What do you make of this, Bert?

Here's another old cartoon from many decades ago. It's not a bawdy postcard this time, just a single panel gag cartoon from 1937. I did find it rather puzzling though, but perhaps you can make some sense out of what's going on here:

At first glance, there's a lot of questions about this one. Where is this happening? What's behind the curtain? What job do these men have? Why is there light shining from their heads? Why does that one guy have such a perverse leer? Why have these people removed their shoes? Can someone explain any of this??

In the course of my 'research' I discovered that the most likely scenario is that these men are train conductors or porters, and that the setting here is a sleeper car on a train, although nothing in the artwork suggests this. (Unless the number '4' is meant to give it away?) That would explain the shoes. Oh, and one of the pairs is women's shoes, so there's something untoward going on here, Miss Marple.

The only visual element to this cartoon that I like is the dark-red ink wash for the curtain, although the use of red did make 'cinema ushers' or 'cops doing a brothel raid' a more likely scenario in my mind. Such is the suggestive power of a single colour. 

This cartoon is credited to Frank Beaven. He was one of several contributors to Laff-A-Day, a daily gag cartoon panel that ran in American newspapers from 1936 all the way up to 1998, if you can believe that. When King Features revived the series in 2006, its promo statement included this line: "Older readers may get an extra chuckle from scenes of traveling salesmen, two-ton Chevies and women sporting funny hats."

I mean if you don't get a chuckle out of those things you have no soul, yeah?

Until next time.

I say, shake it, madam! Capital "knockers"!

What ho, chaps! Fancy taking a trip back in time with me, to examine a 100 year old postcard? No? That's a bally awful idea, you say? Suggest such a thing again and I shall summon the police, you say? Well, too bad! Take a look at this.

This cartoon appeared on a postcard in the 1920s, depicting the end of gendered segregation on British beaches. The artists are credited only as 'AE & EW'. Note their deliberate choice in showing the lone female bather with a dejected expression while the male oiks look on making fatuous remarks. By Jove!

Those green structures the men are emerging from — clearly 'one at a time' didn't come into play back then — are not changing rooms. They were called bathing machines, and were pulled from the sand into shallow water (hence the wheels) so bathers could change into their bathing suits without being seen by the opposite sex. Bathing machines first appeared in the 1750s and were obsolete by the 1920s, but they were essential in those days of strict public bathing propriety. Well I never, Mavis. What will they think of next?

I am somewhat inclined to believe the two fully-dressed beachgoing fops on the extreme left are 'AE & EW' themselves (despite a total lack of evidence, but — gut instinct, right?). I think the one with the monocle is a bit more sinister, so I had a bash at drawing him.

It looks as though the identities of the erstwhile AE & EW have been lost to time, although there are many examples of their art to be found online. They were decidedly anti-feminist (big surprise) and you can see more here. In one of them, a man asks a suffragette "Don't you wish you were a man, Mrs. Spankhurst?" She replies "Yes, don't you wish you were?" 

Ah, the 1920s, where one could sally forth to take the seaside air of a morning in one's bow tie and boater, paired with cummerbund/coat and tails. What a time to be alive. Which I wasn't. Thankfully.

Mayday – a forgotten character

Have you ever created a character intended for all kinds of comic strip shenanigans, only for nothing to come of it? 

Back in the late ’90s, I created a character called Mayday. I wanted to do a comic strip with a female lead. I was heavily influenced by the series Æon Flux, which was airing on SBS at the time and which I watched religiously, even though I didn’t understand most of what was going on. I had never seen anything like it before (or since). I wanted a world that matched it in bizarreness, if not in subject matter. I sketched out the character, but couldn’t think of any plots, so I put aside that idea. Not too long after that I got into anime. In 1999 I created a character called Juliet Prime and began making comics and stories about her instead.

Mayday was very much a proto-Juliet. They both had similar designs — short in stature with short scruffy hair. They were also both heroines who were out to defeat a totalitarian. Like the early Æon Flux shorts there would be no dialogue either.

She also had a little walrus who followed her around. The setting was a Soviet-looking brutalist hellscape populated mostly by hominids and itinerant salesmen. That’s all I really remember about this proposed comic strip.

There are no drawings of what Mayday looked like, so I did this mock-up to show you, to the best of my memory. The walrus I coloured purple here because Rotor, the walrus character in the Sonic The Hedgehog comics, was the same colour.

Also, my niece has a little walrus bath toy that is also purple. Coincidence???

If you’ve read my book Freefall O’Malley (and if not, what are you waiting for?!), the above drawing of Mayday might look familiar to you. That’s because she never completely disappeared down the memory hole. In designing the character Anna Yamaha, I (probably unconsciously) borrowed several elements from how I remembered Mayday to look. So she never really went away, she was just floating around in the back of my mind, waiting to be found again.

Five things that happened 100 years ago

1922. Remember it? No, I don't expect you do. It was 100 years ago, after all. What comes to mind when you think of those days? Well? Can't think of anything, eh? Allow me to fill you in, then, on five things that took place exactly one century ago. In no particular order. Let's go.

Branston Pickle is invented

This pickled chutney was named after the village where it was first made, and not only am I a devotee of this product, I used to live in the town of Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire which is right next to Branston. There's not a lot I can add to this, except you either like it or you don't. Oh, and happy 100th birthday. I salute you!

 

Nosferatu is released

F.W. Murnau's German Expressionist vampire horror film Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens was released in March 1922. Perhaps you've seen the above iconic scene showing Count Orlok (he's not named Dracula for some reason), played by Max Schreck, entering a room as the door opens by itself. A clip of this scene appears in the video for "Under Pressure" by Queen & David Bowie. That's actually where I first saw it.

The whole film, silent and in black and white, has an air of unremitting menace, although you never actually see any blood or explicit violence. As Drac—I mean 'Orlok', Schreck does look extremely corpse-like with his frail-looking build and hollow eyes. The film established many vampire film tropes, such as sunlight being able to kill vampires. It was also the first German expressionist film to be shot on location rather than a set.

Murnau died in somewhat bizarre circumstances in California in 1931. His skull was stolen from his grave in 2015. Of his 21 films, only 12 survive in their entirety.

 

William Desmond Taylor is murdered

Taylor was a prominent figure in the early days of Hollywood, acting in 27 films and directing 59. He was murdered in February 1922, a crime that is still unsolved; one of the oldest cold cases. His murder sold more newspapers in the United States than any news item before.

When the police saw Taylor dead in his apartment, he was lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his back, while two studio execs were burning papers in the fireplace and a comedy actress was rummaging through drawers. The servant was washing dishes in the kitchen while various randoms rushed in and out of the place. The police discovered a bunch of pornographic photos, featuring Taylor, and the director's closet was full of womens' lingerie. The murder weapon was never found. There's a lot more to it than I can summarize here, so you can read more about it on your own time – but consider yourself warned!

Vegemite is invented

Okay, I'm cheating a bit by including two popular condiments instead of one. But I would be ostracized from Melbourne and deported from Australia if I didn't mention Vegemite, the Vitamin B spread which was developed here in Melbourne in 1922 and went on sale the following year. Its invention came out of a need to find a use for the yeast extract left over after brewing beer.

It was the first product in Australia to be electronically scanned at a supermarket checkout. In a torturous bit of advertising sloganeering it was known as Parwill from 1928 to 1935, all so the ads could proclaim "Marmite, but Parwill". Because renaming your product in order to make lame puns in reference to its competitor is sooooo worth it.

 

Tutankhamun's tomb is discovered

Led by Egyptologist Howard Carter, the tomb of the legendary pharaoh was discovered in November 1922 as part of an effort to clear the Valley of the Kings down to the bedrock. Found nearly intact, the tomb established the length of Tutakhamun's reign, showed what a complete royal burial entailed, and sparked a surge of interest in ancient Egypt.

Tutankhamun himself became pharaoh at the age of 8 or 9, and died around 1323 BC aged 18 or 19. It is possible that his death was unexpected and his mummy was therefore buried in a tomb intended for someone else. The 5,398 items found in the tomb took Carter ten years to catalogue: it had taken him seven years to find the tomb. Among these items were the famous gold face mask and a solid gold coffin.

For the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, to be remembered was to live forever – hence all those grand monuments. But after young king Tutankamun died there was a concerted effort to remove all traces of him, so he would not achieve immortality. One of the least esteemed pharaohs in life, Carter's discovery of his tomb made him the most famous – where he had lain some 3,300 years, unremembered and unremarkable. But when that tomb was finally found in 1922, Tutankhamun returned to the minds of the living and took his place among the gods once again.

The Terrace, Mooroolbark: Frozen in time

Mooroolbark is a north-eastern suburb of Melbourne which apparently experienced its biggest growth in the 1980s and '90s. It's most known (to an interloper like me at least) for having this weird setup where three roundabouts are squished together. Just look at this abomination:

Seriously, how are you even meant to tackle this?

But that's not the purpose of this post. I came to Mooroolbark to see a shopping centre called The Terrace. Locals all know about it, but I hadn't heard of the place until just over a month ago, when I read on Reddit about it. It's a shopping centre that is not exactly disused or abandoned, but fell out of use years ago, yet continues to keep operating.

After I read the comments about it on Reddit I came across this video by Tim Norman of Stormofilms which was made in May 2019, and which gave me some additional information (and let me see what The Terrace was like in pre-COVID times).

The Terrace was built in 1981, right across the road from Mooroolbark Village (a small row of shops along Brice Avenue), and adjacent to Hookey Park. It opened in 1982, and housed 24 stores such as Treasurway, Replace-A-Film, Microbee (a shop that sold 8-bit computers), and Bojangles Music — very '80s name there — later known as CD Haven.

Here's what The Terrace looks like from the outside. It's got a large car park with 900 spaces, to service commuters using Mooroolbark station across the road, but it's pretty much empty. The surroundings at the front look tidy, with no litter or graffiti, and neatly-trimmed hedges.

That's not to say graffiti has never been a problem at The Terrace — the public toilets inside have been the worst hit over the years. One year they spent $26,000 on cleaning up the toilets alone. Now they keep them locked to keep out vandals and druggies.

You'll notice from that large archway sign that there is a Bendigo Bank on the premises, formerly a Westpac. That sign has covered up many smaller signs which can be seen in Tim Norman's video, which listed each business found inside. Coming up the ramp, you find yourself at the sliding doors of the main entrance.

Unlike most suburban shopping centres, The Terrace has not been refurbished or renovated at all since it was built (with the possible exception of the childcare centre, which seemed tacked-on to the side after the fact). As a result, the interior decor is just as it was back in 1982, with the patterned light-brown lino untouched, as well as the ceilings. The fluorescent-tube lights were on, despite no one being around, and a lot of light actually gets in thanks to the large skylight which you can see above. 

Apparently there are a number of poems written by students stuck to the window of the centre kiosk, which are "post-apocalyptically depressing", according to one Reddit user.

On the right in the above photo is Stay Tuned Electronics, which still has CRT television sets and record players on its shelves. Most of these shops are shuttered up and only 12 of them are open — in fact none of them are currently open because Melbourne is under lockdown.

The Terrace was a busy place once. Then-PM Bob Hawke showed up there in 1987 for some event, but apparently its busiest day was when childrens' TV character Humphrey B. Bear appeared live there. (Poor old Bob. Having to settle for being The Terrace's second-biggest guest star to a man in a sweaty costume made of recycled bathmats.) Anyway, in its heyday The Terrace hosted a number of events, footy players giving handballing lessons to kids, and even a food festival in recent years, even with some of the shops empty.

I am not sure when exactly The Terrace began to decline, but it was probably well on its way by 2017 when its supermarket closed. There was also once a garden centre there. The entrance to it was a large roller door, which you can see on the left in the photo below. Mikayla van Loon reported in the Lilydale Star Mail of July 20, 2021 that Chirnside Park shopping centre, which offered more variety, as well as heating and air-conditioning (which The Terrace apparently doesn't have?), is one of the reasons The Terrace fell behind. A larger shopping centre, Eastland, isn't too far away either.

It seems The Terrace's shop owners couldn't compete with the customers heading over to Chirnside Park, so they either relocated there or closed down.

The next photo is the loading bay for the supermarket, which as you can see was once called KFL. There was a bit of graffiti here, but no more than your typical Melbourne bus stop, really. One tag said "Oops!" which I found rather amusing (though infantile).

Next you see here Terry's Meats, the butcher on the corner. It closed in May 2019, not long after Tim Norman filmed his video. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because of the "2 Dollar" sign you see here — another relic of the past. This isn't the only piece of old signage still visible: if you look closely you can still make out where the "Treasurway" used to be on the front brickwork.

With Melbourne's property market being the way it is, why hasn't this unused retail space been taken over by developers? Why has this shopping centre stood largely untouched since the day it was made? I don't know anything about how strata title works, but from what I understand, Coles supermarkets owns a number of shops in the centre (the Lilydale Star Mail says it is "a couple"), and have prevented any redevelopments from taking place. Otherwise their rivals Woolworths would move in to challenge the supremacy of the Coles across the road from The Terrace.

After the supermarket there (which at the time was an IGA) closed down in May 2017 — a significant loss for the ailing Terrace, as its major drawcard was no longer there — Woolworths made an $11 million bid to redevelop the site, which was then stymied by a competitor. I wonder who that could have been? 

This wasn't the only bid Woolworths has made; in fact they have made several since 2016. But it has been difficult to get everyone on board, since each shop is individually owned. And apparently every time Woolies makes such a bid, the price goes up, so they seem to have got fed up with the idea.

So, as long as Coles holds ownership, no redevelopment can ever take place. And so The Terrace still stands there. And stands there.

But who knows? Right at this moment the Mooroolbark train station is being rebuilt as a result of Victoria's level crossing removal project, so when the new station is built, perhaps the topic of redeveloping The Terrace site will be brought up.

Until then, it will remain frozen in time.

20 years since my first day in Japan

The eyes of sports fans around the world are on Tokyo right now, and on this day 20 years ago, I arrived in Japan for the first time. I was 23 years old, having had my uni graduation only three months prior. Here are my recollections of my first three days in Tokyo.

The hot and humid Sunday morning of August 5, 2001 is my first day in a country I had previously only come into contact with through Japanese classes, soaking up the culture by proxy. My involvement was typical; outings to Japanese restaurants, watching a low-res bootleg of someone’s ‘fan-subbed’ anime video, and hosting an exchange student named Gaku – the first Japanese person I ever met. Filed away in my mind during that period was the notion of Japan as the country responsible for video games, lurid cartoons, martial arts and electronic gadgets, all produced by overworked businessmen.

As the Perth group of twenty English teachers-to-be stagger off the plane into the Tokyo dawn, our suitcases are tagged and forwarded to our respective prefectures. Our first day in Japan has barely reached the breakfast hour and the humidity is enough to wilt flowers. I manage to board the coach first, where I stretch out and fall asleep on the back row of seats.

When I awake we are no longer in Chiba prefecture where Narita Airport is. We are now surrounded by towering skyscrapers on all sides in the Tokyo district of Shinjuku. The name means ‘New Lodgings’. New indeed. There are probably enough buildings to house the entire population of Australia. The gleam from the windows do a good job of temporarily blinding us as the coach pulls silently up to the Tokyo Hilton Hotel, and it is there that our group splits up. Several people are deposited there, and at the next stop, the Century Hyatt Hotel, me, my new friend Chris, then 31, and a third guy get off the bus. The three of us are escorted up to the eleventh floor.  

Chris and I look at the big brass keys in our hands and see they both bear the number 1120. We open the door to find two beds and a third bed folded out from the couch. Dropping our luggage on the beds, we stare out of the large window into Shinjuku Chuuou Kouen (Central Park) across the road. Our remaining roommate arrives after twenty minutes; Deane, from Christchurch, New Zealand. He is 28, making me the youngest of the three, but we have a lot in common. We are all bound for Gifu prefecture, and none of us have been to Japan before. In the centre of the huge expanse of trees beyond our window is a small paved area where a second-hand market buzzes with activity. To the rear is a small waterfall. You can see this below in the first photo I took in Japan, from the hotel room window.

Deane then falls asleep, so Chris and I decide to go outside and have a look around. Outside, we cross a footbridge over the road, and then over a smaller one named the Rainbow Bridge, and find ourselves in the park. The air rings with the buzzing of cicadas coming deafeningly from every tree. On the ground, people doze on mats with mosquito coils burning beside them. Chris and I do a quick lap of the market, and look at the waterfall which is named ‘Shinjuku Niagara’. We then head past the massive Keio Plaza Hotel and back to our own.

Deane is still asleep. About 11:30 the phone rings. Chris answers it, saying “Moshi moshi”. He is excited to be using the Japanese phone greeting for the first time. It is my family calling from back in Perth. I drink some water and lie down. The phone rings again; Chris’ friend Tetsu from Nagoya is in town. While Chris gets ready to meet him, I fall asleep.

I wake up to find Chris gone and Deane awake. It is already 5:30 p.m. I suggest to Deane we have a wander round, and he says he wants to go for a run in the park. In the lobby Deane runs into some of his Kiwi friends, and we stand and chinwag for several minutes before heading out towards the humid metropolis. As we pass the park, we see the sellers have now all gone. Only a few kids doing stunts on BMXs and a couple playing badminton with no net, remain. We head through the underground tunnels of Shinjuku Station and emerge into the nightlife on the other side. The sky is dark, the neon signs are pulsating, and cars choke the roads. The vivid colours and cartoon caricatures tease the eye; the flashing lights never stop. Shop stereos blast J-Pop, the perky and upbeat genre of mainstream pop music, as giant video screens on the side of buildings blare and glare with slick animated commercials.

Once again we stop to take it all in. Deane also remains silent, and he must be thinking what I am. I have seen this city depicted in a dozen anime films and TV series: as a mutated post-nuclear mega-tropolis in Akira; as a crime ridden psycho-zone in Burn Up W and as a carefree nighttime playground for ne’er-do-wells in Taihou Shichauzo (“You’re Under Arrest”). Now that I have ended up here I can see it for what it is: all of the above and more.

It may seem unbelievable in the era of smartphone cameras (and in the era of digital cameras before it), but I only took two photos on my first day in Japan – taken with my somewhat naff Olympus film camera. And the second photo wasn't even taken by me. It showed Deane and I in the hotel room and was taken by Chris.

Deane says he will head back to the park for a run, so I continue on up a stairway, through a shopping precinct and down a crowded inner-city street. Crowded is not the word, although obviously I just used it. There are 325 people per square kilometre in Japan. For ten minutes I stare around me glaze-eyed at such sights as a punk in chain-mail; a girl with him in ‘Goth Lolita’ get-up; people sending text messages as they wait to cross the street; piles of discarded magazines on meter boxes; calling cards of prostitutes in phone boxes, each one featuring a manga character; trash bags piled up on the kerb and a noticeable lack of rubbish bins; and the ever-present hordes of gaijin (foreigners).

The katakana word geemu (game) on a sign catches my eye and I follow the arrow down into a seedy video game arcade. A large fan is on full speed, barely ruffling the addled gamers’ mohawks. A few of the cabinets are just excuses for full-frontal cartoon nudity. Back in the street, I spot the pink HMV logo on the side of a building some distance away. I head towards it in the scrum of flawlessly-attired Tokyo-ites. I reach the Takashimaya Department Store, and get the lift up to the twelfth floor. Entering the massive store, I am surrounded by millions of CDs on shelves, and take a stunned moment to scan the signs above them to seek out the correct genre, which are written in English.

Even after eight years of learning Japanese I’d never bothered to learn the order of the hiragana so locating my favourite Japanese band Shonen Knife is a tad difficult. I eventually find two of their albums and scurry off to the checkout where a youth awaits me. The two CDs come to over 6000 yen – about a hundred dollars in Australian money – but my dedication to Shonen Knife refuses to let this fact sink in. Tax is not included in the stated price, which means you can never have the exact change ready. I hand over a 10,000 yen note, and he returns the change and receipt on a small metal tray. Then, producing a small card and a leaflet, he begins to explain something. I stand there and pretend to be in the know, but I do manage to surmise that he is giving me a loyalty card, with five points for every CD purchased. Luckily, part of the leaflet is in English. He swipes my card and I collect five points. I thank him and leave, my first real-life informal interaction with a Japanese person in Japan completed satisfactorily.

I have no problem getting from Takashimaya to the shopping precinct I first entered but from there I am lost. I decide to trudge down some back alleys in the hope that they somehow lead back to my hotel, but of course they don’t. I go around the block and end up on the main road. Finding one’s way is different to back home; directions in Japan are usually given by block numbers and landmarks. Most streets don’t have names; only main thoroughfares have them. Trying the opposite direction this time, I catch sight of a McDonald’s (where else), go in and order a meal. Ah, a familiar gaijin ritual. It takes them a while to make the burger, so I am given a free small Coke while I wait. I pay with a 500 yen coin. It feels strange to pay for a whole meal with one coin. As I eat, I watch a live music show on a large video screen.

Back out into the warm night I go, sticking to the main roads and find my hotel using the maps on the roadside. Chris has just returned from a place called Asakusa, and Deane has brewed some coffee which he bought from a convenience store called ampm. “Did you find the CD you were looking for?” Deane asks. I say yes, showing him my copy of Strawberry Sound. “Sweet!” he says, in that easy-going Kiwi way. How appropriate (and also inevitable) that my first purchase in Japan were two Shonen Knife CDs.

I was completely dead beat at this point, so I fell asleep without dwelling on the fact that this was my first night in Japan, with a year of living there ahead of me. But I've never forgotten that day. I was grateful to use it by going out and exploring. Perhaps the JET Programme organizers gave us that day to get used to our new surroundings.

 

A 'selfie' (even though the term hadn't been invented yet) in the Tokyo district of Akihabara,
August 7th 2001. I really felt like I had stepped into the future. 

 

Back on August 5, 2011, I chatted with Chris on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of our Japan arrival. "Wow, doesn't time fly," he said, and I hope he won't mind me reproducing his comments here. "I want to go back in time. Back to 2001."

I asked him what he remembered about that first day. "It was like a sauna!" he said. "I remember walking around Shinjuku overwhelmed. The hotel was very nice. Luckily we had good room mates, me, you and Deane. I think everyone slept that evening. I didn't, I met a Japanese friend and we went to Asakusa. I somehow felt OK the next day. We had to be careful, being hillbillies from Perth, haha."

I just reminded Chris this evening about it being 20 years. "Happy 20th JET-iversary!" he said. "Don't throw away those photos and journals. We can talk about it when we are 80! I think I didn't take a photo that day. Most were so tired and slept. Was it just three of us in the [hotel] room? We were lucky, us three. We all got along so well. Never easy staying in a room with people you don't know. I knew you so it was easy."

New graphic novel for 2020

The character you see above is Spike, the first proper character I created for my comics, in or around September 1993, when I was 15. He first appeared in a pencil-drawn comic soon after called Missing, Presumed Stupid which was a whopping 16 pages long (hey, that's a long comic for a teenager). You can see in the above picture there (on the left, obviously) how he looked in it. He appears to have had flamingo feet for hands.

Well, his five-fingered human hands have finally been reinstated and this year he will be starring in my next graphic novel (Untitled 2020), which I will share excerpts with you as n' if n' when time goes by.

Interestingly enough (well, I think so), Spike's age originally was 22, before I increased it to 27. So when he appears in my new book, his age in real time will be 27!

The Mysterious Paving Slab

This isn't really street art even though I've given it that tag – but it definitely comes from the street. In fact, it's on the street itself!

This afternoon, Michelle and I went for a walk in the suburb of Malvern, and at the corner of Kooyong Road, I noticed this inscribed paving slab:

It's 27 years old and a bit weathered, so if'n ya can't read it, it says:

A CURSE UPON THE

REMOVAL OF THIS SLAB

AS IT FINALLY

LAYS TO REST

WITNESSED

1ST DECEMBER 1989

What's that all about, eh? 'Curse'? 'Lays to rest'? Don't tell me some poor schmo was buried under there? Alas, no. It turns out someone called 'Eugene' put it there to protest at the street being dug up time times in a year (presumably the year 1989). He was the chairman of the High Street Traders Association, and was fed up of losing business due to roadworks (lucky he never worked in Hong Kong, then).

It seems to have worked, as the slab is obviously older than the surrounding ones; the subsequent roadworkers just paved around it. So they did heed Eugene's curse, esoteric as it may be.

Ancient Writings

Ahoy there, matey! Today Rob Scholten and I met up after nearly one and a half years. He's been living in Thailand, you see. On a trip around St. Kilda, I found this old book in a bookshop called Nefertiti. It's a Latin religious text printed in 1733, and published only once. The bookshop owner was only able to locate one other copy in the whole world.

What made this book intriguing was that on the endpaper was half a page of handwriting in that was done in the 18th century – well, it mentions "January 1766", at least. How's your Latin?

Japanese Video Tapes

I lived in Japan from 2001–2002, and in that time, I purchased a lot of VHS videos to watch at home. I got a lot of them cheap from ex-rental shops. But they do take up a lot of space, and I'm thinking of getting rid of most of them as I already have pretty much all the programmes on DVD now, or digital files. But here's a look at some of what I amassed. Some VHS sets come in different coloured cassettes:

The videos above are the set of 7 that make up the British comedy series The Thin Blue Line, from 1995–1996, starring Rowan Atkinson. The video covers are below. (By the way, the series was subtitled, not dubbed.)

Here's the set of 6 videos of the early 2000s anime series Burn-Up X. 

And finally the Mr. Bean series, with identical cover art to the original.

Now, git outta 'ere!

Wikipedia Humour

I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for the Australian late '80s/early '90s sitcom Acropolis Now! just now – for gawd's sake don't ask why – when I noticed this little gem. Whoever placed the inverted commas on the word 'hilarity' is a winner, and should be entitled to shout "Opa!" in a comically ethnic fashion.