Posts from December 2012
31
Dec 12
HOBBITSES: or HOW EVERY GOOD STORY DESERVES EMBELLISHMENT (as Gandalf teaches us)
1: I saw this last night (2D/24fps) and here are my notes
2: which is to say SPOILERS and DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE MORE FvCKING ELVES and ABANDON DIGNITY ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE and — above all — BEWARE THE CAVE TROLL IN THE ROOM
3: bcz, in the sense that at the end I very much wanted straight away to be watching the next ep I clearly liked this one, despite there being plenty wrong with it also
4: anyway I am largely going to write a DEFENCE of the plot-changes (and reserve the main critique for stuff PJ also got wrong in the LotR trilogy?)
5: And it is very rough and note-form bcz Silmarillion
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28
Dec 12
The Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl 2012: The Clerkenwell Wiggly Worm
Its that time of year again where Christ has been massed, and New Years Eve has yet to dawn (before it eves). Which means it is the 29th December and the FT between Christmas & New Year Pub Crawl again. And this year its in Clerkenwell. Which was up and coming years ago, but has now up and come and then settled down into being a little bit pretentious, but on the whole rather nice. We will be skirting Clerkenwell Green, nipping past Mount Pleasant and going to a number of lovely pubs, many of which will be closed.
They are all architecturally interesting and serve a decent pint (or whatever you are drinking). Its between Christmas and New Year, it’ll be quiet and you’ll have escaped your families so come out for some fun.
The order is
3pm: Craft Beer Co.
4pm Betsy Trotwood
4.45pm The Horseshoe
5:30pm: The Three Crowns – I mean Kings
6.15pm: The Sekforde Arms
7:15pm: Exmouth Arms
8pm The Wilmington Arms
9pm The Pakenham Arms
All timings are approximate and of course, at least one of the pubs will be shut anyway…
See you there
24
Dec 12
10
Dec 12
Sic Transit Gloria Barlow
When Was The X-Factor’s Imperial Phase?
I got bored with the recent series of the X-Factor, and I was not alone: the ratings this year have crashed by a few million. The post-mortems are beginning: the editor of the Radio Times wasted no time in crediting the Olympics and its awakening of a public desire for real heroes who train and sweat and ACHIEVE and BELIEVE. Stage school is no picnic, honey, you might reply – but the claim debunks itself anyway. The ratings crash this year is no one-off – it’s now a trend, after an even more dramatic tumble in 2011, a year with no whiff of gold.
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5
Dec 12
The Freaky Trigger Readers Poll 2012
“Hi! I’m global megastar Rihanna. While I’m not achieving world domination I like to flick through old copies of Melody Maker and think about how I lucky I am not to have to compete with the likes of the Milltown Brothers and Haysi Fantayzee in the year-end polls of old. Of course, these days the only poll that truly matters is the Freaky Trigger Readers’ Poll, so I’m delighted to be giving you this year’s voting details!
Just email your top 20 tracks of 2012 to poptimistspoll2010@gmail.com by 23.59 31st December 2012. Simple!
– You can vote for fewer than 20 tracks
– 2012 remixes of 2011 songs etc are fine
– Your #1 track will be allocated more points than your #20 track so put them in order if that is important to you.
Happy voting!”