Finding myself with all kinds of useless bits drifting through my head but with none of them warranting a post of their own I feel obliged to scatter them before you instead of letting them fade away to nothing. It is highly possible that not long from now you may wish I had let the fading option win out.
In the gym yesterday, a father and his daughter walked in and something occurred to me. That they were related was obvious and not just because of the way they communicated. More obvious evidence came from their chins, or rather lack of them. Alas, the poor girl had inherited her father’s weak chin and the thing that occurred to me at that moment is that it really isn’t nice – passing on a weak chin. I’m not saying I’m Desperate Dan or anything but I have never found myself unduly worried about my chin. I am fortunate enough to have one and believe me I would take a chin over a full head of hair any day. Nor am I saying that chinless wonders should be banned from procreating, that would be crazy, it’s just that being non-committed in the chin department isn’t exactly the gift that keeps on giving.
Perhaps if the chinless of yesteryear had had the wherewithal to control themselves coitally then the world might now be totally free of this regrettable genetic curse. Imagine reaching up to stroke your chin in a thoughtful manner and just finding an empty space. There’s taking heroin when pregnant and this comes a close second. It almost has a hint of sadism – I didn’t get to have a chin so you don’t get to have one either. Mind you, too much of a chin can be a problem as well: Heston Blumenthal has quite a chin and he’s an unstoppable prick.
What’s next? Oh yes, stand up comedy. On Friday night we went to town to see some comedy; specifically Paul Foot. If you’re not familiar with Paul Foot then you are a default member of a rather large club. If you’d like to see what makes him a very funny man indeed then go onto YouTube and type in ‘Paul Foot Shire Horses’, and this will tell you all you need to know. Unfortunately I have a whopping great big track record of booking tickets for disappointing shows. First there was Jason Byrne – a spectacularly unfunny Irishman who made that classic mistake of assuming that because he was Irish he must be funny. I laughed out loud once, and that was at a joke concerning him resting his testicles over his wife’s eyes while she slept. I understand he is still quite popular. Baffling.
Then there was Eddie Izzard who managed to utterly destroy all my faith in, and love for, him in one night at Wembley Arena (which gets a bonus mention because it is a truly dire venue). I didn’t laugh once during the first half. We did not bother with the second half. Switching to other performing outlets, there was The Mousetrap which was so crap it made my insides hurt. By the time it got to the big reveal at the end I was so past caring that spiritually my arse was already sitting on the train home. We both fell asleep during a Richard Thompson gig and he’s one chap that’s firmly in the living legend members lounge. And I suppose I should mention The Rolling Stones because while they weren’t strictly speaking ‘bad’ they did charge an awful lot of money for being ‘not bad’.
I’m afraid Paul Foot did not rescue me from my reputation as a poor judge in booking ‘experiences’. It didn’t help that his warm up act was the very opposite of funny. He might as well have thrown an ice cube on stage. That ice melted into a puddle of a man call Malcolm Head who should at least be given some credit for sustaining a whole 20 minutes on stage and not saying anything amusing whatsoever. I kept hoping he might say something witty by mistake. As I understand it he was being paid for this and what made it worse is that at least a few people in the theatre were laughing. Irony free laughter. I don’t know if for them a sense of humour is just something that happens to other people but hearing them laugh made me sad and confused. If this had been a lower rung club he would have been showered with piss and insults. How did you get this far, Malcolm Head, you self proclaimed poet-comedian? Incidentally, you were neither.
Paul Foot himself made the mistake of starting well and then going backwards. I cried laughing for the first 10 minutes and then the sparkle just stopped and never came back. A lengthy, rambling piece (yes, like this) that tried to tie together orgies and snooker just didn’t work; though I didn’t have the heart to turn round and tell the prat behind me, who was laughing so hard at nothing that I though he might die. Rather selfishly he remained alive throughout the performance. But the overall result is that my admiration of Paul Foot was virtually decapitated. He almost rescued it with a short piece on imperial measures but when he finished off with a 5 year old joke about Oscar Pistorious I knew that the game was up. Take my advice – stick to YouTube and save your money.
We watched BlackKkKlansman last night. I fell asleep twice. Might have been the wine. It’s an Oscar contender. It did pick up as it went on but, like most Oscar contenders, it projects more importance onto itself than it really ought to. Only cost us £1.99 though. Comme si, comme sa.
Well that doesn’t really resemble what the introduction advertised; not so much a musings finger buffet as a snotty dig at those bereft of an adequate mandible (mental region or mandibular prominence would also have worked), a long moan about stand up comedy and something that barely qualifies as a movie review. I was thinking of writing about that girl that joined IS and is (was, now) pregnant and wants to come back to Britain because here she’ll be safe but I’m afraid I simply don’t have time to fully express my opinion on it. Never mind, you probably aren’t very interested in my opinion anyway.
G B Hewitt. 17.02.2019
…… is still basically junk
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 