Chuck Norris
I’m half-Irish which means that certain character traits are mine to behold. I love bread and potatoes and consider any meal without them to be punishment. This means I can’t go on the Atkins Diet. I’m argumentative and always up for a fight if there’s one going. I’m also as stubborn as a mule. When I make my mind up on something there is nothing on the face of the planet that can get me to change my mind. So imagine my surprise when I was flicking through the channels yesterday and happened upon an informercial for the Total Gym. Okay, that bit isn’t that surprising so far but bear with me. It was a typical informercial: look what you get! look what it can do! look how it increases your sexual attractiveness to women! look how it wins Nobel prizes for literature! Occasionally, I’ll watch one of these things from start to finish looking out for unintentional funnies but at no point ever have I felt any compulsion to pick up the phone. But yesterday was different. You see, the Total Gym was being sold by Chuck Norris! As I watched I became convinced that I wanted a Total Gym. As I’ve stated before I can’t go on the Atkins Diet. More importantly, I wouldn’t want to go on any diet. Cut down on food? But … food tastes nice. Why the hell would I want to cut down on it? Madness! Which leaves just cosmetic surgery, mind transfer to a better host, and exercise as my only solutions to the problem we call "Mr Stomach." Cosmetic Surgery Have you ever seen liposuction being performed? I have. If you haven’t and have some idea that plastic surgeons perform microscopic miracles using high-tech surgical impliments, pristine gowns, nanobots, and machines that go bing! then prepare yourself for a shock. The patient is rendered unconscious using whatever method is covered by your health insurance/national health service (lullabies, cosh, plastic bag, Nytol, whiskey, gas, or injection) and an incision is made on the side of the stomach. Into this cut a long-handled wallpaper scraper is inserted. Here is where the surgeon’s skill is really used: it’s important to scrape away at the fatty buildup inside the stomach and not scrape away at anything else such as an intestine, a colon, or a testical. The scraping is not a gentle action. Think about using a wirewool brush to remove baked beans left in a saucepan over a hot weekend and you’re halfway there. The loose blubber is then vacuumed out using a Dyson cyclone cleaner after which the vacuum is sold as...
Warriors, come out to play-ee-ay
So, Paramount will be remaking (that’s industry code for "not spending any time coming up with new ideas when old ones are ripe for butchering") 1979 classic – despite what my girlfriend says – The Warriors. Dear God, Please smite Hollywood, Sincerely, Mark. Here’s an article about it and here’s a quote from the article with some of my own emphasis: [The new and ruined] version will follow the outline of the first film — in which a gang leader is assassinated during a truce, and The Warriors, wrongly accused of the assassination, must make their way home through hostile gang territories — while updating the heightend (sic) reality of the original film for contemporary audiences Cold shivers should be on their way to you now. Let me know if you don’t receive yours. How can you make a film about gangs in any way contemporary when gangs aren’t a problem in modern life? Possible suggestions include: the Warriors, a "gang" of scouts selling cookies are wrongly accused of not helping an old lady across the road and must make it back to wherever the hell scouts go at the end of the day avoiding girl guides and busloads of foreign exchange students, the Warriors, a "gang" of stockbrokers are wrongly accused of insider-trading and must make it out of their skyscraper avoiding accountants, angry shareholders, evil corporations intent on takeovers, and cleaning women, the Warriors, a "gang" of peewee ice hockey players are wrongly accused of being rubbish and must make it through to the playoffs avoiding being beaten and any accusations that the film is The Mighty Ducks. We can’t know for sure until the "new" script is written (believed to be starting over the weekend, scheduled to finish on Monday) but some pre-production shots have been leaked already that might give some clues as to what a contemporary remolestation of the film might look like: Original – Cyrus addresses the gangs Remake – Barney addresses the gangs Original – the mysterious DJ keeping everyone up-to-date with current gang news and traffic reports on the hour. Remake – lolz txt...
Albums a-go-go!
People frequently stop me on the street and say "Mark, you’re so hip, you’re so now, you’re the man I wish I had been, you’re no longer under investigation for running a white slavery ring, you’re practically poured into those jeans, you’re in the way, you’re gonna die in the flames of hell for all eternity for what you did to my alsatian" and then follow it up with "but what is the real you really like?" and I laugh in their faces because it’s all true but I have no desire to let anyone into knowing the real me and having that desire triggers off my giggle gland. But people – in addition to the all-pervasive odour – are inquisitive and persistant and I have grown tired of the involuntary chortling. So, by way of a compromise and with a quick check around for non sequiturs – we appear to be clear – I’ve had a hunt through my record collection and pulled out albums that I think will help explain my inner workings without me actually having to do much myself. Observe the scans, read the reviews, and conclude what you will. Kros Kris – Trapped In Moscow Zoo This was the Russian duo’s follow-up album to the hugely successful (in Kazakhstan) debut Deffer Than Gorky which you may remember as it featured the dance anthem Jump, Or Be Shot As A Spy. Their second album dropped most of the hip-hop beats and Americanisms that had gained them a cult following among young soviet boys and embraced the concept of the concept album using orchestral arrangements, choral backing, and samples of wild animals to appeal to a wider and hopefully more-evenly-spaced-among-the-sexes audience. It bombed. Kros Kris consisted of Alexei "Mack Tolstoy" Finlandia and Viktor "Tolstoy Mack" Stolichnaya. Their record company dropped them after disappointing sales of Trapped In Moscow Zoo and both boys returned to their pre-music-career jobs as cinema ushers. I bought this album in 1997 as the concept behind it appealed to me. At the time I had been planning a daring heist on Marwell Zoo which involved releasing the caged beasts as a distraction. After listening to Tolstoy Mack’s quivering, childlike voice on "Please Don’t Let The Penguins In The Storeroom" my conscience refused to let me go ahead with my plan and I started a timeshare business instead. Various Artists – Stars Of Lithuania NME said: "K-Tel have done it again and produced the definitive album of up-and-coming and well-established and disappeared-suddenly music stars of Lithuania. From the erotic ballad ‘Plastik 69’ by pop duo Sisters Volvo through to the hard-rocking, upbeat, angry...
I am not Jimmy Osmond
Anni wanted to see pictures of me. Anni is a deranged a dangerous person. I wouldn’t normally give such a request more than a passing thought before shooting it down in flames with a sharp and witty retort but … I have seen pictures of her and, well, I haven’t been updating as much recently and, well, hell, why not? The only problem is that there aren’t many photos of me and I’m terribly shy. We’ll have to do with some old pictures and a bit of artistic licence mixed with photoshoppery goodness if that’s okay. Here goes: I’ve had to watermark these images. I’d hate for them to get out and be mistaken for other people. Aged somewhere between 1 and 4 (I can’t tell how old kids are even when I’m the kid in question) and the only person in my household with a clean driving licence. Still got it. This early introduction to cars and jumpers with skiing patterns on them helped see me safely through the transitional period of puberty later in life and helps to explain why I couldn’t care less about cars (I own a Punto for Christ’s sake!) and why skiing holds no appeal at all. That picture above really was me. The picture below really – I swear – is me too. I wouldn’t make this up. Nobody would make this up. It’s hard to believe that I’m a fashion guru now, setting trends all over the place, advising Derek Zoolander on new looks, and helping Jean Paul Gaultier out when he’s stuck for wacky ideas when this was the start in life my parents gave me. Tartan from the MacShitstain clan in a delightful juxtaposition with horizontal stripes of red and blue: why, it’s a bloody miracle that nobody has tried to copy this look since the seventies! It’s possible that having the picture taken above is one of the reasons that from this point on there aren’t any of me without two fingers raised or my hand conveniently in front of my face. Or my life is a lie and I’m a robot with a badly-constructed past. Or it could be a coincidence. In any event you’ll just have to take my word for it that I simply grew to resemble Little Jimmy Osmond from this point onwards. For many years I looked just like the photo below: I refused to appear in colour. Extrapolating from this point we can see that I must still clearly bear some form of resemblance to the smallest of the Osmonds in big form. So you’ll have to use you imagination and picture...
Pool
I’ve been insanely busy which is very similar to normal busy but has delusions and danger thrown in for free. If you don’t believe me you can ask Joanna, the mechanical hamster that lives among the sentient wax in my left ear. He’ll complain about having a girl’s name and you’ll need to have a good grasp of Swedish and semaphore to comprehend his responses but, if pestered enough, he’ll confirm that my busy levels have been hovering above the insane level for about five days now. That’s over a month in dog years. When I’ve had a smidgeon of free time recently I’ve crawled into the chair in my living room and flicked on the television. Sport helps me relax. Well, watching sport helps me relax. Partaking in sport helps me sweat and I don’t need any help sweating thankyou very much. Damned armpits. Why can’t we sweat internally and then excrete it out later through a nozzle in the belly button? It would rust belly button rings and might persuade women with guts that extend past their waistline to damn well stop wearing cropped tops and these are good things. Why would God invent sweat glands, then invent t-shirts, then invent anti-perspirant deodorant. That. Does. Not. Work? Does that make any sense Joanna? Oh, good point … The sports that currently have my undivided attention during the near-catatonia that follows in the wake of the insane busying are football and pool. The Copa America is taking place over in Peru at the moment and the World Pool Championship is being held this year in Taiwan. If you’re unsure where Peru and Taiwan are then let me explain: they’re on the other side of the planet. Bloody timezones. When Joanna and I take over the world everyone will move to Greenwich Mean Time and a series of space mirrors and space umbrellas will ensure we all get the same amount of daylight and night at the same time. Now, I’ve mentioned the kingly sport of 9-ball pool before. I mention it every time there’s a world championship and every time that the Mosconi Cup takes place: that’s two articles a year I don’t have to give much thought to. As luck would have it I never bothered moving across many of my articles from previous incarnations of this site and my key demographic is the short-term memory problem-ridden, middle-aged male or female with no interest in pool making a "completely new and original" post about pool satisfy both criteria of "making sure people don’t think I’ve died" and "boring visitors to tears" almost perfectly. Rules Of 9-Ball Pool...
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