Art, media, opinion and ideas
In October of this year, after a number of news stories on shootings had been rolled around in the public discourse, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell decided that he'd better look busy. So he made a speech.
Fergal listed his music of the year last week. As usual he takes in live shows, critical successes and wilful musical obscurities. He goes though the albums that struck a chord with him as well as those that left him cold.
I treat Christmas as a land with no computers. Just so you wouldn't be lonely after your third day of Ham dipped in pudding, I thought I'd line up a series of videos to pop up on VoteTube. org by the power of my robot facsimile.
If you'd like to see the fruits of my previous efforts with a tube of glue and a potato, head over to the VoteTube. org site now and see Minister to NowhereI tried posting the video here, but it just broke the site. Feel free to tell your friends.
Some years ago, back when that sort of thing mattered to me, I used to enjoy going through the albums of the years lists in the music press and congratulating myself on how many of the top 50 I owned. As my tastes have grown a little more, eh, rarefied, I find that my own picks of the year correspond less and less with those of the press.
On the suggestion of Dublin Opinion, there follows a selection of some of the books I most enjoyed this year. They are in no particular order, and I jot them down only from memory, so I may have left out something amazing which has but briefly slipped my mind. I also have included books that are not quite recent, but merely recent-ish.
Weekend HeraldOriginally uploaded by Editor_Tupp. Rather a dull affair again. (Wiki Raw Notes) Like eating potato waffle after potato waffle, reading the Herald is journalistically un-nutritious, without any of the racy deep-fried-mars-bar lunacy of a full blown tabloid.
Sometime ago I mentioned a series of web-related coincidences that found me listening, of an evening, to Jewish Klezmer music. Tonight I stumbled upon something much more exotic – Sacred Harp Singing. It is the oldest extant form of indigenous American music, and it is ace.
During a small lull in the Christmas festivities preperation today, I have glued my left thumb and index finger to a raw potato. Roll on the New Year.
Quite unexpectedly, I've been asked to be on the panel for the Leviathan 3rd anniversary /Christmas special on next Thursday. As the topic is Ireland in 2016: The Pope’s Revenge it's likely that the discussion may travel to some unexpected places. However, as all but one of the other panelists are journalists (some of whom may have read the Paper Round) it could just be an elaborate trap.
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