Our old chum!

by Twenty Major on March 31st, 2006

Our old friend Kunle is back in the news again. To sum up he’s a Nigerian who was given a special stay of execution, not literally sadly, to do his Leaving Cert then he was going to be deported. Then, while waiting for a judgement on a previous traffic offence, he was caught driving without tax or insurance. The rotter.

Still, Minister McDowell was not to be put off and he rejected all the pleas and said “No Kunle, you must go home”. He was due to be sent away on March 28th but another appeal was lodged and it seems like Kunle has been spreading his wild seed and has, I’m sure through love and no other reason, become a father and now they’re appealing that he should stay on the grounds that he is the father of an Irish citizen.

Now, underneath it all I’m a good bloke, really, so I don’t want to be too harsh on him. A man needs his son and a son needs his father. But at the end of the day he’s illegal here, but then can the Irish, having populated most of America with out emmigrants, be too harsh on this matter?

I don’t think so. So, I’ve come up with the perfect solution. Kunle still gets kicked out but his baby sets up a blog and to show the kind-heared type of person I am I’ve gone ahead and set it up already with full instructions and everything.

Click here to view it.

I’m happy to hand it over to Kunle and/or his missus. Just email me and I’ll give you the password.

A summer holiday tale

by Twenty Major on March 30th, 2006

What is it about rich people and their stupid names? It’s very rare to find the son or daughter of a rich person called Wayne or Agnes or Kylie or Arthur. They all have names like Paris or Mingus or Sailor or Apple or Pilot Inspector.

And so it was when I spent a summer in Florida in the late 80s. I was staying at a mansion owned by former comedian Richard Pryor. We became friends when he stayed in Dublin in 1986 and desperately wanted to get tickets for the Self Aid concert because he was a big fan of In Tua Nua and wanted to, in his own words, ‘plough the arse’ off Leslie Dowdall.

I overheard him asking the porter in the Gresham Hotel if he knew anyone who could sort him out and I’m not the sort of person to let an opportunity pass me by.

“Richard”, I said, “loved you in Stir Crazy and Superman III although I thought Brewster’s Millions lacked that spark to make it a truly funny film.”

“Thanks very much”, he said. “I only did Brewster’s for the money. Motherfuckers paid me millions.”

“How ironic”, I said. “Anyway, I heard you’re looking for tickets for Self Aid. Meet me back here at 2pm tomorrow and I’ll have what you’re looking for.”

And so I did. At that time I had a friend working in Sunshine 101 and he knew the combination to the safe in the boss’s office. Turns out when Robbie Robinson came in to collect his own tickets for the gig he found a half eaten sandwich and my mate’s business card which meant he didn’t work there for long but don’t worry he got a job with Energy 103. Still, we got the tickets for Richard Pryor and off he went to the concert. He never did tell me if he got to plough the lovely Leslie but suggested that she wouldn’t want somebody to love for quite some time.

Anyway, after that me and Richard Pryor became fast friends and I often went to stay with him in his Florida mansion. It was in 1989 when we had arranged a holiday during which we would go shoot some alligators in the Everglades with a rocket launcher that he got a call offering him a big part in a film which he simply couldn’t turn down. Despite having millions of dollars he wanted more but he said I should come over and that I could bring a friend if I wanted.

Jimmy the Bollix was just back from London so I suggested we take advantage of Richard’s hospitality. And so we did. We flew to Miami and drove up in a rental Chevrolet to his house on West Palm Beach. When we got there we were greeted by his son who, in the tradition of rich parents, had a silly name.

“Hi Twenny! Hi Jimmy! I’m DeBoyce, Richard’s son. I’m here to help and show you around and score shit for you and all that.”

And to be fair to him he was a very nice young man, very obliging and attentive to our needs.

“More beer, DeBoyce!” we’d cry from beside the pool and not 60 seconds later he would have commanded one of the servants to bring us some nice cold ones. He was a little more full of get up and go when he had to drive anywhere though. Beer the slaves could bring from inside the house but other stuff needed to be collected and he was more than willing to do that because he’d just taken delivery of one of the very first prototype civilian Hummers. He would drive like a lunatic and people would get out of the way because if they didn’t they’d be squashed. It was a massive contraption.

“You guys want some burgers or something?”, he ask and we liked to be obliging so we’d say “yes” and he’d go speeding off in his massive vehicle to bring them back. Three or four times a day he go on errands just so he could drive somewhere.

So, the night before we were due to leave Florida we went out clubbing on Ocean Drive. DeBoyce knew all the good clubs and he lined a few palms to ensure we got VIP treatment. We got chatting to former Eagles star Don Henley who was an interesting character. He told us all about Glenn Frey’s unpublishable deformity and that he feels like eating his own sick whenever he hears Hotel California. Jimmy told him that ”Desperado” was one of his most hated songs of all time. Henley said “Fair enough, Jimmy. Have a mojito!” What a guy.

Man, that was some night, let me tell you. There were cocktails, beers, wine, spirits, shots and drugs and I think there may have been scantily clad beauties in bikinis but I only remember the important stuff. We caned it. Big time. I barely remember getting home, naturally taken there in the jeep. We got back to the mansion where, just before we all crashed out (Henley included as we’d promised to give him a lift back to Miami the next day) our generous host said he was going to drive off and get some more drinks and possibly another ounce of cocaine for himself. Like father like son, eh?

I woke about 7 hours later and sat up with a start. That was a mistake. My head hurt like somebody had drilled a hole in the top and was pouring sulphuric acid directly into my brain. I looked at my watch. SHIT! We only had 90 minutes to make our flight. I roused the former Eagle from his slumber and then I woke Jimmy who punched me in the face and went back to sleep. I woke him again. He punched me again. This was not good. In the end I poured cold water and hid behind the couch as he steamed around swearing to pull the legs off whoever did that. He’s cranky, first thing.

“Jimmy you cunt! Come on! We’ve only got 90 minutes to make it to Miami airport or we’ll miss the flight.”

“Oh bollocks”, he said as he raced around some more and packed his case in record time. I did similarly and we legged it down the garage and got in the rental car. I pushed the button which automatically opened the garage door and found our way totally blocked by DeBoyce’s massive truck which he’d parked at an almost impossible angle.

“Oh fuck, we’d better go look for him. He must be flat out in his room or something.”

“Ah crap”.

We went running back into the house and we called his name but got no answer. Dead to the world we thought. We checked his room, no sign of him. We checked the room next to his. Nothing. We checked the other 12 bedrooms, nobody. We checked the servants quarters as he’d shack up with the Peurto Rican maid called Jennifer Lopez from time to time but he wasn’t there either. There was only one more place to look. The bottom of the pool.

Oh Jesus H Christ. We’d gone out with Richard Pryor’s son, over induldged ourselves and now his swollen corpse was going to be face down at the bottom of the roast chicken shaped pool. He was going to kill me and I learned not to underestimate him after he told me he’d taken out John Wayne, Keith Godchaux from the Grateful Dead and Minnie Ripperton in a one month spell in 1979 (look it up) after they’d ‘crossed him’. We made our way slowly to the swimming pool, squinting in preparation at seeing the dead body which was going to cost us such a lot. Don Henley was literally shaking with fear. Being in the entertainment business he knew exactly how ruthless Pryor was and what he was capable of.

Imagine our surprise though when we didn’t see a thing. Such relief, let me tell you. There was just no sign of him anywhere on the property and if he was lying dead somewhere we couldn’t be faulted. We went back to the rental car in the garage.

“Fuck, that was close. Smoke, Twenty?”

“Damn right, Jimmy. My heart is pounding.”

“Give me one of those”, said our famous chum. “Mmmm, delicious taste. What brand is this?”

“Major, natch.”

We sat smoking for a while. Eventually I spoke.

“Of course we still can’t get out of here because of that monstrosity in the way.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Just wait, I guess.”

“Till when?”

It was Don Henley who answered.

“After DeBoyce’s Hummer has gone.”

I hate darkies

by Twenty Major on March 29th, 2006

Having thought about it long and hard I’ve decided I don’t like darkies. They’re too difficult to read and they’re hard on the eyes. I’m talking about websites of course. That’s why after some days of reflection and hours fucking around with stylesheets I have reverted to a whiter looking site with a classic Major trim.

Comments box update will follow some time later.

Edit: I also have to figure out why the link in the previous post is enormous and black whereas the others are small and green. I may need beer for this.

Edit edit: Hurrah, I figured it out without beer. I’m still going to have beer though.

So many Poles

by Twenty Major on March 29th, 2006

Markham makes a very good point about the Polish community in Ireland. With three separate publications in the Polish language it means there’s a whole fucking lot of them.

We need to be careful though. While I am all for immigrants who want to come here and work hard - as opposed to Lithuanians who only seem to come here to be involved in fatal road traffic accidents - having so many Poles here is dangerous.

If history has taught us anything it’s that wherever there are a lot of Poles a shitload of Germans with guns can’t be too far behind.

Frankly Ireland is multi-cultural enough with that lot coming on board. Before you know if there’ll be Braun Tomasz, Hughes und Hughes, Guinnesch and SuperKvin all over the place not to mention the hairy, strong armed women and I don’t mean the ones from Blanchardstown.

It’s a real dilemma though because the Polish people are very nice even if their heads appear to be much too big for their bodies. I’m not quite sure what that’s about. Perhaps it’s their version of ginger. That said they bear some responsibility themselves. More than anyone they know what the Germans are like. They could have come here disguised as Finns or something.

The lurking menace of the German invasion is something that should be addressed in the Dáil but instead we get nonsense like Gay Byrne being appointed Chairman of the Road Safety Authority. Have you ever heard such nonsense?

What’s he going to do? Get Sinead O’Connor in as his secretary and hand penalty points to everyone in the audience.

I demand to know what our government is going to do to prevent that mad-woman Merkin and her Minister for Propaganda, Jurgen Klinnsman, from coming here and taking over.

Mike Tyson gives speeches

by Twenty Major on March 28th, 2006

Mike Tyson is in Ireland giving after dinner speeches, if you can believe such a thing. I assume he’s miming while someone else does the talking because he’s hardly the most eloquent or articulate person I’ve ever seen.

However, his visit has caused controversy, not because of his lack of fluency when he speaks, but because he has a conviction for rape. Some people think we shouldn’t allow rapists to enter the country and from one point of view I understand it but from another point of view shouldn’t we try and accept that the justice system is there to punish and rehabilitate people (except all the people I hate)?

I mean, we’re going to give Niall Quinn his driving licence back after he serves his ban for drink driving. We wouldn’t say ‘No, Niall, you made one mistake now you’re never allowed to drive again’, even though I wish someone would say ‘Here Niall, take this bottle of Jamesons, slug it back then go racing round Mondello with that Jamie Redknapp cretin in the passenger seat and don’t forget to forget to put your seatbelts on’.

Personally I wouldn’t have the slightest bit of interest in paying money to listen to an obvious lunatic try and give a speech. This is also the reason why I would never attend Fianna Fail Ard Fheis but I don’t see any problem with Tyson being here and if some people want to pay him €200 to stutter and blabber then that’s up to them to waste their money whatever way they want.

I wonder would the people who object to Tyson being here having any problem with Kobe Bryant coming over to play an exhibition at the National Basketball Arena. I doubt it.

And where do you draw the line on restricting entry into the country? What about burglars? Or wife beaters? Or people who don’t pay their parking tickets? Drug smugglers? Vandals? Forgers? Conmen? Killers?!

Each one causes problems in society in their own way, obviously some more serious than others but you can’t pick and choose. It’s got to be all or nothing. Criminal conviction = no entry whether you ran a red light or murdered your mother in law because she was a massive cunny.

And if we’re going to restrict entry to people who commit crimes outside of Ireland then why don’t we turn it around and banish people who commit crimes here. A proper old-fashioned banishing with no hope of ever returning. We could strike a deal with a really poor person and work out how much it would cost to keep that person in prison then sent that money to the poor country as payment for the Irish criminal we’re sending to them. That person then must live and work in that country, boosting their economy and skilled workforce while the few bob we send them helps reduce the national debt in a way that Bono and Bob Gandalf can’t, for all their hoopla.

‘Be off with you, vile gent, and ne’er again show thy visage or we’ll boot your bleedin’ bollix in.’

Suicide is not painless

by Twenty Major on March 27th, 2006

Suicide is painless said the people who sang the Theme from M*A*S*H but suicide was not painless for William Langhammer who lived near me.

No jumping off a tall building for him. No overdoses, slitting of wrists or carbon monoxide poisoning in his car. No Japanese ceremonial style falling on a sword either.

William was a troubled man, mostly because some people thought a man with a name like that couldn’t exist, and spoke many times about committing suicide. People would say “Don’t be such a soft cunt. Think of the people you will upset. They certainly outweigh the people who would celebrate your passing” and they would also say “Be a man, face up to your problems and don’t take the coward’s way out.”

He obviously didn’t listen because he left behind a wife and children and parents and a brother and a tortoise called Aubrey who was never the same again.

What he did was gouge his own eyes out after cutting out his tongue, ripping all his fingernails off and castrating himself with a rusty shears. It took him ages to die and medical experts said afterwards it was probably horrifically painful so the singers of the Theme from M*A*S*H are fucking liars and I do not appreciate being lied to by pop music and by the theme music from a popular American TV show.

Next thing you know we’ll find out the Greatest American Hero bloke wasn’t walking on air at all (believe it or not) and the world does in fact move to the beat of just one drum. If that happens I am going to be extremely vexed indeed.

Stupid fucking clocks

by Twenty Major on March 26th, 2006

Why are they always going backwards and forwards? Why can’t they just stay the same time?

I don’t like losing an hour of sleep. Someone will have to pay for this.

Edit: And before some fucking smart arse says ‘A clock wouldn’t be much good if it stayed the same time’, you know what I fucking mean.

Comment is free - Guardian blog

by Twenty Major on March 25th, 2006

I am appalled. I have been looking at the list of contributors and I notice I am not amongst them. It’s a disgrace.

I mean, I don’t know who 95% of those cunts are which certainly puts me on an equal position with most of them as 95% of people wouldn’t have a clue who they were either.

It’s all very serious too, isn’t it? It seems a sense of humour is a bad thing in the blogging world. Personally I think they need to get rid of the boring politics and hire myself, Hutton (Harry, not boring old Will), Noreen and Ballbag, Scary and Manuel to give it a European flavour and then we’d be talking about something different. To add a bit of gravitas we’ll bring Worstall for his unique outlook on Ergonomics.

At the moment it’s a blog for Morrissey fans.

Thanks Blacknight.ie

by Twenty Major on March 24th, 2006

Having just now caught up with my awards attending representative I have just taken ownership of my very swish iPod Nano on which I can put my entire collection of 78s and eight-track cartridges.

This prize was sponsored by Blacknight.ie so thank you very much to them, even if the inscription on the back is rather bizarre. It says:

Margaret Boland - 087 810XXXX - where Xs = the rest of her mobile number.

Maybe I’m missing something but I doubt it’ll make my Jesus and Mary Chain MP3s sound weird or anything.

He who was at the awards is suffering from a large hangover having been on the piss for 10 days. He says he knows where the rest of the prizes are, just ‘not right now’.

Fridays

by Twenty Major on March 24th, 2006

I don’t know about you but Friday is my favourite day of the week. When I was a regular working man you took it easy on Friday, the day strolled by, then there were always pints after work and it didn’t matter if you had one or four or eight too many you had the long luxury of Saturday in which to sleep in and recover.

Saturday is a good day too but it lacks the promise of Friday. On Friday there’s the excitement about the weekend and the two full days that stretch ahead. On Saturday, even if something cool is going down that night, you know that Sunday is just going to be a day when you sit around and drool and wish you had a bigger blanket to hang over the shutters because there’s still a bit of light getting through.

Lots of great things have happened on Fridays too. For example, without Friday we would never have had that series of great horror films about that bloke in the hockey mask who, every Friday 13th, would go on a rampage and the rampage would involve killing people on Friday the 13th and it would continue for the whole night of Friday the 13th. I think it was called Jason and the Argonauts.

Also, Icarus made his attempt to fly to the sun on a Friday, annoying rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead on a Friday and I once won €50 on a scratch card so it’s truly the greatest day there is.

One of the best Fridays ever was some years ago when Dirty Dave dumped his girlfriend. Naturally she was born with no sense of smell so she could live with his odour.They’d been going out for about 9 months and he kept insisting on bringing her to Ron’s. She was a moany old cunt, let me tell you, always complaining.

“Twenty, do you have to fart in public and do you have to life your leg when you do it?”

“Fuck off”, I’d say.

We had a nickname for her. To put it into context have you ever seen one of those people that has a little white blob or a lump underneath their eye, usually towards the corner? I don’t know what you’d call it medically but lots of people have them. It’s almost like a teeny tiny white teat. Unfortunately for Dirty Dave’s girlfriend she had one of these right above her top lip in the middle of her cupid’s bow. For this reason we called her ‘Clit Face’.

Now, after 9 months of her harping on every fucking time Dave brought her to the pub, and we asked him not to after her second visit, we were well and truly pissed off.

“Lads”, said Jimmy. “I love it here at Ron’s but I can’t stand it when Dave brings Clit Face with him. We have to do something.”

“Agreed”, I said, “but what?”

So we hatched a fiendish plan. Dave is a very easy going chap and doesn’t get passionate about too many things but he is a massive fan of soul crooner George Benson. You slag off the Benson and Dave will be in your face.

“Never give up on a good thing is the perfect fusion of pop and soul with a tremendous dollop of funk and a bassline that slaps more than Gazza does his wife”, he’ll tell you.

So our plan was to for Jimmy to talk to Dave while I got the short straw and had to keep Clit Face occupied which meant some kind of turgid conversation. We’d give a wink to Ron who would lash on ‘Give me the night’. About two minutes into the song I was to pipe up as loud as possible ‘Hey Ron, the lady says can you turn that shite off?’ at which point Dave would lose it and then we’d say ‘Hey Dave, she’s been saying George Benson is a poor man’s Luther Vandross’ all evening and that would surely be curtains for Clit Face.

The best laid plans of mice and men (what the fuck does that mean anyway? Mice are well known for lack of strategic thinking) though. When we gave Ron the signal he cranked up the Technics behind the bar and soon the Bensonmeister was doing his stuff. However, before I could deliver my killer line, she says “Oh, I love George Benson. Dave has really got me into him”.

‘Bollocks’, I thought. That was until Clitty started dancing. Imagine, if you can, a spastic crab crossed with Madonna’s scary dance music dancing mixed with Joey Deacon style drooling and hopelessly out of time clapping. To a man we all looked on in horror. Those 3 West Coast Coolers Dave had bought in the off licence and brought into Ron’s for her (he’d never stock such a drink) had obviously gone straight to her head. It was mesmirisingly vomitous.

Dave was gobsmacked.

“Turn that off, Ron”, he commanded in a rare moment of self-confidence. He took a gulp of his pint.

She had stopped her gonzo goofstep.

“Get out”, Dave told her, “and never come back. You have ruined that song for me and given its subtle horn section, its funky double bassline and it’s ‘bapa-dapa-dapa-dapa-dap’ backing singers I never thought that would be possible. Go home, Clit Face, I never want to see you again.”

“You bastard!”, she roared at him. “I’ll tell everyone you like me to put me finger up your hole during sex.”

“I don’t care. Go now. Quickly.”

She made her way to the door. I spoke.

“Wait”, I said. She turned around.

“What?”

I lifted my leg and farted. I love Fridays.