BLACK MIRROR - Black Mirror was part of a slate of British programming I went through over the past few weeks where, due to the holidays, there was scant new television to watch. There was the long awaited return of Sherlock, the binge watch I did of Orphan Black and the nice surprise of stumbling upon Black Mirror. It's a bleak, eerie anthology show with each episode being a complete contained story a la The Twilight Zone. The show does have a loose theme of the role that technology plays in our modern lives and how its advances and innovations don't always mean life will be better or easier, usually just more tragic. In one episode, a bizarre story about the British Prime Minister being forced to perform an illegal sex act on live TV spreads like wildfire on social media, captivating the entire world in a matter of hours. It begs the question: Did our addiction and reliance on social media make this horrific event possible? Another puts us in a futuristic world where people have lost their identity and exist only to work toward gaining merits, which are used to buy everyday products (toothpaste), pop-up programming (live sex chat rooms, where you're charged if you exit out of the pop-up) or potentially a way out of their pre-programmed life (an American Idol-style talent show or a career as a porn star). Yet another drops us into the lives of a young couple in the future who dissect everything in their lives with a chip connected to a hard drive in their brain, called a Grain, which shows us how dangerous & tragic being able to recall and display every event in the history of your life can be. In one scene, during a painfully awkward lovemaking session, each participant replays footage from when their life and their lovemaking was actually good, and use that to make it through the ordeal. Their eyes glaze over while they watch the footage, making them look blank and robotic. I've got the second season (or series, if you will) queued up and can't wait to see what else they come up with.
Mr. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE - I picked this up and have been listening to it in my car in the audiobook format. It concerns a tech-savvy young man who acquires a job at a curious little bookstore in San Francisco who, after noticing that the shop's customers don't really buy anything but instead check out odd titles from dark corners of the store as part of an old agreement with the owner, sets out to figure out what's really going on there. He enlists the help of some of his friends and the quest turns into a quaint, old-fashioned mystery as our heroes explore the past, present and future of books and the act of reading. The author, Robin Sloan, originally wrote the story as a Kindle Single and then expanded it to a traditional printed novel, which is fitting. It seems to share a loose connection with Black Mirror, that being the way that technology is rapidly changing the way we do things we had done the same way forever. His girlfriend works at Google and his friend has a startup, while he is working with the outdated glue-scented dusty old volumes that line the shelves of Mr. Penumbra's shop. I just started it and I'm only 1 disc in (again, fitting the theme of the story is the fact that I'm "reading" a book on CD) but it's quite the page turner, so to speak.
REVIVAL - I have loved Revival since it's inception but I had recently taken some time off from it for a few months. However, I recently caught back up and I was instantly taken back into rural Wisconsin and the quarantined town where, for one day, the dead returned. Dana Cypress, whose father, and boss, is the sheriff and whose sister is one of the revived, is tasked with keeping control of the situation, as much as a situation like this allows. With the revival comes a whole host of problems for the small town including murder, mysterious supernatural beings, a body parts black market and the regular drama that comes with living in a small town. I have seen it referred to as a "farm noir" or a "rural noir" as it says on the cover of each issue, but it transcends that title and is something truly cool and original and creepy and continues to be one of my favorite series and a must-get each month.
THE HORRIBLE CROWES - LIVE AT THE TROUBADOUR - I usually don't like live albums for some reason, I think it's because after listening to the same songs the same way from the studio albums, hearing them done not as tightly and with different timing and sometimes different lyrics is slightly off-putting. However, after hearing of a live album by the side project of the singer of my favorite band at a venue I could've gone to, I became very interested. And it didn't disappoint, Brian Fallon and company delivered a very nice set with all of the songs from their album Elsie and a couple extras. Fallon gives a few short thank you's to the live and listening audience for giving his little vanity side project a chance and supporting them. He has some good banter with the crowd, expressing his admiration of some of the attractive people in the audience and giving a bit of background on a few of his songs. Fallon is a natural leading man, he's humble and humorous and genuinely enjoys being in the moment and sharing the night with his audience. I've seen him solo at the Troubadour and numerous times around LA with The Gaslight Anthem and his live shows always deliver. I have pretty much had this on constant rotation lately.
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