For our #MondayMotivaton today I try to work out which sports we can still play whilst socially distancing...
...explained through the medium of Hot Hits compilation albums!
Association Football? NO! Keeping two meters apart is too difficult in soccer, unless we use the rules of table football for each match (note: no spinning and no tilting the pitch!)
Angling? YES! Social distancing is the reason most people take up this pastime in the first place, plus the smell of bait keeps most people at least two meters away from you.
Motor racing? POSSIBLY! Yes you're far away from people on the track, but pit crews would probably have to be banned. You'll need to change your own tyres if you want to bring back F1 nowadays.
Archery? YES! In fact there's no better way to keep people socially distanc than waving a recursive bow around and yelling "don't you f*cking dare!" like a distressed drunk at the Battle of Agincourt.
Skeleton Bob? NO! You're going to leave a trail of exhaled germs behind you on the track that all subsequent competitors would inhale. Technically one person only could compete safely, but is that really sport?
Triple Jump? YES! Possibly the safest of all track and field events, but competitors would need masks in case they sneezed in the sandpit. Rakes would of course need to be two meters long.
Rugby? NO! Not even League. Scrums, tackles and communal singing in a shared bath afterwards makes this a COVID-19 no-no. Don't try Rugby Sevens either, as I'm not convinced that's actually a sport rather than a warm-up.
Tennis? POSSIBLY! Keeping two meters apart would mean lots of emphasis on 100mph aces from the baseline and that really kills the drama of the game. Players would have to sanitize their own balls and stop picking at their pants before serving too.
Well there you have it: sport is possible during the coronavirus outbreak but you have to think it through beforehand. Fortunately sports enthusiasts are our top thinkers, so I'm sure common sense will prevail! #StayAlert
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Many readers have asked me over the years what my definition of pulp is. I've thought about it a lot, and the definition I keep coming back to... well it may surprise you.
Let me try and set it out.
There are lots of definitions of pulp out there: in books, in academic papers and on the web. And most circle back to the same three points: the medium, the story type and the method of writing.
Pulp is of course a type of cheap, coarse paper stock. Its use in magazine production from the 1890s onwards led to it becoming a shorthand term for the kind of fiction found in low cost story magazines.
let's take a look at the extraordinary work of Victorian illustrator and cat lover Louis Wain!
Louis Wain was born in London in 1860. Although he is best known for his drawings of cats he started out as a Victorian press illustrator. His work is highly collectable.
Wain had a very difficult life; born with a cleft lip he was not allowed to attend school. His freelance drawing work supported his mother and sisters after his father died. Aged 23 he married his sisters' governess, Emily Richardson, 10 years his senior.
Over the years a number of people have asked me if I have a favourite pulp film. Well I do. It's this one.
This is the story of Alphaville...
Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965) was Jean-Luc Godard’s ninth feature film. A heady mix of spy noir, science fiction and the Nouvelle Vague at its heart is a poetic conflict between a hard-boiled secret agent and a supercomputer’s brave new world.
British writer Peter Cheyney had created the fictitious American investigator Lemmy Caution in 1936. As well as appearing in 10 novels Caution featured in over a dozen post-war French films, mostly played by singer Eddie Constantine whom Godard was keen to work with.
Al Hartley may have been famous for his work on Archie Comics, but in the 1970s he was drawn to a very different scene: God.
Today in pulp I look back at Hartley's work for Spire Christian Comics - a publisher that set out to spread the groovy gospel...
Spire Christian Comics was an offshoot of Spire Books, a mass-market religious paperback line launched in 1963 by the Fleming H. Revell company. The point of Spire Books was to get religious novels into secular stores, so a move into comic books in 1972 seemed a logical choice.
The idea was to create comic book versions of popular Spire Books like The Cross and the Switchblade; David Wilkinson's autobiographical tale of being a pastor in 1960s New York. It had already been turned into a film, but who could make it into a comic?
It was a phenomenon, spawning a franchise that has lasted over fifty years. It's also a story with many surprising influences.
Today in pulp I look back at a sociological science-fiction classic, released today in 1968: Planet Of The Apes!
Pierre Boulle is probably best known for his 1952 novel Bridge On The River Kwai, based on his wartime experiences in Indochina. So it was possibly a surprise when 11 years later he authored a science fiction novel.
However Boulle had been a Free French secret agent during the war. He was captured in 1943 by Vichy forces in Vietnam and sentenced to hard labour. This experience of capture would shape his novel La Planète Des Singes.