Once again, summer has slipped away from us like a bar of soap, seemingly within our grasp before its abrupt evacuation. Although the goal of a perfect summer at the beginning seems to be to accomplish as little as humanly possible, enduring memories never come from the days spent marathoning “Parks & Recreation.” Unless you count the exception of watching the entirety of “Breaking Bad” in a month. Or triple-featuring “The Lord of the Rings.” Or headphoning out to the entirety of Radiohead’s “Kid A” for the hundred-thousandth time.
Actually, who am I kidding, most of what I remember from this summer involves things that I watched and/or listened to. Let’s take a look at some of the best offerings of Summer 2012:
Music
Zion I preforming at Altitude Music Festival at Balch Fieldhouse last spring. CUI’s Sam Goldner recaps the memorable music, movies and television shows of the summer. (CU Independent File/David Zimmerman).
The alternative sector had a fairly prosperous summer after the drought of memorable albums in 2011. Animal Collective dropped a new album disgustingly titled Centipede Hz, currently streaming, not yet released. It is definitely not Merriweather Post Pavillion part two, but what would’ve been the fun in that anyways?
Dirty Projectors came back from their acclaimed 2009 record Bitte Orca with the significantly more listenable Swing Lo Magellan, a lovely surprise from a consistently fascinating band. The huge indie crossover of 2012 though is, of course, Frank Ocean. Capturing the hearts of everyone from the record store to the frat house, Ocean’s debut album Channel Orange has managed to catapult the Odd Future singer into a celebrity all his own, ludicrous album art be damned.
Movies
Do I really need to say it? If there’s one thing almost everyone can safely say they spent three hours doing this summer, it’s seeing “The Dark Knight Rises.” The fans cried genius. The cynics shouted plot holes. On both sides, we stood in shock of the apparent human evil that can rise out of anticipation. But through all that horror remains a franchise that impacted each one of us in a more significant way than most blockbusters of the past decade. Also,”Battleship.” Need I say more?
Television
For the sentimentally inclined, “Louie” returned for a third season of witty, observational pondering. Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” managed to gain an impressive amount of viewers, even though none of them could decide whether the show was actually good or not. Reality television managed to hit a new high and low simultaneously with “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” The real news, however, is that “Breaking Bad,” AMC’s must-watch show for anyone who wants to debate the unanswered questions of western philosophy, has begun its final season, which will be split into two halves and finished next summer. Followers of Walter White’s descent into the abyss of human capability have had plenty to talk about this summer, and as always, it can only get more depraved from here.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sam Goldner at Samuel.goldner@colorado.edu.
