Hollywood TV re-makes: 1 Hawaii Five-O

Triple P's memories of the original series of Hawaii Five-O are hazy even though the series ran from 1968 until 1980.  We certainly remeber watching it early in its run but nothing about it stands out other than Mort Stevens wonderful title music and the accompanying visuals; between them combining for one of the greatest TV titles sequences ever. 

We also remember the lovely face of model Elizabeth Malamalamaokalani Logue turning to face the camera and the frantic hip gyrations of Hula dancer Helen Kuoha-Torco as well as the splendid shots of the coastline.

Jack Lord as Steve McGarret managed the clever trick of being simultaneously wooden and hammy and everyone else in the show just revolved around him in a faintly awestruck way.  Still, its extensive use of location filming, at a time when this was still unusual, gave such a major boost to Hawaii's tourism that no sooner had Hawaii 5-O finished than the state ensured that Magnum P.I. carried on this promotional role.

Now the series has been re-made with a new cast but many of the same characters.  The original show was unusal for the time in having major ethnic characters but these days, of course, it is necessasry to ensure there is a woman in the cast too.  Sensibly the producers have hired the altogether splendid Grace Park from another old show re-make, Battlestar Galactica.

Lots of pictures of Ms Park filming on the beach have emerged although we have to say that maybe she should indulge in a few more meals featuring that Hawaiian food staple, Spam, as she looks like one good Kona wind would blow her away like a loose palm frond.

The new cast of Hawaii 5-O

The producers have retained the original theme music and have put together a nicely updated title sequence which makes appropriate references to the original including a big wave.

Agent Triple P was about two hours from getting on a plane to Hawaii from Los Angeles once but sadly the trip failed to materialise.  We shall have to content ourselves with picking up the new (rather well received) series or, perhaps, maybe the original which, with its sixties cars, architecture and fashions would be a far groovier experience.

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Calendar Girl August 2011: Kelly Brook

Our calendar girl for August is the luscious Kelly Brook of whom we have many, many pictures on this blog so don't feel the need to post any more.  Oh alright then, just a few.

So here are just a few more pictures from her recent trip to Italy.  We'd hesitate to call these paparazzi photographs as that implies that they are being taken against the will of the subject and we suspect that is certainly not the case here!

That said, few women take as good a reportage candid as Kelly.  Maybe she just always assumes there will be a photographer lurking nearby and dresses accordingly.

As we have noted before she does look splendidly ripe at present and we definitely prefer her carrying a bit more weight as it seems to accrue to all the right places.

This is a telling shot as Kelly strides ahead of her friends in an attempt to make sure that she is the only one in focus.  Nice retro-looking swimsuit.  Triumphant again, Kelly!

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Yachty Totty at Cowes Week

Triple P has had a request for more yachty totty (or is it yachtie tottie?) so here are some pictures we took at Cowes.  We are just back from Cowes Week, the world's biggest yachting regatta, where the scenery was enlived by the usual influx of Sloane Rangers down to race or, more likely, just watch and shop whilst Giles, Dominic, Jonty, Hugo etc. raced.

Equally inevitably, busloads of local "talent" (we use the term loosely and loose is as good a description as any) arrive at the Red Jet terminal on the number 1 bus from Newport every night in ridiculously high heels and short skirts looking for likely looking men who can buy them drinks.  They are usually ludicrously over made up in the hope that people won't recognise the fact that ther are mostly under age.

The local girls, we are sorry to report, may have good figures (some of them really do) and nice brown legs (the Isle of Wight has a better sunshine record than most of the rest of Britain) but can be less attractive than their "overner" sisters. 

Now there are some pretty girls from the island; Triple P worked with one many years ago who was quite gorgeous, but, on the whole, they largely fall down in the face department.  This is because there is a recognisable Isle of Wight profile, where the slope of the forehead continues straight into the nose, giving them the same profile as a Norman helmet.  There is, we are afraid, something vaguely Neanderthal about it. 

It may well be because they are more inbred; given the surprising lack of adventurous spirit as regards travelling off the island to the mainland (or the North Island as they refer to it). Even travelling from, say, Bembridge in the east to Yarmouth in the west (about twenty miles) is viewed as something akin to HM Stanley's expedition down the Congo.

Anyway, some of these young ladies may be locals but we suspect that most of them are not.  The local girls tended to appear at twilight (they are very much crepescular creatures) when the light was too poor for photography.

This specimen demonstrates the "just off the Red Jet" (fast catamaran from Southampton) look, with no effort made to dress like a yachty as yet.

Soon, no doubt, she will look like this.

Shorts were very much the thing this year (not surprisingly for a sailing event) but the new development was the ubiquity of denim shorts which, unusually, were adopted by the local "shazzers" as well as the yachties.  Shazzers, for our overseas readers, is a derogatory term in the UK derived from the name Sharon as Sloanes believe that most lower class girls are called either Sharon or Tracy.

One ridiculous aspect of some of the denim shorts on display was that they were obviously cut-off jeans and, therefore, had the pocket linings hanging down below the hem of the shorts.  This, we feel, looks just ludicrous!

Denims are not really the thing for Cowes Week (they don't work with salt water very well) but we thought this young lady (below) carried off her skinny jeans very effectively.  Of course nicely toned thighs work wonders.

The more authentic sailing look is better exemplified by these two.  The "blonde" hair, as can be seen by looking at most of the other examples in this post is, of course,  de rigeur.

Finally, it was pretty windy this year which is excellent for sailing (although we admit to sitting out the 48 knot winds on one of the days in the second half of the week in favour of cooking a coq au vin) but not so good for encouraging girls to strip off and sunbathe.

Away from Cowes, in a rather more sheltered spot down the coast, we did come across these two fine examples decorating a motor boat.  Motor boat girls are different in many ways from their wind propelled cousins and we may examine them another day if, as seems likely, we return for the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes powerboat race.

A fine way to end...

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London Surrey Cycle Classic brings out the moaning motorists

Crowds by Triple P's road watch the race

The road where Agent Triple P's lives is just off the route of next year's Olympic cyling road race and yesterday they ran a full test race on the circuit.  There were 140 international cyclists including some top professionals who had recently been racing in what turned out to be the best Tour de France for over twenty years.  We had to make a few adjustments to our planned day as regards moving the car to inside the loop of closed roads and it did mean we had to walk a couple of miles to do so but it was worth it to see such a big event racing through what has just been voted the WAG's favourite village.

These signs have been up for a month at least

Today, however the bike-hating newspapers are full of moaning motorists who couldn't get where they wanted to.  One man complained it took him two hours to do a two mile drive.  IDIOT!  It took me exactly 28 minutes to cover the two miles to and from where we had left the car on foot.  Walk, you lazy moron! These people have got so car-centric they go into panic mode if their vehicles are denied them for a few hours.  There were signs up everywhere for weeks beforehand and whilst it is conceivable that people coming into the area from far away might have been surprised it was mainly locals who claimed they knew nothing about it.  This is just another manifestation of some a vocal  anti-Olympics stance over here, wound up by the press.  Triple P thinks it is great that the Olympics are coming to London for the first time in over fifty years and people who moan about their precious transport plans being altered slightly should be a bit less self-centred.  Britain, more than ever at present, need to be positive not negative.

The breakaway goes past tennis player Andy Murray's favourite pub in "Britain's answer to Beverly Hills" (TM)

There was no TV coverage of the race, annoyingly, but we were surprised to see the field so broken up after just two laps of Box Hill.  With nine laps in next years race it might conceivably generate a breakaway that got further ahead than yesterday's.  There had been at least one crash as evidenced by the ragged state of some of the stragglers off the back of the field yesterday.  It all ended well for our Olympic hopeful Mark Cavendish who managed a sprint win on The Mall even though his lead-out train were all competing for other countries and were, therfore, working against him not with him.  Can't wait for next year's real thing!

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Big Breakfast of the Week 12: Eegon's of Cowes

Triple P's breakfast of choice at Eegons: the All Day Breakfast for £5.50

Very much a feature of Cowes Week for many is a pre-race breakfast at Eegon's Cafe in Cowes High Street.  This is a classic English cafe (pronounced "caff" in this instance) and you are just as likely to be sharing it with the hard working chaps from the Isle of Wight street cleansing department (they start work at 2.00am quite often during Cowes Week) or lifeboatmen (especially as the new RNLI station will be virtually next door) as yachties.

Triple P usually takes the £5.50 All Day Breakfast which consists of two eggs, two rashers of bacon, two sausages, fried bread, baked beans or tomatoes and toast.  There is also (for girls, presumably) a half breakfast for £4.50 which only has one sausage, one rasher of bacon and one egg.

The new Regatta Platta

The range of cooked breakfasts is simply marvellous although woe betide you if you try to ask for any changes to the menu.  Asking for scrambled, rather than fried eggs, for example will be met with a polite refusal.  A new offering this year is the Regatta Platta: a sausage, a rasher of excellent bacon, fried bread, toast, mushrooms, baked beans (or tomatoes) and saute potatoes plus a drink all for £5.

Proprietor Rod Ainge is a Cowes fixture, heavily involved with the commercial life of the town so you are just as likely to eavesdrop on unofficial meetings between council officials and representatives of the local retailers as discussions about sailing.

Breakfast Bonanza

The biggest challenge used to be the enormous Breakfast Bonanza, a plateful so vast you actually got a certificate if you finished it (Triple P has one, of course).  Two eggs, two sausages, two rashers of bacon, mushrooms beans or tomatoes, hash browns, black pudding, fried bread and toast for £7.50.  This year the new Steakfast looks even more of a challenge!  We haven't tried the latter yet.

This year thay have also introduced a loyalty card where, if you amass ten stanps you get a £5 voucher.  this, of course, encourages you to visit even more than you should.

Breakfast at Eeegons is not perfect, the sausages (compared with the bacon and eggs, say) are low quality and the sauces are generic catering sachets rather than HP or Heinz but even so for the sheer choice and value it gets 9/10

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