Honestly

The state of kiddy rock today:
Ananova – Busted Fed Up With Barrage Of Boobs

Veggie Xmas plait

OK, have an opening shot in the food category. This recipe was posted on the wereallneighbours bulletin board and sounds tasty, though I’ve yet to give it a go myself. So, quoting the person who made it:
“I find this quantity makes two plaits, each enough for 3-4 people (or enough to stuff yourself silly on christmas day and have some left to eat cold on boxing day when everyone else is having cold cuts) so I usually do half of this as one plait is enough if you’re the only veggie:

• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 50g/2oz butter
• 450g/1lb carrots, grated
• 450g/1lb mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1tsp dried thyme
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 350g can whole peeled chestnuts (whatever you do, don’t use puree, it doesn’t
  work at all!)
• 225g/8oz cream or curd cheese
• 3tbsp chopped parsley
• 500g/1lb 2oz packet frozen puff pastry

“Cook onion in butter in a large pan. Add carrots, mushrooms, garlic and thyme and cook until there is no free liquid (about 10 mins). Cool, then stir in tomato puree, chestnuts, cheese and parsley. Season. Roll pastry into rectangle 45×38cm/18×15in. Pile cooled mixture in centre third. Cut pastry on either side in wide bands (about an inch wide worked well for me) and fold over filling alternately like plaits. Freeze until needed (another advantage of this recipe – you can make it early and freeze it, so there’s one less thing to worry about on christmas morning!). Brush with egg and bake at 220C/425F/gas 7 for 40 minutes. In my mum’s fan assisted oven the cooking temp and time were reduced – 180C for 25 mins was enough.”
So there you go! I’ll probably be cooking this at some point within the next month, so will be able to give an idea of what it tastes like.

Darwinian Advertising

I like adverts, they’re often better than the programme they are enclosed in. So when some genius comes up with the name Cillit Bang for a surface cleaner and uses the cheesiest “European footage with English overdub” advert in the world to promote it… what can I say, we should all go out and buy a bottle of Bang! just so the company can keep producing more (and to keep “Barry Scott” off the streets.) There’s even an unofficial Cillit Bang t-shirt available, and from the same site the advert itself can be downloaded.
Actually, while I’m on the subject: the Cadbury’s adverts where people’s “inner happiness” is made visible as a companion animal. How much coke was the ad company on at the time they came up with that? It’s no surprise to me that Britain has the highest cocaine use in Europe.

Faversham Hop Fest ‘04

OK, another repost from the old stuff. Faversham hop festival is a yearly binge drinking sessioncelebration of all that is English, including morris men, Spitfire fly-pasts, the chance to tour the Shepherd’s Neame brewery, eat hog roast, drape yourself with hops in some pagan ritual… a fantastic weekend, thoroughly recommended.

New Zealand

Kyla’s going to start to wonder where this is soon, so…
Here’s some photos from our holiday in New Zealand (and LA on the way over). There’s not much in the way of formatting as it’s taken me long enough to just write brief explanations of the photos.

Upcoming gig

I’m going to be depping back into Casa del Funk for a gig at the USSC on 16th December. Cool, an opportunity to see how they’ve progressed since I left in April.

Oops

“There was an old woman who swallowed a fly” recreated with large lifting machinery:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/kiwif/truck.html

Tony Kofi Quartet

Man, that was incredible. For a long time the only jazz gigs I’ve been to have been “university level”, so it was very impressive to see four professional musicians play. Kyla and I ended up sat on the balcony overlooking the band, which meant that we couldn’t see (nor really hear) the pianist, but did afford us a clear view of the drummer. The drummer was, for me, the highlight of the band. Kofi’s sax playing was passionate and smooth, not choosing particularly angular or dissonant lines, the bassist… well, double bassists scare the shit out of me, they must have hands of steel from the thickness of the strings they’re playing. Don’t play “Mercy” with a double bassist. The pianist seemed quite subdued initially, but really let rip in a few solos, particularly in a song that changed back and forth between a swing beat and what I’d describe as a “strut.” The drummer was fucking madman. He really used the whole kit, including playing the cymbal stands and the rims of all his drums, both ends of the sticks and brushes (he used the reverse end of the latter to scrape the surface of the cymbals once or twice; a nice effect), played the kit with his hands, and generally grooved like needle on a record. He also got up once and did a scat solo, which, combined with the fact that his jeans were far too tight, led us to the conclusion that he’s gayer than San Francisco in springtime.
Still bought their CD though. Link.

Gentlemen, let’s broaden our minds

I’ve seen some of his stuff on the web before, but Banksy’s stencil-based grafitti site is well worth a look. As he says in the Outdoor section, “People who get up early cause war, death and famine.” I’ve always suspected as much. And, also in Outdoors:

Like most people I wear my jeans two sizes too big with no belt so they hang low off my ass. Apparently this fashion was started by Los Angeles hoods who refused to wear a belt to show solidarity with their brothers in the Big House who have theirs confiscated on the way in.
When going to paint inside a fountain one night I was wearing these jeans and a pair of large boots. I immediately discovered the water was deeper than it looked as it flooded the wellingtons and everything started going in slow motion.
After a few seconds of spraying, the stencil became unstuck and I had to use my free hand to keep it steady. All the while spreading my legs in a kind of Led Zeppelin rock pose to keep my sodden, beltless jeans from falling into the water.
There was no way I was going to let go of the stencil before it was finished so eventually I lost the trousers altogether. All I know is Fuck hip hop, wear a belt.

New Old Stuff

OK, I’ve imported the old blogger stuff to this site. Some of the formatting’s gone awry, and I don’t think it imports comments, but it’s here now…