The worst three

Last weekend, me and the boy decided to live it up and catch the showing of classic cyberpunk anime ‘Akira’ at the local cinema. The cinema was so hot that I struggled to stay awake during the second half of the film; it didn’t help that the one we were in was on the top floor and, as all good little scientists know, hot air rises. I did stay awake but you would think that the combination of psychic children, exploding people and the end of the world would be enough to keep my brain and eyes functioning.

Before the film started, we discussed what would be the three best films we would like to see at the cinema. The conversation then inevitably came to what three worst films we would want. Having been witness to some of the abject atrocities of cinema from the last forty years, I believe I may have an insight into this that most people wouldn’t. I therefore present to you my choices for the three worst films I want to see on the big screen

Paycheck

John Woo was an excellent director from Hong Kong when he started his career. He ended it tucked away in Hollywood directing bollocks like this. ‘Paycheck’ is a personal favourite of mine because it wastes a story by Philip K. Dick, the acting talents of Ben Afleck and Paul Giamatti and features hilarious one-liners that aren’t meant to be funny including ‘I was eating pie!’. I used to own five copies of this however after moving around a few years ago I had to cut down to only two. If you can see this I strongly recommend it if only for Uma Thurman being horribly miscast as the love interest and displaying barely enough chemistry to boil a kettle.

The Jerk Too

As a child I was introduced to Steve Martin films through my siblings. I owned a copy of ‘The Jerk’ on VHS and watched it repeatedly. It’s not his best but it was his first and puts most modern comedy films to shame with the amount of ideas and general lunacy. What I wasn’t aware of was a made for TV sequel done some years later which only involved one of the cast from the original film (his mum). Steve Martin played the title character, Navin Johnson, as a sweet and misunderstood good-natured person. Mark Blankfield, however, plays him as someone with learning difficulties. It was quite unbearable to watch at times. If you need an example of this (it’s not on Youtube, I checked), try and find the poker game in the shack and the scene where someone mentions lemon merangue pie; you’ve never heard someone ejaculate a noise mixed in with an as worrying as Mr Blankfield does in your life. Throw in some bad guys who make The Little Rascals look like the cast of a Guy Ritchie film, a bizarre musical number in the middle for no apparent reason other than a homeless woman to serenade Navin and an opening credits scene that shows you the entire movie before you’ve seen it and you’ve got a perfect recipe for nonsense.

Bula Quo

You all knew this was coming. The cinema could be decorated in hula flowers and coconut drink cups and… hang on, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Primarily funded by the Fiji tourist board as a way of enticing tourists to visit Fifi, ‘Bula Quo’ is a film that’s not a film because it’s a terrible rock band who can’t act running around Fiji being chased by the least threatening gangster villain since I put a fake cigar in my mouth and did an impression of Al Capone. The music is awful, the humour is awful, the acting is questionable and the whole thing stinks, no, reeks of desperation. Fiji should know better. I wouldn’t be surprised if tourism went down after this “film” was released. The only legitimate way to enjoy it is to be absolutely hammered or… no that seems to be the only way to enjoy it.

There were a lot of runners up: The Quest was a strong contender, Reuben in particular chose “Die Hard on Ice” (see ‘Sudden Death’ starring Jean Claude Van Damme), the Doom film, a parade of Adam Sandler films and anything starring Kevin James. Given how Chris has only ever seen one film I expect it will be a difficult question to answer but what would YOUR three films be?

Fear the return

Fear. That burning at the pit of your stomach. That tingle on the back of your neck. The shivers that overwhelm your entire body and reduces you to a pitiful mess of a human being.

Everyone fears something and I am no exception. If you’ve ever seen the film ‘Biodome’ then you will know what I mean. Monstrosities like that should not exist in this world so if you ever see it anywhere, be in VHS, DVD or, heaven forbid, Blu-Ray, destroy it before it can infect another person.

Recently a friend of mine found a new fear in an unaccepted place. It looked cheery enough but underneath that happy façade was the high pitched voice and relentless energy of a toddler sucking Coca Cola through a red liquorice straw covered in sherbet.

Don’t look at it. Don’t touch it. Don’t go near it. Don’t even think about the fact that it is somewhere in this world. Just be thankful it’s not where you are. Close your curtains and lock your doors. Turn out the lights and hide in the darkness.

You never know when he might be coming.

Mistakes in marketing

Let’s say you own a company. Let’s say you’re involved in JCBs and tipper trucks, shifting muck around. Let’s say you get yourself a nice white van for moving kit about and you get your company’s name written on the back, and maybe a nice photo of some JCBs and tipper trucks in action so everyone can tell what line of work you’re in.

For now we will overlook the fact that you name your company something daft like ”Kellands” when, if sense prevailed, you would clearly have called it something like ”John’s Diggers”.

You have space on the van for a slogan. Something positive and dynamic that tells everyone what your company is about and how great you are.

What slogan will you choose? Think carefully.

Cafetiere

I was given some free coffee so I bought a cafetiere to brew it up and enjoy the fresh taste of morning brown. The coffee was strong and rich so my taste buds, what little I had left, were in a joyful mood. Reuben tried some and instantly dismissed it. Now whenever he sees the cafetiere in the cupboard he refers to it as “middle class bullshit.”

There is a time for instant coffee and there’s a time to whip out the cafetiere. There’s also a time when you need to take a 600 million pound bag of tea and brew up some dirty black tea for you to enjoy, possibly whilst rocking back and forth in the corner of the room, but thankfully I haven’t quite reached that point yet.

Whilst musing on the wonders of life I came up with this playful little ditty. You can sing it or you can recite it like a spoken word poem:

Cafetiere, cafetiere,
Long of taste and long of flair.
Cafetiere, your juice is fair,
Pour some for your closest frere.
Pour some for Jim, Danny or Claire.

Hint of peach or hint of pear,
Think there’s nothing going on in there?
Au contraire, my cafetiere,
The savoir faire of cafetiere,
The savoir vivre of cafetiere.

Yeah you’re right, I made it up on the spot and that’s what makes life so great. Next time you’re brewing some coffee perhaps you’ll come up with your own song.

The smart man cometh

Welcome to a story that starts off well, gets a bit bad and then goes all grand mal on your ass before you realise what’s happening.

I’m a nerd. I’m sorry to hit you with that reality but I’m not the cool guy you thought I was. I know that I dazzle you all with my endless tales of motorcycles, bar fights, chicks and umm cool stuff however in reality it is the complete opposite. My nerdity stretches to almost all levels of nerdom (although I’ve yet to play a proper game of D & D and I’m not ready to quite drop my trousers and start collecting Magic: The Gathering cards) although recently, and for the last few years, it has settled in v. game town.

I collect for a huge range of systems. The Sony PSP, the slightly older, less attractive handheld cousin of the PS Vita, has a large library and currently most of the games are dirt cheap. We’re talking cup of coffee and a toffee crisp prices here, people. We’re talking a day ticket on the bus with all the trimmings (you know, some have TVs that don’t work and some have a USB port so you can charge your phone because it’s an electric bus and it’s the FUTURE). There will always be rarer titles as there is for every console and it is here we find me with an idea.

The PSP isn’t region locked meaning you can buy a game from the other side of the world and it will run on your machine. There’s a game I’ve had my eye on that only ever keeps going up in price in the UK so, in a flash of brilliance, I check a used video game website in the US that I’ve used previously. Lo and behold there it is, in stock and about twenty quid cheaper overall. I know there’ll be postage and import tax to pay yet it’s too enticing to ignore. Surely this is a good idea and nothing can go wrong. This is the loophole that will see me through to the good side of the fence. I go to the basket only to be told that the website doesn’t post to the UK anymore.

Sniff sniff, can you smell that? If you can, it’s probably Brexit.

Foiled and a little crestfallen I mull over this for a day or two. Then it hits me, a second brainwave. Twice in one lifetime? When you’re hot, you’re hot! There’s a website where you can order anything from the US and have it sent to a shipping depot in the US, they’ll then reroute it to your address in the UK and sort out the tax and everything else at the same time. This is too good to be true, right? Right?

My fingers are already going, it’s ordered and paid for. I get the notification that my parcel is on its way to the depot. I am the Thriftmaster. Thrifting is my middle name. Bow before me, peasants, for I am both the king of the Co-op and king of the thrift.

I go to create the shipping request. Duties and tax are reasonable, of course there’s VAT and… the shipping method. The cheapest option available is a little over thirty dollars. Taking into account the aforementioned other charges, this will now put the total cost of getting the fucker to my address in the UK ten dollars more than I actually paid for the game.

I wanted to believe that this was a good idea. This will be the last time I try to be clever. For now, I will be sitting in the corner wearing the dunce hat and counting up to ten only missing the seven out every single time I try. I await your lambasting.

Get out of my mind

Pop music, it’s dumb right?

Not all of it. A lot of it very intelligently made and well put together. There are those out there though that abuse it’s magic and only concoct the worst of the worst to make a cheap buck. Pop music is the house of the lazy songwriter. It has committed more crimes then I’d care to mention (I’m looking at you, ‘Boys of Summer’ by DJ Sammy).

I have recently been re-listening to ‘This Year’s Model’ by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, a lovely bouncy set of new wave poppy rocky songs from 1978. It features two stellar singles; (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea’, a sentiment I think we all share, and the ludicrously good ‘Pump it Up’. Costello is reported to have written the song on a fire escape during a stop in Newcastle of all places. What if he wrote it on my fire escape? Wait, I don’t have a fire escape.

The song ‘Pump it Up’ was later sampled by a sack of arse called Rogue Traders. In classic lazy pop fashion they took some bint they could find (in this case the Australian actress Natalie Bassingthwaite – she used to be in Neighbours because of course she did, she’s from Australia), got her to knock out some half-based vocals and called it ‘Voodoo Child’.

Rogue Traders – Voodoo Child (Video) – YouTube

It features lyrics so banal if you closed your eyes and pointed to random words in a dictionary you would come up with a better one. Would you like an example? Take a sweet glance at the chorus:

“Baby baby baby
You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child
Don’t say maybe maybe
It’s supernatural, I’m coming undone.”

Awful, yes. Catchy, yes. I do believe it has more to do with Elvis Costello and the Attractions more than anything else. If you took away the pounding organs and guitars you’d be left with an empty pickle of a song, a limp biscuit if you will. I only mention this because my brain, in its infinite wisdom, continues to remind me of things like this rather than remembering useful things. When the aliens come and take us all away I will be filed on a shelf of knowledge called ‘Why bother?’ and only called up when they need a particularly spicy pub quiz question.

Whenever I hear ‘Pump it Up’ there is the quiet unsightly ghost of Rogue Traders hiding in the background.

Absolute bastards.

My new hobby

Last week I was having a nose around a shop full of old bits and pieces when this absolute gem of a book caught my eye. And it was only a fiver! I couldn’t believe nobody had snapped it up.

I’ve never been particularly fashionable, but believe me I am now. My new all-knitted wardrobe of highly fashionable black clothes with brightly coloured puffed up armbands and collars is turning heads wherever I go.

If you’d like me to knit you something beautiful to wear, just say the word and I’ll pick you a pattern out of the book.

How to play ‘Donyket’

Ahh the card games. The classics, who doesn’t enjoy playing the old favourites like snap, Happy Families or Canasta? Well now there’s a ‘new’ game in town, brought to you by Changlish Chranslayshon & Sons Ltd.

DONYKET! A twist on the old classic, Donkey. DONYKET! Don’t forget to ‘off ers your cards’, you don’t want to be left with the ‘Dondey’ and get called Donkey!

DONYKET!

Pouring
Beans

Category: Awful, just awful