The Player

Poor David Kahane. Killed by mistake. Typical Vincent role!

This film always gets good write-ups when it's on TV, but I'm not a fan.

The New Tenants

Jan. Shortest ever role. Poor guy.

The Narrows

At last, a film in which he makes it to the end in one piece - and rather jubilant.

Vinny Manadoro is a great character.

Kill The Irishman

Horror of horrors! I don't have the pictures from this film on Photobucket!

We'll have to be satisfied with this production photo of John Nardi.

The Investigator

Ephraim McDougall. Not a name to conjure with. But what a sweet character.

The Cell

Poor, scared Carl. I can't believe I sympathise with a serial killer!

Education US and UK Style

Time after time I watch aghast as TV shows show US university life. Women students demeaning themselves on "spring break", or even getting murdered. "Campus police" dealing with serious crimes without reference to the real police. Hazing rituals to gain entry to sororities and fraternities.

What planet is this? I can't speak for Oxford and Cambridge with their strange clubs (like the Bullingdon Club that our glorious leaders Cameron and Osborne graced with their illustrious presence and recruit those who will continue to "lead" us in future) but British universities otherwise don't have these weird anachronisms.

Anyone who's ever watched Morse knows that the real police handle crimes even in Oxford colleges. There is no such thing as spring break. Instead we have the Easter vacation, when we either go home for a month to study or relax, or work to earn much-needed funds.

As for sororities and fraternities, there is no such thing. Some universities are collegiate, and these colleges create alliances and loyalties. But this "pledging" - unless, as I say, some Oxbridge colleges have such ancient, occult and arcane practices that the outside pleb does not get to hear about - is thankfully absent from our places of higher education.

Now Freshers week...that's another matter. How to introduce new students to life away from home and drown their homesickness in pools of alcohol and vomit. You can sign up for clubs - sports, political, theatrical, apathy (no one bothers to turn up for meetings). There are outings to places where you can get blotto, often with benefit of free beer tickets.

The drinking games help - Bunnies and Fizzbuzz have always been popular. For those unfamiliar, in Bunnies, the Bunny Master waggled fingers either side of the head like bunny ears, and the person either side waggles the hand nearest the Master, who then points across the circle where the person they point at and their neighbours repeat the performance. Any mistake is subject to forfeit, usually a substantial swig of booze. Hence, the longer the game goes on, the drinker the players get, the more mistakes they make and the more hilarity is caused.

Fizzbuzz is an altogether more intellectual game. The players go round the circle counting, replacing every number with 5 in, or multiple of 5, with Fizz, and ditto 7 with Buzz. Numbers containing or being multiples of both are replaced with Fizzbuzz. The Master can reverse the order, just to make matters more complicated. Any mistake is also punished with alcoholic intake.

When I was a second year helping the Freshers to relax, we were in the Lake District at a posh hotel (one of many places we were never allowed back to...) and followed up with rowing boat trips out on to Windermere, the largest of the lakes. The people on my boat spent the next hour trying to strand one another on the many islands we landed on.

Happy days.

The Break Up

Sorry for the squished up head. Another of those cases where I got the capture ratio wrong...

Still, Dennis Grobowski is a sweet character.

That Championship Season

Phil Romano. The only member of this midget cast capable of being mistaken for a basketball player.

That Was The Week That Was

No, not the 1960s satirical show that launched David Frost's career. Just my week so far. Stick with it, it's worth it.

Monday was a write-off. I had a 2.10pm appointment for a lumbar x-ray to support my boob reduction case.

I got up at sparrow-fart on Tuesday in case I got a call to work, but hoping I could spend a sunny day at the zoo. I got a call to work. On the way home I spent the day's pay (which I don't receive till next week) on vet supplies.

I got up just as early on Wednesday in case I got a call to work, but hoping I could spend a sunny day at the zoo. I got a call to work.

This is casual as-and-when work, for an ASD school I've worked for a lot, but it moved over Easter into a brand spanking new building.

I don't know if US schools still have these in their classrooms (no, not Bobby's hand, the blackboard) but in Britain they are long gone.



We've had interactive whiteboards pretty well everywhere for about 15 years, and before that most places had drywipe whiteboards rather than messy chalk. Well, this school has super-deluxe models where the computer, DVD player, USB ports, electric controls for the windows and anything else you can think of are built in.



The teacher controls it with a remote keyboard which is about a third of the size of a laptop keyboard.



It is the most frustrating instrument I have ever had the misfortune to work with.

The buttons top left are the left and right mouse clicks. The ball at top right is the cursor mover, the rest of the ouse function, I guess. It is the most inexact, difficult to control piece of shit any man could have dreamed up (don't tell me it might have been a woman, we all know it couldn't be so).

There are lots of great sensory things in the playground, but sandpits? The younger kids spend all their breaktime putting it down their own and their friends' necks. Only a matter of time till it goes in some eyes...

Then there are the flower beds. The plants, which haven't rooted yet, never will, as they are a convenient handful to pull out and throw around.

Well, as there is a lot of walking to be done in this new building, and I was standing around cooking for a lot of the time, I was pretty exhausted by the end of Wednesday. But luckily Thursday dawned warm and sunny, and there was no call to work, so off I went to the zoo.

It was worth waiting for.

Firstly, the new male gorilla, Kumbuka, was with young Mjukuu for about the first time. They showed a professional level of acting indifferent. He looks at her, she looks away. He looks away, she looks at him. She circles round him. He pretends not to notice. He sits around nonchalantly, she gathers sacks and carries them up to the highest perch she can find.

I don't think he quite gets alpha male dominance yet.





Jae Jae was being particularly fetching. His back was to the window, then he rolled over towards the glass and treated us to these views of his beauteousness.





Jae Jae's enrichment included a piece of meat on top of his climbing frame, with a trail of blood leading to it. I stitched three pieces of video together and shut off the volume, but couldn't convert it into anything usable, so here are three pieces of rough footage for which you might want to turn down the keeper's commentary which is interspersed with crowd noise.

He follows the trail.



He makes his "kill".



He chomps his prize.

Stuart Saves His Family

The very BIG Mr Smalley. Donnie's not Vincent's best look.

Can't disguise those curls though...

Strange Days

Burton Steckler. Woof. Yummy bad cop.

Steal This Movie

Abby. Aaaaah!

Leftovers

There was this wonderful comedy programme years ago called The Young Ones, which had some completely disparate student types sharing a house.

The long-haired hippie Neil, played by Nigel Planer, was supposed to be preparing the meal one day. He emptied the kitchen bin on the table, and when one of the others asked him what it was, he said, "Leftovers".

Well, the genius that is Richard Benyon MP, a Tory politician who likes us all to be "in it together" (as long as they and their rich friends are excused) has been giving advice to those in food poverty. Obviously as a rich twat he must be an expert on this subject.

He said the poor waste too much food. They should eat their leftovers. And cheese lasts a lot longer if you wrap it properly before putting it back in the fridge.

Well, thank you for that. I assume that those on benefits will now be receiving clingfilm with their benefits, as they could not afford to buy that and the cheese to wrap in it. Actually, don't bother, they probably can't afford the cheese either.

As for leftovers, the poor would probably be better off if Mr Benyon and his rich friends donated their leftovers (preferably without putting them in the bin first then retrieving them).

I tweeted Mr Benyon this morning asking him for his potato peelings, carrot scrapings, onion skin and gristle stir fry recipe, but so far he hasn't replied.

This surprises me, because I ran out of characters in my tweet after getting as far as "patronising c"

No prizes for guesing what the "c" was for.

Meanwhile I'm off to get my leftovers out of the bin. I suppose I have to wash them before eating them. I don't think the cat litter they share the bag with has much goodness in it.

Staten Island

Parmy's a favourite. He loved his mother!

Spanish Judges

Max. A time when Vincent could do baldness better.

Flehmen Unkind

Kitty cats large and small have a special organ in the roof of their mouths that increases their ability to smell, which is why you will often see them smelling stuff - or more often the air - with their mouths open. It's called the Jacobson's Organ, and the action is called "flehmen".

Well when you house some anoa (a species of small Indonesian buffalo) next door to the new tiger enclosure in a zoo, two things seem likely to happen: the anoa will be reluctant to come outside; and the tiger will lose all interest in mating with his new love and pace around dreaming of hunting his own dinner - even if he has been bred in captivity and has never hunted more than a stray pigeon.

That's what's happening to JaeJae at London Zoo.

He started the day enticingly close to the glass, enabling parents to get their vile offspring in the same photographic frame as the big boy. He stayed that way during "enrichment", when a keeper tried to lure him to the fence with offerings of meat.





Later, though, he woke up to the smell of fresh anoa and paced around trying to catch a glimpse, and perhaps a morsel, of his potential prey:

He stood on top of a convenient rock demonstrating the flehmen reaction:




In the old tiger enclosure it was too cold for the pygmy hippos to venture outside, so one dozed inside by the window doing an imitation of a leather sofa:



One of the colobus monkeys has a new baby. She's just three weeks old:







I knew I should have made a note of the names of these two types of snakes, but I didn't and I've forgotten. The first is a tangle of two or three, the green beauty just drapes itself over a branch in coils like a complicated piece of washing on the line:





On the subject of snakes, here are my new glasses - the ones that set me back over £450. Could have bought a real snake and a vivarium for that.

Signs of Life

Delicious Daryl. So young, it feels like paedophilia to say it.

Sweet Sound

Of helicopters. London Marathon day and the start is only a mile or two away. Though the elite runners went 50 minutes ago, so it's quiet ended down a bit. The ordinary folks don't count so much...

Salute of the Jugger

Damaged but alive - and still alive at the end! Gar. The name is the same as the sound I would make if we did the dirty dance together, methinks.

A Question...

...for the US Senators who think their loyalty should be to the gun lobby rather than their constituents.

As a mere UK citizen, I watch a lot of US cop shows, and when a school is featured, there always seem to be security guards employed there.

We don't have that over here. So tell me, please, how do you work it out that YOU are the guardians of freedom in this world, when even your kids need protecting from the guns you love by such a huge curtailment of their freedom in what should be the safest place for them?

We had a school gun massacre once, nearly as bad as Newtown. Just once. We immediately restricted gun ownership even further, and made sure all target weapons were locked up in gun clubs. There were few complaints, and none of our elected representatives was against the changes. No one lost a freedom that was truly valued.

You people are the dregs of the world. Protect ALL your citizens, not just those who make guns or those who love to shoot. You aren't living in the wild west any more. Reject the bribery of the gun manufacturers and be men (I guess most of you are male) by standing up for what's right.

A Tale of Two PMs

One Prime Minister built up post-war Britain as a home for heroes. The other dismantled as much as she could so as to enrich the rich still further.

Which one deserved a ceremonial funeral? Not the one who got it.

Clement Attlee oversaw the creation of the welfare state and nationalisation of public utilities and some industries.

Thanks to him, Britain prospered. We had publicly owned companies to give us water, electricity and gas, to provide our bus and rail services, to produce steel and build ships, and to dig up coal.

Margaret Thatcher took his legacy apart, giving the profits from OUR services and giving them to shareholders rather than ploughing them back into those services. Now her acolyte Cameron is trying to finish the job that she started by destroying our greatest treasure, the National Health Service.

Attlee wold not have come across well in the TV age. He was not a great orator. He was not a larger-than-life character like Churchill, with whom he served as Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government. There was a contemporary joke that an empty cab pulled up and Mr Attlee got out.

He was later created an Earl, and his title continues, just, though his grandson, at 57, is still childless. The title will therefore die - just as well, because this treacherous man is a Conservative in the House of Lords.

I would be so proud to have such a distinguished ancestor. John Attlee, hang your head in shame. Think of the good you could have done if you'd followed your in illustious grandfather's footsteps.

The Salton Sea

The completely unprepossessing Pooh Bear.

Yet somehow cute, and all because of his portrayer.

Looking for Love

This is Mjukuu.



She is the female gorilla who was deprived of her baby by David Field, a London Zoo hotshot, husband of a bigwig for an endangered species organisation and so not liable to sanction. He decided to send a new male, not the baby's father, in with the mother and baby just as littl'un was getting independent. The baby was killed. The breeding age females in the group would not get another opportunity to breed as the male was known to be infertile.

Finally, after months of delays, the infertile male having been removed last year, a new male has finally joined the group. His name is Kumbuku. He arrived at the zoo on Thursday and is not yet mixing with the girls.

But Mjukuu and Effie were deperately trying to get into the inside enclosure with him. They tried everything just to get a glimpse. Old Zaire was not interested.

Here's the boy they can't wait to get flirtatious with:





Blurred but obviously very handsome. He wowed the humans with some really butch displays. Then he set about dismantling the climbing wall.

Clever boy.

Nunzio's Second Cousin

Hot sexy Sgt Tony Randozza.

How much???!!

The loathsome author of the privatisation of all our publicly owned utilities; she who sold off all our assets, such as North Sea oil and gas and gave away our heritage and inheritance so that private individuals could profit from the ordinary people; she who destroyed British manufacturing industry and gave power to the finance industry (we all know where that led); she who has a rich family, including a gun-running son who has somehow obtained a knighthood, and ultra-wealthy friends; in these days of austerity where many have to resort to food banks and support for the disabled is being slashed; her funeral is to cost £10,000,000.

Her family may chip in. But why those she impoverished should have to pay for her obsequies, while those she enriched just get to go along and enjoy what the plebs pay for, I fail to understand.

All in this together, Mr Cameron? Yes, all bearing the expense of the witch's last rites. But the rich continue to bear nothing at all except the agonies of having to watch the protests of the anti-Thatcherites being squashed by a police force that, being itself hacked to pieces by the government, should be facilitating these protests, not putting them down.

Meanwhile, a campaign to get this number to the top of the charts has been successful, but "out of respect" for the person who never earned any respect in her lifetime, and deserves none in death, the radio chart programmes have been urged not to play it.

The Red Sneakers

Mercado the inept baddy.

The Newton Boys

Dock says "Hi!" Well, bits of him do...

Men Never Learn

In the supermarket today I saw an elderly man with two boxes of cat food pouches under his arm, and an empty pouch in his hand, which he was scrutinising. The boxes he held were from this range, at two boxes for £6:

I love cats. I like to be helpful. So I asked him if he was trying to identify the box the pouch might have come from. He was. He obviously had strict instructions from someone as to which pouches to buy. "Did a neighbour ask you?" I said, "Or a friend?" No, he said, his wife. I looked at the pouch and identified it as being from this range, at two boxes for £7:

I pointed out where the boxes were that contained the food his wife had asked for. He hesitated. He pointed at a similar box, which was the same brand but for senior cats aged 7+. I asked him how old his cats were. He said 3 or 4. So I redirected him back to the food he needed. He kept hold of the Whiskas boxes. No matter what I said, he kept repeating that he thought he was going to buy those.

I did try to warn him that he was going to be in trouble with his wife if he didn't take home the right food. Still he dithered. I went on with my shopping.

Five minutes later, he was still dithering in front of the cat food.

I don't know which he finally bought, but I can imagine his wife's reaction if he went home with the Whiskas.

Mystic Pizza

Ah, beautiful Bill. Anyone here doesn't wish they were giving him that particular pleasure?

Hooray!

Just heard Thatcher's dead! Evil old bitch. I doubt we'll ever recover from the damage she did to this country, which her darling Cameron is determined to complete.

If there's a heaven and a hell, I've NO doubt which one she'll be in.

Ruby Anniversary

Wow! Today marks my 40th wedding anniversary!

Sadly the divorce was seven years later, three years after the break-up.

One day I might scan in a few wedding photos. Or I might not.

We remained friends for years. I even went to his second wedding, and was invited to his third. But I don't think it took place, 'cos in 2000 he failed to return some calls, and I left him a message telling him to piss off. Maybe he was heartbroken by the split from Number 3, or maybe he was ashamed. Or too self-absorbed.

I think I might still be getting Christmas cards from him, but as I know a couple of guys called John with similar scrawl, I can't be sure. Nor do I really care.

Men In Black

The Bug. Trying very hard to fit into his new skin. Brilliant.

Evil Personified

I don't know if news of our latest native-born monsters has reached foreign shores. Here they are:

Michael "Mick" Philpott and his wife Mairead had six of his seventeen children living with them in a three bedroom house. His mistress, who had also shared the house with them along with the five children she had borne him, had left, and he wanted the children back.

He obviously thought he needed something big to help him along, as he was already facing a road rage charge, and he cooked up the idea of seting fire to the house and heroically rescuing the kids, blaming the fire on the mistress. He was helped by his wife and his best friend.

The fire got out of hand and the six children died.

The couple did the requisite crying on camera in an appeal for witnesses to come forward. But the police were not fooled, and this week the evil man and his wicked puppets were sent to jail for manslaughter. Sadly not murder, as there was no intent to kill.

Now I understand why man-slaughter can also be read as mans-laughter. In 15 years this monster may again see the light of day.

Unless some Good Samaritan regular murderer bumps him off in prison...

Men In Black

Edgar.

Great Oaks

We all know great oaks from little acorns grow. But not every oak is as great as it pretends to be - or as great as oganisations like Government, spending our money, would have us believe.

About 10 years ago I worked with someone who used to go out with a guy who sold his supply teaching agency for a million quid. That agency was called Capstan. The new owners reinvented it as Capita.

 

By the time I got my early teacher's retirement pension Capita had taken on the contract to run Teacher's Pensions. Their first attempt to assess the pension to which I was entitled was about half the amount they'd told me just a year or so earlier. No one knew how the cock-up occurred.

 

A couple of years later I ordered some Christmas cards fom the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I ordered them early, but they didn't arrive. I phoned up several times, and received a different excuse each time. Sometimes they were in the warehouse, some time later they were just about to arrive there. I had to buy other cards to send to my friends and relatives across the Pond, and the charity lost the money I tried to spend with them. The company they had chosen to perform the simple task of filling orders was...Capita.

 

When I was made redundant (the same time as receiving my early pension) I signed up with the nearest supply teaching agency - the former Capstan, renamed Capita. They contacted me once with one day's work. A couple of years on I was doing some work in a school where they phoned up about another supply teacher they had sent there (they made no effort to check they were talking to the right person) and that is when I discovered that this person was sent by them from the other side of London every day, while I, a local, never had a sniff of work from them.

 

The latest fiasco concerns, of all things, providing interpreters for court cases. Last time I was on jury service, we had an interpreter for the defendant. The judge watched her closely and decided she was not translating enough of what was going on to the accused, so next day she had been replaced. Last year the job of supplying interpreters went to Capita. News today says they consistently fail to provide people, to the extent that some cases cannot be heard.

 

I don't really know what it takes for a company to stop gaining contracts, and to start losing the ones they have. I think Capita should be the test case.

JFK

It may have been an atrocious thing to witness, but Bill Newman did have one bit of luck - being portrayed by Vincent.

It Don't Pay To Be An Honest Citizen

And it doesn't please me that I don't know this character's name.

Ashton

For those doubters who thought I might forget about him.