'Fuck off, Mr Postman!'

I don't think I deserve an award or anything for not shouting out 'Parklife!' every time Phil Daniels pops up on an episode of House of the Dragon, because it's only polite.

But I do think I should get some kind of accolade for not crying out 'You've killed me scooter'! every time Phil Daniels pops up in an episode of House of the Dragon, because I'm only human.

Beetlejuice sings the hits of the 60s

When it comes to the best needle drops in movies, it's the songs you don't see coming that always have the biggest impact.

The new Beetlejuice movie is a lot of fun - it's goofy and gross and gloriously garish. Michael Keaton is as magnificent as ever; Catherine O'Hara remains an absolute goddamn delight; Willem Defoe knows the assignment; and Winona Ryder still does the kind of horrified bafflement that nobody else can ever manage, while also finding new depths in middle aged regret.

It's also weird as hell, and I deeply appreciate the use of the particular song that rolls out of everybody's mouths during the big climactic sequence. It's easy to overlook how strange it was for everybody to start singing Harry Belafonte during that dinner party in the original, because everybody watching that movie knew it was coming - it was a major part of the promotion, and kickstarted a whole calypso revival.

It's a very different song in the 2024 film, and thank Beelzebub that they didn't try to keep the calypso theme going, and went for a completely different kind of song. It's also pleasing to see the filmmakers really commit to the whole thing, and let it all play out. 

Despite it bouncing around in my skull all week, I haven't been able to sing that tune around the house -(and I'm not going to name it here), because the lovely wife hasn't seen the movie yet, and I don't want to spoil the surprise of the song, and the satisfying weirdness of its use, for anybody.

Adventures in bookclubbing: Trends and portents

My one-person book club fell by the wayside when we moved down south, but I picked it up again recently because it really is immensely rewarding, and I've been able to find all sorts of new literary thrills, no matter where I live in the world.

I've been sticking to the rules of the club for years now -  I try to get into as many non-white guy English-speaking writers as possible, I try to stick with something that has come out in the past few years, and I insist that it is something by a writer that I've never heard of before.

For all that, it is also very nice to break the rules, and I have done that with the past three books - they were all still by authors that I never heard of, and were all by women or non-English writers, but they were also all written and first published decades ago, and have been reprinted in all new editions. 

The first was Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns, which I 100 percent got just because I loved the title; the next was Arto Paasilinna's The Year Of The Hare, which answers the eternal question of what happens when you abandon your life to wander Finland with a hare; and the latest was The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon, which was very, very Belgian.

They're full of strange perspectives and dated language, but the ones that get the flash new reprints do tend to be seem to be a certain type - they are thoroughly middle class concerns, with the main characters often having to deal with unruly maids and other useless staff, even as the old world rots around them.

They can still come with remarkable imagery that sticks in the brain - the fate of the baker in Comyn's book is particularly rough and something I'll never forget, because it's such an awful fate for a poor bastard who just wanted to make nice bread for people, while the protagonist's use of alcohol to get through the day in the Simneon book is particularly cutting. 

The funny thing about the Finnish book is that it's about someone who hates their life and wanders away from it to find themselves, and that's the plot of a lot of the contemporary books I see as I browse for the next selection. 

You see the trends so easily when you're looking at he blurbs for every single new novel in the book store. There was a whole year of almost nothing but 'I thought I knew my mother, but when I came home to Buttfuck Idaho for her funeral, I found out the real her'; followed by a strange deluge of content based around the Holocaust (obviously raising awareness about this event, while also reeking of crass exploitation).

The next book is unlikely to fit into any of these categories. I can't wait to see what it is. 

This is a House of Stelfreeze (part 2 of 4)

 

Gory madmen behind the camera, very polite in person

I never fail to find it delightful when it turns out that almost all of the directors of the horror films that I got told were warping my brain so much growing up in the 80s appear to be thoroughly nice guys. 

Clive Barker's movies would skin you alive and drop you into the never-ending shadow of Leviathan, but Barker himself was always charming and affable, and surprisingly modest for somebody who had entire universes of different magic rolling through his head.

Wes Craven could drop something as shocking and genuinely upsetting as Last House on the Left, while never coming across as less than incredibly thoughtful and empathetic, and many of the people behind the most outrageous movie shit are lovable dorks.

I know there were still a lot of creeps in the industry, but horror movies directors seem to be the most well-adjusted crowd. Getting all the darkness out of their heads and splattering across a movie screen really does seem to be good for the soul. 

Life without Stinky

After 30 years, you might think you know what to expect from a Hate comic from Peter Bagge, but I still never expected to feel actually feel sorry for Stinky. 

Stinky!

It's been years since the wonderful Hate Annuals slowly faded away, and  Hate Revisited - Bagge's return to the misadventures of Buddy Bradley and the gang - has most definitely been a cause for celebration.

The art is not as slick as it once was, and it looser, thicker and sloppier in an extremely appealing way, but Buddy is still the same old affable loser that he's always been, holding on to his very Gen-X sense of irony in an age of political strife with a surprising deftness (at least in the first couple of issues of the new series).

But then you get to see Buddy and Stinky's first adventure together, and it's weird and fucked up and a little sad, because it's clear that fuckin' Leonard never stood a chance.

Stinky died years ago, and you'll never know if it was a suicide or stupidity, but it still has echoes down the years. It always felt like Buddy was always reacting to Stinky's death with exasperation, and never had the chance to properly mourn his shithead of a pal. It's genuinely pleasing to see him finally tell Lisa, who is just as wonderfully messed up as ever, because if he can't tell her, who could he ever trust?

We all know somebody like Stinky, just too wild to ever grow old, and we can miss them forever, even as they stay young in our memories.

Fucking Stinky, man.

A particularly American gut ache

I got the second worst food poisoning of my life the day they held the 2000 US election. It was some dodgy Burger King, and I was so sick I couldn't really sleep, and could only fade in and out of consciousness, while American news networks breathlessly covered the race between Gore and Bush for the White House.

There was, of course, no result that night, except in my fevered dreams, where I'm sure they announced at one point that the cookie Monster had won Ohio.

And to be honest, looking at the state of US politics over the past quarter century since, where the worst impulses of the American electorate have grown to grotesque and deeply embarrassing proportions, I'm not convinced that fever dream ever ended.

The worst food poisoning I ever had was from some KFC, the night before my big High School science exam. I got a B+, which was pretty good, when I was so queasy I couldn't read the words, but I didn't eat at the Colonel's for five years after that, and then I've been a fiend for it ever since. But the fate of the fucking free world wasn't at stake that night.

Always something new to say about the galaxy's greatest comic

If Tom Ewing's in-depth look at the entirety of Cerebus The Aardvark was right in my wheelhouse, and helped reassure me that there was still some excellent long-form writing about comics out there, his latest series about the earliest days of 2000ad is even more on target.

You can find it on Tom's site here. There's only a couple of entries so far, but I highly recommend it, with Tom finding new things to say about the oldest stories in the galaxy's greatest comic (the discussion of the Volgan War being more open-ended than the real-life conflicts other comic strips were based on is particularly astute, especially as Pat Mills has gone back and turned the Volgan War into the first real forever war, with a clear through-line through to the ABC Warriors and Nemesis The Warlock).

A lot of words have been written about the impact of 2000ad on comics and culture, but after 2400-odd progs, there is always more to say. It helps that Tom's stuff is so sharp, and well worth the effort.

RIP, my King!