Please, give me some more boring action!

Tony Papin, aka Scotch&Penicillin, would deserve money, fame and eternal appreciation for his works. Tony Papin has been publishing handmade photocopied cartoon booklets for a long time and… he is still doing it, faithful to a "bits and pieces" spirit he seems to have invented and which can be summed up as "Formica and poetry", as a reviewer once put it.

Pop stars at the supermarket, comic by S&P

Tony Papin has an inimitable talent to depict everyday life and the minor truths –about love, about life, about the difficulty to put together the various parts of a bookshelf– that shape our minds and souls.
Cartoons have paved the way, displaying Scotch&Penicillin’s endowment for both drawing and writing and the blog has followed. Started a year ago, the Boring blog revolves around a "today" section, that keeps track of the author’s varied actions, which may be:
-"4th January 2007: Today… I counted my old pictures."
[comment: "And how many did you have?", Fred de Suède]
-"8th February 2007: Today… I took the bus and I had a leek pie."
[comment: "I hate taking the bus, but I love leek pie. So I think you are a half-lucky guy", Philomène.]
-"6th April 2007: Today… I went shopping and I reassembled the changing table."
[comment: "Do not forget the screw… otherwise crash, bang, wallop", Gwendal]
Note the hilarious comments left by the very inspired Boring addicts, who play a very large part in the overall quality of the blog and feed this deadpan, absurd cocktail of a universe. When you think most bloggers have to scratch their head everyday to find something worth telling –instead of the usual "Nothing much to say [I hate myself for starting a blog and condemning myself to acknowledge publicly the emptiness of my life"… When all you need is talent!
The talent to initiate something different, sometimes very conceptual indeed –see the videos and pictures of antennas, garage doors– but, in the case of Scotch&Penicillin, always imbued with a mild irony and a feeling of closeness which make you feel deeply part of the human kind.

Antennas and highways...

Tony Papin has just published a guide to success and money under a pen name, John-Harvey Marwanny, chairman of the imaginary Marwanny Corporation. A book which obviously scoffs at today’s "steps to success" and other coaching advice. Tony Papin doesn’t need such support, he has already got all it takes to be a winner and if you do not believe me, go to:
http://penicillin.free.fr/
http://boring.canalblog.com/
(funnier if you can read French)

Automatic body dancing club

Every other Thursday, it’s playtime at Le Baron, the hippest club in Paris. A happy band of cranks gathers to attend a brand new type of recreation: the Automatic Body Dancing Club initiated by Michel Vedette. A hobby from the 4th dimension that seduces more and more participants, eager to meet the master and catch a glimpse of the truth about dancing…
For dancing does not mean moving about in a graceful way, nor displaying sexy, smooth steps, as you may have thought, no no no… Dancing means freeing your body from the pressure of society and finding a new dignity in your own creativity. A militant club, then, which could have been inspired by that crazy–?– dancer staged by Spike Jonze for FatBoy Slim's track "Praise you".
Everyone has the right to dance and especially the right to dance badly. Of course, Michel is here to provide the basics and to help you take the plunge into bad dancing: 12 choreographies, the most famous one being "the Cruiser" where bad dancers take the cheesy posture of a guy on holiday driving his car with the windows open and his elbow rested on the car door. Nothing but high class. And accessible to everyone: as Michel puts it, "80% of the people on the planet live below the dancing poverty line; I am here to redistribute the riches".
Note : you do not have to wear the same tacky suits as Michel Vedette –"Vedette" being an old-fashioned French word for star– to join in the deliberate ridiculousness and have a good laugh.
As the prophet says "Chorus corpus veritas"– which, of course, does not mean anything at all.
http://profile.myspace.com/michelvedette
http://www.broncafilms.com/abdc.html

"Miiiii...chel Vedette!"

Flyer for the Easy Porn session

Uncovering letters

Julien Prévieux is a French artist whose current activity is to expose the growing standardization at work in our civilized society: while most companies are publishing brochures explaining their intent to "give meaning and to connect people", politically correct attitudes, corporate language and representations are overtaking simple good sense and transforming people into timorous robots unable to address one another without resorting to the established formula.

The best example of this is, of course, the world of multinationals, which communicates through corny pictures –embodying for instance "team work" in a bunch of smiling, multicultural professionals gathered around a computer. "Today was hard, deadlines were hard to keep but we made it!".

Following this spirit, job ads are obviously a good terrain to explore the tacit rules of corporate language. Julien Prévieux goes beyond observation and… replies to authentic job ads. Pretending they are addressed to him personally, he explains why he has to decline the job: low wages, too distant offices, the bad reputation of the company or simply the appalling layout of the job ad. Assuming various characters –from the incompetent anaesthetist to the paranoid who won’t work on data bases–, he takes corporate rhetoric literally, compelling Human Resources executives to send obtusely polite answers.
As most graduates put their effort into finding the perfect layout that will make their résumé stand out and looking for the sentence that will convince their potential dictator boss, Julien Prévieux writes to a company producing electronic components:
"My white suit and my two legs enable me to walk, climb the stairs and carry objects. With a "on" function and a 2km/hour speed in straight line, I feel competent enough to carry out the task you are offering me."
And to a chain superstore:
"I think you made a mistake in the job ad you published: "and you want to succeed"… "you earn 65% of minimum wages for 6 to 9 months". I do not see the connection between an apparently overflowing desire to succeed and so insignificant a salary. A misprint must have occurred in the text"
The brilliance of the project is that, in the context of general underemployment in France, the "non motivation" letters state the refusal to be a victim: an eye for an eye, do not hesitate to voice your rejection of such supervised nonsense, use it, divert it and have fun!
http://www.previeux.net/