Foolish resolutions: a month in.

So on the 14th of January, I went to see Gruff Rhys in concert with co-Beard Eamonn, and had a great time. I decided then that the time had come for some ridiculous resolutions:

• To watch a film (in the cinema) every week: not at all difficult, in theory. I doubt I've watched 52 films in any given year, but there are definitely that many watchable ones out there, including season/rep in the IFI.
• To go to a gig every week: probably quite doable, though the danger of repeated exposure to Jape certainly looms. Brian helpfully pointed out that Lazybird on Sundays could be used to top up if necessary.
• To read a book every week: not a hope in hell. Trish barely managed 50 last year, and she's Booky McBook.

And tonight was a second Gruff Rhys gig, Friday will be four weeks since the start, so let's see the scores on the doors.

FILM

• I went to see Team America: World Police and laughed my arse off more or less throughout. It does help if you understand that repetition is the thing that makes funny jokes funnier, and that Trey Parker and Matt Stone's political agenda is limited to "let's make some people laugh".
• Er...
• That's it.

A complete disaster, this. On reflection the problem may be that cinema is caught between two stools: With a gig, you either go to the right time and place, or you don't. And with a book, you can keep at it until it's done. Films, though, are on at specific times, but too many times to be able to say that other people who like the same stuff will probably have been planning to go see the same instance. Also, they're always on tomorrow as well.

GIGS

• Gruff Rhys, The Sugar Club, 14th January. A great, warm, intimate gig, with a lot of low-key faffing about and gentle humour as Gruff presents the guts of his all-new all-Welsh solo album. My favourite bit is him bursting into whistling during one of the songs, then looking up and explaining "these are trumpets". I left before the encore for what turned out to be no good reason (I didn't want to miss the last bus back to Navan, but ended up with plenty of time to spare before that dubious prize)
• United Bible Studies, Voodoo Lounge, 30th(?). A gig I was alerted to by Mark, as he was on his way down there. My money was taken from me be a smiling man who looked slightly familiar, and then I was re-introduced to Mark's friend Paul, who joined the smiling man and some others in the free-shronk freak-out that is the United Bible Studies. They were fine if you liked that sort of thing, and I didn't really mind my six quid, though I did get the fuck out before the main act, who I've already forgotten, having finished fucking up the tuning on his guitar, starting tuning his feedback.
• Cake, Vicar Street, 28th. Free in thanks to Simon, and really strange as regards the actual merits of the light hipsterish slightly country rock-pop and the reaction they were getting. It became a little clearer when they complained that they'd never played here before, so some of those people had presumably been waiting eight years to sing along to Going The Distance, and their cover of I Will Survive, and that's about it for the hits (no Italian Leather Sofa!). The general vibe of "we're rocking now!" contrasted with the actual Rock Quotient to make a very strange gig, but not an unenjoyable one (did I mention the free?)
• Gruff Rhys, Whelans, 9th February. Got tickets on the merits of the first one, and to be honest I'd been expecting a let down after the nice atmosphere of the Sugar Club. I was happy to see new arrangements (including some great stuff with a looped mike), though the Dublin Clap did start to make itself felt at the end. Like the first gig, I couldn't really tell for much of it whether it actually sounded like the Super Furry Animals, or whether it just sounded like them because Gruff was singing. Also the memories of the two songs off Welsh-language SFA album Myng have fled entirely from my head, as indeed with the two other SFA songs. I suspect that if it's not on Guerilla or Radiator, that's it gone. The support was by Jape, who one of my co-giggers had never seen before, and she was wondering whether his position in the scene was the reason why people were putting up with him. I suspect that it's jsut that Whelan's Don't Boo.

Much better, for no good reason. And there's a gig by Continuity Estel on Saturday, and there's Doves gig coming up that I would be at, except that I'm not going to pay €33 to go see them. Fuck you, MCD! Also on the event horizon are possibly another Ballroom of Romance, and Helter Shelter, now that indie has improved drastically.

BOOKS

• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, both by John LeCarre, both from Santa Ian. Two absolute classic spy novels, it's easy to see how the first one made his name, and the second underlined it. What struck me most was how completely different they were. ..In From the Cold is brutal and nasty, starting from a border-crossing death, and working it's way down into the mind of our hero, the deciever and decieved, where death is always close at hand, and through to one of the all-time great sickening lurches. Tinker Tailor, on the other hand, is a mostly genteel book, all drawing-rooms and clubs and a lot more tradecraft, more tricks of the trade and rules of conduct. The benefit to this is that the central character is fantastically well-drawn. The book is more of a mystery novel than ..In From the Cold, as the camera shift from first to third person never really happens: George Smiley has no-one to dissemble to, so we never see how his actions look to others.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. I'm only in the middle of this now, so I'll not say much. Except that one of the things I didn't know about it until I started, and one of the reasons I'm enjoying it more than I expected, was the biographical allusions linking Sammy Clay and Josef Kavalier to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Going more or less as planned. I'll be doing well if I only read books as short as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.