Having survived the recent holiday season with minimal trauma and only one emergency room visit (neither of us were this year's ER patient, thank the gods!) I guess it's time to take a look at the past year in culture. I know I may not look like a culture vulture but I sort of am. No, I don't keep up with the Kardashians or tune in to the vulgarity of Real Housewives; I avoid Bachelors and Bachelorettes at all costs, although, judging from the commercials, that dude on The Golden Bachelor shed more tears than Lana Turner did in her entire career. We don't dig superheroes, either, so that fact, even more than COVID, kept us out of movie theaters for much of the past few years (there were a certain number of exceptions, of course). Still, I have been keeping up with current releases, hence this post.  

May as well start with music, a topic I don't often discuss on this blog. To be specific, let's talk about music videos, since I'm a visual kind of guy who likes to see, as well as hear, the performances. Since the Miami radio market is actually pretty dismal, I spend no small amount of time searching YouTube for new music. In 2023, I discovered Bleachers, a band that has been around since 2013 but was somehow not on my radar until I stumbled across their hit 2023 single, "Modern Girl". The video is very basic, featuring the group performing in a recording studio that's seen better days, but the lusty, energizing magic conjured up by lead vocalist/guitarist, Jack Antonoff, and his bandmates produced one of the most electrifying performances I've seen in years. Across the pond, English virtual band Gorillaz released their 8th album, Cracker Island, which includes the catchy, sinuous Silent Running. Doja Cat merges hip-hop with early Warwick/Bacharach/David in Paint the Town Red. The electronic beat of Jungle's new album, Volcano, harkens back to 70's Motown style while incorporating artists from diverse disciplines to create the upbeat, imminently fabulous Back on 74.  A mostly naked Lenny Kravitz leapt from his bed in fine form with the sexy, hard-driving TK421, while the mostly naked Miley Cyrus scored a major hit with Flowers, which pairs her distinctive voice with her well-established striptease instincts. In spite of myself, I thoroughly enjoyed FKA Twig's turn with It's a Fine Day at Vogue World in London, although I'd never admit it out loud. Meanwhile, my inner cowboy was moved by Luke Combs' heart-rending cover of Tracy Chapman's classic, Fast Car. Also moving my inner cowboy self (although in a vastly different way) was Dixon Dallas (Jake Hill) and his provocative odes to gay sex, F150 and Good Lookin'. Whew! Speaking of gay performers (and more whew!), I relished John Duff's cheeky Somebody's Daughter and the Eric Kupper remix of Duff's Is It a Sin?, which seems like something I might have danced to in a club, circa 1982. Of course, it's Taylor Swift who reigned supreme in 2023 although, to be honest, I'm not a swifty so I can't really comment on this state of affairs. Still, all told, 2023 was a better year for music than I might have hoped for. 

Of the movies we managed to see in 2023, Barbie stood out for it's clever script, tongue-in-cheek performances and vivid (i.e., migraine-inducing) pink color palette. Both director Greta Gerwig and star, Margot Robie, saw their stock soar when the movie became the year's biggest hit. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer also fared surprisingly well for a 3+ hour movie. We managed to see it on an IMAX screen and were (almost literally) blown away by the movie's sound and fury. Saltburn, easily the most twisted (and darkly funny) thriller of the year (see my post from Dec. 6), generated predictable outrage for its sheer audacity and willingness to go there (major spoilers). Toho's electrifying Godzilla Minus One returned to the roots of Japan's most famous kaiju and became the highest grossing Godzilla film ever. One of my favorite directors, David Fincher, came back from a 3-year hiatus with deadpan humor and a terrific turn from Michael Fassbender in The Killer. The performances are everything in the uneven, but entertaining, Nyad, starring Annette Bening as the former Olympic swimmer and Jodie Foster as her ex-lover/manager. Notable movies that we have not yet seen include Martin Scorsese's historic crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, the Ira Sachs love triangle, Passages, Alexander Payne's The Holdovers, George C. Wolfe's Rustin, Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall and Brandon Cronenberg's Infinity Pool. (I am hoping to see some of these before the Academy Awards Ceremony broadcast in March). Neither of us loved Bradley Cooper's overpraised Maestro, although anything with Carey Mulligan can't be all bad. Nor did we particularly enjoy Sam Esmail's Shyamalan-ish Leave the World Behind with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali. As a big fan of Esmail's Mr. Robot, I found myself grimacing at this tiresome apocalyptic thriller, and was reminded, once again, that this genre has been done to death. May December, a much-lauded effort from director Todd Haynes, features Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and Charles Melton in a dramedy that recalls the notorious Mary Kay Letourneau case. While C thought it moderately entertaining, I found my attention drifting to the New York Magazine crossword puzzle I was working on. Finally, I really wanted to like Rightor Doyle's Down Low, the gay-themed comedy with Lukas Gage and Zachary Quinto, but, instead, I really, really hated it. For some reason, I expected it to be better than Billy Eichner's god-awful 2022 bomb, Bros, but, alas.... 

Book-wise or bookwise? Either way, I love the word(s). I read fewer books in 2023 (21)  than I did in 2021 (38) but more than I read in 2022 (15). I even found a few to love. One of these was James Ellroy's breathlessly droll neo-noir, The Enchanters, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2021's marvelously sleazy Widespread Panic. Both novels have L.A. private eye and all-around dirty-trickster, Freddy Otash, narrating the proceedings from a well-earned corner of purgatory. Solid Ivory is filmmaker James Ivory's classily dishy memoir of his 70 years in show business. Former porn star Conner Habib released his first full-length novel, Hawk Mountain, a Stephen King-ish psychological thriller involving the long and devastating afterlife of toxic teenage masculinity. (Lest you think that Mr. Habib's career in the adult film industry somehow disqualifies him from writing perceptive and thought-provoking literature, consider this: prior to his stint in porn, he taught literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Western New England University). Brett Easton Ellis released the controversial and riveting The Shards, a sort of alt-history of the author-as-closeted-high-schooler in an early 80's L.A. populated by posh boys, cool girls, horndog movie moguls, and at least one serial killer. Tons of sex, drugs and a very bloody climax generated considerable angst among the Pearl Clutchers of America but it's my favorite Ellis book yet. Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson combined their prodigious talents to construct Hollywood: An Oral History, an epic volume traversing the lineage of Tinseltown from its very inception to modern times, as presented through a vast collection of recorded interviews and conversations with all levels of industry personnel. Older books worth mentioning that I read for the first time included Truman Capote's modern true crime classic, In Cold Blood (1965), James Purdy's ecstatic and over-the-top gay melodrama, Narrow Rooms (1978), Donna Tartt's collegiate psychological thriller, The Secret History (1992), and Edmund White's literate and informative ramble through the city of light, The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (2001).  

The podcasts I listen to are something of a mixed bag where my interest ebbs and flows from week to week depending either on plot developments (for fiction) or topic/guests (non-fiction). But, two podcasts that have kept me positively glued to my headphones are Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps, and Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien's Who Killed JFK? Kudos also to the often entertaining (and sometimes infuriating) The Movie Crew, NPR's Fresh Air, Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri's If Books Could Kill, the Minnow Beats Whale mindblower, Rabbits, and the intriguing, if, ultimately, underwhelming, Limetown. By the way, these last two podcasts were first broadcast in years past but I only caught up with them in 2023 so I'm counting them in this list.

Looking over this post, I notice that, in large part, my cultural selections over the past year were more visceral (and--perhaps--a bit more Rabelaisian) than has been the case in previous years. I'm planning some deeper dives for 2024, although, never fear, there will always be room for the gamy, the offbeat and those random check-your-mind-at-the-door offerings that seem to appear with regularity on Prime and in airport bookstores. I've resolved to do better in 2024 but, rather like a fish, I am attracted to shiny objects and, as likely as not, prone to being hooked by the flash and bang floating closer to the surface.