Lots of buses and Jamie Oliver.
It took me three buses to get to a bookstore today. The first was my fault; the 13 clearly said it was terminating at Swiss Cottage but it was too cold to wait for another bus so I took that down to where it terminated and waited there. Another 13 came along shortly and that got me as far as Park Road, where there was a motorcycle accident that blocked all lanes of traffic. You knew it was gonna be bad cuz the bus driver actually let us out in the middle of the road and they are VERY adamant about never opening the doors except like an inch away from a stop. I walked the rest of the way down to Baker Street, where there were two random violin bows laying on the sidewalk sort of eerily, and waited for any bus to get me anywhere. I figured 13s wouldn't be getting through so I took a random 139 cuz I saw it went by Trafalgar Square and decided I could just go from there. As I was going down Oxford Street I saw the big Borders was having a sale and jumped off the bus and ran over the road. Might as well have said "NERD SALE". I wanted to get Welcome to the Working Week depending how much it was and also take a good ol browse of all the weird bargain books people like me like, such as Illustrated True Crime. Didn't get that in the end; I looked at all the good bits and figured I wouldn't have any use for it after that. It'd just be one of those things making the room look sinister in my favourite David Sedaris story, Nuit of the Living Dead: the tea towel from the coroner's office, the pen shaped like a severed human finger, the meat cleaver laying for no reason over a picture of the neighbour's grandchild, and the book Illustrated True Crime. You know when you know a book is REALLY bad? When you won't spend a pound on it. I really like finding random fiction in the bargain bin, almost more, or at least as much as finding things like medical manuals or military anthologies; I love finding something I would NEVER buy except that it's one pound so I might as well. I picked up a book today and read the back and it wasn't worth spending a pound on. That is BAD. You know what else is in the bargain section, the A-Z of Modern British History, by my old IES professor Richard Weight. I got so excited when I saw someone carrying it around intending to purchase it that I think I stared and freaked them out; but I was excited cuz it didn't look interesting enough for me to spend my money on, but I really liked Richard and was glad someone was buying his book. Anyway, I ended up getting Welcome to the Working Week (a signed copy too, which I didn't notice til I got home) and Jamie's School Dinners cuz it was in the dvd bargain bin and because I'd really like to own every show Jamie's done on dvd.
School Dinners was the best ever. I watched it immediately when I came home. I stopped writing things down cuz the whole thing was so incredibly quotable and fab, but there were a few that I just HAD to note especially, though really it always comes down to his tone and his accent and everything. Also, why would you EVER watch the expletive deleted version of this? It'd be like hard to follow at times. Anyway:
"Look at that. I wouldn't fuckin' feed that to my dog. I would feed it to my dog, but I wouldn't feed it to my mate."
"It's a bit like taking away David Beckham's football boots and giving him a pair of Jesus sandals. He'll still kick a few balls but he'll run round looking like a muppet."
"And she's givin' me a mouthful cuz she thinks I fuckin' fucked up the order when she was doing the fucking ordering... [here he kind of shrugged and was obviously considering something, which I thought would be the amount of times he just said 'fuck', but...] I don't fucking need that."
"It's gonna be going like the fucking batphone." NERD.
And the Best Rant Ever:
"If they say no salt, I'm happy not to use salt... But those fucking horrible scrotum burger fish finger reconstituted mechanically reclaimed sacks of ol' shit pressed into shapes of drumsticks and fish and all that stuff's pumped full of e-numbers, preservatives, and SALT, so if they're gonna take the salt out of all that, I'll take the salt out of my tomato soup. And until then they can kiss my ass." He'd seriously sort of lost it at this point, but in a really entertaining way.
Besides the comedy and the loveliness that is Jamie Oliver and his almost-too-cute-to-be-real family, it was really quite interesting and inspiring and touching. Just the direct relation between food and academic performance and behaviour and all that stuff; I mean people think it's just about obesity and that is one thing, to learn good eating habits and to learn to recognize vegetables and stuff. But it was really more about the additives and all that extraneous shit that makes up most of this 'food' that makes kids hyper and combative and unable to concentrate that interested me. It was just very interesting, I won't recap the whole freaking show. Know what's a weird Britishism I picked up from Hollyoaks and had confirmed in this? "You what?" (of course the 'what' is unwritable and is sorta like 'whot' but with a silent t if that makes any sense) But anyway, it's the usage of it that's peculiar, like as an expression of disbelief in a sort of "oh know you di'int' sort of way. At first I didn't quite get it cuz it would be like:
Person A: I think you're a crazy bitch.
Person B: You what?
And that makes sense in American English. But it also makes sense in this British English situation:
Person A: You are useless in the kitchen.
Person B: You what?
Anyway, I think it's weird. And there's always a lot of like ghetto-fab bitch fighting in Hollyoaks so they say it a lot.
Kaiser Chiefs drummer and North of England stunner Nick Hodgson and I are soulmates. There was a little between-show thing with him and Ricky giving their opinions on the Best International Band nominees for the NME awards. When My Chemical Romance was brought up, he started out trying to be diplomatic and not really saying anything either way, and then just blurted "They're not very good." And then at the end when they were recapping he was like, so exasperated, "They're just stupid!" His voice/accent makes me giggle so. Ricky also had some words of wisdom.
[Discussing Arcade Fire, though that has no bearing on anything]
Presenter: David Bowie likes them.
Ricky: David Bowie likes wearing high heels, but that doesn't mean everyone does.
Anywho, it suddenly became 1:30 so I suppose I'll get some sleepies. Ta.