Let’s Play Oprah (April Edition)

It’s giveaway time, y’all!

You know what this means… It means it’s time to talk Favorite Things.

Are you ready?!

Let’s ?

Play ?

Oprah! ?

I like to make each work a staccato so you can really feel my vibrato, there. Is it working? Are you silently singing in your best Oprah voice too? Sweet. Now let’s get down to business.

I’m so utterly, completely, gleefully obsessed with all three things that I’m about to share with you, that I’m physically thisclose to losing my mind Kristin-Wiig-Surprise-Party-Sketch-Style.

So before I go jumping through a plate-glass window, I’ll just tell you all about my things instead.

1: Schitt’s Creek:

This little gem of a sitcom is the best kept secret on television right now. We happened to stumble across it as a suggestion on Netflix last month, and we’ve already binge-watched all three seasons. We’re huge fans of the Christopher Guest movies, like Best In Show and A Mighty Wind, so as soon as we saw that Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy starred in this show together as well, we knew it would be good. We just didn’t know HOW GOOD. This show is the only thing out there right now that can sufficiently fill the Arrested-Development-sized-hole in my heart.

It’s about a wealthy family who loses everything and is forced to move into a rundown motel in a town they purchased as a joke for their son’s birthday years prior…a town called Schitt’s Creek.

The comedy is sharp, the characters endearing, and the storyline is surprisingly winsome. I can never decide if my favorite part of the show is Moira’s fluid and indiscernible accent, Alexis’ hand gestures, they way they  wear black and white all the time, or David’s…everything.

I just want David to be my real life friend.

Like, bad.

You can watch it on Netflix, or on CBC. Fair warning: the Netflix version has some language. Oh, and here’s a little fun fact: Eugene Levy’s real-life son, Dan Levy, plays his son on the show (David) and his real life daughter, Sarah Levy, plays Twyla, the waitress at the local cafe.

2: The Avett Brothers:

Now that we’ve covered television, it would feel somehow negligent to leave out music. Back in college I used to pride myself on knowing good music. I went to see cool new bands perform at the Troubadour, I loved DeathCab For Cutie and Modest Mouse before they were popular, and I had my finger on the pulse of what was happening in the music world.

That was a long time ago.

Now I’m a mom who bee-bops to that Amy Grant/ Tori Kelly remix of “Baby Baby” in the carpool lane and I don’t even care who knows it. I’ve reached a point in my life where I know what I like and that’s what I listen to. I don’t care about keeping up with what’s “cool” in the music scene anymore.

But every once in a while I fall in a love with a band that just so happens to actually BE COOL. The Avett Brothers are one of those bands.

Here’s why I love them:

1. Their music slays. Their voices are rich, their lyrics are soulful, and they know their way around a banjo. I mean, who doesn’t love a little banjo every now and then? Even if you think you don’t, I dare you to check them out. They’re a little folk, a little rock, and a lot of soul. It’s good music any way you dice it.
2. They’re the best live show around. We live in a small town here in the Pacific Northwest, but we’re lucky to have access to Britt Music & Art Festival at an outdoor amphitheater in Jacksonville, Oregon that hosts concerts all summer long. It’s a quaint little town with one Main Street that looks like it’s right out of an old Western movie. Our favorite summer date tradition is to share a bottle of wine on the patio of a little Italian restaurant there and then walk to a concert at Britt. My very fondest memories of those summer dates are the nights we’ve spent at Avett Brothers concerts. These guys put on the best live show I’ve ever seen. EVERY SINGLE TIME. And that’s saying something, because I once saw Justin Timberlake in concert and all I can say is, boyfriend’s got game. He even had one of those bridges that float out over the audience, so he could dance across it and serenade random screaming teenagers grown women. At one point I was less than three feet away from a sweaty, air-humping Justin Timberlake, and it STILL didn’t compare to a live Avett Brothers show. If you get the opportunity to see them live, do it. It’s 1,000 times better than listening to their album (which is still totally worth doing.) They give an en energetic, full out, generous performance every single time. And they usually close out their shows with a stripped down, acoustic gospel song, sung into a single mic as they all huddle around it, inviting the audience to join in the chorus. Chills. I get chills.
3. They’re brothers. The family that plays together, stays together, ya know what I’m sayin’? I want them to adopt me as their kid sister so I can play tambourine in the background. Is that weird?
4. They’re dreamers. They grew up on a farm in North Carolina, taking piano lessons from a lady named Karen, guitar lessons from a guy named Nelson, and recording cassette tapes while they dreamed of writing and performing music as a living. They were a long shot, and yet here they are, hitting their mark. They’re good ol’ country boys living a great story.

My favorite albums are “I and Love and You” and “The Carpenter”.

In keeping with the Entertainment theme this month, let’s talk Books, shall we? (Correction: let’s talk about one book in particular, otherwise this blog post will turn into a novel because we all know I could talk about books until I go crosseyed, and then I could keep going until you go crosseyed.)

3) I’m referring to The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

This book was so good I could not stop highlighting. I literally highlighted almost every single page. Steven is famous for his fiction novels (The Legend of Bagger Vance, Tides of War, Gates of Fire, etc) but in this book he shifts course and writes to us about the creative struggle that goes on behind the scenes. Whether you’re setting out to create something, finish something you started, or simply to better yourself, this book is for you.

I love the way he talks about Resistance, that clever dragon we all must slay- every single day, over and over again.

As a writer myself, it hit home in every possible way, but I love the way he connected the theme of overcoming Resistance to all areas of our life. It’s a quick and easy read, but it’s so rich that I recommend taking your time in order to really process it. This is a book I know I’ll return to over and over again throughout the years, because it will always be relevant.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book:

SO, now that we’ve covered this month’s Favorite Things, it’s time to give one away!

This month I’m giving away the DVD set of Schitt’s Creek Season 1 & 2. 

Maybe to you!

All you have to do to enter is click the blue lighted bar at the end of this page and type in your email address.

Easy, done!

If you’ve entered in the past, don’t worry, it’s a one and done type of thing. You’re in for life (unless you unsubscribe) and you are still eligible for future giveaways!

Make sure and join us over on Facebook Live on Monday, May 1st at 12:00 pm (PST) when I’ll draw a winner and we’ll catch up on all the things!

Yay! Blogging is fun!

*this post was sent from my computer and my heart*