While we do love us some books, believe it not, we do have a life outside of reading. So to highlight our other pop culture interests, on the last Monday of each month, we each will highlight three other “happenings” from the last month. Big events on favorite TV shows, new movies we’ve watched, old movies we’ve “discovered,” etc. Pretty much whatever we found of particular interest outside of the book world during the last month. Share your own favorite things in the comments!
Serena’s Picks
Netflix Series: “The Defenders”
I have a very hit and miss track record as far as watching Netflix’s Marvel shows. I loved “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones” but then didn’t watch “Luke Cage” and was scared off of “Iron Fist” by the bad reviews. But as I loved “Jessica Jones” the most out of them all (take a wild guess as to what’s my next pick on this list!), I felt the need to watch this team up show before watching the second season. And I was glad I did! I know this show, too, go a weaker reception than was expected, but I quite enjoyed it. For one thing, I think I felt better about having not felt like I had to spend hours watching every single series leading up to it. And as far as the story goes, I had no problem figuring out what was going on without having watched two of the series. Daredevil and Jessica Jones were by far the best part of this show as well, so I feel like I made the right decisions there. And I did love the outright mocking of Iron Fist that went down in this show. If anything, it definitely got me excited for Daredevil season 3 whenever that comes out!
Netflix Series: “Jessica Jones” season 2
No one is surprised! I mean, I watched a whole other series in prep for this thing, so obviously it was going to make its way on this list unless it somehow bombed, which it did not. Krysten Ritter is definitely the strongest part of this series. She is pitch perfect as Jessica and manages to sell even the weaker moments of this season’s run. While I don’t think it reached the highs of the first season (for one, how do you top David Tennant’s terrifying Kilgrave??), it also managed to pull off the dreaded “origin story” superhero arc. There were a couple familiar faces popping in here and there, but at the heart, this is always Jessica’s story. It covers a lot of ground on some familiar topics (trauma and recovery from trauma) and new one ground with regards to family and memory. If you enjoyed the first season, I think this one is well worth checking out!
Sports: Minnesota United Soccer
Proof that I went outside last month!! So both my husband and Kate’s have been huge soccer fans for forever and have been buying season tickets together to our local soccer club for about as long. I enjoy sports more than Kate, so I’ve been tagging along for the last several years as well. Our team just moved up to the national level last year (let’s not talk about how well we did…), so this is the second year on the “big stage” as it were. This month’s season home opener was particularly fun as it was the first beautiful sunny day in the 50s we had had and our team pulled out an exciting win! This is probably the first and last time you’ll hear about sports on this blog, but quietly, in the background, I’ll be attending every home game we have, proof that not all librarian stereotypes hold water!
Kate’s Picks
Podcast: “Last Podcast on the Left”
So maybe you’re looking for a true crime podcast that also covers supernatural happenings, aliens, and conspiracy theories. And maybe you want your hosts to be three guys who are all kinds of inappropriate, but also do IMPECCABLE research into the case that they are tackling for each episode. If so, you should check out “Last Podcast on the Left”. Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski have done episodes covering such subjects as the Aum Shinrikyo Death Cult, Ted Bundy, The Amityville Horror, and Roswell, with lots of black humor and lots of VERY thoroughly explored information. The series that hooked me was all about 90s Norwegian Black Metal and the murder of Euronymous, if only because of the hilarious but relevant tangents taken during the episodes. Expect some bad taste, but know that they take their research VERY seriously.
Netflix Series: “Wild Wild Country”
SPEAKING OF CULTS, who here has heard of the Rajneeshee Bioterror Attack??? Basically, in the early 1980s followers of Baghwan Rajneesh bought up some land and built a commune in the middle of nowhere Oregon. In an attempt to take over the town, one of their higher ups, Ma Anand Sheela, poisoned a number of local restaurant salad bars with straight up Salmonella in hopes that the townspeople would be too sick (or dead) to vote in the upcoming election. Hundreds were sickened and eventually the cult was run out of town. Well guess what! Netflix has a show about the group and the conflict with the town. What surprised me the most about this series was that it doesn’t just paint the Rajneesh followers as total monsters, but also examines the cultural conflict between this group and the people of the small town of Antelope, Oregon. You can see the motivations and feelings of both sides, and I came away feeling bad for a number of the followers who really felt like Rajneesh was their savior, as well as for the townspeople who were, uh, poisoned by the cultists. Deeply fascinating, and disturbing, stuff.
Netflix Series: “Everything Sucks”
As a person who hit middle school right during the mid to late 1990s (starting sixth grade in 1996), I feel a fair amount of nostalgic joy when I watch the show “Everything Sucks”. I mean, there are so many things that I completely remember and relate to when it comes to this show. My closet was filled with flannel and Doc Martens. I hung out with the geeks, but had a HUGE crush on one of the bad boy upperclassmen. And like many of the characters on this show, I was trying so, so hard to figure out who I was, and how to navigate through the awkward awfulness that was middle and high school. The real standouts are Luke (Jahi Winston), the freshman AV geek who is earnest and adorable, and Kate (Peyton Kennedy), a lonely sophomore who is slowly discovering her sexuality. Not only are the storylines filled with humor and fun, there is the undercurrent of bittersweetness (I was weeping openly during one scene with the use of the song “Rocketman”). 90s kids, check it out, but everyone else should too.
The Library Ladies 