Hello Tbilisi!

The Capital Of Georgia
Lest you confuse one with the other, we are not talking about that state in the south of South Canada, because their capital certainly isn't Tbilisi (it's Atlanta).  Rather, I mean the Caucasian nation state which threw off the Sinister mantle in 1991.  Originally, they had been forced to join the Sinister Union at the point of a gun, being physically conquered by the Red Army in 1921.  Art?

Tbilisi

     Interestingly enough, Josef Stalin was from Georgia, as was his loathsome crony and slavish minion Beria.  Once matey popped his clogs in 1953, the rest of the Politburo got around to reversing his policies and - O what a coincidence! - the Korean War also ended.
     Of course after 1991 all the statues of Stalin vanished, as nobody had ever liked "The Little Sod With The Moustache"; feared, yes; liked, no.  Some of them went a bit earlier, as for example that one in Hungary, destroyed in the 1956 uprising.

Not so little, yet still soddy and moustachey

     Which has very little to do with what Your Humble Scribe really wanted to talk about, which was the title of a book that popped into my head: "The Storm's Howling Through Tiflis".  Art?

Thus

     It's not a well-known fact that "Tiflis" is the old, pre-1936 name for "Tbilisi", which of course Conrad knew, and is why he remembered the title of this novel.  
     No, I've got no idea what it's about and the publishers don't seem to have known, either, or there'd be some blurb on the front about "In the tradition of 'Lord of the Rings'" or "Written in the style of Tolkein" or "An epic high fantasy akin to the Ring" or even (being a touch desperate here) "By the author who lived two streets over from the niece of Tolkein's babysitter".
     I just did a bit of quick Google-fu on this and the reviews are not good.  Not good at all.  Allow me to quote part of one: "The start of the book takes far too long to get going and at no point are you rewarded with any conceptual unity or anything resembling a coherent plot."
    So there you are: Tiflis-cum-Tbilisi.

Georgian architecture

Copyright And Wrong
Yesterday I mentioned some of the problems that face publishers who might want to reprint classic comic strips from British comics, in that their audience is getting rather long in the tooth.  Conrad himself is one of these potential purchasers and will be hitting 59 this year.  Art!

Our earlier example, published in 1971

     The next problem is getting permission from whoever owns the rights to the strips, and this is where things get messy.  The original publication's owners are now very unlikely to exist, instead having been acquired or bought out over the decades by other entities and agencies.  "Down The Tubes", the seminal blog about comics, used "Countdown" as an example because the original publishers, Polystyle, disappeared decades ago, their strips now being owned by The Mirror Group.  Except the Daily Express possibly also owns copyright as well, since they have the original artworks, acquired via a different set of acquisitions. Then - Art?

This puzzled me considerably as a youth

     - as you can clearly see, they used lots of images from "2001", which confused me as a reader (aged 10) since I was aware of the film and didn't know why they'd copied wholesale.  So, in addition to getting permission from possibly two other sources, you might need to get permission from the estate of Stanley Kubrick and whomever acquired the MGM Films group (Spyglass Entertainment, if memory serves).  This is already getting expensive and not a single copy sold yet!

If You Want To Miss This One -
Conrad will generously permit, as he is digesting breakfast, and did you realise how filling porridge is?
     Because we are once again back with "Forgotten Weapons", and Ian McCollom, whom others have christened "Gun Jesus" because of his somewhat - er - hippyish appearance.  Art!

Ian and friend

     This really is one of a forgotten weapon variety (the title's a bit of a misnomer).  You can see the description at upper port, and you may have been fooled by the gun if you'd not read the legend.
     It's not the infamous Sten Gun of the Second Unpleasantness, notorious for being shoddy and cheap, which allowed it to be produced by the millions.  It is, rather, a Teuton copy of said gun, except they simplified it a bit, which is hard to credit as the Sten was deliberately made about as simple as you can get.  The design and production began in late 1944, when the writing was clearly on the wall for the Nazi regime, and they decided to produce copies of Allied weapons to - ah - to - er - confuse them?  The logic, if any, escapes me.  Art!

Note magazine

     The one thing that instantly differentiates this version from the real thing is the magazine, or that boxy thing which holds all the bullets for the non-technically inclined.  Rather than being side-mounted, it is firmly and irrevocably vertical, meaning the major thing Teuton soldiers liked about the Sten if they got their hot sweaty paws upon it, that it could be fire effectively from a prone position, was no longer possible.
     Ironically, as one poster put it in the forum for this item, for a weapon designed to be as cheap as possible, it sold for £8,000 at auction.
     Next!

Back To That "Rolling Stone" List -
Aaand we're not going to bother with number 21, "Astroboy" because it sounds rubbish; a super-powered robot boy in a Japanese cartoon show with dubious animation from the Sixties?  Nope.
     Let us instead indulge Conrad's mania for checking out what he likes, not what you want or like to read or see.  And at Number 20 we have - 

Yay!

     You can bet your boots (also socks, underwear and PPE) that Conrad backs this one.  It's a hard-sci fi space opera where humanity has colonised the Solar System, and taken all it's vices and virtues along for the ride.  Amazon Prime picked it up when SyFy dropped it, thank you Mister Bezos, and they're currently filming Season Five.  Your Humble Scribe has read all the books, which only gives one an outline of what may happen next on screen, since the canny scriptwriters don't simply copy and paste.

     If you have no idea what I'm talking about THEN THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!
Finally -
I know, I know, we've still not gotten around to that Polish website that connects the dots between Keanu Reeves and UFOs, but I haven't forgotten it and we will cover it, eventually.  In the meantime, please have a look at this and tell me what you think -

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

Box Of Andrex For Brian!

May, That Is -
You know, the guitarist in Queen, because Lo! we are back to doing A Little Musical Critique of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which has turned out to be rather a Large Musical Critique because there's so much of it.
     Having lightly skated o'er the verse that might have annoyed some folk, we now come to the bit where Freddie Mercury composed it by opening a Spanish dictionary at random.  To wit:

I see a little silhoutto of a man

The concept of "silhouette" comes from portraiture that was cheaper than a painting

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?

Actually a character from Italian Commedia dell'arte.  The Fandango is a Spanish dance, and I've no idea why the two are mixed together.

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening me

You great big wuss!  Lightning's only dangerous if you're outside under a tree

Gallileo  Gallileo

Gallileo  Gallileo

What on earth does a Renaissance philosopher have to do with anything?

Gallileo Figaro

And - look, what does an opera have to to with the Renaissance philosopher?

Magnifico

Our opinions on this will have to differ.

     There's a great quote from the band's Roger Taylor on the webpage I used to track these lyrics down: "They said "Bohemian Rhapsody" was too long and wouldn't work. We thought, "Well we could cut it, but it wouldn't make any sense", it doesn't make much sense now and it would make even less sense then; you would miss all the different moods of the song. So we said no. It'll either fly or it won't."
     Well, it definitely flew.  He's not wrong about the sense bit, either.  And notice there's not one word about The Plastic People Of The Universe in there, either.

Roj, Now and Then

     Quickly, Vulnavia, flood the moat and prime the claymore mines, for KILLER EELS aboard steam locomotives are trying to storm The Mansion!

Something Has Gone Badly Right
You ought to know that Conrad gets very shifty and worried if the audience traffic climbs above a certain level, because inevitably some legal counsel for The Metro or First Group will get to read about BOOJUM! and decide an injunction is needed.  Not so much for the past 3 months as I've not had to endure First Group's pubic service, and thus not been exposed to The Fish-and-Chip Wrapper, though there is still almost 7 year's worth of venomous invective backed up.
     So I was a bit edgy when this came up.  Art?

"Pageviews Today: 180"

     It's probably the FSB using a zombie network in South Canada in order to check out why on earth John Bolton is posting such scrivel*.
                  
                                          Conrad                                             John Bolton
     That's another reason to dread getting on a bus in future.

"Countdown" And Copyright
NO! Not the game show.  Although Conrad quite enjoyed it when he watched it.
     No, I refer - obviously! - to the comic that came out in the early Seventies, and which Your Humble Scribe distinctly remembers getting the first edition of.  Art?

Interior art by the excellent Jim Burns

     I noticed this title in an entry on "Down The Tubes", which is a website devoted to comics, and an article about why you don't see reprints of stuff like the above.
     Firstly, there has to be an audience out there.  "Countdown" dates from 1971, and if you were aged 10 then (as was Conrad) then you'd be 59 this year.  For comic strips from the Sixties, add another 10 years to that.  Are there enough people out there with rosy memories of their childhood who'd be willing to purchase a retrospective collection?
     That's just the first hurdle a collection of, say, "Special Agent 21" would have to overcome.  Art?

Nothing at all to do with James Bond in any way at all, ever.  Honestly.

     We shall come back to this, as there's quite a tangled thread to unravel about publishing retro comic books.  And I can tell you're thirsting to know all about it.

Aha!  Found It!
I refer, of course, to entry number 22 on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the 50 best sci-fi television series ever.  Which you will have already guessed from my horribly strained title is - "Lost".  Art?

First season cast

     Conrad loved loved loved the first series, after which he felt it went off the boil rather (our quaint Anglicism that approaches the South Canadian 'jumping the shark'), and he never bothered watching it after Season Three, I think.  Was it that season?  Well, anyway, I never saw how it ended.  There were so many red herrings, a positive shoal of them in fact, that I don't believe it could have tied them all up narratively in a convincing manner, and from what viewers have posted about it, I was right.
     Still, that first series was compelling.  I'd better not reminisce too much or I'll end up watching it again, and I've got stuff to do.

Some other people

Finally -
I'm sorry I didn't explain myself about "Scaramouche" and the illustration provided.  Pretty obviously he's not an Italian stock character from the seventeenth century, strumming a lute.  He is in fact an android assassin from Season 5 of "Samurai Jack", who gets pretty close to defeating our hero, whilst carrying on with a most cavalier vocal style reminiscent of a jazz musician.  Of course justice prevails and he gets - but that would be telling too much.

Also does bar mitzvahs

     And I think with that we are well and done, as I'm hungry and want my tea!



*  Perhaps**.
**  Perhaps not.