What about January?
Here are some fun January facts
January is named after Janus, the god of the doorway. Which is why January is the only month you can use to get to any other month (and why you should always knock before entering. After all, June might be in the shower).
January is, on average, the hottest month of year in the Southern Hemisphere aside from when it is December, February and March.
January is one of seven months with the length of 31 days. The others being May.
January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars but in the digital age, January can be whenever you like.
January’s birthstone is the garnet; its birth flower is the pink carnation; its star sign is Capricorn and sometimes Aquarius; it likes going for swims and long walks in the country; its turn-ons are chocolate and snuggling; its turn-offs are “mean people” and Anne Sanders.
During January I saw 5 movies in the cinema (all at the Astor).
The best was ‘George Harrison: Living in a Material World’
Click to viewI didn’t realise it was such a long movie. So I was wondering how much more time they were going to spend on his Beatle years when intermission came.
The worst was ‘Drive’ (even with Albert Brooks in it, I felt it was an interesting 30-60 minute movie stretched to 2 hours)
And two great revivals of old movies with ‘North by Northwest’ and ‘The Court Jester’
(the other film I saw was ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’).
I read 9 books
The best of which was a toss-up between
‘King of the Half Hour’ (where I discovered that my two favourite comedy sketches on an album I bought in 1976 - one with Fred Allen, the other with Milton Berle - were written by Nat Hiken) and
‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ (why had I never read this until now?)
My least favourite was Canary Trainer (Nicholas Meyer’s third and final Holmes pastiche where he places Holmes into the Phantom of the Opera. The first, Seven-Percent Solution, is still the best).
And 21 comic collections including four by Greg Rucka
(the 4th Queen & Country collection was my favourite January reading, closely followed by the 2 Gotham Central collections)
3 old comic reprints
2 Batgirl collections
And 10 Birds of Prey collections
My least favourite was ‘Final Crisis: Revelations which, despite the presence of Renee Montoya as the Question; Crispus Allen as the Spectre and Batwoman, just didn’t seem to gel. It’s probably all that “to fully understand this story you need to read these 500 other Final Crisis titles” thing.
Join me next month for February (unless October makes its move to be closer to the start of the year).