January 29th, 2009
The following are the liner notes from the new cd by ESRE:
“I used to play guitar. Seriously. I was the only guy around who could play ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ using just two chords. I bowled them over alright. People said I should ‘desist’, but I was never that keen on protest songs.
When I turned to managing bands in the 1970’s, it was a rich period in pop history. Managers could have their pick of any number of great groups back then. There was 10cc, Roxy Music, Cockney Rebel, Thin Lizzy… if only I’d picked them and not the turkeys I ended up with, I might not be here working with Neil Sommerville now.
But it’s all water under the bridge. Bleeding troubled water. Which brings me to Esre. I think they could be my ‘bridge’. I think I still have a chance at the big time with these kids. And for those of you who read the papers and think you see a pattern emerging in my life - the making of a small fortune followed by tax evasion, bankruptcy, ignominy and a spell at her majesty’s pleasure - let me say this: Esre are only my ticket to the first of these. I can handle the rest myself.
I may not understand their music, but when has that ever bothered managers in the past? I know a good thing when I see one. Like the first time I saw Dire Straits. Unfortunately it was at Wembley stadium so I was too late to sign them.
And it’s not that I don’t like Esre’s sound, even though everybody knows music’s gone downhill since the invention of stereo. I mean, one speaker was good enough for Phil Spector and if it wasn’t broke why fix it? Spector may be a major twonk, but if Gnarls Barclay traded their four cloth ears for just one of his they might come up with a decent tune.
This aside, I think you’ll agree that Esre could do wonders for my bank balance and help to erase some of the terrible things that have been said about me in the press. Who knows, they could even be as big as Simon and Garfunkel.”
- George Lyttleton, Band Manager
Categories: 2. George Lyttleton, Band Manager |
Tags: music business | 1 Comment
January 27th, 2009
Spore lay unconscious on the floor having stumbled in seconds earlier, clutching a slip of paper. I tried to determine whether he was still breathing. I may not like my clients but I don’t want them dead. It’s bad for business.
LaFlamme wrenched the piece of paper from his fingers and read it aloud.
“Jackals dine,” she said mysteriously. We both stared at each other blankly across Spore’s gangly frame.
“Jackals dine? What the hell does that mean?” I asked.
“I might have missed all the other anagrams in this story, but I’m not about to miss this one,” LaFlamme replied confidently.
I had no idea what she meant, but at least the story was back on track.
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: anagrams, Fifi LaFlamme | No Comments
January 25th, 2009
“You should have stuck with the Da Vinci Code,” said LaFlamme in her best I-told-you-so voice. “Then it wouldn’t have taken you a month to write this next instalment.”
I had to agree that the book had been the source of some of my finest jests and that having abandoned it during a particularly silly passage, what I was now missing was real comedic inspiration.
I tried watching the movie but despite being equally feeble I realised it was no match for the book’s poor character development and shallow plotting, and again my interest tapered off midway.
“How can such a large book be so insubstantial?” I asked LaFlamme, as if she knew all the answers. Generally she did know all the answers, at least ones that would satisfy a dullard like me. This time was no exception.
“That’s part of the skill. If you can prattle on for ages about cornerstones and priories and make people think it’s important, you’ve cracked it.”
“I suppose so,” I conceded. I always think if I have to endure a 300-page tome it better explain the meaning of life at the very least.
“Let’s try and kick-start this baby,” LaFlamme offered, and sat down to type in her inimitable floor-shaking manner.
‘Suddenly there is a knock at the door,’ she began, ‘and the client Ignacious Spore stumbles in and collapses on the floor, a slip of paper clutched in his outstretched hand.’
“That’s quite good,” I said, although I suspected it was from the Maltese Falcon. At least Dashiell Hammett was worth ripping off.
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: Da Vinci Code, Fifi LaFlamme | No Comments
December 23rd, 2008
“Why would my client want to kill me?” I asked LaFlamme. “I’m not that bad a designer.”
It was often hard to gauge what the raven-haired minx was thinking behind the wraparounds, but I never had long to wait for an opinion.
“Spore has you heavily insured,” she replied a little coyly. “You’re worth more dead than alive to him.”
“Insured? How can my client have insured me without my knowledge?” I demanded, confident now that I could get this whole case to unravel like one of the Admiral’s bobbly cardigans. “Shouldn’t I have some say in that?”
“Clients have all kinds of rights these days,” she said matter-of-factly. “They need to protect their investments. It’s standard procedure now.” She paused to take a full-throated blast from the troublesome red, tamed now in her hands. “In fact the underwriters treat it like pet insurance.”
It was hard not to feel humiliated by the notion that my life could have been quoted for alongside the family budgie’s. But there it was.
“Don’t worry, Spore didn’t insure your talent,” LaFlamme added.
“That’s a pity, because he could have claimed last week when it deserted me.” I paused and then spun around to face her. “So what did he insure?”
LaFlamme looked up. “Your soul,” she said.
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: Fifi LaFlamme, Ignacious Spore | No Comments
December 22nd, 2008
- LaFlamme’s take on murder.
“Murder?” I asked LaFlamme. “Who’s dead?”
“That’s not important,” she replied.
“You’re telling me my design client is framing me for murder but it doesn’t matter whose?” Ordinarily I’d have thought that the subject of any murder might be a critical point but LaFlamme disagreed.
“There’s no death,” she stated plainly.
“Murder without death?” I fired back. “That’s even more unusual.” I often begin these conversations with a quest for knowledge and end them settling for a quiet life.
“We both know Spore’s a slippery character,” LaFlamme continued, now in full flow. “He gave you the world’s worst logo knowing you could never work with it. Nobody could. He figured the case would drive you crazy and then he could pin a murder on you.”
“But whose murder?” I persisted.
“Yours.”
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: Fifi LaFlamme, Ignacious Spore | No Comments
December 19th, 2008
A week has passed since my last communication, and my state of confusion has deepened. LaFlamme once again lulled me into a false sense of security by plying me with her sherry-like substance until my whole body radiated with a thermo-nuclear glow.
My graphic design talents, shaky to begin with, were now being tested to the maximum with the challenges that the world’s worst logo presented me. And LaFlamme’s book deal was galling enough without the realisation that the publisher was responsible for the very logo I’d been commissioned to investigate.
“Y’see, kid” she began, taking an ordinary household corkscrew and tackling a particularly troublesome red. “Your client may not have been entirely honest with you.” The corkscrew snapped off, leaving a stump of metal still engaged below the surface of the barely dislodged cork. “Metal fatigue,” she explained, plunging the cork into the bottle with her thumb - a method much favoured by desperate art students, and proof that art college education is extremely practical.
“My client’s never been honest with me,” I said, referring to the lowlife Ignacious Spore. “If he ever tried, I’d think he was up to something.”
She took a swig from the cork-infested bottle - she was a class act alright.
“Yes, but did you know he was here last night trying to frame you for murder?”
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: Fifi LaFlamme, Ignacious Spore | No Comments
December 10th, 2008
I visited LaFlamme with the sole intention of grilling her on her knowledge of my client Spore’s nefarious activities. Instead I was dealt a sherry-like substance and a copy of her five-book publishing contract, along with a reminder that my life still sucked.
LaFlamme had out-manoeuvred me again, and what appeared to be an impending revelation about my client made me all the more uneasy.
“Notice anything unusual about the logo?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the contract. Years of graphic design torture had left me immune to the charms of my own trade, to the extent that I now mentally blanked out anything that wasn’t 10-point Times.
I took a second look at the document header. And there it was: the world’s worst logo. The one that Spore asked me to investigate in the first place.
Now I may not be the sharpest guy around. In fact the Admiral described me as a ‘halfwit’, but after thirty minutes in his company a man’s likely to lose a great deal of his wit, along with most of his will to live.
But I can put two and two together and get a number between three and five. I gathered all my cognitive powers in an attempt to demonstrate my intelligence and perception at its most devastating and incisive, and with everything I could muster said, “I’m confused.”
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: fiction, Graphic design, humour | No Comments
December 8th, 2008
As I approached LaFlamme’s hallway, I met with the clattering of the ribbon-wound Underwood within. I pushed at the door, already slightly ajar, and there was LaFlamme in exactly the same position as I last saw her several days before. The typing was deafening. I could feel the vibrations travelling through the hardwood table to the floor.
“Have you had any sleep since I left?” I asked.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she replied and continued hammering at the keyboard. I figured she was immortal anyway and would need a stake through the heart to stop her.
“There,” she said. “Piece of cake.” She ripped out the last page from the machine and simultaneously thrust a separate sheaf of papers my way.
“What’s this?” I asked, a little fearful of her response.
“Book deal,” she replied and filled two glasses with what looked like sherry but could have been anything. I gazed at the papers in disbelief. LaFlamme’s self-help book, ‘Help Yourself To Drink,’ was going to be published as part of a five-book deal.
“Somebody needs to shake these losers to their senses,” LaFlamme stated matter-of-factly. It was an interesting way of describing her readership. “It might as well be me.”
My hopes of winning the Nobel Prize for splitting the Internet seemed hollow in the light of this. I felt an exasperation that I’d previously reserved for extraordinary pique.
LaFlamme sensed my irritation and handed me a glass. “It’s my duty to relate the sum of the knowledge I’ve gained so far,” she said sympathetically. “People need to wake up and realise there is a better way to live.”
She paused. “Now drink up. There’s something I need to tell you about your client.”
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: fiction, Graphic design, humour | No Comments
December 5th, 2008
I hadn’t actually won it yet but I’d decided this would be the name of my best-selling memoir after my brilliant idea (see December 3rd) had taken the world by storm.
The Admiral pointed out that it would be unusual for a graphic designer to win the Nobel Prize for science, so I reluctantly conceded that I was happy to share the honour with him and his planet-sized cranium.
Splitting the Internet into three was such an obvious thing to do, I wondered why nobody else had thought of it. I tried to recall any precedents. They split the atom and that turned out ok, didn’t it?
I left the Admiral to take the initial steps, which presumably involved some vast feats of calculus between the computer and the coffee machine. I had other things on my mind.
With belated world-recognition all but a done deal, I decided it was time to pay LaFlamme a return visit. I had some questions for her regarding a certain lowlife client of mine, one Ignacious Spore.
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: fiction, Graphic design, humour | No Comments
December 3rd, 2008
My barking client Spore had introduced me to Internet café owner and possible genius the Admiral, in an attempt to help me solve the riddle of the world’s worst logo.
The Admiral did his technical heavyweight best, even explaining the concept of blogging to me, something I found impossibly silly. But it was this explanation and the dawning realisation that the internet was clogged to the gills with drivel that led to my brilliant idea:
We could split the internet.
That’s right, split it into three: web logs, pornography, and the third piece of the trinity - stuff I might find useful. I hated typing all those w’s anyway. Now they could have one each. It was crystal clear to me and obviously Nobel-worthy.
w.blogs.com
w.porn.com
w.stuffimightfinduseful.com
I ran the idea past the Admiral and sensed him making a mental connection between great knowledge and great wealth. He was only short on the latter.
“There are manifold logistical ramifications,” he said. I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. I wondered if he fully understood the magnitude of the concept, because he clearly didn’t feel threatened by my intellectual stature. “But it just might be possible..”
Categories: 1. Graphic Design Dilemmas |
Tags: fiction, Graphic design, humour | No Comments
