In the interests of getting all the potential Avengers jokes out of my head before the ever-speedy progress of the pop-culture zeitgeist renders them null and void, here's a bit more movie-inspired whimsy. And this time with extra pointy things...





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"If the Avengers are the Partridge Family, Nick Fury is Reuben Kincaid." – Joss Whedon

When I first read the above quote, my retro-infused imagination immediately seized upon the words "the Avengers are the Partridge Family" and the following thing is what popped out.




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For viewers who are too young to remember the Partridge Family and therefore don't know the relevance of the little birdies, here's the title sequence so you can sing along!

In the interests of lavishing some Avengers attention on characters other than Loki, here's the Black Widow explaining the possible rationale behind her weapons of choice. (I confess, I am recycling a remark I made in response to a comment on my Avengers review but I promise I won't sue myself for self-plagiarism.)





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I'm still unsure as to whether I'll do a full set of mini-Avengers, but as you can see, I'm trying to encourage myself by drawing them one at a time, which feels less like hard work...

To those of my readers who have no interest in The Avengers in any form, I apologize. But if my imagination has found a fannish oasis in the wilderness of Waiting For Any Decent TV To Come On, I may as well drink deeply from its cheaply intoxicating waters.

The following was inspired by a quote from an article in USA Today:

"Hiddleston explains that as Loki's anger grows, so do his horns. 'It’s all that jealousy. It might be a crazy analogy, but the more Pinocchio lies, the bigger the nose gets. And the more Loki's pain and rage expand, the bigger the horns get. Also, they just look more badass. By The Avengers 3, I’ll be like a magic elk.'"

Well, Mr Hiddleston, if you want to be a magic elk, far be it from me to stop you.




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Some Avengers-inspired silliness for you, and thus containing very mild Avengers spoilers.

If Thor uses Th'Oréal, I thought that Loki deserved his own haircare range. Well, not so much deserved as demanded, in a petulant toddler-demigod-diva sort of way.

( LOKI hair products: how desperate are you for great-looking hair? )

On one of my occasional sorties in search of new fannish thrills, I went to see The Avengers, or as it's ambitiously known in British cinemas, Marvel Avengers Assemble Somewhere Convenient And Complain That No One Is Going Actually Call It By This Title, Now Are They, Of Course They Aren't, Don't Be Ridiculous.





Short review: it's lots of jolly fun and I enjoyed it heartily.

If, however, you're in the market for a longer review (it contains some SPOILERS for the movie, but I've used LJ spoiler cuts to hide the most egregious of them from casual readers), then ( come beneath this cut, puny mortals... )

According to this interview in the New York Times (see page 2), Benedict Cumberbatch has seen my post about the otters who look like him, and says they are “brilliant” and “fantastic”.

That noise you can hear is me fainting very, very loudly.

Most people blunder round this city, and all they see are streets and shops and cars.

When you walk with me, however, you see things and think "Hmm, I could probably turn THAT into a piece of Sherlock-related internet whimsy, couldn't I?" As the following only goes to prove:





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Whoops, I seem to have acquired the nasty habit of posting quick silliness to my Tumblr and neglecting my LJ, with the vague hope that I shall return when I have something more substantial to say. Apparently I forgot that I never have anything substantial to say.

Anyway, I've decided that if something's good enough for Tumblr, it might as well go here as well. The first picture below is a genuine London street sign (it's near Baker Street). The second pic is simply the image that pops into my head whenever I see it:







Here's the Tumblr link for all your reblogging needs.

By the way, I originally tried to take the photo a few weeks back, but couldn't because the street sign in question had been stolen! (It's now been replaced, as the photo proves.) In fact, there were originally two signs, one on either side of the street, and they'd BOTH been nicked, presumably by some over-enthusiastic Sherlock fan with criminal tendencies. Or maybe just a drunken student, it's hard to deduce. In any case, I'm pretty sure that this is why we can't have nice things and would write a stern letter to The Times about it, if only I didn't have three thousand sillier things to do....

Viewers, you catch me at a moment of great performance anxiety. You see, I really ought to do SOMETHING to follow up Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch and hopefully capitalize on its unexpected success before it passes unceremoniously into the wastelands of internet history, but what should it be?

Since the two most appealing elements of the original concept are a) otters and b) Benedict Cumberbatch, I know I can't justifiably remove either of those from the equation.* However, I've looked long and hard into the remaining alternatives and I'm afraid the results are far from promising...

Ten Doomed Ideas For A Sequel To "Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch"

1. Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch And The Women Who Love Them
Self-help book that gently explains how to deal with unrequited yearning for any cute thing that you can't have, whether that's a playful water-dwelling mammal or an atttractively cheekboned British actor.

2. Otters Who Cook Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Recipe book. Includes 101 things to do with a herring and tips for opening a can of sardines when you don't have opposable thumbs.

3. Otters Who Cluck Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Surreal storybook for children, in which Benedict Cumberbatch hangs around a farmyard and tries to teach otters to do chicken impersonations for no reason that can be rationally explained.

4. Otters Who Pluck Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Sequel to the above, in which Benedict, giddy with the unprecedented success of the chicken impressions, ambitiously attempts to train the otters to play pizzicato violin.

5. Otters Who Luge Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Extreme sports action: it's man against mammal, sliding feet first down a mountain on a tea tray. Who survives?

6. Otters Who Look Both Ways Before Crossing The Road Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Road safety campaign, with otters as the 21st century's answer to Tufty the Squirrel and Benedict as the new Green Cross Code Man.

7. Otters Who Look Good Naked Like Benedict Cumberbatch
TV makeover show, in which Benedict encourages timid viewers to cast off their clothing and sally forth covered only by a couple of discreetly positioned otters.

8. Otters Who Look Back In Anger Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Riveting kitchen-sink drama, the drama being caused mainly by the fact that Benedict can't get the otters to stay in the bloody sink.

9. I Know What Otters Who Look Benedict Cumberbatch Looked Like Last Summer
Horror movie in which an evil version of Benedict Cumberbatch trains otters to commit gruesome murders, because no one will ever suspect those innocent whiskery little faces.

10. Otters Who Should Be So Lucky (Lucky, Lucky, Lucky), Otters Who Should Be So Lucky Like Benedict Cumberbatch
Reworking of the Kylie Minogue hit that makes up in sheer relentlessness what it lacks in musicality, scansion and compassion for humanity. What a shame that the UK Eurovision entry for 2012 has already been decided, otherwise we might have a winner...

* So if anyone was waiting avidly for Pygmy Marmosets Who Look Like Tom Hiddleston, I can only apologize for the disappointment.