I don’t know why, but my pop culture consumption this month has been a STRUGGLE. I think the writers strike finally caught up with television, and the weather and snow/ice storm didn’t help with my desire to read or be productive at all. But over the holidays and into the new year I found a few bright spots in my pop culture consumption…

Reading

I really enjoyed listening to Keenan Thompson’s memoir, When I was Your Age. He does all the voices and a few goofy characters, so the audiobook version was the way to go! I also read a cute rom/com Behind the Scenes over the winter break. It’s by an Oregon author and takes place in Portland, a fun quick read to wrap up last year.

I’m half way through No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood and it is… a very different writing style than I’m used to. It was recommended by a client who has similar reading habits so I’m hoping to push through, it’s a quick read and I wonder if it would be better if I was reading it on vacation.

Watching

The most shocking television storyline of January is the season finale of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Hey, judge not lest ye be judged folks. When a new woman joins the cast and spends all season being DRAMA only to be discovered in the finale that she is behind a social media gossip account that regularly harasses the other wives? It was WILD. And I watched every minute of the 3 part reunion, you better believe it!

Since I did a year end list I didn’t write about what I watched in December. I am so sad that Julia was cancelled on MAX. It was such a sweet and smart show. I wondered how the second season would do and loved the CIA story line.

I watched a lot of movies over the holiday break. I get the hype around Oppenheimer now. I didn’t think May/December was great, and finally realized that I don’t like Natalie Portman as an actor. The funnest movie we watched over the holidays was a cute movie on Peacock (I know!) If You Were Last. The cast is great, and the premise is very clever – two astronauts are cut off from NASA and stuck roaming around space. I especially loved how they spent no money on the “space” budget, just papier mâché which made me laugh ever time. The music and pop culture references were excellent.

I caught the latest season of Fargo on Hulu/FX after I read a great piece by Leah Sottile about how it touches on a lot of the extremest reporting she does. Jon Hamm plays a great bad guy, and Juno Temple as a Minnesota nice housewife was so great. A couple of years ago I read Nathan Hawley’s latest book and it was one of the worst books I have ever read. That was tainting my experience going into this season on Fargo (he is the creator of the Fargo TV series), and at the end of the season I realized that a diverse writers room would serve him much better.

We visited my brother and his family over the weekend and watched what I hope will be the worst movie I watch this year, Self Reliant. I really liked Jake Johnson in New Girl and Minx but holy wow this was not my jam. Again, maybe a diverse writing room would have served him better. I’d like my 90 minutes back please.

On the flight home I watched Past Lives and it was incredible. Such a lovely intimate film and I get what all the hype was about, it deserves every Oscar nom it received (and probably more, but I mean the Oscars didn’t seem to understand the point of Barbie based on their noms so…)

Luckily All Creatures Great and Small is back and continues to be such a nice piece of pop culture. We just started Chrissy & Dave Dine Out and the premise is great, the guests are fun and the food is awesome looking. I also started Death and Other Details and it will be a fun “beautiful people being terrible” show, that I think I’ll wait to binge when it’s wrapped up.

Listening

I watched American Symphony somewhere along the way this winter and it was lovely and will make you cry. That got me on a big Jon Batiste kick lately, which is never a bad thing. There was a NYT article that included Questlove’s NYT Energy Playlist and it is FANTASTIC. It’s on Spotify but I did find it on iTunes as well. A guaranteed crowd pleaser.

There’s a vacation coming up with long days of beach reading that I can’t wait for. My stack of books is piling up and needs some warm vitamin D and limited distractions to get me caught up! What pop culture are you enjoying this winter?