Auf Weidershen, Pets

I've spent most of this weekend working on a daft distance learning thing. It's basically an employers market at the moment and as such most companies feel little compulsion to train or develop staff. I therefore figured it'd be a positive step to take the initiative and do a few things that I could add to my CV. Unfortunately, as the whole thing was done in a sort of 'tomorrow is too late' spirit I ended up signing on for the first course I came across, which was a course in Equality and Diversity. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm generally all for equality, diversity, tolerance and rainbows, but when 90% of your course material can be summarised as 'don't be a bigoted dick-meister', then you'll forgive me if after a while I began to find the whole thing a bit tedious.  

One lot of people who would probably agree that the whole thing was a waste of time - although probably for very different reasons - would be PEGIDA (Which stands for Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes. Duh.), who were just up the road in Newcastle the other day. If, like me, you are baffled as to why a German right wing nationalist movement were demonstrating in the north of England it seems that the group operates a sort of franchise system within different countries (a structure it shares, perhaps ironically, with Al Qaeda), so it was basically the English Defence League/Britain First/The National Front waving different flags and trying to piggyback on the success of a more successful group of toss merchants. Even so Newcastle seemed a rather arbitrary choice of venue. I spent several years years living on Tyneside and it never really came across as a powder keg of racial tension. A cynic might posit that it was selected as the North East has quite high levels of social deprivation and historically such places tend to be fertile breeding ground for the angry slap heads.

The organisers predicted that there'd be thousands demonstrating and, in all fairness, they were correct, with attendance around 2,000. However it should be noted that those thousands were on the other side of the police barricade, at the counter demonstration organised under the banner Newcastle Unites. PEGIDA meanwhile managed less than a fifth of that, and most of those seemed to be coming from outside the region. For the most part though, it seems the Geordies simply couldn't be arsed.  The inorganic, bussed in nature of the whole thing was probably best illustrated by the fact that the organisers had utterly failed to take into account that Newcastle United were playing at home. Given a choice between standing in the freezing cold, shouting into the drizzle about things you hate or doing something halfway enjoyable with their Saturday most people seemed to have plumped for the latter. In a nice little demonstration of the occasional synchronicity of the universe, the Geordies won their match with a goal by Pappis Cisse, a practicing Muslim. Back in the Bigg Market meanwhile, a lot of council taxpayer's time and resources was spent humouring the clash of civilisation fantasies of a handful of professional miserabilists. So that's something.

Most of the way through a page for Rag and Bone, added a work in progress below. should have it finished by next week. Huzzah

Gin Lane (A Romance)

A Cockernee wifey was slumped in the dirt,

Now and then sipping a tankard.

Her vision was blurry and her speech was slurred

Because she was utterly wankered.

Away up a rooftop, all covered in soot

A dashing young Cockernee fella,

Fancied this wifey, sat there in the muck

And so he serenaded her all a cappela:

"Gin! Gin! Glorious gin!

Makes me feel 'appy compels me to sing.

Good times will follow, when this booze 'ere I swallow

In me own filth I'll wallow, drunk on glorious gin."

This fair pearly queen he aimed to entice

Squinted up at the man on the roof

She mused that this geezer looked somewhat nice

as she swigged down some 50% proof.

She liked her a song just as much as a drink

And so winked at the bloke she'd just met.

on baby deer legs she got to her feet

And lifted her voice in duet.

"Gin! Gin! Marvellous gin!

Makes me feel 'appy compels me to sing.

Good times will follow, when this booze 'ere I swallow

in me own crap I 'll wallow, drunk on glorious gin."

From all over the city drunk Cockneys came

Twirling and dancing in tandem.

Dancing and singing they poured into Gin Lane

From East Hammersmith right down to Camden.

A Cockernee knees up of gargantuan size

they all came down there to rejoice,

These loved up piss artists and the drink that they drank

As they all sang aloud in one voice.

"Gin! Gin! Wonderous gin!

Makes us feel 'appy compels us to sing.

Good times will follow, when this booze 'ere we swallow

in our own crap we'll wallow, drunk on glorious gin."

With apologies to Flanders and Swann and the good people of London Town. I spent far longer on the above than I'm comfortable admitting, but, goddamit, it needed to be written.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

This One's For the Freaks

The other week, as I was passing, I popped into me mate's mam and dads house, just to make sure that everything's tickety boo and that they haven't been pillaged by vikings. While there I was presented me with a carrier bag of Dave detritus that'd accumulated over the years. Most of this was notebooks full of my witless ramblings and photos from the magical before time, when you had to go round boots and give them monies before you could see that half the pictures you'd took were of some random dude's out of focus chin. In addition to this there were also several doodles and cartoons, because I am me and that's a thing I do.

I'd guestimate the above dates from the early 2000's (Jesus shitting Christ, I'm old) and, sad to  say, probably represents the upper limits of my draughtsmanship at that time. I've posted it above, not just as a bizarre act of flagellation/confession/egomania, but also because, serendipitously, yesterday also saw the release of No Manifesto a documentary film by Elizabeth Marcus about the Manics and the various Manic Street Preacher Fan Men (and women) what follow them. 

I believe I've indicated previously that I've got a bit of a soft spot for the occasionally popularish Gwent beat combo. This however is from the perspective of me now. From the perspective of me back then, when it was still possible to come across a new album, film or piece of art and still get excited about them as if they mattered, the Manics were the greatest band in the history of the universe ever and ever signed God. Or, to put in a slightly more measured  way, they were a philanthropic chain letter*: introducing me to more writers, musicians, poets and thinkers than any other artists I can think of and framing the pursuit of knowledge, critical thought and a predilection towards the arty as things that are not just broadly positive, but actively glamorous. If only for that reason I'm prepared to give any release of theirs at least a cursory listen - although for what it's worth, of the bands last four albums I'd rate at least three of them as being very good to fantastic.

The film itself has a sort of choppy, patchwork structure (which feels appropriate, given the band's fascination with collage), switching between subjects, time periods and mediums at will. It gives a nice overview of the band's history up until 2008, without going into any real depth. I'm not sure if non fans would have any interest in James Bradfield''s mastery of the all day breakfast or Sean Moore's frankly alarming firearms collection, but there's something satisfying about watching the band's creative process in the studio. The film also does a good job of sketching out the central tension between a pretentious rock 'n' roll romantic id and down to earth artisan superego that helps keep the band interesting. It's also refreshingly up front about some of the group's bigger failures, such as their making much more of a splat than a splash in the American market.

While the film's home-made, fanzine nature is part of it's charm it does weaken it in some ways. It could certainly have done with a few less interviews with fans,who all seem plenty nice, but hardly provide much in the way of insight beyond what could be gleaned from five minutes googling. There's also an animated sequence that looks like it was made using Microsoft Paint.

Like a lot of these of these things, No Manifesto kinda lives or dies on whether you've any interest in the artists being discussed. As it stands, I like Manic Street Preachers, so I liked the film. It's very much a portrait rather than an in depth analysis, but that is in no way a criticism. If nowt else the music's good. Also, through it, I found out you can still get Wimpy Burgers in South Wales. Who knew? 

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

*I think I might have nicked that from James Dean Bradfield, although I can't be sure, so sod it, it's mine now

31 Lies I Tell About My Sister

Today is my sister's birthday, in honour of this and the fact that she's a game old bird I've decided to talk shit about her on the internet. Below are 31 facts about my diminutive sibling that may or may not be true, one for every year of her life

1) Our kid is banned from the town of Merthyr Tydfil. She refuses to tell us why.
2) Our kid ate her twin, provisionally named Ermitrude, while still in the womb
3) Our kid had a short lived rap career in the early 2000's under the  pseudonym Lethal Rizzle
4) Our kid doesn't know the difference between left and right and gets angry when you try to explain it
5) Our kid spends her spare time writing erotic Diagnosis Murder fanfiction, starring thinly veiled self inserts.
6) Our kid self identifies as a bisexual dark pegasus fire wizard trapped in an adult woman's body
7) Out kid was born with a tail, which she now keeps in a jar under her bed. She whispers her secrets to it on a night
8) Our kid's knowledge of the solar system is drawn entirely from The Clangers and Button Moon
9) Our kid kept right on going through hammer time
10) Our kid can and will shit in your shoes if you annoy her
11) Our kid ran away when she was a child, and by ran away I mean she hid behind the curtain and then threw an epic tantrum when we weren't sufficiently distraught at her disappearance.
12) Our kid does not know the rules to hide and seek
13) Our kid does not remove the skin when eating a banana
14) Our kid likes to start every day with a nice, refreshing cup of gravy
15) Our kid saw Thomas and the Magic Railroad in the cinema 23 times.
16) Sometimes, when she's feeling blue, our kid likes to get behind the wheel of her parked car and make brum brum noises
17) Our kid's favourite band is The Wiggles
18) Our kid is incapable of saying the word 'toilet' without  giggling
19) Our kid craves the taste of  human flesh, but will mostly just make do with licking strangers
20) Our kid is in complete agreement with everything that Kanye West has ever said. She also refers to him as Kanye Best
21) Our kid honestly believes if she can't see you, you can't see her and will try to hide by closing her eyes
22) Our kid has yet to walk past a cow without mooing at it.
23) Despite being a health care professional our kid believes that disease is a by product of sin.
24) Our kid has only read four books in her life; The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Each Peach Pear Plum, The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Cervantes's The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha in the original Spanish

25) When confronted with food  she doesn't like our kid will simply throw it on the floor.

26) Our kid has been cautioned by police twice for shaving her legs in a public space.
27) Despite being only a little over five foot and having a fairly slim build, our kid weighs approximately 32 stone. This is down to her incredibly dense skeletal structure. This also means that....
28) Our kid is incapable of swimming and must content herself with taking a deep breath and running along the bottom of the pool.
29) Our kid has caught all 719 pokemon, fifteen of which are shinies.
30) Our kid wants Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl played at her funeral
31) Our kid keeps a "poop diary"

Happy Birthday Kidder, you Magnificent Moo

Dave Denton

God Loves us and Wants us to be Happy

So I've managed 31 days without alcohol. Suck it, voice in the back of my head that constantly tells me I fail at everything.  For those whom drinking constitutes a couple of light ales when on a night out with friends and colleagues, this probably doesn't sound that impressive, but please bear in mind my own relationship with booze is anything but healthy. While I've never felt any physical compunction to drink my go to response whenever I'm bored or at a loose end is to grab a couple of stellas or equivalent and shut my brain down for the evening. The problem with this, of course, is that I tend to get bored a lot and when repeated over months and years it becomes quite apparent that I am slowly poisoning myself.

I had one moment of reverse inspiration that was somewhat sobering - no pun intended. A couple of weeks ago one of my sisters forwarded me a picture of my mam's ex-boyfriend.  Using the term 'boyfriend' for a man in his fifties always feels slightly wrong and doubly so here as I was shocked to find he now looked like a geriatric. The man was, and presumably still is, an alcoholic and looking at him for the first time in about a decade it's readily apparent that it's ravaged him. Maybe, just maybe, it was just a shitty picture, but apparently he's also well on his way down the path of alcohol induced dementia, at least according to one of my brothers who bumped into him on the bus. He apparently rambled on incoherently at great length, never twigging who my brother, who he lived in the same house as for a number of years, was. The ageing effects of any sort of substance abuse is hardly news (hell, living round the corner from a couple of doss houses, it's something I see everytime I pop to the shops) but to see its effects on somebody who in an alternate universe somewhere might have been my step dad certainly gave me pause for thought.

I was quite relieved that I managed the month without any struggle, although the fact that I was worried about this in the first place probably says more than I'm willing to admit. I've lost weight, I'm sleeping better, I feel like I have more time and money and I no longer fear the scorn of the bin men as they pick up rubbish bags that clink and clank like a boozy version of  The Telltale Heart. I've also discovered that I can talk to animals. Granted, the animals do not talk back, but it's early days. I imagine I'll be off the wagon next week as it's my sister's birthday, but for now I'll toast your health with a warm mug of ovaltine, send out a thank you to anybody who was kind enough to sponsor me and bid you adieu

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Paul Thomas: A Celebration

A couple of weeks ago, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack I made a passing remark that, alone among his peers, the Daily Express editorial cartoonist Paul Thomas had failed to produce a piece that commented on the attacks in any way. Fast forward to this week and it turns out that he's been fired. I imagine this  has less to do with his failure to engage with topical events (because, seriously, have you  read The Daily Express) and more to do with the proprietor's attempts to turn the title into a newspaper that contains no actual news and can be created by feeding a few random press releases in to a machine and then pressing a  big red button marked 'OUTRAGE!!!!!'. I'm a fan of the often under appreciated art of the editorial cartoon in general, and have a soft spot for Mr Thomas in particular. His work was not particularly incisive, original, funny, well drawn, topical or even pleasant, but there was something in his depiction of giant headed celebrities juxtaposed with row upon row upon row of featureless bald men all pointing and vibrating and spouting reactionary platitudes apropos of absolutely nothing, that I find strangely endearing. By way of tribute, I present ten of the best examples of Mr Thomas's work, and by best I mean the handful I was able to source before I lost patience with the Express's absolute mare of a website.

10)

There's a certain breed of person, usually found in the comments section of news websites, who will attempt to shoe horn a reference to their particular bugbears regardless of the topic under discussion or the appropriateness of the comparison. Above we see a wonderful representation of this sort of tosser; safe and warm, vibrating with contentment, surrounded by the paraphernalia of a comfortable, middle class existence and accompanied by his beautiful wife (who is also vibrating). What cares he about the hundreds of lives lost and the millions in damage as a direct result of Hurricane Sandy? Just as long as he can day-dream out loud about, frankly, unlikely scenarios where natural disasters are harnessed to further the Europhobic cause. Paul Thomas hates this man, whose response to the boxing day tsunami was probably to wish that a similar event would wash Britain further into the Atlantic, and he wants you to hate him too.

9)

Poor Ed Miliband. The man can't eat a bacon sandwich without people pointing and laughing. Of course all this ribaldry masks the fact that Mr Miliband is, essentially, interviewing for the post of most powerful man in the land. You'd think it would therefore be constructive to look at the substance of what the man says, rather than his demeanour as he says it, but the media narrative seems forever stuck on weird and nerdy - to the detriment of us all. Mr Thomas apparently had enough of this and decided to create the most over the top anti-Ed cartoon so a line could be drawn under the whole thing and allow us, as a culture, to move on. He's foregone the usual depiction of a hapless dweeb and instead portrayed Red Ed as a sneering, overweight, drag artist. Topicality has been dispensed with and we're invited to laugh at the Opposition leader not for anything he's done or said he'll do or even seems likely to do, but what he might possibly do in an alternate universe where cats go woof, rain goes up and everything is different. And to top it off the chief piss taker is the normally avuncular Bruce Forsyth, which is kinda like resurrecting Mickey Rooney, specifically so he can tell someone you hate that they're a knob. I feel a trick has been missed by not including stink lines and an actual willy coming out of Mr Miliband's head, but then subtlety's not in my vocabulary. Which is why Thomas spent years being paid the big bucks and I'm sat here eating dry pasta and Oxo cubes.

8)

A skewering of that old standby of the hard of thinking knuckle dragger: 'I can't be a racist. I love curry.' It's obviously not occurred to the vibrating fuckwit, who instinctively reduces the entire output of the Indian subcontinent to vindaloo, that visiting a Tandoori restaurant in Britain that is, presumably, staffed by British citizens does precisely fuck and all to further trade between the UK and India. The cartoonist also perfectly captured the dead eyed smile of customer service staff who are obliged to swallow their contempt and affect an approximation of laughter at your shitty "jokes". And the whole thing's pink, so very, very pink.

7)

This cartoon came as the nation was working itself into a tizzy about the hordes of Romanians that were meant to be invading the shores of Blighty come Jan 1st 2014. In the end the invasion amounted to one confused bloke, who seemed quite nice and already had a job in place. Here Thomas provides the only plausible explanation for the missing hordes that we were assured would be landing. They're all still in Calais, staring impotently over the channel, utterly oblivious to the fact that an EU migrant and an asylum seeker are two entirely different things and that they can legally enter the country any time they feel like it. Alternately Thomas either completely misunderstands or is happy misrepresenting the immigration debate. To which I say, poppycock.

6)

Any American reading this will remember Harry Windsor's visits to the States, an event in their history up there with the moon landings and the Gettysburg address, like it was yesterday. Of course they didn't really replace the Statue of Liberty with one of a member of a royal family that they had a whole war to get rid of - that's what's know as comical overstatement - but it's really not hard to imagine them doing something similar. After all, how could read those words by Emma Lazarus (Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore) and not think of Prince Henry of Wales? Extra points for having the torch hand pointing for no discernible reason and the numerous forty foot American flags, without which I'd have no fucking clue where this cartoon was set.

5)

This rings so true. I have many fond memories of childhood visits to my grandparents. Me and my brothers and sisters would get up early to pore over the broadsheet financial pages, hunting for any positive news on the pensions market while we slurped down our coco pops. Then, pre-armed with evidence in black and white, we would rush over to the granny and granddad we now knew to be minted, in order to extort from them as much as possible. Because, as any fool knows, all relationships, even those with your nearest and dearest kin, boil down to series of financial interactions and anyone who says otherwise is a damn hippy who probably wants to marry a tree.

4)

I genuinely find this hilarious. Not for the joke, which is straight from The Barmy Boy's Bumper Book of Rib Ticklers, nor the fact that anyone who bothered to read Ms Mantel's comments would probably found them entirely reasonable, thus making the reaction entirely inappropriate. The cartoon's brilliance is that it conjures up  the image of the head of state and her two immediate heirs queuing for three quarters of an hour in a Barnsley Waterstones for the sole purpose of delivering an absolute turd of a zinger and then awkwardly shuffling off after a couple of seconds of embarrassed silence. I love it. 

3)

I had some difficulty locating an actual joke in this one. It's about Wimbledon and has something to do with the existence of foreigners,this much I know. But foreign nationals living in a city as cosmopolitan as London or their involvement in what is, after all, an international sporting event is so utterly mundane it really doesn't seem worth commenting on. Surely it's Andy Murray who's the oddity here, given British athlete's past inability to break through to the finals? The Polish do lend themselves to puns, but, as near as I can tell, Thomas has decided that he wont go there with a barge-them*. Is it that Romanians are intrinsically funny? Is it that there's a newspaper billboard propped up where there are no newspapers for sale? Regardless I've spent more time thinking about this one cartoon than I have last years Booker Prize Winner, which must surely indicate some sort of depth.

2)

Part of the reason that people have become so disillusioned with the political process is our leader's constant equivocating and simple refusal to call a spade a spade. Everything is so couched in spin and between the lines dog whistling that it's hard to tell what any of them think on a specific issue. Cue Thomas, who cuts through all the bullshit and tells it to us straight. If someone disagrees with your point of view, well, you straight up murder their bitch ass and parade their decapitated head in front of a crowd of gawking onlookers. That's what those ISIS chaps do, and say what you like about them, they get shit done. 

1)

Who says satire's dead? Paul Thomas, that's who. Because sometimes things are so obviously good, that to question them or to draw attention to their flaws in any way is not just churlish, but actively harmful to the good of the nation, stepping over the mark from simple quibbling to actual Quisling. Why the hell should a political cartoonist attempt to speak truth to power, when those in power are so evidently the very bestest thing for the country?  "Tory" rhymes with "Glory" and that's all you need to know. What does Labour rhyme with? "Gay, duh!" that's what. Kudos for looking past David Cameron's occasional resemblance to a pair of freshly paddled buttocks and instead depicting him as the square jawed, rakish go-getter that we all think of when we picture the PM. And for anyone who feels this portrait of Mr Cameron is unduly flattering and uncritical, you are invited to get a damn grip. It's not like he drew him walking on water.

Well. Except for that time that he did.

Honourable Mentions:

It's funny because he's disabled 

It's funny because Australia

It's funny because domestic violence during the World Cup is totally a thing.

It's funny because... the... the sea dried up?

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Please note, if you feel I have been somehow disrespectful to Mr Thomas, a man who has known vastly more personal and financial success than I will ever know, but has also, at the end of the day, just lost his job, please be aware that he has his own website where you buy cards and prints, enquire about commissions or whatever. Alternately, if you feel I haven't been disrespectful enough, there's an absolutely epic thread on the Mailwatch forum about him that was responsible for my introduction to the man and his work and can be more than a little unkind at points.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

*I'm fully aware how awful that was. I apologise.

Dirty Old Town

Silly David thought maybe he could skip posting for a week, well after a firm, but fair, telling off from the better half I have been dissabused of that notion.

Yesterday was apparently blue monday, the New Orderiest day of the year and apparently the point in the calendar where we as a nation achieve maximum glumness. Normally I would scoff at this, but seeing as I have embraced sobriety this January (cue obnoxious plea for sponsorship, poorly disguised as a pithy comment) the world has been stripped of its comforting beery glow and I find myself stranded in a Dostoyevsky novel  my mood marooned somewhere between alienation, dread and a mild arsiness. My general torpor has been abetted by the weather, which is shitty, the news, which has been depressing, my work situation, which is tenuous, and an annual report published yesterday by the  Centre for Cities which seemed to indicate that the place where I live is slowly dissapearing down the swanny.

To be fair, the picture painted by the report is more complicated that that. Wearside's got one of the best manufacturing bases in the country and is apparently top ten for It start ups. However it remains striking that out of the major settlements in the UK, the one I live in is the only one with a negative population growth. For clarity's sake I should point out that I am not of the Mackem persuasion myself. I was born in Yorkshire and grew up in the wilds of County Durham, where we laughed at the hoity-toity Sunderlanderers and their ilk, mincing around with their knives and forks and their 24 hour electricity. I moved here simply because this is where my job was and I've stayed here because this is where the lady I love is. I therefore have no real roots in the place, but it is where I keep the majority of my stuff and it'd be nice and it'd be nice if it could

Part of the town's woes can be put down to shitty luck, with all the town's key industries being wound up suddenly and without warning back in the eighties, with no real thought or care being put into what might replace them. Part of it can be chalked up to a crap location; the fag end of England, starved of infrastructure investment, right next door to a bigger*, better connected and more glamorous neighbour. Part of it can be put down to local mismanagement; it's a bit hard to blame the national government for the multitude of fuck ugly buildings, the notorious one way system or the recent debacle where £11 million of public money was spent commissioning plans for a bridge that was subsequently scrapped.

Regardless of how the place got in its current state, it's current state is where it is and the only useful conversation to have is how to move forward. One silver lining about the areas relative crapness is that there's a number of fairly obvious measures that can be taken to improve things. Half the town is like a building site at present and the council certainly seem to have some sensible-ish plans to relocate more economic activity in the city centre, although there's always a quite sizable gap between talking and doing. The City Deals announced last autumn by the current government are also very welcome, although I can't shake the concern that it puts Sunderland in direct competition, rather than partnership, with Newcastle, and as things stand at present the Mags are always going to win that particular derby. Also encouraging is the formation of the combined authority -  made up of the various Tyne and Wear councils, plus Durham and Northumberland - although at present that feels more like a talking shop than anything else.

Regardless, here's hoping by the time that the next report is published a year from now that there's some tangible improvements. Not, you understand, because Wearside can be regarded as being merely at the sharp end of a wedge of an society wide trend that is gradually seeing capital accumulating in the hands of a shrinking number of people, while actual communities are slowly beggared. No. Here's hoping things improve because I live here and my life would be a teeny tiny bit better if we could somehow wrangle it so that the city centre got a 24 hour supermarket (Durham's got two, for fuck's sake) and also maybe a Paperchase.

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In other news I did another page for Rag and Bone. Aren't I clever

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

* A lot of Mackems will tell you that up until very recently Sunderland was bigger than Newcastle, which is kinda, sorta trueish if you only look at the populations within the officially defined city boundaries. On the other hand if you look at the population of the continuous built up area, then Tyneside's clearly about 3-4 times bigger than Wearside.