Charlie my boy

Here's Charlie, in his new Taylor made suit and bow tie. All set to hit the road on the Club Tromolo tour!

Blasts from the past, well, more like very intermittent small spurts

So, as I mentioned earlier, I've been trawling through all the files on the hard drive of my old PC, and (very,very slowly) moving the ones I want to keep onto the other PC. This process has been done via the only go-between I could find who could talk to both machines - a 3.5 floppy disk. And it's very lucky that our PC actually accepts those at all!

Anyway, suffice to say, it's been a long night. But I found a few gems on there. Most of them pertaining to the Fleapit Film Club, which I ran from 1997 to 1999 (or thereabouts, it's all a bit hazy).

I started Fleapit with a similarly minded friend with the intention of screening trashy cult films (we're talking Rocky Horror, Russ Meyer etc -nothing too arty or highbrow) in a fun pub/club setting (rather than a stuffy arthouse cinema or similar up-own-arse type place) specifically so that the audience could drink, and smoke, (and talk, and generally have a carry on) during the movie.

We started off in a small "adult" cinema (the stories we could tell!), and managed to move onwards and upwards to better venues - Nice N Sleazy's, King Tuts, The Arches, the CCA, Transmission Gallery (ok that is "arty" but we discovered they're actually very cool and not too highbrow), 13th Note and (thinks - anywhere else?) - oh yes, we did some visuals at super-club Optimo in their very early days. And we did some screenings with the 10 Day Weekend which was a great Glasgow Centric live music festival.

We tried to do a lot of stuff on 16mm wherever possible, it made it more expensive, but isn't there something lovely about the rattle of the projector, the smoke in the beam of light, and the priceless moments when the film somehow goes out of sync and Shaft and Bumby manage to say each others lines? Not to mention having to change reels every 25 minutes or so, allowing the punters to get another round in, and filling the void with an "Intermission" slide projection and shoving the sound input lead into a walkman playing hammond hits or (my favourite) Best of Mama Cass tape?

Anyway, for your delectation and delight, I've stuck in some old fleapit adverts. There's only a couple as these were made on the old PC - most of the other flyers were proper old school cut-and-paste jobs run off on my work's photocopier. I still have a lot of those stashed away. Maybe one day they'll get on to the scanner...

(in case you're wondering, the "Creature" flyer should actually have an effect with 3D specs on - I made it myself in photoshop and fiddled with the colours for ages trying to get something to look sticky-outy!)

Tonight at the Panopticon

Ushering for the Glasgow comedy festival, and ready to eject any drunks...

Prehistoric PC

I'm having a bit of a clear out this weekend and I decided it was time to chuck out my old PC.

I acquired it as a cast off in 1996. It was only out of date then. Now it's just laughable- with no USB it took 10 minutes to work out where the keyboard plugged in. Plus my 1990's fondness for tacky Windows themes is all too apparent... Dear oh dear.

Anyway, I'm now going through various 10 year old files, finding the odd thing I might actually want to keep, and wondering how the hell to get it off the dinosaur and into the real world. I think a 3.5inch floppy might be my only option....

... then we can wipe.... and CHUCK!

Have you seen this chicken?

Just watched Harold and Maude, on the big screen, in a packed house at the gfT. And now I'm in the bar with this waster, bragging about instant picture blogging. How boring am I!

She's in the jailhouse now

Waiting backstage at Tease and Cakes at Low Park Museum, Hamilton, I found this evil looking barred door. Is it for keeping the bad man out?... Or the bad lady in?