culture consumed (January, 2022)

[hermionesviolin]

books

• 7 picturebooks -- highlights:
  • [Persian New Year] Seven Special Somethings: A Nowruz Story written by Adib Khorram & illustrated by Zainab Faidhi
    
  • [India, bedtime -- beautiful] Goodnight Ganesha written by Nadia Salomon & illustrated by Poonam Mistry
    
  • Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder
    
  
  
• [middle grade] Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff
  
• [middle grade] The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf -- draws on Malaysian legend
  
• A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark -- and the first of the prequel novellas/short stories: "A Dead Djinn in Cairo"

I liked all 3 novels I read this month, huzzah!

~live theatre

• Christmas Revels with my parents and Thom (we streamed the digital version) -- I mostly didn't like this year's production very much, but I do appreciate that they're thinking intentionally about the choices they're making, about traditions and diversity...
  
  To remind myself, the blurb this year was:

  Welcome to the George & Dragon!
  
  The pub’s regulars are looking forward to reestablishing the traditional sing-along but the hiccup in tradition has disturbed the space/time continuum and triggered an audit by a fussy Revels bureaucrat from the 17th century. Along with his Elizabethan entourage he will be making an official visit to the 21st century to put things back in order.
  
  Will the current managers of the George & Dragon be able to regain their license for revelry? What will Elizabethans think of the modern song list? What happens when music and dance from the Renaissance collides with the horn section of a pub band and the street-wise locals from the 21st century? In our telling of the story, old and new ways meet, and the world gets a little bigger. We think that there is something here for everyone to enjoy as we celebrate the season as only Revels can!

music

• I told Thom about that terrible NYT article and in the ensuing journey through the Quote ReTweets, they said:

  I think my favorite QTs are the ones that model her “marriage requires amnesia” paragraph and just make ridiculous lists of things. They make me think of “That’s What The Ninjas Use” by Irritating Rainbow, which everyone should listen to at least once bc it’s fucking brilliant.

  So they played that song for me on an ensuing date night.
  
• We also rewatched WoodRocket's The Loin King (and then stopped when we got to the sex, as one does). The joke "that package is my dick" led to me referencing J-T/Lonely Island's "Dick in a Box," which Thom didn't know?!, so I showed them the SNL skit, followed by "I Just Had Sex" (ft. Akon) and "Jizz in my Pants" -- true love is letting me torture you?
  
• We watched Shakira - Can't Remember to Forget You (Official Video) ft. Rihanna as a palette cleanser (it had been on our to-watch list for a while, after Thom had used a reaction gif in Discord of Shakira in that red dress and eventually tracked down its origin to that music video).

tv

• Thom wanted to show me another Ted Lasso episode, so we watched "The Signal" (2.06)
  
• I (finally) watched both seasons of the Netflix The Baby-Sitters Club on the blizzard weekend (they're like 25min episodes -- 10 episodes in S1, 8 episodes in S2) -- I was impressed at how they updated the concept for the present-day, appreciated the increase in diversity, and appreciated the familiar stories I had grown up on