Like a sad bandwagon-jumping pranny, I have written a letter to the BBC Trust. God, it's almost as if I believe people can do something to affect the world they live in. Muppet. So I plugged my mate's book, just to keep myself feeling like it was self-serving, cynical and ironic, rather than a heartfelt plea about something I really, really care about.
Dear BBC Trust,
I have never been moved to write to the BBC before. As a long time supporter of the BBC, the world-rivalling quality of its programming and everything it stands for, I am baffled and saddened by the announcement of plans to shut down 6music and the Asian Network. For me, both stations represent the BBC doing what it does best, fulfilling the remit of its public service responsibilities by providing high quality broadcasting in areas which commercial competitors do not cover. If there is a lack of awareness that either station exists, this is a failure in branding and outreach - not an indication that the stations themselves are underperforming.
Radio1 is now almost indistinguishable from its commercial rivals. 6music is unique, having taken over the commitment to showcasing new, alternative or otherwise fringe music that Radio1 used to promote in the evenings during the early to mid nineties. Similarly, 6music has been supportive of British artists working in other media - I have had the pleasure of hearing authors, film makers, actors and poets interviewed and encouraged to perform on the channel.
The author John Osborne's recently published book Radio Head, a celebration of Great British radio, singles out the Asian Network and 6music as two jewels in our country's broadcasting crown. It would be a tragic day for British music, and a gross dereliction of the principles upon which the BBC were founded, if two of the finest, most unique radio stations on the globe were to be shut down completely. I urge you to listen to the license fee payers, and to re-evaluate the wisdom of your strategy, so that these two stations can continue to promote the best of our country's vibrant and diverse Arts culture.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Clare
http://timclare.blogspot.com
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Reading Instead Of Video Gaming
So with video games off the menu until the end of Lent, I just finished reading Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Yes, yes, I know I'm way behind the times, but better late than never, eh?
My verdict on the first book? Loved it. After years of editing other people's manuscripts I can't quite turn the internal critic off, but even with my scouring for loopholes and duff lines, I was gripped and I really enjoyed it. It's nice to feel like sometimes a book is really popular because it's very good. The book deals in lots of very standard Fantasy tropes, like the false, decadent king challenged by the valiant true heir, the airships and steampunky accoutrements of Science Romance, and the whole many-worlds portal-linked multiverse thing, which is so common as to often be almost assumed as existing in many SF worlds, but it executes all of these familiar elements really, really well. It confirms my growing feeling - influenced in part by my interviews with the author Steve Aylett and with Helen Corner of manuscript consultancy agency Cornerstones, in my book We Can't All Be Astronauts (have you read it yet? Probably - but if not, hey, you can buy it here) - that originality is an overrated quality that readers (and people in general) aren't that bothered by. Readers want a pacy, thumping good read that they can understand, with characters they care about and situations that excite them and make them think.
I'm currently doing some research and assembling with ideas for, gulp, another novel. I think it might be not rubbish this time. It definitely won't be a tale of dysfunctional middle-class relationships. It will be the same colourful, weird nonsense I always do. I don't know why people wouldn't want to write about that kind of thing. Sure, I enjoy books that don't have magic and fireballs and time travel and robots and airships and zombies and portals and spaceships and scrambler-riding dinosaurs, but not as much as books that do. SORRY, MAJORITY OF THE WESTERN LITERARY CANON
Speaking of books set squarely in our drab, everyday reality, there's an interview with me over here about We Can't All Be Astronauts and my being a writer. Oh, and, despite being a memoir Astronauts has a bit where I suplex a T-Rex through the Acropolis. I put it in after the final proofread, because, y'know - wouldn't you want something that rad in your memoir? EXCEPT YOU DON'T HAVE ONE OH SNAP
My verdict on the first book? Loved it. After years of editing other people's manuscripts I can't quite turn the internal critic off, but even with my scouring for loopholes and duff lines, I was gripped and I really enjoyed it. It's nice to feel like sometimes a book is really popular because it's very good. The book deals in lots of very standard Fantasy tropes, like the false, decadent king challenged by the valiant true heir, the airships and steampunky accoutrements of Science Romance, and the whole many-worlds portal-linked multiverse thing, which is so common as to often be almost assumed as existing in many SF worlds, but it executes all of these familiar elements really, really well. It confirms my growing feeling - influenced in part by my interviews with the author Steve Aylett and with Helen Corner of manuscript consultancy agency Cornerstones, in my book We Can't All Be Astronauts (have you read it yet? Probably - but if not, hey, you can buy it here) - that originality is an overrated quality that readers (and people in general) aren't that bothered by. Readers want a pacy, thumping good read that they can understand, with characters they care about and situations that excite them and make them think.
I'm currently doing some research and assembling with ideas for, gulp, another novel. I think it might be not rubbish this time. It definitely won't be a tale of dysfunctional middle-class relationships. It will be the same colourful, weird nonsense I always do. I don't know why people wouldn't want to write about that kind of thing. Sure, I enjoy books that don't have magic and fireballs and time travel and robots and airships and zombies and portals and spaceships and scrambler-riding dinosaurs, but not as much as books that do. SORRY, MAJORITY OF THE WESTERN LITERARY CANON
Speaking of books set squarely in our drab, everyday reality, there's an interview with me over here about We Can't All Be Astronauts and my being a writer. Oh, and, despite being a memoir Astronauts has a bit where I suplex a T-Rex through the Acropolis. I put it in after the final proofread, because, y'know - wouldn't you want something that rad in your memoir? EXCEPT YOU DON'T HAVE ONE OH SNAP
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Lent
So yeah, Pancake Day is upon us, like, well, a pancake, that has finally unpeeled itself from the ceiling and dropped, moist and lukewarm onto our upturned faces. I love pancakes. They are the best food. I always do my best to celebrate pancake day by gorging myself in a hurried and unselfconscious manner.
But I've never given anything up for Lent before. This is partly cos I en't religious, but mainly because quitting something for a month isn't quite so fun as cramming multiple frisbees of soft, sweet batter into my slavering dogma-hole. So, I thought to meself... what can I give up?
I thought of booze, chocolate, crisps, Diet Coke - DC was the biggie, actually. I know I drink too much of the fizzy black sugar water, and I don't much enjoy knowing I'm giving money to the ethically-dubious Coca Cola Company, but still I choose to guzzle quite a lot of it. Still, last time I quit for a week, I got a withdrawal hangover on the first day that lasted for 24 hours, complete with pounding head, runny nose, and chronic tiredness. My main reason for not choosing any of those things was that giving them up didn't seem to have much of an interesting narrative behind it.
So, I tried to think of something I do every day, something I've done for a long time, something I can scarcely imagine life without. And, I've decided...
For Lent, I'm going to give up video games.
It will be the longest I've been without them since Primary School. Yikes.
I love video games. They make me genuinely delighted and happy. I love them like I love books, like I love movies. For over two decades, they have sparked my imagination, and given me hours and hours of fun. But with the advent of game clocks and my progression into the higher echelons of adulthood, I've also had some tricky realisations. After 12 months of play on Pokémon Diamond, I checked the game clock and discovered I'd notched up 660 hours. That's the equivalent of 27 and a half days, without sleep. That's like playing non-stop for the whole of this month. Assuming an 8-hour working day, 5-days a week, that's like working a full time job for nearly 4 months. That's sick.
Obviously, I love Pokémon considerably more than the next man. If you're wondering whether I'm just lying, I'd point out that, since the battles are turn-based, Pokémon is ripe for being combined with other activities such as TV watching, and since it's on a handheld system, I played it pretty much every train journey I had - and I do a lot of train travel. Let's be clear - I'm not smack-talking Pokémon.
But that's not okay, is it? I mean, it's pretty awful. A little Pokémon, fair enough, but that's an actual bona fide binge. And it wasn't even the only game I played that year!
So look, here's what I'm going to do. You may have noticed I've done naff-all updates on this blog so far this year. Sorry about that. I've been busy. But we should reconnect more. So, I'm going to quit video games for Lent, try to rediscover some other pursuits, maybe procrastinate less, and I'm going to blog about it a bit. I reckon I will miss them, but I also think my life needs a little more balance, eh? I'd like to do one or two posts on games that really made a difference in my life, and also on non-video games. You know, like board games. My Dad has always been a pretty awesome advocate of board gaming, and I reckon it's his fault I'm hobbled with this dreadful craving for arbitrary simulated challenges. And I want to write about that.
Or maybe I'll just spend the time checking my Twitterfeed and reading obscure blogposts and I'll realise that video games are one of the most constructive uses of unstructured time available to us. Maybe I'll go mad. Maybe I'll renounce video games and never play them again. Who knows? All I know is that they're a really important part of my life, I kind of, not to be an idiot, but I kind of actually care about them, but for the next month me and them are going to have a trial separation.
And so, for now, I'm going to spend the rest of the evening binging on pancakes and games, in preparation for the long, stark fast before Spring.
But I've never given anything up for Lent before. This is partly cos I en't religious, but mainly because quitting something for a month isn't quite so fun as cramming multiple frisbees of soft, sweet batter into my slavering dogma-hole. So, I thought to meself... what can I give up?
I thought of booze, chocolate, crisps, Diet Coke - DC was the biggie, actually. I know I drink too much of the fizzy black sugar water, and I don't much enjoy knowing I'm giving money to the ethically-dubious Coca Cola Company, but still I choose to guzzle quite a lot of it. Still, last time I quit for a week, I got a withdrawal hangover on the first day that lasted for 24 hours, complete with pounding head, runny nose, and chronic tiredness. My main reason for not choosing any of those things was that giving them up didn't seem to have much of an interesting narrative behind it.
So, I tried to think of something I do every day, something I've done for a long time, something I can scarcely imagine life without. And, I've decided...
For Lent, I'm going to give up video games.
It will be the longest I've been without them since Primary School. Yikes.
I love video games. They make me genuinely delighted and happy. I love them like I love books, like I love movies. For over two decades, they have sparked my imagination, and given me hours and hours of fun. But with the advent of game clocks and my progression into the higher echelons of adulthood, I've also had some tricky realisations. After 12 months of play on Pokémon Diamond, I checked the game clock and discovered I'd notched up 660 hours. That's the equivalent of 27 and a half days, without sleep. That's like playing non-stop for the whole of this month. Assuming an 8-hour working day, 5-days a week, that's like working a full time job for nearly 4 months. That's sick.
Obviously, I love Pokémon considerably more than the next man. If you're wondering whether I'm just lying, I'd point out that, since the battles are turn-based, Pokémon is ripe for being combined with other activities such as TV watching, and since it's on a handheld system, I played it pretty much every train journey I had - and I do a lot of train travel. Let's be clear - I'm not smack-talking Pokémon.
But that's not okay, is it? I mean, it's pretty awful. A little Pokémon, fair enough, but that's an actual bona fide binge. And it wasn't even the only game I played that year!
So look, here's what I'm going to do. You may have noticed I've done naff-all updates on this blog so far this year. Sorry about that. I've been busy. But we should reconnect more. So, I'm going to quit video games for Lent, try to rediscover some other pursuits, maybe procrastinate less, and I'm going to blog about it a bit. I reckon I will miss them, but I also think my life needs a little more balance, eh? I'd like to do one or two posts on games that really made a difference in my life, and also on non-video games. You know, like board games. My Dad has always been a pretty awesome advocate of board gaming, and I reckon it's his fault I'm hobbled with this dreadful craving for arbitrary simulated challenges. And I want to write about that.
Or maybe I'll just spend the time checking my Twitterfeed and reading obscure blogposts and I'll realise that video games are one of the most constructive uses of unstructured time available to us. Maybe I'll go mad. Maybe I'll renounce video games and never play them again. Who knows? All I know is that they're a really important part of my life, I kind of, not to be an idiot, but I kind of actually care about them, but for the next month me and them are going to have a trial separation.
And so, for now, I'm going to spend the rest of the evening binging on pancakes and games, in preparation for the long, stark fast before Spring.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Greatest Video Game Villains Of All Time: #2 Wolf O'Donnell
So, uh, yeah. Doesn't time fly? It's been a year to the day since I started the Cone O' Tragedy. Frankly, I'm surprised (and pleased) it's staggered on this long, like a plucky lil' zombie. So happy birthday, my blog. Well done! Like a drunk lost in an disused railway tunnel, you yell your barely coherent blather-koans into the echoing darkness, indifferent to the fact that no one hears, and that you've soiled yourself.To mark the occasion, I thought I'd continue with what's shaping up to be an exciting annual series, following on from this rather optimistic post back when things began.
If you've not played Starfox 64/Lylat Wars on the N64, go do so. It is available to download for the Wii and I would rate it in my top 5 games of all time. It's a third-person space shoot 'em up that sees you as Fox McCloud, leading your intrepid team of Arwing pilots through battles that span an entire system. It's got the best dogfight sections of any game ever made, really cool set pieces, a great scoring system that keeps you coming back for more, and very fun radio chatter between you, your cohorts, and the enemies you face.
Some of the most fun parts of the game involve facing off against a rival team of mercenaries: Star Wolf, headed by your nemesis, Wolf O'Donnell. Depending on which route you take through the Lylat System, your first encounter with them may be on the planet of Fortuna (Star Wolf's bit starts at around 1:30 in the video):
Later - again, depending on how well you do and what course you plot through the system - you get to fight Star Wolf a second time, this time with revamped ships. I remember playing Lylat Wars a hell of a lot when I was younger, and unequivocally loving it. The dialogue is cartoony and silly, but it's great fun, and the bad guys' gloating taunts and bellowed orders to their underlings add a brilliant layer of hokey pantomime to proceedings. Just for the record, in my day, I was pretty awesome at the game - you get points for every kill you make, and bonuses for wiping out multiple enemies with a single shot, so on replays it takes a combination of tactical acumen and hairtrigger reflexes to maximise your score. Friends, I have both these qualities in spades.
Wolf O'Donnell is the classic hotshot baddy pilot archetype, whose sneaky self-servingness ends up being secondary to his desire to beat Fox McCloud and prove his superiority. There's a bit of the old grudging respect in there too - he's kind of a Moriarty of the skies. His gleeful opening line: 'Can't let you do that, Star Fox!' has become something of an internet meme, as wags insert punnage for mild lols. To be honest, I enjoyed them, because I love Lylat Wars, and I am an awful nerd.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Last Week Of Luke & Ross's Shows - GO! GO!
Apologies for the spotty updates so far this 2010 - I'm hella busy with lots of pseudo-exciting stuff that may or may not come to fruition, and some of that will involve my posting sporadically worthwhile things on this here blog for your perusal. I do enjoy having a meagre platform for my first drafts and half-formed opinions like terrible irradiated embryos hacked from their dead mothers' swollen bellies.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that last week I went to see the latest solo shows by my dear chums Luke Wright and Ross Sutherland, during their run at the Old Red Lion Theatre (nearest tube Angel), which continues until the end of this month. Luke's is called The Petty Concerns Of Luke Wright and Ross's is called The Three Stigmata Of Pac-Man.
Obviously I'm not a very credible advocate of their work, because, as I've made clear, they're good mates of mine. HOWEVER, if I'd thought the shows were crap I simply wouldn't have mentioned them. I actually reckon that they're brilliant. You should go and watch them and see two experienced young poets operating at the height of their powers. They've had several splendid reviews, and a bit in The Independent, and, you know, if you're in London you should do something different and interesting with one of your weeknights and take a friend along who's never seen performance poetry before. The shows are funny and witty and not so long you'll get bumache, and you'll have a new thing to have an opinion about and you'll feel all cultured and arty when you talk to friends for the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, look, you can make your own mind up by watching these clips from their shows. I hope you enjoy:
Anyway, I just wanted to say that last week I went to see the latest solo shows by my dear chums Luke Wright and Ross Sutherland, during their run at the Old Red Lion Theatre (nearest tube Angel), which continues until the end of this month. Luke's is called The Petty Concerns Of Luke Wright and Ross's is called The Three Stigmata Of Pac-Man.
Obviously I'm not a very credible advocate of their work, because, as I've made clear, they're good mates of mine. HOWEVER, if I'd thought the shows were crap I simply wouldn't have mentioned them. I actually reckon that they're brilliant. You should go and watch them and see two experienced young poets operating at the height of their powers. They've had several splendid reviews, and a bit in The Independent, and, you know, if you're in London you should do something different and interesting with one of your weeknights and take a friend along who's never seen performance poetry before. The shows are funny and witty and not so long you'll get bumache, and you'll have a new thing to have an opinion about and you'll feel all cultured and arty when you talk to friends for the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, look, you can make your own mind up by watching these clips from their shows. I hope you enjoy:
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle
So, I just realised I've never posted up this track by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Kaki King. It's written from the perspective of one of the Mushroom Retainers (or 'Toads') that Mario saves at the end of each castle in Super Mario Bros. Toad was my favourite character in Super Mario Bros 2, and I'm glad to see the plucky guys triumphantly return in Super Mario Bros Wii.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Hello 2010!
Hey you. Nice to see you again. You're looking well. Have you had a haircut? Sure? Well your hair looks great today, then. You're welcome.
I had a pretty Kinder Bueno 2009, all told. My first (maybe only!) book came out, I got to do gigs with Vic Reeves, Jon Ronson and Tim Key, I tried my hand at stand-up, and I made some new friends. So come on 2010, how are you going to beat that?
Well, it looks like I'm going to be taking my first ever solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. I'm working on it at the moment, and my main goal is to make it not crap. Having written material for four live shows in the past two years, I know only too well that I'm capable of lurching between rather entertaining and drab sniper bait, so I'm kind of counting on lots of trial runs and useful feedback between now and then. If you were to ask me what kind of show I'd like to go see at the Fringe (well, clearly even if you weren't I'd still volunteer the information unsolicited) I'd say something funny and interesting that made me think. That's the kind of show I'm trying to write.
It's weird though - the moment you start putting stuff down on paper, all these possibilities start closing themselves off to you. I think, as a writer, my biggest enemy is lack of focus. My ideas fly about like shiny bits of paper in the Crystal Dome at the end of the Crystal Maze, and I get sort of dazzled and mesmerised by them and can't decide which to grab for. I think probably the piece of live writing I'm most pleased with so far is my 'How To Save Your Girlfriend' bit for Infinite Lives. Although, in the linked video, it was my first run-through and so my performance is not the greatest, once I had it down I really enjoyed delivering it. It allows me to talk about some obscure shit that I secretly care about, like the opening part of Wardner, or Dynamite Dux on the Master System, but by making relationships the nominal subject of the talk, it's accessible to people who are usually bored to within a merry inch of their lives by banter about video games. I love video games, and getting people to laugh at random stuff I'd privately laughed at before felt really good.
It's very unlikely my first show will use a screen. Though I'm a fan of the Aisle16 comedy microlecture format, and it's hugely useful to be able to illustrate a point or chuck in cool, colourful pictures, unless you need it for every section, it splits attention across a whole extra medium. Plus, I'm a bit concerned that I'll end up writing in that ironic faux-lecturer voice, whereas I'm trying to work towards the 'Hey, I'm just a regular folksy dude telling you the story of what happened to me' voice (though just as grounded in artifice) that typifies things like The Moth. Also, it's just much easier to find places to practise bits of a screenless show in front of a live audience, whereas if I use a screen I've pretty much got a coupla previews, then I'm doing it.
I don't know. Like I say, as soon as you start chowing down on one meadow, the grass o'er yonder starts to look increasingly verdant. Like ectoplasmically so. We're talking Slimer or some shit. That's why it's good I've left myself with plenty of time to pull a 180 if I decide I need to try a different route, like 'git with clicker'.
Anyway, onwards with scriptwriting. In the meantime, you should really go check out Cat And Girl. It's so witty it annoys and depresses me. The internet is renowned as a world-trumping cretin nexus, yet it's full of people much smarter than me.
I had a pretty Kinder Bueno 2009, all told. My first (maybe only!) book came out, I got to do gigs with Vic Reeves, Jon Ronson and Tim Key, I tried my hand at stand-up, and I made some new friends. So come on 2010, how are you going to beat that?
Well, it looks like I'm going to be taking my first ever solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. I'm working on it at the moment, and my main goal is to make it not crap. Having written material for four live shows in the past two years, I know only too well that I'm capable of lurching between rather entertaining and drab sniper bait, so I'm kind of counting on lots of trial runs and useful feedback between now and then. If you were to ask me what kind of show I'd like to go see at the Fringe (well, clearly even if you weren't I'd still volunteer the information unsolicited) I'd say something funny and interesting that made me think. That's the kind of show I'm trying to write.
It's weird though - the moment you start putting stuff down on paper, all these possibilities start closing themselves off to you. I think, as a writer, my biggest enemy is lack of focus. My ideas fly about like shiny bits of paper in the Crystal Dome at the end of the Crystal Maze, and I get sort of dazzled and mesmerised by them and can't decide which to grab for. I think probably the piece of live writing I'm most pleased with so far is my 'How To Save Your Girlfriend' bit for Infinite Lives. Although, in the linked video, it was my first run-through and so my performance is not the greatest, once I had it down I really enjoyed delivering it. It allows me to talk about some obscure shit that I secretly care about, like the opening part of Wardner, or Dynamite Dux on the Master System, but by making relationships the nominal subject of the talk, it's accessible to people who are usually bored to within a merry inch of their lives by banter about video games. I love video games, and getting people to laugh at random stuff I'd privately laughed at before felt really good.
It's very unlikely my first show will use a screen. Though I'm a fan of the Aisle16 comedy microlecture format, and it's hugely useful to be able to illustrate a point or chuck in cool, colourful pictures, unless you need it for every section, it splits attention across a whole extra medium. Plus, I'm a bit concerned that I'll end up writing in that ironic faux-lecturer voice, whereas I'm trying to work towards the 'Hey, I'm just a regular folksy dude telling you the story of what happened to me' voice (though just as grounded in artifice) that typifies things like The Moth. Also, it's just much easier to find places to practise bits of a screenless show in front of a live audience, whereas if I use a screen I've pretty much got a coupla previews, then I'm doing it.
I don't know. Like I say, as soon as you start chowing down on one meadow, the grass o'er yonder starts to look increasingly verdant. Like ectoplasmically so. We're talking Slimer or some shit. That's why it's good I've left myself with plenty of time to pull a 180 if I decide I need to try a different route, like 'git with clicker'.
Anyway, onwards with scriptwriting. In the meantime, you should really go check out Cat And Girl. It's so witty it annoys and depresses me. The internet is renowned as a world-trumping cretin nexus, yet it's full of people much smarter than me.
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