Media, August 2024

What I consumed that month.

§ Music

Mostly a lot of shuffle this month. But I noticed Porridge Radio have a new album coming out soon and I’d never got round to getting their previous one, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky, so I’ve listened to that a few times.

§ Books

I read Nineteen Seventy-Four by David Peace this month which was good but expectedly grim. I did see the TV adaptation of the four books a few years back but hardly remember any of it. I plan to read the rest of the books but after liking this one, I went back to the Oxfam bookshop where I bought it and they had, of course, sold out of the the other three in the same edition. Obviously, I can’t buy them with different covers, or just order them online, so that’ll have to wait.

§ Films

I had a day in London this month and went to see Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962) at the Curzon Soho, which – 20 minutes of adverts aside – was exactly the kind of cinema experience I miss. I wasn’t sold on the film at first but as it went on, and Cléo mellows, I liked it more. Lots of 1960s Paris, and a chunk that felt like the inspiration for Richard Linklater’s Before… series, made it even better.

§ TV

We watched the first season of The Afterparty, the first episode of which we’d clearly seen before but had no memory of having done so, as if it had been beamed direct into our memories with an Apple software update. It was pretty fun. At least a couple of episodes too long, as is so often the case. One of those shows that’s easily good enough to fill a few evenings with, quite happily, but also leaves me thinking, “Is this really the best use of my life?”

The Paris Olympics neatly coincided with a couple of weeks that I was at home so, rather than find anything useful or meaningful to do, I spent a lot of time watching them and it was wonderful. I’m not convinced the Olympics are A Good Thing, overall, but given they exist I love watching them. I stuck to the BBC’s two channels, and bathed in the warm feeling of being involved in a big event, watching people do amazing things, years of training focused on a moment.

I also very nearly finished rewatching the final two seasons of Veep. Perhaps it was starting to drag things out a bit long by this point but still great, with so many excellent characters: Jonah, Gary, Mike, Richard, Minna…

I’ve given up on scything for this year but this month I’ve watched quite a few of the Slåttergubben YouTube channel’s videos which are useful, relaxing and wholesome.

Finally, I enjoyed Pop Goes the Easel, a 1962 episode of the Monitor arts show about four pop artists, including Peter Blake, directed by Ken Russell. It was mentioned in the Roxy Music book I mentioned last month and was a nice period artifact.