Layer Tennis

Layer Tennis

This very exciting news – me and Rex Crowle will be playing in an All-English bout of Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis this Friday. The idea is we swap a photoshop file back and forth every 15min over a match of 10 ‘volleys’. I’ve no idea how it’s going to pan out, but I suspect they’ll be much doodling of monsters, moustaches and general mayhem.

I think we’re going to create a little lawn tennis club in my front room, I’m going to paint my desk to look like a little tennis court with our Macs either side. Obviously we’ll be quaffing Pimms and munching strawberries & cream in between each volley.

The match kicks off 4pm Greenwich Mean Time and lasts about 2 and a half hours.  Sign up for your free season tickets here and watch it live on the internets!

To get a flavour of what it’s all about, check out last weeks match between Jason Santa Maria & Derek Powazek. Jason also wrote an interesting account of the match here »

The Goat Race

Start of goat race

Well the Oxford & Cambridge goat race last Sunday was hilarious :) I wasn’t sure how much of a race it would be, thought they might run off into the crowd for a bit of petting, but when that gate was opened they were off!

Oxford and Cambridge goat race

There was neck and neck racing, overtaking action, it was so quick it was hard to get a photo of it. In the end the little goat Cambridge got to the finish first (I had my money on him too).

Here’s the little winner Cambridge:

Cambridge goat

As an bit of an afterthought I stuck two sock monkey jockies on them. Glad I did, they were funny bouncing along on their backs. Overheard from the audience – “that was probably the funniset thing I’ve ever seen”.

Here’s the much larger, but not quite as quick Oxford:

Oxford Goat

I think maybe he lost because his jockey looks like he’s sleeping on the job  ;)

The goats in their pen

The reason the goats were going for it was so that they could back to their pen and munch on all this hay. It was a great day, not sure how much we raised for the farm, but I’d say there was a least 200 folk there so it must of been a few hundred quid, thanks to all who attended :)

I was impressed with Spitalfields City Farm, can’t believe it’s literally right next to Brick Lane by the Trumen brewery and I’d never seen it before? Lovely to discover a little bit of countryside right in the middle of dirty urban London. You could buy veggies and plants there too, the different kinds of lettuce looked really good.

We’re in our new house

Cookie & Nicky's new house

Blimey it’s been an age since I last did any blogging, sorry folks I’ve been so busy working and then spending all my spare time moving in our new house and sorting things out, but finally we’re in! I hauled the last load yesterday and we did the obligatory trip to Ikea while we had the van. All we have to do now is throw a house warming party :)

Cookie & Nicky's new house

We haven’t moved far from Shoreditch, just a couple of miles up the road to Dalston. It’s a detached house, which is quite unusual in London, and even more unusual on our budget. It was actually built in the back garden of Landlords house! (he doesn’t live there anymore though)

Cookie & Nicky's new house

The house is certainly a pretty impressive piece of architecture, designed by Kyson (they’ve got some good pics),  it was even a finalist on Channel 4’s Grand Designs last year.

Cookie & Nicky's new house

One thing I’ve noticed since moving in is my desire to cook proper food has dramatically increased now that I’ve got a whole kitchen to myself :) Here’s me pulling the first pie I’ve cooked in ages out of our oven.

I’m sure they’ll be plenty more pics once we’re a bit more settled in, the house is due to host it’s first event this Friday – Me and Rex are going head to head in a game of Layer Tennis, but more about that to follow.

Moving house

After about 4 years at Unit 2, I’m leaving to move into a place with Nicky. Now I’m not one to capitalize many words, but our new home is AMAZING! There’ll be lots of pics to follow once we’ve cleared away the mountain of boxes.

But also, it’s going to take about 10 days to get our internet turned on… so sadly they’ll not be much bloggin’ round here until next week :(

Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race

Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race

On the same day as the boat race (29th March) London’s going to host a new event – The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race ;) When Ant, Simeon & Anne told me their idea, I said where the hell are you going to get the goats from?!? Well luckily the nice folks at Spitalfields City Farm (just off Brick Lane) don’t mind us racing a couple of theirs around a field. In return the £3 admission fee will be going toward the up keep of their urban farm project.

THE EVENT:

2 actual real live goats, one representing Oxford and one representing Cambridge, race a tough, meandering course lined with cheering spectators. Then on to the pub for cheap or possibly free (trying to sort out a booze deal now) drinks and music.

AMUSEMENTS:

  • The Official Goat Race Bookie and Sweepstake
  • Enter the Goat Wrestling tournament (I’ve no idea wtf this is)
  • Goatee competition

TIME & PLACE:

Spitalfields City Farm E1, near Brick Lane – map »
Sunday March 29th
Get there 2.30pm
Race 3.30pm
After party from 4.30pm (in the pub)

DRESS CODE:

Strictly: Black Tie, Rowing lycra, boat club jackets and ties, or goat.

ADMISSION:

£3 on the door charge, all proceeds go to a Spitalfields City Farm Charity.

GET INVOLVED:

If you would like to attend, or get involved in any other way (you could turn up with a few metres of bunting at least), head over to the Goat Race Facebook page »

Organised by – Team Magic-Ish (Anne Hopkins, Simeon Rose & Anthony Goh)

Grip Wrench

Grip Wrench

Ah great, Rex’s animated series Grip Wrench is now online! All 10 episodes are on there, featuring Hollywood hardman, Vietnam veteran and fearless patriot – Grip Wrench.

This is Rex’s favourite episode ‘Keep Safe with Grip Wrench’ is embeded above, I’m a big fan on Conad the Barbarian, sounds like gonad, probably one of my favourite testical gags to date :)

Grip Wrench

You can also download a tonne Grip Wrench goodies (meat) for your iPhone and computer here »

Follow Grip Wrench on Twitter

Why not follow GripWrench on Twitter, latest tweet – “Eating a piggy for lunch. His face is crunchy! Ha! Ha!”…

Doodles on white sofa

Also Rex has posted a few pictures of Julie’s white sofa that she bravely let us all attack with sharpie markers during her house warming party. I think it maybe needs another round to completey fill in all the white space…

Done Manifesto

Done Manifesto

Some wise words about getting shit done – The Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark, illustartion by James Provost.

  1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
  2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
  3. There is no editing stage.
  4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
  5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
  6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
  7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
  8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
  9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
  10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
  11. Destruction is a variant of done.
  12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
  13. Done is the engine of more.

Via: Frank.

Kevin Dart

Illustration by Kevin Dart

Kevin looks like he’s been busy drawing his 007 inspired character Kimiko Suzuki (Yuki 7), he makes up his own wonderfully titled (I’m sure Ian Flemming would be proud) fictitious movies and illustrates the posters, generally with a good amount of bikini clad Bond girls in ;). I’m loving – The Deadly Bikini Girls of Shark Island, Mr. Broccoli should take note and put a bit of sauce back into the Bond franchise. Check out his illustration portfolio & blog here. Also you can buy his prints from Fleet Street Scandal.

Illustration by Kevin Dart

You can tell from his style that he used to work as a background artist – he did the BBC Olympics 2008 indents (the ones with Jamie Hewitt’s Monkey).

Illustration by Kevin Dart

He’s working on a book of his Yuki 7 movie posters (not released yet) and is doing a unique poster style for each regional release. I love this French version, which he says was “inspired by an exhibition about street posters from the Paris rebellion of 1968, as well as a bit of Saul Bass.”