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acrylic, on canvas; a painting of a painting of a painting, my mont st victoire? |
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23.11.05 08:13 |
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one ugly dawg
On the eve of Thanksgiving, 'The World's Ugliest Dog' is dead. No, he didn't belong to Ken Dodd's dad, before you aks. they showed some footage of him on TV last night, and it is truly the most gruesome creature you have ever seen. Check out the Washington Post's article about it here. The picture looks like one of them little puppets off the Young Ones, climbing out of the mould. Oh God, it is nasty. Yeurgh! In the footage, it looked a lot like a turkey. And I mean how turkeys really look, not the colourfully autumnal renaissance fowls that all of the Thanksgiving adverts and cards portray. Real turkeys are ugly little sods. But they taste good! I tell you what though, I don't care if that dog tastes like pumpkin pie, though, I wouldn't eat the ugly muthafucka. I can barely look at it. It's like Roland Rat with a serious smack habit. |
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23.11.05 23:32 |
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And it was written, Game Over, and lo! the Game was Over
The Day After Thanksgiving, George Best and Mr Miyagi are dead, my stomach is full ever, and the sales have begun; the new craze, according to the honest truthful people at CNN, are Christian Video Games. Set to 'rival Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil', the newsreader warns/welcomes/insert word. The Bible on DVD is one thing, but what do these games entail? They don't give details. Could be 'convert the infidel'? Or 'pass round the collections bucket'? Or that old favourite 'bum the choir boy'? No, it is probably the American fave 'invade the muslim country'. All I know is that I hate it when people write 'X-Box' rather than 'Christ-box', it's so lazy. I used to pretend I was Jesus when I used to play Pac-Man. When I would die it would be to forgive the sins of the ghosts, and lo! I would rise again. |
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25.11.05 17:38 |
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mystic bloody mary
The religious theme continues in the Sacramento region. For the past week there has been a statue of the Virgin Mary "crying blood" at a local Vietnamese church. It's all over the news here. People say it might be an omen of pertending doom, maybe a big quake or a flood. Personally I think it was a sign that Portsmouth FC manager Alain Perrain would lose his job. As Mystic Pete, I make annual predictions for the football season, and am always wrong about pretty much everything (I predicted Newcastle for the Premiership last year, for example). Well this year I said Perrain would be the first top-flight manager to bite the bullet. With Newcastle's early form it didn't look good for a while, until Souness signed Owen. Now, for once, I am right. Did I cry blood too? I can't divulge my mystical secrets, I'm afraid. All I can tell you is that my Nostrodamical skills go way, way back. |
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27.11.05 05:37 |
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Week Nine: Turkey Day
In the UK people complain about Christmas getting earlier every year, to the tune of Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day". In the US, however, Christmas comes when it is told - that is, on the day after Thanksgiving, announced on calendars as 'The Biggest Shopping Day Of The Year'. Across fifty states, while the turkey, the cranberries and the pumpkin pie are settling down for the night, coupons are carefully cut out of colossal piles of newspaper adverts, while alarms are set for thankless wee hours, all for the pleasure of braving the November elements and the restless lines outside Best Buy. Most people have their Christmas shopping done by about midday, if they survive the crowds fighting over the last half-price laptop. Tensions run so high that in one news report, one Wal-Mart customer said he would be bringing a gun for security next year. There's no need, you can buy one while you're there. The rush to the shops ushers in the green-and-red coloured (green money, red accounts) season, drawing a close to what is surely America's Favourite Holiday. It is also perhaps its purest, unsurprising given Thanksgiving's supposedly puritan origins. The pressure of Gift-Giving is utterly absent, as is the boring seasonal complaint about the commercialisation of a religious feast. Unlike at Christmas time, Hollywood churns out no big awful Thanksgiving movies. It is unsullied and simple, yet wholly American - this is one holiday the US feels no need to share with the world (except the Canadians, who hold their own Thanksgiving a month earlier). It is a family feast, and boy is it a feast. It all begins on Wednesday afternoon, aka "One Of The Biggest Travel Days Of The Year" (the other being the Sunday after). TV is pretty much limited to live reports from airports and congested freeways, interspersed with tips on cooking the turkey and stories about the Pilgrims. If anybody actually makes it to the family homestead in time for Thanksgiving morning, they can expect to watch the quite dreadful Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade live from New York. If you have watched any New York-based comedy, you will know that this parade is huge, and consists largely of enormous themed balloons of characters such as Garfield or Ronald McDonald. In those shows something 'hilarious' always goes wrong, such as Porky Pig floats away or collapses onto a crowd. This year, for real (as Ali G might put it), one balloon actually did fall down, injuring a small girl. Now I know I always found such events ridiculously corny as a sitcom joke, but in real life I must admit I found it pretty amusing. Much more amusing than the American Football, which is the other Thanksgiving televisual tradition, but by then I was well into the pre-meal snacks. Now according to the American public broadcasting channel, whose opinion I value over all other US channels (which is not saying very much, really), Thanksgiving was meant to be a fast, until Benjamin Franklin came along with his bag of vowels and said it should be made a feast. An extra point in Scrabble for one thing. I don't know how true that is, nor do I care, but let me tell you, if it's done to tradition it's the biggest dinner you'll ever eat. The turkey is generally gigantic and takes about a month to cook. Dessert this year consisted of a showdown: pumpkin pie (excellently cooked by my wife) vs apple pie (wonderfully baked by her mom). We aren't talking Blur vs Oasis here; I had both, and my stomach wasn't complaining. Where pie is concerned, there is always room at the inn. I washed it all down with a few glasses of local hefe-weizen beer, and put my feet up to watch the evening movie. Sadly, it was a repeat of the seriously dated Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I knew Santa was already on his way, bringing his bad movie tv with him. While watching the scene of the big mothership with my belly making strange alien noises, a thought occurred to me: I'm glad it isn't Thanksgiving Every Day. If it were, the average American would be a whole lot fatter - now there's something to give thanks for. |
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29.11.05 08:28 |
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