Once Upon a Time

Seeing as I have nothing to do in Philadelphia, The Daily Dahlia has been living up to its name a bit more. And not only have I been writing it, but I've started to go back and read older ones as well. And you know what? I used to be a lot more entertaining. I was way more up on pop culture, definitely more into music, and I used to be able to recall the names of more than 10 books NOT published by Simon & Schuster.

I miss me.

Now, I'm slowly working on bringing the reading back up, since I couldn't bear to do it as a hobby while working in publishing. (Although I did read five books on my honeymoon--The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Falling Man by Don DeLillo, and there was a fifth book, I promise, I just can't remember what. See?!) However, I've lowered my magazine subscriptions to 4--just the bare bones: Allure, Glamour, Marie Claire, and Esquire. I do miss New York, but I was never reading it often enough and I felt silly getting it outside of New York--it's just torturing myself to see what readings are going on and not being able to attend any.

And music. Ah, music. I haven't been to a concert that didn't play Israeli music since No Doubt senior year with Harry Gassel and Avi Flombaum. I listen to the same songs over and over again (mostly "The Queen and I" by Gym Class Heroes and "I Hear the Bells" by Mike Doughty) and I rarely listen to the radio. (I try to listen more nowadays, but they don't play any new songs anyway.) MTV doesn't play music videos, radios don't play new songs--so how do people pick up new music anyway? Because I'm a little embarrassed that all my listening material comes from soundtracks.

Anyway, I miss my media-loving life and I'm up for recommendations. Read/heard/saw anything good lately?