Christmas Diversions and Detours (1)
It's the most wonderful time of the year. Evidently. (The Bus 4.27)
Welcome aboard The Bus!
The Stop
In the UK, public transportation inevitably changes for the worse at major holidays as companies juggle the challenge of giving their staff much-needed breaks while performing much-needed engineering works. The idea is that, hopefully, on Christmas Day and Boxing Day people are where they need to be, so lots of trains are cancelled (or delayed) and many bus routes are shut as well. So, in this spirit, I’m pulling The Bus into the garage for the next two issues and running a slightly reduced schedule composed of diversions and detours I’ve been holding onto for the last few months. Enjoy - they’re all great! And don’t worry - full service resumes from 1st January!
Four Diversions and Detours
The Ballad of Maddog Quinn is a short film (15:30) in the rather niche sci-fi/western genre: ‘Wanted and on the run, an infamous outlaw is pursued across the steam-powered dystopia of The State by a posse of relentless lawmen. In this desolate land of dust, rust and blood, there's not many problems that a fast horse and a gun can't solve, but things aren't always what they seem on the wild wasteland frontier.’ It’s a well-produced, violent short film - and certainly worth watching after a few glasses of Christmas cheer.
Salmon is a short film (23:45) set in the cut-throat restaurant industry. A summary: ‘August, a budding chef, secures a life-changing opportunity at a prestigious Nordic Michelin-starred restaurant. Under the stern mentorship of culinary virtuoso André, he faces relentless challenges, pushing his limits and battling a fear of failure. As he hides missteps, catastrophe looms in this tale of culinary excellence and competition.’ This is an intense film I originally intended to skim, but quickly found that wasn’t possible. Worth every minute.
Bookstores is a documentary (37:41) about how it is possible for us to still read books even when there’s so much distracting us. In the words of its narrator: ‘Bookstores have always driven me crazy. So much to read and so little time! And now with our lives chock full of content - Netflix, podcasts, social media, and the 24 hour news cycle - when the hell are we supposed to find the time to get through a book? This dilemma has haunted me for awhile. So I decided to make a film about it, hoping to find a way through my bookstore anxiety - a way to re-balance my content diet in order to read more books. Making this film brought me to a place of clarity. I hope it does the same for you.’ As an avid book reader, I fully appreciated this piece - and am definitely going to be stopping off at some of the bookshops he visits! Especially the one in Brussels. Damn!
And, finally, check out Soccer Mommy on NPR’s Tiny Desk show. It’s a great end-of-Christmas Day watch.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a selection of five Christmas tracks that will hopefully add some fun to your day: ‘Back Door Santa’ (Clarence Carter, 1969), ‘Blame It on the Mistletoe’ (Ella Anderson, 2020), ‘The Carol of the Bells’ (Marillion, 2014), ‘It’s a Marshmallow World’ (Jo Stafford, 1943) and ‘Merry Christmas Darling’ (The Carpenters, 1978). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from the 19th century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach:1
‘A circle in a straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
For more about Feuerbach, see: Ludwig Feuerbach (Britannica).
I am finally able to slightly catch up to reading my favorite newsletters today and really loved both Christmas rides! I had no idea that Marillion wrote a Christmas song so that was nice to hear. I love that you continually promote and highlight short films, as they so often get lost in the morass of feature films and YouTube videos. I know that I rarely watch them and that is too bad, as some of the best work can be found in the short form fiction, animation and documentary.
The one I REALLY look forward to watching is "Bookstores" as it is a topic near and dear to me. I'm actually working on a piece about how reading books has fallen by the wayside in my life. I was blaming it on an attention span damaged by YouTube, social media, reading Substack newsletters (😀), and TV. But as I've been exploring, it goes much deeper than that. I am unsure whether it will become an earworm post (probably it will), though I have the perfect song to go with it. I want to finish writing it before watching this film as I don't want to be influenced or end up negatively comparing my writing to it, which unfortunately is a habit of mine.
And I've bookmarked the Soccer Mommy Tiny Desk concert! I have always loved her, and her collaboration with Bully is one of my favorite songs of the year.
https://youtu.be/u-JFNPg2y30?si=aatK1KH2QiaPXtF4
Merry Christmas to you and yours. :).