The Gentleman Blog turns two… and a bit

Hello there,
As you may well have noticed, we here at The Gentleman Blog have had a brief, yet lengthy, hiatus. This has been due to our expedition to the South Pole, where we were searching for the remainder of Ernest Shackleton’s lost scotch collection.

Scotch of the Antarctic.

After recovering an entire case of Shackleton’s scotch, which we found next to a Norwegian flag, we returned home. The journey took longer than expected, though, as we were simultaneously enjoying our bounty while navigating. You, dear reader, will be pleased to know that an entire half-bottle remains from the case, but we do not forecast it to survive the writing of this post.

Humphrey Bogart at the helm.

As such, we were at sea during The Gentleman Blog’s second birthday.  This date did not pass unnoticed by us, and we enjoyed a glass of scotch in celebration. But the cabin of our barque - HMS Humidor – is no place to write a Gentleman Blog post. And anyway, we used all our typewriter ribbon detailing the tasting notes of our newly acquired liquor, of which there is none left (as of the end of this sentence).

Cary Grant serves breakfast on the HMS Humidor.

Due to our inhibited navigational skills (partly because of our insistence on using 15th century navigational equipment) we happened to come across a previously uncharted isle. We spent the next few weeks trying to learn the indigenous language and customs. We were treated as kings, and treated our hosts as kings. It was quite confusing.

Even Ensign Yul Brynner was revered as some sort of Egyptian tzar after winning this staring competition.

We left many weeks later. After alerting Rand McNally to our discovery we were notified this isle was, in fact, the continent of South America – home to nigh on 400 million inhabitants.

First Mate Connery educates the natives.

On the final leg of our voyage home, however, we were confronted with another obstacle. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean we encountered the thing of gentlemen’s nightmares – an empty liquor cabinet.

Captain Shatner goes into shock and tries to order 10 scotches from an invisible barman.

After sending a distress SMS (Send More Scotch) signal, our minds were taken off the crisis by a Kraken attack. Unlike the previous catastrophe, for this we had a contingency plan – Kirt Douglas. Kirt Douglas can fight Kraken in his sleep.

Kirt Douglas sleep-walking.

Following all this commotion we made for home as quickly as is gentlemanly possible. Specifically, 110 chains per Scottish minute.

Midshipmen Sinatra, Kelly and Munshin were at sea so long they mistook these women for bottles of scotch.

So there you have it and until next time,

G.O. Brixley and H.L. Griffith

The astronautical gentleman

Good day,

If the gentleman hates anything more than Nazis, it’s Communists. In fact, the only thing gentlemen hate more than Communists is Nazis. And the only thing gentlemen hate more than Nazis is Matthew McConaughey. In fact, there is good evidence that Matthew McConaughey is both a Nazi and a Communist. Typical.

You can tell he's a Nazi because of his bleached hair, and you can tell he's also a Communist by his belief in the sociopolitical Marxist idealogy.

Many great gentlemen have spent their lives fighting both Nazis and Communists. Think of Winston Churchill, JFK and Sean Connery. A major victory for the gentlemen over Communism was achieved in winning the ‘space race’. The space race was a race to space, also known as the Moon. JFK set the race in motion on May 25, 1960 when he said he was going to fly himself the Moon in a ship he had fashioned out of old penny loafers. Upon advice, he decided it would be better to send someone more qualified and less sexually-active than himself and in a shuttle built by experts.

JFK on the set of the Twilight Zone to do some research on building a better rocket.

His intention to send a gentleman into space spawned a whole new class of gentleman: the space-going gentleman. Certainly the grandest of them all is Alan Shepard, who was the first man to golf on the moon.

Alan Shepard, because he was so good at golf and due to the Moon's weaker gravitational field, is about to circumnavigate the moon with this drive and get it in the hole marked by the flag behind him.

Not far behind Alan Shepard is Neil Armstrong, whose pioneering spirit and immense bravery are only slightly behind ‘playing golf wherever and whenever you can’ on the gentleman’s hierarchy of values.

Neil Armstrong in a suit to protect him from Communists. Communists hate nothing more than 'bourgeoisie' (i.e. non-beige) clothing.

There have been 12 men who have walked on the moon, but also many whose Communist-fighting efforts never quite landed them there. Jim Lovell, Michael Collins and Tom Hanks are just a few of those who got close but never made it. Some people will tell you Apollo 13 was just a film directed by Ron Howard. We call those people crazy conspiracy theorists.

Jim Lovell bought the Zapruder camera to film the Moon as a tribute to JFK. Unfortunately he never made it, so he just kept a video blog instead.

Even an Australian gentleman has made it into space to duel Communists. That man is Andy Thomas. He was the first to show that a gentleman can smoke a cigar in a vacuum.

Andy Thomas, just before the four-month intensive course on how to make your head not explode in space by putting your helmet on.

There were also many other gentlemen involved in putting a gentleman on the Moon and busting Communists in the process. Again, Australian gentlemen played a major role at the Parkes Observatory.

Some learned gentleman simultaneously intercept Communist intelligence and guide Apollo 11 to the Moon using state-of-the-art equipment.

There are two important messages to get from this. They are that Communists should be beaten at all races (and contests in general) they partake in, and also that some of the finest gentlemen are those who have taken gentlemanly activities such as golfing, smoking and gathering Moon rocks to other worlds.

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie begged to go the moon because they wanted to play among the stars. They also wanted to see what Spring was like on Venus and Mars. Unfortunately, they were grossly underqualified and hence did not go.

Until next time,

H.L. Griffith

The gentleman in the Subcontinent.

Hello there,

The gentleman may lounge about all day sipping pims and playing lawn tennis but every now and again the gentleman’s natural yearning for adventure gets the better of him and he sets off to satiate his desires.  Therefore if you are in such a state may I suggest you set a course for the subcontinent.

Just look how much the fun Sean Connery is having in the subcontinent. Here he is getting a bespoke suit.

Many great gentlemen have explored the subcontinent from Harrison Ford to Cary Grant and every gentleman in between.  There are many reasons for this including but not limited to the food, the culture, freeing slave children from a murderous cult and being able to wear a pith helmet wherever you go.

Cary Grant and Gunga Din were always getting up to mischief of some kind in India.

The largest country on the subcontinent is India, home of musical films and site of the original space landing.  The other countries include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.  We here at The Gentleman recommend you take eleven of your most gentlemanly friends along with you and challenge any locals you can find to a cricket match.

Teatime during a match in which Griffiths and I narrowly defeated a local Indian team. We didn't gloat though, a gentleman is always a good sport.

If you are entering in your Autumn years and can no longer play a five day test then why not try to immerse yourself in the culture and don some local clothes instead of your regulation British military uniform.

Here we see Sir Alec Guinness (middle) really get in to the spirit of the subcontinent (although he looks bored whilst chaperoning this date)

However you must have your wits about you in a place like the subcontinent.  The main thing to watch out for is the Thuggee religious cult.  Not only were they the main antagonists of Harrison Ford during his sojourn to India, they also tried to kill Cary Grant and Gunga Din.  Now that’s just not cricket.

The gentlemanly Rudyard Kipling was born in India. He was soon thereafter lost in the jungle and raised by animals. This can all be read in his autobiography "The Jungle Book"

But don’t let crazy religious cults deter you (due to the fact they were vanquished by Ford with the help of the Indian and British armed forces).  Instead just put on a nice white tuxedo and live and let live.

Roger Moore does a traditional "Indian sabre dance" with this fellow enthusiast to an adoring crowd.

If you ever get home sick there is one proven way to ease your nerves and that is with a cup of tea.  That or just have another Scotch.

The best way to meet people in India is to free them from servitude. Although this technique does work around the world.

So there you have it.

G.O. Brixley

The Gentleman in literature

Hello there,

A great source of a gentleman’s knowledge about gentlemanly activities, traits, habits and dress come from some quintessential gentlemen who never existed. These are gentlemen who can be found sitting in your library night after night (I mean this metaphorically, not literally – like the time I had to get a restraining order on Gregory Peck for persistent breaking and entering). Here, Brixley and Griffith will introduce you to some of their favourite gentlemen from the literature.

Phileas Fogg

The protagonist of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, Phileas Fogg spent most of his days playing whist at the Reform Club. Upon a wager (from which he would not back down), he used all sorts of gentlemanly travel to circumnavigate the globe.

A somewhat grainy photograph of Phileas Fogg. Shortly after this was taken, Fogg angrily returned his new top-hat because it had been manufactured upside-down.

He also made sure to travel through some of the gentleman’s favourite destinations, including Yokohama, Bombay, Suez and London (where he lives). Not only that, but he wins the bet, marries an Indian girl that he meets on his travels, and punches the snide detective, Fix.

Phileas Fogg embarks upon one of the most gentlemanly (and comfortable) forms of transport known to gentleman - the elephant.

Jay Gatsby

The protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. In many ways, the only man a gentleman needs know about is Jay Gatsby. He throws lavish parties and has a large library. For what more could you ask? Well, in fact, Gatsby has much more. He is a bootlegger (the liquor kind), a war hero and built his fortune from the ground up (via the noblest of pursuits, bootlegging).

Jay Gatsby is feeling a little hungry after wandering about his massive estate all morning.

The story, though, ends when Gatsby is wrongly killed by a man who believes (incorrectly) Gatsby killed his wife. This is the fault of the perfect gentleman impostor – Tom Buchanan. Buchanan embodies all the traits that a gentleman should not have. I shan’t go into them here, because the quicker we move on from him, the better.

Gatsby, after eating a hearty lunch, is ready to spend his afternoon posing in front of his state of the art automobile.

Sherlock Holmes (and, to a lesser extent, Thomas Watson)

The smartest man that ever lived (after his brother Mycroft Holmes). He enjoyed opium, playing the violin and withholding the details of a crime until the very end of the story.

Watson was always envious of Sherlock's mind. Watson had a much greater gift, though. His mustache.

Sherlock Holmes invented the pipe, the magnifying glass and the deerstalker hat (which he used when he stalked or investigated suspects or deers) all in his abode at 221B Baker Street, London.

Holmes and Watson interrogate a chair over a jewellery theft. Although his methods were unorthodox Holmes' success rate speaks for itself, much like this chair.

Sherlock Holmes’ greatest nemesis was Professor James Moriarty, a villainous rapscallion whose brilliant mind rivalled Holmes’ (generally when fighting next to waterfalls).  Although they both fells to their deaths, Holmes used his power of ‘Literary Protagonist’ to stay alive and continued his adventures until retiring to become a bee keeper.

Holmes and Moriarty tussle next to the Reichenbach falls. Since they were both brains not braun the fight was a tie and they both fell to a watery grave.

With his keen sense of deduction Holmes has become a literary gentleman of epic proportions.  His powers of deduction were so good he could correctly split a bill and work out how much to tip a waiter after a short brunch.

Holmes splits the bill and works out an adequate tip.

There are, of course, many more gentleman to find in your very own library. We suggest you spend most of your time between sips of scotch and puffs of your cigar reading your gentlemanly literature and becoming well acquainted with the finest gentlemen there ever were.

Mr Darcy goes to a Christmas fancy dress party dressed as an anti-gentleman.

So there you have it and until next time,
G.O. Brixley and H.L. Griffith

The gentleman in Cuba

Hello there,

Here continues a newly introduced segment at The Gentleman where we open our door of travel experience a crack for you to peek inside. Please read forth for a gentleman’s travel guide to Cuba.

The Cienfuegos Yacht Club - the perfect spot for smoking some of Cuba's finest tobacco. My spanish is not exceptional, but I believe 'yacht' is spanish for 'cigar'.

We all know of Cuba for it’s four main exports: cigars, rum, sugar and highly trained doctors (seriously). The gentleman makes use of all four of these things. He smokes Cuba’s finest cigars, he uses rum and sugar in his mojito and he visits the doctor if/when his drinking and smoking eventually catches up with him (but rest assured, this rarely happens. And I should know; I spoke to a doctor once).

Ernest Hemingway takes the Olympic torch for a stroll along one of Cuba's fine beaches.

Many notable gentleman have enjoyed Cuba as a gentleman’s refuge, such as Ernest Hemingway and Frank Sinatra. There’s something about the Caribbean air,  cheap rum and the fact that you can’t walk down the street without being offered a cigar that draws gentleman from far and wide to the island.

Frank Sinatra gets snapped unawares as he's about to board a light aircraft to Cuba. The picture was later used for his album Come Fly With Me.

I suggest you book your next holiday to Cuba. Pack your summer clothes (including plenty of polos) and a cigar cutter and you should be set to enjoy paradise – the gentleman’s way.

A typical bar in Cuba distributes cigars and rum and little else. Also be prepared for live music. This means bring your dancing brogues.

In order to avoid being ridiculed by the locals, cigars must be purchased in boxes of 25. This is the smallest quanta possible. Request a single cigar and you will be laughed off the island (literally – it’s not pleasant). This means if you wish to sample a few different cigars, you can quickly amass hundreds. When traveling home, customs restrictions are often very stringent with tobacco, so you will need to make sure you smoke all of them while in Cuba.

But you were probably going to do that anyway, because you’re a gentleman.

This man organises his cigars in preparation to smuggle them through customs. Little does he know that the true gentleman's solution to this problem is to smoke them all. I reckon this at less than 3 days worth of cigars if Brixley and myself were released upon them.

Another thing to prepare yourself for in Cuba is that essentially nothing has been updated since the 1960s. This means that all the cars are old, the technology is old and the people are old. This could be attributed to the communist government seceding from primarily U.S.-run technological advancement, or it could be attributed to the Cuban people enjoying living as if in a better era, the hey-day of the gentleman.

A state-of-the-art cuban automobile. This is actually central Havana. Note how literally everywhere in Cuba is a beach lined with palms.

So with that, I strongly suggest you take a trip to Cuba. It will amplify your gentlemanliness like no other country.

Until next time,

HL Griffith

The Gentleman’s 100th article

Hello there,

Today is a momentous day in the history of The Gentleman Blog. No it’s not Talk Like William Shatner Day or some such; it is in fact the 100th anniversary of the birth of The Gentleman Blog (if you measure time in posts by The Gentleman Blog. I know we do. Obviously, in our gentleman units, 1 The Gentleman Blog post = 1 gentleman’s year). So to commemorate our Mahogany jubilee (a milestone only ever reached by The Gentleman), both Griffith and Brixley will be collaborating to take you through a typical day in the life here at The Gentleman.

Morning ablution

A gentleman gets up at precisely 7:24am every morning. This is because 7:24am is the exact time that the morning broadsheet is delivered. After a quick perusal of global affairs, a gentleman will prepare himself for the day to come.

After our separate morning routines (Brixley at Castle Brixley and Griffith at Griffith Manor), we meet at Sean Connery’s residence. Sean is, as always, running behind schedule (due to the immense amount of body hair he must trim and his claim that he works on ‘Scottish time’).

Sean Connery must let his chest hair dry before donning a starched white shirt. Notice his "half nelson" shaving technique.

The mid-morning round of golf

Following breakfast (which consisted of three fingers of Islay Malt and the best part of a smoked kipper), Sean inevitably suggests a round of golf. We were hesitant at first because he’d had a temper the past few days, but relented. Today was like any other, but we’ve learned to laugh.

Sean takes this triple bogey in his stride.

Morning Tea

After our tranquil round of golf we receive an invitation for morning tea at William Shatner’s beachfront acting academy.  We take Brixley’s old Ford Model-T while Griffith gives directions and Sean straightens out his sand wedge in the back seat (see above).

After morning tea Shanter performs his avante garde take on Hamlet. It goes for 37 seconds.

Lunch with Bogart.

From here we leave Shatner and Connery to their devices whilst we touch base with our old friend Humphrey Bogart.  He hasn’t been feeling well recently and so Brixley and Griffith take time out of their busy schedule to check up on him.  He served us up some fricasseed wild boar followed by wild boar pudding.

Bogart has so much time on his hands he can't decide which pastime to win more trophies in; boar hunting, tennis, golf, miniature yachting, archery, fishing, polo, smoking a pipe whilst gazing at self portraits or boar hunting.

We told him to take his dog for a walk as it seemed rather restless.

Digestifs by the pool

From Bogart’s we rendezvous with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe at the local pool to relax and enjoy a selection of single malt scotch followed by some single malt scotch.

Grant can't believe how pale Monroe is. Although due to Cary Grant's jet-setting he has spent 237 hours in direct sunlight during the last two days.

Afternoon tea

From the pool we take the street car to 10 Downing Street London where we have been invited by Winston Churchill for some afternoon tea.  Afternoon tea for Churchill consists of two Churchill sized cigars and an never-ending glass of scotch.  This is precisely what the doctor ordered after our swim (in fact Churchill’s personal chef is a doctor and therefore this statement is to be taken literally).

During our mid-afternoon stroll, Churchill receives an important call on his iPhone from F.D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt believed Churchill to have cheated at Words with Friends)

Dinner

We bid Churchill adieu and took the short steam-engine ride to New York where JFK and we were honourary speakers at a roast for Jimmy Stewart.

Here we see JFK telling a particularly risque tale about Stewart during the filming of Rear Window. Little did JFK know that Stewart would be roasting him not 3 months later. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones (this is particularly applicable to JFK since his house was indeed made entirely of glass).

After Dinner

From New York we ferried to Las Vegas to catch a midnight Sinatra show at the Sands.  Afterward throwing some craps with Sinatra we made a brief stop (via underground mafia tunnel) to his house for a nightcap.

Sinatra not only knew how to throw craps, he could also scoop up the four of diamonds with a long shovel whilst interrupting this poker tournament.

After tucking Sinatra into bed Brixley and Griffith make their way via flying machine back to their respective abodes for some well earned rest, ready for another day of cross-continental engagements with dead celebrities.

So there you have it, until next time.

G.O. Brixley and H.L. Griffith

The gentleman in Africa

Hello there,

We kick off a new segment today that will become a reoccurring theme here at The Gentleman in the same style as our gentlemanly biographies.  Since gentlemen are men of the world it is apt that we should explore different parts of the world in gentlemanly depth (a standardised measurement of 4.34 furlongs)

Africa. There's more than one way to skin a crocodile. There's two. Here we see two gentlemen being taught both ways by some helpful natives.

Africa was invented by Sir David Attenborough many years ago and would go on to stay invented for many years to come.

Here Attenborough is photographed with one of his other inventions: South American wildlife.

Although Africa was invented by Attenborough it was explored much before his time in what we call Africa’s “developmental” stage, where it hadn’t fully been mapped or hosted a tea party.  Many gentlemen explored Africa to better understand and kill it’s wildlife.

Henry Morton Stanley is noted for playing the worlds most vast game of hide and seek in Africa with Dr. David Livingston. He won. Here he is photographed with his gun caddy. He has selected a number 4 gun, a good choice.

But Africa wasn’t just a hunting ground for gentleman, it has also been the inspiration for many stories and songs.  The mystique that was Africa (before Attenborough) was the stuff of legend and its animals the stuff of carpets and buckshot.

Here an African explorer/hunter pens the lyrics to the song Africa by Toto.

The inhabitants of Africa are rich and rare in many cases.  Not only was Africa inhabited by hunting game, it was also inhabited by many people whose unique cultures’ would forever influence the gentleman’s love of the world.

Some African inhabitants: Tarzan and family pose for a traditional family portrait on a tree. Many people believe we evolved from monkey's but in actual fact, monkeys came from Tarzan.

On top of all these wondrous features of Africa, there is also the land itself.  Made up of forests, deserts, mountains, rivers, jungles and coastline, Africa contains many of the attributes that can be found around the world on land-masses.

Such was the beauty of Africa, Robert Redford used to court women by washing their hair in pristine river deltas. A sure fire way to a women's heart and healthy scalp.

With all the wonders that Africa has to offer it’s no wonder that Sir David Attenborough chose to devote so much time documenting it’s attributes.

Here we see the state-of-the-art technology used in documenting Africa. They use four cameras in unison so they can record in 4D.

Since Africa is such a veritable (and sometimes literal) gold mine of wonders a gentleman should take time out to visit, view and perhaps shoot what it has to offer.

Sir David Attenborough uses some technology to invent Africa. Thanks to him the world is a more diverse place.

So there you have it.

G.O. Brixley