Truthfully, really looking forward to it as it's a show that i listen to all the while when I'm working. Only wish I'd been able to make it onto the show on a Friday for the film slot where Mark Kermode turns up to review movies, bearpit that it is.
I meant to post these pictures a little sooner from the KNOCK! KNOCK! BOO! SCARE! project that I was working on with Ian Culbard. These were mood pieces done during the time that I was out of work, post Mars Attacks before commencing designing Bob The Builder. It was a period where I spent time developing my style and painting technique into something that vaguely resembled a more professional look. Hopefully it worked. As mentioned previously in the blog it certainly helped me secure the job on "Bob" as the little boy in the paintings isn't a million miles away from the yellow helmeted one.Below is another painting from the KNOCK! KNOCK! BOO! SCARE series of stories, in particular from The Hoovers, a tale about a vacuum cleaner that comes to life and devours a family. Any similarity to actual vacuum cleaner brand names is purely coincidental. Honest. The manuscript for this, my first ever story written in ryhme, is below. Hope you enjoy.
THE HOOVERS
On a cold dark night while the moon is bright
We spy a sleepy street
Behind each curtain one cannot be certain
Who or what we’ll meet
Take this one with the lights all on
A warm and peaceful sight
You’d never guess the horrible mess
That took place there one night
As Dad watched the news Mum had a snooze
Jim drank a strawberry shake
Jess sat by the cat on the colourful mat
Chomping chocolate cake
“Goodness Jess, what a mess
You’re such a mucky pup.
Crumbs here and there and everywhere
We’d better tidy up!”
There was a roll of thunder as Dad looked under
The stairs to find the broom
But the broom was broken so he pinned his hopes on
A battered and bent vacuum
With the lightning flashing, the thunder crashing
The rain had filled the gutter
Dad flicked a switch and without a hitch
The machine began to splutter
As the storm wailed the power failed
And the lights began to flicker
The vacuum cleaner looked a little meaner
And let out a sinister snicker
With a mischievous moan and a life of it’s own
It crunched up the crumbs from the cake
Revealing a grin it flew to the bin
Sucking up dust in its wake
An old worn out shoe, a used tub of glue
Yesterday’s cold fish and chips
Some fluff and some string, a limp onion ring
Finished off with fresh apple pips
Swallowing everything, gulping down anything
Eating as much as it pleased
First soup and a roll then a meat casserole
Followed by French wine and cheese
Though the wine was fine, the cheese divine
It wanted a tastier dish
With a growl and a grumble and a deep tummy rumble
It moved onto bigger fish
It grunted a groan and devoured the phone
Before swiping Dad’s jacket and hat
On it’s rambling rampage it gobbled the birdcage
Then sucked up the cat and the mat
As Dad stood perplexed it swallowed him next
With a snigger and slobbering slurp
Mum went after him followed swiftly by Jim
And it belched out a terrible burp
The mechanical lout then spun about
Heaving it’s sack through the air
Jess faced the fat beast all ballooned from it’s feast
And threw it a challenging glare
Without a sound she stood her ground
And faced the greedy thug
As it charged at her it didn’t matter
She simply pulled the plug
33 comments:
Ah, Mr. Mayo's show shall receive plus one listener tomorrow, usually I just tune in on a Friday for Kermode but for you Mr. Jobling...
Great to see your work and to hear where it fits into the evolution of your career, always interesting.
Nice story by the way, big fan of Twilight Zone so tickles me.
You're leaving Bushy for dust in the Media Whore stakes with this one !! I think Bushy's only hope is an appearance on Richard and Judy to pull back a bit of ground !! :)
Nice pics too !
Have to remember to tune in when I do some decorating tomorrow.
Nice to see the older work too.
:( Can't listen to the show since I'm in the US. Well, that and I don't have a radio in the first place.
:D That was a wonderful poem, with a great ending. Thank you for posting it.
Haha, brilliant!
You gotta make that into a picture book, Curtis, it's a great little story. You know how all little kids have a period when they're scared of the vacuum cleaner? I bet that's exactly what's going on in their little brains!
dragonhead... if you miss it you'll be able to listen to it online anyway...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/mayo.shtml
There's no escaping him now. shudder.
Nik, is that the original series of Twilight Zone?
I'll be listening! great stuff,
Jon Burgerman
great drawings above!! And i love the cat in the illustration of your poem. Which is a very cool poem by the way. Fun, though scary haha. If I was a kid reading that, I would never touch a hoover again... maybe thats why my dog is frightened of it...
Hope to catch your interview!
Ken :D
Yep Ian, the original series. Even the cowboy ones were sometimes a treat.
Serlings intros were too cool, that cat had style.
Glad to see BBC crediting Mr Bling as the creator of Bob the Builder ;)
Thanks Ian! :)
Ah yes, Twilight Zone. I watch it every night on Sci-Fi channel.
I just remembered. I use to have nightmares of appliances coming alive as a kid.
Well that was painless enough. Thanks to Mr Mayo for going easy on me, although have to say he asked some cracking questions! There was loads of stuff I wanted to talk about, including OFCOM's attempts to regulate what adverts are shown on kids TV currently (a real hot potato) but there wasn't the time.
Nik, I know I know, had to do that correction again re: creator, I always do. Hate to be pedantic but i get pulled up by others if I don't.
Glazey, are we talking about Bushy actually climbing ONTO Richard & Judy? I'd pay money to see that.
Ian, thanks for the link - did they webpod it today or what?
Ken, cheers man, hope you caught it! Am worried now about what you've been doing to your dog!
Ivaylo, still scared of the vaccuum cleaner me, at least that's what I tell Mrs Bling to evade doing the cleaning.
Mister Burgerman! Hey fella, good to hear from you :-) Thanks for calling by, get the kettle on my tea-loving chum...
Reminded me of the Guy Kewney incident (again on the BBC..."researcher" is just a title, not a job description then?). Most amusing, but great recovery. Could see that one coming though, it had it down in the show's billing. Nearly caught ol' Mayo a cropper there, but he managed to re-taylor the questions suitably enough.
Hope you appreciated my phone in question. I did say "Nottingham" but evidently one of their researchers was manning the phones ;-)
"Johnny on the spot" you ain't. Well batted sir.
Nik, correct, that was the right answer. The original series is fried frickin gold. I have seasons 1 and 2 and am hankering for season 3 (it's got the 'it's a menu' story on that one). I love the story about the girl at the bus station and the old west one with the guy who gets his shootin' hand back.
Got to love the Shatner gold in his two Twilight episodes.
Great interview, liked the sneak peak of Frankenstein's Cat and the Harryhausen namecheck.
INJun- which question was yours, the "dark kids TV" one??? They said that was a fella from Belfast. That was the only question I fielded. I thought SM's questions were bob-on, very insightful and made me use the grey matter. Certainly made a change from "Where do you get your ideas from?" Bravo, Mr Mayo :-)
Paul, Shatner's gremlin episode is a classic. Was it Jon Lithgow who performed it in the movie??
I was alluding to the call in being from me (given the subject matter of the call I thought it'd bait you). But fear not, it wasn't really me. I was jokin'.
Whilst on the subject of identity, you should have a t-shirt printed saying "I didn't create Bob the builder, I just drawed them pretty pikchures what them television people made into morph folk with hats on."
Also thought you did rather well with the greywater question too. I'd have just shrugged my shoulders and said "dunno, I just drawed them pictures". Like I said, Johnny on the spot you're not. Most impressive.
This could become a six degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Expect to see you on Question Time next week as the man who invented greywater.
And yeah, the right question to Jon Lithgow is "Who played the Shattner's Role in terror at 20,000 feet in the Twilight Zone movie"?
With Dan Akroyd as the abulance driver for the double twist when he says "hey, wanna see something scary?"
Vic Morrow was in the segment that made that film spectacular, the guy who walks into all those different times of persecution and is on the run. He died making that film when a helicopter landed on him and two child actors. Pop factoid, he was/is the father of Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The funny thing about that story was in the scene where the actor died he was running with two vitnamese kids like he was trying to save them,obviously once the actors had died the story must have been re-edited into a different ending or something.
Not sure about the ins and outs of the edit but it ends with him on a train to Auschwitz.
From Lithgow to the Shatner version of the 20,000 feet story (by the way, that was a Richard Matheson story... I recommend people read "I Am Legend" right now. That's a book I recommended (along "Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury) to Mister and Mrs Bling and they both loved 'em so don't just take my word for it... (and Curt's not been shy on recommendations either... if you can track it down, get a short story by George RR Martin called Skin Trade... and while you're at it, get "The Wolf's Hour" By Robert McCammon... Awesome book).
Matheson's written a lot of books, but stores don't stock that many so you have to track them down, order them in, whatever. He's my favourite and his episodes for TZ are great. Charles Baumont likewise.
Yeah 'I am Legend' is great ! Here's my list of favourite books http://tinyurl.com/hkbj8
Matheson's brill. A lot of his books are R1 which means special ordering's needed, bit of a pain. He wrote 'Duel' too - still one of Speilberg's finest.
Matheson is the man. And I concur with INJun on all other recommendations. Skin Trade and Wolfs Hour. Aahhh, werewolves. Rockin'! Already recommended WH to Nik who has his copy already!!
After the Morrow accident Landis withdrew from movie-making for sometime, IIRC. They certainly did re-edit the ending to the persecution segment after the deaths. Bad business. The scenes with Akroyd beasting out scared the pants off me when i saw the film.
The series has been a huge influence on me, as is probably obvious by the development of concepts like KNOCK! KNOCK! BOO! SCARE! with likeminded chaps like Ian.
Ian, thanks for the kind words on the interview.
Yours in a greywater haze
Mr Bling
Curtis Jobling, Minister of Transport.
Now that that ball is rolling, lets see how long it is before the news spreads and you're on Question Time fielding angry commuter's questions.
"It wasn't me that done it," as Ivan Dobski would say.
Always willing to read about werewolves, I'll check out 'Wolf's Hour', anyone read 'Howling Mad'? Not a fan of Peter David's comics but that is a cool book with a great concept.
Not a fan of Peter David Comics???? WHAT??!?!?!??!!
Well, okay, I don't know what his latest stuff is like, but, his run on Incredible Hulk in the early nineties is genius. It reads like pre-Buffy Buffy, it even has it's own Zeppo in the mould of Rik Jones. That run was fantastic! It's quite a remarkable body of work (not collected yet, but I understand his run is being put together. quite specifically, Gary Frank drew it)
Fair point. His run on The Hulk was the only other thing he did that I enjoyed, but I was getting bit fed up of it near the very end. Sorry!
Fusilier 21 - Don't know about camp, but I certainly sounded scouse. Why me???
Andy - at least I sounded like the talented one, then! :-D Emma, AJ and Evie send hugs back mister!
Swell illustrations Mr. Bling!
didnt catch the interview man :( tried listening online at work, but it wouldnt play! I wonder if there is an archive?
haha err to clarify... my dog has always been frightened of the hoover! I didnt try hoovering him when he was a pup or anything haha
Okay... so perhaps I just want to look like Mrs. Hoover... but it seems Mr. Hoover resembles looks a little like Mr. Hover.... of rushing to hospital with cut foot fame... I love it!!!
Yikes! American lady! Lovely lovely American lady!!!! :-D How are ya hon? There is some similarity between the shears weilding painted fellow and the 4x4 driving hero of Red Stick.....
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