Category: Charming Pastimes

Avatar Easter is murder.

I’m not quite sure what the marketing team at Mars had in mind for this one….

I can only assume from this packet of m&m’s eggs that Yellow m&m and Pink m&m Egg were love rivals for the affections of Green m&m Egg, and that for some reason Yellow has seen fit to slaughter Pink splattering himself and Green in the blood of his rival.

Do you think they picked up on the start of the Easter story, the bit where Jesus gets killed, and not bothered reading on to get to the more traditional ‘re-birth’ bit?

Avatar Big Frank’s Global Domination – The Music Biz

So what do you do when you’ve already conquered the chips, graphic design, computers, cycle hire and boat hiring services worlds? What else could you possibly need to include in your empire to satisfy your desperate need for a domineering monopoly over the rest of the world? You want to stick your dorsal fins tightly into the music business, that’s what.

Not just any music business though. You need to enter the Southern California hardcore scene. We have all seen Big Frank and he is clearly obsessed with thrash metal, speed metal, hardcore and the like. If he’s not punking out on the roof, spitting at pigeons and throwing pork pies at strangers then he’s working tirelessly to move the hardcore scene forward with his enduring work ethic.

Let us not forget that this was the man who started Nemesis Records and who put out the first Offspring album. Big Frank began as a tea boy and worked his way up all the way to the top, grinding his teeth with local bands such as Fisticuffs, Mental Eric, Cracked Vase, Hate Your Mum and What a To Do before moving to producing some of the tastiest albums of big hitters like Vaynes, Syck Syck, Death Hands and Cheryl’s Anus.

To put everyone else to shame too, as well as doing all of this he is a full-time tattoo artist and looks after sick and injured animals. I mean I may as well give up now, there is no way I can ever compete with this man. He must work 26 hour days. Big Frank is clearly a glutton for punishment; what a guy.

The next time you’re getting neck pains from rocking too hard, I hope you’ll think of Biggy F and his overwhelming contribution not just to music but also to the world. You think long and hard, sunshine.

Avatar A life in furniture

Living above a bed shop, you’d think that the item of furniture most at risk of overwhelming my life would be beds. But no: here in the London Borough of Royksopp, it’s sofas we’re drowning in.

As you probably already know, my domestic co-habitant, Steve “Stevey” Stevingtons, is immensely and sickeningly rich: certainly a millionaire, possibly close to Jeff Bezos levels of financial liquidity. So it was that, a month ago, he splashed out on a new sofa to replace his old one. It was a real beast of a thing, a mo-fo so-fa to seat five, with a cornery bit and a separate footstool thing. Absolutely glorious. But as soon as it arrived we both saw the problem: as spacious as our living room is, it’s not big enough for two sofas to be practical.

The old sofa was moved to the balcony for a while, which is also vast, but that was short lived once it got rained on. Steve was forced to dispose of it and for a time we were back to a one-sofa arrangement, until it became clear that the new sofa – hand-stitched in a small village in the Alps and delivered by helicopter at a cost well into six figures – had a saggy ass in one of the seats.

The Stevingtons dynasty are not known for tolerating shoddy workmanship, least of all drooping upholstery, so the new sofa was broken up and this week a third, identical sofa arrived in its place.

I am pleased to report that seating arrangements in the penthouse are now entirely buoyant and without any saggage in the ass or any other region, and I am hopeful that this sofa-saturated period has finally drawn to a close. Thank you for your time.

Avatar Tom’s Sausage Lion

“What is this?” you may ask yourself, whilst sitting next to a roaring fire with a brandy in the your hand. I know that this is the way that Chris normally spends his evening and, thus, I assume everyone does the same. What you are staring at is a book, one of those things with words in that people store on shelves to look intelligent. It’s a book by a man and it was written some time ago. You can tell that because the picture on the front looks like it was from the 1970’s (although according to Wikipedia it was written in 1986).

Now it’s not that it is a bad story. It’s a very short story and interesting enough to keep your attention for the hour or so you will spend reading it. It is, however, not worth reading a second time. Here’s the plot:

Tom is a boy. One evening he comes across a lion eating sausages in his back garden. Nobody believes him (a la The Boy who Cried Wolf) and so he tries to track the lion down so that he can prove everyone, including his parents, his peers and the teachers at his school, that he is telling the truth. The lengths that Tom goes to to prove this are quite remarkable; in this most modern of nows right now, as in now 2018, he would have given up and gone back to playing Puzzle Blox or whatever bollocks was currently trending at the time on his I-Pad. That said, the ending is pretty flaccid. Despite what a comment on the back of the book says (hilariously “the climax is breathtaking!”) he finds the lion, parades it around in front of everyone to show he isn’t a liar and then the owner turns up to take it back. That’s it, about seventy odd pages. It is a kid’s book so nobody expected it to be the length of ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King.

The reason Kev bought it for me was due to the ridiculous title. It would be easy to think that it was some kind of porno without the picture of the child trying to entice a lion, tucking away on a string of sausages. I read this while I was donating platelets at the blood clinic. The nurse who was keeping an eye on me couldn’t believe that such a book did exist and, as I pointed out to her also, I did not know it existed until it arrived in a padded envelope through my front door.

Would I recommend it? No. Would I read it again? No. Would I say it’s a bad book? No. I give it a hearty two stars out of five; it loses a third star for not including a lion made of sausages. The title is very misleading. One of these days I may write a book called Tom’s Sausage Lion which will include a lion made of sausages. It’s a work in progress.

Avatar ‘Janu-Hairy’

What does winter bring you? Christmas? Inner peace? Chilblains and a bad case of the sniffles? Whatever it does bring you, you can guarantee it doesn’t bring you respect.

Winter does not respect you. It will blow you over, blow you down, freeze your chinchillas off and then demand a thousand pounds. Try as you might, there is no easy way to appease winter unless you’re hiding indoors under a blanket hoping it goes away. Wouldn’t you like to give the harshest of seasons what for? Don’t you want to stick twos up at winter and laugh in its cold, dank face?

Look at you; you’re covered in hair. What you need to do is get more of it. ‘Janu-Hairy’ is the newest thing to ever be a thing. In line with other charity-based events, such as ‘Movember’ and ‘Decembeard’, ‘Janu-Hairy’ plans to raise money for people who don’t have hair. Wigs and hairpieces will be distributed amongst those in need, like a wiggy Santa Claus.

How does one help then? By being sponsored to grow as much hair as possible between 1st and 31st January. It’s the easiest thing to do because your body does it anyway, and the more unnecessary hair growth in all your sick and disturbing places the better. That means more cha ching for worthy causes.

Being Hairy on the go, of course I will be participating because I’ve got more hair than all three of the Beans Team put together. I will grow the shit out of my hair for thirty one days in the name of good will toward men and women, whomever needs my hair.

It would be nice if we could use seminal Papples classic ‘January’ as the theme for the event, possibly changing some of the words to fit the occasion. It’s playing in my head now and it’s still lovely.

If you would like to participate then do let me know.

Avatar Flimsy Floppy Bendy Batman

Everyone needs a mascot, everyone needs a prop. When you’re doing things with people (waaaaaaaaay!) it’s always good to have one particular item that everyone can focus on or channel their thoughts into when times are hard. The best example of this would have to be Dr Who, whose exploits of an eccentric flopping through dull science fiction stories would be even more boring had he/she been doing it on their own.

Heading down to Didsbury for a large selection of pints with scale perfect philanthropic Mexican-Chinese genius Kevin and grey-haired family man and insurance savage Tom, I decided that we needed something to drag along for our adventure. I already had a wealth of junk in my pockets (because that’s who I am) so I was immediately drawn to Lego Santa Claus. Yes, he’s small and likely to get lost however he’s made of the firm stuff: he can take twelve hours of drinking, easy to transport, brimming in playful colours and millions know who he is.

Cut to Tom’s wife Claire practically handing me an item that she is done with. “I don’t want to see it again, I don’t want it back. Please take it with you.” It’s a kid’s toy; Stretch Armstrong but it’s Batman. Bendy Batman. What possible harm could this have done to Claire? What evil lies within this rubbery realm of innocent fun? It didn’t occur to me, I placed him in my coat pocket and we left.

As it happens, even with my poor memory, I struggle to remember most of that Saturday. The tweets I made are baffling even by my standards. Photos are non-existent. Vague, sepia-tinged memories of being too drunk to go in the Slug and Lettuce, someone needing a jump start for their car outside a restaurant and pretending to care about football in the most crowded pub on the whole street are all that remain. Floppy Batman was there for all of it. He survived the night and came back in one piece, like a boss. There is a lot to admire.

As it happens, a few weeks later, I’m driving home from work and what do I see? An advert for Very.co.uk virtually on every single bus stop showing, in all his glory, Floppy Batman. It could have been another Batman toy, as there’s many many out there, but no, it’s him, the one and the same. Now he’s whoring himself out for Christmas everyone is going to have one soon. He’ll be accompanying other goons on other alcohol-fuelled Saturday evenings. It’ll take away the magic once the world is doing it. The tart.

I should have stuck with Lego Santa.

Avatar Pie Shaver

Don’t you sometimes want to do something a little unorthodox? Don’t you want to live life on the edge? When someone points the finger at you, accusing you of being a boring old fart, don’t you want to hold something up and tell them that they’re wrong?

Don’t you sometimes want to shave a pie?

Behold!

Reuben and I did. It was a marvellous occasion for all, except the pie, which everyone forgot about and had to be thrown out.

Avatar The Kitty Committee – update

“Brothers and sisters…

… When I woke up one morning, the sun’s rays met my whiskers and gave me a smile that could not be broken. When I awoke another morning, I felt these joys amplified because another one of our lost brothers has been found. Another kitty has been returned to the fold. Though he may flop more than the others, though he may not be as robust as those who sit above me, he is still one of us.

May you take this moment to love and understand the newest member of the Kitty Committee. May you speak fondly of him to your closest work colleagues and occasionally send him fan mail.

As always, we are always recruiting so if you wish to join for the pursuit of naps and purrs do get in touch.”