My Cultural Life - Time Zones

What's Up?

I've been having anxiety issues for a few years now. It comes and goes, usually depending on the time of year or how much stress I'm under, but it has been something of an enigma, given that I've not been happier than I have since I moved to Scotland. I think a bunch of things probably set it off, the most obvious one being the pandemic in 2020, although I didn't really start having serious issues until 2023 when I pretty much had a full on breakdown...

I used to be quite dismissive of agoraphobia - a symptom of anxiety - but I think that was because I didn't understand it, despite having had a bout of it in the late 1990s - also due to stress and anxiety and probably all brought on by that bastard ex-employer of mine, who made my life something of a living hell (and is still alive). Now, agoraphobia is something that is the most prominent product of my anxiety and something I'm slowly beginning to understand, maybe even deal with.

I went to the doctor's in the September 2022 about my growing anxiety issues, but then that serious chest infection that led me to being rushed into hospital happened and everything got thrown into confusion and I had a couple of years of medical professionals treating the symptoms and not the cause. The thing is the pandemic led me down that 'I don't feel happy in places I don't feel in control of' path and that's not a control freak thing, but a COPD thing, because I irrationally panic in situations I can't control my anxiety in. This was amplified by Covid. Again, it's now something I'm beginning to deal with, but it's been a long old process.

Why am I telling you this?

Partly cathartic and partly explanatory. It has been noticed that I rarely socialise now and yet people who attend my pub quiz would probably be hard pressed to think there was anything wrong with me at all. Like many mental health issues, it's something I've learned to hide well. The stupid thing is I'm fine when I get wherever I'm going, it's the getting there and then getting back bits that I struggle with. I also could do without finding situations stressful, especially when there's nothing to get stressed about, or stressing about situations where I have the chance to dwell on worse case scenarios. 

The mind, eh? Can't live with it, cant live without it...

Is There Life on Titan?

The first post-Ed Baldwin episode of For All Mankind started with a dedication to the show's principle character and then featured a guest appearance from his old space partner and adversary, while introducing us to Gordo's granddaughter and the chief subplot of the series. There was me thinking it was going to be about discovering life on Titan (a moon of Saturn), but it's actually going to be the survival of the Mars colony and whether or not Ed's own grandson - born on the red planet - will be able to survive. There's still a feeling of understatement about my favourite TV show, but it's finally taking shape and Aleida's arrival on Mars, after a 40 year wait is a very interesting thing.

The Future of AI

Just before the opening credits rolled on Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the wife said, "Oh shit, you're going to be screaming at the telly before the end," as the show opened with Grayson chatting to a woman who had married her chatbot. The irony is that within a few minutes, she was shouting at the television about the world being full of fuckwits. However, this wacky start was a prelude to 45 minutes of some quite scary ideas and a wee bit of relief, as AI becomes extremely powerful, but has limits to its capabilities - at the moment - which might take a lot longer to master than the experts hoped. Perry is a knowledgeable and amiable host and this is a must see show for fans of dystopian sci-fi...

Double Crossed

As Coop (Jon Hamm) reels from being caught red handed by Ash (James Marsden), he's given a dilemma - retrieve what he stole or face the consequences. This sends Coop down a path in Your Friends & Neighbours he doesn't really want to, but has to and when he finally gets what he needs, he discovers he's not been double but triple crossed. Meanwhile, Coop's business manager has some new found energy since discovering what his client does for a living and Coop's daughter goes full on 'anti-mom' mode and moves in with her dad, much to the annoyance of her control freak, menopausal mother (Amanda Peet).

Legal Eagle

It's been about 25 years since we last watched Erin Brockovich and I'd be honest by saying we'd forgotten what a great movie it is. The story of a woman who essentially was on the waste tip of humanity; two former husbands, three kids, loads of debts and no chance of getting a decent job, who somehow gets a job in a law firm as a legal secretary and then discovers that some of their clients might have a Class Action against a power supplier in California. It's all about her relentless work in the face of discrimination and people looking down on her because of her appearance. It won Julia Roberts an Oscar and she absolutely deserved it. 9/10

Cream of Bailey

Bill Bailey's Thoughtifier, his latest comedy offering, is a mixture of hilarious and tedious, but that's probably just me. I find Bailey a very funny man who has waned with older age, but I've always struggled with his music. Yes, he writes and performs funny songs and his musicianship is remarkable, but I like my comedians to be comedians and I always get the feeling that Bailey is a repressed rock musician who would have been equally as happy in a prog rock band as making people laugh. This hour long special is good, but I think it was poorly edited and we well may have missed some of the more surreal and funnier bits.

We Are All Slaves 

I've often said that we have never seen a bad Matthew McConaughey movie and as we close in on seeing almost everything he's ever made, I can add The Free State of Jones to that list. It's an excellent film, but it does nothing to quell the feeling that the USA is just a giant lie dressed up as a democracy. The slave trade is a difficult period for any normal person to get their heads around; how we as a human race can imprison and force other humans to do whatever we want and if they don't acquiesce then we can punish them as we see fit. White Americans, especially those from the southern states, have a history that will rarely be looked back at fondly by anyone with a working brain. The MAGA movement, led by that Orange Racist in Chief, might want to return the USA to a period in its history that is abhorrent, but for all their power, at present, there are still filmmakers out there who show the country up for what it was - a barbaric, psychopathic and intolerant society that is anything but the land of the free...

This is a story that starts with the desertion of a Confederate officer who has realised that the Confederate army is being run by rich powerful Americans who were not putting themselves at risk, but getting poor, innocent people to believe in a world they had no real place in. McConaughey plays the deserter, Newton Knight, a man who has to hide with escaped slaves because there is a bounty on his head. He rallies his friends and other deserters to fight back against the corrupt Confederates and for a while they not only succeed but are at the forefront of the end of slavery and the birth of the freedmen. However, as Knight's story unfolds, we are treated to chunks of more recent history and a court case from 1950, where a descendent of Knight, who might have been one eighth black was imprisoned for marrying a white woman in Mississippi. As a historical 'document' it's tough watching; it's a great movie, but it will leave you angry and bewildered that the USA paints this fabulous picture of itself, but is really one of the worst places to live in the world if you are not white and privileged. 8/10

The PI Stakers

There is a team at my monthly pub quiz called the P.I. Stakers and I didn't know it was a reference to someone from the film Hot Fuzz. The reason for this is I've never seen Hot Fuzz. The team were amazed, given I write a column about films and I knew Simon Pegg (casually). So, on Monday night, we watched Hot Fuzz and I wasn't very impressed. It was okay, nothing special. I laughed a couple of times, but generally I found it tedious, predictable and exactly how I'd imagined it. There's not much else I can say about it really; if you've seen it you know what it's about and if you haven't my advice would be not to bother. 4/10

Mission Improbable

James Mangold's Knight and Day is essentially a piss take of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible films. It might not be dressed up as such, but with Cruise playing a flippant, slightly sociopathic, version of Ethan Hunt and getting himself into all kinds of situations with dodgy, double-dealing baddies, while also having the best looking woman around, the comparisons were always going to happen. The problem with Knight and Day is it just isn't in the same league as the movies it's attempting to parody. Cruise plays Roy Miller, a CIA agent seemingly on the run from his own people who 'recruits' the help of Cameron Diaz and subsequently puts her in danger. It rushes around a lot, does clever things 'off camera' and generally makes a good fist of a comedy action thriller, except it isn't very funny and a lot of the action happens 'off camera' so what you get is style over substance. It's entertaining without ever being much more. 6/10

Yawn!

Is it superhero fatigue? I doubt it because I'm really enjoying Daredevil. So why am I finding The Boys just tedious now? That's a tough one to answer with any conviction. It might have been Gen V and the fact, at some point, the wankers from that are going to turn up in this. Possibly it's the fact it has gone on for so long now that the actual aim of the story seems like it has outlived its stay - there have been a couple of occasions where Homelander could have been killed off, but here we are, with him going even more insane and yet becoming less threatening. This week some stuff happened.

Yay!

I have a soft spot for Daredevil. It's a comic that for years plodded along with no real direction and then a couple of writers - Frank Miller and then Ann Nocenti - did something different with it and the essence of that took root in Netflix's Daredevil series and now in Marvel's Daredevil: Born Again. This week was the aftermath of last week's boxing match with the WTF ending and much of it was told in flashback - utilising that Marvel de-aging technology they used originally in one of the Iron Man films. As Matt tries to get Bullseye safe from the AVTF, Fisk paces hospital corridors waiting for news of Vanessa. There's a sense of dread all through this and there's even a little subplot that keeps you guessing all the way to its conclusion. This is quality TV and far more entertaining than that The Boys shite.  

Drive My Cars

After watching Hot Fuzz I fancied watching another Edgar Wright movie, because I do find him to be a reasonably good director. That film was Baby Driver, something I'd avoided seeing, mainly because I felt it was going to be a different movie than it turned out to be. Ansel Elgort plays Baby, he's an actor I'm not familiar with but he does a good job as the slightly damaged kid who can drive a car like a pro. Supporting him included Jon Hamm, in a role that was a real change to his usual, Eiza Gonzalez, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. It was a really entertaining feature with a banging soundtrack, but I felt it was let down by the ending which I found a little disappointing, but I suppose it was the only place they could go. 6/10

What's Up Next?

More of the usual and probably less as well. I'm off to the pub tonight for my impending birthday, where I will be 64 and humming a Beatles tune. Then this coming Friday I have another pub quiz and you never know what's going to happen on the other days, especially with a reasonably warmer weather forecast.