tv and movie junky
Since returning and becoming somewhat reaclimated to my great, hot, concrete city, this is what I have done (in relatively chronological order):
- Artscape: My first thought, upon overhearing a college age kid bragging about getting her dog drunk, was that this was not the best first place to go on return to the States. But then Common was awesome, even though I couldn't see him and it was drizzling a bit for the first part of the set. And Questlove proved that a show can be very educational. I have to say that I kind of love Artscape just because everyone from the city comes to my neighborhood and I just get a warm fuzzy feeling as a result. Plus I love free stuff.
- Wordplay: Ah, nerds, I just love them. I have had several crossword playing friends, but I never felt like I could get into them despite the fact that I like other nerdy puzzles, like logic puzzles. But then, former president Bill Clinton made the comment in the movie that we're capable of a lot more than we think we are. If I learned anything from traveling and climbing a volcano, I think it was exactly that, which is going to be an important thing to remember in law school. So I went home and did a crossword puzzle. It was a Monday puzzle, but I think you can now count me among the crossword nerds.
- Entourage, Big Love, Sopranos: Oh, HBO. I love you, even when I hate to love you (as in the case of Entourage). I can't wait for the Wire.
- The Office: The first season of the American version is out on DVD, and all except the first episode is hysterical.
- Project Runway Season 3: Luckily, they replay all the episodes a million times so it was easy to catch up. I am not that into it yet, but I am never all that into reality shows until there are only a few contestants left. I am also lacking people to gossip about it with, which is most of the fun.
- Bought a rice cooker and a belt: After seeing everyone in Central America with a rice cooker and thinking about all the rice I eat, I am not sure how I lived without this gadget before. And then I remembered I had one in college and never replaced it when it broke. What was I thinking? I had to get a belt because my pants keep falling off. I vaguely remember this being a problem before I left and now it is more severe, so I guess that means I lost weight, though I don't really know. I don't really want to buy new pants, though, since I am cheap (which is probably why I didn't buy a rice cooker) so some $4 belts from H&M will have to do the trick. Also, it seems that for salsa dancing you need a big belt buckle. But then at the last minute, I couldn't buy a flashy one. I just can't pull that sort of thing off. Maybe I need to listen to Clinton on that one, too.
- Army of Shadows: This is an important French film about the resistance during WWII that was just released here. I had trouble following it for a while, but Tim explained what was going on during an inadvertent intermission when a frame of the film burned. It's amazing when you think of the things people did there to resist the Nazis. Here we are always thinking of out country's "heroic" efforts in the war, when it's not all that amazing in comparison.
- Caught up on Harper's and the news: You always have to ask yourself why you are returning when you get back into knowing what we are up to internationally. I also didn't know about the prisoners committing suicide at Guantanamo, which was mentioned at the end of a Harper's article about how the government has tried to justify force feeding those who have taken hunger strikes, despite the fact that the only other times the government did this are universally agreed upon as wrong: women trying to get the right to vote and slaves trying to escape. I did get a disturbed laugh out of last month's reading from a business journal about how to apply themes from works of Samuel Beckett to your marketing strategy.
- My Super-Ex Girlfriend: Fun summer movie with some good laughs, though like everyone else I was disappointed by Eddie Izzard.