Not to be outdone, Ev got this masterpiece made for me:

Further cementing her position of “absolutely awesome”, Ev also arranged a surprise party for me. Loads of friends turned up with food and pressies, so I’d like to thank (in no particular order) Lenise, James, Mike, Shannon, Joaquin, Shay, Jeff, Amy, Steven, Jamie, Chris, Grant, Brenda, Ella, Marty, Steff, Shelley, Duane, Jarrod, Mabel, John, Laura, Teray, Lynnai, Sherrieff, Donna, Cervanto and Norma for making it a 40th birthday party to remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-oPQeQ3toI

A BURGER sandwiched between two tacos? Count me in! Think about it: the crunch of the taco shell followed by the cold lettuce, warm meat, more taco shell, then the bread, lettuce, tomato, cheese, burger, bread and back to the taco shell. Amazing. When I saw the advert for this, I told Ev, “I’m buying one and don’t you try to stop me”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJm4rcQEZHY

Trouble is, it doesn’t exist. CURSE YOU, JACK IN THE BOX!! It’s just a ploy to flog us the Jumbo Deal, which has all the makings of a Jumbaco (a burger and two tacos) but comes requiring assembly and, like Airfix Spitfires, without paint or glue.

But then I thought about how easily I was taken in by the fake commercial, and that says a lot about our acceptance of the most ridiculous foodstuffs a) without questioning why they exist, or b) why anyone would want to eat, say, a bacon and cheese sandwich where the “bread” is two pieces of chicken, or an ice-cream sundae containing bacon, or the McRib. I think we’re so used to patently stupid and unnecessary “food” being advertised that on TV and in magazines that we no longer question it. And by “we” I mean “me”.

YOU win some, you lose some. I’ve never been that good at pun headlines but this column was crying out for a touch of LOLcat. It was nixed on the grounds that the average newspaper reader wouldn’t get it because the average newspaper reader is about 98, or something. One bright note: it’s going to be used when the column goes online as the website’s demographic is younger.

The background: the Pasadena Sun ran a story claiming the cheeseburger was invented in the city because apparently Americans care about that sort of thing. Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, the story was seen by Doug Moe, a Wisconsin journalist who wrote a column about how Wisconsin is the birthplace of the cheeseburger because apparently Americans care about that sort of thing. We got permission to reprint Doug’s column and the headline (to me, anyway) just seemed the perfect one. (It’s going to be “Cheesed off with Pasadena’s claim to fame” now).

There is another reason my headline wasn’t used: the potential flood of letters along the lines of, “Duh you spelled ‘cheeseburger’ wrong and it should be ‘have’ and you’re stupid and you should feel bad”. This happened a few years back when I used “pizza the action” as a pun for a story that I’m guessing involved pizzas as frankly I cannot remember anything about it except the headline. We had a load of letters from people who simply didn’t get that “pizza” was a play on “piece of” and, naturally, I got in trouble. I was pretty surprised — when I worked on Wales on Sunday, “pizza the action” was Standard Pun #224b for headlines involving Wales playing Italy. Shit, if Julian or me didn’t get the phrase into a headline at some point during the Six Nations we were given a damn good thrashing and put on tea-making duty for a month.

I also got in trouble for one I did when working for the hellhole that is Celtic Newspapers (or was, as for all I know it’s been sacrificed to keep the Western Fail Mail staggering along). When designing a story about a girl who was the Wales Under-16 Taekwondo champion, I remembered these adverts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1jywlZG74o

The headline? “You know when you’ve been tai-kwon-do’d”. The reason I got in trouble, though, wasn’t because people wrote in to complain about it; instead my editor decided no one would get it because he so obviously didn’t get it. After doing some quick market research in the office and discovering that 100% of designers not in the should-have-been-retired-years-ago demographic liked it, I changed it to something dull then changed it back just before I sent the paper to the press. How was I to know the bloody editor was going to spot it the next day? Even when it was published in the UK Press Gazette’s Headline Of The Month section he didn’t calm down.

Bloody old people.

I KNOW this doesn’t really count as a diner, but where else was I supposed to put it? The Sussex Teapot turns out to be about 10 minutes from our house and serves classic British dishes such as scones and jam, beans on toast, pie & mash and lots and lots of tea.

Here’s my choice for dinner: steak and kidney pie, mushy peas and mashed potatoes, which I’m 99% sure were made from Smash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND8Bbn9V6as

The mushy peas needed a bit of salt but were worthy of a British chip shop, but the pie was great. Instead of the semi-soggy pastry you get at chippies it had a proper crust and was reminiscent of the Clark’s pies I used to get in St Mary’s Street in Cardiff. The filling was great, with loads of minced steak and kidney and rich gravy. Thinking about it I should have got a serving of baked beans dumped on top of the pie for the tradition Mut way of doing things. Ev got a minced beef and mushroom pie, baked beans and mash but wasn’t too happy with it as she thought the pie was too bland. I had to finish it to prove her wrong. But then came afters:

Cream tea time! Although not up to the majestic standard of a Broome Farm cream tea, it was still a welcome bit of Britain on a cloudy Californian afternoon. Two scones, one plain and one with raisins, with dishes of strawberry jam and — drooooool — real Devon clotted cream (apologies to the Cornish side of the family).  There’s just a few steps to making the perfect scone: cut it in half, slather it with cream, slather the cream with jam, stick the halves back together and devour with a hot cup of English Breakfast tea, preferably one strong enough to stand your spoon upright in.

The other great thing about The Sussex Teapot is the shop, which is jam-packed full of British chocolate, jam, cakes, bread, drinks and tea. The only real downsides are the prices ($6.75 for beans on toast? Really?) and the service, which wasn’t too good — but as there was one girl doing the cooking, washing up, waitressing and everything else, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Will we go back? Probably.

Pic by @jamiecraven. In case you’re wondering, the designer’s put “herey herey” as it contains an ascender (the h) and a descender (the y) and so shows the leading, the gaps between the lines of type. Back in my QuarkXpress days I used “dedy dedy”. Oh, memories…

OOPS. Looks like there’s one Guardian sub or designer who’ll be called in for a meeting. As a production journalist I’ve got every sympathy with him/her; errors like this are easy to make, especially when you’re rushed. I’ve been responsible for sending a page with “Stick a caption in here please” under a sports photo; I sent a letters page to the press not realising the dropcaps on the editorials read “T-W-A-T” (I spotted it a few minutes later and re-sent the page); and once, while on deadline, banged in the headline “MENINGITITS” in 96pt Franklin Gothic Heavy on the cover of the Rhondda Leader, a balls-up that would have cost me my job if Mike in pre-press hadn’t noticed it when he made the negative (Mike got a lot of beer and cigarettes the next day). But I can stand proud as I’ve never made a cock-up on this scale:

This one is so amazing it needs an explanation, so bear with me. The original headline, which went over two pages, read “Can Dec finally match Ant?” That was printed in early editions, but for the late edition someone decided that there were too many headlines containing “finally” and so changed the head to read “Can Dec at last match Ant?” Unfortunately only the left-hand headline was changed, leaving the “a” of “at” on that page and the “nally” of “finally” on the other. Beautiful. (If you don’t know who And and Dec are, you’re lucky. They’re a couple of irritating Geordie tits who for some reason infect virtually every British TV show).

Even the BBC isn’t immune:

This is a website error and they’re simple to correct, albeit highly embarrassing when someone does a screen grab and slaps it on their Facebook page. As a print journalist the main advantage of the web to me is that errors can be corrected within seconds of it being spotted, but once it’s printed it’s permanent. It adds an edge to my job that I just love.

I’ve heard stories of mistakes that made it to print in other papers, such as the designer writing “Need a caption of this twat” under a mugshot or “Stick something in here” in subheads. The software we use nowadays is designed to prevent this by using “dummy text,” system-generated gibberish that’s automatically loaded into every caption, credit, headline, keydeck and byline on the page when the articles are drawn up. It’s replaced with the actual words once the story’s dropped in. If you try to send a page when it still contains dummy text, this happens:

So in theory what happened to the Grauniad’s designer can’t happen to me. In theory, anyway…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyT7xMPurgw

I’VE seen this trailer several times when having TV inflicted on my by Ev, and I have to admit to wanting to see The Devil Inside. It looks pretty good: “found footage” of a woman’s attempt to find out what happened to her possessed mother, lots of exorcisms, odd contortions, a priest trying to drown a baby (makes a change from trying to molest it, I suppose) and plenty of screaming/demonic laughter/ubiquitous shaky camera work. Even the obviously fake “The Vactican Does Not Endorse This Film” disclaimer didn’t initially put me off. As Ev said, “You’re going on your own.”

Anyway, “wanting to see it” soon changed to “I think I’ll spend my money on something better, like a barbed wire enema” once I read some reviews. Oh dear. Not only did it receive the AV Clubs’ coveted “F” grade and currently holds a 7% grade on rottentomatoes, it seems a storm has been kicked up by the ending. In case you’re planning on seeing it, here’s an obligatory [SPOILER ALERT]: the movie ends with the car containing the three protagonists crashing, the screen cuts to black… then a URL appears directing the audience to a website where they can see more of the film. Instead of making a website to generate interest in the film, the makers of The Devil Inside got it the wrong way around; they went to all the work and expense of making a film to generate interest in a website. It’s a shame as from reading the reviews, the movie shouldn’t even have been straight to DVD, it should have been straight to landfill.

And what a website it is. If it wasn’t for the fact it’s obviously done with WordPress I’d have thought it was made circa 2001. At the time of writing (10.44am on Jan 7) all the pages — including the index — are returning a “Service Unavailable” error message, probably because of the thousands of people accessing it to demand a refund/abuse the creators. Luckily, though, the message board is alive and well and full of morons who actually think the movie is real because a) it’s loosely based on a real person, b) the’ve never heard of The Blair Witch Project, [●REC] , Paranormal Activity, The Last Broadcast or any of the other numerous “real” movies, and c) they’ve also never heard of the IMDB.

Here are a few select posts (spelling and “grammar” as in the originals):

“that was a dope ass movie cant wait till it comes out on dvd but was it real or another blair witch project????”

“Just saw the movie, i can;t believe it all ended like that , so what are the three of them dead??” (I love the response: “john i’m guessing so because they rolled about how many times in the car and none of them had seat belts on”)

“WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED. just got home from the movie and im so stressed out. that shit isn’t fake.”

“Ikr! I was scared to death. After It was done I wanted to cry cus I was so scared. Some pretty scary stuff:) ps: that was the scareist movie iv ever seen. I went to bed with the lights on and my rosrie in my hand.”

“Fucking crazy shit I tell u stay strong in faith or u will next he prowls on Christians”

“OK SHE DOES NOT SAY CONNECT THE CUTS SHE SAYS A LATIN WORD THAT IS READ “KUNECTICUS” WHICH MEANS THE COMBONATION OF MOVEMENT WITH MACHINERY THEREFORE THE CATORTANISTS!”

“Weell i saw this movie it iss real well excorisms to be honest wen i was lil i wanted to become an excorist i wanted to help the ppl who were possessed watching this movie was a trip i do want to learn more most scary movies dont scare me this one scared me for a while but when i got home an started thinking i want to learn more i might b young but im willing to fight for ma god jesus christ” (Note to Jesus: You’re screwed)

I could go on but if these are real posters and not just made up by the film’s producers (because that’s never, ever happened before) then let’s face it: we’re buggered as a planet and can only hope the Mayans will be proved right.

I, too, am amazed that Mooka has been knocked off the top of the list for the first time but after waiting and saving for seven years to get our own place we finally managed it in April. Or May, we can’t quite remember, as we had to put off our moving date three times thanks to the nutjobs we bought the place off. After investing $[NUMBER REDACTED] on painters, electricians and plumbers the house resembled somewhere you’d actually want to live and not the piss-poorly decorated combination of 1950s kitsch/1970s horrorshow pictured above. I can’t remember the name of our moving company (Epileptic Howler Monkeys would be an accurate moniker) but they managed to turn up hours late and move us in at midnight. Our plasma TV suffered fatal wounds in the move, as did a 23″ monitor, and our microwave and fridge ended up with dents and broken shelves. But, as me and Ev haven’t stopped telling each other, we have a house.

2. Siân Rose 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9yKOzfneac

I will happily admit to bursting out crying — nay, sobbing — when I said goodbye to little Siân in October. I know words such as amazing, awesome, lovely, wonderful, beautiful, sweet and adorable exist, but a new one needs to be invented just for her.

3. Home

Twice this year, in June and October. We had a great time and, as always, many many thanks to all those who made our visit special. We drove miles, shot hundreds of photos, ate lots of Indian food and were again reminded of how beautiful Britain can be.

4. CNPA awards

I picked up a first place for best front page for the Burbank Leader as well as two honorable mentions for the Glendale News-Press, and we picked up three more awards for page layout and design, website and general excellence (I’m holding that award in the pic). The general excellence is the biggie as it’s for every aspect of the paper — writing, design, headlines, photos, sports, captions and editing. I’ve just done my entries for this year’s CNPAs, six in all, and hopefully I’ll win again.

5. Mr. Fezziwig

In April we went from three cats to two, in August we went up to four and in November up to five. Mr. Fezziwig was stuck in a box in our neighbour’s shed and it was down to me to rescue him one freezing Friday night. He’s now happy, loved and cared for, along with being unbearably cute and a total snuggler. (We’re now down to three).

6. The Sponja saga

Christ, where to start? Sponja earned “his” name from “his” habit of sponging food off us. After a couple of weeks I followed “him” back to our neighbour’s garden to discover “he” was actually a she and the proud mum of five adorable kittens. After much soul-searching and procrastinating we finally initialised Operation Kitten Catch 2011 and caught all of them over a month-long period. Two were given to friends, two we kept, and the fifth — a black kitten named Boots — was released back into the wild because he was a little bastard.

And then, a couple of months later, we noticed that Sponja was putting on weight. At first we assumed she’d started sponging food off other people but no — the little slut was pregnant. Ev, whose love of animals is only exceeded by her love of inflicting the E! Network on me, bought her a house which I had to put together. And on October 15 she dropped her sprogs — six this time, including three black ones which frankly just convinced me that Boots and Sponja had turned our neighbour’s garden into an extension of Alabama.

I captured all of Sponja’s second litter over the course last week. Three have been adopted by friends and the two black ones have been dumped back into the garden as they were vicious sods. We have to get Sponja fixed.

7. Duffy boat trip

Me and Ev had wanted to take a trip around the bay on a Duffy boat for ages and so she rented one as a surprise birthday pressie. Duffy boats are slow and easy to use, but when the going got tough around Naples Ev used her common sense and gave up the driver’s seat to a man (me, in case you’re wondering). Now we live more than 100 yards from the ocean we don’t know when we’ll get another chance to go on one but it’s definitely on the cards.

8. Flynn’s surprise party

Flynn didn’t want a 4oth birthday party but he got one anyway. Not that he knew about it until we arrived at the all-you-can-eat Chinese place in Gloucester. How it was kept a secret for months is beyond me, especially as I almost gave it away an hour before we were due to get there. Loads of people showed up, many photos were taken and posted on Facebook, and much hilarity ensued at Flynn’s reaction (pictured above) when he realised that, yes, he knew everyone in the restaurant.

9. Getting to the semi-finals

Wales? In the Rugby World Cup semi-finals? Surely not! But we did it, beating the Paddies in the process which is frankly a bonus. Getting up to watch the game at 6am was made easier thanks to jetlag, as I’d only flown home the day before. Wales played wonderful rugby and the morning was crowned 80 minutes later when England were sent packing. Yes, we went out to France in the semi-final but a World Cup campaign where we only lost three games by a total of five points to some of the best teams in the world (South Africa, France and Australia) is something to be proud of. And I know we didn’t make the final, but I’d rather go out by a point to France in the semis than get slaughtered by New Zealand. Hey, at least we didn’t implode like some teams I could mention. (Sits back waiting for inevitable abuse from Flynn…)

10. The best birthday cake I’ve had since 1977

Made by my good friend Jamie, it’s topped by my favourite meal — beans on toast wiv an egg on top. Her next challenge is to make a cake based on my Mini for my 40th birthday. Jamie — I want the checkered roof, number plates and stickers included, too. And could you make it full size?

Three Stations

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Room

The Wee Free Men

The Graveyard Book

A Hat Full Of Sky

Lost Echoes

Coraline

Wintersmith

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Soul Hunter

Savage Season

Faithful Place

Case Histories

I Shall Wear Midnight

Non Fiction

Mockingbird: A Portrait Of Harper Lee

The Diary of Anne Frank

The Fry Chronicles

Letter To A Christian Nation

1959: The Year Everything Changed

The Authorised Biography of Ronnie Barker

Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Hitler’s Empire: How The Nazis Ruled Europe

Family Britain, 1951–1957

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

State of Emergency: The Way We Were — Britain 1970–1974

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

How to Watch TV News

Austerity Britain, 1945–1951

Honorable mentions to: Horus Rising, all of the Discworld books, Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho, Death Star, Fragile Things, When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin, the Horus Heresy series, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Hunger Games, the Tome Of Fire trilogy and Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.

First off, a sunset pic I took from May Hill in October. This one was a bit of a fluke — not wanting to be blinded, I just set the camera to f22, held it up in the air, pointed it in the general direction of the sun and pressed the shutter release. And it worked. The halo effect was unexpected but very welcome. It’s just a shame about the power lines in the background.

March brought strong winds and pouring rain, perfect weather for taking photos of the beach. With the usually clear skies replaced by dark grey clouds, the wind howling off the ocean and driving rain soaking through my clothes, I braved the elements while Ev was still asleep. The line of debris washed up by the tide leads your eye to downtown Long Beach and does a good job of showing why you shouldn’t go swimming there.

I’m generally crap at taking photos of people and avoid it whenever I can. The one exception is my niece, Siân Rose, who I can’t take enough photos of whenever I’m home. This one was taken in October when we were having brekkies. I pointed the camera at her just as she picked up her tea and the smile she gave me summed up her happiness at having a plate of scrambled eggs and toast with her granddad and uncle. Perfect.

Ev was watering the apple trees in our back garden in August when she spotted this miniature rainbow. I’d been taking pics of the endless parade of squirrels around Lakewood and snapped this one. The shutter speed was a tad slow which at first I thought had messed up the pic, but instead it drew out the spray from the hosepipe and made the photo even better.

Another one from Long Beach, only in nicer weather. We’d gone for a wander down the beach in February and were returning to the flat when I took it. I fitted the 10mm wide-angle lens and got down low to get a different view from the usual one of the lifeguard station and pier. The dark clouds against the blue sky give it a slightly ominous feel.

Oddly enough, I didn’t take this one as I had a small kitten on my head. Ev, who loves taking photos of me despite the grave risk to the camera lens, caught this moment as Mr Fezziwig went climbing Mount Mut in November. Luckily he hadn’t yet developed his habit of clawing everything in sight or biting my nose so I came out of it relatively unscathed. A great shot by Ev and I think it currently holds the award for most “awwwws” on my Facebook page.

Another one from Britain, this time taken at Broome Farm in May. James, Helen, Sarah and me went on a walk around the orchards in the drizzle when I saw this snail. Luckily I had my 50mm macro lens with me so I was able to get in close for this shot. I can’t remember the camera settings but I was well pleased with the result. The orange came out beautifully, the snail shell is perfect, the water drops add another element and the lines are great.

For some reason I had the camera on me one day in September when I was outside having a coffee. I’m glad I did as Sponja and Boots got into a major catfight and I was there to record it for posterity. Of the 20 or so pics I took this one is my favourite, catching Boots in mid-flip as he makes another attack on his mum.

More cats, so sue me. Mr Fezziwig was about six weeks old when he met Emric for the first time in November. Despite Emric being about 20 times his size and approximately 3,000 times his weight, Fezzi didn’t shy away and got up close. Of course Emric ruined this sweet moment by smacking Fezzy across the head just after I took this, but that’s cats for you.

Planet Mut turned seven this year, an event I commemorated by a) forgetting about it until a month after it happened and b) buying a birthday cake in the form of a Pizza Hut $2 “personal pizza”. I don’t just like this photo for marking 2,555 days of me talking crap on a website but also for the lighting and the pretty much perfect exposure.

Coming soon: the Top Ten Books of 2011, and the Top Ten Thingies of 2011. Stay tuned!