cake in milk

On unassigned assignment again for Den of Geek I was interviewing today Dan Antopolski (of Sandwich Rap fame) at his house in Brixton. He was in a bit of an Edinburgh hurry, with Avalon taking bags out of his house to a van to transport them up as I arrived.

As it was a pleasant day we decided to do the interview in his massive garden. Waiting for Jo from Avalon PR, we discussed his rap over pasta and drinks. Sometimes I think I have a great job, but then I remember that it’s unpaid.

After the interview had concluded I headed back to Brixton tube with Jo. We had a chat about Edinburgh, the recent Richard Herring/Brian Logan incident and then she offered me tickets to all of Avalon’s Edinburgh shows. I realised that as well as meeting people I think are great there are additional perks to this unpaid job, so I’ve started thinking it’s great again. Apart from the transcribing bit.

Technorati Tags: dan antopolski, den of geek, pasta

Tuesday

For the first morning all week we woke up before the kids. Kwan, a teaching assistant in Leicestershire, returned from the boys’ bedroom to report that he’d found Kieran asleep on the floor in his dressing gown with a purple pen in his hand. He’d spent the majority of the night drawing on his roommates’ faces.

This had been after the late night karaoke disco the night before; an end of week treat for the kids where they had the pleasure of the Volunteers singing Greased Lightening, Everything I Do (I Do it for You), and assorted other “hits”. It recreated exactly the school disco atmosphere and Chris and I took it in turns to fetch rounds of orange squash for the rest of the Volunteers. The evening had ended with everyone in a circle holding hands singing Queen’s We Are the Champions. Kieran had handed Nate a note written from Brandon to Tanika proclaiming his love and adding that she was “a sexy bitch.” The letter had a handy check box postscript she could fill in to indicate whether or not she would go out with him.

There was a mixture of emotions while we sat in the lounge after breakfast receiving goody bags with CHICKS memorabilia and assorted toys and sweets. As everyone said their goodbyes and tears were shed, Brandon was sat pouring his sherbet out onto a table, carefully cutting lines with his finger.

On the drive back to the train station, the children were quiet and quite sombre for perhaps the first time during the week. The only interruption was the unintended innuendo from Hayley reminding Charlie to keep his stuffed toy he’d purchased at Crealy inside the vehicle “Don’t dangle your snake out of the window, it’ll get soggy, won’t it?” “Keep your snake in, Charlie. You don’t want to get it caught on anything,” then seconds later “Don’t hit Adam with it either.”

I was tired but enthused on reaching Exeter St. David’s. The week had been really rewarding and I’d enjoyed myself. We weren’t given extensive background information on any the kids and I think that’s a wise decision; we don’t want to go in prejudiced or making snap decisions about any of them but of course they’d tell us things sometimes, aspects of their lives. Sure, some of them would be obvious outrageous lies, but occasionally you’d get the mildest glimpse of what they’ve been through and it would never fail to shock me.

Vicky told us that one of the most painful things is with the kids who attend CHICKS year after year because, although it’s great seeing them each time, it means their situation at home either isn’t improving at all, or isn’t improving enough. I’m not egotistical enough to think for a single moment that on my own I’ve made a difference to any of these kids’ lives, but I’m very happy with what I have done to help and I wish I could do more.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids

Monday

We headed out to the field after breakfast, Kieran intent on wearing his dressing gown all day again. There was a something a bit One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest about Kieran; he’d been identified by Vicky and Nate as having serious anger issues, and not like Michael, who’d began to tear stuffed dog toys limb from limb proclaiming he preferred cats. The Supervisors had been attempting to give him cool down time when he became angry rather than a stern talking to. As well as this they’d offered Kieran lots of praise. I think they were surprised that when they did this, he became really quite emotional and begin to cry.

Team games in the morning brought out the competitive side amongst the male Volunteers. This culminated in a neck-and-neck race between Chris, a former boat builder and Lloyd, volunteering as part of his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award. Lloyd was slightly ahead and he slid home past the cone, confident in his win. His self-congratulatory expression swiftly changed as he realised he was skidding uncontrollably into Anna, a girl of 9. She was wailing loudly as her teammates rushed to her assistance, but I overheard April, a ten year old veteran of a previous CHICKS camp whispering to Anna, “I’ll lend you 40p to call ChildLine.” I chose not to clarify that it was a Freephone number.

Then it was off to horse riding at local stables, where a crazy lady named Sally sang at children on uncommitted horses that the Volunteers were forced to drag around a large field in wellies. My thighs were already beginning to ache from a spacehopper race earlier in the day, and this wasn’t helping.

Added to this, sat on the horse I was leading was Kieran.

“Come on, Kieran, you suave, sophisticated young man! You can do it!” Sally shouted, “Up and down and disco dance and up and down and disco dance.” This was seemingly her mantra.

“She’s crazy,” whispered the child in the dressing gown atop a horse. I couldn’t really disagree with him.

The horse riding culminated in an overly long inspirational speech from Sally about bravery and trying something new. She reminded everyone that before coming here they couldn’t ride a horse, some of them were even scared of horses and now they’ve all done that. They’ve learned a skill and they can do something they didn’t think they could do. This means they can do anything!

“I can ride a dog!” shouted Cameron enthusiastically, getting into the spirit of things.

Arriving back at CHICKS just before dinner Vicky called all the Volunteers into the Supervisors office. Not for a telling off, as the kids had assumed, but to inform us that Michael was going home with suspected Swine Flu. Though I wasn’t concerned in the slightest, there was a very tangible tension among my fellow Volunteers. It was understandable; Jane, a retired teacher wondered aloud if she should chance visiting her grandchildren after the Camp “just in case,” and Lloyd, who was due to fly to Bali later in the week, was desperately hoping he wouldn’t ruin his holiday for his family. We were asked not to tell the children because it would just cause unnecessary panic, so we silently filed back out and headed to the dining room.

Each table at mealtimes is staffed by at least one Volunteer, primarily to keep the peace while the Supervisors serve food. Today I was sat with Emma, a Volunteer currently studying Law at University. I asked, perhaps less than discreetly, “Have you got any symptoms?” She shot me a look.

“Simpsons?” asked Cameron, sat between us.

“Yeah,” I said to him, thinking quickly, “like DVDs?”

Cameron launched into a convoluted misunderstanding of the movie and I decided to keep quiet.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids

Sunday

On the ride to Plymouth Vicky revealed her concerns in letting the kids out in public. There’d been more than one occasion that she’d had to force apologies to upset mothers when a fight had broken out. She cautioned that swimming wasn’t to be seen as a means to release any pent-up rage at the kids by holding them underwater for long periods of time.

In the changing rooms of the Pavilions, Adam remained true to form by peering into the showers and saying loudly, “Look at the size of his knob! It’s massive!” An apology seemed unnecessary as the bloke in question looked quite pleased with himself.

We rushed into the pool and immediately lost sight of all sixteen kids. It made for a strangely relaxing swim with a slight air of tension at the end when only fourteen initially materialised. After a couple of tannoy announcements, and to general sighs of relief, the missing two appeared and we headed back to (thankfully empty) changing rooms.

It was relaxing too, on the trip back to CHICKS until Adam began detailing the many and varied ways he’d kill himself so he could come back and haunt Tanika in order to see her naked.

We were told that this group were particularly lacking in attention spans. There were more than the usual quota of ADHD sufferers and the backgrounds of some of the children were particularly harsh. Vicky told us that there was one child on camp who had a propensity for eating toilet paper and another who was fond of getting naked as often as he or she could. She didn’t name names, but it wasn’t hard to guess who that might be.

Sometimes we’d have to wait a little while for our nightly debrief from the Supervisors while they were busy with their own paperwork. This was one of the only opportunities we had to get to know our fellow Volunteers and have an adult conversation. So when Hayley, who was training to be a paediatric nurse, picked up and started playing a maze game, the conversation naturally turned to an animated discussion of toys. Chris asked if any of us had played Bop It; a game where you have to obey a series of increasingly fast spoken commands to spin, twist, pull, flick or bop various appendages on a central device.

I immediately launched into an excited description of Sex Bop It, an adult variation of the game I’d come up with on a boat trip on the Norfolk Broads. It would instead feature commands to finger, wank, lick, suck or fuck the appendages. Jane interrupted with a stern “Excuse me?” but she didn’t really want me to explain in any more detail and I realised this probably wasn’t the right audience for my thoughts.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids, Plymouth Pavilions

Saturday

Crealy is one of those small lame theme parks you’ve never heard of and are never as good as they proclaim. Inevitably, though, kids will love it and declare it their favourite place in the world. It wasn’t Michael’s, though.

Though only nine, Michael was easily the largest child on camp. Despite his claims that he’s always being taken out of lessons at school for playing up, he seemed like one of the most mild-mannered polite boys, but I guess it’s all relative.

I found myself at the top of the Red Devil, a particularly steep “death slide”, sitting next to him. He’d been sat there himself for a while already and I could tell he was desperately wanting to let go, but was something was holding him back from making the final push and surrendering to gravity. I in turn was resisting the urge to push him, or to bribe another child to do the dirty work for me. I admitted defeat when I realised I’d spent 40 minutes trying to coerce a fat kid into jumping.

It was raining again so we stayed inside after dinner to play party games. A couple of games of Wink Murder in, Michael quietly confided to me that he hadn’t liked being the Detective; he didn’t think he’d done too well. I attempted to offer some reassurance, “Well, Michael, in real life you really just don’t know who the murderers are.”

During a game of table-tennis with Brandon, an eleven-year-old from Somerset who fancied himself a bit of a gangsta, I was struck by the one-upmanship, the excessive “my cat’s blacker than your cat” mentality that existed between the children and which extended sometimes to the adults. I don’t think this was unique to these kids, but they’d take it to absurd extremes.

Enquiring if he had played table-tennis previously, Brandon first replied with “Yeah, once.” And slowly over the course of our match it turned out that he’d played in the National Table-Tennis Championships, and had reached the final before being beaten by the best player in Taunton. I accidentally backhanded the ball into his face.

Our game was interrupted by Kieran, a 10-year-old attempting to bring the dressing gown into fashion as regular daytime wear, entering the barn to inform Brandon that Tanika wanted to see him. He pulled his tracksuit bottoms halfway down his arse, winked at me and swaggered off.

Tanika had swiftly become something of an infatuation with a lot of the boys at camp and she knew it. She’d spend one mealtime with Kieran, and then cuddle up to Brandon after dinner. Only Adam had so far professed his undying love for her via a letter written by Michael, who had neater handwriting, and being subsequently turned down and described as “creepy” hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm or spirit. At bedtime Adam attempted to hump his flannel and a Fanta bottle.

That evening over our debrief we had to write a message for each child which they’d be presented with at the end of their holiday. We were encouraged to write something positive rather than carry out a character assassination or just impart to them general life advice, “Don’t do drugs,” or “Join the Army.”

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids, Crealy

On holiday with the naughty kids

Okay, that’s not really fair. These were sixteen children aged from 8 to 11 who, for one reason or another, would not be going on another holiday this year. They might come from a poverty-stricken background, their parents might be addicted to drugs, or they might have suffered some form of abuse. Usually they’ve been excluded from school at least once. The one thing they all had in common was that they deserved a break.

I’d first heard of CHICKS, or Country Holidays for Inner City Kids, at Innocent Drinks’ Fruitstock Festival in 2003. I’d felt for some time that I wanted to do something for charity other than donate money. Sure, I’d had a taste of it with the Walk for Skin, but it was easy; it didn’t test me. This, I knew, wouldn’t be a walk in the park.

I’d arrived to volunteer on Thursday with no expectations at all for the week ahead and was thrown right into the deep end, helping the children unpack into their recently refurbished rooms. We had a brief five-minute “rules” chat from Vicky and Nate, the CHICKS Supervisors, and then it was off out to the Play Barn for table-tennis, foosball, pool, trampolines and air hockey. I was soon exhausted, but that wasn’t so bad because the kids sit down for their evening meal ridiculously early. Throughout the week with no exposure to media or the internet it was easy to lose track of the time and day. Nevertheless I endeavoured to keep a diary.

Friday – Archery and Canoeing

I had reservations about handing these children weapons, but I’d already gained a degree of blind faith in the supervisors, both of whom had been Volunteers themselves. The way the CHICKS staff dealt with the kids isn’t like that of any teacher I’d seen. The time and patience they show to the kids when they did misbehave and the way they subsequently dealt with them is designed to show them that not every adult they encounter is going to shout, scream or hit them. Or indeed ignore them.

It would have been difficult to ignore Charlie anyway. From the East End of London he exuded the image of a 10-year-old Pete Doherty and had a tendency to do a kind of swaggering dance everywhere he walked. All he needed was a trilby.

He was in a canoe with a fellow ADHD sufferer. I say in a canoe, but they spent the majority of the time in the water. The inability of the duo to remain in their boat and their subsequent shock each time their vessel capsized was captivating.

Charlie’s crewmate was Adam and we were quick to notice and attempt to curb his propensity to hump furniture. You could always tell when he was attempting to copulate with a table because he’d start screaming “Don’t look at me!” For pudding in the evening we had apple pie in custard. It was the second day running we’d had a dessert in custard, and the second day running that Adam loudly compared custard to sperm.

After milk and cookies and telling the group our favourite part of the day it was bedtime. Putting the boys to bed, we uncovered a small air freshener on Adam’s pillow from the previous night. Mildly incredulous, this was quickly confiscated to plaintive cries of “Please can I sniff it in the morning? PLEASE I NEED IT!”

The Volunteer’s debrief with the Supervisors which followed was an ideal opportunity to remind us that neither mild substance abuse nor overtly sexual behaviour from the kids was tolerated at CHICKS. They operate on a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. Nate informed us that Adam would receive his first warning in the morning.

Technorati Tags: CHICKS, country holidays for inner city kids

I met up with the kind and exuberant comedian Josie Long for an interview just before she went off to plunder charity shops for her London is Funny column. She suggested a pub in Holborn for the venue which turned out to be a BNP hangout with a distinct smell of dead rat. Next time I’ll choose.

The interview is up at Den of Geek, but here’s an extra added special bonus piece of conversation around my question about her atheism. I brought up the only other thing of note in Holborn: the Sceptics in the Pub meetings.

Josie: How are they? Are they great?

Me: It’s quite good; I’ve seen Robin Ince there, Jon Ronson, Ben Goldacre… It sometimes creates a church-like atmosphere in itself.

Josie: Yeah, ‘cos people are so… but you know what? It’s a way that people bond and that bonding is for good.

Me: You can tell that the bonding there is the only bonding some of the attendees get.

Josie: Aww, yeah, lonely dorks. People need ways to look after one another a bit and be kind to one another and anything that does that can be good. More and more I find I have to organise community events. Where I live there’s a resident’s group and they have meetings and it’s so lovely and I wish there was more things like that in cities ‘cos in villages you have your village mayor, and when you have kids you have your school fête so it’s more for people who don’t fit into established community categories; something to bring them together.

And here’s a bonus piece of poor quality audio, straight from the dictaphone, of me asking a question which a friend suggested.

[podcast]http://www.cakeinmilk.com/podcasts/Josie%20Long.mp3[/podcast]

Technorati Tags: atheism, den of geek, holborn, josie long, sceptics in the pub

Just before Richard Herring had his iPhone stolen, I was sat for an hour with him in the lounge of Shepherd’s Bush’s ridiculously poncey hotel, K-West. This is an establishment which refuses to admit on its website that it’s in Shepherd’s Bush, despite the fact it is directly behind the second best shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, and refuses to include the location in its address. And a freshly squeezed orange juice will set you back £4.95.

The absurdly long interview is here. I forgot to ask him why Nostradamus’ horse was called David Collins, but here are an extra couple of questions that were omitted for space:

Do you consider yourself a geek?

Not really. I think we’re just people and people are quite nerdy generally. I’m not massively into technology; I don’t understand all that stuff. I think other people would think I probably was a geek. I like comedy and I like computer games a bit, and I spend a lot of time on the internet so… yeah, I suppose I am, thinking about it.

You seem to write far less on your blog about Scrabble and poker lately. Do you just not have time for those any more?

I think the poker one I was playing a lot of it at the time, but people didn’t really enjoy reading about it. I’m not playing as much poker but I still play Scrabble just not as much as I did. I think I just spend more time on the internet now but I’ll just use that time on Twitter or Facebook or just trawling the internet over and over again. I’m always doing other stuff when I’m watching TV now; I just don’t have the attention span. So I’m not doing those things as much but they’re being replaced by even more tedious things to waste my life with.

Technorati Tags: collings and herrin, den of geek, fist of fun, hitler moustache, richard herring, tmwrnj, virgilio anderson

Yesterday I went to the Tooting Bec production offices of Michael’s Resignation; an independent film funded by crowd-sourcing. I interviewed the producer, a friendly chap called Alex, about the film for an hour or so before we started chatting about other projects he had going on, and he discussed with me ideas I had for filming. The team utilise their space for any other projects the members have in a very collaborative fashion.

Alex showed me a photoshoot that Sam, the Director of Photography, had done earlier with Ally, his very attractive girlfriend, who’s going to be featured in Maxim in a few months. There were loads of photos, all very nice, but mostly very topless. He’s handed me the laptop and I was casually browsing through before Ally entered the room and immediately asked what I was looking at. I looked up at her with the Guiltiest Expression Ever on my face as Alex smirked and said, “Your photos!” Awkward!

She was fine about it, though. If she’d have had a problem with it I don’t think she’d have had the photos taken in the first place. But if I’d turned up earlier I could well’ve ticked #4 off my list of  things to do.

Reviewed this for Den of Geek. It tell the story of how Diana, Princess of the Amazons was born on an island populated by a group of raging misandrists, and then travels to the USA to learn the error of her ways. And yet again, Skeletor gets a mention. New trend?

-

Remember the days when He-Man would be forced to plough through a small army of Skeletor’s moronic henchmen? When the Turtles fought hordes of faceless foot soldiers? Without exception the non-human characters would be despatched by being thrown off-screen and then shown to be dazed, but crucially alive.

The first sequence of this movie gives us an extended battle between the Amazons, lead by Queen Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) and Ares, the God of War (Alfred Molina, no stranger to playing comic book villains) and his army, the likes of which we haven’t seen before in animation. The exhilarating five minute sequence, very reminiscent of Frank Miller’s 300, culminates in a beheading.

Whew.

Zeus (David McCallum) steps in to stop the Amazons slaughtering Ares, who is instead bound with magic gauntlets and made effectively mortal. Only another god can set him free. As a form of compensation, Hera (Marg Helgenberger) offers the Amazons a new beginning on the island of Themyscira where they’ll be shielded from the ravages of ageing on a man-free utopia.

We cut to an unspecified period later and, on a stormy evening on this paradise island, Hippolyta is moulding herself a child out of dirt (there’s only so much entertainment a tropical island can provide). After pricking her thumb and smearing blood on her claybaby’s forehead, lightning strikes it and it turns into a real one. Unsurprisingly, the baby starts to cry. I bet Wonder Woman keeps the story of her birth a close secret; if her fellow Justice Leaguers found that out they’d piss themselves laughing. Especially Batman.

After the credits, and all grown up now, Diana wonders aloud after a fight with Artemis (Rosario Dawson) what was so bad about men. Is it possible they’ve changed? Her mother shows her Ares all locked up and explains that you can’t trust the wicked disloyal nature of Man. Hmm.

Later, injured in a dogfight, fighter pilot Steve Trevor’s (Nathan Fillion) plane crashes in a lake on Themyscira. After evading furious naked Amazons in a nearby waterfall, Steve soon encounters a furious clothed Amazon: Diana. He attempts to run away again and she kicks him in the balls.

Taken back to the Amazons, the introduction of the Lasso of Truth makes Steve admit that he thinks Diana’s breasts are impressive. The Queen proclaims that the true nature of Man is laid bare. Hmm.

Hippolyta decides that he’s to be taken back to his home country, and the emissary to the outside world is to be chosen by a contest. Diana wangles her way in under disguise and predictably wins while Steve is threatened with castration.

She suits up, hops in her invisible jet (yes!) and embarks on her mission to take Steve back to the USA…

This is the latest in the line of direct-to-DVD animated movies from DC and Warner after Justice League: New Frontier and the anthology-style Batman: Gotham Knight and, unlike its predecessors, this is very much an origin story.

Unlike Batman and Superman in previous DC Animated series, Wonder Woman has only ever been a supporting character. With this release we begin to realise that this hasn’t been a disservice to the character; the studio and DC just wanted to do justice to the Amazonian princess.

We’re all familiar with the story, but the mandate from DC was to ensure the movie stuck to canon as much as possible (it follows the Gods and Mortals arc by George Perez from 1987), to bring the saga up-to-date and relevant and to make it big. I’m confident this is going to be seen as the definitive telling of her origin. With a script by acclaimed current monthly writer Gail Simone and a production team led by Bruce Timm, this 71-minute movie revels in its Greek mythology versus a modern day sensibility backdrop.

From the first kick to the balls in the opening sequence you can tell the film has a heavy feminist slant. In fact, when the second comes mere minutes later, you begin to wonder if this might be a recurring theme of the movie. And it is a bit heavy-handed.

You get the feeling that if Diana hadn’t met a misogynistic idiot like Steve Trevor, she wouldn’t have much justification for her anti-male stance. However, the two characters’ comic rapport is exceedingly well written in the main with some very funny one-liners, especially one that pokes a little fun at some of the stranger Greek myths.

After the first epic action piece you know this movie isn’t going to pull any punches. This is rated 12 and is pretty intense. The characters are all well established; each Amazon has her own distinct personality and look, a mean feat when you consider the art style. Though in keeping with the Bruce Timm style, this is a new look for Wonder Woman, designed by director Lauren Montgomery, that has elements of both her Justice League Unlimited and New Frontier looks.

Wonder Woman’s establishing cast is gradually introduced, not necessarily where you’d expect, but in a way that works well. A couple of reviews have complained about the lack of explanation about the invisible jet, but for me, just the inclusion of the jet is almost enough to give the movie a 5 star review. According to the commentary there was going to be a line explaining it, but the writers couldn’t think of any reasonable justification. The time is much better spent on character development and plot arcs, though.

With a comparatively short running time and considering it’s an origin tale, there is a lot of story and it’s only toward the end that you feel certain things may have been rushed or overlooked.

There are plenty of sequences throughout the film that take your breath away with both their amazing backgrounds and the very rich colour palette. The opening battle scene has such a distinct look with lots of reds, yellows and browns and there are a number of large scenes with an unbelievable number of moving elements onscreen at once.

Extras
Like other DC Animated releases, this 2-disc set pack contains a huge amount – and variety – of additional content. On the first disc alone we have an informative commentary by the creative staff. These people are seasoned professionals in the world of commentaries so you don’t just get awkward play-by-plays of the action. They go into huge amounts of details on creative decisions as regards the story, the history of the character and the rating. Character design and what had to be left on the cutting room floor also play a big part. The director is very free with her praise for, among others, the Korean artists for their work during the large crowd scenes with loads of moving elements, but it doesn’t turn into a love-fest.

A first look promo of the next movie, Green Lantern: First Flight and short documentaries on previous movies also feature, as well as a 10-minute history lesson on Wonder Woman and the evolution of the character.

The second disc backs this up with two further comprehensive documentaries focusing on the history and the mythology of Wonder Woman and two of Bruce Timm’s favourite episodes of Justice League Unlimited prominently featuring the character.

For my money, this is the best of the DC Animated Movies so far. Dedicating a movie on this scale to a character unproven to stand alone in the world of animation could be seen as a bit of a risk, but a production team this dedicated and faithful to the property means you end up with something especially beautiful.

As well as an origin, we get distinct arcs for each main character leaving an opening for a sequel featuring an enemy very familiar to the Wonder Woman mythos.

Film: 5 stars
Disc: 5 stars

Technorati Tags: Bruce Timm, claybaby, DC Animated, den of geek, invisible jet, misandry, wonder woman