hell (quite fun to spend some time in Hell itself, with its attendant Star Trek alien-style demons). Lots of things happen… including the introduction of a priestess Voodoo (with a murderously awful creole accent) and killer pagans. Everyone remains chipper and fun to watch – if you enjoyed season one and two, you’ll enjoy this as well! 

Reading: The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

A rare re-read for me… I’d finished The Girl Beneath the Sea, couldn’t face getting out of bed, and had re-added this to my Kindle because I couldn’t remember where I was in the series. It’s a good re-read! For those not following the Rivers of London series: The Dresden Files crossed with The Bill. London copper Peter Grant gets dragged into the near-forgotten magical police as a huge resurgence of magic begins. The books have a similar light-hearted feel to Charles Stross’s excellent Laundry Files, though they’ve yet to become quite as dark. The police procedural aspects appeal greatly to me, completely eclipsing my general loathing of SFF set in London, plus Grant’s West Indian family, his dad’s love of jazz, and Grant’s relationships with his old-school magician guv’nor, and the literal rivers of London embodied in stunning female form have made this a really fun series for me. The Hanging Tree continues to pull story threads related to the Faceless Man who is the magical Moriarty for this series, the general rise of magic and diving a little deeper into how magic actually works. It’s an enjoyable read, even though I can already see why I’d forgotten if I’d read it – there’s no enormous story arc shift here, it’s firmly in the “another Peter Grant case” zone. I’m looking forward to the next one.     

Watching: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Sure, I’ve seen most of these films multiple times anyway, but I’m enjoying taking advantage of Disney+ to watch them all back to back without the sheer hell of opening and closing DVD cases. I still think the MCU is one of the most extraordinary cinema achievements. No one has managed a watchable ten film series with such consistency and purposeful story arcs, let alone one with twenty-plus instalments and half a dozen excellent TV shows to back it up. Even Star Wars, which I adore, spectacularly fails at planning and consistency, and for all that I really love the new sequel trilogy, it’s afflicted with the same inability to plan for the next film that plagued the originals and prequels. So, Marvel – our literal movie superheroes.

Iron Man (2008)

It remains a delight that the MCU begins by rehabilitating Robert Downey Jr into what will undoubtedly prove to be his signature role. In retrospect this looks oddly low budget, with its gritty video feel. That certainly softens later, making Stark appear to age backwards for a while. As in several of Marvel’s origin stories, this is a small film with big bangs, but introduces us to the central theme of ordinary people becoming exceptional and having to make a moral choice about how to use their powers. Stark of course, is already a genius, but losing his freedom when captured by the Ten Rings terrorist organisation, and realising the harm his weapons industry does inspires him to become so much greater. It also has the first demonstration of how Marvel manages its extraordinary characters, by constantly undercutting Stark’s smugness and arrogance with slapstick injury and being put in his place by his closest companions. All the “building a better suit” montages do this wonderfully, and we’ll see it again for Thor. He’s a massive dick though…  particularly with Pepper, and less so with Happy than in later films. I’d completely forgotten the villain of the piece is Jeff Bridges’ corporate monster. Very topical then, and even more so now. Lt Colonel Rhodes in Terence Howard’s hands is utterly bland and he is sadly not at all missed for Iron Man 2 and onwards. I’m watching Agents of Shield from the beginning again, and it really does deepen all of my fondness for Agent Coulson (and Nick Fury) throughout. Stark’s suit is endearingly angular, and I rather miss the physical effects which are later replaced with nano suits by the time of Infinity War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1p49wrme9Y

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Cruelly, a distribution deal with Universal means I already had to reach for my DVDs for the second MCU film. This one gets a lot of stick, but for anyone who played the Playstation 2 game The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, this is an absolute joy. Borrowing not just the main storyline, but the actual moves Hulk pulls in the game, like ripping a car in half to make boxing gloves, earthquake punches and many more, means that I adore this film. Sure, I can’t imagine Edward Norton continuing in the MCU, but Hulk does us a massive favour by bravely embedding the complete origin story in the splendid comic book style opening credits (largely leaning on Ang Lee’s horribly dull Hulk) before introducing Bruce Banner hiding in South America. It’s a marked change of pace from Iron Man, with much larger and more frequent action set pieces and a pleasingly psychotic Tim Roth becoming Abomination – a bit closer to a big bad villain than a CEO in a metal suit. This one’s unusual in that very few of the hints and leads from it have yet been followed up – we’ve seen no more of his love interest Betty, her father General Ross, or scientist Samuel Sterns who looks like he’s turning pretty Hulky at the end. With the Ruffalo Hulk now all chill and contented with his dual forms, and feeling like he’s at the end of his character development arc, I wonder if we’ll get a proper gamma villain to rile him once more.   

Iron Man 2 (2010)

It’s hard to believe this was a whole two years after the first couple of movies, but then I hadn’t realised they were only released a month apart! This is probably one of the weakest entries in the whole MCU, although most of them fade away if you watch it back to back with the first movie (a bit like Gremlins  but less so Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters 2 is really bad). It feels very much like filling time before we can get to some more characters and a proper villain. On the plus side we get the infinitely more fun Don Cheadle as Rhodes (suiting up as War Machine), and I’d forgotten that this is when we first meet Black Widow (fantastically introduced beating up Happy in the ring). We also see some of Howard Stark and his relationship with Tony, which proves much more important in Captain America: Civil War and is finally, beautifully paid off in Avengers: Endgame. So yay, for that! I suspect these weaker films are all going to be much better with the rest of the story in my head. Iron Man 2 continues the Stark arc of atoning for years of enabling mass murder, and this cleansing punishment probably is necessary for him to later appear in the Avengers films on an equal standing with the super-upright Captain America, Thor, and the rather humble Hulk. The story, um. Well, a Russian dude Vanko (a hopelessly miscast Mickey Rourke) who’s dad co-invented the arc reactor with Tony’s dad takes Iron Man’s success rather personally and sets out to destroy him. Cue laughable Zardoz costume with arc whips. It’s a rehash of the first movie after that, with an underused Sam Rockwell trying to build iron man suits / robots / whatever for his very similar company using Vanko’s genius. The CGI man fighting nearly identical CGI men problem that later besets Avengers: Age of Ultron appears here. Other than that, it’s more of Iron Man doing Iron Man things, upgrading the suit, the arc reactor, getting comically injured and being sweet with his robot arm. All the dialogue is still fun and snarky, but the film overall is just fine. I recall being enormously excited by the end credits tease of a hammer found in New Mexico…

Reading: The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

A fun and quickfire space opera, reliably easy to read with engaging and smart-mouthed characters. There’s not a lot more to it than that though. This is the first of Scalzi’s big new space opera series featuring the intergalactic human empire, the Interdependency. It’s all connected together by “the flow”, a convenient natural anomaly like a slow wormhole which links the various chunks of humanity together and takes months to get from one end to the other. Ruling over it all is an emperox and a bunch of semi-feudal merchant guilds who own complete monopolies on very granular products like “grapes.” Given that only one guild can provide chickens (or something) everything has to sort of work together. Big shock: the flow’s going to disappear, and so humanity and their present system are fucked. There’s a plenty of good stuff here: the time delay in communications, rival guilds vying for power, a massive cataclysm, space pirates and fun action scenes, and yet it all feels rather thin. That might be because there’s no sciencey stuff to this space opera, other than dropping big words like “phsyics”, and the interdependent guild setup feels both forced and like something I’ve read a hundred times before. While I enjoyed this as a quick read I’m not racing to find the next in series.     

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Drop-In

 This week we had Claudia Behlendorf from Germany with a fun workshop on creating big characters fast. We also instituted our first post-improv virtual pub event for regular MissImp folk on Zoom. That was a very uplifting web chat! While improv on Thursdays has been part of my life for more than fifteen years now, it’s the being with people in person and chatting in the pub afterwards that I’ve actually been missing. We had eighteen folks at one point, including some real out-of-towners and people we haven’t seen for a long while. Very nice! It’s on again next week. 

Last Week: Cage of Souls, Altered Carbon, The Girl Beneath the Sea, We Are What We Overcome podcast, MissImp Virtual Drop-Ins

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

BIrthday, Booze and Bumbling

Sure, it’s Friday – or is it? Who the hell knows. I can’t tell the difference, and worst of all I’m writing this (at last) on day one of our four day bank holiday weekend. Thank goodness my workmates told me, otherwise I’d have been working all day. So, with five days separating me from last week, what can I actually recall… I’m in luck, because I’ve started to keep a list. Genius plan, which I undermine as I fail to write stuff down. That feels a lot like our present state of lockdown – it all constantly slips away… I’m still feeling the massive contrast between the hysteria of 24 hour news and this just feeling like normal life. I’m also utterly thrilled to be spending so much time with my beautiful cats.

Still, we had my other half’s birthday, and I feel we made the most of it. Our usual birthday activities are something along the line’s of 1) get up very late, 2) take ages to eat breakfast and get dressed, 3) open presents while watching cartoons (this year we enjoyed Disney+’s Chip ’n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, which feels like it’s suffered the passage of time better than Duck Tales), 4) go to the cinema, 5) eat out somewhere, and 6) crash out on the sofa. On that scale we at least managed all but 4 and 5. So that’s not bad. The whole pandemic and not being able to choose to go out only really hit home when we wanted to complete our usual rituals. Nemmind. I snagged a piece of rather nice original Peter Firmin Bagpuss art, so part 3 of the day was pretty good. We celebrated with a few more folks in a large and very chaotic Zoom party. Weird, for sure, but nice to see peeps.

Obviously all independent businesses are struggling right now, and worse, some people are finding it hard to acquire enough booze to get through the melding days. No fear of that here in Beeston! I was over the moon to see our local independent brewer Totally Brewed (who have homes at the lovely micropub Totally Tapped in Beeston and The Overdraught at the top of Canning Circus) arranged for Friday home deliveries!

Doing: podcasting (live-ish) with We Are What We Overcome

On Sunday we the We Are What We Overcome podcast gang got together to attempt a Zoom to Facebook Live thingamajig. It worked so well in practice, but totally failed to work as expected. Not to worry. We recorded it anyway, and popped the video up on Monday afternoon. We decided to have a little check-in, like we usually do at the start of our episodes, but for longer as this is a strange time, and we all have different feelings about it. I think it’s quite a nice chat – you can watch/listen to it below. Rather nicely, it’s all four us, including Neil who’s usually behind the sound recording desk (or whatever it is that he does to magically trap our speech). At some point we’ll pop the audio out on the podcast feed, but there are a few in the bank already to be rolled out on schedule first. Even better news, we’re gonna try the Facebook Live thang again this Sunday, and every fortnight for the near future, or at least as long as we’re in lockdown. Future ones will show up on our Facebook page here, and I’ll stick a link on the WAWWO page of this website too.

Watching: Altered Carbon season two

I really enjoyed Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon and its sequels – splendid fast-paced noirpunk with loads of action and murder/spy stuff. The central premise that your identity is contained in a stack at the top of your spine and can be swapped between bodies (the so charming “sleeves”) is fantastic, and the results of your body no longer being a part of who you are is ingenious and spun out well in the books. It translated pretty well into season one of the Netflix show, albeit with a lot of gratuitous nudity as we found ourselves in a pretty traditional cyberpunk setting of rain and holograms of hookers everywhere. I enjoyed it, but until I saw the ‘last time on Altered Carbon‘ I could not have told you what happened.

I fucking love Anthony Mackie, he’s immensely charming, fun, and credible in action, drama and comedy (having re-watched Captain America: the Winter Soldier just this afternoon, he is confirmed in my mind as a splendid human). But there’s something wrong with season two – it’s just drifted into the quest for Takeshi Kovacs to find his long-lost love, and while that’s in the books, it doesn’t feel like the driving force of the story. The noir detective element is here, but it feels lost and forced. Added to that are the continued tribulations of his AI hotelier pal, Poe (yep, Edgar Allan), who is very appealing as he finds another AI who he clearly kind of fancies as his grasp on the world deteriorates, but it doesn’t matter. The AI subplot is completely irrelevant and its lack of importance kept punching me in the face. Alas, this season has lost me and I kept drifting away while watching. Maybe I’ll have a rewatch after this nonsense time is over, and perhaps I’ll focus better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MzbLQBeR9Y

Reading: Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I cannot help reading Adrian’s books – it’s a kind of addiction. This one had languished for a while on my Kindle TBR because I’d incorrectly associated the cover with fantasy, and I’ve been in a science fiction mood for a while. Reading definitely feels tougher than usual, and it takes something extra (or just really fast) to captivate my attention. Here we have far-future post-every-apocalypse with Shadrapur, the last human city on (presumably) Earth. Humanity stumbles on, pretending that the end is not very close, echoing the civilisations that have fallen along the way. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff (not so much the usual zombies). This has much more of JG Ballard’s The Crystal World and a bit of Brian Aldiss Hothouse vibe, with the natural world running riot, overwhelming our vain attempts at order and showing every chance of becoming something else. Cage of Souls takes us through the life of one of these last men, Stefan Advani, and how it is that he ended up in a ghastly prison cast out in the middle of nature. This is a big fat book, and for a while it was slow going, though that’s rarely an issue with Tchaikovsky’s glowing prose and this most alluring world of the end-times, but as the depth of the world and its strange inhabitants unfolded I was happily engaged. The Count of Monte Cristo feel is strong, with our unjustly imprisoned academic turned accidental rebel, dealing with an appallingly dangerous prison that the guys in Oz could only hope for, with monsters seizing inmates through the bars of the lowest levels and an absolute monster in charge of the prison. The novel really opens up when we explore the misadventures that preceded Stefani’s arrival, and (spoiler), what happens afterwards. It’s a delight of a book, full of surprises, possible callbacks to novels I adore, an unreliable narrator and a weird, weird world to engulf them.

Reading: The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayne

After a big book I needed a short book, and this was waiting for me on my Kindle. A short, quick detective thriller with a slightly different setup (though with hefty shades of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt stories), of Sloan McPherson – 50% diver with a family dedicated to shady treasure hunting, and 50% auxiliary cop in the Florida quays. There’s nothing exceptional about the plotting – Sloan gets a body dumped into the canal while she’s diving, and quickly finds herself implicated in a conspiracy linked to her dodgy criminal uncle and the aforementioned shady family. It had everything I needed, from snappy dialogue and snarky characters to gunfights and underwater shenanigans. Very satisfying, and I may well dig up the next in the Underwater Investigations series.

Watching: Virtual Improv Comedy Workshops with MissImp

Time blurs, and I discover that the workshop I wrote about last week was actually from the week before! Who’d’a’ thunk it. But that’s cool, it means there are two workshops for you to catch up on. First up the splendid Ki Shah and Russ Payne on Physicality, Objects & Movement. This is a genuinely charming two-hander and I think you’ll be smiling all the way through. Second up is LA improviser Jay Sukow on Solo Improv. I confess I’ve not yet watched this one, which puts me at least two behind as well… Both vids are below – enjoy!

Next Week

Sabrina the Teenage Witch season 3, The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch, LEGO Ideas Dinosaurs and probably The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (if I finish it this weekend). I should do an MCU quick review thing at some point too.

Last Week: AJ and the Queen, I Am Not Okay With This, CHEER, Disney+, LEGO and Improv Workshops

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

What day is it?

The days and nights are beginning to blur… Having a day off on Friday was nice, but didn’t really help with the curious sense of dislocation from the world. I do like working from home, and on a task level it doesn’t make much difference to me – that, combined with being a proper homebody anyway and the odd quiet holiday sense of this pandemic has my body and brain profoundly confused.

In proper pandemic fashion, we went to a birthday party via Zoom on Saturday, and it worked really well! Sixteen people (I think), and not too chaotic, once we were past the obligatory head fuck with swapping background images in and out. That part felt much like watching Predator for the first time… unsettling. 

Watching: Virtual Improv Comedy Workshops with MissImp

Since we can’t meet in person at present, our first phase for MissImp has been supplying recorded workshop material to follow along with at home and bring some light and silliness into the house. Emily has been hard at work finding folk with skills to share, and we’re delighted to make them available to anyone for free. Keep track of them as they become available every Thursday here (or on YouTube). Here’s the first one, featuring a charmingly cabin-feverish Emily (also see below), and the second with Leicester-based pals Ki Shah and Russ Payne. Enjoy!

LEGO photographing and washing (oh, the thrills!)

The nice sunny days that I watched from my sofa last week provided the perfect opportunity to get outside briefly and take some half-decent photos of my latest LEGO build, the temple of quiet contemplation. I have been using it as such, spending hours gazing at it, saying “mmm, that’s some nice LEGO there”. Hey man, it’s working! Anyway, I posted up some of those pretty pics and you can check ’em out here: A Place of Quiet Contemplation.

Meanwhile, the lull in having to interact with the external world has finally led me to disassemble and wash two of our LEGO modular buildings, the Palace Cinema (10232) and Parisian Restaurant (10243). They’ve both been gradually accreting a vile layer of greasy dust due to living in our kitchen. It takes approximately the length of a Marvel movie to properly wash a building… They’re both very satisfying builds, but I hadn’t noticed till taking them apart just how many more pieces there are in the newer wave of modular buildings like the Parisian Restaurant than the Cinema – nearly three hundred more, and that really shows when you’re trying to lay them out to dry on a towel. I’m not brave enough to put my LEGO through the dishwasher, and chose to handwash instead. For those who may wish to burn their hours of confinement cleaning plastic bricks, I just used a splash of washing up liquid in hot water and a toothbrush to attack the most egregious filth. I’ve now got three of those mesh bags that Sainsbury’s sell for fruit and veg filled with Lego sitting on a radiator. Seems to take about a day to thoroughly dry out. The best thing about this is we now have space to build some more stuff! I’ve got my eye on the Brick Bank (10251) and the Monster Fighters’ Haunted House (10228), both of whom have been neglected in their boxes for some years.

Watching: Disney+

Inevitably, we subscribed to Disney+… launching during a stay-at-home pandemic is phenomenal good fortune! I’m only in it for easy access to the Star Wars series, though I’ve already seen The Mandalorian (it’s very good Star Wars – you should watch it now), and the splendid Rebels, but I’ve only ever skipped through The Clone Wars, partly because a lot of it is just very similar battles and it’s Anakin and Kenobi, two of my least favourite characters doing their dry schtick. But there’s also Ahsoka Tano, Captain Rex and Darth Maul – all characters I came to love from Rebels and can now fill in the gaps for. I’m also 100% happy about being able to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe all the way through again. I’m already up to Thor: the Dark World. It is however astounding that Disney+ doesn’t let me just binge through them all in order! On finishing Iron Man 3 it offered me Iron Man to watch… C’mon Disney, don’t make me keep looking it up. We’ve had a glance through the rest of the content, and with very few exceptions it is entirely kids’ stuff, which is cool, but not very appealing. I hope Disney start adding all the amazing non-kids’ movies, like everything they bought off Fox! The interface is based on Netflix’s, so is familiar and continues to make Prime Video look incredibly bad.

Watching: AJ and the Queen

I’m not entirely sure why we watched this. I think it was the burning need for something light after watching season one of Westworld. There are worse reasons for bingeing. I’ve never followed RuPaul, other than by knowing the name, and quite liking him as the stoner neighbour in Girl Boss. He’s in full flow here, both in aiming for drama and his immaculately made-up drag performances. The story is surprisingly dark in places for a thinly veiled drag show tour: Robert (RuPaul) gets fucked over for $100k by his boyfriend and business partner, trashing his hopes of retiring from the crappy club he performs at and setting up his own place. To cover some of his costs, and in hopes of recovering from devastating heartbreak, he embarks on a planned tour of various shitholes across the US. But he ends up with company, in the form of AJ, an (spoilers) eleven year-old girl living on her own because her mum’s a drug addict working girl. It’s all a little forced, but the rapport between RuPaul and her spiky co-star, Izzy G is delightful. Similarly ace is the affectionate relationship between Robert and his blind drag queen flatmate Louis, played by a phenomenal Michael-Leon Wooley. The piece hangs on the characters, and it’s AJ and Louis who help it rise above the slightly shonky acting and setup. I’m not sure I need another season, but I’m quite glad I watched this one.

Watching: I Am Not Okay With This

This is great – a very tight seven half-hour-long episode season featuring Sydney, a teenager discovering her superpowers along with her romantic feelings, plus school outsider, weird friends (Stanley) and the promise of Carrie-style blood spectaculars. I don’t really want to spoil this one… All the performances are spot on, particularly the leads: Sydney (Sophia Lillis) and Stanley (Wyatt Olef), and everyone else… Sydney’s little brother (Aiden Wojtak-Hissong) fits the modern fad for rather grown up youngsters with fine comic timing. It’s filled with teenage angst, but not too much brooding, heartfelt parental performances and the super-awkward romance we’ve come to love in Sex Education. But it’s all that plus extremely unwelcome and uncontrolled superpowers. Exactly my thing, bring on season two please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9vp9lhZiqU

Watching: CHEER

Goddamn, but I do love Bring It On, so when we saw a short docu-series about real-life cheerleaders it was hard to say no. It’s a weird one, because while it’s celebrating the startling athletic prowess of these young women and men (slightly more men, which was initially surprising) it’s super-clear from the outset that this is almost guaranteed to be a dead-end activity. Here we have about forty university students (I think, frankly the US college system of freshmen and sophomores is something I’ve never grasped) who have moved to this college in the middle of nowhere (Texas) solely to cheer and neglect the rest of the studies, but there is no continuation of their sport in the professional/adult world. At best some of them may coach the next frenzied generation in the inevitably multibillion dollar industry, at worst… they’ll leave with a middling degree and satisfaction at their achievements (or not – nailbiting suspense!)

As in any documentary series, you can feel very particular storylines being selected and “characters” focused on, but it feels even more forced than usual. Perhaps inevitably, many of these students come from difficult backgrounds where they didn’t fit in, and it’s wonderful to see them flourish. All of that is countered by the show really wringing those stories out for their misery value. Their hero worship of their coach is frankly disturbing – it might just be that I naturally swing far away from inspirational leaders – it feels super-culty and brainwashy. It’s especially grim when their intense, focused coach takes zero responsibility for the many serious mishaps and injuries that occur as the cheerleaders are encouraged to rehearse through exhaustion and existing injury – and are then variously dropped from the team. Made me wince. I’m left with very mixed feelings about how the story was told, as well as the sport itself. The acrobatics however, are spectacular and inspiring, and I really felt for many of the students. It ends with very little resolution for most of the cheerleaders we follow through, just one who falls through the cracks. Watch it? Maybe on fast forward and pause for the tumbling.

Next Week

Probably a review of the new season of Altered Carbon, Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and almost certainly more LEGO.

LEGO: A Place of Quiet Contemplation

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Welcome to the Temple

I’ve been building this for months, kinda. I originally I assembled some complex and fiddly gates using lots of gold pieces, and left it standing alone for about five weeks before beginning to tinker with walls and shapes. Mostly I blame a trip to the London Lego Store where I picked up a huge number of coral pink quarter-circle tiles, and all the other times I gorged on sand green bricks. The whole front section came first, mounting the hideously fragile gates with right-angle skeleton arms, and then spreading up and out with as much lovely gold Lego as I could convince myself to use. There are cups, weapons (many light sabre hilts and sais) and taps hidden in there somewhere… I learnt some new things, like the lattice window frames can be jammed into the underside of arches, as well as laid flat on top of bricks with studs through them.

It’s built around a tight octagon, which seriously stressed the hinged plates at the bottom, so I was cautious about building on top of it. Eventually I connected them lightly using jumper plates, and later ensured they were all attached to each other, if not the base… I’ve been admiring sideways built shapes for ages, and done little to practice myself, but the green “brick profile” bricks in the walls are all assembled sideways, using lots of headlight bricks to fit them together with long tiles, and to attach the vertical 2×12 plates which fill in the gaps. After that it was just a lot of greebling… with many changes to make it more uniform in colour, which I think has worked out pretty well. I’ve relearned a few things about how many plate widths apart headlight bricks need to be in order to lay other bricks and plates across them, but I still have to refigure it out each time (not that bright).

The steps at the front were fun to make, with a series of the tiles that have flat upright walls fitted together. Nice pattern! I’ve also finally made foliage I really like – again, thanks to pick-a-brick walls I’ve got tonnes of the individual green leaves which here are attached to lots of the small plant leaves, in turn hanging out of the old and new flower stems (with and without bar), and all those are attached to the sea grass pieces at the front. I think they tumble in a pleasingly organic way, without being quite as fragile as I expected.

Once more I’ve built something that it’s impossible to photograph the inside of properly. One day! Thankfully, I made the rear of the temple entirely removable so I could work on it, which provides a lovely view of the tiled floor, and allows me to turn the back wall around so you can see it below. I used the only good sand green minifig I have, the LEGO Atlantis Barracuda Warrior who has delighted me forever. 

Barracuda temple. I wonder if this whole thing was once underwater… This is with the back section reversed.

So, pretty chuffed! I have nowhere to put it…

A slightly higher resolution gallery can be see here.

Last Week, Locke & Key, Lexicon, The Maltese Falcon

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Once There Was Bread, and Milk, and Things

Well, what a week. For all that nothing really happened it sure feels like a lot! We went in to work on Monday and got sent home by the evening. Cue frustrated working off a laptop until I finally cycled in super-early a couple of days later and retrieved my beloved monitors. Work off a single screen? What a bag of wank. I suppose it was the week when the whole pandemic thing felt properly real, for me at least. It’s a strong reflection of the very weak messaging we’ve received from our government, I guess, that even though we saw Italy collapsing, the lackadaisical focus here just kept it unreal. Fast forward a week and I’m stuck at home for twelve weeks because I have pretty bad asthma. Fuckin’ A.

Of course, as a largely antisocial homebody, this hasn’t yet made much difference. Not having improv drop-ins on a Thursday is odd, but since it’s only been one week it just feels like I’ve had a week off (working!) The lack of food in shops most days has given it a true apocalypse vibe, which is both exciting and scary. I can’t say I’m sleeping particularly well, especially once they closed my beloved swimming pool. That left me a couple of days to cycle aimlessly round university park till being restricted to home today. Bah! Bah I say! If anything, being suddenly in contact with a bunch of family and friends has slightly overdosed me on socialising, so I’m content to hide here for now. Content, in the sense of “anxiously refreshing coronavirus news and endlessly scrolling through Facebook”. It’s the extreme uncertainty of course, and I don’t recall anything quite like this before. 9/11, maybe, but without the social media screaming.

So what have I done in the last week? Honestly, it’s a tedious combination of hunting for bread and milk, fretting, being wildly distracted from work, and checking in on people. But we did, of course, consume some media! I’ve been been bouncing between books, what with all the distraction, but have at last settled on Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Cage of Souls, which appears to have the combination of writing style and things happening that I was struggling to find. Oh, I seriously need to write a LEGO building update – I had a good Sunday time!

Watching: Locke & Key

Another Netflix comic book adaptation, finally exploiting all that rich fictional fodder. This one was written by Stephen King’s lad, Joe Hill, and that feels quite clear from the grim murder of one family’s father and their resulting return to the family home – Locke House. Obviously this all spoilers… The house is filled with magic keys, some of which do mildly odd things like putting broken things back together, and others do seriously weird things like take your soul out or unlock your face. It’s a strange mix of whimsy and bludgeoning people with hammers. With a most older teenage cast, it feels a lot like Umbrella Academy and the already forgotten October Faction (seriously, it just took me three minutes to recall the title), not least because it turns out the family is guardian of a secret (the keys, duh) and protecting them from an evil dude. I guess they were going for a Stranger Things vibe with a chunk of It. Mostly it pays off well, with intriguing mystery and a fairly likable cast. I wanted to scream at the kid in it, who keeps using the damn keys even though they’re plainly dangerous. It reminded me a lot of my younger brother at that age… Or everyone flocking to McDonalds and the beach during a pandemic. 

Overall it’s a glossier, better produced product than it’s closest relative, Umbrella Academy, but ultimately ends up with another confusing and somewhat bungled ending which detracts from its apparent conclusion. The burning need to set up the next season by retconning who was really a baddie rather weakens the first season. It’s a real shame, because up to the final episode – even the last ten minutes of the final episode – it was a fun, engaging and rather dark drama. 

Reading: Lexicon by Max Barry

This was exactly what I needed last week – a fast-paced techno-thriller with conspiracy, a cool high concept macguffin and snappy dialogue. Thank you Max Barry! I read Jennifer Government a couple of years ago and was taken with the speed that Barry whips you through a story. Lexicon has a very appealing idea: that words have power. Dead simple, but delightful to push all the way through. There’s a secret society using words of power to influence, control, and even kill people. Even better, there are alluring suggestions in here of how words are made up of primal commands that hack human brains. Once you know someone’s type, you can figure out how to crack them. Big data seems even less friendly than it did before. To hide your type, the operatives – poets – spend a lot of time learning how to hide all of their emotions and reactions, lest their colleagues get hooks into their brains. It’s got that delicious semi-plausibility which, once accepted, make the story just glide by with a frisson of nervous excitement. The novel is split along two narratives: the operative gone rogue, using power words outside of the organisation to wreak terrible harm, and the operative sent to bring her down. It’s a bit like Salt or half a dozen other cinematic spy thrillers, but with a fine literary polish and plenty of rewarding twists.  

Watching: The Maltese Falcon

No Cineworld (and coronavirus) means we have to plumb the depths of our deep and neglected DVD collection. God I love Netflix (and Prime, but less, because it’s mostly filled with crap and its interface is the worst thing since gov.uk), it means I don’t have to open a box and stick a disc in a slot. The freedom is intoxicating. But, since we couldn’t cinematize it felt appropriate to have a similar experience from home. We’re both fans of classic noir, and The Maltese Falcon is (maybe) the best Humphrey Bogart. It also features our other favourites, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. A delightful cast, a captivating little murder mystery about who’s really got a mythical golden falcon statue, wrapped up in magnetic character acting and a witty script. If you haven’t seen it, you’re plainly insane and should rectify your brain now. “Come closer..” indeed.

 

Last Week: Westworld, The House of Shattered Wings, Van Gogh The Immersive Experience

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

In the Time Before Crisis

Wow, last week feels like it was ages ago. Hard to believe that Sunday 15 March is only two days dead.  All the more important to scrape together my fragmentary memories before they’re washed away in a wave of hand sanitiser. Not that we can find any in shops any more. Thanks fuckheads. Last week was already becoming dominated by the outbreak – now pandemic – of COVID-19 and I’m really weary of it. I’m tired of compulsively reading about it, and our government’s shocking (but not surprising) ineptitude at handling it, but most of all I’m tired of this fluttery anxious sensation about the future. It really doesn’t help that so many utter fuckwits are raiding the supermarkets and making it impossible to get, say, toilet roll or paracetamol, or (today) bread or fresh fruit and vegetables. For fuck’s sake. It’s such a frustrating cycle, and it means if I can finally locate the item I want, I’m gonna end up buying two because I’m not gonna find them again. And I hate being dragged into that cycle of compulsion. The endless hand-washing is bad enough. Anyway… 

Watching: Westworld season one

I’ve been waiting to watch this for ages. I’ve got fond memories of the Yul Bryner movie, and of the general style of things from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (which is surely just another nightmare ride in the same park). I wasn’t disappointed. From the gorgeous opening credits, the sublime score and its old West-style piano renditions of popular modern songs (do pick up the soundtrack – it’s ace), to the splendid performances throughout, this is a real SF treat. The story is straightforward enough: dudes make a park filled with simulated humans to amuse rich people through torture, rape and murder. A tale as old as time… Of course the “hosts” are becoming sentient, but their memories get scrubbed every day or every time they’re killed, which is often, and it’s not really working any more.

It’s magnetic viewing, with park guests drawn into the drama, and seeking hidden meaning within the park’s elaborate narratives, and hosts seeking their own freedom from the stories, and possibly from the park itself. Slight downsides, I guess, in the usual HBO vein of truly excessive amounts of nudity, though it’s not remotely erotic, so maybe they succeeded in their thematic point about dehumanising the hosts. It’s also really bloody, which should not be a shock in a western murder park, but there’s still more than you’d like to think people would go for. Gah, there’s too much spoiler fodder I’d like to get into, and some tricksy time-slipping stuff that I believe I need to rewatch the season to really appreciate fully. Just watch it, alright, it’s phenomenal – just look at the magnificent cast. We can watch it together while we’re all at home for the next three months.

Reading: The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

I‘ve learned that despite summarising books professionally for work, I suck at it for reviews of stuff I read. With that in mind… Aliette’s novel introduces us to a Paris (and presumably world) ravaged by magical warfare. In its ruins stand the Great Houses, centres of magical and political power headed by powerful magic users, such as literal Fallen angels. They vie for power amid the rubble, casually destroying lives and each other to claw their way to the top of the slagheap. We first meet a brand new Fallen, as she’s about to be dismembered for magical parts to be used by others. She’s rescued, and one of her tormentors is captured, by the leader of House Silverspires. But nothing is what it seems; dark secrets and past grudges are the foundation of the house’s power and it’s all set to come tumbling down.

Yeah, that sucked as a description, sorry. What I can tell you is how much I enjoyed reading this. Aliette’s prose is gorgeous, and the setting which ranges from the decay of Paris to the near-mythical magical cities of the Far East is deeply intriguing. Partly I’m thrilled to have a great intimate fantasy novel based in a city other than London or Venice (please, spare me another), but also because I like this set up. Theology made real, with few proper answers given – I suppose I’ll have to read the other two books in the trilogy to figure it out propery – magic based on the fading grace of Heaven or from the ground up parts of angels is very appealing. It’s also a rather strange book, in that it seems to promise epic, but is much more rooted in a broad domestic setting (it’s kinda what I imagine Downton Abbey would be if it was appealing enough for me to watch), and I rather liked that. Strong recommend – you’ll have fun.

Doing (I guess): Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

We wanted to do this the weekend before last but it was closed, so we seized what’s likely our last chance to see this at All Saints Church in Leicester (as of writing this the exhibition is still open, but for limited numbers per self-guided tour). Our slightly poor time management (we don’t get up well at the weekend), meant we got five whole minutes in the Leicester Vintage Toy Shop, which was not long enough. There were so many wonderful things to pore over… Another time, I guess. I’ve liked his work since I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam as a teenager – I hadn’t especially cared before I saw it for real – and this seemed like a fun way to see more. Big colours and deceptively sweeping strokes of fat paintwork, plus more cobalt blue that you can shake a paintbrush at. 

The exhibition is traveling around various places and is part historical journey with some very nice big pictures and timelines of Vincent’s short and troubled life. The main event is the immersive section, but before that they have a lovely projection of his very many vase paintings overlaid on an urn, which I probably could have watched all day… There’s also a nice life size creation of his famed bedroom, and a short documentary about him, albeit with a rather portentous voiceover. We tarried around these other exhibits for a bit, but finally wandered into the main event: one of the larger chambers of the church, painted with light from projectors over every surface, including the floor. It’s a twenty-minute (I think, I lost track of time) of Van Gogh’s paintings morphing and flowing across the walls, accompanied by a spoken guide through the artist’s life, with inspiring excerpts from his letters. It’s absurdly trippy, and hard to describe, so I badly filmed some bits of it to give you a better (or worse) idea what it’s like.

After this we took in the virtual reality finale (which is an extra £3 each). I’ve never viewed any VR media before, except possibly some truly ancient stuff when it was all crude polygons decades ago. This is both much better than that, and very limited at the same time. It’s a lovely stroll through Van Gogh’s Arles, placing a bunch of his best-known works in the landscape. I enjoyed it, as a novelty experience, and I kinda liked being able to look around and see the terrifying robotic sheep (I know, so Westworld),  but it did make me somewhat dizzy and headachey. It’s fun, but not a patch on the projection show.

I love this use of space and new ways to view and appreciate art. It’s so very different from just seeing paintings in a book. Check it out, if you can.

Last Week: Onward, The Invisible Man, The Good Place, Braggart, Betrayal at House on the Hill

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Week ending Sunday 8 March 2020

I had a nice long weekend filled with LEGOing and the watching of things, which left me quite chipper. Obviously by this far into a week (Wednesday – egad!) I’ve thoroughly squandered the languid lie-ins we achieved. We were intending to visit the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience in Leicester on Saturday, but found it was closed due to the “Light Up” festival taking place, which seemed odd as the exhibition seems to be entirely illuminations… Oh well. I was a bit annoyed that my poorly-planned intentions were so easily scuppered, and with them a self-indulgent trip to the Leicester Vintage Toy Shop and it’s many examples of beloved and dreadful plastic tat. Next time, possibly next week… Still, it did give me quite a lot of extra time to play with LEGO. I don’t have any updated pics yet, but I was highly gratified this week when a friend popped round and exclaimed with delight at its progress (before I knocked chunks off in my haste to show it off).

Games Night – Braggart, Betrayal at House on the Hill, The Last Word

I also had a nice chance to play some boardgamey things (other than as part of vital team building at work!)

I introduced the mob to my current favourite card game (excepting Fluxx and Gloom), Braggart. It’s a delightful little storytelling game, based around the idea that you’re all winos in a fantasy tavern bragging about your made-up adventures and conquests. The cards offer you parts of a story (scene, deed, foe and result), and as long as you have the two central components you can offer your boast, ideally with wild embellishment and braggadocio. Your companions may nod sagely or cry “liar” and swap high-scoring cards in your yarn for low-scoring cards in theirs, eg previously you fought a mighty demon, but in reality you punched an orphaned child.  If it’s accepted unchallenged you can get the points (coins) on your cards. It’s a fast, silly and splendidly fun game with remarkable replay value. Note for the designers: I would kill for an expansion.

We grew a little more serious and horror-struck with Betrayal at House on the Hill, which I’ve heard of but never played. A random assortment of folks with various physical and mental attributes explore a haunted house, revealing new room tiles as you pass through doorways until someone comes across too many Omens and you trigger the “haunt”. As far as I experienced, each room is filled with nightmares that instantly wiped out my twelve year-old boy’s mental faculties before stumbling into a skeleton-strewn inside garden and plummeting into the grim basement area, from which I never escaped. I did find “a girl” and “a dog” to be my companions, so I guess that’s good. Not a great deal happened before I triggered the haunt, becoming the titular traitor and taking control of the monster, Crimson Jack. He was defeated within one round of becoming active, and that ended the game… It looks like it has a lot of potential with complex and interesting possibilities,  but we didn’t encounter a lot of that. Most of our enjoyment came from laughing at the awful things happening to my character rather than from the game itself!

We’ve played The Last Word before, and it performed as expected. You get a stack of subjects and another one of letters, the task being to name as many things in that subject beginning with that letter, before the buzzer goes off. The time period is random, and the goal is to the last person to say something vaguely cogent within the time limit. It’s fun! Largely this is just yelling things which are tangentially related to the subject and hoping the people you play with will allow them. Lots of give and take, a lot of filthy suggestions and semi-hysteria. Good. 

Watching: The Good Place

If you haven’t seen this yet, then either you lack Netflix or the pressure of other people who saw it and loved it. I really enjoyed it, and we wrapped up the final season this week, having waited until the tedious dripfeed of weekly episodes was over and we could binge it properly. Difficult to summarise by the end of the fourth season I guess… but plainly spoilers are imminent.

A quartet of humans die and awaken in “the good place”, except they were all sorts of failures at being good people and it turns out that they’re actually being psychologically tortured in “the bad place”. And that’s just the beginning. Our four humans are Eleanor, a scumbag person from Arizona (the splendid Kristen Bill), fatally-indecisive philosophy professor Chidi (the remarkably buff William Jackson Harper), ghastly name-dropping socialite Tehani (Jameela Jamil, playing the sort of person who I imagine writes the Metro celebrities pages) and genuine cretin Jason (played with stupendously vacant happiness by Manny Jacinto), In time they fully grasp their situation, grow as people, become good, and ultimately restructure the afterlife. They’re aided in their adventures by the Architect of their particular afterlife (staggeringly on-form Ted Danson, with very good wig) and his infinitely powerful Janet (D’Arcy Carden)  who comes to believe that humans can be redeemed and that there’s something very wrong with the whole system. All of that plot belies that this is an utterly charming character-based, intensely plot-driven sitcom. It’s very funny, packed with pop philosophy and psychology, delightful character turns and relationships I ended up feeling very invested in. It’s a proper heart-tugging finale too. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBgT5djaQw

Watching: Onward

PIxar dig deep into the hearts of its audience to yank some heartstrings, this time playing them in a modern fantasy realm where everyone’s given up magic and uses technology, and their magical past is remembered only by those playing a thinly veiled Dungeons & Dragons. In keeping with Disney sensibilities, we have a nice family with a dead dad, and on the youngest lad’s sixteenth birthday they get the chance to bring him back for a single day. Cue adventure. With a cast headed up by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt it’s quite snappy and the characters are all charming, though I think they could have been played by almost anyone and you wouldn’t really notice. It’s pretty fun, especially as someone very casually aware of what happens in D&D, since most of the comedy and action are based in learning magic and various questing stereotypes. I enjoyed it at the time, but like everything Pixar’s made since Up, it’s rapidly fading from memory (this is in five days!) Good for the kids and fans.

Watching: The Invisible Man

Once more, Universal Studios attempt a resurrection of their classic monster characters, and for the first time since The Mummy (Brendan Fraser’s, obviously, not the fuckawful Tom Cruise tediothon), may actually have succeeded! I should qualify that a bit… This is the invisible man as domestic violence perpetrator and psycho stalker. I guess that’s what anyone who wanted to be invisible probably would be like. I’m not good at horror/thrillers at the cinema, and this one had me twisting in my seat and chewing my fingers. Elizabeth Moss is electrifying as the bullied spouse, Cecilia, it’s a harrowing performance. Creepily shot as if two people are in frame even when it’s just Moss, it swiftly becomes deeply disturbing. Obviously the fucker is gaslighting her like crazy and ruining all her relationships, as you do when you’re a total arsehole. The film really ramps up a gear when Cecilia starts fighting back, and I found it immensely satisfying. GOOD!

Last Week: LEGO Trolls, Titans season 2, Deep Blue Sea 2, The Quiet Earth

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

All Work and Some Play… Week ending Sunday 1 March 2020

Another week of gentle peace and busy days of WORK THINGS. Consequently I don’t have much to report, other than that my cats are beautiful and I’m generally quite content, if verging slightly on manic. To deal with that, I’ll be taking my stay calm and sleep goddammit drugs a bit earlier than usual, otherwise I’ll find myself checking work emails at midnight for that elusive “here’s the instruction you need” email. So what have we been doing? Weeeelll, I guess I’m going to have to start scribbling notes about what I’ve been doing on a daily basis, because once a thing is done, it seems to be just clean gone from my brain. 

We had a couple of lovely opportunities to see friends and family this week. First, a dear pal from the States is in the UK for a week, so I ditched the improv drop-in for a wonderful evening of catch up chatter. I really enjoy those friends with whom you can slip back into whatever state you were in last time you met up. Speaking of which, Saturday saw another convergence of my siblings and spousal partners for food, drink and noise. They’re some of my best evenings, and I’m happy to find that we’re probably closer now than we ever were when we were younger. Even if I did then choose to sleep in an unfamiliar bed and deal with children early in the day – I mean, really, who gets up before midday on a Sunday?! Still, I built a small LEGO tattooist’s with my youngest niece and a cat habitat with the eldest. Win.

Revitalizing: LEGO

That all left me so thoroughly trashed that I almost had a nap on Sunday afternoon. Almost. I stirred myself into action by finishing off the (insane) LEGO Trolls: World Tour set Pop Village Celebration (41255). It’s a fun build, but seriously, what the fuck is any of this? I’m psyched that there are now felt pieces in the LEGO building kit! I’ll aim to do a proper review of this later. That woke me up enough to continue with my lovely gold and green castle/shrine thing. Not enough to give you a proper update just yet, but I’m happy with the progress.

Watching: Titans season two

I really liked season one of DC’s Titans. It’s rare to enjoy anything with the DC label as they’re just so bad at translating their properties into live action, but it was really fun, kinda gritty with suitable TV-level special effects. But what the hell happened for round two? The first episode appears to be the last episode of the previous season, which instantly wraps up all the bad alien dimension stuff that was threatening the world. Now it’s all cool, and the team splits up. That was… odd. After that, Dick Grayson forms a new Titans team in the lush Titans tower, and we’re all confused about why this wasn’t episode one. It never really recovers from there. The introduction of Deathstroke is kind of fun, and we’re soon saturated with mini-Deathstrokes (his kids), who variously get killed or turn out to be bad guys who become good. It was intensely frustrating to see the characters from the first season tossed into thirteen episodes which have fitful pacing, no narrative arc for the existing characters, too many new characters (hi, Superboy!) the utterly baffling behaviour of evil scientists Cadmus, Dick Grayson sulking and fucking everything up, a nice turn from Bruce Wayne, and lots of random crap that makes no sense… Ah man, such a mess. It’s the worst of comic book plotting and cramming of continuities into too small a box, far too fast. Oh, and just wait for the utterly purposeless death of someone you like at the end of the season. For fuck’s sake, just make him Nightwing at the start (without a huge codpiece) and let us enjoy some superhero hijinks. 

Watching: Deep Blue Sea 2

Deep Blue Sea is a proper guilty pleasure of mine. It has a very satisfying B movie cast including a shouty Samuel L Jackson, Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J (ha!), with a genuinely funny script, quite scary massive clever sharks, fun action scenes, stupid science and lots of payoffs. As someone more scared of the idea of sharks than I ought to be, I find it both appealing and terrifying. So naturally, I’ve been keen to see the sequel for some time. You’ll be shocked to hear that it’s fucking awful. Almost unwatchably bad. Everything good about the first is dunked in a bucket of chum, coming up choking, wet and reeking. The sharks are cack, the script is… not good, and almost nothing happens. Plainly filmed for a tenner, and that ten quid spent on buying the sound effects from Piranha 2. There are baby sharks that make a bizarre squealing sound and a mad scientist for whom, when he necks the precious shark cleverinating potion, we see random chemical structures and equations (a la Numb3rs) to show how clever he’s becoming. Very not good. Please compare the trailers below for further details. And do watch Deep Blue Sea – it’s great.

Reading: The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison

I’m somewhat relieved to discover that googling “the quiet earth book” immediately brings up “…ending explained”, as I had no idea what the hell happened. I should say that this is a long-awaited read, since I saw the film version as an impressionable teen and was suitably impressed by the post-apocalyptic (well, everyone disappears, so a really clean apocalypse) vibe, suicidal characters, but most of all by the prospect of being all alone in the world and rooting through everyone’s stuff… So I was interested in seeing how much of a gaping void there was between the book and film, and unsurprisingly, it’s pretty vast – or at least it feels like it is.

In the novel, a very sad scientist who allowed his autistic son to drown himself, and who also had a hand in the experiment that maybe caused every other living animal in the world to disappear at precisely the same time (barring himself and two others), wakes up to discover he’s alone. This leads us into a few hundred pages of his existential angst, grief about his son and collapsed family, meeting and falling out with the only survivor (a nice Maori chap who’s probably a war criminal – don’t worry, they later have a grenade-tossing shootout). We learn he sabotaged the experiment he was working on, and tried to kill himself, leading to the current world catastrophe.

It’s a lot clearer, or at least more sharply done in the film. Everyone who was alive at 6:12 died, and everyone who died at 6:12 remains alive. I think the end turns out to be just a dream, or something. If so, it’s an ending that neatly undermines the whole story. I suspect there’s good stuff in here about the psychology of despair and sadness, but I bounced off the vibe and what felt extremely muddled and hard to understand toward the end, and had to force myself through it. I kinda don’t want to watch the film again, in case it’s not what I recall…

Last Week: Aconyte Books, Return of the Crimson Guard, ST:DISCO, Improv Triple Decker

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Looks Like I Did Nothing

Which is kinda cool. I need down weeks, and from what I recall, last week was one of them. I’ve been working hard, learning a bunch of new things as our first print deadline at Aconyte rapidly approaches, axe in hand with little regard for doors or faces. That’s incredibly exciting though – after nearly a year and a half of work, we’ll finally get tangible evidence of that effort, in the beautiful obtangular form of Wrath of N’kai by Josh Reynolds and Tales from the Crucible, edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells (I know, waaay too many Ls, you wouldn’t believe how hard her name has become to type). That’s our first adventure in the Lovecraftian mythos of Arkham Horror and an anthology of stories from KeyForge. They’re both splendid, and I’m very happy to have played a large part in their cover spreads and internal layouts, as well contributing to the commissioning process for the stories themselves. Oh, and, in the one-hundred word synopses, which is my new artform. They’re out in May! Buy them! Keep me employed! 

Reading: Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C Esslemont

Finally finished this! This is strictly me moaning about being slow and inept, and I knew the second in Esslemont’s Malazan series was nearly twice the length of the first, but still! Totally worth it though. I’m beginning to feel the differences between this and the parallel series by Steven Erikson, though they’re still hard to articulate. These ones feel closer, not that they lack vast scope, but the cast at least doesn’t yet feel as vast. I’m also seeing my favourite groups showing up like the horse-riding Wickans, and a lot of kickass mage action. I’ve read very few epic fantasy series with such a fantastic grasp of battle, and even fewer in which I’m content to linger in that battle for whole chapters at a time, shifting between groups of soldiers and switching sides. It’s great, but remember – these bad boys are 702 pages long! Commit and love them.

Doing: LEGO

So yeah, after blood, sweat etc, I turned to LEGO in the evenings of last week… Since I’ve been making such good use of my time, it’s been well invested here, in lovely LEGO bricks. As you can see below I’ve regularised the shapes around the sides, and added yet more fiddly details at the top and made them all a little higher. Once again I’ve made something I can’t bloody see inside of, so I guess that’ll have to be for me alone… I’m pretty pleased with the outside, with some nice sideways stacked masonry-profile bricks. It’s all becoming increasingly fragile, of course, and I’ve exploded sections of it several times. The walls are at least attached to each other now… At the rear I’m inserting a back wall and shrine kinda thing… I discovered that the best sand green figure I’ve got is this adorable chap from LEGO Atlantis, so I guess it’s his temple now. This section sits neatly on some square jumper plates so I can pop it in and out without wreaking too much havoc. Gonna drop him a little lower I think, and get some more green texture in. I’m very happy that I’ve been gathering sand green and gold and have finally put them to such good use. Next I’ll need to utilise the tonnes of foliage and put the shrine in a place, or something.

Watching: Star Trek: Discovery

Of the various Star Trek series, only Deep Space Nine has ever really spoken to me, and is thus the one I’ve fully rewatched at least five times (I mean c’mon, that’s only 132 hours of entertainment!) I didn’t get on with the characters in Voyager, though I liked all the Borg stuff, The Next Generation is where all the cool stuff started, but it feels patchy as all hell. Enterprise doesn’t even reach watchable. So, I’ve been absolutely delighted with ST: DISCO. It looks incredible, in a way that truly sets it apart from the other series, and the script and performances are polished to the same sheen. My sole complaint is that we don’t get the same soap opera-y character episodes that I adore in DS9. It’s not that they skimp on character development for the core cast, for whom the whole thing is an incredible rollercoaster, especially season two. It’s the sheer brevity of the show, with just fifteen episodes in season one, compared to twenty-four in Deep Space Nine, which makes it pacy and thrilling, but I still have no idea who most of the people on the bridge are, and I feel as if I should… There is very little space to breathe, and rewatching it has been a real boon. Now I actually know what happened! There’s so much going on and so little room in between that I don’t think I managed to take it in. 

I reckon it’s got some more re-watch potential, but for now roll on season three!

Watching: MissImp’s Improv Triple Decker at Nottingham Playhouse

Such a fun show! It’s still a real pleasure to have lots of shows to go to that I’m not actually in. For such a long time there were only a handful of us doing shows, but this time we had three teams with none of the MissImp exec in at all. Five Chubby Foxes, Denise’s 50th and The Improclaimers. It was a splendid mix, beginning with The Improclaimers’ mock cover-band singer-songwriter duo, followed by awkward stepmum drama with Denise’s 50th and a ridiculous octopus hunt from Five Chubby Foxes. I had a really good evening, furthered by the traditional post-show pubbery, in which we headed off to the Crafty Crow because our usual spot, The Roundhouse, was closed. Sad face, but great booze and brilliant chats. I mean, just look at these lovely folks!

Last Week, Sunday 16 February 2020

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Yup, Still Kansas, Just Has More People

Looks like I’m slightly ahead, I’m wrapping up last week only a day late. Surely this augurs great things… Maybe. By my standards, last week was a veritable social whirlwind. No wonder I now wish to hide in the dark! I have a somewhat quieter week ahead, featuring lots of work to be done and if I’m lucky a couple of Lego-ing slots. 

Evening Drinking

Is the evening the best time to drink? I’m never sure. I kinda like daytime drinking when I’m on holiday, but I’ll confess it mostly leads to dozing off in the early evening and arguably not being the best use of time… But that’s what they would argue, and screw those guys, right? Either way, I’ve done a bit of it this week.

I finally managed to catch up with some of my dearest friends from the sixteen years I spent working in Probation before it went to galactic level shit, courtesy of our government’s ideological obsession with privatisation. I finally abandoned ship some four years ago (to find a wildly pleasing new life in publishing), and as usual, I’ve not retained a huge number of friends out of the many people I saw and interacted with daily for so many years. I absolutely suck at keeping hold of folks, which makes me rather sad at times. And then I forget, until I remember again. It’s a cycle… Anyway, due to the remaining aftereffects of storm Ciara and the nightmare that is Nottingham traffic management, only three of us successfully reunited. I’m not sure why it’s mostly my former line managers that I ended up being closest to, but I’m very glad to have done. I get that lovely feeling I do with my cousins when I see them, of snapping effortlessly back into our relationships, just as we had last time we met. It might be one of my favourite sensations in the whole world. If someone’s created a fiendish term to capture it already, I’d be glad to know. I guess there’s something of nostalgia, and muscle memory all bundled in there. Nice to catch up on various gossip / the sheer hell Probation has inevitably declined into, and its further forthcoming catastrophes. A splendid evening out!

I’ve become a fan of Brews of the World in Burton on Trent. Originally they were just a terrifyingly well-stocked bottle shop, and have gradually pivoted into being a fine micropub with ten taps. I tried most of them this week, and was particularly taken with this Star Trek themed beer (presumably in honour of the new series on Prime). Very tasty! 

We mostly skipped Valentines Day this year, save for a trip to the cinema and chicken gorging on Sunday afternoon… though I do now have some exquisite sparkly nail varnish and cute stuff!

Watching: Sex Education season two

If you haven’t started on Netflix’s Sex Education, you really should. Set in a rather nice secondary school (filmed in Wales I believe), featuring a gaggle of horny teenagers learning about sex and relationships, aided by Asa Butterfield and his sex and relationships counsellor mum, Gillian Anderson. The script is impossibly well-written and the performances are pitch perfect all round. This season begins with absolutely cripplingly embarrassing scenes of Asa’s character Otis getting hooked on wanking… It’s hard to make this sound classy, but it actually is. Particularly deserving of attention are Emma Mackey’s Maeve (part time collaborator in Otis’s under-the-table sex ed business) whose very difficult family situation really shines this season. I like them all, though I’m most intrigued by how they found so many characterful and hideous garments for much of the cast to wear. Well played all.

Watching: Parasite

A singularly odd film which has happily scooped up a tonne of awards, Oscars included. Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, who made the magnificently strange The Host and the future hell of Snowpiercer come to life, and filled with fantastic character actors, including Song Kang-ho who was in both of those aforementioned films. I’d been tipped off about this one months ago by some mates who saw it at festivals and I was thrilled it won awards that ensured a longer run at Cineworld…  Essentially, it’s the tale of a down-on-their-heels family who inveigle their way into the home of an upper class family in a really nice house, by getting their existing staff fired and placing themselves in line… I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone, but it turns out they’re not the only “parasites” on the family, though ultimately I imagine you could argue that it’s the wealthy who are parasitic on the rest. Slow, funny, and very, very dark toward the end – I really enjoyed Parasite, though I confess to being slightly perplexed about why it’s being so lauded. I guess if you’ve somehow never seen a non-English movie it’s particularly striking. Watch it!

Doing: Brick by Brick exhibition at Harley Gallery

On Saturday we met up with some dear friends who we spend too little time with (we blame it on their kids, they blame our appalling laziness – let’s call it a draw) to visit the Brick by Brick LEGO exhibition at the Harley Gallery in Worksop. As at previous LEGO shows there, the Harley Gallery spills the exhibits over a couple of floors, giving the magnificent builds room to breathe, and supplying plenty of table space for folks to build their own models (we all did!) A particular highlight is the work of Canadian-Ghanaian artist, Ekow Nimako, who I’d seen popping up on various brick blogs with lovely work, but his entirely black figurines and sculptures inspired by are simply extraordinary in the flesh (plastic). I took a bunch of photographs which all suck because of the highly reflective bricks, but I urge you to check out his website https://ekownimako.com/. There are many other very satisfying and clever builds too, and various LEGO sculptures made out of glass, merged with paintings, large-scale near-interactive pieces, and I finally got to see some of Jason Freeney‘s superb anatomical LEGO sculptures. Art aside, it was a really lovely day out with friends – cheers Silvers!

Here’s a short video on Ekow, featuring a couple of the sculptures at the Harley Gallery. The exhibition is there till the end of April, so get it together! Brick by Brick at the Harley Gallery

Last Week, Sunday 9 February 2020

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Midweek Confusion

OK, so this next week thing has slightly got away from me. As ever, by this point in a new week my recollection of the seven days past is blurring… Since my Google calendar stopped syncing with Facebook, even that once reliable tracker of things I expressed zero interest in has faded in its utility. Alas, I’ll have to go by memory; apologies in advance. 
 
Alright, I’m genuinely stumped for the first couple of days, as far as the evenings go. I went back to the doctor’s – as I’ve been doing with frightful regularity since last July when we accidentally discovered that I have horrifically high blood pressure. My general understanding based on video games is that a high score is good, but apparently this does not follow in medicine. In order to prevent me from spontaneously stroking out (apparently a genuine risk even at my sprightly forty-one years) I’m being loaded up with various ACE and calcium channel blockers, but to counterbalance their potential for good, the ACE blockers offered a chance of trashing my kidneys, prompting fortnightly blood tests to make sure they hadn’t dissolved and begun circulating. They aren’t! Huzzah. But the ramipril didn’t do much on its own, other than not kill my organs, so now I’ve also got amlodipine (I may or may not verify these spellings… ) to work its mysterious way through the calcium channels. It’s all really quite interesting, to me at least since this is my frail puff-paste meat sack I live in. No more blood tests, and at a much higher dose is bringing my blood pressure down into merely prehypertension range, instead of the top end of stage 2 hypertension (down from my max of 180/109 to 140/90). Win. Plus, I’m now taking a proper Smarties assortment of pills, so that’s nice. Looks like it has a genetic cause, since I’m really quite healthy with my daily cycling and swimming routine, and my cholesterol is fine. In your face three kilos of Quality Streets and another three of cheese in December. Drugs for life – which is cool since I’ve been on asthma meds since an unknowably young age.
 
For those uninterested in such health wranglings, tough: your body will begin to fail shortly, as I push these pins into this charming mannequin with a crude rendering of your features. But that can’t be all I did last week, right? Indeed, no. 
 

Building: Lego

I have advanced a little with my pretty golden gates. I’ve expanded upwards, in adding mostly extra gold pieces. That’s a minor challenge because, as an inveterate hoarder, I feel like I should use them very sparingly and not deplete my stores. This is idiotic. The whole reason I’ve got the damn things is to use them! And that they look very pretty and they live in a box, and that makes me happy… As you can see I also greebled the fuck out of the walls, and gone way too far. I’ll find pics next week, but I’ve dismantled them in an attempt to make plainer walls which won’t detract so much from the magnificent pearlescent gold. 

 

 

Watching: October Faction

We finished up watching the second-latest comic book adaptation to slide onto Netflix’s new releases bar (before Locke & Key, which unfortunately looks exactly the same but in Miss Peregrine’s Miserable House of Whatever instead – I’m sure it’s somehow different, and we’re bound to watch it eventually). Best described as Grimm crossed with Mean Girls, October Faction follows a family of monster hunters as they, um, hunt monsters and learn DARK secrets. Pretty chipper performances and casting made this a lot of fun, despite the incredibly predictable plot (not all monsters are monsters, your monster-killing organisation is surprisingly not all that chill). The high school stuff with a pair of twins trying to fit into the new town their parents have dragged them to works well, at least until they discover their own powers and the rest of the story unfurls. Very sexuality positive stuff too, which is always satisfying. Look, it’s not amazing, and the ending is a bit unsatisfying, but it’s a fun watch while you’re eating tea. I guess that’s a recommendation… 
 

 

Watching: Birds of Prey, or the Film with a Whimsical Title about a Murderer (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

I know, I know. It’s a DC movie, why do we even try to enjoy them any more. This is about Harley Quinn, Joker’s recent ex (I mean, literally at the start of this film} and how everyone hates her and wants to kill her, because she is, as I think they say, “just awful”. In the process of people trying to kill her she makes some friends, including a fairly amusing child pickpocket and somewhere in here there’s a story about a massive diamond with encrypted passwords carved in it. There’s several different people’s back stories in here, and they all weave together quite ineptly, constantly tripping the film up. We meet Huntress, who has no character other than being a crossbow wielding lady sad that she saw her parents get murdered (it’s OK, they were mobsters – there’s no reason why you should care at all) by another gang of mobsters, under the instruction of Ewan McGregor, who plays some twat who wears a mask for the final action scenes. I should mention that this might be a career worst performance for McGregor, even counting the Star Wars prequels. Fuck knows what his character is supposed to be. And that’s the tone really, none of the characters have any consistency or make sense (except possibly the pickpocket girl). We veer from snarky comic stuff with Harley, to McGregor’s minion slicing off people’s faces. Everything happens fast, or in pointless time-skipping. Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary is pretty cool, except that her having superpowers seems totally irrelevant until she knocks some folks down in the finale. Rosie Perez’ Renee Montoya is described as speaking in cop cliches, and that’s what they give her in lieu of a character. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn gets to do some genuinely splendid action scenes, and it’s the fighting throughout that makes this mess of a film endurable. Lots of people seem excited by the glitter and beanbag gun scene on entering the police station, but it’s the fight as they leave which is truly splendid. Oh, Arkham looks good – suitably grim and filled with ridiculous architecture and funfairs. I’d rank this as the third best DC movie (of the recent crop, barring Wonderwoman none of their films are even as enjoyable as Batman Forever), after Wonderwoman and Shazam (smoky grey CGI baddies are so Green Lantern) but some steps ahead of fucking Aquaman with it’s ghastly rubbery Sea World. I’m perplexed by this film all round. It grows clearer and clearer that I have no grasp of DC properties at all. In fairness, it’s about as good a grasp as Warner Bros’… 
 

Doing: Creative Mentoring

Every month, for the last seven years (I think), I’ve spent a few hours with my delightful creativity client. We write stories, play improv and inspiration games, all with the aim of simply being mentally and creatively stimulating. And because it’s fun. Not too much to report on this occasion, other than to note (and remind myself) that’s always a genuine highlight of my week. I deeply enjoy the time I spend with Rebecca, and find it inspires me creatively too. What lovely reciprocity!
 

Doing: the Glowstick Trials at National Justice Museum

After a number of rehearsals we finally got to play for real! Seven improvised courtoom dramas, back to back last Friday evening. The chaps directing it this time around (Richard and Ben) rejigged it very smartly from our previous version, putting it much more opportunity to freely extemporise in our various roles of Judge, Defendant, Prosecution, Defence and Witness 1 & 2. A small tight cast, with lots of quasi-legal nonsense. I was lucky enough to end up playing most roles, not least because of the hideous traffic jams that marred the whole of Nottingham for hours, delaying a third of our team. It might have had some effect on audiences too, as we saw far fewer folks in the streets that in previous years. Ho hum. I had an absolutely marvellous time. Hearing Judge Duncan screaming away behind closed doors, myself mounting a vigorous defence (against Marilyn’s thorny prosecution) for poor Alistair accused of thinking about stealing birdseed (he couldn’t possibly have done – he never thinks!), waxing lyrical as a defendant in my maudlin teenage diary, and countless things I’ve forgotten. It was a blast, and I really want to do it again, somewhere, soon… Any offers? 
 

Last Week, Sunday 2 February 2020

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Ah, February, My Old Nemesis

Alright, that’s a bit melodramatic… I’ve perked up considerably and the prospect of February brings me neither fear nor hope. It’s been a very quiet week, or at least… I think it has. I’ve spent much of today in a courtroom in our dress rehearsal for Light Night: The Glowstick Trials on Friday at the National Justice Museum (you should come along, especially if you have kids – get em judged by strangers!), and I feel a little perplexed about what I might actually have done this week. Let’s see… Ah, I have it. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time doing minute photoediting at work this week, and I think it’s turned my brain inside out. Don’t get me wrong, I really love learning more about Photoshop (since I use it every day for book design and layout at Aconyte Books, and for doing a similarly wide range of graphics stuff for MissImp, I’d better learn to love it), but I’ve been kinda embedded in the same task, and can no longer perceive the colour blue. Ho hum.

Reading: Between Books

I’ve foolishly ended up reading a pair of books alternately. It wasn’t intentional, but rather situational. I am very fond of my Kindle – it’s amazing to read a book with one hand while brushing my teeth or wandering around the house, so it’s an automatic go-to. On the other hand (or both hands, I guess), I love to read real books with the paper-fondling and all that. So I’ve ended up on two. I’ll not review them before finishing them (that would be daft).

First up, Adam Roberts’ Splinter, which is a curiously Jules Verney adventure about a chap whose dad predicts the end of the world, and turns out to be correct (probably), leaving he, his father and a bunch of believers (in his father) are stuck together on a little chunk of Earth. It’s odd, and I’m struggling to drag myself back it a bit. On the plus side, it’s got this gorgeous cover by Darius Hinks (whose splendid fantasy novel The Ingenious we published back at Angry Robot. He’s a very fine chap too).

Second, I’m back in the Malazan world with Ian C Esslemont’s Return of the Crimson Guard. Kinda digging it. Also noticing more differences from Steven Erikson’s storytelling: there are far fewer “thus”es.

Doing: Lego

I’m at an awkward point in Lego building. I’ve failed to build anything for myself (as in, not as dictated by the instructions in an official Lego set) since my Wizard of Oz at the beginning of last year. That’s a combination of having very little time (mostly due to doing far too much admin for MissImp), and having relatively little space to get all the boxes out for rootling through them. I’ve managed to have a few breakdown and sorting periods which I find very relaxing, but I’ve not felt the necessary inspiration for building. Trying to build and getting nowhere is really grim. Last week I pulled a couple of boxes out and made some intricate and horrifically fragile gold gates, but didn’t know what to do with it.

But yesterday I had the day entirely to myself and after getting a few things done, I got everything out! Ah, six hours crosslegged on the floor leaves a chap utterly unable to stand, but it was totally worth it. I’ve expanded the gate, framed it and started building a structure around it. The tiled floor is very pleasing (I got loads of those quarter circle coral pink tiles from Leicester Square Lego Shop last year). The long hexagonal shape is putting enormous stress on some of the bricks, but I’m pretty chuffed with it. I suspect I’ve over-greebled the walls and will need to tone it right back down, but overally I feel deeply happy about the whole thing. It’s raised up so I can build some terrain and foliage around it when I’ve got some idea what’s going at the back. Some kind of tower…? It’s actually a little further along than these pictures show – check out Instagram for more continuous updates!

Acquiring: The Dinosaur Films of Ray Harryhausen by Roy P Webber

I’m rarely able to help myself when it comes to Harryhausen stuff. The man was a fantastic artist, animator and all-round nice fellow. This one’s been on my list for a while, and I’ve finally added it to the stack. Unlike the recent (fantastic) Titan tomes on the Hollywood special effects genius, this one is all black and white and a lot more text and commentary. Accordingly, it’s going to take me a lot longer to get into and through, but I’m delighted to have acquired it.

 

Acquiring: Fake Lego Mandalorian

Disney’s super-secret hiding of the baby Yoda spoiler in The Mandalorian was an absolute delight but it has left us with fuck all vital Baby Yoda merchandise! The AT-ST from that brilliant shrimp-harvesting episode (I’m trying to avoid spoilers) is the only real Lego set currently available, so I was utterly at the mercy of knock-off merchants on eBay. The Mandalorian himself has a rather cack helmet print, but the body and armour printing is great, and the overall quality of the parts ain’t bad. Baby Yoda filled my heart with joy though. Shame he’s got a slight nick out of his green face paint (revealing the generic pink below). I’m quite pleased. The Mandalorian is a fantastic show, by the way, the perfect space Western that Star Wars is supposed to be and you should watch it. I’m on my third re-watch now…

Watching: Titans

Ah, this is what I’ve been doing this week… I watched both of these shows last year, but damned if I could recall a single salient story sliver. Titans season 2 popped up on Netflix, and that seemed like a fine opportunity to dive back into season 1 with Marilyn. It’s really fun! I’ve got no idea who any of the characters are (save Robin and Wonder Girl). I feel this a a DC thing – other than Batman and his usual coterie of villains, I’ve never taken to and absorbed a general sense of the DC heroes and villains. The parlous state of their movie universe pretty much guarantees my feelings will stay this way. The show picks up a very violent Robin and a couple of his street-scrapping chums to protect a young girl who appears in dire need of exorcism. They team up with a guy who turns into a green tiger and a spectacular woman who can channel the energy of the sun into burning stuff. It’s proper comics far – somewhat perplexing about why anything’s happening, but it’s all done with a pleasingly gritty tone without too much winking or spandex. The fights are pleasingly violent too – it’s no fun being twatted with a staff, and Titans does not pull those punches. The effects are a bit poor occasionally, but it doesn’t really detract much.

Watching: Star Trek: Discovery

ST: Disco was a delight last year, and caning through it again while playing with Lego and every other activity is proving equally satisfying. I like Discovery because it’s got plenty of mental episodic drama, fun characters and splendid special effects. It’s really all I want from Star Trek. Like DS9 it’s got a strong narrative arc which pleases me, and the cast is pitch perfect (Michelle Yeoh, goddamn). As with all the prequel storylines, I end up completely forgetting that this much better looking, higher tech world with cooler uniforms is actually set way before the hilarious jumpsuits of Next Generation. Great fun, and I’m looking forward to its return with season 3.

Last Week, Sunday 26 January 2020

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Bye Bye January

Pixie and GeigerThe month of January appears to be unfurling correctly, preparing to flip us into February. I’ll be glad to see its end. I fell back into a darkness at the end of December and it’s taken this long to haul myself out, or more likely, wait for the hole to lift me up to the surface again. This was pretty much the subject of our podcast recording on Sunday evening, so it will get a more complete airing when we get round to putting that episode out and add to the sound pollution with which we shall conquer the cosmos. 

So, this week gone by then. Part of the reason I’m starting this up again is in the hope of actually remembering the things I do, especially the good things, instead of letting it all slide into a deep grey quagmire, in which only bad things are buoyant enough to bob to the surface. Progress! It’s almost (but definitely isn’t) a new year’s resolution…

Reading: Night of Knives by Ian C Esslemont

I finished a fine pair of novels this week; I’m glad to be hitting a decent reading speed again. First up Ian C Esslemont’s Night of Knives. I’ve already read the complete Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, which was a serious undertaking of ten titanic epic fantasy novels in quite possibly the deepest and most complex world I’ve had the pleasure of drowning in.  I spent a few days flicking between books, unable to find a realm I wanted to dwell in for a few days, and the magic and battle-saturated landscape of the Malazan world is very familiar to me, and oddly welcoming, for all its horror and bloodshed. I’d been quite curious about Esslemont’s series exploring the world he and Erikson created together, but just hadn’t found the right moment. Imagine how delighted I was to discover that Night of Knives is roughly half the length of Erikson’s bricks. It’s a taut and exciting read, focusing on one specific night in one specific place (unlike the Book of the Fallen, which spans aeons and continents). It’s hard to explain any of the Malazan stuff without half a million words of context, but this one is about the previous Malazan emperor and his assassin sidekick returning from the dead to take the next step in immortal ascendancy to the throne of Shadow (kinda, there’s a lot more to that summary…) I had a lot of fun in the familiar places and peoples. Looks like all of Esslemont’s series fall substantially shorter than Erikson’s, which is great news as at 1200 pages from book six onwards, they became quite intimidating to fit in. I’ll definitely be back for Return of the Crimson Guard soon. 

Reading: The Custodian of Marvels by Rod Duncan

Leicester author, Rod Duncan’s The Custodian of Marvels is the last in his alternate history The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire trilogy, which came out shortly before I came on board at Angry Robot. We subsequently oversaw the beginning of his sequel trilogy.  There’s a huge amount to love here, from the intricately crafted alternate England overseen by the International Patent Office who have an iron grip on technological advancement, and as it turns out, history itself. I’m wholly in love with the protagonist Elizabeth Barnabus who’s sought to avenge the destruction of her family by a thoroughly wicked bastard of a man, the Duke of Northampton. This entry gets us a lot of the satisfaction we’ve been building up to. Unlike the previous two, The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter and Unseemly Science, this is a neat heist movie of a novel, and I’m very reluctant to spoil it for anyone here. Simply put, Duncan’s prose is sublime, he paints places and characters in the alternate 2000s that seem more real than the ones we had. It also ends on a killer last line which had me laughing out loud. Cheers Rod. Looks like I’m gonna have to read The Map of Unknown Things… Also, stunning covers by Will Staehle.

Watching: His Dark Materials

We missed the huge BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy at Christmas, but we’ve finally caught up. I remember loving the first two books in particular, but it turns out I remember almost nothing from Northern Lights, other than daemons (want), a bad lady forcibly separating children from their daemons (an extension of their soul), and armoured polar bears. The series is a pretty good way to experience the world, and it’s filled with all the grim religious intolerance of the novels and magic of the daemons which the movie adaptation sliced away (to it’s doom), pretty good special effects and a very satisfying cast. Definitely worth a watch.

Watching: The Personal History of David Copperfield

I don’t have a lot to say about this film. It was quite fun to watch, but at no point did I know whether we were five or fifty minutes in. It’s a curiously disjointed show, despite amazing comic performances all round (Capaldi finally gives us the Doctor Who we deserved) and a witty, often heartwarming script, I’m left feeling like it’s a real mess. I dunno – see it for yourself. 

Doing: The Improvised Trial

Somewhat busier week than usual, with two rehearsals for MissImp‘s upcoming improvised justice show for Light Night at the National Justice Museum: The Glowstick Trials. It’s the only child and family-friendly show we really do, and it’s tightly formatted for playing in a genuwine courtroom in authentic wigs and gowns! With Ben and Richard as our director/producer team, they’ve reworked the show from 2018-19 and I think made something even more fun out of it. I’ve very much enjoyed the rehearsals, although I’ve kinda dreaded allocating the time to rehearse in.  Just the dress rehearsal to come before the big night! We’ll be performing every half hour on Friday 7 February from 6.30pm – 9.30pm. Tickets are a mere £3.50 and you get a glowstick! Pick em up here.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome – the Podcast 

We Are What We Overcome - 26 January 2020As I loudly alluded to above, careening out of the Christmas bubble has not been easy this year. We met up at the New Art Exchange in Hyson Green on Sunday night to record some thoughts about it. Wes got hideously stuck in traffic and wasn’t able to make it in time, which sucks. I think Matt and I just about succeeded without too much meandering (Neil will be the judge…), but his absence was deeply felt. Hopefully Wes will enjoy our attempts to say what he might have said. We were blessed with a nice little audience who were very attentive and asked smart questions at the end, all of which I’m going to have to think about some more.  Essentially, I don’t like having a period of self-reflection foisted on me, and I need new/old strategies to keep myself together when my daily routine is absent, and be more mindful about keeping track of what I’ve been up to. Hence this whole thing!

That’s probably enough stuff for the week, right? Well no, I also acquired more Lego, played with our beautiful cats, sat around a lot, did some good stuff at work, and probably some other things too.

We Are What We Overcome – Live Podcast Recording Sunday 26 January 2020

Posted on By Captain Pigheart
We Are What We Overcome - 26 January 2020

New year, new podcast episodes to record!

We Are What We Overcome podcast hostsWe’re in my hometown of Nottingham this weekend for an hour of chat and banter about mental health. I think/hope we’re covering a topic which is on my mind a lot at present: new year. Turns out I’ve got a massive aversion to the event, and frankly I find it impenetrably depressing. It’s not that I have any interest in New Year’s Resolutions, but the whole looking forward and back activity seems to tear my soul apart. So Sunday should be fun, right?

 

All the Deets

Sunday 26 January 2020

7.30-9pm
Recording starts at 8pm

New Art Exchange

39-41 Gregory Boulevard
Nottingham
NG7 6BE
Location & Directions

Join the Facebook event, if you do that sort of thing: We Are What We Overcome – Live Podcast Recording (Nottingham)

It’s free and pretty easy…

Recording from 8pm til 9pm in the wonderful New Art Exchange Cafe

Our podcast is the beginning of an essential public conversation about mental health. We’ve all faced mental health problems; we’ve told friends we’re “fine”, and just kept it all to ourselves… now it’s payback time.

Check out our three previous episodes here, or search for them on iTunes or your favourite podcast app: https://wearewhatweovercome.podbean.com/

This event is FREE – just grab a drink from the cafe. We welcome questions throughout.

We’ll start at 8pm, and should be wrapped up in an hour, and we’ll then hang around to continue the conversation in the bar.

We aim to lead by example, sharing our own challenges with mental health and treating them with humour, compassion and conversation. Welcome to our therapy session: an hour of conversation, insight and comedy with a musician, an improviser and a psychotherapist, in front of a live audience (if you show up, otherwise we’ll just talk to each other!)

We Are What We Overcome started as a song, became a live Edinburgh Fringe show, and is now a podcast.

We Are What We Overcome - 26 January 2020

Blood Thickens the Water

Posted on By Captain Pigheart
The Night Ocean

We waited in the still night air, on a dusty knoll overlooking the devastated city. The stars mocked our patience, twinkling with untold mirth at the shadows of truth blackly knotted between them. I waited with my brothers in arms. We waited for our god. For the end of all things, and our just reward for a life of hard service; devout, we’d given our lives to furthering His kingdom. We were much reduced from the height of our pious glory – once a force ten thousand strong and now but three. And mortally wounded.

Jimri lay crooked in the withered old tree’s gnarled embrace, shuddering as he held together the gaping wounds in his gut. The gashes were half-webbed with the sticky tangle of our medicinal paste, which we had laughingly named our puncture repair kits. Alas, supplies were short. Though we’d slathered what we could from our drained tubes, we’d suffered too much, lost too many slivers of flesh in the fight and now had too little left to give. Slumped across Jimri’s knees lay Torschen, my oldest friend, the best man to bear a sword at your back. He too had taken blows mortal: two straight thrusts through his left lung which gave his breath a bubbling quality, that of one already loose in the deep sea of peace beyond. The puncture repair kit had closed the holes well enough and with a reed I’d reinflated his sagging lung, but we’d no further recourse to healing.

We were the last: our armies, healers, servitors, even cooks were gone. Massacred to a man, woman and child. And yet, we had won the day. The city of Ternforl was ours. Or at least it was no longer the ’forlers, for they now swam in the night ocean. Where too, we would join them. But as predators, not prey. Immortal sharks, safe from all else, with lesser souls to feed upon evermore. We’d dragged ourselves out of Ternforl, over the mountains of corpses, the scorched rubble, the breached earthworks and through the blood-muddled earth of the farmland that once lay green and fertile around the city. Blood meal would bring forth a lush harvest in time, but who might reap it was beyond our view. Shambling, we propped up one another, eyes shying away from the faces of comrades, friends and rivals we’d always sought to best – and now had, in a bleak sort of way. I jammed my iron helm tighter over my ears, snarling as it rubbed against the flap of scalp I’d pinned there. It had bled heavily despite its triviality, and in lieu of repair paste I’d simply screwed my helmet into the congealing blood glue. I couldn’t imagine I’d ever remove my helmet again, and I’d rather dive into that vast sea intact, a holy warrior to the last, than weak and naked.

Jimri faded away on an inhale, leaving the ghost breath to whisper out through lungs finally permitted to relax. Torschen died with a choking burble as his unpunctured lung frothed his leaking lifeblood till it foamed from his nose. Alone with the stars. I felt a tremendous lightness as the breeze made its way through the brain-deep gouges down the side of my head. It almost tickled, and I felt freer than I’d ever done before. My brothers were diving even now into that eternal sea, its salty embrace cleansing them of all injury and grief. I’d join them soon, but I just waited, just wanted to see our god. He comes to those who have dedicated their lives to him, they say. I have laid waste an empire, seen all I know fall in that quest. Now I wait for my reward, to take my Lord’s hand and be cast into the abyssal beyond. I’ve earned it.

I bleed. The sense that the night sky is more inside my head than out intensifies. I don’t think I see in colour any more. Like in the deeps, red no longer reaches me. My blood is just another aspect of the seas; we blend together, it and I. Dissolution. He’s not coming for me, is he. Maybe they never do. And into the ocean I slide.

The Night Ocean