JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

I’ve been having some trouble with my mental focus these past few weeks. This a common problem when working on my own projects but it rarely comes up when working for “the man.” I am very productive when working for for someone else but when working for myself, I guess I just don’t respect the boss.

When I need some creative Viagra, I usually just look at great artwork on the internet but that backfired on me this time. There is so much fabulous work out there that it leaves me feeling strangely inadequate! Inspiration can be a double-edged sword when it makes me want to throw out everything I’ve done.

Mind you, I am quite capable of chasing my tail without any outside distractions. My personal form of mental blockage is usually a case of having a lot of ideas and not knowing which one to use. I’ve heard this called “analysis paralysis” but I prefer the term “IDEA-rhea”. Too many ideas is as bad as none, sometimes.

Convincing myself that what I am making is even worth the effort can be a strange mental game. I’ll draw something I’m very happy with and then after a break for lunch, I come back and hate it. The reverse happens as well; I stumble upon some scribbles I did a day ago and have no idea why I threw them away. With me, that ridiculous internal chit chat can go ad infinitum… I know that all of this is a tempest in a tea cup but when the tea cup is my skull, the tempest can be exhausting none the less.

The artists who I really admire have, in addition to good drawing skills and original ideas, the ability to focus themselves and produce. Self-discipline is an invaluable quality in anyone but it really is essential for people creating things, especially when doing the creation solo…

OK, that’s enough of my whining; gotta go do some drawings. They don’t throw themselves away, you know!

These days, many artists (even those still in school) have their own web-sites, with links to artists who have influenced them. Hop-scotching around the internet from site to site has been a great source of inspiration for me in recent years. You can see links to artists that I admire on my LINKS page, but some of those who have influenced me the most have been those that I have worked with personally, and in many cases they don’t have websites and are therefore unknown by people who have not worked with them too.

Part One: Early Influences
I didn’t attend art school. When I started working in animation, at the age of 17, I was trained on the job and there wasn’t time for much “proper” training in the midst of production. So, while a lot of people remember the early influence of their art teachers, I am grateful to those few artist/co-workers who took time to show me some tricks and give encouragement when I was starting out, and had even less idea of what I was doing than I do today. Here are a few of the cartoonists who influenced me early in my career.

JON McCLENAHAN is an American, but he entered the animation industry in Australia, which is where I met him, when I started out at Hanna-Barbera’s Sydney studio, as an inbetweener. Jon was already an animator and he was the first artist ever to take an interest in me and I owe him a lot for that. He gave me encouragement and help with some animation I was doing in my spare time, because I was getting frustrated with being an inbetweener. Partly due to that after hours experimentation, and Jon’s encouragement, I did eventually get a chance to animate. Jon was, and still is, a very focussed, hard worker and he got a lot of work done by staying in his chair all day and drawing, rather than yakking with co-workers, which was my habit back then. I have since acquired his ability to work hard, day after day, but sadly I have never been able to apply Jon’s straightforward approach to creativity; he doesn’t second guess himself, and forges ahead with his first idea. I admire that approach very much and tried to adopt it for myself, but sadly I am rarely happy with my first idea, and so my method is is to “noodle” and try alternatives and throw away a lot of work along the path to making something I am proud of. Years later, after Jon and his family had moved back to his home town of Chicago, I had a chance to work with him at his own studio, called STARTOONS. Fans of Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Tazmania and other quality TV cartoons from the 1980s and early 1990s may have heard of that studio because many of the funniest (and Emmy winning-est) episodes of those popular shows were animated by Jon and his crew.

Jon and I haven’t worked together for many years but we are great friends to this day.

Simon and Chris. These guys are often mentioned in the same breath by people who know them, because they are such complementary friends. When I first started working, they were like the big brothers I never had as a kid. In addition to picking up a cynical sense of humour that I hadn’t really earned yet, I learned a great deal about animation and cartooning from watching these two blokes:

CHRIS HAUGE has animated on the influential Gorillaz videos, including that first one for “Clint Eastwood” that blew everyone away (I must have watched it about 100 times). He did those when working in London for Passion Pictures. Before being part of that buzz, years and years earlier, Chris turned on a light bulb over my noggin when he was the first animator who explained to me that animation wasn’t just individual drawings or even pretty drawings… it is the relationship between those drawings that is important; he made me think about TIMING, which is something that he excells at himself. Chris showed me how to plan out the action in thumbnails first so as not to jam too much “stuff” into a scene, and ensure that the drawings each had enough screen time to “read” for the audience. That may seem obvious, especially to those of you who have had formal training, but it was a revelation to me when I was 18. (He later tried to teach me to surf, with much less success. My thrashing and splashing around made him look “uncool” in front of his surfer peers). As well as enjoying working with Chris at Hanna Barbera in Sydney, I also learned a lot from him when we both worked on commercials at Colossal Pictures in San Francisco (my favourite company I ever worked at). Chris now has his own animation studio in Sydney called HALO PICTURES with not only a great showreel but also a great location; near the beach. (Being close to the surf was one of the major factors in choosing a studio location for Chris).

Chris is the only of my art-pals on this list who actually does have a website, so please check out his animation for GORILLAZ and various other bits and pieces of coolness.

SIMON O’LEARY has worked on projects such as Disney’s Tarzan (in the Paris unit) and now directs commercials in Sydney. His cartooning ability, dry sense of humour and unpretentious approach to working were all major inspirations to me when I started in the animation industry and he inspires me to this very day. He is one of those guys who can do FUNNY drawings… drawings that’ll make you blow your coffee out your nose; you are laughing so hard. This is especially so when he busts out a savagely accurate caricature of a co-worker (or YOU) or a funny doodle based on something that happened at lunch hour. For 25 years or so Simon has both written and drawn a comic strip called Fred Gassit which runs in the Australian Motor Cycle News magazine (and several other motorcycle magazines around the world). While the strip is ostensibly related to the world of motorcycling, the humour is really about Simon taking pot-shots at the world in general, via the persona of Fred; a sarcastic dog-like character who is a cantankerous bastard but appealing none the less (much like Simon). Both the humour and the artwork are vulgar yet sophisticated (much like Simon), which is a winning combination for me; the hardest laughs happen when neurones within the low-brow and the high-brow are firing simultaneously. I have a collection of these strips that is a treasured possession I look through when I want a laugh or need to swipe ideas on how to draw a vehicle, a goon, a bikini babe, or anything for that matter. To my mind these cartoons are insanely funny and I wish that Simon was rich and famous as a result, but the fact is that he doesn’t even sign them let alone “promote” them. Self-promotion is not what Simon is about. Which explains why he doesn’t have a website and why you probably haven’t heard of him.

I have worked with Simon in Sydney, Paris and San Francisco and I look forward to working with him again some day.

DEANE TAYLOR may best be known as the Art Director on the Nightmare before Christmas (and a spin-off game). He also did design work on the animated shows Cow and Chicken and I.M. Weasel by Dave Feiss (yet another animation hero of mine, from later in my career). But years before that, Deane ran the layout department at Hanna Barbera in Sydney. After I had been animating for a few years, Deane offered me a chance at learning layouts under his supervision. Consequently, most of what I know today about composition I learned from Deane, or picked up by working with him and watching him go. He was the most prolific artist in the department. He has a very dynamic drawing style, featuring a clever use of shape and silhoette, that many of his trainees tried to copy, but nobody ever matched Deane for graphic dynamism and energy of line. He taught me some simple compositional guidelines that I learned to apply over and over again, but apart from art tricks, he also showed me quite a bit about work ethics and attitude. Even though the shows we worked on were pretty crappy in those days, and many people just went through the motions when making them, Deane was one of the few who tried his hardest on every show, no matter what. He took pride in his work. He respected people who did a good job on whatever they were given to do, rather than those people who will work on only 2 cylinders, saving themselves for the big deal job on the distant horizon.

Deane taught me to always think of how to “plus” the material that came across my desk. That is certainly what he always does.

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I am very lucky in that I have worked all over the globe, at some really great studios, on some quality productions, with loads of amazing artists over the years… but these guys listed here had a huge influence on me, disproportionate to the quality of the projects we worked on together. In many cases the stuff we collaborated on was a lot of crap, yet these artists are still some of those that I respect the most.

Drive-In theatres are fondly remembered for providing teenagers with both a cover story (a trip to the movies) and a relatively private place (a car) for their furtive, mutual anatomical research. But they were also frequented by families with small children. Before the ages of video and DVD, a drive-in theatre was where parents could see movies without having to feel self-conscious about their bawling kids. No need for a baby sitter for the tiny ones, just bring them along. Sealed off in your (more or less) soundproof bubble you weren’t likely to bother the other patrons, who were probably families themselves, or teenagers who had more pressing things (ie; the pressing of “things”) on their minds. But you could easily bother each other, cooped up in there during a double bill of “Blue-Beard’s Ghost” and “Herbie the Love Bug”. With all the bickering and crying and spilled drinks and whatnot there was often as much tragedy and comedy and drama in the car, as on the screen.

I remember going to the drive-in to see family films when there were little babies in our family (and I was small myself). In particular I was very affected by seeing “BAMBI” when I was 5 years old. My brother Jo was still a small baby and provided his own vocal accompaniment from the front seat where he was attended to by my Mother, already pregnant with next brother, Rob (who would be along to help out with the yodelling chores in a few months). Despite the occasional noise, and being treated to moments of SENSE-AROUND when baby-bro had to have his underthings changed right there in front of me, I was very much engrossed in what was going on up on the screen.

Like a lot of children, the death of BAMBI’s Mother affected me very deeply and I’m absolutely sure that I added my own blubbering to the general commotion within our car at that point. Parents sometimes like to shield their kids from such raw emotions, but this moment of tragedy is a big part of one of my most powerful early-childhood memories. And it wasn’t over yet, BAMBI was about to affect me in perhaps an even more powerful way; it was while at the drive-in watching “Bambi” that I realised that this film was somehow different to other movies… IT WAS DRAWINGS… Moving and talking and seeming to be alive… and then seeming to be killed… drawings making me feel both happy, and then sad. The tears of anguish were barely even dry on my face before I started to wonder how this could be so…. What kind of magic was this? I could not grasp how it was possible for these drawings to be alive. It was a singular moment; I was both pulled into and popped out of, the movie at the same time.

I had always liked cartoons, but never thought about how they were made, in fact I don’t think that I had ever thought about how ANY movies were made until this moment watching Bambi at the Drive-In theatre in Hobart. If I had thought about it at all, I probably thought that films were documentaries and the events on-screen were really happening (Reality TV in today’s parlance). But the realisation that this film was made of drawings made that idea an impossibility. Mum and Dad now had their hands full. Baby on the one hand and on the other, a 5 year old who needed some answers. They both did their best to explain the rudiments of the animation process, but it seemed completely unbelievable. Tiny drawings? What? How? I wasn’t apt to take their explanations at face value either; I hadn’t forgotten the great lengths they had taken to try and dupe me with that Santa Claus nonsense (which I never believed in for a moment, much to the great disappointment of my Mother). You never knew what kind of hokum grown ups were going to put over on you next….

Behind our car at the back of the drive-in, in the same building as the snack bar, there was a tiny window allowing patrons to peek into the projection booth. In an attempt to convey the truth of the animation process to me, my Dad lifted me up high enough that I could see in. I watched a big machine spool out a long shiny ribbon that passed through a ray of light, sending a flickering beam out through the main window and onto the huge screen, in front of which our family car was parked, under the night sky. I was told that there were thousands of hand drawn little pictures on that strip of film and through some process as yet beyond my ability to comprehend, they looked alive when put through the projector and light went through them.

It sounded like some kind of magic to me and even If it wasn’t “real” magic then it was clearly the next best thing. The sense of wonder from that night stayed with me for quite some time; certainly long enough to get me into the animation industry. I can still conjure up a ghost of it even now after 25 years in the biz.

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These days of course, people don’t need to go to Drive-In movies. You can watch whatever you like, and whenever you like at home on your groovy big-screen home entertainment centre, or for that matter just go ahead and take the tiny kids to the multiplex, no problem. Nobody is going to hear them over the all cellphone chit-chat anyway.

I find it hard to be truly original, even when really trying to be. Countless times, I have hit upon what I think is a new and fantastic idea, only to discover that it has either been done before, or that someone else is working on a similar idea at exactly the same time.

In days gone by, if I heard that another project touched on similar territory as an idea of my own, my instinct was NOT to find out any more about the other project. I had an inflated sense of my own innate originality, and simply assumed that I would naturally come up with something different. These days my feeling is the opposite. I have learned that people of similar backgrounds, and sensibilities are likely to have similar ideas at around the same time (probably because we are all drinking in the same influences which inspire similar ideas) and therefore my new strategy is to find out as much as possible about the competition, so as to steer my own project as far away from it as I can.

The bad reviews that I have gotten for my self-published comics mostly focus on two things; my silly sense of humour and use of puns (I am told that puns are the lowest form of comedy) and the fact that my books remind readers of other books that they have already read.

The first critique I make no apologies for; I like silliness and whimsy. The second critique stings but I have no idea how to address it, because I don’t know how to come up with a truly unique idea. Is there such a thing? Even if I do some day hit upon something absolutely original (I live in hope) what do I do in the meantime? If I waited till that singular idea came to me before I started, I may be waiting forever. I do have some ambitious stories that I would like to tell someday, but I don’t yet have the storytelling chops to do them justice.

Although I work these days as a “Story-Artist,” I don’t really have much input in the story itself. That is always generated by someone else, and I know I have a lot to learn about true story-telling. What I DO bring to the game is a childish knack for thinking up and staging physical bits of business; the pratfalling, flatulent stuff that cartoon characters do on screen as they follow the story arcs plotted out for them by bigger brains than mine. The better term for what I do is the older one: “Gag-Artist.” I am not sure why that has fallen out of favour…

On my own projects, my approach has been to go with whatever idea I have NOW for want of something better. Plus, I have consciously decided to start with some silly stories because I think that there is a bit more latitude for learning within comedy. Hopefully, when I am struck by true inspiration someday, I will have already amassed some storytelling skills along the road.

In a recent panic that my memory is failing as I grow older, I have been writing my memories down before they all fade away. Surprisingly, this has been an enjoyable exercise, as more and more of my childhood shenanigans have come back to me while writing others down. I certainly don’t have any plans to write a full memoir, but after dredging up my own memories, attempting to put them in some kind of order and render them with as much honest detail as I can muster, I’ve come to wonder how people DO write memoirs that include quoted conversations, like scenes from a movie. None of my memories (including those from last week) are so crisp as that, and there are startling gaps in the continuity. Sometimes I can piece together a timeline, when memories can be crosschecked with documentary evidence. Mostly however, I don’t have anything to moor my memories to, and they are floating around inside my head like slowly deflating balloons…

While pondering this mystery, I was inspired to track down the autobiographies of CLIVE JAMES, which I’d not read in 15 years or more but remembered as being the most entertaining autobiographies that I had ever read. He is perhaps not so well known in the USA, because his books were hard to find, so I ordered them from the UK where almost anyone could attest to the wit of Clive James. He first made a name for himself there as a television critic, but later he became a TV presenter himself, on a show called CLIVE JAMES ON TELEVISION, where he presented television clips from from around the world, famously including ENDURANCE, the hilariously punishing Japanese TV game show. (Our own “reality TV” shows now feature the worm-eating capers the Japanese were amusing westerners with 25 years ago. So who’s laughing now?) But the entertainment in his show wasn’t only from clips of Turkish soap operas or whacky game shows, it mainly came from Clive James’ eclectic tastes in popular culture and his particular style of witty critical commentary.

My first exposure to him was in the early 1980s when I read the first of his autobiographies, which had been recommended by my Dad. (He was born the same year as Clive James, so their experiences of growing up in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, then going to university in the UK in the 1960s, were generally similar). The first book, called UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS, chronicles the period from Clive James’ birth up until he was 22 years old, about the age I was when I read it the first time. It is without a doubt one of the funniest books that I have ever read. The paperback version has a review printed on the cover, which warns not to read the book in public in case you embarrass yourself with laughter. This I took as mere “you’ll laugh out loud!” hyperbole, rather than realising it was actually the operating instructions for an extremely volatile device… I disgraced myself a few days later when Clive James’ account of a school gymnastics class caused me to honk like an egg-bound goose while riding a crowded train to work… precisely as warned.

The title “UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS” implies, and his introduction plainly states, that he has embellished the facts in their retelling (so THAT’s the secret!) but whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or a hybrid of the two, it is ALL a delight to read. Besides, It is hard to know if he really has changed the facts to make them more entertaining, or if he has merely suggested this to put us off the scent of what is actually real, to avoid libel charges… Several other later-to-be-famous people appear in the books, with their names changed but their true identities not disguised, if you know who to look for. Robert Hughes, Bruce Beresford, Germaine Greer, Brett Whitely, Barry Humphries and other over-achievers feature as “supporting characters” in each of his autobiographies. Famous people not only hang-out together after they are famous but also even before they were famous… (This first struck me when reading books by or about Hemingway’s “lost generation” crowd of US expatriates in Paris in the 1920s).

The copy I am reading now is an omnibus version, called ALWAYS UNRELIABLE, and contains the first three volumes; UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS, FALLING TOWARDS ENGLAND and MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE. One of the pleasures of re-reading these books 15-20 years later is finding resonance in some of what I didn’t “get” before. Initially, I didn’t fully appreciate the 2nd and 3rd books, finding them not so funny as the 1st. This time however, it is those later books that have made me hoot out loud. I just discovered that a fourth memoir, called THE NORTH FACE OF SOHO, was published last year and I look forward to reading it, having refreshed my memory by re-reading the first three.

Clive James is an ungainly-looking man in person, but as a communicator he is like a verbal Gene Kelly or Jackie Chan; graceful, quick, talented, a master at what he does and yet accessible to the rest of us poor slobs. After Jackie Chan busts out some amazing stunt that takes your breath away, he’ll set himself up for a prat-fall that invites you to laugh at him, even though that pratfall was every bit as hard to pull off as the earlier stunt that made you gasp. Likewise, Clive James dazzles with his wit, his handle on language and his education (I confess that I cannot keep up with his vast knowledge of fine art and popular culture) but then he’ll serve up some gags at his own expense, and even those dealing with compromising, vulgar situations, are delivered in sublimely hilarious prose. Some people say that this smart-guy playing-the-goof routine smacks of false-modesty (as if there is any other kind) but I think it is the mark of a great showman and communicator. Like watching Gene Kelly joyfully dancing in the rain, you wish you could do what he does, and part of his genius is that he somehow makes that level of ability inviting, rather than alienating.

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, I suggest you visit the CLIVE JAMES WEBSITE which contains a remarkable amount of his work. Not only essays and poetry but also a series of video conversations he has held with some famous guests. Just eavesdropping on a conversation can be very entertaining if they are the right participants (one of the most entertaining hours of TV that I ever saw was a conversation between CLIVE JAMES and JONATHAN MILLER).

It is wished for, written about, serenaded and talked of. It inspires some of the best in tree-graffiti, diary-entries, soap-operas and pop-songs, but while commonplace in the popular culture, in real-life LOVE can be very hard to find, and once found it is often accompanied by discussions about “where it is all going” that somehow… make it go.

Hate makes its own way in the world like the bird-flu virus, but LOVE needs our support, people! We must tend to it, and nurture it like a little baby hatchling if we want it to grow into a fine, big, majestically-soaring eagle in the awesome, technicolour sunset!

Wont you do your little part to keep the LOVE alive? Today is International Love Day, so stand up outa your chair, get out there, spread the good vibes, and do some serious LOVING!

When I was four, or maybe five years old, My uncle John (who was nine or ten at the time) was showing me around my Grandparents’ place, which was where he lived but not a place that I was yet familiar with. At this stage in the family history I think that my Uncle John (till recently the youngest in the Baker clan) was relishing the fact that there was finally a smaller Baker than him, and another child to play with.

Some people may wonder how it is that my uncle is only a few years older than me and was a childhood playmate. So perhaps I should pause the story to illuminate some of the peculiarities of huge clans, for all you “only-childs” out there.

I am the oldest child of a big family (7 children) but at the time and place that I grew up (rural Australia in the 1970s) big families seemed the norm rather than the exception. It wasn’t until I left my home town and moved to the city to work that I realised that families with less than 4 kids even existed. A feature of huge families is that the oldest child of parents who are themselves oldest children, and started their own parenting young (as was the case with both my parents) may have an Aunt or Uncle who is only a few years older. I have one of each; my Aunty Mary (only four years older than me) on my Mother’s side, and my Uncle John (five years older than me) on my Father’s side. Because of the minimal age difference between us they often felt like my older siblings more than anything else, and some of my earliest memories of playing with other kids were of playing with my Aunt and Uncle.

Once again, I took this for granted in my childhood but have come to learn that it seems hillbilly-esque to people not familiar with the syndrome. So you big city sophisticates can by all means imagine the rest of the story playing out with banjos and fiddles on the soundtrack if you must.

OK, back to the yarn:

One day, in his new role as an older, wiser, and bigger human being, Uncle John showed me how to climb up onto the roof of Pop’s shed. I was a cautious child (perhaps because the memory of my run in with the telegraph pole was still embossed into my consciousness) but somehow, through that powerful combination of encouragement and ridicule that all small boys (and many grown men) use to motivate each-other to do dangerous things, Uncle John got me to climb up on the roof with him. We pottered about for a minute or two until we either got bored or, more likely, till Uncle John realised that we might cop some heat if older members of the clan spotted us up there. Whereupon he nimbly climbed back down.

As I watched him descend, it dawned on me that I was now looking down at the ground from a long way up, perhaps the highest vantage point I had ever achieved until that time, and whatever nerve I had used to scale those heights suddenly failed me in the attempt to get back down. This time however, Uncle John’s encouragement couldn’t budge me and his harangues only reduced me to tears.

When he saw me on the verge of a wholesale hysterical bawling session, Uncle John quickly realised that it was in his own best interests to both calm me down and then get me down, before any grownups spotted tragic little Mr. Trembly-lip up there. It would be obvious to the powers-that-be whose idea the climb had been, and even if this didn’t occur to the inquisition immediately, it was a dead certainty that I would rat him out if I was put to the rack. So, after encouraging me not to bawl out loud, Uncle John promised that he knew a way to get me down safely, and ran inside the house.

Crouching nervously at the edge of the roof awaiting my rescue, I became steadily convinced that Uncle John had abandoned me. After what seemed like forever, he re-appeared from the house and ran back over to the shed, brandishing Grandma’s umbrella. He threw it up to me and suggested that I use it as a parachute, much as Charlie Chaplin or Mary Poppins might do in a film. This struck me as pure genius. We both had complete confidence that this plan would work, I know that I certainly did, anyway. It wasn’t the ambitious vision of taking flight that some children succumb to at a similar age. No, it was the much more believable expectation that I would surely fall, but do so with grace. Why, I should be able to step off the roof and glide gently to earth, touching down nimbly on the tips of my toes!

With that charming vision clear in my mind, and with the greatest of calm, I stood up, popped the umbrella open and confidently stepped out into space…

The umbrella promptly turned inside out, and I plummeted to the ground like a child-shaped stone trailing a black ribbon. I believe that some part of my anatomy was sprained upon its high-velocity contact with the ground, and a piercing yowl ensued, quickly followed by a convergence of angry elder Bakers; precisely the sort of ballyhoo that Uncle John was trying to avoid…

Frankly, that part of the memory is rather a blur to me now, I have no recollection of whether the truth or some artful fabrication was entered into the public record, but the latter would be my guess. All I remember from that point onwards, is the encounter with my old friends; pain and embarrassment, but also something new; the violent disconnect between my absolute faith in what SHOULD happen and what actually DID happen.

This was a brutal lesson in the supremacy of the Laws of Physics over Cartoon Logic for somebody who was to become a cartoonist later in his life.…

I have a memory of what could easily have been my premature death, had things only gone a little differently…

One day, while playing in the front yard of our house, I hit upon the splendid notion that it would be very interesting to see how far it was possible to run with my eyes closed. This was at around the age (between two and three, I’m thinking) that “running” was a new and wonderful super power that had only been recently discovered. I wanted to see what the new limits were, you understand.

Realising immediately that our garden was not big enough to do the experiment justice, I went out the front gate and, closing my eyes, ran as fast as I could down the pavement that paralleled our street. Thankfully, rather than running out into the road and being hit by a passing car, I instead ran full tilt into a concrete telegraph pole, copping a fearsome smack to the forehead from a big rusty metal bolt that was embedded in its surface.

Immediately, blood sprayed out of the gash in my head, while maniacal screams poured out of the quivering hole under my nose. A house painter, working across the street, had the good fortune to witness this spectacle in its entirety as he sat on a scaffold eating a sandwich and having his cup of tea.

It amuses me now to wonder what this man made of the sight of a small boy coming out of his house for the express purpose of running headlong into a telegraph pole and almost knocking himself unconscious. In any case, it was this kindly man who picked me up (still screaming blue murder) and carried me home from my experiment, drenched in my own gore and humiliation.

It was precisely at the moment of bloody impact that I had realised that running with my eyes closed was a supremely stupid idea. Oh, if only that epiphany could have struck me before the telegraph pole…

This was driven home to me in our kitchen, as I was obliged to listen to the kindly housepainter explain to Mum in great detail what he had just seen me do to myself. While Mum cleaned my blood away they both asked me, over and over again, just what the bloody hell had I been playing at? I never told them. The blow to the head had knocked enough sense into me that day to realise that it was better not to let on what my original goal had been…

I have the scar, physical not emotional (or maybe it’s both, come to think of it) from that episode to this very day. It’s right in the centre of my forehead, where the third eye would be if I were more enlightened.

This picture was made with assorted photo textures and illustrates a story about elephants being sedated with ALCOHOL when they are transported in certain countries.

Speaking of BOOZE, 2006 has come and gone and along with it my least favourite holiday of all. Some people express frustration with the pressures of Valentine’s Day and Christmas, I even know one reactionary curmudgeon who dislikes Halloween, but for me NEW YEAR’S EVE is the holiday I most like to dislike.

Other holidays are criticised for the rampant materialism and crass marketing that accompanies them, but at least most have some idea at their core but I can relate to. But boozing up and hitting the town so as to have your tongue down the throat of a drunken stranger at the stroke of Midnight just isn’t a worthy goal…

…besides which, how come it never happens for me? Boo Hoo…

I have tried to get into the spirit of the occasion and gone off to wherever you have to go to get boozed up, and watch the fireworks displays… I’ve put on the fancy clothes and shelled out the money for a posh “New Years Eve bash” a few times, but despite the fanciness and high expectations I’ve always ended up being stranded with hundreds of booze-addled people trudging over broken Champagne bottles and fighting for taxis at 3 am.

The times that I have enjoyed New Year’s Eve have been those that I have spent with a few close friends who turned their backs on the madness and did something else. Like a dinner party. One time I even saw in the New Year while sitting by a campfire under the stars when camping in Death Valley. I liked those particular New Years Eves because they were a bit more reflective. If the traditions were different, New Years Eve COULD be a moment to pause and reflect on the past, present and future… but all that often gets obscured by booze, belligerence and broken glass…

Anyway, I have been engaged in a bit of reflection of my own recently, and not just over the events of this last year I’ve also thinking about events from many years before, as I continue to sift and sort and scan my photo collection. There are already 3 galleries online and I should have another up soon.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Recently I have been travelling back in time; scanning mountains of old photographs that I have taken from as far back as primary-school and e-mailing many of the pictures to friends. It has been fun to trade e-mails with ex co-workers, school friends, and old travelling companions about the memories that the pictures have dredged up… “Wallowing in Nostalgia” was the term used by my old pal Gary Page.

While sorting all these pictures and attempting to plug them into iPhoto in chronological order, I realised that I had forgotten a lot of details… not just names and dates, but the sequence of events. All of this has led me to think about the frightening impermanence of memory, and how it can fade if not sometimes replenished. I think that is one of the great things about photographs; that looking at them can help keep our memories alive.

Even before this photo-archiving project I had been writing down some funny little fragments of childhood memories for a similar reason; just to get them on paper before my mind goes completely. Continuing on from this recent Nostalgia-kick, My brother was in town last week and of course we swapped a few tales from our childhoods.

When I was a kid, I got a simple little Kodak Instamatik camera for my ninth (or tenth) birthday. I dont think that I ever managed to take an in-focus photo with that thing but that was the all photographic equipment I had up until I hit the road. When I was travelling in Asia I realised that I needed a camera more able to do justice to the fantastic sights I was taking in, and upgraded to a NIKON FG20. That did me fine for several years until it was stolen when I was travelling in Peru (along with a sketchbook filled with sketches of my travels for the 3 previous years). While still in Peru, I bought a fully mechanical NIKON FM2 which I have to this day. I have yet to go digital but that may happen sometime soon.

The period when I took photographs most diligently was from the time that I left Australia up until a little after I arrived to live in San Francisco. The time between those two events encompasses a lot of travel and many adventures in Asia, Europe and South America. It was a period in my life when I took pictures almost everyday for several years.

Part of me is sorry that I haven’t kept that habit up consistently since then, because there are some gaps in the photo record, but another part of me is glad I have sometimes laid the camera down as otherwise there would be even more to scan. And as it is, scanning my photo collection is already a massive job.

My habit was to shoot colour slides and Black and White prints. I don’t yet have the means to properly scan slides (I may buy myself a slide-scanner for Christmas) so it is the prints that I am doing at the moment, including some prints I had made from my favourite colour slides.

Many of the photos probably wouldn’t be interesting to anyone who isn’t in them, but a few that I took on my travels in South America, Europe and Asia (such as those shown here) may be of interest to even casual viewers. So I hope to have an updated online PHOTO gallery added to the site in the next few weeks.

UPDATE: The PHOTO section has now been expanded to include 3 new galleries. Each contains about 24 pictures, accessible via thumbnails. Please go take a look.