Holidays Are Coming ... The Advent Announcement

I know, I know, you don't want any waffle or distraction you just want to know the answer to the biggest question on the cultural front. What is the theme of this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar? Well may you ask - and the answer is that once again we are in the realms of music. We've had the albums, we've had the individual songs - and now we have cover versions. Twenty-four beauties of the species. Artists performing someone else's work.

See you tomorrow. I don't know whether it's a by-product of this sodding Covid business but I can't remember enjoying quite such a feeling of anticipation about Christmas. The Groupie and I even put up the tree a couple of days early. 

The Curse Of Catenaccio But A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Despite the time of year my lawn is looking pretty good. For once I have stuck to my little and often mantra as regards leaf sweeping and the result is rather pleasing. Mind you I've got twenty bags of wet leaves needing transport to the dump. So all in all, that's pretty good.

 I have a set course for my shorter runs of about three miles and I have started keeping track of my over-60's PB. I beat that PB by sixteen seconds yesterday. So all in all that's pretty good.

Eddie Jones is getting on my nerves. He has England playing the rugby equivalent of the dreaded old footballing Catenaccio - a system that takes as its key the bolting of the defensive door. Thus yesterday England beat a diminshed Welsh team in a stultifying encounter. Some ambition please. Oh and can someone teach Owen Farrell how to tackle properly. He has all the nerve required but constantly goes too high. It has already got him sent off once this year. An accident waiting to happen. So all in all, not so good.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - yes I know that's not how we spell 'neighbourhood' but it's an American film so we must allow them their way. This is a film which teeters on the precipice of saccharine sentimentality but performs a masterful balancing act to ensure that is does not topple over the cliff edge. Tom Hanks excellent as always and Matthew Rhys matching him all the way. Rather beautiful. 70/100. Groupie and I watched it last night after eating home-made (that is by the Groupie not by me) pizzas. Served alongside an organic Malbec for me - how woke is the Pig! So all in all, that's pretty good. 

Cultural Artefacts

When the break-up of the Beatles was still a recent thing the beastly, avaricious record company moguls put out two compilation albums respectively covering the periods 1962-1966 and 1967-1970. They are seared into the minds of those of a certain age as the Blue Album and the Red Album. They are brilliant and still the most effective primers for anybody who needs to be persuaded that the Beatles are important - incredibly bloody important.

 

So anyway I was saying - incredibly bloody important. And I would venture that it is the band's later catalogue that today attracts the most attention - the difference between the two periods perhaps best summed up the track counts and running times of these two albums. The Red Album clocks up twenty-six tracks and a running time of just one hour and two minutes; the Blue, twenty-eight tracks clocking in at one hour and thirty-nine minutes. Well what I rediscovered today is that early Beatles should not be disdained. I played the Red Album as the background track to some research on Antony and Cleopatra, of which play a little more anon. The Red Album? Well, compilation albums are not generally important cultural artefacts - these are. Has pop ever been done better?

As for Antony and Cleopatra - well obviously another significant cultural artefact. Arguably dear old Shakespeare's best (depending on my mood and the quality of the production), a play that is, to steal from another favourite cultural artefact (answers on a virtual postcard), polymorphously perverse. 

So after a slow start (the early stages of a new chapter of research are always a tad woeful) today has been a good day. In addition to the artefacts already referred to, you will, dear reader, be on tenterhooks about the theme for this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar. I'm excited so goodness only knows how you're feeling. More to follow as December approaches. No teasers. You'll have to wait. 

The Pig Is A New Romantic

I'm feeling rather chipper, thank you for asking. The Groupie and I went for a bracing walk in (on?) Cannock Chase this afternoon. Got a bit muddy but good times - the sun shone for much of the time so I wore the precious Oakleys - said it before but it merits repetition - girls go crazy for a sharp-dressed man.

Anyway, what's this romanticism that's got hold of the Pig? Well may you ask - here we go: 

Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

Percy Byssche Shelley in the conduct of his private life may have had the morals of an alley cat, but that is the only regard in which he might be compared to Donald J. Trump. The quoted lines make up the first clause of Shelley's Declaration of Rights, coined in 1812. They are brilliant. We should trumpet them and act by them.

Now for some damned fine coffee - Machu Picchu since you ask. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three. See ya. 

Sinister Times

I blogged almost triumphally about Trump's electoral defeat. Of course I was premature. The man is not stupid - evil, yes, but not stupid. He had a plan all along and that was so to muddy the clear waters of democracy that enough of his gullible countrymen would believe his lies. Taken at one level (and I have been guilty of this for which I apologise) Trump is the stuff of comedy, but now in what should be his moment of humiliation we see just how dangerous this man is. He seeks to bring the rule of law tumbling down with him and frankly doesn't give a shit. Be afraid. Be  very afraid. Policies do not matter a jot in this scenario - morality does.

Roadkill

I sort of slagged-off David Hare's Roadkill last week. We watched the final episode last night and I've changed my mind. It was in fact slightly worse than I had suggested. I was put in mind of my old favourite, the Donald - everybody always talking in capital letters.

So, entertaining? Yes to a degree, but also tendentious drivel. Give me Paul Abbott, Andrew Davies or Jed Mercurio any day.

 

Lock Him Up!

It was one of those weird moments - I was drafting a paragraph in the old thesis that touched upon Timothy Snyder's excoriation of Putin and Trump. (What's that got to do with Shakespeare you might ask - we'll save that for another day, but trust me I'm right). Well, anyway, I was listening inattentatively to the football in the background when the BBC interrupted the commentary to announce that Joe Biden had won the US presidential election. I have made no secret of my utter loathing of Trump (admit it, you noticed) but only at the moment of his downfall did I realise just how much this wretched man had embedded himself in my psyche. I feel a lifting of a burden. This is silly but that is how much he had got to me. Unimportant little me.

There will be a hypocritical cacophony from Trump and his gruesome acolytes but let us hope that they are given judicial short shrift - if an election really has been stolen from Trump then it is time to abandon all remaining hope in America.

There is much that will handicap Biden, not least what is erroneously designated the 'progressive' wing of his party. These are people who seriously believe in the USA's own imitation of Magic Grandpa, the political sociopath Bernie Sanders. And we must not forget that the deplorable Donald bloody nearly won. But for now let us rejoice that the most powerful political voice in the world will not be coarse, vainglorious and contemptible.   

Political Drama

Later this evening the next episode of David Hare's latest offering, Roadkill, will screen on BBC1. It has a stellar cast who have all doubtless given breathless interviews to the Meeja about the honour that they feel in acting out the tired polemic of our national dramatist. I will be watching - it is quite diverting and beautifully played. Is Hugh Laurie ever anything but superb? What we should not do however is apply the adjective 'great' to this watchable hokum. Hare never whispers his message when he can shout it and that message is I suppose at least consistent - all Tories are bastards - without exception. 

By one of those nice accidents I was looking for our dvd of The Philadelphia Story this afternoon. Couldn't locate it - suspect it may be at Plas Piggy and thereby off-limits to these diseased English hands. But it it's an ill wind and all that because I came across State of Play and so the Groupie and I sat down to watch the first episode. It is the work of the reliable Paul Abbott and, I'll tell you what, somebody ought to send a copy to David Hare and let him know that you can make a point in ways other than bashing your audience over the head with your metaphorical socialist mallet.

And if you really want to see good political drama give YouTube a blast and peer through the hazy video quality and try the 1969 Play of the Month television adaptation of Julius Caesar - Julius Caesar. The play is artfully cut into the two hour slot that it was given and at no stage is the dramatist (or the director) screaming his bias at you. Which is rather the point. As the programme notes by Emma Smith for the Crucible's 2017 production of the play nicely put it:

Ultimately, we have to pick our own way through the rhetoric, the self-serving, and the fake news. The ethical challenge of Julius Caesar is precisely that it does not tell us what to think, but makes us think for ourselves. Not bad training for our troubled times.

Amen to that. Or as the Pig less politely might put it - stop shouting at me, I'm not bloody deaf.