Among all the gloom of Brexit, Covid and Trump, I have made a big discovery.
My YouTube homepage makes regular offerings of possible things to look at based on my viewing history. As with all of these algorithms, it is pretty rudimentary. Along the lines of "You've watched something by this person, here's something more by that person" or "You've watched something on this subject, here's something more on that subject".
Every so often, there's an "intuitive" step to the side but they are mostly crap leading to videos of aircraft descending onto runways around the world from inside the captain's cabin and such like. Fascinating if it's your thing but not for me.
Anyhow, Jacob Collier has just received three nominations for next year's Grammy Awards and so the algorithm must have "decided" to take a punt with him and me. I, in my turn, looked at the link and thought "I wonder what that's all about".
And I'm hooked.
Big time.
He's a real minstrel producing music which is genre bending and dense in structure. He's a genius instrumentalist and harmony theorist with a wickedly silly sense of humour. Great charm. Instant communicator. I shall be listening to his music a lot from now on.
I'm also very smitten by the BBS drama series Industry which follows the life arc of five graduates who want a job at a top investment bank. It's a sort of This Life for the modern era filmed with a great deal of style.
I particularly like the way in which the boundaries between colleague, lover and enemy are allowed to blur especially in the sexual arena. It reminds me very much of my young working life in the arts and entertainment industry.
I also found myself very taken with Harry Lawtey who plays Robert and who plays him very well and who is not afraid to show what young men get up to.
I don't think that any of the characters in the series is a good person (although they all show good attributes on occasion) and maybe that says something about the finance industry and who it attracts. The show is particularly good at following the paths of the young women as they are manipulated by and adapt to the testosterone filled environment in which they find themselves.
I caught up with another Met Opera relay that I had missed for various reasons back in the day - Dvořák's Rusalka.
It was another Otto Schenk production with all that that entails and implies. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted a gloriously transparent reading of the score and Renée Fleming gave us the full effulgence of her Rusalka.
Nevertheless, the best singing over the whole show came from Piotr Beczała's Prince and Dolora Zajick's monumental ogress, Ježibaba, for which role she needed little in the way of make-up.
I also watched the Met's transmission of Simon Boccanegra. What a magnificent accomplishment the work is - truly an opera for grown-ups: a drama in music.
All Verdi's great themes are there - father and daughter relationships, friendships betrayed and broken, curses laid on those seeking revenge, fate working itself out through generations...
But most of all... forgiveness - the one ingredient which can end the cycles of recrimination and death.
Vladimir Chernov was a noble Simon Boccanegra assisted by Robert Lloyd's Fiesco, Bruno Pola's Paolo and Hao Jiang Tian's Pietro to complete the quartet of dark hued voices which give the work is unique sound world. Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa were sumptuous casting for the two lovers Gabriele and Amelia. James Levine caught all the light and shade of the foreboding score. Giancarlo Del Monaco's production is cinematic in its recreation of 14th century Genoa and sumptuous hardly does justice to the colour and texture of the costumes. If you are going to adopt a picturebook style of presentation then this is the way to do it.
And the following is eye-squintingly apposite for these troubled times.
Although the 45th USA President's term of office is currently in its twilight days, there are still strong arguments being held forth over the Atlantic. Here in the UK, and in mainland Europe (and for that matter over most of the globe so far as I can judge), the issue is settled and everyone has moved quickly on ready to draw a veil over an undistinguished chapter of USA history.
The President and his supporters remain persistant in resisting growing evidence. Courts have uniformly thrown out any challenges to the status quo. Rudi Giuliani continues to press supposedly star witnesses with incriminating evidence given whilst not under oath to "tribunals" held in hotels: the star witnesses often turn out to be wholly self-serving narcissists not unlike their President in many respects.
Presiding over the GOP is Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader. In the normal course of events, it's very unlikely that he would be particularly well known on these shores but his loyal advocacy of the ludicrous makes him an object of incredulous fascination as well as ridicule. I'm thinking of this "Spot the Difference" game.
Meanwhile, Melania, the missing First Lady, whose heart has never ever seemed to be in the task, has worked tirelessly to produce her final set of Christmas decorations for the White House. Nobody seems to have had the nerve, the gumption or the inclination to point out to her that lining the corridors of the nation's First Dwelling during a pandemic of biblical proportions with what look like black funeral urns was either tasteless or crass.
Her sole comfort at the moment must be that, whatever her husband says, this nightmare will soon all be over and she can settle down quietly to review the divorce papers.
This is the sort of headline that will be making fools of the UK population across Europe for the next year or so.
What does the Daily Mail think that our Home Secretary was boasting about when she trumpeted her achievements in stopping the freedom of movement across the UK/EU border. This sort of quid pro quo has been absolutely explicit from the beginning. We take back control of our borders: the rest of the world takes control of theirs - against us.
French and Spanish people no longer have the right to stay any longer than 90 days in this country. After 1 January 2021, UK citizens no longer have the right to stay there for longer than 90 days.
You might get a visa if you want to work in a Spanish bar or French Alpine chalet. But then again you might not. And, above all, I think the idea is that, if you are on holiday for more than 90 days, then you are not really on holiday.
So, in all of this gloom, it is worth taking a moment to delight in the aesthetic pleasures of David Brooks.
Truth be told I did also manage a couple of hours of pleasure with Danny as well. He's excited to have completed decorating his bedroom so he is now sleeping upstairs.
We seem to have developed a very regular set of chit chats over WhatsApp. Nothing profound but enough to keep a good rapport going. I took a bit of a gamble just to unsettle him slightly and wrote up a quick bit of porn to see his reaction. And he loved it. Following day, after he told me he was going shopping, I messaged him thus.
I want to give you a hard on. Hope you're reading this in the supermarket and your cock is visibly straining against your jeans.
His response was a very curt "Stop it!!"
We were both well in the mood when we met.
I oiled and massaged Danny's back and bum and legs and ass and then I slid over on top of him and rode him while he gasped. God that lad helps me cum. Not the great floods of spunk of a young man but the coursing flow of energy along the length of the spine, across the shoulders and spilling down the glutes and into the legs. If I'm very lucky, the energy flow can get as far as my toes and finger tips.
Oh, my days.