Although this blog centers around New York love, every once in a while METROPOLIS casts a thought to other U.S. cities. And it is undoubtedly true that an L.A. summer is a magical, mythical, quintessentially American concept. That's why I was so thrilled to come across the bohemian ode to the Los Angeles lifestyle in the form of the Weetzie Bat, young adult book series.

Despite the recent shooting of innocent moviegoes at the Dark Knight premiere in Aurora, Colorado, I was still willing to see the film when invited by a friend. Yes, I found the incident random and horrifying, but at the time little was known about the killer's motives. I was thinking, a crowded confined space is what it is. The nature of the film is just coincidence. It was only in sitting through the movie's first few minutes that I began to recognize the creepy violence of this series and coincidence began to seem more like causation.

Officially, the new Spiderman film also has a new name-- "The Amazing Spider-Man"-- separating it from its predecessors. Personally, though, I anticipate it being remembered as the Andrew Garfield Spiderman. The plot and aesthetics of this version differ in no discernible way-- it is only the actors' unique interpretations of their characters that make it a film worthy of a trip to the local cineplex.

I am sorry to say that I have recently been relatively disappointed in film. It started when I went to see Magic Mike in theaters-- a film which does not possess even the smallest fetal skeleton of plot or character development. And continued with a slow night spent in my dorm room watching a bizarre Netflix biopic.

So, relatively resigned to bad movies in general, back on my Netflix account, I began Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My first thought was "well, if it's got nothing else, it's got the beautiful Kate Winslet." At the time it felt like a superficial throw-away, but, in retrospect, I realize that a lovely, talented actress is nothing at which to scoff.

Watching tourists walk around Times Square, you can see them looking around in a big mass of fanny-packed confusion for an actual New York resident. The sad truth of it is that Manhattanites are simply too cool to hang on the streets. In the winter, they hole up in the contaminated warmth of subway stops or, preferably, in cozy corner cafes. And now that it's summer you certainly won't find them blindly searching through their sweat for the nearest Duane Reade. No, the people of the city have taken to the roofs; there is really no reason for them to leave these cool, concrete heights, up there you can find everything you need: art, gardens, restaurants. Moreover, the roof is a unique experience in that it possesses the hard-to-find combination of being both scenic and illicit. An excellent example of this phenomenon in the Rooftop Films festival, gracing the city's roofs every summer.

In the sweltering month of August, as I spent hundreds of dollars of my parents' money on textbooks, I made one very important promise to them: that I would not become a pretentious academic. If I was going to spend eighty dollars on my intro Anthropology textbook, that was fine, but they didn't want me to start throwing around words like "performative" over Thanksgiving dinner. Somethings, however, are too good to pass up and what, pray tell, is better than paintings of heads made out of fruit? A little ironic, a little psychedelic, certainly not overly academic! So here are the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the sixteenth-century Italian composite painter for your enjoyment: