unpopular

Happy 200

So tired. It’s been a hard week. Lots going on, classes being filled with Things To Do and New Things To Try, which is always tiring and demanding. I finally got a class set up with Flickr accounts and today they uploaded some photos to them. The next step is to see if we can arrange buddy groupings for peer self-assessment through leaving comments. I am pretty confident it will work technologically, but the big question is whether it will make any positive difference to the quality of work. Watch this space…

In other news, I had a nice email from Jeff Lewis today responding to an off the cuff comment I made in my review of his recent Bristol show. I was basically saying ‘hey Jeff, how about coming into my lessons with your comics and doing some ‘lectures’ in place of my Powerpoint presentations.’ It would be so cool if he could come by when I’m doing my comics project with the Year 7s. How cool would that be?! Yay! Anyway, I’ll post the review on Tangents later tonight, and it should also be on the Plan B site shortly.

Speaking of comics, I bought the Whiteout: Melt book this afternoon and I am so looking forward to reading that. Also got book 3 of the Powers series. I got Book 1 a few weeks ago and at first I was totally unconvinced, but now I am kind of hooked. Even though it gave me a bad dream last night after I finished up with the ‘Roleplay’ story arc that makes up book 2. And in more comics news I had a lovely box arrive from Top Shelf today also. A super fat copy of the collected American Elf sketchbook diaries by James Kochalka, and a copy of Matt Kindt’s 2 Sisters. I’m really looking forward to reading those, especially the Kindt book because unlike the American Elf material it will be all new to me. So lots of reading lined up over the next couple of weeks I guess.

Um, in other news, I dropped off some copies of Plan B at Solo this afternoon and was introduced to Orlando, a character previously known only through blog and comic book references by Izzy. It’s quite strange meeting someone you kind of feel like you already know, even though you don’t actually know them at all. Maybe I will see him again at the Help She Cant Swim show on Sunday night which I will hopefully venture out for in order to review for the aforementioned Plan B.

Oh, and this is apparently my 200th Typepad Blog post. Happy 200th to me.

Let's pretend we're bunny rabbits

Rupert forwarded me this today, which I looked at during the Year 7 lesson, sound turned off, ten minutes before the end of the school day. I dare say most of you will have spied it already, but it made me laugh out loud. I mean, come on, how could it not: bunnies enacting The Shining in 30 seconds. They do the same with The Exorcist, and its just as funny. And I’ve never even seen either original movie… Of course maybe that’s why the Bunny versions are so good.

waiting and wishing

Haven’t been to the movies in ages, and sadly nothing in the current Exeter Picture House listing seems even remotely interesting. I do however have my eye on the start of December when ‘My Summer Of Love’ will open there. My eye is also on the Instal festival up in Glasgow mid-October. ‘Scotland’s premier experimental music festival’ says the blurb, and it looks like it could be a fine couple of days. Of even more interest is the glorious sounding Tanned Tin festival way down in Santander on November 4, 5 and 6. The line up is awesome, and it’s so tempting to take a few days worth of sickies to head out there… but sadly that’s just not going to be possible. Sigh. Sometimes I wish I worked in a job where I could take these kind of odd days as and when I fancied it. But then I remember I’d have to do without the sprawling summer vacation and the half terms weeks off and the long Easter and Christmas breaks and I figure it all kind of evens out in the long run. Actually, with a Ryanair roundtrip flight for 47 quid including all taxes, I’m almost tempted to head out for the Saturday night…

Baguette Lady

I went to town again this morning and didn’t feel wibbly on Sidwell St or anywhere else. Hurrah! I posted some mail and then visited the comics shop. I know, I swore I wouldn’t go again cos it makes me feel too weird, but if the damn epicheroes website had actually managed to get my subscribed comics order together I would have been spared the journey for my Batman fix. I got the new Gotham Central issue, which I am excited about reading, and some assorted other titles with some episodes of 'War Games' in. Also picked up a copy of Whiteout which I grabbed for its Greg Rucka writing credit. Rucka did the first Gotham Central collection In The Line Of Duty and that was good enough for me. I started reading Whiteout whilst lunching in Herbies, and it looks like it’s going to be grand. I noticed there was a sequel too, so I can look forward to more of the same when I’m done with this one. Yay!

Also dropped by the museum to see the photography exhibit by Ski Harrison. Some good shots there, although to be honest portrait photography doesn’t normally float my boat a huge amount. My favourites are definitely the series of pensioners from the mid ‘60s, and the ones of elderly South West rural folks from the ‘80s and ‘90s. There are a couple of really terrific images, and a tenner for the accompanying book didn’t seem too steep. ‘Baguette Lady’ rules! Go Baguette lady!

I then made the mistake of popping into the Phoenix to see what their current exhibit was. It’s a nightmare! The South West Textiles group with ‘a response to Eden’. Argh! Plants and ‘textiles’ rolled up in one hideous exhibit! Well, I didn’t hang around for long, obviously. I got out of there, I walked straight out of there, I walked down the road and I started to sing…

Actually I didn’t start to sing. I just wandered down to the Cavern and dropped off some copies of the new Plan B for them to try and shift to punters. Fingers crossed. Solo said they would take some too, so hopefully Exeter’s Indiekid population will once more be well informed and not have to wallow in the gutter with the NME. Well, we can dream, can’t we? Yes we can.

I crept out of the house today. First time in a week. I felt kinda funny, went all wibbly on Sidwell Street for a moment. Not nice. But I survived, and managed to mail off some things that needed shifting, plus I took two big bagfuls of CDs to charity shops. Sharing them out as I went along from store to store, I’m sure their collective indie obscurity will bemuse many charity shoppers. They might also intrigue a couple of students. Who knows…

I also picked up my mail from the central Post Office. This included the box of Plan B’s that I said I would try and shift in Exeter (Rupert, if you want a copy, there’s one here with your name on it). Tomorrow I will try and persuade someone at Solo to take a few copies.

The new issue of Plan B looks good. I had a quick peruse at the Jeff Lewis show last week in Bristol, and I admit that on first glance I was a little perturbed by the slightly glossy paper and all the short bursts of text. On closer inspection I kind of think those work better than I feared, although it does all seem to lurch rather abrubtly from the ‘old’ CTCL layout/style of the first few features to a more fragmented style. But that’s a teething issue I guess, and I’m sure they’ll solve it very soon. Overall, I think it’s great, and no I’m not just saying that for the obvious reasons. The expanded ‘media’ section at the back is very fine indeed, and I’m well chuffed to see David O MacGowan providing ace comics commentary. Go David!

C just emailed me this. It looks really cool. So all we need is someone with enough electronic know how to fiddle with an old digital camera and wire up a chip and uh, someone to fly a kite and we’re away. Maybe it’s time to learn new skills… Actually I flew stunt kites when I was a kid. It was great fun. I have never taken apart digital cameras though, and electronics do kind of confuse me, even though I always loved looking at all the tools in my dad’s tool kit (he fixed ATM’s and computers back in the day… You know, the company he worked for – large American multinational, not IBM - used to send him out to ‘install’ extra memory on computers and all he had to do was change a few jumpers on the boards. The memory was already installed! And for this the company charged a thousand quid… So my dad would make it look like he was actually installing something and take way longer than it needed so the customers wouldn’t feel conned. He always felt bad about doing that particular job. Well, wouldn’t you? Sheesh).

I’ve been doing a small spot of experimenting with flickr and have started a photoblog for the Geek Lair project. The idea, if you remember, is for you all to email me a photo (or photos) of YOUR Geek Lair. It might be a full blown artist’s studio filled with big canvases and pots of paint or a little cupboard under the stairs. It might be a groovy basement recording studio or a kitchen table. Whatever, I just want to see pictures of where you do your work, whatever it might be. Because I’m nosy. And so are you. See what’s already been submitted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/geeklair/ and email me at [email protected] with your photos. Go! Geek! Now!

Just posted a new Mass Observation from my brother, which was good. I laughed at loud when he wrote about what he watched at 16: ‘my bro being left behind on the climbs’. Well, it won’t mean anything to anyone else, but it really made me smile. It also prompted me to go back and look at the MO I did when I started Tangents, and hence to fill out a new one. Well, seven years or so is a long time, isn’t it?

Chatting with D earlier too and I was mentioning the time I interviewed George P. Pelecanos in London and how I kicked off by asking the MO questions. He nearly choked on his coffee when I asked ‘what do you make?’ He thought I was being dead cheeky and asking how much money he earned… And that’s one of the things I like best about the MO thing – how people interpret the questions in such different ways. It’s really cool. I never did transcribe the rest of that interview, which was a shame. I have it on a minidisc somewhere still though. Perhaps I should upload it as an MP3.

Feeling somewhat more together today, a semblance of strength returning. Throat still feels like shit though, which is the worst when your job basically depends upon having to talk a great deal…

Oh and hey! Don't forget to leave your own Mass Observation!

Maybe it’s because I’ve not been ill in a fairly long time, but having succumbed to the speedy assault of the first back to school bug this week, I’ve been feeling particularly crap. It’s like I’d forgotten just how crap it is being ill, and the last three days and nights have been a misery. I’ve not even been really able to enjoy what is normally the pleasure of laying on the sofa or in bed reading comic books and watching cheesy movies. Not that I haven’t tried… I noticed this morning that the new Lemony Snicket title has just been published in the USA, and it’s just my luck that I didn’t have it around when I’ve been feeling at my most low ebb. I’m sure it would cheer me up no end. Lemony Snicket is just the kind of chap you want to read when you are feeling low and incapable of reading anything that is, ah, I was going to say ‘challenging’, but scratch that and instead substitute ‘grown up and dull’. Thing is, I don’t think I have been able to read anything ‘literary’ in years. I tried reading Iain Sinclair recently. It was White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings that I tried. Couldn’t get into it at all. Now either I’m getting dimmer with age (entirely probable) or I’ve just totally lost my patience with books that try to be too damn clever for their own good (also probable). Huh.

Anyway, C.D. Payne’s Youth In Revolt could never be described as being too clever for its own good. Oh no. Nor could the sequel, Revolting Youth, which has helped nurse me through the past few days. Not as monstrously extended as the original, Revolting Youth is nonetheless so stuffed full of highly unlikely teenage escapades that you can imagine C. D. (he’s in his seventies or something crazy!) having the time of his life whilst writing it. It aint gonna win no awards for clever literature, but it’s a bloody great sick bed read, and I loved it.

So there.

Bristol again last night. This is becoming a habit… Last minute thing of course, following an email that arrived from Ben at Rough Trade half way through lesson 5. He asked if I’d be interested in seeing Jeffrey Lewis play in a church crypt in Bristol. Of course I was, and thankfully C is a fan too, at least of the ‘rubber skeleton song’ which had been on a mix tape I made for when she first started her job of driving around Somerset aiding schools, like some Strategy Super Hero.

Unfortunately the drive up kind of sucked, and after an appalling performance by a band called Lost Collar (whom we later dubbed the Underachieving Year 9 Boys) that was full of embarrassing twee shit, I was starting to wish I’d never come, or at least that if I had I’d just got the train and gone myself, and hmmm, for the first time in my life pretty much I kinda thought maybe I should learn to drive then at least I coulda driven up myself and not made C suffer through all this…

But then Jeffrey Lewis and his band came on, and they truly ruled. They opened with a performance of ‘Arrow’ that was like the Velvets, Galaxie 500 and Jonathan Richman all rolled into one. I mean, imagine that! And then Jeffrey was solo for a while and did some amazing songs with just his guitar and his wicked sense of humour, interspersed with an in progress lecture on the history of Communism accompanied by his terrific drawings. It was like seeing a walking Powerpoint presentation only way more enjoyable and entertaining than that sounds. Really. Plus he finished up with the ‘rubber skeleton song’ (real title ‘back when I was 4’, of course), followed by another lecture accompanied by drawings of ‘I saw a hippie girl on 8th Avenue’. It was magic.

The drive home was much better and we stopped for gas and swedgers. C bought these new Kitkats that are yoghurt and lemon flavour and they were, uh, interesting. I was really tired and I kept thinking about school things, like blogs and stuff.

I did an experiment yesterday in a GCSE photo class, and got one student set up with a Blogger account, and did a test post and a test comment from me, and it all seemed to work very smoothly, so I’m kind of looking forward to getting that set up soon and to start using it. The only slight problem is image embedding in Blogger blogs, which isn’t really very straightforward. Well, I mean it is when you know a bit about what everything is doing, but I imagine in a class situation some kids will just never get it… Hmmm.

Anyway, enough of that. It’s ten past 11 in the Boston and it’s pretty mobbed. I don’t think I was ever here at this time on a Saturday before. I’m usually in and out by half ten or so, but this morning I didn’t get up til late (well, 9 is late for me) so it’s kind of interesting to be in amongst the typical Saturday shopping crowd. On the way home I need to pick up a DVD for Monday’s year 8 lessons. Something like Monsters Inc or Godzilla, I dunno… just in an attempt to make an interesting way into the whole project and to avoid the disaster of last week. And last week WAS an unmitigated disaster, it has to be said. But my strategies are in place now, at least in my head, so we shall see what we shall see.

Just picked up some mail, and what it lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality of intrigue. For there, within a 12” card envelope, lurked the first release on the Fourier Transform label; an LP packaged in THE most amazing manner I have ever seen. The ‘outer sleeve’ is made up of two sheets of thick Perspex, bound together with white wire like a parcel. Within the Perspex there sit several sheets of tracing paper, each with a range of text and image printed on them, all layered to create an exquisite piece of eye candy. And just visible at the heart of it all, a clear vinyl record… Now obviously, being sat in the Boston Tea Party as I currently am, I cannot comment on the sounds held therein, but you know, I’m really not sure it matters in the slightest. This is a beautiful art object, and I’m sorely tempted to leave its wire wrap untwisted and the object intact. Maybe Fourier can send me a CDR of the music, or maybe they should include a special code with each copy so that you can download the music from their website instead of actually having to play the record. That would be kind of cool. And I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but they have this plan to do buried CDRs of field recordings where you buy a map to its whereabouts… I am so jealous. Why didn’t I think of that?

Also in the mail a letter from the MCPS about licences… Now I really don’t have a clue about such things. Is this going to cost me more money? I don’t understand it at all… Does this mean I have to get a licence to lose money (cos let's face it, running a vinyl only independent label aint exactly a moneyspinner, is it)? If I have to fill out one of these damn things every time I do a single I think I’ll probably just say fuck it and quit whilst I’m, I was going to say ‘ahead’ but that’s clearly not the case, so I’ll just say ‘not too much in debt’ instead and leave it at that. I really HATE bureaucracy.

Hmm, so school things now: was sitting in my year 11 photography class watching kids stumble through using some guidelines to write about Cubist paintings (long story) and thinking, what would be ideal would be to have these kids email this work home to themselves and then finish it for homework. But are they allowed to email outside of the school network? Nope. All kinds of good reasons for this of course, mainly revolving around the fact that teenage boys simply cannot resist being crude and puerile. Anyway, this kind of ruined my plan, so now I’m thinking I need to use like an iDisk Public folder to store their work in so that they can access it from home or wherever… it’s a complex workaround, I suppose, and requires me doing more work. The other option I guess is to have them do it via a blog. Get them all set up with a blooging account somewhere and get them to use that for their written work. This ties in neatly with C’s ideas for doing research on blogs for self assessment and so on. I already intend to investigate the potential for using flickr for self/peer assessment etc, so maybe this can be integrated. Any suggestions on what blogging communities might best suit school needs? Are there, indeed, any existing education blogging communities? I really must investigate this further. Or better still, let C research it and pass on the info. That sounds like a much better idea.