pulphack

there's nothing wrong with a bit of gratuitous posting to boost a thread... is there? anyway, as far as i can see the old bloke's as fit as a fiddle at the moment. he did make some dubious pictures, though... KK only had jessica lange going for it, really. but i'm a purist, and still love the original simply because of the monkey doll. speaking of which, didn't the mechanics on the '76 version go slightly awry? i seem to recall stories of the giant monkey being replaced by rick baker in a gorilla suit. so was Dino baby just an Italian Ed Wood at heart? what i'd really love to see is Queen Kong, with Robin Askwith, that was made the same year. it never got released because Dino baby took out an injunction, and then it just faded away. as far as i know it's never surfaced since, although i did once find the paperback tie-in, which had eight pages of stills. it looked like rula lenska was in it (though that may just have been my eyes), and it also looked dead cheap (no!). the book was execrable as it was written by jim moffatt (aka richard allen of 'skinhead' infamy).

wow, the first little debate wot i have ever sparked. i feel proud. and i agree completely about the idea that those whose second or other language is english write it down a whole lot better than those who are natives. anything i've ever had from a 'foreign' source (either personal correspondance or assignments) has been far more easily comprehensible than the rubbish received from the likes of ms junior cheerleader. just to clear up the lower case thing. i ALWAYS hit the bloody caps lock key, and being left handed have never got the hang of the shift key on the right. when working, i end up having to go back and retype whole sentences tha HAVE SUDDENLY GONE LIKE THIS when i either hit the 'a' or went for the shift on the left. when working, it doesn't matter - wacking this out quickly, it does. i also suspect it might be the ee cummings thing that has made it sheer affectation on my part.

i have a certain ambivalence about grmmar (sic). a lot of the terrible grammar and spelling here on the list is, i suspect, perpetuated by those of us who are typing furiously between actually doing some work and frankly can't be arsed to go back and change it because we need to press on (ooh, look at them go for me now!). the lack of capitals is, in my case, for much the same reason. if i'm doing work that is to be submitted, then i spend a whole lot more time on it, and go over and over it. have i got the time or inclination here? 'course not. make of that what you will. of course, late night typing is when pissed, and when is THAT ever right? but instead of everyone trying to be professor of posh grammar and trip each other up, let's consider a few points... consistency of spelling and the rules of grammar are established in a language to enable it to be comprehensible in speech and - particularly - when written down. can we agree on that? therefore it is important that accepted spellings and accepted rules of grammar are used to make such points as we wish to make easily comprehensible. however... what if you want to break those rules of grammar for a specific rerason, either humourous or to introduce ambiguity? i've seen people on here jumped on for that. very silly. the rules are elastic enough to enable such games, and if you make them too rigid, or stick to one accepted version, then you take a lot of the joy out of language. and you're also not taking into account that language is mutable and in constant flux (brownie point for whoever remembers me droning on about that elsewhere). incidentally, 'flux and mutability' (or was it the ther way round?) was a really dull david sylvian lp i once owned. but i digress. as long as there is clarity, then there should be room for some degree of flexibility. when i take writing classes, the first thing i try to make them see is clarity (geddit?). having said that, everything about students and kids said above is TRUE! i've had the misfortune to be teaching a media studies as class as a stand-in, and these kids are 18-20. i've had four pieces of work all term, three of which were handwritten and full of spelling mistakes, and the fourth was even worse: typewritten, on a PC, without any use of spell or grammar check. in fact, at least two words were spelt three different ways each! this charmless little blonde bimbo (who wants to be a professional cheerleader - honestly!) also said to me 'i undertsand the media 'coz i got a website, but what i can't stand is all these old geezers using long words just to look clever'. (i think she was having a pop at me) and she expects to pass her exam in june... dream on, love... and maybe teachers don't always put in the the effort, but after taking that class, and thinking about the poor sods who do that all day every day, i don't entirely blame them.

i thought blatantly flirting was the town twinned with balamory? ignore me, i'm just bitter because my own cooking career stalled at burger king - which reminds me, it's my shift soon. would you like fries with that, mr floyd? or - heavens, mr floyd, since you cut down on the booze, you're no longer red, just a little pink... (no wonder music hall died)

out of all those discussed on here, dave davies is the clear favourite - stroke victim who then goes out on the road and is a rock'n'roller all the way through? the best way he could probably go would be half-way through a stuttering guitar solo on a metal version of 'you really got me', wondering all the while why his brother got the talent and all the royalties, so that he still has to play that bloody song every night and line ray's pocket. rock'n'roll - doncha love it? meanwhile, back in the real world: have any of these gentlemen produced anything worthwhile in the last twenty years? retirement would have been a nice option. it may be better to burn out than fade away, but if you can't burn out then the least you can do is fade away in private and not on stage or in the studio. ignore me, i'm just bitter because my own career never became such...

that sounds like the stuff of comedy greatness to me... which is probably why my career never took off. took off? it's still on the runway! (cont. 'Morecambe & Wise - The Wilderness Years')

didn't your mum tell you about drinking with the funny smelling people on park benches? higgins is one of those burroughs/lemmy types whose body chemistry has somehow been strangely perverted by his excesses. research on these guys would not only reveal much about longevity, but would also prevent a few scientists cutting up cuddly bunnies for as long as their grants lasted. never mind which snooker player of that older generations LOOKS ill, it's going to be the bugger with the most cholesterol in their concrete arteries. the seventies and eighties guys drank a lot, smoked a lot, and probably ate too many cheap kebabs and refried chips. make a list and throw a dart (but that's another matter entirely...) although, on looks alone you'd bet on steve davies to die of acute ennui

interesting if a little incomprehensible - but what's this about them shooting the woman who impersonates the queen? have i missed something, or is his typing just worse than mine...

no, definitely 'south' as we like to show a bit of class down the old palace. us men of the cloth are a cut above, don't you know. we are educated men, like... now leave it before i get out the old 'ancient & modern' and show you what else they teach us in lambeth... peace be with you my son.

snatch milked is a gem to treasure - i wasn't being sarky, just apologising for having the wrong impression. you have been amongst the germans too long - i spent a short while dating a string of germans (i know, WHY?), and they all had senses of humour that were at best obtuse, at worst non-existent. speaking of bad impressions - did mike yarwood's drinking increase from the time he did that AWFUL thatcher impression in his xmas show?

ooh, get your handbags out! that's fighting talk where i come from... oh yes, they're all dead hard down at the palace (well, it is south london)

mr non-spud: witty, erudite, biting - funniest thing i've seen on here for ages. because it's true. forgive me for ever saying you were 'too serious' - i was obviously reading the wrong posts. although if given a choice between the two, i think i'd take thatcher because she was honest about being the spawn of evil - tony tries to hide it. not much of a distinction, i know, but it's that inch that makes all the difference

i think you're right about the emperor's new clothes... little britain isn't funny, but it isn't quite the worst sketch show - that's the abominable titty bangbang. what the pair of them have in common is that they're incredibly formalist - both take classic sketch forms and strip them to a bunch of visual and verbal signifiers, without having any real jokes or character comedy in there. in some ways, they're the antithesis of milligan, cook, python, etc who sought to strip the form away and concentrate on trying to be funny without that (not that they were always successful, but...) so they have classic form, but no content. any attempts at humour tend to be mean spirited, as well - they seem to be about poking nastily at the open wounds of embarrassment and difference. in which way they mirror current society, i suppose, but it will change (it always does). personally, i find that kind of humour cheap and nasty - and also far too easy: these are supposed to be talents, any bugger can stand in a playground and go 'look at the funny fat bloke', 'look at the funny bald woman who's got a bad chemotherapy wig'. it raises a knee jerk response amongst many (me too, sad to say), but it's no indication of any real depth of talent. anyway, haven't seen that word issue, but doesn't any poll just tell you about the readership rather than any kind of objective quality? not that you see it that way when you agree with the choices, of course...

first of all i want to know what TLC is doing looking in my fridge. doing my doris stokes/uri geller bit, i predict that you live in a flat that's in a block either above or adjacent to a supermarket that's open more often than it's closed. which is certainly why my fridge is never full... or even half full. oh, and in summer it tends to have a part-empty can of cat food - one cat, live on 4th floor with no easy exit (except out the window), cat on permanent diet. the fish and chip issue is certainly a pressing one. around here (suburban essex) most of the chippies are also kebab shops. proliferation of pies, but no mushy peas, and chips that are often reheated throughout the day (which MUST break some law or the other). only one chippy actually fries fish to order, and most of them also do chicken. (the finest mushy peas i ever had was - were? - in Hartford, outside Northwich, 23 years ago. we walked home for a mile through the cheshire night, our way lit only by a ghostly green glow). chippies should fry to order, have chips that are crisp, NOT have sachets of sauce but a dispenser on the counter with the salt and vinegar, MUST do sausage in batter and saveloys but NOT those weird round things in batter (what's IN them? they taste like nothing i've ever heard of). no pies, no polystyrene trays, only white paper - or even newspaper! incidentally, in Frinton they didn't allow pubs or chippies within town boundaries for years. then finally, about fifteen years back, they allowed a chippy called 'The Nice Fish & Chip Shop'. within a couple of years they had a weatherspoons on the main road. draw your own conclusions. i work in enfield on fridays, and went past one chippy advertising haddock and chips for a tenner! sad days...

jenner's quite healthy. i believe he had a kidney problem about a year back (think i saw it in mojo, but haven't got back issues to check), but seems to be chipper, and popping up all over the place to talk about his ex-charges, from syd to billy bragg. i do think his ex-partner andrew king died a while back, though. but if he's already gone, he's out of the race. i still say it's dave, but it's going to be a longish wait. as for the kinks - dave seems to be quite well and recovered, but it could easily happen again. i don't think ray's going to die: he's going to turn into something from beckett, wandering around a musty room in muswell hill complaining about the past. maybe he should make his next album a concept based on krapps last tape?

just read the news report highlighted above. where there's a will there's always a relative, eh? bet they wouldn't give a toss if he was potless. or crackless. or smackless. or jackless. alright, enough bad taste. he was a great sideman but no main performer, and to be honest it's amazing that guys like him who cane it so hard get to last so long in the first place. why wasn't he top of everyone's list? i suppose because the reports of his health were almost impossible to find until a court case gets involved. i reckon any uk press when he dies will centre entirely around the beatles, regardless of his own merits, as that's a reflection of the press. i bet even record collector will go on about his beatles appearances before they mention his own recordings (some of which are very fine, but as i say, not 'star' material). anyway, everyone knows the fifth sixth and seventh beatles were klaatu.

did he show that calm and collected poise in front of goal that we remember so well? or did he always miss the desk when he put his pencil down...

splendid thread, simply because in part it is everything it purports to be against. this is the only forum i've ever joined, partly because i swore i never would as they were all full of wierdoes with too much time on their hands, and partly because i didn't want to become one of those. oops... anyway, the point of that is that i have no idea how good or bad this forum is compared to others. however, despite the fact that this thread hardly mentions death, it does bring up a few points that are worth considering. free speech is important to keep the forum fresh, but the downside of that is that you get rubbish. i've been as guilty as anyone, but then its probable that some posts i thought weren't rubbish were considered as such by others. i used to think that notapotato was a bit too serious for his/her own good (think of you as a bloke because that avatr looks just like a geography teacher i had in 1979 - neither know or care what you are, if you see what i mean), but i've changed my mind reading this thread. i think we need people from each end of the scale to try and balance this forum and stop it getting too extreme in either direction. we're never going to agree on everything, but an attempt at reasoned debate and trying to find a happy medium can only be a good thing. god, i sound like a guardian reader. and i had to really try hard not to make a doris stokes joke in the last sentence. the other thing i wanted to mention was from earlier on, when canadian paul wrote about joining DL because of facing the meaning of death and this site being open about such things. a lot of people i tell about this site immediately think it's sick without knowing anything other than name and basic premise. but that never occurred to me when i first stumbled across it. and i think CP may have a point: i was 5 when my dad died, really suddenly, and although it was three decades before i really sat and thought about it, everytime someone close to me (family or friend, old or young) has died, i've always reacted in a different way to most around. it's as though i don't see it as a big thing, just a part of existence, and that it's the people left behind who are the sufferers, if you like. i think that's because subconsciously i had to really face it head on at an early and impressionable age, and so it gave me a different perspective. whether that's good or bad is debateable; it is, perhaps, soemthing that we all share in some way, and that shapes our view of death not as an enemy but as something as everyday as eating and sleeping (ok, slight exaggeration, but you get the point).

sleeping is the word, although the mighty alex inglethorpe may yet reawaken the slumbering beast. he was one of ours, too, y'know. anyway, the only kind of transition orient is in involves the transfer of vast amounts of cash from LOFC to Matchroom - allegedly, i hasten to add. there are dark rumours about where the money from the flats might end up. certainly, my fave O's rumour involves Hearn buying the club to build a new south stand that incorporated a boxing hall so that he could nick the matches from york hall and frank warren, thus grabbing the sky contract. except he didn't grease the right palms and so we ended up with a teeny stand and a very big car park. all conjecture, of course. and despite the transitional phase, we still get the theme from the A-team and quo's rocking all over the world when we win. don't know about tijuana taxi anymore - only been a couple of times this season due to family stuff and work, and have been in the east stand bar when they run out! the old north terrace was very alt/indie/punky - lots of people bonding over nww, etc, and also trying to blag freebies from ian who owns damaged goods records and was a season ticket holder. well, it was bettre than the football under tommy taylor and paul brush... actually, just to get a little bit back on topic, the most surreal; insult i ever heard was when we played southend after brush was sacked and joined those essex scum as coach. it was during a period when we could win games against them without scoring (o.g. a speciality). when they went one-down, some geezer yelled 'that'll teach you to go out with my sister, brush you c**t'. the cone of silence as those around tried to work out the complex family dynamics was awesome to behold.

it's not the keyboard, is it. you can tell us, you're amongst friends. the delivery man you're planning on charming with your clean undies is from the off-license, isn't he?

if john smackie broke any legs, they wouldn't be his own; the dirtiest player i've seen for a long time, and an ace diver (got two players sent off in separate games last season by faking being elbowed in the face) yet a cult hero. go figure... as it happens, there are some orient books, and they sell badly as all us east londoners want to do is moan about how crap we are, even though we're going up. the old north terrace was the worst, although it had its advantages. i once missed a goal because i was discussing nurse with wound and current 93 with some bloke standing behind me, and i also heard the priceless 'i'll go a long way, but i won't buy a Vibrators live single...' but you're right about angling the books for current and past fans - there's a geezer from the 80's punk band Picture Frame Seduction who does the same thing for Swansea (do old punx talk about music? no, they talk about football!). the problem with non-fiction is that you have to do research - i'm too bloody lazy, write fiction and make it up as i go along. which, come to think of it, might suit dear dickie (and i'm back on topic. aw thangyew...)

and the best rum around, unless your local stocks eldorado.

blimey yes - DG up to the wall, quite slim; mid-eighties appearing at charity functions, an obvious pie-man; circa the division bell lantern-jawed and trim; now... it's maybe not as marked as i've made out (i rescind my poetic license, that's if i can spell recsind), but still there. re. tommy bolin. 'come taste the band' is a great album, but it's one of those instances where it's not really as deep purple album - just like every soft machine album after four is not really a softs album, but still good (even though by the time they signed to harvest they had more nucleus members than softs!). the only surprise about the kinks is that ray & dave didn't kill each other years ago. if memory serves they took it out on mick avory...

i'm 'between' agents at the moment... though hopefully that'll be sorted after easter. i do know someone who might be interested, but first step is brinsworth itself, and the great man, which i shall get on to this week. although i've almost convinced myself that a book on john 'the elbow' mackie would be a better bet...

that seems a fair assesment, except that yer man gilmour has yo-yo'd weight-wise over the years, and this can cause some stress on the old heart - apparently, one of the things that killed bob calvert (of hawkwind, non-rock fans) was that his weight was wildly fluctuating due to his treatment for manic depression. of course, the manic episodes didn't help, but that's why he popped off in his early forties. nonetheless, the fat man body/thin man heart and vice-versa state is quite straining. but wouldn't it be cool if waters exploded from an excess of spleen and bile before any of them?