Culture Surfing - Kristi Casey Sanders’ Top Five

On Sundays in December, actress/singer Kristi Casey Sanders will be seen on stage at the children’s puppet musical It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year ... For Giving at PushPush Theater as part of the Savage Tree Arts Project’s holiday festival, but she’ll be more busy behind the scenes as Savage Tree’s co-founding artistic director. Some of her favorite pastimes have nothing to do with the holidays.

1) Tökéletes (http://b2.is/?sida=tengill&id=185131): “A friend of mine from Iceland sent me this link, so I can’t tell you what the blogger is saying, but the film on this Web page is so beautiful and sad, I can’t stop watching it.”

2) Album 88: “For some reason, Album 88’s playlist has gotten really good in the past month or so — or at least the DJs are making an effort to find a thematic or audial through-line in their sets, so I am enjoying the eclectic mix of hip-hop with Bonnie Prince Billy and electronica. And the way they read the news is so darn cute!”

3) For the Love of Music: Invitations to Listening by Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe: “I spend a lot of time at my day job editing Atlanta Symphony Orchestra program notes, so reading a book of essays that started off as program notes for the San Francisco Symphony is not my idea of a good time. Steinberg and Rothe don’t give you dry histories, however, but highly personal stories about the power of music and how the act of listening reveals so much about where we are in our lives.”

4) Jenny Holzer: “She’s always been one of my favorite artists. I’m delighted by the idea of secret phrases and thoughts appearing unexpectedly in public spaces. When I travel, nothing makes me happier than passing a lamppost in a city and seeing a brass plaque attached to it that’s really one of her installations, or seeing a carved bench with a portion of her text in an unexpected place.”

5) “Randy Goes Golfing” and “Menage à Moi” (http://itaki.com/media/): “Michael McReynolds of Itaki Design Studios is a master editor and special effects person, and these are two short films on his website. ‘Randy Goes Golfing’ is a little sight gag of a film, but nothing is funnier than watching a man hit himself over the head with a golf club.”