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Avatar Happy End of 2020!

Well 2020 shat itself eyewise early on and never really recovered. Towards the end it’s bucked up it’s ’chude somewhat and approved a couple of vaccines and avoided a no deal brexit (Is a shit deal better than no deal? Probably. Anyway…), but loses points for chucking in a new strain of virus at the end, just to ensure 2021 starts with a (un)healthy dose of chaos.

Anyway I for one am glad to see the back of this year and hope we don’t see the likes again. Here’s an early happy new year cheer from the wee dudes to pick up the spirits. Chin up eh what!

Hooray!

Avatar Taking bets now

David Walliams has recently released his amazing new book ‘The World’s Worst Parents’ to probably universal acclaim. The world has stopped caring about his painful meanderings to try and become the new Roald Dahl and, I expect, given up. They’re letting him run through the wheat fields, spewing out chaff onto our shelves, without a care in the world. If they did still care then someone would have told him that books with titles such as ‘Bad Dad’, ‘Awful Auntie, ‘Slime’ and ‘Grandpa’s Great Escape’ need a re-think.

So now what next? What other depths could he plummet too literature-wise? I’ve seen keen and I can tell that you are all keen to get some red hot dough ray me monwa action on the go. I have been knocking heads with some bookies and we are happy to offer you the following odds on what could be the title of David Walliams next best-selling bogroll:

  1. Drunkle Uncle – 5/1 – Luke can’t get along with his uncle Billy. He always turns up to his football games off his face and embarrasses himself. There is only one thing he can do and that’s take him to an AA meeting. Whilst there, uncle Billy meets an old friend who reminds him of a promise he made back during the Gulf War. It will mean travelling to the Middle-East where all sorts of adventures are going to happen.
  2. Fuzzen Cousin – 10/1 – Harmony and Constance are cousins, and the absolute best of friends. Throughout their early teenage years they are inseparable, however one night Harmony wakes up and she has grown an unusual amount of pubic hair. Constance cannot believe the attention her cousin is now getting from all the boys at school. Something must be done and only the strongest of families, and friendships, will survive an adventure like this.
  3. The Great Steamin’ Grandpa Adventure – 30/1 – Felicity found her grandpa oiling his plants in the back garden, another typical summer’s day. What she didn’t realise though is that this grandpa isn’t her grandpa, it’s a grandnah! He locks himself in his shed and refuses to come out. Grandpa doesn’t want to do anything ever again so Felicity must find a way to tempt him out and re-live all their wonderful memories together. Let’s hope that she can do so before the annual Coin Collector’s Ball needs their star attraction and key speaker.
  4. Dead Shark – 3/1 – Robert finds a shark on the beach. It’s an ordinary dead shark with nothing exceptional about it… or is it? Now when Robert falls asleep he is taken to the magical dead shark dream realm where all your wishes can come true… or can they? Now he must try to work out what is real and what isn’t whilst holding back armies of clandestine crabs and soup knife prawns… or will he? How can Robert trust anything now that he knows a dead shark is never just a dead shark?

Avatar The More You Know – The Chris Explosion

It’s been floated around for some time now and there’s been an awful lot of confusion as to what happens. You know what I’m referring to; that urban myth that has been haunting this website for as long as I or anyone else can remember. Legend says that if Chris Marshall watches a film, any movie whether short, black and white, foreign or animated, he will explode.

You may laugh at such a premise but it is true. A genuine medical condition that only affects one in twenty million, ‘Brewster Explodius’ came to light during the middle of the twentieth century. The first recorded case was a Clarice Mucklesniff, a 26 year old waitress from North Dakota. She was going to the movies with her boyfriend and less than five minutes into the opening credits she exploded. Her bits were catapulted across the theatre, landing mostly in the aisles bar her arms which landed in the lap of an elderly couple towards the front. Since then there have been multiple cases all over the world of this unfortunate illness.

So we move to our current case, Christopher “Christopheles” “Sausage and Cheese Isosceles” Jimmy Jam-Jam Marshall. Poor Chris has been living with this for most of his life. It was lucky that a friend of the family, who is au fait with these kinds of medical conditions, was able to diagnose him before the worst could happen. In order for us to understand more, we need a hypothetical situation:

A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION:

Chris has had a hard day at work. He’s taken off his feather boa and decides to relax on the sofa before making some food. As he picks up the remote to browse some channels, the TV opens on that bit in ‘Cocoon’ where the old people get in the pool with the aliens and have a pool party. 

  1. His eyes witness the film on the screen. The retinal pools record the information and turns it into some weird shapes and colours, possibly resembling cats. This makes it easier to send it up the pipe shaft.
  2. The information travels up the pipe shaft, past the nosal tubes, towards the front part of the brain, more commonly known as the Gluco-chaffinch. Here it is split into several nixtoglands and sent to the seven corners of the human mind.
  3. For a normal person this would be fine; the nixtoglands would reach their destination and everyone would feel great. Several people would do backflips. For Chris though this is the beginning of the end. When the seven corners are activated it causes the multo peak in the glorbo cells to light up. 
  4. Now it is only a matter of time. The blood pumps up into his face muscles which only accelerates the process. The glorbo cells chat to the peanuke rittles causing a chain reaction between the two, meaning a complex chemical implosion that reverses around the maypole and turns back into an explosion. 
  5. It goes off. His head catapults to the ceiling. His noses fires off into the kitchen. The eyes don’t make it that far and the ears flop to the floor. The body doesn’t move from the position, it’s still enjoying the film.

I don’t need to tell you that this cannot happen, ever, mainly for my sake because then it’ll mean I’ll be down one friend and will need to hold auditions for a new one to fill the position. Do you know how long that’ll take? Far too long. Please keep my friend safe and never show him any films.

Avatar The Hall’s Wall Mince Movement

Look at you!

You need to be part of something. You need to be part of the Hall’s Wall Mince Movement.

If you join the Hall’s Wall Mince Movement (or HWMM as it is known amongst its members) then you will be given great rewards, sometimes of meat.

I cannot promise you excitement, I cannot promise you fame and glory. I cannot even promise you a refund on the extortionate subscription fees but I can promise you a couple of bowls of spaghetti bolognese every now and then.

Follow my shiny glitter twinkles and I will lead the way!

Avatar Behold! Ian’s books

We all know that Ian has turned out an awful lot of books in his lifetime, most of them lengthy and devoid of all interest; we also know that every copy that could be found has been systematically incinerated by the cleansing flames of justice.

Even though it is entirely right and proper that his books have all been consumed by fire, I have decided that we should preserve some record of them. We should do this by making sure there is an archive of their covers.

What I mean by that is this: I’ve been back through the whole of the Beans and found all ten books that Ian claims to have written, and I’ve made covers for them all.

Behold! Ian’s books.

Read More: Behold! Ian’s books »

Avatar Luck be a Musician Tonight

I am one of those people who secretly doesn’t know how lucky they are.

That’s a lie, actually.

I am one of those people who occasionally is convinced that luck completely passes them by but, in actuality, it washes up like waves on a beach more often than not. For every instance of not putting one of those new five pound notes in my wallet (everywhere else they jump out and I’m a fiver down) there is something else waiting round the corner, be it a clear run into work on a morning or a one in a mil find on eBay.

Let me tell you about the 23 June 2019.

I am invited by a friend to go to a gig in case someone drops out. I am officially on the ‘waiting’ list so to speak. The closer it gets to the gig it is quite clear that the other person is not coming so the ticket is offered to me, and despite my pleas it is given for free (no, I’m not spitting rhymes over a hot beat, the sentence came out that way). The gig in question is Nick Cave in Conversation at the Sage. I have dabbled in wor Nick and the Bad Seeds over the years with mixed results. This is not the kind of evening that you say no to; you grab it with your sweaty hands and you run away screaming like a frantic, happy loon.

So I turn up and meet the rest of the friends group, who are all rallied round drinking wine, and everyone seems really nice. The usual polite tidbits of conversation are floated round although that doesn’t last for very long because out of the corner of my eye I can see a man approaching. He is coming directly for us.

“How many are in your group?” he says. We all look at each other, we need someone to volunteer as spokesperson. I don’t remember who but a few people stumble up that there are six of us. “Great,” says the guy, “how would you fancy sitting on stage with Nick? You have to be by this door at exactly 7pm (11 minutes time!) and wear these special bands. I’ll run you through the rest of the rules when you’re led to your seats.”

We all look at each other again; what just happened there? There’s not much time to lose though so we all rush to the toilet and head to the door. More stagehands lead us right onto the stage: there are tables set aside with candles on, creating a kind of arc around the middle, which contains a beautiful piano and nothing more. The rules are pretty simple; shut the fuck up, don’t go near him and don’t bother him. Even I, with my primitive brain can handle this.

Nick Cave talks and plays music for almost three hours. He is roughly ten feet from where I am sitting. Nobody is allowed to take photos of him when he is performing meaning that the only memento I have, apart from the ticket and the special band, is a picture of an empty piano with no-one playing it taken about half an hour before it all started. He was amazing, a voice still raw and strong, a plethora of songs all hand-picked on the night, right there and then, whatever people suggest or he feels like playing is done. I have never seen anything like it and I doubt I will ever again.