Falafels: The Nation's Favourite!

Get me a towel! I love falafels and this little bit of falafel-on-pitta action is very tempting. It's too bad that falafels are hard to come by as it has been well documented that kebabs (donner kebabs) are the nation's favourite when it comes to takeaways after a night out.

Currently, the only place where I can get my hands on a few slices of the slightly dry, vegetably, bhaji-esque treat is in Pret-a-Manger where they do a lovely wrap with sun-dried tomatoes and feta cheese. The red onions aren't that great though.

But this might all be about to change! A recent report says that falafels are increasing in popularity after the increase in the number of Middle-Eastern restaurants and takeaways in the country. Hopefully this will mean that I will have easy access to falafels in the near future - it is my belief that they have to be better for you than a kebab which contains a mass of connective tissue.

I still love a kebab though. I don't care about the contents.

Waking Up To The Smell

Soon David Mitchell and Robert Webb will release their book, inventively titled "This Mitchell and Webb Book". I suppose the lack of thought put into the title suggests a quiet humour and the fact that they don't want to gloss over any of their thoughts about various subjects in order to please certain people - nicely refreshing.

Anyways, I've read some of the extracts from the book, including Mitchell's view on coffee. Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with much of what he says. I'm surprised because I never thought I'd ever have much in common with the slightly odd, chipmunk-like comedian but apparently we share very similar views on one of the world's favourite hot beverages.

British people are very partial to a nice cup of tea (or a brew as I now like to call it in a tongue-in-cheek attempt to make myself seem more common than I really am) - in the past year I have moved slowly and steadily from loving a nice cup of fairly strong coffee to wanting nothing more than a fairly strong mug of tea. Not decaffeinated, as I used to drink my coffee though. Maybe it is the presence of this caffeine that makes me, like Mitchell, think that a coffee is highly unsatisfying. Maybe it's the way that coffee is made in cafes that makes it seem like tea's pretentious and snooty second-cousin. Does anyone else think that adding even the tiniest bit of extra milk to coffee gives it a slightly silt-like texture that sticks to the sides of your mouth?

Now, I still like a cappuccino when I'm out and about but I've never been into lattes or mochas or any of those syrup toppings you can get. I've had a frappuccino out of curiosity - from Starbucks no less, something that I feel highly guilty about to this day. It was disappointing to say the least - ice with cold coffee on the top and although it was refreshing on a warm day during the walk back to work, it was hardly worth the money I paid for it. I have also tried a mocha before but I found that it was the slightly insipid and tedious version of a voluptuous hot chocolate - that's hot chocolate made with water; if I compared the mocha to a full-fat milk hot choc then the mocha would be the resume who is put straight in the bin when applying for a top job. Yes, I found it that terrible.

I don't understand the concept of being coffee-literate either. In this way I would never make a good PA. People who require a PA tend to like complicated coffees, something along the lines of a double triple decaf-caff mocha semi-skim latte with 1/3 cream and almond syrup, whipped on top and a dash of chocolate sprinkles. I know people adjust to the needs of their boss but I couldn't do it - I would spend half an hour writing it down and another half hour ordering it while trying to fend off the questions about what else I would like. By which time I would be fired. And thrown out of the premises.

Yes, like Mitchell I would just like a nice brew. It's simple, satisfying and unpretentious. I don't want to smell the coffee.

PS. Sorry for all of the problems with the spacing on blogger lately - there's nothing I can do but wait for a reply from the Blogger people and hope for the best since I've tried everything else! Hope this doesn't affect your ability to read the articles - I know how annoying it is reading unspaced text!

Away From Desk

Er, this blogging desk anyway, at least for the next couple of weeks while I get some stuff sorted out. It's been a bit of a madhouse and yesterday I was feeling guilty that I hadn't written anything on either one of my blogs for a good couple of weeks at least. But I promise that this summer I will be blogging a lot more frequently.

Yes that's a promise. And I won't go back on it. xx

It Could've Worked On Me!

Ah, Pot Noodles! Admittedly, I haven't had one in so many years and probably with good reason - the rice curry ones are a bit vile really and the only flavour I like is the beef ones. Oh, the sweet chili or sweet and sour ones are nice too but my stomach has shrunk dramatically over the years (completely natural! It just sort of happened as time went on and my eyes shrunk simultaneously) and I was no longer able to eat a full pot. So that's why I don't eat them any more.

At least, until now. Okay, this isn't really going to make me buy a Pot Noodle but hey, it's so hilarious that I would buy a sympathy pot, put it in the cupboard and think of the odd parodies every time I stared at it.

Curious yet? Well, peeps living in the UK might not have seen this advert either. There's actually two of them but they never get shown - while watching the third X-Men on Film4 the other week it was never off but since then (and since I've said to everyone "Have you seen that Pot Noodle advert?!") it hasn't been shown! Okay just the once on LFC TV but it's not exactly overwhelmingly commercial is it?

Well now I'm going to subject you all to the kebab advert! It's very Flight Of The Conchords:

On the subject of the Conchords, they're back tomorrow on Beeb 4! The songs have supposedly gone off the boil but from the clips, I'm not so sure! Here's a clip from their first series, their Pet Shop Boys parody "Inner City Pressure":



I do love a good late-night post. They always end up being the best!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I think I'm a fan of the X-Men series and I don't know why. Normally I dislike action films and wouldn't dare watch one but I own the first on DVD and I have been watching the others curiously, thinking to myself "I know I don't like films like this, so why do I like this series?"

Well, maybe it's because there's some sort of moral or ethical question lying underneath there somewhere. So when I went to see the latest installment - er, well, prequel - I was looking forward to it. And I wasn't that disappointed.

I say this almost half-heartedly, because the storyline was nicely put together and explained some things about why Logan acts in the way he does in the original X-Men trilogy. No, the narrative was fine. Except I don't like sentimentality. It gets a little overly sentimental at times, which I suppose is needed for the story to make sense but, you know, it puts you off the action.

Here's why I'm half-hearted: well, there's actually two reasons. Firstly, Hugh Jackman. What the heck happened to the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking, almost playful Wolverine that we saw in the original series? I read another review of this on the NME blog and the guy who writes on the Movie Projector was dead on - in this film, Jackman only acts with the scowly face and the constipated face. Sorry Hugh, but some variation in your mood might have been nice. After all, you're supposed to be a happy lumberjack in the first half hour of so! Couldn't you have least have looked like you were leading a normal life? At some points it's hard to imagine how the Wolverine we all loved from the trilogy was born from this raging beast...

Secondly, and there could be a good reason for this, the CGI. It was flawless, and I mean flawless, in the trilogy, but here it's laboured and so fake that it looks like someone banged it together in a back room in a spare half hour. The best CGI is saved for Victor's claws - his claws, yes. Now if they paid so much attention to detail here how come Wolverine's adamantine claws look so fake? In the scene in the farmer's bathroom where he's coming to terms with his transformation, the metal doesn't blend with his skin at all - it looks like the claws have been stuck on. The terrible blue colour is also highly off-putting.

Then in the scene where our hero explodes the helicopter, the fire and carnage is so blindingly, obviously placed on to a green screen that you wonder if the setting is even real. And then the final sequence should have been flawless. And yes, Weapon Eleven does look pretty real (I'll give them that) but the effects on the powers and again, the setting, is so tacked on that it's cringe-worthy. Wolverine and his enemy are standing there and the sky is.... not there. Because they're standing in front of a green screen!!! Argh!!

Maybe I'm not being fair. After all, it's possible to say that because of the massive leak that happened with the movie that they had to put everything together quickly before the film lost its Box Office weight. Can't spend millions on a movie without expecting to get millions back, can you? Perhaps the leak hasn't done anyone a favour.

To pick on some of the positives, some of the acting aside from Hugh Jackman is solid and somewhat engaging if a little dry. Perhaps the introduction of fan's favourite Gambit was a good move. But we needed more Gambit. He was the friendliest character by far: likeable, cheeky and with some pretty cool powers (using a staff - lovely stuff to an RPG nut like me). We probably needed a bit more from Cyclops as well. He's on the poster and yet only appears for the best part of, oh, seven minutes? And never once does he wear those special specs. That's false advertising!

This film would have benefited from a less clunky script, a better lead performance and some more time spent on integrating the CGI. The storyline was good and, presuming you'd seen the trilogy beforehand, left no plotholes. But despite some good action sequences I was left slightly flat because of all the technical difficulties. Get your claws into it if you want, but it's a real disappointment in comparison to the first three films.

Sorry about the bunchy-up writing again. I've tried everything to get rid of it!

Heels! Heels!

I was recently bought a pair of purple wedges with a platform and a straw-like heel. I'm told that having just the one colour on a shoe is not up-to-date, as a venture in my favourite shoe shops tell me.

So no, unfortunately they aren't these lovely structural Dior catwalk beauties but I could never walk in these anyway - phantom wedge or not. But does anyone else have a problem that heels are too difficult to walk in? Some fit snugly when you try them on and so you think that you'll be walking gracefully down the street in a pair of beauties.

But then you realise that the cobbled street outside probably isn't going to help your balance and you don't want to be falling over constantly like some klutz so you mournfully put the shoes back. I possess only two pairs of true heels and one of them might not count. Firstly, a tenner's worth of black patent Primark (yeah, yeah) courts with four inches of heel and the second are a reduced-price pair of Office black suede ankle boots with a funky round-the-foot zip and a three-inch heel, no platform on either.

The ankle boots have been recently worn but that was the first time since going to see Neon Neon in November where I danced so much that my feet swelled up and looked rather abnormal. I can't even remember the last time I wore the courts.

I think my point is that wedges are the way to go - I can walk in mine comfortably (but without pop-socks, they make my ankles too slippery!) and without the fuss of heels. Heels are now renamed hells. And I don't care what people say about wedges making your legs and ankles look fat - at least I won't be injuring myself 24/7.

Japan: Still Hidden

Oh God, how disappointed am I? I've been pretty seriously ill over the last few weeks and the one of the only things that has kept me mildly sane is the "Hidden Japan" season on Beeb 4. Now, when they said "season" did they mean a good few weeks jam-packed with programming? Like bells they did!

What we actually got was three hour-long documentaries and a couple of films shown late at night. That was it. Seriously. "In Search of Wabi-Sabi" featured the brother of Louis Theroux making slightly embarrassed faces in maid cafes and struggling to keep up with the intensive rituals of monks. Next was "Fish! A Japanese Obsession" which was a little more interesting (oddly, as I have no real interest in fish besides eating a bit of salmon now and again). This examined everything from the eating of fish to the breeding of Koi Carp and fishing for points (hey, now I know where they got the idea for Zelda fishing from!). Finally there was the illuminating "Japan: A Story of Love and Hate" which followed the life of 50-something Naoki and his 20-something girlfriend Yoshie as they battled against poverty - as he puts it "this isn't special poor, this is normal poor in Japan." I guess you just had to see it to believe it - I knew that Japanese houses and apartments were small but this one really took the mickey.

These 3 shows coupled with a Japanese word of the day that seemed to poke a little fun at the Japanese terms for phrases we had here was all I got. I've had a lifetime fascination with Japan and this is all the Beeb are giving me? I thought that they might explore manga and anime, look deeper into the weird idiosyncratic shops and rituals that they have, even explore the language of Japanese.... anything more than we got!!

Ah well, I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time they show anything mildly interesting about the country.