Kitchen Fucks: Gumbo Jumbo

I’m a slut for turning anything into a themed event, so when my homegirl @jesshartdesign suggested rustlin’ up some gumbo to complement our True Blood marathon I nearly shat my pants with joy. Sookie Stackhouse, bottled Bud and a hotpot of bubblin’ Louisiana vamp-juice – what’s not to love?

Heres how: Start with the Cajun Holy Trinity (in which the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are represented by celery, green pepper and onions, respectively). Finely dice your God-mix and leave it to sweat gently in a large pan with a glug of olive oil. For the sake of clarity, we’re calling this pan The Church.

In a separate saucepan (The Cauldron) get started on the blood: rich vegetable stock, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, a splash of red wine, a shot of bourbon and a veritable gang war of herbs and spices (parsley, dill, smoked paprika, cumin, oregano and black pepper). Simmer away until the booze begins to evaporate and the mix no longer tastes like happy hour at Merlotte’s Bar & Grill.

Once the trinity has softened in The Church, throw in some torn chestnut mushrooms, thyme leaves, sweet Scotch bonnets, vampire-warding garlic and chunks of human flesh. For the last part, I used smokey ‘facon’ and veggie sausage but you could definitely use actual dead animals if you have no morals.

The final shift at the morgue (chopping board) involves kale, lettuce, red pepper, baby corn and okra. These join the aromatic congregation in The Church along with a tin of cannellini beans and enough boiling water to nearly cover the mix. Leave this on a very low heat whilst the greens wilt.

At this point you should have a Cauldron of bloody liquid and a boiled congregation in The Church. Next, take a large, deep pan (The Gumbo Pot) and heat some olive oil before adding plain flour and molesting with a balloon whisk until the roux cooks to a fawny beige. Add gradual ladles of the stock and let the sauce amalgamate (metaphor for precarious nature of integration in Deep South).

Empty The Church into The Gumbo Pot, turn the heat down and give a witch-like cackle as you swirl the mixture about. Upon tasting, I decided mine needed an arseload more salt, pepper, paprika, tobasco, etc. Finally, leave the gumbo to simmer (anything between 10mins and a thousand years – if the blood clots, hot water will loosen it).

I fancied something more pornographic than the traditional rice accompaniment so I took a small bowl and combined garlic, onion, mustard, egg, sour cream and grated smoked cheddar. I spread this goo over toasted walnut bread and grilled until bubbling like a vampire on a sunbed. A buttery corn-on-the-cob and a bowl of hot, smokey gumbo later, I was drawlin’ like I done lived in Bon Temps all mah laaaaife.

Where Are They Now?

It’s the classic question. What happens to the leagues of reality TV rejects once their initial fifteen minutes of fame wear thin? Criticism abounds regarding the effect of the talent show upon the careers of its participants but my investigations have evidenced that The X Factor burns bright in the personal journeys of many. I caught up with a few of the show’s stars for a chinwag.


Lloyd Daniels – X Factor series 6


So Lloyd, you’ve famously been representing Niall Horan in the security decoy project, Wrong Direction. Tell us about that.
It’s been mad to tell you the truth. I’ve been getting more pussy than I can fit in my tiny Welsh mouth. One lady actually tried to put a rampant rarebit up my crack at JFK airport.


It sounds like rewarding work. Tell us about the rest of the group.
Well there’s Joe McElderry – he plays the one that can sing – as well as Rikki Loney and a couple of lads from my old school class. We’ve really struggled to find ethnic minorities so our Zayn just uses a lot of fake tan. You can imagine the trouble we’ve been getting from the political correctness brigade for that one.


Quite. Do you have any plans for the future?
No, that’s all been taken care of by our management. Once the decoy demand dies down, we’ll simply be taken somewhere remote where they’ll shoot us in the backs of our heads.


Wrong Direction can currently be seen at most One Direction gigs, leading rabid fanatics away from stage doors.


Austin Drage – X Factor Series 5


So, Austin, after finishing 8th in 2008, you went on to pose for a number of LGBT publications. Did that open many doors?
Definitely! When I first left X Factor there wasn’t much demand. But as soon as I took my shirt off at G-A-Y the offers came flooding in. At first I was nervous about taking my clothes off but then I came to realise that the more naked I was, the more people liked me.


So you took off more than just your shirt?
Oh yeah, I got it all out. Nipples, bum, legs, willy, balls. It felt strange at first but everyone seemed so happy when I did it. These days I just try to take the work that involves the most nudity.


And that’s how you came to be involved in the adult film industry?
Exactly. It was strange at first, because I’ve never really been into other guys and the things they asked me to do were quite painful. But they give you this sniffing stuff and that makes it a lot easier.


Austin (stage name Austin Tatious) can be seen in ‘Sauna Lads Pt 3’, which is available as a download from his personal site.


Wagner Carilho – X Factor series 7


Wagner, you’re one of the X Factor’s all-time biggest personalities. Tell us what you’re up to at the moment?
Well hello, dussus, and may I just take these opportunity to say what a fine and noble gentlemen you are. You are reminding me of a beautiful flower. You have ladies’ hands.


Right, thanks Wagner. So I hear you’ve opened up a new music venue with another X Factor alumnus.
That is correct. I have joined forces, as you say in this wonderful language, with the most big-hearted and also big-breasted and dignified lady, Ruth Lorenzo. Sometimes she wears the dress where you can truly see her boobies, you know? But she is a lady and I have the most profound of respect for her. Together we are running a nightclub for the salsa and all Latin dance. But no zumba.


And do the two of you perform at all?
…because the zumba is not part of my culture but of course you have all these big fat ladies – and I mean no disintent – but all they want is the zumba and to know nothing of Latin culture.


Well thanks, Wagner, it was great catching up.
Fucking zumba.


Wagner and Ruth can currently be found at The Lorb Shack in Stepney Green. Classes start from £32.99 for men and £17.99 for ladies.


Craig Colton – X Factor series 8


Hi Craig, tell us about your recent movements
Well to be perfectly frank, they’ve been all over the place. At times I swear my ring’s about to burst into flame. It’s the stress.


Could you tell us a bit about your current tour?
I’d be delighted. I’ve been working (pronounced weeerchking) with the fabulous Mary Byrne on our tour of Britain’s workingmen’s clubs and it’s literally been non-stop.


What can fans expect? Show classics like ‘Jar Of Farts’ and ‘I Who Have Nothing’?
Actually, we’ve taken things in a very new direction with the material. We’re currently performing a repertoire of Victorian music-hall numbers. Big hits like ‘Little Bit O’ Cucumber’ and ‘It’s Cold Without Your Trousers On’ – all the classics. We’ve got a fab accompaniment from old Bert on accordion. We have a laugh.


Any personal favourites?
‘Boiled Beef And Carrots’.


Craig and Mary are currently on tour and tickets are available for £1.25 from any good workingmen’s club. The Album, ‘Any Old Iron, Any Old Life’ is available to purchase on cassette.


Part 2 of this interview series kicks off next week with Storm Lee and Katie Waissel.

Apropos of "Penis Party"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=penis%20party

Angry Letters: Dear Urinals,

Allow me to preface my thoughts with a short apology. I am sorry. I do not want to hate you. I have the bladder of a pygmy shrew and you are all such willing receptacles. I should be grateful, I know.

The thing is, urinals, I do hate you. Metal trough, novelty mouth or Bowl Duchamp, I truly despise you all. You are instruments of torture and altars of piss-splattered humiliation. You are the ninth circle of toileting hell.

There are some things in life that just don’t make sense to me and the perverse custom of communal urination is one of them. It has always confused me that society, the same beast that teaches us to keep our shameful appendages covered, expects us to swagger like saloon-entering cowboys into public toilets and whip out our members without question.

“Oh, it’s not a big deal,” people tell me. “Nobody cares,” they assure me. Well I do.

Is it so unreasonable that I like to empty myself in the luxury of a private cubicle? I certainly wouldn’t make the nasty bum-fudge in front of anyone else so why should I be any more willing to dispense lemonade? It is my bodily fluid after all. Surely I have the right to dispose of it in the manner of my own choosing.

Unfortunately, toilet politics are complicated in the strange land beyond the trousered stick-man. I don’t fully understand the rules but I know that loitering in wait for a cubicle invites weird looks that make me feel like Louis Spence at a Millwall game. There must be something wrong with him, I hear them thinking. Perhaps he has an incredibly tiny penis, a micropenis even. How awful for him.

Or perhaps, I hear them think, he is some kind of pervert who simply wants to eavesdrop on our chatter and splatter. He definitely looks like a bit of a fruiter. I mean, what real man wears purple drainpipes?

I blame my suffering on no one but you, urinals. Were men’s toilets all lush sanctuaries lined with individual booths, I would not have this problem. If I could rip you from those yellow-tinged walls and relocate you to your rightful place in a museum of sexual torture then I would be happy. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the male species seems to disagree with me. Not only are most men seemingly immune to your gurgling, soap-cubey wickedness, they seem to actually enjoy the lack of privacy, viewing it as a point of camaraderie.

Well I’m sorry, urinals, but it’s not okay. It’s fucking weird alright?

Your Sincerely

Cubicle User

Fools & Gold: Have Some Conviction, Killjoy!

It is that time of year again. The X Factor has found itself a winner and that winner has a single out. It is at this point in proceedings that all serious music journos are required to whip out their cocks and wank furiously whilst wailing about their first Radiohead purchase. Of course to do this in the privacy of a locked bathroom would be ludicrous. The serious music brigade are out in force and they want the spunk of pop resentment to land right in our faces.

I remember listening to Damien Rice for the first time in 2002. It was like a revelation. I was fourteen going on fifteen and I had never before heard anything like the strained, icy romance of The Blower's Daughter or the frightening, complex duality of I remember. Three years on, I was listening to a CD of 'O' on an aeroplane when I fell asleep and thought I had dreamt a bonus track more beautiful than anything else on the album. It wasn't either of the actual bonus tracks hidden at the end if the recording but it was probably their presence that inspired my aural hallucination. Anyway, this song haunted me for ages but I can not, try as I might, remember its tune. It has to stay there, on that plane where I dreamt it, somewhere in a cloud over the Atlantic.

The point of the dream song is that we all form emotional attachments to music but we can't wrap them up in cotton wool and expect to find them unchanged each time we revisit. The Telegraph's Neil McCormick seems to disagree with this and has instead chosen the easy option of throwing his arms up in the air in protest at The X Factor turning an alternative classic into pop tripe.

The thing is, Neil, The X Factor is a walking embodiment of commercial music. For it to pick a track for one of its winners, that track must already be easily accessible. That track must have wheelchair access and a disabled parking spot. When Alexandra Burke sang Hallelujah in 2008, she was singing a karaoke classic that had been covered more than two hundred times and featured in the soundtracks of Shrek and The O.C. She was not, contrary to popular opinion, squatting down for a wee on Jeff Buckley's grave. When 2010 winner Wett Flannle bawled out his languid cover of Biffy Clyro's Many of Horror, he was covering a track that was already very popular with fourteen year old girls. He wasn't making it so.

The same is true of Cannonball. It is a song with a simple melody that you'd have to have lived under a rock for the past decade to not know. It is not abstract trophy of NME readership, suspended in the cloudy ether like the Childlike Empress in The Neverending Story.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely disappointed that Little Mix will be making their first mark on the industry with Damien Rice's Cannonball. I'm disappointed for them because I think that they are better than that. They are better than covering a drivelling ballad that no longer means anything anyway. They deserve their equivalent of The Promise or Freak Like Me or even, at a push, Independent Women Pt I. Until they get that, I shall agree with @Popjustice's tweet, "At least there's one good thing about the Damien Rice cover - It's annoyed Neil McCormick"

Are our associations with the music we love really so weak that they crumble under the pressure of a mainstream cover version? I believe people should have more conviction in their music tastes. When I say conviction, I do not mean a horn-rimmed muso ranting on about liking the Smiths before it was cool. I mean accepting the fact that you cannot hold on to anything forever. Look back on the first time you heard a song - when it was new and untainted by association - look back on that moment with fondness but don't ever expect to get it back.

Fools & Gold: Fix Factor?

I don't know quite how this is possible after eight years of The X-Factor but a large proportion of viewers still seem to be under the ridiculous impression that the contest is some kind of democracy. For shame, British Public, for shame.

The elimination of Janet Devlin against the less-voted-for Misha B has thrown a can of petrol on the already towering inferno of the 'fix factor' debate. Voters are livid, tearing through city centres, wearing nothing but bonnets made entirely of bees. "This is an outrage!" they cry, "We musn't stand for this!"

But what exactly is so devious about recent practices on the show? The bottom two has always existed and the judges have always used it to salvage the contestants that they deem most beneficial to the show. The bottom two is not a new and shocking corruption come to scorch an otherwise fair and level playing field. It's an intrinsic part of the game.

Gary Barlow has been moaning recently about The X-Factor being a singing competition. This is nonsense. The X-Factor is a competition that measures popularity, personality, charisma and the ability to pander to a regional voting base. The latter point was a large contributor to Devlin's success on the show. If people want to believe that a lack of focus on real talent is what led the show to dismiss Janet then that, like Scientology or crack use, is their own bewildering prerogative. Were it purely a singing contest, I would not fancy Devlin's off-tune, hiccupy mumbles and forgotten lyrics getting her anywhere near as far in the contest as she has managed to do with the help of her 'quirky' personality 'rebellious' streak and hardcore regional voting support.

It was that 'rebellious' streak, perhaps, that made producers change their minds about Janet Devlin. Around the time of the third live show it became clear that the whining Celtic wind-sprite was no longer a judges' favourite. What ensued was a cringe-inducingly long and tedious assassination of unsympathetic VTs, poor song-choices and negative comments, which last night finally paid off.

Those who immediately reached for their judge-shaped voodoo dolls should remember that this wasn't a general election. It wasn't even a programme on the BBC. The X-Factor is a commercial machine, which is funded by advertising and bolstered by the successes of its most notable alumni. If producers allowed us, the public, to make all the decision on our own then the show wouldn't be producing the same level of quality, marketable acts. It would also struggle to make headlines by retaining controversial acts like Kitty Brucknell and Misha B. Without the power to do these things, The X-Factor would not be able to continue on the same scale. It would not be able to continue at all.

In business, one has to trade. The X-Factor demands trade-offs from both its participants and its spectators. The show has been running for eight bloody years now so those feigning shock and disappointment at its methods don't really have a leg to stand on. For anybody who's still confused I shall clarify. These are the deals on offer:

DEAL 1 - CONTESTANT:

We can make you rich. We can make you famous. We can guarantee you the best TV exposure available to humanity. We can dress you in expensive clothes, style your hair, send you to premieres and help you to live your karaoke dream on a Saturday night. We can give you glitter and smoke machines and screaming fans. For five minutes we can make the world turn around you.

THE PRICE:

You must sacrifice your integrity. You must forsake your privacy. If you do what we say then we will play nice but if you try to be your own person (or if we decide that you're boring) then we drop you like a turd in a patisserie box. Once the show is over, you have no guarantee that we will care, or even remember, who you are. If you don't like it, fine. There are thousands of young hopefuls who would kill to take your place.

DEAL 2 - SPECTATOR:

We can entertain you. We can spice up your Saturday night. We can show you a good time, baby. Not only that, we will let you join in. If you are prepared to pay a small amount of money then you can vote for your favourite act in the hope that they will progress week by week and possibly win.

THE PRICE:

We will attempt manipulate you at every stage. If you are smart or strong-willed enough then you will see through this and you can take us with a pinch of salt and a self-congratulatory pat on the back. If you are dumb enough to fall for every trick that we play then you will think you are having a great time and forming your own opinions. It's a win-win situation.


NO REFUNDS.

So that's the basic outline then. The X-Factor is not a public service and therefore we have no reason to feel short-changed by its lack of transparency. People have allegedly been complaining to Ofcom about the unfair treatment of Janet Devlin. This is ridiculous. Next week there will be millions congregating in Trafalgar Square to protest after Misha is inevitably saved from the sing-off for the fourth time. I hiss and spit at you. Kill-joys every one.

The judges need to save Misha because we live in a patriarchal society that thinks black women should be meek and grateful like Leona Lewis. The judges need to save Misha because she's the most talented and charismatic contestant in the show (when she's not desperately trying to convince the audience that she's not a bully). The judges need to save Misha because the public is incapable of electing a winner whose music it will actually listen to. The public need to save Misha because her version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was the epitome of great pop music.

You give the people a vote and what do they do with it? I'll tell you. They vote for the act that the judges say are good, regardless of the quality of their performance. They vote for the act that hails from their hometown. Most distressingly, the public invariably votes for whichever act performs in the last slot of the live show. When the public can learn to think for itself, the public can come back and complain about the manipulation of its vote. Until then, it can wait for the BBC to launch The Voice, which is all about vocal ability and being wholesome and boring and sounding like Jessie J or James Morrison or something.

Angry Letters: Dear British Gas,

"I'm sorry but we seem to be experiencing an unusual amount of calls," is not an appropriate automated message to receive every time I call you. Perhaps in the future you should consider something along the lines of "I'm sorry, we're just this shit" or "Be warned, it doesn't get any better."

Once I have listened to your insistence that I can probably sort my problem out online (I can't) I am then put on hold to the mellow, trumpeting borefest of Blur's 'The Universal' for up to forty minutes at a time. This is not acceptable. Are you aware, British Gas, that there exist genuine forms of torture based on similar techniques to your hold music? I am.

You should be aware, British Gas, that I do not spend forty minutes of my time with a phone pressed against my face, purely for the shits and the giggles. Therefore, British Gas, when your operator finally does pick up, please give me more than two seconds to respond to your voice. I am obviously going to have put you on loudspeaker whilst I spend forty minutes of my time doing something that actually benefits me, even if it is flossing between my toes. Do not merely say "hello" once and then hang up, leaving me to embark upon the whole ordeal all over again.

When, British Gas, I finally get hold of you, can you please ensure that your operator has a slightly less obnoxious grasp of grammar than that which I have experienced thusfar. I do not mind in the slightest if English is not your operator's first language. Unlike many bigots, I couldn't give two hoots as to their accent, as long as they understand me. So the underpaid, outsourced guys in the call centre in India are off the hook for this one. What I do mind is the ex-estate agents in your employment abusing reflexive pronouns like there is no tomorrow. In particular, today, your operator said to me, "We can get someone out in the morning or evening. What would be better for yourself?"

Yourself? YOURSELF? A situation cannot be better for myself, only for ME! I can buy a present for myself or spank myself on a lonely Friday night but YOU cannot offer an appointment to MYSELF! MORON! MORON! DIE! DIE! DIE!

Yours with eternal gratitude and earnest pleasure,

A Victim of your Services