The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

 This blog has now moved. You can view this new post by clicking below: The Adventure of the Golden Arches by Dan H In which I share my love for a fast food chain... Read on Substack

 This blog has now moved! You can read the new post by clicking below:  The Adventure of the Feline Friend by Dan H In which I get a new flatmate... Read on Substack

In which I reflect and regroup... I am not going to lie, 2024 has been tough so far. You begin a year with such high hopes and sometimes the year decides to take those high hopes and crush them in the most brutal way.  I'm currently enjoying the tranquility of the summer holidays and a rest that has perhaps never felt quite so well-earned. Perhaps the best piece of advice I was given during the many training sessions I have had over the last few years is to make the most of the resets in your life. That might be small resets, as small as a few seconds in the middle of the day or they might be bigger resets like six weeks off work.  Part of this reset has been getting outside. The year so far has not been helped by the endless miserable weather. We always like to joke in the UK that it rains a lot but this year has taken that to the next level. We often think of climate change as meaning we will get hotter weather but it just means that the weather will change and will get more...

The 2024 Oscars ceremony is mere hours away and I've finally finished writing my annual post about this year's Best Picture nominees. This is my sixth year doing this and once again I've seen all the nominees. Let's take a look! American Fiction Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright who is perhaps best known as Felix Leiter in the Daniel Craig Bond films, is an intelligent African-American professor and writer whose high-brow books sell poorly. Frustrated, he writes a satire of "black" books which is unexpectedly taken by the publishing world to be a serious piece of literature. It's a hilarious film with Wright having lots of fun taking on Monk's alter-ego. At the same time though it's also a clever critique of the sort of media that is consumed by white people to make them feel better about racial issues and the film points out that black people can have normal lives beyond ghettos and gangs- the film itself also tells an ord...