THE LAST TURKEY

In America they take their anthem very seriously. Not only that, but it seems they love to get a celebrity to sing it at big events - each of which tend to put their own spin on the well known theme. Some have pulled it off very well - take Whitney Houston's effort at the 1991 Super Bowl. Quite brilliant.

But for every Whitney, there is a Rosanne Barr (who seems like she wanted to piss off a nation and is thoroughly enjoying it) or a Carl Lewis, who must win the award for worst live performance of anything, anywhere of all time.

But for sheer embarrassment and slapstick, it takes a lot to beat this poor woman...



Personally, I prefer it when they have a live band and let the crowd do the singing, rather than some opera singer adding a load of whoas and yeahs to preceding. Unfortunately, the Brits are following the American's lead on this one and we now have to put up with dreadful human beings like Leslie Garratt warble her way through God Save the Queen. Ah well, at least they don't let famous athletes cock it up... yet.

Exhibit A: Prefab Sprout

"The King of Rock 'N' Roll" is a single by the British rock group Prefab Sprout in 1988. It was the second single taken from their album of that year, From Langley Park to Memphis and makes reference to a washed-up '50s star who is only remembered for his one hit novelty song, which is sung in the chorus. Ironically, it remains as the band's biggest success in their native UK, where it reached #7 on the UK Singles Chart.

It was a hot Saturday evening in the summer of 1960 and Fred had a date with Peggy Sue. He arrived at her house and rang the bell. 'Oh, come on in!' Peggy Sue's mother said as she welcomed Fred in. 'Have a seat in the living room. Would you like something to drink? Lemonade? Iced tea?' 'Iced tea, please,' Fred said.

Mom brought the iced tea. 'So, what are you and Peggy planning to do tonight?' she asked. 'Oh, probably catch a movie, and then maybe grab a bite to eat at the malt shop, maybe take a walk on the beach...' 'Peggy likes to screw, you know,' Mum informed him. 'Really?' Fred replied; eyebrows rose. 'Oh yes,' the mother continued. 'When she goes out with her friends, that's all they do!' 'Is that so?' asked Fred, incredulous. 'Yes,' said the mother. 'As a matter of fact, she'd screw all night if we let her!' Well, thanks for the tip!' Fred said as he began thinking about alternate plans for the evening.

A moment later, Peggy Sue came down the stairs looking pretty as a picture wearing a pink blouse and a hoop skirt, and with her hair tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She greeted Fred. 'Have fun, kids!' the mother said as they left. Half an hour later, a completely disheveled and furious Peggy Sue burst into the house and slammed the front door behind her. 'The Twist, Mum!' she angrily yelled to her mother in the kitchen. 'The f***ing dance is called the Twist!'

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

THE SITUATION:

You are in England, York to be specific.
There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.
This is a flood of biblical proportions.
You are a photo-journalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.
The situation is nearly hopeless.
You're trying to shoot career-making photos.
There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing into the water.
Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.


THE TEST:

Suddenly, you see a man in the water.
He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
You move closer... Somehow, the man looks familiar...
You suddenly realize who it is... It's Gordon Brown! You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
You have two options:
You can save the life of Gordon Brown or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the country's most powerful men!

THE QUESTION:

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer...




Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

Click on the title for a link to a hilarious video from the BBC. I thought the Japanese were descended from brave Samurai warriors...not this lot, I'm afraid.

I have just learnt of this great tale:

Paul Michael Larson (May 10, 1949 – February 16, 1999) was a contestant on the United States television game show Press Your Luck. Larson's claim to fame was his winning $110,237 in cash and prizes, which he was able to do by memorizing the patterns used on the Press Your Luck game board.

Through a careful study of the "random" movements of the 18-square "Big Board" on the CBS game show Press Your Luck, Larson was able to determine that there were only five patterns used to determine the movements of the spinner used to award money on the show. He was able to discover this by using a VCR to pause a recorded episode of the game, and proceed frame by frame to learn the patterns. Armed with this knowledge, he found that it would be theoretically possible to go on the game show, watch the patterns carefully, and hit squares containing money consistently.

Larson arrived in Hollywood from Lebanon, Ohio for a contestant tryout on Press Your Luck, having virtually no money to his name and using most of what he had to make the trip. In his tryout interview, he described himself as unemployed, but an ice cream truck driver during the summer season, who wanted to be a contestant on the show.

Early on in the second round, perhaps due to nerves or inexperience, Larson's pattern play was irregular. On four of his first eleven spins, Larson stopped the board at a point not called for by his patterns; but luckily, he avoided the Whammy all four times.

Then his play became deadly accurate. A player stopping the Press Your Luck board randomly would expect to hit a Whammy approximately once in each six spins. By contrast, in this second round alone, Larson took over forty spins without a Whammy. On thirty consecutive spins, his pattern play was perfect.

Finally, Larson reached $102,851, and he passed his remaining four spins. The main reason for this is because he was beginning to tire from such strenuous concentration. When the game was over, and Michael had won $110,237; of this $104,950 was cash.

While Larson was running up the score, the producers contacted Michael Brockman, head of CBS's daytime programming department. In a 1994 TV Guide interview commemorating the Larson Sweep, conducted at the time the movie Quiz Show was released, he recalled "Something was very wrong. Here was this guy from nowhere, and he was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam, I can tell you. And we couldn't stop this guy. He kept going around the board and hitting that box." Brockman contacted CBS lawyers to prove that he had cheated, but they failed.

When he threatened a lawsuit of his own, CBS finally gave in and awarded him his money. Because he had surpassed the CBS winnings cap (at the time) of $25,000, he was not allowed to return for the next show.

Part of his winnings went to taxes and parts of his winnings were invested in real estate, with the remainder left in the bank. The real estate deal turned out to be a fraudulent ponzi scheme and Larson lost his investment entirely. Larson then learned about a get-rich-quick scheme involving matching a one dollar bill's serial number with a random number read out on a local radio game show that promised a $30,000 jackpot. Larson withdrew his remaining gameshow winnings in one dollar bills in hopes of winning the contest. He would examine each dollar carefully and upon discovering that he did not have the winning number, would place all the money back in his account, only to withdraw it again the next day and repeat the process all over again. Larson's wife at the time stated that this obsession consumed him.

Approximately USD $40,000-50,000 in the remaining cash was stolen from Larson and his common-law wife Teresa Dinwitty while the two attended a Christmas party shortly after giving up on the radio contest, according to a Game Show Network special. Larson and Dinwitty split up soon after.

Larson fell victim to head and neck cancer in 1999 and died while on the run from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Above is the extraordinary Larson episode. It is split in to 5 parts on youtube, above is part 2 which when things just start to get going.

Michael Larson: I salute you.

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' backsides. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

So the conference season is over. The politicians are heading back to Westminster and the people of Birmingham and Manchester can rejoice that the streets of their cities are no longer thronging with politicians. Good news for them. Even better news for us is that we will no longer have to listen or watch journalists asking 'people in the street' what they think.

I'll be blunt. The more I watch 'people in the street' being asked their opinion about anything, I realise that I don't give a flying fuck what your average Joe thinks and that the curse of modern communications is that everyone now has a voice. For a horrifying example of the rubbish that people spout, try any of the threads on the BBC's 'Have Your Say'. It's so awful and so overpopulated by (genuine) Nazis that it should be renamed 'Have Your Say Before You Take Your Tranquilizers'. Am I being hypocritical? I don't think so - sure, this blog is a voice for me and my fellow writers but the reader at least has the chance to stop reading, close the window and rejoice that they never have to read the Last Turkey again.

On the radio and TV it's different. Both the BBC and ITV news programmes last night had panels of mindless, moronic undecided voters telling us what they though of the leaders' speeches. And guess what? They came out with exactly the mindless, moronic, clueless, naive and hopelessly stupid sort of trash that you would expect. One woman on ITV said that the current financial mess was 'the Tories' fault' but not in a way that she thought that the free market approach championed by Keith Joseph and Enich Powell and adopted by Margaret Thatcher was responsible for the banks' behaviour (and for which it is perfectly possible to frame an argument) but in a way that suggested she read the Daily Mirror because the Guardian has too many long words in their articles.

No, enough, I say. Time for the media to realise both on the TV and on the internet that allowing vacuous marons with too much time on their hands to comment about things they simply don't understand is dangerous. If people want to comment they can set up their own blogs, TV stations and radio shows. Until then, please, they should leave it the professionals.