We Have A Theme!

Not Sure How Long We Can Sustain It For

But here goes.  This idea, for your information, came up whilst I was walking madame this morning, and proved to have legs.  Possibly longer ones than Edna's.

     Okay, first of all, you need to understand that celebrities can be hard to recognise when not made up with a whole colour palette of cosmetics.  Art!

     This is obviously Anne Hathaway to starboard, and the bag-head lady to port is equally obviously her sister, who has nothing to smile about.  

     HA!  Gotcha - they are both Anne Hathaway.  That was me being catty.  Art!

     I've heard of DHP.  The others?  Well, they can't be that celebrated, Conrad's got no idea of whom they are and still less interest in finding out.
     It's funny, yet 99% of the 'Celebrities Without Makeup" photographs turn out to be of females rather than a 50/50 split with males.  Probably because we men don't need to purport to be preening popinjays plastered with paints, although to make my point here we do need to wheel on one male celebrity who resorts to make up, and how.  Art!

     I apologise if this image came up unexpectedly whilst you were eating your breakfast.  Nevertheless, the satsuma-tinted image is there for a reason.  Note how Citizen Trump's ears and eyes lack the sepia tinge of the rest of his epidermis?  This is because nitric acid would burn his corneas and damage his hearing of goggles, and you're not supposed to notice the ears.  One presumes that Darth Marmalade insists on being sprayed orange because it mimics a tan, and having a tan implies being out in the sun, which is a good optic for aspiring politicians, right*?

     Right.  Art!

"Yes, really, I got a hole in zero.  That's how good I am."

     Here's matey without his spray-tan - or perhaps he just eats too many carrots? - and a hat where his hairpiece normally sits.  So, you must be asking, where did his -

     TAN GO?!

     I'd thought you'd never ask!  Art?

TANGO: This is the nineteenth letter of the phonetic NATO alphabet, chosen for it's unique nature and lack of confusion with other letters of said alphabet - you don't get MANGO or QUANGO to recite when calling in a Sitrep to battalion HQ, do you?  No.  Art!

FOXTROT ALPHA SIERRA TANGO STOP TANGO ALPHA NOVEMBER

TANGO: A dance.

TANGO: What, you expected more?  You're not getting any more, and that's that.  The next iteration of this word that we're going to use is for a fizzy drink, 'carbonated swill' as Your Humble Scribe is wont to describe it.  Art!

     It's an utterly conventional fizzy drink flavoured with orange.  The only reason it's here is because the producers spent enormous amounts on advertising it with all sorts of ridiculous symbolism and analogy.  Lidl's version will be exactly the same but a fifth of the price.  And no, you don't get any of the adverts pictured here because they annoy me.

TANGO AND CASH: NO!  Not a holdover from the previous item.  Besides, did the banks invent chip and pin in vain?

     This is a daft yet entertaining action-comedy starring Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell, where Kurt plays the slobby Cash and Sly the uptight Tango.  Art!

     It was one of the last big pictures of the Eighties, probably a defining moment in cinema, and whilst the critics made a sour lemon face at it, the audience liked it to the value of $120 million, on a $25 million budget, so quite a big hit.  Conrad worries that, given it's over a generation old, and made wheelbarrows of cash at the box office, Hollywood will 're-imagine' it for a 2024 audience.  

    Ignore that last sentence.  It never happened (can't be giving those suits ideas).

Whisky Oscar Echo?

As you should surely know by now, we here at BOOJUM! are consistently Safe For Work and do not curse, so the crude acronym WTF is always replaced by WOE, meaning 'What On Earth?' when we come across another bizarre event or artefact.

     Thus today, courtesy of "The Daily Beast".  Art!

     The electronic gadget?  Your guess is as good as mine.  The other one seems to be a pocket ice-bath, and by leaning reallllly close to the screen and squinting, Conrad could make out a pair of spectacles.  A means to heat your spectacles up?  Cool them down?  Make them hop in the liquid like a tango dancer?  What On Earth indeed.

Being Beastly

Conrad is unsure what some of the journalists at TDB have been drinking, smoking or snorting, to come up with a sidebar news title like this one.  Art!

     O Rlly?  Art!

     That's from "Box Office Mojo" and doesn't include returns from Tuesday nor today.  How on earth is that 'Doomed'?  I suppose I really ought to read the article and see what they were talking about.

     Ah, they were complaining that it wasn't as scary as the game.

     This is like complaining a breeze-block isn't as tasty as a baked potato, or that cottage cheese lacks the structural strength of rebar concrete.  Dude, these are two completely different things.  Conrad suspects that the film critics at TDB were both embarrassed and annoyed that it's doing so well when they canned it.  Art!

     That egg on your chin was from an ostrich.

"City In The Sky"

Deputy Mayor Mike is escorting Alex and the Doctor around New Eucla, giving them a tour and potted history.  Well, to Alex, that is -

In fact, whilst Mike had been escorting them to the courier offices, the tannery, shearing sheds, the smoking sheds, and explaining the function of each, the Doctor had been keeping a cautious, watchful eye on the watcher.  Eventually he decided that body language, inflection and speech implied only what Mike had told them: he was there to keep an eye on them, and not under orders to inflict any harm.

     Very well, time to explore on his own.  He boldly strolled off, being watched by curious townsfolk who whispered to each other when he passed, and accompanied by a small cluster of children.  In time, a pair of teenaged girls caught up with the youngsters.

     ‘There you are!  What d’you think you’re doing!’ shouted one of the pair.

     ‘We was just watching the stranger,’ replied a child, meekly.

     ‘You don’t just walk out of the nursery!’ said the second girl, exasperated.  ‘That’s twice this month.’  She turned to the Doctor, who anticipated a telling-off for his involuntary Hamelin ability.  ‘Thanks, Mister Smith.  At least they all stayed in one place ‘cos of you this time!’

     ‘Happy to help,’ he said, bowing.

     ‘Ooh, int he polite!’ giggled the second girl.  ‘Come on you lot.’

     Manners maketh both man and Gallifreyan.

"The War Illustrated"

We are looking at a couple more individual frames from the magazine's montage section, all of which are from Italy, which was the only game in town for the Western Allies.  Art!

     This illustration shows a casualty being lowered into a 'Regimental Aid Post' on the beaches at Anzio, safely below ground level and thus less vulnerable to any enemy action.  An R.A.P. for your information, is the first stop for a casualty, whom are triaged and forwarded on to Casualty Clearing Stations for more advanced treatment.

Such as -

     The arty look is spoiled by Conrad being unable to eliminate the page, sorry about that Cecil Beaton-wannabe.  This Anzio farmhouse has been converted into a small hospital, specialising in abdominal wound cases, with large red crosses on a white-washed exterior, in the pious (and not necessarily unanswered) hope that the enemy will abstain from attacking it.

     Being aware that this amount of medical support is behind the lines to offer aid and succour is a boost to morale amongst the blokes that go out and risk being injured, just so you know.

Finally -

That's Sober October done with.  It being the weekly shop tonight, Your Humble Scribe will be purchasing a few bottles of beer, yes by gum Tweedledum, except I cannot drink any of them until Friday.  O well.  Patience is a virtue and all that.

*  It may also divert attention from his tiny, tiny hands.