What I Saw, What I Read, and What I Did in 2024
My personal culture diary of this past year
Welcome back to the land of responsibility and healthy eating, everybody. I hope you got merry and had your fill of all the greatest comfort foods and special hot beverages. For my holiday, I elected to drive halfway across the country to be with my family back in Houston, and after two weeks of good times and great oldies I have now returned to LA. Now I’m trying my best not to worry about all my friends and family who are about to go through another wacky weather event.
But enough about that, here’s something new and fun!
Some years back, I learned that acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh keeps a yearly diary of everything he sees and reads over the course of the calendar year, which he then dutifully publishes to the delight of culture fans everywhere. Ever since I learned about his Seen/Read list, I’ve wanted to give it a go for myself. This year, I was finally able to battle away the demons of procrastination and forgetfulness to present a document of everything I saw, read, and did over the course of 2024:
CRIS SKELTON’S CULTURE DIARY 2024
How it went overall
Looking over this diary, I feel amazed at how much art I took in this year. I also see gaps of days or weeks where I engaged with nothing at all, which means I spent those days doomscrolling on TikTok or watching YouTube video essays. In the new year, I’m going to try to do that less.
There are a lot of failed attempts at art consumption, too. I’m sad to see so many brilliant books and TV shows on this that I started and loved, but didn’t keep up with. I’ll have to make some time here in 2025 to catch up on those.
What’s interesting to me, though, is that the simple act of keeping this diary is often what inspired me to go out and seek things to engage with.
So, in the spirit of year-end wrap-up lists that are six days late, here are my favorite things I engaged with in 2024.
My Personal Best of 2024
Favorite New Movie
STRANGE DARLING
I saw this film on Labor Day, and despite the freakish heat wave that turned LA into a Houston-esque oven of death, I had to sit in my car for about 20 minutes just saying “Holy shit dude. My god. Hot damn!” before I felt safe enough to drive home. This slasher thriller from JT Mollner has got to be the biggest surprise of the year for me. It’s one of the only movies that uses a non-linear storytelling structure to truly surprise. I cannot stress enough just how amazing this gnarly little movie is.
Favorite TV Show
FALLOUT
I really fell out on TV this year. I would certainly love to say that Shogun or X-Men 97 or any of the other things that were on my list were the best of this year, but I just didn’t make enough time for TV. That said, I spent three days laid up sick in bed with Fallout, and I had an absolute blast.
Favorite Book
SHAKESPEARE: THE MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT
Dame Judi Dench is one of the best to ever do it in the Shakespeare game, and this pseudo-memoir that looks at her life through the lens of analyzing the parts she’s played over the years is all at once enthralling, heartbreaking, hilarious, and ultimately inspiring. It’s made me pick up the Bard again to start learning sonnets for fun.
Favorite Concert
JUSTICE
I’ve always been partial to a music festival, and this year I went with my buddy John up to San Francisco for Portola 2024. The headliner of the festival was the acclaimed French DJ duo Justice, and without a doubt they rewired my brain. I cannot say enough incredible things about this show. I imagine this is the closest you can get in 2024 to seeing Daft Punk live. If they ever come near you and you are a fan of electronic music, you owe it to yourself to see this show.
Favorite Thing That Was New to Me
PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990)
I fired up this Harrison Ford courtroom drama to prepare for this year’s Apple TV remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I expected it to be a nice little adult drama of the kind we don’t make anymore, the kind my mom and dad would always rent from Blockbuster on a Friday night. HOLY HELL this movie is so good. It was so good, in fact, that I decided I no longer wanted to watch the Jake Gyllenhaal show. Why on Earth would you attempt to replicate such perfection? Also, as a comic book fan, it gave me a bit of an existential crisis, as it became clear that this movie was lovingly ripped off by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale to create Batman: The Long Halloween.
Favorite Live Comedy Show
HOUSE OF GAINS
Los Angeles is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to live events and repertory screenings. There’s more than one time this year where I’ve been blessed to see something truly great in a way I never would’ve been able to do anywhere else. But the one I came back to over and over again was House of Gains, an hour-long improv comedy show starring Brennan Lee Mulligan and Lou Wilson. I became aware of these guys from their many features on Dropout TV and Dimension 20, so I knew the show would be good. What I wasn’t prepared for was that it would be the show that restored my faith in long-form improv as an art form. For the first time in a long, long time, I saw something that reminded me of just what was possible in live, improvised comedy, and all the accumulated jadedness of the past 10 years just sloughed off my body like dead skin cells. It’s the only improv show I’ve ever seen that I can confidently recommend anyone go to. In all honesty, you should come visit me in LA so we can go together.
The Thing I Got Into for the First Time This Year
GIALLO
My consumption of horror is more or less proportional to the people in my life who like horror. I love the genre, but it’s not one I personally reach for; also, I find horror is better when you can watch it with a crew. So imagine my thrill when, upon moving to Los Angeles in March of 2024, I walked right into a friend group of total horror junkies. Chief among these horror heads is my friend Justice (no relation to the aforementioned French DJ duo), and my first night in town he introduced me to giallo, the midcentury genre of Italian mystery thriller/horror exemplified by directors like Dario Argento. They’re creepy and sexy and they have some truly incredible titles like “Don't Torture a Duckling” and “The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire.” The film he showed me on my first night in town was called “The Killer Reserved Nine Seats.” I’ve been hooked ever since.
My hopes for 2025
This year promises to be an interesting one already, for better and for worse. But for me, I’m choosing to meditate on all the things I can do to nourish my soul. Chief among that will, as always, be the consumption of culture. There’s always something to see, read, and do in the world, and though there will never be enough time to do it all, I can sure do my best to follow my nose toward the things that will blow my mind.
Happy New Year, gang. Let’s make it a good one.
“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke