Welcome Back, My Fiends -

- To The Show That Never Ends
     Yes, a nod to those prog-rockers of old, ELP.  No! that's not a mis-spelling of ELO! - Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  Go look them up and check out Grooveshark.
     Where was I? Oh yes, the never-ending show.  Obviously that's artistic license, as otherwise performers would live for ever and nobody wants to see Madonna still performing at 80, do they?  Not even to throw over-ripe fruit at.  Or unripened fruit, as it's harder and hurts more.

- or even one of these.

What's The Connection -
     - Between Portishead's "Sour Times" and "The Third Man"?
     Answers on a postcard - well, I may tell you tonight, or I may not.

The Difference Between Cats And Dogs
     Allow me to demonstrate Jenny's consistent and predictable idleness; she bolted out of the kitchen, belted up the stairs and bounded onto the counterpane 45 minutes ago:

Yes, that is a collection of Biggles stories in the upper left hand corner - well spotted!

     Where she will lie quite happily for the next 3 hours.
     I can't post a photo of Edna on the counterpane as she didn't stay there.  She whined to get up, then whined to get down, then whined to get up, then stayed still - no, only testing to see if you're paying attention - then whined to get down; she was a furry form of Hokey-Cokey
     Also, as posted yesterday, when Edna is out of eyeline and things are quiet, anticipate trouble - as with small children!  Let me illustrate her earlier naughtiness:

Mess courtesy Edna.  The Mansion is usually a little bit tidier than this.

She'd gotten into the bathroom bin, emptied everything within gnawing distance and taken it to her special killing ground at the foot of the stairs.

Anti-disestablishmentarianism
     Supposedly this is one of the longest conventional words in the English language*. Not that you'll encounter it much nowadays, as if Conrad's fading grey matter recalls with any degree of acuity, it was coined in the late 19th Century.  It referred to the splitting apart of Church and State, something along those lines - or, rather, that's what the "Dis-" part refers to.  Now, if "Anti-" means to negate the "Dis-" part, why - WHY! - isn't it simply good old-fashioned already existing "establishmentarianism"?
     Answers on a postcard - no, only kidding, it was a rhetorical question.

Antidis-etc. is boring.  Here's a mastodon instead!

1993.5
     Er, forgive Conrad for fudging the date a bit here, as one film came out in 1993 and the other in 1994, so if we average it out that should be okay?We're happy with that?  Oh good.
     Tombstone
     Set in the eponymous mid-West town, this is an unashamedly rip-roaring, shooting,
     low-faluting**, popcorn - er - popcorn <imagine a word for "eating" that rhymes with 
     "-ooting" words>

Tombstone.  If you're a bad guy, get an inscription ordered for yours ...

     Assembled behind a quartet of awesome moustaches, we see the Earps, and Doc
     Holliday, blam their way through an array of bad guys, mad guys and downright 
     cad guys.  They don't actually intend to do this at film's start, it just kind of happens
     that their awesome crime-fighting gun-fighting skills - actually mostly gun-fighting 
     skills are in demand.  And when Kurt Russell bellows "HELL'S COMING WITH ME!", you
     duck down behind the settee cushions.

     Wyatt Earp
     Ah, now.  This is a Lawrence Kasdan film, where he is deep and serious about Wyatt
     and his family and life, and how he had a raucous youth on the wrong side of the law,
     being the black sheep of his family and swearing off drink -

What's he shooting at?  The sky?

      It's not a bad film, but it's nowhere near as entertaining as "Tombstone". No popcorn
     value.  It didn't do that well at the box-office, either, so the general movie-viewing
     public also agree with Conrad.  If it had come out before Tombstone, or a few years 
     afterwards, why then it might have gotten a better shot***.

Beat Phil
     If you read my earlier blog - you did read it, didn't you? - then you will know that Conrad discovered a - how do I know you read it?  Can I trust you to be honest? - bus poster promoting a careers advice website with a rather silly advert inviting you to beat Phil - look I know your ISP and will get access to their logs to see if you did read the earlier blog - who it appears is some kind of idiot with business-jargon logorrhea.  In the advert Conrad saw, Phil used the term "touch base"
     Excuse me!  As a wargamer, Phil, let me demonstrate what "touching base" actually entails!  Before I smite you around the head with a cricket bat!

There.  Bases.  Touching.

The Connection is - the hammer dulcimer.  An instrument made famous by the "Harry Lime" theme from "The Third Man", rarely used nowadays but Portishead are an exception.

*  No, no, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is made up!
** I've heard of "high-faluting", so there must be a low equivalent, right>
*** Oh, what a pun!  The wild west, you see.  With guns.  And - Oh.  You do.

Oh - yes, I deliberately mis-spelt "Friends" in the title.  Ain't I a swine!