The Fractal Hall Journal

A few bits and pieces that aren’t big enough to survive on their own. Here they huddle together for warmth, fighting against the cold, unforgiving winter nights.

The Brown M&Ms

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the Van Halen post from a few weeks ago.

Fractal Films: Ratatoille (2007)

Pixar films have kind of got a bit stale for me. I liked the first two Toy Storys (Toy Stories?), thought A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. were alright, found The Incredibles to be a bit pedestrian, and really disliked Finding Nemo. Didn’t bother with Cars. So I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Very funny and very well animated (pixels have never been so expressive), the film works mainly through a surprisingly strong plot.

In terms of atmosphere, it’s the most Disneylike of all of John Lasseter’s stuff, and while not as good as director Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant it has some exceptionally good design work going on. Paris looks like Paris, and there are some very effective visual interpretations of how flavour works, conceived (I think) by Canadian cartoonist, comic creator and animator Michel Gagné. I dare you to watch this film and not get hungry. The end credits, while not the usual fake outtakes, are still worth watching for what looks like exceptionally pretty traditional animation.

But the best bit isn’t the actual feature, but the animated short that precedes it: a dialogue-free sequence where a trainee alien abductor tries to get a sleeping man out of his house. Easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this year.

Fractal Furlough: Bill Bailey – Tinselworm, Cardiff International Arena, 21.11.07.

I lied, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen this year. What impresses isn’t just how good a comedian he is, but the breadth of his musical talent. In terms of pure entertainment, you can’t do any better. Worth the ticket price just for his Emo track about a self-harmer in Starbucks:

The only way/The only way that you will see me/Is if I cut myself/And bleed on your panini.

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The Police gig I mentioned last week reminded me of a story in Dave Lee Roth’s autobiography, Crazy From The Heat. It’s a great refutation of the infamous M&Ms tale, the one that defines the out-of-control rockstar rider.

The version everyone’s heard is something like this: Van Halen’s backstage rider demands that Roth be provided with a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out. Then he finds a brown one, freaks out and causes thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Roth’s version is a little different. During Van Halen’s heyday, they were carting around a ludicrous amount of technology in an army of trucks. Sound systems, lighting systems, smoke and fire machines, and, at one point, a giant microphone that Roth rode on as it flew around above the audience. All this took a long time to set up and break down, and came with an enormous rider that detailed all the things the venue staff had to do to set up this equipment, and all the safety checks that had to be completed.

Roth thought that the detail would get ignored, and that if something was overlooked he’d find himself hurtling head first into the floor at high speed clutching a giant prop between his thighs. As a sneaky double-check, in the middle of the huge list of technical instructions he requested the M&M bowl, knowing that if a bowl didn’t turn up or that if there were brown sweets in it, the venue’s management hadn’t payed close enough attention to the safety list.

So, one day he gets a bowl with brown M&Ms in it and gets into a shouting match with management, who eventually convince him to go on anyway. He does, and because the safety checks weren’t done properly something catches fire and causes a lot of damage, which the papers misreport as being due to his tantrum over a ridiculous contractual request involving chocolates.

I did a quick check of the rider repository at The Smoking Gun, but they don’t have any classic era Van Halen documents. I’ve no idea if Roth is telling the truth or if he’s justifying the rider after the fact. I hope it’s true, for no other reason the satisfying nuts-and-bolts practicality.

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