BenPaddon.co.uk

Yes, I know, I still have to talk about the Fetish Ball, and Wicked and the Foo Fighters, but they can wait one more day.

Back when I was still looking for an artist for Jump Leads, Euan suggested re-jiggling the script and recording them as Big Finish style audioplays. I dismissed the idea, because I’m very much a visual person, but listening to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series re-sparked the idea in my head briefly. It fizzled away again until this Saturday just gone when my Dad suggested it. The idea has grabbed hold of my imagination now, and it’s racing around trying to work out exactly what to do, if I do anything at all.

I find myself wondering how (and if) it would work. The obvious idea is to have audio adventures featuring Meaney and Llewellyn, however my Dad’s suggestion is also an interesting one:

Billed as a memorial podcast in memory of Captain Lucas and his astonishing mustache, it is a 5-minute long podcast drama of the “Captain’s Log” variety, consisting of Lucas’ log entries culled from Jump Leads Administration computers. It starts with the traditional “Jump log 5123779…” and a minute or so of the entry, which fades into an enactment of what really happened. At the end it fades back into the log entry, where Lucas is trying to make it all sound like he meant it to go that way.

That could be fun, and it could perhaps serve as a sort-of “pilot” for a series of audioplays. I’m still not sure about whether or not to actually do
it, though. There are a number of potential problems:

• Voices. I can’t do them all. My Dad can’t do them all, and the fact that we have very similar voices probably doesn’t help. I could try to do some casting, but then I’m faced with the dilemma of trying to find appropriate people. If I ever have to cast Meaney and Llewellyn they’d have to be British. There’s no two ways about it.
• Editing. Anyone who’s listened to PodWarp 1999 knows I have absolutely no grasp of the concept of editing. I’m also not very good with introductions, but that’s less of an issue.
• Where would it go? Do I slap it straight up on the Jump Leads website? So I tack it on the end of PodWarp? Do I make it a SoulGeek exclusive? That’s a tricky one, that is…
• Some third thing.

I could do it, and perhaps I should do it, but it’d take some time to put together. More importantly, it’d take some research too. I shall ponder on it further.

I haven’t been doing Ficlet Fridays in a while, probably because my ficlet-writing has sort-of fluctuated from Every Damned Day to When I Damned Well Feel Like It. That means some days I’m writing three or four, and some days I’m writing bugger-all. But I’m writing, and that’s the important thing. So the Ficlet Friday updates will be sporadic, with updates usually every two or three weeks listing the ficlets I’ve written… well, since the last one.

So here we go. Read the rest of this entry »

I know I promised you a story about a Fetish Ball (and I also owe you accounts of seeing Wicked last Wednesday, and seeing the Foo Fighters at the Forum this Wednesday just gone) but instead I’m going to let you know that I now have Super Smash Bros Brawl, and I’m also playing online. My Brawl Friend Code is:

4811-6594-0070

Feel free to add me to your Friends List, but let me know your code too otherwise it’s a bit pointless.

Before I approach the story of the Fetish Ball, I have to talk about my commute into work this morning. There are probably very few subjects in the world less worthy of being written about than the act of going to work, but today was different because today I got on my shiny new bicycle and cycled into work.

Cycling from Sunland-Tujunga to Burbank is no small feat. It took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to do it, and in doing so I realised that a lot of the roads my Dad usually drives along to get to and from work are very, very long, but moving along them at a slower pace allowed me to take in much of the scenery, sights and sounds that I had previously not paid much attention to. I never really take in much of Sunland Blvd when we whiz down it in the car, but cycling along it I got to see some interesting things. There are a few houses in dire need of a good bit of work, for instance. A small row of houses absolutely stank of pot. And no, that really isn’t a large enough plot of land to keep horses on.

I’m still largely unfamiliar with Californian Traffic Law and how bicycles factor in to them, so I tried my best to adhere to what I remembered of British Traffic Law and hoped that would do me (obviously I decided not to cycle on the left side of the road). I was fairly relaxed, although I probably would’ve been a bit more relaxed if I’d had a helmet. Unfortunately the store I bought my bike from haven’t had any new helmets for a while as their supplier’s warehouse recently burned down in Mysterious Circumstances™, so my head is relatively unprotected. Well, I say “relatively”. I mean “absolutely”.  I’ll ask Dad if he’s willing to make a detour to Target on the way home from work today so I can pick one up.

Getting to work under my own steam was fantastic, and I can’t wait to get up tomorrow morning and do it all over again. I feel like my legs are going to fall off, but honestly I don’t think I could care less about it at the moment. I’d forgotten just how much fun it was to cycle long distance like that.

It still surprises me that buying a book in London in April led me to a Fetish Ball in Hollywood in December.

I imagine that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I’ll try and explain.

You may recall that way back in April I had to pop down to London for my medical. I had a lovely lady stick a bloody great needle in my arm and steal some of my vital fluids, although I don’t recall whether or not I was offered a lollipop by way of apology. I never understood why children are allowed lollipops, but grown ups aren’t. Heigh ho.

But anyway.

Before the medical, I’d passed the time by popping into a bookstore on Oxford Street and picking up an inexpensive book. The book in question was Yes Man by Danny Wallace, and anyone who has ever read the book or heard me talk about the book before probably knows where this story is going.

I’d started reading the book in London while waiting for my appointment. I then read more of it on the tube back to King’s Cross, and then a bit more of it on the train from King’s Cross to Luton. I read a bit more on the bus from Luton Train Station to my Mum’s home, and then a lot more that night. I plowed through the book in a couple of days, and when I’d finished it my outlook on life was irrevocably altered.

At the start of the book, which incidentally is a true story, Danny had broken up with his girlfriend. He’s stopped going out, stopped being sociable, and had largely kept himself to himself. That was more or less what I’d been doing when I broke up with Amy - I kept myself to myself, I didn’t go out or do much. Danny’s life was changed when a stranger on a bus offered the advice “Say yes more” quite out of thin air, for no real reason whatsoever.

So Danny did. He said yes to absolutely everything, from “Would you like sugar in your tea?” to “Buy our amazing Penis Patch”.

I won’t go into further detail about the book, but suffice to say I decided that I was fed up of saying No all the time, and I decided henceforth to start saying Yes again. I wasn’t going to take it to the extremes Danny took it to, but I was going to be receptive to new experiences, open to new ideas, and above all accepting of new opportunities.

In a way, the book is responsible for my contacting JjAR to see if he’d be interested in doing the art for Jump Leads. A friend, Bonz, had suggested I get in touch with him, and after seeing his artwork I’d wanted to. The old Ben wouldn’t have bothered, figuring he’d get a negative response, if any response at all. The new Ben, however, decided there was nothing to lose. So I said Yes, I’d email him, and he said Yes, I’ll do the artwork.

The book is most certainly responsible for the Fetish Ball attendance, which I shall have to write about at some point later in the day as it’s gone 1am and I should be asleep. Until then!