Mad Dog 20/20

Remember this muck? MD 20/20, affectionately known to students of the 90s as Mad Dog 20/20. Ideal for getting drunk cheaply and cleaning paint brushes.

Sadly they've updated the labels and lost some 'charm'... Anyway, having been kickstarted into thinking about it by the fact that kids these days are spoilt by Bacardi Breezers, I thought I'd have a quick Google.

Interesting thing number one: it's Jewish, and as such probably good for drinking whilst hanging around the synagogues. The company name (and where the 'MD' came from) is Mogen David Wine; Mogen David being Hebrew for Shield of David, also known as the Star of David. So one can only assume that Mad Dog 20/20 is Kosher alcopop!

Interesting thing number two: if you go to the webpage about it at The Drinks Group website and follow the link for the tasting notes, you get told that there's none available - which is kinda fitting...

Interesting thing number three: its best friend in getting poor people pissed as quickly as possible whilst killing all nerve endings in the mouth was, naturally, Thunderbird... which is made by the respected company Ernest and Julio Gallo, who do some really nice Californian whites these days! Apparently, as soon as prohibition ended in the US, they wanted to clean up with a "Campbells Soup" of wine, and there was little organised competition (which anyone who has tasted it can tell by the quality). According to various sites, it's most popular in inner-city, Skid Row stores... can't think why. Two steps above Pruno, the prison favourite made with fruit cocktail and ketchup. Nice.

BMW Drivers

BMW drivers are hated by pretty much everyone. The personification of evil isn't a person at all, but a murky-coloured BMW with personalised numberplates, tail-gating you in heavy rain with no headlights on, with a driver too busy holding a phone to his ear to realise that it's been a legal requirement to wear a seatbelt for the past 24 years.

This BMW ticks so many boxes that we can tell straight away that the driver is a man with something to compensate for (and it is a man, we can be sure of that - displays of brazen twattery like this are due to something on the Y chromosone).

I parked opposite this example of parking skill in Tesco last week; it could almost be forgiven if it was left there really quickly but it was still there in this position when I got out 40 minutes later, and that's when I noticed that a steering wheel lock had been applied. It really was supposed to be left in that position. We also have the personalised numberplate - C15ROG - so there's proof positive that the man who drives it has a complete lack of soul. (And is probably called Roger.)

Nice.

The Grand Torquay Roadtrip

Got back from Torquay on Friday night. The show was a bit "teh laem" - we managed to make a whole £80 in sales whilst we were there, which covered petrol and meals... hopefully we'll see some orders come in over the next few weeks off the back of it, because otherwise it wasn't really worth the time or energy or aching legs from standing around for eight hours a day.

Here you can see Ian demostrating stuff to a couple of interested teachers. You can tell how busy it was by the crowds present. Fortunately everybody found it disappointing, so it wasn't poor-quality sales techniques, it was generally rubbish. Torquay was nice though, considering it was more-or-less closed - not much to do in a seaside town off season.

On one of the evenings we went to see The Aviator in nearby Paignton, which is an excellent film, well deserving of its 217 Oscar nominations. Once again, Leonardo DiCaprio impressed me (I thought he was great in Romeo and Juliet, What's Eating Gilbert Grape and The Beach) - the only film he's in that I thought was an absolute stinker was Titanic, and sadly that seems to be the film he's best known for.

A couple of entertaining (for me at least) photos of things I saw whilst we were there...

Puerile giggling ensued at "Homophones" as I imagined a pink sparkly telephone which went "Cooeee!" when it rang. I am easily amused.

And some motorway services had these seven-fingered gloves for sale. I don;t know what that says about people living in Devon!