This reminds me, I made a playlist of what I’m calling Twindie over here on Spotify if you fancy a listen…

I just got an email from the Daniel Kitson mailing list discussing the new show he’ll be taking to Edinburgh this August. It’ll be a show that starts at 10am and will be finished by noon. I liked his reasoning for doing this so I’m reposting it below:

“I wanted to put something amazing where you wouldn’t expect to find it. To take the first moments of the morning and fill them with something silly and sad and wonderful. Something audacious in its scope and scale. Something to make you laugh and cry and wonder before the world even knows you’re awake. Something to stuff your hearts full and send you out, into the day and into the world, wet eyed and open mouthed.

This is a show about every single one of us, the past in our pockets, the future in our hearts and us, ourselves, very much stuck, trapped forever, in the tiny eternal moment between the two.

And, it’ll all be over in time for lunch.

It’s in the morning for various reasons. Here they are…

1) I did a couple of previews last year at the wonderful Forest Fringe in the morning and very much enjoyed the happy sleepiness in the room.

2) My longstanding adoration of John Hegley toppled into jealousy a couple of years ago, when I went to see his show and he was finished, by noon, on a lovely day and free to do as he wished. He’d put something wonderful in the world before noon.

3) Being done by noon means i can see, pretty much EVERYTHING, which I’m excited by and eat at normal times, which my arse is delighted about.

4) For years I thought I hated getting up early, but actually, I think I love getting up early if there is something exciting to wake up for. Like christmas or doing it.

5) It’ll be like going out for breakfast which is always excellent, because once you’ve had a treat, right at the start of the day, any subsequent treats are bonus treats.

6) After years of testing you good people with late starts and secret shows and so on. This is, in many ways, the final frontier. The morning. Hiding in plain sight.

7) It frees me up for potential larks at late night gigs, if im not too busy moonwalking round bristo square harvesting sweet tail and healing the sick.

8) You know, something different eh?”

As I’ve said before, I have no problem with football, I just don’t have the background knowledge to enjoy quite as much as genuine fans without feeling like a massive fraud. Go listen to this song by Adam & Joe for a complete rundown of my football knowledge. My understanding of the game (and most sport) as compelling narrative is down to reading David Mamet’s excellent Three Uses Of The Knife which I heartily recommend to anyone interested in storytelling.

“We rationalize, objectify, and personalize the process of the game exactly as we to that of a play, a drama. For finally it is a drama, with meaning for our lives. Why else would we watch it? The ball game, then, is perhaps a model of Eisenstein’s Theory of Montage: the idea of a SHOT A is synthesized with the idea of a SHOT B to give us a third idea, which third idea is the irreducible building block upon which the play will be constructed.”

If you are watching the World Cup, then you might like to look at Solipsistic Pop contributor Philippa Johnson’s hand-drawn wallchart which you can print out and colour in at home!

I’m away from my computer this weekend so will update on Sunday evening with days 77 and 78. Have a lovely one!

“Next week on Tom Humberstone Answers the Big Questions…”

Couple of UK small press comickers cameo in this one. Recognise them?

A bad start to the day, but it got much better.

Thanks to all of you who have been leaving comments or emailing me about these new Hundred Day comics, it’s really encouraging to hear people are enjoying them.

Bit of a rushed one this. For obvious reasons.

I tried to draw the majority of the comic during the gig. With mixed results.

Very much left with the feeling that I want to return to the days when I was seeing live music all the time. If you happen to live in London and know of a particularly unmissable gig that I need to be at – make sure you let me know ‘kay?

Be sure to check out The Middle Ones, Standard Fare, and Allo Darlin’ – they were all delightful and deserve your attention.

Actually, this track from Allo Darlin’ should probably become the Solipsistic Pop theme song.

Seriously – how hard is it to spell/pronounce/remember the name Humberstone?! This is getting silly.

Not that it… y’know… bothers me at all. Nope. Nosiree. Not like I’ve been holding onto this for three months or anything. Uh-uh.

This one, despite appearances to the contrary, took a lot longer to finish than I thought it would. Returning to this challenge will take some getting used to I think…

I’m back! After three months away, I’ve decided (with some encouragement) to return to the unfinished Hundred Days project. If you’re unsure what this is, you can read about it here and catch up on the previous 70 days here.

This seems a good time to restart. I’ve finished Solipsistic Pop 2 and the third volume is ticking along nicely, my energy is slowly getting back to normal, and the World Cup is on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against football. I’m not a fan but I understand why people are. In fact, as someone who is fascinated by and works with storytelling, it would be hypocritical of me to have a problem with football or any sport. Football, it seems to me, is 90 minutes of a great, unrehearsed play. A play that is ever more satisfying the more you put into it. If you follow the game closely, you know the backstory – you know the players and where they came from and when they were booked and if they have something to prove. Every football fan is watching a game hoping for the best three act play they’ve ever seen and I get that.

But considering I don’t have that background knowledge (or interest) – and how I tend to feel like a fraud whenever I watch a match – I see the next month as a good opportunity to focus on drawing and doing my own thing.

Which is not to say there won’t be any pages in the coming 29 days of me watching a game…

Hopefully you’ll all stick with me for the last stretch of this challenge. And forgive me for the illness induced delay. If the amount of random ideas I have for pages is anything to go by, it should be a fun sprint to the finish-line.

Oh, and a quick process note: I’m using a small moleskine this time as it’ll be easier to cart around with me than the massive sketchbook I was using before. I’ll most likely use more than one page (like the pages above) so there isn’t a noticeable lack of content but it also allows me to do something quick on the days where I’m not feeling so well. Similarly, I may go back to large-scale pages as I’m not entirely convinced by the haphazard nature of the entry above. Essentially, bear with me while I find my feet again – it’s been a while since I got into a routine of a comic a day and it might take a week until I get back into the swing of it.

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