Holmes vs. Potter

Tonight we watched a film that I remember fondly from my childhood. The Spielberg-produced, Young Sherlock Holmes. A decent Indiana-lite adventure that once freaked me out with its trippy hallucination sequences. It always came on the telly on a wet Saturday afternoon.

When trying to convince Alex it was a worthwhile watch, I said 'You'll like it, it's a bit like Harry Potter'. I don't mind a bit of H.P. now and again and neither does Alex. I'm not into the books or anything, but I'll watch the films. Anyway, having not seen Young Sherlock Holmes in at least 10 years, 'a bit like Harry Potter' turned out to be a hell of an understatement. Y'know Withnail & I has that drinking game? Well here's one for Young Sherlock: take a swig everytime something Harry Potter-y comes on screen - you won't make the credits.

The main 3 characters, Holmes (Harry), Watson (Ron) and Elizabeth (Hermoine) wander around their big old school in their stripey scarves getting into all sorts of pavlovas. They make friends with an eccentric old professor (Dumbledore), sneak about after dark and take the piss out of Watson for being a clumsy arse. Sherlock spends most of the film with a scar on his face (given to him by the bad guy, for goodness' sake). Tea is eaten in a massive hall complete with a million candles, comedy twins and scowling teachers:

There's even a fencing (wand) lesson where Holmes proves himself to be a formidable fencer (wizard) but is warned that he needs to keep his emotions in check, or else. As the mystery (concerning an Egyptian cult) unravels, the gang head out into the London underworld (Diagon Alley) to visit curious shops in the search for clues. I'm using Google to find these names, by the way.

Best of all though is Holmes' rival, Dudley (Draco). A right proper ponce who sneers and scowls his way through the film as he plots Sherlock's downfall. He's a bad egg. He chats up Elizabeth. He gets Holmes expelled. He nicks a trophy. Just take a look at him next to Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter. Ooh, that rotter:

Pretty close eh? When you see him in action it's hard to not be all 'hang on a second, this is getting weird'. I guess it could still be a coincidence though. Well, yeah, but just wait until Sherlock goes and makes a potion that TURNS HIS GODDAMN HAIR WHITE:

Haha! It's like J.K. Rowling wrote some weird Young Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction and it all got a bit out of control. Look, he's even got a couple of cronies tagging along with him. There has to be something fishy going on, right? Right?

Well, maybe. Turns out some guy beat me to the comparison by about 5 years. He goes into a fair bit of depth on this blog about it. There's a lot of interesting stuff about J.K. Rowling's influences, Chris Columbus' involvement in Young Sherlock / the H.P. films and more nerdy comparisons that I could ever make. Here's me thinking I was dead insightful.

I'm not meaning to go all conspiracy theorist here, Harry Potter has a ton of really cool ideas going on. It's cool. These similarities only make watching Young Sherlock Holmes more fun. If you're in the mood, you can even watch thewhole thing on YouTube right now.

100 Tuesdays

Close to two years ago I asked Alex to go out for dinner with me on a Tuesday night in Glasgow. She said yes. It went well, we had a good night, so I asked her out again. The best day for both of us, by chance, was the following Tuesday. Another restaurant, another good night. I was feeling pretty smooth! The next again Tuesday also found us out in a restaurant eating a meal - a pattern! - and there and then we made the decision to try to go out to eat every Tuesday from then on.

Today is the 100th Tuesday from that night. We're still going. I have seen Alex every single Tuesday since our first date. Not bad considering we don't yet live together. If I were to guess, I'd say we'd made it out to a restaurant, cafe or bar on 90 days out of those 100. We've maybe had 5 take-aways and bought in food to cook or had a picnic on the remaining 5. There have been no real hurdles, problems or mishaps. Actually, a schedule clash sometimes makes for the best nights - my Newcastle trip was purely to avoid missing a Tuesday.

How's it been? It's been great. We've eaten some really nice food in some really nice places. We used to joke about how we turned Tuesday (the most boring day) into the best night of the week. I guess it was expensive at first, but we learned to tone things down pretty well. We've learned where to get a good deal if we're tight for cash. I only wish I'd kept a diary or something so I could remember more specifics, but I make enough bloody lists.

You could say this is our 'date-night' but I dunno, that implies all sorts of things about trying to keep the magic in a relationship and spending some quality time together - things we don't particularly need to work on. We're doing fine. This is more like a joke that got out of control (in a good way) or a weird game. I'm just happy I've never had a slap or a glass of wine pored over my head. Nobody's gotten food poisoning and we've never even argued. I've probably moaned a bit, but I do that all the time. Alex has been great.

So tonight, Tuesday 100 (Alex and her friends call them 'Dave Tuesdays', but I ain't about to get into that), we're going to one of our favourite places. Wilawan in Stirling. A place I'll full heartedly recommend if you ever find yourself nearby and fancy some Thai food - the best place to eat in town, by a mile. Pro tip: it's all about the starters in that place. Damn.

As for the future, who knows? We're planning our move to our own place soon which might change things up a little. Maybe not. There's no sign of stopping anyway. 100 became a goal to aim for a while back and I'm very happy to have reached it today. What's for tea?

What I Wore Today In Video

I've been playing with my camcorder a lot recently, more for fun than anything else. Well, that's my excuse for being rubbish anyway. I kinda feel like there is a goal to aim for with this video stuff, but I guess there isn't really. Will I be a director one day? Will I make a documentary or conquer Hollywood? Nah.

Anyway, the above clip is the most recent thing I've mucked about with. A real-life version of my What I Wore Today drawings. The goal was to work out how to get images to show over the top of video and, hey, I managed it. My initial intention was to produce quite an elaborate little movie about what I was wearing but once I started, that went right out the window. If I don't delete this after a week (it's quite a weird, invasive thing to put online), I might have another go. It already makes me cringe but I feel a little better when I remind myself that I'm just a beginner.

Apart from that, in the past wee while I have added a dumb trailer for a skateboard film I'm making with my friends (this is almost exclusively for our own amusement, pretty much nobody else will find it funny or in any way impressive), a stupid clip of us sliding on a wall and a video showing the mess Alex leaves when she makes a birthday cake. If you want to follow my progress in the world of moving pictures you can view and subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

Hmm.

EDIT: I should also mention that the idea for this video and all my What I Wore Today drawings came from this wonderful Flickr group started by Gemma Correll (of doing amazing drawings fame). Also, the song is 'Food and Pussy' by Dan Reeder from his self-titled album. Check out Work Song when the Man is getting you down.

Red Neck Zine

I have made a new zine! It's called Red Neck. For a while now I've been mentioning that I've been playing around with making something like this and a couple of weeks ago, with the incentive of the Dundee Jamboree, I finally put it together.

Red Neck is a 28 page zine full of new drawings (all drawn in a 4-day marathon). I set out just to have fun making weird death & destruction pictures, the kind the crazy kid in your class might doodle in his schoolbooks. The end result, as you can imagine, is a little bit grisly but, I dunno, maybe kinda funny?

As an added thing, I knew I wanted to do a little bit of hand-colouring so 17 of the pages have red ink details. This was way more time consuming than I guessed it would be but hey, it means every single copy is unique and has a bit of a different look compared to the usual b&w zine style.

I don't want to post too many of the drawings yet as it kinda ruins the surprise a bit but I'll gradually put up a selection over the next couple of weeks. There are a few full-on patterny pages, some severed limbs, some skulls, some fire and a lot of blood. It's lovely though.

Of course, Red Neck is now available in my online shop. You can pick up your unique copy for the low, low price of £7. Man, I'm a bad salesman. Just have a look and see. Also, if anyone would like to stock a few copies in their shop etc. or needs any further info, contact me and we can sort something out.

I'm really hyped up for doing another zine soon, I've already got a few ideas in mind. Hopefully without the pressure of an immediate deadline I can really focus on doing something quite elaborate. Full colour? Huge? Tiny? Eh, maybe. Stay tuned. I'll also be putting up some new prints and things this week so subscribe if you haven't already for news on that (please).

So yeah, that's Red Neck. Available now. Thanks to Stuart for help at the print place and thanks to the Dundee Jamboree for providing the motivation to put it together. Here are the full details:

Red Neck
by David Galletly

A5 zine
28 pages
b&w print with hand-coloured elements
Edition of 100
Signed and numbered

Available here.

Girl Skateboards: Modern Chair Series

 

I was on a little nostalgia trip earlier, hunting out old skateboard graphics. They're surprisingly hard to find. I guess they vanish quite quickly because they're typically displayed as little thumbnails for online shops and not as nice big images. Anyway, I made it my mission to find the first pro-model deck I ever bought... and I did, kinda.

The above image is my recreation of the Modern Chair series of graphics by Girl Skateboards. I had Jeron Wilson's (I didn't know who he was at the time, just that his board was the size I wanted). The decks are of course a beautiful tribute to classic Eames furniture and are apparently a bit of a collector's item nowadays. It's hard to call but I think I must've bought mine around about 1999. Does that sound right? It got well and truly destroyed.

It's weird to think that I bought something so 'designy' as my first skateboard, long before I had any interest or idea that I'd study design and become involved in illustration. Weird not because it was some mystical prophecy of things to come, more that at the time an angsty slogan or dumb cartoon would've been way more appropriate to where my head was.

I stitched these together using this graphic and this collection of thumbnails. The typeface was hard to match and is a little off. Still, I think they work pretty well. Click the image for a bigger version.

Update on 2012-08-14 08:52 by David Galletly

A quick follow up on this post after finally moving it over to my new site (2 years later): Tony Larson, the designer of these skateboards back in 2001, was nice enough to leave a comment here explaining how popular the Modern Chair series has become with collectors. Thanks Tony!

I had a browse through Tony's website and, dun dun dun, you can view his original designs (not my slightly wonky recreations) over here: Tony Larson: Modern Series.

Survival in the City

I picked up Anthony Greenbank’s insane book, Survival in the City a while back after reading an article about it on thingsmagazine.com. It’s mental. Like, really mental.

Survival in the City (1974) is a guidebook to urban self-preservation, an encyclopedia of tips and tricks for the everyman on a visit to a big city. It covers everything: transport, accommodation, going out and (terrifyingly) other people. It's a paranoid rave about muggers, card-sharks and drag queens.

The best chapters focus on nightlife or, as Greenbank puts it, the ‘trials and temptations of CITY BRIGHT LIGHTS’. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to properly buy a drink, safely handle a drug-dealer or survive a bar-brawl then worry no longer, instruction is at hand. In the big city, you’re doing pretty well if you’ve not had your wallet stolen by a drink-spiking transvestite after mistakenly walking into a poorly signposted “gay” bar. Even the text itself is a barrage of panicky capitals, footnotes and back-referencing that is almost unreadable.

If you can get hold of Survival in the City, I’d really recommend it. It’s brills. Here’s a few little paragraphs with a selection of Colin Harrington’s illustrations thrown in:

SHAKE OFF FEAR PHYSICALLY
Place the fingertips on your stomach just below the solar plexus. Breathe in deeply, press hard with the fingers and bend over forwards. Hold this position and count one-two-three. Now let the breath come out slowly and stand upright. Repeat this effective measure until you feel calmer.

This will reduce the tension in your head and allow you to concentrate.

AVOID BABY SNATCHING
Use fluids to keep you awake when pram pushing (see also THE SHEEP: p. 31). Know the danger of falling asleep if troubled/tired/hot on warm grass; your infant could be stolen (possibly by other children).

SIDETRACK SEX
Quell sexual urges when elderly/male/lonely before joining crowds in summer dress – tennis tournaments etc. It is far safer to masturbate first than yield to sudden temptation to brush/stroke/fondle female spectators in scanty attire when hot-weather atmosphere becomes too heady.

TOLERATE TRANSVESTITES
Expect men-dressed-up-as-eye-pulling-women in dancehalls, ballrooms, speakeasies, discos, restaurants, cinemas, night clubs and bars. Reasons: a bar/club/café may be a hangout for homosexual prostitutes – some or all in drag; a straight bar could have been infiltrated by freelance drag queens prepared to be picked up by the unsuspecting (You) – or they may take it for granted you know (when you don’t); or they may be bag snatchers dressed as women.

NEVER get uptight when you discover your companion is of the same sex as you. Hetrosexuals – pass it off. Don’t recoil in horror, or become violent when not normally given to scrapping.

Transvestites can be vicious – they have fewer inhibitions than normal men and rejection antagonizes them for they think they are beautiful; they also keep together and gang up; some have all-men minders too. So be careful if you encounter any.

KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON DANCING
Don’t get rattled – or rattle others – on a crowded dance floor when a spinning couple knock into you, a balloon-pricking maniac bursts your balloon, your partner abandons you or a stranger accuses you of treading on his shoes.

Follow the dance style of the particular establishment: ballroom-tea-dance/disco/night club. Don’t dance differently for the sake of being different.

Remember: a male may “dance” by resting his crotch on a stair rail or banister and squirming his pelvis – don’t react. If that’s this particular night club scene, go along with it.

STRIPPED NAKED
Improvise clothing when yours is stolen by a female working from a “trick pad” – a room in a sleazy hotel or cheap apartment building (see also THE WINNER: p. 304).

A PILLOWCASE can become a tee shirt when slit across the end for your head and down each side for your arms; start the slits with broken mirror/wooden splinter/burst bedspring, then rip the fabric slowly.

A PIECE OF SHEET 2 ft. SQUARE will make “shorts”; tear the sheet as for the pillowcase; wrap the cloth round your loins diaper-style; knot the corners.

Face the building superintendent without blustering. Ask to borrow trousers/shirt/shoes. It is not an occasion for threatening police action.

Just incase any nutjobs reading this think I'm a big racist homophobe, let me stress that the above extracts are not my opinion and you're daft if you think they are.

Pick up Survival in the City if you can. You'll maybe sleep a little safer.

Farewell 2009

Today, Monday 11th of January, is my first 'real' day of the year. After the whole Christmas thing, the whole New Year thing and a little holiday in Arran, this has been the first chance I’ve had in ages to get myself some juice and have a sit down.

Now, is it too late to reflect back on 2009? Are all the lists done? Does everyone know who made the best film and who sang the best song? How skinny should my jeans be? Oh, I don’t know! Damn. I imagine all that stuff is long in the recycle bin but hey, like I said, my year starts today. If there’s a dead horse lying around, I’d sure as hell like to give it a kick too.

Last year was fun. Lots happened, lots didn’t happen. I got to go places, meet people, see things, eat, drink, draw, laugh and muck about. I got engaged! I went on about 50 bloody holidays! It snowed! Over the next week or so I intend to post a few top 10 lists and things but on the whole, 2009 gets a thumbs up from me. Yeah, I know the world got itself in a bit of a state but jeez, lighten up. In the grand scheme of things; I went to Oban.

That image above is a chronological montage of my year, like the one I posted last January. It doesn’t cover everything, because I left my camera at home too often, but it’s a good enough place to start. I hope everyone else had a good one. There’s 480 unread blogs in my reader that I need to catch up with. Maybe they’ll let me know what’s up.