Plugging my Pals: The Blog of Beth

My Worcester-based friend Beth now has a blog. You can find it here.

Hopefully, her fiancé Phil will get his finger out and start one, too. The Blogosphere sorely needs his wit, wisdom and excitable rants...

The Sixth Degree of Christopher Lee

This evening we returned to Birmingham after spending the last few days visiting Clare's family in the South Kent coastal town of Hythe. It's a 400-odd mile round trip, so forgive me if I sound exhausted. My Kerouac gland ain't what it used to be.

As well as being a pretty town that's been steeped, soaked and marinated overnight in history, Hythe is also home to the legendary screen actor Christopher Lee. At least, that's what Clare's parents have told me.

Lee, of course, has had a long and distinguished career. According to The Oracle of Bacon - the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon people - he's the highest placed living actor in their Centre of the Hollywood Universe chart (second only to the late, great Rod Steiger). In case you don't know (or can't be arsed remembering), Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was a trivia game popular amongst film geeks in the late-90s. Its purpose was to connect any given actor or actress with Kevin Bacon in as few moves as possible.

For example, only three films separate Kevin Bacon from Laurel & Hardy:

Kevin Bacon appeared in 2008s New York, I Love You with Cloris Leachman, she appeared in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) with Iris Adrian and she appeared in Our Relations (1936) with Stan and Ollie.

That's impressive. The Centre of the Hollywood Universe was an attempt to refine the methodology and find out which stars had an even greater gravitational pull than Mr Bacon. In the case of Christopher Lee, only two films stand between him and Laurel & Hardy:

Christopher Lee appeared in 1958's Dracula with Peter Cushing, who previously appeared in A Chump at Oxford (1940) with The Immortal Duo.

I used to have a theory that Lee was something of a real-life Forrest Gump based on the number of historically significant people he seems to have come into contact with. He was, after all, a step-cousin to Ian Fleming and the only member of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings cast to have met JRR Tolkein. The theory was subsequently abandoned, however, after I couldn't think of any more examples.

In any case, according Clare's parents the great man lives just around the corner from them. Now, I've visited Hythe on numerous occasions and have yet to catch a glimpse of the erstwhile Prince of Darkness. I haven't even seen him at the local Waitrose.

I'm starting to think they're pulling my leg.

Et in Arcade ego

Despite my numerous misgivings about the soon-to-be released movie adaptation of Watchmen, its ingenious viral marketing campaign continues to bring out the worst out in me.

The latest is a an 80s-style, 8-bit, beat-em-up arcade game manufactured by Watchmen's fictional Veidt Industries. I shouldn't like it, but I can't stop playing it.

Insert Coin HERE.

My Top 10 Films of 2008

Here's my somewhat ridiculously overdue Top Ten Films of 2008, the disappointing sequel to Top Ten Films of 2007. To make up for my tardiness, each one comes with a lovingly hand-crafted haiku summary.

I thought the haiku was an original touch, until I realised that sites like this have been doing this sort of thing for ages.


Never mind, eh?



10. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Stateside Guillermo
But Hellboy goes to Ulster
Red Right Hand, indeed...


9. The Orphanage

Twisty Spanish yarn
With a very sad middle
Behold the sack mask!

(Thanks to Clare for that one!)


8. Burn After Reading

Coen's strike again
Dumb idiots hatch dumb plot
It's sadistic fun!


7. Tropic Thunder.

Actors' film folly
As they stumble into war
Year's funniest film


6. No Country For Old Men.



The Brothers Coen
Go bleak and nihilistic
Beware cattle gun!



5. There Will Be Blood


Fictional oilman

Think: 'Charlie Kane Does Dallas'
Dan Day Lewis shines!



4. Iron Man


Wealthy arms dealer
Finds redemption in tin suit
He's Invincible!



3. Wall*E

Little yellow box
Dreams of love and musicals
Then clears up our mess

2. In Bruges

Two Irish hitmen

Lying low in Low Country

Beware racist dwarf!

1. The Dark Knight

Costumed crime drama

Of order versus chaos

A spandex ballet!

The Stand Down Margaret

The funniest thing I read today appeared in an article about 80s Anti-Thatch pop in this month's Uncut:

It's 1980, and The Beat are scheduled to play "Stand Down Margaret" on the early evening kids' TV show, Cheggers Plays Pop.

"We had to get the song on by stealth," laughs lead singer Dave Wakeling. "Our genial old Jamaican saxophonist, Saxa, explained to presenter Keith Chegwin that The Stand Down Margaret was an old Caribbean dance. 'Come now, Cheggers,' he was saying. 'Let me show you how to dance The Stand Down Margaret...' and he invents some ridiculous little dance routine. Then we start playing the song and unzip our jackets and we've all got T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of Maggie Thatcher..."

11-11-11: Crown and Cushion, Perry Barr

Le 11 novembre 2008 Clare et moi avons passé plusieurs heures circumnavigating la ville de Birmingham sur l'autobus du numéro 11. C'était idée de limites de Jon Bounds de 'Birmingham: n'est pas Merde.'


We're still on the number 11 bus, we're still in Perry Barr and we're now passing the Crown and Cushion pub. There's been a Crown and Cushion standing at the corner of Wellington Road and Birchfield Road for as long as I remember, although it hasn't always been this Crown and Cushion.

The current incumbent is a fairly modern-looking, functional affair that, by my somewhat unreliable estimation, was constructed in the late 1980s or possibly even the early-1990s. I wasn't on the number 11 at the time so I didn't take any notes.

It was built on the site of a more traditional looking red brick boozer called, unsurprisingly, The Old Crown and Cushion. As I recall, across the road from what used to be The Old Crown and Cushion was a smaller pub squeezed between a row of shops on Birchfield Road. It was called The New Crown and Cushion.

Now, I'm no expert on pub name etymology, but I think its safe to assume that the New Crown and Cushion was a late arrival on the scene. Being a younger pub, I imagine it was a bit of an upstart fuelled by youthful exuberance and swaggering cockiness, although it probably skipped on the the piss and vinegar for health and safety reasons.

It must have felt a bit annoyed when the Old Crown and Cushion was bulldozed and replaced with a Crown and Cushion that was newer than 'The New Crown and Cushion'. For one thing, it had to change its name.

For some reason this makes me think of Spinal Tap.

We've been rather busy this evening.

'Nuff said.