Dolph Lundgren is to the acting world what Henry Kissinger is to international diplomacy... a one-time heavyweight on the scene who faded into obscurity when his heavy-handed methods fell out of favour.
Ironically enough, their high spots both came during the cold war: Kissinger as the master tactician under Nixon and Ford, Lundgren as the Soviet-built steroid-enhanced machine who killed Apollo Creed but got his ass handed to him by Sylvester Stalone.
However, whereas 90-year-old Kissinger now sits around recalling state secrets for his nursing home buddies, Lundgren (aged 55, looks 65) must continue to pick up a pay cheque somehow.
Stalone threw him a lifeline with two appearances in The Expendables and its sequel, but not content with playing 'old action star No. 5' in those geriaction flicks, he has taken the lead on a new TV series called SAF3.
Now if that spells out 'SAFE' to some of you, there's a good reason for that. SAF3 stands for Sea, Air, Fire unit 3.
It is basically an elite - and by elite I mean a group of uber-photogenic young actors you've never seen before, a grizzled leader (Lundgren), and a headquarters by the picturesque shoreline of Los Angeles - unit who tackle forest fires and sea rescues.
It was put together by a uniform fetishist obviously, because the young actors get to swap from firefighters uniforms to iconic Baywatch red swimsuits and trunks, at will.
The acting is one-dimensional, the copious use of over-dubbing suggests someone has trouble with their lines and Lundgren stares into the middle distance more often than the quality tester at a Magic Eye Poster factory.
Within the first five minutes of the show, Lundgren has stripped to his swimming trunks (thank God he didn't wear Speedos) and is toweling himself down, flexing his once sculpted torso and trying ever so hard not to look like he is.
For some inexplicable reason, the head of the fire unit demands that music be put on in the kitchen/rec room and that the young people dance around to it (trust me, I'm not making this up), oh, and Lundgren is haunted by the image of his lover drowning (he couldn't save her... but you kind of already knew that didn't you).
SAF3 is set, as I said, in Los Angeles, but not filmed there. Oh no. Why go to LA where things are so expensive, when you can fly the unknown cast and crew to South Africa (economy class) to film it there.
This TV show is so bad I offer the following safety proceedures. If you walk into a room and it is accidentally on the telly, drop to the ground and roll out of the room. Exposure to even a few minutes of this show can lead to dangerously high levels of despondency building up in your lungs. Also, once you're out of the room, do not go back in UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, even if there is a loved one sitting on the sofa watching it. You've lost that person. Move on. Stare into the middle distance. Maybe become a firefighting lifeguard.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Arthur's Day, Is it a scam if we're all in on it?
A Belfast Telegraph blogger called Eamonn McCann has written a rather scathing attack on drinks Czars Diageo and their cynical attempts to promote a new day of celebration for their main product, Guinness.
The article by Mr McCann (read it here- http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamonn-mccann/how-we-bought-into-the-pr-scam-that-is-arthurs-day-29572850.html) is a tirade against the corporate greed of Diageo, but I think such venomous rhetoric is somewhat simplistic in its explanation and appears all too eager to cast Arthur's Day as without redeeming elements or any essence of merit.
First and foremost, Diageo used the opportunity of the 250th anniversary of the brewing of Guinness in Dublin (1759, the date that appears on all Guinness logos) to launch Arthur's Day in 2009.
It was, in reflection, a date which merited celebration. Guinness has, down through the years, provided one of the most identifiable and exportable products that has ever emerged from these green shores.
What's more, Diageo have paid taxes and have sold enough pints of the black stuff, with associated excise duty, to create possibly the largest dent in Ireland's tax revenue should the stout stop flowing out overnight.
Many people would like Diageo to leave Ireland and certainly to end their association with Guinness. We have idealised notions of Guinness as how our fathers used to enjoy it, perpetuated by the abundance of "Guinness is Good For You" signs which loiter like barflies in wrinkled suits in the dingier corners of our traditional pubs.
But the truth of the matter is Guinness is a global brand because of Diageo and the success of the brand must be attributed in no small part to the ruthless global nature of the drinks conglomerate.
Since 2009, Arthur's Day has returned once a year and has been increasingly viewed by the world-weary as a cynical attempt by Diageo to get us to drink more, with the thin veil of music gigs, special offers or that indefinable 'Irish-ish' tag which accompanies any pint of the black and white drunk by anyone under the age of 30.
The truth of the matter is, we have all become too afraid of alcohol advertising in this country. Drinks companies already have to jump through hoops to advertise alcohol, but this is tempered by the fact that alcohol is a dangerous and controlled substance. It is not available everywhere and its sale is restricted to those over 18 years of age.
Have a look through the Advertising Standards Authority's standards for alcohol (http://www.asai.ie/entiresection.asp?Section_Num=7) and if you are like me, you will see that the vast majority of the regulations laid down make sense.
With limited options open for advertising, Diageo sought another outlet and Arthur's Day was it. The day could not be promoted as a giant drinking session or pub crawl (see the ASAI regs) and so it had to have a separate focus, which was live music.
Guinness-sponsored bands played the length and breadth of the country for the first Arthur's Day in 2009 and subsequent Arthur's Days have had even more bands playing under their banner.
What, exactly, is wrong with this? Who exactly is being scammed? The band? The venue? The audience?
Ah, yes. Mr McCann went with the latter, saying that Arthur's Day was just a means of debasing the 'Irish' identity. In his own words "Sales of plastic bodhrans and leprechaun beards soared through the thatched-style roof of the craft-village cottages, as half the population turned out in full Darby O'Gill get-up as capering extras in epic scenes of paddy-wackery."
Where exactly did this congregation of green beards, ginger wigs and goatskin drums take place? I've yet to see the photos to prove that there was anything approaching the knee-slapping, shillelagh-swinging 'paddy-wackery' that Mr McCann said was so evident.
Some people went out on a night they may not have normally gone out - in 2012 Arthur's Day fell on a Wednesday night, this year it's a Thursday. They had a few drinks. If they wanted to avail of any subsidised pints of Guinness, that was their decision as adults to make.
Eamonn McCann's article was based on the premise that the marketing men and women hired by Diageo who came up with the concept of Arthur's Day and 'sold' it to us are somehow smarter than we are.
I'd say to Eamonn, give the people of Ireland a little bit more credit than that. Arthur's Day is a marketing dream for Diageo, but only because we, the people, allow it to be.
The article by Mr McCann (read it here- http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamonn-mccann/how-we-bought-into-the-pr-scam-that-is-arthurs-day-29572850.html) is a tirade against the corporate greed of Diageo, but I think such venomous rhetoric is somewhat simplistic in its explanation and appears all too eager to cast Arthur's Day as without redeeming elements or any essence of merit.
First and foremost, Diageo used the opportunity of the 250th anniversary of the brewing of Guinness in Dublin (1759, the date that appears on all Guinness logos) to launch Arthur's Day in 2009.
It was, in reflection, a date which merited celebration. Guinness has, down through the years, provided one of the most identifiable and exportable products that has ever emerged from these green shores.
What's more, Diageo have paid taxes and have sold enough pints of the black stuff, with associated excise duty, to create possibly the largest dent in Ireland's tax revenue should the stout stop flowing out overnight.
Many people would like Diageo to leave Ireland and certainly to end their association with Guinness. We have idealised notions of Guinness as how our fathers used to enjoy it, perpetuated by the abundance of "Guinness is Good For You" signs which loiter like barflies in wrinkled suits in the dingier corners of our traditional pubs.
But the truth of the matter is Guinness is a global brand because of Diageo and the success of the brand must be attributed in no small part to the ruthless global nature of the drinks conglomerate.
Since 2009, Arthur's Day has returned once a year and has been increasingly viewed by the world-weary as a cynical attempt by Diageo to get us to drink more, with the thin veil of music gigs, special offers or that indefinable 'Irish-ish' tag which accompanies any pint of the black and white drunk by anyone under the age of 30.
The truth of the matter is, we have all become too afraid of alcohol advertising in this country. Drinks companies already have to jump through hoops to advertise alcohol, but this is tempered by the fact that alcohol is a dangerous and controlled substance. It is not available everywhere and its sale is restricted to those over 18 years of age.
Have a look through the Advertising Standards Authority's standards for alcohol (http://www.asai.ie/entiresection.asp?Section_Num=7) and if you are like me, you will see that the vast majority of the regulations laid down make sense.
With limited options open for advertising, Diageo sought another outlet and Arthur's Day was it. The day could not be promoted as a giant drinking session or pub crawl (see the ASAI regs) and so it had to have a separate focus, which was live music.
Guinness-sponsored bands played the length and breadth of the country for the first Arthur's Day in 2009 and subsequent Arthur's Days have had even more bands playing under their banner.
What, exactly, is wrong with this? Who exactly is being scammed? The band? The venue? The audience?
Ah, yes. Mr McCann went with the latter, saying that Arthur's Day was just a means of debasing the 'Irish' identity. In his own words "Sales of plastic bodhrans and leprechaun beards soared through the thatched-style roof of the craft-village cottages, as half the population turned out in full Darby O'Gill get-up as capering extras in epic scenes of paddy-wackery."
Where exactly did this congregation of green beards, ginger wigs and goatskin drums take place? I've yet to see the photos to prove that there was anything approaching the knee-slapping, shillelagh-swinging 'paddy-wackery' that Mr McCann said was so evident.
Some people went out on a night they may not have normally gone out - in 2012 Arthur's Day fell on a Wednesday night, this year it's a Thursday. They had a few drinks. If they wanted to avail of any subsidised pints of Guinness, that was their decision as adults to make.
Eamonn McCann's article was based on the premise that the marketing men and women hired by Diageo who came up with the concept of Arthur's Day and 'sold' it to us are somehow smarter than we are.
I'd say to Eamonn, give the people of Ireland a little bit more credit than that. Arthur's Day is a marketing dream for Diageo, but only because we, the people, allow it to be.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Man of Steel suffers metal fatigue
I must preface this review of 'Man of Steel', the new Superman film, by saying that this review will contain spoilers about the film, so if you haven't seen it and are planning to, best to bookmark this review and read it when you've watched the movie.
Like many kids born in the mid to late 70s, I grew up with Superman as 'my' superhero. Clean-cut and comically-bumbling (a point I'll return to later) Christopher Reeve was the man in the red cape who wowed me over four movies (yes, I even liked Superman IV, but then I was 11 at the time).
The 2006 film "Superman Returns" was a mis-step for many, but I saw a lot of the charm of the original movie franchise in this, not least in Brandon Routh's portrayal of Clark Kent, the ham-fisted Daily Planet reporter.
But with the name of Christopher Nolan attached to "Man of Steel" like a toe tag on a bloated corpse, the 'promise' of a 'darker' Batma.... sorry, Superman, shone brighter than Lex Luthor's bald head. Or it would have done, had Luthor been the villain of this particular piece.
Instead, Nolan and director Zack Snyder bypassed the very human Luthor, Superman's first nemesis in the original and the 2006 film, and went straight for General Zod. And, instead of having two minions (as he did in Superman 2), Zod had at his disposal an indeterminate number of loyal troops, all blessed with the same superhuman abilities as our boy from Smallville.
Right there was the first mistake. Oh, of course, it would make for great spectacle to have Superman take on not just one of his own kind, but a veritable squad of metal-clad warriors (those last three words were mistake No. 2).
But how does Superman, who is practically invincible, save for Kryptonite as we all know, defeat an army of these superheroes. Well, the short answer is he doesn't. By my reckoning, the only enemy to die is Zod himself. The rest are banished into a very loosely explained black hole vortex created by a phantom drivzzzzzzzzz! Sorry, sorry. Nodded off there for a second.
Zod meets his end after a fight sequence which wouldn't look out of place on a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Having been smashed through buildings, steel structures and even a well-placed construction site, Superman ends up snapping Zod's neck. The notion being that Superman could have killed him at any stage, but did not want to, because it diminished his own humanity to kill a person, even one as 'evil' as Zod.
To this end, let's disregard the fact that in battling through the buildings of Metropolis, Superman and Zod had probably directly lead to the death of hundreds, if not thousands of individuals.
The second error stems from all this fighting. The opening act of the play features a fight scene between an armour-clad Zod and Dur El, Superman's father, played with hammy aplomb by Russell Crowe. It is all clanging metal and shaky camera (Jason Bourne has a lot to answer for) and you don't quite know who is hitting whom.
Does that last sentence remind anyone of Transformers? Well it gets worse. Once on Earth and clad in the same armour, Zod and his minions proceed to bring down helicopter gunships and A10 Warthogs with all the leaping ability of a man-sized Decepticon, and frankly, just as much believability.
The CGI is glaringly intrusive in places. While modern Hollywood effects have allowed guys on computers to beautifully render robots (or in this case, aliens in armoured suits) it struggles once those suits come off, as they do in the final fight scene.
The reason for these cartoon renderings is probably because the CGI geeks have been perfecting the art of making a building fall. It must be said that the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 changed our perception of what is real and what is unreal.
You just have a sickening notion that, as the towers were falling, some budding computer graphics expert was drooling in front of his TV monitor at the prospect of rendering such collapses in glorious virtual reality.
And a lot of buildings fall in "Man of Steel". The ultimate goal of Zod is to turn Earth into a new Krypton, which involves changing the Earth's atmosphere by means of two giant colonising machines, with the side effect of destroying most of downtown Metropolis in the process.
To achieve a 12 certificate, none of this death and destruction is graphic however. In fact, aside from Superman coughing a bit of blood, Zod getting a nasty scar on his temple and Lois Lane (the utterly banal Amy Adams) getting a flesh wound that Superman cauterises with his laser vision, there is a distinct lack of gore or sense of mortality in this film.
A lack of blood and broken bones was evident in both the original Superman series and the 2006 film, but neither of these films had the same virtual loss of life. In the colonising sequence which kick-starts the final act, the death of tens of thousands would have been unavoidable.
The greatest natural disaster of our generation, the Indian Ocean tsunami, is also hinted at but not shown in this final scene, as another massive ship lands on an unnamed island and begins generating tidal waves. Again, the loss of life is not something the movie's makers want you to consider. The humans are unimportant. Concentrate on the aliens.
But I don't want this review to end on a wholly negative note, because there are moments in the opening act of this film which lead you to believe that it could be.... well... super.
Unlike the original 1978 film, Clark Kent's transition from baby to man is not covered in chronological order. We get to see certain pivotal moments in flashback: Clark's first overwhelming experience of his super senses, which makes him freak out in a classroom; his first act of bravery, saving his schoolmates when their bus plunges off a bridge into a river; the subsequent reaction of his father (played with perfect gravitas by Kevin Costner) to his rescue; his reluctance to fight back when being picked on by bullies.
They deal in a more genuine applied reality to the problems Clark would face as a kid. The death of Costner in the film, in particular, sets the tone for a film which could, and in the end should, have been more about Superman 'the man' as opposed the Superman the irresistible force.
And therein lies the biggest disappointment for me in this film. The time it invests in introducing you to Clark Kent is much smaller than all the crashing and banging and explosions and thumps and earth-altering pseudo-astronomical mumbo jumbo.
There is no humour in this film. There is no clutzy Clark, the big oaf that belies the Man of Steel underneath. There is no humour and worse still, there is no heart.
Like many kids born in the mid to late 70s, I grew up with Superman as 'my' superhero. Clean-cut and comically-bumbling (a point I'll return to later) Christopher Reeve was the man in the red cape who wowed me over four movies (yes, I even liked Superman IV, but then I was 11 at the time).
The 2006 film "Superman Returns" was a mis-step for many, but I saw a lot of the charm of the original movie franchise in this, not least in Brandon Routh's portrayal of Clark Kent, the ham-fisted Daily Planet reporter.
But with the name of Christopher Nolan attached to "Man of Steel" like a toe tag on a bloated corpse, the 'promise' of a 'darker' Batma.... sorry, Superman, shone brighter than Lex Luthor's bald head. Or it would have done, had Luthor been the villain of this particular piece.
Instead, Nolan and director Zack Snyder bypassed the very human Luthor, Superman's first nemesis in the original and the 2006 film, and went straight for General Zod. And, instead of having two minions (as he did in Superman 2), Zod had at his disposal an indeterminate number of loyal troops, all blessed with the same superhuman abilities as our boy from Smallville.
Right there was the first mistake. Oh, of course, it would make for great spectacle to have Superman take on not just one of his own kind, but a veritable squad of metal-clad warriors (those last three words were mistake No. 2).
But how does Superman, who is practically invincible, save for Kryptonite as we all know, defeat an army of these superheroes. Well, the short answer is he doesn't. By my reckoning, the only enemy to die is Zod himself. The rest are banished into a very loosely explained black hole vortex created by a phantom drivzzzzzzzzz! Sorry, sorry. Nodded off there for a second.
Zod meets his end after a fight sequence which wouldn't look out of place on a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Having been smashed through buildings, steel structures and even a well-placed construction site, Superman ends up snapping Zod's neck. The notion being that Superman could have killed him at any stage, but did not want to, because it diminished his own humanity to kill a person, even one as 'evil' as Zod.
To this end, let's disregard the fact that in battling through the buildings of Metropolis, Superman and Zod had probably directly lead to the death of hundreds, if not thousands of individuals.
The second error stems from all this fighting. The opening act of the play features a fight scene between an armour-clad Zod and Dur El, Superman's father, played with hammy aplomb by Russell Crowe. It is all clanging metal and shaky camera (Jason Bourne has a lot to answer for) and you don't quite know who is hitting whom.
Does that last sentence remind anyone of Transformers? Well it gets worse. Once on Earth and clad in the same armour, Zod and his minions proceed to bring down helicopter gunships and A10 Warthogs with all the leaping ability of a man-sized Decepticon, and frankly, just as much believability.
The CGI is glaringly intrusive in places. While modern Hollywood effects have allowed guys on computers to beautifully render robots (or in this case, aliens in armoured suits) it struggles once those suits come off, as they do in the final fight scene.
The reason for these cartoon renderings is probably because the CGI geeks have been perfecting the art of making a building fall. It must be said that the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 changed our perception of what is real and what is unreal.
You just have a sickening notion that, as the towers were falling, some budding computer graphics expert was drooling in front of his TV monitor at the prospect of rendering such collapses in glorious virtual reality.
And a lot of buildings fall in "Man of Steel". The ultimate goal of Zod is to turn Earth into a new Krypton, which involves changing the Earth's atmosphere by means of two giant colonising machines, with the side effect of destroying most of downtown Metropolis in the process.
To achieve a 12 certificate, none of this death and destruction is graphic however. In fact, aside from Superman coughing a bit of blood, Zod getting a nasty scar on his temple and Lois Lane (the utterly banal Amy Adams) getting a flesh wound that Superman cauterises with his laser vision, there is a distinct lack of gore or sense of mortality in this film.
A lack of blood and broken bones was evident in both the original Superman series and the 2006 film, but neither of these films had the same virtual loss of life. In the colonising sequence which kick-starts the final act, the death of tens of thousands would have been unavoidable.
The greatest natural disaster of our generation, the Indian Ocean tsunami, is also hinted at but not shown in this final scene, as another massive ship lands on an unnamed island and begins generating tidal waves. Again, the loss of life is not something the movie's makers want you to consider. The humans are unimportant. Concentrate on the aliens.
But I don't want this review to end on a wholly negative note, because there are moments in the opening act of this film which lead you to believe that it could be.... well... super.
Unlike the original 1978 film, Clark Kent's transition from baby to man is not covered in chronological order. We get to see certain pivotal moments in flashback: Clark's first overwhelming experience of his super senses, which makes him freak out in a classroom; his first act of bravery, saving his schoolmates when their bus plunges off a bridge into a river; the subsequent reaction of his father (played with perfect gravitas by Kevin Costner) to his rescue; his reluctance to fight back when being picked on by bullies.
They deal in a more genuine applied reality to the problems Clark would face as a kid. The death of Costner in the film, in particular, sets the tone for a film which could, and in the end should, have been more about Superman 'the man' as opposed the Superman the irresistible force.
And therein lies the biggest disappointment for me in this film. The time it invests in introducing you to Clark Kent is much smaller than all the crashing and banging and explosions and thumps and earth-altering pseudo-astronomical mumbo jumbo.
There is no humour in this film. There is no clutzy Clark, the big oaf that belies the Man of Steel underneath. There is no humour and worse still, there is no heart.
Friday, January 4, 2013
It's not red it's fucking purple!
Ah the unmistakable crunch of another lunch ruined by this purple curse. The order was simple. "Ham special on brown" said I cheerfully, taking my seat like a clueless passenger on the train to hell.
It arrived as I expected. Nothing to tingle the 'spidey sense'. And then the bite. Crisp toasted bread gave way to the soft compliance of melted cheese and the slighly rubbery texture of sliced ham, and then the crunch.
An onion.
A fucking onion.
A red fucking onion.
There came a time in the Celtic Tiger-catalysed culinary revolution in Ireland - I'd estimate some time between it being acceptable to pay over £2 for a coffee and the arrival of the first Ciabatta in the country - where someone, somewhere, brought back a red onion from the continent.
And oh how their friends must have marvelled. Here was a vegetable with all the eye-watering potency of a regular onion, but with actual colour. No longer would you have to hold a slice up to the light to see if it was an onion or a finely-chopped piece of iceberg lettuce.
And so the Irish salad, still in its infancy mind, gained a dash of colour and a potency of taste comparable to smothering a Rich Tea biscuit in curry sauce.
Now I know I am in a minority in not liking the taste of raw onions. Its culinary versatility I do not doubt. Included in a stew or casserole, I would not find fault with the taste.
But a raw onion is a bully. Stick a raw onion in any dish where it is not cooked and you might as well punch them in the face.
Getting back to the salad. The red onion, with it's 'look at me' parlour trick of actually having colour, started the slippery slope down which the Irish salad has been tossed since the mid 90s.
It is now not surprising to go to a restaurant, order a salad, and be unable to tell what half the plants in your bowl actually are. There are now so many mixed leaves - Rocket this and Radicchio that - in the average salad, some of them must surely be endangered.
And then we have the finely chopped salads. Picking large chunks of onions out of a salad which mostly consists of large chunks is a manageable, if vexing, task.
Chasing miniscule slivers of onion around an ice-rink of vinagrette with a fork which is clearly not up to the task is enough to drive a man to be a carnivore.
But the worst sinners are those who put onions unannounced into sandwiches, and then gawk at you with a "well doesn't everyone?" look when you try to explain that their menu does not comply with the trade descriptions act.
If you're going to put onions in a sandwich, signal your intention clearly on the menu. Don't slide a slice or two in and expect us not to notice. It's a fucking raw onion for Christ Sakes!
You wouldn't put down on your menu "bottle of water, €2" and then forget to mention that you put a measure of vodka in every bottle.
If you have a little disclaimer at the bottom which says "Be advised that all sandwiches come with red onions", then I have only myself to blame if I miss it and get tricked into clamping down on a sliver of the Devil's bulb.
And while we're at it, onions, red or otherwise, have no place in coleslaw. Coleslaw is about texture. You add it to sandwiches, you dollop it on your chips, you heap it on your plate, because its texture is different to anything else on the plate.
Coleslaw is meant to be texture, not taste. Do not put onions in it.
And another thing. Red onions aren't red. They're fucking purple.
It arrived as I expected. Nothing to tingle the 'spidey sense'. And then the bite. Crisp toasted bread gave way to the soft compliance of melted cheese and the slighly rubbery texture of sliced ham, and then the crunch.
An onion.
A fucking onion.
A red fucking onion.
There came a time in the Celtic Tiger-catalysed culinary revolution in Ireland - I'd estimate some time between it being acceptable to pay over £2 for a coffee and the arrival of the first Ciabatta in the country - where someone, somewhere, brought back a red onion from the continent.
And oh how their friends must have marvelled. Here was a vegetable with all the eye-watering potency of a regular onion, but with actual colour. No longer would you have to hold a slice up to the light to see if it was an onion or a finely-chopped piece of iceberg lettuce.
And so the Irish salad, still in its infancy mind, gained a dash of colour and a potency of taste comparable to smothering a Rich Tea biscuit in curry sauce.
Now I know I am in a minority in not liking the taste of raw onions. Its culinary versatility I do not doubt. Included in a stew or casserole, I would not find fault with the taste.
But a raw onion is a bully. Stick a raw onion in any dish where it is not cooked and you might as well punch them in the face.
Getting back to the salad. The red onion, with it's 'look at me' parlour trick of actually having colour, started the slippery slope down which the Irish salad has been tossed since the mid 90s.
It is now not surprising to go to a restaurant, order a salad, and be unable to tell what half the plants in your bowl actually are. There are now so many mixed leaves - Rocket this and Radicchio that - in the average salad, some of them must surely be endangered.
And then we have the finely chopped salads. Picking large chunks of onions out of a salad which mostly consists of large chunks is a manageable, if vexing, task.
Chasing miniscule slivers of onion around an ice-rink of vinagrette with a fork which is clearly not up to the task is enough to drive a man to be a carnivore.
But the worst sinners are those who put onions unannounced into sandwiches, and then gawk at you with a "well doesn't everyone?" look when you try to explain that their menu does not comply with the trade descriptions act.
If you're going to put onions in a sandwich, signal your intention clearly on the menu. Don't slide a slice or two in and expect us not to notice. It's a fucking raw onion for Christ Sakes!
You wouldn't put down on your menu "bottle of water, €2" and then forget to mention that you put a measure of vodka in every bottle.
If you have a little disclaimer at the bottom which says "Be advised that all sandwiches come with red onions", then I have only myself to blame if I miss it and get tricked into clamping down on a sliver of the Devil's bulb.
And while we're at it, onions, red or otherwise, have no place in coleslaw. Coleslaw is about texture. You add it to sandwiches, you dollop it on your chips, you heap it on your plate, because its texture is different to anything else on the plate.
Coleslaw is meant to be texture, not taste. Do not put onions in it.
And another thing. Red onions aren't red. They're fucking purple.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Superman or dickhead
Okay. So I was sitting on the throne this morning and I was thinking about the Superman movie. Not the new one, due out later this year. Not the Brandon Routh/Kevin Space reboot from a few years ago. No, the first proper blockbuster Superman from 1978.
Superman saves Lois Lane's life twice in that film. Once by catching her as she falls from a helicopter and once by reversing the direction of planetary spin and turning back time (Huh?).
Anyway scroll forward to Superman II and Clark Kent (in all his all 6ft 4in broad-shouldered, spectacle-wearing glory) and Lois go away to Niagra Falls, where Lois finally begins to suspect that Clark is Superman.
She throws herself into the Niagra river, expecting Clark to turn into Superman and come to her rescue. Only he doesn't.
Instead he stays in character and, by using his laser vision to shoot down a tree branch, manages to indirectly rescue Lois from the raging torrent.
That night, he accidentally drops his glasses into the fire in their bedroom, puts his hand in and retrieves them, thus proving, accidentally, that he is, in fact, Superman.
Which means that Lois Lane almost drowned because Clark Kent was afraid to reveal his alter ego. If you were Lois wouldn't you be a bit pissed off?
"Hold on. If you are Superman, why the fuck didn't you come out there and rescue me in the river? What would have happened if I hit my head and knocked myself out? You fucking dickhead!"
It would be like giving your girlfriend a newspaper to hold over her head in a torrential downpour, when you had a car all along.
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