A Restaurant Review

Fifteen Cornwall
Watergate Bay nr. Newquay

Fans of eating and beaches are in for a treat at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall, the latest branch of his ‘paupers are people too’ restaurant chain. Situated above Watergate Bay beach and with HUGE windows, the eatery is ideal for those who enjoy looking at vast swathes of nothingness (ie. the sea) while they dine.

I should point out that I haven’t actually eaten in the restaurant - I’m not made of money - but I have seen the sign and I have also looked up at the windows, so I feel fairly able to give a balanced review.

The sign is a nice sign. Importantly, it is both illuminated AND bright pink, meaning it fits in beautifully with its natural surroundings. It is clearly visible from the road, and indeed, from most vantage points within a two mile radius.

The aforementioned windows are also nice. Like all the best windows, they are clean and massive, making them perfect for seeing through. This is beneficial for lunchtime diners, who get to gaze upon a beach full of sunburnt fatties while tucking into their lobster starter.

Evening diners can watch the sunset and marvel at fishermen camped at the shoreline; fishing long and hard into the night, destroying their marriages with every futile cast of the hook, painfully unaware that supermarkets have been selling fish for a good few years now and that if they do not go home and eat said store-bought fish with their wives, they might as well stay out all night or for the rest of their lives.

The menu at Fifteen Cornwall is slight but varied, with the best dish being (and this is where Oliver’s fat-handed mockney influence becomes apparent) the ‘Wicked Fish Stew’. Yes, the Wicked Fish Stew - Claridge’s, this is not. Then again, that place is full of what can only be described as the worst people in the world, so it’s probably for the best really.

Fifteen is worth a visit for those looking to add an authentic seafood flavour (ie. the smell of rotting seaweed) to their dining experience, and indeed anyone who enjoys eating good food near a beach. You will have to book early because the waiting list is approximately two weeks long, but when you do get seated and eated, you will most probably not be disappointed. Just watch your wallets around the waiters.

40/50

Fifteen Cornwall

PJ-oh-yay

More Popjustice review goodness, this time for Nelly Furtado's snoozeworthy new one, 'In God's Hands'.

Have a read here.

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Jokez

Here we go again...

Q: How did the drug dealer stay in touch with his clients?

A: He used e-mail!


Yaaaaay!
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Review-me-do

I've got some new reviews on Popjustice. They are:

Timbaland - The Way I Are

Kate Nash - Foundations

Interpol - The Heinrich Manoeuvre

Hurrah!
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Lookalike Corner

For some reason there was a freed CD/advert for beer with this weekend's Guardian (it was an Unlistenable Taster CD, FYI)...

All I could think of, apart from how truly useless the 'music' on the disc was, was that I had absolutely no idea Pete Doherty was Brazilian.

Another 'joke'

Somebody better ring up Comedy HQ and tell them they're all fired...

Q: Why did the tightrope-walker never put on any weight?

A: BECAUSE HE HAD A BALANCED DIET!!!


OMG x 1 million.

"Who said 'Do the dance'?"

No one, you prick.

That Fearne Cotton interview technique in full…

Following on from her insightful contribution to the BRIT Awards, which basically consisted of her telling various bands that she quite liked them, viewers of Sunday’s Concert For Diana were treated to two more weapons from Fearne Cotton’s armoury of investigative zingers.

Question #1:
“You have just played Wembley Stadium”.

Question #2:
“You are going to play Wembley Stadium”.

Add those to “I think you’re amazing - do you agree” and you will see why Sir David Frost is literally shitting into his tiny cotton shreds right at this very moment.

The Band Age

‘Bands’ are what people who are neither good-looking nor creative enough individually form when they want to sell records. Examples of popular bands at the moment include Kaiser Chiefs, Muse and “Arctic Monkeys”, all of whom play regularly to literally dozens of people.

There are also ‘new’ bands. These are defined as being bands who have never had a hit, or who have not yet “punctured the mainstream consciousness”, whatever that means. This lack of success can be quite ironic, since new bands are often a lot better than the tired old ones already out there, eg. Razorlight. If there’s one thing life teaches us, it is that shit ALWAYS rises to the surface.

I have been listening to some new bands recently and have compiled my thoughts on them below.

Modernaire
Modernaire are from Manchester, which is a good thing, and they make offbeat pop music, which is a fucking brilliant thing, but the best thing about them is that as well as making music that is entirely amazing they are also very generous - offering to send me a multitude of pictures and mp3s when I added them on MySpace.
Special Features: Smart lyrics; songs about Manchester, ‘melodramatic popular song’.
Best tune: ‘Bloodshed In The Woodshed’
Link: MySpace

Daggers
I saw Daggers completely by accident at the end of May and they were brilliant. They supported The Whip (“by basically filling the dancefloor for them”, as a blog not a million miles from here noted) at the Roadhouse and were so good that I didn’t have to bother staying sober for the headliners.
Special Features: Amazing skyscraper-sized tunes; at least half the band are stunning.
Best tune: ‘Money’
Links: Review, MySpace

Dragonette
Not technically new , Dragonette are nonetheless currently lacking the chart recognition they so richly deserve. They are very good, and not just because they show that it’s possible to mix guitars with pop music without it all turning to shit (Miss Clarkson, take note). Most of their lyrics are mind-numbingly brilliant.
Special Features: Songs about infidelity, lyrics about razor blades.
Best tune: ‘Take It Like A Man’
Links: Review, MySpace

Hadouken!
Few new bands are being talked about quite as long and passionately as Hadouken! are. What could so easily have been laughable has become a phenomenon as Hadouken! have taken the country by storm, leading the charge of the (neon) light brigade who had their brains frazzled by Klaxons twelve months ago. Already NME coverstars, the band find themselves pitched between those that love it (most sane people) and those that don’t (mostly overweight and lonely people) in a way not seen since Marmite or Napoleon Dynamite. You wouldn’t mind having their poster on your wall, either.
Special Features: EVERYTHING.
Best tune: ‘Liquid Lives’, ‘That Boy That Girl’, ‘Dance Lesson’.
Links: Review, MySpace

Other new bands:

Foals
JOON and Darke Horse
The Tigerpicks
The Whip
Milke

Furnished with brilliance

A while back now I managed to unearth some lyrics written for a song which didn't make the final cut of the 411's classic debut album, 'Between The Sheets'.

It is now widely regarded as POP FACT, that had this track made it onto the album, the 411 would never have been dropped and would probably, at this moment, be bigger than Coldplay.

Sadly, it was never meant to be. The song was cut, the album flopped, the band dropped. Apparently some of them work in catering now, but that's largely unconfirmed rumour.

Still, it'll teach them to name their band after something COMPLETELY un-google-able, won’t it? Yes it will. Now, without further ado, the song.

'Please Help Us Furnish Our Home' by the 411.

Porch and patio,
lemon wallpaper.
Entrances -
arches?

Stairways,
exits.

Heated tiles,
envelope-catcher on the door.
Lounge - theme?
Pots, pans and porcelain things.

Upstairs, downstairs,
so much to do, so much to do.

Porch and patio,
lilac wallpaper?
Entrances -
arches.
Stairways,
exits.

Sources say it had a kind of hip-hop beat to it that was too soft for the US market, but too harsh for the UK one. “They ended up dumping it halfway in between”, remarked one record company insider. What a wag.

What is the point of life?

That’s not a rhetorical question or a case of the boo-hoos; I genuinely don’t know.

We’re all familiar with the story: you’re born, you live, you die. Some things happen in between.

But what is the point of it all?

Most of the things we do, we do for a reason. We boil a kettle to get hot water. We take drugs to get high. We say “I love you” in the hope of hearing it back. We do things that we know will have an outcome. But what ‘outcome’ is there to life itself, besides dying? Surely we can’t live just to die. There must be a reason.

Of course, having a reason to live is different to knowing the point of life. Lots of people have one or several reasons why they keep going: children, loved ones, religion, alcohol. But how many people actually know the reason they were born in the first place? Or what they’re actually supposed to do while they are alive? How many people can say they know exactly why they’re here?

There is an idea that one day, in our autumnal years, we will be hit with a startling revelation. BANG. A moment where everything falls into place; where every single thing we’ve done or had done to us suddenly makes sense.

Is that the point? To live long enough to reach that day? If it was, wouldn’t some old people have told us by now? And what if that day never comes?

We can’t just stumble through life, enduring everything it throws at us in the hope that one day we might find out why we’ve actually been doing it. That would be like taking part in a competition where you don’t know the rules, in the hope of one day winning an unknown prize that you aren’t even sure exists. That would be… pointless.

I hope that there is a point and that we just don’t know it. I hope we all have a unifying raison d’etre, beyond being part of the ecosystem and reproducing. And I hope that one day we’ll all find out what we‘re here for and why. The other possibility is just too horrible to contemplate.