Spank The Monkey

SPANK GOLD: Spankin' USA Revisited (1999)

I started doing all this internet nonsense back in 1998: my first major holiday after that was my trip to America in 1999. During a crammed fortnight, I spent a few days apiece in New York, Washingdon DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. I got two pieces for the site out of it: a review of the just-released Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and a more general thing entitled Spankin' USA which became the first ever article in my Travel section.

It's a bit thin compared with the travel pieces that were to follow - I mean, it doesn't even tell you which hotels I stayed in. But you'll notice that there's a throwaway reference in there to a holiday video called Four Cities, which I promised I'd be showing to an invited audience of Spank's Pals on Independence Day weekend 1999.

Ten years later, I'm going to do that all over again. And this time, you're invited.

Simian Substitute Site for July 2009: Where Are They Now? - Bubbles

I know the first-of-the-month post is usually where I hype up what my plans are for the month to come. But it's going to be a little tricky to do that for July 2009. For now, let's put it like this: there will either be a spectacular series of posts throughout the month, or there'll be a creepy and awkward silence for a fortnight or so. It could go either way, wait and see. Hopefully, interspersed with that we'll have the Spank Gold action you've come to know and tolerate, including a wee USA special for Independence Day.

Beyond that, I really don't know how this month will pan out. I mean, on Bastille Day it'll be this site's eleventh birthday, and I couldn't tell you if we're going to be commemorating it on the day or not. I mean, just how Great a Firewall is it anyway? We'll see.

SPANK GOLD: Year Of The Monkey 1997: Handing It Over

As gobsmacking as my 1993 visit to China was, I knew at the time that it'd be a good few years before I'd be able to muster the resources for a return visit. (More on that soon.) But Hong Kong? Of course I'd be back. No special visa requirements, widespread use of English, and one of my favourite film cultures on the whole planet – it was just a question of when I could make the time to go there.

Four years later, 1997 gave the idea of returning to Hong Kong a little more urgency. After 150 years of British rule, the colony was to be handed back to the Chinese in a ceremony on June 30th. The frequent quoting of the late Deng Xiaoping's mantra 'one country, two systems' suggested China was aware of the advantages of giving HK a degree of autonomy from the mainland, but for all we knew they had a battalion of tanks ready to roll into the New Territories on midnight July 1st. With the clock ticking away, I went over to Hong Kong for a five day holiday at the tail end of May 1997. As with my previous visit, most of my documentary evidence of the trip is on video, and I've put up selected clips for you on a YouTube playlist. (Good news: access to digital editing tools meant that my 1997 holiday video only lasted 40 minutes, rather than the tedious 100 minutes of its predecessor. Bad news: access to digital editing tools mean that much of it is cut like a Nine Inch Nails video, especially the opening titles.)

SPANK GOLD: London Film Festival 1994

Here's an anniversary that I suspect will go sadly unmarked this year: in 2009 it'll be 15 years since the first ever London Film Festival website went on line. (The original site was deleted long ago, so that link points to a partial archive held on The Wayback Machine.) Back then, the internet was a mysterious entity way beyond the capabilities of mere mortals, so the site was actually made by the IBM PC User Group, primarily as a demonstration of the amazing things you could do with web pages. Okay, so it doesn't look that amazing now, but how many web sites were you coding in 1994? Give them a break.

Anyway, here are a few things to note regarding LFF 1994. The programme suddenly changed to an LP-sized square format, as illustrated. (But in the three years the LFF used this format, the cover artwork always consisted of a rectangular image with wasted space up both sides...) Ticket prices were pegged at the same level as 1993, while the LFF's residency at the Odeon West End was now up to two full weeks out of the 18 day run. This may have contributed to my decision to take a week off work to catch a few extra afternoon matinees - it was the start of the slippery slope towards the festival frenzy you're familiar with nowadays. Here's what I can remember of what I thought about what I saw.

SPANK GOLD: Edinburgh Festival 1994

Previously on Spank Gold Edinburgh: after four years of going to the Festival each summer, I was starting to find things a bit samey. Inspired in part by a desire to do something reckless for my 30th birthday, I took a year off from Edinburgh in 1993, hoping that when I came back in 1994 my interest would have perked up again.

Did it work? Yes, I believe it did, which is why I've been taking one year off in three or thereabouts ever since. Looking back at my writeup of 1992, I'd started to get into a series of predictable ruts: seeing the same few people over and over again, even going out of my way to watch acts that I could catch in London any other time of the year. There are still a few old familiar names propping up the list below - and in the case of Lee and Herring, the first appearances of some names who've become regulars on my Fringe calendar ever since - but there was enough freshness in my selections to make it a much more worthwhile enterprise.

If anecdotes are the currency of a good Edinburgh, then 1994 was one of the most profitable in living memory. Even the journey there and back had its moments - the rail service was in the middle of some sort of strike action, which meant I ended up travelling midweek by overnight coach. Which conveniently leads me into the first of those anecdotes...