So we come to the end of 2021.
Time to look back and reflect. Time to total up the cultural ledger, take a deep breath and plunge headlong into the Festive period. Time to almost sustain gout due to the amount of carbohydrates you consume in the next 3-5 weeks. Below are the Definitive Best Things of the Year 2021 as decided by me. It’s absolutely not, as many haters have been suggesting, a mixture of stuff I wanted to talk about but had no way of crowbarring into a longer piece. They will remain the Definitive Best Things of the Year until January 1st 2022. Then - we go again.
The ElBurritoMonster Instagram account is a grotesque Frankenstein’s Monster of internet sub cultures sewn together and thrown into the ether with little regard for the blood pressure of it’s creator or the mental health of the people that consume the reels he makes. His name is Oli Patterson and his videos show him making gargantuan, disgusting and themed burritos (a Roast Dinner burrito? Yep, that’s me not sleeping for a fortnight). Whilst he makes them he inexplicably sings the recipe to the tune of a well know pop song. It walks the path created by the Epic Meal Time craze of about ten years ago and reels often end with Patterson singing “And now I’m ready to scrannnnnn” to the tune of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You. It’s abhorrent but also at the same time incredibly compelling. Initially I watched them with the “I want to but can’t tear my eyes away” energy you would feel in relation to a seven car pile up on the A40. Now they are like old friends. I’ve watched them hundreds of time, in thrall to the utterly deranged concept executed with unfailing, terrifying commitment by the ElBurritoMonster. Performance art? Culinary sacrilege? Who cares. Viva ElBurritoMonster.
Thiago’s Goal against Porto
A late entry from Thiago, who will be gutted to miss out on the top spot to ElBurritoMonster, with the most aesthetically pleasing goal I’ve ever seen. Thiago plays football with the the purists zealotry - chipping, driving and dinking passes when a simple side foot would do. About half the participants of my five a side game tried to do this, or something similar, in our usual game the week after the goal - like a bunch of toddlers who had seen a photo of Guernica and thought “Yeah I’ll have a pop at doing that with the Crayolas before break”. For that alone it’s worthy of its place. Magical.
Facetime with my Mum by Bo Burnham
I'm torn between thinking that Bo Burnham is a generation defining genius and a moping hippy that needs to liven up. The latter sentiment is likely straightforward, unfounded jealousy especially when you consider FaceTime with my Mum (I’m not writing Mom). An undeniable melody that could have a claim to be the best pop song of the year - and that’s before you consider it’s one of about 20 songs from Inside and it’s funny. Disgusting.
Josh Brolin in Dune
Josh Brolin is great in everything - that’s just a well known fact. He’s great as a flip-flop wearing psycho in Sicario. He’s great as a grasping, doomed kind of idiot in No Country for Old Men. He’s especially great as a Space Knight in Dune. In his first scene he screams at Timothee Chalamet about their Space Enemies being “inhuman and brutal”, spit flecking off his lips and onto Timmy’s unblemished face. Up until that point all we’ve seen is Tim wander around in what looks like the Highlands in a nice coat, pouting and saying stuff like “I’ll never be my father’s son” through gritted teeth. It’s like someone’s put on some Metallica during Carols from Kings - a testament to Brolin’s commitment to be in the film he wants to be in as opposed to the film that everyone else is, crucially, actually making. Brolin is also, of course, totally and unnecessarily jacked in this film. He’s clearly spent about six months with a trainer to be on screen for ten minutes. Classic JBrol.
No Laying Up
No Laying Up is a Youtube channel about golf (stay with me). Really though they use golf as a Trojan horse through which to smuggle some beautifully made travel documentaries about friendship and life on to the internet. It’s like an Anthony Bourdain programme with golf instead of food. No jokes here just an earnest recommendation.
Thanks for reading No Dead Time this year. If you liked this piece please recommend signing up to someone you know. I’m also doing comedy previews in the New Year - you can get tickets here. I hope you have a lovely Christmas.