Came across this blog post from Steve Henry at Campaign Magazine.

It’s brilliantly written and — well, I can relate, I guess.

These are unbelievable.

Turkish Superman

Indian Superman (& Spiderwoman?)

Turkish Star Wars

Chinese Indian Jones

Here is a list of other films we’d like to see:

Bangladeshi Inner Space
Libyan Short Circuit
Ghanian *Batteries Not Included
Mexican Three Men & a Baby
Madagascan Tron

#3

Adventureland (film) Emboldened by rum/ a fairground akward and strange/ he steals love’s first kiss  Sports Night (tv) New York in winter/ I feel the heat in your words/ but you talk of sport  Spicy Jerk Chicken with mango salsa on pepper and chilli bread (sandwich) Saturated fat/ absent like snow in july/ it melts on the tongue  Strawberry Swing (music video) I lay on the floor/ the world erupts around me/ in fire and smudged chalk  (500) Days of Summer (film) In the wrong order/ love cools with passing seasons/ a boy meets a girl  American Dad (tv) Like family guy/ but in this one the fish talks/ that’s progress for you  Pow! (iphone app) Adan West is gone/ but his flying fists live on/ blam crash bang thunk pow  Arkham Asylum (ps3 game) Digital Gothlam/ the dark knight detective stalks/ down linear paths  Inglourious Basterds (film) Tarintino hacks/ this film into bloody chunks/ some don’t really work  Hamlet 2 (film) Shakespeare this is not/ but rock me sexy jesus/ is hilarious  Jordan (celebrity) Spring’s brief blush has passed/ flesh droops in autumnal hues/ forget fame and live

Just a quick one today. You may have noticed that when you leave comments on the site, it automatically generates a funny geometric pattern to serve as your avatar. They look a bit rubbish, like a digital hippy has tried to recreate the willow pattern in wicker. You may also have noticed that when I or another blogger leaves a message, it displays a lovely picture of us instead. How do we do it? Do we know something that you don’t? Are we part of a secret society of techno geekery with online powers far in excess of your own?

Yes. Yes, we are. Deal with it.

But also head on over to gravatar.com and sign up for an account. The site automatically links your email address to an avatar image of your choice which can then be accessed by any blog, forum or page that is gravatar compliant (like this one). The results is a consistent digital presence over multiple sites. And in the end isn’t that what we’re all searching for?

That and a self-cleaning waffle maker.

Over the last week I have had figuratively tens of emails about my regular column – The Haiku Review.  There are, it turns out, hundreds of rules a haiku must honour before it is worthy of that title. A hundred tiny hoops for the poor tyke to jump through, contorting its syllables into grotesque shapes to facilitate safe passage. Does it have a season word or kigo? Does it have two distinct phrases? A caesura? Concrete images? An ‘A-ha’ moment? Seriously, google it, it’s insane.

And my first reaction to this onslaught was to simply ignore it completely. For me haiku is about capturing a moment or a feeling with absolute precision. That’s why it’s so perfect for reviews, you can show how something made you feel- surely a brilliant resource when everything else about critical appreciation is so subjective and open to debate? I like this description from dreamsmith.org:

People often link Haiku with Zen. ‘The Haiku Moment’ is a moment of Zen-like awareness. We all have them from time to time. We suddenly see the world with great clarity. We see details that we don’t normally notice. And if we’re lucky, we note some special significance in the ‘insignificant’ details we usually ignore. The moment passes, but we’re left with something special. We then capture that moment in a short poem, preserving it and (we hope) its special message.

Perfect. So why complicate matters with a load of ancient rules? Surely all they can possibly hope to achieve is to crush the spontaneity of the creative spirit on which ‘the haiku moment’ relies? Especially when contemporary English haiku are a bastardisation of a Japanese art form and the rules in question largely contradict each other anyway. Also, it just seems like too much damn work.

But then I thought – rules are good sometimes, if nothing else it gives me something to break when I feel like it. So with that in mind I have come up with a set of 13 rules that I am going to stick to from this day forward (probably). They may not be definitive, they may not result in perfect haiku but they are mine and I like them.

Here they are:

1. Seventeen syllables written in three lines divided into 5-7-5.
2. Write what can be said in one breath.
3. Use a season word (kigo) or seasonal reference.
4. Use a caesura (break) at the end of either the first or second line, but not at both.
5. Have two images that are only associative when illuminated by the third image.
6. Limited use of personal pronouns.
7. Use of sentence fragments.
8. Attempt to have levels of meaning in the haiku. On the surface it is a set of simple images; underneath a philosophy or lesson of life.
9. Use of puns and word plays.
10. Write of the impossible in an ordinary way.
11. Telling it as it is in the real world around us.
12. Use no punctuation for ambiguity.
13. Capitalize the first word only.

Also, from now on, comments on The Haiku Review should only be phrased in Haiku format following these rules. And feel free to add your own reviews of films, books, comics, music, art, people, food etc.

A new era blooms
horizons scudded with clouds
a blinking cursor

I’ve always loved comics. For me they combine the strongest elements of cinema and literature into a brilliant hybrid-medium. The very best comics can have all the immediacy and scale of a film. The visual storytelling and pacing that cinema enjoys can be reproduced shot for shot  – splash pages, close ups, juxtapositions of words and images – while still retaining the emotional complexity and depth that are the hallmarks of great literature. We get to explore characters’ inner lives, the serialised nature of many comics allowing for an epic tale that leaves no character beat or situation unexplored.

So the only real problem is that there aren’t that many great comics. Alan Moore, one of the titans of the industry, once explained that any emerging medium is seen first and foremost as something for the kids. When cinema began, everything was a western, even today you could stick a ten gallon hat on all the male protagonists of many films and create a credible western. Reservoir Dogs – Western, The Italian Job – multi-coloured horses riding across the rooftops of Turin, The Matrix – lots of leather and hails of bullets, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood etc etc. Comics then, have found it even more difficult to break free from their defining genre, everything is about super heroes. In cinema terms it would be like 95% of all films were still Westerns – from Rom-Coms to pornos. What a waste of an art form.

Except things are changing. The best comic series ever written is, of course, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman but hot on it’s heels is a series I’ve only just finished today. It’s called Y: The Last Man and I think it’s about the funniest, most literate, heartbreaking work of genius I’ve had the pleasure to experience in a long time. And not a pair of tights or cape in sight. Everything about this book is just about perfect, the structure, the characters – it’s as light of touch and pacey as Speilberg at the top of his game and as complex and self-referential, unpredictable and earthy as anything by authors like Douglas Coupland and Ian Banks.

And it’s funny. Did I mention how funny it is?

What’s it about? Well I don’t want to spoil the surprises but essentially every mammal with a Y chromosome dies simultaneously in a global gendercide except for one failed escapologist and his monkey. But that’s just the jumping off point …

Please, please – whatever your view of comics, the three colour funnies and the earnest politicising of grown up ‘graphic novels’, you owe it to yourself to at least read the first book. 

You won’t regret it.

At least until it ends, then you feel kind of empty inside and need to write a long blog post about it.

Reviews listed from best to worst.

#2

Laura’s Chocolate & Beef Stew (bespoke foodstuff) By all the laws of/ God and man it shouldn’t work/ but somehow it does  Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (web comic) If you haven’t seen/ this yet then you can’t be my/ friend until you do Jamie’s Italian (restaurant) He may act like an/ idiot but the boy sure/ knows how to cook pork  Brick (film) The Maltese Falcon/ meets 10 Things I Hate About/ You but with more laughs  District 9 (film) Has a great bit in/ it where someone is killed by/ a jet-propelled pig  Bejeweled Blitz Beta (facebook app) We should all live life/ to the full. But first I’ll have/ one more go on this  Cyanide & Happiness (web comic) Badly drawn and in/ questionable taste but when/ it’s good you’ll laugh hard  Old People Karaoke (pastime) Sing us your heart’s song/ memories fade to echoes/ melodies linger  The Final Destination 3D (film) Shit in 3D is/ still shit. Oh look another/ evisceration  The Boondock Saints (film) I am Troy Duffy/ I’m the new Tarantino/ Actually I’m not  

Sometimes blogs are used to publish vehement polemics about the world we live in.

Sometimes they’re authentic and powerful and wise.

Other times they just contain lots of folded up pictures of Ross Kemp.

Like this.

Or this.

I think both uses are equally valid.

Thanks to Kemp Folds.

(they have lots more pictures of Ross Kemp’s face, folded)

I’m learning to play the ukulele. It’s a tiny little guitar and it makes me look like a giant. At the moment, on a scale of 1 to 100, I’m absolutely rubbish.

Anyway, I’ll be putting up a video about once a week so I guess we’ll all see if I improve at all.

In this first musical extravaganza I play something that sounds a bit like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while maintaining a look of pure terror on my face.

Also once it’s finished I look inappropriately pleased with myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my first faltering steps towards competency, I give you Ukulele Diary: Day One …

Not a lot I can really add to this. Ukulele’s are obviously pure sex wrapped up in curvy wood. I’ve only recently started to learn and I’m already having to turn down dates with Uke-loving super models and Brick Lane-dwelling hipster chicks in floral dresses and thick rimmed specs.

Plus I can only really play the first 5 bars of Ode to Joy at half speed with a 70% note accuracy.

Here’s two funny ladies playing a mega mix of 90s hits on a Uke/ Gee-tar combo. Because you demanded it.

They’re called Garfunkel and Oates and I reckon they should be as successful as the Conchords. Fact.