The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope

First off an apology for my recent inactivity. I had a post ready to go when my lap top let out a sad little whine, like a puppy at the vets, and then just upped and died. I tried shouting at it, prodding it with a stick and rubbing it with Vicks Vaporub, but nothing would coax it back into life. I have therefore spent the past fortnight reliving the dark and terrible era known as 2003, before I had regular internet access and had to nothing to distract myself  with except a hoop and stick and a water damaged porn mag that I found in a ditch. Luckily the computer doctor man was able to do dark science at it and it's now working fine, although the work I did beforehand must now be written off as one of the great lost works of the 21st century. Luckily my readership is largely hypothetical so this isn't much of an issue, but the lesson here - and this is really something that should be taught in schools - is save your shit regularly. 

While waiting  in digital exile I've contented myself with wandering around the real world, which is colder and offers less instant gratification. It's now officially Christmas here even though it's only fucking November and me and wor lass toddled off to see Sunderland's Christmas light's being switched on, mainly because the better half has many fond memories of the accompanying fireworks display. This year the switch was being thrown by no lesser a personage than Faye Tozer from Steps. If anybody reading this is unfamiliar with Steps or their work, think of everything that rock and roll embodies; the sex, the wit, the rebellion. Now think of the exact opposite of that. They were a group tailor made for anyone who would have loved the Bee Gees if only they weren't so damn raunchy and as such were a big hit with the pre-tween girl demographic. Unfortunately, given that the group have been inactive for about a decade and those pre-tweens have now grown up, their current potential fanbase stands at around zero (give or take a 5% margin of error). They also had a guy in the group who shortened his name to 'H' - despite the fact that his actual name is Ian Watkins - which makes me unaccountably angry. Still, Newcastle had to make do with a guy dressed up as Shrek and Durham could only rustle up one of the Chuckle Brother's hairdresser so I suppose you take what you can get. In addition to Ms Tozer we also had PC Plum from Balomory, a swing band whose name I've already forgotten, a children's choir that just stood there silently, swaying awkwardly and some bell end from local radio who could not get over the apparently inherent hilarity of the local theatre hiring actors with dwarfism for this year's production of Snow White. As with the recent illuminations, it wasn't really our thing, but we were there for fireworks, goddamit, and if that meant twiddling our thumbs through an hour of sub Cbeebies wank then so be it

Unfortunately the whimsical joy of big fuck off explosions was slightly undermined by the setting. The whole shebang took place on the site of a recently demolished leisure centre. You can kinda see the logic behind it: the city's recently acquired a large green space right in the middle of town and when you've got one of those you might as well use it for this sort of thing. Unfortunately they had made one major oversight - which I like to think only became apparent to the organisers the moment the switch was thrown - in that the green is surrounded by tall buildings on all sides. We therefore didn't so much see the fireworks as hear them. Luckily there's a path through to the a space adjacent to the launch site. Unluckily, due to ongoing building work, this path is currently only wide enough to let three people walk abreast which, given the many thousands of mackems in attendance, meant the route almost immediately bottlenecked and became impassable. It's a small wonder that nobody was hurt.

Regardless, the distant booms and occasional flash acted as a starting pistol for the run up to Christmas, that most drawn  out and tiring period of the year. I've had one, fairly abortive, attempt at starting my Christmas shopping with a day out in Newcastle. I didn't manage to find anything, but I had a sub par steak sandwich and got to see the English Defence League acting like a bunch of miserable, deluded, violent, alcoholic fuckwits. So there's that. I'm currently debating utilising the gift buying strategy of my sainted and much missed mother, wherein I just buy the first thing that I see and then retroactively decide who the gift is for. So if everybody in my  life gets an egg whisk this year, don't say I didn't warn you

The above image is another illustration for Black Hackerty's Windmill, featuring the titular windmill. As before I've added it to the extract I've got up elsewhere on the blog. Also below is a new page for Rag and Bone which continues to inch forward. Due to my recent adventures in analogue I've got a few page lined and ready to colour (although I personally find that by far the most laborious stage). It'll be in double figures before I know it.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

A Very Happy Unbirthday

Winter, as the Starks - when they're not being deaded - are fond of saying, is coming. I sit down at the upside down cardboard box that serves me as a desk and it's bright sunshine. Seemingly moments later I look up and it's pitch black outside, stars twinkle in the firmament and wolves (or possibly the local winos) can be heard howling at the moon.

Taking advantage of the early nights, me and the girlfriend had a looksie up Roker Illuminations the other day. In addition to being an all round cutie and sweetie, wor lass is a keen amateur photographer and was hoping to get some night time shots of some of the displays. The plan had been to go several weeks ago, but various happenings and doings kept getting  in the way. This weekend was therefore our last chance before the whole thing is moth balled for another year and so we dutifully lugged camera and assorted paraphernalia across town. Upon finding a likely looking display she then spent several minutes setting up her tripod, trying not to get jostled by the streams of event goers passing us by. Of course, this was the point where it was discovered that she'd left the camera battery at home. How we laughed.

Still, it was a pleasant night and Roker Park's a pretty, wee place so it wasn't all for naught. The whole event was themed around Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and mostly consisted of fibreglass mock ups of characters from the book, covered in lightbulbs. There was one fairly interesting display where the fountains in the park lake had been synchronised to Live and Let Die, the jets of water illuminated by coloured lights. Unfortunately the effect was marred somewhat by the fact that, presumably due to noise and nuisance laws, the music was played at such a low volume that it was pretty much drowned out by the splashing of the water. It's fair to say that the whole thing is targeted to family's with young children - who all seemed to be loving it - and was somewhat wasted on the misanthropic thirty something demographic that me and the missus represent. I do think though that it'd be worth making it a biennial thing, perhaps alternating with the similarly but astronomically more successful Durham Lumiere Festival, and using the extra time and money saved to stage something truly special.

As a quick aside, the whole Alice in Wonderland thing wasn't something pulled out the organiser's bum crack. There's quite a number of links between the book and the North East in general and Sunderland in particular. A lot of the culture and history of the area feeds directly into the book's imagery. I would whole heartedly recommend Brian Talbot's graphic novel on the subject named, somewhat inevitably, Alice in Sunderland. I have no idea if this is already common knowledge or if anyone else cares, but, hey, it interested me the first time I heard.

Up top I've added another illustration from Black Hackerty's Windmill, this time from the opening chapter. I've also added it to the text I've got up in the Werdz section of this blog and have vague, but noble, aspirations to keep adding to it until it reaches a state of demi-semi completeness at which point I'll whoop softly to myself and go back to bed. That doesn't mean I've abandoned other projects and I've just completed the line work for another page of Rag and Bone, which I should have up next week. Also, because I'm a swell guy and Halloween's just passed, here is a picture of Dracula and the Wolfman. If they owned a pet shop. And were also in love.

still a better love story than Twilight

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

The Not Honking Around Crew

(l-r) portraits by Richard Twose, Thomas Ganter and David John Kassan

The entry's for the 2014 BP Portrait Award rolled into town on Friday. Sunderland, it turns out, is the only English city outside of London that'll be hosting the exhibition, which was rather surprising but also nice. Given that you can't really moan about there being nothing of interest in town and then not bother when something does show up, I had a wander over to the Museum and Winter gardens where it's taking place. Now, I don't know a lot about art, but I know what I like  and what I like is puppy dogs and jelly babies. Sadly, neither of those things were on offer, but the various portraits were very good also. Plus you can totally tell it's proper art because some of the models have got their boobs out. Had a wander around the rest of the museum which in addition to the usual interactive displays and wax dummies dressed as pit yakkers has a couple of pieces by Lowery and a Sikh war turban on loan from the British Museum which, at nearly two foot high, struck me as utterly impractical for fighting in, Well worth an hour or so of anybody's time, so if you find yourself in the area go have a squint.