TV Chefs

I am a little fed up of TV chefs telling me " when your finished with the vanilla pod , what you can do is put what remains into your sugar and this will give it a lovely taste " ......... I KNOW , HEARD IT 40 TIMES THANK YOU !

Fact is , most folks dont have vanilla pods , fresh Fennel or goose fat lying around their kitchens , so please .... dont patronize us .

How addictive is this song ?

This is quite rude , so people with a delicate disposition should avoid it . on the other hand ... if you and your mates like to go out for a drink and a laugh now and then and you ever find yourself in a late night taxi stop waiting for a taxi and you are bored ........ then this is definately the song for you .

Hollywood

Why oh why does Hollywood have to make the same movies year after year ?

The other evening I watched about 10 minutes of a movie entitled " Two Weeks Notice " with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant , it didn't take me long to figure out it was just another version of the same movie Hollywood makes every year ........ Pretty Woman , Maid in Manhattan , Sleepless in Seattle etc . Where's the originality gone ?
If it's not that movie rehashed every year , it's a movie about a group of misfits who go on to win some title or another by bonding together and beating the odds , it doesn't matter if its " The Mighty Ducks " or " Dodgeball " ............ they're all the same .
Trying to find a movie with a new story is becoming increasingly difficult these days , I find that I have to look for independant movies more and more , Hollywood has given up , it doesn't even bother anymore to try and bring something new to the screen , re-makes of old movies and TV shows seems to be the easier option , its bad enough that TV itself is dumbing down ... now we get the same with the movie industry .................... thank God for books.
The problem that Hollywood has with books is that they want happy endings and so change these fabulous stories and in the process ... ruin them . One of my favorite books of recent years was " Hannibal " . the third ( and final ) in the Hannibal Lecter series ........ the ending was beautiful and fitted the completion of the story so well ......... but when Hollywood got hold of it they ruined it , presumeably to leave the door open for another sequel ....... shame .
Trying to sanitize wonderful works of fiction should not be allowed , Hollywood should only be allowed the rights to books if they are going to be faithful to the story, sometimes the book and the movie bear no relationship to one another as is the case with Hannibal .
As a fan of The Lord of the Rings for thirty odd years I was dissappointed with some of the omisions from the original book , I understand that the story is so vast that to put everything in would have meant a forth movie , but some characters and storylines are so important to the overall tale that they should have been included , I refer to Tom Bombadil and the destruction of the shire at the end of the tale , dont get me wrong ... I enjoyed the Trilogy very much and never thought I'd see the day when this story would be so beautifully brought to the screen ....... and yet ...... to leave out such crucial parts and to change other crucial parts however minutely was a strange decision in my view . It was my version of Star Wars or Harry Potter and I didn't want it changed just for the sake of it . I still prefer to read the book to get the complete story and maybe thats not such a bad thing , but I wonder how many people feel that they now know the story having seen the movies .
I often say to people who have seen the movies but not read the books that they should never enter a LOTR's quiz ..... the two are very different , I'm still glad that Peter jackson made the movies , the amazing scenery puts pictures to the words I've read at least a half a dozen times over thirty years .

Here's hoping that a new generation of film maker will be faithful to the words created by the authors in modern fiction , I know that " Life of Pi " and " The Time Travellers Wife " are being brought to the screen soon ......... I have read both and am very fond of them , I will be very dissappointed if they are changed for some sort of dumbing-downess by the time they arrive on the screen , Hollywood shouldn't always make something simpler to make sure that a mass audience " gets it " .......... sometimes its more important to be faithful to the words and if some movie goers dont get it ........ perhaps they should read more !

MISS TEEN SOUTH CAROLINA

. Now , dont panic ..... this young lady is very attractive and will have no trouble at all finding herself a rich husband some day, in fact I'll go so far as to say , most 45 year old millionaires would gladly dump the mother of their children in order to wed this young lady .
The world is full of rich middle aged men who want nothing more from a partner than a mouth that works , the lack of a functioning brain is not a problem and is in fact more desirable .

I'm sure that we'll hear alot more from this young lady in this Z-list celebrity driven crazy world of ours soon , who knows ... she may have already been offered her own reality show on MTV ...................... another fine role model for the youth of today ................. Bless .

THE PLAN by Jack Handey

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen:
—The door to the vault must have accidentally been left open by the cleaning woman.
—The guard must bend over to tie his shoes and somehow he gets all the shoelaces tied together. He can’t get them apart, so he takes out his gun and shoots all his bullets at the knot. But he misses. Then he just lies down on the floor and goes to sleep.
—Most of the customers in the bank must happen to be wearing Nixon masks, so when we come in wearing our Nixon masks it doesn’t alarm anyone.
—There must be an empty parking space right out in front. If it has a meter, there must be time left on it, because our outfits don’t have pockets for change.
—The monkeys must grab the bags of money and not just shriek and go running all over the place, like they did in the practice run.
—The security cameras must be the early, old-timey kind that don’t actually take pictures.
—When the big clock in the lobby strikes two, everyone must stop and stare at it for at least ten minutes.
—The bank alarm must have mistakenly been set to “Quiet.” Or “Ebb tide.”
—The gold bars must be made out of a lighter kind of gold that’s just as valuable but easier to carry.
—If somebody runs out of the bank and yells, “Help! The bank is being robbed!,” he must be a neighborhood crazy person who people just laugh at.
—If the police come, they don’t notice that the historical mural on the wall is actually us, holding still.
—The bank’s lost-and-found department must have a gun that fires a suction cup with a wire attached to it. Also a chainsaw and a hang glider.
—When we spray the lobby with knockout gas, for some reason the gas doesn’t work on us.
—After the suction cup is stuck to the ceiling, it must hold long enough for Leon to pull himself up the wire while carrying the bags of money, the gold bars, and the hang glider. When he reaches the ceiling, he must be able to cut through it with the chainsaw and climb out.
—Any fingerprints we leave must be erased by the monkeys.
—Once on the roof, Leon must be able to hold on to the hang glider with one hand and the money and the gold bars with the other and launch himself off the roof. Then glide the twenty miles to the rendezvous point.
—When we exit the bank, there must be a parade going by, so our getaway car, which is decorated to look like a float, can blend right in.
—During the parade, our car must not win a prize for best float, because then we’ll have to have our picture taken with the award.
—At the rendezvous point, there must be an empty parking space with a meter that takes hundred-dollar bills.
—The robbery is blamed on the monkeys.

The New Yorker ( Nov 24 2008 )