David Hadley's Blog, page 68

Celebrity Parties

Hostelry Spendapenny is probably the UK’s leading celebrity partygoer. As we all know, British tabloids would be much thinner and celebrity gawping websites would have far fewer photo-filled pages if celebrities did not have to keep going out to parties every single night of the week.

However, as is little known outside media circles, most of those parties don’t actually happen. All that is really needed is for the celebrities to be photographed arriving at some hastily hurled-down red carpet. Then, a few stock photos are manipulated to put various celebrities together apparently drinking and having a good time in each other’s company. Meanwhile, the celebrities themselves have snuck out of a quiet back door of the latest happening nightspot and gone home for a quiet night in front of the telly in dressing gown and slippers.

As we all know, there is nothing more tedious than a party. Especially one where you have to pretend to be enjoying yourself, despite, the crowds, the over-loud music, the poor food and lousy drinks. This is one reason why so many celebrities appear in a lot of dire films, awful TV shows and dubious adverts. It is as a way of getting enough money together so that they can buy themselves out of the tedious round of showbiz parties that would otherwise be their lot.

When the managers, agents and producers of the celebrity circuit select a previously unknown person to become a celebrity, then that person must sign a contract with a management team. One of the stipulations in that contract they sign to become rich and famous is that they must attend a certain amount of media –friendly parties per year. If they do not sign, they are ejected from the industry and back into the ranks of the unknown and ordinary. Then everyone, including even their most devout and deranged Farcebook stalkers, soon forgets about them.

Of course, many putative and apprentice celebrities think that the life of a fully-certified celebrity is a glamorous one. A never-ending round of showbiz parties, famous lovers, expensive drugs and wild times on the yachts of the rich and famous. The media and other similar outlets rely on a steady stream of photos of famous and not so famous celebrities to fill the gaps between the adverts and what little prose they can get away with per page.

However, there is a glut of celebrities on the market. This means that the media has absolute control over celebrities and, thus, how they appear in the media outlets. So if a star wants to advertise a new film, a new TV show, a new album, love affair, favourite charity or fashionable drink or drug ‘problem’ they have little choice. The celebrity then must do the media’s bidding, or be forever lost in the obscurity that is the celebrity’s greatest fear.

Hence the parties and hence the pictures of celebrities going to parties that fill every tabloid. Especially, as at the moment, those like Spendapenny and her infamous party going. However, Spendapenny herself has now reached the stage in her celebrity career arc where she will soon no longer have to attend any of these parties. Even if merely to turn up to be photographed entering them. Then, as we now know, she can immediately leave through the back door to go home for a quiet night in with her many cats to watch TV, each too much chocolate and carry on with her knitting.

 

Filed under: Celebrities, current affairs, Entertainment, Events, Fear, Film, Internet, media, Moments, Mystery, Night, Places, Popular Culture, Secrets, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, Time, TV, Web Sites Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour

Friday Funny: Missilesilo’s All-Nude Tool Show

Dobbin Missilesilo is probably the world’s most famous male porn star. It was not until the invention of widescreen TVs, however, that his career took off. He starred in every ep[isode of the award-winning Swedish Plumber Holds His Pipe Vols: 1 – 325 series. His co-star in those films, Doxy Fingerlicker said, ‘it took the widescreen for people to completely appreciate the full breadth of his acting talent’.

To the surprise of many, Missilesilo could actually act. He also, established himself as a mainstream actor beyond porn with a substantial female following, as well as his extraordinarily well-filled trouser.

However, the conventional acting scene soon paled for Missilesilo. He felt it was not stretching his capabilities, at least not after he gave up the porn roles back in the late 1990s.

For a while, Missilesilo flirted with the possibility of becoming a member of parliament. All the main parties were eager to have someone with his natural majority on their side. However, he discovered that the term ‘honourable member’ and ‘upright member of the House’ did not mean what he thought they meant. As a result, Missilesilo decided a life in politics was not for him. ‘I don’t think I’d easily fit in there, ’he said at a hastily convened press conference to announce he would not be considering a career in politics after all.

IHis decision came as a great relief to his many female fans. Many of whom – perhaps rightly – believed that seeing him standing on the green benches, hoping to catch the eye of Madame Speaker would bring back many memories of happier times. Although, a large section of his fan base do say they would like to see him standing in their constituency. Many also said they would each like to take delivery of his manifesto should he stand in their area and come knocking on their door.

However, what turned out to be a loss to politics, turned out to be a massive win for the TV industry. As attention in screen entertainment has moved away from film to TV, so too have many stars formerly associated with the big screen turned to TV. As many Missilesilo fans attest, he is seen at his best on larger screens. So now that many domestic TVs take up most of a wall, Missilesilo’s fans now say they can appreciate him in all his glory.

Missilesilo’s lifelong interest in plumbing was first sparked by those many early films where he made his name and got to carry a spanner. From this, Missilesilo came up with the concept for a brand new form of Home Improvement show. Eventually, Missilesilo’s All Nude Tool Show was finally accepted as a concept by C4.7, last year. It now looks as though those many fans – both male and female – who long to see Missilesilo wielding his tool to full effect in a TV show of his own will indeed have the dreams come true.

Perhaps they will even answer a knock on the door and find it is Missilesilo himself standing naked and proud on their doorstep, one day. Many of Missilesilo’s loyal fans say they dream of seeing him standing there in front of them with his tool in his hand. Then asking if he and his film crew could come in and shoot him giving the householder a full service.

Who knows the next knock on your door could very well be him with his tool in his hand asking you if you will let him come inside.

 

Filed under: arts, Celebrities, Culture, Entertainment, Events, Health And Safety, media, Moments, politics, Popular Culture, Services And Shopping, Sex, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, TV, Video Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour

Specious Diatribe and the Traffic Calming Measures Phenomenon

Specious Diatribe shot back into fame in the UK when he played the cheeky jack-the-lad third bollard from the left in ITV’s long running reality drama Traffic Calming Measures.  A programme described as the everyday story of street furniture and their escapades and dramas.

Traffic Calming Measures was, of course, the commercial channel’s response to the BBC’s surprise ratings hit of the summer Lamppost. This was an in-depth look at the dramatic life of a lamp post on one of London’ most famous streets.

A poll named the star of Lamppost, Hetty Gusset, as one of the most familiar faces on British TV last summer. Hollywood soon signed her up to play streetlights in several new films. One leading Hollywood director said she amazed him with her ability to hold a light bulb high above the traffic, and yet still display all the acting ability that he believed ‘made her be the lamppost’.

However, Diatribe has not had the film offers that have inundated his fellow actors in this new genre of TV show. Many say that it is his perfectionism and willingness to ‘become the bollard’ that has led to him being overlooked for other roles. Perhaps because so many agents, talent scouts, directors and producers all walking right past him, such is his dedication to the role he plays.

Diatribe started out, as we now all know, as a child actor. He had several roles in long-running TV shows where he usually played traffic cones. Such was his influence that soon many youngsters were dyeing themselves orange, with the telltale white reflective strip worn by their hero, in recognition of Diatribe’s roles. It soon meant that several schools made rules specifically banning their pupils from dressing up as traffic cones. Mainly because it broke school uniform regulations, but also because of the problems it causes staff and parents when trying to park their cars outside the schools.

After that, Diatribe moved on to pay a few Men at Work signs. Later, he had a long-running part in the ITV’s remake of their famous old soap Crossroads. There, Diatribe played a set of traffic lights, famously turning bright red when he unwittingly appeared in the show’s most notorious scene. This scene showed the then obligatory soap-opera lesbian on-screen kiss. The kiss took place between the show’s star, Panegyric Umlaut, and an Austin Allegro waiting for the light to turn green at the eponymous crossroads itself.

For a long time afterwards, the remake of Crossroads lost audience ratings. Especially after it introduced a cycle lane, that many in the audience felt was just a sop towards fulfilling some diversity criteria mandate. When the programme ended, Diatribe was lost to British TV; apart from one commercial. There he played the instructions on the back of a bottle of household detergent in what was once voted as the most annoying advert in the history of British TV.

So, for a long time it looked as though Diatribe would be one of those faces only occasionally glimpsed in the background of a murder mystery. However, Diatribe did have one role in Midsomer Murders where he played a hedge, but many critics described his role there, as ‘far too wooden’ and he never played any kind of shrubbery again.

That is how it went until he got the role in Traffic Calming Measures as the bollard. Then, once again, Specious Diatribe was back on our TV screens. It is as if he’d never been away, and long may he remain there… much like a bollard, in fact.

 

Filed under: arts, Celebrities, Culture, Entertainment, Events, Film, Health And Safety, media, Places, Popular Culture, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, Time, TV Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour

A Sky with No Stars

‘Don’t you ever just come up here to look at the stars?’ she said.

‘No.’ I glanced up at the view window for a moment. There were stars out there, millions of them… as usual.

The brush made a coughing sound and stopped. I kicked it and it scuttled off towards a recharging point.

‘Why not?’

‘They are stars,’ I muttered and shrugged. ‘There are millions of them out there.’

‘Don’t you think that is… wonderful?’ The woman, Cooper, her nametag said, turned back towards the window. She grabbed onto the sill and leant forward as if she wanted to jump through it and out amongst the stars. Almost as if she could reach them, touch them.

I shook my head. ‘You’re new.’

Cooper laughed self-consciously and tried to stand up straighter. ‘Can you tell?’ She smiled.

‘After your first few trips, the stars are… well, just stars.’ I shrugged, glancing out at them. ‘You know like the route to school, work, or whatever. You just get used to them, the constant background.’

‘I come from Sod.’

It made sense now. ‘So, you’ve never seen the stars before then?’ I don’t know much and want to know even less, but even I knew about the sky on Sod – or the lack of it.

On our last visit there, I’d even left the starport bar long enough to have a look at it. I discovered the absence of a sky was duller than the existence of one and had gone back to the bar. There, I reaffirmed my contention that an empty beer glass is far worse than a full one and set about rectifying the situation… several times. By the time they carried us out of that bar I wouldn’t have been able to see the sky, even if Sod had one.

‘So, y’know…,’ Cooper moved along the window towards me, ‘once I found out about the stars I had to see them.’

I nodded; I’d seen all the stars I wanted to see in one lifetime. Still, I had some idea what she was talking about, even though she was a new officer and I was only the janitorial assistant charged with fixing the malfunctioning robot broom.

 

Filed under: Dreams, Environment, Events, Fiction, Fragments, Health And Safety, Journeys, Memory, Moments, Mystery, Places, SF, Sky, Space, Technology, Time Tagged: fiction, science fiction, stars, writing

Not Much of a Disguise

‘It’s not much of a disguise,’ Gren spoke as he poked the fire with one of the sticks he’d gathered. He turned to face Dell.

‘W… what do you mean?’ Dell hoped Gren couldn’t see the blush.

‘I could tell you were a woman when we met, back at the inn.’

Dell opened her mouth to deny it, and saw Gren staring back at her, the outlines of a grin on his face. She sighed. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I presumed you had your reasons.’ Gren shrugged. ‘After all, there are advantages and disadvantages to travelling as a woman, as there are travelling as a man.’ He gave the fire another poke. ‘But travelling disguised as one when you are the other? Well, that just adds a whole load of complications.’

‘I….’

Gren raised his hand. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know.’ He took the stick from the fire and studied the flame flickering on its end. ‘After all,’ he turned back to her. ‘All I need to know is that you won’t kill me in my sleep, and that is hardly a thing you’d want to forewarn me about, is it?’ He smiled.

Dell smiled back. ‘No. Will you… will you tell the others?’

Gren shook his head. ‘No, like I said, I presume you have your reasons.’ He shifted on the cold hard ground. ‘But I thought I’d best warn you. After all, if I can spot it, someone else is bound to notice eventually.’

‘Do you think the others…?’

‘No. It is hard to tell with Yoll, but he tends not to notice anybody he doesn’t want to kill… or fuck. Hew doesn’t notice much either. So I think you are safe… for now.’

‘How did… how did you…?’

‘Oh, that was easy. Men are idle bastards. Not many of them will walk off into the bushes when they need a piss, not unless they are in polite company anyway.’ Gren laughed. ‘And us, well, it should be obvious that a band like us doesn’t often meet polite company.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve met some… supposedly polite company that were nowhere near as good as you.’ Dell saw the look Gren gave her. ‘Yes, I’m from a good family… a rich family and they’d pay you well for taking me back to them.’

Gren was silent for a while, watching the fire. ‘And you trust me enough to tell me that?’ He spoke without looking at her. Then he turned to face her. ‘You do realise that we are mercenaries, that we will do anything for money?’

Dell nodded.

Gren didn’t speak, just sat watching the fire.

Dell wondered if she’d made yet another big mistake.

 

Filed under: Days, Events, Fantasy, Fear, Fiction, Fragments, Health And Safety, Journeys, Law And Order, Moments, Mystery, Places, Possibilities, Secrets, Society, Time Tagged: fantasy, fiction, mistakes, writing

Solid Ice

Solid Ice

It is winter, slow, solid and frozen.

Cold metal feels harder to the touch

As though frost and ice have become solid

And will no longer return to their realm.

As though water realised its dream

Of rock, hardness and permanence,

No longer dragged by gravity, moon and tide,

Always falling and falling down

While hard rock looked disdainfully on

From its high solid peaks

That so easily shrug off the passing time

And reach beyond clouds to the sky.

 

Filed under: Environment, Events, Journeys, Memory, Moments, Nature, Places, Poems, Poetry, Possibilities, Time, Water, Words Tagged: ice, poem, poetry, winter, writing

Lost at Sea

The summer was over and we turned away from the time we’d had to head back from the coast towards our inland lives. Something had changed out there; on the edge of everything, where the land is lost to the sea. We had lost something of that certainty, that feeling of solidity underfoot.

Now we were both lost at sea, cast adrift from each other. There was a feeling that one, or maybe both of us, would drown and we’d never see dry land again.

I had not intended it happen that way, but then we never really do. It is the things that happen by accident, out of the blue, that tend to change things in ways we could never foresee.

We planned a long summer break, just the two of us. A month by the sea, back in a place we’d known a long time ago. In fact, when Angela and I were younger, we spent a week camping at Port South.

Angela often said it was that week together that made us decide to get married. She said that if two people could survive a week’s camping holiday in the UK without wanting to murder each other, then marriage would be a breeze, after that.

She was – mostly – right.

We survived together through all the years we saw friends and family get together, fight and then fall apart, while we just managed to carry on, somehow.

We seemed happy enough.

We even went back to Port South a few times after we married. We never went camping again though. Angela said camping was a thing people should only ever do once in their lives.

Instead, we stayed in the hotel down by the beach, every time we went back. There was no more roughing it, no more rainy nights under the canvas and no more tents blown down by the wind.

This time we were back again almost ten years after our last visit. The hotel was still there. It was under new management now, upgraded and improved since our last stay with now its own swimming pool.

Angela liked to swim in the hotel pool each morning. I got bored of watching her and went for a stroll across the beach.

The beachside cafe was still there too, even after all these years. I smiled at a memory from years before, trying to dry out from the rain of a typical summer in that café. We sat at a table inside with our sodden camping gear all around us. It was then Angela vowed never to set foot inside a tent again.

I was still smiling at that memory as I sat out on the terrace in the warm sun. The waitress came and smiled back at me and it was then – at that moment – I began to drown.

 

 

Filed under: Days, Events, Fragments, History, Journeys, Memory, Moments, Mystery, Places, Possibilities, Secrets, Society, Time, Water Tagged: fiction, memory, sea, writing

British Actors Win Awards

Last night, several UK actors and celebrities did very well at the annual Awardies, the awards for best performance at an award ceremony. For example, Trilobite Silverspoon won the award for most tortuous award speech for his now-infamous 12-hour acceptance speech at the recent BAFTAS. A speech he gave after winning the award for the best bit of standing about at the back of a scene. In that speech, he named everyone in the UK who has ever seen one of his films. Brontosaur Huntinwithounds also won the award for his Most Obscure Thank You to a Distant Relative in his acceptance speech. Earlier this year he thanked his girlfriend’s aunt’s Yorkshire terrier for some acting tips. Tips he claimed that made his last role as a former British Prime Minister so almost memorable to the seven people who stayed awake to watch the whole film.

Also winning an award were two old stalwarts of the film industry. At the GUDUPP (Grown-Ups Dressing Up and Playing Pretend) awards, both Pumpkin Dropincentre and Gravelly Chinstubble won lifetime achievement awards. Each for the earnings from the large number of box-office hits both have appeared in over the last several decades. Dropincentre’s Caribbean island where she now spends most of her time ranks as the world’s tenth leading economy from her earnings alone. While Chinstubble owns several governments and is a major shareholder in several leading European countries, as well as owning all his own charities.

In other awards, the Awardies celebrated the fashion industry’s constant struggle with reality. At the awards themselves, rising young star Totty Endowments wore a dress fashion commentators described as minimalist. But Endowments claimed her outfit was a demonstration of her commitment to whatever environmental causes are fashionable at the moment. Her dress, made from three vine leaves held on her body by Blu-Tack, certainly was the hit of the red carpet. Several paparazzi and celebrity photographer were almost crushed to death as they attempted to get as many photographs of her as possible. The crush was at its worst when the wind built up and it looked as though autumn would come early this year. However, the Blu-Tack held long enough for her to get inside the event with no major wardrobe malfunction.

The whole award ceremony itself was held inside Dropincentre’s dress. Once fashion journalist described Drioncentre’s dress as a stunning creation, all made from a vast expanse of blue silk held up by tent poles and with seating for one thousand and a full-sized stage for the ceremony. The dress included a screen to show the award-winning films and TV show clips inside the dress, which was low-cut enough to enable balcony seating to be included in it.

All in all then, it was yet another good year for British actors and celebrities at the awards. Although, on the night, not many British actors made the shortlists or won awards. But the event itself did need a great many waiters, waitresses, kitchen assistants, car-parking valets and other such flunkies. So there were a great many British actors there on the night. Some of them claimed they had earned more in tips in that evening alone than in their entire acting career to date. Undoubtedly, that statistic alone bodes well for the future of acting stardom in this country.

 

Filed under: arts, Celebrities, Culture, current affairs, Entertainment, Events, media, Moments, Places, Popular Culture, Services And Shopping, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, TV Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour

From There to Here

This takes the slow beginning and turns the tentative into movement. My hand strokes down her face. She kisses my fingertips and there is another of those tentative smiles.

Again, she says ‘we shouldn’t do this’ as her hands betray her words and she pulls my shirt open, leaning forwards to kiss down my chest.

Behind us, back in the house, the party goes on oblivious to our absence. As her husband’s laughter barks across from the open windows and across the lawn to the bushes here down at the bottom of the garden her kisses hesitate only momentarily.

I hear a little giggle from Laura before she kisses on, lower and lower.

‘What?’ I say.

‘All the things he wants me to do that I refuse….’ She looks up at me. ‘I want to do them with you… to you.’ My belt falls open under her fast moving fingers. ‘If not now, tonight, then soon.’ She stares up at me from under lowered eyelids. Her breath is heavy, fast.

Then her head lowers and I glance back at the party, wondering how we got from there to here.

I didn’t really know Henry, apart from that barking laugh of his. I’d heard it so often in the summer as I lay in bed listening to yet another of Henry and Laura’ summer parties winding down across the road from us.

Our house was small semi-detached. There’s was detached: big with an even bigger garden, big enough for barbecues and one of those big tent things – a marquee – out on the lawn, if necessary.

Tonight there was no marquee. The weather forecast – wrong as usual – had forecast rain, so the party had moved indoors, into rooms as big as our whole house.

Henry was celebrating – not that he and Laura ever needed an excuse – making his first million. ‘Every year for the last ten years,’ he’d said when surprising me with the invitation. The first invitation to us in the ten years since we’d moved into this street.

I knew why he was not that keen on inviting me. I know he’s always fancied Jenny. I remember once seeing him watching her washing her car one previous summer. I was upstairs in our bedroom, Jenny was on our drive and Henry was hiding behind one of the rose bushes that line up in ranks across his front lawn.

At first, I’d thought he was clipping the rose bush. Then, when his back arched and his mouth opened wide, I could see that it wasn’t a pair of secateurs he was gripping so tightly.

Ever since then, Jenny had called him The Creepy Bush Wanker after I’d told her about him watching her.

Now, here was his wife down on her knees in front of me as I wondered how I could ever tell Jenny about this.

Review: ‘Juggling Balls’ by David Hadley

David Hadley:

A great review of my Novel: Juggling Balls

Originally posted on Katherine's Bookcase:

Genre: Sci – Fi / Comedy
Length: 388 pages (approx.)

I have awarded this book 4 stars.

Summary: Martin Laws hates mysteries. So why has someone sent him a bag of juggling balls? Why has he no memory of buying a new computer? Why has that new computer decided Martin needs to go shopping? Why does a hairstylist he’s never met before keep saluting him? Most of all, why are so many Elvis impersonators trying to kill him? Juggling Balls – a science fiction comedy featuring time travel, mind control implants and a future religion that claims an Elvis Presley clone as its saviour. Oh, and an interplanetary terraced house.

Review: This is the first book that I have read by this author and it was absolutely nuts… but I loved that about it! I spent the whole time that I was reading thinking ‘is this really happening?’ and it…

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