Drawing crypto comparisons from a 60s French film and inspiration from Brentford
Sometimes things are better the second time around; unlike Ronaldo rejoining Manchester United… and how my team Brentford didn’t beat his team this week still baffles me. Come on, you Bees!
Earlier this week I also introduced my son to the utter joy of the sweary 2008 movie In Bruges. It was good enough the first time, but the intervening twelve years, er, I mean fourteen years, has aged it in a good way. Utter genius writing and so much to admire.
My son is nearly 19 by the way, not seven years old, so he can appreciate the huge issues it raises as well as handling the violence and language. And, so it was, in what was a very filmic week for this writer.
I watched Truffaut’s genius debut 1960s French movie The 400 Blows on a lunchtime showing in Brighton this week. And before you chortle, it is NOT a porn film, as my son and friend guffawed at when I told them about it in the car on the way to Brentford FC on Wednesday.
A beautiful film about a good, but naughty, Parisian kid who keeps getting in trouble and is finally sent to Borstal by his underachieving and unhappy parents. The type of human who is too big for his world and that world tries to hold him down by trying to destroy him. The ending is heart-breaking in its beauty and possibilities.
Ring any bells for the crypto entrepreneurs out there? Trying to be good, but the rest of an ignorant world trying to pull you down and demonise you before destroying you? It is so, so boring or trop ennui as Francois Truffaut would say, in black-and-white naturally.
And so it goes (again). Prices of cryptocurrencies have fallen steeply at time of writing and the naysayers are rubbing their chapped hands with glee (again). But this is capitalism (again) and the fall of every asset class at the same time (again).
Sometimes, I wonder if Fridays should just be closed every week for business, so there would be no more Black Fridays and the ultimate bummer after working hard all week and wanting good news for the weekend.
Now, everybody’s looking at their shrinking portfolios and scrambling to buy land now that inflation is back with us. Beware, however, the inevitable fall of the housing market. It won’t be long, the peak is already behind us.
There is a book written by Lionel Shriver (who is female btw and wrote We Need To Talk About Kevin). An amazingly versatile writer, she also wrote Meet The Mandibles – A Family, 2029-2047 that tells of a Manhattan household that falls from entitlement to poverty as the Western economy gradually collapses – and not only on Fridays.
As the pandemic unfolded, a hard-drinking friend of mine finally opted for sobriety and as his 20-year fog cleared, texted me and asked me how come he was finally sober, but felt as if he was in a chapter of The Mandibles? I had no answer, I agreed with him.
I haven’t needed to get sober to realise that I’m living through the pages of this book and Shriver was extraordinary to foresee all this, years before the pandemic showed how easily everything can go from normal to madness.
Nobody knows what’s going on. Not Ronaldo. Not Truffaut. Not Colin Farrell or Brendan Gleeson. Not Shriver (probably). Not stock markets. Not crypto fluctuations. Certainly not politicians. Not money. Not Wall Street.
The best thing to do is grasp art by the lapel, shake it, love it, watch it, buy it, feel, look at it, listen to it because, apart from love, that’s all that matters. Money is for losers, beauty is for winners.
Ignore your portfolio, go to the cinema at lunchtime, dance to music you’ve never heard of and go somewhere you’ve never been to at a time when you’re supposed to be somewhere else. Go and watch Brentford FC at home.
It’s so much un-boring than money, so much more elevating than portfolios and, to be honest, you may as well enjoy it as soon and often as you can.
There’s the biggest storm coming, time to cash in and become a naughty boy or girl, who may end up in Borstal or prison, but it will be way more fun than this first-metaverse stupidity.
I suppose I’m saying sell, sell, sell, but don’t tell anybody, I’ll be in the pub enjoying Wet January in about an hour… and this wouldn’t be the first time. It really is better second, and third, and fourth etc time round.
Monty
Monty Munford is a tech journalist and advisor to the Chickey Chik NFT and game and DeFi privacy organisation Sienna Network projects.
He is a keynote speaker/emcee/moderator/interviewer at prestigious events around the world and has spoken at more than 200 global events interviewing figures such as the late John McAfee, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak (twice in Beirut and Vienna), Kim Kardashian (once in Armenia), Amitabh Bachchan, Ghostface Killah, ZZ Top, Guns N’ Roses and many others.
He was previously a weekly tech columnist for Forbes in New York, the Telegraph in the UK and continues to write regularly for the BBC, The Economist, The FT and… City PM.