Given the amount of this month's posts that have been summing up the year in charts and other nostalgia, it's amazing I found time to write any of my other nonsense on Facebook this month, but amazingly I did.
A weird one, sent by my sister. It does look like me in the bottle doesn’t it? Right down to the blond streak in the hair. Though AI clearly doesn’t know how braces work (think about it).
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Dec 3: Live TV, watched communally by the whole country at the same time, was a wonderful thing that I truly enjoyed. It’s been such a part of my life that I’m sad to see it go, but feel so privileged to have lived through its heyday.
Broadcast TV will soon be a thing that academics will be writing about, and getting wrong of course, until it becomes a poorly remembered bit of history. Like Music Hall and public hangings before it, it’s a vital part of the society who had it, but it’ll be increasingly hard to imagine or describe.
I remember hearing the first death knell of Live TV way back in 1981 when a couple of Mum and Dad’s friends said they planned to watch a movie on VHS on Christmas night. How could they dream of not watching the same thing as everyone else, I thought. Try telling the kids today.
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Is there an estate agent in Wales called Property Ping?
(If not, I’m having it, hands off)
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An excellent article from Metro (link in comments) explains why the Pop Charts don't work any more. For someone raised on them, and who still listens avidly to Pick Of The Pops on Radio 2, it's long been puzzling to me that kids at school have no knowledge or understanding of the pop charts, yet they do still love music. This article explains it at last. And it seems 2014 was when it all collapsed.
Some highlights:
"After 2014, any song, streamed from anywhere – actively or passively – was eligible to chart. ... Then, on March 10, 2017, inevitable disaster struck: after the release of his multi-platinum album Divide, Ed Sheeran occupied nine spaces of that week’s UK top 10. It was the day the British pop charts as we knew them died.
"Streaming figures had distorted things so much that the release of a new album had instantly undermined the meritocracy of the singles chart, which had stood firm for 65 years.
"In the period between 2015 and 2024, the average number of changes atop the charts per year completely collapsed to just 18. You’d have to go back 33 years, to the summer of Bryan Adams, if you wanted to find similar numbers."
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Dec 4: Yesterday I waxed lyrical about live broadcast TV and how honoured and lucky I feel to have lived through its heyday. Well, today I’m feeling the same about newspapers. They were good while they lasted.
As well as being a Guardian reader since I was a student (so a good 40 years), I benefited from the papers my parents used to get, because of their newspaper strips. They got the Express, so I was able to cut out and keep Syd Jordan’s Jeff Hawke strips, and Giles cartoons.
So living through the demise of national newspapers is a sad thing, but very much in keeping with how the 21st century goes.
We are moving into a new world, founded by ‘disruptors’ (spit) but where there are still proper journalists, and a hunger for real journalism. I am, as ever, optimistic that this landscape of podcasts and websites fighting for attention can prove itself capable of giving us everything newspapers ever did.
Quite how we’ll live without doorstepping, bin-raking, outing, blackmailing, paparazzi, political gaslighting, phone-hacking, and the ruination of thousands of lives, that has been the lifeblood of most papers in this country for most of the last 100 years, I don’t know.
But I imagine we’ll get by.
Guess the songs. If you’ve not listened to this, the Top 20 from Christmas 1974, can you identify:
1) The longest song title ever to make the charts (true)
&
2) The record that, in this chart, has a title but no performer?
NB: Nobody even responded to my post. The answers were:
1) You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Even Take the Dog for a Walk, Mend a Fuse, Fold Away the Ironing Board, or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings) by The Faces
2) Oh Yes You're Beautiful. The name of the record was read out by Mark Goodier, but not the name of the artist (Gary Glitter).
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Dec 4: Gregg Wallace story. Hands up who’d never really heard or noticed the name Banijay on TV shows till now?
Hands up who thinks, after a few weeks of being mentioned every time Gregg Wallace comes up, they’ll be subtly dropping the name and calling themselves Endemol Shine again in the new year?
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Dec 6: How GPSR Affects Your Business (article)
Well this is a bundle of bollocks. If I want to sell a book to a customer in the EU I need to "designate a responsible person located in the EU who will be a point of contact for customers..."
I'm either going to make someone up or just carry on writing "gift" on the packages I send.
On the plus side, I've looked at the sales that I've posted out myself this year, and I seem to have sold two thing to the EU, so frankly I think I'll live. But on behalf of everyone else who this affects - bum!
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Blimey. Who else just got a Red Warning for storms go off on their phone? 7:05pm Friday.
We had no idea what it was!
“… and will not try to impose martial law for a second time” Bringing new meaning to the phrase “that’s alright then”
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Has anyone else’s iPhone shed its skin?
Mine has been peeling off. And finally gave up the ghost today. Do I need a new case?
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Dec 8: Am I the only person who’s really confused about Syria? Who exactly are the goodies and the baddies?
Obviously there was Basher Al Assad, who you knows a bad guy cos his name’s Basher. Then there were the rebels who came along to overthrow him about ten years ago, so they were the good guys. People even went over from this country to fight with them, like in the Spanish Civil War, so there was no doubt they were the good guys.
Now it seems the rebels are called the HRT, and they’re not only the enemies of Basher but also of the Isis and the Al Queida. But they want the same things as those other two, so does that make them goodies or baddies or what?
Everyone else understands this all perfectly, right?
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Dec 9: Is Doom-scrolling rotting our brain article
Don’t I remember this same sort of research 70 years ago suggesting reading comics turned kids into juvenile delinquents?
Turns out all that happens after three generations of kids growing up reading comics, watching TV, playing video games, and having the internet is that you have a movie industry full of superheroes and a reality TV star for president. Worse could have happened.
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Dec 10: Article about "Canon" in DC movies
There’s a rule that says any headline with a question in can always be answered “No”. The thing is, this question begs a yes. Canon in superhero movies is stupid and unnecessary, but - and it’s a big but - it has sold more movie tickets than any other aspect this century.
Since 2008 the list of best-selling movies has been packed with sequels which, with any degree of objectivity, have to be classified as Not Very Good. Yes MCU, obviously I mean you.
Now in a sensible world, eg the DC universe where “canon” doesn’t really exist, most of these films would have been left to stand or fall on their own merits. So it is that any movie with Jared Leto’s Joker becomes a little watched footnote, Folie A Deux gets kept in a box somewhere, and an entire Batgirl can get binned without anyone noticing. Meanwhile over in Marvel land even The Eternals makes its money back, and The Marvels was the biggest selling movie directed by a woman until Barbie came along.
So, yes, canon matters. But only to the marketing department. To the rest of us it’s creatively restricting brain rot.
Dec 10: Be honest, he's no Sid James.
Dec 23: Watched Carry-On
This was fun, but do not try and apply Fridge Logic after you’ve watched it!
An airport bag check that you can see the bar and the main concourse from? An airport where you can pull up right outside the doors in your van then just park there, poke a rifle out the side and no one notices? Frankly if you’ve got an airport with security as lax as this LAX, you deserve everything you get.
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Dec 11: A thought just struck me: what are the chances of an 8 year old kid picking up a Superman comic these days?
I’m sure many of us here had that experience, stumbling across these simple, slightly naive stories of super heroism, reading it and having their minds ever so slightly blown. In my case they were selling DC comics at a Butlins that we visited, when I was 7 or 8, and I’d never seen the like before.
Superman seemed a simple, funnier, and more innocent comic than the Marvels I’d read which, to my 8 year old mind, seemed complex, sophisticated and grown up in comparison.
Over the years I would occasionally read a Superman, and to be honest never found them to be gripping. It wasn’t until Alan Moore did his deconstructed versions that I would find a Superman comic I enjoyed reading. They were, let’s face it, for kids.
So, do any kids ever stumble across one and read it these days? Or is that just one of those 20th century things that you’ll read about in novels that’ll need proper explanation in the footnotes?
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Am I the only 6 Music listener who thinks this new Mogwai single is just Zombie by The Cranberries done badly?
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Dec 19: Watched National Lampoons Christmas Vacation last night , for the first time, because people were mentioning it as some sort of seasonal classic.
How was I to know they were being ironic? It’s bloody awful.
Had to see it all the way through, just to confirm it was that bad all the way through. I’m amazed it’s a John Hughes script. You can see motifs and tropes he uses in other movies (Home Alone, Planes Trains…, and Ferris Bueller all have similar Buster Keaton slapstick and lead characters who live in impossibly big houses, for example) but the director of this gets so much of it wrong.
For example Clark Griswold opens the hatch to his loft and gets hit in the face by the ladder. Of his own loft. Which, we learn in the very next scene, he has being going up into since he was a child. A small example, but typical of the mismanagement of the script.
The casting of the lead is awful too. Had it been Steve Martin you may have sympathised with his cloddish buffoonery and felt he had some vulnerability. But Chevy Chase just seems like an entitled asshole. And a creepy one too. ( the stuff with the girl selling underwear has not aged well).
The punching down comedy with the poor relation is classist and jarring, and the fact that the only plot point of any note is that our hateful entitled lead is griping about getting a Christmas bonus that would be big enough to pay for a swimming pool..? I mean this guy is literally Scrooge, but “Before” Scrooge.
A very poor film. Merry Christmas
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Re: Christmas Vacation (the movie)
Am I the only person who’s never had a Christmas bonus?
Freelance since 1989, none of the comics I’ve ever worked for gave me a bonus. I think the only Christmas party I ever got invited to was the Marvel one, which was in America so no bloody use to me.
You people with normal boring jobs can count your blessings. Then you can go back to envying us for living our dreams. 
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Dec 25L Article re Christmas Vacation
Aha! This article (which popped up randomly) explains why Christmas Vacation is rubbish and Home Alone is excellent, despite being written by the same bloke.
Also reveals a lot about the part played by the director and the star in a movie.
(I watched CV for the first time and HA for the fourth or fifth this year. I am pretty sure I’m right).
Director Chris Columbus revealed he was originally attached to direct the classic holiday film, Christmas Vacation, that was until he met Chevy Chase.
“We were in the midst of shooting second unit. We didn’t start shooting the movie or building sets. But it was December, so I had to go to downtown Chicago and shoot all of the department stores and all of that. I had two meetings with Chevy…Forty minutes into the meeting, he says, ‘Wait a second. You’re the director?’ And I said, “Yeah…I’m directing the film.” And he said to me the most surreal, bizarre thing. I still haven’t been able to make any sense out of it. He said, ‘Oh, I thought you were a drummer.’ [Shakes head] I said, ‘Uhh, okay. Let’s start talking about the film again.’ After about 30 seconds, he said, ‘I got to go.’
“He went off and met with John Hughes and said we needed to meet again. Then we had a dinner where John Hughes was present, and I was basically nonexistent. It was Chevy and Hughes, and they talked about everything except Christmas Vacation. We spent two hours together, and I left the dinner and I thought, There’s no way I can make a movie with this guy. First of all, he’s not engaged. He’s treating me like s**t. I don’t need this. I’d rather not work again. I’d rather write.”
Columbus then called Hughes and quit the film, informing him that he couldn’t work with Chase.
“I quit Christmas Vacation. The next weekend, I got another script from John—and it’s Home Alone. Home Alone, for me, was even more personal, a better script. And I thought, I can really do something with this, and I don’t have to deal with Chevy Chase.“
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Re: Harry Potter baking game show on Amazon
If you want a picture of the future, imagine reality and game shows on every streaming channel instead of drama, and no trad broadcasters left to bring the quality stuff back - forever.
Dec 17: Comic strips are alive and well, in the kids edition of the War Cry.
There was a Salvation Army band playing Christmas carols at the weekend, and giving away the War Cry and this, which has five pages of comic strip in - more than most pages of so called “comics” they sell in Smiths.
There’s a 4 page Nativity strip, by anonymous writer and artist, and a Beano-lite single page on the back, with a moral.
See comic doom-mongers, someone still has faith in our artform to attract kids. Well, it attracted me. And yes I gave a donation. Bah humbug.
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Dec 17: Okay, here's a weird one. A school wants me to come and do a class, as I do all the time. They're a Muslim Girls School, again not something unknown to me (I taught at one in Abu Dhabi once). Then they have this small caveat...
"Can adjustments be made to the comic so pupils are not drawing eyes (due to the faith and ethos of our school, drawing eyes on a non-living thing, is not permitted)"
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Update: Having explained more of the class, and showing them a video which includes me drawing a kids face on the flipchart, they reply: “I have consulted another member of staff on the topic of eyes, and it has been said the eyes on the video masterclass is fine. So, let's proceed.
I know the girls will thoroughly enjoy themselves and from watching the video your enthusiasm is incredible. I want to be a participant!
I am super excited for the day!”
So I’m doing the class (it’s next year, obviously). I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Dec 18: Dear Coffee #1 (I won’t name the branch). When a customer asks “are any of these cakes gluten free?” don’t reply that you’re not allowed to tell me and that I have to leave the queue and go and scan a QR code which takes me to a website which gives me a table, hidden on which is the answer.
Not when the answer is: “No, none of our cakes is gluten free!”
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Dec 21: Best laid plans. We set off dead early so we could get to Exeter Christmas Market on this the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Only to find it closed five days ago!
Nobody getting paperweights for Christmas this year then.
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Dec 24: I heard about the whole Blake Lively story just this morning ( and could still not pick her out of a line up) but I am now engrossed.
And the great thing? The Crisis PRs that spread all the deflecting stories are both women, which still leaves us women to hate on. Win win. (NB I am fully aware no one wins here).
Genuine question: do you think a Crisis PR smear campaign has been run against Megan and Harry?
Let’s face it, the royals can afford it. And the resultant hating that Megan gets, for no obvious cause, does resemble the Amber Heard and Blake Lively campaigns
NB: if anyone replies with a “yes but Megan did x” story, I will consider my question has been answered in the affirmative.
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Re: The Holdovers
This was a good film, by the way. I’d stop short of saying “good fun”, and it’s more for the classic cineaste than the laugh or thrill seeker, but recommended for a movie night when you’re looking for quality rather than quantity (of thrills or belly laughs).
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Dec 26: Re Doctor Who Joy To The World
Just a quick question about Joy To The World: (may include spoiler):
If the Doctor is stuck on Earth for a year, and that year is 2024, isn’t there a David Tennant Doctor sat in a garden with Donna Noble nearby, doing nothing, with a full working Tardis waiting to be used?
Why wasn’t the hotel room set in the 1970s or somewhere? Wouldn’t that have made more sense?
Is this Dennis the Menace’s face, carved in a tree at Bodelwyddan Castle? Discuss.
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Dec 27: With all this Xmas TV viewing, from the disappointing Bad Tidings and Outnumbered to the enjoyable Wallace and Gromit and Inside no 9 doc, I suddenly realise we haven’t watched a steaming channel for the best part of a week.
Edit: Ha ha, obviously I meant streaming. Fat fingers on the phone in a hurry.
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Joy. Just discovered that Forbidden Planet in Bristol is open again, and has been for a month.
I’ve restocked with comics to take into schools when my Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses resume. Some of them are pretty good. I chose stuff that I know kids respond to.
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Richard The Third | Findlay Macbeth | Prince of Denmark Street | Midsummer Night's Dream Team |
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Shakespeare Omnibus | Comic Tales From The Bible | Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories | Space Elain |
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