* I love internet memes. I like to think that within the dog's yoyo is a smaller you, and that you also has an even smaller yoyo with a dog inside that... Would Borges approve? No, he'd say it was silly.* This South Park clip always has me in stitches. "Artemis Clyde Frog" is great. I now can't take 'Wild Wild West' at all seriously when it's repeated on TV - although whether I took it particularly seriously in the first place is another matter...
* Earlier in Paddington I witnessed a two tourists trying to pay for their KFC with Euros. The man at the til looked at them like they'd just turned up with wheelbarrowfull of Zimbabwean Dollars.
* We've noticed that 'Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares' seems to have fallen back on an utter reliance upon it's conventions. Now we've got to the stage where we can predict, with a high degree of accuracy, what'll happen: he'll turn up, call the waitress 'my darling', completely diss the crap out of all the food he's given, argue constantly with the boisterous owner/chef (who will likely be Italian-American and live somewhere on the East Coast - usually New Jersey) - then he'll say that they've "lost their passion". He'll bang on about 'fresh local produce', revamp and slash the menu, make the portions smaller (this is, after all, America), then his team will "work through the night" and completely reinvent the restaurant's interior - which the staff and by now abashed and humbled owner will love, especially the photos of their family which he's had put up around the place in a schmaltzy appeal to sentimentality. There'll be one highly problematic night to show how much of a mess the place is, then a successful one after Ramsay's changes. He always comes up with a signiture dish for the place (Italian cuisine? Meatballs then!) which debuts in a P.R. event for the local community. By the end of the show Ramsay has mended both the restaurant and the relationships between the people working in it and their families - hugs and learning all round. Then he disappears in his black coat like David Carradine in 'Kung Fu' or Banner at the end of an episode of 'The Incredible Hulk' - his work is never done and he must move on. In so many ways it's a perfect example of how shockingly bad US TV can be, but we're addicted. It's just too easy to take the mick.
* I find a lot of humour in the idea that Emilio Estevez bears a secret jealousy of Charlie Sheen and spends his days watching 'Mighty Ducks' on repeat, muttering "I could have been the big star with the sitcom, I wouldn't have become a f*cking sex addict..." I also like the idea of him as a Gormenghast/Farseer-Trilogyesque black-sheep of the Sheen dynasty, unable to bear the family name (although Estevez actually is the family name) and working clandestine plots to regain his rightful throne. Yep, that's a bit of a weird one.
* I've also been deriving much amusement from pissing Sara off with my Jackie Mason impressions. What, you want I should stop?
