2024 Media Diet
aka Top content of 2024
If you have not heard of Jason Kottke (an OG blogger) or his Media Diets, you should check them out. My goal of doing my own is to 1) pay closer attention to what I consume, and 2) to take to time to thoughtfully analyze what I do (and don’t) like. Check out 2022 and 2023.
JANUARY
Theater Camp
I have a theory that you should watch funny movies on planes, movies you’ve already seen before, or very attention-grabbing ones. This is not the time to watch that very serious Oscar-nominated film. Anywho. This movie. Hilarious. Gives off Best in Show mockumentary vibes (have not seen that movie, just watched the trailer). Irreverent and full of great child actors too.
We Were Soldiers
I feel like I’m breaking my own rules / disproving my own theory here, but I watched this on a plane. (I think I was also multi-tasking and reading a book at the same time). Horrifically realistic and a depiction of great leadership.
Sing Street
Confession — I did not finish this movie because the plane landed before I could. It’s tender and funny, and as an adult, you go, “Aha. I see what’s going on here. It’s what every child goes through. They’re trying to figure out who they are, and sometimes that looks like trying to be like someone else.” The Irish accents don’t hurt. (Update: finished it on a 45-minute flight to Savannah in April! Just darling.)
The Connellys of County Down by Tracey Lange
Tracey did a great job of creating character that you empathize with and cheer on to be better than they are.
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai
Lyrical and poetic. First couple of chapters are hard to get into, but then it picks up. There were a couple plot elements that felt left field (and not entirely necessary). So 5 stars for mastery of language. 4 (maybe 3.5) for storytelling.
Beartown (Re-read)
Ugh. I just love this book so much. Going on my 3rd time reading it, and dang. I’m in awe over the language AND the storytelling. The themes! The study of human nature! The achingly beautiful characters!
Paris
Paris is always a good idea.
American Symphony
Beautiful documentary about Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad. Man, Jon is just on another level. I love watching people whose art just flows out of them. Hearing the way he thinks about music, how music comes to him, feels like learning another language in some ways.
Hadestown soundtrack
Namely, “Wait For Me.”
February
This eulogy.
So many beautiful lines in it.
These two particular parts stood out:
“Dad was Find My Phone before there was Find My Phone. At any given moment, he knew where all his children were and how and when they were coming home, and could never feel at ease until he had a handle on the logistics. Before I’d go on vacation, he would check in, not to say bon voyage, but to find out what airline we were flying and what the flight number was. I am 52 years old, and it was only this past year when I stopped texting him, “landed,” after my plane touched ground.”
“My father had so many passions and enthusiasms and I’d like to just mention a few, with the warning that an unhealthy percentage of them fall under the dessert category. He loved Russian literature, Russian history, pretty much any book about World War II. The John Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Dr. Zhivago. The movie “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Corduroy pants, cashmere sweaters, turtlenecks, and those fur-lined Cossack hats that made him look like a Russian senator. Mahler’s Ninth. The opera. Simon and Garfunkel. Judy Collins singing “Send in the Clowns.” Joe Dimaggio, Clyde Frazier. The Lou Gehrig retirement speech where Gehrig famously said “today I feel like the luckiest man on earth.” A full tank of gas. A joke at his expense. Walking into town for a cup of coffee. Emptying the dishwasher. Setting the breakfast table before he went to sleep at night. Going to the US Open every year. Summer evenings on the tennis courts with mom. A hot dog and a side of potato puffs from Walter’s. Temptee cream cheese on a plain toasted bagel, Manhattan clam chowder at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central, and those green marzipan bars from Lilac in New York. Babka (as long as it was chocolate and not cinnamon; baklava (as long as it was pistachio and not walnut), a box of Mallomars, a freshly baked challah with golden raisins. Anything from Entenmman’s but especially the discontinued Sour Cream and Chocolate Chip Nut Loaf. Dove ice cream bars, Mallomars, and halvah. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, Cadbury milk and fruit bars, chocolate truffle cake, Mallomars, my mom’s chocolate pudding pie. Mallomars. Are you sensing a theme here?”
House of the Rising Sun from New Orleans Jazz Fest
The Mumford & Sons performance that you didn’t know you needed.
33 Thoughts on Reading by Austin Kleon
A few favorites:
4. I will read whatever the hell I feel like. No guilty pleasures.
5. I will try to clear my mind of expectations before I sit down to read. I will give each book a chance.
7. I will be a good date, but I will not let an author waste my time.
13. I will copy down favorite passages in my own hand, to know what writing the words feels like.
17. I will toss “The Canon” out the window.
27. I will read bibliographies. I will let one book lead me to another.
29. As often as I can, I will read out loud to someone I care about.
30. I will not lend out a book if I ever want to see it again. If a friend asks to borrow a beloved book, I will buy and mail them a copy.
31. I will not harbor the delusion that being a reader makes me a superior person.
32. I will not suffer under the delusion that the act of reading alone makes me a better person.
So essentially, most of the thoughts Austin had.
Shark Heart
Absurd and yet touching. Goes to show you that even in a world where husbands turn into sharks and women give birth to twin birds, we still run into the same daunting challenge of being human and building relationships.
Talking at Night
One review called this book “melancholic,” and I think that’s about right. It feels like you’re stuck underneath the surface, just waiting to break through and take a gulping breath of air. It makes me think about how we try to fill holes and hurts with people, holes they were never meant nor made to fill.
One Day (TV series)
Sob. This series. 1) Never watched the movie. 2) Tried to start the book then got bored 100 pages in. The acting! I almost sympathy cried a couple of times. The fight in Episode 7 deserves an award. Episode 12 is also amazing.
Tiny Moves music video
I just love watching Margaret Qualley dance.
Christopher Nolan, Robert Downey Jr. and Missed Connections (NY Times)
Two industry vets chatting about their thoughts on film, the film industry, directing and being directed. Mainly this para:
“In the film, there are graphic descriptions of the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why did you choose not to show any of that?
NOLAN There were a lot of different issues that fed into that decision and the way we planned the portrayal. The key underlying thing is that what’s most powerful in cinema is often what is not shown. You’re asking the audience to use their imaginations. It’s something that people who make horror movies completely understand, that less can be more. Watching Cillian [Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer] listen to some of these things is one of the most moving experiences for me, because he’s taking you on that journey.”
If you every read the Production notes on Wikipedia for Dunkirk (which really, you should), you’ll notice the same thing. Nolan intentionally didn’t show the Germans “to convey the perspective of soldiers on the beach, for whom contact with the enemy was ‘extremely limited and intermittent.’”
March
Letters to a Young Writer
RAYE
The Gentlemen (TV Series)
Highly entertaining and attention-grabbing. In an age when it’s all to easy to be doing multiple things at once, you can’t take your eyes away from the screen.
This is Water
April
Five Decembers by James Kestrel
The cover is comical and gives historical Harlequin novel vibes when really it’s the complete opposite. Full of twists and turns and a truly fun read.
Metaphor & Worldview podcast
I’ve felt this longing for a while for deeper thinking, philosophical conversations, and an underlying understanding of the way the world has arrived to where it is today. Enter L’Abri. In prep for my summer there, I started to listen to some of their podcasts, and this one struck me — mainly as just a “woahhhhh” sort of feeling. And as a lover of language, of course I loved that layer of meaning.
American Fiction
Late to the party on this film, but it was fantastic. Perfect length. Funny. Thought-provoking.
Scrapper
This film had been on my to-watch list for years and it was just as good as I hoped it would be. Tender and hilarious. Incredible acting by young talent. I’m just in awe of Lola Campbell — her tiny tells, her skeptical tone.
Olivia Dean
Can you tell I go through music obsessions where I listen to one artist non-stop for a month? RAYE was March, Olivia Dean is April. The perfect kitchen dancing music.
May
Nostalgia pt 1
Nostalgia pt 2. Makes me want to forget about work and take a roadtrip with friends.
June
Stanley Cup Playoffs
This was the summer that I got into hockey. Boy, hockey is FUN. Followed the Panthers from the start and you bet I almost cried when they lifted the Stanley Cup on June 24. Already planning a hockey roadtrip.
July
Mere Christianity
My third-or-so re-read. This time I read half of it out loud to my mom, while driving on winding Cornwall roads. Every 10 pages or so, she’d say, “Mark that page for me.” Me? I read it with a pen in hand, to underline and re-underline the words that continue to teach me so much.
Cornwall
A sunny week in Cornwall is good for the soul. Cliff hikes. Beach afternoons. Surfing. Ice cream. Freezing ocean dips.
August
The Art of Listening Prayer
Joey Votto’s Retirement IG Post
- What a fascinating guy (if you read his Wikipedia page).
- Particularly these honest lines:
“Toronto + Canada, I wanted to play in front of you. Sigh, I tried with all my heart to play for my people. I’m just not good anymore. Thank you for all the support during my attempt.
Cincinnati, I’ve only played for you. I love you.
Finally, to the MLB fans. You energized me with your cheers, I loved the boos, the trash talk, the moments where I broke a road cities moment, or was humbled on stage.
I’ll never forget, early in my career, my first time at Wrigley Field and the crowd standing and cheering toward my failure. I remember standing at the plate, smiling and thinking, this is my home. I belong here.
I was myself in this sport. I was able to be my best self. I played this sport with every last ounce of my body, heart, and mind.
Thank you for everything.
-Joey Votto”
“Gloves on!” by Anne Carson (London Book Review)
“So, your life. There it is before you — possibly a road, a ribbon, a dotted line, a map — let’s say you’re 25, then you make some decisions, do things, have setbacks, have triumphs, become someone, a bus driver, a professor of Indo-European linguistics, a pirate, a cosmetologist, years pass, maybe in a family maybe not, maybe happy maybe not, then one day you wake up and you’re seventy. Looking ahead you see a black doorway. You begin to notice the black doorway is always there, at the edge, whether you look at it or not. Most moments contain it, most moments have a sort of sediment of black doorway at the bottom of the glass. You wonder if other people are seeing it too. You ask them. They say no. You ask why. No one can tell you.”
What an intro. This essay is part scrambled thoughts, as one usually experiences when receiving a diagnosis like Parkinson’s (which the author did), part breadcrumbs of a lifetime spend studying art and of a recent dive into science, and wholly an attempt to just make sense.
Another lines:
“It is hard to live within constant striving. It is hard to live within the word ‘degenerative’, which means that, however I strive, I do not win.”
Blue Horses, Mary Oliver
You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.
I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.
