Ray Newman

A few decent days and people are losing the run of themselves here, lads out in shorts and sandals, someone was using the bbq down the road. Ice cream van around this evening.

Brief cameo from Steven Toast here.

[Video description: A punch up from a black and white horror movie; the vampire's henchman looks a bit like Matt Berry as Toast.]

Oops, dir. Fernando Méndez, produced by Abel Salazar.

A poster for the film showing a very Dracula like vampire in a cape carrying a woman whose bedclothes are somewhat disarranged.

Now watching: ‘El Vampiro’, dir. Abel Salazar, 1957, with German Robles as the Hungarian Count Lavud, exiled in Mexico. I think. I've only just started it. 🎥🎬

Who can reply: anyone, nobody, people who can be normal about it.

trying out a new feature, lmk if it works

Greg: What was the wording on the task?

Alex: Make Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the Styx. Most invulnerable Achilles wins.

Greg: Dip the baby. The whole baby. They’re not going to hang onto a heel or anything stupid like that.

Alex: First, let’s see Thetis’ attempt.

Get yer stickers here!

adarrenrileypainting.com

And obviously very attractive planter full of little yellow daffodils in front of some Victorian buildings and a tower block.

Ah, yes, liveable neighbourhood schemes and their “ugly planters”.

BBC Sounds - Constable's Year by Susan Owens - Available Episodes Listen to the latest episodes of Constable's Year by Susan Owens on BBC Sounds.

This is good: ”Virtually every time he got out into the country in April or May he would exclaim it was the best year yet and he had never in his life seen such beauty...”

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie...

crude line drawing of a character walking on a little line over a line in the concrete wall

Just spotted.
The sheer, staggering anarchy of Swiss graffiti.

Holding up a copy of a book, Tales of the Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains by John Grindrod, in front of two suburban semis and a speed bump

Wouldn't you LOVE to have me on your podcast/radio show/other modern communications thingy? Tales of the Suburbs is out next week, and it would be smashing to get word out as far as possible over the next few months via the medium of chat. Slide into my DMs or www.johngrindrod.co.uk/contact x

Sun headline. Wets in peace. Boil in a bag funerals where bodies are liquified and flushes down a drain allowed in the UK for the first time.

Trust The Sun to frame this in the grimmest way possible. It's called aquamation, Desmond Tutu had one and it's way better for the environment. Be chill.

I will take one next time we bump into each other in the pub, fee to be negotiated.

Good shout, thank you. Have ordered some bits.

Current favourites:

* The stickers @panchoballard.bsky.social sends out to Patreon subscribers from time to time.
* The ones that came with the Severin folk horror Blu-ray box sets.
* Some Japanese food-related ones I found on eBay.

Who that I know (in the internet sense) is making and selling cool stickers? And by cool I mean interesting, original, nicely designed. I use them to help me tell one A6 notebook from another as they pile up around my office. If you internet know me, you're aware of the kind of stuff I like.

Two black and white cows made out of FIMO (polymer modelling clay). One is bigger with legs that dangle over the edge of the cake tin lid it’s sitting on. The other is just a small blob for a body and another small blob for a head.

It must be 30-odd years since I made anything out of FIMO. The devil makes work for idle hands.

I doubt I'll be reading any more -- I still fundamentally find comics hard work compared to simple text -- but you never know.

Patrick Wymark on the cover of the Anglia editio of the TV TIMES for the play THE SEVENTH WAVE

Interesting comment on regional accents. In 1963 #PatrickWymark starred as a Grimsby trawler skipper in THE SEVENTH WAVE, but it was noted in his home town that he had to fall in with the other actors who adopted an East Anglian drawl.

Giant face mask of the poet Carol Ann Duffy

Giant face mask of the philosopher Slavoj Zizek

Giant face mask of the broadcaster Frank Bough

Giant face mask of the former Tory MP Michael Fabricant

The Celebrity Cutouts website offers a colossal range of giant face masks. All but a handful of the names and faces are completely unknown to me (and, I suspect you). There are some surprises all the same. www.ebay.co.uk/str/celebrit...

And then you watch videos with that academic who recreates historic British accents and, yes, Russell Crowe got it about right. But, as I say, just a bit distracting if you're watching a fun adventure film.

You could probably get away with it if everyone else in the production was also doing a funny voice, and if the marketing for the film made enough of the authenticity. Otherwise, it's just distracting.

I think this is sort of the point of the article. Being authentic can be distracting. It's very obvious when someone is 'doing a voice'.

“To this end, dialect coaches on historical films face a dilemma: do they recreate the speech of the time as faithfully as possible and risk losing the audience, or use something more contemporary? How far back could we go and still understand English?”

Zones on wheels Zones (1983). My thanks to Nigel Day for sending me the following photos of the rear end of a Lambretta scooter that he was recently asked to decorate with art based on my cover for Zones by Hawkwi…

“[The] Zones sleeve is one of the few Hawkwind covers I don’t feel abjectly embarrassed by... I was only 20 when I painted the Zones cover. Imagine something you’d created when you were 20 years old continually turning up again decades later.”

www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2...

A glimmer in Pat’s (Claire Trevor) eye like the sparkle in her earrings reveals her deep-seated, dangerous passion for the man she and her love rival want to save in their own different and yet similar ways. There’s good in there; it’s just how to bring it out in spite of himself

The looming Raymond Burr as a ruthless bastard in a pinstriped suit with enormous shoulder pads. Is it even noir if Raymond Burr isn’t in it playing a despicable and wholly believable villain?

Holy shit, what a shot. Pat’s reflection in a ticking clock as she wrestles with herself about what to do - the selfish or the right thing, though she knows the latter will destroy any hope of future happiness

One of the all-time fight to the death scenes as Rick (Burr) and Joe (Dennis O’Keeffe… my cousin’s name, incidentally) wrestle on the balcony of a burning room

A doomed love triangle
Raymond Burr in massive shoulder pads
Inescapable fate
Moonlight on wet asphalt
Flickering neon hotel signs
Gunfights in the mist
That shimmer Alton captures in each woman’s eyes when they’re overwhelmed by love

Raw Deal (Mann, 1948) is everything noir should be and more

A spread from a comic showing a detailed black and white drawing of a man who has twisted himself into a tight spiral in a wooden barrel. His tongue is protruding. Two people are looking into the barrel in horror.

Just read ‘Uzumaki' (‘Spiral’) by Junji Ito, 1998-1999. My first manga, as it happens, and a rare dip into comics of any kind, because they're not really my thing. Remarkable artwork and often pretty grim.

Also, the Wombles are clearly some form of imp.

Ah, yes, one of the famous imps.

The names of some imps, via Malcolm Gaskill’s book ‘Witchfinders’ about Matthew Hopkins and the witch mania of the 1640s:

Littleman
Prettyman
Dainty
Rug
Jack
Prickears
Frog
Touch
Pluck
Take
Jacob
Hangman
Meribell
Kit
Beelzebub (a log)
Trullibub (a stick)