This week I watched an old flick called The Quiet Earth, a movie made in New Zealand in the 1980's. Often cited as a brilliant sci-fi film I have been intrigued by it for years and took the plunge when I saw it was on You Tube.
The story is essentially a variation of The Omega Man about the last person on Earth. The catastrophe at the start of The Quiet Earth is an accidental apocalypse brought on by an experiment called Project Flashlight.
The last man on Earth is played exceptionally well by the leading man and his descent into near-madness is fabulously well acted. The introduction of two more survivors is fascinating but it is the final scene shown below which really delivers with its towering clouds flanking an emerging Saturn rising over the horizon.
This enigmatic vision made me think about that man's final day. I imagine that this last day and the end of all nature has captured peoples' imaginations for millennia. An example which I personally find very poignant is this painting by Stephen Lack called Boys in the Last Tree shown below [Stephen Lack was the actor who played Cameron Vale in the sci-fi film Scanners].
The end of days also makes me consider mathematical ideas like probability and the concept of certainty. What happens to them when the laws of physics break down during extinction level events like entering a black hole or the death of the universe? OK, there won't be any scientists left to measure anything but will probability and certainty continue as long as time does in some form?
I ask this as a kid was recently faced with the probability of the sun rising each day. Clearly its a dead cert and I would have thought a yardstick of certainty at that. It got me thinking though about the last day on Earth when it will cease to be a certainty anymore.
Have you any thoughts on this matter readers or is it a certainty that you've logged off?
I knew Kevin's new Triceratops in the desert diorama [below] reminded me of something in my past. Its this magazine cover on Tomart's Action Figure Digest: Toy Fair 97 depicting a storm trooper riding a don't know what on the desert planet of Tatooine I imagine.
I used to love Action Figure Digest and bought a copy whenever I could. Tomart did a great job keeping us up to date with new toy action figure lines as well as describing vintage toys too.
One particular special issue was one of the first toy magazines I ever got in the 90's. I'll have to dig it out. I know its got a Ming the Merciless Defenders of the Earth serpent toy on the cover.
Did you get Tomart's Action Figure Digest mag? Is it still going?
The coffee is hot and the sun is shining on the first of July.
But something's missing.
Nothing has slapped on the door mat. Nothing has flopped through the letterbox.
I've nothing to read!
It'd odd. My childhood was filled with comics and magazines and the best way of getting them was a subscription from the local 'paper shop' and delivered by a paper boy. I loved how our old address was scribbled in the top corner in pencil, 24 Powis ...
I got a few TV21's this way [respect to anyone who got them all through the door!] but the big mat hitter for me was Look-In.
I got stacks of them through the door as a kid and adored the thing. On The Buses, the free gifts, the lot. My favourite was Kung Fu as it tapped into the oriental craze sweeping through the West and right through my bedroom!
Getting your favourite comic through the door was a joy and perhaps a rare joy these days. I'm not sure if its possible to get comics and magazines from the paper shop now and delivered by a paper boy. Is it?
I did enjoy that weekly buzz once more in the Nineties when I subscribed to Model and Collectors Mart and I have to say it was equally as thrilling. I adored that mag as much as Look-In and consumed every word on the steamy bus to work!
But all good things seem to come to an end and Model Mart's sales dropped and it sadly faded away. My pile of magazines was huge and by 2003 when we moved house I had to recycle most of them keeping a few choice ones to follow me into the future.
I have thought about another subscription but nothing leaps out. It could be an age thing with me now. The modern 2000 AD perhaps [is it any good?] or maybe the revamped Warren Creepy of old called Creeps?
Maybe I'm just being an old curmudgeon but perhaps the golden age of kids' adventure comics has gone and subscriptions have faded like the contrails of Thunderbird 2. I've not heard a single modern kid ever mention a subscription comic or magazine to me. If they do talk about them its always superhero stuff, which they got from a city centre comic shop.
Is 2000 AD the last UK gasp for a genre that filled our lungs with the air of excitement and outer space when we were kids in the Sixties and Seventies - and maybe even the Eighties and Nineties?
Its weird what we thought we knew about chocolate as kids.
All sorts of myths and legends abounded, legends like kids getting drunk from eating three bars of Old Jamaica or that the milk left over from a bowl of coco pops actually tasted better than Nesquik!
To kick off what I can actually recall I'll start with Flake, the crumbliest chocolate in the world. It was almost impossible to eat it all as being so crumbly it mostly fell onto your hand or arm and melted instantly.
The myth in the boys' playground was that only gorgeous girls ate flakes and that if you bought one for your 'bird' she would be made instantly 'fit' using the parlance of the day.
Rumours abounded about the exotic location used in the TV ads for Bounty bars. It was Blackpool. It was Heysham Head. It was definitely Carnforth Sands. It was actually a beach called Vai on the beautiful Greek Island of Crete, a fun fact I only found out as an adult when I visited and Vai continues to be bountiful as here on TV in 2011:
Revels were another chocolate morsel oft the nub of boyish pranks as they were more often than not referred to as rabbit droppings. The original chocolate covered peanut, Treets, never suffered such indignities as they were so damn good.
Yorkie is another bar misunderstood by most. A vigorous TV campaign depicting the chunky chocolate being scoffed by a truck driver has forever linked the brand to wagons and lumberjack shirts. It is true that a large mouth with strong chompers is needed to sever one of the huge pieces off the block but Yorkie isn't only the preserve of hungry truckers. A hammer and chisel will do the job just as well for anyone!
Probably the most myths surround that War God in a wrapper, the King that is the Mars Bar. Its well-known by every kid that a Mars a day helped you work, rest and play so it was Doctors' Orders really!
For some reason the Mars Bar made people do things with it. It must have been its relative plainness that induced a pioneering spirit in Mars users. It was in effect abused.
In Scotland most famously the humble Mars Bar was often deep fried in batter, although I have never experienced this northern treat. Have you?
In the comedy movie Caddyshack a Mars type-bar was seen 'floating' in a Golf Club swimming pool, much to the disgust of the swimmers. Upon being found in the drained basin and eaten wet by caretaker Bill Murray the Golf Club Chairwoman promptly feints in one the funniest scenes I've ever seen on film. I have to admit though that the bar in question may not have been an actual Mars as they may not be found in the US. It may have been something like Oh Henry, Butterfinger or maybe something nutty! It is in fact a Babe Ruth having watched the clip again!
Easily the most controversial of all Mars abuses, stretching the 'play' bit to a whole new level, was that portrayed in the steamy Last Tango in Paris, where Marlon Brando redefined eating chocolate but I will leave it at that as this is a family blog. I shall end with the undisputed bad sheep of bars, the goblin king of half-eaten blocks that can only be Cooking Chocolate. With no well-known brands springing to mind, cooking chocolate ignored branding being the very epitome of yukky non-chocolateness. Cooking chocolate was fine in cakes and cookies but if you were starving for the sweet stuff in January when all the selection boxes were empty and nothing else was in the cupboard it was no joke. Cooking chocolate may have sated your hunger at first but after a second row it became clear that this wasn't Dairy Milk in a cheap wrapper. It was all those crumbs of Flake you dropped on the floor, scooped up in a dustpan, mixed with baby talc and re-melted to form second hand slabs of milk dust! Yuk! What do you recall about chocolate? Which brands abound in your country? Are there any myths?
When I say sandals I mean those shoes where the front end was heavily pierced with air holes topped with a large gap and a strap usually buckled.
Born from a need for less sweaty feet in Summer sandals became the unfortunate trademarks of 1. Nerds 2. Mummy's boys 3. Alter boys 4. little boys and 5. Dads. It was a peculiarly male phenomenon.
In that grooviest of decades I was both a little boy, a Mummy's boy and somewhat nerdy I think. Sandals were nailed on!
Even worse were the long knee socks we had to wear with them creating a look so ridiculed that it persists today as the 'socks and sandals' combo popular with older Dads and mocked by fashionistas everywhere. Only string vests generate more cultural vitriol.
There was one style of sandal that managed to evade all this mocking though, the plastic Jelly. I myself enjoyed the sharp clack of Jellies on our lino floors and appreciated their ability to easily go from one terrain to another such as kitchen to garden. They were the ATV'of sandals and could even withstand 1. the paddling pool 2. the swimming pool 3. the sea and 4. the bath [we didn't have a shower in the Sixties].
When I got older and interested in film I was always astounded that the oft-maligned sandal even had its own sub-genre of action film, sword and sandals. However these particular shoes were more usually the basic straps and lashings associated with the bronzed warriors of Ancient Greece, a far cry from the blue, brushed suede baskets from Clerks we had to endure as kids!
Here's an old piccy from my Butlins family album showing a whole assortment of sandalry worn by my Sixties clan. From left to right: Mum - stylish sandals 2. Big Brother - socks and plimsolls 3. Uncle Gordon - socks and sandals 4. Uncle Gordon's son - socks and sandals 5. Me [ showing off the Tudor Rose boat] - socks and jellies and 6. Auntie Terry - stylish sandals.
