A few days this past week have felt like we’re bypassing Spring and heading straight to Summer. It was 80 here yesterday. I’m not a hot weather person, and I am not ready for a long, brutal Summer, especially not after our pathetic winter this year. I’m going to turn on our air conditioners and not leave the house for the next 5 months. Fortunately, I have plenty of entertainment to keep me company while I reverse-hibernate.

Last night I walked over to check out the classic film series I founded in 2015, which I handed over to a friend a few months ago. We watched All About Eve, which I hadn’t seen in several years. After a clumsy opening, this one is still a knockout. Anne Baxter’s performance is the titular Eve is one of the most modulated, carefully controlled progressions of character I’ve seen on screen. I’d be fascinated to see the shot order for this one. The evolution of her behavior and demeanor are so subtly shifted throughout the story. Shooting out of order as movies are would have made this an even harder feat. Of course, Bette Davis is fabulous as well, and we get an early Marilyn Monroe performance. 1950 was a banner year for films exploring fame and aging stars, as Sunset Boulevard also released that year.

I read Sarah Gerard’s new essay collection Sunshine State this week. It was competently written, but I felt it was somewhat dry, especially in comparison to the dark magic of her debut novel, Binary Star. I also read Monica de la Torre’s 2013 poetry collection Four, which did not awe me. For review, I read J.D. Wilkes’s The Vine that Ate the South from my beloved Two Dollar Radio, and I’ll be working on my review of that soon.

I relistened to the first two Oasis albums this week in preparation for a collaborative writing project with a friend, and while some tracks made me nostalgic, overall I was disappointed to find these were not as magical as I found them to be as a teenager. Alas.

This week on the blog I reviewed the zine Amtrak: Adventures Through the South by Sarah Crowder and Sophie Ioannou, and wrote about my adoration for Olivia Hussey.

I also had my first article for Indiana on Tap published last week, and reviewed Rebecca Gaydos’s Güera for The Collagist.

I’m not ready for summer, but it’s here anyway. I suppose I need to get my herbs and flowers planted and quit whining about it. One of those things is more likely to happen than the other.

The title of this post is a line from “Wonderwall” by Oasis.