The Month That Was: December '13

Happy New Years. I spent my first few moments of 2014 being sick into a bucket, and the next day a friend's mum asked me what the morale of the night was: and I think she was getting at me not drinking so much. Which I guess is my New Year's resolution, although before that it was to write more (ALOT MORE) which I'm starting straight away with this new monthly feature. It's all about me (hey, I'm just giving the fans what they want!) so without further ado here was my December 2013:

-The obvious highlight was Santy's big day: we got the family together, watched The World's End (my choice - a good one it turned out to be) and we all got drunk on shots and absinthe. I got a laptop, which should go some way towards that New Year's resolution, and lots of films and books too (expect writing on Only God Forgives, This is the End, Consider the Lobster and a lot more in the coming month). After everyone went to bed I stayed up until the wee hours sipping Vodka and listening to angry Eminem. 

- School wasn't as bad as it's going to be when I get back (4 exams spread over 2 days: FUUCK) even then I guess my quality of revision could only be described as "mild".

-I continued my way through "the classics" - of which I'm starting to lose faith in more and more - by reading the first 100 pages of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, my first Hemingway and unless I run out of books by almost all other writers my last as well. Saying "boredom" as a reason why I didn't finish this much loved classic feels like a cop out so I'll just say that a very unlively, to-the-point prose style and a wandering, unstructured story don't go too well together.

- I went a little Lester Bangs for about a week or two after reading the second collection of his work Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste, which contrary to the reviews is just as good as Psychotic Reactions. I swear there's no writer who inspires me to be a better writer as much as Bangs does.

- I read so much great stuff online this much - like every month - that I wish I had saved most of it so I could spread it around in posts like this, which is one way to say that that'll be something I'll be starting next month, and another way of saying that I don't have any to share now. Apart from this Rolling Stone article. It's a very disturbing article. Plus I find it depressing that I now read Rolling Stone only for the non-music articles (although I bet that would make Lester Bangs smile). A lot of the commentators criticized the article for glorifying the main man of the story although I felt the writer did a great job of showing the slightly fucked up way many youths react to events like this.

- I can say without a doubt I listened to more albums in the last month than in any other month of my life. I started with the aim to listen to every big album of 2013 to write a feature (upcoming) although I eventually gave up after working out even two albums a day would be too slow to get everything listened to any time soon; which is my way of saying that this was a damn good year for music, easily the best one I've lived through.

- My biggest musical adventure was listening to Deafheaven's Sunbather, my first foray into Black Metal. My mother walked past the room while I was listening, which made me feel slightly embarrassed although not enough to make me turn it down; and for some reason I got the image of Lester Bangs in my head, driving around the streets blasting Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music at full volume. Both albums do actually sound a bit similar, which is probably why I managed to get a solid 20 minutes if not more into MMM right after Sunbather (and for just a brief second think that it was a great album).

- That was about it for my month. I'm looking forward to 2014, a lot more than I was for 13, and I hope everyone reading is as enthusiastic as me. Peace out.