Thursday 17 May 2007

Friday lucky bag vol 9


Song of the week
When the wind blows by The Earlies
Ithe Earlies are one of those huge collectives popular nowadays. I first heard them supporting one of my favourite bands HEM. Much as been written about their Trans-global distribution, half of them live Burnley or similar, the other half in Texas. They are the smallest band with the biggest carbon foot print!
They play a mix of rock, folk, country and raga tinged dance which usually gets labelled “eclectic” (in journo speak this means they don’t sound like Coldplay and one of the band may be foreign).
Go and buy their album they probably suffer from “UB40itis”: the condition suffered by the Brum reggae stars i.e. how do you pay for everyone in the band with 10 members!

I don’t how they got their name; my hope is it comes from the same source as “the T’wearlies”. This is a subset of the older part of our community, first pointed out by Cov Blog’s Mum.
In the midlands bus drivers coined the name for the old ladies who loiter at bus stops in the morning flagging down buses and then asking the driver “am I too early?” i.e. “is it 9.30 so I can use my freedom pass?”. This got shortened to “Am I Twearly” (pronounced as twirly). In the wonderful way of English a verb became a noun and the “T’wearlies” were born.
I quite like the idea that boozy rockers modelled themselves on little old ladies.


Solipsism of the week: Ashes to ashes
This is getting out of hand, the trail of fire is falling like lava in a video game, I am swerving and dodging it like Mario after a power up. First it was down the road from home, then down the street from work then the work computer system and now my toaster. The bloody thing wouldn’t go out, once that bloomer style bread hits ignition point it burns “like a saint”. I even burned me fingers! (not badly but ya know it did hurt a bit, it was just some dust in my eye honest, worst things happen at sea…) Hopefully this chain of unconnected coincidence will stop soon.







Call it what you will Choddy, chuddy, chungy just please try to avoid the southern “chewy”. It has led to 2 trains of thought this week. Is it just me or does anyone else remember “BEECH NUT” chewing gum. My Friend A from Leeds was casting doubts on its existence but I remember buying little (1cm) almost square yellow packets (with brown or red ends) of beech nut gum in the hard tablet form. I think Stimyrol came in a similar light blue pack. Beech nut I think was cinnamon flavour and stimyrol aniseed? It was delish.
On the topic of choddy, I think I can coin a new phrase instead of describing a boring, repetitive and unending task as a “Forth bridge job” how about an “Oxford st. job” as every morning I pass a guy with a high pressure hose blasting the gum of the pavement. The first time I saw it the backlit cloud of water vapour made oxford st. look like Manhattan with its steaming road vents!
Ps. When I worked for a south London council it cost £30,000 a year to remove gum from the high street. So Oxford st. must 8-10 times that figure.


Come fly with me!
Found some radio control model films on Youtube. There are some excellent ones
The first is just my favourite things people just having big dumb fun because they can.
These guys (they are American) have a huge model of a Superfortress (B-29 fact fans) a four engined brute, which is cool in its self but they also have a Bell X1 rocket plane strapped underneath, which they launch like the real thing in mid air, cool. They also have mock crash and the crew bail out! Cool.
There are a lot of these films on youtube unfortunately they are mostly too long, badly shot and have dodgy American rock soundtracks!
The indoor rc stunt flying is incredible though.

Beer cannon film of the week!
On a similar note and even though it’s an ad for I think a micro brewery this beer can film is very well done and nicely edited.
Enjoy.
More films barmy Serge Gainsbourge and Bridget Bardot or is it a fast show sketch.
Iggy’s a very rude boy.

Ugliest phone of the week.

Was flick through “mobile choice” (“strapline what to buy and how to use it”) the UK leading mobile magazine when I saw this phone B&O Serene. Two things spring to mind that at £1000 they are a bit of a pricey way to send drunken texts to mates. But also they are horrible, the first thing I thought of when I saw them was those old spring loaded address pad things your parents had. You had to dial a number to find your Aunty’s number and they would spring open. (of course this is like me slagging off the design of the gold taps on Roman Abramovich 's yacht)
Bang Olufson is a strange brand. They occupy the same space as Bose and Lexus i.e. expensive and bland. Now don’t get me wrong I love a properly dampered swishy cd tray as much as the next man and will travel along way to see a nice shiny knob but what it sounds like is most important. I am obviously in a minority here as Nelly Furtado was seen nicking some from a shop on CSI: NY the other night. And she’s reet classy!

1 comment:

It's The Gardening Lady said...

Thanks for the mention! Realised it was about time wrote a new post, some of us aren't as reliable as The Friday Lucky Bag.
Re 'choddy' as you know I have a hearty dislike of the stuff, (though less pathalogical than in the past - just as well if I'm going to be a teecha, ey?) Anyway, I remember Beech nut chewing gum, and also juicy fruit, which I actually quite liked! I could actually start waxing lyrical about the delights of '70s sweeties ( or 'tuffies' as they are known in Nottingham) - but I do need topics for my blog so I'll perhaps save it till then!