Abbie's Real Life Blog

Movies:

Other than running right out and seeing Superbad last weekend, right after it came out, I haven’t gotten to see many movies this summer.  Not as many as I always intend to see, anyway.  Well, if I could have my druthers, I would spend every evening in a movie theater.  I just don’t get tired of going to movies.  I think it’s due to the fact that we never really lived near movie theaters when I was growing up, so I still consider movie-going a big deal. 

But although I haven’t seen a ton of movies in the theater, we’re still getting Netflix at home and I’m still working my way through the AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies list.  Unfortunately for me, they decided to release a 10th Anniversary edition of the list, and they changed it up by dropping a bunch of movies and adding a bunch of movies, and it pissed me off because I’ve been set back by the new version.  Still, I’ve knocked several off the list (both of them) in the past few weeks.  Tracy and I watched The Last Picture Show on a miserably hot Sunday afternoon, and I tried to sit through Robert Altman’s Nashville last week (though I failed, because I found it almost entirely incomprehensible, and I even like Altman in general.)  The other night I saw The Best Years of Our Lives, which was pretty great.  Yeah, the thing about this project is that it does mean involving yourself in the best movies ever made.  Nashville‘s the first one that I’ve just turned off.  In general, it’s a pretty great list of movies that are worth watching.  I still have a couple of dozen to go through, but several of them are westerns, Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin movies, and I was exposed to some of that in college film classes.  I’m not saying I won’t enjoy them, but I’m not as excited about them as others on the list.  Of course, I say that and I felt that way about others from this list that I’ve watched and then really enjoyed, much more than I thought I would.  So I can never really tell.

Music:

I went back to the gym a few weeks ago, and now I’m going to the location of Corporate Gym that is downtown (near my new office) rather than the one that is on the south side of Columbia.  And, actually, they changed ownership and the gym is no longer Corporate Gym but now rather Small Local Chain Gym instead.  So hooray for the little guy, I guess!  And for me, who now must climb three stories to get to the cardio machines, although there are many fewer people at this location than at the one south of town after work so I can usually get a machine right away rather than fighting it out with someone.  Parking, on the other hand, sucks.

Anyway, I had a point, and that point was music, and that point about music is that I have been listening to my iPod at the gym rather than watching television while running at the gym, and so I’ve had to come up with some good gym workout music because lots of things just don’t cut it.  Last night, I discovered that, while I can’t really listen to M.I.A. in the car or at work, Arular makes for pretty great running music.  I think I’m going to buy her new album too, just for this purpose. 

It has to have a beat, you see.  You have to be able to keep your momentum up, and I’m just saying that watching Jeopardy! or If Walls Could Talk or whatever crap How Much is My House Worth? and But How Much is My House Worth Now? is on HGTV at the time, well, that doesn’t really have the right beat at all. 

Dance music.  I need dance music that doesn’t make me cry.

Television:

Summer is always void of good teevee watching, but I have been happy with the Flight of the Conchords on HBO and Mad Men on AMC.  If you have basic cable, you likely get AMC, and Mad Men is really worth checking out.  It’s pretty great, worthy of HBO even though HBO turned it down.  And we’re counting down the weeks before the regular teevee season starts up as well, for most stuff anyway.  I think I have to wait until February to watch Lost, right? 

Books:

I finished the Harry Potter reread, and now I’m rereading the Lord of the Rings series.  Because, yes, I am that kind of a dork.