I'm stealing this post idea from Entertainment Weekly. (Check out this week's issue with Pam and Jim on the cover. I picked mine up in Ajax and found the Office 2010 16-month wall calendar to score.)
Each issue of EW has "The Must List: The Top 10 Things We Love This Week". The title is pretty self-explanatory. It's 10 Pop Culture-related things that the magazine staff is into on any given week. Not that this will become a regular thing, but I figured I'd toss one up here as my latest blog entry.
(In no particular order)
1. The Office - Of course, this will probably always be on such a list. With the sixth season underway, it's nice to have something to look forward to on Thursday nights. On October 8th, the episode, Niagara Falls, will see Pam and Jim get married in a special one-hour episode.
2. Generation A by Douglas Coupland - I haven't actually picked this book up, and probably won't for the next while, but I say it at Chapters and will put it on my "Future To Get List". I would list Coupland among my favourite authors, even though he is often hit-or-miss with me. I either devour his books (Microserfs) or I just kinda pick my way through them. But no matter which category they are in, I enjoy them.
3. Hitler's War by Harry Turtledove - Speaking of authors whose book I usually devour, the master of alternate history is back with a new twist on our past. I got this as a Shelf Life offering and while I usually read them in order in which I receive them, the lure of a Turtledove offering was enought to jump ahead a bit. In this novel, World War II starts over Czechoslavakia in 1938. Poland sides with Hitler; there's no Pact of Steel with Russia and Japan and Russia go to war, leaving the U.S. (so far) neutral. As with all of Turtledove's novels, the story is told from several points of view from all angles of the conflict.
4. Judaism - I know this isn't exactly a pop culture item and no, I'm not thinking of converting (well, not seriously) but I've read several WWII novels about how the Jews remained so calm before the aggressive thuggery of the Nazis and I admire how they took the abuse without losing their cool. It's less an alteration of my faith and more just a research project.
5. Playoff Baseball - It hasn't really started yet, with a few games left to play, but as the regular season winds down, baseball fans gear up for the playoffs. And even without the Jays involved, I still love being able to follow meaningful baseball every day, as 8 becomes 4 and 4 becomes 2, of which only one can claim the Championship. Whether it's watching the games themselves or checking the scores on the Net, it's fun to see who's winning and who's about to start their golf season.
P.S. I'll try and post some of the photos when Lyz De Marco and I went to the Jays - Mariners game last Saturday. The Jays came back to win 5-4 with an Adam Lind walk-off home run in the 10th inning. Check out my Facebook page in the next couple of days.
6. Monday Night TV - Use to be Monday nights meant one thing: Raw! Once 9:00 came, all other shows ceased and pro wrestling became the main attraction on my TV. It didn't matter what else was on, I wasn't going to be able to watch it. However, over the last few months that has changed. Maybe it's because I'm getting into the sitcoms that air on Monday Nights or perhaps it's because wrestling is losing something, I find myself more inclined to get excited about How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, all three of which are good shows I find myself enjoying (especially Big Bang and HIMYM). Not that I totally miss Raw, but I tend to tune in after Big Bang is over.
7. If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback - Not much to tell here, just that it's been in heavy rotation on my iPod as of late.
8. Mark Martin is leading the Spring Cup Chase: Yeah, I like wrestling and I like NASCAR...deal with it. My Dad likes NASCAR and he's rooting for 50 year old Mark Martin to finally win the Big One, so that makes Martin the Milner Family Favourite. (Although confidentially, I wouldn't mind seeing Tony Stewart win...and I'm beginning to like Ryan Newman, but only because his car bears a vague resemblance to the late Dale Earnhardt's!)
9. Zombieland - There's something about apocolyptic/disaster movies that I really perversely enjoy. I'm really looking forward to 2012 (the movie, not so much the year persay) and am tempted to organize a Fun Night outing to go see Zombieland. My only concern is, like Dawn of the Dead, I'll get emotionally invested in the main characters and they'll all die at the end.
10. Country Boy by Johnny Cash - One of things that's getting Zombieland over with me is the music they use in the trailer. Not so much the Van Halen song, but this remix of an old Johnny Cash tune "Country Boy", which is apparently available on an album of similar remixes of Cash tunes. Anyways, I'm usually not into dance tunes, but this one is kinda cool. I'll leave you with the the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_177kYL1coY
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