To be honest, the last month has been a little bit of a mess in ways I had not exactly expected and though I did listen to, read, and watch some stuff, my ability to retain whether or how much I enjoyed that stuff is… less than stellar.
I listened to a lot of Aurora on purpose which was a great choice. I’m particularly fond of The Gods We Can Touch but have not not enjoyed anything I’ve heard.
I read The Talented Mr. Ripley and had a pretty great time, thought it was significantly less gay than what I’ve seen/heard of the movie led me to believe. I also read and liked Kate Leth’s Mall Goth which hit me with some real good nostalgia in the midst of a good, though hard, story.
I watched Pretty Woman for the first time and had a great time! I get why so many women of a certain age are Like That about it and also seeing Jason Alexander be a gross little weasel was so unsettling to me.
In non-media things I’ve enjoyed recently: making canned cinnamon rolls by baking them in cream (The whole internet’s doing it! But this time they’re right!), our new laundry basket that was a little annoying to put together but rolls fantastically and holds a lots, putting a heating blanket just across the foot of the bed so I can tuck my feet into it when they get chilly but not get too hot to sleep, sleeping with my window open even though it’s in the 30s most nights, this little rechargeable Drew Barrymore lamp that I got for our newly renovated bathroom where after six years of living in this house we can finally shower which would also be a thing that I have enjoyed recently (and is of course to some extent) except it cost three times what we were told it would and was a shitshow from beginning to end, Abbot Mojave which does somehow remind me of home, and these little shower curtain clips that install easy and seem to hold the curtain well even if when I ~scanned the QR code to get installation instructions (They’re stickers, I thought I probably had it handled, but it never hurts to check!) it told me the company’s account had expired from non-payment.
The only thing I had the energy to watch this month is a Fox TV show about baseball that was canceled in 2016. Well, I also watched a lot of hockey when it came back and a couple of baseball games, but stuff with an emotional arc? Plot? Don’t know ’em, couldn’t handle them if I did. Anyway, we did watch most of Pitch and 
My two most listened playlists in July were 
One of the best things about Spotify aside from The Algorithm is that if I have an errant thought about a playlist I want to hear, there is already one waiting for me. These two are some of the best I’ve heard this year. (Yes, ska is good, actually. Shut it.)
The Old Guard was really fun! I liked all the characters and the universe it built and I thought the action was all pretty fun and the setup for a sequel was solid. I’d definitely watch another two hours of Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne kicking absolute ass with an occasional detour where two incredibly beautiful men say deeply loving and romantic things to each other if it was available to me.
I held off on watching The Half of It for a bit because I’d seen a thread on Twitter from writer-director Alice Wu talking about how it was based vaguely on a friendship from her youth and how it had ultimately ended badly and I was just not prepared for the chance that the movie might end similarly — I’m a big proponent of writing from your own history, but I also don’t know why anyone wouldn’t write themselves a better ending. What’s the point of fiction otherwise? — but I was wildly pleased to see that was exactly what she’d done and it was such a joy to watch. I laughed a lot, I cried a little, I felt immense satisfaction. Ellie, Paul, and Aster are all great and I loved Ellie’s dad very much too.
Based on what I saw in my Spotify friend activity bar, pretty much the only thing anyone was listening to was Run the Jewels’ new one and that was pretty much my MO for June too. Every song on this one is great, but I’m particular to “out of sight,” “holy calamafuck,” “walking in the snow,” “JU$T,” “never look back,” and “the ground below,” which, to be fair, is uh, most of the album. Run the Jewels always hit me really well musically — for reasons I don’t know enough about music to articulate, but I think it’s a combination of bass lines and tempo? maybe? — but this feels as lyrically pertinent as ever. 
