Spring Media Consumption List

ALL OVER THE INTERNET

Recycled Movie Costumes: The costume from Downton Abbey that looks curiously familiar? This Tumblr will tell you where you’ve seen it before. Guaranteed to suck away at least thirty minutes of your valuable time.

Your LL Bean Boyfriend: “He will make you a table and then he will have sex with you on it.”

Dear Television Reviews:Girls, Mad Men Dear Television is composed of four alt-aca writers: in other words, academics who write for broad audiences, much in the same way that I do. If you like engaged, fiercely intelligent commentary, then you’ll like Dear Television (now in its new home at the New Republic).

Tom & Lorenzo, “Mad Style”:Style bloggers Tom & Lorenzo recap Mad Men elsewhere on their site, but the real treasure is their exhaustive look at the fashions of each episode, with fascinating contextualization and analysis. My go-to after every episode.

The Kanye West Wing: Like Kanye Wes Anderson, this Tumblr pivots on a simple joke: the combination of stills with lyrics from Kanye West songs. The results are far more amusing than they have any right to be.

FILMS FOR A FRIDAY NIGHT IN

Your Sister’s Sister: If you’re missing the Pacific Northwest, this small film, set on Orcas Island in the San Juans, will be your cure. Beautiful performances from the puppy-dog-eyed Mark Duplass and always amazing Rosemarie DeWitt and Emily Blunt.

Jesse and Celeste Forever: This film, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, came and went rather quietly–but it’s a richly textured delight. Jones co-wrote and co-produced, which makes me like it even more. Bonus: a perfect soundtrack.

The Intouchables: Is this enormously successful French film an updated version of Driving Miss Daisy? Maybe; kinda. But it also features an enormously charismatic performance from Omar Sy, the first black performer to win a “Best Actor” César.

BROCCOLI RECIPES

Double Quinoa Broccoli, 101 Cookbooks. Not for the faint of broccoli heart.

The Best Broccoli Dish You’ve Ever Had, GQ. Lightly tempura-ed? It’s amazing.

Broccoli Parmesan Fritters, The Smitten Kitchen. Somewhat labor intensive, but worth every step.

ARTICLES

Wendell Jamieson, “The Crime of His Childhood,” New York Times.Forty years ago, a man threw acid on a young boy. What happened next–and in the four decades after—is by turns heartbreaking and heartrending. Touching in the most surprising of ways.

Amy Boesky, “The Ghost Writes Back,” Kenyon Review. During her graduate school years at a prestigious college, Boesky ghostwrote dozens of Sweet Valley High novels. A meditation on presence, absence, and authorship.

Mike Dash, “For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of WWII,” Smithsonian.com.I read this entire piece with my mouth hanging open. So many questions left unanswered.

Martin Douglas, “The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show,” MTV.com.“There’s a sense of defiance that comes with liking something you’re not ‘supposed’ to like; in a way, I knew I was sabotaging the uniform order among black kids my age. But mostly, it felt like something I could claim for my own, a part of American culture that wasn’t handed down to me or illustrated in history books. It wasn’t my parents’ music. It was something that was happening right now, and regardless of the color lines placed between it and me, it was something that I was a part of.”

HUMOR

“Jon Hamm Needs to Stop Dressing Like a Total Slut,” Thought Catalog.

“Is Taylor Swift a Feminist?” The New Inquiry.

“Best Guesses at Prince’s Email Address,” The Awl.

“If ’90s Dude-Crushes Were Food,” The Hairpin.

“Taylor Swift Now Dating Senator Joe McCarthy,” The Onion.

“39 Ways Men Use Pinterest,” Buzzfeed.

“Instagram Filters Inspired by My Parents’ Reaction to Yet Another Return Home as a Single Man Who Has Not Enrolled in Graduate School,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

MUSIC

Rhye, Woman. Choice track: “The Fall.”The latest Sade-esque indie darling. Perfect everything music.

Kasey Musgraves, Same Trailer, Different Park. Choice track: “Merry Go Round.”I grew up in a small town and loved country music, but knew it was always describing a startlingly different reality than what I experienced. Musgraves’s writing is as catchy as it is honest. My favorite Musgraves lyric: “we get bored so we get married.”

Phosphorescent, Muchacho. Choice track: “Ride On/Right On.” The start of this album makes you think you might just be listening to the next sad sack heavy instrumentalized Pitchfork poster child. But listen on: the album contains multitudes, by turns infectious and sedating.

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About the author: Anne Helen Petersen writes Scandals of Classic Hollywood for The Hairpin, blogs at Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, and teaches media studies at Whitman College.