Review 2009: Subjectively Speaking

The subject this time being me and my year, the questions being asked by a meme.

1. Where did you begin 2009?
At home. I have up on the new year celebration years ago. Too much expectation leading to too much disappointment.

2. What was your status by Valentines Day?
Single. Again.

3. Were you in school anytime this year?
Oddly enough, yes. But only because a friend lives in a flat there now. Or he did. I’m not sure if it’s the past tense.

4. Did you have to go to the hospital?
To pick my Dad up from an eye operation. Cataracts. He can now see far better out of one eye than the other.

5. Did you have any encounters with the police?
Other than asking directions somewhere, no.

6. Where did you go on vacation?
Stratford Upon Avon, finally. Then London, finally. It’s been a busy year.

7. What did you purchase that was over £100?
A DVD PVR recorder. Which has been very, very busy over Christmas.

8. Did you know anybody who got married?
I did. Old work colleagues, old friends.

9. Did you know anybody who passed away?
No one close.

10. Did you move anywhere?
No… but I thought about it, a lot.

11. What sporting events did you attend?
Watched the usual runs about Sefton Park.

12. What concerts/shows did you go to?
RSC, finally. Then the Globe, finally. It’s been a busy year.

13. Describe your birthday.
Worked. Chippy tea.

14. What is the ONE thing you thought you would not do, but did, in 2009?
Stand for an hour on the plinth in Trafalgar Square reading blog entries to an audience of thousands. See also 6 and 12 with an addendum for standing in front of Lord Dudley’s tomb in Warwick.

15. What have been your favourite moments?
Rediscovering myself. A bit. Not enough yet.

16. Any new additions to your family?
Yes. My cousin welcomed someone new into the world.

17. What was your best month?
Probably August.

18. Who has been your best drinking buddy?
The twitterati of Liverpool.

19. Made new friends?
The twitterati of Liverpool.

20. Favourite Night out?
With the twitterati of Liverpool.

21. Other than home, where did you spend most of your time?
Work. I’ll have to do something about that.

22. Have you lost any friends this year?
Open to discussion.

23. Change your hairstyle?
Up and down, in and out. Currenly al-fresco.

24. Have any car accidents?
No, thank goodness.

25. How old did you turn this year?
35.

26. Do you have a New Years resolution?
To be needed.

27. Do anything embarrassing?
Depends on how I’m really feeling about the whole plinth affair.

28. Buy anything from eBay?
Davros: The Collection. It was a third of the RRP.

29. Get married or divorced?
No.

30. Get hit on?
Not sure. That may be a bad thing.

31. Been snowboarding?
Ha!

32. Did you get sick this year?
Lots of colds.

33. Are you happy to see 2009 go?
Only because it’s another year towards the future. And the idea of next year being 2010 is freaking me out.

34. Been naughty or nice?
Nice. I think. I don’t know how to be naughty me.

35. What are you looking forward to most in 2010?
Watching the film 2010. It’s another sci-fi milestone.

[meme via]

Review 2009: Subjectively Speaking

The News

The following short exchange happened on Twitter ...

@feelinglistless Right then, let's begin. What would you like to talk about?

@ThatNeilGuy Well, I thought we could talk about my decision early this year to tune out the news as much as possible.

@feelinglistless A bold move. What brought you to that decision?

@ThatNeilGuy I got sick of hearing partisan bickering all the time. Everything is so implausibly black & white in political discourse.

@feelinglistless Just for some context, where do you live?

@ThatNeilGuy I am in the US of A. In South Carolina.

@feelinglistless Was there a particularly story or report that turned you off in particular?

@ThatNeilGuy So political discourse in general made me angry. Why is compromise such a bad word in politics? Isn't life about synthesis

@feelinglistless -- but surely the news is simply reporting what it sees. I know that's slightly different in the US with network bias but ...

@ThatNeilGuy Everything seemed to come thru a lens of "bush is infallible and all democrats are antiamerican."

@feelinglistless Would it not be possible to simply just tune out politics?

@ThatNeilGuy Hard to not hear all news reports as "this politician says the other side is evil."
@ThatNeilGuy So I've stopped listening to top of the hour news reports. But I still get info from other sources.

@feelinglistless So it would be truer to say that you've stopped with broadcast sources?

@ThatNeilGuy Yes! If I had Comedy Central I'd probably watch Daily Show and get news slanted thru that lens, yet still be informed...
@ThatNeilGuy So I get most topical news from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, a radio comedy quiz show...
@ThatNeilGuy Via podcast. And also learned about financial crisis stuff thru This American Life podcast...
@ThatNeilGuy And science news thru podcasts of Skeptics Guide to the Universe and This Week in Science.

@feelinglistless I should add though that the Today programme on Radio 4 tends be criticised for bias against whoever isn't in power at the time
@feelinglistless But isn't it true that it's impossible to present the news without some kind of bias or agenda political or otherwise?

@ThatNeilGuy Yes. And I am hypocritical, I know, for wanting the agenda to be more akin to my own. Like viewed as comedy.

Review 2009: Subjectively Speaking

Last night I chatted to my new friend Zoe on Facebook and as you can see, without Twitter's character counting restrictions, it became more of an essay writing competition than a conversation. Same rules as before -- I didn't know what the subject would be until we started talking (typing). See if you can spot the moment when I turned into Paul Morley.

Zoe: Oops, I've started talking here. Shall we carry on here? This thing still confuses me!!

Stuart: Let's carry on here. How are you? What would you like to talk about?

Zoe: I'm ok thanks for asking. Bit odd this as I've never properly met you. Ok how about this to break the ice ... Pop Music is Dead. Would you agree or disagree with that statement?

Stuart: Disagree. Vehemently disagree. Why do you think it's dead?

Zoe: Oops, did I hit a nerve? lol. Manufactured boy/girl bands, one hit wonders promoted by televsion shows, cover version after cover version filling the charts, where have all the good pop bands of our youth gone to?? What has happened to originality?? Do you still listen to the top 40? I haven't this decade. Even the BBC knew pop music was dying out cos they pulled Top of the Pops!

Stuart: All of which is true of course, but to an extent it was also true in the 80s with Stock Aitkin and Waterman (which I was huge fan of at the time) and even earlier you could argue that the motown sound was entirely manufactured. Pop music if you're talking about in terms of Spice Girls thru Girls Aloud is manufactured but always has been.

I agree that the Simon Cowell axis of shit has gone some way to changing the perception of pop music but if you look at something like the PopJustice website you can see that pop music is alive and well. I'd call Lilly Allen, Kate Nash, Little Boots, Lady Gaga, Paloma Faith even Metric, pop music, even if the sound is often based on guitars or electronica.

I think the problem is that as such the definition of "pop music" has narrowed lately. Blur/Oasis and before them The Rolling Stones/The Beatles were considered to be pop music whereas these days they're thrown in with rock music and fans of that kind of music tend to look sideways at "pop" as though it's something entirely different.

Zoe: Yeah, but how many people will have heard of most of those names you just mentioned?? Where are our 21st Century Rolling Stones, Oasis, Beatles etc? I doubt if those bands started out today you would ever get to hear of them! Not too sure I agree with your comments about Motown music being manufactured though when you compare it to the likes of Pop Idol/X-Factor these days. I see little similarity between likes of Stevie Wonder and Leon Jackson, and Diana Ross and Michelle McManus! S/A/W started the decline of pop music back in the late 80s and it hasn't recovered since.

Stuart: Oh I see. So what you mean is that there aren't any bands producing the kind of groundbreaking music that we heard from The Beatles etc and even if there were they wouldn't have the same following.

Firstly, with digital distribution and mass demographics it is increasingly harder for bands to get noticed because there's such a diverse audience. I'm listen to an album right now by a band called Metric which was released earlier in the year and is very good indeed and I wish I'd known about it sooner so it could have soundtracked some of the past few months.

But that doesn't mean that something, if it's as good as The Beatles, can't break out. The question is whether it has to. The measure of success has reduced and I suspect quite a lot of bands are happy to have a smallish but loyal following because it allows them to have the creative freedoms that mass production prohibits them from having.

Plus the problem with guitar bands is that they're rather caught in their looong shadow. Even Oasis who have never lived down the fact that everything they do sounds like The White Album (or whatever).

My understanding of Motown is that was the musical equivalent of the old Hollywood system and was essentially copied by S/A/W. They had a roster of stars and would choose who recorded what, effectively filling a gap in the market. If that's not manufacturing music I don't know what is. In terms of musical quality there's a country mile between what Berry Gordy was doing and Simon Cowell, but the methodology was very similar indeed.

Good god, that's an essay isn't it? Sorry.

Zoe: OK, I'll try not to be as epic but I can't guarantee lol. I do think there are bands out there doing good music but they don't get given the exposure that the more "instant-hit", if you like, pop acts are. It so much easier for a record company to go with the easier option rather than invest in something that may or may not turn out to have more longevity.

On the point of digital distribution etc this should surely have made it easier for people to find any good music that is out there? After all didn't the Arctic Monkeys supersonic rise to public prominence derived from the internet and such sites as Myspace etc??

Then again, when you think about it, maybe there just aren't any really really good pop bands out there anymore. If you think back, for example,to Live8 a few years ago, who were the big bands that performed? U2, The Who, REM, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney - were where the 21st century generation of good pop bands? If that concert had been in the 1960s who wouldhave headlined? Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix? The 70s - Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie? The 80s - Queen, Dire Straits U2? Are you with me? In the 21st Century we don't have our really good pop bands any more.

The methodology in what Motown and S/A/W did I can undersatnd was similar, but quite rightly the quality between the 2 couldn't be further apart. Motown took good singers/artists and produced amazing records. S/A/W took soap stars and the like and produced utter musical diarrhoea in my musical opinion. If they had wanted they could have put Geoff Capes in a blonde wig, written a tediously catchy synth song and promoted it on CBBC till it got to No1! lol

Stuart: Exactly. When they should be spreading the money around and investing in lots of different music (which was rather the case in the early to mid-90s, the money is being put into less acts but that changed in the late nineties and hasn't improved much since.

Arguably the sea change happened when the first, best, Sugababes line-up were dropped by the record company because their singles only charted in the top twenty and that was registered a failure.

But that doesn't mean pop music is dead. It's just different. I think you have to be careful not to mix up the definition of what constitutes "pop music". There are perhaps no bands like the ones you list, but that's because pop music has moved on to other things. Girly pop mostly, bluesier influences. R&B.

People are just listening to other things, and like I said earlier, the sound mixes guitar music riffs with dance beats it's all very postmodern because the people creating the music have a much wider range of musical tastes because they have access to a wider range of music.

Not necessarily worse, just *different*. Rock music will have resurgence soon probably just as it did in the early nineties with Brit pop and actually earlier this decade with your Arctic Monkeys and the like. What S/A/W and their successors have done has *nothing* to do with that. They're different genres of pop music.

But I think we're hitting against a taste issue. I love all of the music you list, but I also love Shakira and think her contribution could be and is potentially as important, particularly in relation to introducing world music sounds into mainstream pop.

And people are finding the good music. Little Boots was a grass roots discovery, v popular before she was signed by a record label. Kate Nash too. These things still happen. And both of those are country mile away from most other things and look to the past for influence.

Zoe: I do find it interesting you mention the Sugarbabes, because this in a way has a lot to do with what seems to have become "karaoke" pop music. I think I'm right in saying that none of the original members are still in the "group"? Surely they are now a tribute act? If not, what's the point any more? Just resurrect any band with new personnel and call them The Grateful Dead, Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd?!

Talking of Karaoke, lol, the one thing I despise about the way pop music has gone these days is almost upon us again - the X Factor Xmas No 1!!! Do you realise that if they do it again it will be the 5 year in a row??!! A British institution ruined by a reality TV show. What chance do Bob the Bulider or Mr Blobby have of ever regaining the top spot at Xmas?! lol

As an aside, did you know that 9 of the last 25 Xmas No1s were cover versions of one sort or another . . .?

Stuart: On that we can agree. There are no original members. It is just a tribute act with the same name. If Sugababes are the yardstick, then pop music is dead.

Zoe: Somewhat ironic when you think about it that Mr Blobby and Bob the Builder actually did do original Xmas No1s! lol May pop music rest in peace.

Review 2009: Subjectively Speaking

In which I talk to @tempestuous about her chosen subject of films. It was probably the longest conversation either of us had attempted on Twitter and was a largely successful experiment. Pity I did my usual and strayed off into auteur theory which meant the following exchange lasted two whole hours. For clarity, I've removed everything from each tweet but our names so that you can at least tell who is speaking ...

On the subject of films.

@tempestuous Ha! Yes, what timing! I sure am. How are you?

@feelinglistless Fine thanks. Are you ready, Baltimore? I SAID ARE YOU READY, BALTIMORE?

@tempestuous I'm the one who gets to do the interrogating! So it's more like -- LIVERPOOL! At the ready?!

@feelinglistless I thought it was the other way around, but I'm game. Let's go. What will we be talking about?

@tempestuous Okay! I am going to talk to you about movies.

@feelinglistless Excellent.

@tempestuous LOL is it that way around? Hold on, since I am now choking on my iced tea. I am ill-prepared!

@feelinglistless Don't worry. We'll just talk and I'll probably end up doing most of it anyway.
@feelinglistless So what did you want to ask me?

@tempestuous My original thought was to throw a few of my favorite movies out to you, and let you tell me your quick opinion on them.

@feelinglistless Short pithy opinions coming up.

@tempestuous It's interesting, because beside one-off little notes here and there, I've never actually had a Tweetversation before.

@feelinglistless That's what I wanted to try. See if Twitter works like a chatroom, because that's what it looks like if you're using a client.

@tempestuous It's actually slightly frustrating and leads my brain to questions like the ones my non-Twitter friends ask: Why not IM?
@tempestuous But anyway, I spent a little while thinking about the movies that I am forcibly compelled to watch whenever they are on tv
@tempestuous First up: a movie I have actually more or less memorized: A Room With A View, 1985, I'm sure you've heard of it.

@feelinglistless I have. Merchant Ivory. Arguably Helena Bonham Carter's most normal performance.

@tempestuous Most normal, save for her ""hyperactive eyebrows,"" as I believe Tim Burton has said of that particular performance"
@tempestuous She's one of those actors I'll see in anything - literally anything - but it's the film's over-the-top charm that gets me

@feelinglistless Hah, true. But what's interesting about A Room With A View is that it really brought Merchant Ivory into the mainstream.
@feelinglistless It was their most commercial film up until that point. But they made many great films before that. The Bostonians, Heat & Dust

@tempestuous Have you seen Shakespeare-Wallah?

@feelinglistless I haven't! It's on my list of films I'm saving because I know they're good and I don't want to see all the good films now.

@tempestuous I found it charming in a completely different way than their later movies, sort of rough-edged and strange.

@feelinglistless A lot of their early films are like that. The general perception of M/I is of these perfect little costume dramas when ...
@feelinglistless ... their earlier work is more akin to third cinema, more interested in the Ismail Merchant's cultural heritage.

@tempestuous Yes exactly! It's quite a revelation if you're tuning in for the corsets and the posh accents!
@tempestuous And I could go on for ages about the Prawer Jhabvala / EM Forster relationship

@feelinglistless Which sort of dogged the rest of their career. Unless Emma Thompson turned up wearing a straw hat, people stayed away.

@tempestuous I could go on and one, but I'll throw out another of my memorized / will laugh hysterically EVERY time films...
@tempestuous And I may really hit against some cultural differences here, but... Pee-wee's Big Adventure!
@tempestuous (If going from Merchant-Ivory to Pee-wee isn't a 360... I don't know what is)

@feelinglistless Never seen it. Haven't seen any of the Pee Wee Herman films. He's not a huge cultural figure in the UK

@tempestuous Okay, you should see it... maybe not for Pee-wee, but for Tim Burton.
@tempestuous Unless, of course, you're not a Burton fan, in which case... you might find the whole thing even more annoying
@tempestuous That's one of those films that I'm not sure will translate if you didn't see it an early age. Like The Goonies.

@feelinglistless That's my fear. But it's true I can be a bit vanilla about Tim Burton's films. I think Big Fish is one of his best films ...
@feelinglistless Which I know is a controversial opinion.

@tempestuous I loved Big Fish - thought it was like his silly/dark early themes were distilled into something dark and poignant

@feelinglistless It's also markedly less stylised which is what stopped me from enjoying Sweeney Todd.
@feelinglistless But the story structure really appealed to me and I always cry at the end when the giant wanders into shot.

@tempestuous I thought Sweeney was his return to awesomeness. I felt burnt by Planet of the Apes and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
@tempestuous BUT... I'm massively biased with my love of the original music and Helena Bonham Carter's free pass to do anything

@feelinglistless My reaction to Burton is rather skewed. The wilder his gothic excesses are, the less engaged I am.

@tempestuous I'm really curious to know what you'd think of Pee-wee, then. It's a ridiculous movie but it's done with such heart

@feelinglistless It's a bit like Martin Scorcese. I love everything Scorcese's done, apart from Goodfellas. It's a contradiction.

@tempestuous I just rewatched Goodfellas when it was on cable... yeah, not my favorite, and I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to him

@feelinglistless I much prefer Casino.
@feelinglistless The Last Temptation of Christ is clearly the best of the Jesus films. Life Lessons the best film about an artist's muse.

@tempestuous I have not seen Life Lessons! I'll have to add it to the queue!

@feelinglistless Careful, it's one of the three short films that make up "New York Stories" along with one of Woody Allen's best too.

@tempestuous What do you think of the Coen Brothers?

@feelinglistless I can only stand about 50% of the Coens's films. Again, it's stylistic issues keeping me from being able to completely engage.
@feelinglistless Typically my favourites are The Hudsucker Proxy and Intollerable Cruelty, which were slated by the critics.

@tempestuous Two of my favorites, but I have a soft spot for the super-stylized ones. Have you heard any buzz about A Serious Man yet?

@feelinglistless Mark Kermode said that he can't understand the audience appreciation its getting considering its about at Coenian as they get.
@feelinglistless I think what links Burton and the Coens and number of these directors is that they're trying to deliberately bring a --
@feelinglistless -- sensibility that other directors, international directors predominantly, just *have* and that rubs me up the wrong way.

@tempestuous So you think it's a sort of manufactured sensibility, then? It doesn't feel like it comes naturally.

@feelinglistless Exactly. There's being deliberately different, then being deliberately obtuse. Wes Anderson's films seem more heartfelt

@tempestuous From the moment you see the typeface in the opening credits, you know you're in his world
@tempestuous One of the reasons I find Anderson's films so appealing is that they are so seamlessly stylized

@feelinglistless Whereas in a Coen Bros film they're trying to be stylised AND appeal to as wide an audience as possible. It doesn't work for me

@tempestuous I guess I'm less cynical about the Coens and Burton. I'm also just a snobbier-than-usual casual viewer, not a critic!
@tempestuous I thought the Coen's Burn After Reading was astonishingly wicked commentary on the intelligence of the general audience
@tempestuous Like they took what seemed like a movie that would have mass-appeal and completely turned it all upside down and inside out

@feelinglistless Exactly. I loved it for that. Oh and the moment when suddenly the whole thing falls apart and it just sort of ends.
@ tempestuous And it's perfectly structured because it should be when that character heads off into their climactic success.

@tempestuous Really sticking it to the people who just thought Clooney and Pitt were there to put on a jolly laugh-riot of a film
@tempestuous And that brought back fond memories of living in Minnesota when Fargo came out. The ignorant were terrified by the violence
@tempestuous And there was all sorts of outraged ""We do not really sound like that!"" fussing over the accents.
@tempestuous There's some similar train of thought to living in Baltimore and seeing John Waters' films
@tempestuous And the train is sort of passing my NaNoWriMo-addled brain by...

@feelinglistless Only seen Serial Mom. But you have to understand that the distribution of his films in the UK has been very limited

@tempestuous So what do you think about using Twitter to have a conversation?

@feelinglistless It's very tricky. The problem is update rates and the mismatch between devices. Sometimes we're talking over each other ...

Review 2009: Call For Entries

Subjectively Speaking

It’s that time of year again.

This year’s review is about communication.

Arguably, in online terms, 2009 has been the year of twitter. I won’t bother reiterating the numerous ways that the service has impacted on the real world, especially since The Guardian’s dedicated page does a pretty good job of cataloguing the tweets and turns, but with apparently one in five people online signed up to the service there’s no denying its impact has been immense. Use a client like Tweetdeck and it’s like entering a global cocktail party which buzzes with chatter, a free for all of comment and conversation and jokes. Plenty of jokes.

In this year when communication barriers have broken down to such a significant degree thanks to social networking, I want Review 2009 to reflect that, and so here is what I suggest:

At an appointed time the two of us will meet; hopefully on Twitter, but this could happen on Facebook, via email, ICQ/AIM, a discussion board, the gate-crashed comments section of someone’s blog or even in person (eep!). Much better if it’s in public I think since it adds some extra random elements and also means we’ll tend to stay in publishable areas.

You will choose a topic for us to talk about. Could be anything, literally anything. An interest, a current news story, a book you just read, a favourite film, something personal you want to get off your chest, doesn’t matter. And then we’ll talk about it for as long as we have, for as long as seems necessary, and then I’ll post the results on this blog.

And here’s the twist. I won’t know what the topic is beforehand.

People tell me that I have the ability to talk about anything and I like to think that I’m interested in anything. I want to put that to the test. I expect I’ll be surprised, I expect I’ll be put on the back foot, and I actually hope that happens. But I won’t know what the subject is until you tell me at the start of the meeting.

How does that sound?

If you’re interested do please email me at feelinglistless@btopenworld.com