My next blogs will be about my fave band , The Beatles

Pinoy Comedian, Rex Navarrete ????

As a Brit I really do not have an awareness of many other comedians outside the UK with the exception of the def jam comics, who I only know of because of their appearances in many high profile movies. Besides we English find it very difficult to laugh at much humour that is not British.
However as I was busy trying to find music, traditional and modern, from the Philippines, so I could burn a couple of discs for the wife, I stumbled across this Pinoy comic, who is really funny. I had never heard of this guy before, and I was under the impression that Philippine Comedians were not a saleable commodity outside of the Philippines. Navarrete is definately the exception to the rule, not only is he extremely funny but as a Catholic Filpino he is not afraid to have a poke at whatever comes his way. Since I stumbled upon this guy I have done a little research into him and it seems that he has a very large following especially with the Pinoys of the United States and others too. He appears to have cornered a niche in the entertainment business and called it his own. His American-Filipino style of humour sends me into chortling fits of laughter as you can recognize exactly who he is taking a swipe at. Even the wife thinks he is funny, and thats a first I really did think that she was a little short on the humour front. Please click on these links to hear the man in action I haven chose just a couple to whet the appetite.

Rex Navarette - Grandpa.mp3

Rex Navarette - Filipino Moms.mp3

Rex Navarette - Bad Christian.mp3

When I am waiting!!!

I have 5 children, Chris who is 15, Mart-Jay who is 13, Brad-Leigh who is 11, Kurtis who is 5 and Ben who is nearly 3. Five boys...!!!!...Having children as everybody knows is very time comsuming everthing we do has to revolve around the kids. All our tasks have to fit in with their routines. Marty, does Taekwondo and Football, Chris does Football and badminton, Brad does basketball and kurtis does street dancing. So yes you've guessed it it is time for dad's taxi to come out, I spend more time inside the car than I do inside the house and therefore it is a little time to doodle, on the back of petrol receipts. The following are aprime example of the type of doodle I do in five minutes or less. They do actually show the type of mood I am in also at the time of doing the doodle.

Coming more up to date

With the advent of television to the masses we saw more and more cartoon characters coming to our screens and actually moving no longer were they two dimensional peices of artwork, but real works of 3 dimensionalart which was now part of the movie world, where millions of dollars are invested yearly to develop better and more sophisticated cartoons. The bog standard illustrator as brilliant as he was has now been replaced by a computer whizzkid who can generate life like imagery without hving to put pencil to paper. For instance toy story, small soldiers, nemo, shark tale and even more recently Robots.....Until this production technique was utilised , probably the best and most realistic cartoon was in fact the original Lord of The Rings. I make no apologies for the next batch of cartoons they are my drawings, created from my own hand, however they are copies of originals. I enjoyed drawing them nevertheless.

Before my Time......Really

During the fifties the types of comics and books that the children read were all about cowboys , fighting and all the illustrations are somewhat darker than those of the sixties and seventies, when I say dark I mean much more sinister than the fantasy based, lighter illustrations of their later countrparts. Her again I have attempted to capture the ethos to that particular style.

Cartoon Styles

When I was a boy, living in a village 4 miles north of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, I dreamt of being a footballer (Soccer player to the non educated!!!). I used to have comics and read the story lines about a star striker or a world class goalkeeper or even the greatest team that ever was assembled in print. The cartoon type illustrations were a massive step up from those in the dandy and the Beano, not to mention topper, I thought I said not to mention that comic. Anyhow there were many comics that portryed the boyhood dream of rags to riches, being a famous footballer. The most famous of these was probably Roy of the Rovers, there were many more. These next drawings are a tribute to the illustrators of those comics.

one of my greatest loves regarding artwork is the artwork that was produced in the 19th century for publications such as Punch and London Illustrated and such like. I really like the way these victorian satirists, most of them anonymous, draw with such simplicity yet the final product looks so complex. The way they feature other countries as beasts raelly do drive home the fact that Britain was an imperialist nation and that in the mind of the Brit nobody was as good and that this small Island really did rule the waves. whether or not, it did or in truth maybe didn't, is in fact irrelevant. As I am discussing the illustrators and not the history of England. These people were employed to take risks for the sake of journalism many of their satirical quips were aimed at the politions of the day and were very cutting even by today's standards. I feel that they convey a time taht was dark, hence the darkened effect that each illustration presents itself. I have attempted to reproduce that era with some ideas of my own and attemted to copy that style which is so unique. I hope you enjoy looking at them as I ENJOYED CREATING THEM.

Let's have another go at OFCOM

Can a man take anymore...Well yes he can Bt is actually a wonderful company to work for I am really happy there but it is nice to take the piss every now and again

And finally lets take the piss out of me

More on Compliance

I was feeling sorry for one particular employee we all have them, yes it's the security guard. I don't need to describe him I will let the drawing do that. Best viewed large

Let's have a go at the company as a whole

This one is a take on the carrier pre select service and the competition it has with BT

Our regulatory body or watchdog is called OFCOM they make all the rules and regs which appear to restrict BT but give greater powers to the other companies, our competitors. The next series is my view on this

This is how it looked from our point of view

Another satirical view at Customer options vs Broadband

Talking about broadband I am part of a team that was put together primarily to win back customers from other communications companies whether they are carrier pre selection, cable, Wholesale Line Rental, Local Loop Unbundling etc. We were doing a great job until it was realised that another way to bring back customer was through broadband. So a Broadband team was actually set up , it felt like at our expense, so the next series of artwork is based around this scenario. we lost our office space to this team.

Another compliance feature at BT is the Internet Indicator, basically a statement which asks whether or not the customer is, has or intends to use the internet with us. The fact that the xcustomer has rung us ad has mentioned the internet/broadband isn't enough to us to have to ask the customer if he is going to use it. Imagine phoning the chinese takeaway and them saying to you are you intnding to eat it now, not at all or are you thinking about it. Just doesn't make sense, People have been sacked for not using the Internet Indicator

For weeks I had been calling the bonus manager an ape because I felt that his job must have been paying him peanuts as the bonus was never calculated correctly, if at all sometimes, or we would be given something only to have it taken back again. These drawings however mysteriously disappeared, nobody would own up to it, to this day I still have not got a clue who stole them. Obviously somebody with something to hide...Anyway then I decided to lay off the bonus manager as I felt it was probably sruel to call him an ape the gorillas did not like it. So I portrayed him as the corporate Clown, Sorry Circus folk.

I am totally in favour of the saying "If it ain't broken then don't fix it" We often have that scenario, We go into work and the software has changed which then means we probaly cannot log onto our bonus or some other important area.

At work we have to be compliant in every single way we cannot denegrade the opposition no matter how awful we feel they have been to the customer we must say every script accurately without adlib. To make sure this is enforced there are people employed to listen in to your conversations and there are mystery shoppers, who will place ambiguous orders to attempt to trip you up. This is my satirical view on The Compliance enforcers I call them earwiggers

I work for a huge communications company called British Telecom. All these drawings aare a satirical view of life as an employee of BT. However, let me explain, these scenarios can happen in any large coporate institution. It just so happens that I can only draw, pardon the pun, on experience. May I say that these drawings do not relate to any individual employee but to a number of employees that I have worked with, if you do see yourself in the characters depicted in this next series of drawings, let me say just one thing........TOUGH, .. .. .. YOU POOR PERSON !..

... ... ....This pic below is entitled..................................... "Mum !!!!.. .. I want the toilet, I can't hold it any longer"