Media [Re]Discoveries

Increasingly often lately, I've gotten in the frame of mind where I want to hear all the music from a particular band, or watch all the movies from a particular director. If they are at least somewhat brilliant, you can usually detect a theme running through their work, no matter how disparate the subject matter. It's fun to try to figure out what they're trying to figure out. So here's the most recent roundup.

My friend drove me to a party Saturday, and he had the newest Radiohead CD playing in his car. There's just something about Radiohead. I don't know what it is, but they thrill. So I dug out my "Hail to the Thief" CD and had it rotating in my car. It got annoying though, because my stupid ex-boyfriend was incapable of properly burning a CD, so it skipped constantly. But from what I could hear, it reminded me how awesome Radiohead is. So I went out and bought a non-skipping version of "Hail to the Thief," plus "In Rainbows," just for good measure.

They're all I imagined them to be. So far, I think "Hail to the Thief" might be the superior album; it just has so much momentum, you know? But whenever a new Radiohead CD comes out there's always so much buzz, hype, and anticipation surrounding it. They always seem to take a unique approach to things. And it's all totally justified.

Next up in the media tour is Michel Gondry. He's the French director of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep," and most recently "Be Kind, Please Rewind." I haven't seen the most recent one, but the other two make it quite apparent that dreams, memory, and their interrelation figure prominently in his psyche. I find that very interesting, and particularly applicable to me lately, as lately I noticed that I'll remember something, but then be not quite sure if it was something that actually happened, or if I am remembering a segment of a dream. Weird, yes, I know. Maybe I'm going crazy. Oh, yeah, and Bjork had him direct one of her videos. Bjork is cool and very strange, but unself-consciously so, which I take as an indication that she's for real. When people try to hard to be a certain way or type, and are obviously very conscious of it, it's an indication that that's not who they really are. If it was, then they wouldn't have to try, would they?

Finally, I discovered through a link on Andrea's blog a site called Racialicious. It's commentary, blog-style, on pop culture and race. Very interesting, especially if you fall into the ethnically ambigous/alienated from your culture categories like I do.