Media I Shall Consume

1. The new Björk album, Volta. I've been greatly enjoying the first single, "Earth Intruders." Although I liked Medulla and Vespertine, as well as the stuff she did for Drawing Restraint 9, I've been getting a little tired of this introspective phase of her career. My favorite album remains Post, which had a very vibrant, communal spirit to it--mostly, I imagine, because she brought in a wide range of different producers, rather than using just one (Debut) or doing it all herself (most of her stuff since.) Volta apparently has a bunch of different collaborators, including Timbaland. I think that is fabulous, and I'm really excited to hear it. You know, right, that Björk is my favorite music of all time? She's the only popular musician whose albums I buy as soon as they come out, whose shows I go to see whenever I can, and whose career I follow with a fine-tooth comb. Being a musicologist, it is just too exhausting to keep up with contemporary music to the extent that I did at age 15; Björk is the only artist for whom I allow myself complete fandom.

2. Hot Fuzz. Okay, I have already consumed this media. Mary and I saw it in England a few weeks ago. But now that it is out in the US, I want to consume it again, and I want to drag my friends with me. Picture Bad Boys or Die Hard, except set in a picturesque rural English village. (Somerset County, to be exact, so kind of near the Cotswolds.) It is created by the same team that brought you Shaun of the Dead, and although less formally coherent than that masterpiece, it is nevertheless hilarious and pitch-perfect in its analysis of middlebrow English culture. Brilliant. Brilliant!

3. The Sopranos. Well, I am slightly ambivalent about this. I love the show, of course. But for the past two weeks, I have been catching up on the first two seasons of The Wire, another great show. And although The Wire can be rather didactic at times, I love its precise and clean directing, the elegance of its writing, the overall tightness of the production. Going from that world to the world of The Sopranos, well...these new episodes are so weighty, you know? The heavy portent David Chase puts into every single element of The Sopranos is beginning to grate on me a little bit. Obviously, I am going to keep watching, and I still think the show is probably the greatest every produced on American television, but one more good season of The Wire and that might not be so true anymore.

Oh, and I need desperately to get a haircut. I think I need to go a little shorter, to keep pace with my receding hairline. But that's neither here nor there.