Living For The Weekend: A 2021 Diary By The BBG
Simian Substitute Site for February 2021: Miss Monkey's Valentine's Day Problem

Simian Substitute Site for January 2021: Year Of The Monkey

Year Of The MonkeyMONTH END PROCESSING FOR DECEMBER 2020
[one-line despatches from a lockdown Christmas]

Comedy: Just the Tonic New Year's Eve Special: the closest thing available to our usual NYE night out, a fine collection of comics both big (Al Murray, Romesh Ranganathan) and small (Daliso Chaponda's only really come to my attention through online gigs like this), with Ivan Brackenbury's hospital radio DJ schtick proving a surprisingly smart choice to lead us into the final countdown. The Bugle Relives 2020: Andy Zaltzman, Alice Frasier, Nish Kumar and Nato Green's overview of the year (livestreamed to a paying audience, available soon as an edited podcast) didn't have the budget of Charlie Brooker's Death To 2020 so had to make do with decent gags instead.

Movies: The Right Stuff: selected from our DVD shelf as a tribute to the late Chuck Yeager, we discovered shortly after viewing that it was recently remade by Disney and National Geographic without the Yeager bits, which seems insane. The Muppet Christmas Carol: it's only when you watch the film with someone who hasn't seen it before (really, she hadn't) that you realise how many things in current Christmas culture reference it nowadays. Soul: I suspect Pixar's newie got a lot of free passes from me thanks to being watched late on Christmas Day under the influence of everything, but sadly we never got to arrange a control group to test that.

Music: Thommo's Christmas Music Show: one of the surprise delights of Christmas Eve, as Mark Thomas made live Zoom calls to loads of his comedy chums and played their favourite Christmas songs - the biggest surprise being that a show that was scheduled to last three hours ended up running for five. United We Stream: the Mancunian charity livestreamers had a couple of epic shows for the festive season: a six-hour recreation of Wigan's Boxing Day fancy dress party, and a twenty-four hour bloody monster from the Hacienda mob covering New Year celebrations in every world timezone.

Telly: Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2019: shit, what are all those kids doing crammed in that room like that? Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2020: ah, that's better. The Mandalorian Season 2: still more fun than most things in the modern Star Wars universe, but it'll be interesting to see if it stays that way given how this season ended. The Little Drummer Girl: sitting on our Sky box for over two years until the death of its author spurred us into bingeing it, Park Chan-wook's adaptation has all the sheer narrative drive that I can remember from when I devoured the novel in a single day back in 1984, and makes me wonder why the movie version with Diane Keaton ever seemed like a good idea. Death To 2020: how the hell does a comedy show with eighteen credited writers have so few jokes in it?

Theatre: The Long Goodbye: Riz Ahmed's online-only dry run for his 2021 Manchester International Festival show, taking the themes from his film Mogul Mowgli and brilliantly distilling them into a thirty minute monologue with music. Kid Carpet And The Noisy Animals Totally Normal Christmas Party: we finally got to see one of the Kid's shows for kids, and this crazed fifty-way Zoom call was the perfect blend of inspired daftness with a crafty bit of satire thrown in for the grown-ups.

P.S.: In the half hour between finishing breakfast and starting work on lunch on Christmas Day, I made one of these things - maybe you'll find it useful next year.

P.P.S.: One day after putting the above ridiculously long list of items onto the internet, I suddenly realised that I'd forgotten a couple of other things I'd done over Christmas: specifically, I'd also watched two complete online pantomimes. So. Cinderella And The Beanstalk: the Newcastle branch of the Stand comedy club put on a surprisingly traditional livestreamed affair with a cast of four, some neat use of pre-recorded video and some rather fine jokes (including a reference to Tier 4 a mere half day or so after it was first announced). Jack And The Beer Hops: a rather less traditional panto put on by the Brewgooder brewery in aid of the Theatre Artists Fund, consisting of a beautifully packaged set of four beers delivered to your home, a ten minute video panto featuring characters named after the beers (or vice versa), and a whole Google drive full of activities including colouring in sheets, a quiz, a Spotify playlist of Christmas songs and a video tasting session for the beers.

In the meantime, your Simian Substitute Site for January 2021 is Year Of The Monkey, the homepage for the latest book by Patti Smith. Smith's a bit busy at the moment - she's taking over the big screens at Piccadilly Circus every night this month in the latest of Circa's art installations on the site, which kicked off last night with a special presentation for New Year's Eve. She's also got this kinda sorta memoir in the shops, telling the story of her experiences in 2016 (the most recent Year Of The Monkey, hence the title). Visit the page to read an extract, hear a bit of her doing the same from the audiobook version, and order the paperback from her American publishers. (Sadly her British publishers don't have an equivalent page, but I'm sure it's available from wherever you usually get your books.)

So. Happy New Year, I suppose? If we can at least agree that together we all want to make it better than the previous one, maybe we can get somewhere. Comments welcomed below, as ever.

Comments

Suzewot

Quick trivia question: In THE RIGHT STUFF who plays the part of the bloke who gets his broom handle sawn in half ?

SpankTM

Oh, that's a nice touch - I saw he was narrating, didn't spot that he was in it too. And, as you probably know, Chuck himself is serving behind the bar. https://twitter.com/vashikoo/status/1017649512234475521

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