News in Brief
PARIS, mercredi 25 août—Tall red-haired bloke and delightful companion seen cavorting along Boulevard Montparnasse après-midi. Repeat sightings jeudi-dimanche à Notre Dame, Tour Eiffel, le Louvre, etc. First photos available at Detail, with more to come.
Fringe the Fraught
Because the Fringe started later this year than last, it feels like it’s near the end when there’s still a week to go. Part of it’s because Jane and I will be busy elsewhere for a while, so it is the end for us. And it’s been a stressful month in other ways. At least the Fringe has been a diversion from that; but for me it brings its own demons. Year after year it’s a reminder that I’ve let a side of me stagnate that was once a source of great satisfaction, as I find myself wishing it was me up on that stage.
Nine Dinosaurs
A dinosaur sick of old tricks
Decided one day to affix
Some feathers and things
To his forelegs (now wings)
To meet archaeopteryx chicks
A Town in Ireland II
The OEDILF has opened up more letters (ai- to ar-), which set me off again.
A Town in Ireland
There once was a limericking bloke
Who surpassed many other such folk
He’d fashion a rhyme
In excellent time
And end with a suitable joke
Fringe the Front
You thought it was going to be “Fringe the Furred”, didn’t you. And it was, except that the performers I’m about to review have shaved.
Send in the Clones
Jane and I caught the 27 over to New Town this afternoon to meet a friend for coffee, climbing up to the top deck as usual and sitting at the front. Somewhere around Princes Street a mother got on with her two kids of four or five and sat in the seats opposite. The girl chattered away to her, while the boy started performing infant calisthenics in the front seat.
“Hold onto the bar, Rory,” said his mum.
Six-Pack
I’ve been drawing some single-panel gags for the first time in three years, experimenting with taking pencil sketches straight to scanner and Photoshop rather than inking them first. Here’s a six-pack of the results. (Warning: obscure and tasteless literary and historical allusions ahead.)
Fringe the Fecund
Yesterday was the last of the two-for-ones at the Edinburgh Fringe, which overcame any resistance I might have had towards venturing out in the worst weather this month. After dodging the sheets of water being sloshed off the Pleasance canopies by a guy with a broom, it was straight upstairs to see Laurence and Gus.
Fringe the First
A bunch of hairy Scotsmen entertain the crowds on the Royal Mile, Sunday 8 August 2004. Try a 10-second sample [66k mp3].
Every year I tell myself I’m taking a year off from Fringe reviewing, and every year I end up doing it anyway. And I haven’t even finished those extra batches of book reviews, or anything about the movies I’ve seen lately. Too late, they’ll have to wait: August is upon us, and with it the greatest arts festival on earth. As the weather teeters precariously between the gloomy fog of 2002 and the glorious sunshine of 2003, we’ve teetered precariously from a few pints at the bar to a few shows at the Pleasance.
Swedish Made Easy
Remembrance Day
Over time I’ve noticed two types of bloggers: those who riff off other people’s entries to add their own experience, and those who avoid any subject riding high in Blogdex or raised by a big name. Actually, most of us do a bit of both, although individual styles can shift over time.
I used to do more riffing, but now I tend to wander the lonely path of the anti-zeitgeist. It has something to do with the phenomenon observed by Jill Walker of shutting up because someone else will say it anyway, or already has. It’s certainly affected my participation at MeFi, which was never enormous to start with; and over the past year or so it’s done the same here. Whenever one of my favourite bloggers writes about anything, I find myself unconsciously crossing the subject off my list—even though most of my favourite bloggers (and writers full-stop) aren’t “big names”. Perhaps it’s the academic training to seek the mythical “original contribution to knowledge”, or the cartoonist’s instinct to throw out a drawing when you learn the joke’s already been done. The trouble is, as I get to know more and more, the bar of originality gets higher and higher, and I find myself contributing less and less. It’s a habit I really should break, because my confidence is getting shot to hell.
Nowadays it seems that no subject is safe, not even the most private and obscure, as two links going around the traps demonstrated last week: Staggerin’ Dave Eggers wrote at Spin about his private obsession with a forgotten band; and the author of The War Against Silence, long identified with that same band, announced his retirement. That band happened to mean a lot to me, too, and now I’m faced with either shelving the memories Eggers and McDonald evoked, or breaking out of the ever-diminishing circle of originality and writing about them. For once, I’m going to escape from new yack.
The Seven Families of Lake Pipple-Popple
This was one of my favourite bits of nonsense as a kid, “The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple” by Edward Lear (1865). The text and illustrations are in the public domain. Thanks to nonsenselit.org for the words, corrected and formatted here to match the version in The Children’s Omnibus (Gollancz 1932, ed. Sylvia Lynd).
