Michael Jackson, the international King of Pop, has died. He was 50.
The musician suffered a cardiac arrest Thursday afternoon and was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital where he died, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Paramedics arrived at Jackson’s Sunset Boulevard home after receiving a 911 call. Despite CPR being administered during the short ambulance ride, he arrived at the UCLA Medical Center in a coma.
Updated at 3:15 p.m. Pacific time: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Los Angeles Times.
UPDATED

OK! Magazine and TMZ.com report Michael Jackson has died. The LA Times is reporting that he is in a coma.

Come back to Tennessean.com for more confirmation as it happens.

REPORTED EARLIER

Pop star Michael Jackson was rushed to a hospital this afternoon by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper is reporting that paramedics responded to a call at Jackson’s home around 12:26 p.m. pacific time, and that he was not breathing when they arrived.

The parademics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told The Times.

So, a few of the BOAD have decided to take up Golf.
Not a bad thing really, a bit of social interaction and also a little bit of exercise.
Not that the BOAD don’t get enough exercise each week dragging our arses round the fine City of Lancaster several times each week.
But seeing as we are starting to wear a groove in the streets from walking our usual routes around the pubs we decided to branch out and take the golfing world by storm.
Myself and Munka got equipped with a set of clubs each and also roped LJ into coming along a bit more often than he usually does.
So far we’ve been heading to the driving range a couple of times a week to knock feck out of a few hundred balls each time. I’m pleased to say that we’re all picking it up quite quickly.
A couple of the BOAD Golf Pro’s? Hammer and Big A have also joined us for a session too. Don’t worry lads, we’ll soon be upto and past your standards and we’ll all be soon playing for the BOAD Masters Trophy
There’s even rumblings of a foreign golfing holiday in the future but we’ll have to wait and see about that one.
After Thursdays Session, I hadn’t realised that golf could actually make you ache so much. The morning after, Bits of me i forgot i had, had started to seize up. Saying that, its not going to stop us doing it anymore.
As i type this, its Saturday lunchtime (Following a large FNA session last night) and we already have half a plan to get down to the range again today before tonights drinking activites.
Not sure if thats dedication or addiction?

So, as the last blog said, it was quite a busy weekend for the BOAD, what with multiple birthdays and various other events etc.
To be honest, last weekend only finished on Wednesday night, and as any aquaintance of the BOAD knows, the BOAD weekend starts on a Thursday night, so not much chance of a break before it all starts again!
G.P.B.F.N.A (Granpa’s birthday friday night amnesia) was as to be expected…..
The night got off to an early start and also, we had a surprise guest appearance from young Topher (sporting a purple rather than bright green hair colour this time). As a few of us had been out on the Thursday night for a bit of golf and a few beers, we opted for the easy start to the night. And by that i mean we allowed ourselves to have 1 pint of beer before we started on the spirits. So 1 pint of Red Stripe in the friary later and we were off on the “BOAD Northern route”.
The Northern Route can test the best of the BOAD at most times as the first 2 bars are Mint and Bar Eleven.
And as BOAD Regulation 23:10 states….. When ordering a cocktail, only the strongest mixture they can produce may be consumed.
In the case of Mint, this happens to be a Long Island Ice Tea – this may sound a bit of a pussy drink but at £5.50 each they do like to put that extra kick in, especially when serving the BOAD.
It has even got to the point that when we walk into Mint, they dont even ask us what we would like to drink, they simply say, “So, How many do you want tonight lads?” (I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing?)
We polish the drinks off quite quickly and then move onto Bar Eleven where we all opt for a laaarrrrrggggeee spirit and mixer. A few more bars and a few more large drinks later and we somehow end up in the penny bank. I normally try and make a concious effort to avoid this drinking establishment as it is usually populated with the older cross section of Lancasters drinkers. Although saying that, it was GP’s 42nd birthday, so at least he would have felt like he fitted in a bit more in there. And whilst we are on the subject of the “older drinkers”, it came as a bit of a surprise to bump into Big A in there. Apparently he needed a drink as he had been in deep discussions with his new fiance about when and where to hold their engagement party. It seems that she wasn’t to keen with his idea of renting the upper floor of the Lounge for an evening…..I can’t imagine why…!!!
Anyway, we all drink up and move onto LA1 and then Bentleys…..more large spirirts, more shots, more and more fecked……
I’m not quite sure where we ended up for late drinks that night, but i would guess it would be our usual haunt of the Lounge as they have recently re-started their Friday Indie night.
One thing i do recall is, myself, the Waa and Number 2 visiting the 24 hours spar shop on the way home and each of us doing our weekly “big shop”. Going shopping after having a few drinks is never a good idea. Everything you see looks so tasty….I guess thats why we each ended up with three carrier bags of food each! Milk loaf, dairylea slices, eggs, grated cheeses, crisps…..the list continues, but you get the idea.
I suppose buying some normal food after a night out still beats a doner kebab hands down.
So, Saturday night rolls around with a few events worth remembering and a few events that are not…..
Saturday was the turn of LJ to celebrate his birthday. So Myself, Lj, Matt and Rich from work make it out.
I’m three days into a mini blow out, which at this point is becoming comparable to a North Korean Nuclear test.
We make our way to the friary to meet Matt and Rich and each order a beer. Needless to say it would be easier and less painful at this point to try and lick my own arsehole than drink the pint of beer in front of me.
We slowly sip away at our drinks but finally give in and decide to dump the beer and go onto vodka and lemonade as it would go down alot easier. Rich and Matt turn up so we head off to Mint to get in a round of usuals. After that, we carry on the northern route and head for Bar Eleven.
Its fair to say that Rich and Matt were up for anything, and so, Myself and Matt ordered a “Vespa”. This wonderful cocktail basically contains 3 shots of gin, 1 shot of vodka, a dash of bitters and a piece of lemon rind.
I think it may have unnerved Matt a little when the barman asked him twice “Are you sure you want one of those?”, followed by a “Jesus, I’ve never actually seen anybody finish one of those”
The last time any of the BOAD tried the Vespa’s, the most we could manage was 2 in one night, and even then they fiercely effected our ability to walk in a straight line.
So a couple of bars later, we end up in Bentleys and decide to introduce Matt and Rich to Wood’s rum. This stuff really is the devils own piss. Above average strength too, weighing in at 57%
All of us are feeling the effects of the night by now so we head off to LA1. Matt is rapidly losing the ability to talk by now and ends up ordering 9 drinks for the 5 of us that are out. It doesn’t turn out to be much of a problem as he wipes half of them out flooding the bar with a mixture of vodka and whiskey etc.
They also order a bottle of champagne to help celebrate Laurence’s birthday. So we take our drinks and find a seat outside so we can drink smoke and talk.
The drinks continue to flow and by now the only way that Matt can communicate is to shuffle his head from side to side (in the style of a bollywood actor) and to laugh in a manic high pitched style (hence his nickname of Gizzmo)
We stay there for a while as none of us want to attempt walking anywhere, in fact we stayed there until the place shut and we were politely asked to leave several times as they wanted to lock up and go home.
So, as LJ has a life time barring from Hustle (along with his current 6 month barring from mood and fibber mcgees) we head for the Lounge for a few late drinks.
We queue at the bar downstairs but as the ratio is 1 bar staff to 20 customers we split up to see if the situation is any better upstairs. Total mis-communication and toilet visits means it takes us a while to all get sorted. I’d checked upstairs and the bar was empty, so i headed downstairs via the toilet to inform the rest of them.
Obviously, as i was in the toilet, they’d gone past and headed upstairs, so i spend a few minutes searching around for them and figure they must be upstairs. Visits to the outside smoke room along with more bar and toilet visits meant that it took a good 20 minutes before we were all sat down together again. Everybody is totally rendered by now. According to later reports, I think i was the first to fall at around 2:30am, followed by LJ a little later.
Later reports also indicated that on the way back to Rich’s house, along with losing the ability to talk, Matt also lost the ability to walk…..twice. I think a fitting description would be “It looked like he’d been taken out by a sniper” i.e. walking along fine then he just dropped to the floor.
All in all it was a good night, even if it was a bit on the heavy/mental side.
The next night we all met up was Wednesday night…..another joint venture as it Was Rich’s birthday, and of course, England we’re playing Andorra in the World Cup Qualifier.
So we meet up and head for LA1, but as we are a little early, it isnt actually open yet, so we nip around the corner to Bentleys for a quick drink. The BOAD friendly barman informs us that he can do us some cocktails at a 2 for 1 price. So we order 3 Long Islands…..Rich also gets a wood’s rum, I think he may have a new addictive problem forming here!?!?
No offence to the barman here, but the cocktail was one of the worst i’ve ever tasted. it just tasted like flat coke with a bit of a kick. Anyway, we chinned those then headed back to LA1, which was now open. We order the drinks and populate the leather couchs right in front of the big screen.
The game starts and we settle in to the match with a few more rounds of Vodka and lemonades. The first half goes well and the barstaff are now bringing drinks straight to our table. As half time is approaching, the bar owner comes across and asks if we would like some food (A courtesy offered to regular reliable customers). Tonight’s dish was a fantastic pasta carbonara served with a hot baguette. It was so good I could have eaten it all night.
As Rich had paid for a bottle of bubbly for LJ’s birthday on the saturday, LJ decided to return the favour and ordered a bottle for half time. So as the second half started, we were all tucking into our pasta, sipping on Champage, watching the boys kick seven bells out of Andorra. Fantastic!
As the match finished, Rich also received a birthday shot…..

It really isn’t right when you have to chew a drink!
After the match we decided to have one last drink in Betleys before calling it a night. So we get a round of Vodka and lemonades in, along with a round of Wood’s. There was no chance that i was drinking that stuff. I’m not sure if Rich noticed that his Vodka and Lemonade changed colour to a subtle brown?
So we finish up and head for a taxi. Once again we make a pit stop at the 24 hour spar shop. I buy a sandwich and some milk and LJ buys 3 carrier bags of food……Jebus only knows what he got?
Over the last few days, I think we accomplished the mission of getting all of the birthday boys suitably leathered.
The morning after Rich’s birthday night out, after an enquiry as to how everybody was feeling, I got an email from LJ saying “Rich is broken, He’s been outside for fresh air 4 times this morning”
Sounds like he still has some training to do if he wants to become a true BOAD…..

So, its that time of the year again when we celebrate 3 members of the BOAD being born/hatched.

This weekend see’s birthdays for TBC (Clive), GP (Chris) and Number 2 (Lee).   Another year older but still not any wiser…..

So we started the partying last night (Thursday).  Not our usual start to an evenings activities…..a few of us headed out to the driving range after work to knock feck out of a couple of bucket of balls…..well i say knock feck out of them……actually hitting the balls seemed to be somewhat of a challenge!

As we were getting down to our last handful of balls we all noticed a hare/rabbit just sitting in the middle of the driving range, so it became a mini challenge to see who could get the ball nearest to it.

I swear, that thing must have had nerves of steel…..either that or it was blind or just plain daft.  A few balls landed within meters of it and it didn’t flinch…..it just seemed to flick its ears up mimicking a set of V’s!

So anyway, unsurprisingly,  the rabbit got away without any injuries and we headed off to get changed/ drop cars off etc ready for the main part of the night out.

We meet up and have a quick beer in BOAD HQ and then head down to the cocktail bars.  We must be very predictable now because when we walk into the majority of bars in town, we’re no longer asked what we want to drink……just how many of our “usuals” we want.

In the 2nd of the cocktail bars (Bar Eleven) there was an open mic event on. All i can say is that i wish there hadn’t been.  It was terrible and most certainly hastened our exit.

So a few more beers and bars into the night, we end up in Bentleys. With it being Karoke night we graciously offer to enlighten everybodies evening by knocking out a song.

This weeks victim was Cigarettes and Alcohol by Oasis……sorry lads……

Anyway, with the singing done and the promise of more free shots if we *didn’t* get back on the microsphones, we decided to move onto the Hustle for a quick drink and dance.

After that, as it was getting late, we decided to forefill a pledge that we had all made earlier.

We, as a group, had decided that whatever happens, at the end of the night we all had to go and order a large doner kebab. And to make sure that it wasn’t instantly binned when out of sight of each other, part of the deal was we had to sit and eat them together. We order them and sit down and tuck in.

Myself and Munka have a good go at eating them but it soon becomes apparent that having a skinful of beer and then eating a doner kebab in bright truth bearing flouresent light isnt easy to stomach. (I’m sure mine winked at me!) So we give up and admit defeat and sling them in the takeaways bin.  TBC (Clive) on the other hand is still happilly gnawing away at his.

He looked a right state. There was doner meat (and I use the word meat very loosely here!) everywhere, on the counter, on his lap, in his hair……everywhere.  And as his kebab was covered in garlic sauce and mayonnaise, his mouth looked like the results of a “Money shot” from a bad porno. A big clowns smile made out of mayo.

Not wanting to be beaten, TBC decides to take his meal home to finish off in the comfort of his own home.

He emailed me a picture  earlier…….”Hadn’t had a keeeeeebab for ages……..I know why now”

I just hope that he binned it after taking this photo……but a part of me knows that he will be tucking into it for his lunch as we speak…..