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2015 - The year in multimedia and other fun stuff

March 11, 2016

As is traditional here are some highlights from the cultural universe in 2015

Articles/Essays

I've become slightly obsessed with Tim Kreider, but I only got his awesome book of Essays - We Learn Nothing in 2016. But it all started here with The Summer that Never Was - a sumptuous meditation on summer. Get that audiobook too, it's seriously great, possibly the best on this list.

An essay you can taste: How to grieve with Challah bread

Movies of the year:

Force Majeure / Overnighters / Me Earl and the Dying Girl / Whiplash / Lost Gold of the Highlands / Citizen Four / Mad Max

Shows

Master of None - great stuff from Aziz Ansari, thoughtful, inspiring, diverse, odd. More of this please.

Short Films

Daylight Savings time - this is a smart fun one.

360 degree bike ride this is real trippy and I basically just want to live in this universe...

We walk together: a Syrian family’s journey to the heart of Europe – Powerful snapshot from the Refugee Crises. I've never seen Shakespeare spoken with more intensity than the gentleman at the end.

Great creativity on show here, incredible Chatroulette first person shooter

Terry Gilliam on Stop Motion animation - not new, but one of the most inspiring from last year.

This is such a fun fresh sumptuous music video

Radio/Podcasts -

Another year where I mostly listened to podcasts over all other media. Here are some classic episodes from this years favourites:

Love + Radio still killing it with the strange stories of life...

Mystery Show - meet and love Hans Jordy

Everything is stories - Joining Forrest Fenn on a real life Treasure Hunt.

Tape Radio - if you like podcasts about podcasts...

Thehttp://www.

This American Life - I'm enjoying having a bath and listening to great episodes of TAL. I really liked these two - The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar and The House on Loon Lake

Snap Judgement - Storytelling with a beat. Here are the host Glynn Washington's top 5 episodes, they are all great

Invisibilia on Fear

Longform - interviews with makers

Audiobooks

We are all completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler /// So You've Been Publicly Shamed Jon Ronson

Books - Summer book Tove Jansson - beautiful book, made me want to go and live on a scandinavian Island - always the sign of a good book.

The Water Book - Alok Jha - Water is a big deal, this lovely science book takes us through hard science via philosophy which is always my favourite route.

Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy, intense, not exactly a new release, but a claustrophobic belter.

Music

Mac Demarco - love this instrumental album and it's free for some reason, but his albums are all cool so buy them too.

Some enjoyable YouTube comment nonsense on the video too.

Midnight in a perfect world Ben Gibbard DJ mix

Father John Misty - I Love You Honeybear

Beautiful music session on a (quiet) electric bus. Great idea which sells the concept, and tells the story... Seinabo Sey - Younger

Moon Hooch More of this needs to exist in the universe

Events

In the Dark Radio was great this year, radio listening events are few and far between, look forward to more soon. Bar Shorts film night is a great source of inspiring films, Tree the play by Daniel Kitson and Tim Key was ace. Rhymes with Orange for amazing poetry as usual.

Really enjoyed Emily Haworth-Booth's awesome comic book drawing course. I am the worst at drawing, but found it really fun, and helpful, definite recommendation if you're in London.

Travel

Cycling around Europe. Spent a month doing this and it is just the best. If I was 18 I would just take the whole summer off and cycle as far as possible. People are so nice to you when you are a weird foreigner on a bike in an inexplicable part of Germany.

Staying in the woods, in shepherds huts in the middle of Winter in Dorking is so great, these guys are really lovely at the Green Escape.

ENJOYABLE BONUS GIFS

As per usual in recent years, I haven't discovered enough new music/ read enough books/ listened to enough Audiobooks so please do send recommendations if you have any.

Here's to 2016!

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Into The Wild

May 31, 2013

Two weeks before I was due to fly to the Himalayas, I found myself sat in the Royal Free hospital in North London with 1st and 2nd degree burns on 7 of my fingers, stinking of smoke and burnt plastic, with my hands in a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. My mind began flitting between thoughts of pain, and guilt, and constantly back to anxiety as to how I’d somehow managed to get into this insane situation, and whether my mountain adventure was now over, a fortnight before it was due to start. My laptop charger overheated and set fire to various parts of my bedroom, fortunately I was upstairs at the time and eventually the aforementioned gross burning smell attracted my attention. I managed to stop the fire before burning down the whole house. Unfortunately my hands got burnt in the process.

I thought the trip would be off.

Fortunately all of the doctors and nurses I saw were incredibly helpful, I avoided anything likely to give me an infection and, I managed make enough of a recovery, just about in time.

So I made it to the plane, and into another series of unknowns. The highest altitude I’d done before was probably somewhere near Watford. The trip had been kind of last minute and the fire had reduced any ‘worry time’ as I had to deal with the array of overwhelming logistics involved in filming in a dusty, hot, freezing, dark, bright, electricity-starved environment. Basically buying tons of equipment, and consulting Dr Google for advice.

I was headed out to document a research project called Xtreme Everest 2. A study taking healthy volunteers on a trek up to Everest Base Camp, testing them all along the way, and seeing how they reacted to the differing altitude and the ever-decreasing availability of oxygen.

The mountains are useful for research because the low oxygen levels that are normal up here mimic a problem faced by thousands of people in intensive care back down at sea level. If the house fire had gone on for 15 more minutes the smoke inhalation could have seen me hitting dangerously low levels of oxygen myself.

The plane ride into the terrifyingly tiny landing strip at the foot of the mountains was probably when I started to realise just how alien this was going to be. As I filmed on the tiny, shaky, Yeti airline plane I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the outside world. Normally this diversion from the present is my least favourite thing about filming, but this time I was grateful for the distraction. I’m not a delighted flyer. Despite having a Masters in Science [however tenuous] I still don’t really trust that aeroplanes can actually work, it doesn’t seem right does it?

We hit the tiny runway and didn’t crash into the mountain at the end of it, no more motorized movement for a month.

As I went to bounce excitedly up the steps outside Lukla airport I was suddenly hit by how tiny my lungs seemed to have become. It wasn’t like I was feeling particularly tired, I just was conscious of every step I made. Walking was suddenly a ‘thing’.

A friend who has Rheumatoid arthritis mentioned how she feels like she has ‘tokens’ of energy that she can use each day. If she wants to cook a big meal, then that’s her

token used up so she can’t go out that night, or go swimming as she’ll be using tomorrow’s token, leaving her unable to get out of bed in the morning. It kind of hit home to me, how dependent I was on my physiology. I still had to go 3000m higher and I was feeling it already.

The second night in, I began to notice it affecting my brain too. Words don’t come to you so easily. Even having conversations with people becomes difficult as thinking guzzles your precious oxygen. My chat usually gets me in and out of most problems each day, but it was in short supply.

I guess I was acclimatising because eventually this stopped being quite so noticeable. I think I understood what I was capable of, how many tokens I had,and just scaled down my ambitions to suit that. You literally can’t do what you would at sea level. I’m used to working a full day with coffee and inhaled pollution for sustenance when a difficult shoot is at stake. But up there it’s impossible. The difficulty of lugging heavy camera gear around, constantly thinking, and concentrating on filming in a bastard awkward environment takes a big toll. But once you’ve adapted to what your abilities are, as long as you live within those and take it slow, you cope.

Filming was hard. It’s a ridiculously difficult environment, but I’ll probably write a whole post about that another time….

We stayed in tea houses which are basically wooden hut type things, they are very basic, but pretty comfortable and way better than sleeping in a tent. My ridiculously huge sleeping bag kept me warm and I found I slept really well on the mountain.

One hut in Dingboche was covered in flies which doesn’t fill you with confidence, and pretty soon sickness came to our group. But it did mean I could take this cool photo of a fly attacking a mountain, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

I went up to Loboche Pass which is the memorial for all those who have died attempting to summit Everest. It was a spooky place, hundreds of piles of stones and prayer flags commemorating the dead. It becomes clear that the higher and higher up the mountain you go the better the view gets. I’d never understood why you’d want to climb Everest, but looking up at these incredible peaks, I could comprehend it marginally more. The desire to stand at the top of the world is pretty powerful once it gets in your head. Despite this, the whole trip, I never once felt like I would ever want to try and summit Everest. Crazy people.

I got to climb one mountain called Kala Patthar. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. There was a realistic chance I could have died, clambering to the summit over a tangled web of decaying prayer flags, with absolute certain death on my left if I tripped or got caught by a gust of wind. It was incredible. Here is a photo of me on the summit and my eyes are half closed and I look stoned.

It’s something like being on drugs [I would guess] it’s not reality, your body is firing at your mind, grasping, and failing, to deal with where you are and how you should feel about it. I made a quick film whilst on top…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr2c4xFwPfc&w=640&h=360]

I felt changed as I walked down. Then I realised I’d left a glove somewhere half way down on a rock and it struck me that I probably hadn’t changed too much.

This is a photo of me after walking for two hours and discovering my room key from the previous night’s lodge. Fortunately my Sherpa Passang just handed it to the next guy coming down who laughed at me, and took it down the mountain with him. This probably sums up my entire experience with the Nepalese people. Fun, cheeky, friendly, and so keen to help.

As we reached Everest Base Camp I was feeling really strong, I was in good shape, still hadn’t taken as much as a paracetemol in the preceding 20 days. Having said that I drank a lot of Tang, which is a kind of fruity sugar powder, and I think contains all the drugs, and is highly illegal in most continents.

Sleeping on ice is strange,

This looks pretty uncomfortable but when you’re exhausted you tend to sleep pretty well. The guys at Base Camp have an incredible set up. There are no solid structures up there, only tents, fancy tents, I’ll give them that, but it’s such hard work being up there. They are there doing research in this environment for up to 3 months at a time.

One Sherpa carried an exercise bike up the mountain on his back. That made me feel less proud of my achievement of making it there. It reminded me of the time I got overtaken by a man dressed as bee in the Swindon half marathon.

The people I got to hang out with on the trip were so ace. It was great to get to know my two working buddies really well, we didn't argue [much], and I learned a lot from them. Spending a month with people, and within a culture, makes it impossible for you not be to be influenced by both. All the volunteers on the trip were there because they really cared about the science. You speak to one person, they are part time doctor/part time mountain rescuer, doing this in there holiday time. You had nurses, doctors, scientists, and ambitious students. They were a fun bunch of people. It made me want to get involved in these things more often. I’m pretty outdoorsy, but considering I’ve lived in the UK forever, and not climbed Snowdon or Ben Nevis, been to the highlands, or the New Forest is borderline criminal, if the people who do it are as cool as the guys I met on Everest, then it’s a no brainer. Think how fun we would all be with 50% extra oxygen to play with. Eventually we would find out when we got back to Kathmandu after a month in the mountains, it was pretty nuts. They were even nicer and more fun, we all smelled better when we got back to bricks, mortar, cars, and rum.

I felt like I needed more acclimatisation going from the sparse mountains to insanity of Kathmandu than I did going up to Base Camp. Everything was fast, polluted, and noisy. I still found the locals to be super friendly, not the kind of hassle I expected before I got there.

I would love to go back to Nepal, it was my first proper travel trip and I need to do it more. My rucksack that was with me every day for a month looks empty, and depressed in the attic, but we will ride again.

I’m really grateful for Greg Foot taking a gamble of bringing me out with him. I think we’ve made some great content. Below is a film I edited from the footage shot up the mountain. I hope you like it.

For more on the science and the insanity of working at Base Camp check out our film on the Guardian and Ri Channel:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=watch?v=tovsOiSvZ_c&w=560&h=315] Watch the full video with photos here: http://www.richannel.org/xtreme-everest

I should probably shave my moustache and terrible beard off now.

Not quite yet though. But maybe soon.

I tried to read ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’ by Italo Calvino on the mountain, but it was so mind melting that I literally couldn’t cope [This also happened when I tried to watch Looper on the flight on the way home]

I read it on the way home and it changed me; probably almost as much as going up that mountain, read it. It’s cheaper than a month expedition to Everest.

Let’s go on an ADVENTURE again soon yeah?

Some good links:

Greg Foot's Website [including links to a schools science show tour based on the adventure]:

Jenna Wiley's Blog - Detailing one of the volunteers adventures in travelling and science

Some badass Tweeter's from the trip

Greg - @GregFoot

Emily - @ejghio

Nick - @NickInsley22

Jenna - @wilesjm

and me too if you like @thomhoffman

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Meat-Free Mondays and Tuesdays

January 1, 2013

This isn't a very good photo, but you get the point

HAPPY NEW YEAR

This year I did a New Year’s Resolution, I can’t remember ever having done one before. Usually it’s something like write a novel, or get ripped abs by Summer. Then, Summer is two hot weeks in May and my schedule is all out of whack, my abs remain unripped, and my novel remains unfinished [Though I have the title – the Thommunist Hoffmanifesto].

Cognitive Dissonance is the psychologist’s term for the uncomfortable gap between what we know we should do and what we actually do do, and this spreads across all our lives. Phoning our family, drinking too much, failing to exercise enough, give to charity… the list is long. I fail at all of these things. I guess it always feels like there’s another day to do them and so they don’t happen enough.

One thing that struck me last year was how difficult it is to ignore the harmful effect of eating meat. Whichever way you add it up, meat is pretty bad for the environment. It is tasty, correct, but the memory of taste doesn’t linger very long, and my growing unease with meat has been getting stronger.

I decided full-on vegetarianism would be a bit of a stretch for me, but I wanted to shift my relationship with meat. I had heard of Meat free Mondays, but that sounded a bit too easy, so I decided I would do ‘Meat free Mondays and Tuesdays’.

As this has come up in conversation over the year, I’ve been surprised by how people’s reactions vary. Some people think this is the easiest thing ever, and some people think it’s almost impossible. It goes to show how our relationships with food are so ingrained.

This was a challenge to that ingrained nature. When it comes to making decisions we are often driven by our unconscious, meaning that things like habit and taste have a disproportionate effect on our decision making, compared to longer term health, wellbeing, or social implications.

I wanted to pick two specific days because just picking any two days of the week seemed like I would still be being guided by my own tastes. I wanted to disrupt that a bit. Put myself in situations and experience them as a vegetarian. If I went to a dinner party I have to do the vegetarian thing, BBQ, I’m having some mushrooms. And finally… What is the last Tuesday of the year…? I looked it up in around August, it was Christmas…

It was a great meal, and it’s fine to do it without meat, not a big sacrifice at all.

My Tips are: stock up on chickpeas and lentils, super easy to cook. Vegetable curries are ace. Mushrooms are THE BEST things, and eat a lot of soup. Homemade soup is off the hook tasty and very cheap. Develop an obsession with falafel.

I think there is something intrinsically interesting about actively fighting your normal patterns of behaviour and ‘forcing’ yourself to make positive choices that bridge the gap towards the person you like being. It really isn't a big sacrifice, but it's a small thing thats had a long-term difference I'm really glad I did it.

It’s hard to see how anything bad could come from this. I would recommend it as an experiment to everyone. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do for 2013, apart from write my novel, learn Swedish and get some sweet ripped guns, but my relationship with meat is better in 2013 than it was in 2011.

Happy New Year,

‘Change the things I can, accept the things I can’t and the wisdom to know the difference.’

*I did accidentally eat chicken soup on a Monday after I’d been in bed ill for 5 days and lost track of what day it was. Initially I was really annoyed that I’d failed my challenge, but I traded it off with no meat for the rest of the week.

** I think I ate some chicken crisps on New Year’s Eve

***Here is a good recipe for a Mushroom Ale and Lentil Pie mmm http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/mushroom-puy-lentils-and-ale-pie.html

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Best of 2012 - End of the Year List on Culture Badger

December 19, 2012

Time to review the year, what have we been up, what do we like, what might you have missed? I invented the adverb Douchebaggely

I made a party playlist so you can listen to that if you need something in your ears... http://grooveshark.com/#!/playlist/PARTAYB/80469422

2012 was the year Culture Badger went semi-freelance as a film maker, which means half of the time things are manic, and half the time I'm doing some epic PROcrastination so here is what I've found that's made my life better this year...

GO.....

CLASSIC TOP OF THE POPS - This is just dynamite

My soul melted a bit listening to this album of songs and stories, detailing heartbreak, tall tales, and moving on. Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn - Ballad of Roger and Grace, MORE STUFF LIKE THIS PLEASE MRS INTERNET. That can be yours for £2.50 on Bandcamp

THIS SUMS UP 2012 / ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY

One of the Best things I saw this year - Chat Roulette Carly Rae Jepsen, man in bikini and weird faces

Closely followed by Sexy Sax Man...

This really stopped me in my tracks. John Hockenberry on disability, attitudes, confidence, ownership and getting involved.

the cure for anything is salt water. sweat, tears, or the ocean. -isak dinesen

I bloody love cycling, but I CRASHED MY BIKE IN 2012, I cycled into the back of a taxi, so I guess I have to take some responsibility I was fine, but the bike died... I later discovered this http://bicycletaxidermy.com/ Get your bike handlebars mounted like a Moose's Head

CHECK OUT THIS MAN's CV http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/gallery/paulo-estriga-infographic-cv/

Going for a Summer Swim in Hampstead Heath Ponds

DOING DUNWICH DYNAMO / ST CRISPIN's DAY/NIGHT RIDE

cycling 120 miles overnight is one of the best things you can do

Graham Linehan and Armando Ianucci on comedy writing - http://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/richard_herring_lst_podcast/episode_9_iannucci_linehan/ …

Solid Tumblr which proves that Dads really are the original hipsters - http://dadsaretheoriginalhipster.tumblr.com/

YouTube comments of the year
'I just started my own colony of Dermestid beatles. I have about 100 they are working their way through a pigeon skeleton at the moment x)'
'I'm all about King of Spain. it reminds me of a dude riding the fuck out of his horse as fast as he can to go stop a marriage or something'

Also used http://airbnb.co.uk/ for the first time and it was wicked. £25 for my own converted stable apartment. And they let me use their hammock... Definitely worth checking out if you want somewhere to stay, about 1000% better than a hotel

I wrote a letter to the Leveson Inquiry

SOCIAL MEDIA - Follow my ramblings here http://twitter.com/thomhoffman

@thomhoffman: WEBSITE IDEA: Trombolar - dating website for people who have played the trombone

@thomhoffman: 'I took the map less printed out, and that has made all the difference'

@thomhoffman: Lady on the bus reading 50 Shades of Grey. Myself & other members of the travel sickness community, find this an abuse of power

@thomhoffman: Hipster cows should be scene and not herd

@thomhoffman: DOUCHEBAG just autocorrected to SPICEBUSH, so I'll probably just use that now instead

@thomhoffman: I'd be a pretty liberal parent, but I wouldn't let my kid eat that ham that's also a bear's face.

@thomhoffman: How bad would a war have to get before they called up the people who do British Military Fitness?

FACEBOOK PLEASE GIVE ME ONE CAKE PER PHOTOGRAPH YOU USE, TWO CAKES FOR A FILM. A CUSTARD CREAM FOR A PHOTO BY SOMEONE ELSE BUT OF ME
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THIS STATUS OR MASH YOU FACE AGAINST YOUR KEYBOARD NOW TO STOP FACEBOOK OWNING YOUR FIRST BORN CHILD FOR NO CAKES IN RETURN.

I don't know if it's a good or bad sign, but the neighbours did not seem surprised AT ALL to see me skateboarding down the road in my dressing gown whilst juggling three alarm clocks

@thomhoffman: Magic FM is the least ambitious magic possible. If magic was a thing, it wouldn't be doing this

@thomhoffman: working from home today. Door rings = saleswoman/Jehovahs' witness or something. 'Are your mum and dad home?' - 'Err not right now'. Me = 27

@thomhoffman: Best/Worst lyric = 'you know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute. I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot'

FILMS OF THE YEAR

The Artist / Argo / Searching for Sugarman / Moonrise Kingdom

GIGS OF THE YEAR

Darwin Deez / Friendly Fires / Ben Gibbard / Tallest Man on Earth

BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt / Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh / Everything Matters - Ron Currie JR / Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon / In the Blink of an Eye - Walter Murch / Boxer Beetle Ned Beaumann

BAND OF THE YEAR

Tough one, I'm not as 'down with the kids' as I used to be. I'm about as 'down with the kids', as a person who says 'down with the kids'. The album I've listened to the most this year came from like 2004, but I really got into 'Explosions in the Sky' This year. Such a cool band, who make everything sound EPIC.

This song is a beaut and a nice video

I've had an awesome year, hope you've had one too, thanks for spending some of it here. If you've got any highlights to spread please drop a comment.

Thom

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RamblingsUL

2015 - The year in multimedia and other fun stuff

Into The Wild

Meat-Free Mondays and Tuesdays

Best of 2012 - End of the Year List on Culture Badger