No words

No jokes about the Emirates, please . . .

Fucking hell, they're using actual living kids as goalposts. The luxury. Posh bastards.

All I want for Christmas . . .

. . . is number 17.  

Thank You, Santa.

Animal Farm 2.0

"This time we're not going to fuck it up  . . ."

Road to Christmastide

I'll be watching old Bob Hope movies this Christmas, but for those of you with a more religious frame of mind . . .

Porridge (1979)

Last One In?

Could this be my last 180 of 2019?

Quite possibly but 16 180s for the year is not too shabby in the overall scheme of things. Maybe I will actually hit a double in 2020.

The Thing (1982)

Under Fire (1983)

Gauntlet thrown down . . .

and challenge accepted.

Cheeky bugger. I've been spewing out the occasional shite meme for ages now. I'm not some Johnny Come Lately when it comes to hackneyed political in-jokes. Here's one I did eons ago, and it was only 14 months after everyone else had stopped using and abusing that meme. 14 months, people, 14 months . . .  that's on the ball politicking for the SPGB.

Posted from said armchair . . .

Just doing some desktop clearing up before the end of the year. Found this floating around and, as I feel the need to explain my jokes most of the time, I thought I'd whack it on the blog.

I bet it'd been killing you all this time about what the blog header was actually referring to. I'm here to serve:

Marxist-Wertherism

Don't mind me. Just need to put this somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. 

I'm still on my one man mission to popularize the SPGB-Werther's Originals joke meme. I'm trying  . . .  very trying.

Economic Conscription

Stop the world I want to get off . . .

On this day in 1980 . . .

. . . saw the release of Sound Affects:

Maybe next year, I'll actually write a post about it.

Thanks to The Goldbergs

"I'm too old for tucks."

The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta (Harper Perennial 1997)

“This must be a tough time for you,” Stan observed.

“How so?”

“You know.” He pulled the cummerbund out from under his jacket and laid it on the steps. “This thing with Phil. It must have been awful for you.”

Walter worked his cigarette like a baby sucking a bottle. “Phil was an old man. Everybody's got to go sometime.”

“Still, watching a friend die in front of you like that …”

“We had our differences,” Walter said curtly.

“What kind of differences?”

“Creative.” Walter ejected the cigarette from between his lips. It landed on the sidewalk in a small shower of sparks. “I thought the band was starting to get a little stale.”

“How long were you together?”

“Too fucking long. Thirty-three years I took orders from that sonofabitch. I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

Stan didn't bother to pretend he was shocked. He'd been a musician long enough to know how it could come to this. There “were nights when he'd lain awake writing Artie's obituary in loving detail, nights when he'd imagined committing murder.

Tony Horsfall's Black and White Army . . .

Not a screen grab I ever expected to make . . .

A Crafty Cigarette – Tales of a Teenage Mod by Matteo Sedazzari (Zani Media 2015)

Luckily for my father Theo did not press charges for criminal damage. Later my mother explained to him about my father’s problem with Charlie Cairoli. Theo, being the wise man that he is, totally understood and told my mother that he was once in The Kinks for a brief time, as 2nd guitar and backing vocals. They did a gig in Acton, this was before they made it big, by the way. Theo broke his strings during a song and Ray Davies never called him again, or so he told my mother. Now Theo can’t listen to any records by The Kinks and has to leave the room the moment their music comes on. 

Shit, both Vinnie’s father and my father could have been huge stars, that’s quite depressing.

Tootsie (1982)

He Done Her Wrong by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1983)

“A few members of the staff now believe that the constant reign of terror to your anatomy is causing a building up of resistance by your body. Not that you are immune to damage but that your body has somehow said, ‘What the hell, I can take anything.’ Your skull no longer deserves the anatomical right to be referred to as a skull. We are not quite sure what to call it.”

I tried to sit up and made it to one elbow. I was in a hospital gown.

“The closest thing I have seen to what we are laughingly calling your cranium belonged to a punch-drunk fighter named Ramirez who, when his career was finished, made an occasional fifty cents by battering down doors with his head. Mr. Ramirez was incapable of coherent speech by that time and seemed to think he was a robot. Are you following the allegorical level of my tale, Mr. Peters?”

“If I continue to get hit in the head, my brain will turn to Junket pudding,” I said.

“Your brain is almost certainly pudding by now,” said Dr. Melanks. “I simply want you to sign it over to me on your death. I am sixty-seven and suffering from arthritis, a weak heart, mild sclerosis, and a very poor hereditary profile, but I should outlive you by a comfortable margin.”

The Opposite of Shit, Bugger, Fuck

My third 180 in three days. My ego is currently floating down 7th Avenue.

A slave to the waves.

New flights  . . . new 180 . . . old story of scoring 11 with my next 3 darts.

The Winmaus of Your Mind

New dart board . . . newish city . . . new 180.

Fever Pitch (2005)

Defence of the Realm (1986)

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (Profile Books 2019)

FRIDAY, 6 MARCH

Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2

Nicky in. She has hijacked the shop’s Facebook page again and left this typically bewildering post:

Good morning everyone!
With a song in my heart, I skip in to work only to be berated for buying books off a customer for £45, whereas the BGC would have paid £175. Happy customer, happy me, disgruntled tube, sorry, I meant to say ‘boss’.

BGC is Nicky’s current nickname for me, and stands for Big Ginger Conundrum. ‘Tube’, for the uninitiated, is a Scottish insult, the politest interpretation of it being ‘idiot’.”

Ghost World (2001)

The Day Shall Come (2019)

Upstairs Planet: Cleaners From Venus & The Universe Of Martin Newell (2019)

Unbelievable (2019)

Rushmore (1998)

The Paper (1994)

Late Night (2019)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Go (1999)

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Juliet, Naked (2018)

'71 (2014)

The Big Chill (1983)

Bag of Shite . . .

. . . it was coming:

The Nice Guys (2016)

The Teacake Toasted . . .

Brilliant pic from last night:

*Cough*

A bit random, and a bit precarious, but I'll take it. My tenth 180 this year.

Steaming In: Journal of a Football Fan by Colin Ward (Simon & Schuster 1989)

The first half and the fairy tale continued. Leatherhead went two-nil ahead with Kelly scoring one, making the other goal and generally tormenting Leicester without mercy. At half-time all that could be seen was the 'Kelly Shuffle' and the drinking (and spilling) of beer. In the second half the slaughter continued for a while. Kelly went round the goalkeeper and should have scored, but the ball was stopped on the line. I can still close my eyes and remember him going round the Leicester keeper and shouting 'Goal!' I don't think Leicester would have come back from three-nil down, but as it was this was the turning point of the match. Leicester scored, then destroyed a tiring Leatherhead, finally winning three-two. Nevertheless, the cheers at the end were all for Leatherhead. We left the ground disappointed but privileged to have witnessed one of the greatest performances ever by an amateur team.

Leicester fans approached Leatherhead fans in the street, shaking their hands and saying 'Great match' and 'Cor, what a game.' Had we won the match it is more likely that they would have been waiting to smash our heads in. In an instant, we would have been transformed from the quaint amateur team who had provided entertainment into the bastards who had humiliated and knocked Leicester out of the FA Cup.

A crowd of over 37,000 had witnessed the game and those present will never forget it. To this day everyone who was there talks about Kelly's miss. That night on Match of the Day on BBC 1 Jimmy Hill interviewed Chris Kelly. 'We'll be back next year, Jimmy,' said Chris - although sadly this was not to be. Nevertheless, Leatherhead have the proud record of never having lost to a professional team on their own ground, and have since beaten Cambndge United and drawn with Colchester United and Swansea City.

Last one in?

It's been a while. So long, in fact, that I'd forgotten my 180 celebration. (A combination of shock and fear.)

. . . And Justice for All (1979)