Into the Chipmultiverse

 It's Janice Karman's 70th birthday next week, and it was arguably Ross Bagdasarian Jr's 75th a week and a bit ago (a cursory internet search gives me two completely different birthdays for him). So I'm sure you'll forgive me going on about Alvin and the Chipmunks one more time, in celebration!

I'm pretty sure they and their family are going to continue the epic and diverse history of chipmunk media for ever more, so before the next incarnation comes along I just want to introduce my blog-readers to a couple of the more obscure outer reaches of the multiverse I've recently acquired. Come and see alternate worlds where Theodore wants the hula-hoop and gophers can get inside your brain!

We'll start with A Little Golden Book - "The Chipmunks' Merry Christmas". Now, I stand by what I said about that Dell Four-Color Comic being the first real work of Chipmunk literature (this book's copyright date is 1959, and I assume from the Christmas theme it was released later than the probable August publication of the comic), but I admit there's some wiggle room here. And while the comic was inspired by the boys' second hit single "Alvin's Harmonica", this book is based on the first, "The Chipmunk Song". So it's quite possibly the first real Chipmunk literature to be written, if not published!

And can I also say that if you're wanting to buy books like this, Thrift Books is awesome! Great prices, for the books and for the international postage! Super fast, too! I'm really impressed!

The first thing you notice about "The Chipmunks' Merry Christmas" is that there's no Dave! Instead, as you can see on the cover, his traditional role is taken by Mr Owl!

The second thing you might notice is when you turn to the credits page - the book was written by one David Corwin, and illustrated by Richard Scarry. The famous Richard Scarry! Now there's another illustrious name to be associated with early Chipmunks!

(I'd just like to reiterate my apology for not recognising the name of John Stanley, who may or may not have been involved in that comic, because ever since that point I've been seeing his name everywhere, in places I've seen it many times before without it registering, like in this tribute to the indisputably great Sheldon Mayer...)

But let's turn to the story!

Where can little Alvin be? Alvin is played as the 'little' one in this book, apparently the youngest of them. 

And what's he looking for? That's the great mystery of this book...

Stop being silly, you silly, silly chipmunk. Thedore's giggling shows his characterisation in the early records has caught on with the writer of this book, at least. And Mr Owl steals Dave's dialogue!

Theodore wants the hula hoop! This really is a bizarre alternate universe!

And in this world, the chipmunks aren't making a record - their singing is, as it turns out, for the purpose of letting Santa know what they want for Christmas. It's a slightly strange idea that this is how you convey your requests for presents, but it all seems to make sense in the internal logic of the story!

But Alvin is continuously running away, and not singing! Mr Owl is concerned, and so are... Mr and Mrs Chipmunk!

The chipmunks have parents! In all the myriad worlds of Alvin and the Chipmunks, this might be the only time they have both a mother and a father! And, fascinatingly, Theodore (later to be voiced by Janice Karman) takes after the mother, while Simon and Alvin (Ross Bagdasarian) have their father's fur colour!

But after a lot more running around, things work out all right in the end, of course!

Isn't that nice? This non-materialistic Alvin is a delight to experience!

And now, from the ancient times of 1959, let's move on to the modern world of 2003. The last glimmer of the long-running cartoon series (Alvin and the Chipmunks meet the Wolfman) has been and gone, the CGI movies are still to come, but in between them there was this one oddity...

Little Alvin and the Mini-Munks! A direct-to-DVD movie adventure for the Chipmunks and Chipettes! As puppets! As preschoolers!

This seems to have been intended as a backdoor pilot for a "Chipmunk Babies" type of TV series (Baby Looney Tunes had been a big hit the previous year) which didn't take off, maybe just because the movies came along instead. But with the movies, the Bagdasarians seem to have lost a certain amount of control over their chipmunks, which is a shame - this one, on the other hand, is all about Janice Karman's personal vision! And while I'm not sure it's entirely a success, it's growing on me. I was going to be more scathing about the whole thing when I first watched it, but now I come to look back at it a second time... yes, I'm starting to like it.

So let me get one complaint out of the way now. There's not enough Simon! I've mentioned a few times that Simon is my favourite. He's me! In so many ways! Especially in modern-day episodes written by Janice Karman! And in this film, he's the least prominent of the six chipmunks, which doesn't sit well with me. Everyone else here gets a solo scene or two in the spotlight, learns an important lesson, sings a song... Simon is just a supporting character. I want more Simon in my chipmunk media.

Our story begins at the house of Lalu (Janice Karman). She's hanging up a banner saying "Welcome Chipmunks", and a passing butterfly helps her pin it in place. Lalu shares her home with Gilda, a pompous cockatoo puppet who disapproves of noisy children, and PC (short for Prince Charming), a laid-back frog who talks in a surfer-dude kind of way. Also hanging around the place are two gophers, who talk to the viewers in the style of American news reporters and have the ability to go inside people's minds and analyse their feelings with the aid of symbolic imagery.

This is the kind of thing I don't really get. Or rather, I don't believe the target audience of small children really get. It's very much in the Sesame Street tradition, I suppose, but I can only see the kid viewers being confused and outright disturbed by these scenes. Anyway, the chipmunks have arrived, brought by Dave (Ross Bagdasarian Jr) to spend a few days with Lalu while he's away working!

The chipmunks wear versions of their classic costumes (Alvin's shirt has a lower-case 'a'), with Theodore sporting an unusual pair of blue denim dungarees over his usual green ensemble. I admit, as usual, to paying much much more attention to the boys than the girls in this whole movie. I really need to get over this ingrained prejudice against girls!

The relative ages of the chipmunks in different fictional realities is endlessly fascinating. Here, Eleanor is a particularly young baby who needs to be taken care of. The others are more general preschool/toddler age, although Theodore comes across as a younger brother to Alvin and Simon (who form a double-act when Alvin's not doing something on his own). But on the other hand, it's Alvin who feels his place in Lalu's affections has been supplanted by new baby Eleanor, and in a rather lovely scene when she uses candles to illustrate the qualities of love, Lalu seems to suggest she first met Simon and Theodore, then Brittany and Jeanette, then Alvin, and then Eleanor. It's all a bit ambiguous, but maybe the chronology goes Simon-Alvin-Theodore as per the most recent series.

Brittany's speech is less developed, while Simon and especially Jeanette are very advanced, but that seems to be a deliberate and well-written representation of the different speeds at which children acquire language skills. And they all switch to adult fluency when it comes to singing songs about their feelings!

Of course, songs are a central part of any Chipmunk production, and I was originally going to say the songs in this one are nothing special. But again... they grow on you. And quite frankly, Theodore's "Why Can't We Play?" is a thing of beauty! So yes, great musical productions on display here!

And lessons to be learned by everyone (except Simon, who's obviously mature enough not to need it). Even Lalu - there's a definite continuing thread here of teaching the grown-ups how to take care of kids, as much as teaching kids how to deal with emotions. But everyone deals with issues such as missing Dave, being left out of games, getting in trouble for doing something bad, not getting enough attention, and so on. It's good stuff, really! The whole thing can be watched on Vimeo (nobody's copyright-blocked it in my country, anyway) if you want to give it a try. I love the insightful comment someone provided - "Movie sucks since they chipmunks are puppets Madagascar is way better"

Or if you can't spare the time for an hour and a quarter of baby chipmunks learning life-lessons (shame on you), at least listen to this track! "But you don't want to fly with me, so I am feeling blue, cause I still want to fly away with you..." Honestly, anyone without a tear in their eye at hearing that is some kind of monster.

   

Anyway, I'm going to rehearsals in Reading for my own puppet performance this weekend. And then, I've got the week off work before the big show the weekend following! I booked the days off just because I'm going out of my mind with stress at work and life in general lately, and want to follow the example of Simon (in the excellent episode "Back to Basics") and go and live in a tree for a few days to clear my mind. So I'll see you around!

Translation

 I knew it! I KNEW I had at least one friend who would go to the trouble of decoding yesterday's post! Simon Orton, we all already knew you were the coolest, but this just proves it! Thank you for confirming my faith in humanity! I just hope it was a nice distraction from all the hassle caused by Memory League competitions - and by the way, all the rest of you blog-readers out there should tune in to the Pan American Open this weekend! I'm at a puppet rehearsal myself, which goes to show what kind of memory man I am these days, but I HAVE been playing Memory League every day for the last couple of weeks, and I'm slowly getting back into the groove, in time for league season 21!

Anyway, for those who were less dedicated to figuring out what I was saying yesterday, it was this:

I'm sorry I haven't blogged for a while, but to make up for it, here's an important message in Junior Justice Society code, which appeared in DC comics in the early nineteen forties. It was used to convey messages to society members about not walking in puddles or collecting scrap metal. Anybody who has bothered to translate this message is very cool. You win a prize. The prize is me telling you how cool I think you are. Buy war stamps!

Once again, Simon, you're the coolest.

This is why the Junior Justice Society of America was so great - it's a shame the secret messages that appeared in the comics were just brief war-propaganda messages, repeated many times over in different codes, but I'm sure many kids of the time did have fun with these secret code wheels - definitely harder to crack than the Superman club's codes if you don't know Greek letters.

The one in this picture is set to Spectre code - readers of More Fun Comics #89 could eagerly read this thrilling message from the ghostly hero:

Set your code wheel to Superman

 Ε'Ι ΟΛΞΞΦ Ε ΔΨΣΑΚ'Π ΩΘΛΓΓΑ♀ ΒΛΞ Ψ ΤΔΕΘΑ, ΩΡΠ ΠΛ ΙΨΗΑ ΡΜ ΒΛΞ ΕΠ, ΔΑΞΑ'Ο ΨΚ ΕΙΜΛΞΠΨΚΠ   ΙΑΟΟΨΓΑ ΕΚ ΖΡΚΕΛΞ ΖΡΟΠΕ♂Α ΟΛ♂ΕΑΠΦ ♂Λ♀Α, ΤΔΕ♂Δ ΨΜΜΑΨΞΑ♀ ΕΚ ♀♂ ♂ΛΙΕ♂Ο ΕΚ ΠΔΑ ΑΨΞΘΦ ΚΕΚΑΠΑΑΚ ΒΛΞΠΕΑΟ. ΕΠ ΤΨΟ ΡΟΑ♀ ΠΛ ♂ΛΚΣΑΦ ΙΑΟΟΨΓΑΟ ΠΛ ΟΛ♂ΕΑΠΦ ΙΑΙΩΑΞΟ ΨΩΛΡΠ ΚΛΠ ΤΨΘΗΕΚΓ ΕΚ ΜΡ♀♀ΘΑΟ ΛΞ ♂ΛΘΘΑ♂ΠΕΚΓ Ο♂ΞΨΜ  ΙΑΠΨΘ. ΨΚΦΩΛ♀Φ ΤΔΛ ΔΨΟ ΩΛΠΔΑΞΑ♀ ΠΛ ΠΞΨΚΟΘΨΠΑ ΠΔΕΟ ΙΑΟΟΨΓΑ ΕΟ ΣΑΞΦ ♂ΛΛΘ. ΦΛΡ    ΤΕΚ Ψ ΜΞΕΧΑ. ΠΔΑ ΜΞΕΧΑ ΕΟ ΙΑΠ ΑΘΘΕΚΓ ΦΛΡ ΔΛΤ♂ΛΛΘ Ε ΠΔΕΚΗ ΦΛΡ ΨΞΑ. ΩΡΦ ΤΨΞ ΟΠΨΙΜΟ!

I'm going to my memory palace

 I don't like that phrase. I didn't hear "memory palace" until I'd already been doing memory stuff for quite a while, so it doesn't sound authentic to me. That's perhaps what you get for only reading two chapters of one memory book instead of immersing yourself in the literature. But nowadays apparently Sherlock Holmes talks on TV about going into his memory palace, in a very unrealistic way. Pah. He should stick to detective stuff and cocaine.

But I just say 'journeys', and I'm going to create some new journeys for the first time in many, many years! I want some specially reserved for this mind-reading magic act, and don't want to cannibalise my existing ones. They need to be permanently engraved with long-term memory things, you see. It will be fun - I've discovered many new places since I last prepared journeys! Redditch and the surrounding areas are about to be immortalised in my brain!

Fat bottomed girls, they'll be riding today

It's been sunny and warm all through this bank holiday weekend! Well, it's pouring with rain right now, but that's okay because it's Monday night. So I've been cycling around all weekend - I have the idea that it does more good than harm to my knees, which is probably wrong, but it's fun anyway. Saturday I had a good long bike in two easy stages... 

Runkeeper is still a great app. This is just the free version, too, not something you have to pay actual money for! It's useful for seeing just how big the hills are along the way, if I want to plan to avoid them next time. There are flatter ways to get to Stratford...

The cycle route to Bromsgrove is fun, taking you really through the middle of nowhere...

And going to Barnt Green is basically uphill all the way. That's the problem with going anywhere towards Birmingham from Redditch - it's a great journey once you get past the hilly bits, but starting out is always bumpy.

Memory League May

 The World Ranking system in Memory League is quite badly flawed, I've always complained. Having achieved a high ranking, you can keep it almost indefinitely just by signing up to every tournament, even if you lose every game.

Well, I did say "almost indefinitely", because having failed to get through the first round of qualifying for the Pan American Open, I'm now going to sink below that 22nd place I've been undeservedly hanging onto for so long, and bottom out at a level more suitable to my performance in recent years.

So I'm resolving to work on it - play more games, start winning more often! Get my consistency back to the level it used to be! Anyone want to give me a game some time? Or many times? I want to play a lot, right now!

Tex, from West Bromwich

 Which comic has the invincible IRON MAN each week? Which comic contains the fabulous X-MEN each week? Which comic features the mighty THOR each week? The answer, back in 1967 Britain, was Fantastic. And that autumn, if your parents had an exorbitant nine shillings and sixpence to spend on an annual for a Christmas present, you could read not just a full-length story for each of those heroes, but a whole lot of other exciting filler stuff too! 96 pages, including the hardback covers (that's how the pages are numbered, weirdly), half of them in full colour and the other 48 in red-and-black duotone. We're going to look today at some excerpts from the exciting X-Men adventure!

Fantastic Annual 1968 version on the left, original American version (or a modern reprint of it, anyway) on the right. It's a reprint of the third issue of the American comic, from back in 1963. And a subtly altered reprint, too - the editors seem to be worried that the British audience will find out it's an American comic unless they change a few things here and there! As you can see on this first page, Professor X's use of the Americanism "gotten" has been changed to "got". Fair enough. And Iceman's "on the fly" has been Anglicised to "as they fly", which seems a bit strange to me. I didn't realise that was an expression that only Americans would use...

There are rather a lot of unnecessary changes to the dialogue, actually - a lot of the characters have a habit of droppin' the g at the end of words, and the Fantastic Annual restores it to some but not all of the speech bubbles. Iceman is allowed to keep doin' it, it's the bad guys who have their pronunciation fixed for the most part! But the best example of this editing comes on page 7, where Cyclops is investigating a newly-discovered mutant in the circus...

Naturally, "dollars" becomes "pounds", "clams" becomes "quid", and "bucks" becomes... "quid". A little unimaginative on the part of the British translator. But then the carnival barker (a phrase that was left unchanged) calls on Tex the cowboy to take centre stage. "Yes, sir! I'm ready!" he replies. Because the original "Yes suh! Ah'm ready!" couldn't possibly be allowed to stand, could it? Those British readers might have got the impression that this man called Tex, wearing a cowboy outfit, was some kind of American!

But Tex is definitely a local boy. The Angel confirms it on page 17, in the middle of the pitched battle between the X-Men and the circus freaks (who come out on top, impressively enough)...

"Spoken like a true son of the west, my friend! West Bromwich, that is!" The Angel's original reference to West Brooklyn has been quite brilliantly changed for the British audience. I think this is just perfect. Tex obviously sounds like a brummie in this alternate X-Men universe!

West Brom won the FA Cup in 1968 (and have never won a trophy since), but that was still in the future when this annual came out. Their latest achievement as at the publication date was losing the 1967 League Cup final to QPR. Tex was probably at Wembley for that historic first single-legged final and his meanness here obviously stems from disappointment at the result.

I'll have to write more about this annual at a later date. Why does the bottom left panel of the Fantastic page say "who" where the American version says "whom", for example? The British version doesn't look like it's been changed. Will I have to track down an original copy of X-Men #3 to check? Or might that just be taking it too far?

A pair of boobies in a bikini

 Tomorrow, the May of doing things will definitely commence. No more work for three days! And even the Boston Utd game is on TNT, which I don't get, and I doubt the local pub will be showing it.

Meanwhile, here's a picture I keep around in case someone wants to see it. Drawn by Julie Thompson, many many years ago.

May is officially here!

 And before I start doing particularly cool things every day in May, one question has arisen today. If someone sends me a message saying "I understand you are the chairman of the 'World Memory Championships' and I'd be interested in chatting with you," should I disillusion him?

Actually, it's probably cooler to be a former World Memory Champion than a chairman, right? A chairman is the kind of person who's rubbish at memory things but organizes competitions for other, more talented people to compete in! Which, yes, IS something I do, but not with any kind of official "chairman" title, so it's still cool, right?

Actually, the person making that enquiry has a Twitter page that makes him seem really cool himself, so I've already replied and told him what I really am. I hope he's also interested in chatting with world memory champions...

New month resolution

 I had a whole lot of things I was intending to do every day in May, but I've been kept late at the office and now I'm not in the mood to do any of them. Also, it was hot and sunny earlier today and then it started pouring with rain. So I'm officially ruling that May starts tomorrow, and I'll be posting something on my blog every single day! Look forward to it!

We are the Desperate Dan appreciation society

Boston United win on penalties! Again! After another 0-0 draw! I probably didn't miss much by not being there. But that's worth a second blog today, and I do have something else to say anyway... 

You know, I feel like I was unreasonably rude to Americans in that last blog post, and elsewhere on this blog. It's not their fault they don't know we use miles. Someone British probably told them all that once, as a cruel joke. And anyway, I think America is a great country, full of lots of really cool people. Polite ones, too - they'd never be so rude about my country as I am about theirs!

So I really should redress the balance and talk about ways we misrepresent America in British comics, but actually there wasn't much of that left in our comics by 1989. I think Baby-Face Finlayson, Little Plum and the Three Bears were all either gone or about to be dropped from the Beano. Desperate Dan was still starring in the Dandy, of course, but he's not such an interesting subject for blogging about.

I do remember being surprised to find two almost identical Oor Wullie comic strips in the every-two-years collections, in which there was an American visitor to Wullie's home who boasted that everything is bigger in the U S of A, only to find that Wullie's appetite was bigger by far! At that time, I hadn't twigged just how few different stories there had been in the fifty years Oor Wullie had already been running by that point. But the everything-is-bigger American is such a British archetype that I think we should apologise for it. I've seen Americans who've watched Fawlty Towers being confused by the American guest who's so rude to Basil in "Waldorf Salad" - confused not just by his extremely strange accent but by lines like "Couldn't find the freeway, had to come in on some back road called the M5." He's not exactly 'being sarcastic', as I've seen it described, he's being a stereotypical American. American viewers don't get that, because real Americans don't actually do that.

So sorry, American readers. I'll leave you with that time in the Transformers annual when Ronald Reagan described Optimus Prime as a 'lorry'.

'Ere you are, your 'ighness

 Nottingham, England. From the depths of a river of fog emerges the blood moon... It's some kind of omen, obviously, betokening a quite horrifying example of what American comics think England is like!

It's Wonder Woman #28, cover-dated March 1989. It's the post-Crisis re-imagining of DC's superheroes. Fans were variously excited or disgusted by it at the time, but I was entirely oblivious. As I documented a few blog posts ago, I wasn't into superheroes at all just yet; that would take a couple of years to happen. But that time was definitely approaching, and this one might have put me off them completely if I'd seen it! It's not really that great, I'm afraid.

George Pérez, who was one of the world's very greatest superhero comic artists, is the writer of this comic. Chris Marrinan, a pretty good artist recently recruited by DC, drew the pictures. I really wanted to claim he was a greater writer than an artist, but I can't really do that. He definitely wrote some of the Nova comics in my collection that I was looking at just recently! But no, he's an artist, and a good one too. Point is, though, he's not George Pérez, and some of the writing on this comic is kind of embarrassing.

We open with several pages of suspense on the fog-shrouded moors. Because England has fog-shrouded moors all over the place, you know. Nottingham is full of them.

You get the idea. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman is living in Boston at this point (the fake Boston in America, not the real one in Lincolnshire, England) and hanging out with a large supporting cast including Hermes the god while she tries to find her stolen magical lasso. It had also been decided to add Wonder Woman to the cast of DC's new "Justice League Europe" comic as a part-time member who would take part in their adventures when the ongoing plot of her own comic permitted. What this meant in practice is that she appears in the first issue of Justice League Europe, it's mentioned in this issue of her own comic, and then someone must have changed their mind about the whole idea, because her membership in the Justice League is never even mentioned again.

But it comes in handy here as a pretext for her to go to Europe (the Justice League were based in Paris, but it's all "Europe", right?) and investigate the mysterious Dr Minerva in her sinister castle in Nottingham, England. She disguises it as a general celebrity royal visit, and of course the "London Star" newspaper is all over it...

The London Star gets sold in Nottingham, apparently. Or maybe they have it specially delivered to the building that's interchangeably referred to as a 'mansion' or a 'castle'. Since it's the only building we see in Nottingham in this comic - one solitary mansion surrounded by foggy moors - the postman probably doesn't have much trouble finding it. Even when bringing a letter addressed to Prof Minerva, [indecipherable squiggle], Nottingham, England.

And of course Wonder Woman finds her way there too. This first panel is the real doozy:

She's come by taxi. From Paris? Well, presumably from the airport. The taxi driver seems to be Dick Van Dyke. The taxi is very American-looking, but the artist and writer have made an effort here - the driver's on the right hand side.The colourist has made everything green, so it's hard to tell if they're meant to be on a road, or what side of it they're on, but Diana doesn't seem to be standing in the middle of a busy street to talk to him, so it's okay.

And of course, that clever writer has used the one and only thing that Americans know (entirely incorrectly) about Britain - that we measure distance in kilometers. "The mansion's close to four kilometers past those moors there," says the cockney chimney-sweep who drives a New York cab.

See, here's the thing, George Pérez (the late, great artist whom I admire enormously) - Nottingham is a CITY. It isn't a castle surrounded by four kilometers of moors. If, like me, you grow up in the Boston area (real Boston, not fake American Boston), then Nottingham is the coolest big city you could ever dream of seeing! Sixty or seventy miles away, so too far for a regular shopping visit (it helped that Grandma lived close by) but a whole lot cooler than the likes of Lincoln or Peterborough. The biggest and coolest city I was familiar with at the time this comic was coming out, by far! (London was remote enough that it didn't really count - the world was a bigger place back then).

I would have been really annoyed by this comic if I'd seen it in 1989. No acknowledgement that the Boston in America isn't the one I'm familiar with? Well, that's just rude. But getting Nottingham so totally wrong? Unforgivable!

Okay, let's be fair. There are, even to this day, people in Britain to whom Nottingham is just the place where Robin Hood lived. And where Forest play. But they probably assume there's a castle like the one we see here (Nottingham Castle doesn't look much like that, really) and wouldn't be so certain it's without a foggy moor or two. And to be honest, when I was young, I assumed they used kilometres in America. Miles seemed like a strictly British kind of thing, and kilometres would be what a modern, flashy country like America used, right? It still feels kind of wrong when I see Americans talking about miles. But, see, I make sure to keep it a secret, and laugh at them if they try to do me a favour and translate it into kilometers!

Chess nuts

 Boston Utd beat Alfreton on penalties last night in the first round of the play-offs! 5-4, with one crucial and impressive save from our goalie and five perfectly scored spot-kicks. And so, like all people who technically support a football team but only remember it when something good happens, I'm all about the Pilgrims right now! Semi-final away at Scunthorpe on Saturday!

Ahh, Scunthorpe. A Lincolnshire derby that can only ever remind me of the time I went there for a memorable match of my own, back in my schooldays. Incidentally, if you want another reason why I so identify with Simon the Chipmunk, there's one great episode that reveals that Simon (as everyone would expect) loves chess and enthusiastically forms a chess club when he gets the opportunity... but actually isn't very good at the game. Jeanette always beats him easily.

Whereupon Simon quickly makes sure to smile, congratulate the winner, calmly pick up the board and go away somewhere private, and have a screaming tantrum about playing such a stupid move.

Incidentally, this episode was clearly written by someone who knows the basics of chess, but animated by a studio that didn't. You can see in the first picture above that the board is the wrong way around. Other scenes have the board correctly oriented, but the king and queen in the wrong place, and black making the first move. It's the basics, people - get it right!

I also have always had a reputation for being good at chess, just because I'm that kind of person, but am actually not terribly good at it. This even goes back to my schooldays, when on the rare occasion anyone outside of our chess-club clique heard that I was on the school chess team, they'd probably just nod and think that made sense, since I was the kind of person who would be. Nobody really knew just how unsuccessful our chess team was, but suffice to say there'd never be an announcement in assembly or anything to say we'd won something.

As an aside, the one person who didn't assume I was good at chess was my dad. He had an annoying unshakeable belief that I was a really terrible player, to the extent of barely knowing how the pieces moved. He'd picked this up from playing me at the age of five or so, and never updated his mental image. I wasn't as bad as he thought, at least.

But our chess-club gang was me, Noddy, Slosh and Jimmy, and we were extremely cool in our own way. There were other people at the school who were actually better chess players, the kind who had won competitions and things, but they had better things to do than play in the chess club by the time of our golden era, so the four-man school chess team, which travelled around to other schools in regular competition was me and Noddy, Slosh if he could make it that night (Jimmy never wanted to), plus one or both of Keith and Damian, two younger kids who were about as good as my dad thought I was. We seldom won a game, but some of our opponents were on about our level, so there were some fun and exciting nights!

And then there was the trip to Scunthorpe. It wasn't part of the regular chess tournament circuit, it was a strange one-off thing. I can't remember any details about why it happened, but we had a team of six for this event. Slosh, Noddy, me, Keith, Damian and a friend of theirs who I don't think knew anything about chess at all. We went to the match, as always, in the school minibus, driven by Dr Chambers. The Doc, who was the only teacher at the school with a doctorate to his name, was the chemistry teacher and in charge of the chess club. If challenged on the point he said he did know how to play chess, but he could never be persuaded to prove it. His participation consisted of being in the general lab at lunchtimes and allowing the chess club to happen there, plus driving the team to and from matches.

Scunthorpe is a whole forty miles from Horncastle, outside of our usual range, and should have been about an hour's drive. We somehow got lost along the way and the journey took more than three hours. We were all comprehensively thrashed in our games - if memory serves, Noddy's was a longer and closer contest, lasting about twenty minutes, and the rest of us were all polished off in nothing flat. Then we went back home again. It was a great night!

So that was my only previous visit to the town you can't say on Facebook because it's got a rude word in it. In honour of that previous triumph, I'm expecting a 6-0 win for someone in the play-off semi-final on Saturday. Hopefully Boston!

My lady love, my dove

 I've had lunch today with a magician who wants us to do a mind-reading act together. This is something that could be really cool! I could be Magic Ian!

Which is a reference to a Supergran story (the books, not the TV series), in which I first learned about this particular kind of magic act. Although the title of this post is from a Roald Dahl story which was probably my second encounter with it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually performing the trick live, but I'm sure I could be great at it.

Anyway, this magician turned out to be a Hereford fan, and they happened to be playing Boston Utd today in a crucial game for the Pilgrims' chances of making the play-offs in the National League North, and Boston did indeed win, two-nil. So this is probably a sign that I should definitely do this magic act, although that might just be because I want to do it, and I'm seeing signs everywhere. We can perform at the promotion celebration party!

The vast unknown powers of the sun and moon

 There's a total eclipse of the sun in America today, and not nearly enough people are talking about this guy!

Another great Bob Haney creation who I said I should write about some time, and still haven't. I'll do it one day! Maybe the next eclipse...

The Bendertaker

 Remember that time Boris photoshopped my head onto Christopher Dean's body? Seventeen years ago? Wow, that's a long time now I come to look at it. Thankfully, I've just made more friends since then who do things like that - Don Michael Vickers in a conversation about wrestling on Facebook said I'm his favourite wrestler!

I would be great on the WWE. I can totally see the storyline already. It would involve The Miz and guest-star Lars Christiansen, perhaps the only memory master who could pass for a WWE superstar. I should write it down and send it to whoever writes their scripts nowadays.

An Actor's Life For Me

 Remember the short-lived sitcom with John Gordon Sinclair? It was sort of okay. But the point is, I'm an actor now, and a puppeteer too - I write this on the way home from a weekend's rehearsals, with a whole new appreciation for the cleverness and complexity involved in a stage production! I've never done this kind of thing before, and the whole experience is just brilliant! I don't care if it's a thing none of my blog-readers are going to see, or want to see, I'm officially considering myself an experienced stage actor from now on!

A good Friday

 I like four-day weekends. There should be more of them. Especially when I've got nothing I needed to do except arrange travel and accommodation for a trip to London tomorrow for puppet rehearsals. I can't really afford it, but sometimes you need to splash out a tiny bit. Likewise, I've got my bike fixed (more money) and went for a ride this morning, trying and nearly successfully managing to avoid the downpours and only be out in the sunny bits.

And I had a bath and played a memory league match against Tohirbek O'rolov in my pyjamas. Why he was wearing my pyjamas I'll never know, but he won, which puts paid to my chance of promotion to division 2 for next season. But that's fine - I still play reasonably well without any training, and I know what it would take to improve.

Here's an alternative take of that joke: I played a memory league match against Tohirbek O'rolov in Uzbekistan. Why I went all the way to Uzbekistan to play on the internet I'll never know, but it's really great to see new explosions of memory competition enthusiasts in parts of the world are new and exciting to me. I'll never get tired of seeing the constant expansion of memory sports! What unexplored territories are still remaining to us? I should investigate which countries have never had a competitor, and go over there to introduce the people to an all-new national pastime!

I came 53rd

 Well, it's an improvement on 72nd. I stupidly rearranged the order of part but not all of the data page and had to go back and fix it, or I would have had time to do a bit more, but really, this is unimpressive. I need to get better at this.

How to excel at Excel

 It's the third battle of this year's Excel esports on Thursday morning, and it's fair to say I haven't done excellently so far. I came 72nd in Battle II. That doesn't really qualify as excelling.

I don't think I've got worse at it; there are more people competing this year who are really good at it. But this is something I need to work on, and it's all about speed and technique. I'd really like to do with this what I did with memorising cards, and devise a way to solve problems using Excel more quickly and efficiently than has ever been done before. I don't know if that's possible. You can't invent new Excel formulas. But Excel has a LOT of formulas, most of which nobody in the world ever uses. There's scope for believing that if I can get familiar with them all, and how to apply them... it's definitely possible.

Brilliantly, the spreadsheet provided for Battle II accidentally had a formula left in the example box for task 4 - if you noticed that (which nobody did), you just had to copy it down into the answer boxes! No brainpower required! But the point is, it's a really great formula!

=SUM(ABS(OFFSET(Customers!$B$2:$F$2,MATCH(G169,Customers!$A$3:$A$102,0),0)-OFFSET(Wines!$B$2:$F$2,MATCH(H169,Wines!$A$3:$A$102,0),0)))

That's so much more efficient than the way I did it, which had lots of intermediate steps. I did those steps really quickly, but I need to get to the point where I can instinctively see that one complete formula, and set it up! It gives me something to aim for, at least...

Strong men and nude frogs

 I'm suitably chastened. Right after I posted yesterday's blog, Kurt Busiek (in a comment on an unrelated article on Tom Brevoort's blog which I nonetheless take as a personal reproach) extolled the virtues of the great John Stanley in a way that makes me ashamed not to have recognised the name at once. But it's actually the fault of a deep, dark psychological flaw within myself, which has been very much brought to light by my recent chipmunk obsession.

I think I have to make a full and frank confession here, and apologise to everyone for it, but it has to be said. Deep down, much to my shame... I think girls are ickypants.

There's no denying it. While I was deluging my brother with Alvin and the Chipmunks during his stay here, the first thing he wanted to see was one with the Chipettes. Which took me by surprise a bit - not because he said it (he always liked them and other girly things when we were young, though he tried to keep it more of a secret in those days lest I jeer at him for it) but because it made me realise that I'm still, even in this day and age, really not interested in Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor. I mean, look back at everything I've written about the Chipmunks this last couple of months - I haven't made a single passing mention of the girls!

It's not that I dislike them. There are some good episodes all about them. But all the ones I instinctively identify as great episodes, both watching the 21st-century series today and watching the 1980s series on Saturday mornings when it was new, are the ones focusing solely on the boys. Simon especially, as I've mentioned, but really all three of them! The girls kind of get in the way of that beloved brotherly dynamic. It's the ickypants factor. I should do something about that.

Which explains why John Stanley, celebrated for his fifteen years in charge of Little Lulu, hasn't made such an impact on my consciousness before now. Funnily enough, although I'm (thanks again to my brother, who now he's an adult is disturbingly in touch with and open about his feminine side) more than usually familiar with Little Audrey and the many other Little girl heroes of classic comics, I don't know all that much about the first and foremost of them, Little Lulu herself. I really should do. And for that matter, Nancy, whose adventures John Stanley apparently contributed a lot to over the years.

And there's no excuse at all for me not knowing about Melvin Monster! Created by John Stanley and starring in ten issues of his own Dell comic in the sixties, he's a boy and clearly a great comic hero! I'll add him to my must-read list! 

But now, let's put all this unnecessary girlishness behind us, and talk about Men. Specifically, Strong Man, Cuckoo Man, Tornado Man, Rope Man and Diaper Man - the Mighty Heroes!

Actually, this is where I have to annoyingly break off what was intended to be a long, coherently-plotted blog post with everything leading from one subject to another. I can't find the Mighty Heroes comic from 1967 online. I used to own them, but don't any more, and thought I'd have no problem finding a few snippets to illustrate the point I was going to make about comic book adaptations.

I'll just have to go from memory, and encourage you to read things like this review with irritatingly broken image links to learn all about this fascinating series. The cartoon version of the Mighty Heroes (a supporting feature to Mighty Mouse) had a strict formula - we'd see the above sequence when an emergency arose, and then the rest of the episode would consist of the five Men trying to stop the villain, with a whole lot of crashing into each other and apologising. It was one of those cartoons where you knew exactly what you were going to get, and enjoyed it hugely every time.

And that kind of cartoon always seems to run into trouble when they make it into a comic - it always feels a little different, and fans of the cartoon never seem to quite like it. There's a tendency for comic adaptations to start out doing slightly different kinds of story, and then take note of reader feedback and try to replicate the cartoon more exactly. Mighty Heroes is a great example - in the cartoon, we never see anything of the Heroes' civilian lives beyond that bit of stock footage that appears in every episode. The comic showed them at home, going about their everyday business, for a little while! It just felt wrong.

But the really interesting thing about the first issue of the comic (as best I can recall) is that there were little things different about the appearance and personality of the Heroes. Strong Man's hair was the wrong colour, and he said "duh..." a lot. He's not supposed to be particularly stupid, but the writer, unfamiliar with the cartoon personality, assumed 'musclebound oaf' was the stereotype to go for.

The really, really, interesting thing was that Tornado Man was drawn throughout the 'civilian identity' sequence wearing his superhero cowl! It's a very strange communication mix-up somewhere in the production process, and I'm really annoyed I can't post pictures of it here. I thought EVERY comic ever published was illegally pirated and broadcast to the world nowadays! What's wrong with these evil pirates? Don't they appreciate the great heroes like they should? Someone should have the law on them.

Still, if you have a look around you can find the classic cartoons, not to mention the triumphant return of the Heroes in the Mighty Mouse cartoon of 1987, in which they have retired from heroics and become the law firm of Man, Man, Man, Man and Man, who come back into action in the traditional heroic way. Diaper Man announces that now he's 36 years old, he's changing his name to Plastic Training Pants Man.

Which is the segue into the next subject I was going to blog about! We're back on track now, and I ask you this - can you imagine Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy wearing diapers?! Well, that's what Marvel Comics promised in 1985, but not what they delivered...

I should point out, in the name of unnecessary pedantry (one of my favourite things in the world) that even in the cartoon, the Muppet Babies don't wear diapers (except Rowlf and arguably Animal). Although potty-training was still a taboo subject in kids' cartoons until Rugrats made it mainstream in the nineties, there's ample evidence that our heroes aren't wearing them under their clothes, and people really need to be aware of this fact. But the first issue of Marvel's tie-in comic takes things just that little bit further.

All the way through the first issue, all the characters are wearing their standard costumes (first established by the dream sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984 and quickly turned into a long-running and quite brilliant cartoon series), except Kermit. He, for who knows what weird reason, spends the entire comic stark naked. Not a stitch of clothing. Not even a diaper!

The artist is Marie Severin, the writer is Stan Kay. I know nakedness is the adult muppet Kermit's usual state, but they clearly must have had the full Muppet Babies character designs in front of them, because everybody else is exactly on-model! What happened to Kermit's sailor-suit? It looks weird even taking the comic on its own merits, when everyone else is fully clothed. It's even weirder to people who know the Muppet Babies cartoon, where nakedness isn't anywhere near as prevalent as it was on The Muppet Show. How did it happen that Kermit ended up in the buff? This is the kind of thing it's possible to think about too much. I should find some more healthy entertainment.

(PS I can't let this go to press without noting that in the later and inferior portion of the classic Muppet Babies cartoon, Bean Bunny joins the cast and wears nothing on his lower half, just like his puppet self. He goes to the bathroom in one episode, too, which rather undermines what I said about Rugrats breaking new ground. But Muppet Babies was well past its best by that time, so we can safely ignore it.)

Let's all turn to issue #2 and beyond, and see Kermit after he's remembered to put his clothes on! It's good stuff, I promise you. Although I never really used to like Piggy. Ickypants, you see.

(Skeeter was always cool, though)

I still want a hula-hoop

 Among the things I love about Alvin and the Chipmunks is the long and multi-media history behind them - including the way it ties in with another subject I find fascinating: early issues of comic book adaptations of new cartoons, made before they knew how the franchise was going to develop.

It's a niche thing, but a great rabbit-hole (or chipmunk-burrow) to dive down if you're in the mood. I must tell you at length all about the fascinating first issue of "Mighty Heroes", or possibly go on for pages and pages about naked baby Kermit the Frog some time. But those are comics that had some preliminary details of character designs and the like to work with - the one I've been enjoying today is working from less than that...

The Chipmunk phenomenon started out with novelty records:

And the sheer cleverness of speeding up Ross Bagdasarian's voice to turn it into chipmunk voices is something people don't appreciate in these days of autotune and technology! In 1958 it was a brilliant innovation!

 

Luckily, some genius on YouTube has satisfied the world's curiosity and compiled an original-speed version!

 

But that song and its sequels (squeakquels) only give a slight hint of the chipmunks' personalities, and the various record-sleeve illustrations don't provide more than a suggestion of how they would look. Even an appearance on Ed Sullivan as glove-puppets is just a step in the right direction...

 

No, what was needed was proper Chipmunk fiction to bring them to life! It took the cartoon "The Alvin Show" in 1961 to really turn Dave and the boys into a lasting phenomenon. There were comic book spin-offs aplenty after the cartoons had caught on, but the first real work of literature in the chipmunk universe was this one comic, in 1959!

Dell comics weren't like most American comics of the time, which had a separate numbering for each title. This was no. 1042 in a long, long series of one-off comics based on cartoons, films, all sorts. Number 1041 was Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges. Number 1043 was The Three Stooges, showcasing their new lineup of Moe, Larry and Curly Joe, which is probably what led to the chipmunk issue getting the unique title "The Three Chipmunks", the only time the trio is described in exactly that way. I recommend ComicBook+ if you want to read all the Dell comics that don't feature copyrighted characters (and maybe Disney and Warner Bros will allow them to include the rest, one day).

The GCD reckons that the stories in this comic were written by Paul S. Newman, but has no idea who drew the pictures. A comment on ComicBook+ says John Stanley. Neither of these names mean anything to me, but it's good stuff! 

Alvin's harmonica, subject of the chipmunks' latest hit single, gets a starring role in most of the stories. There are a lot of elements that have stayed constant over the sixty years of adventures - Alvin as well as his typical antics is distinguished by wearing a hat, and there's a consistent colour scheme for each chipmunk, albeit an unfamiliar one. The red-blue-green colours came about for The Alvin show. And the generic cartoon exploits they get up to, usually with a musical theme, are the kind of stories you'll still see in the latest 21st-century cartoon episodes. It's nice when things stick to the classics.

The characterisation of Simon and Theodore is in a very early state too - they didn't get much individuality in the earliest songs, but Simon picks up from a throwaway line or two and comes across here as boastful and thinking a lot of himself. It's an unusual take that drifted away once he'd got his glasses. Theodore is a bit more bland, but has a few moments that make him feel like his present-day self. Here's a perfectly in-character Theo and an unusually self-possessed Simon:

I should have read this comic long ago. I'll have to find a real-life copy out there some day...

Nations

One thing I'll admit to thinking is quite cool is the Nations League football. If it was on a TV channel I could justify paying money for, I'd watch it all the time. I'm excited to see what happens when Gibraltar play Lithuania.

I like the excessively complicated rules about rankings and things that come with it - it's a competition that appeals to the nerdy mindset, maybe just because of the pure pointlessness of the whole thing. I like the expanded play-off system that will take up the international break in March 2025, and especially the attempt to make excuses for it on the official website - "The expansion of the UEFA Nations League into the International Match Calendar window of March will only concern a selected number of teams and the remaining teams will already be available to start the European Qualifiers."

By my count, the "selected number of teams" will be 28 of the 54 European "nations". That's got to put a bit of a dent into the qualifiers for the world cup. But I'm sure it'll all work out nicely. And maybe a proper TV station will get the rights one of these days!

But in the meantime, here's something else that everyone should be watching - Norwell the weasel and his husband, an ensouled coat, have got their own cartoon spin-off from the Charlie the Unicorn saga! Honestly, I love FilmCow's YouTube channel possibly even more than football games between Gibraltar and Lithuania!

Sophisticated entertainment

 Here's a favourite scene of mine, from the Beano Comic Library "Triple Trouble", starring Baby-Face Finlayson. Some things never get old - I've been reliably laughing at "thinks he's helping" for the last forty years.

Drawn by Henry Davies, probably. And really, you don't see this kind of thing in the Beano any more - even the best strips these days don't cram anywhere near this many gags into every panel!

Of course, there is still some entertainment to be found for the children of today. But if, like me, you spend an unreasonable amount of time watching Alvin and the Chipmunks on kids' TV channels, you get the drawback of seeing a limited number of adverts, over and over again.

And the one that really bugs me is the one for Fairy Liquid, with small child saying "Dad, I really want to make a spaceship out of that Fairy Liquid bottle, but it's taking ages to run out!" I have several problems with this. Firstly, the boy is a terrible actor, but that's not his fault. I'm also a terrible actor, and I'm making a point of being nice to such people, in hopes that other people will do the same to me. But secondly, they did this exact same advert back in the mid-nineties or thereabouts, only better. That one was taken from an early reality show where they gave video cameras to members of the public, and so the original scene was at least pretending to be unscripted, and looked a lot more natural. Why remake an old advert, only not nearly as well? Thirdly, Fairy Liquid bottles aren't even the right shape to make spaceships any more. Bring back the old ones, Fairy! And fourthly, I've never understood the whole "it lasts longer" thing that Fairy like to boast about. Whatever washing up liquid I'm using, I just put a squeeze of it into the sink. Who uses extra when they're washing dishes if they think it hasn't adequately cleaned them? Nobody, that's who! Fairy Liquid lasts the exact same length of time as any other, and someone ought to stop them claiming that about it!

I'll stop complaining now. And to be fair, I always buy Fairy Liquid. I don't remember the last time I used one of the rival brands that they claim to last longer than.

But the most irksome advert on the kids' TV channels right now is what seems to be a serious attempt to make children want to eat vegetables. "Eat them to defeat them." I'm sure everyone involved in it was doing it very tongue in cheek, but I bet the child actors in that one (better ones than the Fairy boy) get jeered at by their drama-school classmates.