GOURMET DINNER

Hey suckers, even I get to dine fine now 'n' then.

I quote:

"The Pomo D’Oro Restaurant will be providing a very special 4 course dinner on Thursday 26 February 2009 at 9:30 pm for those who appreciate and enjoy truly fine food and the hautest  cuisine [sic].

Here is the menu designed to stimulate even the most jaded palate

Grilled marinated vegetables

Manouri and gruyère with «mostarda» Papagiorgi

Accompanied by: CHATEAU JULIA Chardonnay

Pennes with tomato and pecorino flakes

Accompanied by: AMETHYSTOS Cabernet Sauvignon rosé

Veal fillet sliced pastitsada over mashed potatoes

Accompanied by: OINOTRIA GH Agiorgitiko-Syrah

Roast pineapple with sweet cream cheese mousse and Botanical vinegar Lazaridis

Accompanied by Distillate Kostas Lazarides.

Enjoy Fine Dining Waters:

S. Pellegrino: The 'star' of natural mineral water

Acqua Panna: The natural mineral water in Tuscany

Price per person EUROS 40"

But get this addendum:

"It is suggested that patrons should dress elegantly as the occasion is to be filmed by the renowned Phaeakonese director Costas Vorrias as part of a video he is making for the website of the Croquet Club of Scheria which is promoting the event."

Et voilà! That should be worth the 40 smackers alone: the sight of le tout Scheria studiously not looking at the cameras as they adjust to their least wrinkly profiles and the ladies adjust to their most chasmic cleavages. Oh what fun - my Nikon will be burning hot.

Alas, I will not be accompanied by any beauteous chasm because word leaked out and hints were dropped as to certain mamzels' availability for the night which left me in a delicate position of either inviting The Bevy and draining my entertainment allowance for this quarter, or taking one and being ostracised by the rest for the season. There is also the question of a certain lady's *mother* and rather large soldier brother whom I prefer not to offend.

STOP PRESS: The nosh was posh, the wines superb - and there was a prize for the most elegantly dressed lady which my mother won. You can't see her elegance because she is in foreground and back to us.

Nor can you see clearly the lady 2nd-to-end, far right, next to whom I sat and talked non-stop and could not take my eyes off. Spitting image of a Kate Bush of mature years.

BARNEY IN BELIZE

Life/death impasse between snake and tree-frog.

Snake had missed getting its jaws around the frog's whole head but would not let go and nor could it swallow it.

Mr Froggy wasn't going to let go of Mr Kaa's throat.

From Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Portfolio 18 (BBC £25) - I think it's this one but there are a few and they don't make it easy to trace.

ESCAPE!

This is so funny and obvious.

Like an Ealing comedy with Donald Pleasance as the escaper.

And look at that fuzz - drool drool. That boy gonna get some fan mail.

2006: Palaiokostas et crony escape from Korydallos in a helicopter, they get caught and back in jug.

They escape again in identical modus operandi

A guard manages to shoot himself in the hand during the fracas

I heard a chick with a gun covered them from the chopper during the getaway

I wonder how many unmarked Euros swapped hands there?

Zero Tolerance:"I won't tolerate this embarrassment," said Justice Minister Nikos Dendias, who asked for and received the resignations of the director, security secretary and head of inspection and control at Korydallos Prison.

"The government will not tolerate the current situation," he said in a written statement. "Those involved in this escape will be brought to justice and punished."

I daren't be rude about Minister Dendias because he's also our lawyer in Scheria - well, his name is on the company lertter-head and his signature on all communications but we do rather better than him: we have the hands-on service of Ms Maria Chytiri, efficient, impeccably connected and of such fragrant beauty that if this was a movie, she'd never have got near the role for being laughably too good-looking.

Anyway, back to Niko's sackings: I don't expect the out-of-jobbers will weep to deeply. The cash under the table will ease their retirement.

Gallery of Regrettable Food

Let me just quote from the page to lure you in.

What were they thinking?

How did they eat this bilge?

Good questions, but you won't find them answered here. This is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes.

It's a wonder anyone in the 40s, 50s and 60s gained any weight; it's a miracle that people didn't put down their issue of Life magazine with a slight queasy list to their gut, and decide to sup on a nice bowl of shredded wheat and nothing else.

It wasn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared for a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't non- nutritious - no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders and pink-whipped-jello dessert, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day

Wife Swap Brit

Do click on the video and listen to the appalling Stephen Fowler sounding off. What a bonanza for the producers. They must have cracked open the champagne when they got this crackpot duo to agree to the show.

Heaven knows why he agreed if he's doing as well as he says.

No doubt, his equally horrendous identikit Stepford wife pushing him towards PR for her life-coach company.

The details of the show don't matter altho' I'd love to have seen a clip or two of her just *asking* for a clip round the lug 'ole from her good ol' boy surrogate 'husband'.

But it's Stephen who's the wally. God, the prig is exactly like me and behaving how I might have except I'm too weak and too fond of my children.

That accent says it all: Estuary meets Michael 'Dirty Scoundrel' Caine meets David Brent meets that oily sneery character actor from the 1980s that cornered the market in Stephen Fowlernuff roles.

His attitude to the hapless offspring - and the son's poignant response to dad's arrogant pushy blindness ... what a wanker.

And she's a piece of work, too, yeh? Perfect Lady Macbeth to his breezy self-referential obtuseness. Exhibit A of the sort of Americaine least capable of carrying off a marriage to a bogus chap like our Simon: feeding off his snootiness and believing herself packaging haut-Anglophilia with whatever qualities she's meant to have.

I was married to an American and she was never infected by one smarmy sliver of trying to be something she wasn't. She hung on to her honesty and directness despite her proximity to and the danger of anything rubbing off from me.

It's not their fault but a tribute to the show's success in producing these hilarious stock characters and setting them up bang to rights for a choicely edited fall.

Of course he was told to overdo the Brit asshole bit, and of course they found a family that would push the opposite buttons. That's showbiz.

But as I say, this Fowler berk is a classic, down to his pretentious T-shirts and selfish use of his son to smooth over the omissions in his own yoof. Fish in a barrel. Great TV. Should've shoved a wig on Fatty Goody for a cameo role as The Nanny.

Another way Stefano resembles me is his living in the US in such a way as to be perfectly positioned to dine off the old Brit la-di-dah superiority aplomb, all the while adopting the cool Americanisms we could never sneak under the BS radar back in Blighty. A soul brother.

What a piece of work, both of us.

CRY BABY: If you can take the grating accent, here's Stephen blubbing about the rules. GREAT television. He totally weaves his own noose.

Guide to Sex Toys

~ Good Vibrations ~

I'm plonking this here as reference source for when next quizzed on what's new or good in the market.

I'm not an expert but I once enoyed (yes, I did) an unlikely tie-up with an angel-face proprietor of a sex shop to whom I repped 12 copies of Jeremy Sandford's "Prostitutes" (for which I performed dynamite PR including a press confab for the nationals complete with TV cameras) and later arranged a signing session with the very hey-class whore that featured in the book and offered herself as token interviewee. A very handsome woman, I must say. BID.

The proprietress and I became good drinking mates and knowing my flair for writing boss copy, one day asked me to vamp her catalogue.

I did so and showed it to her and she made some adjustments to which I made some adjustments. Then we got out a couple of bottles of bubbly and went thru the catalogue and the champagne and arrived at even better wording ... and then I made my excuses and left.

She never paid me but when I took shy young things in there to persuade them to adorn their lithe bodies in suitable gear, she always 'dressed' them perfectly according to their assets and took away their prejudices and inhibitions.

So - shoot ahead many years to a conversation with a very proper lady with an even properer body during which the chat touched on sex aids etc whereupon I demonstrated my improper knowledge and familiarity with the more exotic range of toys and exciters.

Come to think of it, it was the improperly bodied society lady who I celebrated in song with the verse:

"I love it when the Da-da* sun burns down
Mad dogs and Englishmen turn brow
She maybe Lady Prim back home in London town
But she's built for sin where the Da-da* sun goes down"

* I have to go "da da" lest that accursèd Google Alert pick up the name of the isle and broadcast the existence of this blog to the locals.

Loipon, my fate was sealed and before you could say Joy-Tickler, I was the local encyclopaedic Love Guru ("TM".

You know how these things spread: now I'm consulted in sotto voce tones by THE most unlikely people to whom my protestations of being outta date fall on deaf - er - 'ears'.

"Oh go on, you needn't be shy with me; I bet you tell M-- all about the latest gear."

What i do, i confess, is invent stuff and the wilder my fantasies the wider - er- eyed they become. ("Oh goodness, that is soo funny ... where do they think these things up? I say (even sotterer voce ... you don't happen to have a sample I could look at ...?")

With this timely article I can palm them off with this link and a wink.

Vaut le détour:

Coco-de-Mer

Jimmy Jane

More to cum

ANNOYINGLY CHEERFUL?

God have I been waiting to for this - a pill to calm down those insufferably bubbly people in one's life.

Novacastrian

I never realised that's what a native of Newcastle is called. Good trivia question.

Actually, I only looked into the article on how Geordies can handle the cold because, back in Bainbridge, I used to wonder how and why those infuriatingly hearty types who insisted on sitting outside on the deck could make the crossing in mere T-shirt and shorts.

Speaking of which, I once watched with resentful scorn some tough looking chap executing katas right in front of the lower deck window.

To do that sort of thing, you have to think yourself at least good enough to escape mockery.

We could all see that he wasn't VERY good, but none of us could do better so we sat and just watched. Until some meek looking chap went out and engaged him conversation (over which our karateka looked none too pleased) and it didn't get any better as the man suddenly demonstrated how they ought to have been executed. Of course, none of us inside could hear what was going on but it was clear once the meek guy flowed into action.

SOPRANOS UNCENSORED

Spliced together, every expletive ever uttered in The Sopranos.

27+ minutes' worth.

Thank you, industrious Victor Solomon.

Crane Brain

I know this dates back to June 19 2008 but I've only just seen it, poring nostalgically over old Police Blotters.

It is sooo sweet that there are still dinosaur saps out there to be duped.

This has everything:

The tax avoidance line

The Afro name and address

Request for money

The perfect victim

No wonder these frauds go on - the greedy gullibles are still with us.

"1:19 p.m. A Bainbridge man came to the station to report himself as the victim of Internet fraud.

He said he had received an email message from a “Lemmens Crane Systems” company. The email said the company needed to avoid taxes and would send him a check for $4,500, and asked him to wire back sums of $2,500 and $1,550, keeping $250 as profit.

The man deposited the check in his bank account and, as directed, wired $2,500 through Western Union to an “Akwetey Elijah” in Ghana, Africa.

The company’s “representative” soon emailed back demanding the $1,550 be sent. The man sent the $1,550, but then became suspicious [my itals] and requested the transaction be canceled.

The man’s bank advised him that the check was fraudulent, and that he would have to repay the bank for the wired money. The case was recorded."

£1.5 million for Goody wedding rites

Mz Goody is the crass cow who got herself in hot water over racist treatment of a fellow Big Brother house-mate (see gratuitous babe shot)

Actually, more like Big Sister, except for the gargantuan Jade dwarfing everyone else.

I don't know if Mz G got paki-woggy on Shilpa Shetty, but Golli there's a name to make sure you pronounce right, right?

Anyway, that bloke up there in the photo isn't fatso Goody but the brilliant PR maestro, Max Clifford, who orchestrates all these money-making tabloid coups we read not *in* the tabloid press (coz we don't read such rubbish, do we?) but in our posh papers' coverage of the coverage of the disgraceful publicity attracted by all the coverage of the gutter press.

Oy, Cliff, mate - brilliant, my son!! Couldn't have pulled strings better meself.

Tell you wot, maestro - synergy is the word for your next move. Let's see what we've got.

The lumpen Goody coming up for Last Rites as she goes down slow with the Big C (actually not that slow).

£1.5 million brilliantly negotiated for shots of the chavvy wedding to her jailbird bloke (who's not allowed to stay out for the wedding night, so the redtop paps can climb down from their boudoir perches), Anyway, cheap at the price, chum.

Christening of the Goody brats. Lovely - all extra pocket money.

Listen to me, Clifford - Chantelle's Maisie's got to be christened, innit? Don't matter who the dad is.

Ta-raah. Double christening - Master Patten and other claimants to Chantelle's - wait for it - *jade* gate (nice tie in) outside the church, ready to scrap as soon as the paparazzi get there. ("Mine! No she's mine! No she's not, she's mine!!"). Corker coverage.

I tell you, Maxie, a 2-in-1 would hit the sky for broadcast rights - me, I'd even come out of retirement to do an exclusive for my old muckers at the Bainbridge Review.

Sleep on it and have your girl call mine in the morning. We'll do lunch.

Latest readings: Liz Hunt quite good on Goody's final furlong.

Circus Master: interesting and faintly comic Guardian interview with the endearingly earnest PR consul, Maximus Cliffordus.

Always good value when off the waffle, Maxie is equally convincing when he's in  chatterbox gear, thanks to a killer combination of *that* accent and the wonderfully serious pose he adopts when pontificating on his cliffordian puffery hackery wizardry. One of a kind is our Maximilan.

Charm ... dignity: You won't see those unlikely words on this page in the same sentence as that Goody creature, but the Teleg's Jenny McCartney thinks it'll get eyeballs.

Heart-rending and happy: £750,000's worth of heart rend and Maxi media ecstasy.

TV crew to "capture the moment"

Celeb mag forking out for exclusive pics

Some song jays hopping on the wagon for mega publicity

Modest Maxie delivering his spiel.

Jailbird hubby out on extended mercy lay leave.

Mission Accomplished.

CHRISTENING STUFF: Short emotional pale fragile - left anything out, have I?

No Lobbing Loo Paper

I honestly did *not* know that it was still verboten to chuck bog bumpf in the lav.

Everyone remembers the delicate scene in Gerry Durrell's 'Family Animals' but I thought that was long gorn.

I'm referring to the Important Info' section in these endearingly wooden facts about greece.

The Baker

You probably found this silly movie absolutely riveting and an hilarious satire (or do I mean 'pastiche'?) of the whole hit-man gangster Mafioso genre, but I found it grew more idiotic and pointless by the minute.

I said so to the video stores boss and advised him to alert all his Greek customers to think twice before taking it out - despite the dramatic macho jacket.

For one thing, I cautioned, it is exceedingly silly and unfunny in the way that only the English can be. Lord knows how Michael Gambon was conned into appearing.

Imagine my surprise and annoyance when I saw the 'out' ticket on it.

"I see some poor customer has fallen into the trap of taking out 'The Baker'," I chuckled.

"Yes, I tell him what you say and he want even more see it and what is so silly English."

It came back and I enquired and was told he had asked for his money back, such was his incomprehension and disappointment (I could not see how the Welshisms and camp serious humour could translate into Greek, in which case the subtitles would be a total mismatch to the action).

Then I kept seeing it unavailable and when I asked again the boss laughed:

"I tell them what you say but they all think they know English better than other person so they take it out. No-one like it, is one of our most popular movies, always out."

The trailer

Mailstasher

Wow!

Back in the mists of the early 2000s, when I was still in Bainbridge-en-Mer, I subbed to the free Mailwasher, spam spurner supreme.

Then I had the usual crashes - bang went my Outlook mail - then I moved to Londinium and thence to Prosper's Isle where I had 2 more crashes (ditto) .

This morning I thought what the hell, I'll reactivate MW and did so and set it in motion and, damn me, if it isnt loading every mail for the last 7 years (!) and thus retrieving all the lost mail.

It'll take me yonks to go thru and delete but they're so clearly presented with spam marked and ready for deleting that it's no price to pay to have all that lost mail back - and what a walk down Othos Memory to read all those old messages.

KLEEN UP

~ household tips ~

Brass or copper: Away with your brand-name polishes A rub with tomato ketchup or Daddies-type brown sauce is just as good.

Drains: 2 parts vinegar > 1 part baking soda to clear and fragrantise.

Leather: 2 parts linseed oil (in the attic with the cricket bat, remember?) > 1 part white vinegar. Make yr leather furniture all nice and soft and ready to frolic on again.