Fat Pigeons

When I was a young boy, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, and my great aunt. Mum and Dad both worked, so my brother and myself were looked after by Nanna, Poppa and Auntie Ann quite a lot of the time.

They put you in a big white sheet,
and tuck the corners in nice and neat.
Oh-oh-oh-oh, where will we be in a hundred years from now?

Auntie Ann would sometimes sing me a song. About how the world was evanescent and fleeting, and how in the end all things must die. This isn’t the song that any parent would sing to their children. There are some truths that are told by others.

They put you in a big brown box,
and cover you under six feet of rocks.
Oh-oh-oh-oh, where will we be in a hundred years from now?

Last night over dinner I was telling my girlfriend about this. She’s from Texas. It turns out that it was sung in the playground there when she was growing up; she was taught it by her schoolmates.

The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out,
they crawl in thin and they crawl out stout.
Oh-oh-oh-oh, where will we be in a hundred years from now?

And children across the world will be singing this song to each other long after I’m gone to dust. Because there are some songs that you can’t be sung by your parents, but that have to be learned by us all.

…as Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis square off in the battle of the century.

It’s the children I feel sorry for.

For all those poor superheroes with Wonder Woman’s problem – a list of comics featuring female superheroes in bondage.

And cover scans.

There are three apprenticeships available at Working Title this year. 12 months working for one of the big names in the British film industry, and a 12k bursary to boot.

The deadline’s on the 22nd of February. Get applying. I will be.

Warren Ellis has created and written some of the best comic series ever.

Planetary. Transmetropolitan. The Authority. For just three off the top of my head.

Indeed, like The Mighty Stephen Hawking, he is fully deserving of the Mighty appelation. But what is it that makes someone worthy of that title? I think we can all agree that Stephen is a Mighty Power, but what makes him so?

Well, it can’t be just talent. John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey is a great writer, but The Mighty John Rogers? Not yet. Maybe in a few years.

The Mighty Stephen King – yep.
The Mighty James Cameron – yep.
The Mighty Steven Spielberg – absolutely.

(But not The Mighty Uwe Boll. Or The Mighty William Shatner.)

The way I see it, it’s a mixture of three things.

A huge talent, expressed over many years, on many different projects.

So yes, for his work on science (I think we can leave out the excursions into Gangsta Rap which started me on this train of thought in the first place) The Mighty Stephen Hawking. And for his work on comics, The Mighty Warren Ellis.

Any more?

If you’ve spent any time on the West Coast, you’ll know In-N-Out. A burger chain that only exists in the states of Nevada, California, and Arizona.

You can recognise them by the bright red plastic tops and the bright yellow arrow by the signage that just screams “Whooosh! Burger!”

All of which is really just by way of setting the stage.

There are four items – no more, no less – on the In-N-Out menu: Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Double-Double (two patties, two cheese) and French Fries. All cooked from fresh, and to order.

But in addition to those, In-n-Out offers a Secret Menu. The cashiers know about it, it’s coded into the registers, but it’s not mentioned in the restaurants.

Among the secret options are five-by-eights (five patties, eight cheese), protein style (comes in lettuce instead of a bun), or the mysterious Flying Dutchman (I’m not going to say, it’s just too weird).

Sh. Don’t tell anyone.

It’s a secret.

Here, a look at the evolution of games controllers.

And here, check out 25 British Design Icons. And then vote on which one you think is the iconiest.

It’s a tough call – there are some beautiful, functional designs in there, but I managed to choose one eventually.

But really – the World Wide Web as an item? For fuck’s sake people – that is not a design in any possible sense of the word. It’s an infrastructure. Did they need to make up the numbers or something?

Yesterday was a good day.

I finished Draft Zero of my first feature, and my membership card arrived from the Writers Guild.

I feel all warm and professional inside.

But the arrival of my slightly sticky so-cheap-it’s-made-of-waxed-paper membership card does make me wonder.

The Writers Guild of Great Britain was formed in 1958. That’s a fair while back. And while it’s true that unlike the WGA you’re not required to be a member to make a living in the world of TV and Film, having only 5,626 other members join in the last forty-odd years seems awfully low.

And then consider that of those who’ve joined since it started, a great deal of those people must have died. Or let their membership lapse. Or both. Then suddenly that’s not a lot of Guild Members any more.

There must be more writers in the UK than have joined up. If so, what are they doing about things like, ooh, legal advice? Going through the small print in their contracts? Pensions?

I don’t want to die in penury. And a hundred and fifty quid a year (plus change should I earn more than 15 grand) seems like a good investment to make in things like collective bargaining and newsletters and a chance to meet up with other professionals and having an organisation that’s looking out for writers.

Not to mention the fact that when I sell something to the US it’ll save me twenty five hundred bucks joining the WGA.

Cheap at the price.

How did I miss this?

Beautiful star of screen and magazine Ms Bettie Page is about to have a biopic of her very own. Trailer here.

Some of Bettie’s greatest tease films can be bought at a very reasonable price from Amazon.

May I recommend sticking them on in the background and playing hardcore techno?

Marvellous.

So Danny has been talking about getting into a routine.

Routines are good. Routines help. Without a routine, you’re never going to make money from your writing.

Thing is, any bugger can pretend to be a writer by waiting for the muse to strike. I firmly believe that everyone has a novel (or script, or epic poem) in them – and that very few people have two.

Melpomene or Calliope will see you through one. More than that, you have to do it on your own.

So a routine will help you finish something. But how the hell do you get into a routine?

Well, that’ll be a deadline. Some people can set their own deadlines. Me, I find self-set deadlines all to easy to ignore. I need someone to compete against.

(Not necessarily to win against. I mean, I *like* to win, but I’ll settle for a good fight well-fought any day of the week. I think that comes from having a brother.)

So at the end of November, William and I got into a pissing contest.

One first draft of a brand-new film screenplay, from scratch, in exactly two months. And when I say brand-new, that means that you can’t have written down *anything* about the project before.

Not even an aide-memoire.

Your pen hits the paper on or after the first day of month one, and you deliver a finished draft by midnight on the last day of month two.

I’ve got five days left, and I’m almost done. I spent the first month plotting and outlining, and this month I’ve been doing four pages a day after I get home from work. Takes about two hours.

And a lot of it’s rubbish and I know that. But by the 31st the hard work will be over – that of having something to work with, a rough form out of the marble, a shape that I can work with.

All due to just sitting down and chipping away at it, one day at a time.