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This post title is dedicated to Carrie’s performance reading of the blurbs from The Peridale Cafe Mystery series.

Our selfie with Bassem Youssef

Last night we went down to Hyde Park with Jason and Carrie for a screening of Tickling Giants, a documentary about ‘the Jon Stewart of Egypt’, Bassem Youssef, and his satirical TV show Al Bernameg which ran from 2011 to 2014. The comparison with The Daily Show is appropriate because Youssef was openly inspired by Stewart, but also underplays the phenomenon of Al Bernameg which at its height drew an audience of 30 million out of a total Egyptian population of 82 million.

The film runs through the show’s beginnings on YouTube amid the protests which toppled Mubarak, its glory days under the unpopular (though elected) Morsi and then growing intimidation and finally cancellation once General Sisi comes to power.  ‘Cancellation’ is a mild word, but it comes about through protesters outside the studio chanting for Youssef’s death, the arrest of the crew’s family members, the scrambling of the satellite transmission and finally a warrant for the arrest of Youssef himself, who instead flees to the US with his wife and young daughter. And all the while, Youssef and his amazing team of young writers and other crew battle on for their right to satirise the news. When Stewart refers to himself as ‘America’s Bassem Youssef’ towards the end, he’s not really joking.

Youssef himself was at the screening for Q&A, book signing and self-taking opportunities. Unsurprisingly he is intensely charismatic and funny. Oh, and he’s also a surgeon. So if you get a chance, definitely go check out Tickling Giants.

Enjoying the sun with Francisco

La Scarola with Billy and Taylor

Other stuff! After too long a gap we had a reunion with Billy and Taylor at La Scarola, and enjoyed catching up so much that Randi forgot to eat any of her food. We also celebrated Catherine’s birthday with much luxuorious foundue at Geja’s (where no one forgot to eat anything), took advantage of the sunshine while Francisco was in town to wander around Lincoln Park, tricked an unsuspecting group of friends into watching Channel 4’s Naked Attraction (sorry about that) and celebrated heartily on Friday night at Paul Ryan’s big fat healthcare failure. With Indian food, as you do.

Randi and I also decided to expand our pitiful film watching a little. I picked Gladiator because I’d had several “you’ve never seen Gladiator?!” moments recently… and it was fine. An enjoyable 155 minutes, for me at least, although I kept stupidly expecting a scene where everyone would defiantly claim to be Spartacus. Turns out that was in Spartacus. Randi’s choice, Spotlight, was a more unanimous success, although it must be said that the more sobering part of watching a film about brave investigative journalists expose the cover-up of child abuse within the Catholic Church is not the story itself – which I sorta already knew – but the nagging feeling of “wait, who’s paying for investigative journalists anymore?”.

Hamilton

I know you read this blog for its hip cultural commentary, so let me take you to the very cutting edge of 2015 and tell you about this musical Hamilton…

Yes, OK, I’m not breaking new ground here. But after picking up some spare tickets from Jason back in August (thanks!) I finally got to see it for myself tonight, and it was totally worth the wait. It’s enormous fun, full of life and takes aim at (highly overrated) Thomas Jefferson… what more do you want from a night out? I highly recommend extending some Hamilton-style credit to secure a ticket and then passing the following months by reading up on The Federalist before you go. (Or you could just listen to the songs like everyone else does.)

Oh, and George III has great dress sense.

Last Friday night I also saw A Disappearing Number, a play about the (entirely self-taught) Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and his collaboration with G.H. Hardy at Cambridge in the 1910s. I haven’t seen such a celebration of pure mathematics since Mr. Bauer jumped on the table of our GCSE class, and it was wonderful. Ramanujan’s most famous equation demonstrates that the infinite sum of 1+2+3… etc. is ‘equal’ to –¹⁄₁₂, and I found this baffling enough to do some extensive research  ask Katie for help. She pointed me to a controversial Numberphile video, and naturally I shared this with Jason and Carrie the next day (poor things had no idea what they were letting themselves in for). Jason took offence at some of the mathematical slights of hand, and before you know it I had to summon Katie onto Skype and hold up bits of paper with equations written out for her to judge.

Katie tries to bring peace

If you’re out there, theatre people, you should feel very proud of the reaction you caused.

Finally, on Saturday night it was a pleasure to watch The Godfather at Todd and Carolyn’s in a much overdue Salon with Robert and Julie plus the much-missed Shelby and Benno. Todd served us up a delicious meal beforehand, as we sat around a proper table drinking proper wine and talking about proper adult things. And while my main memory of The Godfather from six years ago (I checked) is that it’s a bloody long film, Randi and I both enjoyed it much more than we expected this time around, and we’re already agitating for the sequel.

Addendum

Starved Rock

Some late-night blogging was necessary yesterday in order to jot this all down before flying off to <mystery destination> tonight. Unfortunately, this also introduced a few errors. Not only did I misstate the sum of Ramanujan’s infinite series (now corrected) but I also neglected our weekend trip with Randi’s mum to the Starved Rock state park. We stayed overnight at an AirBnB in the ‘city’ of Henry, Illinois… you can tell it’s not a real city because the owner told us that we were free to lock the front door at night if we wanted to, as if it were a foreign superstition she was happy to indulge but didn’t really understand. Oh, and the park was sunny! Sunny and warm and full of people, only a few of whom choosing to play music out loud from speakers as they walked around.

Donald Trump isn’t good for much, but he has undoubtedly improved Second City. It’s been a few years since I last saw a show there (and yes, that’s a strange thing to write) but I went back earlier this month and the whole thing is much tighter, angrier and more coherent than it used to be. I found it funnier as a result, too, though I’m sure it’s more polarising than the grab bag assortment of sketches which it used to be. Randi and I went with Villy (last seen in London) and her mother, both of whom belong to the comforting class of people who understand visa rules and immigration law in casual conversation.

Randi and Villy and books

In the past few weeks I also made two important introductions which have been a long time in the making. Firstly, at long last, Todd has sat down and watched an episode of Doctor Who. In an attempt to appeal to him as a television connoisseur I opted for the very first one, in all of its magnificent black and white glory from 1963. It’s just so good! While at Todd and Carolyn’s I also fulfilled my completionist desire to finish off the Indiana Jones films with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even though everyone warned me beforehand that it wasn’t worth it. Everyone was right.

The second introduction needs only this photo:

We finally got Robert to play Carcassonne!

Otherwise I’ve just been catching up on Sherlock with Catherine, booking exciting trips so that future posts can benefit from more interesting photos and celebrating Valentine’s Day at La Scarola, which needs no improvement whatsoever. In a romantic gesture, I muted the ‘glamily’ for the duration of the meal. This is a giant family WhatsApp chat which has also sprung up in recent weeks: 35 somehow-connected cousins around the world draining each others’ battery lives at all hours. It’s great. It’s absurd. This is how cults start. Clearly we need another wedding.

Cross-checking Article V

Did you know that there are two things which cannot be amended in the US Constitution via the usual amendment process? I did, because it came up in The Federalist Papers, and now Todd does too, because I quizzed him on it after he presented me with a pocket copy sometime after Shake Shack on a classy Friday night. One is that the importation of slaves cannot be banned until 1808, which should give pause to anyone trusting in its timeless wisdom. The other is that states cannot be deprived of equal representation in the Senate without their consent.

As far as I can see, there’s nothing to stop you just amending the amendment process itself to remove these restrictions, although at that point it might be quicker and cheaper to just invoke the ‘self-evident’ right of ‘the People’ to ‘alter or abolish’ any government which becomes destructive to their life, liberty or ‘pursuit of happiness’.

If you think this reads a bit silly, and leaves out important practical questions like “well does the government have a lot of tanks at its disposal to crush me with?” and “wait, which people exactly count as the People and who decides that?” then congratulations, you have successfully problematised the Declaration of Independence. You also might be the kind of person who enjoys playing Secret Hitler, an excellent bluffing game which Jason funded way back when on Kickstarter and has finally arrived in our lives in a fancy wooden box. Most players are liberals but some are secretly fascists, and their aim is to manipulate the others into enacting fascist policies and electing Hitler as Chancellor. As I say, it’s great, and their website also has an appropriate level of snark:

Hah.

Commuting life: the Caltrain to Palo Alto

Anyway…. apart from playing board games (7 Wonders! Dominion! Carcassonne, obviously!) and setting up a special mailbox in Germany to forward limited-edition Carcassonne tiles from eBay.de to myself (the less said about this the better) I also spent a week this month working out of the Palo Alto office. Rather than staying in Palo Alto itself, which does have a certain logic behind it, I decided to commute on the Caltrain from San Francisco each day. This came at the cost of early mornings but was otherwise a great move, both because it made an excellent reading time and because I could hang out in San Francisco with both Nolan and Jamie on various evenings after work. (And to see Nolan convene a deputation to the office’s ever-changing frozen yoghurt selection is to watch real leadership in action.)

Jamie kindly shared the last jelly doughnut

Finally, in Chicago I had a good night out with new colleagues Arpan, Pedro, Ibs and Joey and also saw Psychonaut Librarians with Randi at our favourite theatre. It’s about… a group of librarians who must venture into the magical Anyverse, defeat the Sandman and bring a girl and a sort-of-boy-but-not-really-a-person together? Yes, this one was a little too absurdist to be one of my favourites (years and years ago I read a review of a particularly surreal episode of The Prisoner on this topic which stuck with me), but the characters were engaging and it was enjoyable to whizz through.

Last word to the jelly doughnut.

Chrismukkah

It’s that time of year again: snowy and cold outside, pretty and festive (but hard to photograph) inside. Carrying the Christmas tree home was a much less stressful exercise than last year’s gargantuan effort, but it still spruces up well. Together with the Hanukkah decorations we had a suitably seasonal living room to host many guests bearing board games, although on many occasions we tricked them into watching Planet Earth II with us instead. Because it was just so good.

Outside of the Chrismukkah base we also went to Randi’s work holiday party (and bounced on a trampoline with her CEO) as well as Robert and Julie’s mirror-image apartment housewarming, Alex’s holiday party at which gluhwein was served (very exciting) and Ellen’s ‘Master of Peppers’ chilli-making competition. Importantly, one is not required to actually cook a chilli in order to attend. I was very sad about missing this last year so it was great to finally return and meet baby Edy for good measure. (Chilli #10 was the best by some measure, in case you were wondering.) We also attended an inaugural D&D game at our neighbours’ flat across the hallway: nothing has felt more back-to-university than being able to return home for the night by just walking between apartments.

Finally, I also had great Motel Bar sessions with Alejandro and Teresa, and also saw Rogue One and Arrival. I put Rogue One in the bucket of ‘perfectly enjoyable but nothing special’ – not as good as last year’s Star Wars outing, although it does finally explain why the Death Star is so easy to destroy. But I really, really enjoyed Arrival. It’s a thoughtful science fiction film which takes seriously the problem of language between humans and aliens, and I thank Todd for wanting to see it with me after a cheeky Nando’s.

You can never go wrong with more lights