New Glasgow Society

Sounding like something from a retro imagined future the "New Glasgow Society" is relaunching this weekend in its little premises at 1207 Arglye Street. They are a good an interesting bunch of characters and highly reccomend going along or catching one of their upcoming future events.

The New Glasgow Society is an organization established in 1965 for the general betterment of the urban environment of Glasgow. The birth of the Society coincides with proposals for the insertion of the M8 through the Victorian fabric of the city. But it’s never been purely a preservationist group, the Society has a long history of supporting and actively promoting new projects which were seen to be of benefit to Glasgow, and, during the 1960’s and 70’s, used their considerable influence and membership of over 1500 to make their thoughts known to the powers that be.

"The aims of the Society are;

• To promote, encourage and stimulate public interest in, and care for, the beauty, history and character of the city of Glasgow and its surroundings.
• To encourage high standards of architecture and town planning in the Glasgow region in co-operation with other interested organisations where appropriate.
• To encourage the preservation, development and improvement of features of general public amenity or historic interest.
• To pursue these ends by means of meetings, exhibitions, lectures, publications, conferences, publicity and the promotion of schemes of a charitable nature"

To find out more go here - http://www.newglasgowsociety.org/

A song to sing

First place in the "Write a song about Hole in my Pocket" competition goes to J. Kap ft Alec Roeser with their above rather odd video; with things on fire, a man in a clown mask and a leprechaun with a watering can.

Second Place goes to Joy Lippard with her song about how God has cut holes in everyone's pockets to teach us all a lesson.

and

Third Place to the Buck and Billo show for their use of back projection and cowboy hats.

Think everyone did a really good job but you could prob have used a bit more personal info about us in the songs - just a suggestion for next time. The prizes are in the post.

Special mention to Pang Vongdharadon Jazz Piano for their jazz take on the idea in Bangkok.

Transformers . . .

Ann and I recently went to Budapest and we saw lots of amazing things and it was all sunny and lovely but the thing that has most stuck in my mind about the trip is a sight I spotted in Prestwick Airport on our way out the country.

In amongst the range of strange items that the Duty Free shop sell - (do people really buy camcorders and televisions in airports on their way onto the plane?) - I spotted some toys including a range of Transformers. Having just recently seen the nonsense, rubbish that was the last movie I decided for some reason to take a closer look.

Now I'm no expert on the subject but I am pretty sure that there is one key component that all Transformer toys will probably share - the ability to Transform into cars and planes. Imagine my surprise then when I discovered that the new range of toys do not transform. You can buy each character in either robot form or in vehicle form! Requiring parents to buy two different toys to appease their young cubs. This is insane!!! The whole point of the blooming things was that they can Transform from one object into another, ensuring hours of flexible playtime and huge frustration as impatient young stubby children fingers press too hard and snap off a leg.

Hasbro have stolen this experience from today's kids and instead all they get is a crappy plastic immovable robot for £6 and then have to go buy an equally crappy plastic toy car for another £6. The toy car has the hilarious addition of the robot's form imprinted onto the bottom like a shriveled up mummy. It makes it look like the robot has been run over by a comedy steam roller.

The amazing thing is no matter how badly these toys have been made, and no matter how poorly thought through the design, execution and intent might have been, they are still a million miles better than the Transformers 2 movie - in which giant monster robots doing battle in the centre of Tokyo are a secret covert force. Biggest load of Micheal's and Zoe's that I've seen in a long, long time.

This was another sign that the world has truly gone mad. It started a couple of years ago when "Wash and Go" decided to bring out two separate bottles for "those that want a bit more control".

Ok I'm not really sure what it is for but below is a link to a Hole in my Pocket facebook group.

I think the fact that the facebook world confuses me might be the first sign that I am getting old am no longer down with the kids - to combat this I might have to go buy a skate board, knock a police man off his bike and begin using the texting venacular. Nt sre dat wud b dat g8 tho - I thnk kidz mite b stupd.

Link to facebook group

Super T-shirt

Just remembered about the film Sammy's Super T-shirt from the late 70's. About a wee boy who's t-shirt accidently becomes part of a science experiment and ends up giving the boy super speed and strength. I'm totally making myself my own T-shirt with the above image.

Sammy's Super T-shirt

long abscene . . .

. . . due to unforseen maddness

normal service disrupted again

Doh - I've managed to sort the small world experiment website - and correct the server so it directly links http://www.smallworldexperiment.com/ to where the files are stored but its now screwed up the paths to my other files and information. This means that none of the above links to my art, design or film pages are working. This will require a rethink to get working again. Doh.

Normal service will resume once I get the hang of it.

hundreds and thousands

Last night I learned that if you drop a jar of "hundreds and thousands" onto a tiled floor then it takes over an hour to clean them up. I also learned that a hover is no use as when it passes over the tiny sweets it fires them round the room like a machine gun.

stamp stamp stamp stamp

I bought a date stamp yesterday. Its great, I've been date stamping everything I can get my hands on.

Monkey Politics

Saw this on my way to Falkirk the other day and thought it rather interesting. If you don't know what it's taking about then check out-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5238222.stm
- for the full sordid and rather bizarre story.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I was at University, we bought some toy dart guns and had a merry old time chasing each other around the studio firing little rubber darts at each others heads. Come lunch time we decided to have break from this hilarity and nipped down the road to buy some sandwhichs. On our way back we started playing with the guns again. I was chasing my mate Gerry past the City Chambers and as we passed the front door I pulled the gun from my pocket and at that same exact moment a man stepped out of the front door and into the firing line. Luckily I didn't pull the trigger or I would have hit a rather startled looking Mr T. Sheriden square between the eyes.