Lions

The photo archives of Life.com have these amazing photos by Michael Rougier of a family going about their daily business with a lion in the house. They are absolutely amazing. I cannot find anything out about them though, a quick Google search turns up nothing. Anyone?

You Tube 2

The second in an ongoing series of tremendous and inspiring You Tube videos juxtaposed with a genuine comment or comments posted about them by You Tube users.


jimmycage316 (2 months ago)
this is gay this faggit sounds nothin like arnie

mrbenholmes (2 years ago)
dude, good attempt but that is a shit arnie impression. Try harder, good concept but shit impresion. Do it again properly

kieren69 (2 years ago)
fuck off his arnie impression is the best on youtube. U aint got a clue pal

mrbenholmes (2 years ago)
As for you, keep liking ass & being an ignoramous that knows nothing of what he talks. Unless your talking about doing your mum as im sure you (and the entire navy) know a lot about that.Oh and why am i using swear words in an attack on you. Because you did.

mrbenholmes (2 years ago)
What the fuck would you know? Seriously? Are you an voice over artist? Probably not, am i YES. Get back in your hole dip shit. Its a good attempt.He does some difficult words but the structure of his impression isn't right. With more work he could do an awesome one. contd....

kieren69 (2 years ago)
lol u fuckin prick... ''the structure'' lol u aint got a fuckin clue u faggot. ''I'm a voice over artist'' are u fuck, your a little cunt who sucks his fathers cock.

mrbenholmes (2 years ago)
affraid its you who are the cock sucker, that is of course when your not doing you mountain gorrila mother in a 'kieren 69'. If you wana c whether im a 'lil cunt' or not i will happily meet up and kick the shit out of you... then cum over your mums face!

kieren69 (2 years ago)
anytime mate. Where ya from il kick the fuck out of you. Maybe you could do a little girls voice for when im stamping on your nugget head

mrbenholmes (2 years ago)
London, come down to peacocks kickboxing gym and i will happily slap the fuck out of you after a training sessoin.... dont worry i will go gently on you, not like i do when im ass fukin your mum

Felix Sneak Preview

There is a sneak preview of the upcoming Felix record on Kranky over at Pitchfork as part of their Forkcast: http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/13285-death-to-everyone-but-us/

Stage Blood Songs

Stage Blood represents the combined efforts of Misters Kearney (Eska, Empire Builder, The Royal We, Pro Forma), Hopkins (Hernandez, Eska, Doctor Jobby), Aitchison (Mogwai, Crippled Black Phoenix) and myself. It is our intention to bring YOU, the good people of the world, the powerhouse indie rock music you crave. We understand that tropical improvised reggae is the hot shit right now. Or gesture-based camp heavy metal. Or whatever.
But, using hipster Andrew Doig as a barometer, we understand that in the confines of your own home you blast out the wonderful musics of Chavez, Tanner, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Fugazi, Elevate, Unwound, Circus Lupus and the like. You play air guitar or air drums. You do this in your pants. This, people of the world, is where Stage Blood come in.
Working in hi-tech isolation with qualified Doctor of Sound Kenny MacLeod in the city of Glasgow which is in a country called Scotland, we recorded 3 songs as "demonstrations" of our plan.
Luckily, Rupert Murdoch has kindly offered to host these songs on his Myspace website so why not go over there, listen loud and then "add" us to your "friends".
We wil be touring these musics briefly and at exceptional volume in October.

Pontiak

Loving Virginia's Pontiak at the moment. They have moments where they remind me enormously of Pearls & Brass in their spiralling, cosmic riffery and vocal styles but it's coupled to more psychedelic tendencies and a slight Lungfishian mantra-like quality. Plus, they are brain-meltingly heavy live. Always a bonus.

Here's the first song off their most recent LP Maker (on Thrill Jockey):

Resonance Phenomena

Doing some research into Resonance Phenomena and Cymatics for a pair of sleeves for the recent Kogumaza recordings. I'm trying to work out what patterns the fundamental notes of the music would make and whether those patterns are absolute and readable like a form of musical notation. It's breaking my brain. Unsurprisingly, David Icke in on the case first...

Kenilworth Castle

Kenilworth Castle is a splendid place. It even looks good from a satellite miles above us.
It's been knocked down and re-built countless times and used to stand in front of a huge lake. Queen Elizabeth I is supposed to have tried the first potato in the UK at the Castle. She apparently ate it raw and found it so foul she threw it out of a window. Charmed, ma'am.
Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenilworth_Castle
I've been round the outside of it hundreds of times but a job doing wedding photos for Katy meant getting to see the inside on the grounds of 'research'. It was the hottest day in memory. Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157622004180758/

Holiday Snaps

Photos from France are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157619327131268/

Jeremy Clarkson

New Holga Photos

Getting a card box from Peak Imaging every month or so is like a little mini-Xmas for me. Until I realise I left the lens cap on for all 12 photos. Luckily I remembered to take it off for this recent batch:







More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157614224224605/

Qisa "Machine" CD Artwork

Just completed this CD sleeve for Derby band Qisa. The brief was to create something that had nods to the music the band play (essentially "butt-rock" in the style of the good bits of GnR and Motley Crue with some heavy duty Hendrix and 70s rock influences too) but didn't look too cliched. We went with an autumnal colour scheme and a rough theme of re-growth and fertilisation (oo-er) with some bikini-clad ladies for good measure.
I think I might have been subconciously influenced by the hummingbird/softcore porn vibe of the Papa M singles collection on reflection, with a bit of Shivering King by Dead Meadow thrown in too.
The research consisted of looking at some nature photography and archived galleries from Razzle and Knave. It was a real bind.

Quick! Before the BBC take it down again

This footage occasionally surfaces on You Tube before the BBC (presumably) gets it taken down for copyright issues. That's a shame because it's all kinds of wonderful. First of all you've got John Lee Hooker on his first visit to the UK in 1964, being utterly transfixing (prepare well for the scream at 2 mins). Then you've got the original Groundhogs line-up as the backing band keeping it the perfect side of grimy and sitting on that groove like only they can (you can see TS "McFree" McPhee and his Cherry Red SG at 15 secs in). But most amazing of all is the 'chef'. This clip is much admired among some of my friends and they all refer to it as 'The Chef Clip'. See if you can work out why...

Famous in Notts

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/photo-galleries.cfm/id/284

The Big Gig Poster Clearout!

I am in the process of moving house over the next month or so. Right now in my 'dining room' is a huge plan chest filled with poster prints. Hundreds of them. If I were more patient I would do some form of stock take on them but my stock take in reality consists of me looking at this Volvo-sized cabinet and thinking: "I cannot be arsed to move this to another house".
In short, I want to get rid of these things. They take up tons of room, I want a dining room in my new house not a room filled with crap.

So, I have done lots of offers on these things but basically they're £5 per poster. However, because I need to shift as many of them as I can I'm going to say for every THREE anyone buys I'll chuck one in for free. Making 4 posters cost less than 4 quid each.

Here's the blurb on them:

I've designed over 200 posters for shows over the last 7 or so years.
These are posters made first and foremost to promote the shows in question, they were printed up at the time and plastered over venue walls, pub toilets and other exciting places. I even put one on a guy's back once and let him walk round Nottingham with it for a day before he noticed. That's another story though.

I started re-printing these in very small numbers a few years back. They're all a little larger than A3 in size (somewhere around 310mm wide by 430 mm high give our take a few mmmmmms) and they fit very pleasingly into a standard clip frame from Wilkos. They're litho-printed using a machine that cost a million pounds. This isn't a joke, it really cost a million pounds. Needless to say, I don't own it. It lays the colours down as pure tones meaning these look absolutely perfect, bright, vibrant and flawless. They're also printed on various types on heavy paper stock, usually Splendorgel (if you're in the business). That means very thick, matt-textured paper if you're not. They look and feel (and smell) tremendous.

A HUGE GALLERY OF THEM ALL IS HERE: http://www.honeyisfunny.com/catalogue.html

And there are also limited prints of illustrations I have done for magazines like Plan B. A more complete gallery is on my Flickr site here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157594212951999/

So thats:
£5 EACH or FOUR FOR £15

Plus postage to your part of the planet which is: £2.50 in the UK and £3.50 elsewhere. To a maximum of 4 posters per tube.

I accept the wonderful rip-off Paypal (though ask that we split the fees they impose if that's cool), cheque or glorious cash.

Bear in mind I have limited numbers of some of these so if you want to send a cheque or cash then bear in mind it has to be first come first served so please list alternatives. I guess that's the benefit of paying instantly with Paypal. I knew there had to be one benefit...

　
Any questions, or to order or check availability, email me at:
honeyisfunnyATfastmailDOTfm
(replace the AT with @ and the DOT with a dot!)