Why We Should Fear Mel Brooks

No!  I Don't Mean That, When The Lights Are Off -

 - he removes his human skin, spreads his leathery wings and takes off into the dark to dine on human flesh, blood and an occasional glass of Tokay*.  Besides, if he did that, his wife would surely notice?  Unless, she, too -

     

 - of human victims"?

     Whoops.  Yes, got a little distracted there.  What I really mean, of course - obviously! - is his prescient film "The Producers", which Conrad has seen, because it's a film about a musical, rather than a musical itself**.  Art!

Gene and Zero

     Since you may have been living up a pole in the middle of the Gobi Desert for the past 54 years, I shall render a synopsis of the plot: Max and his accountant plot to scam investors in their musical, by creating the worst possible musical, thus guaranteeing that it will fail, so they can keep all the money.  Conrad wouldn't find it difficult to see any musical as the worst possible, though I have to concede that "Springtime For Hitler" is an outstanding concept.  Art!

Possibly also a tad lacking in taste ...

     The twist in the tail is that the musical is so bad that people mistake it for a satire.  It becomes a success.

     And thus we come to that televisual combination of dumpster fire*** and trainwreck: "Batwoman", Season Two.  It will have been broadcast last night, which is a bit too soon for the viewing figures to be in yet.  Conrad confidently predicts they will be even lower than last week's, which stood at 660,000.  Or, if statistics is your thing, one person in every five hundred across South Canada bothered to watch it.   Art!

That whine you can hear is Bob Kane spinning in his coffin

     Ooopsie, I told a fib, I have found a site that lists yesterdays viewers and yes they lost another 17,000 viewers.  At this rate they'll be down to 250,000 by the time the season ends.

     Now, this relates to Mel Brooks because a significant number of those viewers you see above are actually reviewers like The Critical Drinker.  These people suffer so that we don't have to - a round of applause for all these people who have to get blackout drunk to manage a whole 44 minutes of these episodes.  The risk, of course - obviously! - is that word will get around of a television program so bad it's hilarious, and more people will watch it, generating more word of mouth.

     Go Google "Florence Foster Jenkins" or "The Room" if you doubt my wisdom.
     Only my The Mars Volta keeps me sane.

     

You What?

Conrad, as we all know, is a terrible person who derives considerable glee from the sufferings of others, most especially if said sufferings were brought upon that person by virtue of their own stupidity.

     Hence his goggling at the description on a Youtube Reddit of a workplace where one manager ate his way through either six ten-packs or ten six-packs of what were termed "White Castle Sliders".  Your Humble Scribe had never heard of these before, so a resort to Google was undertaken.  Art!

Ah, ten six-packs it is

     It's not obvious from that picture, so let me inform you that these are made from steamed beef and are considerably smaller than a conventional burger in a bun.  Art!

30.  So half of what Matey got through.

     Despite them being small, getting through 60 is an impressive achievement.  According to the poster, the last pack were consumed whilst answering an urgent call of nature, in an atmosphere I leave it to your imagination to conjure up.

Toffee And Coffee

Did you ever wonder why these two words resemble each other?  Of course not, that's my job!

"Coffee", according to my Collins Concise, derives from the Italian "Caffe".  This, in turn, derives from the Turkish "Kahve", which is a rather mangled version of the Arabic "Qahwah".  Art!

This will wind you up like a watchspring

     Pretty definitive.  I am afraid "Toffee" is rather harder to pin down.  It is a nineteenth century variant of "Taffy", which appeared about two hundred years ago, and there the etymological trail goes cold.  Back in the days when he could eat sugary stuff without risking a diabetic coma, Conrad used to occasionally make toffee <sighs thoughtfully and throws darts at the motley>.

"Excuse Me, Sir, But Your Lance Is In My Liver"

For Lo! we are back to "Le Mort D'Arthur" again, where Conrad has just started Book Eleven, at Page 520, so only 280 pages left to go!  If you have a low boredom threshold then you might want to miss the Dog Buns interminable jousting event that is held at Lonzep toward the end of Book Ten.  It goes on for (I think, my attention was waning) for seven days, and consists of long descriptions of how "Sir Art E Choke brast his spear against Sir Susurrus, and smote him to the ground, and then Sir Bokebag smote him with a spear that he fell over his horse's croup and then both lightly voided their horses, and Sir Tenty went sore at him for two hours, until Sir Vole De Mort cried mercy -".  You get the idea.

No comments about horns, thank you

     As you can see from the re-enactors above, once a knight was fully tinned-up, the only way to identify him was by his banner, tabard and shield.  This leads to a bit of a mix-up by Sir Palomides, who takes on another knight at a well.  They go at it hammer and tongs until he demands to know whom the other knight is.  "Sir Safere" is the reply.

     Ooops.  Sir Palomides' brother, in other words.  Really, this sort of thing goes on a lot, and should have led to the invention of the business card a few centuries early.  Art!

Finally -

I think I've played "Deloused In The Comatorium" to death, so time for "Frances The Mute".  Or we'll pick it up tomorrow; don't want to scare the neighbours with bonkers mathcore prog-metal, do we!

     No we don't.  Really, we don't.  Plus it's getting late.

*  Even the very worst of us deserve some of the best.

** Yeah, yeah, special pleading.  Be quiet or I'll nuke you.

***  No English comparison available, unless you pay me