[5/8] Recently Read, Watched, and Listened

08 May, 2021

Read

The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See - I'm close to finishing this one. It’s similar to Sumi Hahn’s The Mermaid From Jeju in setting and pacing but i liked this unique story about family and life. My love of stories set in Korea, and specifically on Jeju island, is growing exponentially.

Watched

Shrill - currently at s1 e3. Aidy Bryant is hilarious. This is a good show!

Solar Opposites - completed season 2. This is much smarter than I first judged it to be, especially with the subplot occurring amongst the wall people. I do like Korvo’s rants at the beginning of each show (during the intro).

The Office: Superfan Episodes - completed watching all of the “Superfan Episodes” on Peacock. There are some really funny scenes that were cut out of the original air, which is too bad. But, for the most part, there’s a lot that is “cringe” and that ultimately, cutting the majority of these scenes out was the right choice.

Napoleon Dynamite (2004) - I was thinking about the awkwardness of Napoleon and his brother, and thought it would be fun to rewatch this movie. Still funny; I laughed a lot, and it was needed. I like how the whole movie just embraces the awkwardness, everything from the setting to the pacing to the characters.

Listened

This week’s rotation included BTS, Rush, The Black Crowes, Def Leppard, Tool, and Audioslave.

[Single] "Serotonin" by girl in red - I learned about this one from a Song Exploder episode. I think it's significant not only having been written during the pandemic (and can be attributed to the overall mental health issues during it) but, also having been derived from a TikTok sketch, which is truly a sign of the times.

[Podcast] This Is Love: On the Way to Dinner - This episode elicited a lot of feelings in me, having been abandoned and adopted. While overall heartwarming, a lot of really generous people (namely, the judge) made some extraordinary (i.e. not normal) decisions to make this occur. And while those decisions are kind and generous, they’re not the norm for the system, which is disheartening.

Played

R-Type Final 2 - this game is beautiful and difficult and I love it.

Northgard - I bumped up the difficulty level and I haven't won a game since. I have to really figure out my strategy here.