May back in England.

 

When you move to a new country you tend only to think of the major things that will be different and overlook the small things that you will miss.  Since I moved to Florida four years ago the list of events I look back on fondly has grown with every day that passes.  I think in part it stems from the fact that I am a “the grass is always greener/glass is half full” kind of guy but there is something to be said for some of the old traditions back home.

As we head into May I can expect to get a phone call from my parents within the next few weeks explaining how they have been out all day at the town fayre.  In the small Hertfordshire town that I am from the annual May fayre was a big deal.  For any Americans reading this try and imagine Oscar night and the Superbowl rolled into one, add a few crowded pubs, the odd carney and hey presto you have the Sawbridgeworth Fayre.  When I was a kid I thought it was great because it was one of the few times that my parents would let us roam freely around the village green without watching our every step.  Usually I would have my sister persuade my Dad to give us a few quid and then we would head over to the attractions.  The “attractions” were modest even by the cheapskate standards of village events.  Basically the big thrill was a tiny airbone carousel where you could sit in either a red or blue plane and slowly rotate at above 5 feet above sea level for about 40 seconds per ride.  It was amazing !  I would have stayed on it all day but for the temptation to gamble.  Yes gambling was encouraged at a young age in Hertfordshire as our token town carney lured unsuspecting kids into handing over the 50 pence pieces in the vain hope that they might win a prize.  Our local carney was an odd kind of fellow with a glass eye and an abnormally small head.  He wore a mullett hairstyle well into the 90’s and when he wasn’t ripping off kids at the fayre he was propping up the bar in the “Queens Head” pub.  I don’t recall his name but since I knew a similarly strange fellow who went by the name “Carney” I will just refer to the glass eyed boy as “Carney” for the purposes of this tale.  So Carney ran about three stalls all of which involved some element of luck and the apparent ability to win a prize.   If you were lucky enough to win he always found some kind of reason why he couldn’t give you a decent prize and instead gave you a “gonk.”  I won two of these one summer some years back, one was blue and the other was white.  I was pleased at first just because I had actually won but once I got home and realised that “gonks” were nothing more than toilet rolls with a strip of fake fur glued around them and and two ping pong balls attached as eyes, I was a little annoyed with Carney.

Aside from the one ride and the rip off merchant the fayre always attracted Sawbo’s weirdest residents.  The bearded men and one or two bearded women of the surrounding area would show up in outfits that appeared to be made from rags and shredded news papers and try to pass themselves off as “morris dancers.” It was kind of like an episode of the Mr Men.  Mr Fat the biggest man in town would have his “double glazing” stand which basically was just an advertisement and not in anyway a true attraction.  Mr Boring would team up with Mr Drunk, Mr Short and Mr “I can’t afford a razor or shampoo” and and perform the lousiest attempt at Barbershop since Sweeney Todd.  Sometimes the fire brigade would show up and once this complete nutter called “Mad Ken” who walked around town all winter without a shirt on showed up in his WWII army tank and for 25 pence each all the local kids got to jump all over it for 10 minutes spells.  Kids loved all of this crap whilst the parents got quietly wasted whilst feigning interest in the fortunes of the local cricket team who always seemed to lose unsually badly on this day.   Luckily for those chaps it usually rained after lunch so they could save some pride due the inclement weather forcing a drawn game.  Unluckily for Carney all his gonks cardboard centres quickly fell apart in the rain and he must have lost 2 or even 3 quid to weather damage each year.  It is kind of sad that we don’t have this to look forward to in Florida but the even sadder thing is that I actually miss it !  What is wrong with me ?!!!  

Doctor Who and the fake TARDIS

It is really sad that I am now old enough to talk in terms of things that happened twenty five years ago.   I was about 5 years old and Britain was in the grip of Thatcherism.  The football team were terrible and Michael Foot was making secret plans for Britain to join the Warsaw pact.  Times were hard for a 5 year old with ginger hair and a black school coat growing up in an era when duracell commercials ran on TV round the clock and gave bullies the great idea of associating me with the batteries slogan about “The copper coloured top.”  School was awful as we had a 2 foot tall four hundred year old Italian woman teaching us who could barely speak English and loved to smack us around with her mini ruler.  All in all it was pretty bloody miserable. 

The one bright spot in my life was sitting down in front of the TV each week to catch the latest installment of my favourite show “Doctor Who.”  As you can imagine it came as quite a surprise when my Dad announced suddenly that I was going to miss a day of school so that I could go to London and meet the “Doctor” in person.   I assumed that the Doctor had come to Earth specifically to meet me and it wasn’t until about 5 years later that I put the pieces together and realised that it wasn’t real.  My Dad worked in PR for the Post Office and the powers that be decided to have a letter writing competition for kids.  To launch the campaign they would take a picture of a youngster delivering mail to the Timelord and my Dad savvy as he was managed to land that role for me. 

It was always exciting to go to London but to meet my favourite TV star was something else.  The event was held at Hendon Police college where the Met train most of their bobbies.   The reason they chose Hendon was because there were actual Police boxes there which could easily pass for a TARDIS as far as most people were concerned.  I on the other hand wasn’t deceived.  The real TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside and furthermore it didn’t have any windows whereas this police box had two.  I tried to explain this to Nigel Fitt a fellow from my Dads work who accompanied me for the day.  He was one of those kind of guys who had a deep voice, curly dark hair, wore gold chains and smoked Cuban cigars.  He wasn’t a kid kind of guy and seemed to think that a wink and a pat on the head would make everything OK.  Not ruddy likely.  I was insistent that the “TARDIS” was not the actual Time travelling machine from the television show.  The poor old postman was probably wondering how he got roped into this gig with a whiny kid when the star of the moment arrived.  To most people he was known as actor Peter Davison.  As far as I was concerned he was “Doctor Who.”  Initially I was a little annoyed with him when he also tried to claim that the cheap replica police box was his actual time machine but after a while I accepted his story about disguising it from people.  The cameraman eventually told us to get into position and pose for our publicity shots.  I remember that it was really hard to focus because hundreds of trainee policemen started to gather around us.  Their instructor was angrily ordering them back into class but they were obviously Who fans and massed around the TimeLord trying to get into the snaps.  Anyone who didn’t know what was going on could have been forgiven for thinking that they had stumbled across a “Z cars” convention as the young coppers in their smart new blue Met issue sweaters gathered around. 

Once we had taken the snapshots the Doctor asked us if we wanted a ride back to the Post Office HQ where my Dad worked.  Naturally we agreed as it’s not every day that you get chauffeured around by an alien/TV actor (depending on your point of view).  His car was amazing.  It had all kinds of digital displays and gadgets in it and it was blue !  OK that sounds pretty lame now but in 1982 any car with cushy seats and a radio was pretty flashy.  For me it was a nice change to ride around in a car other than my Dads beaten up old brown Ford Cortina.  You’ve heard of people leaving a trail of exhaust fumes as they jet off on vacation well never mind the fumes our family would leave the actual exhaust pipe behind when we left town.  That old car was a piece of junk but this car was something else.  It was the nearest thing to KIT on Knight Rider I had ever encountered and it seemed to travel at supersonic speed through the grizzly streets of London.  Sadly though it was time to say goodbye and the good Doctor left myself and my companions outside Post office HQ in London. 

That was the last time I ever saw him but even worse it was the last time anyone would see that car.  The following day cricketer Ian Botham borrowed it to use in a charity car race.  Botham evidently wasn’t the greatest of drivers and he smashed it up.  I was furious when I heard about the crash on the news and I never watched a game of cricket again in protest.  In fairness I was on the lookout for a reason to avoid Britains dullest tradition anyway but I still can’t look at Botham without thinking about how he destroyed the Doctors car.  The sad thing is that my Mum who was a grown adult at the time also holds a grudge against Botham but then again she is the same person who claimed that Roman soldiers lived in our kitchen !

Hells Finest Hotels

 I am currently trying to book a hotel for a family vacation to Colorado and as you might expect I am looking for somewhere offering basic amenities and a nice view.  However I wasn’t always a lover of 3 star hotels and during my pre-marriage era travels I stayed in some of the most unusual places you could imagine ……… (Dim the lights as flashback sequence commences) ……………..

Lake Brno, Czech Republic …… My mate Deacon and I decided to go with Cosmos on a $129 coach trip to Eastern Europe and booked into a dated but seemingly decent hotel on the banks of Lake Brno in the summer of 1996.   The Lake was pretty nice if you could overlook the masses of Czech nudists who were congregated on its banks.  They were all men over the age of 40 with giant beer bellies and moustaches that could easily have been mistaken for small woodland animals.   The women were mostly clothed possibly because they didn’t have enough of the oompa loompa style fake tan to cover their entire bodies.  Irregardless I wasn’t there to spy on naked people I was there because it was cheap and so after a day spent discussing the merits of dyeing your hair purple with some middle aged Czech women we retired to the hotel.

The first night the Deacon (We called him “The” because his nickname Deacon was more of an unwanted title that an actual name) started accusing me of throwing things at him.  When something struck me on the head a second later I told him to cut it out.  Before long I was being pelted with fragments of plaster.  Angrily I turned on the light fully expecting to assault my travelling companion for this unprovoked attack.  As the 15 watt bulb slowly came to life we both realised that the cause of the problem was a huge hole in the ceiling that had miraculously appeared as we were sleeping.  Chunks of plaster continued to rain down on us as we quickly dressed and ran for cover.

For our second night the hotel manager transferred us to a more stable room but we were soon on the move again as Deacon came under attack from a colony of spiders at 3am.  I am assuming the bed linen hadn’t been changed for at least 15 years because the offending arachnids were entrenched in every corner of the cheap plywood bedframe.  We stormed down to the hotel reception and demanded to be moved again.  The reception desk clerk called Barin who looked like a cross between Mr Bean and Rod Stewart lead us to one of the “luxury suites” on the 3rd floor.  Everything seemed OK at first but at about 5am I noticed an increasingly loud buzzing sound eminating from the area around Deacons bed.   I wasn’t sure what was going on but thought it would be better not to ask until Deacon suddenly jumped out of bed and starting swearing profusely whilst waving his hands in the air.  At first I though he was having some kind of sleep walking experience where he was dreaming he was at a ”Village People” concert but it quickly emerged that another force was at work.  It turned out that there was a well hidden wasps nest in the room and poor old Deacon who already had a black eye from the falling debris of night one was now covered in sore looking wasp stings.   Time to move again !

As you can imagine we were pretty relieved when our latest room passed our thourough safety inspection.  No spiders, no wasps and even the ceiling felt pretty solid.  The last words I heard Deacon say were “OK I will turn out the light” when suddenly there was a blue flash and Deacon was flung across the room by a violent electrical surge.  All that remained of the light switch was a charred piece of plastic and a small hole in the wall.  The next day we checked out.

The irony was that we only stayed in a hotel because of our experiences of dodgey accomodation on our previous trip to eastern Europe a year before ……

Budapest, 1995.  For some stupid bloody reason we thought that we were getting a good deal when an old shrew who looked like some kind of 13thcentury plague victim approached us with a cardboard sign at Keleti station and said “$5 hotel.”  We should have known better but we followed the old women up several flights of stairs in one of Pests crappiest looking tower blocks to her apartment which in her mind at least was a “hotel.”  Our accomodation consisted of a small room with an old couch and a “bed”  I grabbed the bed and left Deacon with the couch but he was to have the last laugh this time around.  I dove onto the “bed” only to discover that in fact it was nothing more than a grand piano with no legs from which the lid had been removed !  For comfort the shrew had placed a thin blue sheet over the piano strings.  The sound of vibrating strings was almost as loud as my scream as I smashed my knees on the ill fated hammerstein.  Things got worse when we inspected the bathroom and found a toilet with no seat that was entirely covered in some kind of black tar like film and appeared to have no flushing mechanism.  Nevertheless we decided to stay and the following day after a bout of sightseeing we returned to the apartment only to discover that the key she had given us for the door didn’t work.  A passing neighbour informed us that Mrs Nagy had “gone away.”  The fiend !  We had left our luggage, our cash and our passports in there only for this trickster to change the locks and leave town !  We were livid.  Before I knew what had happened Deacon started trying to break down the door whilst the neighbour called the cops.  I don’t exactly remember all that followed but what I do remember is that about 5 minutes after the police showed up (I never quite established if they came to arrest Deacon for attempted breaking and entering or to investigate the shrews apparent deception of us) the landlady showed up with a few bags of Bulgarian luncheon meat for dinner.  Apparently “Gone away” meant she had gone grocery shopping !  Either way we were asked to leave !  I guess it wasn’t as bad as the time we were locked in a padded dungeon by the guy in Krakow but that is a story for another day ……

Marco Materazzi : Equally blessed and Cursed

 

I have always regarded football as more than just a sport.  Football is about entertainment and like every good village pantomine football has always had its fair share of heroes and villains.  One player though has managed to blur the line between good and bad, talented and violent, smart and crazy, helpful and harmful.  His name is Marco Materazzi and about a year ago he was far from a household name despite being involved in more controversial incidents than the average Kennedy cousin since his pro career began about 15 years ago.

The name Materazzi even now may not mean a lot to people around the world but if you add the words, “Italy,” “headbutt” and “World cup final” to the equation then most people will immediately recall a tall dark haired clown who conceded a penalty, scored an equaliser and then induced the worlds best player to headbutt him all within the confines of one game on live TV just less than a year ago.  For those of us familiar with Marco or “The Matrix” as his team mates call him, his World Cup final antics were not a huge surprise.

Marco had one season at Everton which consisted of goals, own goals, conceding penalties and most famously of all an unprovoked attack on an advertising hoarding.  Coventry City striker Darren Huckerby decided to take a dive that Matt Biondi would have been proud of and the ref decided to red card Materazzi by assuming his guilt based upon his past crimes rather than asking the linesman who had clearly seen that no contact was made.  Being a reasonable kind of guy Marco decided that to display his mild annoyance at the red card he would first refuse to leave the field for a few minutes, then kick the crap out of  the adverts surrounding the field and finally for his grand finale he would sit and weep hysterically on the touchline for the remainder of the game.  Poor old Everton boos Walter Smith had to explain to the media afterwards that his $3million pound defender was “not of right mind” to play another game for the club.  Wacko-razzi was sent back to Italy and after a brief spell at Perugia he came to fame again for using his elbow to poleaxe Juan Pablo Sorin in the Champions League.  He also had a major tunnel bust up which caused Cirillo to get two black eyes and to make sure he stayed in the headlines he also scored 12 goals which was a record for a defender.  That is the thing with Marco he is always in the headlines for good or bad.

The World cup was all about Materazzi.  A goal against the Czechs, a red card against Australia and then the in the last game the finest display on attention seeking insanity seen since Nero decided to burn down Rome .   Anyway the reason I mention all of this is because today Inter Milan secured their first Italian title since 1989.  They were awarded the title last year but only long after the season had ended and because all of the teams above them were docked points or relegated for match fixing so that one doesn’t really count.  They needed a win today against Sienna to seal the deal and on cue Marco Materazzi decided his name had been out of the headlines just long enough to warrant a big game and so he scored both their goals in a 2-1 win.  You may love this guy or hate him or you may variously think he is a gift from God or a curse from hell depending on his last involvement in any particular game but you have got to hand it to the lad that he is one hell of an entertainer.

“Lost” : Cath -22

I had always wondered why the writers of “Lost” seemed to think that Scottish people called everybody “Brother.”  Last night that mystery was solved as we discovered that between stints as a runaway groom good old Desmond was actually a “Brother.”  Des has had quite an up and down life really from Celtic fan to fiancee to monk to drunk to fiancee again to crappy interviewer loser to jogger to yachstman to button pusher and finally to psychic.  When all of this is said and done he is going to be one of those nutty drunks who bores people at pubs in Glasgow with fantastical tales that nobody believes. 

I was surprised when Charlie was killed inside the first 3 minutes since it was so unLost-ish to have something happen within the first 53 minutes of an episode.  Never fear when a psychic is near and it turned out to be a harmless vision.  Well relatively harmless although for a while there it did seem as if Dessie was intent on being the only Brit with a funny accent on the show as he lead the hobbit perlilously close to death.  Frankly I am ready for the hobit to go.  We all know his numbers is up the only question is which number is his ?  4, 8, 15, 16, 23 or perhaps 42 ? 

Another fellow who I was beginning to think had kicked the bucket was Bernard but last night Sawyer indicated that the old romantic was still alive and kicking.  Talking of which I wonder how the two pointless red herring characters that got buried alive are doing ?  I am hoping they come back at some point just because I hate to think the producers dragged us through their whole boring back story for absolutely no reason other than to pass a re-cap episode past us without anyone noticing.  Ohh well I guess we’ll see but with 4 episodes left I am hoping there is time for someone with some sense (which basically means it has to be Jin or Sun) will knock off the blond other and her unshaven pig headed boyfriend Jack.  Fingers crossed but I fear it may be another 23 episodes before Charlie even  croaks !

Why America will never be good at soccer

Brian Clough, the real “Coach”

When I lived in Alabama I got into a discussion one day with a customer who was amazed to meet an Englishman. He asked me a lot of questions about the land of my birth and just when I was starting to think he was some kind of anglophile stalker he blurted out “Do you play soccer ?” Silly question. Everyone from England plays soccer except for hooray henrys and the last time I checked I wasn’t wearing a red coat or chasing a a fox down a hole. I explained to him I hadn’t played much since I left college to which he replied “You played at college ?” I nodded. I played soccer every day at college sometimes on a field sometimes on the Hulme Hall Wardens croquet lawn in a thunder storm (He went nuts but that is another story) and sometimes in my bedroom with a coke can as the ball and a trash can as the goal. Soccer or football as it was known back in my English days was a major part of my life. What I didn’t realise was that the words “college” and “soccer” or any other sport in the same sentence have a very different connotation in the US than they do in England. Firstly the chap assumed that when I say I “played at college” that I meant I “played for my college” and he also had no idea that college sport in England is not what it is in the US. At home any kid worth his salt is playing for a professionals clubs junior team by the age of twelve and if he stays in school until 16 he is doing well. In the USA people who want to be professional sports stars get scholarships and play sport at Uni in stadiums as big as Wembley and on live TV.

The next thing I knew I was being asked to take over as coach of the local Under 14 soccer team by this nice but rather eccentric fellow who looked a little like the “Doc” from “Back to the Future.” Unbeknown to him I wasn’t of the Gary Lineker and unbeknown to me Mr Anglophile was going to embellish my presumed resume and tell all the kids parents that I used to be a professional player in England ! It was a little awkward when I showed up for the first day of training and heard a few parents whispering about how I was the “former premier league player.” None of them seemed to have the brains to realise that since I was only 23 at the time that even if I had been a pro I must have had a pretty miserable little career ! Anyway I didn’t really feel it would be appropriate to admit I had over heard them talking and explain that I was about as near to be a professional football player as Anne Widdicombe was to being a stripper !

It soon transpired that there were to be two teams in the town. My team and the team of Coach Kimble. He was the Brian Clough of the city. He had coached the team for 17 years and never lost a championship. He was a hero. He was a good old boy. He was … a complete moron. I first discovered this on the day we had a draft and Kimble gave me a whole speech about how he wanted to have some decent competition and tipped me off to the kids who supposedly were the best ones. I initially took his advice with my first picks but as time went on it became obvious that he was up to no good as every kid who was half decent was “having a lucky day” whereas all of the no hopers were “not showing their best form.” All in all it was a stitch up and I ended up with about 2 kids who could kick a ball in a squad of 15 and not only that but the teams were mixed but somehow I had 7 girls and he had one. No offence to girls who are good at soccer but 6 of my 7 girls were only there because their parents forced them to be.

I had always been an avid armchair critic of the premier league and had won championships with every team from west Ham to Torquay United on “Championship Manager 2″ but I had never actually “coached before so I decided to invest in a book about “Dutch soccer drills.” I figured that the Dutch were usually pretty good and it would be easier to teach the kids to play the beautiful game then to teach them the long ball game given that none of them were above 5 feet tall. The book had some great ideas and fancy formations but said very little about fitness training. The author explained that ball control was key and not mindless exercise. In contrast coach Kimble on the neighbouring field was having his team run marathons and the slowest two kids would have to perform 50 push ups before being allowed to take part in the sprints. One or two parents voiced concern at our different managerial styles but I stuck to my guns believing that it might actually be useful to teach the kids how to play soccer !

I felt fully vindicated when in our first game we met the invincible coach Kimbles team and despite his complete ignorance of offside laws causing him to constantly berate the referee nothing could prevent quality shining through and my team won the game 8-2. I would go on to explain how we were unbeaten for the remainder of the season and even beat a team that had been in the State final the previous year but that would be rubbing salt into the wounds. Beyond boosting my ego what I learnt from my season coaching in Alabama is that many Americans have absolutely no bloody clue about the sport.

There is a belief in the USA that if you are a coach then you are a coach of every sport. One of the many teams we beat had a coach who doubled as the towns baseball coach and whose soccer knowledge was based upon fusbbal to the point that he got annoyed that my players “moved from their designated starting positions during the game.” More recently though in the usually more worldly Florida I met a woman who was boasting about how good her sons soccer team were likely to become. I asked her why she was so optimistic that they would be a good side given that she had just told me they lost their last game 7-1. She explained that “The coach” not Kimble but a rather better known coach of a certian college sport here in town has a kid in her team. After a recent loss “Coach” pushed aside their actual trainer and sent the 7 year olds on a 30 minute run followed by dozens of push ups ans sit ups. He explained that this was the only way to make the soccer team improve. He should know I guess because he is a “Coach” after all. The fact he coaches an entirely different sport means nothing here and that is why America is sadly crap at soccer.

10 Reality TV Villains You LOve To Hate

Clockwise left to right: (Julie, Flo and Zach,Richard Hatch, Don Heinz,Toni)

1.Richard Hatch:  Before Survivor there wasn’t much “reality TV” on the major networks so the stars of that show set the tone of what was to become a new and popular genre.  Richard Hatch a slightly rotund openly gay man with an affinity for public nudity was to become the first reality villain as he deliberately made himself unpopular so as to stay in the game because everyone thought they could beat him in the popularity contest that was to be the final vote.  Hatch though was smart enough to ally himself with some particularly odious figures and ultimately despite being branded as a “snake” he walked away with the million dollars.  In typical villainous fashion Hatch decided not to pay taxes on his earnings a mistake that caused him to be sent to the big house.  He recently described that experience as “horrendous” but surely it couldn’t have been worse than being couped up on that island with Sue, Rudy and Jeff Probst’s wit or can it ?

2.Julie:  The Real World was the first reality TV show of modern times and it has had it’s fair share of villains but the person who stands out to me is a young lady who seemed so sweet and innocent to begin with: Julie.  After years of appearing on spin offs Julie decided to dump her nice girl naive Mormon persona and actually try to murder fellow contestant Veronica by trying to unhook her safety harness during a climbing challenge.  Nice one psycho. 

3. Toni Ferrari.  Star (?) of “Love Cruise” and “Paradise Hotel,” two of Fox’s short lived and most dismal reality TV offerings, Toni mastered the “Psychotic stare” that is now her trademark. 

4. Don Heinz (Colonial House) This largely unnoticed PBS show documented a group of people trying to emulate the early pilgrims who came to the US.  Initially as parson Don was a popular figure with liberal and tolerant ideas for the community.  However when the elected leader left town Don took over and before long initiated a reign of terror that almost caused a wholescale mutiny.  This was the kind of attitude that is epitomised in Lincoln’s famous quote about power.  Thanks for illustrating history for us Don you nutter.

5. Will Kirby (Big Brother 2) A smoother, more charming and better looking version of Richard Hatch.  He only comes in at 5 because refining the art of cunning is not as praiseworthy as inventing it.

6. Flo Pesenti (Amazing Race 3)  For every guy who feels that women can be completely unreasonable Flo is here to prove them right.  Lunatic Flo yelled and screamed at her poor team mate Zach all the way to the finish line.  Hilariously she berated him all the way to the prize since she mistakenly believed they were in last place.  On discovering they had won she smiled as if that suddenly made everything OK.  By this time Zach was more delighted to get away from her than to win the money. 

7. Dilana (Rock star Supernova) From Texas but with a bizarre South African sounding accent this Diva livened up the show with frequent violent outbursts that horrified host Dave Navarro.  Despite Dave’s best efforts to undermine her state of mind Dilana proved popular with the audience and is probably the only contestant with a promising future in the biz.

8. Larissa Meeks (Average Joe Hawaii)  Aside from being the only woman stupid enough to fall for this set up after we had already seen Average Joe 1 on TV, Larissa disappointed a nation by letting superficiality come in the way of love.  Ultimately though her dalliance with Fabio was to be her undoing but just when you thought she couldn’t be any more irritating she said she had only participated in the show “for the art”.  Delusional as well as shallow.  Nice combination.

9. Johnny Fairplay (Survivor) Another in the Hatch mould but the “Grandma died” routine was evil at it’s most brilliant.  Twisted maniac but great villain.

10.  Omarosa. (The Apprentice)  She was widely despised on the show and even tried to turn her much anticipated exit into a race controversy.  Thereafter though Omarosa softened up a little on the “Surreal Life” by seeming normal comapred with Janice Dickenson and this is why she falls all the way to number 10 in the list of villains.

The Amazing Race All Stars

There was a spoiler online a while back which suggested the final four of the “All star Amazing Race” would include team Cha cha cha as well as Charla and Mirna.  Everybody who had ever seen the show knew this was a complete lie as there was no way in hell these teams would actually be in contention for the grand prize.   How could we all get it so wrong ?  I never had anything against the boys from Miami but I never imagined that stopping to buy fruit or taking lemonade breaks would be prove to be winning tactics.       I don’t have anything against Charla either but Mirna is something else.   For some odd reason she seems to find it necessary to imitate peoples accents in whichever country she happens to be in even though she is speaking English.  A few weeks ago we heard her doing an African accent and most recently she was trying to do a Chinese accent.  I don’t know if she realises that the key to being understood is in speaking either your own language or someone elses language properly and not in speaking your own language whilst doing a bad impersonation of Nelson Mandela or Fu Manchu.  Mirna must have inspired more reality TV fans to throw bricks at their televisions than anybody since Mike Boogie first wandered onto our screens several years ago and made our lives miserable for a few weeks one summer until thankfully he got the boot from “Big Brother 2″. 

The “All star” as a whole has been a heck of a lot better than the “Survivor” version on which half the cast either quit or made it obvious they wanted to be on the first plane out of there.  Everyone on this show seemed to want to participate except for one of the NYC baldies who did a pathetic impression of Charlie Chaplin as he “accidentally” stumbled and hurt himself more than once to waste time and ultimately decided to drive at the speed of a milk float until finally Phil the half alien/ half South African host put him and his buddy out of their misery.  I was pretty annoyed about that because on their first season the lads had been pretty entertaining.  Perhaps they were lost without Emily and Nancy who were much tougher and far funnier than most of this shows participants but were sadly overlooked by the casting director. 

The old gay guys didn’t live up to there evil ways either and in fact they evolved into a couple of sentimental old windbags who spent more time hugging than cooking up inventive skullduggery which was the only thing that made them “Allstars” to begin with.  Overall though Miss California is pretty cute but I think Miss NY odd looking and of the teams left I wish Miss C would team up with Oswald since they are the two most stylish and like-able folks left. 

Lost : “One of us”

It came as a huge surprise to me last night to discover that the blonde chick who has been an integral part of “The Others” since the start is oddly enough still one of “The Others.”  I don’t know which is worse, Jacks incredible stupidity or Matthew Fox’s acting.  Every time Fox speaks he goes through a 5 minute routine of rapid breathing, face twitching and sarcastic smiles before blurting out a series of monosyllabic breathy statements before raising his eyebrows and of course his voice.  I can only assume that after years of filming in the jungle Fox has developed some form of allergy related asthma.  Lousy actor in a lousy role.  The writers intentionally or not have turned Jack into a complete idiot who is either suffering from Stockholm syndrome or amnesia.   The Others are bad Jack.  They kill plane survivors, kidnap children and they are ruled by the guy who played the serial killer Hinks on “The Pratcise”.  I would have killed Hinks the minute he showed up with his crack pot story about being a black guy in a hot air balloon !  “The Practise” was on prior to “Lost” so you would have thought that someone like Bernard (What the hell ever happened to him anyway ?) would have said “Hey that bug eyed midget is Hinks from The Practise! ” the minute he appeared on the beach.

I really hate that fat guy Tom from the Capital One commercials as well.  I don’t know how Saed manages to get captured and disarmed every time he has an opportunity to kill him and I can’t see how Sawyer ever swindled anyone since he is little more than a slapstick clown figure who can’t walk more than a few yards without incurring some kind of painful bodily injury in mildly amusing fashion.  Kate is another one who annoys me.  Supposedly she is a cold blooded killer and fugitive but other than having a girly catfight with Mrs Liar last week she isn’t exactly living up to her past reputation as a hellion.  It is about time the survivors got their act together and massacred the others.  No questions asked, no snooping around, no plans involving either Locke’s brain or Jack’s diplomacy but rather a good old fashioned shoot ‘em up.   Sadly the only bug eyed midget likely to be killed off this year is our favourite hobit Charlie.  

Barbie’s new squeeze : Jon Bon Jovi

McFarlane toys recently announced that they are to release a new line of Bon Jovi action figures. After years of being overlooked by the toy manufacturing industry the greatest rock band of all time will soon be found in nurseries around the nation. As a long time Bon Jovi fan my delight at this news is tinged with a little sadness that nobody thought of doing this twenty years ago ! It was in about 1983 while riding the school bus home that I realised “Living on a Prayer” was the finest piece of music ever recorded and twenty four years later my opinion has not changed. I am going to be camping out at Walmart the night before the mini Jovi’s are released so I can buy one for my daughter and each of my nephews. When I was a youngster a little JBJ and Richie would have been the perfect addition to my toy cupboard. Just imagine if I had been able to play with them alongside the A-Team men I had ? For one thing the A-team van is your stereotypical amp transporting type of vehicle and for another thing have you ever seen two guys who look more like roadies than B.A. and Murdoch ? Hannibal would have been an ideal manager for the band although Face would have had to find a new home as there is only room for one pretty boy in the group.

I can imagine the fun I would have had when I was simulating Red Leaders unsuccessful x-wing fighter attack on the death star if JBJ was there to sing a dying tribute as the fat spaceman went down in a blaze of glory. Skeletors Castle Grey Skull would have been an awesome location for the mini rockers to do a gig and Barbies pool party an ideal destination in my sisters room for the after show party. I always hoped that the day would come when I could get my own Bon Jovi for ten bucks and for the last 25 years I have just tried to keep the faith.