Good Stuff Post: Ides of Sept Edition

I'M aware that I've written a lot recently about why we're all totally fucked, so in the interests of balance and blood pressure I've decided to start a regular posting on positive/you've got to laugh stuff.
I originally had the idea for something like this during the dark days of the pandemic, but the idea of writing something satirical in my spare time somewhat withered on the vine when my day-job consisted of documenting the Chancellor's plan to bribe people to visit crowded restaurants in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, why do something for free you can get paid for?
Returning to the idea five years later - when I'm not much getting paid for anything - and I've decided to make it more of a review of good stuff I've come across, somewhat in the vein of Stewart Lee's "I Arrogantly Recommend". Except Lee includes a year-to-date obituary for esteemed public figures and I've left that out. I've kept some of the jokes, although quite how many I won't admit to at this stage.
I reckon I'll aim for putting something up fortnightly - middle and the end of the month. Until I get bored of the whole idea. Or realise it's a lot of effort for a readership of eight people. Or in my"probably on some sort of spectrum" way, I'll abandon the whole idea and start trying to construct a scale-model trebuchet out of cocktail sticks and unwarranted confidence.
The early casualty for this first post has been the punny sub-headings. I realised halfway through the draft I was always pretty terrible at headlines. I only wrote one genuinely brilliant headline in more than a decade of news-reporting and I'll never better it, so I soon after quit the industry entirely. 

NOW PLAYING: Ni No Kuni 

At the turn of the century Japanese RPGs were at the height of their powers, but somewhere along the way they lost ground to their grittier western rivals. for much of the summer I've been playing this 2013 title which feels like the genre at its very best. It swaps drab dungeons for a fantasy world painted in glorious primary colours and injects a welcome dose of silliness. The first town you visit is ruled by a plump tom cat (Your Miaowjesty for short) and at one stage you're marooned on the tropical shores of Teeheeti, where all the resident fairies speak in broad Welsh accents. Not so much Fantasy Island as Barry Island. In an age when gaming has been lumped in with the things blamed for sending young men doolally, this was a helpful reminder it can be truly joyful too.

NOW READING: The War of the Worlds

Now and then I have to crowbar a space in my ever expanding "to read" list to fit in an old favourite. The H.G Wells novel was the first ever pick for the SFX bookclub and it's not hard to see why; it isn't quite the earliest alien invasion story but it was the first to break into the mainstream. It's also useful to return to the book after so many years having Jeff Wayne's musical version playing in the background. Readers will be disappointed to learn that the Martian pods were not in fact launched "at midnight on the fourth of August" but on some non-descript date earlier in the summer. While reactionaries would no doubt draw modern-day parallels with fighting-age fighting machines besieging the Home Counties (Stop the Cylinders!), the book is far more a critique of imperialism - as Earth's foremost military power is pretty quickly fucked up by a vastly more sophisticated enemy.

NOW WATCHING (FILM): Superman

After several years pretending to be really quite serious actually, the DC universe has followed Marvel in taking a much brighter, quippier approach to its comic characters. Enter Krypto - the super-powered canine. For all the film has fun, that's not to say it doesn't have some quite important stuff to say about the times we live in. Public opinion on Superman sours amid claims the native Kryptonian has come for Earth's women and when the alien intervenes to stop a depostic ally of the United States invading its neighbour. But what no doubt angered right-wing commentators above all else was the reminder that the American Way that the superhero represented is a world away from the flag-waving cruelty of the MAGA movement. He also saves a squirrel, the politically correct bastard. NB: Rapacious developers previously closed my local cinema as part of their relentless destruction of public amenities, so this is about as contemporary as it'll get film-wise.

NOW WATCHING (TV): King and Conqueror

Given that George RR Martin's books were actually inspired by the political machinations of Medieval Europe, it would be unfair to say this new BBC drama retelling of the Norman Conquest  is just another Game of Thrones knock-off. Okay, so they cast Jaime Lannister as William the Conqueror (pictured). And in last night's episode, pious weirdo King Edward is put at risk of being shagged to death in a bathtub. But the drama actually does a good job of fleshing out the betrayals and bloodshed which paved the way to 1066. I also like the fact that I can't be spoiled on social media by someone who binge-watched the whole series a month ago, given that the ending is sort of nailed-on. Unless Simon Schama lied to me of course, in which case I could still be shocked.

NOW LISTENING: Perimenopop (Sophie Ellis-Bextor)

The first ever tape I bought (when cassettes were a thing) from WHSmith (when high streets were a thing) was Groovejet, featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor . I later puzzled my mates when I included the track on my first ever compilation CD, which was otherwise limited to synthy video game music and epic film scores. It was not just the only music on there to have charted, but it was quite possibly the only music with lyrics (that weren't Latin). Anyhow, some 25 years on I yesterday went along to my teenage pin-up's album signing at HMV in Brum. It's the sort of thing a decade ago I'd have been too self-conscious to attend, but as I get older I realise human beings are complicated and there's no contradiction between liking ominous choral chanting and Radio 2-friendly dance numbers.

NOW LIVE*: Bohemian Rhapsody (BBC Proms)

After a month or more of the national flag being strung from lamp-posts by Yaxley-Lennon's Louty Cokehead's Band I was less than bothered about watching their dicky-bowed fellow travellers crowding out the Royal Albert Hall. Not least because rhythmic bobbing to the Sailor's Hornpipe Dance, once lovingly eccentric, is now the perfect visual metaphor for a nation's nervous breakdown. But I rather loved the soaring orchestral performance of a certain Queen classic earlier in the evening. Brian May joined in on guitar and Roger Taylor gonged a gong at the end. I almost felt patriotic.

*I know, LIVE NOW is much better, but I'd already come up with the theme for sub-headings.

NOW GROWING: 

I have already harvested much of my veg, but the patio is still being brightened by my Rudbeckia. It's a flower I adore, even if I have to make a quick trip to Google every time I want to spell it. With the days greying and the nights drawing in it's doing its best to keep summer going in the garden.

PHOTO OF THE FORTNIGHT: 

Despite my abiding love of bug-life I've always been slightly wary of spiders. Put that down to my early introduction to The Hobbit or a childhood incident of something hairy crawling out of my pillow and making a beeline (spiderline?) for my face. All that said, this time of year makes for some great shots in the garden. This fellow/lass/undecided was sunning itself on my sweetcorn last week.

GOOD NEWS 1:  With Trump tilting at wind turbines (they send the whales crazy you know) and his allies trying to cultivate a similar backlash against climate action on this side of the Atlantic, it is easy for environmentalists to despair. But the sheer pace of the green transition is undeniable and perhaps even now irreversible. I read this week that while it took almost 70 years for the first terrawatt of solar power to be installed worldwide, the second terrawatt was achieved in 2023-24.

GOOD NEWS 2: Despite Keir Starmer's attempts to make his government seem as shambolic as the Tories were (when people tell focus groups they want Britain how it was, I doubt they were thinking of 2022), the Labour administration is still occasionally doing good things. The Employment Right Bill, which returns to the Commons this week, is a decisive shift away from the crappy ways of working which were allowed to proliferate in recent years. Frustratingly, despite being far and away the most popular piece of legislation working its way through Parliament, according to polling experts, only a quarter of voters have heard of it. 

RANDOM TRIVIA: In my most recent BBC History Magazine I came across a brief item on a remarkable episode in papal history known as the Cadaver Synod. To slight misquote Mr Wells (see above), no one would have believed that in the final years of the ninth century a Pope would have a predecessor's corpse dug up and put on trial. In a sure sign of two-tier justice - given human remains are rarely able to defend themselves - the former pontiff was found guilty.

AI is Good For Something Award:

Irony is Dead (as dead as Pope Formosus) Award: Responding to claims that Donald Trump's tribute to far-right polemicist Charlie Kirk was AI-generated, a White House spokesman said "anyone spreading deranged conspiracy theories should be ashamed of themselves".

And finally: My ageing keyboard is giving up the ghost, and the x is proving particularly problematic. Normally if there was any letter that you could do without, it would be that one. And then I realised I was going to have to write about both Sophie Ellis-Bextor and potentially social media maniac Elon Musk - whose platform is of course named after the 24th member of the alphabet. Given the choice and the risk of perfectly knackering my laptop Musk had to go, naturally.