Happy birthday, Evie!

I have now been a parent for exactly seven years today, and it has absolutely been the best seven years of my life, and it really has felt like it's been seven seconds.

Throwing hands with Doctor Strange

Sometimes, when I'm standing around waiting for something, I'll have my hands behind my back, and I'll make the hand gestures that Doctor Strange makes behind his back towards the end of the original Infinity Gauntlet, as drawn by the mighty Ron Lim.

I do it without even thinking about it, as an unconscious thing, but I haven't managed to open any portals with my mystical gesturing. Not yet, anyway.

Only Hollywood makes me cry

I've been a fool for Tarantino films since the start, when me and my mates all walked into Reservoir Dogs as innocent 18-year-olds, and all walked out cinephiles for life. His films are smart and witty and clever and stylish, and sometimes they get quite emotional - but the end of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the only one to bring me to tears. 

It was the last movie I saw before I became a parent - quite literally, the wife and I saw it the day before our eldest was born, and I spent a large part of the long run time hoping our little treasure would stay put for a few more minutes. And then the real life tragedy of what happened to Sharon Tate and her friends in that house is avoided, and the world of the film is just a tiny bit brighter because of it. 

The main characters' righteous violence against the Manson murderers who invade their home is initially hard to take, with big men murdering much smaller women with their flamethrowers, attack dogs and bare hands.

But when you know what really happened - that they carved up a heavily pregnant woman in the most horrific way possible, a dog biting off their face in this fictional context is getting off lightly. Watching it that first time, with the most pregnant woman in the world sitting next to me, I cheered on the carnage.

And when it's all over, and Rick Dalton is invited into the Tate household and greeted with love and hugs, it's heartbreaking. It's the ultimate Hollywood ending, where the good guys win, and the most awful tragedy is avoided. And there is real sadness in the fact that this isn't what happened in real life, that those more people in the Tate house had the most awful of endings.

Those final moments are the quietest of conclusions to a Tarantino film, and the weight of real history weighs heavily on this happy ending.

But if Hollywood is a place of dreams, this is the most pleasant of them, where the Manson killers pick the wrong fuckin' house to crash, and the world isn't poisoned by their stupid cruelty. That's worth a tear or two.

You're paying way too much for your pot, Lester

American Beauty's reputation has diminished greatly over the years, even if it does have a moment of sublime beauty with the trash bag. Most people bounce off the obviously problematic stuff with a middle aged loser lusting over a teenaged girl, but the thing that always annoyed me the most about this movie is how much Kevin Spacey was paying for his weed.

The late nineties were my peak stoner age, so I was having a good fuckin' time when I saw American Beauty for the first time, after the usual morning sesh with Shane over the back fence. It was totally a vibe movie, and I was into it. 

And then Lester happily pays two grand for a tiny amount of weed , and I could not believe what he was doing. Three hundred for the ounce of regular marijuana seemed legit, but in all my dealings, I never met - or smoked - a single strain of weed that was worth that kind of money. You might as well be buying cocaine if you're going to spend that much.

(It also cracked me up how it was "genetically engineered by the US government", when the best weed growers are old crusty guys named Funk or something who knew more about pot than anything any damn government scientist ever dreamed of.)

I think about this now and then, because pot is still largely illegal in this part of the world and the local constabulary like to put out statements saying they have busted a big cannabis operation and seized millions of dollars in weed, but then you only have to do some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations to realize the cops are full of shit because it turns out they're valuing it at $4000 an ounce, and nobody is ever going to pay that much for an ounce, even if it's personally sourced by the freaky kid next door.

So when I need my American beauty fix in the future, I might just watch the trash bag scene again, and forget about the rest of it. The cost of pot is enough, let alone the yuck of Spacey. 

Love and happiness forever!

It's a bit of a joke, when Ewan McGregor's insanely charming Alex makes the toast in Shallow Grave - forcing his partying flatmates to drink to 'love and happiness forever', He's being a dick about it, and it's all obviously about to go wrong and there will be corpse desecration and murder, but he's still demanding the oath. 

But I'll drink to that idea, any day. It's all everything we all need - what can be better than love and happiness forever? Maybe Nathan Barley's 'peace and fucking'.

Best dollar sale ever

I have always been a fiend for the $1 comic sale. Regular issues of American comic books are getting perilously close to $12 in local money, but give it a few years, and a lot of that stuff will end up in the cheap bins, and that twelve bucks will buy me a dozen slightly trashed old comics. 

A vast chunk of my comic collection was swept up from bargain bins, and I never miss the kilo sale at one of my local stores. But when the most excellent Iron Age Comics announced it was doing a special sale, I really did not expect it to be the best dollar comic sale I've ever been to. But that's what happened, all the same. 

It was a good sign when the first thing I see in the first box is Fantastic Four Annual #4, the one where the old Human Torch comes back - a pivotal moment in the early Marvel Universe, and it's just sitting there. It was missing a back cover, but was still a thing of beauty, in all its roughed-up glory. 

Then I found Avengers Annual #10 in there, and a bunch of other Avengers from the early seventies and many 60s and 70s oddities like ancient Justice League of America, prime Kirby Demon and loads of Marvel Two-In-One, and they're all just a buck each. 

They are, obviously, in awful condition. Some of them have been warped and torn by water damage, and some come with covers that have clearly been attacked by rodents, but a beat-up comic has just as much as charm as one that still smells like the printers. 

And if the cover is getting gross, there is so much thrills inside, so much beautiful artwork, for the cheapest of costs. Son of Satan issues and loads of terrific DC Comics Presents, including the one with the first ever New Teen Titans. A decent chunk of the post-Kirby Return of the New Gods, because why the hell not?

It's taken me weeks to get through them all, because Bronze Age comics are dense as hell, but two things are certain - short of straight-up stealing something, this is the best bang for buck in all  entertainment, and that I'll be there for the next sale, every time.

All the time in the world when you're unemployed

I haven't been properly unemployed for years now, but there were a couple of times when I was younger when I just could not get a job and I remember how much it sucked, so I'll be doing all I can to ever avoid being in that kind of situation again, especially when I have actual dependents in my life now. 

I was out of work for about four hours the last time I quit a job due to pisspoor management, and had two different offers in those few hours, so I hope I'll be okay. 

While there was some freedom to being free of the various obligations of employment, it fucking sucked. It sucked how much you had to scrape through every day with the barest of sustenance, and it sucked how much you were forced to rely on the generosity of family and friends just to pay the fucking bills. It sucked that you couldn't watch or read all the things you really wanted to, and you certainly couldn't go out at night, because there was no spare cash by the time the dole came through. 

The only thing you did have was free time, just acres of it, and I always managed to fill it out with endless books and movies, and so much of the film and general geek knowledge and experiences I have now is a result of the months when I had nothing better to do, so many years ago.

I didn't have the endless options of today, where you could spend all day on free streaming sites and never get bored, but I could hire eight movies on video tape out for a week for $8, and might even watch some of them twice. And when you're burning through so many films on grey Tuesday afternoons, it forces you outside your comfort zone, inspires you to try something different, and that leads down all sorts of wonderful paths.

And when I got bored of the movies, there was always books, and I would haunt the local library and again, try out novelists I wouldn't ordinary bother with. During my last extended period of homelessness, I started looking for older, classic books, and fell into an exceedingly pleasant Graham Greene wormhole.  

And when that also got a bit much, I could always try some writing myself, and churned out hundreds of pages of unreadable prose, trying to find some kind of voice.

The only other thing I would do is walk, a good walk never cost anything, is good for the health and the soul.

That's how I got through the day when the days got too long, and I didn't have any work to fill them, and there was some pleasure in it. It still sucked like nothing else sucks when you're an adult, but there was some light in those endless days.

Fury - My War Gone By: He wants to keep on fighting

- Fury: My War Gone by #3

Art by Goran Parlov

Words by Garth Ennis

Colours by Lee Loughridge

Letters by Rob Steen

Rock history always makes my day

There was a joke article in a 90s issue of the NME, where it was the secret diary of Henry Rollins, and it was just day after day of pain, misery and push-ups, and then he got laid and everything was lovely and fine. 

I always thought that was pretty funny, and I honestly think the closest I get to feeling like that is when a new episode of Andrew Hickey's A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs comes out, and another cold, grey day is full of sunshine and roses and some very big thoughts about rock music. Life really is a little brighter with that in my ears.