Fighting with Frank (part 3 of 13): You can probably stop doing that now.

There was only one Servalan in the galaxy

There is a lot of talk about how quickly the people of the Star Wars galaxy memory-hole the Jedi after the Empire cracks down on them, becoming a galactic legend with a smuggler's lifetime.

But hell, I could handle the way the entire galaxy in Blake's 7 pretends Commissioner Sleer in the later seasons isn't obviously the mighty Servalan, as if there were two homicidally ambitious women with that fashion sense and that haircut. 

I'm still a little confused why she had to go through that deception, but even in the near infinite diversity of a future civilisation, there could only ever be one Jacqueline Pearce.

If I lost you would I cry - Changing my mind on music

I used to get so mad about music, and just so very angry that the loud, intense and moody stuff I was into wasn't topping the charts.

When you're a teenager, music can feel like the most important thing in the world, and combined with all those adolescent hormones, there is always going to be some kind of audio obsession. 

I just always liked it big and loud, with the heaviest rap beats and the sharpest guitar riffs. But I came of musical age in the late eighties, and that was the era of soft and fluffy pop songs. The hardest thing you got was Michael Jackson's Bad posturing, and the only guitar bands that troubled the charts were full on hair metal.

I hated it so much, hated Phil Collins, and Sade, and the New Kids on the Block, and all of them.

It took me years to get over my own prejudices, and longer still to really see how fucking stupid it was,. Sometimes I hear those old songs on some golden oldie station playing at the supermarket, and I can't deny that it has got a funky beat. Even something I considered at the time to be the most annoying song in the world still brings joy to the world. 

And while singers like Whitney Houston and Tina Turner were obviously deadset legends - I always thought Tina was fucking magnificent in Beyond Thunderdome - their music was so ubiquitous in my corner of the world, in that space of time, that I hated it with everything I had. 

Why weren't people listening to Iron Maiden, for Eddie's sake?

As a mellower old fart, I can get past this adolescent stupidity, and see this music for the brilliance it is. There was a time in my life that if I heard Whitney's 'I Will Always Love You' one more rime, I would rip my ears off, and now it's a pleasantly bombastic ballad, while the memories of Tina Turner's music being ubiquitous before rugby league games that I can recognise River Deep Mountain High as one of the greatest songs in the history of forever.

I'm glad I grew out of that self-importance, and all that sneering, just gives me more to enjoy, and more to groove to around the local supermarket. It wasn't the music that changed. It was always great.

Sports betting needs to get away from me

I gave up reading books on futurism, because they were all convinced that algorithms know me better than they know myself, and one day they might, but today is not that day. We're not even close, and sometimes it feels like the algorithms that drive the few social channels and advertising recommendations I get thrust in front of me are aggressively running away from me. 

Because after three decades on the internet, and two decades of blogging and social media, I still keep getting served ads for sports betting, something I absolutely loathe with every fibre of my being. I've been yelling in the digital void for half my life long, and all I'm getting back is stuff I legitimately can't stand. How does that even work?

I'm not opposed to the concept of sports betting, one of the small pleasures in life is putting $20 down with your mate on a big game, giving it all a bit of spice, especially when the chances are the winner is just gonna buy beers for everybody anyway. 

But the corporate sucking up of this disposable income - promising massive riches through astronomical odds - does real harm with no goddamn benefit, and we've got enough of that in the world, right? There is a mountain of evidence that this shit does actual harm to people, but it's tolerated and encouraged, and I fucking hate it.

And yet, every second podcast I listen to thinks that this is something that I would be into, and throws it in my face in every inserted advertisement. 

I'm just not that into it. I'm just not a betting person,. We visited Vegas once and I bet $5 on a Star Wars slot machine at the airport on the way out, and that was as far as my gambling went (all that opulence, all clearly hoovered straight up out of the pockets of the marks who flocked for the cheap buffets).

The idea of targeted ads does have some appeal - maybe show me the books and movies and music I'm actually interested in buying, and might not know about. But no, instead I'm being told to constantly get my bet on, like all the other fucking rubes.

We're finished. All of us.

When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal. You're finished. We're finished. All of us.

Sam Peckinpah could be a mean and ornery old drunk, but 56 years ago he showed us all that he knew what had actual worth in life with a far greater moral clarity than the people who lead his dustbowl of a nation in the year 2025. Sam would curse them all to hell.

A letter to Empire

Dear Empire Magazine,

It's not you, it's me. It's been a journey, and I think it's over now, and I think it's time we went our seperate ways.

When we first met in the mid-90s, you were the sexiest movie magazine on the shelves, and you had some proper competition at that time. Movieline had the steamiest covers, and Premiere had the big stars, but Empire had the passion for good cinema, and while you still came with the patent lust for beautiful movie stars, you were the first place I heard of thousands of great films.

And I've got you every month since then, as best I could. There were the years when your Australian cousin came in and muscled in on the action, driving your right and proper UK edition right out of the local market altogether, but I've I've kept up by subscribing for more than a decade now. 

Even then, I usually miss two issues a year, and I used to complain about it and the subscription people were very nice and always sent out a replacement, but sometimes that replacement disappeared too, and that was that. There would always be holes in this long collection, as much as I've held onto every issue I ever got.

But it's always been an absolute goddamn delight when I have got my hands on a new issue. Finding out what's coming up, reading the latest reviews (and the inevitable disappointment at seeing how many promising films turned out to be mediocre), and getting some proper cinematic history - there have been some great articles about ancient Hollywood history in the past few years. I still try to guess the spine quote every time, dig the regular Kim Newman column, and always read the last scene.

And there have been things that have been annoying - the tedious podcast banter spreading into full articles, the way some reviews are relegated to online only - (I still have the issues that will tell me if 1991's Shattered was any good, but online reviews from a decade ago are pure vapor.)

I thought I could handle all that, and all those missing issues, but it's the holding onto them that has broken the magic. Hundreds of big bulky issues breathlessly excited about the latest Harry Potter movie or Star Wars TV show, and while every issue has a gem of an article or a review, it's a lot to hold onto.

So I'm abandoning most of the Empires I have held onto for more than 30 years now. I'll sell them for dirt cheap so some other young movie nerd can soak up all this cinematic data. I don't need to any more.

And I think I'm abandoning the regular issues, because I haven't seen a new one in three months now. I'm not sure my attempts to change my address have really stuck, and if nobody else cares enough to rectify the situation, I don't know why I should care about getting the magazine anymore.

It's not a clean break, I'll probably get the odd issue if I see one in a random magazine store or something (which hasn't happened in years now), and I'm still holding onto most of the 90s issues I got, because I imprinted on them hard.

I know I'm never getting rid of that one issue that was Bard Pitt's first cover. Those eyes still slay me. But it's time to move on.

Thanks for the memories, Empire.

Love,

Bob

The random bookcase

My poor wife hates moving house, she finds it frustrating on an existential level, and enormously tiring. I understand completely where she is coming from, and when she tells me how much it sucks, I still bite my tongue and don't tell her how much I find it tremendously exciting, no matter how hard it gets.

She doesn't need to hear that. That won't help anybody.

But I do secretly love it, because it's a chance to redo all the bookshelves, to sort them out in new and interesting configurations. I fucking live for that shit. 

I have put hours of thought and labout into organizing my bookshelves. I find it very calming, and very relaxing. If something isn't quite right on the shelves, if a book is in the wrong place - and it's always obvious - I have to remedy it as soon as humanly possible.  Sometimes I order them on a thematic level, other parts are by author, and most of the time it's by size, and whatever fits. 

And our recent move back to the big city has seen a complete revamp of the bookshelf space in our house, and I am very much into it. The new place has loads of storage space, so I've been able to get all my 2000ads and Empire magazines out of our rented storage unit, and air out some books that have sat in a banana box for a decade now. 

There are dozens of boxes, and I've proper fucked my arms lifting them around, but I've also stashed them all away in the old concrete room downstairs, for easy access. And I'm taking my time going through them, and deciding which of them are bookshelf worthy, and which can go back in the box.

I've got all the worries in the world hanging over my head, just like everybody else, but it doesn't matter when I'm digging out all the BPRD comics I haven't read since 2012. I have no idea what happens in each individual issue. It's all the fun of getting new books, without spending any money on them.

But I'm taking my time sorting out the main bookshelves, the ones my lovely wife got for me exactly 10 years ago. As I slowly bring the boxes up from their concrete tomb, I start by shoving all the books wherever they will fit, and slowly organising them over the next few weeks, months and years.

It's not just the aesthetics of the thing, it's the personal nostalgia, sorting out the books stirs up all sorts of terrific memories when I'm reminded of their existence - every book on that bookcase blew my fucking mind when I first read it, and I can still feel the embers of that cultural explosion in my head. It lingers.

And I'm definitely shallow enough to also have a deep emotional connection to the Alice in Sunderland and Art of Grendel books that I bought during our days of international travel. We don't travel so much any more, but those books can take me anywhere.

But I have worlds and universes on those bookshelves, that are slowly taking shape, in their right and proper way.

Fighting with Frank (part 2 of 13): I can't hear you laughing.

- Missionary Man: Bad Moon Rising

Art by Frank Quitely

Story by Gordon Rennie

Letters by Annie Parkhouse

I missed you, Jeff!

Sometimes, when you've listened to a regular podcast where the hosts talk about their personal tastes and private lives for a long time, you can feel a little bereft when it suddenly ends, and you're left wondering what happened to them, or even how they're doing, and even though the person you've been listening to for years has no idea who you are or if you even exist, you desperately want to know if they are doing okay, and while you might follow them to a substack, or on social media, those things have a habit of disappearing, and when they do, they're gone. 

And then sometimes, just sometimes, you find them on a new social media account, and while it might not be the same, it's heartening to know they're still out there doing their thing, and haven't faded away into the great tapestry of the world.