Nominal Value (not Current Market Value, duh!)

Fictional Brothers, Cousins, Nephews and Other Relatives of the Relatively Rich and Unfortunately Famous, funny names, runny phlegms, money games, and general silliness.

Armstrong "Arm" Pitt, Brad Pitt's half-brother. Has a tendency to sweat profusely and, subsequently, smells of onion bulbs.

Albert Marcus "A.M." Bush, George W. Bush's long-lost cousin. Enjoys attacking people and/or non-Western nations by surprise from concealed positions.

Anna Keynes, great-granddaughter of John Maynard Keynes, who -after having married Christopher Walken's second cousin George Khai-Walker- became Anna Keynes Khai-Walken. May the Force be with her.

Albert Robert "A.R." Caine, Sir Michael Caine's nephew, twice-removed. A.R. Caine is fairly enigmatic and mysterious. And into esoteric philosophical issues.

Better talkies and celluloid, bitter talk and cellulite...

Simon Says, and the rest of us simply repeat what he says, like the mindless morons we are...

Hollywood taught us that teenage pregnancy can be a lot of fun. And that jocks that get schoolgirls pregnant are cute. [Juno]

Hollywood explained to us that rich people needn't believe in God, but poor fellas pretty much have to. [There Will Be Blood]

Hollywood demonstrated to us that if you want your film to be a blockbuster hit, you should make sure one of the lead actors dies for the film's release. [Dark Knight]

Hollywood showed us that -as long as you are a minor- you can accuse innocent men of rape and get away with it. Maybe even write a best-selling semi-autobiographical novel about it. [Atonement]

Hollywood revealed to us that it is perfectly acceptable to be a psychotic assassin as long as you are thorough and you follow a strict -yet somewhat dubious- code of conduct. Thoroughly. [No Country For Old Men]

Hollywood proved to us that the works of Gabriel García Márquez are as dull and insipid in book form as they are on the big screen. [Love in the Time of Cholera]

Only in Hollywood.

Halfwits and Twothirds-Twits...

Deciphering the Secret Meanings of Songs, or perchance reading too much into it all. Lyrical analysis of sorts, in any case.

Try Not to Breathe (R.E.M.)

"I will try not to breathe,
I can hold my head still,
with my hands on my kness.
(...)
I need something to breathe.
(...)
I will try not to burden you,
I can hold this inside.
I will hold my breath
till all these shivers subside.
(...)
I will try not to worry you,
I have seen things that you will never see.
(...)
I shudder to breathe ."

As it can undoubtedly be inferred from the excerpt above, the aforementioned song from R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People clearly has a narrative structure. The song depicts a sufferer of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, who -in an unnamed location- has a heavily-seasoned dinner (possibly, yet not certainly, a hot Indian Curry), as a result of which he/she is afflicted by a particularly violent attack of diarrhoea. The narrator of the song has obviously not dined alone and, thus, the song is addressed to his/her date, from the latrine over which the narrator is currently squatting. As the song goes: "I will try not to breathe, / I can hold my head still, with my hands on my knees (...)." Our diarrhoeic hero even attempts to halt his watery excretions at a certain point in the narrative, whilst getting the world-famous vindaloo-sweats: "I will try not to burden you, / I can hold this inside. I will hold my breath / till all these shivers subside."

The protagonist of the song looks down into the septic pit under his feet and, looking into the abyss, the abyss stares back at him: "I will try not to worry you, / I have seen things that you will never see." Even the title of the song -Try Not to Breathe- refers to the pungent stench of the only partially digested turmeric-infused, cardamon-imbued, chilli-riddled amalgam of meat and rice. "I shudder to breathe," he/she affirms, as the song approaches its almost dysenteric end.

Say 'No!' to Marmite™

And say 'No!' to peanut butter, too, for reasons that will become apparent after having read this entry.

Recently, whilst watching Last Tango in Paris (1973, original title: Ultimo Tango a Parigi), I came to a threefold realisation. A mental triptych of revelation, to put it in pompous words.

Firstly, I realised that no-one has ever seen the whole movie since its first Film Festival Run and original release. Because of the word-of-mouth nature of the film's success, audiences simply went into the cinema to watch the one memorable scene (involving sodomy and butter, a tantalising mélange) and swiftly walked out, assuming the rest of the film to be merely an anthology of bland trailers advertising pointless European films starring the late Marlon Brando. Nowadays, all modern audiences get to see of it is its infamous sex scene in mind-numbing, time-filling shows with names such as The Greatest Movie Scenes of All Time, Hollywoody: The 100 Best Sex Scenes of the 20th Century, and/or The Censor's Wet-Dream: Dirty Shoots and Filthy Shots. Thus, I have been the first individual to watch the whole damn thing since the early 70s. And, trust me, it's overrated.

Secondly, I understood why Bernardo Bertolucci's previous pitches of the film with Hollywood producers had failed so miserably, the reason being the film's earlier -tentative, so to speak- titles: Last Waltz in Berlin (confusing), Penultimate Mambo in Reykjavík (confused), Antepenultimate Morris Dance in Caracas (confusing and confused), and Fourth from Last Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina (a bit dull, really), to mention but a few. All of them lacked the exquisite punch of the final version.

Finally, as I learnt from a DVD sub-menu unimaginatively entitled "Deleted Scenes," Marlon Brando (being the Method Actor he was) envisaged his character preferring peanut butter, rather than plain butter. See, Method Actors don't act, they do, actually do whatever is written in the script. I know, I know, technically they aren't even actors, but there's enough material there for a different blog entry. In any case, when the time came to shoot the scene for the first time, Marlon Brando lubricated himself and Maria Schneider with peanut butter, failing to realise it was of the Crunchy kind. Due to its nutty chunks, this type of peanut butter if favoured by children all around the world, but -for obvious reasons- it is not the most popular of sexual lubricants in today's worldwide market. You could almost see -or, perhaps, imagine- little tears in the corners of Maria Schneider's eyes, yet -being the professional she was- she waited for Bernardo Bertolucci to cry "Cut!"

"Ouch," she can be heard saying in the background.

I thoroughly recommend the Director's Cut DVD version of the film, full of Easter Eggs, Peanut Butter, Pointless Trivia, and nonsensical documentaries that were created at the very last minute, so they'd be able to justify the unduly steep price.

Cheesus Christ!

Ooh, la-la...!

It seems an avid reader of this blog has found an image of Cheesus Christ (a.k.a. Cheeses Christ, God Jr., C.C.) in a chunk of cheap cheddar (alliteration not intended). C.C. -not to be confused with his homonymous c.c. (carbon copy), cc (cubic centimetre), C.C. (Closed-Captioned), and CC (Cape Cod)- seems to have appeared in the most unlikely places within the last month, including a Canadian production of Monty Python's Spamalot, the bottom of a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka, an unaired episode of The Simpsons, and the sheets on Tracey Emin's bed.

He is expected to make an appearance next Monday at the McDonald's in Waterloo Station, London, UK, sometime between 10am and 6pm.

"And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, [so] be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. Therefore the centurion took thought, and said unto himself, Dude, that Cheesus Christ kid sure speaks funny, don't you think?" Matthew 8:13

Gregarious Gregarine! It's Greg!

World-famous blog spitonit salutes Greg McCool, funkiest man this side of the Himalayas.

Hello, Greg!

And here are some greg-licious factoids for all the fans!

Greg -better known as el Gregorino in the sweet, generous lands of Andalucía, Spain- fought in three World Wars, the third of which has remained a state secret for the past two decades. Greg has the body mass of twelve castrated marmots or, alternatively, eleven non-emasculated ones. Greg likes Pepsi-Cola, yet prefers Coke. But he's not fuzzy, really. Greg is so cool that -if he ever shared a stage with Liam Gallagher- he would make Liam lose all confidence, resulting in poor ol' Liam having less stage presence than the microphone stand behind which he would try to hide. Greg works out a lot, not because he needs it, but because he can. Because he wants to. Greg likes his beer cold and his women hot. Greg once met Salman Rushdie and said "I think literature is for imbeciles." Salman Rushdie agreed and courteously bid him farewell. Two hours later, Salman Rushdie was found in the gents' toilet, crying his heart out. Greg does not cry. Greg is so powerful that he could kill us all in the blink of an eye, but -for some reason known only to him- he doesn't. He once said to me "I like to watch you all running around in circles thinking there is hope." He then laughed, and I was scared. Honestly. Greg is omnipotent, but he is not showy. Daniel Day Lewis keeps calling Greg every morning, because he wants to be his friend. Greg is having none of it. Greg is believed to have written all of the Arctic Monkeys' songs, but refused to have his name included in their albums, stating "They're crap, man! Long live T-Rex...!" Greg officially changed his last name to McCool, after it became painfully obvious that he was the grooviest man in the world. Greg has a glass eye (the left one), six toes on one foot (the right one), and cannot pronounce the name Foucault correctly. Though he has never much cared for the French, anyway. All of Lou Reed's drug stories are based around anecdotes that Greg told him from his days at university. Lou Reed is actually a lactose intolerant, teetotal virgin with a wheat allergy and a spotty chin.

Gregorino, spitonit salutes you.

Reese Wetherspoon, wet her spoon...

Turnstiles, Reptiles and a Handful of Knock-Knock Jokes... Ok, I may have lied ever so slightly. But there are reptiles involved.

x: Did you know that...?

y: Lizards and human stomachs speak the same language.

x: Does that mean that if you lie there with a lizard taking an afternoon nap on your tummy, it will attempt to start a conversation with the lizard?

y: Yes. However, the lizard is most likely to attempt to convince your stomach to die.

x: But, why? Lizards seem so nice...

y: A lizard's niceness is merely a sort of camouflage, a visual deception, or dermic mirage. In reality, lizards are cold-blooded killers, more cunning and intellectually developed than dolphins, as evidenced by the fact that they would never allow themselves to be forced to perform silly tricks with inflatable plastic balls in Miami, Florida.

x: Why would lizards try to hurt me, though?

y: Lizards, very much like their human counterparts (also known as the Bush Administration), have one and only one goal: World Domination and the Destruction of All that is Holy to Anyone Else but Themselves.

x: But that would be two goals, not one.

y: Shut up, you idiot.