Spot The Dog

No!  This Is Nothing To Do With That Wretched Puppy

That seems to have taken over the world. At least it doesn't wear clothes and talk (YES PEPPA LOOKING AT YOU).  Conrad is rather bemused that the creature is still at liberty as it lacks a collar and one might expect the Council Dog Warden to have put him in kennels by now.  Art!

FORESHADOWING

     The Dog Buns! thing never seems to age, and Your Humble Scribe knows why; because it's actually a cyborg, and underneath that Cute Little Puppy Skin lies a sinister metallic killer, and if Art will render up his bowl of coke -

     You just wait until Skynet turns up and then you'll be sorry, when th

      ANYWAY that's a load of what this Intro's not about, as per usual.  Today's title is in fact a fearfully clever pun that works on two levels, because Lo! we are going back to Yayoi and her inflatable artworks.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     Yes, this is the large-scale version of 'Yayoi Chan', standing proud at 13 yards high, or nearly 40 feet tall.  Given the size of these balloons, asking 'Can you spot the dog?' is a tad redundant, because Ring-Ring is hard to miss at 15 feet high.  And yes, he is decorated with dozens of 'Tens', which is Japanese for 'Dots', of course - obviously!

     Moving on, or at least turning around, there is a gargantuan inflatable gourd or pumpkin, which is hard to get completely in frame due to it's size.  Art!

"Life Of The Pumpkin Recites, All About The Biggest Love For The People"

     This vast veggie is over thirty feet tall, and represents Ol' Yay's obsession with pumpkins, ever since she first experienced one talking to her.  Don't judge her, she's an artist.  

     Conrad would also like to point out that all the large balloonsculptures not free-hanging sit on a podium or dias.  This must conceal all the power equipment that provides enough pumping capacity to inflate them and keep them inflated, and to illuminate certain of them.  I wonder if they deflate them at night, to reduce stress on the fabrics, and what they look like when collapsed in the dark?  The free-hanging installations must have a valve in order to top up their content, as being on display for months must inevitably lead to leakage, be it ever so small.  Art!

Yayoi and her diminutive prototype

     I think that's enough art for this part.

The Royal Hunt

Or, perhaps, the hunting Royal, for Lo! we are back on the story of Colonel's Goffe and Whalley, the regicides who had escaped to the English colonies in North America, and I can call it that because they hadn't become South Canadians yet.  A lot of the people and local government in New England had exactly 0% respect for, or wished to be involved with, Charles II, which aided both fugitives.  Art!

Yes, remembered 300 years later

    They found a nice convenient cave that was handily remote from anywhere, but near a spring for water, and stayed there for months on end.  They then moved into a safe house, that of the Tompkins, who were pioneer settlers with no love or regard for the English crown.  They stayed there for two years (!) without leaving the house, which made for a dull existence, certainly, and also a safe one - hence the two years.  Art!

     Here you see a somewhat romanticised depiction of the duo in the wilderness.  The third man is Dixwell, another regicide in hiding whom we may come back to.

     Whilst Gee and Wee were in hiding, the New Haven authorities generally lied, prevaricated, quibbled, delayed and otherwise thumbed their noses subtly at Charles II.  His temper worn thin, he finally sent an expedition with Commissioners, four frigates and 400 troops to try and hunt the regicides, by which time it was 1665.

   The daring duo decamped long before this - having developed a fine sense of when to bug out - to Hadley, a tiny settlement where the founder, John Russell, offered them both sanctuary in his own house.  They settle down there and remained undiscovered, until Whalley, suffering from dementia, died in 1675 (!).  He was much the older of the two, being Goffe's father-in-law.  Art!

     Things ain't done yet, but we shall draw a curtain on them for the moment.

     Conrad is somewhat surprised that there hasn't been a television series on the subject, as a film would have to compress too much into it's running time.  Art!

Breaking News!

The Indian Chandarayaan-3 space probe is looking for a safe landing spot on the lunar surface.  Art!

     Let's hope they manage better than the Ruffian Lunar-25 moon mission, which fell foul of sheer inexperience, as it's 47 years since the Ruffians, in the guise of the Sinisters, attempted a moon-shot.  Unconfirmed rumours have it that the probe went wildly off-course before it crashed, causing major damage on impact.  Art!

*

"City In The Sky"
Welcome to the future!  Shabby, lived-in and worn-out as it is.  But, when you live aboard a space station in orbit, popping outside to get supplies is rather out of the question.

An attempt had been made to decorate the unit’s exterior with purple, a long time ago, and the paint had faded to a dull pink.  The usual curtain of fabric, dyed with that same faded purple, swung over the doorway.  A sunflower in a pot sat in a window. 

     ‘After you, Ace,’ said the Doctor, holding the curtain aside.

     ‘Why don’t they bother with doors?’ she whispered, before taking in the room.  Unlike Nat’s barren apartment, this one had shoulder-high partitions, lots of computers, beanbags and subdued lighting.  A dark-complected man stood up from further within the divided area and waved to them.  He wended his way to them and looked them up and down.  His face relaxed from a frown, tired lines around his eyes vanishing for a second.  His one-piece coverall displayed no extra decoration – unless the stethoscope draped around his neck counted.

     ‘Doctor Smith,’ he said, bowing and offering a hand.  They shook.  He turned to Ace.  ‘Dorothy,’ again the bow, but this time he kissed her hand, making her jump a bit.

     ‘She prefers “Ace”, actually - ’ replied the Doctor, leaving a gap.

     ‘Doctor Davros Haritanian,’ said the man, making Ace catch her breath.  The Doctor’s – her Doctor – eyes twinkled.

     ‘It’s a common Armenian first name for males, Ace.   Barev dzez,’ he replied to the other, who blinked.

   The bit about Davros is true, I'll have you know.

Some People Have TOO MUCH Time On Their Hands

Yes, that is howlingly ironic.  Allow me to introduce you to a safety match sculpture, which took 120 hours to create and 12,000 matches in total.  Art!

     Courtesy of the Youtube vlogger Fire Hand, who ought to have taken an establishing shot of the whole thing before hand.  Did you notice the two points where the matches fail to catch and the ignition trail dies off?  Possibly not, but that's the sort of thing that leaps out at Conrad's perception.

Kooky Spooky

We do seem to have shifted from doing wildly speculative reviews on films based on nothing more than their titles on a bus poster, to something almost serious based on their budget and box office returns.  We have occasionally done this in the past, but never in much detail.  However, Conrad has acquired a taste for celluloid blood (if ever there was a mixed metaphor).  Art!

     O my, Disney prove their unerring ability to burn shedloads of money AGAIN.  This film is based on a ride at a Disney theme-park, because you know if "Pirates Of The Caribbean" was a hit then all you need to do is repeat repeat repeat, right?

     Wrong!  This tissue of toerags had a budget of $150 million, to which you can add at least another $50 million for Promotion and Advertising.  It's been out for over three weeks now, and how is it doing?

     Not well.

     Globally, it was greeted with a yawn and a roll of the eyes.  Let's get a better breakdown.

     Okay, it would have needed to take in the region of $400 million to break even, and it's made barely 20% of that.  Congratulations, Disney, another $315 million loss to add to the red side of the balance ledger!  You should team up with Fire Hand, but use $100 dollar notes, rolled up reallllly tight, to create your fiery sculpture with.  You might get more people to watch that* .

Finally -

Better rock off the blog, I've still got the last episode of "Glitch" to watch, another episode of "For All Mankind" and more misadventures of Markus in "The Annals Of Urquelomplangia" to compose.  Later!

*  I know, I know, I'm a terrible person