Been Caught Reading

This week I got kicked out of a shop. Well, not quite kicked out,. Escorted as I left in mortification, really.

Waiting for a few minutes after a wee walk while I was having some family prescriptions filled (not a euphemism), I stopped in at one of Wellington's few remaining shops with a healthy number and array of magazines in. I do this from time to time, not regularly, and try not to overstay my welcome. Ocasionally - but really not often, to be honest - I might buy one.

This week I picked the wrong time to flick through a magazine and two comics (fan-style - never cover-to-cover) in under five minutes. From behind me came an approaching voice and a familiar complaint:

"Hey, mate - you can't do that here. This isn't a library"

I was so surprised and taken aback I nrealy blurted out "but I'm a librarian!', which would have been a very daft thing to say. Instead, I mumbled an awkward assent, carefully replaced the magazine back in its shelf (no chance of buying that now), and walked out with the owner behind me. I guess I was the only customer in the shop, but I don't remember checking either in or out.

This picture: United States National Archives

I won't return. I think the message was clear enough, and I'll check my behaviour next time I'm in a newsagent's. I've lived in this city for twenty years now and, as said, have been an occasional customer to this particular shop, buying papers, gum, chocolate bars, stamps and, yes, magazines. But if I could be called a 'regular', then probably not the best kind - certainly in the eyes of the owner.

 Walking back to the chemist shamefaced and a little rattled, two thoughts came quickly - some sympathy for the owner, and an acknowledgement that I am part of the problem. I didn't go into the shop to buy a magazine (but I might have - occasional impulse purchases are not outside my habits)
 and who knows if I was the first, the fifth, or the tenth visitor to abuse his floorspace there that day, that week, that month. Maybe I am that kind of 'regular.'

It must be a hard time for a newsagent in this age of dwindling print sales, electronic subscriptions and the added impact of high turnaround titles like the weekly Prog. Nobody walked out of that shop happy this time, but next time I'm in a magazine shop will be different.

License Expired, Go Offshore

 This is my collection of DC minifigs. They're compatible with educational building blocks for children, if you take my meaning. Not a single one of them is official or licensed, which means that despite upholding truth, justice, and the American way - they're actually all a bit naughty.

You can't buy these in shops - aside from that brief time when Two Dollar Shops were common on your main streets, and their toy shelves were sheepishly crammed with various knock-off minifigures from assorted pop culture franchises and cartoon guff. Minions, super heroes, sci-fi characters - all were fair game. For some reason the quality was usually on the low side of variable - so much so that, in the Simian household a well-meaning great aunt bought her great niece an unlicensed Peppa Pig minifig sight unseen - only for it to be unboxed, boasting two left legs and a machine gun.

So these have been sourced online instead, from a global retailer with a name borrowed from the Arabian Nights. Many of these figures are based - or quite likely stolen from fan designs of unattainable figures - fans of the brick, hungry for representations of Characters That Should Not Be, deemed as they were beyond the approval of the Danish company. Hence Deadpool - who, despite Jet Junior's classroom familiarity, is definitely not family friendly - nor the site's slasher movie ghouls, or Watchmen.

Which brings me to my collection; for these are largely characters unlikely to be made by the official masons of merchandise and their lucrative movie licenses. Sure, you can have any of your Batsmen or Spider-men in onscreen and non-canoncal combinations and their ever-increasing range of vehicles. They clearly sell - but there's also very little likelihood of a licensed Lego Alan Scott Green Lantern, much less Justice Society, Black Lightning or TV-accurate Killer Frost. Even those heroes and villains who made the casting call were shortly withdrawn from the range to make room for more Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Jurassic Park. The existence of copies of these particular withdrawn figures likely only hurts the opportunists out there otherwise profiting from the laws of supply and demand.

The Danish brick men know where the money comes from, though - hence the popularity of the Marvel and Star Wars ranges. Thank the gods for the Lego Batman Movie, then, for its mad range of obscure DC heroes and villains (El Dorado! Polkadot Man!) - but in  world where the huge success of Wonder Woman boasts one Lego set restricted to a single US chainstore (and one local one if you were lucky), and family movie Shazam is rewarded with a single figure seemingly shoved into another Batman giant box set just before release, then it's not surprising the bootleggers moved in to fill the small demand. Unless Warner Brothes change tack and produce more profitable movies, it's unlikely to change.

 So in essence here is a collection of the unlicensed, unmade, unrenewed, and unallowed realised - and in some cases improved. However, I think I've done my dash with the still grubby enterprise of propping up dodgy outfits and an already scary economy with these still IP-busting bootlegs. It always made me feel a bit squeamish. So, this collection is now complete, and the museum is closed. Don't forget to wash your hands as you leave.

May the Fawcett Be With You

 Star Warps! It's Star Warps Day again! They should do this every year.

December to May

Well, why not. Rumours of my death et cetera.

Oh, there's a bit to add in the past four months. Stick around! I might add them!

In the mean-time, crikey, the spam-wolves have been busy...

'What is the Future of the Future?'

Manic Street Preachers: Resistance is Futile (2018)

With a vintage group announcing a new album, the long-term fan may feel an approaching leap of faith. Will this be the best? The least-loved? The peak? The last? Every release is a spin of the chamber.

I'm tempted to regard a dichotomy to Manic Street Preachers album releases - like Guillermo Del Toro's on-off Hollywood and arthouse projects, or the alternating quality of Star Trek movies. With Manics the commercially-oriented alternates with the artistic - not perfectly, and with not as much regulatory as would fit the comparison, but compare Resistance to Postcards and Send Away the Tigers... and you may sense a pattern. 

This is an accomplished album, but not characterised by the confident musical probing of Futurology or the greater lyrical reach of This is My Truth; instead, Resistance presents an album meticulously arranged, familiar in trappings, and reliable in themes: memory, loss, disenfranchisement. Not an angry album, but one resigned to being... resigned. There are clear highlights after the table-setter People Give In , International Blue comes across as pure pop Manic - James Dean Bradfield once again offering a tenor belying his years, and Nicky Wire and Sean Moore bringing up a thundering rear. 

Consciously, the album is reflective not only in its mood, but also in its sound - Sequels of Forgotten Wars (a personal favourite) the closest to the faster, early Manics, Dylan and Caitlin a return to earlier albums' wining duets (Your Love Alone and Little Baby Nothing more than Sullen Welsh Heart). Topically there's a looking back - at past idols like Bowie (In Eternity), while Liverpool Revisited finds itself haunting the same Hillsborough as Truth's SYMM, from the other side of the later coronial inquest and twenty years on from the disaster. 

 (Wire even provides a guitar solo for Liverpool) 

That said, there's a lot to like. International Blue is a belter, Broken Algorithms could have been a great closer (I do wonder if the album could be a couple of tracks shorter), and penultimate single Hold Me Like a Heaven provides the singalong stadium who-oahs and memorable hooks to surely make it a live favourite. As said, the album is engineered well - reflective of the extra time put into it while the band's new studio was being built. As any ageing rocker will argue - why rush quality? 

As ever, you might find yourself wondering where the next Manics album will lead.

Cover story: A colourised portrait by Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz: 'Samurai Warrior 1881' - a once-heralded soldier captured on the eve of a new century, and a future that will be characterised by automatic weapons and machines of war. The band (as has been noted) cast as a relic, composed and dignified, displaced and resigned.

Here's my gift to you: a soundtrack to the void.

Giving a Hoot

My latest mindfulness strategy is microprojects. So far they've served me pretty well, with the great Pumpkin Ladder being an early victory over outdoor living space.

Rather than anticipating pumpkin futures though, this project is a look back at the past.

My Gran passed away twenty-one years ago, and I have few material objects to remember her by, such was the nature of the Simian couple's upping sticks from the South to North Island. A bookmark, an Art Deco desk calendar, and a bookcase (which was vast and the bane of Mrs Simian, but nature and borer won in the end, and aside from a few salvaged shelves, it made a sad and warming fire for a few nights.) Add to that her plaster owl, which sat at her front doorstep for many years, slowly weathering and losing its fancied original lustre. It's travelled with us from flat to house and sat in damp garages and rooms for a long time, now, its plaster form softening with age. Restoring this is my new microproject.

I don't know what type of owl it was supposed to be (horned?), how old it is (1950s?) or from whence it came, but gingerly dusting off its efflorescing surface has uncovered some interesting details hitherto covered up by (I imagine) house paint. A feather quill lying on a small pile of books, pages picked out in shallow relief, as well as corner protectors for their covers - all of which will be picked out.

But first, a serious undercoat of protector. I don't know if old tawny will sit out in the open, but if he or she does, he or she will be well-protected. The shop assistant at the local paint shop suggested simple acrylic - maybe even from a humble test pot. But then, she didn't know my Gran. No, something fancier and harder-wearing for an undercoat, and then we can talk colours. 

And also whether it remains an outside owl or stays indoors. 

A Box of (Past) Delights

 A recent trip down home unearthed a bounty of old playthings and bits of playthings from... oh, over thirty-five years ago. Yikes! They all came in an old, slightly garagy box, near bursting with nostalgia and forget. 

So: what's in the baaahx...?

Ooh. It's densely packed! And everything's individually wrapped. What sort of twisted mind would do such a thing? Oh yeah - that's right. I did that myself.

A plethora of playthings are here. Some of it useful (missing original Kenner line Star Wars Stormtrooper still in pretty good nick! Hello, boy!) And some probably not so much (a Hot Wheels ramp without its struts, some terrain for a WW2 field gun, its parts and crew probably long since tossed to the four winds.) That green Matchbox car might be salvageable. There's even some promising modeling work here, maybe. Like... 

Bits of spaceship models. There are three separate examples here, none of which are or likely ever will be complete. The Space Shuttle is missing its tail fin at least, and was never finished in its day, so it could be.  

This Apollo 11 'Eagle' lunar lander I'm undecided on. It's definitely not complete - and some of the surviving plastic bits are so thin I'd consider replacing them with something sturdier, like brass rod. That said, I do have the plans  - as brief as they look; and allegedly the classic Airfix model above is not known for being entirely accurate. Oh, the astronauts are there, too. A little bit disembodied in the limb department, but might be worth a crack. Unlike... 

...this guy. Who is some more parts of this guy See - I knew I had some more pieces! Beats me where the rest is, though. Even with these bits reunited, the result might have to be... creative.

And some vintage transfers for racing cars and hot rods. I say vintage transfers because I'm pretty sure these days they'd be a download file somewhere, rather than be something you'd actually have to hunt down and buy in your local model shop. Or combination bike shop, fishing gear shop, toy shop and model shop - which is what we had back home, and in my mind it was - and remains, awesome.

So, a few more projects here to add to the pile. And in the mean-time, a bit more clutter to put in the basement.