The Amalekite vs John C. Calhoun
I swore I'd produce a journal entry summarising our recent two-day soiree and now I have. Whereas lesser men in my position would simply fumble out a few tweets on Twatter1 like badly underdone foreplay2 on a high caste wench, my feeling is that only a full unabridged record of the proceedings will do. It was certainly worth more than 140 characters.
My father always told me that life is like a box of CUNTFLAPS you make your lifelong friends at university. Unfortunately, my university is a clean hundred miles plus from where I live now and so prior to Monday, I hadn't seen any of my fabled posse since the sweet Summer of '07 which Canadian singer-songwriter and US President John Adams sang of on the floor of the House of Representatives, filibustering the shit out of Jefferson's Madagascar Plan and slaying Joseph Brant in the process3. Therefore, I was greatly cheered to hear that mr_mitts and dracko were repairing to my hallowed hometown of Albion City for divers silliness involving loins and musculuture4. About time too: I had until recently begun to think of them purely as fictional constructs, the product of a beautiful mind. Just like in that Russell Crowe film Out of Africa5. Thus:
DAY THE FIRST: This Mandarin Goes Up To Eleven
I had consumed a pear for breakfast whilst taking another one along in my coat pocket for later-pay attention: this will become a plot point later6-and having started work at nine of the clock, I proceeded to work until Mitts showed up avec a suitcase of luggage and a few pounds more than I remembered (plus the haircut I used to have back when I had hair7). We exchanged the official Anime Soc handshake, commented on the Judaeo-Caledonian nature of some of the store's book prices8 before he fucked off so that I could get on with the rest of my job. Half an hour on, we met up again, left the store, browsed a few book shops and then made our way to Chinatown, just like Jack Nicholson did at the end of that film about a detective, Batman9. We may have over-ordered and overspent at a local restaurant (and over-tipped) but we egressed their house of Sinic culinary delights with smiles of personal accomplishment shining across our normally hateful countenances. This was about the time we made for my aeons-old haunt of the BFI Southbank (I've been going there for almost ten years now and I'm still the youngest member of the audience).
A Digression of the Modern Kind: The Bitter Tea of General Yen
Before It's a Wonderful Life and It Happened One Night10, Frank Capra made this, a tale of Megan, an American missionary's wife in warlord era China, and her abduction on her wedding night by the aloof and autocratic Chinese general of the title. Mitts is more familiar with the historical angle and will doubtless provide more information on the film's background and the accuracy depicted therein which he will now have to do as I have just fucking said so. The film's portrayal of Yen as a typically cold-blooded Asiatic in and from a culture of reserved but brutal people obviously dates it a bit, but at the time the threat of miscegenation or an interracial relationship was still bugbear enough to see it banned in Britain and her empire. Yen's blustering, cigar-chomping, carpet-suited American financier inveighs loudly against any involvement with the white woman-although it's no skin of his cock-in his typically loud and crass Occidental manner. Through a fairly stunning dream sequence and other visual cues, Megan finds herself falling in love with her kidnapper and his firm, taciturn ways, becoming the tsundere schoolgirl to his brooding vampire in the modern parlance. The yellowface didn't crack me up like I thought it would but before the final reel someone in the projection booth made their first and final fuck-up and the sequence was delayed. It was at this point that Mitts leaned over to me and whispered into my ear Johnny Carcosa style the phrase "Wza-Y'ei" "Dho-Hna" "Yr Nhhngr" "This One Goes Up To Eleven" just after the sound came back on and Yen had struck a bell, cementing it in my subconscious like a virus of the mind. For the final ten minutes of the film, whilst the general gazed upon his crumbling empire like a jaded mandarin, I was choking back laughter at the mental image of Yen suddenly revealing a stringed instrument from behind his robes and informing his squeeze that "this mandolin goes up to eleven"11.
Capra was hoping he had an oscar magnet on his hands; he didn't, but it was a decent picture all the same. A few drinks later, we returned to my new flat and watched Teesside Tintin and the Frankie Boyle & pals drugs experiment before Mitts passed out and I too gave myself up to sleep and fell into the arms of Morpheus as played by Laurence Fishburne in that one where all the characters are dressed in long black coats and wear dark glasses. I think it's called Pee-wee's Playhouse12.
FINAL THOUGHT: Mr Mitts snores like a howitzer. The firebombing of Kobe could've been going on outside my place and I wouldn't have heard it for his nocturnal exhalations. He really is a prize cunt13.
DAY THE SECOND: Those Bold Resurrection Men
Once Mitts had been safely mailed off to his Gran's and the transference of Fry from Cambridge had been soundly secured, I took a shower and a shave before making my way to Piccadilly Circus for further entertainment. We booked a table at a Thai restaurant where I had eaten previously and could vouch for the quality of the vittles. The waiter gave me a shifty eye when I asked him to hold a table for fifteen minutes; he looked at me as if I had just told him we were from MI5 and wished to speak with him about all the Cambodian prostitutes he had out back. Looking back on it though, he could've just thought I was a fucking tool. When Fry arrived, the insults started flying as I had hoped they would. It had been three years but these were still the same two saddos I remembered and hoped to spend a good deal of my life with, perhaps even give eulogies for, before showering both their graves with my warm, warm urine. Moving on. Our stomachs filled with curry and satay, we made for one of the Leicester Square Odeons for our celluloid pleasures to help with the digestion.
A Second Digression: Burke & Hare
In answer to Mitts' question if I had ever seen a bad John Landis movie, the answer is a qualified 'no' since I've never seen Blues Brothers 2000 or Beverly Hills Cop III and a few others in his oeuvre so I can't attest to their quality. They very well may be shit. This one wasn't though. The West Port murders of 1828 and 1829 are not the ripest subject for a comedy or so you who find no laughter in mortality may think. If you think that then you're a gimp because murder is hilarious and anyone who disagrees hasn't watched the right videos on YouTube. Burke and Hare were the most famous body snatchers in British history despite being Irish and while the film takes a good number of liberties with the truth-neither of them were born in Donegal for a start-you can well imagine working class Edinburgh at the fag end of the Georgian era looking very much as was presented to us. I didn't really care too much for the personality dynamics of a determined Serkis with Pegg as the conscience-ridden foil, sort of like a homicidal Harold and Kumar, as it's so ubiquitous in cinema and television, I just get bored of it. I found the whole Macbeth subplot appropriate but I just got more laughs out of Burke constantly getting cockblocked. Perhaps this is more of an aesthetic hope, but Knox was notoriously racist against the Irish and Celts in general14, I had hoped we'd see a bit of that attitude towards our two antiheroes. Just for good measure. Of the bit parts, Christopher Lee and Paul Whitehouse were the finest, but every scene with Ronnie Corbett had him at his diminutive best: before now I'd never pictured him as a self-important shako-wearing half pint Scottish Judge Dredd but from now on that's how I'll always think of him. The historical cameos from Darwin, Wordsworth and Niépce were similarly amusing (and just about chronologically feasible). The lukewarm to shitty reviews the film has got from magazines such as TimeOut and The Guardian are largely unfair as we all laughed our arses off and there was very little whispering other than that emanating from the bastards directly behind us. If only Landis could now go and make a black comedy about the Gordon Riots, we could have our delicious cake and eat it. That's an artery, by the way.
After further drinking and reminiscing, Mitts made good his escape so as to beat those striking bastards before they cut short his train ride home. Fry and I followed likewise and once home, ordered pizza while we watched YouTube, Teesside Tintin and more Frankie Boyle (Fry wasn't tipsy enough for the drug experiment bit so we just watched the main performance). In his favour, Fry doesn't snore but he did get up at around two and disappear into the toilet for twenty minutes. I was barely awake at the time, but I concluded then that he had put his head in the toilet bowl and was merely communing with the Deep Ones, those antediluvian beings who had in a former age held imperium over the deep blue majesty we call the sea. This was prior to the epoch of man, when shapes inchoate and abhorrent peopled the brumal lands; in these days, the welkin rang with behemothic melodies whilst abased and baneful empyrean entities thronged the firmament with their loathsome presence. There were no dollars in them days. But sons of bitches, yeah. Or I guess he could've just been puking or having a shit. It's your call.
I sent Fry packing this morning after a makeshift repast and now it's all over. My one regret is that we didn't take any pictures and consequently, none of it ever happened. If either of the two gentlemen involved wish to quibble about any point or reference to their character which they found to be counterfactual, they can go and stick their genitals in a rotary blade like in that film with Peter Lorre and Justin Bieber, Blowbang Chronicles 2: Eclectic Portaloo. Zounds.
Footnotes:
1 This pun is my pun. This pun was made for you and me.
2 More like BOREplay. Am I correct in this estimation?
3 Memorably commemorated in John Trumbull's classic oil-on-canvas masterwork The Fuck Am I Supposed To Be Paintin' Here?
4 Sorry, I've been reading D.H. Lawrence and J.G. Ballard and I just had to fit those words in somewhere.
5 Bud-doom tish.
6 It won't.
7 CRAAAWLING IN MY SKIN... THESE FOLLICLES THEY WILL NOT HEEEAL.
8 £25 for a paperback? Chook it back in the rabbi's sporran and tell 'im to fook off.
9 An oldie but a goodie.
10 Screwball magic. Without this film the Coen Brothers probably would've packed it in after Blood Simple and by now would be cantors at some synagogue in Minnesota, trying to resurrect the Golem of Prague.
11 I'm still laughing about it now.
12 As seen on no one's TV.
13 Oh, and if you're reading this, chum, the writing on the cistern in the toilet IS Korean. They've got more circles than a donut factory.
14 Knox is a Scots Gaelic surname, indicating Celtic provenance (as would be expected from a Scot). What a fucking dolt.
And In Conclusion:
My father always told me that life is like a box of CUNTFLAPS you make your lifelong friends at university. Unfortunately, my university is a clean hundred miles plus from where I live now and so prior to Monday, I hadn't seen any of my fabled posse since the sweet Summer of '07 which Canadian singer-songwriter and US President John Adams sang of on the floor of the House of Representatives, filibustering the shit out of Jefferson's Madagascar Plan and slaying Joseph Brant in the process3. Therefore, I was greatly cheered to hear that mr_mitts and dracko were repairing to my hallowed hometown of Albion City for divers silliness involving loins and musculuture4. About time too: I had until recently begun to think of them purely as fictional constructs, the product of a beautiful mind. Just like in that Russell Crowe film Out of Africa5. Thus:
DAY THE FIRST: This Mandarin Goes Up To Eleven
I had consumed a pear for breakfast whilst taking another one along in my coat pocket for later-pay attention: this will become a plot point later6-and having started work at nine of the clock, I proceeded to work until Mitts showed up avec a suitcase of luggage and a few pounds more than I remembered (plus the haircut I used to have back when I had hair7). We exchanged the official Anime Soc handshake, commented on the Judaeo-Caledonian nature of some of the store's book prices8 before he fucked off so that I could get on with the rest of my job. Half an hour on, we met up again, left the store, browsed a few book shops and then made our way to Chinatown, just like Jack Nicholson did at the end of that film about a detective, Batman9. We may have over-ordered and overspent at a local restaurant (and over-tipped) but we egressed their house of Sinic culinary delights with smiles of personal accomplishment shining across our normally hateful countenances. This was about the time we made for my aeons-old haunt of the BFI Southbank (I've been going there for almost ten years now and I'm still the youngest member of the audience).
A Digression of the Modern Kind: The Bitter Tea of General Yen
Before It's a Wonderful Life and It Happened One Night10, Frank Capra made this, a tale of Megan, an American missionary's wife in warlord era China, and her abduction on her wedding night by the aloof and autocratic Chinese general of the title. Mitts is more familiar with the historical angle and will doubtless provide more information on the film's background and the accuracy depicted therein which he will now have to do as I have just fucking said so. The film's portrayal of Yen as a typically cold-blooded Asiatic in and from a culture of reserved but brutal people obviously dates it a bit, but at the time the threat of miscegenation or an interracial relationship was still bugbear enough to see it banned in Britain and her empire. Yen's blustering, cigar-chomping, carpet-suited American financier inveighs loudly against any involvement with the white woman-although it's no skin of his cock-in his typically loud and crass Occidental manner. Through a fairly stunning dream sequence and other visual cues, Megan finds herself falling in love with her kidnapper and his firm, taciturn ways, becoming the tsundere schoolgirl to his brooding vampire in the modern parlance. The yellowface didn't crack me up like I thought it would but before the final reel someone in the projection booth made their first and final fuck-up and the sequence was delayed. It was at this point that Mitts leaned over to me and whispered into my ear Johnny Carcosa style the phrase "Wza-Y'ei" "Dho-Hna" "Yr Nhhngr" "This One Goes Up To Eleven" just after the sound came back on and Yen had struck a bell, cementing it in my subconscious like a virus of the mind. For the final ten minutes of the film, whilst the general gazed upon his crumbling empire like a jaded mandarin, I was choking back laughter at the mental image of Yen suddenly revealing a stringed instrument from behind his robes and informing his squeeze that "this mandolin goes up to eleven"11.
Capra was hoping he had an oscar magnet on his hands; he didn't, but it was a decent picture all the same. A few drinks later, we returned to my new flat and watched Teesside Tintin and the Frankie Boyle & pals drugs experiment before Mitts passed out and I too gave myself up to sleep and fell into the arms of Morpheus as played by Laurence Fishburne in that one where all the characters are dressed in long black coats and wear dark glasses. I think it's called Pee-wee's Playhouse12.
FINAL THOUGHT: Mr Mitts snores like a howitzer. The firebombing of Kobe could've been going on outside my place and I wouldn't have heard it for his nocturnal exhalations. He really is a prize cunt13.
DAY THE SECOND: Those Bold Resurrection Men
Once Mitts had been safely mailed off to his Gran's and the transference of Fry from Cambridge had been soundly secured, I took a shower and a shave before making my way to Piccadilly Circus for further entertainment. We booked a table at a Thai restaurant where I had eaten previously and could vouch for the quality of the vittles. The waiter gave me a shifty eye when I asked him to hold a table for fifteen minutes; he looked at me as if I had just told him we were from MI5 and wished to speak with him about all the Cambodian prostitutes he had out back. Looking back on it though, he could've just thought I was a fucking tool. When Fry arrived, the insults started flying as I had hoped they would. It had been three years but these were still the same two saddos I remembered and hoped to spend a good deal of my life with, perhaps even give eulogies for, before showering both their graves with my warm, warm urine. Moving on. Our stomachs filled with curry and satay, we made for one of the Leicester Square Odeons for our celluloid pleasures to help with the digestion.
A Second Digression: Burke & Hare
In answer to Mitts' question if I had ever seen a bad John Landis movie, the answer is a qualified 'no' since I've never seen Blues Brothers 2000 or Beverly Hills Cop III and a few others in his oeuvre so I can't attest to their quality. They very well may be shit. This one wasn't though. The West Port murders of 1828 and 1829 are not the ripest subject for a comedy or so you who find no laughter in mortality may think. If you think that then you're a gimp because murder is hilarious and anyone who disagrees hasn't watched the right videos on YouTube. Burke and Hare were the most famous body snatchers in British history despite being Irish and while the film takes a good number of liberties with the truth-neither of them were born in Donegal for a start-you can well imagine working class Edinburgh at the fag end of the Georgian era looking very much as was presented to us. I didn't really care too much for the personality dynamics of a determined Serkis with Pegg as the conscience-ridden foil, sort of like a homicidal Harold and Kumar, as it's so ubiquitous in cinema and television, I just get bored of it. I found the whole Macbeth subplot appropriate but I just got more laughs out of Burke constantly getting cockblocked. Perhaps this is more of an aesthetic hope, but Knox was notoriously racist against the Irish and Celts in general14, I had hoped we'd see a bit of that attitude towards our two antiheroes. Just for good measure. Of the bit parts, Christopher Lee and Paul Whitehouse were the finest, but every scene with Ronnie Corbett had him at his diminutive best: before now I'd never pictured him as a self-important shako-wearing half pint Scottish Judge Dredd but from now on that's how I'll always think of him. The historical cameos from Darwin, Wordsworth and Niépce were similarly amusing (and just about chronologically feasible). The lukewarm to shitty reviews the film has got from magazines such as TimeOut and The Guardian are largely unfair as we all laughed our arses off and there was very little whispering other than that emanating from the bastards directly behind us. If only Landis could now go and make a black comedy about the Gordon Riots, we could have our delicious cake and eat it. That's an artery, by the way.
After further drinking and reminiscing, Mitts made good his escape so as to beat those striking bastards before they cut short his train ride home. Fry and I followed likewise and once home, ordered pizza while we watched YouTube, Teesside Tintin and more Frankie Boyle (Fry wasn't tipsy enough for the drug experiment bit so we just watched the main performance). In his favour, Fry doesn't snore but he did get up at around two and disappear into the toilet for twenty minutes. I was barely awake at the time, but I concluded then that he had put his head in the toilet bowl and was merely communing with the Deep Ones, those antediluvian beings who had in a former age held imperium over the deep blue majesty we call the sea. This was prior to the epoch of man, when shapes inchoate and abhorrent peopled the brumal lands; in these days, the welkin rang with behemothic melodies whilst abased and baneful empyrean entities thronged the firmament with their loathsome presence. There were no dollars in them days. But sons of bitches, yeah. Or I guess he could've just been puking or having a shit. It's your call.
I sent Fry packing this morning after a makeshift repast and now it's all over. My one regret is that we didn't take any pictures and consequently, none of it ever happened. If either of the two gentlemen involved wish to quibble about any point or reference to their character which they found to be counterfactual, they can go and stick their genitals in a rotary blade like in that film with Peter Lorre and Justin Bieber, Blowbang Chronicles 2: Eclectic Portaloo. Zounds.
Footnotes:
1 This pun is my pun. This pun was made for you and me.
2 More like BOREplay. Am I correct in this estimation?
3 Memorably commemorated in John Trumbull's classic oil-on-canvas masterwork The Fuck Am I Supposed To Be Paintin' Here?
4 Sorry, I've been reading D.H. Lawrence and J.G. Ballard and I just had to fit those words in somewhere.
5 Bud-doom tish.
6 It won't.
7 CRAAAWLING IN MY SKIN... THESE FOLLICLES THEY WILL NOT HEEEAL.
8 £25 for a paperback? Chook it back in the rabbi's sporran and tell 'im to fook off.
9 An oldie but a goodie.
10 Screwball magic. Without this film the Coen Brothers probably would've packed it in after Blood Simple and by now would be cantors at some synagogue in Minnesota, trying to resurrect the Golem of Prague.
11 I'm still laughing about it now.
12 As seen on no one's TV.
13 Oh, and if you're reading this, chum, the writing on the cistern in the toilet IS Korean. They've got more circles than a donut factory.
14 Knox is a Scots Gaelic surname, indicating Celtic provenance (as would be expected from a Scot). What a fucking dolt.
And In Conclusion:
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