Fun Spot Attractions
Thank you Fun Spot Attractions! Thank you for hiring some little shit of a flyer-distributor to wander around the car park in Chichester attaching flyers under windscreen wipers. Your complete lack of any concern for my property – my car, my fucking car – is most appreciated. Thank you for getting your little shit to stick that flyer under my rear windscreen wiper. I am happy to report that he or she failed to damage anything and, since I approached my car from the rear and needed to place my backpack into the boot, it was a simple matter to tut, remove that flyer, and place it in the boot too safe in the knowledge I could discard it into the recycling at a later point. I especially want to thank you for getting your little shit to stick a second flyer under my front passenger-side windscreen wiper nice and low down where it wasn’t spotted until I had started driving. There’s nothing quite like having a small, flapping, distracting piece of paper just visible out of the corner of your eye while you’re trying to concentrate on driving. Nothing. Like. It. Thank you again, Fun Fucking Spot Attractions, for the increased adrenalin surge that then enveloped me when it started to rain as I was travelling down the A27. Driving at seventy miles per hour with a distracting piece of paper advertising your amusement park while it’s raining whilst considering whether it’s at all safe to switch on the wipers since there’s no way to know whether it will scrape along the windscreen or fly off into the car behind me is something I’ll never forget. Thank you for making me pull into the first layby I could find and get out into the rain so that I could screw up that particular flyer left by your little shit of a distributor. Thank you for adding minutes onto my journey home as I waited for a suitable gap to appear so that I could safely pull out. Thank you for conspiring to cause my car to subsequently be in the exact right spot at the exact right time to hit and kill a pigeon just trying to get on with its life. Fun Spot Arseholes: you bird-murdering bastards. Thank...
Hollywood Goes Japanese
The fact that some of Hollywood’s biggest and – occasionally – best actors and actresses appear in adverts around the world is something that most people familiar with the movie industry are all too aware of. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously advertised a pro-drugs campaign in Mozambique with the tagline “I’ll be crack”; Drew Barrymore was the face of Mexico’s most prestigious beauty treatment company Mayanbelline (“maybe she’s born with it!”) during the 1990s; the list goes on and on. For decades Japan has been the second largest user and abuser of Hollywood stars (after Qatar) and its fascination with such ‘A’-list celebrities as Matt Damon and Clint Howard has helped these actors through the lean years of low paydays as a direct result of rampant piracy. But it’s probably less well-known that in addition to television and newspaper ads many western stars also regularly appear in Japanese movies, albeit with dubbed voices. On my most recent trip abroad I managed to pick up copies of three such films featuring some all-too-familiar faces. Jodie Foster has made a nice living playing the popular superhero character of Happy Pink Weapon Girl since 1993 in a series of adventures about a girl who loves pink so much she ends up falling in love with it and becoming fused with pink power. If that doesn’t make sense to you then remember: this is a Japanese film we’re talking about. David Lynch doesn’t even watch Japanese films because they give him headaches. Happy Pink Weapon Girl fights all the non-pink things that are wrong in the world and this typically involves men in blue suits, flying gorillas, and her arch-nemesis Captain Sausage. The latest film in the franchise – Happy Pink Weapon Girl VI: Electric Speed Fight – takes place entirely on Captain Sausage’s supersonic maglev train that travels without rail tracks across all the islands of Japan shooting babies at single women. Subtlety has not made it into Japanese cinema yet. A newcomer to Japanese cinema is actress Jessica Simpson who has so far only appeared in one movie but it just so happened to be the largest grossing movie in Asia in 2010. The movie in question is Jessica Simpson Is Eaten By Monsters and consists entirely of thirty monsters taking it in turns to catch, eat, and then regurgitate Jessica Simpson for the next monster that comes along. The simple concept and repetitive yet enjoyable storyline wowed and thrilled eastern cinemagoers to such an extent that there were riots in Osaka when the actress scheduled a personal appearance at the main cineplex there but owing to a mix-up with airline bookings flew...
American Motels
Not only would I like to live forever, I’d like to have lived forever. I want to see everything that ever was, is, and will be. Sadly, stupid mortality will get in the way and my experience of the universe will be incredibly limited. I’ve seen some impressive things (and a lot of crap too) but not enough for my liking, and every time I look back at historical photos or writings or consider the various scientific conclusions of evolutionary progress on this planet I get a welling up of a sense of, well, not quite nostalgia – since I never saw or lived through these things in the first place – but something akin to it. A temporal wanderlust, perhaps. For instance, take the following postcards of American motels from the glorious era of American motels (whenever that was) uploaded by Jordan Smith: I’m not American, I wasn’t alive in the forties, fifties, or sixties, and I can’t help but imagine that a lot of these places would have been just unbelievably terrible places to stay in. But don’t they look fantastic anyway? There’s a wonderful style there that’s gone now. But it’s only just gone. In the grand scale of things I missed out on seeing these with my own eyes by a tad less than a smidge of a fraction. In a word: buggerations! Below I’ve selected a handful of my favourite motels from the postcard collection. Check out the entire set (linked in the paragraph above) and subscribe to Jordan’s In The Heart Of Downtown site to be kept up-to-date with every new American motel discovery too. Alexandria Bay in New York is the location of Captain Thomson’s Motor Lodge, featuring air conditioning and private balconies over the water. Of course, wood panelling is present too. You have to have wood panelling. What’s slightly more interesting about the motel room pictured is the size of the beds. Two beds, I understand. Two double beds… has implications. This motor lodge may have catered for large people. Alternatively – and I’m favouring this thought – it may have been popular with swingers. Look at that couple by the window. They’re looking out for beautiful people in polyester suits and flowery dresses to join them for an afternoon romp. You know they are. This is the Colonial Statler Hilton Inn, just twenty minutes from downtown Boston, and it’s not hard to love this place instantly. A swimming pool in a dome; if that doesn’t scream The Future to you then you’re not seeing the world through my eyes. What’s even better than a motel with a Future Pool?...
The Garden War of 2011
In early July of 2011 the relationship between the humans and the garden finally snapped under the strain. Negotiations broke down, with the garden refusing to restrict its buddleia population voluntarily. When the weeds that covered the ground between the east and west walls rose up in support of the two major buddleia masses the garden was in danger of being lost for good behind a barricade of nature. The humans had hoped that the weather would be a factor and the exceptionally long period of drought and high temperatures would naturally limit any expansionist moves from the garden, but, alas, this hope was in vain. For a long time the garden had very gradually increased its occupying forces but after a short period of covering rainfall in June there was a sudden surge of growth, taking advantage of any disinclination on the humans’ part to intervene during inclemency. This brazen act was the straw that broke the camel’s back. On Sunday, the third of July at a little before nine in the morning with the sun already high, bright, and hot, the back door to the garden was opened by the humans; first-line defensive measures left by the garden – spiders cocooned around the frame and crack woodlice units lined along the threshold – were caught unprepared and dispatched swiftly by the 21st Forward Broom Brigade. The humans immediately committed one half of their forces to assault the eastern buddleia division. Precision strikes from the long-handled secateurs initially met little resistance from the garden inhabitants but as the buddleia was thinned out its roots and branches left became steadily thicker and tougher. The attack slowed and the temperature started to exert a sweaty toll on the offensive side. Buddleia that had been killed in the war dropped to the ground where weed allies supported it further obstructing human inroads against the garden. This necessitated a change in tactics but it was one that had been prepared for. The use of a rake was authorised and ground was cleared. A cleared passage into the heart of the garden had now been made but this created a vulnerability for the humans. Supply lines of Ribena were at risk of being cut off by a swift counterattack at the rear and there had still been no movement against the western buddleias. Understanding the danger the humans now released the remaining forces – the elite Special Wife Services – tasked to protect the back of the first assault and, simultaneously, open up a second front to the west. At about this time the humans discovered evidence of biological weaponry for the first...
The Jewish Invention
So, you want to know about my incredible invention and how it affects every Jewish person on the planet, yes? Very well. But where to begin? I’m drawn to Poland in the early 1960s. You might not think it would be a hip and happening place – certainly nowhere near, say, London – but there were places you could go and things you could do that put London in the shade. In a sense, almost quite literally so, since it was just outside Warsaw that saw Europe’s largest solar array built, a vast collecting dish lined with early photovoltaic cells. They weren’t much like the things you see these days, though. You have to remember that this was during Poland’s decade of experimenting with genetic manipulation, before the animal rights people came in and freed the cooking, twitching silverfish from their power parabola prison. I dated an animal rights activist for a while but we all do crazy things when we’re out of our faces on glue. No horses were harmed in the formation of that glue. The same can’t be said for my short run as head of innovations for the world famous Ragtag Circus during the summer of 1971, touring South America. I was convinced that a 21-horse pyramid was possible but, well, maybe we’ll never know for sure what caused the collapse. My dear friend Monsieur Bolobo the clown claimed a painted zebra had infiltrated our number on the night of the spectacle, its weaker back giving way under the weight, but this was his stock excuse for every failing. Made for an amusing divorce hearing from his wife. Someone else who divorced his wife was Ignatius Lemming. Now, it’s a strange name but I’d be surprised if you’d heard it before since he went out of his way to hide it from the public, adopting noms-de-plume in much the same fashion that celebrities adopt children and charities. Among his many aliases for a while he was Charles Ford, tobacco importer; then he was Jermaine Montezuma, backing singer for the soul group The Five Spaniards; I remember a wild fortnight when he had clicks in his name because he’d seen some television documentary about a native tribe somewhere. This was right around the dolphin uprising at Chicago Zoo. And now you know why. The Five Spaniards wasn’t a real group, unlike The Six Senoritas, although funk and soul weren’t their specialities; they preferred rumbles and robberies. They were rough, they were tough, and they were buff, but you accused them of being anything other than straight, angry women at your peril. I first encountered them as...
Review: Simon Singh and Adam Kay
Simon Singh – occasional champion of chiropractors (my definition of “champion” may differ from yours) – and Adam Kay – one half of the musical comedy duo Amateur Transplants – were the guests at last night’s Skeptics In The Pub meeting in Portsmouth. Since I’ve attended all the meetings so far and attended this one too, and since there’s a high likelihood that you didn’t, and since you’d probably (I studied statistics at ‘A’ level but wasn’t very good at it) like to know a little about the meeting, Simon, and Adam, I thought I’d let you enjoy a taste of the night through the magic of letters formed into words. The Good Simon Singh was informative and amusing, treating us to the lyrical stylings of Katie Melua, a swift overview of his work history, writing in the Guardian, working at the BBC, acupuncture, homeopathy, alternative medicines in general, and libel reform, all in under an hour. He then took questions from members of the audience and handled them expertly. Adam Kay was very funny, very talented, provided us with numerous short and funny versions of songs (getting the audience – including me, I embarrassingly remember – to sing along to choruses), and provided the perfect accompaniment to the more serious tones of the earlier part of the evening. So good, in fact, was he that I felt compelled to part with money and buy merchandise from him. I’d also been drinking. Usually I’m far more reluctant to hand cash to strangers. The Bad The One Eyed Dog is fairly decent in terms of layout and decor as pubs go but it certainly wasn’t the ideal place for this talk. The space allocated for the talks was too small for the number of people who turned up. I have misanthropic leanings and large crowds of aggravating humans bother me; they particularly bother me when I ponder how few of them will probably turn up to another meeting unless there’s a big name attendee and when that happens they’ll probably crowd out whatever venue we’re in and make the experience less pleasant for those of us who turn up regularly too. I’m not saying there should be a premium-seating, priority system for regulars over those who just turn up because it’s someone famous that they want to heckle. Oh, wait, yes I am. One area where the One Eyed Dog really did whatever the opposite of excelling is was in the range of available beers. “Real Ales £2.95” said the sign behind the bar which sounded nice because real ales is what I drink and drinks for under a threer...
Recent From Retro
-
The Women Of Kilobaud Computing Sep 26, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent From Entertainment
-
Dance Music Triple Nov 19, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent Comments