This is already starting to spread like wildfire but is worth posting again in case anyone has not seen it. Proof once again that the Muppets are one of man's greatest achievements. Nicked in this instance from cath by the way.

Edward Woodward has passed away. Big shame, a very great but often under-rated actor whop will be sadly missed.

And of course the subject of one of the funniest but most pointless jokes ever:

Why does Edward Woodward have 4 Ds in his name?
Because if he didn't he'd be Ewar Woowar.

If'n you're not watching Miranda on BBC2 (the TV continuation of Miranda Hart's Joke Shop on Radio 4) then you very much must. Miranda Hart is awesomely funny, Patricia Hodge (such fun!) steals all her scenes and Tom Ellis is just hotness on legs.

Is it worth staying for the Saturday night in the bar at Leeds, and if so which is the hotel to be at? I'm still not sure if I'm just going to get the late train back at the end of the day or if it's worth 'networking' (ahem) in the evening too.

 You know, I still get quite emotional listening to and watching stuff about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 13 when it came down but it's absolutely burned in my memory as an absolutely pivotal moment in time. Going to Berlin a couple of years ago and seeing what remains of it made it even more real, but speaking to Chris' cousins' girlfriend, who was born in East Germany and remembers the Wall coming down and the complete bemusement that it engendered but the changes that it bought eventually, really brought home how important it was.

It's bizarre to think there are people who have been old enough to vote for two years who weren't even born when it came down, but in a way that's good. It shows that something like the Wall, and all it stood for and meant, can be destroyed and lives changed for the better for ever. The Berlin Wall, wrong as it was, wasn't the greatest injustice in the world or the worst crime against humanity ever but the best thing about it is what the fall of the wall meant and means to this day. It shows that change can and does happen. 

This made me and Chris almost die laughing. It's incredibly puerile but good lordy lord it's funny.

The cheesecake/beefcake idea is percolating in my brain merrily at the moment so today in spare moments of small child wrangling I've done a few sketches to work out ideas. The problem I'm having is that while I want them to have that same kind of coy sex that proper cheesecake pictures have I also don't want them to be too gay (they're going to be pretty gay no matter what i do though. After all, it is me drawing them...). I think I may have to avoid the dog lead getting wrapped round the legs staple since I've seen at least a couple of versions of that with a man instead of a woman so I don't want to do the same thing again. I also want to avoid having any kind of drag or cross dressing, so any kind of stockings image is out (although i think I might do the caught in the changing room idea with sock suspenders). I may, if I can it to work properly, do some kind of burlesque one though.

Anyways, the three I have now (and excuse the whacked up contrast but it's the only way you can see the pencil lines in the photos properly. It does mean you can see the picture underneath too. Heh.) are the Beefcake Bunny:



The Boudiour (how the hell do you spell that?) Beefcake with shaving replacing the usual make-up/powder puff/dressing table (but with small dog naturally)



And the Breaking Belt Beefcake (with obligatory shopping preventing him holding up his improbable short malfunction. It'll have plums and nuts and, obviously, celery). This one means I can have the woman watching amusedly as well.



So any thoughts? They're all pretty rough and there's some hideously shocking anatomy going on in places, but I quite like the basic ideas.

OK, quick question, what are the conventions of cheesecake art? I'm thinking more the 40s pin-up cheesecake and the modern versions thereof rather than superheroine cheesecake or Page 3 semi-porn. Things like the naughty school girl or the army girl or the dropped towel. The sexy, but not sexually explicit side of things really. 

At the moment Chris is sort of getting into his history (through historical fiction) and I'm thinking about getting him a book about it for Christmas as he keeps asking me questions since clearly I am the fount of all knowledge (an awful lot of people seem to assume this and don't notice the fact that what i actually am is very good at sounding like I've given them an answer without actually saying anything concrete at all). Anyways, since I know I've got a well read lot reading my journal, does anyone have any recommendations for history books about either Richard III and/or the Princes In The Tower, Henry VIII generally or his wives specifically, or even a good account of the York/Lancaster or Tudor/Stuart histories? Really with things like the Princes I don't want books that say 'aha, I have solved the mystery and this is exactly what happened I am a History God' because we're never going to know what actually happened and if definitive proof hasn't been found before now it never will be, but books that present all the evidence and then draw a conclusion from it without it claiming to be the absolute truth I'm fine with. Chris doesn't mind things that are pretty complex, but a lot of history books in my experience are so dry and dull that they're impossible to actually read and enjoy in anything other than a purely academic way.

In a way I'm thinking of the adult equivalent of the Horrible Histories series, if you see what I mean. The actual history and facts and analysis but also a fun read.

So, anyone got any ideas?

I'm really rather pleased with this. Riddler is great fun to draw, and I like the slightly more Edwardian dapper gent look than I would normally go for. I've decided on no background for this one though because I couldn't get one that I actually liked.

Right, Scarecrow finished now as well. This photo really isn't terribly colour true, but it's not horrendous. I did have a bit of trouble with the colours though since, as previously mentioned, of all things, Scarecrow is mostly brown. As was most of the rest of the picture. So it's a very brown picture with some blue bits. I'm also not sure that the red moon was the best decision, but it's too late now. I'm now debating whether i do a drawing of Riddler (and then maybe Catwoman to complete the main Batman villains set) or do something completely different.

Jolly good, guest pass sorted as I'm taking part in Crisis Of Infinite Crayons at the end of the day on Saturday. Still need to work out if I'm going to stay over or not, but the City Inn (the recommended hotel according to the website) is coming up at £69 a night  so unless I can make a bit of extra cash from another commission or two I think I might just get a late-ish train back from Leeds that night.

We went to see Tom Jones in concert last night and he was *awesome*. I mean, genuinely amazing. His voice is even more powerful live than on a recording and he's just got the kind of wit and charm that everyone would wish for. He's clearly a born performer and even if he is getting on a little in years now it's not dimmed his talents in the slightest. 

It was interesting that he wasn't resting on his laurels at all, in that most of the songs he did were from 24 Hours or Reload, and is still very much in a working and developing career. That said he did do the classics as you'd expect, Thunderball, Help Yourself To My Lips, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Green Green Grass Of Home, Kiss and the like. And let me tell you, there's nothing like singing along to Delilah with Tom Jones and about fifteen thousand other people.

Utterly awesome night all in all, and someone that I would wholeheartedly recommend you go and see if you get the chance. You'll find it very hard not to have a completely brilliant time. :)

I'm rather pleased with the way Scarecrow turned out. The challenge with the colour version is going to be making it so that even though it's mostly shades of brown (and blue for the clouds) it doesn't look flat or dull.

Finished off Two-Face last night and am now working on Scarecrow. I will have the entire Batman Rogues Gallery done by the end of this month at this rate...

 

 The wind must be blowing our way the last few days because we're suddenly being invaded by ladybirds. When I say 'invaded' I mean there are like ten or so of them on our french windows at the moment and a noticable few on the walls, not absolutely millions of the buggers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets that way. I know it's been a good year for them but if the wind is blowing fairly consistently one way they tend to get swept along by it so you get them all piling up in one place. Second year of uni I lived in a basement flat and Aberystwyth was hit by a serious swarm of ladybirds to the point where we could barely get out of the flat because the steps were just carpeted in ladybirds. They're very pretty little beetles and obviously something good to have in the garden, but not to that degree. When the floor is red with black spots and impossible to walk on then it's not so good.

Callum thinks they're awesome though. I think he's especially pleased by the fact that they're all different types of ladybird too. I've not seen any yellow ones yet, but even though they're just the red and black ones there are everything from two to twenty spot and the black ones with reds spots and the ones that are almost totally black. It's all very nice. I may not say the same thing when they are blocking the light from the windows though... 

As I'm going to be doing Ade's new panel game at the end of the day at Thought Bubble I'm debating whether to stay over that night and go home on Sunday or to get the train back on Saturday night. Question is, is it worth staying on the Saturday night and if so which is the best hotel to go for? Coming back home on Saturday isn't really a problem since it's only an hour on the train and they're very frequent from Leeds to Manchester, but if there are likely to be a lot of people around who I'll not see till Bristol and it's likely to be a good night then I'll stay over.

President Obama Wins The Nobel Peace Prize - No-One Seems Quite Sure Why. Film At 10.

Now, it's no secret that I am not one of the people that think Obama is the best thing to have ever happened in the whole world ever and think the fact that he's A) the first non-white President of the US and B) not Shrub is not enough reason to proclaim him the saviour of us all, but it seems that no-one, from his greatest supporters to his biggest nay-sayers can actually understand why he's been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently it's because of "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples", which is all very nice but to my mind smacks of them saying "aww go on, he's dead nice and talks to everyone and hasn't actually started any illegal wars yet and, you know, he's now Shrub". It doesn't mean anything and since he hasn't actually done anything tangible yet with regards to world peace I fail to see how he deserves the Nobel Prize. Granted he has more chance of creating World Peace that a beauty queen but I bet they look better in the bikini and sash.

So, yes, it's not one of those awards that makes you think 'how the hell do they justify that?' but it is one tnhat makes you think 'really? Was there *really* no-one else more deserving who has actually done something?'.

Goodness, there's an awful lot of 'actually's in that post aren't there?

 budgie_uk  just posted about the rather wonderful closing scene in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and the fact that Spencer Tracy died almost straight after filming was complete. The fact that he's sharing the scene with Katherine Hepburn, who knew he was dying, makes the scene even more powerful than it already is and it got me thinking about things like that, real life that adds something to a film in a way that just makes the whole even more than it would be otherwise.

The one other film that really springs to mind that that's true of is The Misfits. Now, The Misfits is far from a perfect film. Marilyn sleepwalks through much of it, Gable is clearly slaughtered half the time and the trouble on set shows in some of the film. When it's good though, it's brilliant. You have a film about a group of angry, damaged people trying to find their place in the world being acted by... a group of angry, damaged people trying to find their place in the world. Apart from Bus Stop (a much better film, although that's not to say The Misfits isn't well worth watching if you've not seen it) it's the best straight acting that Marilyn did and showed quite how good she could have been if she hadn't been typecast as the comedy blonde (which she did brilliantly, but that's not the point) and hadn't let people tell her what to do so much and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that she's clearly putting so much of herself into it. The moment at the end of this clip with her in long shot screaming at the world just strikes me as being her, the actress, doing the same thing. 

Unfortunately it was the last completed film of both Monroe and Gable. Gable actually had a heart attack two days after shooting finished and died ten days later, a heart attack almost certainly induced because he insisted on doing his own stunts despite not being a well man already, and Marilyn committed suicide a year and a half later. Even during filming she had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital and had previously attempted to take her own life. Add to that the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller (who write the screenplay for The Misfits) at the same time and you can understand why the anger and the hurt in her voice are there to such a large extent. 

Like I say, it may not be a perfect film and may not be the best final roles that an actor could have wished for, but in it's own way it's fitting finale for two such messed up people as Monroe and Gable (Montgomery Clift, the other major role, died four years later as well but had a few other roles afterwards so this isn't his last film as a lot of people think. Freud, Judgement At Nuremberg and The Defector all followed The Misfits).



Hmm, now mentioning Judgement At Nuremberg makes me want to go and watch that as well. A truly remarkable piece of cinema with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift all absolutely delivering some of the best performances of their respective careers. William Shatner is in it too...

Inked drawing of Two-Face, yet to be coloured (um.... obviously). From blank page to this in maybe three hours, possibly a bit less. I'm not sure how quickly I'll get round to colouring it as I have a commission to do first (yay!)