Watched THE ASH TREE (1975) - might be the best ghost story for Christmas yet, I love how dense and uncompromising the constant time slippage is, making for a really eerie vibe

Gene Wolfe’s Latro series, you would need the budget because to reflect Latro’s perception of the world every actor apart from him would be recast every episode

Didn’t ask for any books this year cos I still haven’t read loads of last year’s but I DID get DVD box sets of Pressburger & Powell and Jean-Paul Belmondo films which will help in future Project Boss Baby style antics!

My kid got this for Christmas, I have to admire how hardcore it is with zero LOTR or Hobbit scenes and FIVE for Beren And Luthien

The realisation that it’s not just me, Monopoly is just not a good game was an important one to me!

A chance to post this perennial festive banger youtu.be/2yUsvt2deSc?...

Presents wrapped, drummer boy drummed, compliments of the season to one and all 🎄🎄🎄

Flight home's been delayed two hours so I had to make something important

Got some kind of virus which might mean postponing Christmas dinner to Boxing Day but no so called bug can prevent the annual ritual of wrapping the presents to the 42 minute version of Little Drummer Boy youtu.be/x0US4KqCMKM?...

Luke 2:1 "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." Morgan McSweeney: "Focus groups are going to fucking hate this"

That was good, I thought! Didn’t necessarily go where I was expecting but laid some good foundations for the central relationship in S2 (tho you never know with this show)

Watching the season finale of PLURIBUS which is proving that the “never compromise” bit of Watchmen would have been a lot funnier with a translation app involved

Will I Am is a funny case in that he’s basically a pop star who really loves the idea of talking business speak in the way other wealthy pop stars enjoy racing yachts or running trout farms, saying this kind of stuff is his main hobby as far as I can tell

I have already outdone will I am simply by dividing my day into twenty *five* hours to grind in

Watched THE TREASURE OF ABBOTT THOMAS (1974) - “is this the one with the toad?” I asked myself and YES! it’s the one with the toad (here rather more amorphous). Great central performance of a rather smug rationalist laid low, and a well-done ecclesiastical mystery

This is very true however I am smarter than Colony Earth

I’ve been a Mariah stan since her Cribs appearance, and she keeps on giving.

Finally hearing some of the new Lily Allen tracks and it reminds me a bit of The Streets?

I’m reminded of watching two old ladies ask a teenage goth for directions and she politely told them and when she was out of earshot one lady said “You know where you are with a goth”

Kinda discouraging to spend ages working on a fun year end music poll with tons of new discoveries and immediately get a quote skeet going "oh I won't be voting in this I've only heard of 5 of them", sorry I forgot the sole purpose of the internet was to remind you of stuff you already knew

RIP to a Balearic legend youtu.be/4I_iIxd2qCg?...

He looks like an old school Mancunian who never got over the Hacienda closing.

When I worked in the second hand bookshop this was the only CD we had permanently on hand, Terry on the cover like a benign presiding spirit. We all loved it, the customers tended to hate it, so it was very handy for days when we had a ton of new stock to price up or markdowns to do

NIGEL FARAGE STOLE MY SATSUMAS

Oh no

I used to think “they’re OK for summaries“ but found that the longer the content the worse the output; this is partly an inherent problem with ‘summarising’ though! Anyway I hit the “not worth my time to fix it” barrier quite rapidly

Caught up with PLURIBUS episode 8 - I love how good it is at making nice things feel sus - even before the "why" of the train the sheer length of it is just creepy, 'no that's too train'. A sensation we're all getting more used to these days.

Just want to point out that MALAK BROOD is one of the great evil wizard names

#ProjectBossBaby enters the world of giallo with SUSPIRIA (1977) in which an American ballet student explores an alternative curriculum. My thoughts -

don't put it in the papers that me mad

#ProjectBossBaby enters the world of giallo with SUSPIRIA (1977) in which an American ballet student explores an alternative curriculum. My thoughts -

#PeoplesPop25 This is the NOMINATIONS THREAD for the WORLD CUP OF 2025 Pick 3 favourite tracks of 2025 (in order of preference!) Spreadsheet here (with the 48 already qualified tracks) docs.google.com/spreadsheets... Guidelines here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

It's that time again!

This has got revived out of nowhere so just to confirm, 43 years now, still mad

Occasionally I will see parthenogenesis used outside Shriekback’s “Nemesis” and do the Leonardo pointing meme

#PeoplesPop25 Final choice final boost and it's... DANNY BROWN ft UNDERSCORES - "Copycats" I feel a bit guilty for not listening to the DB album yet, I know some feel about Danny Brown's voice the way I feel about the lad from Geese but this is great www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7h3...

Feeling rough as dogs then by a Christmas miracle I remembered I'd bought one of those microwaveable pouches of Tarka Dal last time I had a cold for this exact scenario, unprecedented work by Past Tom

Getting ready to make decisions on year end Pop Poll qualifiers

My younger son announced yesterday that there were “no rock stars any more” and I of course said what about Geese, only joking, I said yeah basically you’re right

A little peeve of mine from reading year-end music packages: Everyone's "bursting on the scene" with "hits" that aren't hits and whatnot. Feels a little like a (badly conceived) anticipatory reaction to the inevitable "I've never heard of these people" complaints. Like, "Well, you SHOULD know them."

The first new Christmas themed song to be Christmas No 1 in 35 years! Or 31 depending on where you stand on the East 17 issue

Watched LOST HEARTS (1973) - another winner, a very tight adaptation with wonderfully creepy kids and a great performance from Joseph O’Conor as a particularly twinkly and avuncular occultist

Fame going to their heads, it’s the Gallaghers all over again, I hope you EOY list makers are pleased with yourselves www.bbc.com/news/article...

Reaching for a glib comparison he's kind of the American H G Wells - massively popular novelist writing (conflictedly) from the heart of Empire, who defines a genre with his early successes but also writes a LOT of later books, we are deep in King's Tono-Bungay era

Delivered my last bit of freelance pre Christmas work and now I can concentrate on the true joy of the festive season, coughing and sneezing through an impeccably timed cold

Been listening to the Just King Things podcast about Stephen King, which is interesting to me as of course I knew King had the temerity to continue writing books after I lost interest in him (age 18) but I have no idea what any of them are about or like

#PeoplesPop25 6/7 TWICE - "Strategy" K-Pop again? Again and again! My favourite song from KPop Demon Hunters is not by Huntr/X and gets my boost here www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz_w...

Went to the THEATRE to see Othello starring David Harewood - the last of the big Shakespeare plays I’d never seen! (It was excellent)

It was the year I started watching stuff again and the best new thing I saw was THE LOWDOWN with Ethan Hawke - dense, twisty, brutal, extremely funny and surprisingly generous in the end