Andy's Glasses

Came home last night and, whilst trying to digest the biggest ice-cream ever consumed (and the best, if you’re at all interested) we turned on the tv. And because we’re in God’s own country, instead of the ‘Meet the Parents’ or ‘Grease 2’ or ‘Die Hard AGAIAIAIAN’, we were blessed with Django Unchained. Ok, lot of blood-letting, which doesn’t aid the digestion, but the wonderful Tarantino wit, the outstanding performances (I’d forgotten how revoltingly brilliant Di Caprio was), all make up for seventeen thousand litres of red paint in 12 minutes. And of course, best of all, they’re all shouting out ‘Nigger!!!!’ all the time. Which wasn’t censored, wasn’t cut, wasn’t anything, it just was. How can that be??? A travesty!!! A disgrace!!! Appalling!!!! Like going to Tottenham and hearing that excessive use of the ‘yid’ word!!!! Like social anthropological rape!!!

But its not. Its ‘istory, innit. And thus, in true historical realism, they said what was said then and it all sounds normal, though a bit louder than we speak today, and no-one complained because its like real life used to be. Hmmmm. A black ex-slave, wearing sunglasses that wouldn’t be invented for 65 years, riding round insulting white slavers. Yup, realistic.

So Jeremy Clarkson, the petrolhead’s motormouth, the guru of neanderthalism, the man worshipped by anyone who drives a V8 car and has a conscience, our Jeremy got in biiiiiiiiiiig trouble filming Top Gear. He decided to say a nursery rhyme to select between two options. “Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo” he started. No problem there, you can say all those words to Her Majesty the Queen. Though oddly enough, if you call Prince Phillip a queen, he’ll punch you on the nose. Then the next line, uttered, on camera, by Jeremy: “catch a ni- by the toe”.

OH!

MY!!

GAAAWWWWD!!!!!!

Did Jeremy Clarkson just utter the most unutterable of unutterables???? Did he really??? Rewind and confirm. Yes he DID!!!

So 25,000 phoned, wrote, emailed and tweeted to complain about this atrocity and demand Clarkson not just be sacked by the BBC but taken out and publicly flogged, like a… like someone in Twelve Years a Motoring Correspondent.

Such an overreaction. As always. Political correctness is just a bunch of tossers trying so hard not to offend people they really hate that they inflict their misery on everyone else. Ironically, or perhaps, justly, the only group of people you are officially allowed to really insult without fear of reprimand or punishment, is middle-class, white, hypersensitive, twin-setted, purple-rinsed, Home Counties church-going old mingers with too much time on their scrubbed and creamed-up fucking hands.

Happy Sunday, I’m off to watch Blazing Saddles.

A xxxx

I know, I know, England’s having a heatwave, hotter that 1936, sunnier than Bahrain, warmer than the toaster, eggs frying on car bonnets in Esher, blah, blah, blah. So it seems a bit ironic to book a last-minute break ‘to the sun’ whilst it seems to be more of a busman’s holiday leaving the sun to sit in the sun. Who knew it was going to be gorgeous in London? And really, going ‘away’ is not just about sun. Its so much more. Its about distancing yourself mentally. Its about the complete relaxation that you simply can’t get at home. And its about enjoying a different world, a different culture. And, as is generally the case, ‘culture’ means ‘food’.

They say that civlisation arrived when the human question changed from ‘what will we eat?’ to ‘where shall we eat?’. No-one kills goats any more to feed the family for a week, nor goes out picking leaves in the forests, when Tescos have them on 2-for-1. Ok, in parts of Africa and Asia and even South America there is poverty and starvation, which is a bad thing, and in many other places there is McDonalds, which is arguably worse. The old ‘starvation vs clogged arteries’ debate. But in the west, and even here in the Middle East, food is a defining feature of life. Certainly of my life.

So I’ve come here really, as I do most years, to spend my time eating ‘things in pitta, doused in chilli sauce’. And I’m not too fussed what those ‘things’ might be. Meat works. Tuna salad. Fellafal. Fruit salad. Fruit salad? With chilli?? In pitta??? Well, it just seemed a bit more breakfasty than more meat. Maybe put some yoghurt on it too.

But that’s only part of the story. Last night we did sushi, tonight its tapas. Multi-culturalism means different flavour restaurants. But before that we have our ritual. Well, this is Israel, and today is the sabbath day, so we need something spiritual. And that’s where the iced coffee comes in. A ‘special’ ritual for 5pm every day. When we sojourn down the beach, following the path of our forefathers, when they escaped from Egypt, even though we now use the boarwalk which only went up 5 years ago. And we trudge in the sand until we find an oasis (called Bell Bar) and there The Lord has provided sustinance for us. Or iced coffee as manna is now known. Because they do it here differently. They do it better than Starbucks, better than Costa, better than anywhere. Probably because they skimp on neither fats nor sugars, but they don’t have to. Holidays are calorie free. (I fucking hope they are or I’m in big trouble). And we sit in the lowering sunshine, watch the amblers ambling, the surfers surfing and the sand… er… lying there. And we suck wonderfully-flavoured ice through a straw. A slow business. But what the rush. We’re on holiday.

Ahhhhhh. Though may have to delay the ritual a bit for the cup final today. Or get them to put a screen up on the beach. Now that’s an idea.

Come on Hull,

Shabbat shalom, as they say in Knightsbridge,

A xxxx

Satnav is just another sodding screen to demand our attention. We leave our computers, occasionally, walk around staring at smart phones and then get in the car. And turn on the satnav. Well, you probably do. I get in with a map. And notes. Scribbled down from some direction site and relating to places I know. Because I resent satnavs and what they represent. I hate the fact that you’re just getting into American Girl and when Tom Petty implores: “take it easy, baby. Make it last all ni- IN 5O YARDS, TURN RIGHT!!” Oh just piss off, you told me that 300 yards ago, 200 yards ago and 100 yards ago, you’re like the worst, nagging wife in the whole world, now SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Yet they have a place, satnavs. Mainly when you’re going somewhere far and exotic, like Putney, or Oldham, and you haven’t been before. My girls had satnavs for their 18th birthday presents. At which point they simply stopped noticing where they were driving. Neither can now make it to the end of the road without assistance from the satellites.

But satnav is soon to become old news, yesterday’s toy, this generations 8-track, betamax, tape cassette, Leeds United kind of thing. Historical amusement value only. Because (apparently) you get ‘black spots’ when the satellite is blocked out and the instructions stop and you get lost. Which is tragic. Even though no-one I know who uses those things ever complains about it. Scientists are now working on, and have perfected, the quantum compass. Sounds impressive, its full of colliding atoms and physics shit, like a mini CERN for home use, and its 1000 times more accurate than satnav. How they arrive at 1000 times is beyond anyone without a PhD in particle mechanics and psycho-pedantics.

Now isn’t that fantastic news. The compass is currently 1 metre long and very heavy. Perfect for using on a bike. And I hate to imagine the cost. So don’t go throwing away your 75-quid Tom-Tom, which is 3 inches long and weighs nothing, just yet. Surely it can’t take long to minimise this thing. I mean, how big’s an atom?

Charlotte Leslie, MP for Bristol-somewhere, was, in a former life, a lifeguard. And a pretty damned fit one at that. Can I say that? Without accusations of chauvinism? misogyny? sexism? Rolph Harrisism? Anyway, she reckons that the skills she learned out there in the waves serve her well as a member of parliament in Westminster. Which I reckon is true. I mean, what is being part of the conservative party machine if not the saving of drowning men. If they’re not drowning under the weight of public scorn over expense claims, then they’re drowning under a heap of their own rhetoric and bullshit. Whatever floats her float.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So here’s the quandary. Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the night flight over to Tel Aviv, arriving at some godforsaken hour and feeling like shit? Or to take a flight the next morning and basically lose a whole day of sun, sand and sangria? Not that we drink sangria here; it just alliterates better than ‘water’, ‘beer’ or ’12 year old single malt’. As time is precious we opted for the overnight, get 3 hours of uncomfortable, disturbed sleep, arrive feeling positively zombiesque, but at least arrive.

So to celebrate, we went straight out for ‘brunch’. What an underestimated meal that is. Positively wonderful. Its like breakfast (the ‘br-‘) but because it implies that includes lunch too (‘-unch’), you get to eat loads more. And Israel is brunch central of the world. They have a thousand variations of brunch here, all of them wonderful, all of them completely calorie-free because you’re on holiday and therefore going to burn off any kcals consumed by walking… to dinner later on. Or strolling along the beach for iced coffees. Again, completely fat-free and ultra-lite. Unless you count the calories or fat. In which case, get a fucking life.

My eggs Benedict came with a salad. Salad? For breakfast?? No, for brunch. The salad was the ‘unch’ bit. The pancakes came with fruit salad. Fruit? For lunch?? No, Mel always has fruit for ‘br-‘ so just added the most fabulous pancakes to unchify the deal. Add rolls, preserves, juices, coffee and I start to appreciate why they call this ‘the Holy Land’.

And I’m in here writing this because its just too damned hot to sit out any longer. I’m singeing. Cooked to perfection, like my eggs.

5 days of heaven. And the pic is the view.

Have a lovely thursday; wherever you are.

A xxxx

Normally this is a horrible time of the year. When the football season finishes. The hiatus. Mind the gap. But this year we have a World Cup to look forward to. Even though its going to be all late night matches because of the time differences.

And due to those late kick-offs (in UK time, as if anyone else’s time is important) they’re going to extend pub opening hours to enable unemployed drunks to watch the 11pm starting matches in the comfort of their own Lamb To The Slaughter, having already been drinking since about 6.30 that evening. So the government is sorting out these extended licences and they are working out the possible scenarios. And have decided that the chances of England getting into the knock-out stages of the competition are pretty remote. And that’s our own government. Another vote of confidence for English football.

But before that starts we have the inevitable ‘spring cleaning’ at football clubs. Which for Spurs, inevitably, means getting rid of the manager. Its a ceremony we perform every year. Gives us a clean start next term. Refreshes the parts. And also this is the time of year when the transfer market goes into a frenzy. Because if you wait til after the Cup to buy star players their stock may have risen and you can no longer afford them come August.

Tim Sherwood had to go. So said Daniel Levy. Because the players don’t like Tim, the board don’t like him, the fans don’t like him and even his wife’s not that keen. However, if you adopt an ‘appointment by popularity’ paradigm, surely Daniel Levy should be the first to go. Everyone hates the Chairman. And how about our director of football? What a waste of space not just he is, but the whole concept of such a role. And if you accept the importance of a Baldini then surely, after last year’s disastrous wasting of 100 million quid on worthless mediocrity, he should be replaced too, with someone who knows his backside from the bend in his arm.

We need a ‘big manager’ to keep the players happy, otherwise they’ll leave. The phrase “FUCK’EM!!!” probably best summarises my own feelings on ‘player power’, as we describe the throwing of toys out of prams by the world’s most moronic, overpaid divas that council estates and trailer parks can produce. Players so loyal, so devoted, so passionate about ‘the shirt’ that if that shirt is not in the Champions League next year, then bollox, I’m leaving. Rather than playing better to improve your club to the point where all deserve entry to that most hallowed of competitions, they’d just leave and go to Chelsea, who are already there. All the glory, none of the work. Great ethic.

But Brazil; wow. I love Brazil. I love Brazillians (especially those beach volleyball ones), I love the whole thing. The fact that the nation has essentially bankrupted itself building a bunch of stadia with no plans for after July. Maybe they’ll become shopping malls? Maybe a prison (honest, that’s one possible plan), maybe housing? And will it all be finished in time?? Are there enough workers left in that country to complete the works after so many have died in the construction so far??

Didier Deschamps has the right idea about the world cup. Its not about players, its about teams. So Samir Nasri, petulant little French shit, may be a great player but if he’s a sub he moans, whinges and upsets other player, so Didier has left him behind. In Paris. Or Manchester. Like I care.

Oh well, bit late today cos much to be done in order to escape. At the airport now waiting for flight to Tel Aviv. Taking our baby daughter to the seaside for a few days.

Shalom,

A xxxx

I’m a reader. I read a lot. That’s what tube travel was invented for. Not time travel, that’s something else. Not somewhere else, more sometime else. If you were a time traveller and there was a delay, would that mean that your British Timeways trip to 1776 is not leaving for 15 minutes? (and would that matter??) or that its only going as far as 1829?

Anyway, books, me, snob.

I don’t read classics. Anything by any Bronte, Austen, Dickens or anyone else on my set books from school, wouldn’t touch ’em. Nor Agatha Christie. Who wrote a hundred whodunnits. Or the same one a hundred times.
And I don’t read biography or autobiography unless its by/about a really good sportsperson. Or maybe someone who’d had multiple breast enhancements. I will read non-fiction, but only if its very sciency. Fermat’s Last Theorem. Chaos Theory. Stephen Hawking (I completely understood the meaning of life, the universe and everything whilst reading him, until I put the book down, then it was gone), even Richard Dawkins. Though my fave was the late, great Stephen Jay Gould. Who? Harvard professorial mega-brain who published 25 years of monthly essays in neat, bite-sized chunks of evolutionary biology, geology, history and philosophy of science, and all written with charm, wit and humour. Unlike Richard Dawkins who writes about similar stuff but with arrogance, smugness, dogmatism and an attitude so sneering that you repeatedly punch the book hoping that it will find its way to the author’s face. Not great if you use a Kindle.

Which I do. I love my Kindle, you can keep yer soddin’ paperised rubbish, I’m a e-man. And the best thing about ebooks is that there are free ones. So as I search Amazon’s vast ‘library’ for decent books to acquire, I also grab a few freebies. What’s to lose? Only pride. As these free books, often first time, self-published writers, and not always the best. So what? Out of every 10 there’ll be one gem. Maybe.

Free books tend to fall into categories. Or ‘genres’ as us pretentious book snobs call them. There’s the clumsy, clicheed cops and robbers ‘thrillers’, there’s slash-em-up horror, fantasy game-a-thronesesque twaddle, vampires and zombies, trying to be the next Twilight, and there’s romcoms. Loads of loved up twenty/thirty-somethings looking for ‘Mr Right’. Always written by women, for women, about women. And they’re all the same.

Girl bumps into a guy in Starbucks (all very contemporary, probably while she’s tweeting as she queues) who spills her coffee. “Why you clumsy, idiotic, stu-” his eyes were the biggest, blackest pools I’d ever seen, his muscles rippled as his white (and coffee stained) Armani shirt stretched across his maaaassive chest, the bulge in his trousers was like a third bicep…
Later the next day/week/whenever they meet again in a work/therapy/social situation and reinforce their mutual contempt and displeasure, whilst really admiring each other’s physical perfection. Ugly fat people have no literature. They don’t fall in love, they just fall over. So on page 1 you know how the book ends. All these books. But its the journey to that end that makes the book. The men are all beautiful, the women ‘sassy’ and cute. And they’re all in Seattle. I must visit that city one day and look at all the stunning women and bulging men all spilling coffee over each other. Maybe I’ll open a dry-cleaning business there.

So that’s it; my guilty secret. I love stupid, slushy rom-coms. But only if they’re well-written and funny.

Otherwise it has to be Stephen King; the Master. John Irving, a God among writers. Harlen Coben and Carl Hiaason because they write the funniest brilliant crime books. Jonathan Tropper, only 4 books so far but no-one does dysfunctional family better or with greater wit. Philip Roth is also a master. Ayn Rand (they’re ‘classics’ of a sort) only wrote about 3 books but as each is about 1500 pages long that counts as much more, and if you’re up to it, they’re quite amazing. Robert Harris is great, David Baldacci has his moments and so many others it would be like listing the entire World Cup squads for every country. And still there’d be no mention of Ashley Cole.

I’m off to the tube. Perchance to read.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

I’ve always hated the Eurovision song context. Its the most pathetic, puerile, talentless collection of horrendously dire, mid-European, plink-plonk, squeeze-box-‘rock’ garbage churned out every year and surely there are better ways to spend about 4 hours of your life. In meditation would work for me. Being tortured in Abu Graib would be a preferable use of the time. Waiting for the wheel-clampers to come and release your car having taken 400 quid for doing so; even that would be better than watching Eurovision.

I haven’t watched it… well, ever really. I was always a music snob, much like I’m a movie snob, a book snob… I suppose I’m just a snob at heart, generally. I made exception when Abba first came out of their test-tube and were presented to the world, all blond hair and mini-skirts, but that wasn’t really about ‘the music’. It was about schoolboy fantasies of the Swedish au pairs we never had. I don’t know that I can ever fully forgive my parents for that omission

On Saturday they voted a ‘bearded lady’ as winner of this year’s contest. A transgender Austrian (aren’t they all, really) won the contest. Good for him/her. But now there’s an outcry. Because the competitor with the most tits, sorry, most votes, was the ‘Polish Milkmaids’. I never saw them but you can imagine, and there’s pics in the paper today; all blond hair and big cleavages and knowing, inviting, ‘you’re next’ looks to camera as they squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull on imaginary udders. The cameraman had to change his trousers before the next act.

But the bearded drag artist (surely you’re a much more convincing ‘woman’ if you shave off the beard?? Unless you’re in Greece) was deemed winner because the ‘professional judges’ get more votes (its all sounding a bit Moscow at this point) or more influence and they chose the drag queen because they’re ‘judging more on the actual singing ability and musical talent’ than just the novelty factor, or political statements (“the contestant from Ukraine, scores 10 from Belarus, 7 from France, Russia refuses to acknowledge the independence of this singer and insists her votes be added to the Russian total…”) or whatever vague and moronic influences possess the voters.

So why go through (what seems like) 9 hours of voting from all the nations if you’re just going to overrule them anyway? That constitutes torture of the public and is illegal under the Geneva Convention. This was the greatest electoral travesty since George W Bush won the Florida recount. Though at least he did that without a beard. Just the dress worked for George, transengenderalism, as he called it.

But more importantly, using the ‘artistic merit’ card takes it all too far. This is the Eurovision Song Contest; there is no fucking artistic merit. Its not allowed. There are only degrees of hopelessness. You want ‘artistic’ go paint the Sistine chapel, don’t dress as a giant lemon and mime to a reworked Hitler Youth marching song.

Basically, I don’t give a shit who wins the Eurovision, as long as its not Russia. Or Germany. Croatia. Lithuania. Holland. Latvia. Estonia. Norway…

But I do care about abusive quasi-electoral systems. One day you’re ‘massaging votes’ in the Eurovision, the next you’re claiming Ukraine as a ‘victory for their people’, or having a Kim Jong Un haircut. And I didn’t chain myself to the Houses of Parliament wearing an Emily Pankhurst dress (and beard) for that. No siree.

Happy pro-European, undemocratic Monday

A xxxx

The seaon’s over, the last battle’s fought
for some there is gory, for others, just nought.

Manchester City are champions once more
yet one more reason for us all to deplore
their evil methods; their financial excess
their cheating and scheming ways to depress
good honest fans whose teams, humble and poor
can’t make the grade, get shown to the door.

So City get fined for financial unfair play,
but its only more money, they can still enjoy their day
then after, the penalty, 50 mil to be paid
Sheikh Mansoor spent more than that one night in Soho just to get laid.

Poor Norwich go down without any struggles
got beat by Arsenal with a team full of muggles
“if only we’d won”; their fans dids’t cry out
“by just 16 goals, then we’d have some clout”
but it wasn’t to be, the inbreds go down
their six-fingered fans share a communal big frown.

But the saddest of the day is Liverpool FC
the bestest team that city has produced since 1973
Pipped at the post, robbed of their right
the entire population will be crying all night

Whereas at Spurs indeed it is time to rejoice and celebrate
we won a game, we scored 3 goals, no-one died intestate.
The world is our lobster, we have now drawn the line
under ‘last’ season, its over, its finished, we can bide our time
and create a wonder team for next year, a team to beat all
Because we are the fucking best, and pride predeeds the fall.
Yet 2015 remains a blank page,
with all to look forward to, without any rage.
Its Europe for us, The Europa League… again
We beat Manchester United to that privledge and so we remain,
playing in Kiev on thursday nights in -30 degrees,
thawing out for sunday’s match, the team on its weary knees.
But a new manager, a new broom, to sweep well away,
the useless, the impotent, the pathetic, the insane
leaving us with… errr… hmmm… well, just the good players, and many for sale
just let us win for a change, BRING BACK GARETH BALE.

That concludes the season for this time around
about football now I’ll not make a sound.
Oh, there’s the World Cup, if f the stadium’s finished
But not for 3 whole weeks, my enthusiasm’s diminished.

So have a happy remainder of Sunday
the sun’s just come out to shine our tears away (but not for Liverpool fans)

A xxxx

No taxation without representation!!!

So rang the chorus of the Americans when they decided, stupidly as it turned out, to oust their British masters and become a ‘republic’, rather than just remain a suburb of London, 5000 miles away and 974 times bigger than its governing nation. The Amerians regret it now, of course, and rue how life could have been so much better if they’d stayed under sovreign rule. But it was all about tax. Its always about tax. No matter how many tea-bags you throw into Boston Harbour.

And we stand on our high horses, in the moral high ground; us and all the press and media, and we slag off Amazon and we slag off Starbucks and Google and Jimmy Carr and Gary Barlow. Not for the quality of their appalling coffee, rotten singing or whatever google do that sucks, but because they don’t pay enough tax. And that’s unforgivable. And so we nod and congratulate the powers that be when such nasty, selfish, un-public-spirited companies/people get shafted for past evasion/avoidance and get lumbered with an eye-watering tax bill. Hah! we say, fucker(s) deserved it. Good job.

Then we pay the window cleaner in cash so we don’t have to pay the vat and moan like Jose Morinho after every Chelsea game when our tax bills come in telling us how much of the meagre monies we’ve worked so hard for are demanded, not requested, but demanded, by the government so they can squander it in handouts to India to feed their starving millions so they can use their own billions to fund their useless space programme. The Romanians get the rest of ours.

No-one wants to pay tax. No-one volunteers (other than Her Majessty, but she’s different), you can appeal taxation but you’ll never win, you can avoid it but it’ll come back and bite you on the bum (Gary Barlow’s bum has teeth-marks all over it, nothing to do with Luis Suaraz) and only misguided socialist billionaires offer to pay more.

Oddly, the most maligned and misunderstood company in the whole country, if not the whole world, the infamous Wonga, pay lots of tax. 50 million last year alone, but because they lend money to people who can’t borrow from the banks, who have no ‘line of credit’, who are desperate, Wonga’s profits are so frowned upon that no-one mentions the money they put back into the national pot.

But mainly, we hate tax avoidance schemes because a. you have to have sufficient millions to get onto them (unlike job creation schemes, homeless shelter schemes), and b. we don’t like people getting away with things we can’t. Rich people who pay tax are just about acceptable and forgivable. Rich people who don’t must be lambasted and crucified in the court of public opinion. Bastards. And companies who make big profits are total bastards. They must be to make such big profits in the first place.

So Wonga are bastards because they make a big profit. Even though they pay all their taxes. And Gary Barlow is a bastard because he’s richer than me. And Starbucks are bastards because they don’t pay tax.

I better think about this whilst sipping my skinny, soya, no-foam, flat-brown caramel mochiato with extra calve,s liver.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

When the movie Terminator came out in 1984 (I was still upset that Orwell’s Big Brother prophecy had failed to meet its deadline) I refused to go and see it. Quite frankly it was beneath me. It was yet another big budget blood and guts fest of special effects, tragic dialogue and a lead actor made of wood. Austrian wood. Because Schwarzenegger had been in a few movies, or basically been in the same movie several times before and they were awful. Big guy carries massive gun with bulging muscles and slaughters all who come before him, speaking only when spoken to in ‘boys own’, comic strip action hero bollox. Unworthy of my burgeoning movie snobbery and arthouse fixation. ‘But where’s the meaning????’ ‘What is he REALLY trying to tell us???’ ‘Its just existentialist mumbo-jumbo thinly veiled in the director’s nihilistic vision of dystopia!!’ Fuck I must have been horrible. Plus ca change. Anyway, Terminator? Moi?? Oh dahhhling, you must be having a smirk.

Then I saw it. Some years later. On tv. Where I can put it down to ‘just background noise whilst I’m reading Proust’. Not that I’ve ever read Proust, its just that a pretentious fucker like me should have been reading Proust rather than just doing the (easy) Su Doku in the Standard. But I saw it and it is one of my top 3 (yes 3!!!!, not top 5 or 10, but 3) all time favourites. Its still on tv all the time, and I watch it every time. Even just for 5 minutes.

It simply has it all. It had Arnie, still made of wood, but in the perfect role, as someone made of metal. Briliant casting. He was a frikkin robot, of course he was monosyllabic and expressionless. So easy for Arn. It had Linda Hamilton who I was already in love with (not top 3, perhaps, but certainly top 50, or 500… how many women are there?). And it had more weaponry than American Guns and best of all, the story (a surprisingly good story in such a film) was a time paradox. And I love things that if you think about them long enough can actually make your head explode. If you go back in time and father a son, how does that work for you? There could be two of ‘you’ present? Fathering the son changes your (future) history so you may no longer exist when you go back there (this ‘son’ could kill your mother?). Oh, I love a time paradox. Anyway, I can honsestly say ‘Terminator changed my life’. Not necessarily for the better.

When Terminator 2 came out I refused to see it. Don’t do sequels. Even ones directed by James Cameron. Sorry, its got a ‘number’, it must be shit. Needless to say it wasn’t. It was better than the original and took CGI to another level. Linda had lost some weight, put on some muscle, but still adorable, in a violently insane kind of way. Arnie was Arnie.

Then I watched Kindergarten Cop. Arnie does ‘funny’. In a German, humourless, really unfunny, custard pie in the face kind’a way. And it was awful. Truly tragic. Arnie had tried to portray a human and failed miserably.

And now he’s done it again. At 96 years old (well, he looks it) he has a new film out called Sabotage. In which he commits the twin errors of trying to act as a person and trying to be funny. Even though after numerous surgeries, the three facial muscles that he once employed now no longer function at all. And I simply refuse to see this film. There’s not enough money in the world to make me. (though you could try). No way.

And maybe I’m wrong again? This time though, that’s pretty doubtful.

Hasta la vista, baby

A xxxx