My Month of Entertainment

Being that I talk about specific cd's and books sometimes, I figured I can start a monthly "what I bought" post...kinda like Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree, but much much less entertaining.

Music

This was a phenomenal music month for me. I didn't buy a ton this month, but everything I bought ended up being fantastic, and that rarely (if ever) happens.

Taking the Long Way, Dixie Chicks
Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam
Blues for Allah, Grateful Dead
The Soft Bulletin, Flaming Lips
The Bends, Radiohead

I've posted plenty about Taking the Long Way (here) and Pearl Jam (here), so I'll skip over those. While I've always respected the aesthetic created by the Dead, I've never felt the need to buy any of their albums, but I've always loved "Franklin's Tower", and I'd read really interesting things about this one and decided to give it a shot. It ended up being much better than I'd imagined. This is an "iPod" cd...meaning it sounds way better in headphones than on a stereo...you catch a ton of more detail on headphones, and it's much more rewarding to listen to.

As for Soft Bulletin and Bends, I'm embarassed that I didn't own these two long ago, so I won't say much about them. I talked a while ago about how the Flaming Lips are one of the more rewarding bands to discover because they keep revealing layers you didn't think existed...while I honestly think I like their newest one, At War With the Mystics, better, Bulletin is definitely a worthy addition to the collection...lots of experimentation and probably the most vulnerability I've ever heard revealed.

I posted a long time ago that I didn't get into Radiohead until very late (didn't buy OK Computer till last year...the music snob in me likes to be the first one to discover something, so once I was late to the bandwagon, I made myself later out of stubbornness, I guess). While I doubt OK Computer will ever be topped, Bends is interesting because it reveals how they went from "Creep" to OK by showing slow progressions (both lyrically and sonically). OK wouldn't exist without Bends, though OK has more depth, if that makes sense.

DVDs

Office Space (special edition with flair!)
Veronica Mars, season 1

Since the discovery of TiVo (best wedding present ever), DVD purchasing has been few and far between. That will change in June. Not only is it 'Buy 2, Get 1 Free' month at Barnes & Noble, but now that the TV seasons are over, TiVo doesn't have much for us. Next month, be prepared for reviews of Entourage season 2 and the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates World Series DVD. Yes, I'm pathetic. At least I admit it. The Butterfly and I discovered Veronica Mars this season, and it's quite the revelation (she's quite the Buffy fan, and this continues a lot of the vibe from that show)...though we haven't cracked open this DVD yet (working our way through Buffy, season 3), so that's all I can comment on at the moment.

Books

Watchmen, Alan Moore
I Put a Spell on You, Nina Simone
The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Nelson George
Moneyball, Michael Lewis
How Would a Patriot Act?, Glenn Greenwald (review here)
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2, Alan Moore
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game is Wrong, by the writers of Baseball Prospectus

Big book month. And I actually read all of these aside from the Nina Simone and Nelson George books. You can see from this list that a) I'm going through an Alan Moore phase (I'm sure there will be a post about that at some point), though I'm not sure what I'll be getting next, and b) the worse the Pirates do, the more I read about baseball (figure that one out). Everything I read was quite good, HWAPA? and Moneyball probably being the best.