Bomber's beerspot - women and Beer, mix at your peril

so i've been thinking about that link D.P.Richard posted a couple of days back about Toi Senhauser's OPB or "Original Pussy Beer", which is claimed to be made with "trace amount of [her] vaginal yeast" with the aim that;" Experimentation with these historic staple foods, in combination with my own body, helps to build a new artistic dimension". Shockingly, I've come to the conclusion that I'm decidedly pissed off about the whole thing. Look; firstly it's a bird making beer, which - don't get me wrong - is a shit idea. I believe Kaiser Willhelm said "send me a woman who loves to drink beer and I will conquer the world." Well might that have been true, BUT was he further heard to opine, "better that she makes her own beer utilising not brewer's yeast, but her own fanny batter, then the whole universe would be ours"...? Well I don't recall that bit.

Ahhhhhhh! What the fuck's THAT??!!

What next pisses me off about this is the whole americanism of the thing. a "trace amount of my vaginal yeast"? you might as well have said you spat in it. That is all so fucking American ... choose your words carefully ... don't want to be critisised for actually doing something or causing a health hazard bollocks that the whole fucking world is now sufferring from (but for which I blame the Americans, and more specificaly American lawyers, which most American presidents began as, for starting.) The point is to make beer, love, not to ponce around talking about how you put half a scaping off your flaps into a barrel and pretend that it makes it more than contaminated homebrew. If you want to do it right, go on; forget the brewer's yeast, get yourself a good infection and manufacture the lot yourself. THEN I'd accept you're talking about "a new artistic dimension". But your artist's PI policy probably wouldn't cover the fall out of actually getting someone sick now, would it.

Then there's the whole claim about women having "invented" beer; yeah, like that's, like, likely. "Toi" (stupid bloody name) states, "Somewhere between 7,000 to 4,000 B.C ... in Sumeria women invented beer". Well fuck me if she needs a whole 3,000 year window to place the invention of beer, but she still knows it was birds that did it. Well let me tell you, coz I had this out with another American the last Friday. God invented beer, bloody must have done. Look; we had this conversation which started by him asking "who do you reckon first brewed beer?" all friendly like. Then we got to talking about how it was possible to "accidentally" make alcohol from various fruits (ever tried filling a poof with sugar then hanging him from a tree for three weeks in the sun with a straw hanging out of his bum? Same process.) At no point in the converstaion was the use of Lady's Self Raising in the fermentation process mentioned. It became obvious though that, frankly, who would bother even trying this (making booze) with something as revolting looking as hops and barley? And if you did you'd just end up with a can of Gold label and the first taste would convince you to go back to hanging fruits. Makes no sense. Proof of Intelligent Design, I reckon. What else could explain it? God taught it to blokes. Blokes taught it to birds (possibly using sticks to help the learning process.) Birds spent 3,000 years making it for blokes in Sumeria, between bouts of having kids and what and finally they all moved to the UK and started Whitbread. Actually, it sounds like we gave up a good thing there, I suggest a return to the Old Ways. Henceforth all birds shall be forced to make beer for their menfolk (except mine, who hasn't enough time as she needs to earn money for our ski trip next Feb so she's exempt.) I looked this up on the wikipedia repository of all human knowlege, which supports my view. Any suggestion that I wrote any of that article is absurd.

Either way, tomorrow I'm making bread using my knob cheese instead of baking soda. I've been saving the scrapings for a while, but it takes a lot to fill four tea spoons so I need some doners. Any takers? This isn't art, I'm doing it to save money. Answers smeared on a postcard.

Bomber out.

It's almost the weekend, like I give a shit! and movies movies movies!

Well, I do (give a shit) this week, cause all me mates are coming from Blighty. We've got Smudge and Jules arriving tonight and Richard, Sparky and Emma arriving tomorrow. Richard's bringing two of his mates, who I apparently met at Richard's wedding. I only admit having been at Richard's wedding due to irrefutable photographic evidence of me standing on the bride's train and abusing the presents (separate photographs) and the fact that my camera was full of photos of the wedding and that I woke up in Hawes the following morning, which has to be the funniest place to have a wedding ever. Smudge swears that I will fall in love with Richard's mate once I meet him (again) but that all sounds a bit gay so I'll settle for getting drunk.

The weeks are getting a little boring actually so I've signed up for a French course starting after the mid-term. I'm doing studying type things at home, which is OK, and I get some practice arguing with check-out girls about the price of cat food, but I really need to get into a class (double French, euuugh) and get some garlic on my tongue so I've bitten the bullet and signed up.

We don't have any TV signal type thing (cable, terrestrial or satellite) fitted so have been working our way through our favorite DVDs and some new one's I got from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. Gattaca is still one of the best movies ever. It is just so damn good I would be speechless but for my lifelong bout of verbal diarrhea and, while I am a fan of Uma, I don't seem to hold her in the high sexiness regards that most people do, she is georgeous in this film, even if she still has hands like an NBA star (although whiter). I realised that I still don't understand the end of the night club raid scene, where Uma's thoughts seem to run "oh, you're a murderer (which she clearly thinks e is at this point), in that case I'll sleep with you", but it's a minor logical blip on an otherwise perfect movie.

The Comic Strip Presents has been taking a thrashing aswell. I was a little worried about this. I really enjoyed it as a tweeny and, after waiting for a decade for those cunts at C4 to release it on disc, I was really worried that it might somehow have become shite in the interim. I remember years back re-watching Scooby Doo, which I remembered with such fond memories as a kid (except for the Scrappy episodes, which no serious Mystery Machiner would credit with being a serious part of "the work") only to find out that Scooby Doo somehow became SHIT while I wasn't watching. I was sure it must have been updated or re-edited or I was watching later episodes (you know how these things always go bad in the end etc etc) but Bubble assured me; Scooby Doo has always been like that. I was distraught and felt stupid and cheated all at once. What had they done with my Scooby Doo, the bastards? Well, I was concerned about the same thing with the Comic Strip but I needn't have worried. Well, not too much in any case. I have always known that there were some shit episodes in the series but equally some classics (5 go mad, fist full of TT, Mr Jolly) but what I hadn't realised was how bloddy many of them there were. nearly 40 episodes! Actually top value for around 30 quid so I ordered it up. Andrea seems not so thrilled, but then; a) it's English and b) I have the power of nostalgia on my side. Of course the production quality is pure shit. It looks like what it is; very simply and cheaply produced and shot for TV comedy acting. The projector does it no favors at all. Actually, the production values are so bad that for years I thought it was made by the BBC. Anyhow, it's well worth a view but I think that you need to have fond memories of watching it in your early teens and accept that roughly half of the episodes will not hit the spot, oh, and be immune to Ade Emonson and Rick Mayall's signature whining. Even better if you find it funny, like me. Deffo the Young Ones next.

Unlike in the rest of the French speaking world, they actually do sometimes show English language films in Brussels. Sadly not often (another reaon for learning tLotE) which means to say they probably showed Titanic and they're gearing up to show the Zorro sequal. This was a little confusing for us (in a "that's odd, they're re-releasing that Zorro movie" sort of way) as the only clue the posters on the bus stops gave gave that it might not be the same movie from 10 years back was the omission of Anthony Hopkins from the main credits. Oh, and on closer inspection, that Catherine Zeta Jones has been airbrushed (stretch marks, I expect). Now, when they wait 10 years to make a sequal, you have to think about it. There's a lot of pitfalls here. Let's take Terminator, Alien and 48 Hrs as examples. I think that there are 3 queations that need to be answered;

1. Was the original good
2. Does the sequal appear to bring anything new to the story (clues include a different top end director and more characters)
3. Have the actors all grown old in the interim, andf if so, what has been done about this?

With the Alien / Aliens, they achieved one and two and got away with three. Taking a landmark original movie and changing genres completely with a completely new cast and direction (except Sigourney, who appeared to get away with the time shift, but then the constantly low lighting probably helped there).
With Terminator / T2, no change in director but a seamless extension of the plot line and a 15 year break in the story line to allow John Conner to grow up allowed Linda Hamilton to get a bit older forgivably. Did she do any work in the interim? Arnie gets away with it in T2, although you do need to squint a bit. So they scored three out of three on that. They shat their pants on T3, which of course was a turd of a movie, not least because Arnie was by this time Geriatric (55!) and had to wear a turtle neck to cover the wattles on his neck. And tehy felt the marketing need to have a female terminator, who was unforgivably shit. This annoyed me because I think they scored on Number 2 bringing the story arc to a close with a certain amount of fatalism when, after all that talk of the future is not set, it turns out that you need to do more than blow up a lab to change the tide of (future) history, which I thought was a good line. They just had no excuse to use Arnie a third time (except that, although he's not credited with production, I'm sure that's the reson he was in);

Hollywood; "These are GREAT characters you've written here, James! Who should we use for the good terminator guy? oh, yeah! Let's get the president of California, he's well known and he was in the first two wasn't he?"
Cameron; "Well, he's a bit fucking old, why not have another T2000 or something even cooler. Also, it was a bit of a stretch having the T100 looking the same in the first movies but we got away with it, why push our luck?"
Hollywood; "Well, that's it then, we'll use Arnie and get some bint to be his nemisis, thanks for the support James"
Cameron; "Err... well. Thanks for the writing credits, I'm off diving"

For 48 hrs / Another 48 hrs, well the story's even worse than T3. Pretty good original, same
director, same cast err ... same plot. Why did they make this film? At least Nic Nolte has always looked that old, I guess. 1 out of 3 and that's only for the original film being funny.

That went on a little longer than expected.... back at the batcave

So, Zorro then. Obviously not expecting a trip to the Cinema to see if this franchise has too gone to seed. After all, same director, same cast (are we seeing a pattern here...?), plot set in California. Eh? What's that about, I thought he was Mexican or Spanish or something. I looked this up and blow me but the original Zorro stories were indeed set in "the Precidio of Los Angeles" so perhaps the geography is correct, so there you go. Even so, that Catherine Zeta Jones tart has had a billion kids since the last movie and, while I like Antonio, the only movie he's ever been able to carry on his own was Desperado, and that had Selma Hayek in it ... naked! Well, prehaps I'm remembering what I want to there but anyway, I really don't hold out very high hopes for this flick and wouldn't have talked about it at all, if it wasn't for Vern's review on AICN this morning, which is shockingly positive about the whole thing. He really quite likes it and says if you like the first one and are generally a fan of Banderas (check ... check) then it's worth a go. I still don't completely buy the California connection, though. On the other hand, it does give him the opportunity to fight neocon Christian right wingers (apparently) and perhaps we'll even get to see the govener's cigar on the end of a spike so perhaps there's enough end to justify the blah blah etc etc.

Well, that took (and went on for) far too long. I'm off for breakfast

Bomber out

Bomber's Bits from the interweb

Morning Proles, all limbered up from yoga, I thought I'd have a mid-week catch up. What, it isn't mid-week yet? I must have forgotten what day it is because I HAVE THE WHOLE OF EVERY WEEK OFF! Sorry, I've been watching too much Rick Mayall recently...

Well, in order to keep you entertained during your dull work day, I have been scouring the interweb for stuff and actually found some that isn't pr0n. Check out these redubbed Dolmio ads. Sound dull? Well they're not. They've been dubbed over in broad Gaswegian (sp...?) and the bits that I can make out are very sweary and quite funny.

B3ta hit the spot again this week. One that had me rolling in the aisles is a description posted by someone in the vein of "would you dare do this to anyone?";

The Spiderman; pulling out just before the vinegar strokes, chucking your fat into your hand, then flinging it in the girls face whilst triumphantly shouting "Go web go!"

Bubble wasn't as impressed as I thought she'd be when I explained to her the reason for my incessant giggling. No sense of humour, girls. Where's Willsy when you need him?

On to Hallowe'en, fast approaching with the arrival of Sparky and Emma, the Smudges, DP Richard and his mates, this idea has been profferred for updating the festivities to appeal to adults. Naturally it involves several pubs. It's known as the Crawl of the Dead and I want to go on one. They give tips on make-up and everything. I need to get the reverand's facial bite mark from NOTLD though, that is far and away the coolest scar ever!

Enough, I have to do me French lessons so I can become an EU spy. Or something.

Bomber out