Lefty News

A big hoorah for Sr. Rafael Correa, last seen hurtling headlong toward a sizeable victory in Equador's presidential elections.
Another step forward for democracy and common sense in the Yanqui-oppressed sub-continent.

Sr. Correa's opponent is Equador's richest man, billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro "Nob" Noboa, who has been campaigning on the kind of right-wing Christian fundamentalist ticket better suited to Texas than Equador.
He's been toting a bible and spouting crap like "Like Christ, all I want to do is serve …"
Unlike Christ, he wants to do this by attracting more American companies to profit from Equadorian labour …
Well, capitalism never did Sr. Noboa any harm; no wonder he believes in it. Whether or not that belief is shared by his workers, only the polls will show … and indeed they are showing …

Oh, and just to give you notice so you can get geared up to PARTY, Saturday 2nd. December sees the glorious fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.
Visit Cuba Connect and the Cuba Solidary Campaign and show your support (among other goodies, you can get a copy of that lovely Che poster from my studio). And for smokers, you can get genuine Cuban cigars from the tobacconists on Threadneedle Street in the City and Victoria Street in Westminster (the others just sell "Cuban" style fakes - don't buy 'em).

¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

Shiny Happy Old People

And so Rod and Sharon, sound engineer and top drawer vocalist, arrive back from Hawai'i, tanned and healthy and finally married.
As I've said before, may copious and effusive congratulations overflow in their general direction.

A big hotel on the north Norfolk coast has been taken over and braces itself for a wedding party full of musicians (second only to footballers for debauchery) … inflatable palm trees, virgin sacrifice, dancing with goats, dressing up as characters from Hawai'i 5-0, industrial quantities of booze, a pretty good covers band, real surf just outside the windows …

Being a professional curmudgeon, I come not as 5-0's Steve Mc.Garrett, but instead come dressed as the twat out of Miami Vice, only to meet up with Michael in the car park, who, being also curmudgeonly inclined, has coincidentally come dressed as the twat out of Miami Vice.
Crockett, a suspiciously white Tubbs and the lovely Miriam enter a plastic and neon Hawai'i to be greeted by the newly nuptualised Mr and Mrs P, who are ludicrously tanned and almost illegally happy.

Lots of beautiful women kiss and hug me, but unfortunately, they are mostly the wives, girlfriends and daughters of other musicians. However, I am distracted from any potentially available mate by the fact that - for the first time in ages - the gang's all here. Yaaay!

The gang are a hardcore of musicians who have played together in way too many bands and at way too many recording sessions for the past twenty-five years or so since we first met (a couple of years back Steve gave me a beautifully boxed set of some of his favourite sessions we had played at … it ran to eighteen CDs).

And so the night disappears in reminiscences, tears of laughter streaming down our ravaged old faces. Even though I try to keep my music and my blog separate, some of these tales have been set aside for future posts as they are so bizarre they just have to be told.

Tragically, Steve - an extraordinarily gifted bassist who originally brought the gang together as his "dream team" of pretentious, virtuoso, session prima-donnas - has been struck down with motor neurone disease and has been deteriorating for some time now, so because of this and other band commitments the gang very rarely come together on stage these days.
He is remarkably chipper, telling us how his electric wheelchair makes dog-walking a lot easier, though not for the long-suffering hound being dragged behind him.
This evening, however, he is getting about with a stick which is great to see. He even manages a dance with Sonia, bringing a lump to my throat. We all love him dearly.

Steve is organising another charity bash for us - date and venue tba - sometime in the new year, where I'll go head to head with regular guest Ron S again.
That's always fun; we try to do it at least once a year. Ron won Guitarist magazine's player of the year at Wembley two years running (they wouldn't let him back again after that), and we - the grizzled old man and the kid pretender - grin at one another and go at it head to head in a monstrously self-indulgent frenzy of pointless, widdly speed guitar, driving one another on to absurd heights of unlistenable stupidity.
All of which is tremendously popular with our fans, the drooling horde of guitar nerds we call the Salivation Army, and so raises a decent amount of cash for motor neurone research.

The wedding party is a huge success, but the upshot of all our reminiscing is that, by the time we come up for air, all the unattached attractive women have gone home.
Ah, well … yet again I miss my chance for humiliation and rejection.

And I have overslept by five hours and feel like I've cleaned the hotel carpet with my tongue.
Bleurgh …

I need coffee.

Congratulations and much love to Rod and Sharon.

Robyn's Art Circle Pt.2

I thought I'd do something suitably seasonal for today's Art Circle post, so I tried making an autumnal-looking Japanese maple and drooping it over some water.

Trees are a bugger to make in 3D, but tremendously satisfying when you get them right.
Water's a lot easier.
If you haven't got a programme that makes good water, you just get a Photoshop airbrush with a very fuzzy edge and make some splodgy patterns like waves seen from above in black and white. You can save these as a mask and use it in your 3D programme as an alpha channel mask to create your wave pattern. Then mess about with bump mapping to get the wave heights.

This water's a very simple reflective one with a slight pinky-orange specular tint to offset the blue sky where it reflects the broken cloud I put up there.

You can make water as murky as you like. I wanted this one to be very transparent so you can see the lake bottom where the tree shades it (click on the detail below for a bigger view).
I gave it quite a high refractive index though, to blur the bottom a bit and make it look a bit more realistic.


Sadly, I really enjoy doing this type of thing. I should be out chatting up girls and trying to get my life back, but yesterday afternoon I sat tweaking parameters until my 3D water made me go "Oooh".

Then I went out to a party and totally failed to chat anyone up, but more of that later …

Meanwhile, Back In The Sandbox

Mikey's entry into our little Art Circle with the post of one of his old Bryce scenes makes me dig out some of my own stupid kids' stuff.

So. Up into the attic for the boxes of floppy discs. Then back up into the attic again to find an old beige Mac that actually has a floppy drive in it. Drag it down the ladder, network it up (Woohoo! It still works!) and start searching for old junk without getting sidetracked by Prince Of Persia 1.0 …

The first thing any man of a certain age does when he gets hold of a 3D programme is to revert to childhood.
For Mike and me, it was getting hold of a copy of Bryce when it first came out in '94.

Having loaded it onto our old "beige box" Macs, we peeled off our thin veneer of maturity, threw it in the bin and started giggling like guilty four year olds.
With wild whoops of over-excited glee, we made alien landscapes and spaceships, then we blew the shit out of them with silly explosion noises and lunatic laughter.


Adult responsibility can go suck ass. This is fun!
"Whee!"

"Hey, let's make Mars."
"Yeah! Then we can crash spaceships onto it!"
"Woohoo!"


We each designed our own spaceships, swopped them on floppy discs, then smashed them to bits.
It's an intoxicating experience; feeling your brain turning to mush as you create stupid alien worlds, then invade them with stupid, home-made spaceships.

Perhaps if George Bush had been encouraged to do this, Iraq would still be breathing, instead of twitching on the floor …


"Kerblooey!"
"Blam!"
"Luke, I am your father."
"Pow!"
"Flash Gordon approaching! Open fire ! All weapons!"
"Boom!"
"Mwah hah hah haaa …"

Having greased myself up and squeezed back into my veneer of maturity, I no longer create and destroy silly spaceships, but I have to admit it was great fun.

Thanks for the reminder, Mike. If I receive a CD with the plans for your latest spaceship on it, you know I'm ready and willing to revert to childhood once again and gleefully blow it to bits.

Rules for living: number one:
Grow old if you have to, but NEVER grow up.

Radioactive Man

After the tragic and heinous murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, it turns out that radiation from polonium-210 (by weight, about 250 million times as toxic as cyanide) has been found at his home, at a hotel he visited on Grosvenor Square, and in the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, currently closed for forensic examination and decontamination.

Er … Oops!

Remind me not to buy sushi from places where Russian dissidents have recently been poisoned.

Mum phoned me in a panic this evening to say "Tell me you haven't been near there".
What could I say but "Er … I often eat there. They do good sashimi. I kicked my way through all the journalists to get lunch there the next day, then moaned about the crowds of freeloading pressmen on my blog."
She howled a bit and went on "They're trying to trace anyone who's been in there."

Then I remembered she's a Daily Mail reader.
For those not from our shores, this is a shitty little rag, run by an ex-nazi which exists solely to frighten the ignorant and the elderly (if a black guy crosses the road in Peckham, they have three inch banner headlines shrieking about immigrants bringing road chaos to the capital).

So I went on line and had a look and managed to reassure her (see the BBC news site's articles on Litvinenko's murder and on polonium-210).

I've had a bit of a death wish going for the past ten years or so, but it turns out I'd probably have to have eaten poor Mr. Litvinenko's fæces or snogged him to be in any significant danger. Oh, well …

My deepest sympathies to his family.

And Vlad … Maybe you should have used thallium after all. Using polonium-201 is a bit of a giveaway. It turns out that you don't just brew this stuff up in your kitchen; it needs a nuclear reactor and a government sized budget to isolate it …

Deny it all you like, but you are in deep shit my son.

Robyn's Art Circle Pt.1

Robyn has been posting her lovely watercolours and has suggested that we all post examples of our own artworks to form a little art circle.

I'm attempting - so far with little success - to photograph my oil paintings and drawings (they are way to big to scan).
Until I figure out how to do that properly, I'll post some of the things I make while dicking around in 3D programmes.

Some of you will already have seen the stuff I do for a living. To get those results requires a lot of failed experiments.
These start off as felt pen sketches, then get worked up on the Mac into the kind of stuff you see here. Then the real fun begins.
Making the actual models in 3D is only half the battle. Getting light, textures, water, glass, metals, reflections, etc. right takes lots and lots of time and not a little jumping up and down and swearing.

These are a couple of the experiments I did a few years back on "how to get water right in 3D". It's pretty easy in most 3D programmes to make spaceships and sci-fi stuff and crap like that, but to make something which can fool the eye into thinking it is real is frustratingly difficult.


This one was just a simple exercise in trying to balance reflections, refraction, light on the water and transparency.


And this one was trying to get still water right, while experimenting with rock textures.


The things I really like doing in 3D are abstracts. This one was a series of geometric shapes made from glass and metal which I tortured for a bit, then shone coloured lights onto (hey, it was a rainy weekend). The result reminds me of the generators on "Forbidden Planet".

I'll try to dig up something more adventurous later (most of this stuff is scattered across several old computers with none too helpful numbers instead of titles … I've always been crap at filing).

Eat Me

1621 …
Dinner time …

Somewhere near a Wampanoag village on the east coast of the new world, a bunch of somewhat ill-prepared religious fanatics are starving to death.

One of them gets a bright idea:
"Hey, those Injuns have got food. Let's invite the suckers over for dinner."

Over at the Wampanoag village, the mail arrives.
"Hmm … We've got an invitation:"

Dear Injuns,

The self-righteous and pompous white folks of Plimoth would be delighted to have the company of you savages for dinner on Thursday.
Unfortunately, we've got nothing in the fridge, so please bring all the food.

RSVP

So Thursday arrives and along come the Wampanoags, who have extreeeeeemely unwisely decided to take pity on whitey.

"Eat Me!"

They bring with them some amusingly shaped vegetables and a fat kid in a turkey suit.

"Okey dokey." say the pilgrims. "We'll take that kid, and when you've done the washing up we'll slaughter you and then we'll steal all your land, hee hee."
(They may not have actually said "hee hee" but you can just picture them sniggering behind their hands).

"Hmm … That doesn't sound like too good a deal to me … You smile sweetly while I go get my tomahawk from the hall stand."


Now this is what SHOULD have happened, had the Wampanoags had their wits about them.


If I had a time machine, I'd go back and find the Wampanoag who said "Aww, c'mon. Let's help those stupid white folks." and smack him round the head.

But unfortunately, that's not going to happen.

So instead I'll wish all of my lovely blog chums over there in the Colonies an outrageously happy Thanksgiving.

(scariest moment in movie history - Wednesday Addams "smiles")

And may the rest of whitey USA suffer acute indigestion.

Thanksgiving reading assignment: Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."

Screen grabs from Addams Family Values used without any permission at all. Sorry guys, that's just the way it is …

Holy Crap

The Scientologists opened their big new Cult Central in London last month and today we learn that the Met are under investigation for accepting waaay too much hospitality from them.

That's "the Met", as in London's Metropolitan Police … Scotland Yard …
The guys tooling around this city carrying sub-machine guns are suspected of being under the influence of the Cruise/Travolta nutjob posse.
Just thought I'd better get that straight.

And the fourth most senior plod in the squad actually spoke at the big cult opening …

I'm thinking maybe it's time to get the hell out of Dodge.

While my mind reels from that horrorfest, it's time to wave bye-bye to the lovely Robert Altman.
I'm going home to watch a M.A.S.H. and The Player DVD double bill tonight. I suggest you do something similar to honour the man.

Tom Purdew Pt.4 - Teachers

À la recherche du …

We have to wear caps when we're in uniform.

And if we are in uniform but outside the school, we are required to doff said caps to teachers, parents and governors.
For a kid just starting grammar school, who wouldn't know a governor from a hole in the ground, this is a bit daunting.
We do, however, miss having to wear gowns by one year. Which is a bit of a swizz, because they're great for playing Batman.

The Big School is huge, like a scary city, with places we're forbidden to enter and others we're just plain terrified of. Our little gang gets lost for the first few weeks. We get bullied. We get yelled at and hit by the teachers and præfects (yes, Latin is mandatory to O level) for just standing there looking confused.

The teachers' corporal punishment armoury is formidable. There's the cane, of course. And Mister White has his slipper; Messrs. Montacute and Fosdyke are all too ready with a heavy wooden blackboard eraser to the head. There are rulers to the hands, chalk thrown at the head, all manner of slaps and punches to head and body … and Mrs. Gardner, the deputy head, rules by sheer pants-wetting terror.

Oddly, nobody is afraid of Old Slump, the half-dead headmaster who sleeps, toad-like in his study all day. He is a master of delegation.

For a kid who has been teacher's pet in primary school and shoved forward a year for being a girly swot, the Big School is a real smack in the face with reality. Suddenly there are other kids smarter than me. There is a pecking order and I'm not at the top.
Arse!

The teachers come in two basic flavours:
Flavour one is the old guard. Hardened and embittered old disciplinarians; they will all retire when we leave after our seven year sentences as the school is due to become a "comprehensive" under education reforms and will be filled with filthy little oiks.
The old guard are determined to take it out on the last year of grammar school kids … us.
Flavour two is the young, wide-eyed and innocent wave of liberal, anti-corporal punishment, caring educators. We love their classes for the first few years; it is only after we realise they haven't the balls to beat good grades into us that we start to turn against them.

I find as the years pass that the most terrifying and the harshest teachers are the ones I come to like and respect far more than the wishy-washy drips who let us run riot.
In fact, in my final year as a præfect I am best friends with the child-eating gorgon Mrs. Gardner who, as I've said before, shares a passion for avant-garde music, lets me wear my hair long and wear my dope-stinking old afghan coat, and lets my rock band play school concerts (unheard of back then, when guitar was not allowed in music class).
And I get through all seven years without being caned once …

Special mention in the teaching awards goes to:

Miss Mc.Carthy (English Grammar) and Miss Jackson (French). A couple of elderly spinsters of uncertain sexual proclivities, who share a small bungalow in the town and who make an excellent cup of tea for a student who has been out gigging all week and so needs to be watched over (at their bungalow) while he catches up on his homework.
Miss Jackson is ex. French Resistance and goes understandably apeshit at any mention of Germany; which must be uncomfortable in the modern languages staffroom …
Miss Mc.Carthy is without a doubt the best teacher I have ever had. Bless her wrinkly old stockings. She instils in me a love of books, a love of learning and a pedantry beyond all reason.

"Fifi" Harcourt; another elderly French mistress and apparently a bit of a goer in the nineteen-twenties. Imagine Margaret Rutherford after being dead twenty years, yet behaving in an unnervingly frisky and flirty manner, and you will get Fifi.

Bernie Culpin; the only one of the new breed to garner any respect from me, probably for introducing me to the Communist Party; though marks deducted for not accepting an essay on John Lennon and the peace movement (JL is very much alive at the time, and so not of "historical significance").

Mr. Phillips; for seducing Andy P. and getting kicked out (not for the seduction, but for the brazen flaunting of their relationship).

Mr. Stuart, a Scotsman madder than Old Knudsen, who makes a damned good athlete out of me by shouting a lot and hitting my shins with a hockey stick (his constant companion).

Mr. Grove (Religious Education); for producing more kids than he actually teaches. We all feel sorry for his poor, permanently pregnant wife.

And finally, Miss Moore, Head of Art (Hi, Priscilla), the micro-skirted and admittedly hot school tart; for leaving her knickers hanging on the mirror of her sports car, and for leaving me in sole charge of the art department all through my final two years while she fucks her way assiduously through the sixth form register; which results in
(a) me winning the school art prize and
(b) copious sex with Judith F in the art office …

Happy days? I honestly can't remember …

Fun With Reptiles

Gaaargh!
Even the bloody disposable cups at the water cooler have got Christmas messages on them now! I'm doing my bit for the environment by using a glass from now on.

And it's almost time to run from the horror of Jo and Little Jo decorating the office.
If Little Jo thinks that singing bloody reindeer is staying out of her bottom this year, she had better think again. And if she's not careful, the tree will follow it.

This, however, on the BBC news site this morning, successfully distracted me from depressing festive arse and cheered me right up:

"An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.


The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park."

I can see some Everglades rangers' wives getting shoes and handbags this Christmas …