Girls! Girls! Girls!

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1. Starting to run out of ideas, I asked a friend for a suggestion just before I ran off to a meeting. She said 'a Victorian lady in a bird-themed outfit' or something to that effect ... My first attempt got the 'Victorian' but the 'bird' aspect dwindled to some feathers in her bonnet.
2. So I tried again, going Georgian this time ... the dual-purpose hat worked OK, but my intent with the billowing skirts not so much.
3. Then I gave up and drew Sandi Toksvig, from memory, in a meeting. I dunno, does it work?
4. When I was young, I naively thought I would have more in common with my peers if I went to a private school. Having learned more about private schools since then I suspect I would have spent most of my time like this. Usually I drop out the under sketch but I so thoroughly hashed my way through this one, I had to show you ...
5. I'm surprised it took me until the last week to toss off a sarcastic half-assed throwaway installment, but here it is at last.

On The Media

It's all my thoughts on and links to media in the last week in one post! GO!

Stephen Fry on the Bat Segundo Show - I've been sitting on this one for ages because I don't know how to blurb it, but you know what? It doesn't need a blurb. On it Mr Fry quotes Oscar Wilde: But what to me, Bosie, is unforgivable is that you never achieved what I believe used to be called “the Oxford manner,” which I take to mean the ability to play gracefully with ideas. So my blurb is this: Stephen Fry plays gracefully with ideas, for a little over an hour. It is a thing of glory. (Even though he went to Cambridge. ;)

John Cleese on Creativity - Speaking of playing gracefully with ideas, John Cleese does this with advice on how to be a creative person. These 36 minutes have certainly changed my perspective on the subject, as well as answered some questions that have been really bothering me lately, such as why I feel so creatively comatose in such an ostensibly artistic environment, and why I find certain company so much more satisfying than others. Who knows what you will get from it! If the whole world sees this video, what a better place it might be.

Stephen Moffat on Fresh Air - Usually I only have NPR on when I need background noise in the kitchen, but last night my background noise happened to consist of Stephen Moffat being brilliant, which was a bit of a lucky thing. Now you can hear it too! He talks about Sherlock and Doctor Who, brilliantly of course.

Shakespeare's Restless World - This series has been running on Radio 4 for a couple weeks now but it's all available on podcast, which is a lovely thing. As much as I believe Shakespeare's plays are relevant to all times and places on a basic human level, learning about the historical and social context in which they were written does add a whole new level of meaning to things.

The Pirates: In an Adventure with Scientists* - "Do not put me to't, for I am nothing if not critical." You can tell by how little I have to say about Pirates that I quite enjoyed it, and have nothing to nit-pick and no tangents to rant upon. It had a disappointing opening weekend, so I suggest that if you're looking for a good time, and The Avengers is sold out as it almost certainly will be, you pop into a cinema that is showing some fine British stop-motion animation and have a good chuckle. On my own part it was enormously satisfying to see a movie made by people who were evidently concentrating on what they were doing; I get a distinct impression of distraction from most CG movies lately – I don't know if it's because they're made in such a rush, or because the nature of CG encourages people to animate with the TV or radio on, but Pirates has a really admirable presence of mind from storyboards through to final animation, some of which is really staggeringly awesome if you look past the endearingly goofy Aardman look. I will definitely be seeing this one again, and possibly will write a better review for it, but I hope this will suffice for now. If you were turned off by the trailer, please consider changing your mind ... it was obviously made to appeal to the lowest common denominator and doesn't reflect the tone of the film at all.
*I refuse to use the 'Band of Misfits' subtitle because that sounds like one of those movies with the talking dogs with CG mouths. Pleh. Also I like to stand up for SCIENCE!

For those handful of people out there who have internet access but have not seen it yet, Series Two of Sherlock gets its US premiere Sunday night on PBS. Check local listings! This series kicks off with A Scandal in Belgravia, with the oft-misused character of Irene Adler. I would just like to say YOU GET IT, YOU REALLY GET IT, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO GET IT, THANK YOU. The end.