Various Media I Consumed This Week

Are you wondering what I read, watched and listened to this past week? Yes? Well, okay. I aim to please.

I read Brick Lane on the planes to and from JournalCon and enjoyed it very much, thank you. I brought a back up but between sleeping, knitting, and talking with Mandy in the airport for five or so hours before our planes left I didn’t open it until the other day, which is good because I didn’t make it past the first chapter. I think was a sentence that went something like “She was back at her grandmother’s house and was free to dance with the wind” that made me snap it shut.

I also read Young Wives Tales and Breeder. I don’t see myself ever getting married or having children but it’s nice to know a little about those things anyway. And last week, I think it was, I read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and I sort of feel I should read something by Ann Coulter in order to provide myself with some conservative (and crazy!) perspective but I can’t bring myself to submit to such punishment so I’ll just be sitting here in my little West Coast liberal bubble la la la la I can’t hear you. I have been reading a lot online about the Republican National Convention stuff, does that count?

And I’m right in the middle of Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight In Heaven, which I can’t believe I haven’t read before now. All other things being equal I’ll probably finish it tomorrow night and then I’m going to give proto-online journaller Samuel Pepys a whirl. We’ll see how that goes.

In magazine news, I got the latest issue of BUST because I am powerless to resist the siren call of articles about the much-mourned Sassy (still, after like ten years I miss that magazine) and also about Eddie Izzard. Those were actually two different articles, there, for those of you who wish I would employ some recognizable syntax. And a new acquaintance has an ad for her purse company in it, which is very exciting. Anyway, I like BUST fine but I cannot shake the feeling that I am not cool enough to read it. Sometimes this bothers me.

I also flipped through the latest Cooking Light and National Geographic. I am ashamed to admit that I only flipped through the National Geographic because the lead story was an in-depth look at the effects of global warming and I was skittish. I promise I will read the whole thing though. And I didn’t really read the Cooking Light because sometimes I feel like Cooking Light judges me and it also makes me a little tired. I do need to start cooking more and stop eating out of cans and boxes though, I know this. But it still makes me tired. On the upside, my housemate C gets Real Simple and that’s always good for a deep, sustained belly laugh.

In movie news, this was a banner week for Chiara in that I went to an actual movie theater on an actual Saturday night to see the lovely and fine-I’ll-own-up-to-it-cry-inducing Garden State, during which I fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love with Zach Braff’s character. When I got home (at 9:00 on a Saturday night, woooo!) I checked out his blog and then I maybe perhaps developed a little celebrity crush on Zach Braff himself, fueled only by my email correspondence with Molly. I think it’s nice we have internet writing in common, don’t you? I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t get a thousand comments though, were I to enable a comments section for some reason. That’s okay though because I’m pretty sure Zach Braff isn’t a hits whore. Also, I just like to say “Zach Braff.” C’mon, say it with me! Zach Braff. Zach Braff, ZachBraff, ZachBraff zachbraffzachbraffzachbraffzachbraffbraffbraffbraffbraffbraffbraff. Isn’t it grand?

Netflix afforded me the opportunity to watch Spellbound which was a very nicely done documentary during which I knitted two more squares for the Baby Blanket I Plan To Give Lily When She Goes Away To College Or Possibly As A Wedding Gift. When I got home from the movies on Saturday (at 9:00, because I’m wasting my youth!) I watched…or tried to watch American Movie, based on Rob and Anna’s insistence. I am never listening to them again about anything. Never ever again. They made me watch The Big Hit too, did I tell you that? I’m going to visit them (among others) for Thanksgiving and I’m just going to lay down the law that I get to pick all the movies this time. Man.

On to happier topics, did I tell you I got a new computer? My first computer of my very own since about 1996? My dad sent it to me, so it was a gift. Obviously I am stunningly grateful for this, as you might imagine, as well as stunningly grateful to my housemates for having the foresight to get wireless in the house and particularly so to my aforementioned housemate C, who helped me get mine all set up. I have the feeling that it’s a little more computer than I need, but that’s cool. I spent a lot of the weekend putting CDs on iTunes and making very specific playlists with titles like “Songs To Brush Your Teeth To” (The Sundays, Liz Phair, Costa Rican classical guitar music) and “Songs To Listen To When It’s Four On A Sunday And You Just Finished Making Chocolate Biscotti To Take To Your Friends’ House For Dinner Even Though You Forgot That One Of Your Friends Can’t Eat Chocolate” ( New Order, James Brown, White Stripes). That has been a most satisfying activity, let me tell you.

And I guess this is sort of about music, and sort of about something I did last week, which is sort of what this part of the entry is about, so: I went to karaoke again on Friday. Same place I went three weeks ago for a co-worker’s baby shower. It’s the diviest dive bar that ever dove, although I truly don’t’ have much to compare it with, and it specializes in very fruity alcoholic beverages and some truly insane karaoke regulars. This is the same place that saw my utter defeat and humiliation in the Tainted Love category. I didn’t sing this time but did get to watch the husband of the aforementioned purse-making new acquaintance positively own “Let’s Dance” in the sense that he channeled David Bowie in such a manner that the karaoke hostess lady came and sat at our table and told him how awesome he was, waving her cigarette in my face the entire time. I thought long and hard about my One True Karaoke Song and if I will ever find it and whether I’ll have the nerve to sing it in front of strangers if I ever do find it. I also remembered how much I deeply love to sing along to Bon Jovi and Def Leppard and Guns ‘N Roses.

And thus we conclude my painstaking evaluation of the Media I Consumed This Week!