*Deep inhale in*

*BIG BLOW OUT*

There. That was me just digitally blowing the digital dust and cobwebs off this blog.

*Cough cough!! Sneeze!*

Ooh, bugger, I just got some digital dust up my nose, and now there’s all digital snot down my shirt. Sorry about that.

I’ve been packed off to France. I’m in Lyon, for the opening of CARTOON MOVIE, the big event hosted by MEDIA. It’s a “co-production forum for European animated feature films.”

Yes, I have little idea what that means, yet, either. It’s my first time to one of these events. It’s also my first time to Lyon, and so, inevitably, the first thing I did was get lost. When I went up to a French man to ask for directions things played out like this:

Me: Excuse me, I’m lost. Do you speak English?

French Twat: Yes I do but I’d rather speak Spanish.

Me (thinks): I’m going to call you a twat on the internet later.

Kapow! Take that, Frenchie! (Naturally I actually replied with a simpering apology for not being able to speak Spanish either)

So anyway, I’m here. The sun is out and I’m lovely and toasty from my warm French welcome. Nothing too exciting has happened yet. I’ve been away already this week, and so I had to set off at 2.45am this morning, which is a bloody stupid time that nobody should ever have to wake up at. I flew into Amsterdam and then onto Lyon. The second flight was a smaller ’shuttle bus’ type flight, and was, I suspect, populated only by animators, as it was an odd mix of very shy and retiring types and a few ‘whacky, zany jokers’. Or ‘wankers’, for short. If I sound like I should cheer up and am being a miserable sod, I should remind you I’ve been up since 2.45am.

On the second part of the flight it turned out that I was sitting next to a twice Oscar nominated animation house owner. He very kindly bought me a coffee and introduced himself as Carl, and we had a good chat all the way into Lyon, me and Carl, my new mate Carl. We reached Carl’s hotel first, so I bade my new best friend Carl a big ‘Bye Bye Carl’ bye bye. Naturally the first thing I did when I got internet access was to look him up on Google and realised that his name is not Carl at all and I had heard it wrong and been using the wrong name all along.

Terry Gilliam is here, apparently, so I have my eyes open for any big feet that may suddenly appear from the sky and crush me. So far I have collected my ‘Welcome Pack’ – a black, shiny PVC bag with vaguely bondage-esque undertones, and with a strap that is slightly too short, like when your mum sends you too school on the first day with a pair of trousers on that you suspect are too short, but it’s not until you get to school and everyone laughs and calls you a twat for wearing too short trousers that you fully realise the full extent of the error.

However, my too short bondage bag contains all the information of the screenings and presentations of the event that I need to know, so I have spent much of the afternoon getting up to speed with events and trying to fit in. Now all I need is the address of the local S&M club for sado-machoists who have been dressed by their mums.

More news tomorrow. Proper news, too, I hope. This is more me just trying to get back into writing about stuff I’ve been up to, today. Thanks for indulging me. The program looks great and there are some really interesting projects in development and being pitched. Hopefully I’ll get to see a future biggie here…

(Incidentally, I know that blogs are old hat and everyone uses Twitter now, so if you find yourself getting bored of any of my postings and losing concentration, please read it 140 characters at a time before taking a break to look at some videos of cats on YouTube before returning to read another 140 character chunk. Also, try ignoring any vowels to help. Thnky)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Cartoon Movie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.