Nick's Blog
California Blogging
14/7/2009 @ 22:48
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It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold. I disagree. For me, revenge is something best done with an upbeat tempo and with close harmonies. A prime example must surely be one of the most fiendish, the most calculating bit of psychological warfare ever conducted outside of a CIA campaign to destablise a 3rd world country that's just been toppled by Communism.
I give you The Mamas And The Papas.
Sure, you might think of them as a group of loveable sixties love children singing cheerful but somewhat sacharine ballads but there's a darker side to their music. Towards the end of their career Michelle Phillips (the pretty and thin one) had an affair with Denny Doherty (the smaller of the guys) which her husband, John Phillips (the taller guy), found out about.
Now, some people would get angry, they might smash things, there would probably be a blazing row, some suits cut up with scissors and maybe a pot plant or two hurled. More calculating people who had been cuckolded might get the offending partner thrown out of the house and taken to the cleaners in a divorce court but John Phillips had other ideas....
He wrote a song about the affair called "I Saw Her Again". Then he MADE the rest of the band sing it! And sing it with gusto! And then releasing it as the main track on their second album! And then see it get to #5 in the US and #3 in the UK! And after that, he threw Michelle out of the band! Now that's revenge, my friends. This is a kind of lasting revenge that would haunt the perpetrators every time the song is played on the radio and it would net John Phillips some nice royalties every time! So it had its own built-in compensation scheme. Now this is so much more effective than digging two graves and putting a bullet in the back of their heads.
I can imagine Sean Connery playing Phillips in a movie, wearing a kaftan and love beads saying "he makes a pass at your wife, you write a poem, he sleeps with your wife you write a top 10 pop song....THAT'S the hippy way!"
Daytime Blog
11/7/2009 @ 10:37
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Wifey went back to work this month, part time, and I look after Junior on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This has given me the opportunity to discover a whole world of daytime TV that I hitherto have been unaware of.
I'm not talking about talk shows, cookery shows or shopping channels. I'm talking about movies where Joanna Kerns is a widow and feels lonely until she meets Corbin Bernsen and they have a whirlwind romance and get married. But her daughter, Kellie Martin, suspects Corbin of being a psychopath and sets out to prove it. He goes ballistic one day and tries to kill Kellie but Joanna kills him instead, gets arrested, goes to trial but has a hot shot lawyer who argues that the killing was justified and she gets set free and ends up apologising to Kellie.
Or Mel Harris forgets to collect her daughter (Kellie Martin) from ballet practice and gets sent to a mental institution for being a bad mother because of some strange state law. Kellie finds a crusading lawyer (Corbin Bernsen) who fights for her freedom.
Or Kellie Martin is jealous of Tori Spelling because she's the school cheerleader and the coolest and is also having an affair with the school principal (Corbin Bernsen) so she decides to shoot them. Her mother (Joanna Kerns or, if wet, Mel Harris) can't believe that her daughter is a killer but detective George Dzundza is set to prove she killed them.
Or Brian Dennehy has been waging a campaign of hate against single mothers Mel Harris and Joanna Kerns in a small town but crusading journalist, Kellie Martin, tries to get to the truth with local sherrif, Corbin Bernsen, by pressuring the man who owns everything in the town (G.D. Spradlin) to give up what he knows about Dennehy. William Devane plays a crusading lawyer.
Or Kate Jackson plays Mel Harris in a story about a once prime time leading actress who is now reduced to starring in daytime weepie thrillers about being stalked by Corbin Bernsen, William Devane and Tim Matheson simultaneously while Brian Dennehy looks on from the cameras he's secretly placed around the town just so he can spy on everyone. Kellie Martin may or may not be a serial killer.
The Blog Of Human Kindness
06/7/2009 @ 10:10
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Wifey and I had a completely bat shit insane conversation over the weekend: The kind that could get either one of us sectioned under the Mental Health Act. And like a lot of batshit insane talk that can get you sectioned under the Mental Health Act, it all started innocently enough.
We were sitting having lunch in the garden with little Junior and talking about his likes and dislikes when it comes to food. Here is, verbatim and without any embellishment, the converstion:
ME: He does like cheese.
WIFEY: Yes, except for Feta which we tried him with the other day.
ME: Yes, but that is a sharp tasting cheese though. It's from goat's milk, is it?
WIFEY: Goat or sheep.
ME: Sheep? I didn't know you could get sheep's cheese...or milk...for general consumption.
WIFEY: Oh yes.
ME: I mean, all mammals produce milk so in theory you can make cheese from any of them. Like whales.
WIFEY: Are whales mammals?
ME: Yes, they can suckle their young. However, it would be difficult to get hold of the whale milk to make cheese.
WIFEY: Best stick to land based mammals.
ME: Yes, like monkeys. Monkey cheese! I'd buy that.
WIFEY: Human milk is best for humans, so why not milk women?
ME: Hmmm, in a liberal, Western society could we really justify taking women out of their jobs and homes to milk them for half a day? I suppose you could have nice, comfortable milking centres where women could be milked and they could watch telly, or read a book or magazine or something to make them feel relaxed.
WIFEY: No need to take them out of their jobs...just set up women only carriages on the Underground or trains and equip them with milking machines. The women get on the train, attach themselves to the milking pumps and they can get milked on their way to and from work.
ME: Then you're encountering the problem of supply and distribution. These train carriages need to be emptied regularly and the milk stored quickly. So we would need to....
WIFEY AND ME SIMULTANEOUSLY: ...Build dairies next to train terminuses!
ME: Edgware on the Northern line terminus could have a dairy built in and cheese production could begin then and there.
WIFEY: A simple plan which is bound to work.
ME: Only, you would have to renumerate the women for their milk. It would be immoral to take their milk and sell it on without them getting a penny.
WIFEY: We could set up shares, it could be like the Co-op or John Lewis.
ME: And those shops do very well.
And so, a plan was hatched to milk the women of Britiain for cheese on the London Underground. Right, Wifey and I are now off to section ourselves.
