Boulder County Events: What to do when there’s nothing to do

BOOKS

n ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS — OCEAN VUONG T he title of Ocean Vuong’s debut novel gives away the young writer’s ability to craft riveting prose, imbued with emotion and beauty. Written as a letter to his illiterate mother, the story centers around Little Dog, the son of a Vietnamese refugee and a nameless G.I. It explores the nuances of immigraiton, family, mental health and sexuality through sweeping poetic language. A coming of age story like no other.

n NORMAL PEOPLE — SALLY ROONEY W e’re not sure what it is about Sally Rooney’s Normal People that makes us care so much about a high school love story, but there it is. This novel found a way to suck us in and hold us there until we finished, as it brilliantly illuminates modern intimacy, love, family and social class.

n HOMEGOING — YAA GAYSI T his is ambitious story-telling at its finest as Gaysi’s writing enraptures the reader in a world of generational stories linked by whispers from the past, symbols of eras gone by. Starting sometime in the late 18th century, the story follows the family lines of two half-sisters born in West Africa. One marries a British official and remains in Africa, while the other is enslaved and shipped to America. As the novel progresses, each chapter represents another story down their respective generational lines until we reach present day. It’s a captivating read.

n THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE — ALAN BRADLEY H unker down and follow along as amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce must pull herself away from her beloved chemistry lab to clear her father of murder. Flavia is as endearing as a protagonist can be, even as she torments the housekeeper and plots revenge against her two older and equally quirky sisters. Set in the British countryside of the 1950s, this 2009 murder-mystery is witty, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable. Plus, its the first book in a 10-part series. This is only the beginning.

n ROUGH MAGIC — LARA PRIOR-PALMER A riveting memoir following a young girl as she searches for herself by racing in the 1,000 kilometer Mongolian Derby. Prior-Palmer demands the attention of her readers, torn between digesting the story quickly to find out what happens, and slowly drinking in the profundity of each line. The story starts with Prior-Palmer from her home in the U.K. as she decides to enter the derby ill-equipped and untrained. It then follows her across the Mongolian Steppe on myriad spirited Mongoloian ponies as she seeks to win the race and settle her soul.

SOME OF 2020’s BEST ALBUMS… SO FAR

BY CAITLIN ROCKETT

ALBUMS n 2017-2019 — AGAINST ALL LOGIC L ike any good setlist, let’s start this one off with a banger. Unlike the warmer sounds he last offered under his alias Against All Logic, Nicholas Jaar goes hard for 2017-2019. After a fairly dreamy opening featuring a sample of Her Royal Flyness Queen Bey, Jaar quickly grows antagonistic with tracks like “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard” and “Alarm.” Even when he brings the temperature down, he keeps it at a simmer. n HEAVY LIGHT — U.S. GIRLS M eghan Remy has an obsession with truth and vulnerability, which is why her project U.S. Girls makes such vital music. Heavy Light is a personal album for Remy, using a deceptively poppy 21st century girl-group sound to explore her own physical abuse, but also institutional abuse. The track “4 American Dollars” is a finger-snapping discourse against vast accumulations of wealth. The track “And Yet It Moves / Y Se Meuve” begins with a question as timeless as it is of the moment: “Nos mienten sobre todo, no?” — They lie to us about everything, don’t they?

n WE ARE SENT HERE BY HISTORY — SHABAKA & THE ANCESTORS M illennial British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings teamed up with a similarly aged group of South African musicians to create the genre-redefining jazz found on We Are Sent Here by History. “We need to start articulating our utopias, articulating what needs to be burned and what needs to be saved,” Shabaka told The New York Times. The album explores how toxic masculinity begets violence and authoritarianism, but it focuses on how vulnerability and truth can set us free.

n EVERY BAD — PORRIDGE RADIO O n the Brighton four-piece’s second album, lead singer Dana Margolin opens with a feeling many of us might be experiencing at this precise moment in virus-panicked time: “I’m bored to death, let’s argue / What is going on with me?” The rest of the album goes on to explore just what might be wrong with Margolin — or any of us, for that matter — vacillating between whispers and screams, fluctuating between emotional extremes.

n THE NEON SKYLINE — ANDY SHAUF A ndy Shauf knows how to take the mundanities of life and mine them for every ounce of humanity. The Neon Skyline tells the story of a man who goes to his local bar, hears that his ex is back in town, then watches as she enters the bar. The power of Shauf’s music lies in his ability to find the beauty in lost love, drunken conversations and dive bars.

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PODCASTS

n THE OTHER LATIF — PRESENTED BY RADIOLAB R adiolab reporter Latif Nasser finds one other person in the world who shares his name: Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. Over the course of several years, Radiolab’s Nasser investigated a man the U.S. government claims was one of Osama bin Laden’s top advisors. As is always the case with Radiolab and its side projects, this six-part series is as heart-rending as it is fascinating. npr.org/podcasts —CR

n REPLY ALL F ans of this show know that technology is just the frame in which hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman hang beautiful snapshots of humanity. Tracing the origins of viral memes, conspiracy theories, deep fakes, dark patterns and whole constellations of Twitter fights leads to captivating storytelling. Check out episode 158, “The Case of the Lost Hit,” where Vogt and Goldman help a listener hunt down a song that’s seemingly lost in the ether — a prime example of this show’s playful brilliance. gimletmedia.com/ shows/reply-all —CR

n QUEER SEX ED S ex education in the United States is abysmal, particularly if you’re anything other than cisgendered, heterosexual, non-disabled and monogamous. Queer Sex Ed is a project by Boulder-local Sara Connel to turn sex on its head — to “queer” sex education by not only centering on LGBTQIA folks, but also people with disabilities and others on the margins who find themselves left out of sexual discussions and education. Sara and cohost Jay tackle trans justice and inclusion, consent, BDSM, polyamory, body dysmorphia and so much more with compassion, intelligence and humor. queersexed.org —CR

n HEAVYWEIGHT U sing an outsize version of his neurotic personality to narrate, Heavyweight host Jonathan Goldstein employs an absurdist brand of humanity to help others resolve long-past conflicts. There’s not always a satisfying answer (the episode “Rose,” for example, where a woman longs to understand why she was kicked out of her college sorority), but even then there’s a sense of closure. Other episodes, like “Scott,” showcase Goldstein’s ability to set his subjects at ease, resulting in a multi-generational investigation and a heartwarming conclusion. gimletmedia.com/shows/ heavyweight —CR

n ROOM 20 K ept alive by breathing and feeding tubes for the last 17 years, the name on the hospital bracelet simply called him Sixty-Six Garage, named after the garage his car was towed to after a 1999 crash in the California desert near the U.S.-Mexico border. Follow investigative reporter Joanne Faryon on a two-year journey to identify Sixty-Six Garage and in the meantime realize he may be conscious after all. wondery.com/shows/ room-20/ —AKE

STREAMING CAT BLUES An endless selection to keep you company BY MICHAEL J. CASEY

The bad news: the novel coronavirus has disrupted life as we know it, and will for the next couple months. But, you’ve gone to the store, you’ve stocked up for the long haul, you’ve washed your hands and you’re social distancing yourself just like you should. Now, it’s just you and the looming thought of having to stay indoors and watch wall-to-wall COVID-19 coverage.

The good news: Never has there been more access to media, information and entertainment, all from your perfectly selfquarantined home, and all available with the click of a button.

We always say a film festival has a little something for everyone, but a festival can’t hold a candle to some of these services. Even better, most offer free trials, anywhere from 14 to 30 days, which ought to help when the cash flow starts to dry up. Not to mention, watching cinema is a profoundly human activity. It opens you up to new experiences and new people, empathetically connects you with a past long forgotten or misremembered. And it’s much safer than binge-watching Food Network and HGTV.

Settle in, you and that couch are about to become very close friends. Enjoy the ride. FILM

n THE CRITERION CHANNEL

Specializing in American classics, powerhouse foreign films and independents galore, The Criterion Channel boasts one of the most eclectic libraries around. Start anywhere, really, but make sure to swing by the Directed by Agnès Varda collection, especially her sensational smash, Cléo From 5 to 7. This year’s Conference on World Affairs was to mark the 25th anniversary of the conference’s signature panel, Ebert Interruptus. Cléo was slated and would have paid tribute to the late great Varda (who died in 2019 at the age of 90). It also would have been the first time a film from a female director was the subject of Interruptus. But, alas, it is not to be. That doesn’t mean you can’t love Varda and Cléo on your own. Heck, host your own Cléo Interruptus. Not quite the same as CWA, but it’ll do in a pinch. Five more to find: The Life and Death of Col. Blimp; Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters; I Walk Alone; A Hard Day’s Night; Wendy and Lucy

n KANOPY

Public libraries are grand, but you can’t go to one right now. You can visit Kanopy, the library’s online streaming service. It’s spectacular, and it’s completely free to use. Just sign up with your library card and dive into a collection so diverse it’s bonkers. From criminally underseen independent gems (The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Bisbee ’17) to nearly lost noir gems (The Man Who Cheated Himself and Woman on the Run). Watch them all, but make sure to carve out time (you have time) for Mark Cousins’ 15-hour documentary, The Story of Film. It’s like mainlining a collegiate-level history of cinema class.

Five more to find: Bill Cunningham New York; The General; Charade; A Ghost Story; Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

n HOOPLA

Also available through the public library, Hoopla is an excellent resource for audiobooks, e-books, comics and a whole lot more. It also has movies — lots of them. Start with Jafar Panahi’s masterful This Is Not a Film. Focusing on the gaps and intersections of isolation and human interaction, Panahi’s films of the 1990s and 2000s drew ire from the Iranian government. They put the filmmaker under house arrest and banned him from making movies. But abstinence proved impossible for the incarcerated Panahi and This Is Not a Film was his shot across the bow. It will stir your soul, and maybe even your creative juices while spending those days longing for human interaction. Five more to find: Dial M for Murder, Loving Vincent, A Man Called Ove, The Host, Penguin Highway

n RARE FILMM

Public domain is the cinema’s greatest double-edged sword. With no controlling interests, these movies can be freely traded at low costs, but no one can truly make any money restoring, preserving and properly releasing them to a home market. Enter rarefilmm.com, the cave of forgotten films. Here’s where you’ll find all those titles they wax rhapsodically about on TrailersFromHell.com — and they’re all free. Start with Moolaadé, a Senegalese drama from director Ousmane Sembene. It’s the story of an African tribe governed by old men and old traditions. But the women outnumber the men, and they’re a heck of a lot smarter. The time for revolt has come. It’s glorious, comical and incredibly prescient.

Five more to find: They Won’t Believe Me; The Big Sky; Getting Straight; Destry Rides Again; Nausicaa

n MUBI

Sign up now, and you’ll get three months of Mubi for $1. Not too shabby. And considering that Mubi is a handpicked streaming service with 30 films to choose from (each day, one title expires, and another is added), it’s quite handy if you’re the type to spend more time trying to decide what to watch than watching whatever it is you settle on.

Where to start? The Last Man on Earth, naturally. Adapted from Richard Matheson’s short story, I Am Legend — arguably one of the greatest short stories ever penned — director Sidney Salkow both managed to pull a measured and pitch-perfect performance from Vincent Price while using desolate urban landscapes to create a genuine sense of emptiness and desolation. These scenes were shot in Rome, which only adds significance to modernday viewing.

Five more to find: Rosa Luxemburg; Outrage Coda; The Quiet Earth; Guilty Bystander; The Toxic Avenger

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