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erazonpo3 · 3 years

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Lost Legends

Okay so I read Lost Legends: The Rise of Flynn Rider and general thoughts? It was cute and fun, and I have gripes here and there but I can still recommend it. I don't want to compare it to WOWM because it's like apples and oranges but Lost Legends wins points for me by actually acknowledging the TTS storyline and characters, even though it's kinda brief and not quite as... entertaining.

And before I go into the in-depth spoiler review I'll jot down a few thoughts here: there's a lot to be said about tie-in media and 'canon', but where I think it becomes contentious is where two pieces contradict each other, and whether those contradictions necessitate a canonical hierarchy or cancel something out completely. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because while LL borrows TTS lore it also contradicts it? which is. ironic.

but i'll get into that. Spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of The Plot

Our story starts at the Dark Kingdom, with a short prologue. It's all stuff we already know from the series: King Edmund tries to grab the moonstone, his wife dies, Eugene gets sent away for his own safety. What's funny is that Ms Queen still doesn't get a name, but her Lady in Waiting/Handmaiden gets a name (Maeve), and it's Maeve who really drops the ball on dropping Eugene off at an orphanage instead of raising him as Prince Horace. Go girl give us nothing

And from here the LL timeline begins, as Eugene and Arnie are now twelve year olds (I think?) in an orphanage in Corona. Which is the first contradiction to 'canon' but shelve that thought for now. Eugene and Arnie are good little boys but they're getting too old to keep hanging around and the orphanage needs money for the evil Tax Man, so they decide they'll go off into the world and send some money back when they're rich off their famous adventuring. What happens instead is that The Baron's circus rolls into town (yes that Baron) and Eugene and Arnie decide to try their luck signing up for that gig.

To prove themselves to the Baron, Flynn and Lance have to perform a hazing ritual a heist. The heist is literally just to buy a key from the Weasel but it plays out as this huge dramatic thing with a guard chase which is eternally funny to me because two kids walk into a bar, buy a key and then leave, and it's treated like fucking ocean's eleven. The Stabbingtons try to betray them (those guys are here too) but Flynn and Lance outsmart them, beginning a rivalry for the ages. Also, the pub thugs are all part of the Baron's circus crew. Don't think about it too much.

Anyway, as this has all been going down, Eugene is really interested in getting to talk to this guy with a tattoo of (what we as the audience know is) the brotherhood symbol, which Eugene recognises from the note left with him as a baby. He wants to talk to this dude in the hopes he'll get a clue about who his parents are, but this dude keeps eluding him. He also hasn't had a chance to tell Lance about this yet, so when Lance finds out about it he assumes Eugene only tried to rope him into the circus so he could find his parents and ditch him. Cue an ongoing silent treatment.

Eugene eventually does talk to this guy and he learns that the Brotherhood symbol is from the Dark Kingdom but the Dark Kingdom is gone so he shouldn't bother looking for it. Bummer. And now the Baron is planning a huge heist of the reward money for the Lost Princess' return, and Eugene is getting cold feet. He's been okay with a little bit of thievery so far but this feels like too much for him, and he's not okay with pulling it off but Lance still won't talk to him.

As the plan unfolds, Lance and Eugene reconcile and then they work together to betray the Baron and return the stolen treasure that they stole back to the King and Queen. They get caught by the Baron, escape, then get caught by the guards, but it's okay because they're presented to the King and Queen and when Eugene explains that they felt really sorry about it and promise not to do it again they're let go. And so the story ends on a high note.

My Thots™

Okay so here are the thoughts

Canon Compliance?

The obvious takeaway here is that this story offers you a beautiful pie in the form of the characters you know and love and the established lore, then shoves the pie in your face with things like "Eugene already knows the Dark Kingdom and the Moonstone exist but he never brings this up" and "Eugene betrays the Baron in a very significant way but somehow they'll make up and he and Stalyan will get engaged". Which means that if the integrity of the series is important to you, you'll probably just mentally cross out Eugene knowing about the Brohood/DK/Moonstone.

And imo that's fine! My own approach to this story is a kind of general 'if it works it works, if it doesn't I'll leave it' thing to work my own headcanons around. Because there's a lot of fun things to pluck from, like a new ex-Brotherhood member and other characters that could pop up from Eugene's past and other worldbuilding details.

The Story

The story was pretty short and obviously very tailored towards a younger audience, but it still felt kind of... slow? Mostly because nothing particularly exciting is happening until the big heist and even that feels pretty underwhelming. And of course I don't expect a story like this to be particularly complex and can appreciate its simplicity, but I felt like if it had been longer there could have been more twists to keep things interesting.

For example, the Baron is set up as a character not unlike Gothel, who lavishes praise upon the boys and goes on about how they're 'family' but is obviously just manipulating them and would throw them to the wolves in a heartbeat. Eugene underestimates just how criminal the Baron is, but at no point in the story does the doubt we have in the Baron's sincerity ever amount to anything- Eugene only turns against him because he has a morality crisis, which I'll get to in a minute.

Misc. Thoughts

Okay so one thing I thought was really cute was that each chapter has a little 'quote' from a Flynnigan Rider book, and I wrote them all down so if you've read this far and want me to post those separately lemme know. Anyway I just thought it was a very cute touch.

An honourable mention goes to every time Stalyan shows up, she doesn't really do anything in the story yet still is somehow the only character holding the brain cell. Rapunzel gets an indirect cameo by Lance and Eugene stumbling upon her tower and going "Whoa that's Crazy. Anyway. " which is amazing, and Cassandra even gets a little mention by the Captain! And to answer the question nobody asked, there's a chameleon running around Corona because she's an escapee from the circus, and Pascal's mom's name is Amélie!

Characters - okay really just Eugene

Eugene/Flynn is the title character of the book and we get the story exclusively from his POV, so there isn't a lot to say about Lance. On the one hand while I can acknowledge that this is a story about Flynn, not Lance, there's a few choices that feel like a missed opportunity at best given that this book really was an opportunity to explore Lance's character in a way the series never really does.

And it feels extra egregious when the plot demands conflict between Eugene and Lance, because while the emotion between them is engaging when it's happening, at other times it just feels like a convenient way to shove Lance offscreen again. (As a side note, as contrived as the conflict is these are also two twelve year old boys so. Can't blame em too much).

Also, Eugene coming up with the name "Lance Strongbow" on Lance's behalf while he's unconscious is one of those backstory things I'm not going to be acknowledging, thank you.

The Robin Hood Dilemma

Something I touched on after reading What Once Was Mine is that Eugene's characterisation prior to the movie isn't something writers seem to really like... dealing with. And it kind of makes sense that the author received a lot of characterisation notes from Chris Sonnenburg, because little Flynn does feel very similar to the Eugene we know; only the Eugene we know is an adult man who has since grown out of his Flynn Rider persona. But the Flynn Rider persona he needed to grow out of isn't something that ought to be cast aside entirely!! Stop being cowards!!

Taking a step back, the whole premise of the book is kind of a paradox- because Eugene needs to become Flynn Rider before he can learn to embrace his authentic self, but Flynn Rider isn't hero material, he isn't a good guy, he's not the right protagonist for a story for kids. So what we get isn't Flynn Rider, it's really just Eugene trying on a new name. That works for the beginning of the story, because he is just Eugene trying on a new name, but he doesn't grow into it.

At the beginning of the story, Eugene is an orphan in a poor but still functional orphanage run by a kind old lady, and he is surrounded by nice little boys. Eugene is motivated to leave and get a job by a desire to send funds back to the orphanage, and when he joins the Baron's circus he's taken aback to learn he's among thieves. Here's where I thought: okay, this might get interesting. We might be getting a G-rated 'angel falls from heaven' story about Eugene being morally corrupted by the Baron, of learning that the world outside is tough and he needs to look out for himself first and foremost-

but no. The Baron shares his plan to steal the reward money for the Lost Princess, because all the people he's surrounded himself with are already criminals who don't give a shit, but Eugene thinks that this is going too far! What about that poor lost princess who people need an incentive to search for? (he's like, projecting about his own parent issues which is fair, but still). And so the story ends with Eugene turning on the Baron to return the money to the "right" people (aka the king and queen of a kingdom?? okay) but he takes a single golden egg for himself so he can send it to the orphanage.

Which is all sweet and nice but. He still has to become Flynn Rider, asshole extraordinaire. He still has to lose his morals to the point where he'd take an inexperienced young woman to a pub that he, in this book, recognises is a dangerous place in the hopes that he can ditch her. He still has to go and become a wanted thief and rejoin the Baron and then ditch Stalyan on their wedding night.

The reason I'm going on about this so much is that the appeal of Eugene to me is that he is this good guy who wants to be a better person for the people he loves, but that means recognising that he has behaviour he needs to change, and his development is meaningful for that. Watering him down to a righteous Robin Hood hero does him a disservice.

The Real Villain Was Capitalism All Along

I will not elaborate nor should I

#hi i do book reviews now #sorry if you came here for anything else this is who i (cringe) am

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Goof Week: Goofy Birthday Shortstacular!

Hyuck all you happy people! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOFY! The celebration already got on track today with a look at the two part goof troop pilot. You can find that here.

That review kicked off GOOF WEEK my weeklong look at all things Goofy, but as is tradition on this blog the birthday of one of the big three wouldn’t’t be complete without a look at their theatrical shorts career. And with this one i’ve covered all three of Disney’s biggest stars having covered Donald last june (and will again next month) and Mickey in September so it’s long overdue that my boy gets a shot and even longer overdue I watched some of his classic shorts.

A large part of why I started doing these is because I love classic theatrical shorts and the reason I love looking at the Disney ones is, unlike Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry, I didn’t grow up with these and Disney never replayed them. At most you’d get one or a small slice of one in a House of Mouse episode. So this is a fun way to dive right into history and see a piece of Disney I’ve only started scratching the surface of.

This is a fun one too. I ended bumping this up to 12 shorts again, and i’m glad as it allowed me to take a look at some of the weirder stuff and we go all over the place: We have dancing, goofy begging for a smoke, goofy devlopnig a split personality that calls him fat a bunch, a prototypical max who is a LOT, trips to medevil times and cowboy times, a tex avery esque noir short, and the lead in short to National treasure. If any of that sounds like a real good time to you, then keep reading under the cut!

Mickey’s Revue (1933)

Goofy was created by his VA Pinto Colvig, who based the character on the local happy go lucky moron from his home town, and after a dicussion with Walt it was decided to roll him into Mickey’s growing supporting cast.

My guess from here is they decided to do a dry run to make sure the character worked with audeinces before giving him a full time roll. Given Goofy’s been both a staple of Mickey’s supporting cast and often more popular than the mouse or even the duck, you can see how that went.

Colvig was awesome. While Bill Farmer is my preferred Goofy, I still tip my hat to the original and it’s clear this was a character he was born t play and it shows: a lot of characters take a short or too to really find their personality. Goofy.. has his early shorts persona straight out of the box> The only weird thing is he’s an ol dman here.. but otherwise his schick here, loudly eating peanuts, laughing a bit too loud and annoying everyone around him with no genuine malice.. that’s Goofy and Pinto really hit onto something and as we’ll see today had a TON of range beyond this.

As for the rest of the short.. it’s forgetable. It’s not BAD, but it’s just Mickey and friends capering on stage. Nothing really out of the oridnary for these early Mickey Shorts, especially since some of them could get really damn creative.

The Whoopee Party (1933)

Now we have Goofy’s first proper appearance, going from joke character in the crowd to full member of Mickey’s friend group.

This one is also just okay, but better than the last: Mickey and friends throw a wild party, with Mickey, Goofy and Horace making the sammiches. Goofy dosen’t do much btu gets a good gag or two, and overall it’s alright. Enjoyabl efor it’s lively animation and not much else.

Goofy and Wilbur (1936) Three years later we get Goofy’s proper debut, a cute short about him using his Cricket friend to fish. That’s not the exestitnal nightmare that it sounds like mind you as Wilbur simply tricks them into Goofy’s net an donly gets eaten when they catch on and Goofy runs to his aid. The short really is more about Wilbur but it’s fair: like with Donald , who was paired with Pluto in his first solo short, they wanted to test the waters before having Goofy carry a cartoon himself. As we’ll see he very well could, but it’s fair to want ot backdor pilot it first and it’s easily one of the best shorts of today’s batch.

How to Play Baseball (1937)

First off while they make a good effort I already know how ot play baseball short...

How To Play Baseball is my faviorite of the Goofy Shorts on Disney Plus, which is a VERY small batch. Especailly since most of Today’s shorts aren’t at all problematic or inapproriate for kids. This one is a gem though. It’s one of the How To Shorts where a narrator goes ove rgoofy trying and failing at an activity though this one’s a tad diffrent.

The How To Narrator teaches us about baseball before narrating the world series game. It’s full of cleve slapstick, high speed animation and plain fun. It’s also part of the trend that would dominate Goofy’s sports career of putting him in whatever roll the shorts needed. Here he’s everyone at once, others he’s his old goofy self, other time sh’es just a normal joe. But Colvig does every version amazingly, so it all meshes and that general goofy design is so appealing it just WORKS. So yeah while i’m not into sports I do genuinely love the How To shorts, as they were my faviorite part of House of Mouse and still are, and the originals are every bit as classic as their reputation says they are.

A Knight For A Day (1946)

This one is the only other one of these on Disney Plus and it’s decent enough. Nothing incredibble or extra specail: Goofy plays a Squire who has to fil lin for his Knight in a tournament and tries to win a princesses hand against another douchier goofy. Simple stuff iwth some fun gags, but it just dosen’t feel all that fresh, especially since Disney already did a much better shorts with knights with Mickey’s “Ye Olden Days”. It just dosen’t feel as fun or creative as that one was btu on it’s own it’s fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible, just fine. First short of the day to feature Goofy’s faceless blonde love interest who in domestic shorts is his wife and by the same extension Max’s now dead mother.

Tomorrow We Diet (1951)

We’ve got three from 1951 here. By this point Goofy had traditioned from lovable bumbler to every man, taking on a more generalized personality to fit into every day slice of life scenarios, using those to brilliantly contrast the goofy animated comedy with the more mundane setting it comes from. And sometimes it’s just straight up sticom humor with the ocasoinal joke you could only do in a cartoon. And sometimes.. you get a version of Goofy who lives in a mirror taunting Goofy over being fat and then trying to keep him on his diet while it’s not clear if thi sis a split personality, a mirror ghost tormenting him that took his form and is doing this so Goofy breaks the mirror and frees him, or his evil doppleganger from another universe.

Yeah .. one of the centerpieces of this short is Goofy’s reflection/split personality/earth 3 doppleganger/some sort of evil genie taunt shim abotu the fact he’s putting on weight startnig by saying “Hey Fat”... because apparently in this unvierse the best weight joke they can come up with is literally just calling someone fat. I bet I know who rules THIS timeline with an iron fist....

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The first half of this short is Goofy being told he’s fat by a bunch of people and the second half is his hallucination/psychotic break/guardian asshole tormenting him with the diet. And I do mean tormenting: He knocks away all of Goofy’s food, then suggests he not even eat his carrot and STARVE himself, which is just deeply unhealthy, and earlier forces Goofy to let him read his book and then tell shim to just diet anyway. Which granted dieting IS sensible.

So yeah this short as you can probably guess by the fact it involves the term “Hey Fat” which was only said by a human being once.. Dick Kinney or Mick Shaffer, the writers of ths short, when one pitched the line to the other and they laughed for some reason and put it in the script. But with that you can wager this short is REALLY outdated> Overating CAN be a problem and fat shaming still exists, but it’s far less tolerated and far less of a thing.

And hell I can tolerate a good natured weight joke, the Critic had some great ones, especially as a fat guy myself... but this isn’t good natured. The entire joke is, as the man said above HE’S FAT.. So as a legit short. it’s deeply unfunny at best, horribly insulting at worst. But as a so bad it’s good short? it’s GOLD. From the whole mirror goofy thing, to the fact fat is seen as a legit insult here or something to just call fat people because that’s what the writers thoguht humans, even in the 50′s talked like it’s just riffably cruel.. though it will obviously depend onthe viewers tolerance for both fat jokes and how creepy the short can be and again as a short it sucks. As something to be mocked for fun.. it’s fat with potential

Father’s Are People (1951)

Hey Kids you wanna see Max and Goofy reenact Problem Child?

Given I did Goof Troop earlier this week and i’m finishing this week with A Goofy Movie, it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker that I wanted to cover the first short with Goofy’s son Juinor, who’d later be remolded into Max.

The short STARTS promising with Goofy having a kid and the hyjinks that comes from having a baby child: Goofy passes out Cigars because Lung Cancer was the preferred way of celebrating having a child in the 50′s, runs himself ragid helping out, which I give the short credit for as “Donald’s Diary” three years later would play a man helping a woman around the house for horror. Here George (Goofy would often go by George Geef in later shorts) pitches in and while he’s clearly exausted he is trying to help with the boy.

It takes a turn though once we jump ahead to a toddler Junior. Seriously a red head named junior... there’s no way that’s a coincidence. Anyways, the problem is unlike problem child, where Junor dosen’t really go after his dad but the assholes around his pushover dad who genuinely deserve it, this Junior goes after Goofy who at wors tis mildly negelectful but clearly loves his boy> He also DOES try to take a brus hto the kid... but it’s hard to be too mad about that as it was acceptable at the time and he dosen’t actually paddle a three year old. It’s like a less horrfying version of donald puttin ga penguin to a shotguns face in that the targeted party dosen’t see the threat and that goofy isn’t some form of sociopath in this short like Donald was there. It’s just not very funny and only worth watching at all for the historical value.

No Smoking! (1951) (Patreon Selection by WeirdKev27)

This is my first of two Patreon selections, my patreon is here if you want to chip in a buck to pick a short for Donald’s birthday next month, by longtime friend and backer of the blog Kev. He suggested this one for the sheer absurdity of Goofy smooking.. and was right on the money> This one is DELGITHFUL.

It works on two levels: it works on the modern level of seeing such an iconic cartoon grapple with trying to quit smoking, first smoknig so constantly a giant cloud appears over him and he has about 80 cigs in his mouth at once, but then trying to quit and being surrounded bycigs before finally DESPERATELY begging for one. As I discovered you really HAVEN’T lived till you’ve heard goofy madly call out “Smoke, smoke gotta have a smoke”.

But while the novelty IS great.. it’s also just a good cartoon. Outside of some blatant racisim at the start, with a native american sterotype introducing smoking to colmbus which feels so wrong to type I need a shower and really puts a damper on the short which after that.. is just really funny. From the smoking through the ages, to the very creative smoking gags it’s just fun.. and it is CLEARLY anti-smoking, showing both the insane amount of cigrte smoker can go through and how mad the addiction can drive you. It’s not bad... though if you can’t stomach the blatant and terrible racisim.. I get that and it’s fair.

Two Gun Goofy (1952)

This is one of two “put Goofy in another setting all together” pieces, both in the same year which tells me they were trying to find new stuff to do for Goofy. Thi sisn’t unheard of in cartoons: Around the same time and before Bugs Bunny went all over the world and thorugh time and space, and Mickey went through the looking glass and had two fantasy shorts, so i’ts not unusual

But what IS neat about these next two shorts is they combined the two goofys: he has his goofy demanor and oblivoiusness from the classic shorts, but still has his deeper, slightly less goofy voice from the everyman shorts and is still treated as an average joe, just one now undertaking genre careers, here a cowboy and next a detective

This short is decent. I’m a sucker for cowboy episodes apparently: either old west style showdowns or having the characters go to a dude ranch or something. So naturally I picked this one and was told Max was in it an dhe is... in a two second cameo when Goofy has a thought bubble after meeting faceless lady.

But this is a really enjoyable picture. not Disne’y sbest but good stuff. It also pairs Goofy with pete which really is a perfect pairing, putting our scowling rotund villian against our skinny well meaning hero. And while i’ts a common gag in a lto of things I do love Goofy accidently beating the shit out of pete as the short finds fun ways to do it. All in all worth a watch.

How to Be a Detective (1952)

This one was a REALLY fun one. Like with westerns i’m a sucker for a good noir parody, even if ironically I haven’t watched much of either genre proper. Add in the fact this is clearly inspiried by Tex Avery’s work and i’m sold on this fun madcap romp with an approraitely more noirsh narrator.

Goofy is naturally a detective and hired by the faceless woman to find “Al” having to contend with both a goon he keeps failing to recognize and The Chief of Police, played by Pete, who keeps telling him “I told ya to stay off the case Goof!”. It’s just the delivery makes it funny any time he says it as does his instance... and the punchline, which I won’t spoil to both that an dthe overaching mystery i sa gem. This one’s on youtube, seek it out, it’s damn fun. Before I go thoguh I also love how Goofy is Given “Goof Balls”. Yes GOOFY GETS DRUGGED and I am here for it

Father’s Day Out (1953)

I couldn’t find any GIF’s for this one, not even one’s in teh same tag that were unrelated so here, have more smoking Goofy. It will never not be funny.

This one is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtastic. Goofy is overworked, wnats to rest on his weeknd, and stuff gets in the way. Oh and halfway through he abrubtly has to take Max to the beach. It’s.. not much honestly. It’s like the simpsons if it wasn’t funny.

How To Hook Up Your Home Theater (2007) (Emma Fici Patreon Selection)

You may notice the MASSIVE time jump here. That’s because while Disney still does theatrical shorts nowadays, in part because Pixar’s shorts turned out to be a huge hit, they almost never use the classic cast. This delightful anamoly is one of the few exceptions and was picked by Emma out of sheer curosity. And she picked well this short is fun, feelnig like a big budget version of the House of Mouse How To Shorts I loved so an dhaving a modern yet still ultimatley timeless subject: while the tech featured is missin ga streaming box and 4k, otherwise it really has aged incredibly well and getting all the diffrent modes set up and what not is a hassel we al lcan agree with.

It’s a fun short with lots of good gags and humor as Goofy tries to set up his Home Theater before the big game, and worth a watch. Weirdly not on Disney+ though try explaining that one.

One final note is for whatever reason this was paired up with National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

My BEST GUESS i sthat it appeals to the kinds of dads who’d watch National Traesure: Book of Secrets as well as kids since it’s an adventure film. Though it now makes me want to see Nicholas Cage voice goofy. Get on it Disney. Not forever though, Bill’s a treasure. Just for a gag like Don Cheadle vocing Donald.. oh god put them together.. and then have them do a movie together I don’t think they have and do not know why.

Final Ranking: As a bit of added fun to close this out and as a new feature for these i’m ranking today’s shorts from best to worst How To Be A Detective How To Play Baseball No Smoking Goofy and WIlbur How To Hook Up Your Home Theater Two Gun Goofy The Whoopee Party Mickey’s Revue Tommorow We Diet A Knight for A Day Father’s Are People Father’s Weekend

For the record despite not being a GOOD short Tommorow we diet is at least intresting, hence i’ts ranknig while Father’s weekend is just a boring 50′s version of problem child. Fathers are People at least has some good gags to set it off.

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow

#goofy #disney #goofy's birthday #goofy goof #max goof #mrs goof #pete #peg leg pete #peg legged pete #pete pete #pinto colvig #disney shorts #disney plus #disney+

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mychemicalimagines · 6 years

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The Walking Marauders (4) Remus Lupin

No Magic. As soon as the dead starting walking, Melissa Potter just wanted to find her family. After waking up from a coma she finds herself in the world of the undead. She goes into the city and finds Remus Lupin. How will they go on in this world? Will they fight together or fight each other??

Tag List: @maraudersandco @itshelaodinsdottirbitch@iluvharrypotter172@rosesarestriped @definethatpotato @la-fille-en-aiguilles @darling-i-read-it

Other chapters are linked in my masterlist in my description

Requests are still open! Please message me or submit an ask to request. If you would like to be tagged please comment on this chapter or message me. Please comment telling me your thoughts on this chapter, or even the story in general. If you would like to see a character in this story please message me and I can see what I can do. Either from Walking Dead or the Harry Potter series.

I didn’t put Charlie, Bill, or Percy in this story. It would just be too many children to keep track of. So the Weasleys only have Fred, George, Ron and Ginny.

Warnings: alcohol consumption and cussing.

I get shaken awake the next morning by Hermione. I forgot about what happened last night so I was shocked to see her in my tent. Wait this isn’t my tent. I look around and notice the shirt Remus was wearing yesterday. That’s right we stayed in Remus’ tent last night.

“What’s wrong Hermione?” I ask sitting up rubbing my eyes.

“I have to use the bathroom.” She says quietly.

“Okay, lets change and I’ll take you to the RV” I say stand a little to change. I change and I look at her. “Are you ready?”

“Yes please,” she puts her arms out to me.

I smile and pick her up stepping out of the tent. Everything is cleaned up from last night. All the tents but mine are packed and put away. I walk over to the Weasley’s RV with Hermione in my arms.

“Morning Mel, Hermione.” Arthur says from the top of the RV.

“Good morning Arthur” I say as Hermione waves. “Is it okay if we use your bathroom?”

“Sure you guys can. Molly and the boys are helping James and Lily with their packing so you can go on inside.” He says smiling at us.

“Thank you,” Hermione says in her sweet voice.

Arthur just smiles at us and we walk inside the RV. After helping Hermione use the bathroom I pick her up and take her outside. I look around for Remus or Sirius but I find Severus first.

“Hey Severus, wheres Sirius?” I ask as Hermione puts her face into my neck.

“Hes with James at the cars packing up. So” He pauses and I give him a look that means ‘hurry up.’ “You are taking care of a kid now?”

“Yeah, got a problem with it?” I question. Before he gets to answer I walk over to the cars searching for Sirius.

I see him standing with Remus at Sirius’ old Jeep.

“Are you guys ready?” I ask them.

“Yeah. Remus just has to put his tent down and were good to go,” Sirius says turning toward me then waving a little at Hermione. She blushes at him and hides her face further into my neck.

“Hey Mel, if you want you guys can ride with me to the CDC,” Remus smiles toward me.

“Hermione what do you think?” I ask her blushing a little. “Do you want to ride with Mr.Remus?” She nods into my neck so I look at Remus and say, “Sure Remus. We’ll ride with you.”

“My cars over there,” He points toward the back of the car area. “Its the green one.”

“Thank you,” I say sweetly.

He smiles and walks over to his tent to start taking it down. I look to the car area to look for his car. For the next hour Remus and I get all of his, mine and Hermione’s stuff into his vehicle. We make sure to put a car seat in there for her. I turn to everyone in the campsite.

“We all ready to leave?” Everyone nods at me. “Lets get going! Remus’ car in first then Sirius’ with the Potters then the RV then the Thomas family. That good?”

“Sounds good to me,” Sirius says nodding at me looking at everyone else. No one complains so we all go to our cars and start driving.

“Mr. Remus.” Hermione says.

“Yes Hermione?” He asks looking into the rear view mirror at her.

“Are you and Mel my new parents?” she asks curiously.

“We are taking care of you but we don’t have to be your parents. Why?” he sneaks a look at me then back at the road.

“Because my mommy and daddy were really mean to me and you guys actually take care of me. I’d rather you be my parents.” She says looking down at her hands.

“We can be your parents but you don’t have to call us mommy and daddy. Remus and Mel are fine.” I say to her smiling. She nods at me and starts playing with a doll she brought with her.

After about 4 hours of driving we pull up to an open gate and Remus slows down.

“This is it,” He says pointing to a sign.

He pulls over to the side of the road and I look at the building. The doors are closed and theres a few walkers around. I get out of the car and look at the other cars. Sirius, Michael and Arthur step out of their vehicles as well. I look at Remus.

“Do you want to survey the area with us?” I ask.

He nods and steps out of the car.

“Hermione.” She looks at me. “I’m going to give you to the Potters so you’re safe okay?” She nods at me and I open the back door and unbuckle her. Remus walks over and takes her out of the car for me. He smiles at me and walks over to Sirius’ car.

I look at Sirius and the others. “Okay were going to see if we can get in or see if someones still here. Do we all have knives” I ask.

Michael and Arthur takes out their knives but Sirius smirks at me and goes to the trunk of his car pulling out his crossbow.

“You still have that thing?” I laugh at him.

“Of course.”

Remus walks back over to us pulling out his knife.

“Alright lets go,” i say walking into the gates and I go straight over to a walker whose back is to me.

I shove my knife right into its head and he falls dead. I run straight to the doors as the other guys take care of the rest of them. I push the buttons that are suppose to open the door but nothing happens. I bang on the door.

“Anyone there? We have women and children. Please open the doors!” Nothing happens. The camera moves so I bang on the door again.

“This is stupid! The doors aren’t going to open!” Severus yells from the open RV door.

“The camera moved!” I snap toward him and I bang on the door again. “Please we need some where to stay!” I yell up to the camera. It moves toward the guys standing behind me and then toward the cars.

“It does move!” Sirius says looking at me.

“Please help!” Remus says helping me bang on the door. I sigh and turn around.

“We should-” I go to say but the doors open up behind me making me turn and its blinding everyone looking at them.

“Is anyone infected?” a voice asks from inside the light.

“No.” I say putting my hand cover my eyes a little so I can see.

“Grab all your stuff and everything you will need. Once these doors close, they will not open again.” the gentleman says.

“You go inside. We got this.” Remus says looking at me. I nod at him and he winks at me and runs toward the cars with the guys. I turn to the gentleman.

“My name is Melissa Potter. Thank you so much for opening the doors.”

“My name is Dr. Horace Slughorn. You guys are safe here. You said you have children?” He asks curiously.

“Yes, I have a daughter. My brother has a son and one of the guys with me has 4 children.” I answer not wanting him to question why Hermione is with me.

He nods and everyone walks up to us.

“This everyone?” he looks around. I turn around and count heads.

“Yeah,” I say taking Hermione from Remus and he puts his hand on my lower back when Severus gets a little close.

“Now I’m not suppose to let you guys in here, so I am going to have to take some blood and do some tests just to make sure.” He says looking at us.

“Thats fine,” I say automatically so he doesn’t make us leave.

He walks into the building and we all follow him. As soon as the last person who was Sirius walks in the building he closes the doors and turns back to us.

“As I told her, my name is Dr. Horace Slughorn.”

“Hi. I’m Hermione” Hermione says to the man. He chuckles and looks at her.

“Hello,” he smiles and then looks at everyone. “Follow me.”

We do as he says and for the next 20 minutes we gave some blood. I sit in the chair after giving blood and Hermione is next.

“I don’t like needles. They look scary,” She says looking at me.

“Its okay. I’m here,” I rub her back a little. Remus kneels in front of her to keep her mind off the needle.

“Okay you guys are done. Lets get some food into you,” Slughorn says standing up.

We follow him into an kitchen area. For the next couple hours, we are eating and drinking when I stand raising my glass.

“I just want to thank our host. For letting us in and giving us a place to stay and food in our tummies.” I smile around the table.

“Booya!” Sirius yells raising his bottle of alcohol. Everyone laughs and raises their classes, cheering with him. I sit back down and Severus looks over at Slughorn.

“I don’t mean to be a party pooper but how come you’re the only one left? Where is everyone else?” He asks.

Remus sighs, “Mood killer.”

Slughorn explains that everyone left or “opted out”. They couldn’t take it. I sigh looking at the kids.

“Alright. How about I show you guys to your rooms.” Slughorn says standing out of his chair. We follow him down a couple halls.“You guys will have to share rooms, and go easy on the hot water.”

“hot water?” Michael asks.

“That’s what the man says.” Sirius says smiling.

We split into groups. The Potters in one room. Weasley’s in one room. Thomas’ in one room and Remus and I in another. Sirius and Severus got their own rooms. Hermione pulls on my pant leg. I look down at her.

“Can I stay with the Weasley’s? Mrs. Molly said they will be playing games.” She asks sweetly. I look over at Molly who nods at me.

“Sure darling.” I pick her up and give her a big kiss on her cheek and put her down. She runs over to Molly and she leads her to their room. I turn to Remus.

“You can shower first.” He says. “I’m get some more to drink.”

“Grab me one please.” I smile walking into the room.

After both Remus and I shower we are sitting on the couch laughing at a story he tells me about his time at the zoo a few years ago.

“Want to play a game?” I ask taking a sip of my alcohol.

“Sure. What game?” He asks turning more toward me putting a leg up on the couch.

“20 questions? Get to know each other more?” I ask.

“Sure. Um. Whats your favorite color?” he asks me.

“Purple.” I blush. “Mainly dark purple. I don’t know why its just a pretty color. Whats your favorite animal?”

“Wolf. They are really smart and only protect their pack. They also howl at the moon a lot and I like the moon. Its bright,” He smiles over at me. “I remember you tell me you were in a coma before all this, what happened?”

“Sirius and I were shooting at some bank robbers in Hogwarts County and we weren’t informed there was 3 guys. I got shot” I pull up my shirt and show him the scar that has formed.

“Wow,” He says leaning over to look at it.

An hour later I look at him, “When was your last relationship?” I ask.

“Um. About 3 years ago. I focused more on my job getting more money to get out of my crappy apartment.” He slurs a little bit.

I look at him and hes looking at me and blushes. I look into his beautiful eyes. Before I realized what I was doing, Remus and I both were leaning forward. Our lips lightly touch. I guess he gain some courage because he presses his lips harder into mine. I lean more into the kiss deepening it more. We pull away and I blush.

The next morning I wake up and notice that I’m in the only one in the room. Remus must have waken up and gone down to breakfast. Holy shit. We kissed last night.

Remus’ POV

I look at my plate Michael served me. I can’t believe I kissed her last night. I’ve always thought she was beautiful and I want to be with her but I don’t even know if she likes me back. I hope she remembers so we can talk about it later. Mel walks into the room and smiles at me and walks over to the empty chair next to me.

“Hey!” She sits down.

“Hey did you have fun last night?” I ask making her think I forgot to see if she remembers.

“Yeah, I don’t remember much but from what I remember I had fun.” She looks at Michael when he hands her a plate. Shit she doesn’t remember. I look down.

We all finish eating and Severus looks at Slughorn.

“So we didn’t just come for the food. What is this? This disease?” He asks.

“Severus,” Mel snaps a little at him.

“No. Come with me and I’ll explain everything.” Slughorn says standing up from his chair.

We go back into the room where we got our blood taken and he explains that we die but then the disease restarts our brain stem. All our memories and stuff die and it only makes us move and eat. I look over at Mel and Hermione who are standing on the other side of the room. I sigh. I just feel so awkward around her now that I know that she doesn’t remember the kiss. I don’t want to tell her and her end up not actually liking me.

Arthur points to a clock that’s counting down on the wall, “Dr. Slughorn, what happens when that clock goes down to 0?” The clock was at 45 minutes and 58 seconds.

Slughorn looks down at the floor,”then the building is going take down everything that is infected with a certain area”

“Great so all the walkers are going to go down right?” Andrea asks smiling at him.

“We’re all infected with this disease.” Slughorn says looking up at her.

“You mean its going to blow up the building?” Severus asks running over to him.

“Yeah,” Slughorn says. I walk straight over to Mel and Hermione wrapping my arms around them. “Thats why I told you the doors aren’t going to open back up.”

“So were going to die?” Mel asks looking at him. Slughorn just nods.

#remus lupin #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x you #remus lupin x oc #harry potter imagine #the walking dead imagine

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wreathedwith · 7 years

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How Not To Be a Boy reaction post

I finished this book – Robert Webb’s memoir – last week and it’s a book very dear to me that I had been eagerly anticipating. My thoughts are in chronological order below. Full spoilers for the whole text, hence the read more link (also for reasons of length). If you’ve also read this book and/or this post, please let me know your thoughts!

Here’s the wardrobe that never yielded to Narnia no matter how faithfully I reached for the cold air.

Lovely.

Tall, Welsh and handsome, the presenter Steve Jones…

Apparently this is a key aspect to note of RW’s Flashdance experience.

And after everyone has left and Abbie has gone to bed, I’ll sit in our little garden and drink another two bottles of red wine and smoke about thirty Marlboro Lights. Tomorrow I’ll do something similar – but in the pub in the middle of the day. This behaviour won’t change when our daughter is born, and the moment will come when Abbie will tell me about these months and say as she looks at me steadily: ‘You let me down.’

These parts, mostly come back to later, are very tough reads – it’s sad to think about RW letting his wife down, and there’s more catharsis in the overcoming than the (partial) repeating of his childhood. It’s not so unusual to find searingly honest memoirs, but unlike most of the rest of the book RW doesn’t have time’s distance, substituted names or the death of those involved to fall back on here – he’s being very honest about something quite recent and similar to his current life, even ongoing. On the other hand, a narrative ending where everything was perfect would have seemed trite and not rung true.

15: You sound quite posh. 43: Ah yes. Well, that was your idea. You want to sound like Stephen Fry, don’t you? 15: What’s wrong with that? 43: Nothing. I mean it’s a bit – 15: Look, I just don’t want to sound like fucking Dad, all right? I want to be the opposite of Dad.

Self-evidently this ‘exchange’ says quite a bit about class, emulating heroes and RW’s relationship with his father in under 50 words.

‘Quiet boy’, ‘painfully shy’, ‘you never know he’s there’: these are some of the phrases I catch grown-ups using when they talk about me. But not here, not in the car with Mum.

I found this extremely affecting. It made me think about moments carved out when you feel safe when you generally don’t, being told you’re quiet, time craved alone with parent(s) without siblings, and my own mum of course.

(Shyness: see also: ‘He’s just very shy,’ explains my embarrassed mum. I hear that word a lot. ‘Shy’ is my defining characteristic. Everyone tells me I’m shy so I must be.)

I take a more cautious approach to the outdoor life and I don’t do it with other children. Unless, of course, you count the Guy-Buys. The Guy-Buys are my imaginary gang of friends. I am the Captain of the Guy-Buys, obviously, and they are my twelve – yes, twelve, like the apostles – men.

See also Would I Lie to You?, Series 5 Episode 2.

But mothers underestimated girls and overestimated boys – both in crawling ability and crawling attempts… Expectant mothers who know the foetus is male are more likely to report foetal movement as ‘violent’. So the odds are that Huckleberry, compared to India, is expected to be more independent, more aggressive, more outward-facing and less interested in personal relationships since before he was born. With the best will in the world, bunging him a Barbie when he’s five years old isn’t really going to cut it

This is a fair point, but how do we stop doing this? (It’s fine – I didn’t expect this book to provide me with those sort of answers.) Any unconscious biases are difficult to overcome, but I suppose being more aware of them is a start.

Susan and Lucy in grief for their dead king, the great lion; Charlie, eking out his year-long ration of Wonka Bar; Emil, alone on a train (before he meets his detectives), pricking his finger on the safety pin; the Doctor, losing his mind on Castrovalva; his companion Tegan, longing for home; Luke Skywalker, looking for adventure in a twin sunset – together with Mum or alone in my bedroom, stories were a way to reach distant places. But also, and without my noticing, a way to reach distant people. That’s where I really caught a break. I don’t mean I suddenly had miraculous powers of empathy; I just mean that empathy had a chance.

No note, just appreciation.

Roger has a Commodore VIC-20 which, technically speaking, has a much smaller memory than my 48K Spectrum, but does have the advantage of actually looking like a computer. Still, I’ve grown to love my ‘Speccy’ and treat it with almost religious respect. After each session with Horace Goes Skiing, Jetpack or The Way of the Exploding Fist, I carefully put the Spectrum back in the box that first revealed itself to me under the wrapping paper last Christmas Day.

Gamer chat! (Sadly I think this is it all for the whole book.) RW has also talked about playing arcade games on family holidays to Skegness on S2E6 of Go 8 Bit.

I like it when he calls me ‘Rob’ as he used to at Coningsby Juniors. It’s strictly ‘Webb’ and ‘Baxter’ on the school bus.

Why did (does) this happen even at a mixed sex grammar school. And the girls don’t get it at all? Society is weird. (That’s one way to put the theme of this book, broadly.)

‘What do you want to be when you grow up then, boy?’ he asks. I do the usual. ‘Computers.’ It’s the fastest way to close down this sensitive line of enquiry. Nobody over twenty has the faintest idea what a job involving computers could possibly mean, so it works well.

This is funny and, I would assume, no longer work.

I say, ‘I was always Cowley. Roger Baxter and Matthew Tellis took it in turns to be Bodie or Doyle.’ David Mitchell puts his pint down in surprise.

FUCKING FINALLY, like 33% in, Jesus Christ RW. (I know he doesn’t really fit in for the most part, but what RW does say about DM is completely lovely, so I’m happy enough.)

(DM first mentioned RW 19% of the way into Back Story.)

I say, ‘I was always Cowley. Roger Baxter and Matthew Tellis took it in turns to be Bodie or Doyle.’ David Mitchell puts his pint down in surprise. ‘How come you always got to be Cowley?’ ‘Well, they – hang on, what do you mean, got to be Cowley. No one wanted to be Cowley.’ ‘What are you talking about? Cowley was in charge. Cowley gave the orders.’ ‘What, so at your school everyone wanted to be Cowley?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Seriously? You were all queuing up to be Cowley?’ ‘I don’t remember a queue, but yes, essentially.’ He takes the drag on a cigarette I just gave him. ‘To be fair,’ he says, ‘we were quite weird, our little gang. It’s probably more normal to want to be the macho men.’

I mean they had fairly different upbringings, despite (I would assume) the general assumption of them being broadly similar, and that is made amusingly clear.

David will spend his twenties being the only example I’ve ever known of a successful social smoker. He bums a couple of fags in the pub (good luck with that, American readers) and then doesn’t dream of having another the following morning. I don’t mind this because every now and again he’ll turn up with a pack of ten and hand them over as a contribution to an ongoing tobacco kitty where I keep the change.

Whatever this is just adorable.

It’s more that we just chat while keeping half an eye out for a funny idea creeping up on us. They always do – they wander in from the edges of sight. If you look straight at them, they disappear, like faint stars. You wait until they’re in plain view before stealthily picking up a pen. Then you’ve got them. Talking about TV is typical of us on these occasions, but talking about school is not – we’re in our mid-twenties and too young to find children interesting.

Mid-twenties *sucks in a deep breath*. An insight into the Process here. A focus on TV, often daytime TV specifically, is clear to any watcher of That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Many years later I’ll be talking to a friend (not David, but another comedy writer) who puzzlingly seems to have moved from one terraced house to an almost identical one in a slightly different part of Brixton. He tells me that, in the last place, the neighbours started using his bins for their overflowing rubbish. I ask him, ‘What did you say?’ ‘Oh God, I didn’t say anything,’ he replies. ‘No, we decided it would be easier to move house.’ This makes me laugh for about three minutes. I know he’s joking, but mainly I’m enjoying the idea that I’m not the only grown man who will go to incredible lengths to avoid an awkward conversation.

*Me, scrolling through my BritCom rolodex* who is this

One of QEGS’ battier traditions is the Eisteddfod

I have NEVER heard of a non-Welsh school (I went to a Welsh school) putting on an Eisteddfod; please get in touch if you can give me further evidence to the contrary.

It becomes obvious that once you’ve got their attention, you can wait. And you can make them wait with you. In fact, the longer you make them wait for ‘Indeed, sir’, the bigger the laugh will be when you say it. Confusingly, if you wait too long, they won’t laugh at all. So I start to listen to the audience. I start to time it.

I’ve read (*cough*) quite a lot of books about comedians’ early lives, and something like this generally happens in them, but I think RW does write about it particularly well.

Suddenly I have a name for that feeling I had in Dad’s car on the way back from the Flashdance fireworks. That feeling, the one that made me blush, was an overwhelming desire to be famous.

I mean, I can’t believe there is a linear through-time Flashdance narrative in this book. Amazing.

So I’ll be famous. And funny writing and acting is what I’ll be famous for. That will help because famous people are safe. Famous people don’t have problems. And they can probably have the radiator on as often as they like. And maybe girls like them.

We move into self-psychologising here quite thoroughly, but I will choose to take this as pretty insightful.

The only person I want to kiss, and to kiss her would make my decade, is Tiffany Rampling, friend of Zelda and the younger sister of my future dream-girl Tess Rampling. Yes, that’s right. One day I will adore Tess and get nowhere. But only after two years of getting nowhere with her sister Tiffany.

‘I only went with her 'cos she looks like you. My god!’

(This is an extremely esoteric observation, but I was slightly disappointed there were no Pulp references within the various music mentioned in this book. I just have to accept RW is a Suede (actually mostly Prince) man.)

I’m in my bedroom, reading in bed. It’s a pity that the Doctor’s companion, Nyssa, has chosen to part company with the Doctor, staying behind to help with the space leper colony. But then, I think, as I remove the last of my clothing, that’s Nyssa for you: beautiful and kind-hearted. I put the book to one side, and think about beautiful Nyssa and how, on the space leper colony, she wouldn’t have anyone to help her if, for example, she somehow got a splinter in her vagina…

…HANG ON, SOMETHING VERY ALARMING BUT FANTASTIC IS HAPPENING! I SHOULD STOP THIS – IT’S MAKING ME GOING TO DO A WEE! NO! IT’S NOT A WEE, IT’S SOMETHING ELSE! IT’S . . . OH MY FUCKING LORD! And thus it was that the would-be Doogie Howser MD of space cunnilingus had his first orgasm.

Ahhhhh hahahaahaha.

Also: points (?) for first getting off to getting a woman off, albeit mostly through the ego-boosting prism of being very good at it.

Also: this is a fandom-related wank, right? This is a first fandom wank. I’m sticking a flag in this for fandom.

‘You’re born naked and the rest is drag.’ RuPaul

You think this book wasn’t going to have a RuPaul quote? Pfft.

‘I’m a man, he says!’ I almost yell at Mum. ‘Only a boy would need to say so.’ It’s a line I’ve been waiting to try out for days.

Ah the performative cleverness of teenagehood *stares back through the mists of time*.

‘I mean, they’re not exactly The Beatles, are they?’ she says, cheerfully. I scowl at the TV and say in a slow pantomime of controlled rage, ‘Not everyone . . . can be . . . the sodding . . . Beatles.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘Soz, Rob,’ she teases. I blink at her queenily and then do a reluctant grin.

Nice use of the adverb ‘queenily’.

And I’ve just noticed that wanting to be famous just for the sake of becoming famous makes you look like a massive twat. I’ll have to come up with a better reason. I’ll have to start saying that fame is an unfortunate side effect of my, I dunno . . . art.

The boy matures. (A bit.)

So what is it about this ‘Will’?

I’ll level with you: it’s when Will turns up the ‘Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.’ message starts coming up on my Kindle highlights.

I adore how RW has written Will, and how he has written Will as a first love. We know exactly how RW sees Will (rather than who Will actually is), we feel his awed lust and love. Again, RW doesn’t hold back and it does pay off. I fell in love with Will (well, at least got a bit of a crush on) because I’m reading RW’s point of view of him, and RW is in love with Will, and that is the result of a successful clearly-rendered memoir’s voice.

He’s about the same height and build as me. His hair is darker and he can grow it longer… Will can get his to just wavily flop either side of his thin-framed glasses.

This reminds me of someone else a bit

More Will just because I can:

He’s skinny like me but his collarbones travel just that little bit further before they reach his shoulders, his muscles are slightly more defined, his knees just a bit less knobbly, his legs . . . But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was talking about his attitude, right? Not his body. It will be instructive that, when introducing you to my new Best Friend, the first thing I want to do is undress him. Probably because I would spend the next five years trying to do exactly that. He’s cool… His clothes just fit. It’s mesmerising. They cling and swing around him like adoring fans. Still, as I say, I just like his attitude. Also, his legs.

I’m not seriously suggesting anything here, but I am reminded – when RW is talking about how completely cool Will is – of the part of Back Story where DM meets RW for the first time.

The second thing I noticed about Robert Webb was his earring… the first thing was his long hair – by which I mean the fact that it was long. I don’t want to accidentally sound romantic: ‘As soon as he walked in I was dazzled by the sheen of his golden locks.’ No, I noticed he had long hair which, I’m sure he’ll mind me saying, at that point in his life was a touch mullety. He looked like a bit of a rebel, a bit cool, left-wing, metrosexual.

The SDP/Liberal Alliance poster in the window of Mr and Mrs Slater’s Horncastle home in 1987 has not gone unnoticed. Neither has the fact that Mum is a Labour supporter or that almost everyone who makes me laugh on TV is some kind of leftie. Politics is suddenly an area where secret hopes (university, being a funny actor) neatly overlap with a general wish to side with Mum against the Men. The facts may be that the Parliamentary Labour Party is composed almost entirely of men and that Mrs Thatcher is a woman, but these facts are to be overlooked for the time being. Where Mum agrees with Mrs Slater and both agree with Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood . . . and where all four disagree with Derek, Dad, Norman Tebbit and Bernard Manning . . . well, let’s just say it will be a long time before I feel the need to read a manifesto. I’m Labour. That’s it.

Politics! This makes RW’s recent-ish leaving of the Labour party seem an even Bigger Deal.

For example, Will does a pleasingly smarmy impression of Education Secretary Kenneth Baker (whom I devastatingly rename Kenneth Faker – oomph! Eat that, Tories!) and I play a contemptuous interviewer which owes a great deal to other people’s impressions of Jeremy Paxman.

This made me laugh in a very ‘self-aware of your teenage self’ sort of way.

Sometimes when I make Will laugh, he throws his head back and I stare at the symmetry of his jaw. I like to think he doesn’t notice.

*internal screaming*

I have three CDs: Revolutions by Jean-Michel Jarre, Kick by INXS and Lovesexy by Prince. All read by a laser. Cool.

I mean, really.

I muster what I imagine to be a knowing smirk, as if Han Solo is big enough to take another of Princess Leia’s witty put-downs.

Oh yeah, and there’s a Star Wars linear thread throughout AND it has a really fucking amazing pay-off at the end! RW may only keep to one massive fuck-off celeb story, but it’s a good one.

The Han Solo thing is really not working for me any more. Lucy doesn’t go out with Han Solo: she goes out with a spotty twenty-year-old called Dean who is often in fights and can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure. Surely everyone but me can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure. Obviously, Will has a guitar and can play the bass line to ‘A Forest’ by The Cure.

The… History Boys… crossover?

I’m counting the hours with dread. Will is nothing if not frank, and I know that when he Does It With Daisy, I will be literally the third to know... How does he get to touch her at all? How does she get to touch him at all? One morning before registration, he wanders round to Form 5S and announces that he’s going to see Prince at Wembley. That is, he’s going with Daisy, Daisy’s dad and some of Daisy’s friends. To London. To see Prince. Because he’s going out with Daisy. I am not invited. Why would I be? No wonder I yearn for a time long ago in a galaxy far away. This galaxy obviously hates me. I start writing poetry.

arghhh this is so painful (and, of course, essentially universal)

Reader, I suspect you think you want a piece of that, but trust me you don’t. I’ve been as candid as my ego allows but I have to draw the line somewhere. No teenage poetry. Not even a Best Of.

hahahahaaaa

‘OK, so . . . you know that thing when you’re trying to get Cresta Run to load on a Spectrum and it doesn’t work because you’ve set the volume on the tape too . . . No.’

OK, I was wrong about the last mention of gaming thing.

I think I was drawn to [Michael Jackson] partly because of his stolen childhood, which manifested as childishness. It turns out that some dads do hit famous children… And what he reminded me of in 1987, when he released Bad, was a painfully shy child playing at being tough. If you want to see a real-life Guy-Buy, have a look at that album cover. There he is with his silly costume and unlikely bravado. And that terrible fear very nearly hidden in make-believe… I’ve never seen a performance like it... It’s so beautiful. The way he moves around that stage, you’d have to be mad to take your eyes off him for an instant. It’s also a hell of a song, despite, or perhaps because of, the same weird boy/man disconnect – he’s written a song about contested paternity when the last thing you can imagine Michael Jackson doing is having sex. I like it that he might be a virgin. I also have to admit that I like the way he’s accidentally outperformed his older brothers and utterly eclipsed his violent father.

This whole section (being a fan, again) is wonderfully written.

And I find out something else too. Even though I think I’ve worked out how he does it, when I watch the whole thing again, it still looks like magic. Taking something to pieces doesn’t spoil the whole when you put it back together. You can still love the effortlessness even when you’ve noticed the effort. Not before time, I finally start reading books in the same way. Not just to enjoy what a writer did, but for the pleasure of figuring out how they did it.

I like this part too, although I do have some slightly more complicated thoughts on this. (This is the root of moving from reading to creative writing – the root in any skill from moving from a fan and consumer to creator as well – but if you love a piece of writing for non-literary reasons and you have a sinking feeling it would not stand up to the scrutiny of close analysis, it is tempting to leave it well alone. On the other hand, much of my personal joy in the consumption of something creative that I adore comes from relentlessly close analysis, as is self-evident from my long relationship with fandom and this ludicrously long blog post.)

I wait till no one else is in the Form room and ask Mrs Slater if it’s ridiculous for me to think of Cambridge.

This takes bravery as, of course, does the reapplication of himself and the getting-in-eventually, the going back to school for another year, rather than just going to another university, all from a 17, 18, 19 year old who had lost his mum. It says something about RW’s focussed desire to go to Cambridge in order to be a famous comedian (and he also cites some snobbery), but it’s also hugely impressive.

Will puts 50p in the jukebox. ‘Bobs, at some point you’re going to have to face the fact that you’re about as likely to have sex with Tess Rampling as I am with bloody . . . Trevor McDonald.’

A note: it’s interesting to see RW’s name change throughout this book according to the situation: Robert to his mother, Robbie to Mark, the little brother, Rob when he’s at university, ‘Bobs when Will’s being all casual and cool here, Bobbington when that outgoing Footlights president is being a bit of a dick… there are a lot of different names.

[Will] runs a careless hand through his hair in a way that makes me want to jump him right here and right now

*swoons*

‘Have you fingered her yet, then?’ enquires Pete through another gobful of crisps. ‘Honestly, Peter, don’t be so crude,’ Will replies, putting his brandy down and producing a soft-pack of Lucky Strike out of his black 501s. ‘Of course I’ve fingered her. She’s lovely.’

This is like, I don’t know, if the Inbetweeners interacted with their idea of a successful human being.

At home I listen to ‘Slow Love’ by Prince and think of Tess. I listen to ‘I’m Not in Love’ by 10cc and think of Will. It’s difficult to know which one to have a hopeless wank about first.

*Me, screaming through the void* It’s going to be OK Robert Webb! It’s all going to be OK!

I try to look on the bright side – at least the way I feel about Tess proves that I’m not gay. Rationally, I can see that being gay is fine, but it looks like gay men have to put up with a whole world of stupid nonsense that straighties with a one-off fixation get to ignore. And, if I’m honest, the way I lust after Will feels not only dangerous and exciting but also shameful and wrong. The Sovereign Importance of Early Homophobia has done its work. It’s like I’m left with a closet homophobia – a Farage in the garage. Or, as I would have pronounced it at the time, a Farridge in the garridge.

There’s not loads of this chat in the book (and why necessarily should there be) but the reader gains some important internal feelings of teenage-RW context here.

[Diary extract] He [Will] hit me with it. He started talking about how he’s shagged Daisy on Friday night while watching a video of Krull.

The Krull detail is a beautiful one to be recorded for posterity.

I found out that Mum had cancer in early March, and three weeks later, I found out that she wasn’t going to survive it.

As RW has rightly said when doing interviews and other press for this book, the grief in this book is universal: everyone has lost someone. I’m not claiming I’m special. But not only as someone who left a comprehensive school in an isolated area to study English at a newer Oxbridge college you don’t hear so much from, but also as someone who lost their mum at a fairly young age (I was 22 – this is, to be noted, very much not the same as 17) to cancer on almost exactly as swift a timeline as RW’s mum, I had yearned for this book and I was emotionally steeling myself for this part of the text – after all, through RW’s structural choices (and from what I knew about RW already), we know it’s coming. We are exactly 50% of the way through the book and this profound loss is the heart of the book. Yes, I cried.

I’m remembering its implacable seriousness. The way the danger, the terror was unswervable, non-negotiable – this was going to hurt and there was nothing to be done and nowhere to hide.

Compared to the mad-cat-on-a-wall-of-death infatuations with Tiffany, Jill, Tess, Will, Marina and about three other girls and a boy that I haven’t troubled you with…

This intrigues me because of RW describing Will as a ‘one-off fixation’ earlier on (although that was written from the viewpoint of RW at a slightly younger age, and in the context of being worried about being gay). There’s also Sam, but he doesn’t come until university. It’s not just once, although he notes that the “Michael Portillo line” he uses later is true.

I’ve got an English exam in the morning, History on Thursday and Economics on Friday.

Perpetually surprised throughout this book over RW’s third A-level being Economics.

Two seventeen-year-old boys are holding hands in bed. One of them is Will; the other one has just stopped crying. Will is wondering how long this is going to take. It was likely that being best mates with someone whose mum has just died was going to involve some kind of emotional doobly-woobly, but he wasn’t expecting it here and now, at 5 a.m. in a double bed in a rented holiday house in Torquay. There again, there’s never a good time for this sort of thing. I feel an urge to get up and put some clothes on. But then – not so fast – because Will is holding my hand. He never holds my hand… I’m not thinking about this in bed. Instead, I’m thinking the thing that I usually think in the company of Will – ‘I wonder what Will is thinking?’ He shifts his weight slightly. ‘I didn’t hear Ralph come in. D’you think he’s sleeping on the beach again?’ Oh, OK – that’s that then. Gently, I let go of Will’s hand.

Still, the emotional temperature is only just returning to normal and he leaves what he imagines to be a tactful pause before checking his watch with his now free hand. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to found a minor religion in his honour…

...It’s a hot summer and neither of us can be bothered any more with that extra bit of admin to do with special night clothes. Practical enough – and I guess there must be plenty of other male friends who would be happy to share a double bed naked. I just don’t know any. Something is clearly going on, although neither of us could quite say what. It’s unthinkable that Will is secretly gay or even secretly bisexual, but his curiosity – maybe his sympathy – allow him to be secretly something-or-other with me. And as for me, I don’t know what I am, but I know what I like, and what I like is Will. What happens exactly? I touch him; he doesn’t mind; I’m grateful. And repeat. It’s not exactly Torvill and Dean. A few years later, he touches me. I’m even more grateful. Frankly, the sex is pathetic. But the love . . . my goodness me. You don’t choose your first love. I was lucky with Will.

Whatever’s going on, it’s only the eye-catching headline of the real-life story of everyday teenagers titting around. We drive to Boston and walk into River Island, hearing En Vogue’s ‘Hold On’ playing through the speakers and suddenly notice we’re striding down parallel aisles to the beat. We get to the end of the shop, turn round and stride straight out again, like idiotic dudes. And all the rest – the hysterical argument about whether Oliver Reed was in Castaway or The Blue Lagoon, the underage piss-ups in fields before barn-dances, the joint love for all things Prince, Robin Williams, and Fry and Laurie, the competitive impressions of friends and teachers, the pound-a-pint games of pool, my attempts to teach him the moonwalk, his attempts to teach me the chords of A and D, the many splendid parties and the fun, the honest-to-God fun of it. And there he is, holding my hand in the dark because he’s friend enough and man enough.

The friendship will last. But soon, he’ll have a girlfriend, one he’ll be crazy about. The sense that he’s crossed the boundaries of his masculinity will catch up with him and he’ll become colder towards me for a while. And he’ll remember that he should care, as he currently does not care – now, in August 1990 – as he gets out of bed and saunters from the room towards the loo, that I am watching the lean, easy movement of his body in the breaking dawn light. As things are, he looks straight back at me with a tarty smirk as he goes through the door. In the window the closed drapes have begun to glow with the last day of the holiday. Gentle beams of light pierce the cracks and tears in the fabric as if a benign alien power were probing the room for signs of intelligent life. I notice the moment, and because I am seventeen, I notice myself noticing. I marvel that something so present will soon become real only in memory. This moment, a happy one, will vanish. But it will be there to be recreated another time, any time – just as I daily reconstruct the sound of my mother’s voice.

This is a ludicrous amount to quote in one chunk, but I won’t make much attempt at an apology because I think this is a beautiful passage that I found gentle and peaceful and cathartic and heart-skipping and it ends with RW, writing now, thinking back to something that happened but has not gone.

This gives me a windfall of £615 and I blow £500 of it on Chesney. It’s a sporty-looking two-tone blue coupé with a curvy back windscreen and a five-speed gearbox which belies its tiny engine. It beeps when you put it in reverse. I love it.

First car! Independence! (DM left home to go to Cambridge but he wasn’t escaping anything much and never learned to drive; RW learned to drive and bought a car with his mum’s life insurance policy and was desperate to leave home by the time he’d had to do a third year of sixth form – discuss.)

Carole, my mum’s top friend and increasingly one of my own, steps in with the offer of a lift, which becomes the offer of three lifts. We visit King’s College, then Robinson College and then finally she drives me to my interview – at Robinson College.

I can’t work out for sure from this book (I know no-one cares) whether RW applied to King’s and was pooled pre-interview or whether he just visited King’s and then ended up applying to Robinson.

(See later: I picked my Cambridge college – Robinson. They want AAB so I better bloody well pull my socks up.)

Robinson sends me an offer of a place if I get AAB. My second choice, Leeds, offers ABC.

Grade inflation – RW’s may have been a compassionate offer as he had to get AAA next year. Since the introduction of A*s at A-level the standard offer is A*A*A – A*AA. Leeds asks for AAA for their English Literature course these days.

Two men in grief, two men who can’t cook and don’t know how to work the washing machine, two men who don’t know how to talk to each other and who haven’t got the first clue about bringing up a child. One man who is still a boy, who thinks his exams are the most important thing in the universe, but who can’t or won’t do any work. One man who left school at fifteen, but goes along with the idea of education while finding it faintly ridiculous.

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead we chew it slowly that last apple pie. Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed. We never could talk much, and now don't try. You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare… The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay, only our silence made us seem a pair. Not as good for staring in, blue gas, too regular each bud, each yellow spike. At night you need my company to pass and she not here to tell us we're alike! You're life's all shattered into smithereens. Back in our silences and sullen looks, for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between's not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

- Book Ends I, Tony Harrison

In my memory, she’s alive and well, not poor and old. Any year now, I might have to say something. Actually no, easier just to move house.

This is a nice callback.

At the same time I rack my brain for a memory of Woodhall Spa ever having a launderette. Like the one in the Levi’s advert with the soundtrack of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ and that beautiful model taking his clothes off. No, don’t think about the model…

It’ll be fine. As long as he doesn’t know I’m still thinking about Nick Kamen in his boxer shorts, it’ll be fine.

(Good god.) Happily, we do get some resolution as to the concern over fears of the reaction towards the end of the book as well.

As Will was wearing black 501s earlier, I’ve now cast Nick Kamen as Will in my head in some sort of terrible conflation.

Accountancy, for crying out loud. To me, Will is destined to be an accountant the way Jay Gatsby was always going to end up selling pet insurance. But I suppose the way I see Will isn’t the way he sees himself…

This is what I mean by the fact that Will in the book is how RW, in love, sees him, not who he actually is.

I notice that there are rumours about me and Will which I do nothing to discourage. In fact, I start to cultivate a deliberate sexual ambiguity. In a common-room chat about Thelma & Louise, I casually mention that Brad Pitt is ‘obviously some beautiful model they’ve given a few lines to’ and my co-winkies seem to appreciate my bullshit insights into Hollywood while going a bit quiet at that use of the word ‘beautiful’. It doesn’t take much.

I enjoyed these descriptions of RW, frustrated at being left behind to do another year of sixth form, rebelling further by cultivating an ambiguous sexuality.

Prince Hal is either going to leap onto his horse in a single bound or carry on getting pissed with Falstaff. Luke is either going to leave Tatooine forever, or go to work as a rent boy in the Mos Eisley cantina.

Striking This Is It turn of phrase.

I’m currently under the impression that it’s all to do with irony and detachment. I think that whatever they say, clever people don’t mean it. I expect in the next hour to be in the exclusive company of people who would never dream of calling a spade a spade. The very idea! Surely, it’s all going to be rather camp.

I actually wouldn’t say this was an incorrect perception.

And by the time we pass Huntingdon, my accent is finally in line with the geography of England. It was a good four years ago that I started to say ‘carstle’ instead of ‘caastle’ and ‘ahp’ instead of ‘oop’. All the affectations are coming home, I think. To the place where they won’t be affectations any more. No more pretending.

More accent affectation. People still do this, because I know people at university who did.

So far I’ve learnt that every one of their parents is a teacher, academic or writer. All ten parents are seemingly all still married.

We get a big change in a short space of time in the book, which works well narratively, between RW being desperate to be different, and RW feeling very aware that he does not seamlessly fitting in. He both does and does not now desire to be different from the people he does not seamlessly fit in with.

See also:

I’ve just turned twenty. With my September birthday and my unmissable third-year sixth form, it feels like I’m two years late to the party and also two years under-prepared.

Again, this would have been to quite a reasonable extent not the experience of DM. (To be considered, DM also went, by contrast, to Cambridge’s oldest college.)

And:

I like the general chuckle. But something is wrong. I’ve taken off my jumper to reveal what was once a grey T-shirt but which last summer I cut into the shape of a grey vest. My longish hair has grown much faster at the back, so I look less like a foppish public schoolboy and more like a mullet-wielding footballer. The gold stud in my left ear that was daringly effeminate in Woodhall Spa now feels weirdly aggressive, as do my Doc Martens boots and the box of condoms visible from within the bedside cupboard, left artfully ajar. The summer spent painting all ninety-four of the Dower House window frames has, for the first time, given me some muscle definition in my arms and shoulders but . . . did I have to wear a vest? And why, next to the Laurel and Hardy poster, is there a page of A4 on which I’ve written ��Je suis une Communiste’ in chunky hip hop writing? Why, within hours of arriving at Cambridge, did I make a sign that said ‘Je suis une Communiste’ in chunky hip hop writing and put it up on the wall?

Oh my god, Je suis une Communiste did make me laugh.

So I re-cross my legs while unobtrusively lighting a cigarette with the Zippo that Will gave me as a going-away present.

(pause for minor swoon over Will’s going away present here.)

It’s about this time that I give up reading. That’s to say, at the beginning of my English degree. So, naturally, this is also where the lying has to start in earnest. As an English student, reading books and writing essays about books should really be quite high up there in a time and motion study of how I spend my day. The trouble is, much as novels, plays and poems have previously been a solace and an inspiration, reading them is now my job. I used to be practically the only boy who loved reading: now I’m surrounded by them. Therefore: screw reading.

He’s putting this down to his pushing back, his rebellion, but it’s not exactly surprising – we know from following the book through, from RW’s teenage diaries, that he wanted to go to Cambridge to be in the Footlights and become a famous comedy writer/performer. Lots of similar autobiographical writings, including RW’s hero Stephen Fry, mention how the academic work they put in to get to Cambridge drops off at this point now they are able put in the hours with like-minded people on comedy writing and performing.

It takes a particular type of focus and effort to do this, however – because of its reputation, the student comedy scene at Cambridge in and of itself is competitive and it’s also one without guarantee of paid work at the end of it (generally, of course, through comedians’ memoirs we here about the successful ones – although Tristam Hunt’s done alright for himself) and the stress from not doing academic work (as RW mentions later) and the pressure to expend your greatest amount of effort on that is substantial.

At this point, Dr Weiss gave me a one-to-one ticking off so gentle it had the effect of encouraging me to do even less. ‘Robert, it’s possible that you could secure a 2:1 with native intelligence alone, but unlikely. And certainly not a First.’ Oh Judy mate, that’s FINE! That’s BRILLIANT NEWS! Who needs a First? I’m going to be a wealthy TV star!

I think it also helps if you are reasonably sure of yourself.

God, this thing is starting to read like Confessions of a Sex Maniac! It’s awful I know, but I’m just recounting the facts. Let’s be clear, poppet, you don’t think it’s awful in the slightest. You’re having a ball and good for you. Pity about all the lying, though, dearest. Pity about the ‘facts’.

So it was always debatable how canon or how fanon it was that RW had a lot of sex and a lot of girlfriends, or whether this was just e.g. a contrast with DM, but yeah, he had quite a lot of sex.

It’ll come down to love and sex again. Unrewarding sex and unrequited love. Nothing very unusual, but then the privilege of being young is a total lack of perspective. So there could never be a sexier, more gorgeous woman than Lily-the-Goth. And there could never be a more beautiful, more enigmatic man than Mags’ friend Sam (the-former-Goth). And there could never be a turn of events more calamitous than my sort-of girlfriend Lily, and my sort-of minor deity Sam, falling in love with each other.

The nightmare: your crushes dating each other.

(I like how he calls men ‘beautiful’ quite often.)

Another man, and another tragic matter of the heart. At least it gets the poor boy to counselling.

At the end of my first year, the funny (and outgoing) outgoing president Miles Williams has left me a kind note asking me to give him a ring. I was immediately star-struck not just because the president had noticed my existence but also because he had his own telephone number. I nervously dial from one of the Robinson phone booths. ‘Aah, young Webbington! Thanks for calling, just catching up on a bit of cricket on the telly.’ Miles has been brilliantly compèring Smokers all year and I’m unnerved by the sound of his voice, as well as by the news that he’s in possession of not just a phone number but a television. Jesus, what else do you get if you’re president? A speedboat? An annuity?

This is amusing, but also quite a difference between 90s studenting and now-ish.

You and that Tristram Hunt boy. Do you get on with Tristram?’ ‘Er, I haven’t actually met him.’ ‘Nice chap, bit wet behind the ears, bit of a leftie by all accounts but you can’t have everything’

Ahhhh Britain is ridiculous part 927.

Fine, I thought. I’ll just learn Anglo-Saxon. I mean, how hard can it be? How many words can they have possibly invented before 1066? Boat? Sword? Rain? This is going to be a doss!

O.O

It’s with that attitude that I turn up at my first Old English seminar. In front of about seventy students, the Canadian tutor holds up a copy of his book: A Guide to Old English. ‘Read this book,’ he chortles in an accent that’s weird even for a Canadian, ‘and you’ll never need to come to one of my seminars again!’ The undergraduates around me chuckle indulgently. Not come back to the seminars! The very thought! My goodness!

The thing is, when people say things like this at Oxbridge is that they don’t expect at least some of the people there to take you seriously.

‘It’s all stupid, really. There’s a boy here that I fell in love with. I thought he was the best thing in the world. I’d just read The Picture of Dorian Gray and then he walked into the bar and I couldn’t believe my eyes. But I was wrong to give him my trust.’…

Bad enough he just had to endure an emotional outpouring from a semi-hysterical child, but he has also been made to consider that if there’s one thing that would look worse for Robinson than a 2:1 student getting a Third, it’s probably a 2:1 student lobbing himself off a high balcony.

The Education Committee scene is a set piece tour de force.

I kept hearing this first-year’s name and it was annoying me. I knew he had something, but people wouldn’t shut up. I was going to have to see for myself.

We’ve hopped back to my second year. I’m in a little performance venue called The Playroom to watch a one-hour non-Footlights revue called Go to Work on an Egg. A bunch of mates from Peterhouse and Jesus College have cobbled it together, apparently. Eddie had put me in charge of Smokers and I’ve auditioned most of them. They’re fine but let’s not get carried away. Except for one.

As a first-year, he was never going to be in the Tour Show, but he’d been asked to contribute material and I’d written a sketch with him. The sketch was nothing special, but that wasn’t unusual. It’s just that we’d nearly made each other sick with laughter while writing it. That was both special and unusual.

He’s on stage as the lights come up. Come on then, young David Mitchell. Let’s see what you’ve got. Oh, I see. You’ve got everything. I spend the hour enjoying the sketches without once taking my eyes off David.

He’s very funny, which helps. But I’ve seen other funny student performers. This is different. He’s completely committed, but entirely natural. He can afford to seem generous to the other performers because he’s going to get your attention just by standing still. It’s a precious combination of ease and focus that I conceitedly think reminds me of me. He looks like he lives there. It’s an exciting but also worrying turn of events. What am I going to do about this?

Fucking finally part 2. We already got DM’s perspective in Back Story.

This is lovely.

I pop the question. I don’t quite say, ‘Join me, and together we can rule Footlights galaxy as . . . two blokes’, but I do suggest we do a show. He’s a polite young man from a minor public school, as well as a first-year being asked out on a big comedy date by next year’s vice-president. So I can’t help hoping he’ll look pleased. What he actually looks like is Charlie Bucket just after Willy Wonka offers him a Chocolate Factory.

HEARTS FOR EYES

There again, once a sensitive young man belatedly understands that he’s been dumped, it’s only natural for him to start sensitively sleeping around. A whole eight days later, the panto cast party sees me trying to charm all the people I’ve variously ignored, patronised or insulted over the previous few weeks. One of them is a very nice girl called Jenna. She beckons me over . . .

I know it was fanon-canon to give RW a lot of girlfriends, but… eight days between one long term relationship and another! He’s probably had a good think as to whether this means anything, so I won’t go into it further here.

But I suppose I’m at least consistent. I didn’t come here to get an excellent degree. I came here to meet someone like David Mitchell. As it turned out, I met the actual David Mitchell, which was even better.

(hearts for eyes again)

David and I are two years into the business of creating a career in comedy and we do so with the quiet hysteria of the chronically obscure and stonily broke. We write together, we travel together to meetings, we travel back from them, we perform fringe stuff together, we watch TV, we stop watching TV and go to the pub, we walk home from the pub, we say goodnight. He is the first vertical person I see in the morning and the last at night. We’re annoying each other and I’m not helping the situation by living in his flat without paying any rent. But the flat for which I am paying rent seems a long walk away and contains a cat that isn’t house-trained. So I can either live with David, or I can live with a load of piss and shit. He doesn’t seem as flattered by my preference as I might have hoped.

It’s interesting to see this here, although of course they’ve talked before about getting fed up with each other.

Before then, for the two years after leaving college, I’d lived on Super Noodles and toast. I tried to avoid opening letters or answering the phone in case it was the landlord, the bank or the DSS. I was claiming housing benefit and taking whatever part-time work turned up. I worked as an usher in a theatre; I drove a lorry; I worked in a photo-library for a magazine about buildings (that’s Buildings Magazine). Jenna had a credit card and would occasionally bail me out. I tried to get my own credit card, but was refused. It was the Co-op offering a card to Labour members that turned me down. I must say, I thought that took the biscuit.

It’s been said before elsewhere by others, but I don’t know how you would do this in London today.

Jenna bailing him out with her credit card: shout out to partners enabling creative dreams.

And it seems to Jenna and me, as once again she goes glumly to bed and I stay up with a bottle of wine to play Civilization II for another two hours,

(OK, gaming again, fine.)

The pilot called P.O.V. has been commissioned for a whole Channel 4 series and the new title is Peep Show. I do the first week’s filming and Jenna even leaves me some warm food for when I get in at night.

I can’t believe Peep Show started so long ago RW wasn’t even with Abbie back then.

When she hears me say that none of Shakespeare’s comedies are actually funny, she starts singing a made-up song called ‘Pretty boy is a fucking moron’.

We all love Abbie, obviously.

We pack St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden – ‘the Actors’ Church’ – with lots of other family and friends. ‘This room,’ says my best man, David Mitchell, ‘is full of very nice people.’

Again, aw.

‘But before her . . .’ I take the Michael Portillo line because, it happens to be true, ‘as a teenager and a younger man . . .’ ‘Go on, boy. None of my business. Go on.’ ‘. . . not all the people I had, erm, relations with were girls. In fact, one or two of them were boys.’…

…Ultimately, we’re not talking about much sex with many people… Dad made exceptions for me just as I made exceptions for him. His views on snooty, Champagne socialist, metropolitan, formally pan-affectionate, middle-class Oxbridge luvvies had to take a step back when he noticed he had one for a son.

Well there you go then, I guess.

I look at my CV over those years and there’s persuasive evidence of breadwinning panic. Great Movie Mistakes, Argumental, Robert’s Web, Pop’s Greatest Dance Crazes, Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum, and almost any ad or voice-over going. I did all this stuff as well as I technically could, but my heart wasn’t in it and the audience noticed.

Hard to know what to say about this. I noted at the time that this stuff did coincide with starting a family and the higher costs that entails, but I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed they were to be regretted (except maybe the higher rate of panel shows).

But for now, there’s Daddy in the picture, standing outside, waving at his two daughters through the kitchen window. It’s as if he prefers it. It’s as if young families make Daddy sad.

tough read tough read (see my comments earlier)

How did you get on? If you scored 5,634, then congratulations because . . . That’s Numberwang! If you didn’t get 5,634, commiserations. Also, if you answered anything other than d) for any question, then you have been Wangernumbed and must now be taken out to be gassed. On with the show!

I love a good Numberwang reference.

I’m sure we’ve all seen it, the Care Home Kaleidoscope Synecdoche (I expect this phrase will catch on): a house concentrated into a single, glittering room. Trinkets, ornaments, pictures in frames – the mementos that survived the downsize. They stand for all the treasures – including the people – left behind.

I found this well-observed.

‘Well, yeah . . . she was a great reader, our Pat. By guy!’ ‘By guy’ is the way John softens ‘By God’ when in the presence of women or children. It reminds me of something, but I don’t follow the thought: before me is the great pleasure of reading to my daughter and grandfather at the same time.

‘By guy . . .’ John had said. By guy . . . Guy-Buy? Is that where I got the name, all those years ago? The name for the Guy-Buys, my gang of twelve disciples, by God? I doubt it, but it’s tempting to think so. Life is a mess and the desire is always to try and straighten it out instead of embracing it as it is; to unpick the cobweb into its silvery thread.

I like this: writing a memoir is about straightening a life (messy) out into a coherent narrative, with callbacks and foreshadowing just like any good fictional story, but even the most realism-centred novel isn’t as real as real life. In a story you’d never get two main characters with the same name because it would be too confusing. In this book, which is about real events, RW changed the name of his friend Jonathan Dryden Taylor because he had a John (his grandad) in the book already.

‘Are dragons real?’ I wrestle with this for a moment, but decide not to lie. ‘No, sweetheart. There are no real dragons.’ Ezzie takes this in and looks again at the pictures in the book. ‘But they’re real in the story.’ Gosh. That’s a good way of putting it. Must remember that one. ‘Yes, my love. They’re real in the story.’

Another good meditation on fiction.

Mr Rochester has a lot to answer for. Charlotte Brontë’s original Fifty Shades of Moody Twat is the direct precursor of Dirty Den and the accompanying notion that only a tall, dark emotional car-crash can make anyone come.

Well, excuse you.

I don’t drink alone and I’ve quit smoking. It remains a sexist world and I can’t change it for my daughters the way I would like to. But I can try to improve the situation one man at a time. Starting with me.

He had three grandsons. When I told him, in 2008, that Abbie was expecting a baby, he said, ‘It’ll be a boy, boy. The Webbs only do boys.’ And then when we turned up with a girl, followed by another girl, he was delighted and said, ‘Robert has to be different, doesn’t he?’ Yes. Robert has to be different.

I’ll leave with these final two quotes, except one final delightful DM thanks from the acknowledgements:

[Thank you] to David Mitchell for helping me to remember what happened and when. His excellent Back Story was a useful resource for the university section of the book, but I pestered him about chronology all the same. Without wishing to turn this into a mawkish BAFTA acceptance speech… I wouldn’t be in a position to write this book without the partnership that I formed with the gentle and brilliant David Mitchell.

#robert webb #how not to be a boy #britcom #mitchell and webb #text post #long post

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healthnotion · 6 years

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Movies Every Millennial Dad Should Introduce to Their Kids

I’m a Millennial dad approaching middle age. My young kids are finally at the ages (7 and 5 respectively) where they’ve developed an attention span that allows them to watch a film for longer than 20 minutes. We’ve watched a lot of Cars and Toy Story movies together, but something that has given me a lot of enjoyment is introducing them to the movies that served as the backdrop of my childhood.

My parents did the same with me. Thanks to them I got steeped in the archetype of the cowboy by watching plenty of John Wayne, learned why Steve McQueen is called the King of Cool by watching The Great Escape, and discovered how well spooky suspense can be built in the absence of blood and gore by watching some Hitchcock. The movies they shared were classics and enjoyable to watch, but they also gave me a window into who my parents are. When you’re a kid, your parents kind of seem like un-relatable aliens, but when you watch a movie with them that they enjoyed in their youth, you get in touch with a bit of their personality and human-ness. You also get a taste of the era that they grew up in; even when the film they show is a period piece, a certain “flavor” of the time in which it was made comes through.

It’s been fun to continue this tradition with my own kids — it creates a little bridge between us, a shared cultural reference point. Plus it’s just fun to watch a movie you personally enjoy with your children.

Below is my non-definitive list of movies every Millenial dad should introduce to their kids — the movies that feel like nostalgic “classics” from my childhood. Being at the very oldest end of the Millenial generation, these are films that came out roughly between 1982 and 1995. If you’re a younger Millenial, you might have some different, later picks, but really, come on, this was a golden time for movies and it’s hard to get better than these. That’s what everyone says about the movies of their childhood, sure, but in this case, it’s totally, actually true.

The Goonies

The ultimate kid adventure movie. Treasure maps, secret tunnels, pirates, booty booby traps, an awesome cave water slide. The Goonies has it all. I watched this movie over and over again as a six-year-old and even demanded that my family call me “Mikey,” just like the film’s young protagonist. When I was in kindergarten, I got hit in the eye with a rock during a dirt clod fight in a field by my house. I nearly lost my right eye, but I took solace in the fact that I got to wear an eye patch just like One-Eyed Willy. And of course, I watched The Goonies again and again while recovering.

Watching The Goonies with your kids will hopefully inspire them to go on their own adventures for hidden treasure.

The Karate Kid (I and II)

Oh man. The Karate Kid. This movie had a huge influence on my childhood. I learned the importance of standing up to bullies from Daniel (or was Daniel really the bully?) and why you should always look people in the eye from Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid: Part II was pretty good too. The Karate Kid: Part III fell off a cliff quality wise. And let’s not even mention the later movies made with Hilary Swank and Jaden Smith.

The Karate Kid is so wholesome and sincere and full of legitimately good lessons, and yet somehow doesn’t seem cheesy. It’s magic.

A few months ago, I introduced The Karate Kid parts I and II to my kids and they fell in love with the movies. We went through a phase where we watched them every day for a few weeks. Lines from The Karate Kid have become part of our family vernacular. Gus will ask me every now and then “Live or die, man?” before honking my nose, and Scout will bark at me “Look eye! Always look eye!”

I’ve succeeded as a father.

Aside: The new YouTube Red series Cobra Kai is really good. The writers did a great job balancing the earnestness of the early Karate Kid movies with the snark and edginess of 21st century humor. Probably should wait until your kids are teenagers to watch it, though. Includes adult humor and language.

Back to the Future Trilogy

Why should you watch the Back to the Future series with your kids? The story is amazing (time-travel!), the acting is top-notch, and the music score is one of the most iconic in film history. Yes, you should watch the Back to the Future trilogy with your kids for all those reasons — it’s pure joy. But I think the reason these films have become modern, timeless classics is that the heart of the story is a kid coming to grips with the inadequacies of his parents, the difficulties of adulthood, and his own place in the world. By going back to 1955, Marty gets an upfront and personal look at his folks in their youth; he sees they were young like him once and had dreams and foibles just like he does. When he travels to the future in Part II, he sees a possible adult life for himself filled with stunted teenage ambitions. And when he travels to the 19th century in Part III, he sees firsthand how his ancestors’ decisions shaped who he is today.

Every kid should see Back to the Future because it shows in a very entertaining way that who we are is not only shaped by the decisions we make, but also the decisions of our family. It teaches you to have grace for yourself, but also for those who came before you.

Also, let’s not forget the allure of power laces and hover boards. I’m still waiting for that legit hover board.

Flight of the Navigator

Flight of the Navigator is a lesser-known time-traveling adventure that subtly teaches the importance of family. 12-year-old David Freeman goes out into the woods to look for his little brother in 1978. Along the way, he takes a fall that knocks him out. When he awakes, it’s 1986, and though David hasn’t aged at all, his family has. What happened? Well, he got picked up by an alien ship flown by a robot eye with Pee-wee Herman’s voice and dropped off in the wrong time. The rest of the story is him trying to get back to his “real” family in 1978.

I watched this movie with Gus a few months ago. I think the story of a kid getting back to his family really hit home with him. After the movie he gave me a big hug and said, “I love you, Dad.”

Compliance.

The Sandlot

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that The Sandlot is the best movie about being a boy ever. My friends and I would watch this movie over and over again during the summer (in between our games of Pickle and Pepper), and have a great time laughing at and repeating all our favorite lines (“You’re killing me, Smalls!” “You play ball like a girl!” “FOR-EV-ER!”) and drooling over Wendy Peffercorn. The Sandlot doesn’t pretend to be anything more than a simple movie about close boyhood friends and their shared love of baseball.

I introduced this movie to my kids last year and it’s become a beginning of summer tradition in the McKay household. Both kids have incorporated “You’re killing me, Smalls!” into their verbal lexicon.

Indiana Jones (Original Trilogy)

The hat, the whip, the legend. There aren’t too many films today that inspire adventure like the Indiana Jones series does. I still remember seeing The Last Crusade in the movie theater on the 4th of July in 1989. And, of course, when I got home I immediately donned my grandpa’s old cowboy hat, fashioned a whip for myself, and started fighting imaginary Nazis. The first three are the best. I tried watching the one where Indy finds the alien skull. Just didn’t do it for me. Can’t wait to watch these with Gus, soon.

Heavyweights

Hot take: Heavyweights is Ben Stiller’s most underrated and overlooked movie. His crazed fitness guru Tony Perkins is one of the funniest bad guys in film history. Plenty of fart jokes and awesome montage scenes of kids having fun and taking part in hijinks. I still want to try out the Blob, thanks to this movie.

The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad is an oft-overlooked kid’s adventure flick. People typically go to The Goonies to scratch that itch. But The Monster Squad will do the trick too. I had a buddy say it’s the edgier, cooler version of The Goonies: “The Monster Squad is to The Goonies as a Greaser is to a Soc. The Monster Squad is The Goonies’ scarier, more rebellious cousin that wears a leather jacket, carries a switch blade, and gets all the girls.”

Dracula, Wolf Man, Mummy, and Gill-man descend upon a small town, and a group of plucky kids take it upon themselves to kick some monster ass. This movie is a cornucopia of quotes: “My name is, Horace!” “Bogus!” and of course, the greatest line in movie history “Wolf Man’s got nards!”

Ghostbusters

I was a big-time Ghostbusters fan as a kid. The raunchy, adult humor definitely went over my six-year-old head (it wasn’t until I was 17 that I finally caught on to the sexual innuendos), but when you’re a kid, you don’t watch Ghostbusters for the jokes — you watch it for the ghost-fighting scenes. What makes Ghostbusters a good introduction to scary movies for kids is that the humor tamps down the fright factor. A monster-sized Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is scary, but not too scary, because he’s, well, made out of marshmallow. (The shushing ghost in the library is legit scary though.) I just wish they still made Ghostbusters toys. Christmas 1988 was Ghostbuster Christmas for me — got the firehouse, a proton pack, and lots of bottles of ectoplasm.

Home Alone

This past Christmas, Home Alone became a new McKay family holiday tradition. The kids pretty much watched it non-stop all through December and they even started watching it again in March. Why do kids love this movie? First, it’s funny, but the story of a kid facing the world all by himself without grown-ups lights up a child’s imagination. Our kids seem both scared of what parent-less life would be like, and intrigued by such independence. So a perfect encapsulation of how it feels to grow up.

The Princess Bride

A great, action-adventure movie for kids filled with heady humor for adults. Plus, The Princess Bride is filled with classic one-liners that can be pulled out for almost any occasion (“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”).

E.T.

My in-laws introduced my kids to E.T. this summer and they loved it. A troubled boy named Elliott musters the courage to help a lost, cute alien return to his planet. Such great storytelling in this movie. It also contains one of the best product placements in film history. Every time I watch it, I want to eat Reese’s Pieces.

SpaceCamp

It was every ’80s and ’90s kid’s dream to go to Space Camp. While I never managed to get on Double Dare to win a trip there, I was able to vicariously experience Space Camp thanks to the campy 1986 movie of the same name. A bunch of kids go to Space Camp and get the chance to sit in the Space Shuttle for a test run. Fate steps in and they actually get launched into space. The rest of the movie is them trying to get back home. Not an award-winning film — just a good time flick.

The Buttercream Gang

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, there was a production company called Feature Films for Families that put out direct-to-VHS movies for kids that were designed to teach moral lessons. My mom bought my brother and I bunch of them. They were super cheesy, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t wear those tapes out. The Buttercream Gang was the particular movie in the collection that got lots of playtime in our household. It’s about a “gang” of boys who do good deeds in a small town. One summer, the leader of the Buttercream Gang, Pete, moves to Chicago where he joins a real juvenile delinquent gang. When Pete returns, he starts another bad dude gang. The Buttercream Gang rallies together to try to save their wayward friend.

It’s a nice story about friendship, love, and grace. The overly-dramatic acting makes it a hoot to watch. Pete’s meltdown in the general store is epic. It’s also got some great lines that I still drop into my conversation today (“Is that a threat? No, it’s a promise.”)

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