Private Collection
Today I used the word ‘vestibule’ and giggled like a school girl.
Does that make me wrong?
14 comments March 19th, 2009 Ian
Question Time
Good Afternoon and welcome to today’s nightly edition of Question Time. With me are two members of the public burning with desires to answer questions of a slightly significant nature that may touch on issues but really they don’t and we will thinly veil them with large words to make you think they do.
On my right, Kevin Head aka The Wizard. On my left, Chris De Mar “Bomb” Shell. Let’s begin:
1. Unnecessary roadworks months is well underway. Tell me, do you consider reams and reams of plastic orange borders a problem or a joyous scene?
2. Gentlemen who go to the toilet, see that someone else has been before them, flush the toilet, have a wee then flush the toilet again. Are you one of those people and can you defend the second flush?
Whip crack away. Whip crack away.
13 comments March 18th, 2009 Ian
Chris’s Top Theme Tune of the Month
Yes, theme tune fans! It’s time for another brilliant theme tune! Here’s where I bring you one and you can listen to it! Why? Mostly because this place is dead and that makes me sad! So here’s something to perk it up a bit as Da Beans approaches its third birthday!
Clicky clicky clicky this: UFO theme tune
Yes! It’s the theme music from Gerry Anderson’s UFO, first screened in 1970 and which has been mostly forgotten as a live-action follow up to things like Stingray and Joe 90 that nobody remembers much because it wasn’t all that good and nobody was sure if it was for kid sor grown ups. But what a theme tune!
As my Top Theme Tune of the Month, I award it seventeen annoying stars and my own personal “yippee”!
x17
11 comments March 16th, 2009 Chris
Bring on the Weirdoes!
Living in Newcastle you do get a fair share of crazies coming up to you in the street. Some keep their distance and allow you to watch their madness from afar. Here are some of my favourites from the last few weeks:
- Crazy drunks with impressive yet dirty facial hair (at 7 in the evening).
- The strange man who works in the same building albeit on a different floor. When he gets into the lift he focuses on the bottom corner and refuses to look up. It’s the strained expression on his face that makes me wonder how much he hates social interaction.
- The drunken couple on the Metro; another classic example that unravels itself like a story. They both get on but clearly have had an arguement so sit at opposite ends of the train. After a couple of minutes the woman gets up and paces down the Metro and starts slapping the man. Then they enter into this bizarre display (on the seats opposite me no less) that looks as though they are trying to fight and f*ck at the same time, sometimes kissing, sometimes hitting. Twice they fall off their seats into a heap on the floor. I crank the Klaxons up to 10 and look desperately out the window.
- The dog with the huge p*nis (and flaunts it at you as he runs past).
My life would be so dull without them.
12 comments March 12th, 2009 Ian
Silly Bint of the Month: Glasvegas
Scotland is very good at producing glum rock bands. At the very cheeriest end are bands like the Fratellis, who have a vague sheen* of upbeat cheeriness but actually have no real substance to them anyway. Nothing they say means anything. In the middle of the scale are bands like Del Amitri who have a superficial sing-along niceness but are ultimately quite maudlin and have something of a victim complex.
The other end of the scale – the very crowded end – is where the rest of the bands go. Idlewild and Ultravox and all that. Glasvegas are currently squatting at the darkest corner of that spectrum, frowning and grunting at passers-by.
Glasvegas are really a modern-day Ultravox: pompous, pretentious, deeply miserable and with a very acute sense of their own importance. Their “wall of sound” (for which read, “big noisy tuneless background that is the same in every song”) gives every tuneless wail the same relentlessly funereal atmosphere of annoyance.
The lead singer, with his bouffant hair (Morrissey circa 1989) and too-cool-for-this-shit attitude (Midge Ure circa all his life) makes him particularly ripe for binthood, and I recommend that he is the bintiest bint of this month, with other band members in a secondary bint status.
In short: Glasvegas = major net loss.
* Buff to sheen.
18 comments February 22nd, 2009 Chris
Enlightenment
Buddha’s Guide To Living
1. The world must be divided into pairs, whether husband and wife, brother to brother or friend with friend.
2. One person must be chillin’.
3. One person must be illin’.
4. Said pair can nominate another person to do the illin’ so they can perform the act of chillin’ either immediately or at a later time. You do not necessarily have to know the person you nominate.
20 comments February 11th, 2009 Ian
Cutlery Drawer
What order should a cutlery drawer be in? Personally I think it should be knives, forks, big spoons and teaspoons across the front. Sarah and my sister think Im wrong, but couldnt offer consistant reasons.
I need more opinions! Perferably enough to put me in the majority.
15 comments February 10th, 2009 Kevil
Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Dear the 1980’s,
How are you? I haven’t heard from you in a while. Come to think of it you haven’t been in touch for at least, what, nineteen years now? That is quite a long time. Being only twenty-five that’s most of my life. Have you been up to much? Occasionally something will come up and I’ll think of you: Thundercats, Transformers, A-Ha and the likes of school boy memories that I have since forgotten about or shunned for much more up-to-date stuff like the fact that you can now buy mobile phones that do almost anything. You tried those didn’t you 1980’s? You tried so hard but it was such a brick you can’t help but look back and laugh. Some things were acceptable in the 80’s, according to some berk, however that clearly wasn’t.
You also tried games consoles too. I had to wait ten minutes for my brother’s BBC Master to load up Ziggy and by then I had to go for my bath. It was pretty pathetic. Rubbish even! Now you can crack off some inane RPG online like World of Warcraft within minutes and play with people all over the world, can sneak around in realistic environments in Metal Gear (do you remember that? Your version had dodgy colours) or play Mario Kart on the shitter. Such things were just a dream to you 1980’s.
I don’t mean to be mean but when you keep away this long I cannot help but feel bitter, like you couldn’t even be bothered to write or leave a message or anything. Occasionally something like ‘We Love 1980’s’ would come on and I would get excited thinking that you were coming back. Nothing. Monster Munch and Whispas were returned to our shops. Nothing. It’s just not good enough and I can’t just hang around every day waiting and expecting the same thing we had nineteen years ago. So it’s over, 1980’s. Just go and don’t even try any snivelling apology. Stay away and never come back.
Yours Sincerely
Ian McIver
P.S. Although if you do have some Lucky Charms left I’ll take some. I’m not paying to import the mo’ fo’s from the US – they can whistle dixie for all I care!
7 comments February 3rd, 2009 Ian
Now We’re Really Living
I need some clarification, some closure and some clothes to cover this naked level of understanding that me, a common beatnik, cannot get my head round.
Last week when I took the boy to school I almost arrived at the bus stop but was greeted by a curious sight. Sat on the corner by the pub was a golf ball. A golf ball that had two turds curled around it. Now I have three questions:
1. Do dogs play golf?
2. Would that be classed as modern art?
And the biggest one of all:
3. Is it marketable?
11 comments January 26th, 2009 Ian
Is Kev famous?
It’s the burning question of the day. I think we all want to know whether Kev is famous and, if so, how long has he been famous in secret? We should be told.
The secret got out yesterday when I saw this.
So, Mr Hill – what the hell are you doing with an hour-long show on E4?
17 comments January 24th, 2009 Chris