The Mystery of Hamboning - Cartoons nowadays

As someone born in the ‘olden tymes’ (my daughter’s words) there is especially as I hurtle towards the big 40 a lot of talk about the good old days. I’ve seen a lot of this recently on my social media about remembering when you could go down the road and you wouldn't get kidnapped, you could play all day and no-one was worried, cola cubes cost 5p, dogshit on the pavement turned white with age and how wunnerful it was back then. Cue Hovis music…

Which is all well and good I suppose but very flawed. Firstly, I have a background in Criminology and one of the many intriguing things you learn is that there is always the ‘Golden Era’ this hallowed time where things were beautiful and wonderful and not like the terrors of the modern day. Evidence will show for example that the murder rate in the UK was higher in the 1970’s than it is now. Don’t believe me? Look it up. But I digress. My reason for this week’s rant is not a treatise on the rates of criminal activity between 1970 and 2015 but to talk about cartoons…

I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid, I also had the fortune to travel quite a bit so I watched a lot of TV on very different continents. So intertwined amidst Jamie and the Magic Torch was Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Fat Albert, Galaxy High, Battle of the Planets to name a few which did eventually end up being broadcast in the UK. It’s easy with the mutation of Nickelodeon 2.0 which is less on the slime and more on the OMG-YOLO-HASTAG-over privileged idiots who clearly are in need of a Taser and a reality check to bemoan the loss of good cartoons. Before I get lost in the nostalgia of it all, I can fully admit the flaws in some of my viewing.

Jamie and the Magic torch…..erm clearly this child was sniffing glue. Dogtanian and the Muskehounds…not exactly the best animation in the world. Dungeons and Dragons..I loved it but that fucking unicorn should have ended his days over the barbecue on many occasion and as for that bell end Dungeon Master, don’t get me started. Jem….wait back the hell off Jem if you know what’s good for you! I may not have been the most pink laden girly girl but Jem is my one concession. I suspect it’s the amalgamation of all of my girliness in one place with a thumping soundtrack about how you play the game. If you value your life, let’s not discuss the remake. So I am very aware that not all of the cartoons of my youth were awesome, sometimes it’s that very thing that means they hold a place in my heart. I was recently shocked though by the amazing talent of 3 recent shows that counter all of the awful Wizards of Douchebag Hole or whatever it’s called.

One is a series that follows a Cat married to a rabbit with 2 kids and the household goldfish that grows legs, starts talking and becomes a member of the family. The other follows a boy and his dog best friend who has magical powers and live in a post-apocalyptic land with their friends and get up to  any and everything. The last is about a blue jay and a raccoon that live and work at a park.

The Amazing World of Gumball, Adventure Time and The Regular Show are that saviours of modern kids cartoons.

While I could sit here for hours and probably deliver a mammoth treatise on the awesomeness of The Amazing world of Gumball (see episodes ‘The Game’ ‘The Words’ and ‘The Boss’) the sheer madcap surreal nature of Adventure Time, (See episodes ‘Tree Trunks’ ‘It came from the Nightosphere’ and ‘What was Missing’) which in my opinion is up there with Monty Python and The Mighty Boosh, I must expand upon The Regular Show.

I cannot remember which episode I watched first, what strikes me is that I watched a kids show on the Cartoon Network which happily referenced and ripped films like House, Kickboxer, Over The Top, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and a myriad of other films and shows from my childhood (The episode ‘Ello Guv’nor as a British person is a particular delight!). Any show which features Mark Hamil voice acting, gets an instant five points as standard but the more I watched the show, the more I realised what it was that defined it as great. Mordecai and Rigby, at first glance are just as their boss Benson tells them, slackers. They are 23 and find inventive ways to do as little as possible in their jobs as groundskeepers. They are assisted by Muscle Man, High Five Ghost, Pops and Skips. Hilarity ensures but the thing that I love is that there is more beneath the surface. Over the course of 6 seasons and counting we learn about friendship, sometimes we have to do go above and beyond for our friends as they would for us, that life can be tough, you don’t always get what you want. You have to grow up but that doesn’t mean that you have to give up and not have fun. About moving on from heartache to something potentially better. That some rules are stupid and some important. That just because someone is on TV doesn’t make them cool or nice. To be accountable for your actions, even if you didn’t have the wit to see how bad things could get. Most importantly we also learn that hamboning will save our lives. Someday.

This is one of the things about Regular Show that means it is very close to my heart. The death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie in 1986 was a valuable lesson. It taught me that life was not always neatly wrapped up in 21 minutes, heroes could die and unforeseen circumstances bring out the best in us all. Sometimes we have to work with the people we wouldn’t normally piss on if they were on fire to achieve the best outcome.

While watching shows with my daughter when she was slightly younger and which ultimately culminated in a ban of Nickelodeon, I realised quite quickly that I couldn’t figure out the messages from some of these programmes. The children were whiny and often to my mind, spoiled and rude. They were condescending and truculent to anyone above the age of 14 and the parents or adult figures in them were objects of ridicule, often trying to be down with the kids as the canned laughter highlights their stupidity. I am in no way saying that some of this was not present in some of the shows and cartoons of my era, Scooby Doo is the perfect example of the pesky kids putting the adults to shame but say in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, there was a limit, there was a place that Will could not go with Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv and if he did so, they were quick to shove that toe back across the line. In fact the last show I remember to get the semblance of this right was My Wife and Kids starring Damon Wayans. 

Benson in The Regular Show is the authority figure, stressed and frustrated by the efforts of Mordecai and Rigby to do fuck all, but there is a reason behind it, there is something he is trying to teach them and there are times when he gets it wrong. I love that one of the oldest characters in the show Pops is just so sweet. He quite literally spends his time sniffing the roses and having fun but don’t let that fool you, Pops can be a bad ass when he want to be. It teaches kids not to dismiss someone because they are or seem old, that age is no barrier to fun.

The more I watched this show and bonded with my daughter over it, the more I appreciated it. I have shown episodes to friends who despite their initial trepidation have been in hysterics by the end, sometimes even unnerved (Terror Tales of the Park l ll and lll spring to mind). I applaud it and the other shows I have mentioned. It’s not beating you over the head with the moral message like He-Man but casually feeding a nugget of something useful to you while defeating a giant head for the universal record in Broken Bonez.

It gives me a warm feeling not to decry that all hope is lost and cartoons were so much better in muy day, but to give a tip of the cap to the folks whose surreal and crazy imaginations meant I could enjoy some fantastic television with my daughter. So thanks J.G Quintel, Pendleton Ward, Ben Bocquelet and all the amazing folks bringing such great TV to life. WWHHHOOOOAAAAAA!

I Swear By My Pretty Floral Bonnet, I Will End You..

When I revamped and started writing this blog, I promised myself that this time I would not be overly concerned with sticking to one subject. I did myself a complete disservice by trying to keep my last blog strictly craft and food. Now that hasn’t disappeared and I have a few ideas on some craft and food ideas that I want to share, but I found the scope was just too limited. I feel better in writing from wherever and whatever feels best, so from Gaming to Geekdom, comics, food, craft, movies and all stops in between, I endeavour to put write about what feels good and maybe sometimes what doesn’t. That can only be a good thing.

So San Diego Comic Con has come to a close this week….and once again I feel wretched for not being there but at least this time as the doors close, I feel a glimmer of hope that I could actually get there in years to come. This initially started life as a way to vent the frustrations of being a woman who geeks, my annoyances and a list on all the things that suck and really get on my last nerve. But I have to say that maybe it’s the strange London heatwave mixed with some of the instagrams I have seen from #SDCC.

Maybe it’s Seth Green and Nathan Fillion and a brilliant Venture Brothers cosplay that I saw. Whatever it is, I just don’t have that vitriol in me right now…at least not this time.

Instead I find myself feeling hopeful and I am fully prepared to admit that this is purely down to seeing a poster of the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past movie, but I want to take the time to say a word of thanks.

Being a geek in whatever form that may take is a freedom. If you spent a lot of time in childhood and adolescence feeling like everything around you resembles a shoe that is 2 sizes too small, then climbing the mountain, getting to the cave and seeing someone huddled by the fire who just happens to hum the Firefly theme fills you up.

It still happens to me. I am 35 and when I meet someone who likes a selection of the things that I love, from the on-again-off-again of Katchoo and Francine to the mayhem of Preacher, it still feels like hot tea on a freezing cold day. In a world of folks going on about North West Kardash, it feels good to roll your eyes and look to see someone else thinking, “Wouldn’t you just kill for a Firefly rerun right now?”

We know that there are people out there who just don’t like women identifying themselves as Geeks. They think we are playing at it or just have seen Big Bang Theory too often. When you get to the professional level, there are still those that think we do not have enough to say or that for some reason, as eloquently pointed out by Joss Whedon a few months back when I saw him, Men are not interested in what women have to put on screen or in a comic, but then expect the same women to be interested in what men have to say and do. We know this. But sometimes I feel that in focussing on this, we miss the opportunity to say Thank you.

Thank you to those comic shop owners and workers who do what they can to make sure that a raft of people don’t feel even more awkward and ostracized. I know that I can cynically say that, of course it’s in that person’s interest to engage me as I have greasy pounds in my pocket that they want. However, I have walked into shops where the dipshit behind the counter couldn’t give a rat’s arse if I had £1,000 to spend, as far as he was concerned, “What do you want? We don’t sell Look-in!” or “The Archie comics are over there” without as much as a look up from the greasy pages of Fangoria. Luckily I found another shop that was more than happy to let me know what happened when Hardcase and the Harriers met the X-Men and in a twist of fate the other shop went out of business. Unfortunately, a few years later so did the nice one. So thank you, for every dumb bloody question you have to endure and every really ridiculous request, thank you…..you guys deserve a medal and a ceremony, a bit like the end of A New Hope would suffice.

 

A big thanks to the people who didn’t assume that on the way to finding the shoe shop, I just happened to walk into a comic shop and proceeded to while away the hours getting into a very heated discussion as to the wonders of Top 10 and Fables.

How clichéd is it to wheel out the old ‘With great power comes yadda yadda” but the clichés have this annoying thing of being true a lot of the time and I am aware of that more and more with younger folks around me. When I see them in shops, I do my best not to write them off as a collection of Lumpy Space Princesses. I do what I can, if the opportunity presents itself to show them to something different….try a little Authority perhaps, maybe in a few years you’ll be ready for Preacher and then there’s My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer…..

It is an odd and liberating thing to give yourself the geek title. It means so many different things to so many different corners of the world. Embrace and disdain go hand in hand because from that point on, the world and your place in it is changed. I guess that’s my two pence, a word of thanks to all of those out there combined with a word to visit a comic shop when you can. Ok it can be a bit strange and I cannot guarantee things won’t get a little odd before you leave, but I promise you, by my pretty floral bonnet, it really is worth a look see.

 

Now for that drink

Rampancy Cocktail – Courtesy of Clint Slowik

Ingredients

1 part Chambord
½ part Grenadine
2 parts Alize Wild Passion or Gold Passion
2 parts UV Pink Lemonade Vodka
1 splash Aftershock
Raspberry Ginger Ale (UK: methinks here add some fresh raspberries and ginger ale)
2       drops of red food colouring

Directions:

‒       Pour Chambord followed by Grenadine over ice in a hi-ball glass.

‒       Float the Alize then the UV pink vodka and lightly pour the Ginger Ale to fill the glass (adding the raspberries for the UK folks)

‒       Finally add the Aftershock and the drops of food colour

‒       Proceed to lapse into Rampancy

 

What The Fluxx! - Inconceivable

I realise that with each word I type, how much I have missed writing.  Far too many things and people were allowed to get in the way of the things that I wanted to do but mainly, sorry to go all Yoda, I was afraid, so afraid of completely sucking that stopped me from taking the plunge.

Eventually I began to face these fears and then, one day I watched the most excellent Adventure Time with my daughter and Jake said:

So inspired by Jake the Dog and Finn the Human and buoyed by my recent promise to myself to do more all the time, here I am. And here is Tabletop…

My brother is an awesome dude, when he was a kid he was a pustule on my right buttock but as he has matured in age he has become not only a great brother but a best friend. Usually when he introduces something new to the mix, I tend to listen. He knows me enough to know what I would like and hate and so when he wanted me to try some ‘Tabletop’ I paid attention as he showed me the Will Wheaton’s series.

He did the best thing as he knows I have a little geeky love for the Wil not- only-formerly-known-as-Wil-Crusher but for his work on Stand by me and The Big Bang aka my real life but not half as funny and I am not Penny or Amy. As much as I am a huge geek, I had my own ideas about Dungeons and Dragons and the whole Tabletop thing. I’ll be absolutely honest, a part of me was like, “Seriously…..errr D&D….really” Tabletop to me meant D&D, and for me was a game that some folks took waaaayyy too seriously. It tended to end up with someone killing some other players parents whilst rolling for Initiative or whatever, combined with strange dice and the inevitable harassed neighbour who says that they were very quiet kids until that unfortunate business and, oh look movie of the week etc. So a little bit of media induced baggage then?

Bruv did the best thing…he ensured that I watched the Gloom episode of Tabletop which just happened to feature Amber Benson (Tara from Buffy…..how is this woman not aging?) and I watched as the game unfolded. He allowed me no time to dismiss anything. Any preconceived ideas I had, pretty much evaporated in a few minutes of watching.

Gloom is a tabletop game where each player has a family of 5 and the aim of the game is to spin a tale to degrade their self-worth, aided by cards in the deck and then shuffle them off the mortal coil. Opposing players will do their best to boost your families’ self-worth and fend off the despair that you keep piling on. That’s essentially it. It struck me because, I love a good yarn and this was an opportunity to work out those muscles and tell a twisted tale driving a character to a Carrie White like demise.  I was initially a bit nervous about it but eventually we mastered Gloom, Fluxx & Pandemic.

In the heady euphoria, he decided to expand and take this out to a wider audience and with a little help from myself, we had our first Tabletop event on 30^th June in a pub in the heart of London. Dare I say that mighty fun was had by all, 11 of us all together, including the wonderfully talented GreatEscapist  who can really spin a debauched tale or 2. There were times when I am sure that the pub in question regretted allowing us to play with shouts of “NerfHeader!!”,”Is that the Zombie Syphilis strain taking out Chicago?” “I f*&kin knew it was HIM!” and of course, “We’re all dead!” The best thing was the way that after some initial reluctance, everyone had a damn good time and no-one was harmed…much…a few came very close to having cards shoved where the sun shineth not but the outcome was a hunger for more.

So here we are, planning more events like this and thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the meantime. If anything, I wonder why the hell I didn’t give this a go a long time ago. In honour of Tabletop, today’s recipe is a dedication to the 30^th June, courtesy of the awesome folks at the The Drunken Moogle. I have no affiliation with them but by God if I did….well this would probably be a blog about my descent into drunken debauchery…hmmmm I wonder???

Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Magic: The Gathering cocktail - Courtesy of The Drunken Moogle

Ingredients:

½ oz. Hpnotiq

1 oz. Blue Curacao

½ oz. Bacardi 151 (or any overproof rum)

1 oz. Sweet & Sour

Orange peel

Directions: Add ice and water to a Martini glass to chill the glass. Add all ingredients to a mixer glass with ice and stir well. Dump the ice out of the Martini glass and strain the drink into it and garnish with an orange peel.

Note: This is the 2^nd blog of mine that features booze….but then again this blog is called Lock in at The Bronze!