summer replay

Winter break is officially over and Spring semester has fully started. For break I got to go back to Houston, Texas, where my parents currently live and where I spent the entirety of the most recent summer. Even though it's January and the weather is alarmingly cold, I wanted to take a second and look back on my summer and talk about what reminds me of this summer.

popular coffee shop, Agora, in Houston

What influenced me to do this was the drastic change from Chicago to Houston. I got off the plane only to immediately take off my puffer that I needed in Chicago to stay warm. The day after I got to Houston I was walking around in a 3/4 sleeve shirt and was perfectly fine. I checked the weather that morning and it was a high of 78 degrees. Most days it ranged around there, and my family considering it to be cold out when the low was around 50 degrees. As I was outside during the day I had kept forgetting that it was December, I kept getting Christmas gift shopping confused with birthday gift shopping because my whole family has summer birthdays. It was 75 degrees out and it felt nothing like a typical winter. Last winter break I spent in Kansas City so the weather was more similar to Chicago, even having to stay inside for nearly three days cause of a snow storm. But anyways that's besides the point, Houston, and it's weather really made me take a second to look back on my overwhelmingly hot and long summer and what reminds me of it and all the media I consumed.

My past summer in Houston was quite boring. To give a quick sum up my parents recently moved there, I had lived there before when I was much younger but it had been years so I didn't know anyone and my siblings were still in Kansas City. So, I was left to figure out what to do with myself for the 3 months. Aside from working and taking 11 credits worth of online classes I basically just drank coffee and consumed a ton of media.

Members of ABBA

When leaving Chicago at the start of summer break I had declared it to be an ABBA summer. Honestly, that kind of held true, they were my top artist of May, which was basically my first month in Houston. Something about ABBA gives me the vibe of summer, I can't listen to them and not automatically associate them with summer. My top song of May was "SOS," my third song was "the winner takes it all", and my 5-9 songs were all ABBA as well. In order, "does your mother know", "the name of the game", "gimme! gimme! gimme!", "lay all your love on me", and "angel eyes". So I really wasn't kidding when I said I started my summer off with ABBA.

cover of Virgin by Lorde

In June, my top artist was Clairo, which wasn't too surprising, she was after all just barely my number one most listened to artist of the year, consistently being my top five every month. In the month of June I listened to a lot of the Marías, the strokes, and Jeff Buckley. For July and August though I reached a new pattern that followed for two more months after, having The Marías, as my top artist. The album Virgin by Lorde came out June 27th, I listened to that relatively soon after it came out too, my favorite song on the album was probably "favourite daughter." My music throughout the summer wasn't anything too out of the ordinary for me truth be told. I did however see one of my favorite bands in concert, The Greeting Committee, basically a year after I had seen them previously. I was barricade for both, except this year I met the lead singer Addie Sartino.

Throughout the summer though I did watch quite a few things. Now once my summer classes started I was rewatching stuff mainly for background noise, but even then there were some shows and movies I hadn't seen before. Halfway through May I went to Mexico City with my mom to visit family for a week. Now usually when that happens I just sit around with my grandma and watch movies. So per tradition that's exactly what I did. The most notable of which was watching all 6 Scream movies in order and in about two days. I had already seen all of them before but never back to back like that. It was definitely interesting and I went down a rabbit hole the lore of the movies too once I was done.

As many people know one of the popular movies in theaters at the beginning of summer was Final Destination: Bloodlines. I however, had never seen any of the final destination movies. So once I got back from Mexico I actually had another movie series marathon and watched all 6 in order in roughly a week or less. They weren't bad, but I will say they weren't exactly life changing. Now if I had seen them a few years ago when I was incredibly anxious all the time and always thinking about every possible way for something to go wrong I probably would've been more affected by it. I believe on my Letterboxd there was an average rating of 3 stars given for all six movies.

Poster of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Now after all these movie marathons I really couldn't force myself to watch another movie series. So I went to one of my favorite movies to rewatch, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Despite it basically being doom and despair I find it to be one of my comfort movies. It's also one of the few movies I have rated as 5 stars on Letterboxd, truth be told I don't take it very seriously. It's very real in a sense of many people wish that could happen, but at the same time at the end of the day you'll find your way back, because you're never supposed to forget someone. But I'll leave it at that, if anything, anyone who hasn't seen it quite literally has to as soon as possible.

Now despite there being a good amount of movies that came out in the summer and some of which got a bit of recognition, I truthfully did not watch basically any, other than Final Destiantion Bloodlines. I spent the rest of summer mainly just watching and rewatching shows. I watched the hit show Overcompensating over the summer and truth be told I loved it. I thought it was amazing and I can't wait for the next season. I think it's another one of those so-called "awkward" shows that are slightly relatable and realistic. I also watched the new Hulu Show Adults, which similarly is another "awkward" show in my opinion. I think it's very much relatable and also the ending made me look forward even more to another season.

Now following this theme of "awkward" shows I started rewatching some of my favorites as background noise, yet I'd still pay some attention. I think I mainly rewatched them cause of the similar dynamic in Overcompensating and Adults, that reminded me to watch them truthfully. SO consequently, I started off by rewatching Sex and the City. I even watched both of the movies after I was done and I truthfully had only seen them both once or twice before. After this I rewatched yet another HBO show, which was none other than Girls. Now I don't really like Lena Dunham as a person, but I will say she was in fact "the voice of her generation" at least when it came to the writing of Girls. Around this time I tried to get into the Love Island (USA) new season, but after watching a couple episodes I honestly just couldn't stay fully into it and never watched past the first week. I also rewatched the first and second gen of Skins (UK). It was honestly something about HBO and Hulu that really had my attention.

Now I watched some other movies here and there but mainly just rewatching so nothing too interesting. Towards the end of the summer the creator of Bojack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg released another show on Netflix called long story short, which was basically about a dysfunctional family. I watched this the week I came back to Chicago. It was a great way to end off summer break. Now nothing will compare to Bojack Horseman, but I will admit long story short, definitely exceeded my expectations. But that was basically my summer, a whole lot of homework, working, listening to music, and watching movies and shows.

With that, I hope this Spring semester goes well for everyone,

-AC