#20: Clearing the decks
a scattergun list of alternative topics
The out-of-office message is on. The claw clip is out. I have done my final commute of 2024, and am two weeks away from three uninterrupted years working full time somewhere (wild, for me). And, similar to the ways in which one might try to clear their to-do list or inbox before clocking off for the year, this evening I’m going to list some of the things I could’ve devoted more time to in a different Critmas for the same year.
Without further ado:
How watching a genuinely funny Waiting for Godot is a bit like listening to audio at 1.2x speed: it is definitely easier to get through but have I potentially missed something with it too? The line I found most profound aged 17 on a school trip watching the tops of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s matching bowler hats and have oft quoted since — ‘What shall we do, now that we are happy?’ — nearly past me by this time. I would not have remembered it, I don’t think, but I did appreciate that the costume and physicality suited Msmati and Whishaw, as well as making Pozzo and Lucky feel much more explicitly Aggrandising England and the Subjugated Irish (among other things). This year has been characterised by a Ubiquitous Theory of Clown: I am increasingly aware of how proximate I am to clowning at all times. Pingu? That’s clown. Your friend’s housemate? Double check they haven’t dabbled with Gaulier. The results may surprise you.
It is terrible to pit women in fields (any fields) against each other, and it’s boring to make overly London-centric content but: the virgin Rosie Kellett vs the chad Sophie Wyburd tells us about how South-East London is winning and Hackney is a Ponzi scheme.
How Challengers did not sustain the year, and how it would’ve been far more dominant in my top 100 played tracks of the year had Brat not come out too. It does go off though, particularly all those defiantly nonchalant ‘Yeahs’. Is it too soon for us to talk about how one of the trio was notably weaker than the other two actors though? Also it is amazing that the scriptwriting couple behind Past Lives and Challengers both had films out within a year of each other about contemporary love triangles. I love this for all of us.
The absolute Raygun of it all. The sadness that the upcoming LA Olympics will not have a breaking contest as part of the games, when it’s arguably one of the more appropriate cities in the world to host a competition of that kind. The fact that the Australian Olympian’s outlandish performance overshadowed the absolute European hip=hop cringe of a white Lithuanian teenager going by the name ‘Nicka’ got silver while wearing a durag. In her defence, her first name is Dominika and I have nothing against her. Meanwhile, Rachael Gunn is still generating headlines as recently this week: her legal team has stalled a proposed Raygun musical, and apparently her kangaroo move is intellectual property she is seeking to trademark.
I saw pitifully little of the Paris Olympics, which is the downside to having not had a TV for ambient viewing purposes, and indeed missed much of the opening ceremony, but I do think the French were little babies for including worldwide talent to bolster their celeb contingent. No offence to Rafa Nadal or Serena Williams but I thought this was a nation of gatekeepers!
May all Olympics to come have such a long concerns and controversies page on wikipedia.Rivals. No harm to it, I just don’t have much to say. I hope Aidan Turner turns some more local heads in Rutshire for series 2, though.
Tajin as 2024’s trend foodstuff, beating hot honey.
How quickly I seem to have kicked my Twitter habit, which is interesting to me as up until the very moment I decided to cba, I was struggling on for dear life there. I will, however, have to rearrange some of my alternative opinion finding sources, which is a shame. That website brought me friends, foes, flatmates, freelance gigs, readers, writers, mascara recommendations, #CookJan and so much more. I know it’s very du jour to say it’s been toxic for ages, and maybe it has been, but each time I go on Bluesky (not that often), I am reminded at how much less funny the QI/Only Connect lot are versus how the more raucous bits of Black/Gay/Scottish/Dopamine Deprived Twitter so often were. Remember when that person joked they had asked their landlord to raise their rent so they would up their hustle? Anyway.
‘Texting the dough man for dough’: the absolute madness of procuring a humble pizza pie at a pub by the river in West London that I heard about at a birthday party and am still struggling to understand. Also: those Topjaw interviews.
How holding a lav mic probably makes the sound worse because the plosives (P and B sounds) can get more explosive. And why do I care, but also why do content creators do this now to demonstrate they take their craft and business seriously?
How the book More and the articles in the New York Times about polycules who use agile scrum project management methods to make their multi-lover arrangement practical were tools by the East Coast Media Establishment to make themselves seem normie in a critical election year. Molly Roden Winter, author of the memoir More which chronicles her marriage becoming and staying open, is not the ambassador for the project I would have picked. Who is calling other women ‘plump’ in their writing if not to sound like a 90s fashion desk wannabe who derives too much of their power from wearing the same size jeans they did when they were 24? But of course, open relationships don’t actually need ambassadors.
How I did keep thinking maybe Kamala Harris should’ve done Joe Rogan if she was going to do Call Her Daddy and why Keir Starmer couldn’t have gone on The Receipts in an election year, but Ed Miliband would’ve matched Louis Theroux’s energy. But I don’t think we need to bemoan podcaster dominance — we know it sucks but also…it’s boring!
There’s actually much to unpack about Baby Reindeer and I am sort of well-placed to discuss it as someone who saw the stage show at the Bush Theatre pre-pandemic and also had a horrible lucid dream after watching the series, but I don’t really want to talk about it. The comedy mentor guy was really well acted, though.
And that feels like enough to be getting on with! I have an episode of You Are Good where they covered The Holiday to finish up and want to have a good night’s sleep ahead of my big pre-Christmas clean this weekend. It’s going to be pretty epic because I keep referring to the place as ‘my depression hovel’ and I have guest in less than a week’s time. The hoover has been charged in anticipation.