YouTube (and certain other video sites) is blocked in China, but my main problem is that my connection speed – via Tor – is so slow that streaming is unviable from just about any source. I should – soon be getting myself a VPN. And then I’ll probably spend a week or two catching up on all the stuff I’ve missed. (I have, for example, been wanting to do a Barstool ‘Unsuitable Role Models’ tribute to the recently deceased Keith Floyd.)

Needless to say, I’d never heard of The Fast Show until you mentioned it. And three guesses how I spent the next hour or so…

First, I know you have problems with YouTube; do they extend to other videos on the Web as well? (I don’t know if the YouTube thing is a technological issue or a Great Firewall issue.) If you can view other videos, instead of going directly to YouTube try Google Video. There’ll you find links to YouTube, of course — especially since Google acquired it — but also to Google’s own video library, Dailymotion.com, Myspace, Photobucket… various sites based in Italy and Brazil, for example… perhaps even some downloadable WMV files. (I haven’t found any of these. But if they exist, you could sidestep the problems with stuttering a/k/a streaming video played through a slow Internet connection.)

At the moment, 830(ish) hits are returned on the phrase “the fast show.”

Among them, I see, are several copies of an episode in which Johnny Depp actually did make an appearance — one of the “Suits you, sir!” bits. (However, this was in the so-called “Last Fast Show” in 2000, not the original series.) I also see that Amy Winehouse showed up in a 1997 episode.

But the thing I thought might really interest you — because it doesn’t require any fancy hardware, software, or Internet connection, and I can’t believe it would be worth blocking — is this: via the Internet Archive, a complete collection of Fast Show transcripts. Not just the “real” three series, but also the three-part last show and two specials.

Of course, I guess the really definitive thing — if you’ve got a Region 2 DVD player — would be the 7-disk set, The Ultimate Fast Show Collection from 2007…

I’ve done one post on South Park so far, specifically about Cartman. (But mysteriously, I don’t see anything about it on Froogville, other than a few stray asides. Hmm…) It took me quite a while to latch onto it, because it was carried only on a premium cable channel at first — or one, at any rate, which I didn’t have access to for some reason. My niece and nephews (and brother, and one sister) kept telling me, like, “Uncle John! You have got to see this show!!!”

So about a year and a half ago, while pressing some things off for work the next day, I scrolled through the channels for something to watch. Only South Park was not showing a commercial at the time so I figured, well, I might as well give this a try… Before the episode was over I’d fallen over backwards onto the bed, laughing.

Good thing about this is that so many of the shows are still new to me. Bad thing about is that my niece and nephews have all pretty much seen everything by now, and talked themselves out of it. So it’s been a solitary (not exactly guilty, let alone shameful) pleasure. Heh.

But he could have been, damn it.

Yes, I cut a lot of corners in that fairy-tale version. I was nervous about posting it in its original form, which pretty much gave away the show on every important plot (and character) point. I do think Martin’s a necessary ingredient — if for no other reason than that he pisses off one character so much that he (the latter) digs in his heels and insists on going forward with a plan which he’d otherwise have had a lot of questions about. (Weak Martin’s interference becomes strong Larry’s weakness.)

We’re about to head out for a group lunch; when we get back, I’ll have some Fast Show goodness (which I found yesterday) to share with you here.

Sorry to inundate you with references and recommendations, JES, but the great standout in skit shows in the last couple of decades was The Fast Show. Its genius lay in the subtle variations they worked in the very limited and repetitive scenarios, so that many of the characters started to seem real and human and surprisingly, movingly detailed (despite being basically confined in the same one-minute sketch over and over again). Of course, it helped that the acting was so good. I have no words for Paul Whitehouse: he’s unbelievable. (Impressive enough that Johnny Depp begged for a guest spot on the show!)

Last time I looked, there wasn’t much of it on YouTube – but the particular highlights to look for are the Ted & Ralph segment (portraying the strained affection between a young aristo and his elderly groundskeeper) and the fireside chats of Rowley Birkin (Whitehouse’s greatest character – a permanently sozzled, barely coherent septuagenarian raconteur).

I should probably give A Clockwork Orange another go – both the film and the book. I read it in high school, but it was the invented language that left an impression on me. I have just about no recollection of the story, or even the tone or purpose of the book. I did, however, have the feeling that Kubrick’s film had completely missed the mark. It seemed to be very much in the mould of a number of other late ’60s British satires, like Lindsay Anderson’s Oh Lucky Man! – cheesy, overblown, cartoonish. (Maybe it was just the presence of Malcolm McDowell, who seemed to be in all of them.) I agree it’s difficult to watch; but I think that comes not only from the often unpalatable content, but from the fact that the story just doesn’t engage – I never really cared about Alex’s plight, nor had any sense of where the film was going.

I love South Park. To an indecent extent. There is a genius to it. I agree that the cartoon format gives you a saving distance (although I have winced at many of Kenny’s horrible deaths); any attempt to recreate what they do in live action would just be vile.

I couldn’t help thinking that in your ‘Fairy Tale’ summary of the WIP – which was too plot-light and character-background-heavy to be a satisfying fairy tale, I’m afraid; you weren’t really following ‘the rules’! – this character didn’t seem to have any convincing purpose at all. (You said hardly anything about how he would affect the central plot, and nothing, as far as I recall, about the device of him introducing the Welsh brewer back-story.) It seemed rather as though your Arthurian fetish had compelled you to introduce a Mordred character, but you hadn’t yet entirely decided what you were going to do with him. I supposed that the non-stripped-down, non-’fairytale’ version would have more flesh on the bones – but does he have an essential purpose?

I think it’s always worth asking yourself that question about a character (if for no other reason, just so that you’re prepared to fight your corner if your editor asks it): What would the novel be like without them?

I didn’t know anything about Little Britain before your mention, so (predictably: ha) looked it up. It appears to be one of those shows which I could watch no more often than once a week. More often than that, it would start to seem sadistic or cruel rather than merely biting. (Or, putting a finer point on it, it would start to make me question my own… well, compassion, for lack of a better word.)

Now I say that, which makes me sound delicate and easily offended. But I’ll watch South Park episodes and re-runs five times a week and laugh out loud at every one. (I generally do this in the back room, while pressing off things to wear for work the next day, because The Missus does have a substantially lower gross-out/discomfort threshold than I.) Probably something to do with the ridiculous, crude animation style — put the same words in the mouths of stage or film actors and I’m pretty sure the laughter would die in my throat.

While reading your comments on The Wasp Factory and My Idea of Fun, I was reminded of a novel from the early 1990s by Patrick McCabe, called The Butcher Boy. Do you know that one? Hard to read in numerous spots — even though you’ve got plenty of reason to “understand” the violence, you still don’t exactly want to encounter more of it.

(Clockwork Orange has that effect on people, too. I’ve never met anyone else who acknowledged reading the book (worth the read for the language alone, if one can sufficiently compartmentalize his squeamishness to enjoy it). But the movie had many people feeling like Alex himself: forced to sit with his eyes open as all this dreadful stuff happened onscreen. Which was sort of the point, but nobody I ever talked to about it seemed to have gotten it.)

“…’the sooty man’ that could ‘move our childish hearts with something oddly close to love’”: that’s wonderful. And much more accessible than a dozen treatises on why Mephistopheles is a better character than Faust! (Although I do think there’s a connecting thread.)

And y’know, he’s not even a villain. He stands (or rather, will stand) in opposition to the other main characters. But he’s not the central conflict, the main obstacle they’ll encounter en route to “The End.” So I didn’t want to make him a diabolically twisted genius. He’s selfish, weak, vain. I wanted to make him someone who would threaten the placid world of multiple main characters in the late 1980s, most of whom are elderly (and thus generally value placidity). These characters, I guess you could say, fear tripping on a sidewalk or setting a kitchen fire more than they fear death. I want Martin to be that sort of threat to them. (By book’s end he will, though, nearly unravel every thread in the plan they’ve put together: not because he’s evil, just because he’s spiteful.)

And he’s also the hole in the dike through which two centuries of history leaks, tying together the story of my Welsh brewmaster with the main story. If he were genuinely, greatly evil, I think he’d resist being the agent of any outside force — or at least be aware of its influence. He’s not “possessed” a la The Exorcist, but he is easily nudged: his path of least resistance lies evil-ward, and he’ll never have second thoughts about it, but he needn’t be an evil genius. At the same time, as you say, he’s just a thoughtless jerk, and yet needs to be enough of a thoughtless jerk that awful things can happen in his wake.

Thanks for provoking all this thought. I hope to achieve the above, but we’ll have to see how it works out. In the meantime, having laid it out like this, I have a clearer idea of some of the pitfalls I have to deal with — to keep an eye open for.

(Ludicrous reCaptcha in this context: Levy-Samuel twinkles.)

Somewhere around here, I’ve got a horror story which I wrote some years ago. The protagonist was a… a creature unlike others I could remember from classic and second-tier horror stories and films I knew. That was a goal I’d set for myself at the outset. (I never did anything with the story, although I like it, because a few years later a successful film (and less successful sequel) came out which featured a monster much like mine. The movie killed a central motivation for me to have written the story — I just knew any editor worth his salt would want to know why I’d so brazenly ripped off from the film — and I lost interest in it.)

Another goal for the story — for the central creature-character — was to make him matter-of-factly irredeemable, I guess you might say. There was nothing personal in his peculiar appetite, although he took great pleasure in both the hunt and the kill; what he ate was just, well, just what he ate.

When I workshopped the first draft of the story, one reader’s comments started something like, “I love that this guy is completely unrepentant.” Which was very close to “matter-of-factly irredeemable,” close enough to satisfy me. (He’d read a lot of horror.) But the other workshoppers weren’t so sure: the consensus was that (biology/anatomy aside) such a creature failed to convince them, because they didn’t understand his mind enough to believe in his unrepentant nature. He was sort of the opposite of a deus ex machina, an evil miracle whose evil wasn’t credible because his unrepentance seemed so conveniently miraculous. The final draft of the story thus included a certain amount of backstory, plus some additional foreground material — and was almost twice as long as the first.

In retrospect, I’ve always thought the story was stronger with the limited backstory than with none at all. But I couldn’t help regretting the loss of that “evil beyond analysis” feel of the original, something like your excellent take on Harris’s original Lecter.

(That story of mine also had one of my favorite titles: “In the Ruins on Borphyr Road.”)

More later…

Do you remember that Vernon Scannell poem I was trying to find, about the experience of Saturday morning cinema-going as a child in the ’30s? A central theme of that is the fascination with the villain in old Westerns – the fixation on the trappings of stereotype, the dark clothes, black hat, stubbly jaw; the recognition that there was something about “the sooty man” that could “move our childish hearts with something oddly close to love”.