Wednesday, 24th Jun 2009
Well, my CBBC thing has been pummelled and kicked into something resembling a script shape. It’s in the envelope and will be away in the morning.
Definitely an interesting experience writing for 8 to 12 year olds. So many things to consider. So many pitfalls. Plenty of other bloggy people have very kindly posted their notes from the CBBC Q&A session (and now the Writersroom people have posted the transcript) and I’ve desperately tried to subsume them all.
I’m concerned that I’ve failed pitifully at doing so.
See, the thing is, writing for kids is, in some ways, really easy and, in other, myriad ways, really, really, bastard-hard. My biggest concern is that the tone of my story is a bit too dark for the kiddies. Scaring the crap out of 8-year olds is probably not the best way forward. Still, I fondly remember when I was a kid, sitting, wearing a wide-eyed rictus as I watched some piss-poor rubber monster on Doctor Who. Perhaps scaring children is the way to go. Or perhaps Richard Littlejohn is right and the namby-pamby-politically-correct-health-and-safety-couldn’t-make-it-up-equal-opportunities-brigade have taken over the BBC and sanitised children’s TV in an attempt to molly-coddle our kids and probably help immigrants or something.
Lets hope not. If for no other reason, than the fact that a world where Richard Littlejohn is right about anything would be a very grim world indeed.
4 People told me what I did wrong
Sunday, 7th Jun 2009
The live music experience is a complex social environment. Forget about your years of torment at the hands of the cool kids in school – veteran gig goers will roll their eyes and nudge their mates if you fail to conform to a thin line of cool. Scratch that, it’s actually if you do conform to a wide swathe of uncool.
No longer will others laugh and point. Follow these simple rules and seem instantly cooler when you go see a live band.
- Don’t wear a T-shirt with the band’s name on it. Wearing T-shirts with a band’s name is acceptable in some circumstances but never at that band’s gig. Just say no.
- While, ostensibly, the same point, it’s worth elaborating and stating that if you bought your band-name T-shirt at Next or Top Shop or a similar high-street chain and/or, if the band’s name is spelled in sparkly sequins, you shouldn’t even be in the same building as the band.
- Don’t dress like a member of the band. This is even more unacceptable than a T-shirt with the band’s name (unless it’s sparkly). There’s a bloke who’s turned up to every Paul Weller gig I’ve ever attended who dresses like Weller and has hair like Weller’s (complete with bangs). He’s probably a very nice person but… you know.
- Never sing along with the band’s most popular song. You know, that one that all the people who were quiet up to that point are now singing their little heart’s out to. This has fair-weather fan written all over it.
- Learn to clap in time. If you’re going to clap along, hands in the air like you just don’t care, it’s important that you understand how rhythm works. Try listening to the song, particularly the drums, and try to clap on the beats rather than at self-determined, arbitrary intervals.
- Don’t hold up your phone so your mate at home can hear the band. He can’t really hear it and you look like a twat.
- Don’t spend the entire time texting your mates. The lights in the audiences laps shouldn’t rival those on stage. There’ll be time enough for texting when the dealing’s done.
- Shut up. Pretty much everybody around you paid to hear the band, not to hear you chat with your mate about Big Brother. Zip it!
That’s it. Easy peasy. Now you’re too cool for school. You’re not just Kool, you’re The Gang too. You’re so cool you’re hot.
I’m still not going to talk to you at gigs, although I may not nudge my mates so much.
4 People told me what I did wrong
Tuesday, 26th May 2009
As part of a captive audience at Disneyland Paris, we had limited choice when it came to eating. This limitation is what found me dining in Planet Hollywood.
I’d never eaten in Planet Hollywood before but was relatively sure of what to expect. Mediocre food and loads of movie tat on the walls I thought and that was, pretty much, the way it panned out.
I hadn’t, however, expected to see a customer pointing out, to a waiter, something on the floor, only to have the waiter chase said ’something’ and capture it in a glass. I’m not certain what it was as the waiter, for the benefit of the diners, popped a small bag over the glass to obscure its contents before carrying it into the kitchen. There are so many things wrong there that it’s hard to know where to begin.
I also hadn’t expected the movie tat to be quite so extensive that I would have to sit and eat my uninspiring burger under this:
The picture was taken from my seat. You try eating a burger as a, mostly naked, Sylvester Stallone stares down at you from above. It’s more than a little disconcerting, I can tell you.
7 People told me what I did wrong
Tuesday, 26th May 2009
Made it through my second Disneyland Paris tour of duty. You can forget about firemen or soldiers fighting wars – until you can face down a huge, trundling, simpleton of a woman trying to push her way through the crowds to be at the front for when Pooh Bear’s float goes by, you don’t know true bravery.
My daughter enjoyed it immensely though, and that’s all that’s important.
To be fair, other than daughter’s nosebleed, mid-ride, on some spinny thing (our slasher-movie, blood-stained clothes drew some interesting stares afterwards) it was a relatively incident-free trip .
I did notice some interesting tattoos, though. Disney ones. On adults. Who should really know better.
At breakfast, one day, I spotted a woman who had a young Lion King on her arm. Similar to this:
Later the same day, another woman, this time with a massive dragon tat all over her back. She displayed it proudly. It was pretty much the image below, minus the background.
Massive, it was. Honestly.
I find it weird, but then the world confuses me pretty much all the time.
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Saturday, 16th May 2009
As long as they’re plastic dreams, wrapped in sparkly cynicism and tied with a big, money-grasping, bow.
Yes, I’m off to Disneyland Paris.
Four glorious days of that rictus rodent gurning and waving with his podgy, gloved hands at me. Four days of Heston Blumenthal prices for sub-fairground fast food. Four days of educationally sub-normal adults pushing kids out of the way so they can be in the front for the parade. Four days of watching the characters’ cheeks twitch uncontrollably from being forced to constantly smile as they’re closely monitored by Disney security for the slightest deviation in ’sunniness’. Four days waiting, praying, for Cinderella to finally crack and go mental in a massive murder/suicide spree. At least it’d be a break in the trudging, monotonous, veneer of happiness thinly pasted onto a bundle of depressed, and depressing, fibre-glass structures in a gloomy, jaundiced, manufactured suburb of what is, otherwise, quite a nice city.
Four days. Expect me to come back with a substantially lighter wallet. I’m guessing there is considerable expense involved in keeping Walt Disney’s head frozen and that’s the justification for the avaricious prices charged in, and around, the park. Of course, I don’t mind paying for the ambience of a faux-jungle-hut or for the service-standards of those who know they have a captive audience- “Don’t like it? What you gonna do, queue for another fifty minutes over in Aladdin’s Pizza Palace? Ah haaa haaa haaaaa!”
Four days watching George Lucas, who, thanks to some sort of weird LucasFilms licensing thing, can often be seen standing by the shop selling bad copies of Indiana Jones hats or over at the X-Wing fighter, rubbing his hands in glee, only stopping to occasionally argue with a customer that Jar Jar Binks is a wonderful character and shout that, when the prequels are remastered, Binks will be, incongruously, CGIed into every single scene.
Four days of standing in lines, in the rain, for forty-five minutes for a forty-five second ride in a plastic, hollowed-out Dumbo. Four days of the lifeless, insentient, and, yet, somehow malevolent eyes of the racist puppets in It’s A Small World After All (one of Walt’s personal favourites, apparently).
Four days.
God help me.
2 People told me what I did wrong
Thursday, 7th May 2009
The character Beenfeeld, that I’m writing for Resonance FM’s Whale In The Room play, is like me in many ways. One of these, in an odd fortuity, is that he is now growing his own vegetables. We both have a fine, nascent crop of foodstuffs on the go.
I started this veg lark only in the last couple of years but it’s pretty cool. Secreted deep beneath the dark soil in my garden and, since this year, in my tiny greenhouse are spring onions, rocket, radishes, peas, and a few varieties each of carrots, beans, lettuce, tomatoes and chillies. On the Herby front, my sage, oregano, rosemary, thyme, coriander, parsley, mint and basil is coming along nicely. And, lastly, I’m only slightly fruity, possessing just strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. I’m keeping my green fingers crossed for a bumper crop. Much depends on whether the sun actually shines this summer as it has failed to do for the last two.
Why am I telling you this? No idea. I know you’re not bothered. Truth is though, I quite like my little bit of the Good Life. Granted, my wife’s arse is bigger than Felicity Kendal’s but there’s still the vegetables.
Also, I’m reducing the quality of my posts in order to attain more quantity. It’s a strategy that’s certain to work.
Oh, and if you’re reading love, I was just kidding about the arse thing.
3 People told me what I did wrong
Monday, 27th Apr 2009
…About a slightly odd writing gig.
Resonance FM are putting together a new radio play called The Whale In The Room. Nothing odd about that, you say. Well, if I told you that the script for this play was to comprise entirely of the Twitter status updates from six different people, you might begin to see a different picture. Resonance, in their wisdom/insanity, are trying something very original and quite experimental here.
They called for potential writers for each character a couple of weeks ago (which got picked up by the BBC Writers’ Room site too) and I applied. The Resonance guys monitored each prospects Twitter feeds for a fortnight and, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, they decided that my procrastinatory ramblings were sufficient to write for one of the characters.
I say write. It’s a weird sort of writing. The gig is to write as a character for a fortnight and to tweet and react as that character might. Strange, but interesting.
If you’re on the Twitter, you can follow me as I tweet in character at twitter.com/beenfeeld (that’s me – Benson Fielder @beenfeeld).
To make the most of things, you really need to follow the other five characters too. So, join Twitter and also follow @cynpa, @tomxart, @fragharpy, @rhiannon97, and @Sidebird.
It’s all very new and I don’t know how it will end up. I’m interested to see though. Why not pop along and see?
4 People told me what I did wrong
Monday, 13th Apr 2009
Last night, I had an odd dream.
I was Telly Savalas. You know, Kojak.
Wait, it gets weirder…
I, as Telly, was going to meet the Pope. The actual Pope. The Big Catholic Cheese.
In the Vatican, a cardinal (possibly, my knowledge of the upper echelons of the Catholic hierarchy is limited) asked me to wait as he went into the next room to see if the Pope was ready for our meeting. He came back out and told me to go in. Bit of a shock as the Pope was sitting on the toilet in a vast, sumptous bathroom. All marble and fancy red carpets with not a drop of wee on them. Even the toilet roll holder was gold.
The Pope waved me in and offered his ring to kiss (no making up your own jokes). This I, or Telly, dutifully did. We even said “Your Holiness” and it was all very respectful. I remember thinking that it was a bit odd to have a meeting while on the toilet, but Telly had important stuff to discuss and so he and I put that to one side.
His Holiness and Telly chatted for a while – I can’t remember the content – and then the Pope asked if I/Telly would like some food. Food in the bathroom? Perks of the papacy, I assume. I sat on the red carpet and a lady (I know) came with a sandwich. It had turkey and some other stuff inside but, and this is the important bit, it had mustard. Really strong mustard. Telly didn’t realise and a big glob hit the back of his throat and began to burn there.
At this point, I woke up hacking and coughing at the mustard in my throat.
Think it means anything?
2 People told me what I did wrong
Saturday, 11th Apr 2009
Too long, man. Too long.
Seriously though. It has been too long. In my defence, I’ll simply say that I’ve been busy/lazy. Only one of these is a half-lie.
It’s the Twitter, you see. The Twitter is taking up my time and, more importantly, taking the tiny kernels of ideas, thoughts, whines that I might have and allowing me to express them in tiny, tiny, 140-character chunks. They get tweeted and never gestate sufficiently to allow an actual blog post of more that 140 characters. Don’t hate me. All the cool kids are doing it. I’m not strong enough to go against the crowd.
And, worse still, now that I’m used to thinking in 140-character bursts, I don’t think I can sustain anything longer. It’s like our ADHD society took a giant leap away from any meaningful, significant discourse and instead chose to blurt evertything in staccato bursts instead.
I’m not doing a good job of selling this, am I?
It’s not really like that at all. The truth is, I really like the Twitter. I like the communication with people I know in real life, people I already know virtually and with some people I’m just getting to know. It’s all good but it’s a get-it or don’t-get-it sort of thing. Some people like it and some don’t. That’s ok. Incidentally, if you get it, or want to try get it, I’m here.
Soon I will post an actual post. About actual stuff.
Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. I’ve been drinking. Mmmmm, beer.
1 Person told me what I did wrong
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