Your Daily Dose Of Kitsch

Okay, reader.  Don't say I don't do anything for you.  I'm going to post a clip of true, flesh crawling badness for you.  It might make you laugh.  It might make you cringe.  It might make you tap your feet.  It might take you back to a carefree time when you wore studded black wristbands - a heinous crime against fashion to which I plead guilty, but then again, I was a nineteen-year-old metal fan (as opposed to a fifty-one year old metal fan) so I plead mitigating circumstances m'lud.  Without going into too much detail, I had reason to You Tube this clip today, which is Brian Mannix and Uncanny X-Men on 'Hey, Hey, It's Saturday' performing 'Best Looking Guy In The Factory'.

For sheer kitsch horror, it simply cannot be beaten.  Mannix is busting moves that make Elaine Benes from 'Seinfeld' look like Margot Fonteyn.  The blonde guitarist is in shiny leather (or more likely sweaty vinyl) pants.  The bassist has a permed mullet.  The lyrics include 'the girls are all dogs/the men are all wogs...'.  Not exactly the stuff of Sondheim, is it?  Towards the end, Mannix addresses some unseen person - possibly an audience member, or possibly a character in the ditty - 'Hey, you with the snot rag on your head!'  Truly, what's not to love?

So, I had a look at it again today.  And I could not look away.  It drew me in with its tractor beam of sheer unadulterated vulgarity, as if plotting to stow me onto the mother ship and transport me to the planet of Tacky.  Almost a little like St Patrick being kidnapped by pirates.

I will post the clip here, and don't say you weren't warned.  It's really an unbearable guilty pleasure.  Maybe, as I mentioned, it evokes memories of being carefree.  However, it's awfulness is enough to rupture the very fabric of time and space, so to save embarrassment, you might want to draw the blinds and dim the lights, lest the neighbours watch you viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoBFZWEkZjQ

The other day my home town unveiled a statue to honour the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba.

It's not apparent from this picture, but if you were up close you would see pure horror, fear, and determination in the faces of both the rider and the horse.  There is remarkable detail in the anatomy of the animal, and the body language of the rider is phenomenal.  As a work of art, it is breathtaking.  I was not at the unveiling, but when I had my chance, I inspected the new statue.  Then I read the plaque, and it mentioned 'unveilled'.  Yeah, you read that right.  Double consonant after diagraph vowels before a suffix.  My day was officially ruined, and I made due enquiries with my local council.  I have been informed this plaque is only temporary, the Good Lord be Praised.  

Again, I have advertised my services as a tutor in English.  One of the local schools informed me I could not advertise in their newsletter.  The email bringing this negative news had a misplaced apostrophe, and I had to fight an almost insurmountable urge to write back and point out the author of that email could do some tutoring herself.  Pedantry aside, I have had enquiries from other people, so will hopefully have some more students next week.