Coffee.

Panic. I've eked out the last morose coffee beans from the bottom of the pot. Horrible timing, as I have a triptych of exams to take next week.

It's funny, but until I arrived at university I was a stoic tea-drinker. Nothing could have seemed better then a cup of great English tea in the middle of the day and my caffeine intake, whatever the makeup of that particular cuppa, was never an issue. It was a simpler time. A time when the very notion of caffeine headaches in the middle of May would never even cross my mind. Yesterday, choking down a latte in the blazing heat, I decided enough was enough; what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. I'm forsaking coffee forever and making a triumphant return to tea. Even bought a pack of Earl Grey this morning; an elegant drink for a more civilised age*.

Whatever the reality, I've always seen tea (good tea, not half-milk-three-sugar-builders'-tea) as a drink of sophistication and lazy English afternoons. A good cuppa, I mean a good cup of proper English tea from a pot, can only really be enjoyed at leisure. Coffee seems much more of an American concept; a drink on the move. Convenience over class. Cool but crude, like Raphael. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Normal service, rather then uncensored ramblings about hot drinks, will resume next post.

*Star Wars fans, I know you clocked that.

On music.

I'm friends with a lot of very talented people. Musicians, mostly. Real musicians, ones with the uncanny ability to listen to a song for five minutes and come back with an acoustic guitar to melt the hearts (and in many cases, remove the panties) of the lucky few within earshot. Probably on a beach somewhere, in a little circle as we gather to worship the chosen few that can probably see the matrix.

I played guitar for three years. It could have been me on the beach, with my sandals and my flowing hair and my Bruno Mars covers igniting the underwear of the nearby totty. Alas,I was mediocre at best. I was greedy and lazy - I never had the drive to carry on. I was learning guitar because it was cool, not because I enjoyed the thing. My insistance on listening to nothing but classic rock probably didn't help my ear for music, either.

This is part of the reason that years later, I'm dragging my itunes kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. I'm tearing myself away from the all-too-familiar arms of AC/DC and Poison to expand my operations - it's a big step. Metric I like, courtesy of the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, a film chock-full of on-the-cusp Canadian indie rockers. I'm growing to love Childish Gambino as my first tentative steps into the hip-hop world, and I've downloaded the entire soundtrack to the OC, a veritable smorgasbord of once-hip indie rock. None of it's cool anymore. I just love the show.

Back-issue Blog: Usagi Yojimbo

"Back-issue Blog" is my little infrequent comics column. This week, we're looking at an introduction to Dark Horse's rabbit ronin with Usagi Yojimbo #136 and #137.

I'm going to be honest, I only picked this title up because I've stopped buying Marvel. Love the characters, love the films, slavering at the mouth for The Avengers et cetera, but having to suffer through Siege, One More Day and Cap's ridiculous resurrection (a "Time Bullet"? Really?) I decided to cut my losses before I broke something. No way on God's green earth was I going to shell out for four Avengers books a month. So like so many others before me have done, I looked for salvation on the internet. Turns out there are very few independent comics with unanimously positive reviews. I could either wade deep into DC's Brightest Day line or admit defeat and slink off back to Brian bloody Bendis and his four Avengers books a month. But just as I was about to bend over I noticed Usagi Yojimbo, a quaint little title tucked away in Dark Horse's output. The reviews were unanimously positive.

I must admit, I was put-off at first. The dialogue was simple, the art was cartoonish and more to the point, the lead character was a rabbit. While a great recipe for a children's book, it didn't sit well in a comic about a masterless samurai doomed to tread the warrior's path. And then, on closer inspection, it kind of did.

The dialogue was simple, true. It was elegantly simple. It was as if Stan Sakai, the man who has written, drawn, and inked the comic for 137 months and counting, took a sword of his own to his writing; every word that didn't build our understanding of a character or didn't advance the plot was mercilessly cut away. Sakai's art also shines; the attention to detail and the hand-drawn cross-hatchings are a breath of fresh air compared to the exquisitely computer-rendered environments of many more commercially successful comics. And say what you will about the rabbit, at least he's memorable. Iconic. Even his cute little ears are done up in a samurai topknot, and the variety of emotions that contort over Usagi's cute little face are so evocative of his character, a guard without a master struggling to find his purpose. Look at that face. That is unmistakeably the face of a badass.

Don't be put off by Usagi's childish nature. Scratch beneath the surface and you have an absolute gem of a genre comic that deserves a much, much wider audience. If you're like me and you're fed up with every superhero title on the shelf, you couldn't go far wrong with Usagi Yojimbo.

A Long-expected Party.

Peter Jackson gives us a first look at The Hobbit. We see a lot of pre-production; the wardrobe department, a tour of the sets and some fight choreography. However, what excited me most was the actors mapping out my favourite sequence, the council of the Dwarves at the start of the book.




I mean, wow.

I could drone for paragraphs about how much I loved this video, how good Rivendell looks, little Martin Freeman tottering around with an armful of axes and the perfect casting of the dwarves (Jackson, in a stroke of genius, apparently chose to raid the BBC's entire back catalogue of respected male actors) but I won't patronise you with that. Let's just say when I heard Ian Holm (Bilbo in Lord Of The Rings) read the opening line of my favourite book in the world as the door of Bag End closed, there was no doubt in my mind that we're in for something special.

Heyuguys.co.uk have an archive of the articles I've written for them.

It was a while ago, and I hope I've improved a little. Nevertheless, check them out here.