Martin and the Gilmore Girls

there are two distinct pop culture phenomenon that continue to make me actively angry, and for one who is wary of hope and works to avoid it, I actually see a hint of resolution for both on the horizon thanks to hbo.

Frustrating phenomenon one:
I am an avid, borderline obsessive Gilmore Girls fan and I continue to be frustrated that there has yet to be a comparable show. Today, after watching many hours of reruns with my dear friend Rachel in a desperate attempt to find some nostalgic solace, I turned to the internet and googled "shows like the gilmore girls?" To my delight, Amy Sherman Palladino (Gmore Grls creator, writer and oft-director) has recently entered talks with hbo to create a family dramedy. I am tentatively delighted.

Frustrating phenomenon two:
I love sci-fi, the more feminist the better, but have typically avoided fantasy though the line is blurred and often crossed. For example, I love Ursula K. Le Guin in nearly everything she does and she spends quite a bit of time constructing fantasies all of which I love. Same with Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Frank Herbert, Philip Pullman, etc. This summer, I took the dive into high fantasy having really only enjoyed classic anglophilic work like Tolkien and MacDonald. I devoured George R. R. Martin's sprawling Song of Ice and Fire series and upon reaching the end was immediately irritated that I could not continue to a conclusion as Martin has not finished the series. Once again, hbo swooped in to sprinkle glitterings of hope as the blogs began to buzz about the upcoming Game of Thrones series that is currently in production in Ireland. The casting appears phenomenal, the excitement is mounting and I honestly can't wait to see the pilot.

Completely unrelated:
I have seen to silly, thrillery seasonally appropriate pseudo horror films recently and recommend them for a fun time: Currently in theaters, Paranormal Activity is really, actually fun. As someone is actually much more freaked out by ghosts and aliens, the demon aspect made it just unbelievable enough for me to have a really pleasant time getting scared.

Second, today I watched Trick 'r Treat with Corey today and thought it was just completely ridiculous, wacky, halloweeny fun. Its a loose weave of various scary happenings in a small town, all manifesting the spirit of halloween in its spooky, ambient, goofy, pagany, messy, gory tropey fun. For some reason (very possibly due to the high levels of violence towards children), it never made it to the theaters but it has a great cast, was produced by Bryan Singer (which is really neither an affirmation nor condemnation), looks good and sets just the right halloween mood.

Blossom Dearie crisis averted

A certain tender-hearted pirate took pity on me and ripped Blossom Dearie's incredibly rare xmas album. Hooray! And yes, I did post this primarily to make certain words other than (josh groban) appear larger in my tag cloud.

Do you love Fever Ray?

I love The Knife and now I have Fever Ray to love as well! Thank you, Sweden!

Says Sasha Frere-Jones:
Most people know Andersson from The Knife, a duo she maintains with her brother, Olof. Both The Knife and Fever Ray are largely electronic and tilt toward the dark, though The Knife render that darkness as dance music. Fever Ray is uncut darkness, a combination of silty bass and high, brambly sounds. Andersson sings in an unfiltered voice that favors an avian, hard quality. She also digitally alters the pitch of her voice, making it sound like the voice of male mummy, perhaps singing to himself as he looks through an album of water-damaged photographs.

I like that idea of the mummy and his photos. What a silly and strangely effective audible description.

Perhaps my new best friend: David Hajdu

I feel weird that I don't know about David Hajdu, because I love him. He's a writer and cultural critic and somehow managed to encapsulate my thoughts on J Gro way back in 2005. I would like to see him revisit the topic now the Josh has released a little more personality out into the world via twitter. I enjoyed the article but will not expect anyone else to! No pressure!

(Holiday Music. . .I know, I know, I'm gross)

I just have one thing to say: I cannot find any Blossom Dearie holiday music recordings that are not super rare and super expensive. Stupid.

Podcasts and Pop Culture

I have a new phone which I have been attempting to utilize to its fullest; I got it insured so I figured I can do what I want! I’ve almost completely replaced my ipod with my phone, am attempting to navigate my podcasts through the beta app Google Listen (which is not that great but tolerable) and also attempting to do all my music listening through Pandora which works fairly well. Its going ok but its nice to feel the dynamism of the application world: I know some of these apps may not be fantastic now but they will be soon.

So! I listen to a lot of pop culture blogs and have yet to really find the perfect one. My top three favorites are : 1. Slate's Culture Gabfest, 2. Television Zombies, and 3. E! Online’s The Answer Bitch. I have also attempted to get behind a variety of movie podcasts, none of which hit where I want it to other than the Slate Movie Spoilers which is still not quite what I want, something called The Big Red Podcast which seems to focus on television with a very wide lens, Slate’s the Double X Gabfest, which is Slate’s semi-feminist, fairly decent podcast. NPR’s Culturetopia, their pop culture round-up podcast, is ok as well but the hosts are not my favorites, I dislike the intro music, and often the stories are topics I don’t care at all about.

My classic favorites are still dominated by NPR and include Sound Opinions, Planet Money, To The Best of Our Knowledge, This American Life, and Radiolab.

Back to the pop: If there was a way to cram all three of my favorites (the Gabfest, Zombies, and the Answer Bitch) into one podcast, it would be perfect. Slate provides the cynicism, smarts, multi-syllabic words and snobbery; Zombies provides endearing personalities and a sci-fi/fantasy genre focus with a comfortable self-awareness and no painful nerdiness; and the Answer Bitch is just a fast-talking, witty, East coast to west coast transplant with good gossip, lots of savvy, zero celebrity ass-kissing and plenty of swagger. If only a daily show existed with a smarty-pants, cynical, genre, gossip focus where I liked or liked to hate all the commentators.

Perhaps some people may say: well, why do you need an all-in-one when you have these three? I say I need an all in one because I have nearly two hours of podcast time a day and these three shows are sporadic at best. I can count on a once-a-week episode from the Gabfest and the Answer Bitch but the zombies, they continue to disappoint with their random, every couple of weeks contributions.

Perhaps one day the perfect podcast will come along just for me. You have to have a dream!