I swear that there must have been at least a year’s worth of dust and stuff under the sofa, despite it having been only a month or so since I last looked under there. But then I think the last time I looked under there I didn’t actually do anything about it save for making a mental note not to look again unless it was absolutely neccesary.

The reason that someone is coming round is that we are taking advantage of the solitary babysitting option still available to us and are off to see Richard Herring at the York City Screen tonight, to see if he can top last year’s excellent ‘Hitler Moustache’ show with this year’s ‘Christ on a Bike’ show. Last year’s show was probably the best live stand up I have ever seen, so he has a job trying to top it tonight.

Thankfully whilst I have been working my way down the long list of things that need doing today, I have been taking advantage of the empty house to blast out some new albums that I have acquired. I still need to write a load of reviews for Demon Pigeon as it is but I’ve now added to the list of new albums I need to write about with the excellent album from Mammifer, as well as new-to-me albums by KEN Mode and Mono. Considering only the other day I was moaning about the lack of decent new music, I may have to admit that I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. Oh well.

In the meantime I still have a rather daunting list of jobs before me that need to be done before Ellen and Rosie make it home, so I had better get on with them, before my joints all seize up and I am unable to get back up from the sofa where I am currently typing this.

For the most part I’ve been taking December as a ‘month off the Internet’, save for the occasional pop round the door of Twitter or Facebook to say hello, or tell crap jokes which then get ignored or scorned upon. It’s been refreshing, and I’m not really sure how much I’ve really missed it, but that has as much to do with still being burned out by Nanowrimo as it does with the Internet itself, I suspect. Nonetheless, given that it is the end of the year I feel somewhat compelled to come back and pester you with some half formed thoughts about the year that has gone by.

First of all, I’ve decided not to burden you all with the standard top ten lists malarkey this year. Unless you are really very good at them and your opinion carries some weight then let’s face it they are by and large a big heap of Gillian McKeith. Either you list a load of stuff that everyone’s already heard or seen and come off as being too mainstream and boring, in which case why bother. On the other hand if you try and go for more obscure things then you end up looking like a shallow scene wanker trying to point out how cool he is by listing a load of stuff you’re not cool enough to have heard. Over at Demon Pigeon Dan and the others lampooned this pretty effectively, so I’m just going to say there are a few albums this year which have blown me away, if you’ll spare me a moment’s indulgence I will tell you what they are.

Firstly the new Dillinger Escape Plan album, Option Paralysis, blew me away in March and has rarely been off my stereo since. It manages to be both the melodically adventurous and poppy metal album I’ve ever heard, and conversely the most brutal as well. There’s only one word for it, and that’s bewildering. Other metal albums I’ve really enjoyed this year have been the new Knut album, Wonder, and the excellently named Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza’s third album. I reviewed all three for Demon Pigeon so if you want more on them by all means click on them there links. I quite liked the new Misery Index album as well, even if it is a bit generic it’s a good laugh.

As for non-metal I’ve loved the Joanna Newsome triple album Have One On Me and the new Sufjan Stevens album Age of Adz. The latter especially is a lovely bold move by Stevens, incorporating digital effects and even auto-tune and vocoder without ever sounding generic or bland. These are by no means the only albums I have enjoyed, but they are the ones that stand out. As for gigs, well it’s been a bit sparse but the excellent Damnation Festival was a great day out, and Richard Herring’s Hitler Moustache was probably the best stand up I’ve ever seen.

I’ve only been to the cinema a handful of times so I feel ill-qualified to talk much about this year’s film crop, but rather predictably I loved Inception and HP7a. I’m sure Social Network would have made me very happy with its mix of being geeky/being written by my favourite writer/being directed by David Fincher, but I never got to see it, so I am now left to wait impatiently for the DVD release. Not being able to see many new films has not stopped me from getting addicted to the Kermode and Mayo podcast however, and hello to Jason Isaacs if you are readong. Which of course you aren’t. I’ve been watching far more television this year, and it’s been a bumper bonanza of goodness in that regard. I was mentioning to Ellen the other night how it’s felt that this year British Sci Fi has taken over again from its glossier American counterparts. Consider the quality of the second series of Being Human or Misfits, or most strikingly the new Stephen Moffatt helmed Doctor Who and contrast that with the rather stale reimagining of V, or flashforward, or any of the other Heroes clones wheeled out to fill the void left by Lost and Battlestar. Long may it continue, although the news that the new American based Torchwood is being mainly done by ex Buffy writers may mean American Sci Fi goodness returns next year. In non sci fi I think Any Human Heart was about as perfect as TV drama gets, just a sumptuous feast of excellence.

At the end of the most turrbulent year in politics that I have experienced in my adult life, I now strangely feel I have nothing to add. This may be because i think everyone is now so much more engaged with what is going on around them that I have nothing to add to the reams of available information or commentary, or it could just be because I couldn’t possibly put anything better than my favourite blog of the year Enemies of Reason, which has grown month by month into the most authoriative and correct voice in my feed reader. If you don’t already read every single word that Anton Vowl puts out, then I highly recommend you do so. But please don’t judge me for having the same wordpress theme as him. All I will say is that having supported the Liberal Democrats for all of my adult life on the grounds that they were a little less interested in power and more interested in their values it’s quite staggering the extent to which they have sold those values out for a modicum of power. 

On a personal level, I think I can call 2010 a good year overall, although financially it’s been an absolute nightmare. But Ellen and Rosie and I moved into a proper family house in May, I am close to passing my driving test, I launched Demon Pigeon which has turned out to be reasonably popular, although I am not under any illusions as to my own responsibility for this success given the excellent assembly of writers that are now doing the words. On top of DP I wrote a lot for Blood on the Motorway (still hope to launch soon) and wrote the first draft of another novel. On the flip side after a very successful first six months the Year of Health experiment turned out to be a pretty catastrophic failure and I am back up to the weight I was at the beginning of the year, and that’s before even the indulgence of the next few weeks to go on top of that. I have managed to give up smoking however, so that one goes firmly in the win column. As for the weight I am going to try again in January, but one suspects this will be a battle I will be having with myself for most of the rest of my life. I say most, because I plan on not caring when I get to pensioner age. I have taken the YOH site down now since it was being spammed to a ridiculous level, but all the posts are now floating around in here, so if you missed any of it feel free to try and work out where they are.

As for next year, well I have other news that I cannot share at the moment but I think it’s fair to say that 2011 is going to be a brilliant one. I will share more when I can, but that might be a few months away yet. As for you lovely readers, if you’ve managed to make it through this most sparse of years, where my average post count has never crept above one a week then I must say a hearty thank you, and I wish you all a lovely Xmas and a Happy New Year. I leave you with a video from my favourite album of the year, because nothing says Christmas like a buff man shouting over tech metal.

Merry Xmas you beautiful bastards.

Just a quick one today, work has been hella busy today. It seems that the nation’s worst newspaper did a small feature on us over the weekend, leading to a ton of orders.  I’ve been processing the Internet orders all morning.  On the upside I get to stick my headphones in and listen to the new Coalesce album, downside, every time I enter someones details I know that they are a Daily Mail reader and I find myself wondering what they made of the Jan Moir article.  Oh well.

It’s Ellen’s birthday today, so this morning was the presents giving event, with Rosie trying to unwrap them all before Ellen could. Frankly though, she’s rubbish at it, so Ellen managed to unwrap most of them and Rosie just played with the paper.

Tonight we’re off to the theatre. Well, a theatre, to go and see Simon Amstell.  Despite me being a huge fan of stand up, I’ve not been to see any stand up outside of a festival comedy tent since I did my work experience at Jongleurs comedy club in London in the mid 90′s, so I’m really excited.

Also, I’ve realised that if this week goes as well as recent weeks around here, I will have passed 1000 visitors by the end of this week, which is not bad since I only launched in August.  It took a year and a half to reach this sort of total on the old site, and while I am under no illusions that these numbers make me a rival to any of the blogs I read, it’s lovely to know that there are people out there reading. So I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for stopping by, and I’ll try to keep up some semblance of quality for you.

For some reason the cold that I’ve had for what seems like an age has spread to my ears, leaving me in a cloud of half heard phrases and general befuddlement.  I can only hear what people are saying to me if I am looking at them when I say it, which is leading to some interesting conversations at work, and me missing out when people offer to make me a coffee.

Other than that not a lot to report in the world of Paul, except that Ellen and I are off to see Simon Amstell next week for her birthday, so that should be fun.  Oh, and Gray from Cross Blogination is, as I type one third of the way through his marathon 48 hour tweetathon on twitter. It’s pretty impressive given that he’s already had two PC’s die on him, but I’m really looking forward to the point tomorrow when he stops being able to form complete sentences and starts to converse in single letters and emoticons.

If you applaud his effort then by all means to do watch his progress and donate some money on his Just Giving page. He’s up to nearly £500 so far and if he gets to £1000 he’s going to get a tattoo.  It’s all for a good cause.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to suffer a little bit of Celebrity Death fatigue. With the announcement that Stephen Gately had died from ‘not in any way mysterious circumststances’ the sympathetic mode of my brain is no longer able to function and goes straight to the point where I start to make jokes. When I got to work today I mentioned that it was probably the remaining Boyzone members bumping him off to increase record sales and was met with nothing more than contemptuous glares.

Of course it’s very sad that someone of his age should be cut down in the prime of life, and I do respect the impact he had on the acceptance of gay rights in this country, but at the end of the day he was a singer in a truly awful band whose main accomplishment was to spawn the career of Ronan Keating. I’m just saying.  And now we’re going to spend the next month avoiding every single music channel, lest we bump into a Boyzone memorial marathon.

In this time of economic apocalypse and global pandemics, I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if the comics I grew up with were real. Would the current insanity over American healthcare be solved by Batman? Would Superman stop global warming? 

But alas, we live in a world where no such extraordinary beings exist. Or do we? Imagine my delight as I found the headline ‘Airborne rabbis fight off swine flu’ parading on the BBC News website.  Could it be true, that these men of God have finally been rewarded by their deity for their hard work and been given the twin gifts of flight and mass inoculation?

No. It turns out that a bunch of religious fellas have taken to flying above Israel (in planes, not under their own power) and, um, praying and ringing some bells.

According to the article;

The flight’s aim was “to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Aharanot newspaper.

I’m sure that will work mate, but just in case, you’re stocking up on Tamiflu, right?

Genius. Of all the Bale stuff out there, this is the best I’ve seen (heard?) so far.

News today that there may in the ether be a forthcoming Bill Hicks biopic movie delight me in the same way as mint choc chip ice cream, but the rumours that erstwhile Aussie nutbar Russell Crowe is sketched in as the lead worry me.  Sure, he looks the part, as Empire rightly point out, and he has a brooding intensity that goes well with Bill’s stage persona, but I just worry that he doesn’t have the necessary lightness of touch that Hicks coloured his life and his act with.

Ho hum, at the very least this will bring a bit more attention to the man who I can clearly state has been more of an influence on my way of thinking than any of the mish mash of pop culture that formed my personality.  I am a product of tv, music and radio, like many of my generation, but it wasn’t until Bill came along that I saw the fallacy of these teachings and looked at them with eyes anew.  A true original, the greatest stand up ever, and ever since my first year of Uni, when a friend whose name I can’t even remember now lent me a copy of ‘Rant In E Minor’ more of a God than a man to me.

Today I started reading ‘The Liar’ by Stephen Fry.  I have never read any of this books, and find I am already quite taken.  Yesterday I finished Cormac Macarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men,’ which was majestic and depressing, with an even more downbeat ending than the film, if that’s even possible.

I haven’t laughed that hard in a good long while. However, Miss Heather, I see your Fucking Hoff Style and I raise you this!

If you make it to the end of this second one the title of this post will make sense.

It seems the world of dating in the modern rock scene is more dangerous than I had thought. It seems that after I blew off the girl who so spectacularly fucked up my New Years the other night at Fibbers, she has retaliated in that most crushing of ways. She has deleted me as a Myspace friend! How ever will I cope? They’ll all be laughing at me in the factory where they manufacture skin-tight jeans and MCR hoodies!
Edit: It seems that her conscience has gotten the better of her and she has undeleted me! Oh well. I’m going to go and watch a Will Smith romcom to compound my lack of taste.

I also noticed that there appears to be a new series of The Shield that has started on Five. Unfortunately I came a bit late to the party with this show, and as much as I love it, I’ve still yet to see season three, which has inexplicably recieved no region 2 release on DVD. If anyone has any idea when this is coming out, please let me know.

At this point I’m sure many of you would point out that I can easily download such episodes. This is true, but I’m not a fan of illegal downloads of any kind. I have never downloaded a CD in my life, mainly because a lot of the music I like is made by small bands who struggle for funds. I mean, Metallica is one thing, but if I were to keep downloading things like Today Is The Day or Bossk (whose excellent ep is currently delighting my ears) or Knut, how are these bands supposed to survive? And besides, I like my DVD shelf, all nicely lined up and pretty. It’s not the same on a computer. Now I am slightly hypocritcal in some respect, because I will gleefully borrow CDs off of a friend to listen to on my MP3 player. but if I really like them, I will then go and buy them. And besides, I’m a big fan of packaging, lyric sheets, and with DVD’s, special features. Maybe I’m just old fashioned that way.

Before I go, I’d like to point you in the direction of one of the funniest flash animations I’ve seen in years. If you don’t find it raises even the slightest of chuckles, then you have no soul. And isn’t it great that poking fun at Bush just never grows old? John Culshaw was interviewed on Jonathan Ross tonight, and he said that come 2008 there will be a big comedy hole where he used to be.  I tend to agree.