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Futtocks

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Posts posted by Futtocks

  1. In my ongoing trawl through cinema's glorious gutters, this evening saw 'The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak' appear on my TV screen.

     

    If you think the title is bad, then it is obvious you haven't seen the film. The titular female lead is played (with all the subtlety of a Chopper Harris tackle) by Tawny Kitaen, star of the Tom Hanks flick Bachelor Party and several Whitesnake videos. She was, at the time, married to the lead singer, who obviously included the "wearing fancy knickers and pouting in all me videos, like" clause to the pre-nup.

     

    The film's plot splits into three parts:

    1. A bad attempt at Romancing the Stone. Kitaen delivers the Basil Exposition and meets her greasy alpha-male leading man.

    2. A slightly less bad attempt at Indiana Jones. Having met her inevitable beau, Gwendoline has a couple of dull adventures in jungles and deserts with various menacing critters'n'savages. No R.O.U.S action, though. Then they discover the hidden city and...

    3. Breasts! Great Caesar's ghost, so many breasts! As Michael Caine once said of Zulus, "farzands of 'em". There was a bit of story going on at this point about an underground city and a lost Amazon civilisation but a. it was drivel and b. there were breasts getting in the way of my brain cells. In short, breasts.

     

    Did I mention the breasts?

     

    Here's a collector's item - Ms Kitaen in the last part of the film wearing (some) clothes.

    tawny_kitaen_gwendoline_83MO2Ve.sized.jp

  2. I cooked a couple of beef back ribs in the slow cooker, with shallots, tomato, garlic, some generic bouquet garni, a splash of red wine and about a tablespoon of Cumberland sauce (the latter because the jar was there, rather than being part of any particular recipe). The smells were good, the taste even better!

     

    Served with sweet potato chips and marrowfat peas.

     

    £2.66 for two ribs is not to be sniffed at either.

  3. Diana Rigg was in the crowd during filming for Sporting Life.

    Rugby League World once published a photo of Diana at a Rugby League match. It was at Headingley, I think. Of course she looked gorgeous, and LPL would go up a lot in my estimation (hint hint) if they posted it on this site.

  4. To be fair though, when the Pension system was designed, Age Pensioners only ever had 2 possible variations: change address or die. It also didn't have to "talk" to any other systems - there were no Income or Assets Tests so there was no link to the Tax Office. Pensioners rarely left the country back then so there was no link to Immigration.

     

    On top of that I think they used COBOL in the 70s and 80s, which didn't change very often and had a big advantage that lots of huge US users had already found any bugs in it before the AUS Govt installed it.

    The second time in his life that my grandad went to hospital was in the Nineties. They informed him, much to his amusement, that he didn't exist. The first time he'd been to hospital was before the NHS was created, along with all their medical records.

  5. I remember that. I started with Windows 2.

     

    It can't have been universally true though. I worked in Social Security Dept in 1989 and we must have had Age Pensioners over 90 then so there was some way of entering DOB pre 1900

    That was probably back in the day when software was written by people who had taken Computer Studies in school, as opposed to shiny-suited spivs who'd sell you someone else's half-checked coding and blithely assure you that nothing could possibly go wrong.

  6. Not mentioned in Ince's book, however, is 'The Eye of Argon' by Jim Theis. Although you can buy it, plenty of versions exist online, like this.

     

    Long thought to be a hoax by a professional writer, it is generally accepted these days to be the real thing - a mercifully short Swords'n'Sorcery tale written by a teenager with an unhealthy lust for (usually inappropriate) adjectives. Reading it aloud and pronouncing the typos without laughing has become a drinking game among fans.

     

    Here's a little background and a rundown of some of the worst bits.

  7. Memory's an odd thing. My sister bought this single in 1983, with that same orange and black cover, and I hadn't thought of the band's name since then.

     

    It's actually a rather enjoyable, bouncy Afropop-inspired song whose Top 20 UK chart success was ahead of its time. But then, they were managed by seasoned trendspotter Malcolm McLaren (surprise surprise). Paul Simon's 'Graceland' came out three years later.

     

  8. 'Bad Book Club' by comedian and broadcaster Robin Ince. He's found some publications that beggar belief.

     

    A Kindle search reveals that Don Estelle, author of 'Sing Lofty: Thoughts of a Gemini' is mentioned by name 16 times. A good sign.

     

    If you thought 'fan fiction' was a new thing, then the Eighties book 'Starlust' will set you right. There's even a fantasy about a bit of mutual fumbling with the Jam's bass player Bruce Foxton. Then there's the Barry Manilow fan who climaxes with a shriek of "COPACABANA!" before sobbing herself to sleep that her actual partner isn't really the swoonsomely anodyne Bazza.

    Ooh, The Old Testament and Apocrypha in Limerick Verse by Christopher Goodwins. How could I resist?

     

    There’s one thing you must do - Not!
    In Sodom the men want you, Lot!
    But quit there for Zoar
    Don’t look back! But go . . . er
    Bad news, your wife’s now become salt.
  9. 'Bad Book Club' by comedian and broadcaster Robin Ince. He's found some publications that beggar belief.

     

    A Kindle search reveals that Don Estelle, author of 'Sing Lofty: Thoughts of a Gemini' is mentioned by name 16 times. A good sign.

     

    If you thought 'fan fiction' was a new thing, then the Eighties book 'Starlust' will set you right. There's even a fantasy about a bit of mutual fumbling with the Jam's bass player Bruce Foxton. Then there's the Barry Manilow fan who climaxes with a shriek of "COPACABANA!" before sobbing herself to sleep that her actual partner isn't really the swoonsomely anodyne Bazza.

  10. Birdemic: Shock & Terror. Truly terrible. The leading man can't even walk normally on camera, looking like some kind of wooden robot. The leading lady is very pretty, but also turns in a stilted performance. Tippi Hedren was persuaded to appear in this, too. She can't save it...

     

    If it wasn't for the RiffTrax treatment, it would be totally unwatchable. Cheap CGI makes the exploding birds even less convincing than the premise as you read it.

     

    Here's a sample scene for your delectation. Nathalie complete fails to hide her hilarity, while Rod holds his arm over his mouth at one point, so presumably he was corpsing too.

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