Friday Fun 40: Musical comics and comical Musicians

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. 3 entertainment heroes: Morecambe, Borge & Dawson, all passed on, but all wonderful in their different ways. And they had impeccable timing, comedic and musical.

Enjoy.

Friday Fun 39: Swotting up on the English Reformation (part 3: Elizabeth I)

For the time being, this is our final dip into the murky waters of Sellar & Yeatman’s classic 1066 and All That. After all, overindulgence is always wrong. Wouldn’t you agree?

Having digested the reign of Henry VIII, and then gobbled up his heirs & successors Edward and Mary, we come at last to Gloriana herself, Good Queen Bess, the Virgin Queen, the one who was to be obeyed (on pain of decapitation etc etc). These Tudors weren’t exactly a straightforward bunch. No doubt, there were post-natal attachment issues which can explain all the shenanigans.

Friday Fun 38: Swotting up on the English Reformation (part 2)

Boys and girls, last week’s lesson was only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. How could you possibly imagine that we had plumbed the depths of the English Restoration? There is more work to be done – not least because Bluff King Hal left quite a legacy, much of which was left much to be unravelled amongst his 3 children and successors.

What a mess web he weaved.

Friday Fun 37: Swotting up on the English Reformation with Sellar and Yeatman

A day late, but hey. It’ll be worth it. But whatever you do, don’t use this for your GCSE history revision. [If you have done your revision, you'll see why]. Having read this, how will you ever be able to confuse the Reformation and the Restoration again? What’s more, whoever thought we’d need Hilary Mantel to bring this era to life?

Anyway, thought I would dedicate one or two Friday Funs to the sublime brilliance that its 1066 and All That. So let’s dive in straightaway, with Henry 6th and his 8 wives. Or was that the other way round?

Friday Fun 36: Bloggers in Therapy

Every blogger needs to feel the love. But it’s a dangerous pursuit. And sometimes, we need help to get over our hangups.

The cartoon department at The New Yorker is an ever-present help in such troubles – so for your joy, delectation and general therapy, here are some important pointers…

A fresh (medium rare) perspective on horsemeat

While the world out there is contorting itself into ever more yogic twists about horsemeat being found in burgers, I thought a little contribution from Graham Greene might be valid. I’m rereading his rather wonderful (dare I say it, quixotic) Monsignor Quixote and encountered this little gem in chapter 1.

After coming to the aid of an out of town bishop, the uber-parochial Father Quixote invites him to lunch in his humble abode. Having to deal with this unexpected guest provokes this conversation with Teresa, his housekeeper.

Friday Fun 32: How to live your life to the MAX

This is a serious bit of randomness (or should that be randomity?) from my son (Bananamationman) and his best chum Tyler (Tee_Po).

They were at a loose end a couple of weekends ago and so crafted this raster superb and searing satire on the self-help industry. I’d even go so far as to say it was prophetic, actually. Almost pythonesque, in fact.

Watch, and be inspired.

Friday Fun 29: Winston takes his stand on foreign place names

A real gem this week. It’s on display in the painting studio at Chartwell, Churchill’s much-loved home in Kent. I couldn’t resist getting down his points verbatim when we paid a return visit over the summer.

Bananamation Man is BACK (again): The Xorp Grand Prix 2012

Half term was not idly spent by Joshua and my nephew Hudson (despite consistently dismal weather). Over the week, the fused their considerable talents to produce this short, which is little short of a masterpiece (IHMO). 

60-second adventures in religion

I can’t remember who told me about these, but they’re fab. The Open University Religious Studies is obviously plugging its wares – but fair enough. The results are wonderful and very useable in all kinds of places I suspect – wryly humoured animation with the added bonus is the wonderfully-suited satirical voice of David Mitchell.

The Apples’ Adventure: Another Stop-motion Triumph

This post is not motivated simply by beaming paternal pride – I also got to have a cameo role in Joshua’s latest triumph… albeit as banana. And I got to be musical director. I have to say that I doubt my acting career will ever get much better than this. (And don’t forget, I ‘starred’ in an oscar-winning movie).

Towards an Integrated Christian Imagination

It was a joy to be able to spend a couple of hours with members of the CU at London’s University of the Arts on Thursday evening, giving a talk on this subject. Sarah Dargue has already done a really good job at summarising the key points over at the Interface Arts page (if you’re an arts student, definitely worth keeping an eye on that blog). But here is my talk outline, so that you can get some of the key quotes and references, plus my slides.

BananaMationMan is back: The Creation as you’ve never seen it before

Well, the boy’s done good again. For most of the weekend, Joshua (aka Bananamationman) worked on a very ambitious white-board stopmotion narrating the story of the Creation from Genesis 1-2. It’s frustratingly brief – but then when you realise it took around 11 hours of drawing and photographing each move, you can understand! There are some lovely touches – my particular highlights are the waves, the fish and the bird.

Awesome. Beams of paternal pride pour forth!

Love’s warnings and Picasso’s prophetic perception

Love is never abrasive, destructive or cruel. But it can sometimes be straight and difficult. It may even be unpalatable. But that is the nature of love-motivated truth. And for something or someone to be truly prophetic it must be both – loving truth and truthful love. I was struck by an anecdote about Picasso, as related by Martin Gayford to David Hockney, in his wonderful A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney. For it really got me thinking about what constitutes the truly prophetic, as did other elements of their conversation.

Stopmotion Genius – although I say so myself

I’m afraid I can’t really resist this – being a proud dad an’ all. But here are a couple of stop motion videos that my 13-year old Joshua made over half term. He’s experimenting with different methods, and so taking inspiration from all kinds of different things out there.

Friday Fun 17: Harry Graham’s Ruthless Rhymes

Haven’t done a Friday Fun for a couple of months – oops. So thought i’d share something from a lovely Christmas present I received – a 1942 printing of Harry Graham’s 1930 classic, More Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. It doesn’t get much darker or blasé than this. Just the ticket to keep morale up during the Blitz no doubt.

A Bodyguard of Lies: Secrets, sleights of hand and deceptions in wartime

Churchill famously declared during the Second World War that the “Truth is so precious that she must often be attended by a bodyguard of lies” – and the British military effort entailed the largest and most complex exploitation of deception  in warfare to date. This involved the twin arms of message interception and code breaking (through the extraordinary work of Bletchley Park in particular), and the use of all kinds of deception tactics (including the use of double agents and entirely fictitious battalions preparing to invade the Pas de Calais around the time of D Day’s Normandy landings).

Orwell on The Unspeakable Wrongness of Taking a Life.

I get restless if I don’t have something to read on the bus. So I grabbed the closest thing on my desk as I ran out yesterday – which had been a recently thumbed anthology of George Orwell’s Essays. (I’d been looking at it because of the seminal piece Why I Write, recently recommended to me by the Real Grasshopper). I found myself, somewhat incongruously, sitting upstairs in the front row motoring down Park Lane, and reading a short account of an experience Orwell had in the British Imperial Police in Burma – starkly entitled ‘A Hanging‘.

Friday Fun 14: Bombaugh’s The Lovers

Another outing from Bombaugh’s genius. The perils of the English past participle. It speaks for itself.

Friday Fun 12: An Indignant Letter to an “Impetiginous Acroyli”

It seems that church ministers are fair game and always have been. Rowan Atkinson is certainly not the first to lay into clergy as people “of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society”. Ho hum. Much of it is no doubt deserved.