Culture bender

My traditional end of semester ritual involves going on a culture bender: catching up on movies, books, and music that I missed out on during the hectic academic term.

These are the best benders, and I'm not just saying that because I'm pregnant with baby #2 and not drinking. The hangover from a culture bender isn't physical but mental, and pleasantly so. Instead of headache, there are echoes of the art that other people made, bouncing around in the brain, perhaps inspiring new art. Inspiring new thoughts, at the very least, and that's a pretty good deal, especially from a DVD or book borrowed from the library.

The books I purchased were cheaper than a bender bar tab, too. At least I think so. I really don't recall, Senator. I do know that a sixer of nonalcoholic Beck's costs something like $6.99 and tastes like skunk. I may have been overheard muttering "Skunk it up" in the kitchen the other day, followed by the resigned clink of a bottle cap.

So: movies. For your light science fiction needs, let me recommend Super 8 and Another Earth.

I liked the former quite a bit, but the latter: whoa emm gee. Would you think me over the top if I called it life-changing? It was life changing. If you imagine that your life is perfectly fine the way it is and you cannot see room for a deeper understanding of humanity, then do not see this film. Plus it's gorgeously shot. And Mr. Littlejeans from Rushmore is in it. I have way more to say, but I'm working on a separate thing about it. To Be Announced.

Been reading like a madwoman, too. And writing and revising again. And feeling more like myself, aside from gestating another human. Which is wonderful in its own right. But you are no longer just yourself when there is someone growing inside you. Someone for whom you have given up coffee (kind of) and wheat beer (totally), who makes you off-balance when you stand up, who makes strangers smile because he (another boy!) pushes your belly out more each day. You are you and you aren't you. You know? People see you differently, and you are reminded: I am different. Suddenly I am thinking of my friend Barney, who does not like it when you use the second person. See what I did there, friend?

But I was talking about books, or meant to. A recent sampling includes The Singles by Meredith Goldstein: I was a couple years ahead of Meredith in college, who now writes the Love Letters column for the Boston Globe and just published her first novel. It follows a group of friends from our alma mater, Syracuse University, at a wedding where many of them attend solo. Tons of flashbacks to the 'Cuse, which I loved. Meredith remembers the brutal winters well. The Next Right Thing by Dan Barden: Dan is a professor at Butler University here in Indianapolis, and he wrote a noirish mystery with a twist. The protagonist is searching to understand the death of his AA sponsor, who'd been clean for years and overdosed in a So-Cal motel room. A page-turner, dark and funny and full of feeling. Ayiti by Roxane Gay: I finally met Roxane in person this spring when she read at Butler for the Pressgang launch party. "Aren't we Internet friends?" she asked sweetly when I introduced myself. Indeed we are, and for that I am glad. Her writing contains surprises every time. This collection of mostly short pieces about Haiti floored me. So do Roxane's essays at The Rumpus. You go check these out right now, or I'm telling.

We are disappearing and becoming pixels at this late (for me) hour. In the time it took me to write this, people in my feed posted 86,000 new tweets. My nosy Facebook sidebar that monitors our comings and goings and birthday tidings and snarky comments has disappeared -- has yours? I have a false new illusion of privacy, but probably something is just broken. The last things I viewed on Amazon were books and Gerber Lil' Crunchies snacks. I do not like where they put the apostrophe in that brand name.