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Round 42: it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!


Nanny 1 wins dick with Larry Hagman. Here’s someone’s nice personal anecdote about Hagman. Aggregating all the stories I read, he sounds like he was bugfuck crazy. But in a nice way.

Okay. Onward and downward!

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you don’t want the fabulous prize, you’re too smart to be a regular. It takes me forever to put them in the mail, packages go by slow boat, typically take minimum eight to ten weeks and lose the will to live along the way.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

The prize? Still a fabulous two-pack of Aunty’s Spotted Dick…!

November 30, 2012 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 115

Hey, it’s working!

Yes, I look exactly like this, h8rs!

I’ve decided to stay unconscious until the worst of this is over. So far, it’s working. I’ve slept 40 out of the last 48 hours, like a Serengeti lioness. And it only took one dose of Night Nurse, two doses of alcohol and a serving of ibuprofen with codeine, spread over a two day period.

Oops, gotta go…I seem to be waking up.

I’ll set the Dead Pool up now, so it’ll autopost tomorrow, 6 sharp, WBT, whether I’m conscious or not. Be here!

November 29, 2012 — 11:52 pm
Comments: 20

uuuuuhhhhhhh

Uncle B brought home a special holiday cold from London last week, and I thought just maaaaaaybe I’d avoided catching it.

Nope.

How bad is it? My skin hurts.

How bad is it? I couldn’t even be arsed to take my own picture of wadded up tissues; I pinched this one off the internet. Not that we’re posh enough to use actual tissues — it’s store brand paper towels for our plebian snouts.

Brits call paper towels “kitchen roll.” They call Nyquil “Night Nurse.” See? Even in agony, I impart unto you secret expatriate knowledge.

Also, we’ve invented a thing we call a snot log. We take the empty paper towel tube, stuff it with all the used bits and throw it on the fire. One roll’s worth per tube — the finished log weighs about two pounds and burns with a merry light.

Oof. Can y’all make your own fart jokes without me for a while? Ta.

November 28, 2012 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 30

The Butler’s Song

‘Nother YouTube. This is The Butler’s Song. The performance (happily caught on phone cam, looks like) was in 2010, singer is nonagenarian actor George S. Irving (he was also the narrator for Underdog — there’s trivia for you!). The song is from the short-lived Broadway play So Long, 174th Street, which was an adaptation of the long-lived play Enter Laughing, based on Carl Reiner’s semi-autobiography.

Dolores del Río, by the way, was a Mexican actress, one of the lucky ones who successfully made the transition from Silents to Talkies. She was also the One Great Love of Orson Welles’ life.

And you’re a better man than I if you don’t get at least that first line badly stuck in your head. Which — am I wrong? — more or less shares its tune with I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy and She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter (at 4:23, but give yourself a treat and watch the whole damn thing).

And that there is a metric buttload of ancient pop culture references. If you got them all without following the links, you a) are old, b) American and c) wasted your youth sat open-mouthed in front of a television set. Like me.

November 27, 2012 — 11:43 pm
Comments: 17

Important public service announcement

We’ve just started watching Season Four of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s cleverly titled sketch comedy program Harry and Paul, which is very good. And, ummm…you probably can’t get it. So by way of apology, please accept this YouTube of my all-time favorite Enfield short (from a previous series): Women, Know Your Limits!

I laughed until kittens came out of my nose.

You can watch other videos from that series (Harry Enfield and Chums from the Nineties) on its own YouTube channel (and if you click around from there, you can spend a whole evening sampling the Beeb). Oh, and check out Armstrong and Miller — another good sketch comedy program coming out of the UK.

Anybody doing sketch comedy in the States any more?

November 26, 2012 — 11:29 pm
Comments: 18

Toys have changed a lot since my day

Okay, boys ‘n’ girls…are you ready for something more than a little scary to head into the weekend? Click here to see this action figure in full.

Aiiiiii!

Welcome to the world of collectible high-detail Japanese bishoujo figure sculptures. Hand painted and not cheap. This one will set you back ¥9,333, or about $110. Have a look around; they have a lot on offer.

Ha! Ha! I’m pretty sure just clicking that link put you on Interpol’s special perv list. Bishoujo is Japanese for jail bait.

Though this girl has clearly hit puberty. Or been hit by it. Really hard. Oh, did I mention the costume comes off?

Have a good weekend, my special pervs!

November 23, 2012 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 42

The ghost of Thanksgiving past

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorites. Nobody ever believed me when I said it, because I seldom went home for the day and spent nearly all of my Turkey Days all by myself. It’s supposed to be a family holiday, after all.

But what’s not to love? You close your eyes and think to yourself actually, come to think of it, I have a pretty sweet deal — that mental exercise is good for the soul, or the id, or whatever meat gizmo drives the self, I do firmly believe — and then you gorge yourself into a coma. I have never missed observing Thanksgiving with all my heart. w00t!

It is also overlaid with a personal meaning — I arrived in Britain permanently on a Thanksgiving Day. I count the holiday as my Brittaversary, rather than the date. Four years, if you can believe it. Stranger in a strange land.

And now, yet another layer of meaning, as we attended the funeral of a neighbor this afternoon, a great and mighty sheep farmer in our little community. It was a sunny and very windy day, and we stood outside with a crowd (our local church is small and he was a popular man) getting blown around like flags. They carried in his coffin draped in a whole woolly fleece.

And then Uncle B had to go up to London and won’t be back until late. So here I am, like a Thanksgiving of yore, full up on my solitary feast and dozing in front of my Tudor fire while the wind howls away outside. A strange day, but on the whole, you know, I have a pretty sweet deal.

November 22, 2012 — 11:00 pm
Comments: 25

Mmmm-mmmm…! Pudendalicious!

I love Parkerhouse rolls. You know, the cheap brown ‘n’ serve ones you buy in the supermarket. My mother called them “gluey rolls” because duh…but me, I could never get enough of them. It isn’t a holiday without rolls.

So one day, I got the most awful craving for gluey rolls. Out of the blue. I was about fifteen. We lived in the ass-end of nowhere and the nearest store was miles away, so I got my mother to help me make a batch of standard white dinner rolls.

I did the work while she kept a supervisory eye on me. Then, right at the end, before the last rise, she took a pastry scraper and made an indentation in the middle of each one, so they wouldn’t be too thick and bready.

But after she shaped them, she looked at the rolls, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and I looked at the rolls, and we looked at each other looking at the rolls, and the rolls looked like…eh, well you can see what the rolls looked like.

And forever after, homemade gluey rolls were known as pussy rolls in my family.

So, I have just made the most hellacious batch of pussy rolls for tomorrow (make them up a day ahead, leave them on the counter overnight wrapped in aluminum foil, then heat them in the foil for about twenty minutes. Good as new, and one less job on the day). It is officially Thanksgiving eve!

I’m going to have a slightly odd Turkey Day this year. I’ll blog about it tomorrow, if I’m spared — between hot buttered pussy rolls.

November 21, 2012 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 19

It’s…complicated

Okay, Americans — please back me up here. There are three kinds of potato, no? New potatoes, red potatoes and Idaho bakers. (I mean, not counting those blue things that’re supposed to be Quetzalcoatl eggs or something). Amirite?

Well. No. Geez, you would not beLEEEVE the potato drama that goes on here.

It’s not just that they recognize dozens of breeds of potato, they actually sell them in the store that way. Potatoes with names like Lady Christl, Rocket, International Kidney, Pentland Javelin, Duke of York, Charlotte, Piccolo Star, Maris Piper and Maris Peer. Dozens more. Don’t make me go look it up.

Oh, but there’s also the time of year they’re up: first early, second early, maincrop and second cropping (this is special late potato, for Christmas). Which I guess is mostly for people who want to grow their own, but this data intersects variety.

Oh, plus the place they were grown. Kent. Prince Edward Island. People can tell the difference.

People. Not me. Mash them up with butter, salt and pepper and, honestly — what’s the diff? Food is just too damn complicated here.

Don’t even get me started on the twenty varieties of sugar!

November 20, 2012 — 10:59 pm
Comments: 42

Monday, huh?

Feh. I got nothin’. Have a hug.

(Image nicked from the Anorak).

November 19, 2012 — 11:56 pm
Comments: 16