The Greenhouse effect in action

In conversation the other night I was reminded when I was once convinced by an Apple Performa 475 published poster at school to go along to the Lunchtime Greenhouse Club. It sounded OK: some relaxing gardening before the 2nd part of the school day, what was not to like? These days it would be very ZEN you know.

Well I don’t mind telling you, it turned out to be full of geeks and losers. And when I say full, I mean there were 5 of them – 2 geeks and 3 losers. What made it worse was I couldn’t believe I had been tricked yet again into going to another school club which basically was for less socially enabled sorts. The Lunchtime Computer RPG Club and now this - in fact I was starting to think all school lunchtime activity clubs were like this.

It was apparent that those in the Greenhouse Club were there to get away from the tougher elements of the playground. The thing was, it being the Greenhouse Club and all, it was very obvious where they were and easy for those who wanted mock them to simply do so at will through any one of the clear glass walls while standing around, some sporadically fisting Quavers into their mouths and others drinking from straws in squeezed 5alive cartons. We were not in enlightened times and the school had not thought it all through. It was like Greenhouse Club was really just a basic viewing booth to look at 2 geeks, 3 losers and 1 King of the Geek Losers contained within it alongside some shrubs and a couple of cacti.

Over the week I went to the Greenhouse Club [well, you have to give these things a chance] I learned a lesson that no conventional class, I suspect, could teach: that repotting plants and taking cuttings is not so serene when the scene outside the greenhouse at times resembles Dawn of the Dead.

The exterior shots of Hooker and Romano's patrol car almost never match the background

Watching an episode of T.J. Hooker the other day, something occurred to me. I should say now, Despite this being the 2nd blog-ette on it, I am in no way championing the show, T.J. Hooker. Don’t ever think that I am. Honestly. There is a myriad of things that are terrible about the programme. But just as fire and political power are irresistible to fire raisers and Mugabe these may be just the reasons which, by my nature, keep me coming back for another episode. It is not that I enjoy them. Really. Alright then I’ll prove it…

Let’s look at the evidence of just a few things which are both wrong and strangely compelling about T.J. Hooker:
William Shatner cannot deliver a scripted line, ever. And with this in mind should never have been made to say, given his weird inflections and vocal ticks: “No Romano, you’re forgetting that there is one important difference between statutory theft and what I’m doing. I have no desire to permanently remove the item from the owner’s possession!” let alone the heavier: “He… wasa… rapist… ofthemostbrutal… kind. He viciously raped many women over…and… overagain.” Just waiting to find out what line William Shatner will overdramatise next is enough to buy the box set alone.

T.J. Hooker, in perhaps a throwback from his younger days of doing something he describes as Automobile Hill Racing, steadfastly refuses to use the seatbelt in the patrol car whilst simultaneously adopting a high risk driving approach that often directs itself to him crashing into other cars driven by perps, perps running in front of the patrol car, or trees. I keep waiting for him to be thrown through his own windscreen or fall out of the car, hobbling from whiplash, begging the perp to give himself up he struggles to get off his knees. Instead the dramatic sudden reduction of speed only serves to propel him out of the car running every time. Which leads me onto…

T.J hooker, despite being older, heavier and patently less fit in a mobility-restricting uniform [and that toupee can’t be helping], most episodes chases the perp who is invariably younger, fitter, wearing sneakers and, frankly, running faster. But with each cut of the camera Shatner gains significant ground on him. T.J. Hooker, in a very subtle an attempt to one-up the Star-Trek franchise, can indeed it seems change the laws of physics. Take that Gene Rodenberry, if that is your real name!

T.J. Hooker also has a tendency to violently grab women, leading them by their arms which I suspect Shatner thinks is him ‘acting’ the emotion of affection/seduction but which I only find troubling. Let the lady take your arm when walking along the beach, don’t take hers and then force her walk at your police pace, Hooker, you controlling misogynist pig.

But Shatner is not all that is wrong here. Though he mainly is what is wrong. There is Stacey (played by Heather Locklear) delivering her scripted lines like an android. She sounds uncannily like the ship’s computer on the Enterprise. Perhaps sounding like the computer from the Enterprise-A is intentional – either as another film company in-joke about Star-Trek or simply that both Star-Trek and T.J. Hooker production crews found that the precise and flat intonation of a female voice was the only thing to soothe the volatile Shatner on set.

Those theories aside, each time she responds to Shatner’s own hopeless speech acting I half expect her to say, “Access code accepted, Hooker. Self-destruct sequence initiated, 99, 98…” She even dances like a robot designed by the Japanese, in at least 3 episodes.

And I am fairly sure the boy that plays Corrigan was playing, in one episode, the entirely different part of an old friend of Hooker's who had been falsely charged by the LCPD as someone who had carried out a string of grocery store robberies which eye-witnesses had testyfied as being done by 3 people, 1 being a woman.

[I concede that this returning actor thing has also been the case in Columbo - but Columbo is art.]

The only one that comes out with any respect is Romano. He’s OK. He's from Philadelphia, you know.

I should switch channels, look away at the very least – but I can’t. The plotting is hypnotic. The tone lies somewhere between Midsommer Murders and The Wire. It plays fast and loose with the genres of gritty reality, soap drama and humour in a way only most cop shows could dream/ have night terrors about.

I may have digressed there slightly from my original topic.

Look at what you could have won

I like Jim Bowen as much as the next person so when my friend and confidant, Jennie Law, during a conversation about Jim, sent me a link to a CNN news story I was intrigued:

Apparent 6th severed foot found in British Columbia

What appears to be a separated human foot inside a shoe -- possibly the sixth discovered in Canada's British Columbia in the past 15 months -- has been found on a riverbank, Royal Canadian Mounted Police revealed on Wednesday.
The shoe -- a left New Balance running shoe -- was found about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday on the south arm of the Fraser River by a Richmond, British Columbia, couple, police said.
It was turned over to the British Columbia Coroners Service for examination and DNA testing, authorities said.
Before Tuesday, five feet -- all inside running shoes -- had washed ashore in southern British Columbia since August 2007. One of them, a right New Balance shoe, was found May 22 on Kirkland Island. That foot was determined to belong to a female, authorities said.
Authorities are investigating multiple possibilities on the origin of the feet, including foul play. Royal Canadian Mounted Police have released photos of the shoes, hoping someone can help identify the remains.

Jennie, brilliantly and surprisingly, added at the end of her mail:

“sincerely hope ole' Jim Bowen has not been acting up in Canada”

Frankly, I would be astounded if Jim was behind these acts.

It would certainly take the shine of the Bulls-eye re-runs:
If Central Televisions’ Bulls-Eye was his high point in the entertainment business for Jim, it is a pity but surely for many people when he tortured, killed and severed the feet of those 6 innocents in Canada he reached more than just a personal low. Only caught because he stuffed a bendy Bully in their mouths as macabre calling card – his one mistake in his perfect crime.

History would not judge him like my Gran who would have still thought more of his entire portfolio of work and, on balance, probably have seen the positives outweighing the negatives.

"That yoghurt is our last hope" "No. There is another."

I was eating yoghurt the other day, and how I came to be so is a truly dark and most sinister thing indeed. However, my mind easily wandered as it usually does as I slug the mild, smooth, creamy taste of despondency down, to the halcyon days of yoghurt, which, you’ll find, were the mid 1980’s.

The 1980’s was when the yoghurt scene was vibrant and exciting. It was then when I settled on my favourite yoghurt flavour.

A clear and present child of the 1980’s my red M.A.S.K. lunch box had a matching red flask (which contained the fl.oz. for one and a half, small, plastic cupfuls of orange juice), one corned beef roll, one Masters-Of-The Universe moulded jelly sweet and a Star Wars yoghurt.

I suspect that I am one of a select few who remember Star Wars Yoghurts. One of the main characters was drawn on each pot. They were brilliant. Except Luke Skywalker pots [vanilla – was he ever heroic in anything?] and Princess Lea, obviously [a girl on a yoghurt pot? I don’t care if she does have her blaster drawn. Not in my M.A.S.K. lunch box].

Of course, Star Wars was never going to last and soon, too, their branded pots were replaced in my lunch box by St Ives’ Fiendish Feet.

Now, these yoghurts were genius. Their pots were designed as monsters: a fun monster character face drawn on each pot. But they were so much more. You see, the Pots. Had. Feet.

When you had eaten a Franken-pot monster yogurt, after your lunch, you could wash it out and you had a little empty yoghurt pot bloke to play with. It was no PlayStation 3, but these were simpler, more rubbish times [Google search the 1980’s Robosapien equivalent: “Little Professor Calculator”], post-MTV generation readers.

The thing was it didn’t matter. Screw your bipedal yoghurts: my mind had been made up.

To this day when anybody asks me what my favourite flavour of yoghurt is my answer is as swift as it is unerring:

Chewbacca flavour.