Author: Criss Crimz

Avatar The second horror of Christmas

Round here people like to put lights on their house for Christmas. You know there’s that house near you, where the people go a bit mad, and cover the whole thing in garish flashing multicoloured lights? Every year, because it’s their “thing”? Well, we more or less live in a whole town of people like that.

On our street, the people next door and the people over the road compete for the most Christmas lights every year. As a result we are trapped in the middle of the fairy light equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Here is the view out of our bedroom window this year.

And then, if you want a bit of a break from the light shining through the blinds, you can go round to the back, where this is the view.

Avatar Teaser trailer

I’m in a ridiculous position. Normally, on the last day of the month, I’m scrabbling around for something to turn into a blog post so I can earn a bean before the clock runs out. Nightmare. What picture can I find on my phone? What mundane event can I expand into a witty anecdote? What horrifyingly self-important letter of complaint from my past can I share?

This month isn’t like that. This month, on the final day of November, I find myself with a different kind of anguish. This month I have a whole series of blog post ideas ready to go, but I can’t use them yet. 

I’ve got pictures from the Papples recording session for Pop Squared. Tons of them! And they’re great, and funny, and there are stories about them. But I’ve already posted one set of Papples photos this month and I haven’t uploaded these ones. 

Then, I’ve finally edited the behind the scenes footage we shot while we were making “Space for an Ace”. It’s great. I pulled a few clips from it a few years back but the rest has loads of fun stuff too. Trouble is it needs another tweak before I do a final export, and in any case it would need to go on YouTube and there’s no time for that tonight. 

I’ve also got Four Word Reviews brewing. The album “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba has been on my desk for the last two weeks, but every day I thought I’d have time to listen to it I ended up not having time, so I haven’t managed to fit it in yet.

This is all without mentioning my camera roll, which is of course brim full of potential posts. Probably. 

Anyway, the point is that this month I’m tossing off a last minute post not because I’m short of material, but because I’ve got loads of stuff lying around and yet I still don’t have anything ready to go. So instead please enjoy this teaser trailer for upcoming posts here on the Beans. You’ll love them. If I ever get round to them. 

Avatar A slice of 2010

While rummaging in the dusty Beans archives for material to put in the 2024 calendar, I found a load of photos we took during the making of the Papples’ second album, Masterpiece, back in 2010. (I also found pictures from 2011, when we were making Pop Squared, but I’m saving those for next month because you have to keep those post totals up.)

There are 149 pictures in the set, so you’ll be relieved to hear I whittled them down to 80 before adding them to a new photo gallery in the usual place.

The photos start out in my old flat in Streatham, where we can be seen doing a bit of recording and editing, but then quickly turn to a day trip we took to Kent. I think we spent the day touring around various seaside towns, messing about, taking photos for the album cover and possibly sending postcards to Kev. I’m fairly sure the photos include visits to the Isle of Sheppey, Westgate, Whitstable, Sandwich and Samphire Hoe, though there may be other places too.

In Westgate we refused to get out of the car, and instead spent our time getting into stupid positions (in the boot, legs out of the window) and using the headrests to pretend to be walruses.

Along the way we learn a number of things.

Ian enjoyed taking a self-portrait. Selfies hadn’t been invented in 2010, but if they had, he’d be the king of them. Among the 69 pictures I discarded were lots of alternative shots of Ian’s face that he took himself. There are still loads in here.

I thought it was funny to be completely expressionless and vacant in pictures, and did this almost every time a camera was pointed at me. Most of these are irritating and don’t work, but I will admit that the picture of me outside a pub called “The Smack” still makes me laugh.

We also learn that Kent is full of places with stupid names, and we photographed most of them. Pictures of daft streets, towns and businesses litter this album. It’s a masterpiece of silliness. Enjoy.

Avatar Forty first

It’s been revealed today that Ian “Mac Mac Mac Mac” McIver, a high class civil servant from Newcastle, has become the first person to be 40.

For years now, scientists have theorised that a person might be able to become 40, but nobody in human history had ever actually managed it. Now, a number of papers in leading medical journals are beginning to explore the genetic mutations that might have made this feat possible.

Speaking at a Sherry and Fortified Wine Symposium in Washington DC, US President Joe Biden – who has been 39 for more than 42 years – congratulated Mr McIver on his remarkable achievement. “If this guy can do it, perhaps we all can,” mumbled Biden, whose speech was becoming indistinct after several hours tasting samples of port.

While almost 40% of the world’s population are now aged 39, there is great trepidation about what the leap to 40 might mean. Sir David Attenborough, now aged 39 and 696 months, speculated that those reaching the new age might find themselves pushing onward to 41 or even 42 in the years that followed. “It could be a slippery slope,” he told reporters outside his local LaserQuest, “like the ones penguins slide down.”

Two fearless volunteers are said to have signed up to follow in McIver’s pioneering footsteps, but safety is paramount and their steps forward into the world of 40 will be taken slowly. Criss Crimz, 39, and Kevindo Menendez, 39, are both expected to become 40 under controlled lab conditions during the next year. Scientists will be monitoring their progress carefully.

In the meantime, Mr. McIver’s feat does not seem to have fazed him, nor does his unprecedented old age seem to have dulled his lively air of self-importance. At a press conference yesterday, he pushed aside the lead researcher, who had been explaining early findings about his condition to the world’s press, grabbing the microphone and climbing atop the lectern to shout “I was first!!!!” to the assembled crowd.

“I’m all about the wins,” he continued, “winning at life. Absolute cog pipes, I’m gonna win ’em all!”

Security personnel removed him from the auditorium at this point, but as he was bundled out of the door, McIver could be heard to shout “It’s OK, soon you’ll get the chance to win, but not right now – because I’m winning!”

McIver’s whereabouts are not known since his removal from the press conference.

Avatar Heist movie

Right, lads. Thanks for gathering here in the seedy basement criminal headquarters round the back of the seedy basement criminal billiards hall. Grab a cocktail stick to chew. I’ve spread out a blueprint on the table so gather round and have a look.

As you all know, this is the big one, the heist of the year. We’re going to lift four million nicker in used five pence coins from the Coinstar machine by the tills in Morrisons.

First off, we all need code names. Kevil, you’re Mr Blancmange. Ian, we’ll call you Mr Trifle. I’ll be going by the name Mr Bread and Butter Pudding. No arguing now, those are the names, if you don’t like it you can walk out the door and miss out on the biggest haul of loose change this country has ever seen. Alright? Good. We’re all in.

Here’s the plan. Meet round the side of the Morrisons petrol station at 3.15. Mr Trifle and Mr Blancmange will be at the air machine feigning an argument about the correct tyre pressure for the rear wheels of a heavily loaded Dacia Sandero in cold weather. I’ll be in the shop buying a bag of Jelly Tots. If I come out and show you a car wash ticket for a number four programme with hot wax, the game is on.

At that point we all get into the Sandero sharpish. Mr Blancmange will drive. Mr Trifle will jump in the boot so the car doesn’t look too full. I’ll sit in the passenger seat and crack open the Jelly Tots. Then we swing it round to the front of Morrisons and ditch the wheels in a parent and child bay. They’ve got extra room for the doors to open and they’re right by the entrance. I don’t care if we get a ticket.

From there we make it to the Coinstar machine under cover of a montage. Mr Trifle will play in some lively montage music on a bluetooth speaker. Then we get indoors in five montage clips.

  • One, Mr Blancmange slides the stack of shopping baskets in the way of the automatic doors to wedge them open.
  • Two, Mr Trifle grabs us three copies of the free monthly Morrisons recipe magazine to hide our faces by pretending to read them.
  • Three, I’ll offer the security guard some Jelly Tots so he’s not looking at the CCTV.
  • Four, Mr Blancmange grabs a 10p plastic bag from the self checkouts and covers up the camera.
  • And five, Mr Trifle humorously pauses by the display of flowers to pull a rose from a bouquet and tuck it into the buttonhole on his suit jacket.

When we get to the Coinstar machine we have sixty seconds to get it away before the checkout supervisor sees what we’re up to and raises the alarm. Mr Blancmange and I will lift the floor panel next to it, revealing a manhole down to the drains. Mr Trifle will then announce that he’s “got this” and we will leave it to him to push the machine into the hole.

When that’s done we jump down after it and ride it away through the sewers like a big cash-filled surfboard. The current will tip us out at the riverside where we can get a number 65 bus back here to the lair.

Any questions? No? Good. In that case, you put your suits on and I’ll get the Sandero out of the lock up. Everyone synchronise watches. See you outside in five.

Avatar H-A-L-L-U-M-I

Back in July 2020, Ian was carrying out some gentle archaeology among his possessions, which had begun to settle in accreted layers like sedimentary rock. In the midst of a rich stratum of shopping lists and half-finished song lyrics, he stumbled upon a miniature Sacred Book, and reported this to the Beans.

The booklet runs only to four pages in a bigger book that is otherwise full of other tat, and records the events that took place in the Magic Lantern pub in Whitley Bay (which later became a Harvester, and is now, of course, a Miller and Carter). In-depth scientific analysis of the occasions on which all three of us were in Newcastle, cross-referenced with the visits that had not produced a full Book, suggests that this was likely to have been in 2009.

We begged Ian to scan in these pages so they could be added to our collective store of wisdom on the Beans. We implored him. We offered him trinkets and prizes and financial incentives in discreet brown envelopes. But he resisted, and no scan was ever made.

Well, I don’t know about you, but my patience ran out, and it ran out at about 6.30 this morning. So I took the dodgy photos he had posted to the Beans, straightened and corrected them, and produced decent quality images of all four pages which I have now added to the Beans, bypassing the whole sorry business of Ian having to scan them. I have titled this new book “H-A-L-L-U-M-I”, that being the first thing written in it.

Its four pages contain an amazing number of in-jokes that survive to this day:

  • Wexford and the cheeses
  • Chris’s scrodsack of change
  • The science of warms per air

So, there it is, a lost slice of history, saved for the benefit of the nation. You can find it in the Books section.