sheriffmitchell

intweetion: (via littlemara)

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:11:24 +0000

intweetion:

(via littlemara)

Seen on thisisnthappiness

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:09:30 +0000

Seen on thisisnthappiness

Shoes and lettering

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:05:25 +0000

Shoes and lettering

The Stuff What I Wrote

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:16:41 +0100

In the final few days at one of my previous jobs I sat staring around the office wondering what had happened to my life. As one position came to an end and another job I didn’t even want was about to fire up, I found myself in a brief period of introspection. What had happened to my creativity? I thought the best way to give myself the kick up the arse I needed to get me back onto the writing horse was an overview of why I liked to write. It was pretty rough around the edges and sat on Google Docs for nearly two years, untouched and unfinished.

A lot has happened in my life this year, there’s been a hell of a lot of change, however, I still feel passionate about writing. So, in hour of frantic rewriting I finished what I started two years ago.

When I was in my final year of junior school I attended ‘Drama Class’ - this was way before I developed an aversion to public speaking. Every Monday night me and several other kids stayed after school for an hour of extra curricular activity with Mrs. Ducker. She later left the school under a cloud of financial impropriety, true story.

The lessons weren’t up to much, games played in character, things like that. Nothing you would want to use on your ‘reel. The paydirt of the Club was to put on a show in front of the rest of the school and our parents. This was no nativity, this was kids acting. The kind of thing that today makes my skin crawl. The theme of our show was television, five minute parodies of the nations favourite early evening shows. All the soaps, comedies and what not were parodied by ten year olds. It’s sounds eerily like something ITV would base their entire Saturday night schedule around. Anyway…

It was decided that my friend Dean and I would host the news segment and I would have a starring roll in Coronation Street playing gravel-voiced harlot Phylis. Both went down a treat with our audience, particularly my junior drag act. Not the kind of thing that would be actively encouraged by primary schools in our current cultural climate

It was the news report section that I remember most vividly. The script, that we all memorized was hand written and photocopied for the cast. We had added our own lines into the performance. The one that stands out would be my crude attempt at satire. To paraphrase myself, ‘What’s the difference between Robert Maxwell and Maxwell House coffee… the coffee dissolves in water.’ A joke about the recently deceased Newspaper magnate coming out of a ten years olds mouth, cutting, nay, bleeding edge.

I didn’t join any drama clubs in Comprehensive school, mainly due to the fact that all our school put on was musicals and I a singer I am not. Also as the teenage hormones set in I was found primarily with a scowl in my face listening to my loud playing walkman. Also my comic compadre Dean was cruelly taken from me and placed in another class. None of our subjects overlapped and as new friendships were made ours disappeared. We would both admit to the not speaking to each other for five years. Strange yet sadly true.

However during our A-Level years we were thrown back into the same class and after the initial awkwardness at our five year hiatus we quickly made up for lost time. We were the main writers of the school newspaper together. Our best submissions were written under the nom de plume of Forbes Mitchell, a tragic, alcoholic food critic cum voyeur who divided his time between reviewing the eateries in our village and playing peeping tom into the after-school lives of our teachers. It was wonderfully over the heads of most of the year group but the magazine, Whickham World, was my first attempt at writing in partnership and was some of the most fun I had in school. Years later we popped into the school only to find the magazine still pinned up in the office of our old English teacher Mr. MacKenzie. A revelation that made my heart swell with pride.

We also returned to the stage together during our annual Charity Week. We wrote and performed an hour long verion on the former BBC TV show Shoooting Stars. Teachers and students made up the teams while my Vic and Deans’ Bob made the funny. We even got the dubious honour of recreating the Din Bin; where we placed a teacher into a huge catering bin and beat the living s*** out of it with cricket bats. Cathartic to say the least. However, it was the writing of the show that sticks in my mind. Drafting and re-drafting each line into a joke, grafting in callbacks only to be livid at the casts poor delivery of our meticulously crafted lines.

The performance in front of a fire risk full house of over 300 was fantastic. However due to idiocy on the part of our elected cameraman we have no record of what we achieved, apart from a stamped ticket stub and, more importantly, a copy of the script.

To somehow further my love of writing I managed to get myself a weeks work experience on the TV show Byker Grove through a friend I enjoyed playing table football and drinking beer with. I shadowed Andrew S Walsh, the script editor, for a whole five days. I had a blast seeing first hand how the production process worked. Andrew was a hoot and tolerated my questions with great gusto. He also a dab hand with the plastic dart guns we bought to shot the s*** out of each other with. He also worked writing scripts for computer games. A quick Google search shows he still does, and s***load more to boot. Anyway, I got to see a very much in progress look at his work on the EarthWorm Jim game on the N64. I didn’t really think much of it at the time but that was pretty awesome. On the Grove I came up with the name for the shop two of the daft slag lasses set up to shill clothes in. I called it Tyne and Gear (see what I did there?!) It was amazing however to see something I played, abeit a very small part, in creating gracing the TV.

University life kicked off for real after a one year piss around on my initial, poor choice of higher education, The History of Modern Art, Design and Film. Although the I did get an great grade on essay I wrote on the locker room antics of James Cameron’s opus Aliens and 90% on an exam I did while still very drunk, it wasn’t for me. I swallowed my non existent pride and restarted on a new degree. Knowing what I know now, I whole heartedly wish I’d done something like Cultural Management, Human Geography, you know, the kind of real degree that gets you a job you don’t loathe. Something with an end game in mind.

Anywho, I, for my sins along with my hopes and dreams, enlisted on the educational whipping boy that is Media Production (specialising in Scriptwriting don’t you know). Man alive did I goof off in the first year. To be fair I had an almost full time job that I kept up for all of university even though most of the other students found it easier to play Xbox and smoke weed. Some still do this today, god bless ‘em.

Anyway I attended only one of my scriptwriting lectures yet somehow still aced the first year. Year Two was much of the same but with added awful short films I either poorly wrote, badly filmed or shoddily edited. However, in the second year of Uni I started writing with Andy Waugh. We spent a worrying amount of time together over the next two years and looking back it was pretty intense. Writing with Andy however was great. We produced a comic book based on the life Steve Guttenberg… well the life we created for him. I’m fairly sure Steve isn’t a serial killer who holds Tom Hanks directly responsible for stealing his acting roles in Hollywood. I’m also 99% sure he doesn’t hang around with Tom Selleck and Ted Danson, who happen to be gay lovers, although I do hope he shares an apartment with Michael Winslow.

Anyway we put out this comic book. Not only is Andy a great writer but he is a talented artist. His unique style and our Grade A funnies got us a lot of attention and some great reviews in various magazines. Outside of Uni we developed the comic book into a pitch for animation. We would spend hours in coffee shops planning how the series would unfold. As part of our degree course we visited the BBC and Channel 4 in London getting hold of names of people we could later harass. The project went from good to better. The scripts we wrote were funny and the episode outlines were great. We got a letter of intent from the BBC who were keen to see the project. It was amazing. Some friends produced a crude five minute version of the show for their final piece. Andy and myself provided the bulk of the voice talent. It got some big laughs at our final year screening. I was particularly proud of a the K 9-11 gag that I wrote into the short. The project was pretty hot property. We created a nice amount of buzz for two people who didn’t have a clue what the f*** they were doing. Hell, we didn’t even have a website. Actually, thats not true, we did pretend to be Steve Guttenberg on a blog we put up for a while attracting some deluded Guttenberg fans and legal threats. It didn’t last long.

I honestly wish I could say that this had a happy ending. I wish I could say that we ended up creating a British Family Guy with toys, merchandise and huge DVD sales but that didn’t happen. We already know this as you’ve never seen this amazing animated series about Steve Guttenberg. I’m pretty sure that some of our gags somehow ended up in the awful MTV animation Drawn Together though. After living out of each others pockets for so long our relationship had grown strained. We were asked to pitch at an animation festival to get some funding. We couldn’t make it as working for the man had begun to rob us of all our free time so some awesome friends, Andy Smith and Leonie O’Moore agreed to step up to the plate for us. Andy wasn’t happy about new people getting into the mix. He seemed to want control over the project to ensure we called the shots. I know this now, at the time I thought he was being a cock. We didn’t get the funding and Andy and I silently called it a day. We stopped calling each other and drifted apart.

After our breakup I went along to the animation festival. It was weird. A lot of people seemed to know about the Guttenberg project. Real people, people in the industry. I spent a week at the festival with Andy Smith, who had pitched for us. We met some amazing folks, hell we met guys from ILM and Pixar. It was honestly amazing. I was introduced Curtis Jobling, the guy who created the design of Bob the Builder, he was keen to work on the Guttenberg project. I told him it was finished, a great idea that would never happen. He invited Andy Smith and I to write for him instead. He had an idea for a new kids TV show. He had done some character designs and had interest from some TV networks. I stress this is all he had done. No script or nothing. It would be a lot of work for us but when someone in the industry asks you to write for them, you say yes.

And so another writing partnership was born. Over the course of six months Andy and myself knocked out several scripts for the show. I can say, with hand on heart, these scripts are the best things I have ever written. Pretty much everything I had done to this point had been, well, kinda blue. Not the kind of scripts you would want your parents reading. They were sweary and very crude. The show was sparkly clean, hell it was a kids show, it had to be. The two of us learned how to write to time, we did read-throughs, we took notes and acted on them, instead of the, “what the f*** do you know,” attitude I had previously had. And for a brief moment it looked as if everything was going to turn out great. This was about to be the anti-Gutt, the project that came off. It looked as it writing was about to be our thing.

But no, that’s not the way it played out. Curtis rewrote one of our scripts and we weren’t to fond of the results, bad juju had come to the project. Although Curtis has a meeting about possible development for the show he went another route. Again, looking at it though the courtesy of my hindsight glasses, it would be the route I would have taken. He optioned the project name and characters to [BIG NAME ANIMATION COMPANY] and that was that. It’s currently sat on a mahogany desk somewhere and I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day. If it does we have all of our work safely saved to compare against the finished project. We never got paid and I don’t think we got enough thanks for what we did. Curtis moved on to other projects like the pro he is. His latest creation, Frankenstein’s Cat has graced networks the world over and will be back for another season.

This was a kick in the balls to many. Although I did a Media course it taught you exactly nothing of how the industry actually works. How people you think are your friends really aren’t. It didn’t prepare you for rejection. Team Smith and Mitchell downed tools and never properly picked them back up. Writing was something I did for fun and every time it started to get exciting a calamity would befall the project I was working on. Writing became a chore and as a result I stopped. There were fits and starts, some real funny but not finished ideas, a few unsolicited submissions here and there but nothing I was completely proud of. Nothing like I had done previously. I truly fell off the writing wagon and it left me for dust. I got a real job and got on with life.

Cut to 2008 and a lot has happened. I have edited music videos and behind the scene promos for both bands and business. Two of which were released on DVD. I was voted Evening Chronicle Young Reviewer of the Year. I have had my first travel article published in a local magazine. I got back into Photography and had pictures published in a number of magazines, including a National Geographic publication cover. And this year, quite incredibly, I am going to California to film and edit a short documentary. All this on top of buying a car, a house and holding down a well paid real job. But something has been missing, something I could never quite put my finger on.

I have decided to pick up where I left of and give writing another go. Not because its easy or even because its a hobby. I have wanted to write for TV for as long as I can remember. When we were at university and sat off shooting the s*** everyone admitted to wanting to be a director. But I didn’t, all I have ever wanted is to write, everything else I have done or am doing has been through good fortune. It’s time for me to get back to work.

So that was last year. The documentary was incredible and a ‘career’ hightlight that I don’t thick will ever be topped. However it’s time to dust off the pen once more.

And that feels good. I’m excited.

More to follow…

Skateboard Tetris is the balls

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:05:13 +0100

Skateboard Tetris is the balls

This insane photo was seen on Gizmodo

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:12:23 +0100

This insane photo was seen on Gizmodo

via rolandtiangco

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:47:16 +0100

via rolandtiangco

Moved

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:47:33 +0100

So I’ve moved. A considerable distance in north eastern terms. From the heady heights of Dunston with it’s brutalist Rocket,

and being stone’s throw from the cultural wasteland of the Metrocentre. All the way to the wind swept coastal town of South Shields. You will have seen it every year as the end of the Great North Run.

The town / finishing line is a tad Royston Vaey and lacks any kind of decent shopping experience, unless you fancy decking yourself out in clothes from River Island or Debenhams. Oh sorry, it’s a women only Debenhams, so I guess I’m out of luck. Or in luck, depending on your views on the fucking travesty that shop is.

King Street, the Champs Elyse’s of South Tyneside is a joy to behold. Let’s just say the majority of the shopping done in the awful stores on offer is fuelled squarely by pasties and certainly not by a quality education. Tragic and worrying in equal measure. It’s also sad that Shields it’s closer to Sunderland town centre than Newcastle, mainly because, Sunderland town centre is a fucking abortion that needs a late stage termination. Although the piece of shit Housing provider Gentoo would probably build yet more unnecessary flats on the land. Dabooka loves Gentoo and will happily tell you all about them. Go on drop him a line.

I do, however, have a swish new Asda on my doorstep and the Metro can quickly and efficiently transport me back to Gods country. You are taking your life in your hands travelling through Simonside past dusk. I am allowed to carry and use knives on public transport aren’t I?… you know… for protection.

What South Shields lacks in shopping, culture and ability to pronounce the word food correctly, (Fudd is Elmers’ surname, not something you eat. Enunciate people… Enunciate!) it more than makes up for in quality real ale boozers.

Real Ale is a bit of a passion of mine. I have had the joy of sampling the Great Beer Festival in Brussels a few years back, numerous trips to sample the alcoholic delights of Germany and visits to several Ale Festivals in the UK. I have yet to make it to the Great British Beer Festival held in London… mainly because I think it will kill me.

However, from my new riverside haunt I have the wonderful Alum Ale House less than a minutes stumble and within spitting distance, The Steamboat, The Riverside, The Rose and Crown and The Dolly Peel. All of the bars are purveyors of fantastic beers with several of them ranking highly in the Good Beer Guide. It’s a real treat to have well kept ale on tap literally on my doorstep, although my liver might disagree.

I have also discovered that the Alum Ale house will soon be holding Jazz and Blues nights, kicking off at 11pm and finishing at 5am. Eight real ales and a cavalcade of single malt whiskeys will be on offer to compliment the live music and inevitable booze induced coma.

It’s safe to say the nearby pubs are lovely with a great non threatening atmosphere. Unlike the majority of other pubs in Shields which seem to be populated with fucking idiots who have never seen outside of South Tyneside… or drank anything other than Fosters or Carling… the bunch of cunts!

I also have the Shields Ferry terminal a stones throw away and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the hostelries on the other side of the water. I know the Magnesia Bank is good but any other recommendations for pubs where an opinionated, long haired, glasses wearing mouth piece wouldn’t be stabbed would be gratefully received.

I also have just had the internets installed at the flat. Since I moved out and took up residence with the folks for quite a while I have only had my phone as a way of connecting to Skynet. Well no more!

Admittedly Virgin fumbled and fucked on like the incompetents we know they are. Mouthing off on Twitter got me a phone number and name of some one based in the north east which was refreshing… but he messed up my order as well.

In total it took a month… a month to get it all sorted… and even then they left me with a piece of shit Netgear router that didn’t work properly. Airport Express to the rescue, thank the Lord. So I now have 10 Meg broadband whizzing around my home… it’ll probably give my cancer but who cares when I have access to celebrity nip-slips and streamed music once more.

So, apart from being very poor, without access to anything other than a council gym and missing the ability of being able to walk into Newcastle. It’s all good. So perhaps this is the return to the blog that I promised a few months ago… but like… really.

Anyway it’s safe to say, to quote Tracy Jordon, I want to take the internet behind the bike sheds and get it pregnant… and that’s exactly what I intend to do…. in a manner of speaking.

My friend Sonny

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:37:01 +0100

My friend Sonny

Blogs

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:33:00 +0100

I’ve been pretty tardy of late. But it actually wasn’t my fault… no really. I have a post about it all. But…

Two of my friends have blogs I urge to stop looking at porn for… come on, you can do it.

Leonie

and

Andy

They post regular and everything. Check it!

My amazing new iPhone case. Currently winging it’s way to...

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:29:42 +0100

My amazing new iPhone case. Currently winging it’s way to me.

Made by the super talented Tovicorrie.

You think this is real Quaid? It is! via Printresting

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:18:38 +0100

You think this is real Quaid? It is!

via Printresting

M14A Pulse Rifle Replica. Yes please!

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:11:11 +0100

M14A Pulse Rifle Replica. Yes please!

NESynth. Yet another awesome app that I must own.

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:01:41 +0100

NESynth. Yet another awesome app that I must own.

Tattoos

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:56:00 +0100

So I had some more tattoos done. Here they just after having them done. I’ll have to get some photos taken not using the rubbish camera on my phone.

No more for a while I reckon… even though I have some more amazing ideas.

BIKES!

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:51:00 +0100

So I’m moving soon, more on that later but I intend to ride my bike into work whenever I can… be bothered. I am the proud owner of a Raleight Parkway Lite folder. It’s super light and super awesome.

Here I am looking very proud of my baby near the Baltic in Newcastle.

It’s a pretty simplistic affair and I hope to get a another ride once my work adopts the Cycle to Work scheme. Shit, that’s my responsibilty isn’t it. Anyway, I’d like a Racing bike if possible because I can’t be bothered with off-road riding and all the shiz that goes with it. As a result I’d like to get a tricked out bike if at all possible. It probably won’t happen as I’m a pretty lazy guy. My posting frequency should be testament to that.

The wonderful Make blog posted a link to this amazing site for people to show off their amazing bikes.

Click here to check that shit

Biznizz Cards

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:42:32 +0100

I all my ‘real’ jobs I have never used business cards. I think they are pretty pointless. I’m a fan of the Flickr Moo cards to leave dotted around the place, but your bog standard name and company gubbins doesn’t float my boat.

These however do.

Lego Business Cards. Awesome.

Get crafting motherfuckers

(via observando)

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:15:21 +0100

(via observando)

Normal service has been resumed

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:49:00 +0100

Is this thing on? Testing… check, one, two…

Can you hear me in the back?

Right, after a quick few posts over the weekend, I’m finally getting my shit pulled together and getting back into the swing of things after a long hiatus from the site.

I got a reminder that my .com address was due to lapse and that was the kick up the arse I needed to start thinking about the site again.

It’s been a quite a long time since I’ve written anything on here. There are several reasons but perhaps the most obvious is my recent change in circumstance. After twelve years my and my girlfriend split up. It was a trying time for the both of us and rendered me pretty incapable of even the simplest web posting… and washing myself. I digress.

Like most stand-up men put into this situation I moved back in with my folks. This rendered me essentially communicationless. Their home is served by a paltry 1Mb broadband connection. I could probably have done better with yoghurt pots and string. The walls of their property seemed to also shield my iPhone from picking up even the mearest sniff of a 3g connection. So my access to the internet has been…erm… slow and sporadic.

My white cat Charlie stayed with his mam. I miss him a lot. I now have a surrogate

Charlie in the form of my parents dog Lucy. It’s not quite the same. The threat of possible violence has been removed. I mean pet owners should be at least slightly afraid of their animal, shouldn’t they?

Also, my affliction of being unable to sit through even ten minutes of anything the airs on the ITV network means I have also been without television. My life has become like one of those castaway social experiment shows. But not based on some tropical Thai island.

I have even reverted to reading newspapers, which in all honesty is lovely, although not quite as fast paced as Twitter.

So it’s been a period of introspection. Introspection and tattoos. Some might say self immolation but in fact more of a cathartic experience that has proved to me I’m not such a wimp and ever so occasionally I can follow actually through on my ideas. Thanks to Em for her awesome tattoo design skills BTW.

I’ve had three sessions since February and I’m getting booked in for some more next month. I was recommended Kev Totton based out of the Tattoo Station by Minxlj. I owe her a great deal of thanks. It was her awesome tattoos and comment posts after I put up my New Years Resolution list, that give me the impetus to sort it out. Thank you : )

Sadly the New Years list has fallen by the wayside in light of recent events but I don’t think the resolution Gods will blame me. I intend to get a new list drawn up in the not too distant future to start working towards.

Re-invention? Perhaps. A more accurate description would probably be a list of things I’ve been too fucking lazy to do in recent years.

So, hopefully this marks the return to fold. Posting up countless links to products I like the look of, interesting / stupid flash videos and the odd photograph that I or others have taken. Sorry it’s been so long internet, I’ve missed you.

File under “Of Course!!!!” Seen on the wonderful...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:37:07 +0100

File under “Of Course!!!!”

Seen on the wonderful Make blog