some opinions about the media and literature I've been getting into lately

Miami Horror –  Here is my favorite new Australian indie-synth-pop band. The electronic sounds on MH’s Illumination (their recently released first album) sometimes inspires my hips to commence shaking.  Other times, I end up lying on the floor (maybe with a friend, maybe even a boy…), a little tipsy on any number of substances, entranced, letting the psychedelic rhythms take me away. The mood and energy pre-existing the music is always a factor, which is fun, because who doesn't love possibilities?

Vetiver – To Find Me Gone came out in 2006, but it’s fairly new to me. I love low-key folk music with easy, simple melodies, so this band, especially this album, is perfect for me. Sitting by the pool, reading in the sun, I’ve been queuing up TFMG with high frequency. It’s also great as background music when I’m chilling with my friends. I recommend their other albums too, but something about TFMG (it has a more wispy, interesting sound than the others, perhaps) has hooked me. I’m looking forward to listening to Vetiver’s latest album, The Errant Charm, which was released in June.  I guess I’ve been a little behind on new music these days, in this busy, busy life I live. (haha)

Breaking Bad – I’m going to be brief, although I could gush for pages about AMC’s genius television series Breaking Bad. No synopsis from me, although if you’re interested, by all means. I want to recommend this series to anyone who has a thing for great writing, acting, and production—this show is the WHOLE package. It’s smart (but not so complex that it becomes a chore to watch), and the character interactions and development leave me feeling anywhere from wholly heart-warmed to outright empty and devastated. Best show since Six Feet Under.

Curb Your Enthusiasm – I took a break from this show for awhile. It wasn’t a planned break, but I watched through season five and then just stopped. Why? Graduate school maybe, or because I always used to watch it with an exboyfriend and was ready to start my life anew, or because it was getting a little over the top for me. Over the top? Yes, the humor no longer making me laugh, only causing me to turn away cringing in disbelief at Larry David’s absurd behavior in the show. Now that the buzz about Season 8 is sweeping Portland, and I needed a new fix of humor in my life since catching up to Californication and Bored to Death, I have picked up where I left off with CYE, Season 6. Sure, the absurdity is occasionally too much for me, but overall, this is a damn good, laugh-out-loud hilarious series. And I love it when I’m laughing by myself (seemingly out of nowhere), and Luna looks over at me with her tragically big, beautiful dog eyes like I’ve off my rocker.

**a quick aside. I am impressed by the overall quality of television in the past decade. No longer can a person categorically call television a mind-numbing waste of time. These shows I’ve been mentioning, among many others, are thought-provoking & emotionally acute, serious ART.

Source Code -  This flick was recently released on DVD, and let’s be real: Jake Gyllenhaal is so hot I’d watch truly horrendous films just to get a good look at him in action. Source Code is far from horrendous. While not exactly the deepest or even interesting film I’ve seen, it’s interesting enough, and the creativity in ideas is there. The characters are somewhat flat, and the plot loses momentum as it progresses, though, so I’d give it a 6/10 for overall quality and a 10/10 for hotness factor.   

I love to see poetry books
with awesome covers,
because it's a bit rare.

Lucifer at the Starlite by Kim Addonizio – This collection of poems is good. Not as good as Addonzio's Jimmy & Rita (a great novel-in-poems) or my personal favorite What Is This Thing Called Love, both collections able to hook me into the complexities of the human condition with their bold and expressive use of language, especially where the heart is involved, more than Lucifer at the Starlite. The structure of this book feels forced, and while Addonizio is a master of the List Poem, there are too many in this collection, which make certain ones stand out as being clearly lesser. Still, L at the S has some true gems (Yes, Storm Catechism, My Heart, for example) which play off the book as a whole for their power. This isn’t to say those poems don’t stand alone as Gems, but reading them within the context of the book will always provide the richest experience.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz –I love that this book calls itself the story of a person, a boy, Oscar Wao, but is in reality the story of one Dominican/Jersey-an family.  The chapters alternate between family members (Oscar, mother, sister). Oscar’s roommate (a somewhat intimate figure to the family) is even given a chapter. These shifts in perspective from character to character work to tell the story of a family, using history and culture as backbones, in a way that’s constantly compelling. And talk about tone. The language of the narrator (colloquial and contemporary as hell) makes it so that the readers know that the narrator is obviously SOMEONE, calls attention to itself, providing just a touch of suspense and curiosity without overshadowing the actual story. Superb book.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – So, it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Big deal. Just kidding! It is a big deal, and it deserves every prize it gets. Here’s a book that alternates characters from chapter to chapter in perhaps the most fluid way I can imagine. The shifts are not jarring, despite the fact that the characters are not explicitly linked (and we only figure out their often loose links as the book progresses). A story unfolds, one story, through there are a dozen different characters given their own chapter over the course of twenty or thirty years in non-chronological order. And it’s a pretty emotional story that has a lot to do with aging, or maybe what it’s getting at is just living (being alive), and the whole package that comes with it. I’m intrigued by how much I can connect to every single character, no matter how diverse their backgrounds or decisions, and how the book works within its structure to create just one story that feels natural, and honest, regardless of how a structure like this would seem to contradict that outcome. If you love literature, and especially if you think about craft while you’re reading, you should read this book. Probably start today.