One week into 2013, I seem to be still catching up on last year's cultural highlights. I finally got to see Skyfall, which I'm surprised no-one's yet noticed is a kind of remake of Cat Ballou as a Nintendo-graphics spy thriller with Daniel Craig taking the Lee Marvin role of the flaky hitman pulled out of drunken retirement by a beleaguered damsel - Dame Judy standing in for Jane Fonda here, though not quite so prettily. Entertaining though overlong.
And still online though perhaps not for long: Simon Amstell's show Numb which is genuine genius.  Starting from the familiar existential angst of Granma's House Simon builds gradually from shrill nerd to bold visionary, staying with his stand-up persona through some excellent strategies for world peace ~ "if you're going to have a flag, have a flag of a vagina, so then you can meet people and say "Hi, where're you from? Oh! Same as me, let's be friends!" ~ to undisguised profundity: "We need to feel as human beings, otherwise we will just consume and consume. Why have we nearly destroyed the earth? Because we felt alone, and it was there. But we're not alone, we're profoundly connected to each other."
Which is also the premise of Cosmic!, the show that Annabelle and I are currently devising for First Cut Theatre, inspired initially by our Cosmic Walk last summer. As Brian Swimme says, we're living in a chasm between the stories of the past and the new story from what we now know about the universe but haven't yet learnt to live. Let's hope this is the year we all begin to find a way.