God Save the Corgis.

The Queen is coming to Toronto.

Not the Queen with the dead gay guy. The Queen of England Queen.

This one.

Not this one.

Now I know what you're thinking... Who gives a shit? I didn't give a shit either until someone pointed out that she's probably coming here to beg for money. You see the Queen currently gets 7.9 million pounds from the UK government but that amount has been the same for the past 20 years. Getting 7.9 million pounds to live off of in 2010 would be just fine if the Queen lived in a cardboard box and ate her own boogers (Fergie) but this is the Queen of England we're talking about. She has castles and servants and gold coaches pulled by corgis. She can't survive on 7.9 million pounds (for you Americans that aren't familiar with the British pound, 7.9 million is less then 16 Survivor wins).

File photo: America's Treasurer

The Queen went and asked Mummy and Daddy Britain for money and they said NO. Now she's coming to ask crazy Uncle Colony Canada and I hope we take a big swig of Molson and burp NO right in her face.

The Queen needs to figure out how to make ends meet. The Brits were always going on about how tough they had it during the war. How they had to rub gravy on their legs for stockings and eat animal guts (they'd still be doing both of those things if tanning beds didn't come along). So lets look at what's costing the Queen all this money and what she can do to rectify it.


Repairing her castles.

File photo: Queen's current residence.

The Queen has lots of castles and many of them need repairs. I'm assuming she kicks holes in them after watching England play in the world cup (because they suck). I think what she should do is repair them with Lego. It's all the rage right now.

It's got to be cheaper than antique stone. In fact she could probably get it for free as a good will gesture from Denmark. And it already comes in castle!

Plus Lego lasts forever. My parents still have Lego that I played with when I was a kid. She just needs to make sure that Prince Philip doesn't chew the antennas like my cousin did.

I say, I seem to have ruined another antenna do to this blasted oral fixation of mine. Oh bother!

Quail Eggs

I'm assuming that this is all the Queen eats. quail eggs are waaayyy more expensive then regular eggs.

How many people have even seen a quail never mind see it lay an egg?

Plus, quail eggs are so small that you have to eat 10 times as many. The solution? Stop eating them. They're disgusting anyway.

Instead eat hotdogs. They're way cheaper and they're more delicious.

Replacing Dead Corgis

The Queen loves Corgis. She has hundreds of them. But the Queen is also a busy woman. She has to sit in a room all day and people come in and meet her (old people complain that no one comes to visit them and they wish their life was like the Queen's. That's why they love her so much.) The only time she's allowed out is to stand on her balcony and wave or sit in the back seat of a Rolls Royce and wave while she's being transported to a different castle.

As a result her Corgis are neglected and die. But if she saw how much all these replacement Corgi's were costing her, surely she'd make the effort to take better care of the Corgis she already has. My suggestion? Feed them. You can feed them with one hand while you wave with the other.

Hotdogs are a delicious one-handed food that I'm sure Corgis would love.

Keeping the fact that you killed Lady Di a secret.


Somewhere in the rugged northern part of England there's an army base that is the Uk's Roswell. But instead of alien corpses and bent out of shape anal probes the UK's Roswell contains all the evidence that proves that the Monarchy killed Princess Diana. (for more on this speak to London's cab drivers and more outspoken homosexuals.) I'm sure that the Queen is spending thousands of pounds to employ a crack team of Royal Marines/MI5 to keep all this under wraps. And I don't even know how much those Men In Black Ipod Nanos that erase al their brains every day cost.

If it was cheap the DVD would come with one just so you might watch it again.

There's a simple solution to this. Burn it down. Keeping al this evidence of Di's assassination is the equivalent of some of some pervy school teacher keeping all the text messages of her laisons with her hairless lotharios. Trust me it happensl.


A pack of matches costs 5 cents at Beckers last time I checked (1986).

Just don't send Matt Pepper in to get them. We sent him in there to buy smokes in grade seven and he came out with ladies wine tipped port cigarillos. Send him in there for matches and he'd probably come out with two gummy big feet or one of those rolled up horoscopes.

Thanks Matt... close but no cigarillo.

I just think it's hilarious that a woman that once represented a monarchy that was so powerful that it could basically cut the head off of anyone that looked at them funny is now reduced to begging. She's basically a cross between this.





And this.





Maybe she should call up the only British icon that's more useless then her... Johnny Rotton. He still seems to find ways to make money.

Why crazy ladies should stick to owning cats.

Have any of you seen the show Extreme Poodles? It’s a documentary/reality type show where lonely/cruel/insane women take this:

And turn it into this:

Yes, that’s a poodle. Yes, that’s a Ninja Turtle. And yes, TLC has a show about it.



It’s kind of like that other show Toddlers & Tiaras but instead of giving off a creepy pedophile vibe, Extreme Poodles gives off more of a sad Humane Society commercial vibe.

Kind of like this but with a pink Mohawk.

The crazy ladies are allowed to dye the poodles beforehand but all the shaving and attachment of dollar store items must take place during the competition. One lady was shaving her dog for so long that it couldn’t stay awake anymore and she had to take it out of the competition. He was probably tired out from all the fun he had during the 7 hour drive to the competition in his crate or the long walks he took all night around the single bed at the Monte Carlo Inn.

One hilarious spectator had a great idea for keeping the dogs awake. He kept squeaking a squeaker toy in the audience while they dogs were being groomed. Then all the dogs would turn their heads and the groomers would mess up the haircuts. All the ladies got pissed and started complaining so security went looking for him. I wonder if they tased him?

See how YOU like it.

The most bizarre part of the show though was when the crazy ladies would unveil their masterpieces. This involved sort of a cross between a fashion show, a beauty pageant and a diorama competition.

The crazy ladies got dressed up with their dogs and put on a little show where they announced the dog. Some of them danced around and some of them had weird display tables and backgrounds.

Like this:

And this:

And, good god, this:

The worst one was a poodle that was dyed and shaved to look like a buffalo and then they shaved a 3D Indian face into the side of it (you can see a few flashes of it in the video). The crazy ladies came out dressed as Indians and I think they said something about it evoking the native spirit. I’m not really sure because the TV was shaking do to all the buried natives in North America spinning in their graves.

If this ground’s a rockin’, TLC’s a mockin’.

Yep, to sum it up TLC’s Extreme Poodles is pretty crazy. How crazy? Well… crazier then Denim Huggies.

I wonder if Depends makes tuxedo ones for my wedding day?

But still not as crazy as what Japan do with poodles.

President’s Choice presents: Memories of Little Johnny.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten?

The reason I ask is because this weekend I had  black pudding for breakfast.

Most people wouldn’t eat this for any meal never mind breakfast but I like it. Also at the grocery store this weekend, I saw these.

For all I know jerky nuggets could taste just fine. Maybe they’re not much different from regular jerky, which I don’t mind at all but there’s something about that picture on the bag and the fact that they’re in nugget form that just makes me shudder. Yes, I’ll gladly eat a type of sausage made by cooking blood or dried blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled but dried poultry makes me heave.



I think it has to do with my upbringing. When I was a kid I ate all kinds of gross things due to a mixture of curiosity, coercion, low gag reflex and Scottish parents. Things like…

Liver

No one should be eating liver. It’s essentially the body’s toxic waste dump. But because some relatives were forced to eat it during war time, I was forced to eat it during dinner time. All I can say is thank god for ketchup and thank god Silence of the Lambs didn’t come out until 1991 or my parents would never have gotten me to eat that shit.

Me on liver night.

Kidney

Hey, if we’re going to eat the liver why don’t we eat these wee jobbies on the sides too? At least they had the good sense to bake it into a pie. Most things can be tolerated in pie form.

I said most things.

I still didn’t like eating the kidney pieces though. The only way my dad could get me to eat them was to tell me that kidney was what cowboys ate. I can’t believe I fell for that. You know what dad? Cowboys also never bathed and slept with prostitutes.

I hates manure but I loves prostitutes and kidney. Yee Haw!

Spam

Actually we usually didn’t even have Spam. We had a cheaper Canadian version called Klik. No fancy imported meats for little Johnny.

Guess it could have been worse. We could have had Mayfair’s Spiced Beef Loaf (for visitors) or Spork or even Poreef.



Potato Chip Sandwichs

I’m not sure if this was something that was passed down to me as a kid or if it was something I came up with on my own. I remember stealing croutons from the salad bar at Wendy’s to put in my burger so it made a crunching noise when I ate it like the burgers did on the Flintstones. The potato chip sandwich may have evolved from there. This is something that although gross, I still enjoy eating. My favorite is a ketchup chip sandwich with ketchup on it. Once I even made a sandwich out of simulated bacon bits and heated it up in the microwave. It did not taste good.

Oh the culinary possibilities.

Dog Food

Not all animal bi-products/snacks were forced upon me by my parents. When I was little I spent a lot of time with the neighborhood dogs. And when in Rome…



I don’t remember much about how the kibble tasted. I do remember that although the Kibbles N Bits looked better, they didn’t taste as good because they were really soft and chewy and they would get stuck in my teeth.

For the 3 other people that remember Whacky Packages.

Also when my mom would catch me and try to stop me, the dogs would often growl at her and chase her away. Where were they when she was force feeding me liver? Come on you Bumpus Hounds, the back door’s open!

I don’t know who made this… but it’s really fucking weird. Smell you later.

Who's this cool customer? It's Michael Jackson, it's Liberace, it's Darth Vader, it's Slash, it's Mr. Peanut...

About a month ago I was in Kensington Market.

It’s not usually this gay.

I went into this clothing store and low and behold they were selling a pair of spats.

You know, those things old timey gentleman wore over their shoes about 100 years ago.

You don’t see spats too often these days. I’m sure the editors over at  The Chap Magazine dawn them from time to time.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if Michael Jackson had a pair.

Yep, he did.

And maybe even somewhere there’s a Chippendale dancer kicking around who’s added them to his shirtless tuxedo outfit for that special lady in the audience with a foot fetish.

But all in all you don’t see spats being worn too often now.

Now this store wasn’t a vintage store. It was mostly hipster attire and local designers. What I’m trying to say is I believe these spats were newly made and that who ever crafted them did so with the intention of bringing them back for a modern crowd. I can maybe see it. The whole modern dandy look has really hoped on its bone shaker lately and taken off. What with the mustaches.

The hats.

I know, I know but it’s still a step up from the trucker hat.

And the general tweedy/waistcoat/boating blazer/bicycley thing.

How many of you instinctively made a fist when you saw this picture?

Are spats the next step? Am I going to be forced to observe some dickhead coming out of Rotate This wearing these over a pair of Converse? It’s highly probable. And what’s next? What other fashion accessories will these hiptorian Burk & Hares pilfer from poor Bertie Wooster’s coffin? Lets see…

How about the cape the cape?

After seeing Phantom of the Opera back in 1986 my mother was convinced that the cape would become a big fashion accessory again for men. She talked about how men would have one type of cape for work and a flashier one for going out on the town.

Sensible knitted day cape.

More eye catching evening cape

Sadly my mother’s dream of a cape filled late 80s metropolis never came to be. But there’s still time. The cape could rise and flutter again. Adidas has thrown their tri-stripped hat into the modern cape ring with their Star Wars inspired Darth Vader track jacket complete with cape.

Look, it even rolls up into a light saber! How can something be so cool yet so lame?

You know what goes good with a cape don’t you?

That’s right, a top hat. Sadly (actually thankfully) there aren’t too many of these around anymore either. About the only people still wearing them are hard core Goths.

If I were him I’d put a little card in the hat band that said Goth instead of Press

And Slash

Even today’s magicians seem to be shying away from the old magic top hat. Instead they're going for that hip urban look.

Although Chris Angel’s look is so rock star ridiculous that he might come full circle and start wearing a top hat in honor of Slash.

So why is Slash still wearing that thing? Maybe he knows something we don’t. Maybe he knows that the top hat is well overdue for a come back. All those false-bottomed magician top hats are poised to be scooped up by the youth of today.

Hey kids. Keep your keys in me instead of attaching them to your belts because they won’t fit in the pockets of your skinny jeans. Why not add a little pocket to me for your iPhone. You could cut a hole in my felt and add a speaker so you could blast the latest M.I.A. track. The extra weight will keep me on your head while you’re long boarding to the bodega. Whoopy!

It made me cool. Don’t believe me? Ask the Jackson 5 you turkies.



A top hat might make you look cool (no it won’t) but how would you like to LOOK cool. Only one way to do that, bring back the monocle.

Now you might say, What was the point of the monocle? Surely even the lowliest, calf brained proletarian could envision the superiority of the more practical spectacles?! (I’ll assume that the punacular yousage of envision was not intended by you good sirs.) The monocle was not about practicality or superiority. It was about fashion. And when has fashion ever made any sense?



I for one champion the return of the monocle. I’d certainly opt for one over say a pair of reading glasses or one of those Owl magnifying cards.

I wonder if I could get a light up monocle?

Why look like an old coffin dodger from Florida when you could look like Mr. Peanut?

Look, not only was he was wearing skinny jeans before anyone, he’s also got spats, a top hat, a monocle, white gloves and a vanity cane. So go fuck yourself Karl Lagerfeld!

As for me, I think I’ll stick with the tried and tested attire of the true English gentleman. Allan Partridge’s Sport Casual.



P.S. If you thought my mother’s Phantom of the Opera cape idea was crazy, you should have heard her after she saw CATS. I remember her talking about how great it would be if everyone had fur like a cat. And how not only would there be different races but there’d also be different fur types too like calicos and tabbies and how people would cut and style their fur all different ways. (You know the gino cat people would cut their fur to make them selves look huge guy!)

Jheeps file photo: Rum Tum Tugger