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More Than A Shameless Plug...

As you may or may not know, many moons ago – a shit load of moons ago to be fair – I presented a radio show with my good friend and fellow Billy Idol aficionado Tom Stewart. More Than a Feeling with Mike and Tom was publically lauded and critically adored, many claimed that it was single greatest piece of public speaking ever to be recorded, bettering the likes of JFK’s “I’m a German pastry” speech and that time Duncan James from Blue accepted the award for Best Dressed Male at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party 2003.

Gone but never forgotten the show remained in the annals of time, where it sat for years to be fondly remembered but never to be re-examined. However… Recently I have been digging through some of my old writing work. I’d love to tell you why but unfortunately due to a nondisclosure agreement I signed I must remain silent…Let’s just say a certain publishing house is looking to publish a certain someone’s memoirs…

Anyway, during the archaeological dig into my years old work, I unearthed a bevvy of old content from the radio show, most notably the countless Corporate Sponsors.

To the uninitiated, each week the show would have a different sponsor typically a local business or institution. For an extortionate fee they would not only get a two to four minute advert on the show but a glowing endorsement from both Tom and myself. So I thought why not bring to you once again some of my personal favourite examples of us selling our souls for that ever seductive ol’ Yankee dollar. What’s that old expression ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’…

Corporate Sponsor 1

Would you like to gain the knowledge and skills of one of the World’s most gifted stage and screen actors?

Would you like the ability to reduce a roomful of people to tears purely through the power of mime?

Would you like to develop these talents through a weekly one-hour online course?

You would? Well, who wouldn’t!

Welcome to The Rick Moranis Academy of Dramatic Excellence!

From the comfort of your computer chair, let the star of such classics as Honey I Shrunk The Kids and the ill-fated sequel Honey I Blew Up The Kids impart to you the acting tips and tricks which have been acquired over a thirty-year career performing on or relatively near Hollywood’s silver-screen.

Online courses include; Sword-fighting 101, Eating-On-Screen and In-Camera Love Making.

Courses may vary in price, dependent on Mr Moranis’ rent and monthly gas and electricity bills.

The Rick Moranis Academy of Dramatic Excellence. Arrive as strangers, leave as slightly more confused strangers.

For more information head over to www.therickmoranisadcademyofdramaticexcellence.org/learning

Next up we have...

Corporate Sponsor 2

Scarlet Tissues Productions & Distributions.

We are lucky enough to be sponsored by the production and distribution company Scarlet Tissues. They pride themselves on producing the best in straight-to-video celebrity-endorsed content for the entire South Sheilds region. Here is just a small sample of their fantastic titles... Peter Beardsley’s Beards Are Silly on DVD and VHS

The former Newcastle mid-fielder Peter Andrew Beardsley travels on a whistle-stop tour of provincial northern towns to find the people with the wackiest facial hair. But that’s not all as Peter looks to comb a little deeper to find the stories behind those bonkers beards, in order to answer that all-important question: Who is the modern-day man?

Special features include: 86 making-of featurettes and audio commentaries on every episode by Mr Beardsley alongside former Blackburn Rovers right-winger Stuart Ripley.

RRP £16.99 

Bruno Brooks’ Keyboard Magic exclusively on Betamax

Join top pop DJ and all-around absolute laugh (his words), Bruno Brooks, as he takes you on a spellbinding yet informative journey through the life and times of keyboard. 

Bruno will chart the development of the keyboard, in his own inimitable style, from its infancy as the Casio CZ-101, all the way through to the Moog Concertmate 1000. He even delves deep into some of the more ill-fated forms of the keyboard, we’re looking at you Mr Keytar! 

Special features include 36 making-of featurettes, Stills gallery of Bruno and a number of his favourite keyboards. 

RRP £38 (16 disc set)

Akabusi On Duncan-Smith in HD

Join gold-medallist, TV presenter, motivational speaker, Kriss Akabusi as he presents his three and a half hour long lecture on British conservative politician and MP for Chingford Ian Duncan-Smith. 

For the first time ever in glorious high definition DVD, Akabusi covers all the topics when dissecting the life and work of the former Tory party leader. From adolescence, all way up to middle-age and his struggle with male-pattern baldness, Akabusi seeks to create a human portrayal of one of Britain’s most divisive political figures. This DVD is absolutely perfect for anyone who.... Scarlet Tissues Productions and Distributions. Entertaining the nation’s under-3s and over 80s for 50 years.  Finally, in this first retrospective look at More Than a Feeling with Mike & Tom’s corporate sponsors, we have...

Corporate Sponsor 3

Ashley Cragg’s Porcine Porcelain Workshop

Are your two favourite commodities fine bone china statues and the cheeky farmyard favourites pigs?

They are?

Then look no further than...

Ashley Cragg’s Porcine Porcelain Workshop.

The brainchild of amateur ceramic artist Ashley Cragg (Real name Ashley Cragg) The Porcine Porcelain Workshop offers a wide range of high-end and low-end china rendered pig antiques. Mr Cragg has been creating his ceramic swine curios for a total of six months now and the prolific artist has already completed over 4 different pieces (He’s made 5) and he has another two currently in the kiln. 

This clay creator is not just satisfied with the sheer enjoyment of his artistic craft but moreover, he wishes to share his terracotta talent with the world. So for a very reasonable price (Each piece’s recommended retail price is £70 which does include a personal decorative ice-cream tub container). You can own your very own porcelain piggy prize! Now you may recognise Mr Cragg from the 2013 series of Dragon’s Den, where he presented his hand-crafted hogs to the six infamous business tycoons in return for a portion or should I say PORKtion of equity. 

Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful in his bid for investment and in doing so set the Dragon’s Den record for quickest time to get six rejections from the investors. Each Dragon declared themselves out before he’d even finished his pitch. It was around the time he revealed his bone-china sculpture of celebrated darts champion Eric Bristow as a pig, that his dreams of investment were shattered.

However that minor setback hasn’t slaughtered Ashley Cragg’s dreams, he promised himself to keep on creating and let his life experience inform his art, culminating his most recent piece...

The Dragon’s Pig Pen, which consists of bone china effigies of all the TV entrepreneurs that rejected his porky proposal, they include, Theo Pig-phitis, DebBoar Meaden, Piglet Jones and finally, Duncan BannaSwine.

The current location for The Porcine Porcelain Workshop is the boot of Mr Cragg’s Rover Vitesse hatchback at the Tamworth Bi-monthly car-boot sale and meat auction. 

If you’d like to contact Ashley, unfortunately, he hasn’t got a phone, or an email address or home address. He did tell me that he recently got a fax machine but he doesn’t know how to use it. So your best bet is to head on down to the boot-sale.

So to back announce this week’s Corporate Sponsor is... Ashley Cragg’s Porcine Porcelain Workshop. 

Who wouldn’t want a bone-china statue of a pig? Seriously who wouldn’t? Go on, find me someone!

That is more enough nonsense for one day. If you enjoyed this like and share it. More will follow if there is demand or otherwise...

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Ice Cream: A Sticky History

The sun looms high above. Its rays swim through an azure sky to transform pasty skin into a beachcomber glow worthy of Vogue. Liquid vanilla drips escape the icy prison of The 99. Crawling down the tightly-clenched cone, the drips seek the sticky solace in the grip of a seafront walker. It is summertime and what does that mean? Ice cream.

That sweet treat to quell the heat. Now ice cream isn’t necessarily a seasonal dessert, many a time I’ve stood in line in a torrential downpour just to get an ice-cold sugar fix. However, when summer hits, our frozen friend is a highly required member of the team. 

(Sidenote: Are ice cream vans fitted with the same P.A. system that Metallica have? Because you heard those jingles from towns away. Even after the chilly geezer was long gone, the tune of “Greensleeves” lingered as the soundtrack to your brain freeze.) You could tell a lot about a person from what ice cream they chose. For me, it was a Feast every time because I’m a cool guy and I love to party…For the more refined palettes, you had the Fruit Pastille Lolly, a solid lolly if not for the downright LIE that the ad campaign propagated to us that “The colours never run!” Fuck you Rowntree’s, we all know after a few sucks it all goes pissy yellow. If there is a metaphor in there, I’d rather not know. 

We all know not to trust the lad who chose a Funny Foot, he would usually be seen later exposing himself on the jungle gym. The Fab was exclusively for your older sister. A Calypso was there when you were coming down from the e-numbers in your Cherryade and you were ready to get totally off your box. And then you had the Solero, an ice cream designed for mums but soon became repurposed as a sign of those Little Lord Fauntleroy super ponces within the group. You all know the ones, determined to look down on everyone from their ivory tower, well I’ve got news for you mate. YOU AREN’T BETTER THAN ME, HAVE A TWISTER LIKE EVERYONE ELSE YOU TOTAL PRICK…… …So with that in mind let’s celebrate our sub-zero summer hero, Ice Cream! A Frosty Biography

It appears that many different cultures have their own Ice cream origin stories. In 200 BC, the Chinese would create a frozen mixture of milk and rice by pouring snow and salt over the exterior of a container. In the Middle East, frozen sugared milk flavoured with rose water or dried fruit or nuts was eaten as a sweet treat. In the Persian Empire, people would create a dessert by pouring grape-juice concentrate over collected snow. Although rudimentary, we now know who to thank for the creation of the Slush-Puppy. Perhaps the next time you are at the concessions stand at the cinema try ordering a Persian Flavoured Snow Explosion.

In Europe though, legend has it that King Charles the First was so impressed when he first sampled “frozen snow” that he offered his own ice cream maker a lifetime pension if he were to keep the formula secret, therefore ice cream would’ve remained a royal prerogative. Thank the lord that never happened. Imagine ice cream remaining a royal secret, behind closed castle doors the royal family snacking away on Viennettas, Twisters, and Funny Feet, whilst we lowly subjects sweat away in the burning midday sun totally unaware. Luckily that never came to pass, however, we cannot be certain that there isn’t still a secret royal ice cream recipe hidden away in the basement of Buckingham Palace. Just imagine what that might include: Edible gold leaf? Prince Charles’ organic custard? Literal hundreds and thousands?...Much like the dessert itself, Ice cream has had a rich and flavoured history.

In recent times it has become a canvas for confectionery companies to test the boundaries of what is possible and/or acceptable. Whether it is the advertising team for Magnum attempting to usurp the Cadbury Flake for the most sexualised confectionary on the market or Ben and Jerry and their two-man mission to create ice cream flavours that would make even Willy Wonka say “Come on lads, don’t go mad”. As we have seen, Ice cream is a great cultural and generational leveller. Everybody loves to welcome the summer either clenching a cone or cradling a tub of snowy arctic nectar of the gods. Ice Cream, we salute you.

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Tom Bryans. Thoughts on a life departed.

It has been just over a month since I lost my dad. In that time I have been gradually working my way through every one of, what could be described as, “the mourning emotions” from Total Grief through to Despair before falling deep down into Rage and then finally drifting into Melancholy. That initial sharp, piercing, sorrow has subsided and now I’m left with a pensive, introspective sadness you seem to only feel when remembering the life of someone departed.

The illness that took so much from Dad including and ultimately his life likewise stole it all from us as well. However there are things that even a despicable disease like the one Dad had could not steal. The first thing, however obvious it is to say, is the years and years of memories that we made as both a family and personally over Dad’s life. I remember the family trips we would take where Dad would have a few too many “strong” continental beers and exclaim incoherent sentences like… “Drink up quickly, I don’t want another beer so make it last” Statements like that could easily be dismissed as the pissed-up ramblings of a drunken madman but for me when Dad would blurt them out they had a sozzled poetry like that of a lager-drenched Philip Larkin or Spike Milligan.

Similarly I will always remember those personal little moments that Dad and I would spend together predominantly when we were playing music. These moments, I recall, were filled with both joy and utter frustration in equal measures. As Dad had his very own very distinct sense of rhythm. When he would play the violin or sing, he would perform with the same theatricality regardless of where he was, whether in our front room or at an event in front of 200 people. He would fly through certain sections of songs making them bounce and soar, yet at other times he would hang on notes for what would seem like an age until every last ounce of sentiment had been drawn out of it. It was wonderful to watch but an absolute nightmare to try to play along with. When playing alongside him, my performance would often be reduced to the musical equivalent of a man either arriving too early or too late for a bus. Nonetheless when playing next to him, I always had the best seat in the house.

However in many regards, Dad is still here. He’s still within me. I’ve got his stupid sense of humour. His insatiable thirst for shite jokes. It’s now up to me to decide when the conversation has become too highfalutin, and thus drag the brow lower with a bizarre joke without a punchline. Similarly, for all his irreverence, Dad was an incredibly sentimental man. An attribute that has remained in me also. He would often well up at a piece of music or something on T.V, which when I was younger would make me think: “How can that make you cry Dad? You big girl” However now I find myself doing the exact same thing all the time. To the hilarity of those around me. Most recently I welled up watching an episode of Derren Brown’s TV magic show Trick of The Mind. I know, what the hell? Cheers for that Dad.                                    

Ultimately I believe his sentimentality came from his beautiful appreciation for everything. My mum has told me stories about when they worked at the bank together. It there where they initially met and ultimately fell in love. Mum has told me even though he was the guy in charge, everybody loved him because he genuinely cared about the people he worked with. He was encouraging and saw potential in everyone in the office. He prided himself on having never sacked anyone. He believed in making people better. He hated the TV show The Apprentice, as he would say “That is not how you do business!”

Likewise he would see the innate value of things; forgotten or broken objects, from the minute to the massive. It was his love of things that made it impossible to throw anything away in our house. He would take things and fix them or re-purpose them. His shed was packed full of, what we used to call, “loads of old shite” but to be fair to him, the guy used it. “They’ll come in handy one day”

I remember once he spent a whole Sunday afternoon building me and my brother Nick a skateboard ramp out of a broken coffee table he had been keeping at the bottom of the garden. He put so much care and effort into building this elaborate, ridiculous-looking ramp, which made it all the more upsetting when it lasted 10 minutes before collapsing under the weight of our almost kick-flips. I think we stayed outside in the street hiding that broken coffee table all evening as to not hurt our old man’s feelings.

I do have one caveat to that last paragraph and it is the following story. Like I said, Dad would not throw things away. But we had this sofa. A relic from the Seventies. One of the most garish things I’ve ever seen. Seriously it was like something out of the Super Prize Showcase from an old Family Fortunes episode. You can imagine Les Dennis in a canary yellow lounge suit straddling it legs akimbo. Basically what I’m getting at is, it was a shit sofa. We had it for years, until it had essentially lost all comfort and was more coffee stain than design. 

Eventually, years after it should have been condemned forever, Dad finally replaced it. Which meant that we had to dismantle it…and I got to dismantle it with him. So one sunny afternoon, we took the sofa into the garden. Dad braced me beforehand that it was to be a strict, regimental, and systematic operation. He spread all his tools out on the garden lawn and explained to me the intricate process he had planned. Within five minutes, we were just kicking the shit out of that sofa. And we continued to wreak havoc on that poor three-seater all afternoon. He was always a very gentle composed man but that afternoon he kicked the arms of that sofa like a pissed gorilla in DFS. We massacred those seats till sundown. It was a day an 11 year old boy would dream about. It had everything. Outdoors, sunshine, mindless destruction, but most of all I got to spend all afternoon hanging out with my dad.

Ultimately this grief that I feel will never totally leave and lastly what I have realised is that Grief is a powerful emotion, which should be harnessed and used as fuel to power me to go live the life that my dad always wished for me, and to make him proud. He was a sensitive soul with the surreal jokes, who never threw anything away, who was an accomplished musician whom played to his own time, a failed carpenter but an expert at sofa demolition. But ultimately he was my friend and he was my dad.

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The Joker’s Wedding

Hello. So yes it has been a while since I posted it on here. Blame lack of time. Blame down right laziness. Blame constant crippling hanovers. Blame what you will but nonetheless my words return. Periodically, every few months or so, I always manage to find myself watching The Dark Knight (Or Orphan Vs. Creepy Clown: The Squabbling) It’s arguably the greatest superhero movie of all time. The second in Christopher Nolan’s gritty, realistic take on Batman, it introduced us to Heath Ledger’s mad-as-a-lorry turn as The Joker, ultimately inspiring lazy fucking lads’ Halloween costumes for all eternity. I was once at a Halloween party where three silly fuckers all turned up as the Heath Ledger Joker, with various levels of quality and effort. 

But watching it again, for now the 6,828th time, my imagination was lit on fire by one of The Joker’s explanations of how he got his scars…

Hold the fucking potato peeler! What if the Joker had a wife!?!? Not just a girlfriend. A WIFE!?! That means not only would they have had to have a ceremony. They’d have to have planned that shit out. I wonder how that would’ve gone…

Sorry about the giant gaps. Im not quite sure how to use internet fully yet, or computers in general really....in fact calculators are still tricky from time to time too. Anyway. Peace. 

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Insights from the Infirm Part Three: The Mysterious Ian Gifford & The Stolen 45 Minutes.

(The following is a patchwork quilt of bullshit assembled from hastily typed observations OF hospital waiting rooms whilst IN hospital waiting rooms...)

The phrase “we are running…” can never be finished without making the listener feel immediately angry and/or depressed. Honestly it’s not physically possible. Try it. We are running   ...…on empty                            ……away from a sabre-toothed tiger                            ……a failing party-planning business in Bury St. Edmunds                            ……a charity fun-run dressed as a pantomime horse See it can’t be done. And it is with that universal life truth. We begin this story…

“We are running 45 minutes late” the receptionist tells me as I stare at the waiting room full of broken souls. Wrapped in plaster and cardigans, each face more depressed than the next. A chorus of involuntary vinyl-cushion fidget farts provides the audible accompaniment to everyone’s despair. I find a seat next to a man carving a notch into his leg-cast for every minute that passes. So far there have been 50. A nurse with greying hair, greying skin, and a greying outlook on life emerged from a side-room. “Ian Gifford?...Ian Gifford?” She glances down at her clipboard “Ian Gifford?” She hadn’t misread. Nobody moved. We daren’t. Everybody’s seen the Channel 5 documentaries about the man that goes into hospital for an appendix removal operation but accidentally receives gender re-alignment surgery. That is the last thing I need right now. I’m already going to have to deal with a gammy ankle for the rest of my life. I refuse to hobble out this hospital whilst trying to reassemble my entire identity, crotch upwards.

I stay concrete in my seat. The other patients get restless at the nurse’s fourth call and start their own recon missions to weed out the one they call Gifford. Eyes dart round the waiting room assessing each patient’s eligibility of owning such a moniker: Broken arm, 11 o’clock. Nope he looks far too pissed off not be listening intently to every announcement. Wheelchair, 3 o’clock. Nah he’s not an Ian. He’s definitely a Stuart or a Stephen. Walking stick and M&S bag, 5 o’clock. No that is an elderly Chinese lady. I suddenly realise several sets of accusatory eyes focused on me. Fuck off do I look like my name is Ian Gifford! That’s the name of a man twice my age. I shoot a “how very dare you” look back at my accusers. They remain eyeing me with suspicion like I am the presenter of the shittest hidden camera prank show of all time.

All of a sudden, in limps a man – mid-fifties, bald, mustard coloured mac, burgundy corduroys – I am off the hook. Every eye in the waiting room snaps sniper-focus on him as he makes for the reception desk. A silence of intense anticipation falls over the room. Even the Bargain Hunt contestants on the wall-mounted TV keep quiet. As he limps forward, we all lean forward. In the collective subconscious of the waiting patients, derogatory statements sound-track his steps: “15 minutes late?! You limping prick” “Don’t think I won’t punch a bloke on crutches” “If you’ve made me late to pick up my kids, you’ll be picking up your teeth mate…” As he reached the reception desk, the tidal wave of forty impatient people’s venom and vitriol crests ever higher. The baying crowd began to psyche themselves up. People snapped their crutches in half to create make-shift shanks. A father and daughter began slapping each other in the face whilst screaming. The old Chinese lady rummages in her purse for her keys and then sticks them between the fingers of her clenched fist.

As the aggressive atmosphere nears breaking point, the receptionist greets him with an unconvincing smile, “Name please sir.” said with all the intonation of “Well where the hell have you been?!” In the distance, somewhere, you can hear the Mortal Kombat announcer cleaning his throat. The old Chinese lady makes one final adjustment to her house key fist. The Man broadly smiles a shit-eating grin and replies, “Malcolm Collins to see Dr. Cross…” The whole room lets out an audible groan. Everyone gets down from their chairs. Shirts are put back on. War paint is removed. Knitting needles are slipped back into balls of wool. And the old Chinese lady un-assumes the Praying Mantis position and removed the keys from her fist. Under her breath I  hear her mutter “Oh fuck off Collins, you cunt” Oh what’s that? Not satisfying enough for you? You read this entire thing only for the meagre pay-off of an old lady saying “cunt” Starting to feel like you’ve wasted your time? Welcome to my world for the last 7 weeks...... Okay I feel bad. As a peace offering here is a picture of Joe Biden looking like a total G...

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Insights from the Infirm Part 2: Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Waste-Of-Time

Day 39. Perhaps this is how Andy Dufresne felt when that bastard Warden Norton threw him in The Hole just for playing that record over the Shawshank PA system. Two months he got for that! Imagine how long he would’ve got if he had blasted out some So Solid Crew.

Although I’ve never been accused of killing my wife and her golf-pro lover, I still have an infinity for Andy Dufresne.  We are both being unjustly incarcerated. He, for getting framed for murder, and me, for breaking my ankle when I accidentally got a bit pissed. Victims of fortune some might say. However, we both use this physical and spiritual isolation to great benefit. Andy Dufresne used his imprisonment in Shawshank to nurture his triumphant human spirit and became a symbol for the insatiable driving universal force of hope. Likewise, I am using my time of imprisonment to watch every single episode of Four In A Bed AND Come Dine With Me.

Now before you claim that there is absolutely no correlation between Andy Dufresne’s struggles and whatever it is I have been doing for the last 39 days, remember you this, he had that wicked orchestral soundtrack AND Morgan Freeman narrating everything. What have I got? Dave Lamb narrating a silly berk in Wigan failing to make trifle!  

However as my time held captive sidles on like an old, wheezing sheepdog through a muddy field, with each arthritic step another 24 hours I’ll never get back, I have reached a cultural chasm. For I feel I have exhausted all entertainment.

Daytime TV has nothing to offer me. Netflix is no longer a quick-fix. YouTube no longer brightens my mood. And so, instead of staring down into the abyss of contemporary entertainment, I have been forced to stare deep into my soul, to take a swim in my imagination, stroll through my subconscious. If the world won’t entertain me, then by Jove, I’ll entertain myself! And no I don’t mean I’m going to be doing that…

What follows is a sample of new TV shows I have been forced to write in order to make the imprisonment in my plaster-cast cocoon bearable. I now offer them to you. You’re fucking welcome World… 

Buffalo Hospital was written as a reaction to the state of the medical based TV dramas currently infecting our screens like a foot-long parasitic intestinal worm. Buffalo Hospital is a no-brainer for the BBC, you wouldn’t have to pay Buffalo actors scale and they have been known to be much more receptive to direction than the latest slurry of drama school no-hopers. Plus who wouldn't want to watch a herd of buffalo perform orthopaedic surgery? Certainly not this guy…

The Baby Daddy is the natural conclusion to the accepted Hollywood The-Guy-Who-Is-Too-Immature-To-Deal-Fatherhood trope. With the character of Nicky the Baby, we reach the apotheosis of a guy who will literally have to grow the fuck up to be a “good” father. I’ve already come up with the perfect pitch for a meeting with all the Hollywood production companies:

“Imagine Three Men and A Baby meets Baby’s Day Out…”

Essentially it’s an excuse to print our own money...If I had to cast it, I’d see Kevin James as Nicky The Baby, Adam Sandler as Marty the sarcastic best friend and Jean Dujardin as the comedy foreign paediatric doctor... “So let me get ziss straight, ziss beby is ze beby AND ZISS BEBY IS ZE FATHER?!?!” I forecast 60 million dollars opening weekend easy...

More will follow...

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not after breakfast but it will...

[mikesgotsquareeyes]

Insights from the Infirm

(Disclaimer: The following op-ed was written under the influence of painkillers and chronic boredom. The views and opinions expressed are solely The Author’s…and whoever The Author stole them from…)

Day 25. All hope is lost. My current mood is that of a lost sailor, riddled with scurvy, adrift at sea. I start to forget what my wife and son look like. Was she blonde or brunette? Did he inherit my green eyes? I remember the biking holidays we used to go on in the New Forest? Or was it the south of France? I start to remember I don’t have a wife or a son. No! Take me oh Lord take me!… Now having lost a wife and a son, I feel my mind is next to leave me…

My soul is slowly melting like cheap Tupperware spinning in a microwave. My left leg withering away in a plaster prison. In the last three weeks each little piggy has aged 30 years, wrinkled and shriveled like leftover chipolatas from a child’s birthday party. My right foot laughs mockingly at his immobile brother. Oftentimes I catch him performing a full burlesque of dexterity, each toe working in perfect synchronization with his piggy brethren, a chorus-line of digits, all for a reluctant audience of one, plaster-of-paris-ed into his seat. Incapable of escape.

26 days since the incident. I use the word ‘incident’ instead of ‘accident’ as a full account of that night’s events has yet to emerge. And most probably will not emerge. It’s not so much a case of unreliable narrators but more double-pissed narrators. Fully incapable of recounting the behavior or condition of my ankle from Drink 5 to A&E waiting room 2. All I know, I’ll never tap dance again. (Sidebar: It must be noted I never tap-danced previously. However I feel now, at age 24, the time to learn The Art of Tap has been and gone, and I must live with the bitter sting of what-could-have-been.)

I’m annoyed. Not at myself. Of course not. I cannot be blamed for the things I do. I am merely a product of my interactions and my environment. I am a victim of circumstance. Everything else is to blame. The weather, a light drizzle that night, making it slippery underfoot. £4 Primark shoes, they’ve got blood on their hands. Captain Morgan, he’s noticeable by his absence, not even a card, typical fucking pirate, turns up fucks everything up hightails it out again, I’m just surprised I’m not pregnant with a one-eyed, bearded, alcoholic baby. But these are not the reasons why I am currently annoyed. I am white-hot with rage right now at the makers of those classic action movies I consumed as a child. I am angry at everyone involved in the production of the Die-Hard franchise, Rambo, Rocky, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Under Siege 4: Cooking up Chaos. I’m angry at Stallone, Willis, Segal, Chan, Van-Damme, and to a lesser extent that bloke who played The Punisher. Never in any of their films do we see the hero, reeling from a particularly hairy bar fight or dock-yard punch-up, sat on a sofa with broken limbs wrapped in plaster watching Dinner Date repeats on ITV4 day in day out for up to EIGHT WEEKS. Lying Hollywood bastards. I bet those scenes were neglected for “pacing issues”. All Art is a lie. Don’t let it fool you.

But whether it is mediating a civil war between feet, chasing the mercurial memories of what went on the night of March 4th, or being lied to by 80’s action stars, I am a human and thusly I will endure.

[mikesgotsquareeyes]

Food Inventions

Picture the scene: 250,000 years ago, we’re on a Prehistoric landmass in an area that I imagine would later become known as “Bedfordshire”. Two Neanderthals are engaged in a high-brow intellectual debate. Between the grunts of conversation, one of the hirsute gentlemen idly rubs together two twigs. Suddenly a spark! That spark lands in a nearby shrubbery igniting it instantly. The shrubbery in turn immediately engulfs a passing yak in flames barbequing it to perfection. Cut to: two very satisfied Neanderthals are kicking back in their cave with more perfectly cooked meat than you can shake a barbequed yak leg at. In that very moment not only was our notion of gastronomy born but moreover it was the beginning of human invention. With that almost 100% accurate historical tale in mind, this week we bring you five incredibly essential food and drink inventions.

Corkscrew Before the invention of corking to seal wine bottles, traditionally an oil-soaked rag was employed to bung the top of a bottle, which, if we are all entirely honestly with each other, isn’t a particularly sophisticated protection for the world’s most elegant liquid. It is a bit like employing an over-weight St. Bernard to guard the Mona Lisa. Yet when vintners (winemakers, don’t worry I didn’t know that’s what they were called either) started sealing their bottles with corks they encountered a brand new problem.  How do you get the blasted things out? Now after what I imagine was a few months of broken molars due to the teeth-grab uncorking technique, one plucky vintner sought the help of a Gun Worm, traditionally used to clear debris from muskets, and reassigned it with the task of abstracting the alcohol obstacle. And the rest they say is...well...we’re not sure, you tend to lose your trail of thought after a couple bottles of wine.

The Spork To paraphrase the seminal Britpop band Blur, modern life is difficult at times. For most people, at the top of their list of contemporary gripes is almost always insufficient space to house their entire set of cutlery. And so as the classic maxim goes ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, the spork came along to puncture not just our food but furthermore our preconceptions of the hybridic potential of our present-day kitchen utensils. Combining the concave cupping qualities of the spoon with relentless piercing prongs of the fork, the spork allows us, as the human race, to tackle a full meal with just one hand freeing up our other to perform a full range of tasks from filling out your tax return to defending yourself from would-be attackers. Due to the outstanding success of the spork, imitators sprung up all over the place from the spife (spoon and knife) to the knork (knife and fork) to the most perverse of all the chork (a combination of chopsticks and a fork). Yet they were all rendered pale in comparison to the spork’s enduring charm and effortless accessibility.

Instant Coffee We live busy lives. This we all know to be true. An average person’s morning routine involves well over 20 steps including waking, washing, email response, dressing, an unresponsive glance at the local news etc. So, with a short window of time to get from bed to street, to find up to 10 minutes to brew some coffee renders your whole routine criminally inefficient. You may as well sleep in your work clothes or worse yet not sleep at all and spend all night stood by the door in insomniac anticipation. However you have a time-saving, energy providing, water-soluble friend at your finger tips in instant coffee. The origins of instant coffee are murky some claim it was invented in New Zealand, others say it was Japanese creation, yet whatever the case those tiny brown granules of concentrated bliss have been the fuel for the early morning risers for over 100 years.

George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine Allegedly first offered to World Wrestling Champion and angry middle-aged Milky Bar Kid lookalike Hulk Hogan, the Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine is perhaps one of the most successful and beloved home-cooking products released in recent years.  And can certainly be awarded the most successful celebrity endorsed kitchen product ever released, for a while it was thought the Barry Manilow’s Toasted Sandwich Maker was set to overtake in sales but ultimately it didn’t peak the public’s interest as was hoped.  By adopting a technique that painters of fine art had implemented centuries before him, George Foreman was able to convey his pride in the product by writing his name on it. The George Foreman Grill became one of the first products to seize upon the health-conscious home-cooking market with its simple-to-use ergonomic clam-shell design and its removable fat drip tray, the public was able to see just how much healthier they were getting from grilling.

  Mr.Whippy Ice cream (Soft Serve Ice cream) Think back to your childhood days. What a care-free, spontaneous time it was. If you wanted to climb a tree, you climbed a tree. If you wanted to speak in a French accent all day, you spoke in a French accent all day. And one thing you can be sure, come rain or shine if you heard the infectious chimes of the ice cream van you were stood out on the street. In what can only be described as a wonderfully counter intuitive move, soft serve ice cream was discovered in 1934 when a man after suffering a flat tire, attempted to sell his half melted ice-cream to passers-by. He sold the lot. Out of the jaws of defeat he rose phoenix-like. Perhaps a bit hyperbolic but nonetheless what he couldn’t have realised that in that very moment he would create a product that would be the taste, the texture, and the smell of countless people’s childhoods forever. Finally I leave you with the image of a Chork...I mean honestly. What. The. Christ.....

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Food Documentaries

As you may or may not know I write a weekly (sometimes fortnightly) blog for the Sustainable Restaurant Association, you really should check out their website http://www.thesra.org/ They are really doing some impressive things right now. Anyhow, this week I was tasked with finding five interesting/though-provoking/stomach-churning food documentaries.  Due to a relatively strict word-count I had to edit out a lot of what I had initially wrote on each film. But since I now have this shiny new blog, I thought I’d stick up the entire unedited, director’s cut, fully restored with Dolby surround sound. Enjoy you spoilt brats....

We shall start first with Food, Inc. (2008 Dir: Robert Kenner) a critically acclaimed documentary which intricately explores the modern commercial food industry. Charting the change in agricultural farming practices from the 1950s to the late 2000s, the film shows the alarming rate of which traditional farming has been industrialised, revealing that the traditional notion of cattle-rearing and crop harvesting are a long forgotten practice replaced by mass production of crops and intensive battery farming. The film also explores the dismantling of the diversification of crops into an industry standard of just a mere few genetically modified commodity crops, of which a shockingly vast array of products are made, from ketchup to diapers and fruit juice to charcoal. The film extensively contextualises every aspect of the commercial food industry, from highlighting how intensive farming techniques can lead to an entire nation’s food supply becoming infected with pathogens like E-coli, to explaining how government subsides given to commodity crops, used to make predominately snack foods, leaves low-income families with no consumer alternative, which ultimately maintains the obesity epidemic. Food, Inc. is an incredibly important documentary which reveals everything you did and perhaps didn’t want to know about where your food comes from. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0

A film that most definitely should be viewed as a companion piece to Food, Inc. is One Man, One Cow, One Planet (2007 Dir Barbara & Thomas Burnstyn) which at the very beginning posits the question ‘A gardener and a bucket of cow dung, is this the recipe to save world?’. What follows is story of the Indian organic agricultural revolution, which is in both equal measures compelling and inspiring. Our guide through India’s organic farming community is Peter Proctor, an 80 year old New Zealand farmer with such infectious optimism and idealism that within the first 20 minutes you start to believe he may have the answer to a modern sustainable, organic agriculture. He promotes biodynamic farming, a totally self-sufficient, self-contained, and sustainable method involving organically cultivated composting. We are witness to the process in which the biodynamic compost is made, it is transfixing and plays out like a spiritual ritual going through 8 stages including cow dung being dandelion and camomile leaves and cow horns, filled with mineral rich soil, embedded in the compost pits. The film charts India’s involvement in the green revolution in the 1950s and the contemporary repercussions from extensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The results from the biodynamic farming are astonishing when compared to conventional chemically based commercial farming methods. The documentary leaves with you with an overwhelming feeling that India, a country which has a perception from the west of an underdeveloped country, may in fact hold the answer to a modern and sustainable agricultural future. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcmzK_Mzx5k

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011 Dir: David Gelb) follows 85-year old sushi master Jiro Ono, who although reaching retirement is still relentlessly pursuing the culinary perfection of sushi in his 10-seat sushi-only restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro. His restaurant, the first of its kind to be awarded 3 Michelin stars, has people make the pilgrimage from all over the world to sample his food. The film is a thoughtful and delicate as Jiro’s sushi, as it marvels at the intricate assembly of his creations and savours every slice of his knife like a painter’s brush along the canvas. The film depicts a chef’s unwavering desire to reach perfection in a food culture which is wrapped tightly in tradition like kappa maki. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1UDS2kgqY8

  Next we bring you A Matter of Taste (2011 Dir: Sally Rowe) Filmed over a ten-year period the documentary charts the ups and downs in the career of chef Paul Liebrandt, a 24 year-old food prodigy who after becoming the youngest ever chef to be awarded 3 stars by the New York Times, struggles with overbearing restaurateurs and food critics alike in his pursuit of artistic expression within food.  A Matter Of... is a depiction of a Chef having to have the constant negotiation between culinary creativity and economic compromise. We see the duality of the restaurant as both the artist’s gallery and the businessman’s office, and how a bad review is much more destructive than simply a plate of food being disliked. A Matter of Taste is an intriguingly candid look at the many different, and sometimes contradictory, aspects that goes into making a success of both a restaurant and a chef. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONxiNbPrVTg

  Finally we wrap up our list with Spinning Plates (2012 Dir: Joseph Levy) which follows three restaurants which at first glance would seem to be worlds apart. We meet struggling Mexican restaurant La Cocina di Gabby, the experimental fine-dining experience Alinea, and Brieitbach’s Country Dining a 7th generational family run small town restaurant. However over the course of this strikingly touching film we see that regardless of a specific cuisine, decor, or location, these three restaurants share not just a passion for food but moreover its power as a social and emotional tool. As the film progresses parallels are drawn between the restaurants’ stories leading to one of the most profoundly beautiful denouements seen in modern documentary film-making. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPHaLkd4J28 Hungry yet? Thought so. In all seriousness though I cannot urge you enough to watch all five of these documentaries. They may seem like a disparate group of films but they are all incredibly insightful, inspiring, and wonderfully made. I will leave you with this picture of a seagull stealing crisps...

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Robin Williams 1951-2014

I wish that my first blog post would've been under more jovial circumstances unfortunately there’s nothing quite like the passing of someone you truly care about to provide the impetus for a slurry of words. The passing of Robin Williams isn’t just an unfortunate event. It isn’t one of those moments when a well known public figure of an essentially young age dies and catches you off guard and you spend the rest of your day eulogising someone you know little about. Robin Williams is different, in every sense of the word. He wasn’t just an actor that you may’ve seen in that thing ages ago. He was in a series of films which would form the cultural bedrock of our generation’s childhood. Robin Williams is woven into the tapestry of our youth, like skateboarding or 7-Up. He was a constant reliable source of joy who would be with us from the moment he emerged from that animated lamp in 1992. I still remember my first encounter with Robin Williams. As an extremely young child I can recall being sat in front of our old 15 inch tube television watching repeats of Mork & Mindy, the sitcom that made the relatively unknown Williams a household name in the states, whilst I waited for the next episode of Crystal Maze to start. As a child I couldn’t totally comprehend the traditional premise of the classic sitcom but that really didn’t matter as Robin, in the guise of extra-terrestrial Mork, had such an infectious energy that I became sucked into his own fantastically original brand of madness. Before long I was pulling the waistband of my trousers as high as it could go and complaining to my mum that there wasn’t 200 people laughing every time I did something crazy – as a six year old Mork & Mindy was my introduction to the studio based sitcom.

After my introduction to Robin Williams as I sat on my living room floor eating ham sandwiches with the crusts taken off, I wouldn’t encounter him again until I swapped the floor for an oversized cinema seat and the sandwiches for an inordinately large box of popcorn as I watched the re-release of Aladdin. The one thing I recall from being in the cinema as a six year old was being so perpetually frustrated that the film was forever sidelined with this dickhead pricking about with his monkey when all I wanted to see (or more precisely hear) was the Genie stealing the show with his continually changing rolodex of voices. As the Genie, Robin Williams brought a wholly welcoming but nonetheless intoxicating brand of anarchy.  It was with that character that Williams instilled in me that it was alright to be energetic, it was alright to be loud, and it was alright to be funny. After seeing that film my mum’s declarations to “Calm down Michael” fell on deaf ears.

What followed were a series of films that not only ignited my imagination but made me engage with themes and ideas that without Williams there as my tour-guide I feel I would’ve never fully embraced. Whether it’s Jumanji which is essentially a film about son seeking acceptance from his father or Flubber which ultimately shows us that hubris will be the unmaking of us all, one day I’ll write my thesis on how Flubber is in many ways a Greek tragedy, or Mrs. Doubtfire where we are shown the overarching extents a father will go to see his children grow up, the one aspect that strings all of Robin Williams’ films together is that they all have such an overwhelming heart. All of his films aside from being some of the funniest films that will ever be made had a genuine morality and emotional core. And that emotional honesty permeated every one of his roles. As an actor, Robin Williams will never be dismissed as just “that crazy guy with all the voices” He was artist at the top of his craft. He brought tears to people’s eyes with both laughter and empathy. It is a genuine tragedy that he is no longer here. I implore you to go and watch some of his lesser known films to fully embrace just how impressive he was of an actor. Go watch Toys, World’s Greatest Dad, What Dreams May Come, The Birdcage, Jack, One Hour Photo, even go watch Death to Smoochy which is a fucking terrible film but he is just superb in it. Robin Williams, you were and will forever be one of cinema’s true legends and will never be forgotten. Thank you for filling our lives with laughter and magic. There is a human sized hot-dog shaped hole in all of our hearts.  Robin Williams 1951-2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_lbK_6n5eY