CLEGGY!

Forgive Me For Being Loud

I managed to restrain myself sufficiently to not use two exclamation marks, because that would be shading towards Continental levels of hysteria.

     So, what are we being a tad exuberant about?  Why, nothing more profound than having a theme for this Intro.  I was going to belabour you with pictures from the opening sequence of "Damnation Alley" but you might jib a little at yet more from this cheesy classic.  Maybe later.  Art!

     You may be wondering what on earth this apparition has to do with 'Cleggy', whoever he is, and generally whether Conrad has been at the cooking sherry already at the unholy hour of 08:13.

     Of course not - remember, sober for December.

     Okay okay okay, the illustration.  There's quite a bit to unpack here, so let's begin.  First of all, this is from the third Kenny Who? story in "Judge Dredd", about the hapless Scottish farmer who dreams of becoming a comics artist, and who has already both crossed Dredd's path and registered on his radar, neither of which are a good thing.

     This strip is written by Pat Mills and drawn by Cam Kennedy, and both of them obviously had a hoot with it.  For starters, "Who knows the badness in the hearts of Judges?" & "The HOOLIE knows!" is an homage/rip-off/tip of the hat <delete where applicable> to The Shadow.  Art!

     A long-forgotten hero of the pulps, for your information*.

     For those unfamiliar with Scottish slang - Art!

     Conrad, with his ancient Celtic ancestry, will translate for you: "You reprobates never learn!  Right!  You collectively are all in for a sound thrashing!"

     For your further education, that is a shinty stick, most emphatically NOT a hockey stick.

     "But, O aged savant of the snowy locks, what has th -"

     PATIENCE!  I was coming to that.  Art!

     Conrad confesses that he'd never heard of a 'Cleg' before and had to look it up.  The spelling can vary to be 'Clegg'.  It's a fly.  Hence today's blog title.   O and "Hoolie" is another term for "A violent and destructive young person" a.k.a. "Hooligan".
     Now, I'm sure that there must be more than one or two of you who looked at that title and instantly thought I was talking about the character of that name from "Last Of The Summer Wine".  Art!

Norman Clegg

     I wasn't.

     However, there is another Mister Clegg out there, one who was made legendary - hmmm perhaps not 'legendary' as leg-ends are feet and he's only got one of them.  May I introduce - Art!

     I think this is the debut of Roger Waters (at port) as regards song-writing and singing.  Take a gander at a few of the lyrics.

Corporal Clegg had a wooden leg

He won it in the war, in 1944

     Ol' Rog got better over time.  Good thing, too.  I don't think "The Wall" would have been able to sustain the track lengths of a double album if it was all at the level of 

Corporal Clegg received his medal in a dream

From Her Majesty the queen

His boots were very clean

     To round off this Intro let us wheel on the-  Art!

KLEGGS!

     Okay, I may be reaching a bit with that.  It sounds the same out loud, doesn't it?  This lot were savage alien mercenaries, fond of eating their defeated opponents, who got hired by Judge Cal as muscle to enforce his demented rule (it's a long story).  They eventually became an endangered species, but I obviously missed the story where that was explained and only picked up on it later.  Their nemesis, of course - obviously! - was Judge Dredd.

     Which is where we came in.

"The Thin Red Line"

I know what you're thinking, and NO! I don't mean the Terence Malick film, which I had the good fortune to see at the cinema, because that way you appreciate the cinematography better.  Conrad recalls one battle scene that lasts mere seconds, yet which must have taken days to set up and enact, wh

     ANYWAY I have come across the B&W 1964 version as a free film on Youtube and intend to watch it.  I'll let you know.  Art!

"The War Illustrated"

How apt.  Art!

     I know, I know, I was thinking "Wow these British certainly got a move on from the D-Day beaches and into Normandy -" 

     Except no.  This photograph is of British Sherman tanks massing for an attack on a Teuton-held village, part of the Gustav Line in Italy, not France.  At this point the invasion was mere days old, and Allied propaganda had to keep alive the fiction that the real landing would take place in the Pas de Calais.  Art!

     Right, that's enough of the internecine.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor doesn't know, not for certain, yet he may still suspect he's being hunted.  By what may be less than human.

Those upright snakes had intrigued the Doctor.  Subtly, without seeming to, he discovered that Harry, Billy’s dad, had been lying in wait for wild sheep, hidden beneath a tarpaulin itself heaped over with dried earth.  Not liking the look of the snakes, he’d kept silent and still and let them slowly walk on –

     ‘Ha!’ snapped the Doctor to himself, impressing himself with his own acuity.  ‘ “Slowly”!’  The jigsaw piece fell into place.

     Equally abruptly, he realised he’d followed that young person into the back streets of New Eucla whilst thinking about his problem and possible solution.  The tame gecko and girl vanished into the dusk and wooden walkways, leaving the Doctor alone with only the wind for company.

     Time to head back to the Tardis, he realised, stopping and changing direction.

     sssssskkkkkkWHAM!

     A sudden and unwelcome coolness played over his temples.  In a moment that would have looked good in a Chaplin or Keaton silent, he groped over his hair for the missing boater, realised it had been shot away and dropped flat. 

     WHAM!

     This impact didn’t have the hissing prelude of the previous one – which meant the missile, whatever it was, had missed by a greater margin.

     O dear.  This doesn't look good.     

At The Earth's Core

NO!  Nothing to do with the film.  Do you see quotation marks and a fuschia font?  No you don't, so it's NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FILM.  

     What I was getting at was being so far down the rabbit-hole that you risk immolation at our planet's molten nexus, and yes, there are people this applies to.  Art!

     This is Kristian Saucier, a former sailor aboard the South Canadian Navy's nuclear-powered attack submarine (are there 'defence' submarines?) USS Alexandria.  

     'Former' because Kris did a silly thing.  He took photographs of the nuclear power plant aboard the Alexandria.  This, despite there being a plethora of warning signs say NOT TO DO THIS VERY THING.  Also, the very greenest enlistee in the South Canadian Navy has it beaten into them that you MUST NOT DO THIS VERY THING.

     So, he got arrested, thrown in clink for a year and dishonourably discharged.

     Then Pumpkinhead got involved.  Art!

Art -

     He pardoned Kris.  Kris then engaged a lawyer and tried to sue the Obama administration (who were in power when he was in pokey) including Obama, the head of the FBI, the Attorney General and others, and claimed that it was so unfair, waah waah waah that he'd been prosecuted, because - sit down - Hilary Clinton hadn't been prosecuted.

     You what?

     It may not have quite hit home with Kris, but if you accept a pardon, then YOU ADMIT YOUR GUILT.  This is why some felons languish in prison still, when offered a pardon.

     Kris then complained that his lawyer, Ronald Daigle, had been suspended, claiming that it was all a big conspiracy to prevent him from obtaining justice.  Art!

     In fact Daigle, who has no internet image up across Google, had stolen $23,000 dollars from the estate of a deceased client, which got him suspended for a year.  Why invent a conspiracy when plain old-fashioned greed will suffice?

     It's a shame matey wasn't in the South Canadian Air Force, as I could have titled this bit "The Flying Saucier" and ended with it amended to "The Lying Saucier".

     His case got thrown out of court.  Probably to a chorus of mocking laughter.

Finally -

O go on.  Art!

     I could swear there was one on Abebooks for over £6,000.  Either I imagined it or - yes, well, there are people out there with cash to burn.

     Toodles!

*  We will pretend that film never existed.