2012 - March

Very little seems to have happened in March either.

Songs I dug

Tracey Thorn - Kings Cross (Hot chip remix)

Books I read:

The Comedians - Graham Greene
A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison

TV that entertained me

Smash: like the Kids from Fame crossed with Glee, but for grown-ups. Grown-ups who like musical theatre, anyway. Grace from Will and.... plays one half of the Rogers and Hammerstein of the 21^st century currently writing Marilyn The Musical. Various actual Broadway stars and American Idol runners-up play the hoofers and hollerers, whilst Jack Davenport channels Simon Cowell as the homophobic-surely-he's-in-the-wrong-business director. Angelica Huston is the cash-strapped producer, whose ex-husband  keeps turning up to the same restaurant she's dining in order to get drinks thrown in his face. Perhaps one of them should try Pizza Hut instead. Very slow moving (like the path to Broadway); one episode's main conflict was whether Jack D would leave Marilyn and go back to the My Fair Lady revival (he didn't).

2012 - April

I went to the Hockney show at the RA and to the theatre to see The Ladykillers. It's a been a cultural year, I went to the theatre an unprecedented five times (The Globe, the NFT, the Gieldgud, Theatre Royal (York) and the Camden People's Theatre) as well as to (thanks to commonpeople) some contemporary dance, but I can't think of five gigs I attended. We also went to Bruges for the day.

Songs

Beautiful South - Song For Whoever

Tennis – Origins

Books

Stephen King - On Writing

Michelle de Kretser - The Hamilton Case

TV

Grandma's House 2. It's unusual for the second series of a comedy to be better than the first (although having said that I immediately think of Peep Show, the IT crowd, Extras), but this was. Less of Simon Amstell, more of the Liz 'n' Tania show - God, I love those women. I loved the altered relationship between Simon and the awful, pitiable Clive, going from Oedipal hatred to a weird but oddly touching dysfunctional father-son relationship. Bonus was nephew Adam in more scenes, presumably because the actor is now 16, going from wannabe Independent Financial Advisor to attending to awful provincial nightclubs on the basis that Simon will get him into the VIP area.

The Bridge. I didn't like it at first, the disparate threads didn't mesh, the washed out look was annoying, Saga seemed to be taking her acting inspiration from the Buffybot, but it grew on me, the main reason being the relationship between Aspergsy Saga from Sweden and schlubby Martin from Denmark which started, as in all good cop bad cop buddy buddy relationships, as untrusting and unfriendly. Saga was not such a heroine as Lund, but it was good to see a female character being on the autistic spectrum, totally unconcerned about what people thought of her and social niceties. My favourite scene was one in which she went to a club to scratch a sexual itch, refusing a drink from someone trying to chat her up, then seemed confused when he walked away. (I think this is really how men, or male writers, want relationships to be). The only problem was that the thing was entirely implausible. If a super-crim was really murdering willy nilly and hadn't been captured after killing 10 people, the whole of the country would be shut down in order to find him, it would be a media scheisse-sturm.

Girls. 24 year old Hannah, a Brooklyn Josie Long, is, during a posh Italian dinner, cut off financially by her parents. "We're professors, Hannah". Hannah, not surprisingly, is outraged by this: "I could be a drug addict. You're lucky. One girl I know had two abortion last summer, one after the other." Later on, Hannah tries to do a deal with them them - $1100 a month for the next two years in order to write her book. Her parents, specifically her mother, remain unimpressed. "I work hard. I want a house by a lake. I deserve a lake!" This is the main crux of Girls, the rest of it is sub-plots comprising: attractive housemate doesn't like her handsome boyfriend because he's too nice; Hanna's douchey on/off boyfriend who is resting from acting to concentrate on carpentry. "Woodwork just feels more honest", an annoying English cousin who has not heard of Sex And The City and. despite being on a travelling the world binge, speaks in American syntax, and a friend who boils opium seeds for a tisane: "It's just like flowers". In short, there were many not just beautifully observed moments of 20s slackerdom but many lol moments too. I'd love for them to meet up with Jonathan and Ray in Park Slopes and then go on a road trip to Portland to hang with Fred and Carrie.