MY PAST INTERESTS PART 2

 

 

Cartoon characters on humans

 

I was watching Chris Evans TFI Friday in September 1998 and saw stage performers with puppets on their heads and I was wondering to myself that one of them was either bare-chested or wearing an orange shirt but they wearing black jackets and that really got me into drawing Sonic the hedgehog characters’ heads on human bodies bare-chested and wearing a black jacket and trousers and I stuck them on my bedroom wall.

 

In October 1999 I started to draw the female characters from Sonic the hedgehog wearing the exact same clothes but also wearing a bikini top underneath. As the year 2000 progressed I started drawing other cartoon characters like that and adding some more colours to the jacket and trousers.

 

I didn’t realise at the time but in February 2006 I was watching the video of U2’s “Sweetest thing”, and I saw the puppet heads from “Chris Evans TFI Friday” and I began to realise that they were puppets of the members of U2.

 

 

Pump It Up

 

In 2000 I watched a children’s afternoon programme called “Pump it up” and it was about two teams competing against each other in five games. The first 4 games were different games each time but the last game was the same every time and the two teams had to race against each other by going down a hill, over a gunge lake with their own bridges, through the pencil forest and then turn right into gunge gully where they had gunge dropped on them and it was in four different colours, white, purple, yellow and green. They then turned right and went through barriers, across another gunge lake, over another little trap of gunge and finally they had to climb up the final hill and the winning team was the team who got to the end first. In the first four rounds whoever won a game got to eliminate a colour in the gunge gully so no gunge came down in that colour zone.

 

When I first watched “Lavender Castle” on the CITV programme at the same time of year I saw the 6 characters on a ride, which was like a roller coaster, and there were three carriages and each one of them had two of the characters in them and they were enjoying themselves and a villain tried to make it scarier for them. First he twisted the tunnel and then as they went uphill one of the characters said, “This is going to be the big one”, and they were thinking that they were going to go fast downhill and the villain said “Yes, this is going to be the big one” and then instead they went horizontal and she said that she thought it was going to be the big one and one of the characters said that it was and that they were going to go over the end and as they were nearing the end of the tunnel, the villain said that the end of their journey was near. At the end of the tunnel the track had ended and the villain said, “We have a perfect view trump as they plunge into oblivion”. Then they came out but didn’t go down they just flew right onto the other side onto another track. I missed the rest of the episode. I liked to pretend that there was a ride like that, a curly whirly tunnel, and then going uphill, then horizontally then out of the tunnel over a bridge against a gunge lake, into a pencil forest then turn right into gunge gully, exactly like the gunge gully on pump it up then turn right again through barriers, on a bridge across another gunge lake, over another little trap of gunge and then through a fake brick wall.

 

 

Robot wars

 

I also used to love robot wars. I liked watching the fights in it. I started watching it in September 2000 and stopped watching it a year later but it was good. I went to see Robot Wars live with my Nan and Granddad in 2001. I also used to like drawing car versions of the robots that I saw on Robot Wars and people driving inside them and at war with each other in an arena the size of a football stadium which I now understand would have been a bad idea.

 

 

My Own Songbooks That Mean Nothing To Me Now

 

In late 2004 I was interested in publishing my own two mini songbooks that I used to have. It’s a good thing I don’t have them now because they mean nothing to me now.

 

 

The First Songbook

 

The first songbook was called ‘School Songbook’ inspired by Pink Floyd’s 1979 album ‘The Wall’ which I got for Christmas in 2004. I wrote 10 songs for the songbook and I recorded myself singing them along with some of the songs on the album on a tape recorder that I used to have along to the tune of some of the songs from the album. I also tried to make sure that the original words weren’t heard in the background. The songs I written featured my own words except the first song and some had the same title whilst the others had different ones. The songs I used from the album were ‘Another Brick in The Wall’, ‘Young Lust’, ‘The Thin Ice’, ‘Mother’, ‘Hey You’, ‘Comfortably Numb’, ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘In The Flesh’, ‘Run Like Hell’ and ‘Waiting For The Worms’.

 

 

The Second Songbook

 

The second songbook was called ‘Show Tale Songbook’. I wrote just four songs for it and I recorded myself singing them along to the tunes of 4 original songs and they also featured my own words. Again I tried to make sure that the original words weren’t heard in the background. The last three songs were a tale about an ABBA tribute group who were just on their way to performing when they accidentally knocked a cow down in the road just like in ‘Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere’ so they knock on the farmer’s door and they admitted to accidentally knocking down a cow that got out in the road and the farmer said, “So it was you that killed my cow was it?” They then discover that it was one of his cows and were so shocked that they raised their voices three billion octaves high and admitted without shouting that it was an accident. The farmer then decided that they should sing that high at their performance for him so that’s what they did. They weren’t all that keen on doing it but he insisted. Can you imagine the struggle? Apparently the tribute group were humans with the heads of four of the characters from the 2004 animated film, ‘Shark Tale’ and those were, Lola, Angie, Lenny and Oscar. They also had exactly the same voices. I do know that it’s not at all possible that anyone could do that.

 

The first song was called ‘Time Dilation Room’ which I recorded myself singing to along to the tune of ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd from the 1973 album ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’. The second song was called ‘So It Was You That Killed My Cow Was It?’ Which I recorded myself singing to along to the tune of ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ by Pink Floyd from the 1979 album ‘The Wall’. The third song was called ‘I Can’t Believe You Burnt My Drawings’ which I recorded myself singing to along to the tune of ‘Whatever You Want’ by Status Quo. The fourth and final song was called ‘They Came To Play’, which I recorded myself singing to along to the tune of ‘We Came To Dance’ by Ultravox.

 

The ambition to publish both those songbooks faded in mid 2005 and I’m glad it didn’t happen because I’ve lost interest in them as I sometimes say “I don’t want to live in the past. I’m a man for the present and future”.

 

 

My past favourite films

 

I remember seeing ‘Chicken run’, at the pictures when I was 13 in July 2000 with my class on our trip to Letton Hall and I liked it so much that over the rest of 2000 I saw it 4 times in total.

 

The following year I saw ‘Shrek 1’, and I enjoyed it so much that over the rest of Summer 2001 I saw it 6 times in total. Nowadays I would never beg my Mum to see the same film again and again because of how much I’ve grown up over the past few years.

 

My next favourite film was ‘Finding Nemo’, in 2003, which I saw 3 times. I first saw it on 12th October 2003, then again at my Nan’s house in the same month but I don’t remember the date, and again in December 2003.

 

On 15th July 2004, we went to see ‘Shrek 2’, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed ‘Shrek 1’ as sequels are never as good. When we were going up the escalator in the cinema I saw a reference on the wall of a new film coming out and that was ‘Shark tale”, and it looked very good indeed. Before seeing the film ‘Shrek 2’, we saw a trailer for ‘Shark tale’, and my mood stayed high during the day.

 

We saw the film on 17th October 2004 and I saw it again with my Nan and Granddad in the same month but I don’t remember the date when I saw it for the second time and this time I felt like twice was enough times to see the same film.

 

We went to see ‘Robots’, in March 2005 but that wasn’t quite so good and I thought I would really enjoy it as I much did ‘Shark tale’, but not to be.

 

 

Looking out for good films

 

Since July 2005 I’ve been looking out for an enjoyable animated film with two beautiful female characters, similar to the film Shark Tale so I could make up a story about them along with two other male characters from it and the story would be about them being a band like Bad News from a ‘Comic Strip’, episode called ‘Bad News Tour’. In the story after a tour is put on hold they’d become a Genesis cover band but the story isn’t important to me now. I was going to do it with the characters from ‘Shark Tale’ and they seemed right for it but seeing love triangles in the television soaps put me right off the film. Apparently there was a love triangle and Angie was mad at Oscar because he was kissing Lola and that particular bit had caused me to start hating episodes of soaps and dramas where a woman is angry with her boyfriend or husband for kissing another woman although I didn’t used to mind it so much before. That’s what got me into really hating the soaps.

 

Since Shark Tale seeing animated films seems less exciting than it used to be because of the characters in them. I had in mind a certain type of film and none that I’ve seen has lived up to my expectations.

 

In July 2005 I went to see an animated film called Madagascar twice, first with Mum and her boyfriend Colin and the second time with my Nan and Granddad but I didn’t find that as enjoyable. In April 2006 I went to see a film called Over the Hedge twice and again it wasn’t as enjoyable. In the same month I saw ‘Ice Age 2’, and that wasn’t as good either and most bits in it made me anxious especially when the male mammoth tried to save the female mammoth from being trapped and drowning. I mean I know it turned out all right and that he did save her, it’s just I didn’t know how it was going to end all right. In August 2006 I went to see another animated film, which was called ‘Cars’, and again I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did ‘Shark Tale’. It was around the time I got into seeing films only once at the pictures. In October 2006 I went to see ‘Barnyard’, with my Nan and Granddad and yet again it wasn’t as good.

 

I also tried with these films, same result. ‘Over The Hedge’ in April 2006, ‘Ice Age 2’ in the same month, ‘Cars’ in August 2006 which around the time I started to lose interest in going to the pictures, ‘Barnyard’ in October 2006, ‘The Reef’ in February 2007 and ‘Shrek 3’ later in the year and we kept on seeing films, which I thought I would enjoy but they didn’t appeal to me.

 

I haven’t been to the pictures since July 2008 and I’m sticking to the decision of never going again. I originally decided not to go again after we went to see Ratatouille on 17th October 2007 and my Mum enjoyed it but some bits in it made me anxious. I decided that if I enjoyed it I would keep going to the pictures and if it didn’t appeal to me I would stop going to the pictures for good and true to form, it didn’t.

 

I decided to give ‘Kung Fu Panda’ a good go and I went to see it on 8th July 2008, the first time in nearly nine months that I’ve been to the cinema. Before the film started I got extremely stressed when I came across an advert where a young man sees a young woman he likes but she tries to avoid him. I didn’t know at the time but it was because he was looking at his own armpits. I don’t like it when women reject men, however the film ‘Kung Fu Panda’, was okay. Afterwards I decided not to go ever again.

 

 

Calendars

 

I also used to be interested in calendars. In October 2003 when I was staying with my Nan we were out and I saw a ‘Finding Nemo’ calendar for 2004 and I thought I’d have it so we bought it and I looked through it.

 

On 13th November 2004, two days after my Mum and I moved into the house we are currently living in I saw two very good calendars for 2005. One of ‘Shark tale’, and one of ‘Creature Comforts’, and I was so excited I jumped high up in the air but no one watched and we bought them. In the same year I made a calendar for myself using 13 sheets of A4 paper, laminating them and hole punching them it was a 2005 calendar of Eric Clapton performing ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ in 1977.

 

In 2005 we bought a calendar for 2006 of an animated film I mentioned earlier called ‘Madagascar’. In early 2006 I made another calendar for myself for 2007 of a young Kevin on Harry Enfield’s Television Programme messing about at Christmas dinner and I used exactly the same method as I did for the Eric Clapton calendar. I bought a calendar for the same year of another animated film I mentioned earlier called ‘Cars’. It was around the time when I started to get less excited about calendars.

 

I had three calendars for 2009, one of ‘Kung Fu Panda’, one of ‘City Scapes of Britain’ and one of ‘Wacky Races’ but I’ve never been bothered to hang them up because these days I’m far less enthusiastic about calendars than I used to be in the early days and I got rid of them some time in 2009.

 

My Nan got me a ‘South Park’ calendar for 2010. I put it up in my bedroom but I didn’t bother to keep it and I got rid of it in early 2010. That’ll probably be the last calendar I’ll ever have and in fact I’m so far less into calendars these days that I’m now trying to completely avoid all calendars and the ones I’m particularly trying to avoid are celebrity ones, pop star ones, soap star ones and film star ones. I think it’s because I didn’t use to take much notice of them in the days when I used to be really into calendars. It also means that I can’t go into shops when they’re selling them but the bright side to that is I won’t have to stick to that routine on a regular basis because they don’t sell them for twelve months of the year but I know they have to sell them and I have nothing against that at all.

 

 

Other things I’ve lost interest in

 

I started having piano lessons in April 2007 but I lost interest in it. My last lesson was going to be on 11th December 2009 but my Nan offered me to come to stay in London for a couple of days to look at the lights on 13th December.

 

In early 2010 I asked my Mum to stop ordering me issues of a music magazine called Q after three years of doing it. The reason I asked her to is because I’m no longer into reading them.