How I spent my summer

Well, Summer is coming to an end. I used to rank my summers much like how I rank albums now. I think starting at age 10, each summer had to top the next summer - sort of like how the Hollywood box office has to top the year before. Obviously, I was crushed when I was 11, I had to spend the majority of my summer in my grandmother's radon-rich, moldy, decaying house with only a paper sack full of GI Joes and Transformers to entertain me (the neighborhood was heavy on elderly, unemployed and college students and light on kids). No way that summer was going to beat the summer when I was ten, when I saw Ghostbusters about five times and Gremlins about 15 times and played basketball until it got dark - and watching MTV's "Friday Night Video Fights" and calling in to vote for Duran Duran's "The Reflex" (it worked, I think "The Reflex" was one of the only videos to get retired from MTV's "Friday Night Video Fights").

I think it was in college where I stopped comparing summers. They all sort of started to blend into one another. Sure, I had a summer soundtrack for each summer, but I gave up trying to rank one above the other. Nowadays, with a full-time job, it's getting even harder to identify any album that defined my summer. So, here's my recap of the summer I'll use only as a reference -

Movies I liked: Good question - Not too sure. Wedding Crashers was really good. Star Wars - Episode III was good solely based on the fact that it wasn't a total cinematic abortion like the previous two. Still, there was no Spiderman 2 in terms of great overall entertainment, no Fahrenheit 9/11 to piss people off or no Sideways or other movies you can honestly see yourself watching again and again.

Music: Despite what my friends say, I like Bloc Party's Silent Alarm. Oasis's Don't Believe the Truth can 'almost' be declared a return to form and I'm crossing my fingers for the New Pornographers latest, due August 23. But I guess my favorite album of the year has to be System of a Down's Mezmerize (even though for two weeks, I thought the album was called 'Mezmakize' because I just glanced at the album cover - the 'kize' part just sounded so intense, heavy and totally appropriate for System).

Books: Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. Freakanomics is on my purchase list.

Concert Highlight: Wilco in Red Rocks with the Roots opening for them. Not perfect, but I'll definitely take it.

Summer soundtrack: It's an older album, but I can't think of anything else - it pretty much summed up this summer -

Congrats - Wilco's Summerteeth














My jeans are purchased. I want to make chili again and watch college football and eat wings and down bloody mary's with my friends. Bring on autumn.

Current listening selections -
Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
Radiohead - OK Computer