Sunday, May 31, 2009

XX


I'm a fan of Slate.com both the web site and blogs as well as the podcasts. In addition to the existing podcasts (culture gabfest and political gabfest), Slate has recently started a new gabfest: the Double X Gabfest. There is also a Double X web site, which I haven't spent a whole lot of time on. So, what is it? It's a site devoted to women - not feminist issues per se but women in the news, what these really interesting women (who created and contribute to the site) are reading and thinking and analyzing.

For instance they've got a "Sotomayor Buzzword Watch" which is "keeping track of the arsenal of assaults from her attackers." The most recent podcast (linked above) discussed Sotomayor, of course, a recent study on womens' happiness in America and women action heros (i.e. why aren't there any good ones?).

I'd recommend giving the podcast a listen. Like the other Gabfests, this one makes you feel like you're taking part (kind of) in a conversation and it's real people just talking. These particular real people happen to be women who are lawyers, journalists, movie critics, news analysts and much more.

Monday, May 25, 2009

TV

The yuppie that I am, I have spent this weekend listening to podcasts, watching movies ("films"), knitting, reading books and magazine articles, and making bread (but *not* in a bread machine). I made blueberry bread but the loaves came out sort of less plump than in the past but still tasty:

Anyway, I noted a theme in a few of my mental consumables this weekend: TV.

The Slate Cultural Gabfest podcast, an old episode of This American Life, and my choice in viewing all involved this. I am not really a TV watcher but this topic comes up occasionally in conversation. It always sounds so uppity when I mention that I don't watch TV. What people usually don't hear is why I don't watch - because I'm a freaking addict. If I had cable I'd be about 300 lbs and have jelly for brains because I'd just sit there and channel surf endlessly.

This past week's Slate Culture Gabfest (The Mature Adaptation Edition) - two of the three Gabfest participants do not watch TV and one does. They had an interesting conversation about network TV versus...what, HBO TV? Where is TV going with things like the internet, Tivo, and Hulu around. They also talked about why two of them don't watch TV. Sadly there was no real answer other than time constraints. The show often discusses TV shows but doesn't usually ponder TV in general. Interesting.

An episode of This American Life (What I Learned From Television) from 2008 had TV as its theme. The most interesting act (the show is almost always performed 3 acts) was David Rakoff's bit. He hadn't watched TV for 20 (?) years and the show's producers wondered what someone who has been away for so long would think of TV today. At first he couldn't watch it, then he got into it too much, but in the end he rejected it. He admitted feeling a bit stupid about the things he found funny (e.g. America's funniest home videos) and not really getting other things (e.g. MTV's My Super Sweet 16).

Finally, we started watching a now ended show from HBO - The Wire. We watched the first three episodes of the first season. I was sort of luke warm on it but Sandy really liked it. It takes a while for me to get into things. It seems we're tentatively moving forward with our viewing of the show and trying not to get totally addicted. We've established a "No Blockbuster" rule, which means that we have to wait for the episodes to come in on Netflix and not cheat by running to Blockbuster (we spent a lot of money doing this watching Six Feet Under on DVD).

Ok, well I've gone on loooong enough. Stay tuned for more in the near future.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Really, nada

Outside of the garden variety yuppie problems, life has been pretty ho-hum lately. Nothing of note about which to blog. I mean I did get out on Friday night for a happy hour which lasted a few hours. This was my view from the floor when I got home that night:That's right, Yota and her scratch pad (aka Sandy's old yoga mat). Unsurprisingly, Saturday was pretty uneventful. Um, Sunday too.

If only I still had photoshop, then I could spend productive hours manipulating and recoloring our photos like these:


But, alas, there is only the news sites, the blogs of others, reddit, and Icanhazcheezburger to keep me distracted.