PostConsumer Culture Club #2—The Week of September 6-September 12

PostConsumer Culture Club: A list of everything we at PostConsumer Reports have been digesting this week, with brief commentary. Hopefully, we can culture something good in you. Happy PostConsuming!

Here is what we watched the week of September 6 through September 12.

TV: Late Show With Stephen Colbert
I made a plan to watch every night of the first week of Stephen Colbert's turn at the Late Show helm. So far I have not missed a show yet and so far I am really enjoying myself. I posted a longer review, which you can read here: The First Week of Late Show With Stephen Colbert.


Sports: U.S. Open
This week's PostConsumer Culture Club is pretty short for two reasons: Colbert's Late Show debuted and U.S. Open tennis was. I watched a lot of tennis this past week, streaming it from www.usopen.org, which was a bit of a pain, but oh well. Tennis is just the greatest, although it doesn't seem to gel so well with American culture. I haven't quite figured out why yet but it probably has something to do with having matches of indeterminable length, strange start times, a difficult scoring system, random rain delays, it being an upperclass snobby sport, and a considerable lack of concussions. 

For me though, tennis is just the greatest. It is the ultimate sport. This past week I loved watching Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka, John Isner and many others battle each other. There is still more to the tennis season over the next month, with Davis Cup matches, a few ATP Masters 1000 series tournaments, and the tour finals for both the ATP and WTA.

Literature: I stopped reading The Sparrow
I could not take anymore of this book. Later I will include a passage of the clunky language that finally ended my reading of this sci-fi soap opera.

Literature: 33 1/3's Kid A
In lieu of not know where any of my books are due to our family's move, I opted for reading an entry in the 33 1/3 book series, each volume of which documents the making and interpretation of a great album. I have already read The Beatles Let it Be and a good portion of Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and now it is on to Radiohead's Kid A, one of the band's most remarkable and perplexing albums.

Music: Sufjan Stevens Albums
Once again I am listening to Sufjan Stevens, this time in preparation for a couple of upcoming articles I have been planning for a couple of weeks. As the years go on I hate him less and less.

Podcast: Fred Armisen interview with Marc Maron
I love the work of Fred Armisen, most especially his show Portlandia with Carrie Brownstein, but he is a really perplexing, enigmatic person. In how he presents himself I never get the feeling I am seeing the "real" Armisen (For instance, I was really disappointed with Armisen's episode of Seinfeld's Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee—Jerry couldn't quite crack into the safe that is Fred Armisen ). Well, Marc Maron finally got Armisen to open up and play things straight a little bit on his WTF Podcast. To my knowledge it is the most transparent he has ever been, even to the point of detailing his relationship problems and tendency towards sexual addiction. We also get to hear Armisen's backstory and whether or not and to what extent Armisen thinks he himself is weird. For fans of his work this is an essential interview.

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