On The Buses

I Know What You're Thinking
Not literally, the telepathy helmet prototype I stole from DARPA needs a few spare parts to get it back into working order.  No, what I meant is your puzzled reaction to a post about travelling on public service vehicles on a Sunday, when I am not due to be in at The Electric Goldfish Bowl until tomorrow.

I thought I'd just throw this in as an example of Russia's non-linear approach to design philosophy

     Ha!  Gotcha!  This isn't anything to do with First Bus, rather I am referring to that classic British satirical sitcom*, "On The Buses".  This featured the character actor Reg Varney, and the whole series stands as an example to First Bus of what looks good as a public service, rather than what they supply, which is a pubic service.

Reg is on the left.  Just to be clear.

     Okay, back to our usual trick of jumping from one topic to another within the length of a sentence.  The person I really want to refer to is JIM Varney, but I wanted to get Reg out of the way first because he's the person most people in the Allotment will be familiar with.  On the other hand, our trans-Atlantic cousins will be far more familiar with Jim.  Art?

A rare non-girning moment for Jim

     Jim came to fame in the late Eighties playing the character Ernest P. Worrell, a rather dim Southern South Canadian of amiable inability, in films that never rated higher than 5.7 on IMDB.
     "There has to be a point to this," I hear you mutter.  "Let's hope it arrives soon, 'No Offence' is back on telly."
     Pausing only to nod approvingly at your choice in contemporary televisual entertainment, I shall expound - at length, so you may want to set the recorder going.
     Okay, Jim's work with Ernest began with "Ernest Goes To Camp" in 1987, which yielded a Box Office of $23.5 million; for an outlay of only $3 million this is good going and reason enough for sequels.  

Ernest is happy

Then comes "Ernest Saves Christmas" (1988) and here the budget had ballooned uncontrollably to $6 million; however the return was a healthy $28 million - suits still happy.  There's a problem with the analytics after this for "Ernest Goes To Jail" and "Ernest Scared Stupid" as I don't have a cost for them; however, "Ernest Rides Again" has a budget of $7 million, so we can guesstimate $6 million each for the former pictures, and a return respectively of $25 and $14 million.  "Ernest Rides Again" only made back $1.5 million, so a relative disappointment.

Ernest is sad

     The films continued, though with no financial data I shan't analyse any further, except to observe that the suits don't continue to finance failure.
     Still, in the end, making back $92 million or three times your investment on an amiable idiot is not bad going.  Sadly, Jim - who had an acting range considerably beyond portraying Mr. Worrell - is no longer with us, having passed away in 2000.  A moment's silence for the man.

A Bit Of An Interlude
After the light and frothy nonsense of Ernest, I hesitated before going onto Varying Hideous Methods Of Execution, which would be the opposite of bathos (going from sublime to ridiculous) so in the spirit of - er - sohtab, we shall resort to a picture.  Art?  Put down that coal and get working!

Very random, eh?

     I know this is like one of those memory games where you get shown a tray of objects and then have all of thirty seconds to scrutinise, store and recaall what they are.
     Well - surprise surprise - this isn't that.  It is, in fact, a collection of stuff fallen down the back of my computer desk.  I'm quite grateful for finding the nail scissors as the whacking great kitchen ones I use to trim the talons frequently end up snicking other bits of my anatomy.  Also, the passport is pretty essential; every time UNIT or Spectrum detain me I have to provide it; something to do with travel off-world.

Hmmmm.  I don't really have the space to develop an item on Varying Hideous Methods Of Execution, so instead we shall have an item on something infinitely more worrying -

Jim'll Paint It
Will he now!  Truly there is no predicting the depths or heights of weirdness that the human imagination can descend or aspire to.  There is no more concrete example of this than Jim'll Paint It.  Allow me to add in a link to pre-empt him suing me for Intellectual Property Slander or somesuch.

http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/

!!!

     This is Jim's latest effort, which is proof positive that there are some extremely odd Hom. Sap. out there, enough to make BOOJUM! look like a model of good sense and sanity.



*  Bitter caustic irony being laid on with a JCB**here, folks.
**  What the South Canadians call a "Backhoe"