Terry Engleton, writing in Prospect magazine tells us who he hates..... Hold on. Terry Eagleton, that leftie professor whose latest book is called "Why Marx was Right" - perhaps he means Groucho - he's writing an article in that rightie magazine!!!! Those four exclamation marks no doubt would bring out the worst in Eagleton: "one is too many".
Anyway, he gives a list of people he'd like to see done away with or locked up with the key thrown away. These are Tom Cruise,Mel Gibson, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Prince Andrew, Piers Morgan, Ben Brown (who's he?) and Robert Kilroy-Silk.
I have to agree with him on Mel Gibson but probably for different reasons. He doesn't give reasons but you can see where he's going can't you? Tom Cruise is Master (or some such thing) of Scientology, a religion based on the teachings of a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard - I wonder what the L stands for if anything; maybe it's like the G in Edward G. Robinson which gives some distinction to an ordinary name but isn't actually a name at all. So Eagleton must be against stupid religions. That means most. Mel Gibson is a Jew-hating religious film maker and hopeless actor who makes religious films etc. Dick Cheney. Well nobody likes Dick Cheney except Dick Cheney and George Bush (maybe). Kissinger. Mmm. Yes I suppose so. A bit sinister and remember Vietnam.Tony Blair? Now I like Tony Blair but he is disliked by the right and the left for, wait for it, Iraq and the dodgy dossier. Blair made the Labour Party votable for; without Blair there wouldn't have been all those years of left-wing..... er..... liberal.... er.... OK, I hate him too. Prince Andrew. Agreed. What a shocker he is!!! (three exclamation marks to make sure he's noticed). Piers Morgan. I can't say I like or dislike him. He's a bit of a nonentity really. Ben Brown. Who's he? And Robert Kilroy-Silk. Not who's he but where's he?
The trouble with Eagleton is, like a lot of lefties (and rightees), he doesn't believe in freedom of the individual; he'll shut people up who don't agree with his ideas; he hates people he doesn't think worthy of his time; he writes books like "Why Marx was Right" when we all know now that Marx was wrong.
Wasn't he?
Monday 30 May 2011
Saturday 21 May 2011
Chips
So Wallace McCain is dead. Who was Wallace McCain? Well, he's the man responsible for selling milliions of bags of oven-ready chips. He started the company that made them, turned it into a million dollar enterprise, became a billionaire before he was forced out of office by his brother - never mind why. The point is that he and afterwards his brother is responsible for flooding the markets with inferior goods. They are not chips at all. I think they must be made of reconstituted potatoes mashed up and fried. O yes, they're easy to cook; all you do is heat up the over and stick them in. You don't have to peel potatoes then chop them into chips then fry them, you just open the bag that's been in the freezer, tip out a quantity onto a tray and bung them in the oven. Easy for the harrassed housewife over the hot stove all day.... Rather the harrassed wife over a desk all day, coming home to get some ready-made food for dinner and simply opening the bag etc.
I don't like them. I think they are just dreadful. They don't taste like chips at all. They don't even taste like potatoe. They taste like cardboard. OK like I imagine cardboard tastes.
Chips are fine foods. They may not be what Jamie Oliver and his ilk think are fine foods but that's because they dabble in trivialities, make what's simple difficult. i.e show off.
I have come across two methods of cooking chips well. Fist from one of the Hairy Bikers. You fry the potatoe chips at about 140 degrees until they are cooked through but not brown; you then take them out of the pan and let them stand and dry. You then turn the heat up to 190 degrees and cook until they are brown. Another way, from the internet: boil the chips for about ten minutes, remove and dry, then fry at a high temperatuure until they are brown.
I've tried the second mothod and it works well.
But tonight I did my usual thing: just fried them once. Maybe not quite so good but certainly far better than McCain's hash.
There's a certain chef who fries them 3 times. He says they taste as good as lobster.
Good chef there; not one of your prima donnas.
I don't like them. I think they are just dreadful. They don't taste like chips at all. They don't even taste like potatoe. They taste like cardboard. OK like I imagine cardboard tastes.
Chips are fine foods. They may not be what Jamie Oliver and his ilk think are fine foods but that's because they dabble in trivialities, make what's simple difficult. i.e show off.
I have come across two methods of cooking chips well. Fist from one of the Hairy Bikers. You fry the potatoe chips at about 140 degrees until they are cooked through but not brown; you then take them out of the pan and let them stand and dry. You then turn the heat up to 190 degrees and cook until they are brown. Another way, from the internet: boil the chips for about ten minutes, remove and dry, then fry at a high temperatuure until they are brown.
I've tried the second mothod and it works well.
But tonight I did my usual thing: just fried them once. Maybe not quite so good but certainly far better than McCain's hash.
There's a certain chef who fries them 3 times. He says they taste as good as lobster.
Good chef there; not one of your prima donnas.
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Eric
You won't know Eric but there was a time when he was, well, "known" for a while. Saw him today on the bus going into Cardiff. Looked a lot older than when he used to go to the local pub quite a few years ago. Older but not frail; a bit bandy now and a bit wobbly perhaps. Knew who he was straight away but I don't think he remembers me.
Claim to fame? He used to be a singing partner to Shirley Bassey in one of the clubs she sang at in Tiger Bay, Cardiff - where policemen went in two's at least. Pretty rough area then. Not now: it's been transformed into The Cardiff Bay with a great body of water like a large lake held back from the sea by a sort of lock so that ships can enter and leave at various times of day. Boats on the lake and, surrounding it, cafes and restaraunts, all good ones, some classy, some quite cheap but not "cheapy" or "greasy spoon". A few clubs there still but none, I believe, like the one/s Miss Bassey used to sing in.
She was good then and I suppose she got better. According to Mark Steyn, who writes a daily blog which covers politics and show business, she was the best singer of the James Bond films' opening songs. She did more than one I believe.
I nearly got to interview her once a long time ago but her agent (or somebody in charge) said no.
I should have tried earlier in her career when she was singing in that club in Cardiff. With Eric
Saw him later in the day in Cardiff; he was with a very attractive woman not as old as him, who is eighhtyish; she was about fifty eight I guess. No wonder he was wearing his best jacket. Maybe, later on, he'd serenade her with some of the old Perry Como numbers he was so fond of.
Claim to fame? He used to be a singing partner to Shirley Bassey in one of the clubs she sang at in Tiger Bay, Cardiff - where policemen went in two's at least. Pretty rough area then. Not now: it's been transformed into The Cardiff Bay with a great body of water like a large lake held back from the sea by a sort of lock so that ships can enter and leave at various times of day. Boats on the lake and, surrounding it, cafes and restaraunts, all good ones, some classy, some quite cheap but not "cheapy" or "greasy spoon". A few clubs there still but none, I believe, like the one/s Miss Bassey used to sing in.
She was good then and I suppose she got better. According to Mark Steyn, who writes a daily blog which covers politics and show business, she was the best singer of the James Bond films' opening songs. She did more than one I believe.
I nearly got to interview her once a long time ago but her agent (or somebody in charge) said no.
I should have tried earlier in her career when she was singing in that club in Cardiff. With Eric
Saw him later in the day in Cardiff; he was with a very attractive woman not as old as him, who is eighhtyish; she was about fifty eight I guess. No wonder he was wearing his best jacket. Maybe, later on, he'd serenade her with some of the old Perry Como numbers he was so fond of.
Friday 6 May 2011
Fair Game
The film stars Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, both fine actors (though sometimes I find it hard to understand Penn - he mumbles), and is about how Bush and Cheney tried to deceive the American public about the Iraq war. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't but this film believes they did and in a way that was totally immoral. They heard, from British intelligence, that Sadam Hussein was going to obtain nuclear material from Niger in Africa; to substantiate this piece of news they sent a man, who had previously been an American ambassador to that country, to find out if the news was true. He found no evidence to prove it; in fact, he was positive that Niger was not in a position to do so. His report was ignored and the war went ahead. The man, played by Sean Penn, wrote an article in The New York Times saying what he knew and this resulted in a leak from the CIA naming the man's wife as a CIA agaent, which she was. This resulted in her world contacts being exposed and in some cases killed.
If I had know all this before I saw the film I might have been more entertained than I was. The film is made in such a "hand-held-camera" style - even when the camera is not being hand-held - that the story is a confusing and confused mess. Only at the end did it seem to work - in retrospect.
Sometimes I wonder if some of the modern American film makers don't know the first thing about story telling: they throw action scenes in to demonstrate how clever they are and they lose the story line. A good dose of Ozu would do them good I feel - he hardly moves the camera at all.
Anyway, I don't believe that America went to war in Iraq on the one detail of the build-up to it that this film highlighted; there were heaps of things that pointed to Hussein's wish to make WOMD. Maybe they were all matters of intelligence failure. But everyone believed tham at the time.
Another film maker some of these whiz-kids of American cinema ought to study is Woody Allen. Now there's a guy who knows how to make films; he puts a story together brilliantly. I have recently seen "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and it is brilliant. And no one in it or making it is trying to push a political point down your throat as "Fair Game" does - and not very successfully either.
If I had know all this before I saw the film I might have been more entertained than I was. The film is made in such a "hand-held-camera" style - even when the camera is not being hand-held - that the story is a confusing and confused mess. Only at the end did it seem to work - in retrospect.
Sometimes I wonder if some of the modern American film makers don't know the first thing about story telling: they throw action scenes in to demonstrate how clever they are and they lose the story line. A good dose of Ozu would do them good I feel - he hardly moves the camera at all.
Anyway, I don't believe that America went to war in Iraq on the one detail of the build-up to it that this film highlighted; there were heaps of things that pointed to Hussein's wish to make WOMD. Maybe they were all matters of intelligence failure. But everyone believed tham at the time.
Another film maker some of these whiz-kids of American cinema ought to study is Woody Allen. Now there's a guy who knows how to make films; he puts a story together brilliantly. I have recently seen "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and it is brilliant. And no one in it or making it is trying to push a political point down your throat as "Fair Game" does - and not very successfully either.
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