Recipe: Noodle Pizza

Why stop at one student snack when you can have two... at the same time!

Missed a meal and need to catch up on stodge?

Can't decide between noodles or pizza?

Have BOTH my friend!

Noodle Pizza is something I have encountered twice so far. Once, I made it. I was living on whatever Aldi would sell me for dirt cheap... so pasta, noodles, and pizza as an occasional treat. It was fun being a student. I can't exactly remember WHY I made a noodle pizza of all things, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

I believe I cooked the noodles separately, then added them to the already cooked pizza. I then added a bit of cheese and stuck it in the oven for an extra minute or two for optimum meltage. The resulting meal was actually pretty good. I will have used spicy noodles without a doubt, and probably a spicy pizza too. For once, I have just posted an actually edible foodstuff.

The other time I encountered it was as a Halloween party snack, made by someone else. They had taken it a step further and added green food dye to the noodles whilst cooking them. This was a bit too much for me, plus it was cold by the time I found it. I politely declined, as did almost everyone else at the party in question.

You really don't need a sketch of this one, but I did one anyway in case you've never seen a pizza before. It's very rough as I don't exactly expect many people to actually look at this blog. If anyone asks, the noodles are burnt.

They look more like scribbly pubic hair here though. I wouldn't suggest putting that on a pizza.

Supermutant Animal Duels

This mentalism starts from seeing the films Megashark vs Giant Octopus and Komodo vs King Cobra which are both terrible. After seeing the second of these abominations, we decided to make up our own ridiculous animal fights.

There have been too many to remember, at various intervals as this is a recurring conversation. I for one think there is still a great deal of scope for this particular topic.

However, when the conversation was in full swing last night, I decided to write a few classics down. They're pretty interchangeable... I was just saving two animals per duel in the order they were devised. Feel free to suggest your own. So without further ado, here's the Supermutant Animal Duels DVD box set film listings:

Pandaman vs Lazer Fox

Awesomehorse vs Thunderbug

Death Otter vs Stabby Frog

Battlepig vs Turboslug

Nuclear Mollusc vs The Phantom Microbe

Napalm Sloth vs Waterhawk

Solid Hamster vs Rage Turkey

Slippery Badger vs Massive Shrew

Vertical Panther vs Stupid Elephant

Solar Bear vs Spring Limpet

Season 2 will probably crop up at some point.

Recipe: Jam Limpets

As promised in the last recipe post, here's another little piece of cooking gone wrong courtesy of Graeme.

In an attempt to make some jam tarts, he in-deliberately invented another jam-based sea creature. The shape of the tart casings somehow came out... well... limpet-shaped. As if that wasn't enough, the jam within them was some kind of bizarre mixed jam, which was stickier than even the best superglues. It did such a good job of sticking to the roof of my mouth, my teeth, and my internal organs... that I can easily imagine these blighters in a sheltered rock pool, or stuck to the hull of a ship. These things have the potential to sink many a vessel with their stodge-based crust and ability to grip onto anything, probably even whilst underwater.

Anyway, as usual, I did a little sketch:

I for one can't wait to see his Jam Sea Anemone.

Recipe: Jam Crustacean

Not so much a recipe as a picture of wrongdom. Back in my old house, a frequent visitor called Graeme would occasionally turn up with baked goods. He still does this in the new house, as the recipe after this one will illustrate.

He seems to like making cakes, buns, cookies, biscuits, tarts... but with his own unique twist. Doing something wrong. Not a specific thing, but something. Well, the Wine Pie which he was involved with was a specific bit of wrong... wine and pies do not mix.

The Jam Crustacean is a sort of cake. A cake that didn't rise, and became a funny shape whilst being cooked. The surface of the cake was also hard and quite shiny. Basically, it should have looked like a cake, but actually looked like a crab. I'm not just saying that because I'm a crab enthusiast either, this happened a fair while before I'd even read a Guy N. Smith book!

Here's a little sketch of it:

As you can see, I took the liberty of adding some legs, pincers and eyes.

The line across the middle is where it was sliced open and filled with jam. You can't have a Jam Crustacean without jam.

I have no idea how you would achieve the construction of one of these things, and I doubt that Graeme does either. I think he just makes these things by accident, possibly when trying to turn lead into gold.

Satan's Crustaceans

I really want to form a band called Satan's Crustaceans despite being in no way musical.

I did a bit of research to see if there were already any bands under that name, and found this incredible article. Seems like a good blog to follow...

I also conducted a bit of a search on Myspace, and found this selection of hilarious crustacean based bands:

Ben Cheddar And The Potato Crustaceans
New Age Crustaceans
Midlife Crustaceans
Crustacean Armor
The Friendly Crustaceans
Killasauras The Crustacean
Crustacean Village
The Hot Crustacean Band
Harmonicus The Crustacean
Auto Erotic Crustacean
101 Crustaceans

Which is your favourite?

I think Satan's Crustaceans is free for me to use! Now to draw an awesome logo... and do nothing with it.

Rock Star Breakfast

Caution: This blog entry was written out of complete boredom whilst in Wakefield, and may therefore be long-winded and incredibly pointless.

This morning I woke up in a spare room in the house of a man called Steve, from a band called Khuda, in a place called Leeds. I was there of my own accord.

The night before I had attended a gig at The Cardigan Arms, a jolly good pub in Leeds. The gig room upstairs is pretty much under the control of a man called Tom, also from a band called Khuda. He made everyone some veggie-friendly curry, which was very nice.

The line-up was Khuda, Alright The Captain, Orders Of The British Empire and Magnapinna. I made sure to get there a bit early as:
a) It was a Sunday and there's only 1 train every hour or so from where I was, and if I hadn't got the one I did get, it would have been a further hour and a half wait.
b) I wanted to hang out with the Khuda and Alright The Captain boys. Last time they played at the same venue we all had a great night and a bit of an afterparty at Steve's previous abode.

After a 25 minute walk from the train station, in the extreme Yorkshire desert heat, I was in need of a pint. Leeds Pale was my drink of choice, and I headed into the venue room with my first of the night.

I immediately felt welcome when seeing Tom and the guys from A.T.C. and joined them in a bit of a sit and some banter. After a while, some bands played.

Khuda were on first, and I have seen them perform a solid set on a number of occasions. Their album is due out soon, and I can't wait to go and buy a copy... despite having the mp3s and artwork to hand already. The set here included a couple of new ones, which sounded great, particularly the set opener. There were some problems with a string break, a tuning issue and Tom being half-deaf for the least manly reason ever (which I won't go into). Regardless, I enjoyed them as I always do!

Next up it was Alright The Captain, who also had a selection of new tunes to play. I was well impressed with all the material on show here, and I think the particularly loud and heavy sound within the venue for the whole night made this set stand out more than the previous times I've seen them. I may have even enjoyed it a touch more than on the CDs I have!

The next band, Orders Of The British Empire are doing the full tour with Alright The Captain, so I expected them to be good, even though I knew nothing about them. I wasn't let down! Heavy post-rock sort of stuff, played really well in an almost pitch black room. I was very surprised to hear this was their first ever tour, because they were bloody good!

Finally, the ever-incredible Magnapinna. I can't even begin to describe how well these guys play. They must practice a lot. So much force goes into the kick on the drums, the kit had to be moved and fixed on more than one occasion during the set!

After a speedy load out (it over-ran a bit) and me buying an A.T.C. shirt and an O.B.E. CD, I piled into the front of the O.B.E. van to get to Steve's house. We actually managed to beat him there, even though he set off (on foot) considerably earlier. We listened to a tiny bit of an Elvis Presley interview CD whilst on the road. Not very entertaining.

Plenty more banter was to be had, along with a beer and some daft film or other on the TV. A lot of the conversation revolved around all the bands / venues / promoters that Khuda and O.B.E. have encountered so far, and I was surprised at how many of the things mentioned were also people & places that I was well aware of or had encountered.

After a good lengthy sleep, I came back down to the living room (which also housed the smell of boys) and found the boys from O.B.E. on the sofas and floor. After a cup of tea from a heat sensitive mug showing a woman in (and out of) a bikini, we devised a plan for what to do next. As I had no idea where I was for walking back into Leeds, I jumped back in the van for a trip down to a guitar shop and some food, after we had said our goodbyes to Steve, and O.B.E. very generously gave me a T-shirt.

We went for some grub in what we originally thought was a Wetherspoons, but ended up being some other pub. All day breakfast was £8.45! However, there was a two for £10 deal, and it was well worth a fiver. I say it was well worth it, I actually had mine paid for by James the guitarist. As there were five of us, Dan the drummer decided to buy two for himself (at £1.55 extra, you might as well, eh?!) but with the actual intention of sharing out the second. I ended up having some mushrooms and black pudding out of it anyway.

Breakfast talking points seemed to revolve around more bands, venues and promoters, tour plans, set lists, recordings, mortgages and poo. All the usual band stuff then really.

Then we walked to the guitar shop, which was much further than any of us expected. More than half way to the station in fact, which was a bit rubbish because two of us were heading that way, but my stuff was still in the van. So I walked back with James, we drove back to the guitar shop, and it was here that I said my goodbyes to the band. Apart from Dan that is, as he was getting the train to Nottingham instead of jumping in the back of the van. A wise man indeed.

We walked to the station from there, and I then went of to Jumbo records to get a hold of the Quack Quack album, which is awesome. Back to the station and then home after that. Home to the world of boredom.

So that's what I've done with my day, how about you?

Being Sir Michael Parkinson

I started making a little montage of Parkies cut from those bits of junk mail from Sun Life Direct. Somehow, it seems like they found out, because they recently gave me a whopping FOUR letters at once! Each one features a good 4 or 5 pictures of Parky, but I'm trying not to repeat myself... yet. When I have enough pieces of Sun Life mail with his face on them, I'm probably going to do a full film poster style effort of Being Sir Michael Parkinson. Anyway, here's the little selection of different Parkies (some of them are just different sizes of the same face) so far:

You may notice a selection of chlamydia propaganda too... Again, it comes in the post and is considered funny enough to go on our upstairs toilet wall. I'll make sure to post more pictures of some of the other treats soon enough.

I can't say I have ever seen any kind of Parkinson based TV programs. I just find his envelope-printed face amusing.