Futtocks

I forgot to say, the terrible yacht rock theme tune from 'Hard Ticket' is my current earworm. It is bouncing around the inside of my skull like a tasered gerbil.

They sampled some interesting whiskies on Channel 4's 'Sunday Brunch' today, including Octomore from Bruichladdich, which has been picking up world awards despite being only 5 years old. There are some interesting things and experiments going on in today's world of whisky!

My sister bought 'Damn the Torpedoes' because she thought Tom looked pretty hot on the cover photo. She went off him a bit when she saw a photo of him in profile, with the 'schnozzle rudder' in full view. Whatever; I inherited the LP and have loved the album ever since.

I forgot to mention, I also queued up 'The Boys of Summer' by Don Henley. God almighty, it takes me back... Written by Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, just to tie things together.

Judee Sill - Heart Food (from the 'Abracadabra' reissue) Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes (Disc 1 of the 2010 reissue) I finished off with a really stunning vinyl rip of 'Son of a Preacher Man' from Dusty Springfield. Amazing that a song recorded in that hard right/hard left stereo from the early, gimmicky days of the technology* could still sound so natural. But her voice sounds so very real. *like some of the early Beatles albums, with various instruments shoved to the sides of the soundstage.

I sense that some of you don't believe me. Here's the scene in question. SFW, as even the doll is clothed. Please not that at no point do I state that this is the most stupid bit of the film.

I just discovered that the Jonestown massacre happened the day after the Star Wars Holiday Special was broadcast. One can't help thinking there's some sort of connection. Hang your head in shame, George Lucas!

I may have hit Peak Cheese - the cinematic oeuvre of Andy Sidaris! If you're too young to know about it, this was exactly what the Eighties was like. Things go BANG, breasts go BOING, cars go ZOOM, dialogue is dumber than dirt, hairstyles are huge and if the pace starts to flag, he throws another handful of Playboy centerfolds at the plot. Plus, you get unexpected names on the way down (or sometimes up) starring in them, like Erik (ChiPs) Estrada, Noriyuki (The Karate Kid) Morita and Danny (Machete) Trejo. And, in 'Hard Ticket to Hawaii', there's an assassin with a skateboard and a blow-up sex doll, who gets killed in mid-air with a rocket launcher. The stupidity, it hurts!

Teenage Cave Man (1958), aka Prehistoric World, aka Out of the Darkness, aka Land of Prehistoric Women Laughing at this is as easy as provoking a RU troll. It is, after all, directed by the King of Cheepnis Roger Corman. But what the hell, right? I can sum it up in one sentence: Robert (the Man from U.N.C.L.E.) Vaughn looks neither like a teenager or a caveman. But there's actually a real twist! Not a great one, and one that makes the dinosaur (a crocodile with a big fin glued to its back) footage, which was nicked from another movie, make no sense whatsoever. Not actually the worst film ever made (as claimed by Vaughn), but it takes something pretty stinky for a guy like Roger Corman to claim he never directed it (he did).

I'm a bit worried about them. I enjoyed the early series a lot, although the later ones lost me a bit, as I wasn't religiously watching every week at that point. I just hope they're good.

Mentos advert.

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.

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.

I saw a bit of 'Beowulf'. Having read the original story more than once, I have no idea where ITV found this plot.

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.

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.

Imagine how long it must feel in an AFL state. The poor devils...

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.

London doesn't seem to do snow any more.

Nothing quite like this bunch, especially on the 'Stop Making Sense' film.

"Eight bars of implied piano!"

This is the kind of sick filth the BBC were broadcasting to primary school-age children in the 1940s.

On the episode of 'The Avengers' broadcast this evening by TruEntertainment, viewers were treated not not only Diana Rigg, but also Charlotte Rampling.

Fifty years ago today, Adam West and Burt Ward debuted on TV as Batman and Robin.

Researching that has brought to my attention the prose and poetry of Amanda McKittrick Ros, who writes like an 19th Century Morrissey. Here's her magnum opus, 'Irene Iddesleigh'.