I admire people who can pull off musical comedy greatly – mainly because it combines two difficult disciplines into one and creates a third art. It’s can be hard to make people laugh and it can be hard to write memorable songs – so combining the two forms sometimes seems like pulling a rabbit from an invisible hat (think about it).
Hurt Feelings
So I’ve been on a bit of a Flight of the Conchords bender the last weeks after buying the boxset online. I’d missed the series on TV and caught a couple of the later episodes so I was keen to see all of it. I’m glad I did because I think this is where the seed of my “Melvin” script germinated from. Watching all that comedy and music must have watered my grey matter or somefink.
Inner City Pressure
Of course parodies are great – especially if they are well done and I love the Pet Shop Boys parody (I’ve actually got a lot of time for the Pet Shops too – I know my tastes are broad). But maybe I’ve got a man-crush on Bret and Jemaine, I don’t know.
Sugar Lumps
I mean, if you aren’t humming “Sugar Lumps” by the end of this post, then you are either a member of the living dead or have had your humour gland removed. Again, it is too clever by half commenting on the sexualisation of women in pop music as well as questioning why men can’t be viewed in the same frame of reference – obviously because it is too comedic.
Carol Brown
But at the heart of the duo is a really good ear for a tune – even though this is a comedy song, it has such a delightful melody, it is a shame that it isn’t a “real” song if you know what I mean. Also, the episode was directed by the great Michel Gondry – responsible for mind-bending videos by Bjork, Radiohead and The Chemical Brothers – and it shows here.
Of course, the title of this post coincides to a conversation I had with my dear mother yesterday about ways of improving the business. She said: “Maybe you could all move out and I’ll stay here and put up an ‘Under New Management’ sign?” To say my feelings were a little hurt are an understatement especially as I have very little to do with the customers (I prefer child-care duties, heavy lifting and book-keeping/money wrangling) and I have fought hard to rebuild the place and keep it going. Oh well, you can’t choose your family, I guess!
Yesterday’s title was stolen from this song by Roy Harper – the opening line just seemed very apt: “It was one of those days in England, that I thought would never end…” but I took it in a bad way, not a good way as in “I wish this day would end” but the car journey just went on and on and on…
One of those Days in England – Roy Harper
Category: Diary
The idea was simple – take the kids to see Great Grandmother back in the old country. A simple feat involved a two-hour drive back to the capital. On the way down we were delayed on the A11 close to Thetford by a forest fire at the side of the road, which caused us about a 20 minute delay – in the heat.
Then closer to London, by the junction of the Eastern Avenue to M11, a Land Rover caught fire on the opposite carriageway. This didn’t cause us delays on the way there, but added another 15 minute delay on the way back – three hours later! Yes, it took nearly three hours of the police to “not” clear the burnt out car from the carriageway – meanwhile the poor owners were left on the verge sifting through their smoke damaged belongings which were strewn around them.
Then on the A11 outside Thetford on the way back, there were some bollards being put down at a slip-road and The Missus mistakenly thought that they were closing the sliproad and drove on. But instead, we had driven onto a massive tailback on the A11. Without further ado, The Missus broke the law by doing a U-turn on the A11 and riding the WRONG WAY down the closed section and nipping back off on the sliproad.
I plotted a diversion through Bury St Edmunds and Diss in order to avoid the hellhole that is the A11, which added further time onto our journey. All in all, we were on the road for a whopping five-and-a-half hours.
The kids were absolute troupers who did not complain once, but were very tired and emotional (and thirsty) by the end of our ordeal-by-road.
I took delivery of the new Microsoft Xbox 360 Slim yesterday. I wouldn’t normally upgrade my gear for the sake of it, but I was having so much trouble with my old Xbox connecting wirelessly to the Xbox Live service that I was hoping that this new iteration would solve my problems. It turns out I was right and it is good to get everything working properly again. Safe to say, my old Xbox is on eBay at the moment.
Do I like the new design? It’s OK, I guess. It’s very shiny, which is good. It’s also very small and I am used to the Microsoft design ethos of everything being chunky and workmanlike – whereas this new design has a more aesthetic approach to its stylings. It’s also a lot quiter and doesn’t sound like a jet engine taking off whenever you fire up a game.
Having the kids, I don’t play many games mainly because of the adult content in them. When you are a childless, you tend to blot out all the bad language and inappropriateness of computer games and TV programmes because you have no need to filter: afterall you are an adult, right? But now that Verity is speaking and is like a sponge, I’m very careful about what they see and hear: even with videogames. So my gaming has taken a second step and happens after bedtime – unless it is racing game. Verity likes to watch me racing the cars – she likes cars a lot.
But now I am surprised how much swearing and blood is in modern computer games – and I am also surprised I never really took notice before. What annoys me is that there could be a switch in these games that bleeps out the swear words and removes the blood. In Germany (so I’ve heard), it is illegal to show blood in computer games and so all blood is re-coloured as green. You also can show Nazi insignia either, so it makes WWII-based games a little problematic over there.
It is heartening when Verity asks me to “play the hedgehog game” and I get to fire up the Sega classic “Sonic the Hedgehog” for her to watch. It also reminds how computer games used to be: for all the family, inclusive and relatively harmless. Why does everything have to be so “adult” now. Even the rating of my ice hockey game is rated at 15 – so anyone under fifteen years cannot play ice hockey on the Xbox because there’s a rating for “violence”. Slamming people into the walls of the arena is regarded as too warping for little Johnny and so you shan’t enjoy the joys of whopping the virtual puck into the back of the net.
That evidence of the incredible disparity between computer game content and their actual rating. I remember once standing in Woolworths (remember them) and a teenager was being served in front of me. He was buying a copy of the latest “The Sims” game (or update or whatever) and he was asked for his age and then told he couldn’t buy the game because he wasn’t old enough. Now this kid must have been fourteen or pushing fifteen and as far as I know there’s no objectionable content in “The Sims” games – so I felt really sorry for the kid. We never had anything like that back in the days of the ZX Spectrum.
But again, video games do not make children violent. It’s parents who let their kids play video games for 14 hours a day that turn them into unempathetic automatons. If you let any child obsess about any hobby like that, you are going to end up with a troubled child. Moderation is the key!
Meanwhile, I’ve finished the first draft of “Melvin” – the story has a beginning, a middle of sorts and an end – but I need to work on it a bit. There’s something needed in the middle of the story – not padding – something extra, an extra dimension. The beginning and endings are good – but the middle, ah, the middle, the middle, the middle. I know what it needs, but I just need to do it.
So I am two thirds into my rough draft of “Melvin” and I am up to page 51. The rate of writing has slowed somewhat because I had to do Daddy stuff today, but I reckon I can get this done by the end of the weekend if I put in a few more hours.
I have one of those weird beliefs that the perfect movie is around 90 minutes long. 87 minutes if you take off the credits. It’s the same way I believe that the perfect album is between 37 and 42 minutes in length. Human concentration can only be stretched so far and I would prefer to keep people interested rather than bore them to tears.
Of course, I could be completely wasting my time with this, but I must admit I am enjoying the feeling of the keyboard under my fingertips again. When I worked in the heady annals of Teletext, I broke three computer keyboards in four years. The power of my typing is such that I used to wear the lettering off the keys around the most popular vowels.
Look – sparks come from my fingers!
I must admit that it is good to be writing creatively again. I’ve been putting finger to keyboard and have knocked up 25 pages of my “Melvin” script so far. I’ve got the first two acts pretty much worked out in my head and the third act is coming together nicely too. I was worried that I didn’t have enough dramatic tension, but with a little help from The Missus, we worked something out.
This isn’t some great work, you know. This is just a comedy about a loser who has something really bad happen to him that would normally be a real disadvantage to some, but to him he really capitalises on it.
The film poster should be spelt with the “V” in Melvin capitalised or accentuated someway.
In the bath, a fully-formed idea for a movie script appeared in my head called “Melvin”. This is a bit alarming because I had no plans to write a movie script nor write a comedy script either – but whatever creative spark that put this idea into my head should be honoured, shouldn’t it?
I don’t know whether to write it or not? Even if I write this script, what then? It was strange because I’ve even got a lead actor in mind to go with the script. Weird. Not had anything like this happen to me for a long, long, long time.
Previously, I’d written about how I’d received a letter from the local court informing me that there was to be a hearing to decide whether or not our assailant was going to be absolved of paying his £175 fine for crashing into our property. The reasoning was that our chum was now in chokey and so, for whatever reason, those who make decisions of law had come up with the spiffing idea that we could either appeal for the decision to be upheld or pursue him ourselves. Of course, I wrote strong letter for the hearing which is due to take place in the middle of this month.
So get this…I check our bank account and there’s been another £10 payment of the fine from our chum. So, one can deduce that he is at least trying to do the right thing by paying off his fine, but yet the magistrates court wants him to stop paying. While this earns our chum some kudos for taking up his responsibilities, I am at a complete loss as to why the local magistrates act in this fashion.
I just don’t get it?
But perhaps it explains why the laws of this land appear to be derailed at every opportunity. Again, without making myself sound too much like a right-wing, Daily Mail reader, I would imagine that the bleeding-heart liberals who have wriggled their way into these places of office are making such fool-hardy and destructive decisions. Or it could be a Ken Clarke and the Conservatives who seem to have done a U-turn on crime in this country and think that our streets would be a much better place for the wrong-do’ers of this land. (In this Bizarro world, it seems that the Labour Party really were the Party of law and order!!!)
But as I get older, I get more and more bamboozled by this world and what is happening around me. There’s no wonder why I take refuge in my guitar and music-making!!!