IIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN One
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Albion Arras, The Great British Pub
What makes me British?
What gave me my sense of humour?
What made me, me?
The answer is the pub, the British pub.
There is no better time, for a man, than that magical couple of hours at the start of the evening where the first four or five pints are supped, and the conversation magically meanders down a stream of wit and immeasurable fun.
You’re going to hear a lot more from me over the next few months about the British pub because they are an endangered species. Did you know that? Thirty-nine (that better be right, Doylie!) are closing every week. It’s a disgrace. A bloody disgrace, and do you know what? I am gonna do something about it!
I’m not advocating binge-drinking, here, but there’s n’owt more fun than a night in a drinking pub. I ain’t talking about shitty bars with chrome/pine furniture, three-quid a pint minging lager and a bunch of pretentious w***ers swanning about like fake cockneys (mockneys), I’m talking about dingy, dirty pubs with pool tables and dart boards, which brings me on to my next topic: darts.
There is no better drinking sport than darts. Snooker is a sport that makes men commit suicide, and is the hardest game in the western world (pipped by kabaddi in the eastern hemisphere). Pool is a class game, but you have to pay money, and some of the balls get stuck and when you play winner-stays-on, some smarmy little bastard with his own queue cleans up. That leaves dominoes, back gammon, blah-di-blah; they’re for pensioners (any other good bar games that deserve a shout?). So darts is the best. Fact.
It is a game of skill, precision, maths and nerves. It is the ultimate sport.
Historically, this beautiful past-time gave rise to the finest gameshow ever to grace British TV: Bullseye (not the US gameshow presented by Jim Lange). Bullseye was amazing. I can’t be arsed to go into the details, but check this link out if you have never heard of this TV giant. The Bullseye Format Just to put into the context the enormity of Bullseye, it ran for thirteen years and drew in about fifteen million viewers, every Sunday night. That was over a quarter of the population!!
Here you go, enjoy …
DON, YOU F***ING IDIOT! YOU F***ING IDIOT! YOU NEEDED 40, YOU USELESS T**T! YOU ARE THE DART PLAYER! YOU ARE THE F***ING DART PLAYER!
Left side of the board for f**k’s sake.
Sorry.
Up north, Don would have lived out the rest of the days in hell. He would have been shunned by his family, friends, workmates and neighbours, and, to be fair, that would have been the least he deserved.
That’s darts, or arras (arrows) as we like to call them.
I said earilier that I wanted to save British pubs, and I do. Hopefully, as I grow into a famous, powerful, impotent author, I will be able to make a big difference to the pub industry. As an unknown, slightly out-of shape, nearly impotent author, I can help a little.
www.mark-jackman.com and www.ll-publications.com are now proud sponsors of a darts team, The Albion Arras, Loughborough, England.
We are having a night out on the oche to celebrate, and I will report back on the festivities. There will be a chance for you to meet the team, and a chance to win Albion Arras/Great Right Hope merchandise.
H’oway the Albion Arras! Wish them luck, friends!
“Wake up to a nice hot cuppa with this Goblin tea’s maid!” Jim Bowen, Bullseye Host.
Pic courtesy of Wikipedia (Mudhappy)
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Tags: 180, 80s, Albion Arras, ale, beer, Britain, Bullseye, Jim Bowen, Jockey Wilson, LL-Publications, mark jackman, Pub, Quiz, ringpiece, The Great Right Hope, Tony Green, You can't beat a bit of bulley
Riga, Latvia. Survival of the Fittest
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko's Reviews
It’s good to be able to write this blog; it means that I am not dead. If you read my previous entry, you’ll know that I was nervous about my trip to Latvia. Have a recap: http://mark-jackman.com/blog/2009/04/22/riga-latvia-please-dont-kill-me/
There were twenty-four guys on the do, and it was a helluva a weekend. Remember, “What goes on tour, stays on tour,” so no details will be shared. But what about Riga? Was it as bad as the stories?
Yes and no.
There are a lot of no-go areas in the city. In fact, the first pub that we went to carried a warning from the US embassy, but most of the dangers are to your wallet, rather than your kneecaps. Saying that, if you are in a situation where your wallet is in danger and you don’t pay up, then the danger moves back to your knees. The biggest scam involves “ladies of negotiable affection,” (Terry Pratchett, nod - for the term, not the scam). The ladies get the drunken punter to buy them a drink, and then the barman charges stupid money for it. Not paying results in a visit from big Russian Mafia heavies. Some lads we spoke to got stung for £150 each.
As for the city, The Old Town was beautiful. There is a lot of effort put into keeping the town clean, and there was no litter in sight. That’s the reason that littering in Latvia can result in some hefty fines, or even a night in the cells. Drunken pisses in the streets or throwing up result in a night in the slammer, and why not?
Writing this, I realise that I didn’t see any of Riga. I was drunk. We walked from pub to pub, in a drunken stupor. I was drunk when we landed and hungover when we left. I didn’t try any Latvian food. We ate breakfast at the hotel, and a McDonalds at night… twice. Technically, I have visited Riga, but I haven’t really seen it.
In terms of a stag do location, Riga was spot on, but it isn’t a place to go for a cheap time. It was no cheaper than London. We ended up in Club Essential, which was pure 80s Euro action, where I enjoyed paying £7 per bottle of shit Heineken. The people in Riga were beautiful. People take care of themselves over there. It was not like a Saturday night out in Yarmouth.
As long as you don’t go to to the dodgy bits, stay in a decent sized-group, don’t buy the lasses drinks without knowing the price up-front and don’t piss in the streets, then you’ll be fine. I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter where you are, it is who you are with, and I was lucky enough to be out with a great bunch of lads, who were all up for a laugh.
Good weekend, but feel like crap, now. I have a few days to recover before the next one in Birmingham, on Friday. My poor liver.
All in all, a cracking send off for Leachy.
Tags: Jacko, Latvia, mark jackman, review, Riga, Stag Night
Riga, Latvia - Please Don’t Kill Me
Posted by Jacko | Filed under ManChat
Tomorrow, I embark on a Stag Do to Riga, capital of Latvia, home to over three quarters of a million people. I decided to have a quick look on the internet to find out about the city and the nightlife, and now I think that the best thing that come from this trip is a quick murder (mine).
“That looks quite nice.” Yeah, that’s what I thought, but check out some of the stories. I’m hoping that all the stories are exaggerated as people only write about the bad things. Still, here is a variety of tales and reviews from the world wide web:
“The Prime Minister said in the National Paper The Baltic Times All English People are Pigs, Imagine if Tony Blair Or Gordon Brown said that? They are the Pigs and the lowest form of people on this earth, a bunch of Gypsy’s, They don’t have the honor of making an honest living and think Stealing, Ripping you off or how much money you have is a normal way of life…. Respect that? I don’t think so… I have now left and never will return to such a country that is a such a country of filth. Riga should be changed for the Russian name Suka or Land of whores…”
“It is very typical for the girls to try to talk you into a private room for a “special show.” Most often you will get nothing “special” but it is quite common for the girl to set an open bottle of champagne on the table as part of the “party”. Only later do you find out that you are being charged as much as 2000 Ls for the bottle!!!! This is very common scam unfortunately. If you refuse to pay the club will call the police who will force you to pay. Do not expect the police to help you in Riga! They quite often have a mutually beneficial “arrangement” with the strip clubs and they will be happy to beat you up to get you to pay the 2000 Ls bill!!!”
“There was a guy called snakemanand a tall guy with blonde hait with a smaller guy they are out to rob you”
“I was robbed at Club Essential by the club’s security. They saw me go to the ATM and when I returned, I was dragged into a closet and they took all of my money”
“Ive been to some of the biggest cities literally all over the World, Paris, Prague, Miami, london, cape town, milan just to list a few. Riga must be the worst major city ive ever been to”
And my personal favourite:
“If you are looking for a girl you will have a hard time in Riga. And beleave me, I usually get girls quite easy anywhere”
What a stud.
On Sunday, I am hoping to God that I am able to report back with another blog about the wonderful time I had (although no details will be leaked- what goes on tour stays on tour, womenfolk). If I don’t make it back, I want to say thanks to all my fans, friends and loved ones out there.
Dear Latvian police, if I am found dead in a Latvian brothel with inanimate objects fatally rammed in certain orifices of my body, please tell my girlfriend that I died peacefully in my sleep. Oh, and the prostitute was dead when I got there. Cheers guys.
Ah, well, it’s my 29th birthday on the Friday, too. At least I’ll go out drunk.
H’oway the lads!!
Tags: fatal anal penetration, humour, Latvia, mark jackman, Riga, Stag do, survival
WARNING! Books Are Being Wiped From Existence!
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Chewing of Fat
It reads like a warning from a tabloid newspaper, one written to drive fear into the public. If you are an author, you have developed a cold sweat. “What’s happening to my book?” you ask. As a reader, you are terrified that you’ll never be able to read your favourite story, ever again. I’m not joking, either. Soon, your book will cease to exist.
OK, I’m using the word “soon” on a universal level. And a couple of thousand years is a short period of time when considering the history of existence. But before you panic too much, let me tell you that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I am going to attack you with facts!
In the British library there are 150,000,000 items sat on 640 kilometers (398 miles for my American friends) of shelves. They have built a new depository at Boston Spa which will hold 7,000,000 books, weighing in at 12,000 tonnes spread over 263 kilometers (163 miles for my American chums) of shelves, and kept under a reduced oxygen atmosphere of 16% rather than the 21% that you are breathing right now.
That is a lot of books.
The British Library also holds 5300 tonnes of newspapers and here is the shocker. 1.4 tonnes are lost every year to the atmosphere. That means in 3800 years all the papers will all be gone! Can you imagine that? In a few millennia, our descendants will not be able to see a picture of Britney Spear’s lady-bits flashing out of a car, and they will not be able to find out how many slappers were nailed by our professional footballers round the back of London nightclubs.
Does it matter?
The British Library think so (you’d sort of hope so, wouldn’t you?) and they care so much they are investing 130 million pounds into the whole process.
How are they going to do it?
What do you love about books, apart from reading them? For me, it’s the smell. I love the smell of old books and libraries (although not when the local tramp comes in and starts downloading pornography on the library computer) and scientists at the British Library believe that the smell is the key to understanding how the books are degrading.
There are 109 chemicals that give us that magnificent smell. One of them is acetic acid. You probably know it. You probably put it on your chips/fries earlier tonight. At the moment, they think that it might be one of the chemicals that is causing the problem, but we shall see.
E-books rock!
E-books solve everything. Unless someone lets off a global EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bomb, like in “Escape from LA,” they will be stored on our computers for as long as there are geeks in the universe. The information from every book in the library can be stored on computers. You could argue that if there are no books, then we won’t have that wonderful book smell. Surely the 130 million pounds is worth that alone?
Actually, you can buy that smell, and it will probably cost a little less. CafeScribe, an e-book selling website, are releasing a scratch and sniff sticker that will give you that musty magic! What a great idea! People love great smells. Scientists are trying to recreate the new car smell… but in a non-toxic form. Yes, that’s right, the new car smell kills you! Everything does.
To end this scientific paper, I’ll ask you a question. Does it matter that we are losing our books? Isn’t the information the important thing? I, as a man, was born with the sentimental values of a horny tomcat, but I can understand why people want to save these beautiful books, packed with heritage and history. 130 million pounds is a lot of money, though. Think what we could have done with it and the people we could have saved. Is it worth saving books that are kept in a depository, which cannot be touched by human hands and are held in an atmosphere where you won’t be able to breathe properly? You tell me.
Your books are still dying.
Does that scare you?
Tags: British Library, britney spears twat, e-book, end of the world, Jacko: Author, mark jackman, pissflaps, science, science saves the day
REVIEW: “Ordinary World” by Tony McGuin
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko's Reviews
I am venturing on to new paths. I love film and I love books (wish I had time to read more). So I thought to myself, why not start reviewing them? So I am going to.
(That was all a true story, I didn’t dramatise it at all).
My first victim is Tony McGuin. Ordinary World is his debut novel and is published by LL-Publications. You will never have read anything quite like it…
Review: Ordinary World
There is one amazing revelation that everyone who reads Ordinary World, by Tony McGuin, will experience, and that is the concrete certainty that there is someone out there with an imagination more f**ed up than anyone the reader knows, even ‘Funny’ Uncle Trevor, who your Mum would never allow near you, unsupervised. In fact, a rumour passed my way that Joseph Fritzel finished reading the story, just before his trial, and announced “Tony McGuin, there’s a man who isn’t afraid of a little controversy.” I first read the blurb on the back of the cover, and thanked God. I had finally discovered an author who shares his thoughts with a more demented demon than my own (Rory).
Right now, you are wondering to yourself what can possibly be so disgusting that it warrants the use of Joseph Fritzel’s name in the opening paragraph of a review (which is probably a world first, I might add) so I am going to hit you with it, hard and fast: In Ordinary World, someone wants to open a fast food chain that sells burgers that have been made from aborted human foetuses.
Yes, you did read that correctly (unless I spelt foetuses wrong).
The story centres around Tohon Sehsa and Boater, two of the most unlikely heroes that you will ever meet. Actually, they are not heroes, not in the slightest, and McGuin never makes them out to be anything else. The classic combination of a tall, thin guy and a short, fat bloke has been used countless times before, but not like this. Never have they been murdering, scheming, drunken, woman-beating, lying, cheating, scumbags like these, and they are the good guys! Even though they are terrible excuses for human-beings, you can’t help but like them, and you can tell McGuin does too. These two find themselves wrapped up in the entire foetus burger fiasco, in more ways than one.
So in a book about eating foetuses, and murdering, drunken heroes, what the hell are the bad guys like? The funny thing is, again, there is something likable about all the characters that McGuin creates. There is always something quirky or intriguing about some of the most despicable villains to ever walk the pages of morality. Even the priests with questionable ethics fiddled their ways into my heart. Why does McGuin get away with it? The explanation is simple: this book is laugh-out-loud funny. There are some terribly dark scenes within the three-hundred pages, but there is always something to bring you back. Always.
Before you throw-up, phone the police or organise a lynch mob on McGuin, hold your horses. You see, there is a sense of morality behind it all, and, although it is very easy to forget that and get wrapped up in the word “foetus,” a word which I have just used more times than in a Midwife’s textbook, there is so much more to the story than that. McGuin creates a horrible world of the future, where religion is all that matters and is the driving force behind everyday life, but God has somehow been forgotten. Only in this world could a reader become comfortable with the idea of a foetus burger. Only the mind of this man could allow a reader to become comfortable with this horrific idea, and then hit you with something ten times worse, nearly half way through the book.
Yes. It gets worse.
I can’t divulge anymore, as I want you to experience the emotional roller-coaster that is Ordinary World. This book is not written to simply shock the reader with vileness. There are glimpses of hope in a world seemingly gone mad, and even the most horrific of characters can find a little love in their hearts (not including the priests, mind). You will never have read anything like this before, and you should give it a go. There is a fantastic story underlying the nasty subject matter, and a cast full of characters who you will not be able to forget.
Ordinary World: A title that can only be appreciated once you have turned the final page.
Ordinary world is available direct from LL-publications and also Amazon
Tags: comedy, humor, humour, mark jackman, novel, Ordinary World, pissflaps, review, Tony McGuin
