Back To Business

As you know, part my mission statement here at Leatherette Beanbag is to keep you, my peeps, informed and abreast of the hot issues of the day. I don't always do that, very rarely in fact but now and again news items catch my eye and I think to myself "I just have to do a post on that". Invariably, I forget and due to my international jet set playboy lifestyle don't post anything at all.

It's been a week, again. My output has slowed considerably. The days of 4, 5 even 6 posts a week are long gone and due to my current schedule, won't be back anytime soon. Every now and again I think about jacking it in but then how would I amuse myself? Besides, I have never been a quitter (unless you count the time I said "fuck it" and left England for the US) and will carry on posting when I can. To those of you whose blogs I don't comment on as regularly as I would like please bear with me.

All that said, the wacky wookie impersonator of Hollywood Blvd is at it again! Some of you may recall that back in February a Chewbacca impersonator on Hollywood Blvd was arrested for harassing Japanese tourists outside Mann's Chinese Theater. The Chinese is the haunt of numerous horrible celebrity impersonators all jostling, sometimes aggressively, for the tourists' dollar. You pay them to have your picture taken with them in their ratty foul smelling costumes. I just don't get it myself but who am I to judge?

Anyway, this time a Marilyn Monroe impersonator called the cops and accused Chewie of placing her hand over his crotch in a dispute over tips. This time Chewie was not arrested as not report was filed. Police claim not to know if this is the same impersonator (how many can there be?) as was arrested back in February. The two impersonators have a history of not getting along.

Marilyn (Manson not Monroe) Look-a-Like

If you are going to impersonate someone you really have to do it well to avoid ridicule. You have to both look the part and sound the part, one out of two won't cut it unless you are on the radio. I have never quite got the impersonator thing. They are rarely ever amusing unless they are unbelievably bad and I'm pretty sure that isn't what they are aiming for. They have to believe that they have their target so spot on that they could actually be mistaken for their idol. But they don't, do they? I mean it's not like I'm walking down the street and over the other side is a Michael Jackson impersonator who, from a distance, bears a decent resemblance, and I'm going to think "Fuck me! There's Michael Jackson!" because the real Michael Jackson doesn't walk down busy streets, alone, in the daytime does he?

Just Can't Wait To Be King

I think if someone is impersonating a dead celebrity, it's different because it's like they are re-creating something that we can no longer experience except on telly or on radio, cd, dvd, record, the internet etc. I personally would not pay to go and watch an Elvis or a Biggie Smalls impersonator perform but there are obviously many that would. Probably people who never saw the real thing, but at least they can tell their kids that they saw the next best thing one time at the LA County Fair.

"Can I Get a Whoop - Whoop?"


Will The Real Old Knudsen Please Stand Up?



"Like What You See or See What You Like?"

Fuck Me! It's a Fucking Meme

I swore I would never do this but since Foot Eater and Fat Sparrow both tagged me, and me being a polite, accommodating sort, I feel that to ignore them would be rude.

So, against all I stand for, here are eight items of biographical half truths about yours truly:

1. I have a lifetime ban from all Tesco stores worldwide. In an embarrassing case of mistaken identity I stand accused of fondling fruit and of committing simulated sexual acts with vegetables during store hours.
2. I am currently suing the National Hockey League for the patent on the modern day hockey puck which I designed on the back of a beer mat in 1998. The beer mat was subsequently stolen from the bar while I was in the bogs.
3. As far as US immigration knows, I am also known as Sancho Robles de Oaxaca, a poor cobbler from Mexico.
4. I once got kicked off "Stars in Their Eyes". My impression of Prince Charles was described by Matthew Kelly as "repulsive and sickening".
5. I have never been to Barnsley.
6. My application to join the Cheshire Constabulary was rejected when I answered "I do not recall" to the question "Have you ever taken illegal substances?"
7. My own line of designer men's underwear "Eddie's", was withdrawn from sale after unfounded allegations of the use of child labour and further bad press regarding what "Which?" magazine called 'excessive gusset shredding'.
8. I carry a forged 50m breast stroke swimming certificate with which to impress the ladies.

There you have it. Just because it seems I have to, I shall tag Ellie, Fresh Hell and Lord Milky and MJ who should be back from her lesbo holidays by now. Please accept my apologies...

Feedback Welcome

So as I alluded to in the previous post, I was subjected to some training at work this week. Two whole days to be exact, 8 - 5 both days. What made this worse was that I didn't need the training. I already knew how to use the fuckin' web based tool for analyzing sales and revenues. In fact, I am one of probably about 5 people in the entire company who did know how to use it. I suspect that everybody else is happy to keep it that way and so I was one of the lucky ones who was instructed to attend.

The training was conducted by two lads, one of them, Mike was the owner of a ridiculously sticky out belly button. To ice the cake, his choice of shirt on both days was a polyester polo shirt that seemed about a size too small, exaggerating his disgusting belly button even more than was necessary. I swear that this thing stuck out like an inch and a half from his belly and was about an inch in diameter as well. So what the fuck is this guy thinking? Is he proud of it and wants to show it off? Is he deliberately fucking with us to see who pays more attention to his belly button? Does he just not give a fuck? What's the deal?

Desperate to get a second opinion, I say to the woman sitting next to me " You could hang yer jacket on that". She looks at me blankly and says "What?" I say "the belly button", she says "I hadn't noticed......ugh! You're right, thats nasty."

Hadn't noticed???? This thing was more noticeable than a deformed limb. You couldn't take your eyes off it if you tried. He may as well have been walking round the room with his dick out.

The feedback forms they passed out at the end of the second day were anonymous so I made sure to note that he should consider wearing looser fitting shirts if he was to command full attention from the trainees. I also rated the course way too long and gave him a poor for his knowledge of the course materials.

His assistant, an Indian( 7-11, not Native American) lad who claimed to be from Chicago but had far too thick an accent was equally useless. He said his name was Jonathan but there is no fuckin' way. It's like when you call your internet company for help and somebody who sounds like they rode into work on an ox or on a bus full of chickens answers the phone and says their name is Robbie or Nicole when it obviously is nothing of the sort. Yes they speak English but they don't UNDERSTAND English and say things like "You can be very welcome to be a loyal customer" and "I can be helping you with that" after every other sentence. 'Jonathan' was a vegetarian but had failed to mention it (probably on purpose) and so didn't get any of the lasagna that the company had provided for lunch. On the second day they provided cold cuts which included sliced cheese but he couldn't even have any of that because the caterer had alternated a slice of cheese then a slice of roast beef around the platter so that every piece of cheese touched a piece of roast beef.

On Jonathan's feedback form I put "Bring a packed lunch" and checked the box for zero when asked how many new skills I had learned as a result of the course. I had to amuse myself somehow...

Weak Excuse

It's been a bugger of a week and I'm fuckin' tired. In addition to all the usual, everyday drama of life, love, work and the general nitty gritty of my incredibly spicy lifestyle the computer caught a virus on Friday night while I was at work and I although I managed to recover all the files, nudey pictures and secret surveillance dossiers I keep on the neighbours, I am still in the process of reinstalling everything and getting it working right again. I won't point fingers or assign blame here other than to say that Mrs. Waring is now well aware that we did not need that update to Windows Media Player that she was offered by that very official looking pop up.

I have stories from the week such as the IT trainer at the day job with the outrageous and very noticeable "outy" belly button and his Indian sidekick with the fake name, I also have a couple of very poor "Do you know who I am?" examples from the club but they will have to wait. I just don't have the time or energy to tell right now. I have a bottle of vodka in the freezer and have set the evening aside for it's consumption.

The 1976 FA Cup Final between Man Utd and Southampton is being shown on TV right now, it's funny how times have changed, not a foreigner on the pitch don't you know?

A Toast to.....Toast

Where the fuck would we be without toast?

Toast is fuckin' ace and no, I'm not toasted and suffering from the munchies. I just thought that I should take a moment to celebrate toast and all it's toasty goodness.

It's one of the most reliable and pleasing foods around if you ask me. Who doesn't like it? What can't you do with it? Cheese on toast, beans on toast, toast with jam on it, bacon on toast, the list is endless. There is no shortage of things that you can do with toast, and like the potato, it's pretty much universal.

Toast is always a welcome treat. Just hearing the word toast makes me feel all warm and funny inside. So does the word "pie". There is never a time when I can't handle a piece of toast. Even in the midst of the worst hangover imaginable you can still manage some toast if nothing else. If you have depressed or suicidal tendencies, just have some toast and it will cheer you right up.

If I wasn't already married, I would marry a piece of toast. For our honeymoon we would go to Barbados where I would eat the toast and report it missing to the the authorities. After a couple of years we could assume the toast is gone for ever and I would remarry, this time to a muffin, although I would be thinking about toast when we did it and would probably cheat on the muffin with all kinds of toast. Wheat, white, sourdough I love them all.

What the fuck am I doing......

100 Not Out

Local man Elbert Dickyleg turns 100 on June 25^th. His family in the hope of cashing in on the old geezer, is planning a secret celebration in his honour at the nursing home where he has lived for the past 40 years. Well, it was a secret. Hopefully he won’t be reading this until after the event. His eyesight isn’t so good so maybe if they just hide his glasses until the 26^th he will be none the wiser. They have ordered a Dora The Explorer bouncy castle and an up and coming young mc/rapper/comedian by the name of F. YoMomma from the local art collective to be the compere. The day promises to full of surprises for Elbert and his friends in the Chateau Requiem Home for Unwanted Relatives and the day will end with a mud wrestling competition between the male care nurses who work there.

I first met Elbert on Monday when I stopped by the home with a donation of old Hustler magazines that I no longer needed. I had torn out many of the better pictures and at some point, probably while very drunk, had drawn crude images of genitalia and written disjointed sentences like "Cunt fuck ice cream...." in felt tip pen over many of the pages that remained. As I’m always thinking of those less fortunate than myself, I had decided to give them to people who needed them more than I.

As I passed a high backed wing chair in the TV lounge (which strangely did not appear to have a TV in it) my arm was grabbed by gnarled bony fingers and I was pulled down into the chair opposite. It was Elbert and he immediately began to regale me with tales of his youth. I didn't want to appear rude and the old lad seemed like he needed someone to talk to so I listened. I was amazed by the story he told and I feel it only deserving of a man of his years that someone should document his story for posterity, after all, if I don’t do it, who will?

Here it is, to the best of my recollection. I may have added some bits here and there to spice it up a bit because he was quite hard to understand at times and would whisper softly to himself now and again. Hopefully it is an accurate account of days gone by.

“We used to ride the box cars on the trains into Dodge City, me and my brother Sarah. He would be in one box car with the cows and I would be in the next with the horses and the elephants, big buggers they were, shat turds like big, giant round things. It used to get real lonely on those box cars and I used to watch my brother Emily having his way with the dairy cows through the cracks in the side of the car. The hours used to fly by and before we knew it we would be in Alasky digging for clams in the frozen dirt. People said we were crazy to be digging for clams in Alasky as everybody and their three legged mule knew that all the best clam digging was to be had in South Dakota but we had been there and never saw a clam not never. Sometimes we would get off the train in the outskirts of a big city like Chicagy and find us a hobo jungle where we could have a good time and my brother Sissy would sell his mouth for a few cents so’s we could by us some vittles. I never did it cause I didn’t care for the taste of other men’s manfat, just my own or my brother Hannah’s if I was hungry enough. Sometimes we couldn’t afford any food so we would have to steal a turnip from the onion vendor outside the moving picture house. A rare treat was a raw parsnip and if we made it back to the hobo jungle without eating it we would throw it into the big pot of hobo soup that the other hobo’s would be cooking up. If we didn’t have a cabbage we would throw in a boot for flavour or one of the elephant turds we had been saving for a rainy day, the worst thing about them was the bits of grass that would get stuck ‘twixt my wooden teeth. I had to have wooden teeth cause all my real ‘uns were stolen by Injuns when the box car was hijacked one time by the suckacoq tribe outside of Dreadlock City. Anyways I took good care of my wooden teeth I did, I would polish them twice a day, sometimes three or four times if I got tired of watching my brother Zsa Zsa having coyeetus with them darn dairy cows. I can still hear his screams of pleasure, mostly at night when the lights go out, he has the room next door to me see y’see. I bang on the wall to tell him to stop but he’s deafer than a deaf matchstick salesman so he is. I’m going to outlive him, we joke about it sometimes. We laugh and laugh until the big nurse comes and punches us and then we stop, or I do, my brother Agnes just keeps laughing. He’s madder than a toasted banana he is. Anyways after the war, we joined the navy as a ships female impersonators cause women weren’t allowed on ships in them days. Bad luck y’see. So they would take hobo’s off the street, men of little morals they called us and would use for the cooking and all the womanly duties like cleaning and sexual acts. We were sailing round the Cape of Halibut one time when we passed the wreckage of a ship and in the wreckage was a young lad with a violin that had no strings. We rescued him and learned from his sign language that he had been raised by sea otters and couldn’t talk although he could play air violin like a riot. When we got back to shore we sold him to a circus man for $20 which was a kings ransom back then. Soon after we deserted and went back to a life of riding the box cars and having our way with animals. It was a different time back then sonny, but we were…….”

Elbert had drifted off and I spied my chance to escape, leaving the box of Hustlers at his feet. I can think of no one more deserving. Happy 100^th Birthday Elbert, you old roisterdoister you. Keep on rockin’ my man!

Elbert "Weather Ear" Dickyleg
Man of The World

Fashion Victims

Fashion is a funny thing. What seems super cool and trendy to one person or group is fuckin' maddening to another. I don't really have a problem with most of today's fashions. I'm quite tolerant and respectful of people's right to dress how the hell they want to as I know what it is like to be laughed at in public, pointed at by small children as they tug at their mothers sleeve and say things like "Mummy, that man scares me."

I don't think that my personal choice of attire is particularly offensive. Day-glo orange lycra cycling shorts go just fine with a chiffon shirt and sheepskin waistcoat, knee length argyle socks and rubber wellies. It's a statement that I am making that says "I am my own man so fuck off or I will hurt you." It seems to work as most people cross the street to avoid me and rarely make eye contact.

One of today's fashions that mystifies me is the saggy pants worn around the thighs exposing the boxer shorts underneath. Mostly worn by, lets call them African Americans, and people who wish they were African Americans, talk like they are African Americans but are definitely too pale to be African Americans, the fashion is to say the least, irritating. Just like me, they would probably argue that they are just making a statement and I would agree. I hear it loud and clear and it is telling me that they are twats.

I have questions. Burning questions that I need answers to and would be happy to ask one of the subscribers to said fashion if they would not keep crossing the street to avoid me:

1. How do you keep the pants half way down your thighs without them constantly falling down? I tried to recreate the experience in my bedroom while the wife was out yesterday but they wouldn't stay there. Are you using braces or is that considered cheating and if so doesn't that make you unfashionable?
2. Given that you can mysteriously make your pants stay put half way down your thighs, how do you manage to walk more than 3 steps without falling over. It is like running a three legged race with a one legged man as your partner, impossible.
3. I say you are a twat. What are you going to do about it, twat?

"Oi......Pull yer pants up you twat!"

In Jamaica, there is a movement afoot to outlaw the wearing of saggy pants in public. Similar attempts in the Worlds 2nd greatest country, the USA, fell flat last year when officials in Dallas proposed a $50 on the spot fine for wearers of low riding pants. The American people were once again defeated by their own constitution amid concerns about civil rights and personal freedom.
Luckily, in Jamaica, these things are less of a concern and the movement is gathering steam.

Public opinion seems to be swayed against saggy pants, many people believe it to be a sign of homosexuality and they may have a point. 43 year old street vendor Robert Stuart told The Jamaica Observer "That is a sodomite principle, because your pants supposed to be up at your waist."

Shaneek Sewell, a 19 year old student doesn't find it attractive and said "I think the persons who do these things are mostly like the uneducated people in society."

"It's not appropriate, it doesn't look right, it's not gentleman-like. It's definitely unacceptable for most of the population," said Deanroy Edwards, a 23 year old technician.

Fining people may be a little extreme and difficult to enforce, especially when it comes to collecting the fines as most of these fuckers do not appear to have jobs and any spare cash they do have seems to be spent on clothing that is too big for them (a pet peeve of mine.) I would like to suggest Brazilian style government sponsored death squads cruising the streets in a Ford Transit van with blacked out windows and loaded to the gills with M-16 wielding federal agents. This would create jobs while at the same time alleviating some of the pressure on the welfare system. Although frowned upon by liberals and do-gooders, this is actually the answer to many of today's social ills and I think that pretty soon, these namby pamby, limp handshaking types would be benefiting from the very thing they seek to prevent. Besides, surely it would only take the discovery of a handful of saggy pant clad corpses before the rest of them got the message and pulled their fuckin pants up. I also contend that if you were to ask enough of them you would definitely find more than a handful who would claim to be willing to die for their right to wear their pants any way they choose so all you would have to do is find them and everyone would be happy. Well, mostly everyone. I'd be happy, that is all that matters.