Be entertained.

What I’m reading, watching, hearing –

Reading:

• Eric Hobsbawm’s books. I started with “The Age of Extremes,” so it just made sense to work backwards through “The Age of Empire.” Accessible history that ties it all together from an economic perspective.
• About to read Artie Lange’s “Too Fat To Fish.” How can I not?

Watching:

• TV: I couldn’t decide whether to get re-involved with “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” especially when my DVR missed the first couple of episodes of the season. Yesterday, recovering from the creeping crud, we had the time and inclination for some scripted television (a rarity these days) and got sucked right back in. They’re keeping it interesting and moving the story forward.
• Movies: “Monster Thursday.” Or, in the original, “Monstertorsdag.” Listen, if you watch only one Norwegian surfer love triangle movie this year, make it this one. I watched it twice this weekend, and would happily watch it again. Sweet, complicated, interesting.

• Tapes from the ’80s. I suddenly took it into my head to just convert my old compilation tapes from the ’80s and suck them into iTunes, which has brought the realization that there are a lot of songs I used to listen to regularly that I had all but forgotten about, and that The Vapors and Paul Collins’s Beat used to play a much bigger role in my music collection, and there were a lot more snippets by Art Linkletter and Lloyd Bridges (from an instructional record on scuba diving).
• The Best of Bob & Ray, Vol. 1. A birthday present of their public radio show from the ’80s, when there was a major Bob & Ray renaissance and we all found out they were as great as we’d remembered.
• The Rolling Stones. Suddenly, anything they did, but especially stuff I barely ever paid attention to before, like Beggar’s Banquet and the album cuts of Let It Bleed.