Geoff Nicholson's Blog, page 67

AFTERS

I have noticed that Psycho-Gourmet has somehow ground to a halt. I don't exactly feel that I've abandoned it - a blog is surely forever - but right now I've slightly lost my appetite, and I have other things I need to write, some of them actually for money.In the meantime, have a pizza, and speak fondly of me if you speak of me at all.BestGeoff

SIGNS OF HOLLYWOOD

For the last seven years or so I've lived in Hollywood, at the very eastern edge, where, if you were a realtor, you might argue was actually part of Los Feliz, but you'll get no such argument from me.

Naturally, Hollywood is where I do most of my walking. The fact that I live within easy strolling distance of Hollywood Boulevard, and even Sunset Boulevard, still gives me a bit of a buzz on certain days.

You can't actually see the Hollywood sign from where I live, but any time I go walking ...

LATE NIGHT CLOWNISHNESS

One of my regular readers, name of Lydia, points out that Conan O'Brien has been twitting about Circus Liquor, in North Hollywood, at the corner of Burbank and Vinleand Boulevards. I know it well, and drive by it once in a while, and I had thought of including it in my post about clown-related consumption. The reason I didn't was that I don't have a my own picture of the sign, and although

HOPPER IN HOLLYWOOD

I walked down to Hollywood Boulevard to see Dennis Hopper getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; 11.30, Friday morning. March 26th, 2010.

I've always thought that the placing of the stars, on Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, is a strange combination of the fiercely hierarchical and the utterly random. Why exactly is James Brown's star on Vine outside Bed Bath and Beyond? Still, for whatever reason, Hopper's is perfectly placed right outside the Egyptian Theatre. This is as good...

THROW UP THE CLOWNS

Before I move on from cereal, a small thought about the imagery and characters companies use to sell their food products. We all know that millions of dollars go into marketing, market research, focus groups, and whatnot, but in advertising agencies the world over, after all the time, money and effort has been expended, somebody in the office evidently says, "Ah screw it, let's just stick a

KILLER CEREAL

A more worldly set of kids would have realized that the Top Cat theme would have been unlikely to celebrate the joys of dripping. Hanna-Barbera were the go-to guys when it came to providing cartoon characters for sugar-rich, child-targeted cereal. I admit I fell under the spell.My memories are imperfect. I do recall various cereal boxes with Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Quickdraw MacGraw

DRIPPINGS

You're probably too young to remember the Hanna-Barbera TV series Top Cat. It was made for a surprisingly short time, I discover, just 30 episodes in 1961/2, but I watched it avidly at the time. Imdb tells me it was called "Boss Cat" in the UK but I'm pretty sure we all referred to it as Top Cat, not least because of the theme song. There was a UK brand of cat food called Top Cat, which I

THE POTATO EATERS

I've always thought that two of the most extraordinary-looking women in the history of the world were Kay Kendall, see belowand Slim Keith, also below, who was also known as Slim Hawks for a while when she was married to movie director Howard.Both women had those fine chiseled angular faces that don't seem to exist anymore, and it's hard to believe they ever did. Now, it doesn't surprise me to

LUNCHEON ON THE ASTROTURF

There's one thing that's probably even less satisfying, and far more trouble, than breakfast in bed, and that's the torturous ritual known as the picnic.Eating outdoors in itself is fine - whether it's sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich or on the terrace of an outdoor restaurant - but once you call it a picnic there's all that organization, all that business with hampers and special plates

THE WHITE STUFF

An article of mine, about my mother's all-white eating habits, has just appeared in the new issue of Gastronomica: a great magazine.The article doesn't appear in their online version, so here it is in full.*EATING WHITEToday I ate lunch in memory of my mother. She died about a decade ago, and every once in a while I feel the need to replicate the kind of lunch she and I ate together many times.