On like Donkey Kong…

Starting next week will be a new thing on the blog that is this blog: The Art-Off!

Each Sunday afternoon, both myself and herself will be posting a new piece of art side-by-side. It can be interpreted in any way we choose: a portrait, an abstract, a comic, an ice sculpture, inks, pencils, pastels, whatever… Each piece will be based on the same theme or idea, and should you so choose, favour should be bestowed on the piece you prefer. Who ever gets the most yeas wins, chooses the following week’s theme and shall have right of mockery o’er the loser. If no one wins, we cry into our cupped and gnarled hands at the lack of attention we sorely crave and pick the next idea at random. Suggestions for themes are welcome, will go on a list and will almost certainly be done at some point. The only rules we will make is that the topic should be worksafe, since I maintain the vague idea that this blog is such (at least until I decide cursing is cool once more) and that any comments be made here rather than on Twitter or Facebook (as keeping track across multiple sites is a pain and I am lazy, to be honest).

Since I have a holdover request or two from Livejournal, you can expect to see the following very shortly: Cute Girls with Bees (for Dave Monk) and Guilt (for The Demure Lemur). It should be noted that Olivia has a degree in art and therefore I am more deserving of your pity and as a result your support. Vote Brian!

And with that, it is on.

[Disclaimer: the production of a poster I promised Very Lovely and Wonderful Patient People will not be disrupted by this endeavour. Theoretically, this will improve it!]

The end of an era

I’m not sure if it has been officially announced yet, but I’ve been told by people ‘in the know’ that RTE have cancelled The Den. To those not of Irish descent (or, if you were born after the early nineties), The Den was THE television show for children (and laterally the adults who ‘happened’ to be in the room by some strange chance…). The easiest way to describe it in its prime would be to take your favourite Muppets, have them on TV every day and somehow never lower their quality of entertainment. Zig and Zag alone were so popular the UK TV station Channel 4 stole them… Stole them from the children of Ireland! The success of the show lay in the fact that it was helmed initially by seasoned host Ian Dempsey and later by child psychologist Ray D’Arcy, both of whom actively sought to engage their prepubescent (and older) audience with fun and surreality and ludicrous plotlines, almost all of which were engaged within the confines of their one-camera box-set. There was no attempt at making ‘sophisticated’ or ‘mature’ viewing for its childish audience – it was big and silly and loud. It revelled in these things and defined entertainment for a generation of children.

So initially it annoyed me that the Z-list celebrity-wannabes who took over the series in the wake of Ray D’Arcy’s departure (to say nothing of the glorious puppets which either left or were ousted from their presence within the show) had managed to topple this behemoth of my childhood. Then it occurred to me that the aforementioned presenters left many, many years ago and it took the doofs currently presenting it twelve years to muck it up.

That’s all sorts of wonderful, when you think about it, and it’s certainly how I will remember The Den: A children’s entertainment show so awesome, it took idiots over a decade to run it into the ground.