Three Endorsements

I have a couple of endorsements for you to kick start your weekend. First, if you haven't already discovered from my irregular poking, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo have set up an online Advent Calender. Every day you can flip open a new window to uncover a short clip of Kermodian wititainment direct from the year's archives of classic ranting and banter. Sorry to bring this to you quite late in the Advent season but now you've already got twelve clips to delve into. Secondly, A. A. Gill who I take great pleasure in loathing, has actually written an entertaining article for once between the pages of Vanity Fair. He dives the murky depths of a craze that has since been revived by the movie: the Sex and the City bus tour of New York. Amusingly, before stepping off the bus into an adult shop apparently featured in the show, Gill aptly describes the "buzz of anticipation". Finally, you may have noted that I'm not so far up my own arse that I collect old Jazz records. However, Charles Mingus, who's not known for his piano playing, released a beautifully inspired album in 1964, simply entitled, Mingus Plays Piano. It's as if you're listening to a man think with the piano, and it makes for an endearing 45 minutes. Again, what's so brilliant about the music is that Mingus is clearly not a master of the piano, but merely toying with it, allowing it to take him wherever his ability leads, stuttering and swaying his way towards symphonic beauty. If you can get your hands on a copy, do it.