This fall has been caps lock ROUGH, am I right? As someone who’s #stillwithher, the presidential election felt like a complete sucker punch to the gut. It also stripped my desire to be creative. For a while there, this WIL post that had been kicking around in my head felt so inconsequential and pointless, I did everything I could to avoid touching my website.
But in the past two weeks, I’ve come to realize the main reason I love doing these posts: to share other people’s art with friends and followers. What do we (collectively) do when we’re yearning for a distraction? We turn to art, in all its forms. Helping me escape the anxiety and fear that’s gotten me down as of late, here’s a few of my favorite recent pick-me-ups:
1) Fox’s PITCH: I’d heard about this show during upfronts, but it fell off my radar by fall. Then, one recent Thursday evening, I was on Twitter and watched as my writer friends were live tweeting the heck out of an episode. Clearly I was missing something! Now I can say I’m almost caught up with the first season and TOTALLY see what the fuss was about. Kylie Bunbury is AMAZING as Ginny Baker, Major League Baseball’s first female player. Throw in a stellar supporting cast—Kevin Arnold’s Dad! Zack Morris! errr Mark-Paul Gosselaar 😉 …who’s got mad chemistry with Bunbury BTW….Mark Consuelos! Ali Larter!—and I’m sold all the more. Make this series even cooler? Scoring the show is the amazing duo of Black Violin. I saw them perform at Ball State a few years back and was wowed, so it’s a bonus to hear their musical stamp on the episodes. Watch the trailer for PITCH
2) Keepin’ It 1600 Podcast: If you voted for Donald Trump, this ain’t the podcast for you. But, if you (like me) were one of the millions who voted for Hillary, then you might fall for this series featuring political junkies and ex-Obama staffers Jon Favreau (sigh…so dreamy) and Dan Pfeiffer. I’ve been listening since the election and these guys are on top of the news, offering smart, colorful commentary that includes interviews with key and upcoming players of the Democratic Party. Bonus: EW calls it the hottest political show of the season.
3) Everything Is Copy, an HBO documentary about Nora Ephron: Guys, I thought I loved Nora Ephron before this doc. But my fan girling went to a full-on 11 after watching this. Shot by her son, Jacob Bernstein, “Everything is Copy” (a phrase Ephron was known for using) examines the life and legacy of this trailblazing woman. As a journalist, a feminist, a screenwriter, a director, a mother, a cook….Nora Ephron was and forever will be a total icon. I couldn’t love her more.
4) Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam: The album “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine” is what happens when you pull together artists from two of my all-time favorite indie bands: The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij. If there was one album I’ve listened to the most this fall, it’s this. Solid start to finish, it’s also one of those albums you’re going to hear tracks from in all sorts of places. Case in point: this awesome iPhone commercial.
5) My friend Rena Olsen’s book, The Girl Before: When Rena handed me an ARC of her debut novel, I was so curious about the story I was about to dive into: Who was Clara Lawson? And why was she being ripped away from her husband and the life she knew? It didn’t take long for me to find out and BOY was I hooked. Rena’s writing style is very cinematic, which is probably why, mid-way through this fast-paced read, I found myself wishing this was one thriller that would make its way to the big screen.
