Day 777

Aka Monday 18^th March 2019

Today was my Birthday and while I felt every one of my many years, I did get some nice books (and some cash, which is always nice 😊), now I've just got to finish the book(s) I'm currently reading!:

…I also worked on new job application, and I was taking it a bit more seriously (printing out the candidate pack, re-reading through it properly, making notes on it that I used when planning out my statement instead reading the everything online and revising an old statement)…

…I also listened to the new The Brain Jonestown Massacre album, ‘The Brain Jonestown Massacre’, which is great and manages to both sound like a classic BJM album and sound modern, it has the classic rock ‘n’ roll and shoegaze and pop touches, but it doesn’t sound like they are treading water and sticking to what they know, but are taking their sound forward. I can’t pick out a few standout tracks as they all sound as good as each other and I know that I’ll be regularly revisiting this album. It kinda reminds me of The Stones ‘Exile On Main St.’, in that the tracks fit perfectly together and the more you listen to it the more you hear, the more pleasure you get from it. 9/10.

…and ‘Edwin Starr: The Essential Collection’. As I’d previously mentioned there is a great Edwin Starr track on the ‘Bad Tines At The El Royale’ soundtrack, ’25 Miles’ and everyone knows how good ‘War’ is, so I wanted to give the rest of his catalogue a try, hence picking up this best of. And the songs on here are good, but not great, and only a few stand out above the rest, such as ‘War’, ‘Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On’ and ‘H.A.P.P.Y. Radio’. 6/10.

…and I watched ‘Showtime From The Frontline’, in which Mark Thomas explains how he set up a comedy workshop and club in Jenin, a Palestinian city:

 

“Name the comedian who might say ‘I wonder if I can set up a comedy club… in a refugee camp… in Palestine?’ Of course, it’s Mark Thomas. And that is exactly what he tries to do.

Dodging cultural and literal bullets, Israeli incursions and religion, Mark and his team set out to run a comedy club and put on two nights in the Palestinian city of Jenin. Only to find that it is not so simple to celebrate freedom of speech in a place with so little freedom.

Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade during the Second Intifada, is not a place synonymous with laughs. But it is also home to the Jenin Freedom Theatre and to people with a wealth of stories to tell.

Mark tells this story alongside Faisal Abu Alhayjaa and Alaa Shehada, two performers, actors and now aspiring comics from the Jenin Club. This is a story about being yourself in a place that wants to put you in a box. Funny, moving and necessary. Mark says, it’s the nearest he will ever get to Alan Parker’s ‘Fame’.”

…and he’s joined by Faisal Abu Alhayjaa and Alaa Shehada, who are two performers/actors who took part in the workshop and club and during the show they re-enact the short routines they developed and performed at the workshop/club. I enjoyed the show and while there are plenty of chuckles and titters and there’s a great comradery and friendship and warmth between Mark, Faisal and Alaa, like they have been performing together for decades, and it feels like you’re amongst friends just telling each other funny stories and not watching a professional show. My favourite part is when Mark gets a bit meta and makes a joke about people watching worthy comedy (like this show) because of the worthiness and forgetting to enjoy the comedy, that they are making mental notes about how “…that joke was funny…I must remember to laugh at it later…”. 8/10. 

…and ‘He’s Out There’, a horror film about a mother and her two children in a holiday house far away from anything or anyone, who are attacked by a stranger. I wasn’t expecting much from this film, just a couple of scares to while away the time before bed, but it doesn’t a great job of building up the tension and suspense. Which is an opinion that doesn’t seem to be shared by the critics and yes, the film does use a few clichés, but I got a real feeling of terror, being scared, unsure of what to do, and despair from the actors (Yvonne Strahovski, who played Laura, the mother, and Anna Pniowsky and Abigail Pniowsky who played the children Kayla and Maddie). For the story I’d give the film 6/10, but because of the actors (and the direction) I’d give it 8/10.

…and I did the G2 Crossword:

…which continues the hot streak from last week and gets the week off to a great start, with needing to cheat on only two of the 25 clues. And I really should have gotten those two – ‘agitated’ from ‘worked up’ and ‘taken in’ from ‘fooled – assimilated’, I guess the little grey cells were a little too over confident! Will this streak continue with tomorrow’s crossword? Let’s find out!