Tag: Entertainment
Not Bad For A Newbie
I’m so sick of people (mostly in the Comintern media) yammering about how The Donald hasn’t achieved anything during this, his first year as POTUS (or “God-Emperor”, as one of my favorite commentators puts it).
Allow me to quote Patrick J. Buchanan, surely the sourest of conservative commentators, on the topic:
The largest tax cuts in decades. Elevation of Neil Gorsuch to the Antonin Scalia seat on the Supreme Court. A record number of new [conservative, originalist – K.] U.S. appellate court judges approved by the Senate. The U.S. is out of the Paris climate accord and out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
NAFTA is being renegotiated. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will be open for drilling. The U.S. is at full employment, with minority unemployment near record lows. The stock market has consistently broken records, with the Dow having added 5,000 points. The Obamacare individual mandate tax is gone. Obama-era regulations have been cut and some eliminated.
Can’t add much to that, except for the inevitable:
Ol’ Pat forgot that one. All by itself, it’s a major Trump accomplishment.
Groucho’s Moustache
It’s all Phil Collins’s fault.
Perhaps I should explain myself.
Phil has a daughter named Lily who is a fashion model, and an extraordinarily beautiful girl she is, too:
However, she is distinguishable from most other girls by her signature feature, those thick, glossy eyebrows. And if there’s one thing we know about the fashion business, it’s that they slavishly copy anything that could be called “trendy” or “in” or whatever term they use to justify lemming behavior.
Yesterday I was riding on London’s Tube system, and across from me were sitting two girls of exquisite beauty — had they not been fuller-figured than the norm [2,000-word rant on the Anorexia Look deleted], I would have thought they were models. (I’d like to show a pic, but nowadays if you take an unsolicited photo of a woman, the next thing that happens will be you finding yourself spreadeagled on the ground while protesting to an unsympathetic audience of the fuzz that you’re not a stalker.)
However, both said beautiful Tube girls were (in my mind anyway) disfigured by having painted their eyebrows thicker — grotesquely so, like this:
…and in so doing, they’d transformed themselves into caricatures of Greek peasant women.
And forgive me, but the Greek peasant woman look doesn’t go well with blonde hair.
I would suggest that younger women take a pass on this particular trend, no matter how many fashion mags suggest that the simian look is the latest hot thing. What looks natural on Lily Collins looks freakish on everybody else — because no matter how good you think you look, all we see is that you’ve done a Groucho on your eyebrows (and hence the title of this post):
Of course, nobody’s going to listen to me. I just hope Phil Collins is satisfied.
Off The Beaten Track
Unless I have actual business to take care of there, I avoid large main streets like the plague. Notorious among the avoidees is London’s Oxford Street, which is a shitty thoroughfare full of tourists and other scum, all taking selfies and being fleeced by the stores selling the most awful tat (British for tchotchkes) while they try to persuade themselves they’re having a great time in the world’s best city.
Fach.
My advice: turn off the rotten thing as soon as you can — as I did when I walked down Soho’s Wardour Street, which is a narrow lane full of interesting places…
…such as the Pickle & Toast, which specializes in cheese toasties (grilled cheese sandwiches, to my Murkin Readers):
Exhausted by having had to walk a block down Oxford Street, I badly needed a cup of tea so I went inside.
I ordered my cuppa, and then sat down to drink it and relax awhile — but the smell of sourdough toast was too wonderful, so I ordered a cheese toastie. This was also because the place does not use just any old cheese, no sirree. This is the stuff they use:
It’s Quicke’s Cheddar, from Devon; and the sandwich looks like this:
Good grief. I could have eaten three, and the rest of the menu looked just as tasty — and they serve breakfast too, but I got there just too late. To say that this beats a Big Mac on Oxford Street is to utter the understatement of the century.
And just so we’re all clear on the concept: I could have eaten at about a dozen different places along Wardour Street, and I probably would have had just as good a time and just as good a meal. Now you know.
Delenda est Via Oxonium.
Tale Of Two Cities
Well now, lookee here:
Buzzing Around
So after arriving at Heathrow yesterday, I wasted no time in re-submerging myself into Britishland culture: sausage roll and a cuppa at the station at 10am, followed by a lunchtime pint of Fuller’s London Pride (my tipple of choice where Wadworth 6X isn’t available).
…which I imbibed at this fine establishment:
For this last leg of my sabbatical, I’m staying in another hotel in Ye Olde Fleabagge Inne chain, this time in Earl’s Court. It’s been many years since I stayed here, but fortunately, it hasn’t changed much — although I continue to lament the disappearance of the excellent Hi-Tide chippie: last night’s fish & chips dinner in a nearby pub was mediocre. (I won’t mention the fucking background music because it was so loud it was actually foreground music, requiring that conversation had to be shouted to be audible; and in true Earl’s Court fashion — because all residents of Earl’s Court appear to be ESL* — the screams emanating from the neighboring table to mine sounded like a conversation between Latke and Simka from the Taxi TV show.)
All that said, I love Earl’s Court; it’s regarded with absolute horror by the upper crust — and I have had several letters from friends in said demographic commiserating with my plight — but I can think of no better catalyst to wake me from my somnolence after having relaxed in one of Johannesburg’s toniest suburbs for the past two weeks.
The difference between this:
…and this cannot be overstated.
And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m off to find a decent Full English Breakfast amidst the curry palaces, Italian bistros, vegan vendors and halaal kebab restaurants hereabouts. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the only bloke in the place who’s reading the Daily Telegraph.
I love London.
*ESL = English [as] Second Language, to my non-U.S. Readers.