Awesome

Famous

Celebrities I have seen while I have been living in New York:


Woody Allen


Claire Danes


The emo tool behind Dashboard Confessional


James Cromwell


Joan Allen


Dylan Baker


Scary Spice


Joey Fatone
(Scary Spice and Joey Fatone were on the same day within 15 minutes of each other. I felt like I had slipped into some weird 90's pop vortex)


Tony Soprano


Ferris Bueller


Nick Jonas (not really. This is for Sarah. I'M SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!)

This post was prompted by the fact that this man:

Gerard Butler

lives near where I work, and so I've seen him a total of three times. In New York, seeing someone three times, famous or not, is kind of a big deal. I took the same subway every day at around the same time all summer and never saw anyone more than once. When I lived in my old apartment, I never saw 2/3 of the people that lived there, and it was only a 5 story building. So, like a friend suggested, perhaps if I see Mr. Butler 10 times a genie will pop out of the sidewalk and grant me a wish. Or maybe under some obscure law he'll be obligated to marry me. You never know.

Catch Up

So I'm finally back home after visiting my family in Colorado and America's dairy-land, aka Wisconsin. I goofed around with my sister, learned some interesting tidbits about my mother's past, went to Sonic, watched a lot of TV, slept, and appreciated the absence of humidity. Obviously I did not have a single second to devote to this blog. But now I'm back. Back on the East Coast, back in my new apartment/house, back in the humidity, and back to being a real person. (Ha!) Since I a) have yet to hear if I'm going to become employed in the near future and b) I don't feel like organizing all of my crap that's currently sitting in boxes piled around my new room, it's list time again!


-I saw (500) Days of Summer and loved it. Loved the clothes, loved the music, and only had slight issues with the plot. Seeing as how this movie could categorized as a romantic comedy, a genre of movies that I typically despise, the fact that I really, really liked it speaks volumes. My thoughts about the title character can be summed up in this little comic that has been floating around the web recently:

Brilliant.

-Because of said movie, I have also been forced to add this man

to my "Celebrities that I would willingly get naked with 5 seconds after meeting them" list. Ahem. Moving on!

-This rumor (oh god oh god oh god I hope it's just a rumor) makes me absurdly angry.

-I've become obsessed with 'No Reservations', Anthony Bourdain's travel/food show, and with cake decorating shows. The first because the host is funny, I'm a travel nerd and I love food...the second I have no idea why. Because they're pretty?

-I tried to watch this movie with my friend Maggie

(aka Kirk Cameron's ode to boats, porn, firefighters and Jesus) but it was so awful we only got through half and had to turn it off.

-Did I mention I went to SONIC????

I swear, Sonic cherry limeaid is like the elixir of the gods. If someone took me on a date (cough I'm looking at you JGL cough cough) to Sonic and bought me a cherry limeaid and an order of tater tots, I would marry them on the spot. (Or at least give them a really good bj)

-I just finished this book after seeing the movie

and was fascinated with just how much the FBI sucked when it first was organized.

-I have an absurdly long list of TV shows that I want to add to my Netflix, including but not limited to: The Wire, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Twin Peaks, Weeds, and Deadwood.

And now a quick story to sum up the post: Anyone who has spent more than a week's worth of time with me will inevitably be made aware of my not-so-secret obsession with Lord of the Rings. I love the books, love the movies, love the awful cartoon, loved the memorabilia you could buy in the SkyMall magazine found in the pockets of airplane seats. I would buy the movie soundtracks and listen to them over and over and over, until I had the themes to each movie pretty much memorised. Two days ago, I was sitting on a plane back to New York, watching the buildings and lights below from my tiny porthole window, and fiddling with the crappy music stations on my armrest. Just as the Manhattan skyline came into view, I paused on the classical music station and was surprised to hear the opening notes of one of the songs from "Return of the King". It was the song played at the very end, when Aragorn is crowned king and sucks Liv Tyler's face off and everyone bows to the hobbits. So I listened to the flutes and horns and strings as Manhattan glistened below me, and just as my plane touched down, the song ended. I think that was a good sign.

So I know...

...that Hollywood might possibly totally bastardize the story and make it have explosions and possible robots BUT



is it so wrong that I'm a little excited about this?

Mad Woman

A show that I desperately need to catch up with is 'Mad Men'. It would always be on right when I had to study for finals, or when I actually had some semblance of a social life, so I would only catch snippets of it and be all, "Damn, Don Draper is sexy. I wish I could wear every dress featured on this show. I also wish I could smoke and drink with such abandon. I wish actual things like hamburgers still cost a nickle. Damn, Don Draper is SEXY"......and so on. From what I have seen, the art direction, makeup and costume design are stunning, plus it's set in an era I'm extremely interested in, PLUS did I mention Don Draper is sexy? Hopefully this fall I'll have more time to sit around and watch my ever-growing Netflix cue, which now includes all the disks of 'Mad Men' I can get my hands on (as well as Fargo, Donnie Darko, The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys, The Queen, and The Girl Next Door. Ha!) Until then, I'll have to satisfy my Mad Men cravings with this very neat promotion/game thing that the people at AMC's website came up with called Mad Men Yourself, which enables you to create an awesome looking 'Mad Men' alter ego. Here's mine:



Why can't I look like this ALL THE TIME??? Look at my cute little watch and glasses and cigarette and dead animal around my neck!!!!!! I've said it once and I'll say it a billion more times: I love 1950's clothing. I covet it. If I could have one wish, well... it would be for world peace. But, if I had TWO wishes, I would ask for world peace and then for '50's style to become all the rage so I could walk down the street in gloves and a pillbox hat and not get deranged looks from passersby. (Then I would fly to all the places in the world that are now conflict-free in my pillbox hat and perhaps have a Mai-Tai on my way there) And in this beautiful universe where everyone holds hands and wears red lipstick and pearls, I would of course need a traveling "companion":



What?

Literary Failures

I stumbled upon a fantastic and hilarious blog the other day entitled Awful Library Books. It features weird, outdated and hilarious books found by the two librarians that run the site. Two of my favorites:




The rest of the blog is equally as great and I highly recommend it. And speaking of things literary that I recommend, I recently started reading this:



My friend Maggie told me about the book and I'm really enjoying it. Normally historical books are a little dry for my taste, but this one is very well written and exciting to read. I'm only about a third of the way through, but SPOILER ALERT Lincoln just died and it was sad and moving and Mary Lincoln is kind of a nut job huh? Anywhoo I'm looking forward to getting back on the subway so I can read more about what a bastard Booth was.

I wish...

that this was my summer.

Concerning Aquariums

Aquariums are some of my favorite places in the world, ever. If I am visiting a city for the first time, I judge whether I like it or not based on two main things: the food I eat and if it has a good aquarium. (Note: New York City is damned lucky I did not visit the aquarium before deciding to live here. Just saying.) I can literally stay for hours in these places, and that's saying something. My ADD usually kicks in after about 45 minutes even at places I love, like the MOMA or the Met. But there's something about aquariums that facinates me and soothes me. Maybe it's the soft music they play, maybe it's the blues and greens of the water, or maybe it's the slow movements of sea fans and anenomes swishing back and forth in the simulated surf. Anyway, you can probably guess my reaction when I saw this video:



To quote the inspirational Liz Lemon: I WANT TO GO TO THERE. Seriously. They have WHALE SHARKS!!!!! I'm seriously considering having my friend from Japan translate my resume so I can be one of those tiny scuba people floating around in the tank picking up whale shark crap in case the whole "Find a job in New York" doesn't pan out. Because I'd love it.

On a related note, it's also not a surprise that this is currently one of my favorite commercials on TV right now:



Any commercial with sea turtles and clown fish gets my approval, add manta rays and I'm yours. Good job VISA!

Summer Jam

Love the lyrics and the video. Whenever guy stuff has been getting me down this summer, I just play this song and crank up the volume.

Holy Crap

It's mid-July. This blog has been abandoned, and I feel bad, but the explosion in the post below still remains a good visual description of the chaos that is my life this summer. The only reason I have time to write this now is because I mapped out an evening to clean my room and start packing, and of course I'm procrastinating. I figured that I would devote this post to catching up a bit...a quick little summery of the pop culture tidbits that have occupied my brain this summer so far. Let's begin!

Obsession #1
The new pictures that were released from Tim Burton's upcoming 'Alice in Wonderland'





When I saw these my mind almost exploded. Movie makeup is something I'm looking at as a potential career choice, so I'm always hunting for examples of what I would eventually be able to produce myself. A++++++ and a billion gold stars to Leslie Devlin, Susan Stepanian, Patty York and all the other talented artists involved with this project.

Obsession #2
The movie 'Adventureland' (and the soundtrack)


I saw Adventureland after it had been in theatres for a pretty long time, but I was glad I caught it. I went in expecting a standard teen summer comedy, with dick jokes and boobs and maybe a message about how nerds win in the end. All those elements were there, but didn't overshadow what was a sweet, subtle, and thoughtful ode to growing up. Plus, it has a KILLER soundtrack. I've been rocking out to it for about a month now, and I have to say, "Don't Change" by INXS has earned a place on my list of near perfect pop-songs.

Obsession #3
Dior's newest Couture collection
Fashion and I have an interesting relationship. I like following it, can't afford to dress how I would like to, and wish I had the ability/talent to style myself better. I am also larger than a size 2, so couture lines and I never really cross paths. But when I saw these pictures :





all I could think was, "WANT". Despite the face that I will probably never have the need for a corset/ballgown, I would willingly amputate one of my toes to own it (what? The dress covers my feet!) Also, ever since I returned from England I have become increasingly obsessed with hats, but again, I have no occasion/outfits to wear them with. I really should have lived during the 50's.