I’m sure some highbrow writer once wrote something very quotable about how the past inevitably leads up to the future. I would quote that here right now were it not for 2 simple reasons.
- I spent most of my time reading comic books or watching movies so I don’t know any quotes apart from Yipeekayay Motherfucker and all the dialogue from the Lord of the Rings.
- I can’t be bothered to google it because I will feel like a pretentious git (hipster), quoting something I haven’t actually read.
So, imagine that here there is a very inspirational quote about time that will tie in beautifully with the rest of this post. You did it? Great! Let’s move on.
Like the invisible quote probably says; without the past there is no future. Except the asshole who made that up probably did not have my memory. From a single shot of a movie I can determine whether I’ve seen it or not, I remember almost everything I’ve ever read, but it took me up to 11 years to memorize my full name; my birthday took me even longer. If I try to think about what I did the past year…I hit a giant blank.
Mostly I remember the city lights reflecting off the canals of Amsterdam at night, I remember the sun on my skin, I remember the taste of coffee and bagels, I remember playing with my dog for hours, I remember writing a lot, I remember I wasn’t always too happy, I remember one friend coming home and another one leaving, and I remember I finally saw Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil
But the events that happened, something of a narrative outline of the year… Couldn’t say. And this worries me, because it means that most of my time is lost. I’m not saying like Jack Dawson in Titanic (I just wanted to quote something I did see): To Make each moment count. That’s just stupid. I think if we would do that, most of us would fry our brains.
But where the fuck did my life go if all I can remember is riding my bike through Amsterdam staring at the light hitting the water (good times though)? There must have been more significant moments that I can’t remember simply because I am not wired that way. The giant bag of proteins in my head just refuses to store those moments somewhere I can access them, and this annoys me. But since I am already in the business of altering the make up of my brain (See last post) I can probably add: ‘Get a working memory!’ to my to-do list as well.
So, this is totally not where I was going to go with this post. I was going to say… 2011 happened, get over it. All I remember is watching a bunch of terrible movies and worrying that as a species we were getting more and more stupid. (This, FYI, is a genuine concern of mine. I have some concerns that some day either dolphins or monkeys or crows might take over the planet and this is not the part that concerns me. It is that they might do a much better job of it than we are doing at the moment). And the same will apply for 2012. It will happen, and I will most likely forget to remember what happened that year as well.
Ad Infinitum and then you die. By then it won’t really matter what you remember, because memory shapes your reaction to things to come… And I am a firm believer that dying really is the end station. I hope that by then I’ll be kinda done with this whole thing called living (unless the singularity happens and I can upload my consciousness into one awesome super-cyborg and I will never forget anything again). But for now I am very much alive and they still haven’t put a computer chip in my brain (Should probably add that one to the bucket list as well), so for now I worry about forgetting stuff I shouldn’t because I don’t want to miss out. Also, I don’t want to have to redo experiences just because I buried them to deep in my temporal lobe and cannot locate them anymore. That seems like a giant waste of time.
And I think it is kinda sad that I can tell you exactly which movie I saw where, but have a hard time remembering what I did on my birthday last year… (Anyone. What did I do? — Oh wait, I remember. Struik? Or was that the year before….. See. I’m lost. I remember Wez’ not being there. Dinner at Cote Ouest and that’s it.) But what sucks for me is probably great for you, so that now you don’t have to read me go on and on about my year which was probably just as mundane and insignificant as yours.
Instead, I’ll just tell you what were the most revelatory and brilliant things I’ve discovered and seen this past year… and do with that what you want. I’m sure none of these lists are accurate and I forgot a bunch of things… so I’ll probably add things to it over time.
Top 5 movies (New Releases) in no particular order because they are all so damn great!
- Never let me go
- Senna
- Drive
- The Tree of Life
- Super 8
- (special mention) Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows pt 2.
Top 5 Classic Movies through the years of cinematic history seen in 2011
- Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil
- The Lady Eve
- North by Northwest (and everything else by Hitchcock)
- The Goonies (Because it will always make the List)
- Zombieland
- (Special Mention) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Top 2 movies I wish I’d never seen (or wished I could stab my eyes out while watching them)
- Cars 2
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn pt 1
Best New Television Series that is in fact in its third season, but I only just saw it this year
- Community
Top 2 Television series I abandoned but couldn’t stay away from because they are too damn good
- The West Wing
- Fringe
Hey, whadda you know… I read some books this year as well and these were all pretty good
- Snuff by Terry Pratchett
- Boomerang by Michael Lewis
- Bambi vs. Godzilla by David Mamet
- Scenes of a Revolution by Mark Harris
- The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
- Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- The Stand by Stephen King
- De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
- (special Mention) A study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman
And for Good Measure, here are some graphic novels one cannot live without:
- Habibi by Craig Thompson
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The graphic Novel by Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith and Tony Lee
- Fables by Bill Willingham and some other guys
- Y: the Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
- Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa
So, that’s part of what I read and saw last year. Get cracking folks because you don’t want to miss out… Except you should probably stay away from the Tree of Life, unless you are really really into cinema or Brad Pitt (Who isn’t into Brad Pitt btw? Men want to be him, girls want to be him… everyone wants to be Brad and who can blame them?!)
Even Brad Pitt wants to be Brad Pitt
London Express. 