Year End Charts

Okay, so this might be controversial but I'm pretty sure that there've been no good albums out this year. Been scoruing (that was supposed to be scouring, but somehow scoruing seems to sound more thorough) those year end charts, thinking that there must be something tucked away somewhere; somewhere, I dunno, in the early-twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart. But no.  That's not to say that everything (in the early twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart) was bad. Pale Green Ghosts was good, but not as good as Queen of Denmark. Push the Sky Away was good but not as good as Abattoir Blues.  Basically I've become a grumpy old man and have spent the year moaning that nothing sounds fresh anymore.

Even the best new thing I've heard this year isn't fresh. Turns out that the Horse Head song was doing the rounds as long ago as 2009.  That's nearly half a decade ago. To be fair I wasn't paying all that much attention to Youtube in 2009, as longterm readers (both of you) will know (if you missed 2009, here's a recap). 

So, aside from out-of-date (but ace) antifolk, what else have I enjoyed? Theatre. I've been to the theatre a lot.  If you count stand up too (it's on a stage. Sometimes) it must be the other side of fifty times. Which is obscene by any standards.

Disappointments:
When A Star Danced - amdram at its most amateur; very much not the incisive comedy that the flier had led me to believe.
Beard Envy - bad enough to put anything that wasn't great at Edinburgh into context.
King Lear at the Globe - I should have loved this.  I didn't.
Hot House - I don't get Pinter.  By no means in the bottom five of things I saw this year, but something that I had way, way too high expectations for.
Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic - The best thing about it was that it was almost an hour shorter than the last time I saw MAAN.

Particular Applauses:
Sophia Blackwell - okay, so it was performance poetry, but it counts because it's my list.  So there.
Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time - not having the balcony collapse on me is pretty celebration-worth.  Confetti.
Book of Mormon - A lot of fun, but probably not as funny as...
Peter Pan Goes Wrong - A late contender. I went to this with trepidation and have since hyped it to everyone.  Everyone. Which means no one is going to enjoy it as much as I did.  But hey.  It's still on.  Go and get tickets.
Chimerica - I don't think I could do justice to this.  If you saw it you know how good it was. If you didn't then you probably missed out.
 

All boys, except one, grow up

Have you been to the Pleasance? The London one? I've been to both the Dome and the Courtyard in Edinburgh but had never been to the London one. It said it was in Islington. In my head I'd be skipping there from Angel passing sun blushed olive stalls like the middle class fool I am. Not quite how it worked out. Turns out it's on an industrial estate by a prison. Not a smoothie bar to be seen.

Saw a farce -Peter Pan goes wrong. Now I generally avoid farces. The two that I've seen in recent years (Noises Off and ...Guvnors) were both ridiculously hyped and I don't really remember laughing. Maybe a noisy smile but nothing more.

PPGW made me absolutely hoot. Really wasn't expecting it, but there were belly laughs, tears, at one point I even found myself pointing. Most unbecoming.

Christmas. Yay.

Christmas is here, in all its baubled glory. At the risk of coming across a bit grinch, there's not that much I like about Christmas. I find both giving and receiving presents a bit uncomfortable. Is that normal?

I've been to Bristol since I last wrote. I quite like Bristol. It's somewhere I've been quite a lot but never really explored. Solved that now. And went to my first ever closed door bar. Box ticked.

I've finally got round to watching Winter's Bone. It is exactly a prequel to the Hunger Games. Well, maybe not exactly but if you replace 'mine explosion' with 'crystal meth' then you really won't be far off. Turns out rural Arkansas looks a lot like District 12.

I had a dream last night where I dropped my gloves and hermit crabs moved in and no one would let me take them out because they looked cute in their knitted caravans, so I had cold fingers. Does that mean anything?