I haven't posted in forever! So here's quick rundown of my life via pop culture. 

What I'm Reading: 
I just finished John Irving's latest novel: In One Person, which was fabulous! I pretty much devoured it whole--whilst camping. (I've found that vacations and road trips are my best friend when it comes to my summer reading list. Must go on more.) It's a novel of adolescence, sexual identity, and the people who change our lives for ever, chockablock full of literary references. I am now reading A Gay and Melancholy Sound by Merle Miller. The narrator Joshua Bland, who has decided to kill himself, is dictating his life's story which is fascinating. He is quite funny and darkly observational.

What I'm Watching--TV: 
I've been rewatching a lot of TV lately. I just finished season six of Buffy, and I finished all three seasons of Arrested Development. I'm excited for the 4th season and movie next year. As far as new(ish) TV goes, I finally finished this last season of Parks & Rec and Smash. I'm also getting to the last five episodes of Revenge. When Happy Endings wrapped their season and Revenge went on a month hiatus in March, I kind of forgot to start watching it when it came back on.

What I'm Watching--Movies: 
I saw the classic Greta Garbo version of Camille, and it was lovely (but Moulin Rouge! will always be nearer to my heart). I've been working on my best of film list. I saw Singin' in the Rain--that quintessential Hollywood musical--for the 3rd(?) time, and it just gets better and better! Schindler's List is a masterful Spielberg epic in beautiful black & white cinematography. It's a Holocaust film that's not exactly about the Holocaust. It's more about two men: Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a Nazi psycophath who kills arbitrarily and represents the evil of the Third Reich; and Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a con man and war profiteer who ends up saving 1,100 Jews from Auschwitz. Roger Ebert writes, "Religion and race are markers that we use to hate one another, and unless we can get beyond them, we must concede we are potential executioners. The power of Spielberg's film is not that it explains evil, but that it insists that men can be good in the face of it, and that good can prevail." I saw Fellini's experimental, surreal, avant-garde masterpiece 8½ for the second time, and I'm not sure if I liked it as much as the first time I saw it... Battleship Potemkin, a Russian propagandist film about the anti-tsarist mutiny on the Potemkin, is a silent film and a treasure of cinema history. While I can recognize some of the film's qualities, I was bored stiff. I currently have Sunrise, 1927 silent film which won an Oscar for Unique and Artistic Production at the first Academy Awards (while Wings won Best Picture), and The Graduate to watch this weekend.

I recently saw two Wes Anderson movies in the theater. Moonrise Kingdom, which is getting universal acclaim as one of his very best films, though it didn't quite enchant me in the same way that my first viewings of The Royal Tennenbaums or The Darjeeling Limited did. However, I may very likely see Moonrise Kingdom again while it's still in theaters. I also got to see Tennenbaums on the big screen as part of SLFS's Summer of 35mm. Delightful. This weekend's feature is Chinatown, which I would love to see but have no one to go with. Films I'm looking forward to seeing include Brave, Magic Mike, Your Sister's Sister, The Dark Knight Rises, Take This Waltz, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Farewell My Queen, Hope Springs, and Cosmopolis.


What I'm Listening To--Music: 
Regina Spektor's album What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, is s l o w l y growing on me. My favorite song is "All the Rowboats." Some of my favorite summer songs this year include "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men, "I Love It" by Icona Pop, and even Fun.'s "We Are Young" while I'm getting tired of "Call Me Maybe."

What I'm Listening To--Podcasts: 
My tried and true favorites include Seattle-based TBTL, food podcast Spilled Milk (also Seattle-based), This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Fresh Air, and Utah's RadioWest. Since that is not quite enough to keep me listening at work, I've been trying out some new ones such as Radiolab, Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin, The Dinner Party, and On Being.

 What are you reading, watching, listening to?