Phillip Seymour Hoffman

This is incredible. Have a watch and admire one of the greatest.

JB.

Well Played, Seth Rogen...

Having had the pleasure of hearing this man give a speech, and the utter displeasure of having someone very close to me affected by this disease, I urge you all to watch this video, enjoy the hilarity, and maybe think about the message.

Cheers,

JB.

Shakermaker

Can we all just agree that this song is the utter nuts.

That be all.

JB.

Quote of the Day

"When I mention God, and Angels and all that seemingly biblical stuff in songs….my wife is an angel to me. And a real one. Because she appeared out of the smoke of a nightclub when I was at my lowest. And I've never looked back since then. To me, she's an angel. But she's real. She's not a heavenly body. I can touch her. And I do, regularly, and it's great"

Noel Gallagher (The Meaning of Life - 2013)

Fitch The Homeless

Well, this is about the best thing I've seen in a while. Bravo, that man.



JB.

Heroes to Humanity: #821 - Richard Harris

Born in Limerick in 1930, old Dicky boy was one of the few at the time born into a relatively privileged background (Ireland was pretty feckin' poor in those days). However, as a youth he decided to escape the trappings of his life on the Emerald Isle to head to the badlands of London, where he wished to pursue a career in acting.

"I would consider myself an excessive compulsive. Everything I do has to be excessive. Like for instance if I fall in love, it has to be excessive. I overpower the woman with devotion and love and sex, to such an extent I exhaust them"

After arriving in the big city, Harris tried to find himself a place to stay. In doing so, he stumbled across an ad for a bedsit which read "Black or Irish need not apply". In response, he smashed his fist through the window and stole the sign - which he kept for the rest of his life as motivation. From there he went and applied at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA), finding the headteacher and proclaiming "I've done my fuckin' research on you lot, and you haven't had one star graduate from here. I will be your first star". As a result, they let him audition and he got in. Later on, Harris saw the same headteacher who told him that his was the single worst audition he'd ever seen, but "anyone who had the balls to perform that badly in front of a room full of people had to have something"...and a legend was born.

Upon graduating from LAMDA, Harris quickly made good on his promise, landing several leading man performances and becoming a full-blown Hollywood star with the release of "This Sporting Life" wherein he put in a great performance as a disgruntled coal miner who becomes a rugby star. From there, Harris really started to move through the gears.

"The difference between me and someone like Tom Cruise is that if you see pictures of me going to one of my premieres, you'll see a bottle of Vodka in my hand. If you see Cruise, he's holding a bottle of Evian water. That's the difference - a bottle of Evian water" 

Now, while still in his teenage years, Ricky suffered a terrible bout of Tuberculosis, almost killing him. It was after surviving this experience that he decided to live life to it's maximum capacity, and if there's an industry in which life is fully allowed to be lived at this capacity, it is the good old entertainment industry. The perfect storm was created and one of the most notorious Hollywood Hell-Raisers flourished. He would turn up to set drunk, disappear for days on end (only to re-surface with bevvy of beautfiul birds on his arm), piss off untold movie stars, go to premieres drunk, fight any and all and generally behave like an absolute lunatic on every level. However, as is the way in this town, the studios allowed all of this behaviour because he was a proven money-maker and an actor of the finest pedigree.

Indeed so legendary was his debauchery that, after flying 12 hours across the world for a shag - getting royally battered the whole way - he ended up at the doctors, who informed him that his blood-sugar was dangerously high and he was to give up drinking at once. So what did he do? In his words..."So, I went out and did Coke, Heroin, LSD, Speed, anything I could get my hands on". Brilliant.

"I was a sinner. I slugged some people. I hurt many people. And it's true, I never looked back to see the casualties.... I hate movies. They're a waste of time. I could be in a pub having more fun talking to idiots rather than sitting down and watching idiots perform."

It wasn't all fun and games however. One night, our Richard did so much coke that he collapsed and overdosed. Again, almost dying. This time though, he decided enough was enough and became teetotal for 15 years, in which time he enjoyed a renaissance in his acting career, starring in films such as "Unforgiven", "Gladiator" and "Harry Potter". However, his role as professor Dumbledore was to be his last, as his health devolved rapidly - concluding in a collapse at London's Ritz Hotel. However, even when being stretchered out of the building, Harris managed one last joke - yelling to mortified guests of the Hotel Restaurant "It was the food!". What a fucking legend.

Anyway, I could write for weeks about this man and still not remotely do him justice. An actor whose career is littered with magnificent performances, a womanizer of the highest order, and possibly the greatest storyteller of all time. What a refreshing thing it is to see a man who had it all, did it all with charm, style and class, and found himself completely unaffected by being a "performer" or an "artist" or however else you with to aggrandise the whole thing. And surrounded as I am by the boring, synthetic,  wet mops that we are treated to today, I think it is a damn shame that more like Richard Harris don't come along - just normal blokes who like a bit of a drink, a bit of a shag and don't get caught up in all the self-involvement of it all. Yes, he may have been a lunatic, but the best kind of lunatic, wherein he leaves a trail of incredible stories and smiles across the faces of all who knew him.



I shall drink a pint of Guiness in your honour, sir. You should too my friends.

Cheers,

JB.

JT

I like Justin Timberlake. There I said it. I used to think (obviously given his time with the world's worst boy band) that he was an absolute tool. However, I heard his solo material and was sold. I took untold amounts of abuse from all my mates for buying his first album when it came out. However, six months later and everyone was dancing like a bellend to his tunes - a few of which will be played at Essex weddings throughout the annals of time.

Now of course he is a world-beating, platinum-selling, movie-making megastar and, on some level, I like to think I'm responsible for that. I think he knows that too. Be nice if he acknowledged it occasionally but I you can't have it all, eh?

Anyway, I happened to catch this performance from last night's grammy awards and my man-crush came back in full force. The first song was marginally gash, however the second one is an absolute tune. I don't care what anyone says........

I'm not gay. Repeat, I am not gay. Honest.

JB.

Heroes to Humanity: #405 - Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards

I tell you, few things got me more excited, as a young nipper, than watching the Winter Olympics. The reason for that was simply one man. A god among men. A bird, floating effortlessly through the heavens, kissing the wings of an angel before gliding back to earth among us mortals. That man was, of course, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards...

"Bo Selecta!"

Has there ever been a more English of heroes? With his movie star looks and sly wit, he had it all. I mean, when he wasn't doing death-defying dives off of enormous ramps, the man was a plasterer! How perfect is that?

Growing up in the West Country of England, god knows how Eddie got into Ski-Jumping as a professional pastime. Honestly, just dwell on that for a minute...a country with no snowy mountains. None. Couple that with the fact that the man was supposedly afraid of heights and you must wonder...how???

Anyway, got into it he did and eventually became Britain's representative in the 1988 Winter Olympics. In actual fact, Eddie can claim to be the only Ski Jumper our fair shores have EVER produced. Ever. Another miracle to hang his hat on.

I remember during the '88 Olympics, he was my undisputed hero. Every jump seemed to be walking the fine line between landing safely and decapitating himself. Oh, the excitement. Of course, our Ed came last in every event he entered, but he took that very British trait of dignified failure to entirely new levels and captured the nation's heart in the process. The man is simply a legend. I believe this interview excerpt sums our hero up nicely:

Eddie: "They said I was afraid of heights, but I was doing 60 jumps a day then. Is that the behaviour of someone who's scared of heights?"

Interviewer: "Well, were you afraid of jumping?"

Eddie: "Yeah, of course."

God bless that man.

JB.