Saturday, August 26, 2006

Avatar Of The Week!

We interrupt this edition of The Late Raymond Williams Show to bring you exciting news from the world of, errr, I dunno, the carnivalesque production of the self in disembodied space or something, otherwise known as my new Avatar Of The Week award!

This week's award goes to last.fm user and Swamptrash fan hdickins, who may or may not look a bit like this:


Who knew the chance articulation of fruit and lego could be so entertaining?

30 comments:

Sean McManus said...

A work of genius! I wonder if he's French, since he's wearing a berry. Hee hee.

Dave said...

Dash! Sean said it before me.

GreatSheElephant said...

reminds me of my one and only perm

realdoc said...

I always liked redheads

Billy said...

Brilliant!

Del said...

He's obviously the fruity one from the Village People.

James Henry said...

'Flego'

Molly Bloom said...

Brilliant. I love this. I've always liked the idea of Lego 'clip-on' hair. Someone should patent it. We used to put it on backwards for jolly.

It's CARWASH!

Molly Bloom said...

I enjoyed reading your dissertation piece as well...thankyou for sharing it. It was interesting that you hinted at it 'all being taken away'...I often think this is a precarious place and wonder whether it will always be here. I hope my little beanster reads mine and thinks 'What a nutter!'

Re your 'dumbing' down comment...I know I go on about it..but I'm not even harking back to the 'owld' days. I'm not sure there was a particularly 'high' expectation even then. I think you're right...people think it was 'better' then...but not necessarily so. I just hate the way that it is frowned upon that people do have intelligence. It's great that you are sharing your ideas...this is just one example of someone being proud of what they've done. I like it. I think we should share more stuff like this.

I hope this doesn't sound like a 'firing off' - it's actually a joyful comment. Sometimes the words come across wrongly on the page. I admire the mixture of difference (pronounced in the Francais way!) - just look at that marvellous juxtaposition - wow! High-art nuzzling up against the Lego avatar. It's just excellent. I love it.

Molly Bloom said...

I don't like it when you get a hairy bit of raspberry in your mouth.

patroclus said...

Way to go Molly with the eclectic commenting!

On my walk this morning it struck me that this here avatar is a great example of the very thing that my new best friend Michel De Certeau and his cronies were going on about (actually I think it was Fiske, he's my new best mate too) when he/they said that people create stuff all the time, but no one sees it because it doesn't have a dedicated place where it can exist, so it's all transient.

Without the 'participatory Web' (aka Web 2.0, aka user-generated content) and digital photography, not very many people would have known that hdickins had put half a raspberry on a lego man's head. And the world would have been a slightly poorer place for not knowing. So this is what I mean about the web (in the guise of blogging) making grass-roots cultural production visible and permanent.

Anonymous said...

Pertinent to another conversation entirely, but I just thought you should know that I was dancing at a club last night with some friends, when 'Golden Brown' by the Stranglers came on. Seasoned dancers all, we immediately found difficulty dancing to this piece, and had to improvise a kind of marionette / pantomine horse movement to cope with it. At first we thought it was down to the harpsichord and it's strangeness, but then I realised the piece is in 3/4! No wonder most pop music avoids this time signature - it forces the kids to dance like marionettes.

Tim F said...

Why didn't you just waltz?

Taiga the Fox said...

Is that raspberry blonde hair?

Billy said...

I can't see a harpsichord without playing Golden Brown on it. (This has only happened twice)

Marimbas inspire a blast of Under My Thumb.

patroclus said...

Taiga: it is nothing of the sort. It is, of course, framboise blond.

Lorna said...

Of course, he could alternate it with a blackberry or possibly a bilberry, to suit his mood...

patroclus said...

Oo! I have lego men (there is a more technical term, I believe), and a bowl of blackberries!

*some moments later*

Hmm, the blackberry has less of an internal cavity, but I've just stuck a half-chewed one on to the head of a lego ghost wielding a magnifying glass, and the result made me giggle. Of course I have no camera, so my experiment in secondary production will have to remain Fiskeanly unobserved.

Lorna said...

I'd pay good money to see a blackberry-clad lego ghost!

cello said...

I knew it was Mac, what with the leather jacket and all. Blackberries for Guy, a sloe for Caroline and maybe a lychee for Joanna.

Tim F said...

And a little sliver of black olive for Dr Alan Statham.

Spinsterella said...

"I have lego men"

Care to explain?

patroclus said...

Yes, well, *cough*, I'm quite fond of lego as it happens.

Is this the point at which I admit that not only do I have lego men (and, er, kits and stuff), but also that it's mainly Harry Potter lego?

Yup, there goes all my cred. Again.

Smat said...

but we have the gay hairdresser lego men with the ice cream parlour, which beat your Harry Potter lego men.

patroclus said...

I was wondering what happened to the gay hairdresser lego men with the ice cream parlour! They were great!

Heather said...

I have Harry Potter lego too Patroclus. There's no shame. Except when I couldn't put the Knightbus together because I'd lost the instructions and I'm too thick to figure out where all the bits go. Then there is shame. It's meant for a 5 year old for gods sake!

Tim F said...

I have it on good authority that Molly has James Joyce lego.

rach said...

I have some very bizarre cavemen lego (Mr Caveman, Mrs Caveman (wearing a rather fetching tooth necklace) and two little cavemen). It seems to go with some dinosaur duplo, but as I've acquired it via some random Dutch cousins, anything is possible. Might be improved by a little fruit hairdressing - any suggestions?

Tamburlaine said...

Albert can't dance to Golden Brown because, although much of it is in 3/4 time, the opening verses are in a mixture of 3/4 and 4/4 (3 bars of 3/4 and 1 bar of 4/4, I think). So there's an extra beat every so often that you aren't expecting.

Money by Pink Floyd, is also difficult to dance to, as most of that (apart from the long guitar solo) is in 7/8.

Love the flego: I want one!

Occasional Poster of Comments said...

Wearing a beret like that you'd think he'd have some Prince tracks on his last.fm list.