Yeah the people who make Pot Noodle.
This is becoming a bit of a pet issue of mine, as this is something I have personally run afoul of in the past. Two incidents come to mind. The first was when one of our listener meet ups ended up at FAB Cafe in Leeds, only to be thrown out because it’s “illegal” to take photos in a nightclub, it isn’t. And the conflict continued as I took photos of the bouncers from the street, also not illegal. Read More
Lindsey Kalenborn (lindseykal on our forums & @lindseykal28 on Twitter) gets Simply Read something of an exclusive as she interviews Katy Pfaffl, one of the cast members of the Broadway smash, War Horse.
Everybody remembers the depth of feeling they had for their beloved childhood pet. The mere mentioning of said animal is enough to inspire nostalgia and a faraway look even in the most cynical among us. It seems that Broadway is not immune to this phenomenon, as the play War Horse won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Play and continues its successful run with no end in sight.
The West End import is based off the novel written by Michael Morpurgo and adapted by Nick Stafford. A movie version is due out this Christmas with none other than Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair, and should broaden War Horse’s already large fan base.
The story is about a boy, Albert, and his faithful horse Joey. When Albert’s drunken father sells Joey to the Calvary during World War I, Albert sets off on a dangerous journey to recover his cherished friend. War Horse has been praised for being able to walk the line of sentimentality without treading over it, and consequently is a favorite for children as well as adults. Meticulously-crafted and operated, the horse puppets give surprisingly life-like performances, all adding to the visual spectacle.
I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to one of War Horse’s cast members, Katy Pfaffl. Also known as “Mighty Kate”, she answers some questions about her role as “The Song Woman” and performing in the Tony award winning play. Read More
Last weekend I had the pleasure and the privilege to interview the fantastic Gail Simone at Montreal Comic-Con.
Gail Simone is a prolific and fan-beloved American comic book writer most known for her work on Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Secret Six, and the recent Batgirl reboot. Before she worked writing comics, Simone was a fan who became known for her online initiative Women in Refrigerators, which documented the frequent use of violence against women as plot devices for male protagonists. This website caught the attention of many people in the comics industry, and Simone was hired to work as a comics columnist. She went on to write many runs and titles for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Wildstorm. Simone is currently writing the Batgirl title for DC Comic’s “New 52” reboot of their universe. She has been writing professionally for ten years.
In my university Creative Writing course, we were assigned to interview a professional or long-term artist about their creative process, and I immediately thought it would be incredible if I could somehow finagle a meeting with Gail, who had a table and two panels at the con. Since Gail is so talkative on twitter, I dropped her an @reply, mostly expecting her to be too busy, but I was immediately replied to with interest and before I knew it I had an interview scheduled with one of my favorite comic book writers. Despite a few obstacles (such as two-hour convention entry lineups) I was able to meet her at her table in Artists’ Alley and we had a lovely chat, interspersed by other fans of hers. It was a wonderful experience.
In what seemed to be kismet, Channel Four’s recent “Street Summer” season of programming coincided with the rioting that blighted Britain in early August. The vandalism perpetrated by a significant portion of the country’s working-class teenagers was probably not the ideal backdrop to launch of series of programmes focusing on the environs that produce many of these same teenagers. It seems that while in the planning stages, Channel Four set out to show the other side of inner-city culture that you seldom see in the red-top newspapers. And the timing of the rioting blitzkrieg proved a telling social counterpoint. Here are three programmes from the series that stood out for me: Read More
We’ve been to all manner of zoos across America’s eatern-midwest, from Indianapolis to Columbus to Pittsburgh. It’s what Lisa and I do. And when we go, we do the tourists-with-a-camera-pretending-to-be-serious-photographers thing.
Sure, it embarrasses the ol’ wifey. But that’s part of the fun. This summer, we hit the Cleveland MetroParks Zoo twice. It’s not bad, and it’s only 25 minutes away, so we end up there several times a year. This time around, we spent lots of time at the new Elephant Crossing exhibit, where trainers bring elephants just a few feet away from the crowds.
So since I had the photos and a little free time, I decided to throw them out there… and included a pinch of trivia. Read More
The following post is from Greg Blanchard (a.k.a. GAB on our forums). He can also be heard on the “Inappropriate Conversations” podcast, which can be found at http://inappropriateconversations.podbean.com/ or on iTunes.
As many of you know, I grew up in America’s, “Bible Belt” where the reddest of the so-called “red states” can be found. One of the great things about our current internet age is that it is possible to interact conversationally with people from across the country and/or across the world pretty freely. That can also be one of the more disturbing things.
Laura, an old friend of the family who moved west around the time that I moved east, commented online that she was so tired of all the hate-filled talk about the definition of marriage. Expressing exasperation, she suggested that government just back away from marriage decisions altogether, leaving the concept to churches or individuals to define.
Read More
The following will contain plot spoilers:
When David Tennant took to the stage in 2008 to play fiction’s most famous Dane, Hamlet, it was the biggest story in the theatre world. Tennant’s performance was largely praised, but he came in for some criticism for getting the part due to his fame. Sir Jonathan Miller lambasted the West End for having, “an obsession with celebrity” & dubbed Tennant as “that man from Doctor Who.”
Well Mr Miller must have been less than pleased as Josie Rourke’s Much Ado About Nothing contains not only Tennant in the cast but his former Doctor Who companion, Catherine Tate. They play the leads of Benedick and Beatrice, whose cynical attitude to love is balanced out by Tom Bateman & Sarah MacRae’s Claudio and Hero, who have a much more idealised view of such matters. Read More
Sugar Lake, Wright County, Minnesota
By Tony Pucci (host of the Pollyanna Cowgirl Records Podcast)
The air had ceased moving. It hung like a weight around the afternoon’s shoulders, a viscous syrup to be swum through. The sun brushed the ground with a transparent honey, and flies buzzed lazily, if they buzzed at all. The grass stank with a humid sweat as I raced across our cabin’s backyard. I was ecstatic; my grandmother had just given me two dollars to spend at “The Resort”!
My pace then slowed as I stepped onto the dirt road that roller-coasted behind the row of cabins. Typical of any kid during summer, I wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the road had many rocks anxious to become acquainted with the soles of my feet. I kept my stride between the edges of one of the two strips of smooth, worn-down tracks made by years of cars passing through. Filtered by a canopy of trees, rays of sunlight dappled the ground, seemingly dancing with the stream of dark, pungent motor oil spots which had dripped off the boats being charioted on trailers to and from the lakeshore. My excitement grew as I passed the familiar fish-shaped signs, each with a name on it marking another family’s driveway and cabin; they told me I was getting closer. Read More
With the Edinburgh Festival drawing ever closer, this is the time of year when the nation’s stand-up comedians try out their new material in preparation. Yesterday at the Soho Theatre, one such stand-up, Stewart Lee trialled his latest set of material, appropriately titled, “Work In Progress”.
For those not in the know, Lee isn’t your average comedian. His BBC show, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, was cancelled after one series of good reviews but not so good ratings. The show was only re-commissioned after an impassioned e-mail appeal (of which I was a contributor) from his fans. However, rather than try to make his comedy appeal to a broader audience, Lee used the second series to take constant jibes at the BBC. Read More
One author whose books I have often read and purchased over the years (including audio books) is Jack Higgins. He is most well-known for THE EAGLE HAS LANDED in 1975. I do like a good spy novel, and starting in 1992 with EYE OF THE STORM, Higgins began a series of books featuring the character of Sean Dillon, originally a member of the IRA, becoming something of a super gun-for-hire (he is referred to in the books as being second only to Carlos the Jackal), and eventually (and ironically) starting in the second book THUNDERPOINT, ending up in the service of the British Empire in exchange for his freedom. The Queen can use a man with Sean Dillon’s talents, of course. Think James Bond, minus the fancy toys.
Thanks to that fountain of knowledge, Wikipedia, I discovered there are now 18 Sean Dillon books from Jack Higgins, there were considerable gaps in my Sean Dillon reading, and what I had read was very out-of-order. Being a sucker for linearity, loving the Dillon stories and wanting something comfortable to begin an effort to read more, one of my new reading resolutions is to read the Dillon novels in order. Heck, I already owned 12 of the books! Read More
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