Lovely Girls #2

Welcome to the next instalment in Terence McDanger's soon-to-be-bulging portfolio of raging beauties.

Continuing on the theme of Lovely Girl #1, number 2 is also a bombshell brunette with bountiful boobs and with any luck, a deep appreciation for alliteration. Say hello to Rachel Weisz. I haven't managed to type her name correctly even once yet, but she's a very, very, very lovely girl indeed and lends herself, with typically easy grace and charm, to a plethora of puns about 'Weisz-ing up' and getting 'caught in a Weisz-like grip' and so forth, fnarr, fnarr.

I've been thoughtful enough to include a rather racy picture of herself there above. It's a snap open to all sorts of interpretations. On one hand, she might be fresh from running around some windswept moor like a love-struck leveret in Wuthering Heights, while on the other she might be a slightly wanton little hussy after dancing her socks off in a heaving nightclub, teasing an endless succession of slathering, hopelessly inadequate blokes. There's also something very weird running through my head about her having been caught short while out shopping and having to leg it to the nearest public jacks, but I'm odd that way. Whatever the context, someone saw fit to spray her front with water to give her that breathless, sexy/tousled look. I want to shake that person's hand.

She's been cavorting about the silver screen for quite a while has our Rachel, has remained consistently lovely throughout and shows no sign of letting up. She's not afraid to glam down either; she got a little mucky as a resistance fighter in Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law and was also a few layers of makeup short of a prom queen in the Constant Gardner as well. But I see beyond this to her core of true lovliness underneath. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, About a Boy and Runaway Jury are also on her CV.

Some absolute bastard married her recently I believe.

Despite her marital status, Weisz (35) was overjoyed and typically gracious when Moo-Dog contacted her at her residence in Brooklyn to tell her of her inclusion in the lovely girls pantheon of greats.

After deftly handling the suspicious questions of her simpering fool of a husband (with a tale about the caller being a cheese-grater salesman), she cooed endearingly: "Well obviously this is a huge honour, I'm very flattered Terence and it will do wonders for my career. I think we should hook up and have alot of sex at the nearest opportunity. I can do Thursday. "

I'm only sleeping...

What the...? Who the hell sleeps like that? This is some crazy dude I snapped on the train. Now I've dozed in some unlikely places myself but this is the equivalent of nodding off on a rodeo horse with a postage stamp for a pillow. I thought of cow tapping when I saw this but dammit there were too many people looking.

Spotted oddity...

Look at this. Saw it while out and about with Mardzord today. It's 'instant mass' apparently. At first glance I thought maybe it was instant mash, but on closer inspection it was confirmed that yes, indeed, it was instant mass.

I didn't realise religion had sunk so low in our quick-fix society that you could now get powdered priests and just add water for an on-demand ceremony! And that labelling is far too disco to be appropriate for worship. I blame those fuckers in Vegas getting married by Elvis and all that, that's where it all started.

Where's me rosary beads...

History isn't bunk

I never intended writing movie reviews and such like here but now know that every so often I'll chance upon a new book, movie, strangely-shaped cabbage or revolutionarily-designed ski-pants and will just have to to share my knowledge with the world.

With such an inclination was I gripped when I saw the History Boys film. It's based on a play by Alan Bennett and has "enjoyed a very successful run on Broadway" as they say in real reviews.

When you see the flick itself, complete with the original stage cast, you don't wonder why for very long.

The plot centres around eight academically gifted schoolboys in 1980s Yorkshire who all have a chance of bringing fame and prestige to their school and families by gaining admission to Oxford or Cambridge University. They return to their school for extra tuition following their final exams, to be headmastered by Clive Merrison's excellently odious, snobbish little principal who is truly obsessed with some of his own students getting to either of these universities so he might bask in the reflected glory. He hires a new hotshot tutor to give "an edge" to the boys' writings and prompt them into new ways of thinking (somewhat artificially, but effectively in the finish). This new teacher's methods are a bit at odds with the hilariously eccentric methods that have brought the boys to their current point of progress - e.g. French class involves playing out a brothel play, or scenes from classic movies - and the divergences between the two main teachers' oeuvres forms a key sub plot of the movie that at times gets a little poignant. But I didn't cry...

That's all secondary to the characters of the boys themselves though. You've got Dakin, the suave good-looking bastard we all knew at school who everyone fancied (and I mean everyone), Posner who's a gay Jew who sings like a choirboy, suffers agonies of lust and gets alot of the most pithy quips, while Timms is the obligatory chubby always banging on about tits and sex. There are others too but the ones mentioned are the most developed. The interaction between them all is typically teenage stuff at times and there's more than a hint of Dead Poet's Society going on too, but the real strength of the film is in its razor sharp script.

There's some genuine cut out, keep and bring 'em home one-liners littered throughout the movie, alot of them delivered by the boys but also by a deliciously glib and witheringly sarcastic Francis de la Tour who plays another of the teachers at the school. One of her finer moments (although there's way more from her and others that are even better) comes when she admonishes a colleague who has been collared for mildly molesting one of the students. The colleague remarks that he didn't see it as touching per se, but more as an educational rite of passage from an older man to younger, or as he says "a bendiction of sorts." She replies: "Oh for fucks sake Hector, much as I love you, a grope is a grope, not the bloody annunciation." I love straight-talking funny types like that in real life and I'd love to have had a teacher like her. Instead of the hatchet-faced old biddies I did have...

Anyway, that's only one of the lesser highlights in a script of many, while most of the acting performances are excellent as well. Some of it naturally reminds you of your own school days but the openly gay subtexts between characters are not something I reckon happened or happens in many schools among bunches of friends, no matter how friendly or close they are like in this movie.

Anyway, I've said enough. If you admire a well-written film, then see this. It's alot of laughs but makes you think at times too. It's a little smug and over-fond of itself though, which is the only gripe - a little too in love with its own importance and slightly posturing intelligence - but don't let that put you off.

Go on, see it. You too Henry if you're reading.

Rosco

This is Rosco, the house dog of my homestead. This is my first blog off mobile, a rather cool feature I've discovered.

He's a little bastard by the way, don't know why I chose to snap him.

New beer! New beer!

I feel like Sr. Walter Raleigh when he discovered spuds. He might not have known it at the time but it would prove a stupendous moment on the road to our modern society with its eventual nutritional cornerstones of mash, basil mash, creamed potatoes, chips, wedges, crisps, jacket potatoes, sauteed potatoes and potato bread. That's alot of corners. What can I say, it's an odd-shaped world.

Of course potatoes are also high in carbs which is a major no-no in our multi-cornered society, and just slightly worse, they were the root (giggle!) cause of a major famine in Ireland, bringing with it disease, death, mass emigration, alot of kitchen sink literature by bad playwrights and worse than all that, latter-day bizarre outbursts by Sinead O'Connor. So to sum up: Spuds - both a good and a bad thing - but mostly good since 1847.

But what's all that to do with beer and Walter Raleigh? Well, I'd like to think that just as the bearded medieval one in pumpkin-lke pantaloons arrived back to his Queen, to triumphantly reveal a Maris Piper to the civilised world, I too arrive in the court of beer-jesting aficionados (that'd be you down the back, Radge and Mardzord) and direct you to the presence of a new and worthy beer in our realm.

It is called Brahma my friends. On the sixth day (yesterday) I tasted it and saw that it was good. You will too. It's even got a curvy little bottle design so it sits snug in your hand, like it belongs there. Permit me to be wanky a moment and quote Seamus Heaney - "snug as a gun," he wrote. He was referring to a garden spade, which doesn't taste at all like a beer if you lick it and won't get you remotely pissed, but you get my drift. All things considered, that's just clever bottle design whatever way you look at it.

Naturally, it tastes good too. I'm no fan of Heineken and Stella etc., much too harsh and strong-tasting for my cultured palate, so it follows then that Brahma is nothing like those coarse offerings or their ilk. I'm a Smithwicks (I've agricultural leanings) , Budvar, Michelob, Corona man, and this one is right up there in that exalted pantheon.

You'll get 455cl in a bottle and 4.8% as well. Sure what more would you want. It's now becoming widely available in more mainstream off-licences, expect it to hit the pubs soon. Remember where you heard it first.

Greatest Living Irishmen

It takes a particular (or peculiar) caste and mould of man to make a total gobshite of himself to the nation on a weekly basis. Julian Simmons, the chubby camp guy on UTV who pulls grotesque faces and has a mild fit every time he introduces Coronation Street, is one such man.

Julian is a small part of the fabric of Ireland's underground elite, joining other luminaries like Daniel O'Donnell, Red Hurley, Sonny Knowles, Richie Kavanagh etc. in that particular set of celebrities who are widely ridiculed but yet retain enough of a stealth following, mostly among house-bound pensioners, to keep them relevant.

Doubtful though the talents of some of these people are, those of 'Ore Jewleean' are particularly precarious. His fame and popularity seem to be solely predicated on his ability to purse his lips, draw his chin back into his neck before flapping his arms limply and adopting a stagey Belfast accent, all before introducing Coronation Street in perfect gay, delighting 'older' women everywhere - (Gummy bingo goers who wear massive industrial strength knickers to you and me). Wearing a pink bow tie or some other such garish comic horror, he blabbers thus:

"An' nigh on the Yew TV, thon' there Deirdre is running abite cluckin' like maud with her turkey neck all a twicthin' after Tracey Barlow's latest escapade with that rogue trader Charlie. An' no-one to take care o' the wee chile only poor Ken an' sure he'd rather be readin' a book are samthin! Lord blay-iss us all, but it's awl kickin off over and going right maud over thar on thon Coronation Street. An' a big whadda-bite-ye to big Jum Devereaux in Waist Bail-fawst whose wife called to get us to say hello and remind him that his lemon meringue coloured Y-fronts are still out on the washing line and will need taking in if they're to be ready for his sponsored walk tomorrow..."

For fucks sake, how do these people get work? I despair.

Deja Poo

Fuckin' Bolton. Jasus.

September has barely wiped its feet on the way out and already Liverpool's league challenge is as good as over. I now fret for our long term league chances under Rafa Benitez, because it seems the little Spaniard cannot rid the team of its deeply ingrained inability to beat middle of the road teams in the Premiership, week in and week out. It's this that has cost us a league title under our previous two managers as well, dropping points to lesser sides. We hold our own with the big guns so obviously the ability is there. Must be a mental thing.

Everyone thinks league titles are decided by a team's results against the division's leading lights and this is true to an extent. But far more important is the ability to get up for a game against some minnows from the arsehole of Backwatersville on a wet and windy Monday night. Look at Chelsea. When Ranieri was there, their results against the big teams were more than good enough to suggest they should be winning the league, but they frequently imploded on supposedly inferior missions at Ewood Park or The Dell. What Mourinho has done is rid them of that particular mental frailty and that's why they win leagues, even playing poorly they will always punish inferior opposition.

Every game Chelsea play you expect them to win. With Liverpool, certain games, especially away from home and you just know we're going to struggle against the little men who treat playing us as their cup final. It's a nasty habit we'd better get shut of and pretty quickly, else we can forget about ever winning a league no matter what stadium or what funding we have behind us.

To have lost 3 games by end of September in a season where we're supposed to be mounting a challenge is wholly depressing. It's not that I ever believed we could win it this year anyway, but the least I expected was to see something that would suggest next year could be the one. Instead, we're still floundering for consistency which suggests we're getting no closer.

Aston Villa have managed to stay unbeaten so far, and they've played Arsenal and been to Stamford Bridge as well. Obviously Liverpool's ambitions differ from Villa's in that not losing is good for Villa where Liverpool are expected to win, but there's a steel and defiance, an iron will and hunger in Villa under Martin O'Neill that the more illustrious scousers would do well to note and learn from.

And Reina's in me fantasy team too. I'll be flogging him this week.