My Mum unearthed some long lost drawings I did at school when I was 13 and gave them to me today.
Although they’re not very good at all, I remember getting really pissed off at the teacher for writing score marks on the actual drawing itself! Even the thought of it gets to me now and I’m 31! Ha Ha!
This story is called: “The Ginger-Snap Cream” and it’s completely true.
When I was 8 years old, I tried a biscuit called ‘The Ginger-Snap Cream’ for the first time and I LOVED THEM and later on that same night, when my Mum and Dad were sleeping, I tip-toed down into the kitchen and I stole the ENTIRE packet of biscuits because I wanted them all to be mine.
I crept back up the stairs in the dark and hid the stolen ginger-snap creams under my pilow and over the next couple of days, I was pleased that nobody had noticed the missing biscuits.
One day, I came home from school to be confronted by my Mum and Dad who were holding up the now almost empty packet of ginger-snap creams and straight away, I broke and confessed EVERYTHING!
They told me that I was greedy and that I should be ashamed of myself. And friends, they were quite right.
When Sunday came, I went into the ‘confessional box’ at chapel and confessed my secret thieveing greedy shame to the local priest who told me that Jesus and God were very disappointed in me and that the only way out of it was for me to say 25 ‘Hail Mary’ prayers, an ‘Our Father’ AND a ‘Glory Be’.
I thought the sentence was a bit harsh but I said every last one of those prayers anyway.
TO THIS VERY DAY, I feel greedy whenever I eat even the smallest amount of food and I also have a problem eating infront of people.
THE END.
Alan Cook. (Age 30).
You May Also Be Interested In…
* There’s Yer Dinner!
* A Sinister Tennant
* My Tragic Fridge: An Update
All my life, I’ve admired winos and derelicts.
In the mid to late 1980’s, my Mum was a barmaid and we lived right behind the bar she worked in and as you can imagine, I knew a lot of degenerates, drunks and bums.
Hell, some of them are still alive.
– Barely.
I’d always see these guys cutting about on the waste ground beside my house when I was growing up. Big guys in dirty army jackets, swigging from green and brown bottles with long hair and beards.
I’d think to myself: “That’s what I want to be.”
Here I am years later and quite frankly, I sometimes feel disappointed with myself because I didn’t become a complete bum. I came close a couple of times but not close enough. Just because you’re a functioning wino, it doesn’t make you a real derelict.
– A rambling old yarn spinning crazy mad man!
That’s what I’m always aspiring to.
Stan Yale.
Does that name ring a bell?
Stan Yale played the degenerate wino at the beginning of “The Terminator” who says to Kyle Reese:
“Hey buddy, did you just see a real bright light?”.
Look at him. He stopped caring a long time ago.
Look at that expression on his face.
It says: “I’m a hopeless jaikey fuck-up and I fucked my entire life up but hey, I’m out of my tree on brown paper bag wine so…every cloud!”
Of course, the expression on his face also says: “Hey buddy, did you just see a real bright light?”
Stan Yale’s wino in “The Terminator” is probably my favourite cinematic portrayal of a drunken degenerate because that’s EXACTLY the kinds of guys I saw when I was growing up in the 1980’s.
Since he played the part so convincingly, I decided to look up Stan Yale on the IMDB and Jesus Christ, did I get a surprise!
How about this for a resume!
2006. Homeless Man. ” My Name Is Earl” (TV Series).
2002. Gus. “Judging Amy” (TV Series).
2002. Homeless Man. “Nikki”. (TV Series).
2001. Homeless Man/Squeegee Guy. “Black Scorpion” (TV Series).
1999. Homeless Guy. “The Pretender” (TV Series).
1999. Stinky’s Friend. “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” (TV Series).
1997. Bearded Man. “Living In Peril”.
1996. Bearded Man. “Persons Unknown”.
1994. Homeless Man. “The Force” (Video).
1994. Homeless Man. “Save Me”.
1993. Bum. “Monolith”.
1992. Alley Bum. “Trancers III”.
1991. Homeless Man. “Dragnet” (TV Series).
1990. Wino #1. “Watchers II”.
1989. Bum. “Matlock” (TV Series).
1987. Bum. “Moonlighting” (TV Series).
1987. White Wino. “Terminal Exposure”.
1987. Bum. “P.I. Private Investigations”.
1984. Derelict. “The Terminator”.
The guy is a professional tramp!
Almost nobody is talking about this man on the IMDB forums but I did find one post which stood out:
“This wonderful Gentleman is my Uncle and yes he played the “Bum” or “Homeless man” roles a lot. He also played a pirate in HOOK. I love to hear him talk about the differant movies, shows, and Soap Opera’s he’s been in and about the many actors he worked with.”
So there you go.
You May Also Be Interested In:
* Concept Art: James Cameron’s “Terminator”.
* Amazing Snippets From Les Paul’s Wikipedia.
* A Sinister Tennant.
I had trouble even remembering his name for a while.
It was so long ago…
I would have been 8 or 9…or maybe even 10. I don’t know but it would have been the 1990’s and almost midnight and I would be awake and glued to the my wee flickery TV with fuzzy reception.
Dr. Terror would appear on the screen to introduce the scary horror film of the evening.
Dr. Terror. That was his name. He was a cartoonishly (That’s a word!) sinister horror host for the BBC. An elegantly scary class act!
Do you remember this guy?
Those were the days.
Back then, there were fields as FAR AS THE EYE COULD SEE…
10 pence. That was a lot of money then y’know!
I remember it all and in those days the BBC would run horror double bills at midnight on Fridays and it really was an education.
The good old Doctor introduced me to the likes of “Child’s Play” (1988), “The People Under The Stairs” (1991), “Sometimes They Come Back” (1991) and obscurities like “The Baby” (1973), “VAMP” (1986) and “House” (1986).
I also grew up watching Hammer Horror flicks and Dr. Terror’s Vault Of Horror re-ran a lot of them.
I have a particularly good memory of being dog tired in my dressing gown, keeping myself awake so I could watch “Scars Of Dracula” (1970) at 2am.
Things haven’t changed much since that’s exactly what I was doing at 2am only two nights ago and I’m 30 years old now!
Anyway, it really was a great time to be young and impressionable and luckily for you and me, a few videos of Dr. Terror exist and here they are:
I’m trying to wean my 5 year old Nephew Asa off of the computer games he constantly plays.
He plays this simple flash game where you’re a stickman sniper and you have to take out other stickmen with a rifle!
Last night he even had a nightmare where a gunman came into his room and shot him!
I don’t like it one bit…
As his Uncle who loves him, I can’t let this go on and although I was originally gonna save this talk for his 8th Birthday, today I introduced him to the beauty of horror cinema!
Nothing too graphic.
– Just a few slimey sea monsters and creatures to start him off…
Success!
It didn’t take as long as I thought it would either which gave me enough time to teach my 1 year old Niece Orla how to do an impression of the Zoltar machine from the movie “Big”…
The Unravelling Of Al Cook... 