Thankful Thursday

Movies: None.

Television/Streaming: Watched an episode of Farscape (#6, "Thank God It's Friday, Again," where they go to that planet where people are essentially brainwashed into constant working). And Taskmaster, of course. I really like Fatiha, she is hilarious. The whole group gels really well, though and I'll be sad when this series is over. Other than that, some YouTube (Smosh stuff and Mark Narrations).

Books: Finished Summer Fun. It was a bit wild to finish this book, which is a thinly veiled alternate history of Beach Boys and Brian Wilson in particular, a day or so before Brian Wilson died. I thought the book was really good. The author is interesting; I read a couple of interviews with her from various indie magazines and she has been working on this book for a LONG time. And obviously, is a huge Beach Boys fan.

This book has a lot to chew on about fandom (especially say, fanfiction about real life folks; while B- is fictional, he is a real person in the universe of the book, and Gala is quite the obsessive fan). One review on Goodreads pissed me off because they said that the book was pretty dark when talking about trans lives.

Hi, have you been paying attention lately? Some people are so fucking oblivious.

Just finished Zoo Station: the Story of Christiane F. which was written by two German journalists in the 1970s about a teenager who was struggling with heroin. If you are around my age, you probably read Go Ask Alice at some point; this is the German version of that book, and unlike the version penned by a Mormon housewife as a cautionary tale, this one is real (as far as I know). Christiane's descent into drug abuse is gradual, and there are many societal factors in play here in the 1970s - the political upheaval in Germany, lack of jobs, the boredom of youths with nowhere to go, and cheap and plentiful heroin. Christiane has no idea what she's doing and has that invincibility of all youngsters who think they're better than the others - I'm not addicted, I can stop anytime I want to, etc. The book really paints a bleak picture of Berlin in the 70s. It did tend to get a little repetitive, although I know that the path for many addicts trying to get sober and off drugs is not a straight path (they relapse, sometimes multiple times). However, I felt that the journalists who put this book together from her words could have tightened that a little bit.

Next up is Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's the 5th anniversary of our online book club and we are doing a classic.

Rolling Stone Album List: only one this week. Number 494, Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes (number 422 in the 2012 list). Rolling Stone blurb:

More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.

It's a good 1960s girl-group pop album. I liked most of it. "Walking in the Rain," "I WOnder," and "How Does It Feel" were a few stand-outs to me.