Bar Review: Escucha, Nottingham

My favourite cocktail, a "Peniscolider"

Escucha is the Spanish word for ‘Listen’. Ironically Escucha leaves a great deal to be desired in the ‘hearing’ department. It occasionally tickles the ear with male wolf whistles or bad chat up lines, “In case you didn’t know, I love cunt”, the styling’s of a DJ so talented he refers to himself as ‘Funky T’, or women screaming the names of cocktails that don’t exist but sound like cocks, ”Make me a Long John Silver”. I don’t know if when you hit 30 you stop realising how ugly you are, but no amount of booze will fix the years of being disgusting you’ve already lived through.

The clientele, as implied, are of the highest calibre. Some are men, just back from work, letting their hair down for the weekend. This kind of light frivolity normally ends up with them consuming large amounts of lager, while also considering life’s greater problems, such as all the ‘Poofs and blacks’. Occasionally they entertain a political flare to their conversations, turning on all the, ‘Queers and immigrants’. In no way of course would I imply the entire demographic of this fine establishments client base is racist.  Escucha’s abundance of, ‘African Nights’, ‘Greek Nights’ and ‘Eastern European nights’ surely reflect Escucha’s desires of being a cultural melting pot, or ‘Melting Pint’ if you’ll excuse the pun. Nothing says ‘Mixed Majority’ more than a pricing system based on the night’s racial acclimatisation. “African Night is it? Make Hennessey slightly more expensive and put all the napkins in the back room!”

Pictured: A tiny selfish cunt

Its constant drop-ins from top tier celebrities only better the mixed bag that Escucha provides. JERMAINE JEANICE is a frequent visitor and CAN often be found loitering near any young, impressionable women. If you’re hoping he’ll tip you, you’d be wrong, because he’s a tight bastard.

Take a quick trip downstairs and you’ll find yet more price differentials. Apparently price is relevant to altitude, as Escucha’s sister bar, Minus One, is so low down that import tax has been added onto all drinks, making it thirty pence more expensive, as nothing says ‘class’ like thirty pence more, old glassware and no windows. Minus One also indulges in some of the more ‘sexy’ styling’s of modern bars, using dim: “She might be fit” and “Did I get the right change” mood lighting. Its not all doom and gloom however, Minus One provide a wide array of gaudy beds and thin curtains for you to sit behind. This of course would be more fashionable in any country that houses elephants or any establishment that allows you to have sex with prostitutes.

If you're looking closely,
you're gay.

Altogether Escucha isn’t that bad of a place; the floors may be sticky with blood and semen, but if in your heart of hearts you’ve always wanted to know what a rugby players dick looks like, wander down on a Wednesday, stare about one metre from the floor and don’t open your mouth. 

*(written last year, published today, is it relevant? I dont know?)

From The Editor 'a pretty greek deal'

Editorial: Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012

"If I could fight drugs, i'd do it with my fists, in the water
and I would have gills. Call my producer"

I do not have one, not one, Whitney Houston related pun. So here's the news - "The Heartbreak Hotel has reported Whitney was found dead after Dancing with Somebody, her family is reported as saying 'this is So Emotional', A drug overdose is suspected which is, Not Right but its Ok'.  Her death for me  lacks any emotional resonance because I saw it coming, Whitney has been on a downward spiral since she started spinning on Bobby Browns cock in the 1980's. I guess even Kevin Costner couldn't save her, disappointing, considering she survived that whole incident in the forest. 

The current circumstances of her death are unknown, other than her being dead. Whitney had long struggled with drug addiction. Despite this, her family can find some peace in that Whitney was found dead in the bath, so at least she died clean...

"How much coke do you want"
"About a heads width, and a little extra"

I have a lot to thank Whitney for, we all do, she was an inspiration. Whitney once publicly stated that 'Crack is whack' and that she would never take it due to its cheap quality. I imagine her other drug choices received more favourable slogans such as, 'Cocaine is horrifically moorish, me and Bobby take so much sometimes I cant feel my legs', 'Ecstasy? I wouldn't take ecstasy unless I'd run out cocaine, which would never happen because I have fucking LOADS' and  'I love cocaine'. Though I'm sure she never touched the stuff.

Lets review a few of Whitney's lies statements she's made over the years:

On taking all the drugs

'No im not a drug addict and neither is my husband"

Bobby Brown in hospital
with a bad cold

So the hours of dancing, singing at full pelt, without stopping, so wide eyed that I could fry an egg on your pupil and all those times you admitted to taking loads of drugs are irrelevant.

On marrying Bobby Brown

"It was crazy love"

Crazy like, "Oh Bobby its so funny when you kick the shit out of me, pass the coke"

On what she takes

"Cocaine and Marijuana, thats it"

Well thats a relief.

From the Editor, a pretty 'too soon' deal

Speedy Bar Review: Brass Monkey Nottingham

Brass Monkey, 'boasts', some of the finest cocktails in Nottingham. 'Boasts' however, is all that rings true in that statement. I 'boast', that I have a twelve inch cock and that i've slain dragons, but it doesn't mean either of those things are true (they are). When I wait over ten minutes for something to be made, I expect it to be of a bearable quality and not just to taste like rinsed liquor. Admittedly, I did once order a glass of water and trust me, it was un-be-lievable.


The menu spans over a small novel, ranging from drinks named after dead celebrities, to concoctions that sound as appealing as, 'blended sick' (you can have that one), which appears to be the only thing left out. A great deal of the Encyclopaedia Boozeica appears to be re-boots of popular drinks, or maybe 'rip-offs' is a more appropriate term. I've designed my own original cocktail, its called 'The Sum of it's Parts' and you take a little bit of gin, throw in some tonic for good measure, dont forget the lime. Dont steal that one Brass, I've copyrighted it! Though I doubt any of the bar-staff know how to plaguerize, as I imagine they dont have a diploma between them.

Best Speller 2007 (I made my own too)

The bar seems awkwardly presented, like its trapped in the early 90's. Huge Brass Monkey swastikas garnish the bars cramped interior. Above the bar sit two very sorry looking bits of A4 paper, proclaiming some very suspect accolades. 'Best Bar 2007'...what happened in the past four years. Makes you wonder...


The staff seem to be having more fun than the customers. Casually tossing pieces of ice down cleavages they'll never touch. It's not that I feel they are incompetent, some of them do appear to be well read, constantly citing the wonderful literally culture of barmanery. 'Booze and You', ''By Gordons! Understanding Gin', and 'Going Mad With Power: Where to get a 6ft Bodyguard and 3ft of Mahogany'.


The roaring 80's soundtrack tends to blindside every conversation you have, creating a little confusion. Several people have asked me why I keep telling them about my sunglasses....at night. Others made mention of my trips to Africa or when I played with the boys at the beach. It gets me hot blooded.  By the end of the night I've got double vision and I just want to find some hero to knock the jukebox on the head.


Dont take my word for how great it is though! You should all head down there. Dont forget students drink cheaper! They love students, you should all go, get really drunk first though, because they love that the most. Saturday is RnB night, dont miss out on seeing Dappy have a WKD after his regular set. Theres a special code too, if you are told you cant come in, try to break the door down, thats how they know you're cool.


Honest.

From the Editor a pretty 'gin and slimline' deal

Film Retrospective: Armageddon - Space Drillers

"Now I know what a space dinner feels like"

There are some obviously ridiculous things about the film ‘Armageddon’. Bruce Willis would not work on an oilrig; there isn’t enough danger there. He would surely have to be on some sort of ‘space’ oilrig, mining space oil. This is clearly why Hollywood bigwigs decided to add in an elaborate plot element…space. 

Bruce Willis assembles a rag tag, rough neck, beaten down, washed out, dirty, reckless group of individuals to go to space and save the earth from a large rock. Apparently, according to a narrator, this is the son of a similar rock that destroyed the dinosaurs and is out for revenge. As astronauts would not be able to master the careful art of drilling holes in their short 8 month drilling experience, Bruce ambitiously requests the team being replaced with his friends and fellow drillers or ‘Drillermatrons’, if we are going to use official NASA terminology. 

One of these fantastic friends is Steve Buscemi. Steve Buscemi is the only actor in the world capable of playing a loveable man who has every despicable flaw. In the film Con Air, Steve hands in a sterling turn as convicted, not wrongly convicted mind you, pedophile and notorious rapist, Garland Greene. He spends the entirety of the film purveying a misunderstood and loveable rapist, even stopping to share a song (surprisingly not a euphemism for a penis, which I imagine was as hard as steel when filming) with a seven-year-old girl. Nothing says redemption like singing to a little girl instead of doing what he obviously wants to do…rape her, literally rape her, maybe even kill her. Buscemi has had less disturbing roles however, such as Crazy Eyes in Mr Deeds, a loveable, if not psychotically on edge, cross-eyed man. He has taken on smaller if not equally normal roles such as Bananas the Clown in 13 moons. Buscemi even played a gerbil in hit animated comedy, G-Force, a film entirely about gerbils and not about him being a rapist, This clearly is the man you want to take to space, cast in space and put in space. This film could have even been retitled ‘Steve Buscemi, Space Pervert’ and it would have probably made more sense. At one point he genuinely implies he would like a female soldier to kick him in the balls for pleasure. Then in a scientifically accurate moment he contracts the deadly and constantly occurring disease, ‘Space Dementia’. 

"Dangerous but hilarious"

This is similar to the disease contracted by the elderly when they become hilarious and loose their possessions and attack care workers. )The space version only differs slightly in that it involves 'space' and is instantly diagnosed as ‘Space Dementia’ and no other recognised medical disease, as it is impossible to contract a disease or mental disorders in the place known as space, unless of course that disease contains the word ‘space’. This also applies to ‘Space Flu’ and ‘Space Cancer’. 

This brings me on to another preposterous element of the film. Not more absurd I imagine than the casting of Billy Bob Thornton as the rogue space team leader and not a homeless man or alternatively the large, weeping, black man who grabs penises, from The Green Mile as a large weeping black man who grabs penises…but in space. No, in truth, no moment rings as absurdist than the moment of genius when a man in a suit, apparently some kind of ‘Space Lawyer’ states. “Patents don’t exist in space” . This simple justification for the illegal production of a large, boring (pun alarm) drill was probably put in an absent minded moment, but surely they cant think that’s true.. It must be difficult to complete a screenplay that is so scientifically accurate while being easily understandable. Maybe I should point out some of the better zingers.

“You’re override, its been…overridden” - this surely defeats the point

“We’ve got a hole to dig up here” – but that’s not a boring thing to do because he’s in space.

“I’ve been drilling holes for 30 years and I’ve never not made the distance” – Bruce Willis’s job is to dig holes in the sea. That’s easier than beating up puppies, or children.

"This actually happened"

Or, if that’s not enough, maybe the scene in which Billy Bob Thornton depicts the complex space landing to 7 grown men with toy spaceships on chopsticks, a big globe, a meteorite made of paper mache’ and a genuine sense of conviction. At one point Owen Wilson thinks this is ridiculous. When a man who can only talk in whispers and refuses to fix his dumb, fucking nose, thinks you are being ridiculous, you should cease doing what you are doing. (Its fine when he's in Wedding Crashers, because its half him weeping and you can barely hear him whisper over the sound of Vince Vaughn eating everything within the gravitational pull of his massive melon of a head).

From the Editor ‘ a pretty part of a new emerging maple syrup conglomerate deal'

Editorial: Beanbags, a Buyers Nightmare

'What does this even mean?'

I recently decided that my room doesn't look enough like a PE lesson from 1996, so I thought that I should get a giant, obnoxious beanbag, from which I could be more comfortable while playing video games and masturbating. I call this 'Masterplaytion' - what? Im a wordsmith, or a 'Vocabucer'*. I came up with words you use every day like - 'Giantole'*, 'Whoreasaur'* and 'Ridicuphile'*. 

'Cum Shot'

I came to realise that finding a beanbag suitable for your environment is treacherous territory. Is it too big? is it the wrong colour? Can men have suede, unless used in tasteful red jackets, slippers or y-fronts. Should it speak about me as a person, possibly a Thomas the Tank Engine number would suit me? He's classy, he's mobile, always smiling and shaped like a 30 foot cigar. Whats not to like? 'I could be the Fat Controller from the privacy of my own home. That said, spending my evenings sitting on Thomas's face while jerking off does sound like an activity that man would undertake. He talks to TRAINS! They should call him 'Dr.Choolittle'...wordsmith. 

Unfortunately, their aren't all that many places that exclusively sell beanbags, there aren't really any places that sell devonshire air or canned shit either, but god created Ebay for a reason. And aside from the obvious one - 'Selling your stolen/broken/stained goods' to the elderly woman who feels that a 'Super Happy Fun Kettle with Antique qualities' is definitely a purchase worth making, it really is the place to buy bean bags....and babies. 

Meal - Deal

* Vocabucer - Vocabulary Sorcerer 

* Giantole - Giant Mole 

* Whoreasaur - Part whore, part dinosaur, or any woman who closely resembles one

* Ridicuphile - Someone who molest's jesters.

From The Editor , 'a pretty comfortable deal'

Editorial: The Train and Why I Hate You

'This looks like the build up to a punchline'

I don’t find Train journeys irritating, I don’t find myself complaining about the four minute delay, I don’t stand in the face of what is a great service and damn it to hell because I didn’t pre-book my ticket. I stand humbly and commend all the trains, the lot, Thomas as well. The piece of the puzzle that is ruining our travel experience is you. You chewing with your mouth agape, you with your broadsheet paper, sitting there scratching your genitals, reading the copy of The Sun left on the seat that you knew I wanted. You’re about to get written about, Old Testament style.

'Just put them out of their misery'

A typical train journey has two possible outcomes; sitting alone, or God forbid, sitting next to someone else. Worst-case scenario, it’s an old woman, she hasn’t spoken to anyone other than herself or that magpie she assures you is “The same one every day, comes back he does”. No he doesn’t, no it isn’t, you lonely, old, wench. She’ll sit there spindling her old fingers, like a five foot pickled onion in a wig, waiting for the moment to speak to you, casually shuffling a bag of Worthers Originals in front of you. She wants you to take one, then she’s got you, one big caramel web of old stories; her dead husband, her dead sister, her dead friends, her old, forgotten vagina. It’s a regular old wives tale. All you can do is endure it, like a cavalcade of stones being hurled at your face. “I remember when this station was….”…. WHAT, WHAT WAS IT? EVEN MORE FUCKING BORING THAN WHAT YOU’RE SAYING? Then there are other conundrums (my word of the day), What if she dies? Does the train have a defibulater? Am I responsible? Did my story about being sick into a DVD case scare her to death? Because it literally splashed back all over my hair and face, it was dreadful. I don’t want to resuscitate her, she has old lips, and years of kissing peoples cheeks have wrinkled them into little beetroot crisps. Its for the best to just leave her there, At least I can say I was with grandma when she died, maybe I can use the sympathy to get a hot buffet at her funeral?

“Is anyone sitting here?”, a dreaded question, are these people thick? Its clear im utilising the other seat for my bag and two baguettes. You expect me to give up the privilege of not having to stand up to get my two, fresh made, expensive baguettes. I should just throw them out the moving train; you want me to not have my eight-pound baguettes. You’re talking to the guy trying to eat a fifteen-pound baguette here, COME ON!* Next time someone does that, I’m going to pull down my jeans and just bend over and take it. Because every time you make me move my bag you are sodomizing me. I want it there for convenience, and no, as you’ll joke, gesturing at my nice bag (plus baguettes) “Does he have a ticket, HAR HAR”. No he doesn’t, but if I had realised before I got aboard that some smart aleck was going to try to rhetorically fuck me out of my extra seat then I would have purchased two.

Maybe it’s me, its possible I’m the worst person on the train, because obviously it’s a crime to want to sit undisturbed for the duration of my journey. Without some pork pie slouching down next to me, smelling like an old library, eating a pack of Tesco’s basics sausage rolls. Is that so much to ask? For you not to look at me with that doughy face, that pair of beady eyes resting on my expensive, expensive baguette. These aren’t your only bad features Fat Man. I’m an internet blogger, so its pretty clear that I’m very attractive, like a young Denzel Washington, but not black or bald. This means I cant stand that sight of ugly things, it makes me want to be throw up my baguette (reasonably price considering what a great baguette it was). I cant even watch programs about ugly people. I was watching Katie and Her Beautiful Friends and was sick all over my genitals. This was because the title was so misleading I mistakenly believed it to be ‘wank-worthy’. Those people aren’t beautiful at all, poor marketing.

Aside from my bashing of the horrifically disfigured, I’d like to move back to my hatred of everyone else, because I don’t discriminate. I’d like to round this all of with a short-list of my most hated journey companions

'I preferred it when they just indulged in casual terrorism'

·      ‘One Upper’ – you pull out a Nokia, he’s got an iPhone, you call your mum, he calls your mum.

·      ‘Broadsheet’ – Buy a smaller paper you pompous idiot

·      ‘Phonesman’ – “No Fletcher I said ‘sell’, If those stocks are still there when I get back its your job. Yes I understand you’re just the caretaker but your bills aren’t going to pay themselves, what, well tell your wife you don’t like funerals...what do you mean ‘hot buffet’?” – No one cares about your business, shut up.

·      All the Children – In the event of a continuous, rhythmic seat kicking the key is to turn round and whisper , “Maddie did that on the plane to Portugal”

I just really love the train, and you’re ruining it.

From the Editor ‘a pretty locomotive deal’

*The new cultural reference system. Guess in the comments section for prizes. I'm not fibbing