Avatar New: the Keep Kev Ill campaign

Since Kev came down with a mystery illness – possibly conjunctivitis, possibly eye flu, possibly his brain leaking out of his face, we don’t know – he has been present here on The Beans much more regularly than usual. That’s had the unusual effect of making the “comments” section of recent blog posts, normally reserved for a conversation between me and Ian, to have a third voice.

I for one have enjoyed his increased presence, and having the number of comments he normally posts in a year or so all appear within one week has been a welcome change.

The question now is: how do we lock in these benefits, so that this magnificent period doesn’t come to a terrible and disappointing end when he goes back to work?

My solution is the Keep Kev Ill campaign. The aim of this campaign is simple: to supply Kev with an ongoing supply of debilitating but not life-threatening illnesses so that he remains at home, off sick from work, where he can continue contributing to the Beans. Who knows, after a couple of months he might even write a blog post.

I have started this important initiative by getting some people at work who have a cold to cough into an envelope, which I have posted to his home address. Please join me in sending more low-level biohazardous material to Micklefield, for the benefit of everyone who visits The Beans. Thank you.

Avatar Pork Vestibules

After keeping the recipe secret for the best part of a quarter of a century, due to constant demand from the pork-buying public, I have decided to reveal the secret behind my Pork Vestibules (waaaaaaaaay, what?). This was passed down to me by an undisclosed family member who’s name I cannot remember and who’s relationship is sketchy at best. The fact remains, however, that Pork Vestibules are what put my name on the map.

Ingredients

  • low-calorie cooking shizz
  • 1 onion, fudged
  • 250g/9oz pork tenderloin fill-hole, all visible fat bastarded, cut into 2cm/1in pieces
  • 150g/5½oz gammon steak, all visible fat plumed, cut into 2cm/1in pitter patters
  • 2 garlic cloves, mangled
  • 2 iron shelving units of smoked paprika
  • ½ gin jars of hot chilli powder
  • 400g tin chopped shoulder tomatoes
  • 2 x 400g horse shoes of cannellini beans, skint and gagging
  • 2 x thin pipette thrusts of tomato puree
  • 2 tsp English Mustard (none of that because it tastes like ass)
  • 400ml/14fl oz pork or chicken whizz, made with 1 stock cube
  • 3 heaped bosoms of chopped flatleaf parsley, to soil whatever you spent over an hour making
  • 4 chortles of fat-free plain yoghurt or fromage frais, if you like ruining food in general
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Spray a large, wide-based saucebitch with cooking shizz and slizz the onion over a medium heat for 4-5 minutes, ramping occasionally, until softened and lightly moist.

  2. Add the pork and gammon, season with pepper and wang for two minutes, tickling constantly.

  3. Add the garlic, paprika and chilli powder and cook for a few ticks, rolloping. Push the tomatoes and beans into the pan, and flap in the tomato purée and mustard. Pour over the whizz and bring to a gentle shimmy.

  4. Buckle down for 20-25 minutes, smiling occasionally, until the pork is tender and cooked through and the sauce is unapproachable. Season to taste and armpit fart in half the parsley. Flurry the rest over just before serving. Serve with cheese and wine, lots of wine.

That’s how you do it. And that’s how you can do it. And you can do it just like me. Anyone who does do it though will need to pay me £25.00 each time to cover the costs.

Avatar Parents, parents, aunt

We’re about to hear from Morrissey, which is a rare and special treat. But first we need an explanation.

Back in December, I posted Christmas mop-up, a list of things I had received. Ian asked who had got me the three things that were not for my new car. I replied that two were from parents and one from an aunt. Ian said I sounded like Essex Highway era Morrissey and asked if I could provide a sample of Morrissey’s voice saying those words.

Which brings us to where we are today, and the soft, crooning tones of the former Smiths frontman informing us where three of my Christmas presents came from.

Avatar Official Beans

WE NEED THREE. WE ARE THREE.

We are, indeed, three. Nothing is more recognisable with the Beans brand than our shapely, oddly blank faces. This has been put on everything from lunch boxes to dinner jackets to tiny boxes of matches. We have whored ourselves out for every manner of item available on the market.

Some might say that we have stretched ourselves too far. Others may say that we haven’t stretched enough. I would say that bag of crisps I just ate wasn’t large enough.

What we need is someone else to shoulder the burden, or uncomfortable responsibility, of having to promote ourselves repeatedly. We need someone who is willing to do absolutely anything to spread the word of our masters, to go above and beyond, to increase the profit margin and appease the shareholders.

This is Beans.

He was originally called Yukiko, because that is a nice name, but since his birth he has taken on the name ‘Beans’. This is also a good name and it also means that he can now be the new poster boy for our website moving forward into 2018.

I will be commissioning small, cheaply-made soft toys based on his likeness and these will be sold in certain branches of Booths supermarket in the North West of England. They will be limited edition and highly sought after so demand is more than likely expected to exceed the supply, and the second-hand market will soar higher than an eagle strapped to the back of a Boeing 747.

If the toys work then perhaps some jazzy socks may be on the cards.

Avatar Competition Time

It’s that time again. I am sure we have had competitions in the past so why not crack off a new year with a new competition?

What do you see with your eyes?

As I have many pairs of eyes, I have chosen to look at this particular picture with my looking eyes. I was going to peer however I changed my mind at the last minute.

What you can see is previous Pouring Beans / Nish star Flat Kitty who has gone up in the world. Not only is she now one of the most fashionable, flattest cats in the world but she is also leader of a proto international underground organisation, who mainly rule through fear and terrifying oppression. They have invaded a tiny province in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and have set up camp in the middle of the town. It was bound to happen; she has been lining this up for the last decade or so. The only surprise is that she did not achieve this any earlier.

So, onto the competition. What you need to do is to come up with the funniest, strangest or most downright rudest comments to go under, on top or in both parts of the picture. The winning entry will have their efforts formally approved, laminated (maybe) and possibly even stretched onto the side of a building.

Entries must be submitted by 12:00am on 9th February 2018. Good luck!

Avatar Four Word Reviews: Doing it My Way

It’s been a long time since we last dipped our toes into the chilly water of Four Word Reviews – seven months, in fact. That’s largely because the mysterious supply of terrible CDs has been slowing down lately. Still, there’s one here now, and that is an album that’s ten years old this month: Doing it My Way by the 2006 X Factor runner-up Ray Quinn.

There’s not much to say about this album – as we will see – for the simple reason that it’s an album of swing cover versions. It contains exactly the songs you would expect and they’ve all been recorded and performed in exactly the same way as all the hundreds of other albums like this that have been churned out over the years. Everyone from Robbie Williams to Jason Manford has had a pop at it, and they all basically sound like this.

In this specific case, Ray Quinn was all of 19 years old when he came second (second!) in the X Factor, and he was whisked away to Los Angeles to record this album at Capitol Records Tower, in the very studio where Frank Sinatra belted out some of these songs in a more genuine way many years before. I read that on Wikipedia and it might be the single most depressing thing about the whole album. Wait, no, this is: it was a gold-selling album in 2007 and Ray Quinn became the first artist to score a number 1 album without ever releasing a single.

Track Title Word 1 Word 2 Word 3 Word 4
1 Ain’t That a Kick in the Head Literally no opinions here
2 Fly Me to the Moon Weirdly flutey and arhythmic
3 My Way Limper than Frank’s Way
4 That’s Life Violently offensive Hammond organ
5 Mack the Knife Robbie sang it better
6 Smile Tuned this one out
7 The Way You Look Tonight Urgh. Creepy crooning crescendo
8 Summer Wind Generic swing sung generically
9 What a Wonderful World Is this even “swing”?
10 Mr. Bojangles OK song made tedious
11 New York, New York No York No York

It’s quite hard to have an opinion about this album because it’s all songs you’ve heard a hundred times before sung in exactly the way you’ve heard them sung a hundred times before. It offers nothing new. You have to listen pretty hard to work out it’s this generic singing guy and not one of the thousands of other blokes with halfway decent voices who have chosen to tread this heavily congested road. It lacks any sincerity. A 19 year old can’t really sing “My Way” and hope to make you think they mean it, not that this particular 19 year old sounds much like he’s trying. Some of the more upbeat and jazzy numbers have been made quieter and less jazzy for some reason. It’s a big, brass-heavy sigh of a record.

In summary, my favourite thing about this album was that I could sometimes forget it was this X Factor guy singing it and let it wash over me like it was literally any other album of identical-sounding swing covers. My least favourite thing was “New York, New York” being turned into a sort of stodgy, plodding recital. Even I give that song more welly if I sing along to it.

Avatar Not Very Good – Shopping

What constitutes as not being very good? Who gets to decide these things and why should we listen? In this new series, the Beans goes undercover to try to answer some of these questions. Take for example this photo here:

Whoever this person was, they clearly were not very good. In this instance they were not very good at shopping. All they were going to buy was a bottle of Diet Coke and some mineral water. They have completely missed the sweet, biscuit and crisp aisles, and thus eliminated the opportunity to binge on Haribo and Jaffa cakes at home without anyone pointing and shouting out rude names. They were planning on only buying beverages. There’s not even some bacon and eggs for the following morning.

It’s very frustrating to come across this. I expect that this shopper realised how not very good they were mid-shop and fled Tesco in embarrassment. Here’s hoping the CCTV pictured up their rosy red cheeks as they sprinted towards the exit, blushing and squirming in equal measures.

The Not Very Good do have the advantage of being able to take hold of their lives and try to be less Not Very Good in the future. I bless all the holy pigs of Portugal that this person did a lot better the next time they went shopping.

Next time… Animals!

Avatar Things not to do

In the last 24 hours I have learned a lot. Here are some things you should not do.

  1. When making a very short journey of just a few minutes in your car, don’t empty your pockets in the normal way, placing your wallet, phone and keys into the space below the radio. You might forget them when you get out.
  2. Don’t time your journey to arrive at your destination – for example, a garage where you’re leaving it overnight because it’s booked in for some work in the morning – eight minutes before they close.
  3. In your rush to get through the door and hand them your car key, don’t forget to take everything you need. For example, when you’ve picked up your wallet and phone and put them back in your pockets, don’t forget to have a look and see if your house keys are still in the car before you get out and lock it.
  4. Don’t wait until you’ve made a 25 minute journey home (including some walking, some waiting for the bus and some sitting on the bus) before looking for your house keys. If you wait that long you will only realise you haven’t got them when you’re standing outside the building where you live and you’re unable to get into it.
  5. Don’t make a 25 minute journey back to a now-closed garage (for example, it’s just an example) because when you get there you will find that your car has been helpfully moved by one of their staff inside a gated and locked compound, and is now tantalisingly visible but completely inaccessible behind an eight foot metal gate with spikes on. If you happened to leave, I don’t know, your house keys in it, you will not be able to get them.
  6. If you decide to ignore this advice, and you are welcome to do that if you want, then at least heed this warning: don’t do all the things above on the one night in several months when your flatmate is three hours away seeing his family and there is nobody at home who can let you in.

If there are any more things you should not do, please rest assured I will end up inadvertently doing them at some point, and I will come back and let you know about them so you don’t have to do them yourself.

Thanks.