Four Poster

Yes, We Are Back On The Subject Of 'Four' Again

And am I not posting about it?  Hence the title.  Commiserations to all of those who expected to see the bed version.  There's a fatal model in the 'Jonathan Creek' episode 'The Grinning Man', console yourself with that.  Art!

Things that go creek in the night?

     ANYWAY I was pondering upon where to start, and it came to me in a dull flash of muted muse: begin with bands!  Art?

  
     Paul McCartney of The Beatles, a.k.a. the Fab Four, performing for the camera on Salisbury Plain, escorted by Centurion tanks, a whimsical notion if ever there was one.  Yes yes yes, there's only one of them visible.  Use your imagination, bafunes.  Next!

     The Four Tops, out of Detroit, one of the most successful South Canadian vocal groups evah.  Cuts no ice with Conrad, they don't have guitars or organ riffs.  Art!

     This is the first studio album from Gang Of Four, 'Entertainment', dateline 1979.  They were dubbed 'Post-punk' and delivered 'funk-punk' and 'art-punk', whatever hideous farragos they might be.  Not a band Conrad has nor had any appreciation for.  Named after the clique in The Populous Dictatorship who took control of the political levers of power after Mao died, and even before he died - which is a whole other ballgame.  We may come back to that, it's a lot more interesting that a band who changed members more often I change my tee shirts.  Art!

Not the band.  Just so we're clear.

     Having gone off at a tangent - how utterly unlike us! - let us get back into entertainment NO NOT THE G.O.F. ALBUM but rather films via comics.  Art!

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: One of Marvel's tent-pole properties since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby dreamt them up in 1961.  They have been so profitable - ahem - sorry I mean so artistically relevant and timely that writers are not allowed to muck around with plots too much, or (gasp!) kill any of them off.  Marvel has tried to convert their property into a cinematic version several times, with limited success, and look to be going for a forth attempt.  We shall see.  Art!

     The 2017 flop.  Just to prove that not everything Marvel turns out is either good or profitable.

     THE FOURTH DOCTOR: Spanning media in the opposite direction, here we have an iconic television trope that has also translated into comics.  Known fondly as the 'Tom Baker era', it was teased by adverts where The Doctor was holding forth on a dandelion that had been crushed, nay pulverised, and what deductions he drew from that.  Art!

     " - according to my estimation of the resistance to pressure of vegetable fibre, it was stepped on by something weighing a quarter of a ton." Art!

     

      Conrad has to be careful or the rest of this Intro will be nothing but Fourth Doctor.  Another of his quotes comes to mind: "It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favourite species!"  Art!

     Present company excepted, Harry being the idiot who pressed what wasn't supposed to be pressed.  As when he tried to remove an explosive harness from The Doctor by giving it a hefty pull, deciding that Cyberman technology was unable to cope with aggressive tugging.

     ANYWAY Art!

That scarf looks sentient

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL: Good lord aloft, it's horrifying to realise this film is 36 years old!  I've only seen it the once, which was quite enough for me, and remember it as Hugh Grant's break-out role.  He personified the somewhat bumbling, self-deprecating Englishman who had a heart of gold and whom drew the ladies like moths to a flame.  Down, Vulnavia, down!  Art?

     In fact the role was a bit of a mixed blessing: yes, it got him other, similar roles in other rom-coms, yet tended to get him typecast.  Only in recent years has he been able to display his acting chops by playing villains.  Art!

     'Box Office Mojo' informs that the budget was $4.5 million, and it made $245 million at the box office, meaning a profit of at least $100 million, and one can only applaud screenwriter Richard Curtis for not bowing to the money men and penning a sequel.  Art!

     A Gerry Anderson puppetry series you may not have heard of.  It features sheriff Tex Tucker, the authority figure in the town of - you may be ahead of me here - Four Feather Falls.  Tex was gifted four magical feathers for saving the son of an Indian chief.  Two of them enable him to rotate and shoot his guns without so much as touching them, a jolly useful skillset to have in the lawless Eighteen-Eighties in South Canada.  One feather enabled his dog to talk, and the other allowed his horse to talk.  Probably boosted their intellect, too, as otherwise their conversation would be all 'More hay!' 'More beef!' 'Less riding!' 'More walkies!'

     

Hmmmmmmmm

It's a well known fact that Conrad likes ginger.  Ginger snaps, crystallised ginger, ginger beer, ginger ale, ginger and lemongrass cordial, the list goes on.  So, a couple of days ago I idly Googled for ginger beer recipes, of which there are loads.  Art!

     The recipe I glossed over included sugar, honey and yeast, as well as plenty of water.  Central to the idea is that you ferment the sugary solution after adding a syrup of boiled ginger and honey, leaving it to stand for a couple of days.

     Only this afternoon, several days later, did I realised that 'fermenting' means 'creating alcohol' so even if I did make it, I'd not be able to consume it for a couple of months.  Not only that, the proof of the end product can vary from 4%, or about the same as a pub pint, to 11%, which is almost as strong as wine.

     Gotta admit, I am tempted.

BOOJUM! And The Unending Battle Against Clickbait

This time, less to do with a film or television series and more a retail location.  Once again the 'Daily Express' conspires to have you click on their baiting article in order to complete the headline.  Art!

     

     If you Google for the item, you get the information that it's the Riverside Retail Park site going toes-up, which has only been open for a year, implying that their profits have been non-existent and whomever signed off on the deal needs to have a long, intense chat with HR.  Ooops.

Two Bad, So Sad

The horrorshow that is life in occupied Krim gets worse by the day.  Ukraine blew up a couple of the highly ineffective Pantsir SAM vehicles ON THE KERCH BRIDGE ITSELF a couple of nights ago, then found a small tank farm that had accumulated fuel brought in by ferry and destroyed that, too.  The foolishly loquacious Ruffian milblogger 'Fighterbomber' had been gloating about a lot of fuel suddenly arriving, for which information the Kozaky are very grateful.  Art!

     Those are two of the small ferries the orcs are - sorry, were - using to transport supplies from the Ruffian coastline into Kerch.  Krim authorities are now advising drivers to revert back to the M-14 highway, after having made a will.  Art!

     Each yellow dot is a confirmed geolocated Ruffian transport vehicle destroyed with video evidence to back it up.  What you see here is about a tenth of the overall total Ukrainian claims to have malleted.  So now the orc tourists in Krim have no fuel, no water, rolling power cuts and the likelihood of being forcibly conscripted as 'volunteers'.  So much win!

Someone Has Been Watching Too Much 'Dawn Of The Dead'

 - and thinking that it's a documentary, thanks to them being but lightly endowed with intellect.  Art!

     He's going to order that he be pumped full of them when he drops dead at the Resolute Desk.  Really, I cannot see that he'd perform any worse as a zombie than he does at the moment, although camera crews and photographers would need colour lenses to turn his green skin into a vibrant popping orange.  

Finally -

THIS is why I always ran past the Lego shop in the Arndale Centre when I had to work there on a daily basis.  Art!

     Too much temptation!