Pandora: there is hope

Loathe as I am to put external links on this blog that don't feature myself, this time I just can't avoid it. Pandora is the best site I've seen in ages. A lethal combination of predictability and unpredictability and a great way to find songs you'll like but haven't heard before, wrapped up in an interface that can only be described as "sweet as a nut".

The Notorious VEG

The five fruit a day theorem causes me no end of pain. It’s a daily challenge of Herculean proportions. Or: it totally does my head in.

Sarah manages to reach the target constantly; she has the advantage of being vegetarian, but I still don’t understand how she does it. I mean, be serious, when are you supposed to eat these five fruit and veg? Here are some things which I think should count as one portion:

• A glass of vodka and orange
• Five minutes of apple juggling
• A packet of Fruit Pastilles
• Meat

Scribbling on Scarlett

You probably didn't know that I camped out at the Golden Globes with my easel and paintbrushes. But I did.

Scarlett Johansson at the Golden Globes

Messed with in Artrage

A letter of complaint

Some readers have suggested that this blog is getting too highbrow, and that perhaps it's time to return to the days when I wrote about crisps and other more mundane matters. Well kids, this is your lucky day, because I just started eating a packet of crisps so hideous that it made me put pen to paper in disgust. By the way, it feels really strange to sellotape up a half-eaten packet of Roysters and then put it in a big envelope.


Dear Sir / Madam,

I'm writing to complain about a packet of your Royster's T-Bone Steak crisps I purchased from Oxford News, 78 Oxford Street, London today. Most of the crisps tasted stale, with none of the crunch I'd expect from the usually reliable Roysters brand. I was disappointed, but not devastated. That was until I reached the middle of the pack, where I came across a lump of uncooked crisp material welded together, looking like a mutant life form originating from a galaxy far from our own.

The fact that Roysters now seem to be available in only one flavour should surely improve quality, but the enclosed evidence disproves this theory dramatically, and tragically.

Anyways, the half-eaten packet is enclosed. Hope you have more fun with it than I did.

Yours sincerely,
Will Parkhouse

enc

All the places I haven't been to

Pretty cool, this. Saw it on Mimi in NY's blog (she's a Brit journo-writer in Noo Yoik, who does some stripping on the side. Good blog). You tick the places you've been and it turns it into a world map, so you can weep at how ill-travelled you are. I sneakily included Morocco, because I'm going there in March, and Africa was looking a bit grey.

Click here to create your own visited countries map

Blue Strawberries

Apocalypse Bau(er)

Watched the first couple of episodes of 24 series 2 last night. One of Tony Almeida's first lines was "Jack Bauer? He's inactive." I'm watching this and thinking, Almeida, you're so full of shit, Bauer's blatantly not inactive, he couldn't be inactive even if he was six feet under. But then cut to Bauer and he's wearing a lumberjack jacket and sporting a thick ginger beard. I'm like, Tony, you were right, this guy's, like, totally washed up. Then Jack goes home and curls up on the sofa clutching a photo of his dead wife.

It's a testament to both the plot development speed of 24 and Jack Bauer's tendencies to go totally mental that 15 minutes later (this is real-time, remember), Jack has not only returned to CTU and shot a suspect in the chest with no provocation, but has also sawn the head off the corpse with a hacksaw. (Brilliantly, when boss George Mason protests, Jack accuses Mason of "never getting his hands dirty".) About half an hour later, he's managed to break some guy's ankle with his bare hands, and can barely disguise the "I haven't done that in ages"-style glee on his face. "Jack's back," says one of the terrorist goons. Indeed.

Artist impression

Hey look, I’ve become a watercolour painter without any formal training! Hurrah!

The Stockwell Flats, watercolour

Remixed in Artrage

"Salman Rushdie's arsehole"

Went to see some Manchester comedy on Saturday night as part of Sarah's friend Sarah's birthday. Well, the comedy was at the Manchester Comedy Store - in fact the three stand-ups were a Geordie (Paul Tonkinson), New Zealander (Jared Christmas) and a Canadian (Tom Stade). No matter: children, what I wanted to talk to you about today was the strange series of scenes which unfolded before my lagered eyes during the show's interval.

When the compere called for a break, all the people I knew dashed out for pints, and I was left sitting with birthday girl Sarah and two of her friends from university, both called Rachael. Neither of the Rachaels had produced any kind of laughter during the performance, which, if you ask me, was a pretty extraordinary feat of humourlessness. Sarah, who, remember, had organised the evening, turned to ask if they were enjoying it (and it was pretty decent stuff actually).
"No, we're not," said Rachael 1.
"Not really our cup of tea," said Rachael 2. There was a pause.
"How much do we owe you for the tickets?" said Rachael 1. Cruel.

I decided I should leave such hideousness and climbed over a seat to get away and piss. On my way to the toilet, I went past a small stage which held a singer-guitarist who was singing some lame ballad. Standing directly in front of the stage, with his back to the singer, was this wiry-but-hard-looking skinhead, dancing and singing, inexplicably, The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight over the top of the strummings behind him. "I said a-hip hop hip to the hippy hippy to the hip hip hop and you don't stop..." he crooned.

The singer finished the tune to a largely indifferent room. "You're supposed to clap at the end of the song," he prompted the crowd, with a slight note of anger in his voice. He then did little to help things by launching into an ill-advised rendition of David Gray's Sail Away With Me.

Outside the toilets was another shaven-headed goonda. A girl was lifting up his shirt and explaining patiently why she thought he probably didn't need a hernia operation.

Following some satisfying toilet relief, I walked back past the troubadour. The skinhead was still at it, but had been joined by an almost identical-looking friend. "Salman Rushdie's arsehole!" shouted the first skinhead to the audience. No one replied, presumably out of a combination of fear and drunken apathy. "None of them get it," he complained to his friend. I went back to my seat to watch the second half.

Lessons learned from... A Cock and Bull Story

Post-post-modern metatheatricality is funny, but Brydon and Coogan doing Al Pacino impressions is funnier.