Hi Steven,

Can you please stop directing films that have German soldiers in them. It is a problem with the baby boomer generation but anyone born post 1960 just doesn’t care about them. You on the other hand, appear to have a bizarre fascination, some might say a fetish with our grey uniformed Deutsche chums.

Here is your filmography and evidence of the amount of panzer based nonsense you’ve inflicted upon us all. Maybe you just like their motorbike sidecars and the helmets, I don’t know, but for your remaining years, could you please move on.

Please also avoid aliens as well.

Duel — big truck chases a man (allegory for das boot vs the allied solider)
Something Evil — some demon nonsense
The Sugarland Express — US based thriller
Jaws — German made shark terrorises local community
Close Encounters of the Third Kind — aliens with theme tune
1941 — have a guess what this refers to.. yup… Zee Germans!
Raiders of the Lost Ark — Nazis abound
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — Elliot harbours Ann Frank from Nazis on Halloween
Twilight Zone: The Movie — sci-fi thriller
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — Nazis are back with shriveled faces
The Color Purple — Whoopi!
Empire of the Sun — WWII with Japanese instead of Nazis — subtle
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - MORE NAZIS
Always — “comedy“
Hook — more comedy
Jurassic Park — British / Americans colonise island, Nazi dinos fight back
Schindler’s List — serious Nazi Nazi film, with Nazis
Amistad — Matthew McConaughey begins annoying movie goes worldwide
The Lost World: Jurassic Park — Nazi dinos stage full scale US invasion
Saving Private Ryan — More Nazis attack
A.I. Artificial Intelligence — swear the ending needed more Nazis
Catch Me If You Can — lol
Minority Report — totalitarian police state, much like another European state I once knew
The Terminal — “comedy“
War of the Worlds — stupid flu-ridden (Nazi) aliens stage invasion of US
Munich — WWII guerrilla spy drama set 30 years after WWII
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — ZEE NAZIS ARE BACK!!!
War Horse — German soldiers abound, prequel to your many other Nazis films

So 10/28 films are about Nazis… it’s 2012.… it’s been 67 years… one year older than you Steven. Let’s leave it now. I beg you. War Horse was by the numbers drivel, and we all know you only took the chance so you could get your German soldier fix. Why not join a reenactment group, live the past instead of inflicting it upon us time and time again.

Tschüss

And lo’ ITV has decided that what the people want is more period drama bollocks. Not content with Downton Abbey and its incredible propensity for exposition [“Oh golly, I can’t be upstairs, I’m a servant and I can’t be on this floor. — Yes, you better get back down before his Lordship finds out.”] they have commissioned an utter utter by the numbers pile of wank in Titanic, something they claim is:

Scripted by Julian Fellowes the ‘esteemed’ writer behind equally expositiontastic Gosford Park, Titanic tells the story we’ve all heard 34892734 times. Many destroyed James Macaroon’s version — but Captain, I’ve counted the lifeboats and there don’t seem to be enough — but at least it put to bed any need to tell it again.

The problem with the trailer is that it tells the entire story and negates the need for watching the tripe when it goes live to rapturous applause and inevitable Twitter trending greatness. NB: All pictures have been annotated as the source material is incredibly complex.

First up, he’s the arrogant ship pilot:

Then, the inevitable unlikeable rich:

Obviously, taking a leaf out of DiCappuccino’s poor character, here’s this show’s poor man:

Unfortunately, exposition storms back with the girl he bumps into informing him not to use those stairs again. You can guarandamntee that at least 80% of the Television Event of 2012 will be spent explaining the rather fucking obvious class structure of the time. But in case it isn’t abundantly clear here are some photos of rich people not respecting the women&children classic, poor trapped like cattle and a military man losing his shit.

Why would ITV waste the money on this toilet? There are so many scripts out there, but ITV somehow always get it wrong. Get ready for April when everyone dies on a ship hit by an iceberg. Taking bets on the final shot being a slow pan out of the bodies in the water with a cowbell intermittently ringing alongside a slow piano.


ITV; refusing to break the mold for decades on end. Catch the trailer here

Perhaps the closest the Taiwanese get to a national dish is Beef Noodle Soup but even this isn’t eaten universally as many of the country’s Buddhists won’t eat beef. Instead the country has a vast snacking culture where you can buy all manner of street food for next to no money. Unlike Japan, which specialises in intricate presentation, the Taiwanese care little about how things look. Making sure the food tastes great is the main priority as competition for business is so fierce owing to the fact that barely anyone cooks at home.

Case in point is the oyster omelet. Oysters, eggs, spring onions, a little spice sound great, but when it looks like this, would you order it?

Then there is the fried food. If this ever fell into the wrong hands (Americans), the consequences would be dire. Heart disease would no doubt treble overnight with the resulting deaths extending into the hundreds of thousands. The main threat comes from Pai Ke which is on paper just battered chicken but is one of the most addictive foods out there. The thick batter is both spicy, a little sweet and ultra crunchy and when combined with succulent chicken is a heart attack in a paper bag. Approach with caution.

Accompanying the Pai Ke or Ji Pai are fried sweet potato, mushroom, taro (squidgy greatness) and tempura. Tempura in Taiwan differs to the Japanese battered prawns, by instead taking the prawn and mashing it up with the flour. Then the resulting splodge is cooled, chopped up and then deep fried. The end result is a airy light crispy shell that becomes slightly chewy when eaten. Tossed with light chilli, it is as moorish as popcorn. Again, all of these fried foods are no good in any way but are perfect when eaten after a long day with a beer or two.

Then there are the more traditional of Chinese snacks; the meat buns, the dumplings, pancakes and some kind of mystery meat and rice.

Finally these little hot cakes can be filled with custard, taro or red bean but really if you’re deviating from the custard version, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s easy to graze in Taiwan :)

I’m pretty sure that Orange Pixel, the makers of Stardash, watched the Youtube videos of a game called Asshole Mario (see here), a homebrew version of the Nintendo classic with an insane amount of cheap tricks and nigh on impossible difficulty.

Stardash is tough, real tough but the stages are no longer than 35 seconds long meaning the bitesized levels won’t drive you insane if you die towards the end of a stage. And die you will, very very often. The challenge comes in that there are no power-ups at all and if touch any bad guy you die (unless you jump on them). In this respect it’s just like Super Meat Boy in that you’re given infinite lives to beat a stage. In each level there are two stars to be earned. One for finishing it in a strict time limit and one for collecting all the coins scattered throughout the level. In order to beat the time limit means you’re encouraged to run full-pelt through the level like Sonic, timing jumps to perfection to beat the stage. But there is no penalty if the time runs out, allowing you to collect the coins at will to earn the other star. Each world has eight stages and in each stage is also a hidden key that opens up a temple level if all keys are collected in a world. Finding these keys requires a lot of trial and error and brings even more depth to the game.

The physics are spot on so you can rarely blame the game if you die, though hit detection is, on rare occasions, a little off. My only gripe with the game is that while the style is purposefully 8-bit/Gameboy, it would be nice to have the game in colour. Stardash is fantastic, a true platforming gem that will make you better at games if you can grab all the stars and unlock all the levels. I’m currently at 88% and am using all spare time to press on ahead. Independent games like this should be supported and event though the game is free on Android, I want to buy the paid version as it is just so good.

Day Two and we went to my girlfriend Wynn’s step-dad’s Japanese restaurant. The food was spectacular, starting with assorted sashimi, followed by more appetisers, then California rolls and possibly the best ever sushi created; Grilled Halibut Nigiri.

Not sure of a better translation for Scallop Lips… sound gross, taste ace.

This is one rare type. According to research if you’re American it’s likely to be Summer Flounder, while the Japanese call it Hirame. Whichever type you get, ensure that it is roasted beforehand with crème brûlée torch. This not only warms the sushi, but gives it a creamy texture that puts it at the very top of the sushi pile, on par with grilled eel. Honestly, once you’ve tried it, you’ll never be able to go back. In most Japanese restaurants they don’t offer it as it is very expensive, but you can get a similar effect by asking the chef to grill salmon sushi instead. Definitely recommended.





So after a bunch of dishes (including what can only be described as a huge bowl of unscrambled eggs with six crabs) and much family catch up one of the cousin’s boyfriends got into a discussion with Wynn’s uncle. Now this guy is the archetypal seen it all before cop. He’s a chain smoking, whisky drinking force of nature. Four years ago, the first time I met him at a Chinese New Year meal he sat next to me and with a few English words made it clear he wasn’t someone to be messed with. The words were “me… national boxing champion… go police… helicopter… mp5.. dakka dakka dakka.” He finished the night trying to drink me under the table but while I sipped he knocked them down like only a cop in Hong Kong movie could before stumbling into another party’s table and frightening the bejesus out of them.

Back to the meal and I turned my head to be greeted with this:

The young boy proceeded to punch his clenched fist once or twice, laughing unaware of the pain coming his way. The uncle then told him it was his turn so the boy, just out of uni, held his hand out. The uncle then proceeded to pound the shit out of this guy’s fist, pam pam pam. The boy, trying to hold his shit together kept smiling and asked his friend to try it. The uncle then went to town on the boy’s friend and I’m pretty sure both went to hospital the day after. Of course, thanks to face culture, neither could show their pain so just laughed it off, but if this was a movie you know they’d be plotting their revenge in a fake call out to an alley where they’d be waiting with pipes. But instead, we all just went back to fruit.

Taiwan sits at the heart of Asia with a complex history of ownership and colonisation. Thankfully, despite much political wrangling, there has been peace for the best part of 60 years which has allowed the island to flourish economically and get on with the more important business of feeding its inhabitants. Sitting so centrally in Asia has meant that all manner of cuisines have made it over to the tiny island from Japanese and Korean to the many regions in China, Thai, Indonesian, Malay and Indian. Plus with the American military presence and seizing of American culture, there are countless gourmet burger diners to give you that fix when you want to play at being a 400lb superstar.

There are a lot of things sound utterly disgusting, but once combined (smothered) in the right sauce or cooked in the certain way become delcious edible. Things like chicken testes, eaten for luck at a wedding, or pigs’ ears or even stomach lining. Of course these “delicacies” aren’t the norm so there won’t be many freak out dishes from my journey back to Taiwan but hopefully will give you an idea of what can be found here.

First up, just after my girlfriend and I touched down in Taiwan was a trip to a Re Chow (熱炒) place. These restaurants are crazy popular, in which diners generally sit under a sheltered roof to enjoy meal long into the night while watching people going home after work, drinking lots of beer in tiny glasses. The first dish arrived; pig’s blood soup with intestine. Pig’s blood is much like black pudding, but here it’s squidgy instead. The intestine tastes like you’d imagine it would… sweaty though the soup masked the funk well.

Thankfully after this, we were onto clams cooked with garlic, chilli and ginger, alongside deep fried prawns, pineapple and er… hundreds and thousands. The Taiwanese love the sweet/salty combination and this is one dish guaranteed to edge you closer to a heart attack.We finished up with a fried squid, basil and mushrooms and a soup. Not a bad start for day one.

The simplest way to save jobs and protect the quality of editorial content is to charge readers. However if a poorly implemented online paywall is installed as that by The Times, it is apparent that readers simply stop engaging with that online edition and move elsewhere for news. The FT has a strong online subscription service, as does the Wall Street Journal but one could imagine that if The Star tried to charge for online content, it would rapidly lose the majority of its ad click revenue.

The perfect solution to this, and very easy to implement is a collective deal encompassing all daily titles from all media groups for online content. This completely strealines the process and because readers do accept that journalists need to be paid and newspapers have costs to face it would work. Plus one payment for all media simplifies everything, meaning a reader only needs one account.

You would then split the pot of revenue accordingly. 50% of the pot is shared amongst all titles equally. The remaining 50% is divided by the traffic each online edition receives. Looking at the table below the total unique visitors per month for all titles is 28,431,000 so the Mail Online, with 6,645,000 UVPM would take around 23% of the total set aside for online traffic.

MailOnline 6,645,000 (Unique Visitors Per Month)
Guardian 4,622,000
Telegraph 4,394,000
The Sun 2,916,000
Newsquest Media 2,877,000
Trinity Mirror 2,427,000
The Independent 1,693,000
The Times/The Sunday Times 1,211,000
London Evening Standard 693,000
Daily Express 408,000
Daily Star 356,000
Economist 189,000

Et Voila, the UK newspaper industry is saved. If the 9,792,974
people that bought papers for September had instead paid £5 a month for the service, then the each paper would have got around £1.75 million pounds through the shared pot, the lowest ranked paper an extra £160k and the highest £5.72 million.

At just £5 a month this brings around £50 million a month or around £600 million a year. People would pay £5 a month for access to all UK nationals. I will take a 1% commish for the idea, thank you and good night

It’s been a great week for my belly. Three restaurants, lots of martinis and a kebab. First up last Sunday was Dong San, an excellent Korean restaurant in Soho. Populated exclusively by Koreans reading the Sunday papers, sipping beer and snacking on BBQ, Dong San needs to be visited immediately.

On the far left, the most succulent beef this side of the 38th Parallel called something like Gaubi. Then a great grilled eel sushi roll (Grilled eel is a mandatory purchase whenever you see it on a menu) followed by a seafood rice cake, which doesn’t look like a rice cake and is more like a spanish omelette. The red soup was ultra spicy tofu and on the far right, mussel something something with a really tast squidgy thing.

Dong San
47 Poland Street
London
W1F 7NB

Next up Japanese curry at home my girlfriend made. 2 potato, 3 carrot, 2 onion and the meat of your choice. boil all with seasoning, then add the curry cube. Serve with lychee martinis.

Friday was a trip to Busaba Eathai in Old Street with old friends. Delicious as usual — Thai Calamari, Pad Thai, Creen Curry, Spicy prawn, chilli beef yummmmmmmmmm.

Saturday brought about a return to tradition with Dim Sum at Imperial China. This is one of the best places to get your yum cha fix in London. Part 1 was char sui bao, prawn chen fung, luo bu gau, xiao long bao, crispy squid (mistake >.<) and ho fun.

We’d been searching for our lost cat in battersea dogs home and had gone for a walk with the dog in Alexandra Palace so our appetites had gotten a little away from us. After wolfing down the dim sum, we stumbled punch drunk head long into part 2.

Quite why they gave me a fork I’ll never know, and aside from a delightful misunderstanding with my girlfriend, a really really good meal.

Imperial China
25A Lisle St
London
WC2H 7BA

Finally Sunday was steak, roast potatoes and roast sweet potatoes with grilled asparagus and red wine mushroom sauce (I’d call it a reduction but I’m not a ****).

Next week, Poland, Jewish New Year and … er.… kebab?

This isn’t longpig but it’s not far off and is sure to impress despots and maniacs in equal measure. In a world of increased knowledge of world cuisine, chefs like heston blumenthal have resorted to convincing people that offal, ear and hoof are the height of fine dining. but alas with so many tv chefs and shows it is hard to differeniate unless you’re that bald guy who eats taruntulas and fertilized eggs that have feathers and beaks so what to do? well, like a good friend said go big go huge so here it is, the latest must sample dish for all you foodies out there.

Roast Sphinx

In Greek mythology the Sphinx has a body of a lion, the wings of a bird and the bust and head of woman. Now while at first glance it may seem a little tricky to source these ingredients, a true gourmet revels in the challenge.

Ingredients:

1 x Lion
1 x Swan
1 x Female Torso
500g Salt
300g Mustard Seeds
10kg Flour
2L Water
Handful of cloves

Preparation

It would be prudent to cook the Sphinx away from prying eyes so why not wind the clock back to the 1700s to undertake your very own Grand Tour. Morons continually point out that catching your own meat will make it taste better but the truth is, it’s the taboo that makes it better. Derren Brown proved this with shoplifting. And nothing says taboo like hunting lion, well… maybe bolting on a human torso but well… onwards!

1) Procure swan — current research suggests an abundance in Regents Park, Hyde Park and Hampstead Heath. Forget that nonsense about swans having the strength to break your arms, their no match for a mallet, chainsaw or drillbit. Remember we only need the wings so if there is some buckshot to the body or decaption with a broadsword don’t fret. Alternatively slaughter in a humane with a rabbi present to give it that kosher flavour (I say flavour as swans aren’t kosher, but if the rabbi sees you killing a swan, he’ll probably bless it once you outline the wider recipe and he just wants to make it home to the wife). Now as many people know, it’s pretty much illegal to kill swans in the UK, but you can just about get away with it if you deliver the remaining parts to the Worshipful Companies of Vintners and Dyers once you’ve carefully removed the wings and bung them a fiver or two.

2) Fly to Doctor Congo and go big game hunting. Kill Mufasa. Skin and treat the hide using your artisan skills to receive a bonus rug. Remove head and sell to the gentry who will no dout be the talk of the town. Gut the innards, sell to Chinese medicine quacks and/or homeopathy lunatics.

3) Get severed female torso — unfortunately, you might have to buy a bulk purchase as it’s touch difficult to find just a torso. There aren’t many recipes involving the lower half of a body but just think of it as one of those obscure erbz that Jamie Oliver forces you to buy (fennel seeds par example — currently rotting in 7.2 million homes around the UK). Recommend locating to the border of a wartorn country… perhaps that rabbi can set you up something nice on the edge of the Gaza Strip and Egypt. In fact that way, by eating your roasted sphinx on the Egyptian border you can really do your part for international diplomacy.

Method

1) Prepare the meat by seasoning it with salt and if you like tenderising with a baseball bat.

2) score a few lines across the body and place a little butter and rosemary inside. Repeat with cloves and mark where that section is, so you can give that part to the doubting dorises who frown upon your quixotic desire to sample the mythical.

3) Now, lions being carnivores and incredibly active will mean their meat will be very tough. To counter this we’re going be cooking it in the style of beef wellington. Not only will this encase the meat protecting it from becoming impossiblly tough, but the cooked pastry will create the effect that lion still has its skin. The insides will be just like pulled pork. You can find an excellent beef wellington recipe her which will allow you to wrap the lion perfectly.

4) Given the size of the beast why not use one of the many burning trucks adorning the Gaza Strip as a make shift oven. You want to wait until the blaze is under control and then just pop it in the back for 5 hours at 180 degrees.

Final Preparation

1) rope in a few med students on the premise of practicing their suturing skills. hoist the torso to the front and watch them go to work stiching the cooked meat to the flesh. think human caterpillar without the implications.

2) Repeat with the wings, but why not give a fledging seamstress the opportunity to practice her tailoring.

3) Position the dish in your choice of pose. Whether you make the sphinx run or rearing up to attack, don’t forget to have a professional enbalmer on hand to give the corse that last minute touch up. Your guests will appreciate your devotion to finesse.

Serve with greens and a glass of chianti. Heres to you, cheers!

Next week; mermaids!

Months late to the party here’s my take on True Grit, the multi-nominated western that is the same as every other western ever released. Oh my days, why is everything so brown and arid in all these films. It’s always so fucking brown. You know there’s a point where the girl is trying to convince Jeff Bridges to go find her daddy’s killer that the only colour in a room full of junk is tan. It’s like I’m watching some kid who’s just discovered the sepia setting on his first digital camera. Obviously got to the Coen brothers as they lost it, added a drunk dentist dressed in half a bear during snowfall to break the monotony in an overly drawn out scene that aided nothing.

The plot is much the same as all westerns. Some shit has gone down, some one has to track down a killer. Thankfully they do it without any cliches like footprints or broken twigs. Only problem is that the bad guy turns out to be a moron, which I guess is a statement on unfairness found in life but it doesn’t make for gripping cinema. I semi-remember watching one western where the bad guy walks into a woman’s home, steals her husband’s money and has her make him breakfast. All the while she’s terrified. The husband comes home, the bad guy kills him in front of the wife, he finishes his breakfast, kills the wife and departs the house leaving a crying unattended baby who surely will also die. That’s a bad guy. This film lacked one.

And why did Jeff have to kill the horse. He returns to save the girl after about ten minutes. There is a shot of him with two horses just before he returns and he’s leading an extra horse. They could have just ridden back to where he left it and rode home safely. But i guess, as Wynn says, everyone in the films needs to get shot at least once.

It was brown, the girl’s character was very good, the plot and the rest were just another run of the mill western. Don’t know quite why it was raved about. In closing, I couldn’t shift the thought that Hailee Steinfeld had Will Smith’s eyes and Jermaine Jenas’ gormless face complete with the same front tooth gap.