Andy's Glasses

Well thanks to Dom for pointing out that I hadn’t listed every brilliant film ever and possibly forgot a few. It isn’t that I have a list next to my bed and add to it every few weeks/months/years. It was just a list that sprung to mind as my fingers typed. So I forgot some. I’m human. In some ways…

So I thank him for the Blues Brothers, without which my life indeed would be far from complete. Similarly One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest. Amazing. The Godfather(s) were brilliant but far from my own personal top 10 (of 395 and counting). Though I did omit Taxi Driver, by accident, and also Dog Day Afternoon and Midnight Cowboy. Even The Witches of Eastwick. Firstly because Jack Nicholson was so brilliant that not for one moment did you suspect that his character was anything but the devil himself, and secondly because ‘we’ NEED Michelle Pfeiffer in this list. Just NEED her. Might have thought for a bit about The Usual Suspects but you’re not allowed to talk about K*v*n Sp*c*y any longer in case someone comes round and changes all YOUR vowels to asterisks!!

But movies can only take you so far. I’m expecting a whole batch of Coronavirus movies to come out soon. Keanu Reeves fighting off microbes in bullet time. Just ducking them. Tom Cruise (but he looks much bigger) fighting them off with machine guns and booby traps. Alec Baldwin starring as Donald Trump in ‘Death of a President’ about a man who refused to believe. Hattie Jacques will play Melania. Sid James as Boris Johnson.

But it turns out that Covid 19 is racist. Deeply racist. Like, KKK levels of racism. As it appears the darker your skin, the greater the chance you have of dying from it. Which is horrible. Yet statistically borne out. Whites lose 23 people out of every 100,000 of population to the virus, whereas for black people it 43! People from India and environs run at about 27, unless they’re from Bangladesh in which case it drops to just 20.

That is pure fucking racism. They should outlaw the virus on those grounds alone. I’m not sure how that stats rate for gays, lesbians and bisexuals and can see that ‘trans’ people might possible confuse the statisticians. Men are more likely to die than women from the virus. Not sure about Jews but we ain’t doing too well.

So I’m moving to Bangladesh tomorrow. I’ll keep in touch. Without touching, obvs.

Happy Next Day

A xxxx

Ok, here’s my top ten, all time, greatest ever, most brilliant, movies ever of all time, ever. Ready??

1. The Producers (original Mel Brookes, the one and only Zero Mostel)
1. Life of Brian
1. Blazing Saddles
1. Pulp Fiction (for its startling originality and Uma Thurman in that wig)
1. Duel (Spielberg masterpiece)
1. Star Wars (original, first one ever, ie part 4, which it would never have become if it had failed)
1. Play it Again Sam (Woody who can no longer be named)
1. Annie Hall (ditto)
1. The Graduate (introducing Dustin Hoffman, but Anne Bancroft… OMG, Anne Bancroft…)
1. Bullitt (jacked up Mustangs, Steve McQueen, Dodge Chargers, it had everything)
1. French Connection (same as Bullitt but Gene Hackman must be on this list)
1. Enter the Dragon (simply terrible film, hence very funny, but Bruce Lee at his arrogant best)
1. Thelma and Louise (because I’m a feminist. And Gina Davies was soooo fit)
1. Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (love Richard Dreyfus, love modelling out of mashed potatoes)
1. Terminator (sheer brilliance, wonderful time paradox)
1. Terminator 2 (spectacularly visual, same time paradox, you can never have it too many times… no pun)
1. The Lives of Others (East Germany at its most grey and bleak and yet wonderful)
1. Django Unchained (so much violence, has to get on the list)
1. Kill Bill (Uma, martial arts, both parts just sensational)
1. Carrie (the original, obvs, the best ‘you wouldn’t wanna see me angry’ flick ever)
1. Frankenstein (Boris Karloff in the original)
1. Young Frankenstein (the… errrr… re-make)
1. Double Indemnity (my personal, ultimate, ‘noir’ movie. And Barbara Stanwick)
1. Some Like it Hot
1. Cabaret (funny, brilliant, musical, yet the dark threat of the Nazis seeping all through it, quite incredible)
1. American Graffiti (George Lucas autobiographical debut movie, introducing Harrison Ford and a shit-load of amazing cars)
1. Blue is the Warmest Colour (you simply can’t go wrong with gorgeous French lesbians)
1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Paul Newman was gorgeous and never more so than in fab cowboy-ish flick)
1. Fargo (just brilliant, from start to finish, every part played to absolute perfection)
1. Duck Soup. (Because without the Marx Brothers innovation verging on insanity would we ever have reached the comedic highs of Monty Python? Of Woody Allen?)

So there. It’s a start.

Happy Day after yesterDay

A xxxx

I just had an innovative invitation to my mate Sizzi’s birthday ‘party’. We’re going to hook up on Zoom and watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail for his 60th celebrations. Then we’re all going to get really pissed (alone) and smash up the bathrooms (our own) in a celebration of 70s culture. I’ve got a six pack of really trendy designer brewery beers with fancy but stupid names, like Dracula’s Kiss and Uncle Chaim’s Halitosis, and a bottle of Laphroaig in case they don’t work properly. And a sledge hammer. For the bathroom. If I’m still awake after the film. And the booze.

But not so long ago (ok, fucking decades ago) one of our local cinemas (they were open back then, in about 1977) offered a midweek ‘special’. One night only. Double hit. Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles. Quite literally, at that time, the holy grail of comedic brilliance. So we went. Dozens of us. Who, collectively, had seen those 2 movies approximately 2,536 times between us. We must have set the precedent for the Rocky Horror Show. Which you can’t see in a cinema unless you know all the words to every song and scene and are dressed as a sweet transvestite. Because we knew every line of both movies. From “I fart in your general direction” to “Mungo just pawn in game of life”.

It was a zeitgeist thing. Two movies that were the epitome of their cultural freedoms of expression. Just before the devil that is ‘political correctness’ ruined fun forevermore.

Holy Grail was a masterpiece. And insulted everyone who needed insulting. Mainly French people. Fine by me. And was wild and wonderful and so stupid as to become totally brilliant. When Life of Brian eventually came out a little later it became ‘the’ ultimate Python film but mainly because it upset every church in the country and added heresy to the normal satire. But Holy Grail remains sacred to many of us.

Blazing Saddles was Mel Brooks’ finest moment. So that when PC finally came around that movie was the blueprint for ‘the place to start’. Because you were allowed to laugh at race jokes, slavery jokes, jokes against women, against Jews, Muslims, gays and even the KKK. You could even call the ‘native Americans’ ‘red Indians’! Who, for the purposes of the film, spoke Yiddish. Which is probably why it is never shown on those late night tv slots where they show old movies. Simply because its too good. And if you censored it using modern criteria there’d be just 3 minutes and 22 seconds left.

Happy Gorgeously sunny Day

A xxxx

Joey’s working from home too. And has cleared his in-tray. Because he’s very productive and very busy. And is now brain-storming. Or weeing. Either takes serious concentration. The latter sometimes more.

And working at home I dare say can be very productive. If you sit at a computer for 5 hours and… and… and do shit on that computer of a worky and creative and critical nature. On Zoom. But if your work, like mine, is a bit more ‘different’, a bit more difficult to do from home, it just means you do less. Though oddly, that ‘less’ takes 15 times longer than doing it in a work environment. Mainly because most people are stupid. Dim. Brain-dead. Moronic. And the bigger the company, the more moronic they are.

I just had an interesting conversation (never would have happened in ‘normal times’ when everyone’s on autopilot) about the whereabouts of a pair of sunglasses I ordered for someone 3 weeks ago. Which I then, as instructed, requested to be delivered to my home as THE PRACTICE IS SHUT!!!! just like everywhere else in the country. I emailed the details, exactly as requested and received confirmation from the ‘logistics’ people. What used to be called ‘dispatch’ until they got big computers and bigger ideas and demanded a new title. As befits… yeah, whatever.

This is the largest optical company in the world. By such a long way that if the chief exec wants to buy a kit-kat it HAS to be taken to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission before he can open it. By which time his tea’s gone cold.

And today I learned that the job had shipped to Fleet Street. Ah. Fleet Street. Where I used to work before the plague. Where they’ve always sent stuff. Where I specifically requested they don’t cos not only are we not currently there, at the present moment there are no living people in the entire City of London. Only the burglar who smashed my window and 16 really nice policemen. None of whom take in packages.

But what’s the point of venting my frustration, my anger, my… sheer hopelessness of this debacle, with a girl sitting in her flat in Amsterdam, on her computer, talking about the failings of tossers in Milan who can’t follow instructions sent from… possibly Riga. Maybe Prague.

As I had cause to say to a different CEO (doesn’t eat kit-kats) yesterday about a different but equally annoying matter: companies will be remembered by how they behaved during ‘the crisis’. And its true. And my shit-list is growing daily.

Much better to vent to you. Where I can do it properly and DON’T HAVE TO ACT POLITELY OR FUCKING NICELY!!!!

Happy home-working Day

A xxxx

I love America. I guess (horrible Americanism) I always have. I fell in love with Westerns as a kid, then always wanted the ‘GI Joe’ over the British Action Man, drooled over adverts for ‘chupa chops’ in DC comics, even though I had no idea what they were and with hindsight, if they were as good a confection as Hershey-anything, I did well sticking with the pictures. When I lived in California in 1982 it only enhanced my love of the place. And of the people. Some, ok, in the literal sense, but most in a ‘holy shit, are people really like that????’ kind of distant amazement type deal. In that Americans are just like us but at the same time 15 miles apart. And seemingly stuck in a clicheed world of ‘way to go!!’s and high fives. And bluster. Whilst we Brits have always been a perfect study of understatement and self-effacement, our Yankee counterparts are full of bluster and bravado. Basically, they shout a lot. Or, in the case of Mr POTUS, they shout and repeat. Shout. And. Repeat. Very slowly. As if the profundity of his moronic utterings are so important that we need to write them down or have them tattooed on our biceps.

They had a ‘protest’ somewhere in Michigan. About the unfairness of the lockdown. (I ain’t scared’y no bugs!!!) So a bunch of morbidly obese men gathered at some town hall or other, wearing their best baseball hats, to state their case. All of them carrying high-powered assault weapons over their shoulders. And I know its (sadly) legal to do so, but you have to ask yourself ‘why?’ Why would you feel the need to attend a peaceful protest in Detroit armed for the invasion of Syria? Over here we take placards. Hand written on floppy A4 sheets that no-one can read because they bend in the wind.

And then I watched Tiger King. Ho-leeeee shi-iiii-iiiiittt!!!!! Have you seen it? It explains everything you ever need to know about America and Americans. About limits. And how the limits that society imposes about any given parameter can be stretched and stressed way beyond what is even imaginable. Until you end up with the Tiger King. Who is the most red-necked red-neck, yet he’s gay. In fact he’s so gay that he’s part of a 3-way marriage. (Yes, ???) He’s the most gun-toting mutha who seems intent on killing his little lake, so many shots he endlessly fires into it with part of his immense arsenal. And of course, he has a few animals. Other than the lions, pumas, leopards, ligers (yes, fucking ‘LIGERS’ cross between our two most popular big cats), he has (had, cos he’s been locked in jail for 97 years… currently) 227 tigers. Big ones, little ones, babies, white ones, snow ones, blue ones (ok…). Just FYI being married to one or even two men in a state where, I’m gonna guess, gay marriage is illegal (Oklahoma? Oklahomo???) won’t put you in jail. Nor having 227 tigers. All stuck in horrible cages. Which he constantly enters. Shooting at your own lake won’t put you in jail either. Unless it dies. No, he’s in jail for murder.

As it apparently costs about 1000 dollars a year to feed each Tiger, that’s… add 3… divide by 7… that’s a lot of money. So he invites the public in to enjoy his critters. Have their photo taken with ickle likkle tiger cubs. Which are adorable, that must be said. But then they grow.

There’s other guys who own tiger… places? Farms? Zoos? One is a drug gang lord (retired) and the other basically runs a cult. In which he is the unquestionable Lord (by name as well as status) and appears to have almost as many concubines as he does tigers. Or ‘workers’ as he calls them for tax purposes.

Yet its the people who go to visit the tigers who actually are the most fascinating. And the wonderful distinction between a zoo (horrible places locking up animals in tiny cages) and an ‘animal salvation and research centres’ (horrible places locking up animals in tiny cages) which really is the focus of the series. And the cause of most of the trouble. Other than the lake. That deserved to be shot.

Happy sunshine-back Day

A xxxx

Some people (you know who you are!!!) don’t eat bread. They find it too… bread-like, too… carby, too… just too… something. These people are silly. Bread is wonderful, bread is delightful, bread is the best. And don’t get me started on what you can put in/on/around/between it.

Yet there’s bread and there’s bread. Paul Hollywood is Mr Bread. Not because he looks like he’s actually made from 2 very large, fluffy, fat loaves, but because he reckons he can bake it to perfection. Well not my bread he can’t. Because today is the most special day EVER (literally) for the bread we call ‘challah’. And that’s not pronounced with a ‘ch-‘ like ‘chair’, but a chchch- like clearing your throat before you spit. As if you’d spit.

People mistakenly call challah ‘Jewish bread’. It’s not. Nothing like. Challah, baked properly, can only be made by God himself. Sorry, or herself. Itself. By their gender-neutral-self. Whatever. Because no bread anywhere tastes quite like it. Slightly sweet and made with egg. Which is unusual for bread. And even Jews can only really get it on Fridays, as its baked for the Sabbath.

I’m actually fascinated by bread (coeliacs and glutards may check other pages now). In a geographical sense. Because as you travel East in the world (as if you could, like we once did) the bread gets flatter and flatter. In Western Europe we like our bread big and soft and a bit crusty on the outside. Yet when you get to even Italy, they’re making pizza bases (and what the fuck is a pizza if not an open sandwich?) and by Greece your Hovis is replaced with pitta. Which is flat but at least opens up. Turkey has those too, but also represents the start of proper, single-sheet, flat breads. Which is what bread is all across the Middle East and beyond. When you arrive at India, Pakistan and proper sub-continent Eastern nations, its all naan and chapati and roti. Mainly because they’re so good for mopping up curries, but also because most people there are savages who wouldn’t know a knife and fork from a bowler hat or an Oyster card.

Go further east and the bread has flattened off still further and is called ‘rice’.

Today is Friday. Challah day. But not only that, its the first day after Passover, when no self-respecting Jew would EVERRRR eat anything vaguely bread-ish (fortunately I have absolutely no self-respect so my rules are slightly relaxed compared to the standards of anyone wearing a black hat in summertime). So Jews are desperate for bread today. And not just any bread, but it happens to coincide with Friday. AND, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in a lock-down type situation and not supposed to go out. Unless ITS ESSENTIAL. And what could be more essential than that.

They were queuing hundreds of yards outside all the Jewish bread shops this morning (for reference, in current climate, 100 yards = 4 paranoid people). But we got in. Ok, by sneezing and coughing our way to the front, but we got in. Our Marie Antoinette moment. “Fuck the cake, let them eat challah!!”

Happy pre-sabbath bread Day

A xxxx

Iss a funny ole thing, this coronavirus. It’s made me ‘preciate much more luvverly shit than wot I used ta. Cos naah the pubs ‘ave shut, I have to walk abart a bit. Somefink I’d previously avoided like the fucking plague. Ironic that, innit? Now we ‘ave a fucking plague and I’m getting all naycherred up every day. Cos its Spring, innit. And I’ve acherley started noticing stuff. Like flowers. There’s all kinds, just out there. Daffodils, tulips… errrrr… more tulips, little blue things, a bunch a white ones, and… like… flowers. I don’t know their proper Latin names cos I’m less a Roman, more Roman Road (Bow, E3). And there’s birds. What I’d previously fought of as ‘noisy fucking pests’; rats in the sky makin’ a racket when I’m hung over. And now my revulsion has turn to relevation and I’m loving ‘em all. Sparrers. Robins. Big Black Fuckers. Tits. Ha, ha. And trees. There’s loads of ‘em. Amazing wot you notice now the football’s finished forever. Or not.

And that is the question of the day: what do we do about football? It’s all a question of who is going to be most pissed off.

If the season is played beyond July 1st, all the players under contract til June 31st (and there are many and they are good ones too) will be eligible to leave. Just walk off the pitch, throw their shirt and look for the next badge to kiss. Depending on how much someone is prepared to pay them to kiss it. Apparently there is no (current) law in England/Europe that can force a contract extension if the players don’t agree. So the clubs’ll be royally pissed off.

Supposing games could be played from June, which is doubtful and would be behind closed doors (the worst bit of all), they wouldn’t have enough time to finish the season before the contract scenario goes pear-shaped. Which pisses off everybody.

And if you can’t finish the season then, it begs the question of why not finish it now? As the leagues stand. And that would be great for Liverpool. And… errrr… and…

No-one else. Not one other team would benefit. All teams being relegated would start legal proceedings. Any team not promoted would start legal proceedings. Any team will delusions of grandeur (the rest) would start legal proceedings. If Spurs aren’t given a European place I’m starting legal proceedings.

Or they could ‘cancel’ the whole season. It was all a dream!!! Like the Wizard of Oz. Rub it out and start again next year with a clean slate. And I don’t think those kind, understanding, compassionate Liverpool players and fans would have any complaints about that. No. Not at all.

Happy curve-is-flattening Day

A xxxx

Here’s my day.

Wake up at 11.45. Doze for another hour whilst everyone makes me tea.
Read the papers. Which is basically reading about coronavirus. How many died here, there, everywhere. Looking at graphs. Lots of graphs. London rise vs Manchester. England vs Italy. Spain vs France. Deaths in Zimbabwe against cases in New York. It’s amazing just how many comparisons can be made when NOTHING ELSE IS HAPPENING IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD! Read about dead celebrities. They die differently. More celebrity-ish.
Stagger downstairs-turn on tv. There is no pause between those 2 events.
Watch the longest available series(es) on Netflix until I either fall asleep or someone calls me to eat something.
Return to the tv and fall asleep. Wake up and watch Pretty Woman for the 53rd time this week.
Speak to someone on zoom/FaceTime/WhatsApp. Doesn’t matter who.
Look at all the memes/videos about coronavirus that have arrived in the last 2 hours.
Get ready to take the dog for a walk. Realise I don’t have a dog. Go back to tv.
Eat dinner. Drink booze.
Drink more booze.
Just one more for the road… to the tv.
Go to bed.
Get thrown out of bed. Take shower. Return to bed. Stay.

It’s brilliant. It’s like being an obnoxious teenager again, but without the acne.

If only. The reality is that there is simply not enough time to get all the shit done wot needs doin’. Today’s big event was shopping. Remember when you just breezed into Waitrose, barged your way round, without even a mask on! Remember? Well now its rubber gloves, mask, disinfectant spray, which only a few people get upset about if you get it in their eyes, rubber boots, visor, virus-repellant hat (looks like a beanie but the guy who sold it to me assured me of its magical properties, which is why it cost £234.50). And yelling. DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT 2 METRES LOOKS LIKE?!?!?!?!!!! KEEP AWAY!!!!! YOU’RE TOO CLOSE!!!! FUCK OFFFFFFFFF!!!!

Then you come home, open the door and get straight into the shower, with all your clothes and all your shopping. It’s the only way.

But then, like prisoners, you get 1 hour of each 24 to spend in the exercise yard. And we pound the streets. Well, the heath really, as its softer underfoot. And marvel at the myriad of newfound ways people have of avoiding each other.

And if I get to watch one measly hour of tv each night I’m doing well. Other than the news, that don’t count. And last night we had the veritable treat of the first part of the new Killing Eve series. At least the deaths are more interesting than those on the news. More creative. Artistic.

Remember; bizarre is the new normal.

Happy (some) Day (or other)

A xxxx

So you’re walking along, all cazule like, say, Fleet Street, at about midnight. You’re in a ‘lockdown’ so shouldn’t really be out, but you’re so pissed/stoned/insane/unbalanced that you’re barely aware of any of that shit. And suddenly, you get the urge to acquire a new pair of RayBans. Even though its the dark of night. And there, in front of your very, photophobic eyes, is a whole bunch of them! As if delivered by the angels! Wow. Only problem is, those pesky angels seem to have left them behind a quarter of an inch of reinforced, laminated plate glass. But you can’t be deterred. A ‘message’ is a ‘message’, innit?

But just before acquisition, there’s a few considerations that might be worthy of consideration. Firstly, that there is a lockdown and the City is a ghost-town. Secondly, even though ghostly, it still has its own police force. The one with the highest ratio of coppers/square inch than anywhere else in the country. And thirdly, that said RayBans are in a locked cabinet standing approximately 2 metres high. Made of steel and ‘glass’. Heavy.

How the hole was made I have no idea. Guessing something pretty heavy. Perhaps like his mate, maybe. Hold him sideways and use his head as a battering ram. I don’t know. But I can testify in a court of law that a hole was somehow made. And then, this very heavy and high display cabinet was somehow manhandled through it. Leaving a wake of fucking destruction and chaos behind as Johnny Dipstick and his mate wrestled a 2 metre cabinet through a four foot hole.

But they did it. Successfully. And dragged/carted/shlepped/wrestled this unwieldy thing down a side street to a quiet ally. Where they smashed and kicked and bashed and whatevered until they could open it and reach the treasures within. But sadly they were disturbed in their quest. Probably as they were trying on the styles to see whether the Clubmaster looked better than the Aviator, and discussing the advantages of polarised lenses over normal ones.

Our hapless criminals were ‘nabbed’. By loads of police who spend their evening driving round my City looking for… for tosser imbeciles nicking RayBans. Of which there aren’t currently very many as anyone out on any street currently invites suspicion.

Mel insisted on coming with me. We arrived about 1.15 after the police phoned, and left about 4 once the window was boarded and all statements made and signed and done. The police were, it must be said, brilliant. Which they should be, as befitted my newfound ‘victim’ status. And I do ‘traumatised’ better than anyone. I spend most of life like that. Almost nice to do so in earnest.

But spare a thought for those poor, inept, stupid robbers, for a moment. Society is to blame. Coronavirus lockdown temporary insanity. Socio-economic considerations. They never had a chance in life.

I hope they bring back hanging. Motherfuckers.

Happy, tired… Day

A xxxx

There’s a view of coronavirus that ain’t nice, ain’t pleasant but is definitely valid. That it is culling the weak, the infirm, the aged, the sick, from the world. Because although others are affected, by a massive margin, the ‘high risks’ count for a humongous proportion of the actual deaths. Which is why there are so many wonderful conspiracy theories around about the Chinese. Who, let’s face it, would not think twice about annihilating the most financially demanding sector of their own nor anyone else’s societies for the sake of reducing a housing problem of saving a bit of cash. Other than that I maintain a very high regard for the morality of the Chinese people and their government. Well, that and the bats.

But as we grow accustomed to ‘the new world order’, we’re adapting to new ways. Which are pretty much all online. So I do my tai chi online twice a day with my instructor and my mates, on zoom. And its great. In fact it is totally fucking life-saving. Obviously we can’t hit each other in any meaningful way, but we can make up for that ‘on the other side’.

I can’t play tennis. And therefore I’m missing out on any ‘cardio’ stuff that you’re supposed to do. Heart-pounding, panting, sweating, kind’a deal. We do about a 5k walk every day but that don’t do it. Mel & Rachie can’t do their spin for their fix either.

So the daughter has found a solution. Hardcore H.I.I.T. sessions. High Intensity IntervalTraining. Which I decided to join this morning. I mean: how hard can it be? And it was totally brilliant!

Ok, it was totally hateful, painful, agonising and sadistic. Which, in the ‘HIIT’ world, are all big selling points. You’re led by a gay South African lump of smiling muscle. Ok, he’s probably not really gay, in any serious manner, but I prefer to think of him that way to compensate for any misplaced sense of physical perfection any women may presume about him. And, smilingly, he makes you do squats, and planks, and squats jumping into planks, and planks lifting arms and legs off the ground, then lifting all limbs and torso off the ground, then jumping; star jumps, skip jumps, twist your right leg into your left ear 17 times whilst jumping and twisting. Sit ups of all types, keep going, half way there!! keep going, 6… and 5… keep the rhythm, 4… and 3… … and 1 and NOW you can lean over and vomit. Well done. Quick wipe and into plank, just one finger on one hand, both feet off the floor, bounce up and down for 50… 49…

Oh just fuck off and let me die of the virus, you vain and narcissistic foreign person.

Really enjoyed it.

Happy… Day

A xxxx