Verse And Worse

Random Wit, Errant Rhyme. Not A Literary Crime

When Brylcreem was forced to issue a disclaimer
On the vertical hair of Michael Richards's Kramer
No shock waves hit the set of Seinfeld

But the action caused a legal minefeld.

The Sipping News

English Tea Room Introduces Strict Bans

You thought Seinfeld's Soup Nazi was a tough character, didja? Now a tea shop owner in the UK has said he will as customers to leave his Brighton shop if they dunk their biscuits. Other rules include not putting elbows on the table, not insulting the Queen, never handling sugar cubes and not sipping from teaspoons. Banging a teaspoon against a cup and using a mobile phone is banned outright, as is talking "louder than two shakes of a tea cup". Owner David Daly says, "People have to obey the rules and if not they are asked to leave. It is the art of tea drinking.’’

FOOTNOTE: Surely that's not the Daly Express.

Critique Of `One Small Steppe For Man’

How Elvis And James Brown Faced The Music

This critique of Passing Sentence Game #3 is by Andrea Beattie, well-known reviewer, queen of pop culture and editor of the Citybeat section of mX newspaper. Here is what she said about One Small Steppe For Man.

``What a ride! Only the creative minds of bloggers from across the world could come up with a yarn that has just about everything - time travel, bloodthirsty conquerors, Seinfeld and sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. I loved the musical flavour of this story, particularly Elvis thumbing his nose at James Brown's trademark dance moves; a world away from where the action began in dusty 15th century Mongolia.

Placing the notoriously ruthless and cold-blooded Khan brothers at the epicentre for peace, free love and understanding was also a keystroke of genius. And don't get me started on the Seinfeld reference! Congratulations to all involved. Well done. Bring on the next one!''

Passing Sentence Game #3

One Small Steppe For Man

Can 15 different sentences – written by different bloggers – make a good story? There’s only one way to find out. As we did last week and the week before, I’m going to write the first sentence and I invite you to contribute the next sentence, in sequence. Just leave your sentence as a comment, and I’ll keep adding them here on this blogpost. Now you can see why I call this ``passing sentence''. Here goes the first sentence …

Okay, so the second-hand Time Travel Machine only cost me fifty quid at a flea market in Tooting Broadway, but it worked fine and here I am in 15th century Mongolia – one small steppe for man, one giant sleep for mankind.

Time elapsed: 1 hr 42 mins. Second sentence from Scala in Portugal:

Mongolia seems to be very dirty and savage compared to my home town, but certainly the air is pretty good.

Time elapsed: 19 mins. Third sentence from Shrink Wrapped Scream in the Isle of Man:

I've run into a very nice chappie though, Attila the Hun; he and his pals are most insistent upon showing me around (well, a tad pushy about it, truth be told), so, all things considered, it looks like I've landed on my feet here, eh?

Time elapsed: 37 mins. Fourth sentence from Nobody’s Friend in the UK:

Just as I realised that I didn't speak Mongolian, and that "Heartbreak Hotel" was playing somewhere in the background, Atilla put his knife to my throat: "You know how it works, get us out of here!"

Time elapsed: 8 mins. Fifth sentence from Dance With the Sun in Canada:

I frantically looked around for help and seeing none, I promptly fainted, my last thought was "I don't remember who sang Heartbreak Hotel!"

Time elapsed: 26 mins. Sixth sentence from Terry’s Playpen in Portugal:

The ghosts of the Khan brothers, Genghis and Kublai, stood off to one side observing the fiasco; it was their best buddy Elvis, from somewhere in the future, who was belting out 'Heartbreak Hotel', but they still didn't find it as kool as their own camel-skin orchestras, so they each decided to light up a cheroot, squat on their haunches, and plan a takeover themselves - wouldn't it be a whizz to flip back to the 12th or 13th century and do that blood-letting all over again?


Time elapsed: 5 hrs 38 mins, Seventh sentence from OzLady in Singapore:

Suddenly, with a whir, the time machine stirred, sprung into the air, and with a dazzling light display it transported the Khan brothers, Elvis and myself - we were suddenly engulfed in screaming fans at a James Brown concert in 1983.

Time elapsed: 13 hrs 4 mins. Eighth sentence from Bartraeke in the US:

Brown was in the middle of his "Help me, no wait, throw off the robe/cape" schtick when we got there, which greatly vexed Elvis, who huffed, "What an amateur, man, I like the music, but what a ham, man," and it was then I realised it was most definitely the young non-jump-suited Elvis who had tagged along for the ride.

Time elapsed: 2 hrs 2 mins. Ninth sentence from Bob’s Diary in the UK:

Meanwhile, the Khan brothers were having a great time. They took to Brown like a wasp to a picnic. Strutting their stuff, and it getting so hot in there, they stripped right down to their pants and sang "Wa-heyyyyyy!" in Elvis's face.

Time elapsed: 29hrs 8 mins. Tenth sentence from Pijush in Greece:

The screaming of the Khans woke me up; it was really a nightmare, but I am not in my bed, I can’t see things around, where am I?

Time elapsed: 1hr 58 mins. Eleventh sentence from Sam in India:

This infuriates Elvis and he decides to take another time travel epsiode which takes us all right to the very heart of Woodstock ... the loud music causes the Khans to spin around and search for its source, while me and Elvis groove to the music!!

Time elapsed: 5hrs 4 mins. Twelfth sentence from Chewy in the US:

Woodstock, (drugs, music, rain, mud) all the pants come flying off in a crazy hippie dance flower power peace & love craze.

Time elapsed: 2 days. Thirteenth sentence from Sam in India:

And so began a night of pure ecstasy as the music seeped into the heart and ripped apart the cloak of indifference, gifted by the supreme materialistic existence of the common man, to carry everyone into the realms of a world known only to the people who lose their heart to music.

Time elapsed: 6hr 58mins. Fourteenth sentence from Papoosue in Scotland.

Singing ensued and they danced around the fire - 'Let's all get drunk and go naked, Let's all get drunk and go naked, Let's all get drunk and go naaaaaked, and lie in a great big piiiile!'

And here's the last sentence:

By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong, so Attila and Genghis went looking for electric Kool-Aid while James Brown and Elvis usurped the Time Machine as their private sound stage, leaving the young Crosby and Stills to gnash their teeth as Spencer Tunick arrived to photograph all of our bare butts; and just as Attila and Genghis returned with a ``borrowed’’ tractor pulling a 2000-gallon vat of Kool-Aid, we saw Seinfeld, George, Kramer and Elaine stroll past, saying: ``Nice outing; not that there’s anything wrong with vat’’.