No! Not The Band
Although Conrad is aware of their name, he's not heard anything by them - a deficiency I think I will correct by having them play in the background whilst I hammer out these words of wonder, wisdom and whimsy (wit is on holiday today). Art!
A rather disingenuous picture as the lady pictures, Kelly, was only present on their debut album. Not only that, they are from the distinctly un-rock 'n' roll town of Hartlepool.
Hmmmmm got "Spin Spin Sugar" on in the background, not bad not bad, kind of electro-pop stuff. Different from the Danish electro-pop indie bands I like.
ANYWAY bear in mind that the Ruffians, in an attempt to prop up their faltering economy and to be able to afford eggs, sold 230 tons of gold on the very last working day of 2023, in order to KEEP IT SECRET. THEY WANTED TO BE SNEAKY ABOUT IT. DID I MENTION SECRET YET? as it was a tad embarrassing to admit that they needed to blow 40% of their gold reserves on eggs, bananas and fish. Art!
"What is that doing here?" I hear you quibble. "For it has nothing to do with eggs, Ruffia, gold or English electro-rock."
How very perceptive, pilgrims! It does, mind you, have an opening that is intimately involved with sneakers. As in they fall out of the sky and clobber Shia's character on the head. Notice how his name's not above the title above? Before he was famous and peculiar, you see. Art!
Smitten - - by foot mitten*
All Shia's ills derive from a pair of sneakers acting like less-edible manna. Art!
Yes yes yes once again nothing to do with gold or eggs yet everything to do with sneakers. Art!
Conrad has only seen the film once and is thus working off old memories strained through a haze of gin and absinthe, but I seem to remember that these sneakers are a trail-blazing prototype that will corner the market and allow Parrish to crush the lesser sneaker-makers, earn unlimited rice pudding and so on. Art!
Except not. They get put through a handily placed Special Machine For Shredding Things Up That Has No Other Purpose Or Justification But To Destroy Parrish Sneakers. End result you see above.
I could probably find more films where sneakers play an inordinately large part in the plot, except sneakers are unremittingly dull footwear, so -
What's that, Vulnavia? You're been apprised of a new line of sneakers? Ones that embody all that is tacky and tasteless? Bring it on!
Ah, I might have known. It's failed businessman and fraudster Pimpkinhead again, making a bizarre foray into the world of sneakers, where the "T" obviously stands for "Traitorous Tosspot" or "Tangerine Toad".
These horrid-looking items will cost you $399 per pair. You can see where all that Ruffian gold ended up, having caused a glut in world lamè supplies. Donald Buck needs all the money he can get but this is realllllly desperate. I did see one of his supporters try to get a GoFundMe started to pay off his hundreds of millions fine and they'd gotten to $25,527. They didn't pay any attention to the rules for GoFundMe, because it prohibits raising money for those guilty of financial crimes. So they'll get their money returned, absent an admin and handling fee.
In the meantime Pumpkinhead only needs to sell 8,850,000 pairs of these tacky footholders and he's raised enough to pay his fine! Sorry, this fine. There are and will be others. Art!
Not difficult if they only made 144 pairs, which is a gross, because they are.
Learn, Hollywood, Learn!
Another instalment of The Critical Drinker's plan to reform Hollywood and save it from itself. Yesteryon we were dealing with the ridiculous amounts of money that the A-list celebs get for appearing in a film, and how to cut down on such huge sums.
There is a problem here, of course - obviously! - since these very same A-list Famous Actors bring with them a positive comet's tail of hangers-on, friends, minions, agents, management, gofers, bodyguards, tasters, dog-walkers, psychic nutritionists**, chauffeurs, chefs, personal trainers, Feng Shui experts and fiancèes. Art!
The Rock's entourage turn up
Most of these feckless parasites serve no useful purpose except to beef up the actor's egos, which means they get to stay around until the paychecks start to dry up.
Ol' Critty also had what he called 'Production Bloat' in his sights, meaning all the endless titles you see scrolling up at both the beginning and end of a film. Does a film really need six Executive Producers? What value do they bring to a film? Why are there three Associate Producers? What does an Associate Executive Producer do, apart from get paid a lot? How come they need a Line Producer now? What does an Associate Line Executive Producer do, apart from get paid even more? O and here's the Unit Production Mangager and the Assistant Unit Production Manager and the Deputy Assistant Unit Production Manager, and by now you've spent $20 million without shooting a single second of film. You think I'm exaggerating, don't you? Art!
"Godzilla Minus One" Indy 5
One can only assume that the Japanese studio staff have far smaller salaries than the American ones, given that their film overall cost about 5% of the Yanks abomination.
Whilst On The Subject Of Footwear And Gold
BOOJUM! is always happy to give old Putinpot a good shoeing when he's down, as is the exchange rate of late. Art!
Ooops. It looks like the Ruffian Central Bank might have to burn through even more tons of gold and piles of Yuan to try and bring the dollar/ruble exchange rate down again. I don't think Peter The Average likes the rate to go above ₽92 to the dollar and if it gets to ₽100 he'll probably expire from a massive stroke thanks to rage.
FYI the rate is still at ₽92.50 as whomever is in charge doesn't do updates across the weekend nor on Monday morning.
"City In The Sky"
Staff aboard Arcology One are watching the progress of 'Barclay's Bomb' into the Gulf of Carpentaria from their orbital vantage.
‘What I’d give to get down there,’
murmured another member of staff.
‘Amen,’ echoed Ace. By now the
Prof would – guaranteed – managed to find trouble and fall headlong into it
without her to help him out.
She looked across the banks of monitors.
One screen had died and the crew no longer had replacement parts for
repair, so it sat in the upper right and stayed blindly blank. Across another seventeen screens she saw the
immensity of the
Ace recalled hearing about tsunamis, waves generated far out to sea that
devastated coastlines where they hit and hoped that they hadn’t violated the
Doctor’s sketchy instructions. Already
the narrow white outline of the shock wave had reached shore and blasted
inland. She watched it grow fuzzier and
darker as it lost energy and acquired debris.
All good news when dealing with hydrophobic aliens, I assure you.
Hot Patootie, It's A Clootie
I did warn you there would be more about the Clootie Dumpling, and here is pictorial evidence that it was created. Art!
 |
| With Conrad's paw for scale |
There's not a lot of difficulty involved in making it, the trick is to keep the baking parchment and tea-towel it's wrapped in as tight as possible, to avoid it getting turned into soup.
As you can see, a small portion has already been consumed, and, you know, it's not bad for a first attempt.
Finally -
I didn't bother with my stew yesteryon so it's going to get made now. Wish me luck.
* Yes yes yes, that ought to mean a sock. Work with me here!
** I nicked this from a "Superman" film.
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