Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Parks and Recreation, Curb Your Enthusiasm & the Emmys

TV

Aside from watching New England sports (Red Sox, Patriots), I’ve finally caught up on the HBO show Hung and watched the season finale, which, I must say, didn’t thrill me, season finales rarely do. The show, overall, has proven interesting enough that I’ve bothered to keep up with it.

I’ve been thoroughly bored by the Jay Leno Show which premiered this week – otherwise known as “Hey-Let’s-Put-the-Writers-Out-of-Work-and-Hog-Up-Five-Hours-of-Primetime-a-Week-with-Lame-Crap-That’s-Really-Cheap-to-Make.” The set looks like NBC invested exactly $247 in it. The two blue chairs where the interviews are conducted appear to be placed on what looks like a dance floor. The whole show seems awkward and weird to me because when I see Leno, I think that I should be getting to bed because I’ve been trained to think that it must be past 11:30 when I see his face. Maybe he was funnier later at night. Maybe that’s it. Or not.

Despite the Leno mess, I am planning on tuning in tonight to NBC’s slate of Thursday night humor, particularly to see if one of my favorite comedians, Amy Poehler, can make Parks and Recreation work this season.

By the time Sunday rolls around I think my TV is going to explode. Notwithstanding the fact that The Spouse and I will be hosting a belated Rosh Hashanah dinner here for family in which we’ll engage in the age old ritual of putting the Patriots game on TV lest my eldest son’s head explode because he cannot watch it, my poor DVR is going to be conflicted that evening.

Of course, Mad Men is on at 10, as is Army Wives, both of which I write about here in this space on Mondays. Plus there’s Entourage – which I usually watch On Demand but on which I’m a bit behind. But Curb Your Enthusiasm is back with new episodes after a very, very long absence.



However the Emmys are also on at the same time. My pop culture column at Mommy Track’d for next week is on the awards show, so I’ve got to watch live. (If there are still relatives here when the Emmys start, maybe I’ll try to goad them into wagering.) Such the dilemma . . .

DVDs

Still watching The West Wing, season one. Just saw the episode where Toby pulled strings to arrange a military funeral for a homeless vet who got Toby’s coat from the Good Will. Also saw the episode where the president revealed to Leo that he had MS. I thought that happened later, not within the first eight episodes.

Books

Am still in the early part of On the Road, although my progress through it may be detoured because I have to read two other books for some articles I’ve got coming up.

I also just joined a local women’s book club – it’s been eons since I’ve been in a book club – and have got to read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa by next month.

So, what’s on YOUR Pop Culture slate this week?

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Presidential Address, Julie & Julia, Beatles Get Cover Treatment & HBO's 'Hung'

This, in case anyone was wondering, is a non-Gosselin edition of Suburban Mom's Pop Culture. There's only so much of Jon & Kate that I can handle in one week, thank you very much . . .

TV

Who out there is planning to watch the presidential address to a joint session of Congress tonight? I'll be there, in front of the TV -- likely tuned to NBC's Brian Williams, love Brian -- with an open mind and ready to listen. On Thursday, I'll be ready to analyze. One thing I can't stand, though, about these addresses, is the repeated jumping out of one's seating and clapping all the time. Drives me nuts.

From the commander in chief addressing Congress to a male prostitute. There's just no good segue here . . . I've been ODing on HBO's new comedy Hung, about the down-on-his-luck high school teacher/basketball coach/divorced father of two teens Ray Drecker who turns to high-priced prostitution -- calls himself a "happiness consultant" -- to pay his bills and get the funds to fix his home which was partially ruined by fire. (He didn't have the cash to pay his home owner's insurance premiums and let the policy lapse, so now he's living in a tent next to the house.)

After I've seen the season finale (airs Sunday night), I'll devote a separate blog item to the show. It's mighty quirky, in a Weeds sort of way. I love the dynamic between the main character and his pimp Tanya, a confidence-craving poet who has worked at a temp job in a law firm for more years than she'd care to admit.

Books/Magazines

I finished Julie Powell's book Julie & Julia on Monday, upon which half of the movie of the same name is based. I was entertained throughout, though the sections on Powell cooking organ meat curdled my stomach. (When I told my 11-year-old son about the chapter on cooking brains -- given, we were at the dinner table at the time -- he curtly thanked me for killing his appetite.) A great number of the events which occurred in Powell's life during the year in which she was cooking her way through Julia Child's first book and blogging about it were omitted from the film, so reading this helped fill in the blanks. Once I completed Julie & Julia, I moved on to finally cracked open Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I'm just at the very beginning though. Never read Kerouac. Have no idea what to expect.

After sitting unloved on my desk for a while, Wired Magazine's latest issue has been beckoning me. Meanwhile, I enjoyed basking in the Beatles Mania in this week's Entertainment Weekly and harassing my kids by singing tidbits of Beatles songs at random moments.

Movies/DVDs

This week I watched the first DVD in the first season for The West Wing. God did watching that show that bring me right back to the 1990s, before people were using BlackBerries or doing things like Twittering and Facebooking. It's almost charming to hear people mention faxes, which aren't used like they were when this show began. I fondly remembered Leo, Sam, Josh and C.J., and realized I'd forgotten how sanctimonious Jed Bartlett could be. The discs for the remainder of the award-winning freshman season are on my Netflix queue. Can't wait. (And no, I haven't watched Milk yet, which I've had for some time from Netflix, sitting next to the TV.)

The Spouse and I did, however, watch Flash of Genius over the weekend starring Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham. Aside from production/film issues (the camera would sometimes move awkwardly, almost jarringly, and some of the clothing did NOT appear period, maybe I've been spoiled by the anal retentive Mad Men folks) I found the tale of inventor/college professor Robert Kearns getting screwed by the Ford Motor Company after they stole his invention, bittersweet. The drama peaked when Kearns wouldn't drop his lawsuit against Ford, even with his family, his job and his sanity at stake. If this had been made 40-50 years ago, I can imagine someone like Jimmy Stewart in the lead role, of the little guy getting taken by the big, expensive-suited power brokers.



Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Hamm on Talk Shows, Julie & Julia and Classic Kerouac

TV:

To be honest, I've been DVRing talk shows all week to catch Jon Hamm talk without saying anything of substance about the season three premiere of Mad Men on Conan, Fallon & Good Morning America, watching marathon Red Sox games (like last week's 15-inning losing battle against the sinister Yankees) and cringing as Kate Gosselin also visited the talk show circuit, including her terribly awkward chat with the clueless Regis Philbin who apparently is the only person on earth who thinks there's a chance in hell that Jon and Kate will reconcile. Other than those things and the latest episode of Entourage -- which'll be the subject of an upcoming stand-alone post -- I haven't caught much TV this past week.

Sitting in my DVR queue are two episodes apiece of HawthRNe (which just got renewed for a second season) and Rescue Me, plus I've got to catch up on Weeds and Nurse Jackie with my Showtime On Demand because I'm behind a couple episodes with those as well. (I blame my backlog of unwatched material on my new puppy Max who likes to howl in the middle of the night, for long stretches of time, who's got me feeling like a sleep deprived new mother. It's easy to blame the pup. He doesn't read my blog.)

Oh, I AM planning on watching a niche drama on Sunday night, LIVE. It's on AMC. Maybe you've heard of it . . . something about ad men in the 1960s . . .

DVDs:

Last week I was all wrapped up in season two DVDs of Mad Men for a column I was working on and am just about finished with watching the first season thirtysomething DVDs in preparation for another piece (have one episode left). Don't know what I'll watch on DVD when I'm done with these two shows. Maybe I'll finally watch the Milk Netflix DVD I have sitting, unloved, next to the TV.

Movies:

While I haven't seen any movies this week -- save for the tail-end of Message in a Bottle which I caught on cable and made me instantly tear up because I'm a sentimental fool -- I'm hoping to see Julie & Julia this weekend. Reviews have been stellar. I think my best plan of action will be to eat something halfway decent before walking into the theater, otherwise I'll be distractedly ravenous during the entire thing.

Books:

Finally finished re-reading The Time Traveler's Wife and sniffled my way through the end. Again. Even though I knew how it ended, it still made me cry and ponder Clare Abshire's life choices. Wonder if the movie -- which is, unfortunately, getting mixed reviews -- aptly translates the dense, long and somewhat complicated book. I hope that it does a decent job because that's on my "to see in the theater" list.

After completing Time Traveler, I was browsing through my bookcase at books I own but haven't yet read and pulled down a 1959 edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (a paperback that once belonged to my mom). I've never read any Kerouac. It's time I change that.

Image credit: From this web site.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Weeds, Jon & Kate, Mrs. Washington, New York Times Mag on Julia Child

This past week has been sheer madness at my house. We celebrated my youngest son's birthday and then took a seven-plus round-trip car ride to New York to adopt a 3-month-old puppy who has yet to sleep through the night yet in his crate without howling all night long . . . kind of like my youngest son did. Until he was three.

Here's what I've been able to fit into my pop culture consumption in the past week+, that is when I'm not taking the puppy outside in an attempt to housetrain him and keep the six-pound ball of fluff from being dinner to larger animals in the neighborhood.

TV/DVDs:

-- In order to prepare for writing a column about Showtime's Weeds, I ODed on it, watching several seasons via Netflix and On Demand. After watching the evolution of Mary-Louise Parker's character Nancy Botwin, while I remain entertained and intrigued by the current season of the mom-pot dealer comedy, I liked Nancy's character a whole lot more in first season, before she got seriously dragged down into the muck and immorality of the drug trade.

-- Jon & Kate Plus 8 returned with two new episodes this week, only with a lot less of Jon and more of Kate-as-a-single mom. As I sympathize with Kate more each day as I read more about the heel that is her soon-to-be-ex-"Hey I'm still young!" spouse, Kate sure doesn't make it easy with her queen-like, dismissive attitude displayed in the show's first new installment since they announced that they were filing for divorce. In one scene where Jon and Kate were consulting with kitchen designers about renovating their kitchen (a room which I think looked awesome and didn't need massive changes, but what do I know?) she was wretched when she gestured toward a vase of flowers and dismissively told Jon, "Can you get rid of those? They're really distracting and ugly." Then, in a strategic feat of editing, the show's producers soon went to a cut where Kate -- who now sits in a white chair, not a love seat, for her one-on-one interview, Jon does his separately from a leather chair -- said, "I'm not as ridiculous as I used to be."

I also really did not like how the show's editors mocked Kate's attempts to camp outside in her backyard with the kids in two tents by getting her children to make fun of their mother and say she didn't know what she was doing in putting up the tent. It was disturbing to watch to say the least.

-- In a moment of weakness, I DVRed and watched the Hallmark Channel's original film, Mrs. Washington Goes to Smith, about a woman who quit college during her junior year in order to get married, worked to put her husband through dental school, raised their children to adulthood and was unceremoniously dumped by her husband for another, younger woman. In a life-altering decision, the character, Alice Washington, decided to go back to school and live in the dorms in order to complete her final year of college. She hoped to then become a high school English teacher.

Why would I watch a completely predictable but satisfying TV film -- akin to gorging on a salty bag of chips -- which had at least one totally fantasyland situation (there's no way a fifysomething woman would make the Smith College hoop team, at least that fiftysomething)? I watched it becuase it starred Cybill Shepherd, whom I've always liked -- especially for her sitcom Cybill -- and was surprised to find that her love interest/college English professor, was played by Jeffrey Nordling, who was in Once and Again and, more recently, 24. Sure, it was a chickflick in its purest form, but it was one with an upbeat, positive message, "This is the next big step in the rest of my life," Shepherd's character, Alice Washington said. The Hallmark Channel is re-airing the film numerous times.

-- I'm up-to-date on Entourage and have found myself getting increasingly irritated with the man-boy that is Vince.


-- In preparation for a Mad Men-themed column, I'm immersing myself in the Mad Men Season 2 on DVD, especially the special features.

Magazines/News:

-- This past weekend's New York Times Magazine was so chock full of articles that I haven't even finished reading it all yet. Among the pieces was a solid one on the dearth of female superheroes for little girls to embrace and a thought-provoking one about the contradiction between the fact that while the Food Network seems to be doing well and people are much more sophisticated about food in general, we're making fewer and fewer meals on our own, instead preferring to outsource meal prep to the grocery stores and restaurants. Julia Child's revolutionary 1960s PBS cooking show was featured prominently in the piece, given that the film Julie & Julia comes out this week. (I'm hoping to see that movie soon and write a column on.)

The lengthy Michael Pollan food article was a fascinating read. Here's a sample:

"It’s no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television — or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else. The ads on the Food Network, at least in prime time, strongly suggest its viewers do no such thing: the food-related ads hardly ever hawk kitchen appliances or ingredients (unless you count A.1. steak sauce) but rather push the usual supermarket cart of edible foodlike substances, including Manwich sloppy joe in a can, Special K protein shakes and Ore-Ida frozen French fries, along with fast-casual eateries like Olive Garden and Red Lobster. "

-- Last week's issue of New York Magazine arrived at my house just yesterday -- thank you snail mail -- and I got the chance to enjoy Emily Nussbaum's ode to the chameleon-like Madonna who's now entering another phase of her life and of her public persona. While Nussbaum's favorite phase was the "Ideal Brunette Madonna . . . saving Black Jesus in that incredible slip," (mine was the "Express Yourself" Madonna), she wrote:

"Maybe it’s because I’m getting older along with her, but watching Madonna strut past 50—hips grinding in high heels, posing legs spread—brings out anxious, contradictory emotions. It’s become taboo to criticize stars for plastic surgery—both because it is their choice and because they have no choice—but each time I glimpse that grinning mask, I wonder why it’s impossible for Madonna, with all her power, her will to shock, to ever stop 'giving good face'? I try to persuade myself to admire her most New York qualities (ambition, workaholism); I tell myself she’s a dancer, and this is what dancers do. But I feel exhausted just witnessing the effort it must take to maintain this vision of eternal youth. This didactically selfless Madonna is less inspiring than the selfish one in so many ways."

The latest New York arrived today and I can't wait to dive into the Mad Men pieces, including an interview with Christina Hendricks, a defense of Pete "The Snake" Campbell and an abridged guide to the first two seasons. Not that I'm obsessed with Mad Men or anything.

What are your pop culture fixes of the week?

Image credit: Alexx Henry/Hallmark Channel via the New York Times.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Potter, Entourage, thirtysomething, Time Traveler's Wife

I've been mired in the doldrums of mid-summer amid inclimate, rainy days, bickering kids and having to take one of those kids to multiple appointments intended to rid her left ankle of pain. Amid that, here's what I've been consuming in the pop culture this week:

Films:

-- I took my twin 10-year-olds to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince soon after it opened nationwide. Had we not all read the book, we would've given it an unequivocal thumbs up, enthusiastically so. But given that we did read the book, it was hard not to be irritated by many of the changes made in the film version, including in the pivotal scene at the end where Harry was supposed to be immobilized by a spell, at least he was in the J.K. Rowling version. The way it played out in the film made Harry look wimpy.

That being said, I think that upon a second viewing -- when it comes out on DVD -- the kids and I will be more able to fully embrace the movie as the well done, two-plus hours of stylistic fantasy that it is. The teen actors are believable and many elicited emotions (laughter, tears) from yours truly, as well as from many other members of the audience in the theater.

-- Finally saw Hancock On Demand over the weekend with The Spouse. (Milk, which I got from Netflix about a week-and-a-half ago, is still sitting next to the TV.) It wasn't bad, but I'm a Will Smith fan so I'm predisposed to liking him. However I thought the "romantic" twist was silly and not well thought out. It could've easily played out better as a straight super-hero epic and been perfectly fine as an action hero flick without it.

TV:

-- I had an imaginary question mark lingering over my head after the recent episode of Entourage, where everything seemed to be unfolding re-al-ly, re-al-ly, sl-o-w-ly. Terrain that's already been trod is being revisited, which is growing tedious. Plus, I, frankly, could care less about Ari's business partner's extra-marital fling, though I find it interesting that Ari himself, to the best of my recollection, has not strayed from "Mrs. Ari."

I'm planning to stick with da boys throughout the season, although I'm starting to believe that this slow motion, underwater feeling I get when I watch the HBO show isn't going to go away any time soon.

-- Post-All Star Game Boston Red Sox games have been depressing, y'all. Now the Sox have fallen out of first place in the AL East, replaced by the Evil Empire. It's sad, yes, but I'm of the mind that the Sox fare better when they're underdogs as opposed to the top dogs. It's what kept Sox fans going through an 86 year championship drought.

-- I'm going to write about this subject AT EXTREME LENGTH soon, but I've been spending time traveling back to the year of 1987 with Keds, enormous shoulder pads, cassette tapes, Reagan and in which there was no internet, no cell phones, no e-mail, no BlackBerries, no On Demand. Why? I've been screening the first season of thirtysomething on DVD (goes on sale next month) in preparation for a column or two. I, a long time fan of the show, am in Michael and Hope Steadman heaven.

Books/Magazines:

-- I finished Half-Blood Prince and then polished off Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but couldn't put away my box of tissues (the end of the both of those books make me snivel), because I started re-reading The Time Traveler's Wife. (The film based on this book comes out next month.) It's almost like reading it for the first time because it's been so long since I first cracked it open. After the past season of Lost, which featured mucho time traveling, the whole notion of moving back and forth through time now seems old hat.

-- For some reason I've recently found myself coveting recipes in Martha Stewart Living Magazine which have inspired me to stray from my food rut (a rut inspired by the aforementioned kids, two of whom rarely eat anything I make). I've been gazing at the recipes, the photos of what the food I prepare will never look like and hoping that when I present the food to the picky eaters, they'll be won over by the beauty and delectable aromas. Then I serve a Stewart meal -- shrimp, chorizo and veggies on a skewer over a bed of saffron rice (it was my idea to use saffron rice) -- and at least one kid requested a grilled cheese instead. This is the reason why my trying to cook anything from a lifestyle magazines tends to depress me.

What's your week of pop culture look like?

Image credit: Barnes & Noble.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: HawthoRNe, Two CBS Pilots, Mad Men, Time Traveler's Wife

News:

The dominant news story of the week -- Michael Jackson's memorial service -- was also dominant in my house as I had it playing on TV and am not ashamed to admit that I was moved by several aspects of it, from the displays of genuine emotion from usually polished performers, to the raw, heart-rending pain exhibited by Jackson's 11-year-old daughter. I downloaded some of Jackson's biggest hits to my three kids' iPods this week and have periodically found myself unconsciously humming either "Billie Jean" or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" as I feel as though I've been marinating in Jackson music.

Of course there was also the Sarah Palin bombshell dropped late Friday -- that not only was she not running for re-election, but that she was quitting the Alaska governor's post by the end of this month. I'll have more on that in my next Pop Culture & Politics column. Stay tuned.

In other pop culture/news for the week . . .

TV:

-- I caught up on TNT's HawthoRNe, starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan (Alias). I'm willing to give it a little latitude because I like both Vartan and Pinkett Smith. But other than laudably portraying a strong working mom role model, Nurse Christina Hawthorne seems too good to be a modern leading TV character.

I've grown way too accustomed to seeing leading characters who engage in anti-heroic behavior. Like Gregory House who's an excellent doctor -- someone you'd want to take care of you or someone you love in a medical crisis -- but he's got the social skills of a wasp, is horrifically inappropriate and is hooked on pain meds. (Plus he was sent to a mental institution at the end of the season.) Then there's Showtime's Nurse Jackie who's a dedicated nurse who'll do whatever it takes for a patient even if it means risking her job, but she's got a nasty Percocet habit and she's cheating on her husband. Her flaws make her seem more down-to-earth.

I'm not saying Pinkett Smith's Hawthorne has to start drinking (a la Rescue Me's Tommy Gavin), taking drugs or behaving in wildly inappropriate ways, but I tend to gravitate toward more realistic, flawed character. Let Hawthorne get a little more messy, and I'll be on board. Plus I like Vartan, did I say that already?

-- I watched screeners for two new CBS shows premiering in late September. Loved one of the pilots and need to see more before rendering a judgment on the second.

The Good Wife, starring the always-compelling Julianna Margulies (ER), Chris Noth (Sex and the City) and Josh Charles (Sports Night), is gonna be a regularly DVRed show in my house. I was really disappointed last year when Margulies' gritty Canterbury's Law was canceled after only a few episodes. That show -- set in Rhode Island about a troubled lawyer who was in the midst of divorcing her husband after the pain of their young son's disappearance became too much for them to bear -- was fantastic but the ratings, eh, not so much.

I'm hopeful that The Good Wife has better staying power. It seems to have a timely hook: Margulies plays a lawyer who gave up her practice as a defense attorney in order to raise her two children and to support her husband's -- Noth's -- political career . . . until his career as a state's prosecutor went down in flames following his affairs with prostitutes and criminal charges that he abused his office. After selling the family house to pay his legal fees, moving to an apartment and with her husband incarcerated, Margulies has to re-enter the workforce after having been out of a courtroom for more than a dozen years. She doesn't appear to be planning to divorce her lying and cheating spouse, but the sordid taint of his actions sticks to her professionally and personally. I have my fingers crossed for this one.



Accidentally on Purpose is a sitcom with an on-paper interesting premise: Jenna Elfman's Billie Chase is a thirtysomething newspaper movie critic who, after dating her newspaper's owner (Grant Show from Melrose Place) for three years, broke up with him when he said he wouldn't get married. In short order, she picked up a twentysomething boy toy at a bar and "accidentally" got pregnant. He moved into her tastefully decorated apartment because she didn't think she could, in good conscience, allow the father of her unborn kid to live in his beat-up van. Elfman's character is winningly fast-talking -- a la Lorelai Gilmore -- but the pilot seemed like was trying too hard and larded itself up with forced jokes about cougars and "young candy." The premise reminded me of the Uma Thurman movie Prime, only with too many bad puns. I'm going to wait to see more episodes to see if the forced artifice gets dialed back before I deciding whether this one will earn my regular viewing.

-- In preparation for the beginning of the third season of the exquisite Mad Men, I've been again watching season one episodes on DVD. I realized that I miss Rachel Menken and Midge Daniels. They had a lot more going for them than Bobbie Barrett, a character who I despised and who I think was an overt indication of the swirling despair into which Don Draper was sinking last season.

Books:

I'm almost to the end of my second reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and am kind of putting off finishing it. If you've read it, you know why I'm procrastinating. (I'm at the part in the cave, with the green liquid.) Once I've finished with the sixth Potter installment and feel prepared to compare and contrast the book with the film being released next week, I've pulled The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger from my bookshelf to re-read because the film's coming out next month. I haven't read it in years, so I'm wondering how much I'll remember.

What's been on your pop culture/news agenda this week?

Image credit: TNT.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Tommy Gavin, Jason Bourne, Harry Potter, Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin & Red Sox

When I haven't been catching up on the latest news stories about Michael Jackson, the unfaithful South Carolina governor who doesn't know when to shut up, U.S. troops leaving Iraq and about Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell being put on the DL (!), I've been coping with sick kids and have been sick myself . . . but that hasn't stopped me from consuming pop culture and watching Sox games. Here's what I've been up to pop culture-wise this week:

TV:

-- Sox, Sox and more Sox. Mercifully, I didn't watch the entire game when the Sox blew a massive lead -- and "imploded" according to Jonathan Papelbon -- against the Orioles. Silly gal that I was, I thought they were going to win because they were up by so much, so I tuned in to other things, like Rescue Me.

-- I said this last week and I'll say it again this week: Rescue Me has been great this season and has drawn viewers into dark, twisty, unpredictable places. This season warrants a full blog post on its own, particularly given the blow torch scene. Damn!

-- Nurse Jackie: Jackie Peyton's kid is creating drawings sans colors, with no sun in the sky? Sounds like the recent weather around New England. Kidding aside, this dark show has me hook, line and obligatory sinker.

Movies:

-- Adored the Bourne Ultimatum which The Spouse and I saw on DVD. It sparked a heated discussion about who would take who in a fight: Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer. (I say Bourne. Bauer would be too busy yelling, "Dammit!" and trying to get patched in to Chloe on the phone.) While Ultimatum's handheld camerawork made me feel a bit nauseous at times (or it could've been the flu from which I was recovering), I was otherwise highly entertained.

-- What didn't I find so entertaining this week? Planning on watching the cerebral Frost/Nixon film by Ron Howard, only to find that I'd instead ordered from Netflix the ACTUAL Frost-Nixon interviews from the 1970s. At 10 p.m. on a Saturday, I could've stayed up to watch Ron Howard's hyped up dramatic version of the interviews, but I feared the real ones would've put me to sleep. It lies, still unwatched, next to the DVD player.

-- In preparation for a column in which I compare my kids' fascination with all things Harry Potter to my generation's fascination with all things Star Wars, I OD'ed on Potter films, specifically The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Order of the Phoenix. I still tear up at the end of Phoenix.

-- In preparation for a different column for a different publication, I'm planning on going to the theater to see the Sam Mendes film starring The Office's John Krasinski called Away We Go. It's been a tad challenging to find it playing at a theater near me, seeing as though it doesn't have a massive, nationwide distribution. I can't decide whether to keep my expectations low or not, given that I really did NOT like the last Mendes film, Revolutionary Road.

Books:

-- I'm continuing to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as we're now at T-minus two+ weeks and counting before the film version is released.

Magazines/Newspapers:

-- I've not yet read the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin -- "It Came From Wasilla" -- but from what I've read on the internet, it sounds like it may well be a polarizing piece about a woman who's controversial herself. It's on my "must read" list.

-- I read a thought-provoking column in the New York Times over the weekend which mused about whether Michael Jackson is truly the last, worldwide mega-star who spans the generations. His music, the article suggests, was popular in the pre-internet days/pre-iTunes/pre-fractured pop culture world, when everyone watched MTV when it still played music videos. I tried to think of another cultural figure who is vastly popular with a wide swath of people, whose accomplishments affect people of varying backgrounds and nationalities, and who would cause people to spontaneously gather to celebrate and the only name that popped into my mind was Oprah. Do you think Times writer David Segal is right when he speculates that there will be no more mega-, multi-generational celebrities like Jackson?

Image credit: Vanity Fair/Risko.

Introducing: Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week

I've always been interested in the weekly feature on Whitney Matheson's blog Pop Candy called "This Week in Pop," in which she tells her readers what things, pop culture-wise, she's reading/watching/listening to, etc. It tends to generate some discussion amongst her readers about their pop culture consumption.

So I've decided to do my own version of a weekly list here on this blog. I'm, cleverly enough, calling it, "Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week." (I know. Title stinks. However if I come up with something with a little more pizazz, you'll be the first to know.) My list will include stuff I'm watching/reading for both business and pleasure.

TV:

-- Watched the latest two episodes On Demand of Edie Falco's Nurse Jackie on Showtime. Her storyline, particularly when it comes to her oldest, anxious daughter, is becoming insidiously nuanced. Three episodes in, I'm hooked.

-- I set the DVR to record TNT's second episode of HawthoRNe (with Jada Pinkett Smith and former Alias hottie Michael Vartan) but it didn't record the show for some reason. Maybe it's the 2,000 episodes of Sonny with a Chance, Jonas episodes and repeats of the Clone Wars cartoons that are clogging up the DVR queue. I'm going to have to watch the new episode online to see how the tone compares to the pilot.

-- Rescue Me. Man, this show is getting as dark and sticky as molasses . . . that's when it's not being interrupted by odd musical numbers starring Sean Garrity in top hat and tails. More on Rescue Me and Tommy Gavin's return to the bottle in a separate blog entry.

-- Da Sox. As in, the Boston Red Sox. You might as well consider this an omnipresent entry on the list. The Sox. On NESN.

Books:

-- I'm working on a column about Hollywood moms so I'm in the middle of reading Tori Spelling's Mommywood. (Seriously, it's for a column . . . to which I'll link in this space later.) I'll also be re-reading a book I read a few years ago, Motherhood and Hollywood by Patricia Heaton for comparison's sake.

-- Although I've got the Mad Man-inspired book of poetry, Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara on my nightstand waiting to be parsed, I went to the movies this weekend with the kiddos (see next item) and saw the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I read the book last summer and am a bit fuzzy on the details as I zipped through it fairly quickly, so in preparation for the big movie release on July 15, I'm re-reading it.

Magazines:

-- Just read a piece about Jada Pinkett Smith in Redbook about how she and husband Will keep their sex lives spicy. (Key: A change of venue.)

-- Am waiting for a good time to thoroughly read the "Living by the Numbers" package of stories in Wired.

-- Perused Entertainment Weekly's "must list" for summer pop fare. Meryl Streep's new movie about Julia Child looks promising.

Movies:

-- Went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian over the weekend with The Spouse, the kids and my parents. It was just okay, though the kids laughed, some belly laughs. We'd visited the Air & Space Museum in DC a few summers ago so they remembered some of the exhibits and monuments which were shown in the film. Afterward, they actually asked questions about General Custer and Teddy Roosevelt. If anything, at least the movie sparked a discussion about American history, albeit a minor discussion.

-- The Netflix DVDs sitting by the TV: The Bourne Ultimatum and Frost/Nixon.

-- The Spouse and I caught the last third of Little Miss Sunshine on cable TV over the weekend. I've forgotten how good that movie is. The ending was truly a surprise the first time I saw it.

What are you watching/reading/listening to this week?

Image credit: Scholastic.