The trials and tribulations of a wannabe rodeo clown from Titahi Bay :: Stuart Parker :: NZ :: New Zealand :: www.stuartparker.com :: Stuart Gordon Parker
I’m not sure when or where it started, but I used to play this game with my friends where we’d try and figure out who the “heaviest” legend was in terms of having the clout to bump another superstar from a reservation at a packed restaurant on a Saturday night. It starts to get fun when you work your way up to bickering about whether Robert De Niro bumps Bob Dylan, or Springsteen bumps Bono, but the game quickly runs out of steam when you realize that nobody can top Paul Newman. You can sort of picture Bill Clinton standing at the front of Nobu waiting for a table to pay their check, smiling and whispering “Paul NEWMAN is here!”
Yes, I know I’ve been a bit erratic lately. First rule of blogging is ‘turn up every day’, and in that regard I’ve been sorely lacking. A lot going on, but over the worst of it so will be back in the saddle tomorrow. Promise.
In the meantime. C4 is having an 80’s weekend, and I just about soiled myself in the middle of Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ video when it dawned on me…
Interestingly, the similarities extend far beyond looks. One of these people claims to regularly feast on the flesh and blood of a dead Jew, and the other one is Hannibal Lecter.
Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
The clip below comes from “Jono’s New Show”, a pretty typical no-budget local show that ran on C4 earlier in the year. As a whole, the show was crap. However…
Want to know the collective term for a group of dwarfs, by the way? A flock of sheep. A murder of crows. A gaggle of geese. A shortage of dwarfs:
Sarah just got in from work, having cleared our mailbox on the way home. My sole piece of correspondence had a massive Ministry of Justice seal on it, and when I opened the envelope the first word i saw… SUMMONS in big bold upper-case letters.
What’s next – a plague of locusts?
Thankfully it turns out that the offending word was proceeded by the word JURY, and accompanied by instructions to be at the High Court at a given date and time next month, lest I be torn a new one. Not only am I not dreading jury duty and trying to think of a way to get out of it, I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT!
I’ve always been pretty critical of our jury system. I mean, you’re supposed to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, but all my peers have demanding careers and would never let themselves get sucked in to six weeks’ slog in the jury room for less than minimum wage. The only people with the time and inclination to sit on juries – with the exception of my own sweet self – are old people and the unemployed, and though I hope to be old one day and have endured the odd bout of unemployment in the past would certainly not consider them my peers.
Anyhoo, that’s my big news of the day. Will let you know how I get on, and hopefully have a blow-by-blow for you if I end up being selected. Wish me luck!
Possibly construed by some as cyber-stalking, but I don’t care. For anyone who knows who Michael Arrington is, you gotta admit this is pretty neat. (click to enlarge)
Meet Fozzie. Fozzie’s parents are moving back to Canada (eh?) and so Bentley now has a little brother – a chocolate Labrador Retriever, born 6th June ‘07.
I’d forgotten what hard work puppies are! Having Fozzie around has reminded me what a fantastic dog Bentley is, and how important it is to train them while they’re young.
As you can see he’s pretty overweight, and he’s also well overdue for some basic training. But he’s already best buds with Bentley so I figure we might let him stick around for a while. Will look forward to introducing him to you all soon.
ps. His nuts are coming off next friday, so please send any useful recipes, handy craft ideas etc to the usual address. I already have a kangaroo scrotum purse, and if barbequed dog testicles taste half as bad as goat I won’t even consider it – so you’ll have to dig deep to really impress me.
BMW was a client of mine for about three years, prior to my leaving Marker at the start of last year. They could be a challenge at times (I’ve yet to find a client who isn’t) but they were damn cool to work with.
A lot of people daydream about winning the lottery and what they’d do with the money. Most will reel off a shopping list starting with a big house and flash car, most likely a Ferrari or a Porsche. Sod that. When I hit the big time the only thing that would deter me from buying an M5 or M6 is the knowledge that I will almost certainly – and at no fault of the car or its manufacturer – die behind the wheel of said supercar (or in close proximity to its crumpled remains).
Last year I was fortunate to land a spot on one of BMW’s regular driver training courses at Pukekohe race track. After a day of instruction, skills testing and driving brand new 330i’s like they were stolen, instructor Mike Eady (former Porsche Racing Series champion and class winner of the Nurbergring 24-hour race) took us all out for ‘hot laps’ in the M5 he’d been driving all day. The bog-standard M5 he’d picked up at Jerry Clayton’s that morning…
Four passengers. Hot brakes. Badly work tyres. 3 passengers. 245 km/h (153 mph) in 5th gear. Apparently he decided not to use 6th or 7th ‘cos he ‘didn’t want to push it’.
The M cars are fucking monsters, and superior to every supercar you could think of, with the possible exception of the Bugatti Veyron (but with a $4m price tag, the Veyron might as well be hypothetical). Screw longeivity – I want one!
The first video I stumbled across this afternoon, and shows German racing legend Hans Stuck taking an M6 up to 194 mph (310 km/h) on the Autobahn. The second is from 2004, and shows the same guy setting a new lap record at the Nurburgring in an M3 GTR. At one point you see a little black dot appear in front of him, get slowly bigger and then flash past his side window. In case you miss it, it’s a 911 Turbo doing over 100 mph.
