Music, Movies, and More

If you ever leave the US for a year at a time, you’ll find that you come back completely ignorant of American pop culture. I’d been making a list of movies I wanted to see (as in rent, because that’s what you do when you find yourself behind like this) while I’d been gone (Brokeback Mountain (gotta love that controversy, right?), Walk the Line, Crash, Over the Hedge, etc.), but I came back to find that my list barely scratched the surface of movies I’d missed. At the same time, there are plenty of good movies out in the theaters now (yes, I do love Will Ferrel), and, so as not to fall further behind, I’ve actually made those my priority. I’ve got lots to catch up on, and at $7.50 a pop to go to and $4.29 a pop to rent, these movies are giving my eyes and my wallet a hardcore workout. By the way, do you know what I could get in India for the cost of watching a movie in the US? A lot more, that’s all I can say.

But I can’t spend my whole life watching movies. I’d like to, but I’ve got music to catch up on too. My mom brought me Brooks and Dunn’s latest album when she came in February, but I’d missed everything else in country, as well as pop, rock, and R&B. And, since I like all those genres, I’ve got an awful lot of artists to get to know and an awful lot of their new songs to hear and their new albums to buy. So far, I’ve purchased Reba, Terri Clark, and Miranda Lambert from the country section and Coldplay and Nickelback from the pop/rock section; I’m also thinking about Beyonce’s new album, but that won’t be out in the R&B section for a few more days.

So, one movie and one CD at a time, I am getting back into American pop culture, and, although I’m enjoying the education I’m getting, my bank account is not.

Fortunately, I don’t have to pay for my news on top of my movies and music. I turned on The Today Show to start catching myself up on US news, and I was disappointed to find Katie Couric had gone missing from her studio. And only hours after I got home, I was already tired of hearing about JonBenet Ramsey and John Mark Karr. But that’s just the media, in America and everywhere. So now I know about that, I seem to know it all, and I think I’ll go back to music and movies. I’ve got a Blockbuster rental waiting in the DVD player, and I think I might smell popcorn.