As 2018 shuddered to a halt and I struggled to recall what the fuck had happened in 2018 Without Notes - being too lazy to trawl through my diary - I decided that the coming year would be different. I would note down what I'd read, watched, listened to, where I had eaten and so on, and I would do it every single day, and then I would offer a corporate style end of year report on 2019. Unfortunately, as I examined all of my data on the 1st of January, 2020, I realised that I had a much greater quantity than I'd anticipated having to process, so great, in fact, as to potentially suck most of the fun out of the enterprise. Nevertheless, I'm reluctant to waste a good idea, or even a fucking stupid idea, so here it is at long, long last, following a lot more work than it really deserves.
WONGA
I spunked away a total of $8,463.09 on groceries and assorted household goods in 2019, household goods here meaning food, cat food, soap, shampoo, beer, hay for the rabbit, cleaning supplies, and occasional stuff for the garden such as a new trowel or a bag of grass seed. Of course, my wife paid half of this sum. Generally speaking, I buy the stuff at our local supermarket on the way back from my daily twenty miles on the bike, then she pays me back half of my total spending at the end of the week. As we see from the graph, the extremes both occurred during the summer, a stratospheric $839.73 in August dramatically falling to just $385.34 for the month of September. This is because I went back to England to see my parents in September and left my wife to cope on her own. The cost of mailing groceries back from the UK would have been prohibitive. I'm not sure how I ended up spending so much during August. Maybe I was stocking up on Top Ramen for the kid, it being one of the three things he eats.
CYCLING
For five days of the week, I try to cycle twenty miles so as to prevent my turning into Stan Ogden. My odometer registered a total of 28,956 miles on Tuesday the 1st of January, 2019, and a total of 33,683 miles prior to my setting out on the morning of Wednesday the 1st of January, 2020. Additionally, the aforementioned odometer failed on a couple of occasions during 2019, usually when I'd accidentally knocked the little magnetic dingus mounted on the wheel out of wack. At the time I estimated that my odometer had therefore failed to account for 8 miles travelled. Amending the total to account for the lost mileage, I therefore deduce that I cycled 4,727 miles during 2019.
Inspection of the resulting pie chart reveals that during 2019, I cycled 14% of the total distance I've cycled since I began using an odometer back in October 2009, which is interesting.
BOOKS
I've usually got a book on the go as I read quite a lot, mostly novels but including comic books here and there. I read a total of 93 things during 2019, including 18 comic books, 8 non-fiction, and Papercuts by Bernadette Cremin, which is poetry.
As you can see, poetry isn't really my thing, although most years it occupies a mere 0% of the pie chart, so this represents a binge by my standards. I've compiled a top ten of my most read authors of 2019 which, as with all of these things, should be taken as an approximation for several reasons. Firstly, I read four back issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction which I haven't counted just as I haven't counted other multiple author anthologies; and otherwise, I read four novels by D.H. Lawrence, three each by Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke and A.E. van Vogt, and then there are a further seven authors of whom I read two works each; so it doesn't make for a tidily sequential top ten given that chart positions two through to five are interchangeable as are six through to twelve, and I've excised the final two authors - Philip Purser-Hallard and Kurt Vonnegut - simply because they're at the end of the alphabet. So my most read of 2019 are, for the sake of argument, as follows:
1 - D.H. Lawrence.
2 - Charles Bukowski.
3 - William S. Burroughs.
4 - Arthur C. Clarke.
5 - A.E. van Vogt.
6 - Martin Amis.
7 - Daniel Bristow-Bailey.
8 - Fletcher Hanks.
9 - Mark Millar.
10 - New Juche.
I can't really see the point of listing all 93 things I read here, so anyone who cares that much should refer to the appendix of Missing Words which will be published at some point in 2021. On the other hand, here's how much I was reading and when:
Here the extremes were February and September. Of the twelve titles read during February, only two were comic books, so I guess the rest must have been slightly breezier than I remember; and as for September, as mentioned earlier, I flew back to England that month so my usual reading habits were slightly disrupted, plus I was proofreading my own Bricklaying the Charleston which I haven't counted because it would be wanky, and I guess Abraham Merritt's The Face in the Abyss wasn't quite the page turner I'd hoped it would be.
As you will see below, I've additionally correlated the information regarding date of publication so as to determine which decade (or century) produced the bestest books and which was the most boringer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of what I read was produced during the twentieth century, with twenty-six titles having been written since 2000, and just five prior to 1900 of which the earliest would be Voltaire's Candide of 1759.
Should any four-eyed brainiacs be reading, the four important nineteenth century novels (or at least collections) I read were Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native (1876), Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat and other Tales of Good and Evil (1842), George Eliot's Silas Marner (1861) and the Marquis de Sade's Crimes of Love (1800) which I offset with Bill Strutton's Doctor Who and the Zarbi (1965) and a couple of eye-wateringly weird Fletcher Hanks collections so as to keep my feet on the ground and retain some kind of understanding of what's going down with the kids on the street.
MOVIES
2019 was apparently the year during which I began referring to them as movies rather than films due to my ongoing Americanisation (although it should be noted that I still can't bring myself to spell Americanisation with a z). For the sake of argument, I am here referring to anything which doesn't quite seem to count as a TV show, so hour-long comedy specials and certain one-shot documentaries are included. Anyway, I clocked up a total of 57 movies or might as well be movies during 2019 - Stan & Ollie (2019) and Spirits in the Forest (2019) at the cinema (or movie theatre as I have no intention of ever calling it), Won't You Be My Neighbour? (2018) and Straight Outta Compton (2016) on DVD, and the rest on telly. There were a few which I saw while crossing the Atlantic on a plane in September, but I failed to specifically note which ones so I'm afraid we'll just have to soldier on in the absence of that information. Let's have another pie chart.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot to conclude from this beyond that I watched a bunch of films, of which 31.6% were documentaries. I watched ten in September, which was doubtless thanks to being stuck on a plane for roughly twenty hours, and I watched just one in January, but the month by month viewing statistics don't really seem sufficiently fascinating to be worth preserving in the form of a chart, not even to me. My top ten, based purely on which ones I liked more than others, is as follows:
1 - Mean Girls (2004).
2 - Stan & Ollie (2019).
3 - A Christmas Story (1983).
4 - El Camino (2019).
5 - Dolemite is My Name (2019).
6 - I, Tonya (2017).
7 - Dark Star (1974).
8 - The Damned: Don't You Wish That We Were Dead (2015).
9 - The Laundromat (2019).
10 - District 9 (2009).
I can't be bothered to compile a bottom ten, but the worst was probably X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) about which I can't remember a single fucking thing, which is interesting given that I can remember the far superior comic book it was based on in some detail and I'm not actually sure how many decades have passed since I read it.
Turning to the dating of all the movies and might as well be movies I've watched, it's probably no great surprise to see the statistics dominated by the last ten years.
This is because I'm fire and proper quality innit and I can't be doing with none of your grandad flicks, yeah? You get me?
TELLY
I am aware of having stated - and with some frequency - that I don't really watch much television, despite which I somehow managed to catch 215 episodes of Wheel of Fortune during 2019, so I suppose what I actually mean is that I try to watch only things which seem worth watching, rather than sitting there with my face glued to the screen like some fat knacker more or less regardless of what's showing. Nevertheless, my viewing habits are apparently such as to result in a corpulent mass of data which I've found more or less completely bewildering, even impenetrable, some nine months after the fact. In an attempt to tackle this data, I'll begin with the simple stuff, specifically my top ten most watched shows of 2019, which are as follows and include shows from both regular TV and streaming services:
1 - Wheel of Fortune (215 views).
2 - Boardwalk Empire (56 views).
3 - Episodes (39 views).
4 - Jersey Shore Family Reunion (26 views).
5 - Kim's Convenience / True Detective (24 views each).
6 - My Name is Earl (23 views).
7 - King of the Hill / Mindhunter (21 views each).
8 - The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (20 views).
9 - Carnivale (19 views).
10 - The Good Place (14 views).
I've neglected to account for episodes of anything where I either gave up half way through, or which was simply on in the background as I did something else, although it should also be noted that this top ten is as much representative of which shows simply had a greater number of episodes than others and therefore only indirectly reflects how much I may or may not have enjoyed them. Also, it's actually a top twelve seeing as I watched as many episodes of Kim's Convenience as I did of True Detective, and the same even tie occurs with King of the Hill and Mindhunter in joint seventh place.
Anyway, during 2019 I watched 887 episodes of 185 shows. Of these, 585 were viewed on streaming services, principally Netflix or Hulu, and 288 on regular cable television because we get tons of HD!*, plus there were 14 DVDs in there somewhere. Admittedly this does look very much like an absolute fuckton of telly, although broken down works out at an average of 2.43 shows a day, which sounds about right.
As we can see, an impressive 19.5% of all television I watched during 2019 was actually Wheel of Fortune.
Here we see my viewing figures as they fluctuate in terms of the full year, determined by count of episodes rather than shows, with the lower part of the graph referring specifically to episodes of Wheel of Fortune for the sake of comparison. My initial analysis of the data describing my general viewing suggests the August peak may have been caused by the increased Texas heat obliging me to spend more time inside the house at that time of year; followed by a trough in September resulting from my visiting England and being therefore unable to watch the Wheel during that time; presumably leading to a second peak once I returned to the United States in October and caught up on all of the episodes I'd missed. However, the data referring specifically to Wheel of Fortune reflects this pattern only in a vague sense and may be additionally influenced by the network tending to show only reruns of the Wheel during the summer months, therefore rendering it less essential in viewing terms.
FOODS
My wife and I tend to eat out a couple of times a week. According to the statistics we dined out - or at least I dined out - on 192 separate occasions during 2019, meaning we ate out 3.69 times per week for the duration of 2019 - generally Thursday and Saturday evenings because it gives me a break from cooking, then Los Dos Laredos for lunch on Sunday, but sometimes also Saturday.
I don't know what happened in April. I don't remember going on a diet. Anyway, my top ten most popular eating places of 2019 were as follows, although it's numerically a top twenty-five given tied positions at seventh, ninth and tenth places.
1 - Good Time Charlie's (31 visits).
2 - Los Dos Laredos (29 visits).
3 - Sabor Cocinabar (16 visits).
4 - Jim's (9 visits).
5 - Tandoor Palace (7 visits).
6 - Hung Fong (6 visits).
7 - The Hungry Farmer / Taqueria Cazadores (5 visits each).
8 - Sea Island (4 visits).
9 - Bandera Jalisco / Cheddar's / Hooters / Longhorn Steakhouse / Tong's Thai (3 visits each).
10 - The Barn Door / Blanco Cafe / Cracker Barrel / El Bosque / 410 Diner / Jacala / Magic Time Machine / Mamacita's / Papagayos / Pho Plus / Taco Tote (2 visits each).
For the sake of full disclosure, the establishments I visited just the once during 2019 were as follows: Al Amir / Babil Cafe / Bamboo Biryani / Bangkok 54 / Bar-B-Cutie / Bill Miller's BBQ / Burger Boy / Burger King / BurgerFi / Café 37 / Café in the Park / Curry Royal Tandoori / Denny's / Earl Abel / El Jarro de Arturo / Ginger & Co. / Guajillo's / Heitmiller Steakhouse / J. Alexander's Restaurant / Kai / LA Crawfish / La Fonda / Las Tapatias de Jalisco / Luby's / Mediterranean Turkish Grill / MezzeMe / Pig Stand / PoPo / Pot Belly / Rehoboth / Rising Café / River Hofbrau / Sapporo / Tarka, TGI Fridays / The City Arms / The Flying Saucer / The Lion and the Rose / Tomatillos / Triple C / Triple T / Wagamama / Whataburger.
A couple of these were in England and MezzeMe was in Austin, but otherwise they're all in San Antonio except for River Hofbrau which was somewhere on the way back from Austin but was sort of crap anyway. Although J. Alexander's, Bar-B-Cutie, and TGI Fridays stand out from this final group as significantly underwhelming, most establishments at the lower end of the list are only rated thus because it's pretty hard to beat Good Time Charlie's or Los Dos Laredos, and certainly the notion that I patronised Denny's, Bill Miller's and Guajillo's in particular just once during the entire year seems peculiar. That said, I seem to remember having the shits after eating at Bar-B-Cutie so it'll be a while before I go back there. They should probably place greater emphasis on food hygiene and less on having a fucking stupid name.
MUSIC
Finally we come to music and the subset of data which proved ultimately so expansive that I almost couldn't initially be arsed to correlate it. As a rule, I listen to two, occasionally three CDs when out on my morning bike ride during the week, sometimes a couple of singles as I'm getting ready to go out on my morning bike ride, then other stuff at home for some of the afternoon, almost always vinyl albums, unless I'm writing and need to concentrate.
Apparently I listened to 1,185 compact discs, records, tapes, and singles during 2019. This breaks down to 511 CDs, 375 vinyl albums, 126 vinyl singles, 103 cassette tapes, 69 downloads - mostly listened to after burning to CDR - and one solitary CDR which wasn't originated from a download. These figures count double disc sets as single albums and additionally describe the number of times I've played albums, rather than describing the number of albums I've played, if you see what I mean. Also, I've ignored albums or CDs where I've listened to less than half of the thing before switching to something else, and tapes while I've been editing them as sound files for public sharing through my Ferric Archaeology blog - which I count as work rather than listening. Anyway, let's take a look at these figures as a pie chart, seeing as we haven't had one since we were discussing Wheel of Fortune.
I was fairly sure I listened to more albums on vinyl than on compact disc, so it just goes to show how wrong you can be.
The top ten - but actually sixteen due to a few of them being evenly tied - artists whose work I listened to the most in 2019 are as follows, with total number of discs, tapes or whatever media indicated in brackets. Peter Hope and David Harrow seem to have turned up on a number of shared releases as well as recording under variant names, but it seemed tidier to give each his own listing encompassing all names under which they have recorded.
1 - David Bowie (43).
2 - Peter Hope (37).
3 - David Harrow / 2Pac (29 each).
4 - Residents (24).
5 - Sleaford Mods (19).
6 - Apostles (18).
7 - Ice Cube / Mrs. Dink (17 each).
8 - Cabaret Voltaire / Haystak / Snoop Dogg / WC (15 each).
9 - Lil Nas X / Sex Pistols (14).
10 - Einstürzende Neubauten (13).
The top ten albums or equivalent works I played the most in 2019 were as follows, again with full number of plays indicated in brackets. This list is a little more arbitrary than the previous one given that I'm not allowing for tied results, so those albums occupying the sixth to the ninth position, for example, could be in any order, each of them having been played ten times.
1 - Lil Nas X - 7 EP (2019) DL (14).
2 - Haystak - Portrait of a White Boy (2004) CD (14).
3 - Hero Of A Hundred Fights - [Hero Of A Hundred Fights] (1999) CD (12).
4 - David Bowie - Hours (1999) LP (11).
5 - Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970) LP (11).
6 - Mrs. Dink - D(EE)P R(IS)K (2019) DL (10).
7 - Peter Hope & David Harrow - Wrong Acid EP (2019) DL (10).
8 - Shangri-Lies - Drain / Greed / Hunger (2019) DL (10).
9 - Stephen Mallinder - Um Dada (2019) LP (10).
10 - Residents - Mark of the Mole (1981) LP (9).
Finally, for the sake of being thorough, here are my top ten most played singles of 2019, again in a slightly arbitrary order so as to avoid the number three slot being shared by twelve records all of which I listened to twice.
1 - Peter Hope & David Harrow - Feel / Fear & Love (2019) 7" (7).
2 - Mansun - Wide Open Space (1996) 7" (3).
3 - Sleaford Mods - Sleaford Mods (2018) 12" (3).
4 - Caroline K - Don't Believe It's Over (2019) 12" (2).
5 - Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm (1985) 12" (2).
6 - Marc Almond - The Boy Who Came Back (1984) 7" (2).
7 - Nocturnal Emissions - Stem Cells (2018) 10" (2).
8 - Peter Hope & TBC - Apple Eye / White Grass No. 2 (2019) 10" (2).
9 - Psychic TV - Unclean (1984) 12" (2).
10 - Sex Pistols - The Biggest Blow (1978) 12" (2).
The factor which I've found most surprising about the above data is that I don't actually listen to music as much as it feels like I listen to music. Asked to guess how many times I've listened to WC's Revenge of the Barracuda in 2019, for one example, I would have said twenty or thereabouts but it was actually just six times. Additionally, I've had the impression that the majority of my listening has been dominated by rap, but let's see what the pie chart says - and keeping in mind that certain slightly arbitrary lines have had to be drawn for the sake of brevity in deciding what constitutes a particular genre.
So my impression was more or less correct, naturally prompting the question, what sort of rap?
As we see from the chart, I've mainly been keeping it locked to the west coast for the duration of 2019, yeah boy, albeit not exclusively because I'm all about keeping it real. Having moved to America in 2011, I now feel a bit less weird about listening to quite such a high percentage of American rap, although it will be noted that I'm still, strictly speaking, not representin' my hood (in a general sense) in this respect, despite my top two albums of the year both being rap albums from the south, respectively Atlanta and Nashville if anyone cares. Additionally, this pie chart should not be taken as an indication that I ain't be feeling UK rap and or grime or whatever the hell it's called this month, for indeed my general opinion is that the standard of UK lyricism generally exceeds that of these shores by some margin, however 1) I'm a white man in his fifties and am therefore subject to certain limitations when it comes to what's going down on the road with the kids and that, not least due to the aforementioned road now being on a different continent. Word to the motherfucker.
Here we see the data approximately correlating the years from which the music I listened to during 2019 was derived. Thankfully, it seems I'm not quite an eighties man in the sense of a number of my contemporaries who subscribe to the belief that it was more fun when we was growing up and with none of that swearing like now and that the first Go West album really does contain some classics if you'd just give it a chance. I find the pathological need to experience new music and to keep a finger on some notional pulse a bit peculiar, by which I mean this kind of thing seen a while back on facebook:
'I'm fifty-one. My favorite bands right now are Otherkin, Bad Sounds, Spring King, Sundara Karma, Inheaven, Kagoule, Vant, and Moaning. I can't see myself ever not listening to new music.' - Mike Tully
I actually looked up a few of those and they were mostly shit, and more than a couple of them sounded like something from 1979 for some weird reason; but, mid-life crises aside, obviously it's nice to hear music I've never heard before from time to time, regardless of vintage. The one hit registered in the graph for 1869 was Wagner's Ring Cycle, in case anyone was wondering, which sort of counts as music I've never heard before (for example) because it was probably the first time I've played it all the way through, despite having found the three disc set left outside on the pavement by someone back in the nineties.
Anyway to further break it down, my top ten favourite years, musically speaking, were apparently as follows (including a couple of score draws):
1 - 1999 (54).
2 - 1979 (36).
3 - 2000 (34).
4 - 1996 (31).
5 - 2001 / 2019 (29 each).
6 - 1980 / 1994 (27 each).
7 - 1990 (26).
8 - 2002 (24).
9 - 2006 (22).
10 - 1977 (21).
Finally, in case anyone cares, my top five most played albums on a month by month basis were approximately as follows, allowing for anything played with the same frequency as whatever made number five being omitted by virtue of appearing later in the alphabet. In other words, had I listened to any tapes by AA Book of the Road just once in September, Forever: Rich Thugs would have been displaced.
January
1 - Hero Of A Hundred Fights - [Hero Of A Hundred Fights] (1999) CD (12).
2 - Cabaret Voltaire - Groovy, Laidback and Nasty (1990) LP (4).
3 - DDAA - Ronsard (1988) LP (4).
4 - Undertones - Undertones (1979) LP (4).
5 - Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar (2018) CD (4).
February
1 - Cosey Fanni Tutti - Tutti (2019) LP (7).
2 - Dentists - Heads and How to Read Them (1990) LP (7).
3 - Einstürzende Neubauten - Fuenf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen (1987) LP (5).
4 - Haystak - Portrait of a White Boy (2004) CD (5).
5 - Chris Duncan - The Vanishing Mother (1981) C60 (3).
March
1 - Haystak - Portrait of a White Boy (2004) CD (9).
2 - Sleaford Mods - Eton Alive (2019) LP (8).
3 - Salford Electronics - Communique No. 2 (2017) CD (7).
4 - Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970) LP (5).
5 - Shangri-Lies - Drain / Greed / Hunger (2019) DL (4).
April
1 - Residents - Mark of the Mole (1981) LP (9).
2 - Shangri-Lies - Drain / Greed / Hunger (2019) DL (6).
3 - Bollock Brothers - Never Mind the Bollocks 1983 (1983) LP (5).
4 - Infinite Livez vs. Stade - Art Brut fe de Yoot (2007) CD (3).
5 - Apostles - Cartography (1987) C90 (2).
May
1 - Peter Hope & David Harrow - Wrong Acid EP (2019) CDR/DL (10).
2 - David Bowie - Hours (1999) LP (5).
3 - David Bowie - Tonight (1984) LP (4).
4 - RZA - Bobby Digital in Stereo (1998) CD (3).
5 - Antonym - Statues in Ice (1992) C50 (2).
June
1 - Mrs. Dink - D(EE)P R(IS)K (2019) DL (10).
2 - Stex - Spiritual Dance (1992) LP (6).
3 - Residents - Tunes of Two Cities (1982) LP (4).
4 - Shellac - Dude Incredible (2014) CD (4).
5 - Residents - The Big Bubble (1985) LP (3).
July
1 - Lil Nas X - 7 EP (2019) DL (13).
2 - Chrome - The Visitation (1976) LP (7).
3 - Imagination - Scandalous (1983) LP (6).
4 - Princess Superstar - Princess Superstar Is (2001) CD (5).
5 - Charlatans - Some Friendly (1990) LP (3).
August
1 - Nicht Gut - Grönland (2019) C30 (7).
2 - C.W. McCall - Black Bear Road (1975) LP (5).
3 - Mex - Dark of the Moon (1981) CD (5).
4 - Laibach - Opus Dei (1987) LP (3).
5 - Wreckless Eric - Construction Time & Demolition (2018) LP (3).
September
1 - Awkward Geisha - 100 Soft Rock Anthems (2019) DL (4).
2 - Wreckless Eric - Transience (2019) LP (4).
3 - Beatles - Please Please Me (1963) LP (3).
4 - various - Real Time 1 (1982) C90 (2).
5 - Above the Law - Forever: Rich Thugs (1999) CD (1).
October
1 - Pixies - Beneath the Eyrie (2019) LP (7).
2 - Bernadette Cremin & Paul Mex - Mutual Territory (2018) CD (5).
3 - Cabaret Voltaire - 1974-76 (2019) 2LP (5).
4 - Dickies - Dawn of the Dickies (1979) LP (5).
5 - Stephen Mallinder - Um Dada (2019) LP (3).
November
1 - Stephen Mallinder - Um Dada (2019) LP (7).
2 - Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money (1968) LP (5).
3 - David Bowie - Pin Ups (1973) LP (4).
4 - Ice Cube - Raw Footage (2008) CD (4).
5 - Nocturnal Emissions - Beyond Logic Beyond Belief (1990) LP (4).
December
1 - Mrs. Dink - Diabolique (2019) DL (4).
2 - Headyello - Road to Elsewhere (2019) DL (3).
3 - Love Unlimited Orchestra - Rhapsody in White (1977) LP (3).
4 - 2Pac - R U Still Down? (1997) 2CD (2).
5 - 2Pac - Thug Life (1994) CD (2).
There I think we have it, because that's already more useless statistical information than anyone sane could ever possibly need.
Any data-mining types intending to somehow use the above information to try and brainwash me into purchase of Babylon 5 DVD boxed sets or listening to They Might Be Giants on Spotify, go ahead. Take your best shot.
*: This potentially confusing qualification refers to an unusually annoying Spectrum internet television commercial and as such, is unlikely to make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen the commercial. Additionally, being just a passing reference to something annoying, it probably isn't funny enough to be worth explaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment