Simian Substitute Site for August 2009: Gorilla With A Human Brain

Right. Was that enough new stuff for you, then? (And posted in the face of rampant opposition from the Chinese government, no less.)

There's still a little more to come from Year Of The Monkey 2009, as promised. It's currently a week since we got back home, and we still haven't really had time to look seriously through the photos and video we took while we were in China. As soon as we've sorted through the best bits and uploaded them to various places, there should be an epilogue piece with lots of handy links. Might be in August, might be later, we'll have to wait and see.

Inevitably, things will be slowing down here a little in August to compensate. A few more Spank Gold bits - Edinburgh 1996 (wrapping up that particular strand), London Film Festival 1995, and - new thrill this month! - a look at the early days of the Pick Of The Year compilations, beginning with the cassette that started it all in 1993. Possibly a new bit in there somewhere tying in with a film being released in a week or two, but that's probably all you're getting from me for now. I've been on holiday, I need a rest.

In the meantime, your Simian Substitute Site for August 2009 is Gorilla With A Human Brain. It's actually a discussion thread on Whitechapel, the internet forum presided over by Warren Ellis with his usual rod of iron and eels of arse. The members of Whitechapel include a large number of people who, like Warren, work in comic books for a living: so once a week, he gives them a project called Remake/Remodel. Warren introduces an out-of-copyright comics character, and asks artists to come up with their own interpretations. The descriptions can be very vague - here, for example, is this week's.

Hahaha I am a bastard. From BLUE BEETLE #9, in 1941; "Jack Castle was both a drunk and assistant to a mad scientist. He is knocked unconscious by the mad doctor, so Castle would not reveal the nature of the doctor's experiments to Elsa, the doctor's niece. Castle's brain is removed and then placed into the body of a gorilla. When he awakens from his operation, he seeks revenge. First, he kills the mad doctor, and then goes after his assistants hoping to be cured of his affliction."

That's all that the artists had to play with. But they're used to that by now. Read through the thread and see how they responded.

I know we've not really been short of comments for the last week or two, but as usual you can feel free to leave any general ones below. Go!

Comments

[Old Lag]

Hi Spank, know you are a fan of David Byrne whom you went to see at the South Bank. Just have to say that he has definitely been doing a pension tour, completely tarting himself around Italy, where he seemed to be playing in every ancient town and of course now in Herefordshire at the Big Chill. Only know one hit of his dating back eons to 1980 and that is really 30 years ago! :-)

[SpankTM]

Byrne's also taking pension contributions at the Roundhouse this month.

http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/playing-the-building--3268

[Old Lag]

Hi Spank. Saw David Byrne at the the Big Chill. It turned out that was in fact his last concert of his world tour. But boy was he pissed off when they let the firework show off half way through his set. Also why did they want to to celebrate such a momentous occassion by wearing tu tu s for their encore? For all that it was a good set and I recognised more songs than I thought and wish that he has raised a suitable PENSION!

[SpankTM]

A nice person called Drink8AceDrink shot some HD quality videos at Big Chill, including this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U0JBgpwq7o