Wednesday 27 April 2011

The Ignoble Savage

Latest party game for those who haven't seen it, is to discover your Royal Wedding Invitation name. Start with Lord or Lady then, for your first name, use the forename of a grandparent (whichever is the best). The surname is a double barrel of your first pet and the first bit of the name of the road where you grew up.
Hence I am Lord Israel Dandy-Cranley. And perhaps the best I've heard so far is Lord Russell Pussy-College.
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Is it hayfever, is it some kind of spring flu or are people allergic to the tube? For some reason, every single person who uses London Underground now sniffs for the entire journey.
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Robbie Savage is retiring from football at the end of this season and the general rule is that all fans are supposed to salute his spiky, never say die attitude that made him such a popular figure with all the clubs he played for and a kind of pantomime villain for everyone else.
Not me. How someone with such a limited talent made so much money and is now feted as some kind of tactical genius and broadcasting star (Radio Five Live - how could you?) is beyond me.
I have a general policy not to feel hatred and bitterness towards footballers. It's just a game and they are all trying their best.
But not Savage. Not for diving in the 1999 league cup final and getting Justin Edinburgh sent off in the biggest game of the lad's career. And a million sins against the English language. And for that hair and his arrogance and for being the best example how a no-talent dipstick can make millions in the modern game when people like Jimmy Greaves and Stan Bowles struggled to make an average living.
No, I don't wish him well and a happy retirement. I'll stop short of wishing him harm in the way Arsenal fans would with, say, Ryan Shawcross of Stoke. I'll settle for his hair falling out.
Not like that nice Ryan Giggs who is such a wonderful ambassador for the sport and a lovely family man to boot, I believe.
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Sainsbury's has this really, really, condescending, smarmy and completely unconvincing policy of calling all its staff 'colleagues' whether they are in the boardroom or stacking shelves.
So all press releases talk about the money colleagues in Wigan raised for Comic Relief or how the company's profits are all down to the hard work of colleagues.
It smacks of trying to be like John Lewis where everyone is a 'partner' but then that company is owned by the staff. Sainsbury's is not. It's a moneymaking giant which, like Tesco and others, squeezes suppliers until the pips squeak and exists purely to make money.
Its insurance arm, for instance, will go to extraordinary lengths not to pay out on a policy if it can find the slightest excuse not to.
And I bet when some acne-ridden checkout kid is caught nicking a few cans of beans from the storeroom, the manager doesn't call him 'colleague' as he frogmarches him to the security chief.
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I'm a bloke and blokes make lists. It's in the official Haynes Manual for men of a certain age. So here's my top ten favourite Simpsons episodes of all time. For no particular reason other than I was mulling it over in my head.
1.The Stonecutters - Homer joins a Mason-like cult and becomes the chosen one. Until all the others get sick of him. It's my personal fave.
2.The Gay one - with John Waters where Homer is worried Bart may be gay. Features the brilliant scene in the steel foundary.
3.The prohibition hits Springfield and Homer becomes a beer baron. Ends with the immortal toast 'to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems.'
4.The fiery chilli cookoff episode which sees Homer go into a chilli-induced fantasy that includes Johnny Cash as a space coyote and ends in a lighthouse and everyone singing 'who loves short shorts'.
5.The Van Houtens divorce. Milhouse's parents split up and Homer decides to be nicer to Marge. It's just hilarious.
6.Cape Fear rip off where Sideshow Bob seeks revenge on Bart. So many visual gags and references but best of all is an extended scene of Bob standing on rakes which was made to fill in time because the original episode was too short.
7.Snow Plow wars (that's how they spell plough out there) where both Homer and Barney each start up a snow plow business. The adverts they make are brilliant. And it features Linda Ronstadt.
8.22 short films about Springfield - a marvellous pastiche of Pulp Fiction with loads of scenes all merged into one episode.
9.Selma marries Troy McClure - if for nothing else but the revelation that Troy has a sexual abnormality that involves fish and he needs to marry someone, anyone, to avoid the papers finding out.
10.Monorail. Includes a wonderful song, some brilliant sight gags and loads of clever one liners that you miss the first few times of watching.
And the moral of the story is...the best ones don't necessarily need the biggest stars or Ricky Gervais but have the crispest writing, the subtlest jokes - and some unsubtle ones - and both heart and pathos.
My name is Solly and I'm a Simpsons addict....shhhhh....Solly

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