A Bug's Life

"So what do you like doing with your spare time, bugshaw?"
"Well, I like going to the cinema, and to gigs and comedy and art exhibitions"
And I can back it up with the evidence below. How I fit all this into a month boggles me.

Books read (4-9)
Natural History, Justina Robson (2003)
#tag, David Wake (2014)
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (2012)
Boneland, Alan Garner (2012)
The Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman (1996)
A Madness of Angels, Kate Griffin (2009)

Films watched (21-35) (6 at the cinema, 4 DVD, 1 video, 2 tv, 2 stream)
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
Pitch Perfect
The Lego Movie
The Thirty-Nine Steps
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Employee of the Month
Lady Vengeance
Under the Skin
The Godfather
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Computer Chess
Calvary
Legend
Pa Negre/Black Bread
Starred Up

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (8-14)
Paul Klee (art, Tate Modern)
Beautiful Science (art, British Library)
Made in London (jewellery, Museum of London)
The Tyburn Tree (music, John Harle and Marc Almond, Cambridge Corn Exchange)
John Cooper Clarke (punk poetry, Cambridge, Junction) plus support Mike Garry, Dave Formula and the Finks, and a comedian from Bungay whose name I forget
Simon Munnery: Fylm (comedy, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Veronese (art, National Gallery)

Books incoming: 1 (I, Phone: David Wake as I wanted a proper shiny paper copy)
This was the month in which I got a Kindle, pre-loaded with 512 books, so I hereby abandon all attempts to obtain no more books than I read. I seem to read fast on a Kindle, maybe the fewer words per line leap into my brain more quickly without having to do so much eye-tracking.

Lots of things were awesome! (Lego: everything is awesome!) But if I wait till I have time to write all about everything and how awesome it is, a) I won't get round to it and b) you will have to scroll down a half dozen screens. Read Code Name Verity, and go and see Under the Skin if you can (if you like existential sf films with weird scores)

Books read
None. Not a one. Maybe 100 pages of Justina Robson's Natural Selection which I didn't finish for Book Club in December. An issue of Empire magazine. A bunch of articles on the internet.

Films watched (9-20) (5 at the cinema, 4 DVD, 1 tv, 2 stream)
Byzantium
Coriolanus (Fiennes version)
Zodiac
Death To Smoochy
Inside Llewyn Davis
Philomena (rewatch)
Oldboy
Bridesmaids
Her
12 Years a Slave
Dallas Buyers Club
Coffee and Cigarettes

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (2-7)
Coriolanus (NFT version at cinema, Hiddlestone)
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Itch (gig, Junction, Cambridge)
Sensing Spaces (architecture exhibition, Royal Academy, London)
Bill Bailey Unplugged (comedy, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Avenue Q (musical, Mumford Theatre, Cambridge)
Of Montreal (gig, Oval Space, London)

Books incoming 1 (reader copy)

In February I got rid of my cough enough to get out to the cinema and catch some of the Oscar nominees (still want to catch The Wolf of Wall Street) and beforehand got shown some fine DVDs some of which I hadn't known of before. I also got out to quite a lot of gigs etc. Taking the last week of Feb as annual leave helped with this :-)

Gigglesome: Bill Bailey, Avenue Q (but why does it have to take such accurate swipes, darn it? I thought I was special!)
Fab: Of Montreal. Amazing show, I saw poor reviews of it elsewhere because this is the stripped down version they're touring Europe with.
Good films: Her was not the painful unreconstructed 50's build-a-girlfriendbot story I had feared; Coffee and Cigarettes is full of awkward conversations; Zodiac was great; Philomena still good on a second viewing; Oldboy was brutal.

I've not seen or read Coriolanus before, it was interesting to watch the recent theatre version (2014, starring Tom Hiddlestone) and a fairly recent film (2011, dir and starring Ralph Fiennes) and compare and contrast to see which themes were strongest. One Coriolanus was early 30s, the other late 40s, which gave a different interpretation of where they might be in their career/readiness for politics/skilled in social ways. The Fiennes version was set in a more contemporary setting, which highlighted how some issues were current. Seeing the same dialogue from two sets of people helped me understand it more, Shakespeare's words were not always that clear in meaning.

Books read (1-3)
Cerebus: Latter Days #266-288, Dave Sim (2001-03) (graphic novel)
Cerebus: The Last Day #289-300, Dave Sim (2003-04) (graphic novel)
Cor Baby, That's Really Me!, John Otway (1990)

Films watched (1-8) (0 at the cinema, 5 DVD, 3 tv)
Drive (rewatch)
The Inbetweeners Movie
Pacific Rim (rewatch)
The Other Boleyn Girl
Cave Dwellers (MST3K)
Little Miss Sunshine (rewatch)
Premium Rush
No Country for Old Men

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (1)
Stewart Lee, Much A-Stew About Nothing (comedy, London)

Books incoming 0

So, I finished reading Cerebus. Lots of people say you don't have to bother with the last two, even for completion, and I'm inclined to agree. But I guess you have to read right through for yourself to satisfy yourself in this opinion.

The first weeks of January were busy with work, the last weeks I was noisy with cough, so a whole month went by without a cinema trip. There are plenty of films that I hope stay on long enough for me to catch.

I enjoyed the director's commentary on Pacific Rim, lots of information about details and choices and colour themes. Premium Rush was good too, flash-back time-jumping movie with Joseph Gordon Levitt as a New York cycle courier with an urgent package and bad guys trying to intercept it.

Books read (47)
London Falling, Paul Cornell (2012)

Films watched (148-167) (4 at the cinema, 6 DVD, 3 video, 6 tv, 1 stream)
Nebraska
Faust (Jan Svankmajer)
Control
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (rewatch)
Matinee (rewatch)
Saving Mr Banks
Kung Fu Panda (rewatch)
Enduring Love
The Woodsman
Queen of Outer Space (rewatch)
Fracture
Rock of Ages
Elf
Zoolander (rewatch)
Everything Must Go
Performance
Quartet
Emma
Planet 51 (rewatch)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (37-39)
Fairhaven Singer, Music for Advent and Christmas (Cambridge)
Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People (comedy, London)
Jesterlarf (comedy, Cambridge)

Books incoming 1 (1 gift, read 23/30)

WOO HOO - I have succeeded this year in reading more books than I acquired. I bought 10, was gifted 3, loaned 14, others were free/proof-reading.

Good films this month: Elf is lovely, very funny. I had thought I didn't like Will Ferrell but I was wrong.
Nebraska, Control and Performance. Performance was weird. I had heard about it from an early age in Smash Hits magazine (famously having Mick Jagger in it!) but I'm glad I did not seek it out to watch back then.
Zoolander is a classic. I seem to watch it most years.
Watching Matinee on a recorded-from-the-telly video and seeing how much it goes for on DVD has encouraged me to get the technology together to transfer some of my videos to digital format. Though maybe as a Feb/Mar project.

This new interface on LJ's mobile site is pretty weird. Each post on the friends page is successively indented (L & R) till the last takes up only half the width of the screen. And the user icons are given a circular crop of the top left hand quarter of the picture. (When I look at the mobile site on my laptop the circular crops are of the centre of the image (but still smaller) but I would, y'know, rather be reading it on my phone...)

I get to this time of year and reflect on what I've done in the year that has been good, but it is so easy to forget things as time passes and people tell you to do emergency graphs that I often forget the good things. This year I have been writing them down.

... transition at work from a Strategic Health Authority to Health Education England in April. Many colleagues kept their jobs through the restructure, we're still working out at many levels what the new organisation does, and things are settling down. Jolly busy though, and we have not yet sorted out the firewall issue to allow us to connect to the online database.

... proofreading and transcription. Proofread a couple of short sf novels/novellas. I like this, I get to be helpful and fully indulge the pickier aspects of my nature :-) I started transcribing some interviews for Take One, a film reviews site which started out as the Cambridge Film Festival newsletter but has massively expanded. I have tried and failed to write reviews, it's like blood from a stone, but I can type up interviews, especially with scientists. It has been very interesting at the beginning, noticing how different people speak, that some slow speakers are easy to transcribe and others not so much, how people talk over each other and trail off sentences and while listening your brain is happy that it has absorbed all the concepts but it doesn't make any sense as plain transcribed words. One chap was a lecturer and managed to speak in whole sentences, a skill I had not properly appreciated before.

... met and fed lemurs (LJ post). Lemurs! I can still smell the banana in my hair and feel their little paddy paws.

... physio. Made massive leaps on the long-standing (sic) back problem to the extent I can now use underground trains when in London and drive to work and stay at the pub till nearly closing time. I hope to travel further afield next year. Several "I can never do this without hurting my back" have turned into things I can generally do.
Driving includes reversing into the garage, which I have been terrified of for the ten years I've lived here, but now it's fine, largely thanks to a parking lesson with Máiréad who I recommend if you are in Cambridge and want to learn to drive.
I have renewed my passport which expired a couple of years ago and has been languishing unvalidly in a filing cabinet while I give grouchy glares at people who said "You should renew it (for £££), it's useful for ID!" Now its corner is snipped off and I have a shiny new one. Paris in the the Spring, maybe?

... made a beaded butterfly bracelet for my mum who was very pleased with it, didn't get a good photo though. Painted some dinosaurs (Twitter pic). Made three cross stitch Christmas cards. Did not finish Many Other Things.

... had kitchen out of order in the summer due to a leak. Kitchen is so well repaired now I forget it happened.

... had some very nice meals, including at Alimentum who are always good about the dietary restrictions while being inventive and delicious. I'm tempted to see if I can get a gfdf tasting menu one day. Had a Fumo Martini (not at Alimentum), which had oaky smoky liquor and was garnished with a thin slice of bacon. I have had the experience, so now you don't have to.

Plus all the good films, gigs, concerts, comedy gigs, theatre, art exhibitions, first ever trip to the opera, books etc that I write up every month. I've had a good, rich cultural year.

gang aft agley. But how often is this because they were laid terribly well in the first place?

Plan for Fri night/Sat morning:
11pm bed
6-7pm cat breakfast
8am off out shopping

Actual:
11pm bed
Midnight woken by cat for breakfast
1am woken by cat for breakfast (get up and close door)
4am wake and hear a distant neighbour playing drums (not sure if playing instrument or record)
5am still awake, hear cat scratching door politely because if the light's on I may as well get the breakfast out. Feed cat.
6am woken by cat for second half of breakfast - T's radio has come on which signifies Official Breakfast time
7:30am wake when alarm goes off. Groan and go back to sleep.

Books read (45-46)
Phonogram vols 1 & 2, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie (2006-7, 2008-10) (graphic novel)
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1940)

Films watched (131-147) (8 at the cinema, 7 DVD, 2 stream)
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (rewatch)
Amour
Gravity
Big Trouble in Little China
Full Metal Jacket
Forbidden Planet (rewatch at the cinema)
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Hellraiser
Philomena
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (rewatch at the cinema)
Shorts: Meditation (London Underground Film Festival)
Shorts: animated (London Underground Film Festival)
I'm A Cyborg, But That's Ok
The Selfish Giant
The Butler
The Consequences of Love
M

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (29-36)
Phil Hammond: Games to Play with your Doctor (comedy, Cambridge)
Mark Kermode: Hatchet Job (book tour talk, Cambridge)
Stewart Lee: Much Astew About Nothing (comedy, London)
Emiliana Torrini (gig, London)
Victoriana (art, London Guildhall)
Sarah Lucas (art, Whitechapel Gallery, London)
Wellcome Collection (exhibition)
Georgians Revealed & Permanent Collection (British Library, London)

Books incoming 1 (1 purchase, read 22/29)

A few days of holiday in London helped fill out the gigs etc list this month. I also seem to be back on the films after a slow October after a packed September, and saw a few classics I'd not watched before.

Good films: The Selfish Giant, Gravity, M, Full Metal Jacket, The Consequences of Love, the weird final film in the Meditations shorts

Stood up surprisingly well to a rewatch: Scott Pilgrim, watched for costume references because went to a dress-up quotealong event, where London Gigging Buddy and I were the only ones dressed up but it was fun anyway, and liked seeing loads more tiny details on the big screen.

Good other: Stewart Lee, Emiliana Torrini, Victoriana

Books read (43-44)
The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Fry (2010)
Gunnerkrigg Court: Materia vol #4, Thomas Siddall (2013) (graphic novel)

Films watched (123-130) (2 at the cinema, 6 DVD)
The Thing (John Carpenter) (rewatch)
The Thing (John Carpenter) (rewatch with commentary and documentary Terror Takes Shape because fab)
A Clockwork Orange (rewatch)
They Live
Serenity (rewatch)
Armageddon (rewatch)
Thor (rewatch)
Thor: The Dark World

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (26-28)
Richard Herring: We're All Going To Die (comedy, London)
Oxjam (various bands): Motor Tapes, Fred's House, The CoGo (Cambridge)
Madam Butterfly (opera, London Coliseum)

Books incoming 4 (2 loans, read 21/28)

Good: Madam Butterfly. The Thing. For different reasons, although lots of blood in both. I seem to have had a comfort-rewatch month after the heights of the Film Festival in September, I've been rewatching Battlestar Galactica too.

I posted about Cokezone ending their reward scheme on Oct 15th. Since then I have bought enough bottles to get up to 150 and one last cinema ticket - but today fell foul of the rule where you can only enter 50 points-worth of codes per day, as it turns out it is 50 points per week and I stuck at 109 with another 42 sitting on the shelf un-enterable. My cinema-going loss is World Wildlife Foundation's £5 gain though. *kicks self for not entering the codes a week ago when I bought the Coke*