A few words on the subject

A few words on the subject

The collected

ill-informed drivel

of

Richard Asplin

September 2009

A few words on... saws, soccer and spidery-men

3rd Sept 09

What ho, as Plum liked to say. How are we all? Splendid to the point of being ever-so-slightly irritating to loved-ones I hope. M’self, I am full of glee and South London carbon monoxide. But mostly glee.

A Kennington woodland boy-band of 2 squirrels, 3 crows and a Labrador (backing vocals) watched me suspiciously at 6.05am as I slapped my lanky frame about the park in the chilly morning half-light – a vision of gangly grey marl awkwardness, like a spider at drama class.

But boy I felt good for it. Came home, brewed a cuppa and stood ‘neath a scalding shower feeling like quite the Gillette commercial. All this and day 95 of no-smoking. Get me. (or “smell ‘er”, if one prefers).

A few things to mull over today, but promise not to keep you too long.

In frankly no discernable order whichsoever: First up, I’ve had some feedback. Yes, one Darren Cook persisted in wading through my ill-informed bigoted rant about soccer and its inherent rubbishness, and was moved to send me a not unsubstantial email in footie’s defence. A remarkably erudite and well argued (4-4-2) defence, to boot. (A £260 boot with studs, presumably. Or rather thick soles, wine leather, 16 holes and red laces, to match the snow-washed bleached jeans, turn-ups, green bomber jacket, Fred Perry, braces, skinhead and – oh he’s off again. Sorry, can’t help it).

Anyhap, the nub of the thoroughly enjoyable counter-riposte in footie’s favour included rose-tinted bobble-hat-and-rattle-Melchester-Rovers-glory-days nostalgia (in full here – worth reading I think) is

it’s just a game; it provides vital bonding for fathers n sons; the office banter about who won and lost o’er the weekend is welcome distraction from dull office life.

Well I can’t argue with any of that. What I will say is that the same is true for snooker. However nobody fears snooker fans, nobody ever got stabbed, bottled, intimidated, punched or ridiculed due to liking Hurrican Higgins over Bill Werbeniuk, non-snooker fans aren’t subjected to hours and hours and hours of snooker on prime-time terrestrial channels, snooker themed television quizzes, pundits, ads, snacks and sponsorship, closed tube stations or ugly polyester snooker leisurewear.

Next up. For those with empty enough lives to care, I have finally completed posting some of my early comic writing from back in the 1990s. Remember then? The 1990s? What an utterly un-stimulating decade. What was there? Jurassic Park, Parklife and Geri Halliwell. Anyway, follow these for my first pun-heavy, addled and speculative attempts at feature articles on westerns, students, rebellion and the Academy Awards.

Now this. I have had an invitation from the terribly lovely, and not in any way the star of Quantum Leap despite appearances, Scott Pack-ula. As a consequence I will be biffing up to the Book Swap at Windsor Fire Station on November 26th to irritate the collected literary buffs with my patented brand of anti-intellectual snobbery, vapid musings and stupid hair. Join me if you can.

Can rumours of “Spider-Man – The Musical” be true? Or, I mean, what? Have you heard about this? I saw it in a newspaper a week or two back and coughed up Bovril onto my eggs benedict. An achievement, as I wasn’t even drinking Bovril at the time.

(Hmm, thought: Is there a joke to be made about pouring Hollandaise sauce onto the A-Team and making a Dirk Benedict? Hmm. No, apparently not).

Yes, “Spider-Man – The Musical.” Now in theory there’s no reason this wouldn’t work. Much more unlikely characters have featured in Broadway Song n Dance numbers. I’m thinking specifically of Hitler, Herod and Magical Mister Mestopholes.

The reason I’m all a wobble and had to clutch the furniture, is that – if this article is to be believed (and it was in Woman’s Realm so why wouldn’t it be) – U2 are providing the music.

Yes.

Why U2, for heaven’s sake? I mean Spider-Man is a story set in New York, which has a large Irish population. But that can’t be the reason, can it? Can it?

Presumably tunes will include “The J.Jonah.Joshua Tree,” “Beautiful Day (for beating the crap out of Doc Octopus)", “Stuck In An Elaborate Web You Can’t Get Out Of”, “Bullet the Blue Sky (and The Green Goblin, while you’re about it)” “Gwen Love Comes To Town,” and “Get On Your Boots, And Then Your Mask & Webshooters”

Oh and “The Fly,” obviously.

If you can think of any more, send them in and I’ll print the best ones.

Actually, let’s face it, who the hell are we kidding. it’s no stupider than getting Elton John to write songs about baby Lions. But I don’t know, this one seems like a horrible, coke-inspired cash-in mash-up (mash-in? Cash-up? Hmn) based on nowt more than some bored producers throwing random darts at random pop-culture icons. Presumably the same people who threw two darts last month and punctured “Thorpe Park” and “SAW – The Movie.”

This one can’t be just me, can it? I need to know. SAW – The Ride? SAW? R rated torture-porn horror nasty? Thorpe Park? Fun family day out theme park? It’s all too strange.

Is this the beginning of other “Horror-Themed-Amusement-Rides?” Can we confidently expect Alton Towers to soon announce the opening of “Evil Dead Dodgems.” Will Chessington be hoping to wow the Bank Holiday crowds with “I Spit On Your Grave Teacups?” Let’s hope so.

They’re not the first people to seize an already familiar brand and slap it on something incongruous for instant customer recognition. “Jaws” chocolate bars and “C-3P0’s” breakfast cereal spring to mind. It’s a tried and tested marketing method. I actually went on the SAW ride last weekend and boy oh boy, it really does mirror the SAW movie experience to the letter.

I paid £8 at the turnstile, spent 90 minutes in the dark and then the dazzling twist was revealed and I found myself standing in broken toilet.

Marvellous.

Love to all

Rx

Hello all. Here’s hoping you join me in a terribly good mood. I know it’s Monday an’ all. But heck’s bells, we have to try and shake this Monday thing off, don’t you think? Our working weeks are 20% Mondays. That’s 6.5 years of Mondays over a working life. Too long to be in a calenderially provoked grumpy mood, methinks.

Do you do that thing where you move days of the week about in your head? For example, if you’re off work on a Friday, then Friday is sort of your Saturday. So Thursday becomes your Friday, so you bump your mood along by 24 hours? This results in people getting very confused if they’ve booked a Tuesday off, because their Monday grumpiness is elbowed off the touchline by the Friday feeling and they don’t know where they are. Usually they’re by the photocopier saying “it’s my Friday today!” like buffoons.

I say this because I’m off on holiday on Wednesday, by the way. So today is my Thursday! [I’m pulling a buffoony face as I type this]. I don’t know where I am, frankly).

Thanks to all who got back to me to tell me that Snooker is as obtrusive and ubiquitous as soccer. I am chastened and bowed. You are right of course. And my rant was up to such a speed that I managed to completely forget Jim Davidson’s “Big Break”. A mental state I wish upon you all.

Anyhoo.

Had a moment in front of the mirror yesterday, which failed to alarm me, the fact of which then alarmed me. Hmn. It’s got a bit Two Ronnies now hasn’t it. Allow me to explain.

I clambered clumsily from the shower yesterday (imagining with clammy horror as I do every-damned-time I get in and out of the shower, that I might slip on the wet tile and go crashing through the curtain and brain myself on the Armitage Shanks) to towel off in prep for a day out. I gave my stupid doughy face a close-up peer through the dried spitty toothpaste constellation on the mirror. Eye-bags, double chin, pubic eyebrows in scrappy Arizona clumps from where I’ve picked and plucked them with TV boredom. Tilt the head a certain way and the downy hair on my neck and ears glows like a halo. Head back, pulling my nose up like a pig to examine the foliage within – will I need to wipe off the Remington Nose & Ear trimmer? Will I need to jab nail scissors up my nozzies and snap away like a Pelican? Or will it just be a manual, eye watering grab-n-yank of the darkest shiney spidery ones?

Well there was a brand new category of nostril fur this morning. A glorious silvery blue, almost translucent like a Spanish guitar string. It however was more the length that impressed, rather than the colour. It curled and kinked from the cavern of the schnozz, around the filtrum, just nudging my top lip.

I stared at it a while, amused slightly by the novelty. And then reached up to get a decent purchase, toes curled and buttocks braced for the sharp tug. Only to be thoroughly disappointed when the little fellah merely wafted from it’s doorway with no resistance and curled about my damp index finger.

T’was not a hair at all, y’see. T’was of course an escapee thread of cotton from my bath towel that had become adhered to my ‘tache zone.

Hardly a story worthy of an anecdote, I agree. Would barely pad out a thin Richard Stilgoe number frankly. And you feel rightly short changed. However what bothers me is this:

I was faced in the mirror by a thick, shiny, silvery grey nostril hair approximately an inch long, which had overnight curled from my nose to my mouth, and I merely shrugged it off and reached for the tweezers. I saw nothing unusual about this at all. Unwanted, unexpected, unslightly, disfiguring pensionerable nasal growths of Barnum n Bailey proportions that would make children scream and my wife vomit are clearly now so regular an occurrence I don’t bat an eyelid.

Gone is the twentysomething’s yelp. Adieu to the vain panic. TTFN to the surprise that my body sprouts visible hirsute signs of decay with me still feeling like a youngster.

Age, I guess. It appears, mother - in the words of Whally Range - “I can feel the soil falling over my head.” I have now humbly accepted the slow trudge to the grave and have given up the struggle. Which would explain why – despite Dr Steven Hawking’s evidence to the contrary - the world appears to be shrinking. I don’t mean shrinking in any kind of “technology-bringing-us-closer” twee Apple Mac sort of way. I mean my universe, my arena, my scope – much like yours, I expect dear reader - is closing in day by day, year by year like a Death Star trash compactor.

It’s true of us all I think.

When you’re a kid, you care about the whole universe. Posters and books of stars and galaxies and planets.

Then as a teen, it’s all about planet earth. Greenpeace, Artic, Rainforests.

Then in your twenties, you narrow your cares again. It’s just the third world that gives you concern. Screw Australia and Canada, they can look after themselves.

Thirties, you read the papers, feeling old, worry about the UK. What are our politicians up to? Have a kid? What sort of country will they grow up in? Air, education, water.

Older still, it becomes about your city, your county. Voting in local elections. Parking, amenities, taxes.

Older again, it’s the street. Litter, local shop.

Older again, your house. Your garden.

Until you’re 75 and the only thing you give a shit about is your chair and your slippers.

A solid theory that leads me to think maybe my nose hair isn’t getting bigger, it just appears bigger against my shrinking world? That’s encouraging I suppose. I just need to broaden my horizons, increase my compassion and empathy and all of my body will shrink back to its regular proportions.

I don’t want to get too concerned though.

There are parts of me that are dangerously small as it is.

Love to all

Rx

A few words on the grim reaper and nasal hygiene

7th Sept 09

A few words on yanks, jocks and excess toast-racks

Hello.

Being something of a speccy retro fifties fellah, I have become almost used to having verbal abuse flung at me on the public highways, byways and Safeways. This experience has ranged from the harmless but frankly migraine-inducingly obvious nudgity-nugde, winkity-wink between people in bars, to violent screaming by thuggish footie fans huddled in hoodies around a low-slung be-spoilered hatchbacks. “FACKINELL! LOOK AT THIS CAAANT.” In between these comes spitting (London Underground, northbound Metropolitan Line), drenching in spray snow (likewise) and the mouthy chuckle of “Hey! Grease Mania!” on Cardiff’s Queen Street by pre-school twitwits too thick to know that Grease was a musical before it was a Saturday evening light-ent Westlife and Halliwell vehicle.

I’ve always wished I had the guts to respond in these situations by suddenly feigning panic, whirling around wide eyed in my baseball jacket, gripping my verbal assailant by the upper arms and shrieking “What..? What YEAR is this?!” before legging it off shouting about time travelling experiments. Sadly I’ve never done this. I just go crimson, bury my nearest chin in my bowling shirt, adjust Matchbox on my I-Podulator and quicken my Converse All-Stars.

The reason I mention this today is that the phrase “What..? What YEAR is this?!” is what you might be thinking, given my lengthy radio silence. Where have I been? What happened to the bi-weakly inbox interruptions we were threatened with?

Well I’m sorry ‘bout that viewers, but I have been away.

Some of you might know, a few less of you might remember and one or two of you left over might care that I got m’self married back, oooooh, let’s say 7 months ago. The gathered several who were informed of this credit-history-changing event were all lovely enough to shower my wife and I with a mixture of cheques, cold hard cash and LastMinute.Com vouchers, all of which enabled Mrs Richard and m’self to hot-sandal it to Heathrow and spend 12 blissful, row-free days in the US of States.

A fast word on Wedding Lists. A marvellous idea. They are based presumably on the frankly oldy fashionedy idea that friends and family are furnishing a first starter home for newly weds. These terribly, tired cynicky-booted days of course, what with couples living together for a decade before tying the knot, the need for towels, candles, toast-racks and side-plates has diminished somewhat. In fact if anything, most couples shack up with bruised Big Yellow Self Storage boxes full of duplicate plates, DVDs, CDs and bathroom whatnot.

So I suggest that married couples publish a Wedding List online, of crap they’ve got two of. Mugs, lamps, IKEA coffee tables, copies of Pulp Fiction – and guests can put their names down for what they want. All the guests chip up in their best bib and Office court shoes, eat, drink, toast, dance and then go home with a gift the bride & groom are glad to be shot of.

Genius.

Anyway, yes. Holiday.

I shan’t be posting up photos of my spazzy gurning mush grinning crooked teeth from outside, atop or up against yankee landmarks. Two reasons.

1.I didn’t take any photos.

2.Perfectly fine, focused, framed and fabulous fotos of everything we saw are already available, taken by proper camera types. The world doesn’t need another shot of Cape Cod harbour, especially one with my dumb phizzog obscuring the seagulls. So why not just type New York, Boston or Cape Code into Google Images and there we are.

Over the next few entries I’ll let you know what we did and what we thought of the place. An hilarious sideways glance at the kooky side of foreigners, as it were. Y’know like Billy Connelly did for Australia and what Ross Noble is doing for … erm, Australia. Again. Hmn.

While we’re on the subject, what is it with Ross Noble? Is it me or does he look like an incredibly disappointing lonely hearts date who described himself as a “bit of a Russell Brand lookalike?”

Just me, p’raps.

Have you ever seen him live? And if so, do you, like I, tire of his opening hilariously improvised ‘literal idiom’.

Cue Geordie giggle-chops: “Whay-yae! Hows you all doin’? Man, it’s reet nippy out there tonight eh? (pause). By which I don’t mean it’s actually nippy. No-one is actually getting’ nipped, ya knorr? (sweep hair out of eyes). That’d be mental wouldn’t it. Tiny crabs fawllin’ from the sky, with their tiny crabby faces smiling, tiny claws clippin’ away like, like, like tiny clippers. Etc etc for 2 hrs plus interval…”

So no. Not like Ross Noble. I’ll be more like a young Jonathan King. Mmm, there’s a thought.

A chubby, gurning, four-eyed, paeodophile in a baseball cap, if you will.

So look out for drivelsome Woody Allen, yellow cab, Ground Zero, Harvard, Amity Island, Charlie Brown guff over the next few weeks.

‘Til then, missin’ you already, y’all and so on etc.

Love to all

Rx

30th Sept 09