The Books + Movies + Music of Lately
The Matchbook | 8.7.26
Been a bit since I’ve rocked one of these my friends! Been a bit indeed.
I figured it was time for a Media Diet, as it’s been a long time and I’ve been reading a lot, listening to a LOT of music, and watching a few films and shows to pass the last hours of dark and forest-fire-smokey nights.
I’ll be brief so that you can make up your own minds, and I’ll give them a little ranking in Signal Fire Flames 🔥, so you know how I liked it if you’re in a hurry. 1 is bad, 5 is best.
Below are 5 things I’ve read, watched, or listened to, and a few bonus items too that aren’t media, but they Are worth talking about.
Oh, and if you’d like to help keep this Signal Fire alive, you can very easily do so by joining the fam, pledging your support, and getting a front row seat for all the goodies forthcoming, including our LIVE ZOOM Gatherings, which we’re announcing soon!
Here’s what my brain’s been digesting lately:
Glen Hansard Discography 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 - I’ll never quite recover from losing this man, this artist, this genius, this gentle, gentle soul. The world lost one of the best, and his music will always endure. If you’ve not yet jumped in, now is the best time of all time. Honor him, treasure him, love him. Please.
Project Hail Mary 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 - Minutes after finishing this film, my Mom called me and told me I had to watch it because the main character was “so me” that I wouldn’t believe it. Sarah said the same. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a thing, and for some reason this movie quietly snuck into becoming one of my top 10 movies of all time. I loved it. So very much I loved it. It stayed pretty damn true to the book (which I also loved), and Gosling nailed it, considering he was acting alone a lot of the film, and responding to a puppet the other half. I cried for some reason a lot, and also found out that something I’ve always experienced has a name that I never knew about. It’s called Stendhal syndrome, and it’s basically “a rare psychosomatic condition where a person experiences rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion, fainting, or hallucinations when exposed to art or objects of great beauty.” Yep. I have that, and this movie brought it out.
Land by Maggie O’Farrell 🔥🔥🔥🔥 - I’m about 50% through this, and I absolutely love it. Set in Ireland, on what I take to be the Dingle Peninsula ( a place we’ve been lucky to visit about 8 times and is one of my all time favorite places on earth), this book is so far stunning. I love the way O’Farrell writes, and the only reason I am not giving it 5 flames is 2 reasons: 1) I haven’t finished, and b) Sometimes I DO feel like Maggie chooses $30 words where a $3 word would do just as lovely. Still though, she’s an artist, and a wonderful crafter of outrageously beautiful sentences. So go on, use your fancy words, I’ll still gobble them up.
Paradise in Plain Sight by Karen Maezen Miller 🔥🔥🔥🔥 - TMI maybe, but, we always have Buddhist books in our bathroom so whenever we have to do a #2, we have something beautiful to read and remind us how to be better humans. The book rotates (and is then thoroughly sterilized) and right now it’s this stunner from Karen Maezen Miller. It’s about her buying a home in LA that came with an unbelievable Zen Garden, that she then had to learn to take care of. It’s a Buddhist Koan in the best sense of the word, a lesson wrapped in a beautiful tale. What a reminder, what a beautiful writer. Please, read this one.
The Drama 🔥🔥🔥 - Ok, I like this, kind of a lot, but I also did NOT like this. For some reason (and Please don’t think I am being shallow here) but Robert Pattinson’s hair really threw me off and distracted me in this film. That’s not why I gave it only 3 flames though. I thought that what plagues so many A24 movies kind of plagued this one for me, and it’s this over-saturation of something I don’t know how to put my finger on but only can call a constant simmer of anxious dread. I know it’s supposed to, but sometimes I think it’s overdone to the point of losing its nuance and it makes the films uncomfortable beyond the “this is uncomfortable art” and somewhere into “I just am not enjoying it.” This probably makes no sense, but I just don’t know how else to explain it and I hope some of you have seen it so you can ring in beyond the usual “Zendaya is amazing,” statement, because she is, but yeah. Thoughts?
Amish Country Medium White Hulless Popcorn 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 - I know, you’ve already heard me talk about popcorn before, and I sang high and long the praises of the Amish Country LadyFinger kernels. I know. These are better. By accident we ran out of popcorn, found a sample bag of this new kind, tried it, and fell so deeply in love that we bought a 50lb bag of kernels on the internets to make it cheaper in bulk. Yeah. It’s that good. It’s bright white, it’s perfectly textured, and it’s almost completely hulless so you don’t get stuff stuck in your teeth and you get all the lightness you deserve. Try it, you’ll buy 50lbs too.
Chasers of the Light Bespoke Elopements + Handfastings 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 - If you’re sick of hearin about these by now, sorry, not sorry at all. They are that good, that fun, that world and life changing, and that amazing. We go all over the world, we want to go all over the United States, and we want to work with YOU. Whether it’s a full elopement that we plan for you, OR even if you’re already married, we do these custom handfasting ceremonies that include me writing you a custom handfasting poem, officiating the official handfasting ceremony (and explaining the entire custom and how you keep it going), AND then you get a full amazing photography shoot with it. They are beautiful, they can be done anytime you wish to create a new vow renewal tradition, and they are so much more emotional than you’d think. Yeah. Everyone is welcome to do them, everyone should. Basically, reach out, let’s make magic.
Hope some of these tickly your pretty little fancies. Hope you find some new stuff to occupy some of YOUR time.
I love you all.
Be good.