What I’m watching, listening to, reading
I gave blood this afternoon and am feeling logy, so you get another bulleted post.
Landismom posted recently about giving up cable. It made me realize that I haven’t watched TV in months, not since the end of The Amazing Race and Heroes. Here’s some of what I am watching, etc:
- Right now, we’ve got Spiderman 3 playing. Boy is it lousy.
- This weekend, I finally got a chance to see 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days. It’s painful, austere, brilliant, horrifying. Watching it wasn’t exactly enjoyable, but it’s worth watching.
- I’ve been listening to the podcasts of This American Life. This week’s episode, Switched at Birth, is truly haunting. The women in question didn’t find out about the switch until they were in their 40s. But what makes the story absolutely bizarre is that one of the mothers realized the switch right away, but didn’t do anything about it. This could have been just a freakshow, but the interviewer has such empathy for everyone involved that it works.
- Dr Horrible’s Sing a Long Blog is pretty funny. Except when it’s not. Don’t try to watch when your kids are anywhere in earshot.
- I just read The Miracle at Speedy Motors. Fun, nothing profound.
- I started reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, and got about 200 pages into it (it’s 600 pages long) when it needed to go back to the library. One of the problems is that’s just too heavy to haul back and forth on the metro every day. So I bought it in eReader format — I figure this will be a good test of whether reading books on the Touch is really something I’d do.
Updated: Meant to ask — what am I missing by not watching TV? Anything I should be adding to the TiVO? (I assume I’ll watch at least some of the Olympics.)
July 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I am hoping Olympic coverage will be better this year and whichever network bought the rights will televise alot on their cable channels. Or I could youtube it or try to watch it online via a foreign country.
I would love to get rid of cable, but there are a few shows I watch:
1. Project Runway (a must for this artist)
2. The Closer (about the only great show with a strong female lead)
3. CNN, FoxNews (eventhough I hate pretty much everything that is on these channels I can not get rid of them in an election year)
I did cancel the only subscription I had, HBO. I am missing Flight of the Conchords, but I was not giving another cent to Bill Maher after all the sexism on his show this year. I can always catch up with the Conchords when it rapidly becomes available on DVD.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:45 am
Oh good lord, Spider Man 3 was just too much. Lousy indeed.
Yes, the podcast of TAL was haunting this week. Say, do you remember that Atlantic article about quirkiness, in which the author, Michael Hirschorn, takes aim at Ira Glass and essentially characterizes TAL as a trivial radio show?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200709/quirk
I listen to shows like this week’s episode, and so many others TAL has done, and I just think that Hirschorn is way, way off. TAL is pretty damn serious and important when it wants to be, which is frequently.
The best book I’ve recently read is Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, which has gotten a bazillion fawning critical reviews.
But you asked about TV. I think the only TV I’m watching these days is The Office on DVD. I didn’t like the pilot way back when it came out, but now I think the show is hilarious.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
wayne, thanks for that link to the atlantic article. i agree with you, i think tal is mostly serious, sometimes important, and hardly ever precious in the way the author seems to imply. it’s interesting.
otoh, i got an hr into everything is illuminated (on cd, which may have been a problem) and gave up. precious in the extreme, but going nowhere.