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What is life? What is love? What is power? Power is knowledge, my friends.You see, every week I do this; I write you a Whimsy. Why? Well I just don’t know. But I do my best to get out all these voices in my head telling me to do things. Sometimes they are good things like stroking kittens and reading poetry and fighting for a cleaner, better world. But sometimes they are bad things. Like eating lard and laughing at old people because they have wrinkles. I’m happy. I have no wrinkles. Well, it must be said that my jazz week away has taught me a lot about life and discipline and love of my fellow person. Isn’t that a good thing? I love this world we live in and I love you all, all of you out there in Whimsyland. I say - Look! Look over there! Now look this way! And look at them! They are sad because they have no Whimsy. Let them join!!! This week I have chosen to honour those who made the last week fun and frolicsome. Our first special guest is the lovely Susie Day who some of you may have heard of from previous Whimsies. Susie was kind enough to offer me alms on my journey up to the "smoke". I also indulged in highly enjoyable flick watching, more of which later. Susie is also the proud owner of the World’s biggest pumpkin. What joy she must have, knowing that her pumpkin is bigger than anyone else’s. Our next special guest is Jon, the Colossus of Rhodes. Jon Rhodes is an Actoooorrr and a thespian which should mean that he is archly camp (or camply arch), has a goatee and swans around in Soho claiming he is "resting" which we all know to be a euphemism for "tossing about ‘cos I ain’t got no work. Say Mister, I’ll blow you for food". Jon is not like that, oh no. His kindness and generosity is to be noted, as is his considerable acting skills. I urge you all to check out for two new films that (hopefully) will be hitting your screens soon. "Sleepless" and "The Devil’s Music" both star the beloved Jon and he is mentioned here as a special guest for his aforementioned generosity, which will be explained later. Some of you will know Jon from days past and for those of you who do, check out his website at www.jonathanrhodes.com Bababeedopdoodooshabapapapbaaaaaaaaa dididom bebop welcome (Incidentally, this week’s Whimsy is partially inspired by events and things I noted last week.)
Actually, if any of you know humourous village name that may amuse me, please do not hesitate to send it in and I will feature them in a future Whimsy.
Fish of the Day - Swordfish. Whilst enjoying myself in London (and no, I wasn’t in a lapdancing club at the time) I happened to have a lovely meal in this adorable Italian restaurant in Richmond which was a Swordfish Steak on a bed of rice. Mmmmmmmmm. Fab. But the swordfish is a tormented creature. Evolution has given it some bum deals. For one thing it has a huge spike on its nose which means it’s gonna find it will be difficult to get served in an British country pub. It also looks cool, which means every rich bastard near the coast wants one on his or her wall like the grotesque severed heads of deer which adorn the aristocracy’s fireplaces. It also tastes damn fine. This is a bad thing for animals to do because they inevitably get eaten by people and thus become extinct. OK, cows are all right because they aren’t exactly endangered because we keep breeding them. You can farm cows. You can farm chickens - Hell, you can farm Ostriches and Salmon. But you try farming Swordfish. For one thing, it is bound to be a nuisance to keep their cages in order with big spiky noses ruining everything. And anyway, if Swordfish want to remain on this Earth much longer they had better learn to taste of vomit because otherwise they will become extinct in order to satisfy the cravings of lardy young men like me.
Musical Instrument of the Day - Banjo. Now I know I may offend some of you but here goes: Fuck Banjos. They suck arse. OK, they are an important folk instrument that has played its part in the rise of colloquial music in the USA but they also represent the devil. They also represent inbred hillbillies - Jesus, haven’t you seen Deliverence? Banjos make an appalling noise that can only be calmed by the touch of a true master and even then it is bordering on torture. The best thing to do with a banjo is to smash it over the head of the twat who is playing it and then use the strings to "cheesewire" his balls from his body.
Irritant of Modern Life of the Day - This is sick, no it really is. If you are reading this after you’ve eaten, don’t. Skip on to the next bit. I advise you to read this paragraph only on an empty stomach. OK? Ready. I am talking about the by-products of our household bins. By that I mean the liquid that inevitably appears at the bottom of bins when you take the bags out. Yes, I am talking about Bin Juice. Bin Juice (or Bin Gravy as it is sometimes known) is greyish brown in colour and smells like nothing else in the world. How many times have you emptied the bin and found a small puddle of toxic liquid lurking at the bottom? How many times have you emptied the bin only to get a gust of vile fermentation and putricity? Well look at Bin Juice. Don’t get too close to is because it is so disgusting. That stuff was once food and/or drink that you gladly consumed and now it is the worst-smelling liquid that really makes you want to spew. Don’t even think about drinking it....Oh God....I just did. EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ugh. Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick. Urrrrrrrr.......no.....please..... (I fumble around in the sitting room to try to find Nick Drake CD. I put it on.) Ahhhh. That feels better. (Dan unconsciously thinks "Bin Juice. Mmmmm") OH GOD!!!! ERRRRR!!! YUCK!!! Happy Thoughts. Happy Thoughts. Better.
TV Show of the Day - Robin of Sherwood. We all remember this with great fondness. When up in Oxford, Susie whipped out a copy of Robin of Sherwood from her vast collection of cheesey TV show videos (Dear Susie, when I next come up, can you find a copy of the original pilot episode of The A-Team? Just a thought....dxx). It has to be said I was well up for re-acquainting myself with Robin of Sherwood. R of S was noted for many things. One was the leading man, Michael Praed, who was charged with performing Robin as a pagan with a mullet and a tendency to rob the rich and give to the poor. He was as wooden as the entirety of Sherwood Forest but not half as wooden as Jason Connery, who took over the role when Praed was offered billions of pounds to ponce around on Dynasty. This meant that Michael Praed’s Robin was killed off rather clumsily to make way for a new Robin played by Sean Connery’s ugly son. So how can you have a TV show about Robin Hood when Robin Hood is dead? The mind boggles.... We also remember the luscious Judi Trott playing a marvellously frothy Marian. She was gorgeous. Probably fat and ugly by now though (and has never been seen since) but back then she was a honey. We also remember Ray Winstonen (pre "Nil By Mouth" but post "Scum") as a terrifcally short-fused but surprisingly boyish cockney Will Scarlet. Top bloke, fab actor! We remember the Saracen bloke played by Mark Ryan who rarely said anything but had two funky swords which he used to kill people with. The coolest of the admittedly not very merry men. The idea of a moody Moor was later pinched (along with the idea of a campy pantomime bad-guy Sheriff of Nottingham) for Kevin Costner’s hilarious "Robin Hood: Ponce of Thieves" which is worth watching for the line : "Here you go Maggie, buy yourself a new Sow." Not a patch on the Errol Flynn version..... But most of all, we remember the glorious music by Oirish Neo-Celts, Clannad. Clannad’s music is easily identifiable. All their songs have far too much reverb on the vocals, plus dreadful synthesised flutes and endless boingy fretless basses. Remember the theme song? It should have sounded like this: " whistly flute bit ‘Robin: The Hooded Man’ pedal bass". But thanks to Clannad’s bloody reverb fetish, not to mention fretless bass and cruddy synths, it went: "PEWN, PEWN, PEEEEWWWN.....’RAAAAAHHHHBIN’ (Boing, Bwow) ‘DA HOODIE BAR! (Bwow, Boing)". It’s hardly Fairport Convention, now is it? Robin of Sherwood ran for about three seasons and it ended badly with Marian, believing that Jason Connery’s Robin was also dead, running off to become a nun - a bit difficult in the eyes of God when you’ve been living with a pagan outlaw for the last few years, baby. The rest of the "merry men" (who were always arguing all the time - they should have been called "emotionally dysfunctional revisionist outlaws" for the series) ended up moping about like crappy lager louts who have discovered that one of their number has got married and become respectable and will never come up the pub again. It may never be shown again. If you get the chance, go and rent one of the videos of the series from your local video emporium. You are in for an amusing treat.
Tourist Attraction of the Day - The London Eye. Whilst situated in London I learned that my good chum and Led Zeppelin fan supremo, Jon Rhodes, was working on the London Eye (you know - the big ferris wheel on the banks of the river Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament). Jon left a fabulous message on my answerphone (in a sexy voice: "Oh Dan, come to London. Come on my eye!") which I could only honour by coming on Jon’s eye. When I arrived I was pleased to see my buddy waving his arms in an efficient manner and taking no notice of the mentally deficient American Tourists who are swarming like dung beetles in the UK this year. Jon was in his element, flirting with fit birds and amusing himself by "metal detecting" tourist baggage with his Walkie-Talkie. I got on the eye and Jon was our "pilot". There was then one of the most spectacular experiences of my meagre existence that has not been attributed to sex, drugs or Rock n’ Roll. I’ve been to many fine places around this wonderful planet - Sear’s Tower in Chicago, The Duomo in Florence, The Golden Palace with the Jade Buddha in Bangkok, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, I’ve stared across Yosemite Valley, I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate..... Anyway, the London Eye is pretty damned impressive if you ask me. Jon gave us the regular tour patter plus the fact that the sun had just gone down and the lights were beginning to come on. Over on the East of the city the neon blue glow on the top of the Tate Modern was clearly visible, as was the constant wink-wink of the air traffic lights on the top of Canary Wharf. To the North East, St. Paul’s Cathedral lay like some pregnant cow giving birth to the endless bland dogma of the Anglican faith. To the West, the Houses of Parliament dominated the foreground while Buckingham Palace sat all squat, sullen and useless, dripping with the blood of the inbred tyrants about a mile away. In the distance, the Chiltern Hills outlined against the sky. Ultimately, the most spectacular thing was the view straight down. OK, the skyline of London is pretty damned impressive but there is nothing quite as heart-stoppingly awesome as the view straight down from 450 feet. I also saw another of London’s finest sights, Jon’s bird. Suffice to sayI had a ripper time.
Mammal of the Day - Water Vole. One of Britains finest reatures is now something of a rarity. As a child, I was taken on holidays on the British Canal network and Water Voles were not uncommon. Hell, I remember when I saw about 10 inn one week. Now they are declining faster than the Tiger (RAAAAAH!) is in the wild. This means that the Water Vole is in danger of becoming extinct, wiped out, kaput, gone forever. The reason behind this is that in the 1970s, a bunch of stupid tree-hugging hippies decided to release Mink from fur farms in the countryside of the UK. Now the grand irony is that these people (the Animal Liberation Front, no less) care deeply about the environment, right? Wrong. They couldn’t give a flying fuck and this was demonstrated when the Mink started eating every smnall fluffy animal around. Mink are related to the Weasal - in terms of genetic sub-species, rather than first cousin twice removed or something - which as you know, the Weasal is a vicious, determined but small predator. However, the Mink is not small but actually quite large, almost the size of an Otter, and once a foreign creature is introduced to an ecosystem and finds it to it’s liking, then the indiginous population had better adapt or be wiped out - as an example, witness the decline of the Red Squirrel due to the aggressive invasion of the American Grey Squirrel (Humans and Squirrels alike, methinks!). Or what about the distasterous introduction of Rabbits to Australia? Mink have in 20 years decimated the populations of shrews and voles, particularly the Water Vole. The Water Vole is sometimes called the Water Rat by stupid people who can’t tell the difference between Voles and Rats. The Water Vole was immortalised as "Ratty" in Kenneth Graham’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’, which goes to show that Mr. Graham was a stupid person who couldn’t tell the difference between a Rat and a Vole. Water Voles are one of the most adorable creatures in the World. They have a permanent expression of bemusement which is endearing and an ability to look intelligent and stupid at the same time, which causes girls with an affection for fluffy-wuffy animals to go "Awwwwww!". Water Voles have legendary sexual prowess and can often have endless shagging sessions. However, this constant shagging is no good when all your lovers are being eaten by bastard mink. To give you an idea of what the character of the Water Vole would be like, I will use the analogy of British Rodents as members of the Monty Python team. Take it like this: John Cleese = Hare Graham Chapman = Red Squirrel Eric Idle = Harvest Mouse Terry Jones = Mole Terry Gilliam = Grey Squirrel (American Invader, doing very well for himself) Michael Palin = Water Vole with Carol Cleveland = Sexy Bunny Rabbit See what I mean about the Water Vole?
Top TV Totty of the Day - (drum roll) Regular readers will have noticed the absence of this item for some time. I’m sorry it has been away for so long. So without further ado....: LAY-DEEZ AN GINNELMEN! RETURNING DUE TO OVERWHELMING POPULAR DEMAND: IT’S WILLOW FROM BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER!!!!! (Fanfares, dancing elephants, fireworks etc to fade-out). Wow! There is a God. This month’s SFX magazine (glossy mag for Sci-Fi nerds: gives credence for their boring, zit-ridden, pedantic, lonely obsessions - I never read it of course, I’d rather read Nympho’s Monthly) features a cover photo and interview with our elfin babe. However, the photo’s are not of her best side. SFX are notorious for making fit birds look like trolls: witness previous photoshoots of Jeri Ryan, Gillian Anderson, the Fit Bird from Deep Space 9 - no, not that one; the one with all the freckles around her head - and SFX succeeded in showing how much of a minging dog Sarah Michelle Gellar really is by highlighting her strangely shaped nose. Look I never read this mag, my brother buys it and I squint at it from across the room whenever I visit my parents. Bloody true!! Thought for the Day - What does Bin Juice taste like? Dan Greensmith Whimsy Archive |