My Cultural Life - What Day Is It?

So, This is Christmas?

It's probably just me, but as we get older and Christmases come round faster every year, I really couldn't give a flying fuck about this festive season. No, it's not nice for bad shit to happen to people at Christmas, but, you know, let's put it into perspective here. It's not nice for bad shit to happen period! There is no good time. If bad shit happens in the summer, the blow isn't softened by our ability to function in minimal clothing.

When I say I don't give a flying fuck about Christmas, I should put that into some context. I don't have children. I have dogs and my dogs think every day is Christmas. Dogs are vessels of untainted joy; if ever a creature understood the fact that we're just electrical impulses masquerading as individuals and when the spark stops, so do we, it's a dog. Carpe diem, or something like that. 

It's like Valentine's Day, ennit? What a load of old fucking bobbins that is. 'Hey, it's annual remind your other half that you love them day!' I don't need a fucking excuse to tell my wife I love her; she knows I do and I tell her often enough. What it really is is a company that creates a market for a product they sell. Oh God, I haven't got my wife a Valentine's Day card she'll think I don't love her any more and suspect there's a problem in our marriage unless I add a bunch of roses to this Moonpig order. 

We are capitalist animals; the cows and sheep, maybe even wombats, thrown at the planet to feed the monster that is called Profit. Maybe I'm not so much because I don't tend to spend much money and what I do is rarely further than eight miles from where I'm typing this blog entry, unless it involves a delivery driver. So when I say we are all capitalist animals, what I'm saying is you are all capitalist animals, I'm more benign hanger on.  

The thing is, it's the 23rd and I still haven't wrapped her presents and I bought them in October. This is something I should prioritise.

... And Then it isn't Anymore

I am known for not being a Christmas kind of guy and to be fair, I have transmitted an general air of disgruntlement at the festive season. I realised what it was that changed in me a long time ago, but that kind of realisation doesn't always guarantee a changed view or perspective of something. Christmas is for kids, ostensibly. I people who would argue with that, but the reality is Christmas, like most 'seasonal festivals' is pretty much made for children and if you can look past the rampant consumerism, most festive pleasure arrives via a young person and if you haven't got children then that general enjoyment is absent.

I also just fucking hate Christmas. It's almost on a DNA level now and it's because it really only is for 24 hours. Because Capitalism doesn't really do spiritual 'festivals', not for more than 12 hours at best, Christmas isn't and never was the Twelve Days of Christmas. In fact, all that song did to me when I was a kid was think what a bunch of bourgeoisie cunts the people in the song must have been, flaunting their wealth, when all I got was some crappy Hot Wheels loop-de-loop game that I got bored of before it was fully out of its wrapping paper. Plus, in what reality is someone going to get a full 12 days off  full of joyous shit happening? So this picture I was fed as a child of Christmases all looking like Hollywoodland and hyper real and the reality of the world never looking as good as the ones on TV struggled to sit side by side and the cynical miserabilist that writes a weekly blog and occasionally vlogs from the beach has felt like way since about 1970. 

I also went through a phase of being disappointed that Christmas wasn't about a celebration of Jesus Christ, someone I have believed in for about 3 weeks of my entire life. One of the things that made me feel less ambivalent about Christmas was hearing stories about people doing good shit for the 25th. Giving up the time no one would blame you for giving up to make sure that someone else, even a miserable cunt like me, is happy. It happens all the time and has done for as long as Christmas has existed and much longer than that.

My happiest Christmases that I can remember happened in the mid-noughties when I worked in a homeless hostel for the YMCA. The centre's cook was not working over Christmas and I was not on the rota to work. Several of our younger kids - 16, 17 and first Christmas away from their families - had asked me if I would work so they could be guaranteed a good Christmas dinner and when the rota came out and the person who was on duty you would have had trouble trusting with an egg and a pan of hot water... I said to my boss that I'd come in between 10am and 12 noon. I'd basically cook Christmas dinner for 16 residents, two members of staff and other things to guarantee they all had a 'family' Christmas.

I'd never had to work on the 25th before. I don't know what I thought might happen to me if I did, but Christmas 2003 was a memorable one for me. When I got home, the wife said I was just beaming and buzzing on what a good time I'd had, being Christmassy for other people and enjoying doing it.

Christmas is most definitely a day (or a week) for doing something that makes someone else's life better. I know we can choose to or not to make decisions like this at any point in the year; good will unto all men shouldn't be confined to a week at the end of the year, but actually, doing it now really is a great feeling. You know, in the past, where you did something for someone and there was a look on the other person's face; the one you knew was the most naked of thanks or warm wishes or happiness aimed towards you, well it ain't wrong to feel that way and it's most definitely not wrong to do stuff, during a period where people can be really lonely despite being in a room full of people, that brightens the darkness inside people we have no idea about.

It might have been Hollywood painting a picture about Christmas being a special time, but that was because it should be seen as a special time, not one governed by excess and how much money you've spent. 

Things Can Only Get Better

Now, I really don't believe that when the Duffer Brothers were casting their net far and wide for their four bicycle riders of the apocalypse; the heroes of their magnum opus, Stranger Things, that the young weedy one who gets kidnapped by the bad demon man has to end up being gay. I think Noah Schapp - who plays gay Will Byers - blames himself for all the bad things that have happened, but equally his gayness makes him the key in defeating Vecna and saving the world from collapsing in on itself and destroying existence.

I fucking shit you not. This is all because Will doesn't like girls in a stiff winkle kind of way. The US army are bad guys, the demons and nasty creatures are also bad guys, but none of this would have happened if Will had just knocked one out while thinking about Nancy Wheeler's flesh coloured lemon. I mean, that isn't all that happened, but it was the most lucid and easily to follow bits. There was a scene where baby Wheeler, who is a different actor than the two girls who played her last time, and Max, who has but hasn't been in a coma for 18 months, are agonising over saving their lives while running away from danger, where they could have sat down at a picnic table, had a coffee and some cake, had a pedicure and maybe dreamt of something really boring. We have to escape, so lets stand around and reminisce about bullshit until our escape goes wrong. Who fucking writes this shit? Really? Three hour long episodes to get to the point where all of them get in a van and head off for the final showdown. It's been the longest televisual foreplay since the end of the porn film industry.

One of the things about the cod science they use in this is that it's only slightly less fucking loopy than the cod philosophy that gets wheeled out whenever one of the main cast characters is facing imminent death. There was lots of crying, wringing of hands and teenagers shooting trained army personal with high powered automatic weapons with an ease only equalled by the amount of wankiness on screen at any singular moment. You wonder how them Duffers are going to end all of this neatly with the New Year's finale unless that's about 12 hours long. The Duffer Brothers are absolute cunts. Make no mistake. 

Oy Vey

My paternal grandmother was a lapsed Jew... Now, if you were Jewish, that would be the start of a joke. My dad was a little like his mum with his humour and a lot of that humour was Jewish. I think it comes with the territory, or at least it once did. The entire 'point' of The Marvellous Mrs Maisel [I'm sorry, I can't write it as the Americanisation it calls itself] is to reproduce that wholesome, comedy Jewishness that pervaded entertainment between the 1930s and the early 1970s. Despite fewer than 3% of the entire population of the USA being Jewish. But there was a period where television made it look like everyone lived next door to a Jewish family and they were all Groucho Marx. This TV show reproduces that so well, yet manages to have an adult story going on against this backdrop of comedy Jewish family dramady. 

The thing about the first season is how it arrives at the end and you're puzzled about how you got there. Rachel Brosnahan is extremely Lucile Ball mixed with Joan Rivers and Roseanne Barr. She is breezy and disposable as a character but when she's on stage she turns into a beast. Alex Borstein as Susie - Midge's manager - is not dissimilar to a character a female Danny DeVito might have played, while the supporting cast of Maisels and Wisemans just adds to this impression every one in the USA lived this comedy Jewish existence. What makes it work is there's an adult story going on behind all of this 2025 aping 1965; it's like a 1950s wholesome family comedy where half the cast say fuck all the time.

The New Top Gear?

Watching bits of old Top Gear episodes recently made me yearn for that kind of television again. I know there are a lot of people who couldn't stand Top Gear, but sometimes, it scratched an itch other TV couldn't. While you could make an argument that there were many presenters of Top Gear who made good TV, most people would point at the former disgraced, TV show host and now beleaguered farmer and NHS cardiac out patient, the short one from Birmingham who was always crashing cars and the slow posh one the other two took the piss out of and remember that the most fondly...

The thing is, I'm a fan of the slow posh one and I think he might have come up with a 2025 version of Top Gear. One without cars, with little or no insulting and with James May as the main presenter holding it all together. I say this all because of James May's Shed Load of Ideas, which teams the 62 year old May with his friends Sim Oakley and Tony 'the Tool' Bains, has that devil-may-care self-awareness that could turn it into a hit (when typing the previous line I wrote 'git' instead of hit). It's like 'What If Top Gear was more like How?' Throw in some beer, a slightly dull 'fixing my mate down the pub's toaster segment and the fact, in real life, James probably goes to his own pub, in Wiltshire, less often than he goes to Japan and you have a televisual winner. Seriously, some of the stupid stunts are stupid, but some of them will have you weeing yourself (and they can probably come up with a solution for that problem). It's paced perfectly for Top Gear fans now in their 60s, but with no cars or chest-beating or xenophobic comedy. 

Trailer Trash

I'm off to the pub again later, so I'm filling space... The first trailer - proper - for Avengers: Doomsday has dropped and I expect it would have been something of a shock to your average cinema goer. I've seen some speculation, but I don't tend to patronise gossip and rumour columns or stations, so if there was rumours of this I'm sure my geek-o-meter would have gone off. It's Captain America - Steve Rogers - in the 1950s with a baby and it's Chris Evans; last seen as a 120-year-old man handing over the mantle of Captain America to Sam Wilson, who possibly thinks he might be Captain America.

The trailer is not even 90 seconds of what could be a massive bit of obfuscation. For starters, Steve looks a bit AI, don'tcha think? Yes, it's him looking longingly at his paradoxical suit, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's got to put the duds back on. Holding a baby - his baby - who might be an adult now, might play a part. This could almost be Evans's cameo - his name wasn't included in the chairs bollocks because he's in it for three minutes and he's changing diapers in two of them. 

There is also another vitally important thing everyone needs to understand going into this film when it eventually is released [to the sound of money leaving Disney like shit from a cow] it's likely to be just shy of three hours. It needs to set the stage, nothing else, but it will need to be like Infinity War and be a great movie. This is a movie with so many people in it, some of them are not going to get more than a minute on screen.

For Disney to announce this a full year to go before it's released suggests to me that this is either a ham-fisted bit of PR or they have had to make some huge changes in the story to be able to shoo Rogers into it and if this is a thing what about Tony, um, Victor Von Doom? If we're getting 1950s Cap, why not get 2012 Tony Stark to help fight a guy who looks like him? For this to work it needs to have a good story; we know the directors are capable of delivering big, but this is going to need a story that feels like whatever it does there can only be one more film after it, but also it can't be all anti-climax.

What follows Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027 is anybody's guess; if you asked me to put my old comics column hat on and say what I think *might* happen, then I think the reason future films have become a topic that isn't discussed reflects the mood inside Disney and whether the MCU needs to have a more stringent economic outlook going forward. There is nothing on the horizon that feels nailed on other than the X-Men film and my gut feeling is Doomsday and Secret Wars are going to be the end of the MCU. By the end of 2027, the shared universe will become one single timeline with a new singular history.

Here's another idea, they've announced the recasting of all the X-Men, not who has been cast, just that there will be no returning actors to same roles. Maybe this is because Disney is going to allow Marvel to try and repeat what they did with the MCU with a new mutant universe. Make the X-Men film about the past; if they're going to have a new Charles Xavier and Erik Lensher, if these actors are in their 60s in 2025, then have realistic doppelgangers in the 1970s and 80s and have stories that make them worth wanting to see.  

The Fantastic Four film was not frightened to be different and MCU films rooted in the past have been huge successes. Maybe the new Marvel, after all these bombastic event films, will concentrate on quality over quantity.

One last thing. Marvel never told us about Chris Evans' return, we've not seen anything from the actual film and everything else is literally being fuelled by fan sites. Marvel is keeping this close to its chest. If Evans is back as a lead character, then what about Scarlett? Was Mark Ruffalo's name on one of those deckchairs? What about Jeremy Renner? Is Robert Downey Jr really playing Doc Doom? Could he be playing Tony Stark as well? Is Doomsday just going to be loads of superheroes dying on screen? Could Secret Wars just be going to feature the original Avengers? 

Where We Are

Regardless of the hype around this series, Pluribus has been an odd concoction of ideas and there's obviously a certain amount of luck regarding its success. Now that Carol has effectively become a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, it's up to Manousos to try and make her see the light and, naturally, the entire point of this series was to put Carol in exactly the position she had put the other 11 human beings in earlier on in this story cycle. So, other than failure and with an example of how giving up ones individuality for the hive mind really is as banal and not exciting as you would imagine it to be, this first season went nowhere at a reasonable preamble...

I have just got the feeling that the hivemind, which I believe will  have to attempt to protect itself if threatened, is going to evolve. There's got to be something like a subplot in the second season because it doesn't matter how good it is, you need a reason to be watching it. This isn't a celebrity fishing show and it doesn't have David Attenborough giving us a blow-by-blow account of the final days of individual man. 

I will say this; 2025 has been a year of false starts. The number of shows I've watched that have knocked it out of the park in the opening two episodes and ended up like a fart in a bath... I have gone from pondering whether Pluribus could be one of the greatest TV shows of all time to wondering how it's going to maintain my interest.

Wholly Underpants

"It dawned on me about half way through the first episode, this is that boring thing about idiots living in giant vaults underground..." The wife had remembered season one of Fallout and now might have condemned it to an early bath, in football parlance. Considering it's only been about a year since season one, everything seems far more convoluted and complicated now. Walton Goggins and Ella Purnell are still working their way across post-apocalyptic USA trying to track down Kyle MacLauchlan's bad guy father. I managed to stay awake through this one, but I'm struggling with it.  

What's Up Next?

Next week might be the time humanity discovers they're not alone in the universe. Equally we might have another week to suffer the company of each other while watching 'lesser creatures' be tortured by barbarians. I'm sure it will be a bundle of laughs.