Luxe.

My love and I have a new music project.  Click the image to check out our demos.  GO GO GO!

Property, Pooches and Popcorn.

These are the three things mainly swamping my existence at the moment.

Flat-hunting is honestly one of the most soul-destroying things to do.  I hate it so much.  You find a dream flat (we’re looking at Stoke Newington.  Is it as dreamy as it looks?). It’s all going swimmingly, then BAM.  You realise that your estate agent is a lying shit and you lose it.  THEN you can’t find anything remotely close to the glory of the lost flat, and consequently want to hang yourself.  Or eat…

Which leads me to a close friend of mine.  Popcorn.  We’ve hit a popcorn pandemic in my house.  We can’t stop.  That salty, buttery, soft yet crunchy goodness.  I tell myself it’s fine because it’s low in fat.  But kind of counteract that idea by eating enough for 18 people.  OOF.  We’ve even been forcing bad films upon ourselves, just so we can validate the excessive consumption.  I think I better stop now though.  My face has started to bloat severely from the salt-intake.  Cripes!

And now for the wonderful news.  Yes.  I am once again a proud mother…

Say hello to Borris!  I never thought I would get a dog, but if I did I always longed for a Beagle.  My boyfriend and I even bought a goldfish called ‘Beagle’ about 5 years ago.  Bless.

But for years I was too loyal to my cats.  Yes, I genuinely am a Crazy Cat Lady.  Anyway, for about a year now, I have truly yearned for Borris.  Then I saw an ad for him, and trekked all the way across London for him.  And boy, how did I ever not have this little bundle of heaven in my life?  What a pooch!  I’ve fallen head over heels for his silken floppy ears, his giant paws, and his excitable whip of a tail.  He’s the bomb.

Although, it has not affected my crazy cat love.  In fact, I have a new-found respect for cats.  They are so wonderfully agile and slick.  Borris runs around like a pissed clown, whilst they stalk seductively on tip-toes.  I also forget that dogs don’t land on their feet either.  Not that I throw my cats around (ahem), but we have had a few instances of Borris bouncing head-first into the bed.  Poor dufus.

Even better news is that the cats have warmed to him swimmingly.  I was imagining some sort of Itchy and Scratchy HELL in my house, but nah.  They’re OK.  Particularly Pegoes (yes I named my cat after my favourite Portuguese wine).  These two are AMAZING together.  They play-fight all day long.  She actually kicks his butt which makes my heart swell a little more.  They’re hilarious.  It’s like Homeward Bound or something.  Although…I better keep my eye on them.  They’re ‘play’ fighting sometimes looks a little too enjoyable.  I don’t want to be the first person to have to experience cat/dog crossbreeding if y’know whaddimean.  LOOK:

HUGZ.

Animals fill me with such overwhelming glee.

Note to self.

Don’t make tipsy blog posts.  They make no sense at all.  Chanelling my 90s self?  Eh?

Anyway, in other news, my boyfriend may well have Swine Flu.  UH OH.  It’s obviously hard to tell seeing as you can’t actually get a diagnosis from the doctors.  So we went here, and BOY is it a load of panicked pish posh.  Oh well, at least Tamiflu will speed up the process whether he has it or not…

Thomas!

Edited for drunk reasonz.

I was reminiscing the other day about how much I loved Tom and Jerry as a kid.  And as an adult.

Hilarious.  Genius.  Killer musical scores.  Think about HOW much effort went into each episode.

I always loved Tom the most and wanted him to eat Jerry, the little shit.  I also used to fantasies over:

1. Having a Zoot Suit.

2. Eating the entire contents of the Mammy Two-Shoe’s fridge.  How do cartoons manage to make chicken drumsticks look SO good?

3. Going to Heaven on the Golden Escalator.

I could blab on all day, so instead I’ll leave you with a few of my faves:

The last one was GENIUS.

And now it’s time for a shopping wishlist:

Yes, it’s a ring.

There’s more, but I’m drunk and I can’t be bovved.

Pizza Face.

A few things fueling my days:

THE FAWN.

This meal:

I really do amaze myself with my culinary skills.  I don’t care how arrogant I sound.  I am a God.  The God.  The God of food.

I made deep fried pizzas, Garlic/Rosemary flatbread and Dough-Sticks with garlic/chilli butter.

The photos may not capture it, but I honestly wanted to stab someone with excitement over the sheer glory of this meal.  Chewy, light, bubbly, crispy crust.  Sweet and salty rich tomato base.  Bubbling mozzarella.  Lord.

Afterwards however, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so full and grotesque (there’s another cheeky pizza that the photo doesn’t show).  The food didn’t want to go down.  Then came the deathly acid and the sleepless night…

Worth it though.

Interesting thought.

Fish a tenner out your pocket. How many weird and wonderful things do you think have been bought with it?

How many people have touched it?

How many lines got snorted through it?

Kind of cool, right?  Well…and pretty disgusting.

I was obsessing over this thought last night.  Be it a ten pound note or a penny.  The particular note I own currently has been in circulation for 9 years.  9 years!  Imagine that?  I can’t imagine how often it got passed from one person to another.  It could have been some kid’s pocket money.  I wonder what they bought?  I wonder how many shops it’s travelled through.  How many trips abroad it sourced.  How many trips to Sainsburys it’s had.

This could kind of go on forever, but I think it’s a nice throught all the same.

Or perhaps not so nice.

9 years ago, I would probably have bought some extremely baggy men’s JNCO jeans from TKMAXX, or a dogchain to attach to them from the pound-shop.  Yeah baby.

In other news, I am lusting quite heavily over an array of wonderful shoes from Topshop:

Although, really I should kiiind of watch out for the mega heel.  I am tall.  And as much as I enjoy being tall, sometimes, certain heels just take the piss.  People look at me angrily as if I’m mocking their average heights.  No, really.  One pair of my heels puts me up there with the 6ft 3 gang.  Thank the Lord for my tall boyfriend.

Also, this video is the bomb.  Hello Bale twin?  This guy is my new obsession (although watch out at the end – there’s a bit of NSFW action):

Yikes.

I’ve been horrific with my baby blogstiklez.  I’m back.  LET’S DO THIS.  There’s a few things that need to be addressed:

1. Michael Jackson.

I still cannot get over this.  At all.  I don’t care how much of a sad-act this makes me.  I’ve not found any of the post-death jokes funny either.  Let the guy be, geeze.

Nobody can deny how phenomenal he was.  You all had a favourite MJ song, and I bet all of you have a memory involving some of his music.

What made his death all the more poignant and weird for me though, is how much it reflects all that is bad about modern-day media.  I found out about the King of Pop’s death over Twitter.  To me it just felt a bit wrong.  It’s just too easy to know everything about everyone, everywhere.

And what happens when he dies?  Does the person leaking the story dial BBC news?  CNN?  Nope.  The first thing he thinks is ‘how can I make some money here?  Somebody famous is dead, and I can make some money out of it’.  So he calls TMZ.  A notorious and intrusive celebrity gossip website.  Nice.  Really.  No thought for the dead man, or his family, or anyone else.

Sometimes I think we do just know too much.  I can be a sucker for celeb gossip as much as the next person, but this is crossing a line.

Imagine when Elvis died.  People simply had to wait.  You can imagine families huddled around the TV set, and suddenly, there’s that headline: ‘Elvis is Dead’.  To me that seems a little more respectful.  A little less intrusive.

ANYWAY.  Keep on slidin’ MJ.

2. Childhood Crushes.

I always knew that I was a childhood pervert, and had the hots for a variety of unusual men/fictional characters (by that I mean most fully grown women wouldn’t like them, let alone a small child).  It wasn’t until the other day that I ran through the list and realised what a serious little creep I really was.  I’ll entertain you with a list:

Jerry Lewis.

Literally I was in love.  Particularly as his role playing Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor.  Oh my good God.  I think it was a combination of the utter sleeziness, the greasiness and the mind-blowing suits he wears throughout the film.  If you haven’t watched this, please do.  It pisses all over the remake.  Jerry Lewis is a genius.

Rik Mayall.

Particularly in Drop Dead Fred.  I love that film.  Hunk.

Tim Curry (aka The Devil)

Now, this is where I start to fear myself a little bit.  It is a Legend-specific crush.  In everything else he’s not my kind of thing.  Maybe it has something to do with my secret love for Lucifer (I have reoccurring dreams that I am in love with him).  I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just a little psychotic.  I used to be horribly jealous of the girl when she turns bad and has a fabulous black outfit on, and he wants her.  Ech.  Whaddaslag.

Alan Rickman.

It’s that voice. Beauteous.  The love stemmed from Truly Madly Deeply.  It was my favourite film when I was about 6 (yes I was far too old for my years – poor freak).  I was won over by the Bach duet.  If you haven’t seen this film…GO!

Christopher Reeve.

Specifically as Clark Kent.  I don’t actually remember watching him in anything else.  I would dream that he’d fly through my window (in Clark Kent form) and fly me through space.  Yep.  (Starts downloading all the Superman films..)

That will do for now.  Yikes.

3. British Weather.

Oh my actual God.  Could the weather get any worse?  I am a total sun baby, so it’s really killing me.  I was in Portugal a few weeks ago, and the weather was epic.  Wall to wall sunshine until about 9pm.  In the 30s.  Nice pool to dip in if you get too hot (and boy did I).  I wish I was back there.  I’m sick of rain.

Why can’t the UK just have proper seasons?  Balmy sunny Summers.  Fresh Springs.  Crisp Autumns.  Snowy Winters.  Nah.  We have drizzly grey.  All year round.  Grey.  How inspiring.

Go ahead and Google ‘British weather’.  We’re the laughing stock of the world.  Boo.

4. An amazing cover song.

I think this is a phenomenal cover.  Beats the original.  I love you Antony.

Vote alert.

I entered a comp with Dazed.  Sounded sexy.  So go vote for my butt:

Service Waiter?

This is an official rant post.  A rant about restaurants, waiters and the horrific treatment that the poor people of Britain have to endure in most eateries.

I’ll start by telling a story about a recent cheeky time at Baker Street.  We were celebrating our Mum’s birthday.  All was going well.  The food was delish.  The waitress was not.  Well, at first there was a bit of a language barrier, but she seemed friendly enough.  Anyway, before the meal started, we gave the waitress a surprise Birthday Cake, and told her we’d let her know when we wanted it bought out with candles.  She seemed a bit confused, but ‘bless her’ we thought.  Maybe she’s new?

Meal over.  Yummy.  The waitress kind of disappears, so my brother goes and finds her and tells her to bring out the cake.  We’re all perusing the dessert menu, trying to throw my mum off.  She comes over to the table and asks ‘So who is this cake for?’  We all awkwardly giver her the ‘SHUT UP IT’S A SURPRISE’ look, and she doesn’t seem to get it.  My brother drags her away and tells her it’s a surprise birthday cake.  She disappears again, and we’re all waiting for a glowing cake to make it’s way to the table.  It doesn’t…she walks over with the cake (still in it’s plastic casing) and a pack of candles and dumps them onto our table.  ‘No lighter’, she says, and walks off.  Like, literally.  Noone could even speak from the shock.  Did that just happen?  Did she actually just dump an unlit cake on the table?  Nahhhh.  Dreaming right?  I was actually about to pass out from rage, so I asked her for the manager.  ‘Why do you want to talk to her?’  Errrr…why do you fucking think you Donkey tit?  The manager comes over and I explain the situation.  I said I’d never known anything like it and I wanted a fat chunk knocked off the bill.  She just looked at me in disbelief.  Someone is complaining?  What do I do? She says ‘Shall I go light the cake and bring it back in?’  Ummmm no…moment’s kind of gone there sweetcheeks.  So she brings out plates, and we sit there weeping over our cheesecake.  We’d been so thrown off that we hadn’t even sung Happy Birthday to my mum (I may sound dramatic here, but Birthdays are always a big deal with my family).

The waitress finally comes over, and still can’t bring herself to apologise about it.  ‘I don’t smoke you see, so I didn’t have a lighter or matches’.  Errrrrr wtf?  How did you light all the candles on the table then fanny-breath?

Anyway, the manager I think finally twigged as to how angry we were, and realised that there’s nothing worse than shit like this happening on a birthday.  And thankfully totally redeemed herself with 50% off the bill, a free round of Limoncellos and a special birthday cocktail for mum. This is a total rarity though.  Usually when I complain they ‘can’t’ do anything about it, we’re left to suffer and the only damage we can do is take off the tip.

The only problem is, that we shouldn’t have had to complain so ferociously and asked for the discount.  It should be a given.

My British-based restaurant rage started when I was 19 on a visit to Miami.  Something went wrong with our order, and I swear the staff bent-over-backwards to redeem themselves afterwards.  Free food.  Free cocktails.  Anything to ensure we didn’t give the restaurant a bad name.  And that’s how it should be right?  Well apparently not in the UK.  I can safely say that about 1 in 10 waiters can’t even bring themselves to even apologise when something goes wrong.

Mistakes happen.  That’s ok.  We’re all human.  But when you are made to feel bad and guilty about something going wrong with your food, that’s when it becomes all sorts of wrong.

Another recent episode happened at Carluccio’s.  We were ignored for 20 minutes and not even given a menu.  Then when we finally did order, and hour later my fiancee’s food came out ice-cold.  We told the waiter, and he took away his plate without a single WORD.  And left mine.  I told him I didn’t want to eat without him, so told him to take mine back too.  He snatched my plate and dropped most of it on the floor in his rage, and again silently left.  MATE.  I was chargrilled with anger.  I asked for the manager and thank FUCK he was American, and we received American treatment that night.  He was so upset about it.  Free mains and wine.  We only paid for the dessert.  And fuck it.  That’s how it should be!  How fucking dare anyone have to sit there and lump that kind of attitude from anyone?  The best part was when we heard him SCREAMING at the waiter and threatening to fire him.  Gutted prick.

Anyway.  What I’m saying is this.  Every single meal I’ve ever had in America has had perfect service.  And if anything did go wrong with the food, you still left feeling like you had a wonderful night.  We need to start doing this in the UK.  British diners get treated like shit, and are too scared to even say anything half the time.  I’ve witnessed countless people receiving the wrong order and taking it anyway.

There’s just no care.  At all.  People, you do realise that you have to earn your tip right?  It’s not just forked out for a laugh.

NO MORE.  YOU DESERVE THE BEST MY HUNGRY LITTLE CRITTERS.  STAND UP FOR YOUR TASTY RIGHTS.

OH. MY. ACTUAL. VOODOO. GOD.

It’s real.  It’s actually real.  Oh my god I just did a fat CRAP in my nappy.

Soooooo…not only do I get an episodic series sndfbjdfdhsjfdhsfjksdhadjs.  Nofgdbgjkfdhjgkdfnjksfghdsfjgnjl/fdznvmcx mcvzklbjfdizjgdfa.  Nah, can’t even type from excitement.  So ermmm….they’re ALSODSOJASFPOISOASnfdkslhfdlajfkldsjfkldsjafkldjsfkdskalf. 

THEY ARE ALSO RELEASING A REMAKE OF THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND.

 OMG CLICK.

Oh and I need this: