A Brave Old Beans

This scarcely seems believable, but it’s true: the first post on this incarnation of the Beans was made ten years ago today when Kev published A Brave New Beans. I still think of this as the “new” Pouring Beans, but it’s been running nearly twice as long as the original. This blog, and all it contains, now forms a record of the whole of our thirties.

Anyway, I wanted to make a post marking this slightly unbelievable milestone, so I have taken my inspiration from Kev’s original post. His “A Brave New Beans” was just a test to make sure everything was set up, and it just contains the word “words” repeated 127 times (I counted). So let’s see how many words we have produced in ten years.

2024 State of the Beans Address

Good morning. Thank you for joining me. It’s wonderful that so many of you have made the journey to be with us today here at the Hollywood Bowl. My name is His Holiness The Honourable Sergeant-Major Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, KBE, QC (Retired). I hope you agree that the trip to Los Angeles has been worth it, and I’d like to confirm at the outset that we are unable to reimburse your air fares.

Happy new (insert cat joke) year

I hope you’re all well and safe as a cat sitting in what looks like half an oven in a Medieval painting.

Owl threats

Earlier this year, I had a go at learning a new language on one of those language apps. It wasn’t very successful and started to feel like a bit of a chore, which isn’t the point, so I gave up after a few months.

I still have an account, though, and this particular app isn’t keen on letting you go. I occasionally still get a jolly email from them asking whether I’m going to come back. I don’t mind that. I do my thing and they do theirs, and everyone’s happy. Things are OK.

Until now.

Suddenly it’s not OK. Now the little cartoon owl is angry.

The message just gets worse from there. “Keep Duo happy, do your lessons” it says. Then it tells you an ominous parable about your feckless ways: “Every year, learners say they’ll learn a new language and Duo gets excited. Then they almost forgot their lessons, and Duo gets sad. That won’t happen this year, right?“

Then there’s some other distracting guff, before it finishes with an outright threat. “I’m going to make you do your lessons… by any means necessary. No one wants to see Duo when he gets upset. A few minutes of daily practice can keep Duo smiling in 2024. And a happy Duo means a safe and happy you.”

Screw you, Duo. I’ve unsubscribed.

ABOFB 33: Disappointing Things

After only 9 months since the last episode, and because Ian made me feel bad for that fact, here comes episode 33!
I’ve dredged out from the lockdown archives this gem, where we discuss:

Gigs
Gruff Rhys
Ignoring the question
Food

Four Word Reviews: Tubthumper

We’ve visited the nineties before, in our Four Word Reviewing Time Machine, and found it a strange place. Suggs was there, of course, which wasn’t so bad, but on other visits we were left traumatised by Clock and Vanilla Ice. So it was with some understandable trepidation that I opened the CD case for “Tubthumper” by Chumbawamba. Released in 1997, this might be the most nineties album ever made – the first single, Tubthumping, was a massive worldwide hit, but nowadays it doesn’t get the nostalgic airplay that, say, Oasis or the Spice Girls or Dee-Lite do. It belonged so much to its own era that it seems to have stayed there.

By Scanned by User:Markaci, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2238867

A list of thanks

It’s been another year, a year with a lot to be thankful for. As I look around my empty living room whilst writing this post, I imagine all the people that have helped me in the year 2023 as well as those that I have offered my help to. Some of them are smiling, some of them are waving, some of them are wondering why I’ve materialised in their kitchen and they’re trying to waft me away like I’m a bad smell or a pernickety bird who accidentally got in through the window. What a lovely image.

Before we reach the end of December I wanted to offer up a list of thanks to those that have done the most for me. In no particular order, here’s that list (because if I didn’t give you it then none of this would make sense):

Kev – it goes without saying that Kev has contributed so much to the website by not actually adding very much. Confused? Very. There comes a time in the month when you feel as though two posts is your absolute limit and no matter what you do no other ideas will come to the surface. Maybe you can scrape another one but that’s all you’ve got left. Sadness. Melancholia. You strive to reach that four posts per month and sometimes you can’t. Then you look at how many rancid peas Kev has and all of a sudden you’re writing a paragraph about bookends that look like puffins and searching for pictures of sea salt. It’s the most uplifting thing. Thanks, Kev.
Calendar – every day calendar is there for me. Every day calendar delivers the goods. When I wake up in the morning calendar provides me with a little look into the past and it’s almost always excellent (apart from the ones I can’t remember and without context make very little sense).
The man in the charity shop – he’s always cheerful and chatty and knows the kinds of film and music I like. I think he predicts if I’m going to want a particular blu-ray and puts it out in the shop because he’ll ask me if I picked up so and so either when he’s serving me or the next time he sees me. He also handed me a massive anime boxset because I was wearing a Cowboy Bebop t-shirt. Class.
Preston Vanderslice – a name so ridiculous it cannot possibly exist, right? Wrong! It does exist and belongs to this guy who’s in a few Hallmark Christmas films. As soon as I saw it I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s almost a Matt Berry ‘Toast of London’ name. His acting is fine, I’m sure he’s a lovely guy but with a name so posh it should have a street in Covent Gardens it’s going to be a winner every time. Vanderslice raises a huge smile.
Crème Brûlée – up until this year I don’t think I’d ever eaten one. When Vikki and I were away in Norway the boat was serving these in a particular restaurant every day. It was a crema Catalana, orange and lemon-scented Catalan-style Crème Brûlée. It may have contributed towards some of the weight gain from that holiday yet it was totally worth it. I cannot put this into my mouth quick enough.

Thank you one and all. Now go away because I say so.

The Rapples ride again

Do you remember eight and a half years ago, when we were rap stars? What did we do with all the fur and gold chains when that all ended? And how did three thirtysomething white northerners ever get away with recording four terrible, terrible rap songs?

The EP Space for an Ace might not be something you revisit on a regular basis (though I still think Turd Picnic is pretty catchy), but a far more appealing prospect is the video footage we recorded over the course of the weekend while we were making it. I’d just got a new camera and wanted to try it out, so we filled a tape with more than an hour of nonsense. A few bits have leaked out over the years (like this and this and this), but now I’ve finally edited the rest to make a pretty watchable 18 minutes of new stuff.

A lot of material was trimmed because it was rubbish. Other parts have been lost forever: a fair slice of the creative process for “Crash and Burn” exists only as silent pictures, because of a microphone mishap that Kev kindly makes me explain in the film. There was also a five-minute sequence with the three of us sitting on the sofa, talking to the camera and to each other. It looked hilarious, but we’ll never know what we were talking about now. Never mind.

Still, lots of stupid stuff survived, so I’m delighted to present – at last, eight years late – the Rapples in action, live from 2015. It’s pretty good.