268: Spice, good and bad

I love spices.  As I’ve told everyone I’ve met all weekend, I finally cracked all the secrets to making exceptional chilli con carne.  The timing, and the balance of all the flavours was perfect.  And to top it all off, instead of just using mince, I slow-cooked beef steaks in spicy vegetable stock all day, and added the hot liquid and super tender steak to the fried mince.  The steak flaked and mingled with the mince, and the juices created the best bloody hot meat feast you should be sorry you missed.  Spices are incredible.  I love spice.  There is nothing that could possibly be done to spice to ruin it... nothing... never... not a thing...

Now I sense the elephant in the room.  Actually it’s less a sense, and more a crushing death of an elephant’s heel stamping on the side of my skull.  It’s a dark cloud, and an elephant, and the elephant has a dark cloud too.  There is one way to ruin spice.  That is with the addition of the word Girls.  And one way to further increase the descent (?).  Spiceworld: the Movie.  What the fuck is going on there?  Yesterday was Sunday.  Day of rest.  Day of shite on TV.  It came down to that choice between Spiceworld or Songs of Praise, and I made the wrong choice.  Respected actor, after respected musician was trotted before my eyes to make depressing cameos in what is best described as an extremely odd film, which exists separate from the realm of good and bad, in a sort of negative void...

note Posh's massive facial scar

In one scene a bored barman in a B&B mentions he likes jazz.  His tenants are the Spice Girls.  They whip out a tape recorder, slap on the beat to Wannabe, and dance around the dining room like puppets.  The oddest thing about this odd scene is everything that Posh Spice aka Victoria Beckham does.  Her bizarre attempt to dance is more unsure and awkward than my own on the rare occasions when I may be socially required to dance whilst sober and well-lit.  She wobbles a bit and doesn’t know what to do with her arms.  I presume the movie had a director and that he was distracted by some darling objet d’art in the background.  I don’t know what else could have stopped him from yelling cut, and demanding an answer from Posh: just what the fuck do you call that?  Aren’t you supposed to be a pop star?  Obviously you can’t sing, but if you can’t dance either just what the fuck are you even doing here?

I mentioned this observation to my fiancée and she informs me that that was her thing; she’s the one that looks like she has a stick up her arse.  I’ll take her word for it.  Anyway, as witless, badly acted and depressing as Spiceworld is, it’s still funnier and better written than this blog.  It has all weird post-modern, meta-textual, breaking the fourth wall, stories-within-stories, and monologues by characters that dictate action through narrative.  And it has the most pathetically underwhelming concert finale I have ever seen:  Blues Brothers or Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey this is not.

Spice Girls have been on my brain recently because Liz West – artist friend of Blank Media Collective – has begun her exhibition of her Spice Girls memorabilia.  The exhibition is at the Leeds City Museum until 3^rd July.  Liz has just been successful in her bid for the world record and is now the official Guinness World Record holder for the largest collection of Spice Girls memorabilia.  Weird, eh?