HEY ITS MAY!!!

So last year I wasn't able to post a blog under that title in May, and I realized today is the last day of May and I don't want to wait another whole full year to use it.

MAY. Where have you gone?!?!?!

This is what I have spent May doing:

Reading
Singing
Waiting Tables (at Joe Vera's Mexican Restaurant on Center Street, come in and see me!)
Going to classes
Studying (not)
Watching Prison Break
Eating Otter Pops
Basking in the temperamental sun
Fantasizing about actual nice weather
Shopping
Hot Tubbing
Getting ready and excited for all of my adventures to come this summer (like Rachel and Jason's wedding in July and Rose and Douglas' Wedding in August and Disneyland in August with the 5!)
Trying not to think about life post-college

This MAY (get it, May? Like the month?) seem like a lot, but I have a pretty relaxed schedule which is super nice.

Oh! My little sister Lauren came into town for EFY so on Sunday we went up to Temple Square, it was her first time being there which is weird. But she is fantastic and I get to spend more time with her after EFY so I'm looking forward to that!

More

Apparently I am on a Top Five kick. This post I will be sharing my Top Five movies that I love right now. Translation, these are not my ALL TIME favorite movies, although some may make the leap there, rather these are my I LOVE these movies right now. Plus, if you know me I have a million favorites of everything.

(Oh, and also, just a little comment out of vanity, I always judge my posts based on the number of comments, and last post was a record high of 7! WOO! Seriously though, if a post gets zero I feel like I failed and like I have to step it up for the next post. K. Now I'm embarrassed I said that.)

So on to my....

Top Five Favorite Movies Right Now

1. Bella. 2006. I don't really know how to explain this one because every time I try to say what its about, it doesn't convey the right feeling. So. There is this cook and a waitress, they skip work and spend the day together in New York. Kinda. I mean, they do, but you just have to see it. It is VERY good. Funny, sentimental, beautiful. Everything. Plus it won Peoples Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and if I know anything about Toronto, its that they have great taste in cinema. Plus the main guy has BEAUTIFUL eyes. Seriously, he should be a soap star. Or my husband. Just saying.



2. Synecdoche, New York. 2008. If you know me in school, you know how much I love simulation and simulacrum. If you know me outside of school, I'm telling you now. Simuacrum = my favorite thing EVER. Really, I'm salivating just talking about it. Baudrillard is my hero. So, needless to say I love this movie. There is this play director, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who is so brilliant he gets a grant to write and direct a play, so he decides to write a play about New York, so he builds a life size New York inside of a warehouse as his stage. He wants everything to be exactly true to life, so he hires an actor to play him, and everyone else in his life, and in New York. The same conversations happen in each life, so the fake life begins to get realer than his real life. OOOOH. SOOOOO GOOOOOD. There is a few objectionable parts, so watch it edited or on one of those fancy pants DVD players that edits. I could talk about this movie ALL DAY. Although, I feel like you might have to be someone like me to enjoy it. But maybe not, I only know one other person who has seen it.



3. Rebel Without A Cause. 1955. James Dean. It was released a month after he died, which adds a lot of weight to the movie. Basically I love it. Its about James Dean, who is a rebel, and he doesn't have a cause. Deep analysis, I know. But really, it feels like a non-musical West Side Story. It has all the essential elements of a good movie: whiney kids, fast cars, death, planetariums, famous red jackets, and knife fights. What more could you want? Oh, Natalie Wood is in it, you know, Maria from West Side Story! Yeah, the one who one an Oscar for playing a Puerto Rican, when she is most definitely white. Ridiculous, right? Right.



4. 8 1/2. 1963. Frederico Fellini. This is about a famous director with writers block. As he is starting to direct a film with no script, we see the different influences of the women in his life, wives, lovers, friends, prostitues etc. This was Fellini's 8 1/2 film he ever directed, thus the name. The recent film 9 (2009) with Daniel Day Lewis and Nicole Kidman is based on this movie. I saw them both, and true to originals versus remakes, 8 1/2 is better.



5. Brief Encounter. 1945. Laura and Alec meet by chance one Thursday in town. Each succeeding Thursday they meet and a love interest begins (they are both married with children). They only meet a few Thursdays but the encounter changes each of their lives. Its really really moving and it raises a lot of questions, which I'm all about in film.



Enjoy!!!

Number One

So, I have this list of my top five favorite male celebrities, based on hottness, because what else would be a worthy qualification, talent? Pshhh. But seriously, these guys have it all, and I am going to share this list with you tonight...never has a blog been so fun to write.

(PS if Calista can blog about her love affair with her TV, I believe I am perfectly justified in blogging about this...)

1. Lee Pace: I don't even have to say anything, do I? Just look at him. I first saw him in Pushing Daisies as The Pie Maker, who could bring people back from the dead, but only for one minute. Never have I wanted to kiss someone so badly through saran wrap...



2. Adam Brody: he is intelligent, witty and all around a good guy...on The O.C. that is, but I'm sure hes the same way in real life. Seriously, I am sure because I stalk him. Plus, his smile is adorable.



3. Heath Ledger: He's not further at the top of this list because usually he's my number one for dead celebrities, but I love him so much he goes here. Plus, he's crazy crazy talented. RIP you lovely man.



4. Justin Timberlake: funny, great golfer, sexy singer, pretty bad actor, but I'll let that one slide JT, just because you're so cute.



5. Wentworth Miller: He looks good in prison clothes. Nuff said. Plus, he broke in to prison then out again to save his brother. Then he broke out of a different prison in Panama. Talk about skills. Mad ones. Never before has prison looked so appealing.




Oh Happy Day!

Publicity

So I did it.

I went "public" with my blog.

I put it on facebook. I am still not too sure if this was a good idea or not. Now I am even more worried about trying not to sound like an idiot on here.

On other notes, I am going up to Ogden tonight for the weekend with Ashley, because she is presenting at the Weber State National Literary Conference!!! YAY Ashley!

I will leave you with a frontispiece of Aphra Behn, who was the first woman to earn a living by her pen :) She also wrote Oroonoko which was recently adapted into a play, which I am aching to see.

:)

Dear Readers,

I am a happy happy girl right now. I have a lot of love for a lot of things. Here are some good quotes for you from some of my favorite people:

"May you live all the days of your life!" --Jonathan Swift

"Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake." -- Henry David Thoreau

"It is not length of life, but depth of life." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." -- Gandhi

Sorry if I am especially sappy right now (this will be the only time I promise), but I believe every one of those quotes, and I hope to live up to them. I recently discovered how beautiful passion can render its connoisseur, and I was deeply inspired.

Because I can never have a blog sans photo, I tried to find a perfectly blissful picture to show one of my happiest moments, but while looking through my stuff, I couldn't find just one to express my joie de vivre. It seems I have a pretty fantastic life. Hence I give you a picture which I think perfectly exemplifies the celebration of living.

Obsession

So, I am obsessed with a boy.

His name is Blake Mycoskie.

I have never met him. I first saw him on the Amazing Race, (season 2) with his sister Paige. I liked him, but soon forgot all about him. These TV crushes of mine (un)fortunately don't stand the test of time.

Fast forward a few years. I see a man on Oprah, he is definitely attractive and he has started his own company called Toms Shoes, where for every pair you buy they give a pair to a child in Argentina. Rad, I think, an attractive and socially conscious man! SCORE! So I buy a pair. Then I buy another pair. Then I become a little umm...interested in him. I do some research using good ol Google, and realize he is Blake from Blake and Paige! Then I read that he was in a Man Pageant ahem...a "Bachelor of the Year" program which appeared on Fox in 2000. I was sad because I missed that boat. As luck would have it, I happened to see this program this summer. Yes, I watched it. It was terribly painful and Blake did not make it very far.

But the reason for this blog was to share something he wrote on his blog back in January which I love...

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. he simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."

- Francois Auguste Rene Chateaubriand

Well, to close this blog up, here is a picture of Blake from his Man Pageant days:


And now a recent photo of him with his shoes:


whoever said men don't get better with age was seriously disturbed. (not true in all cases)

My Conversion Story

This is my conversion story, and it's very personal to me.

Last Saturday I decided that I was converted to the church of 3-D Movies.

Ok, maybe that was a little irreverent.

But seriously.

I have always been a skeptic of the third dimension, especially remembering that horrific 3-D Movie with Michael Jackson at Disneyland. Sorry Mike, I am not a fan. And there are always too many tricks they play with the audience that I do not like. Period. They are fun the first time, but after that they are annoying and downright disturbing. I apparently have remnant issues from my childhood from that Michael Jackson movie...

But ever since then I have avoided the hype. Avatar. Sorry folks, but I don't give a damn. And all the critics who say that 3D is the new future for movies. False.

So what changed my mind, on 3D at least? (I still believe what I said in the paragraph above)

ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

I haven't always been the biggest Alice fan, mostly because the movie creeped me out as a child (why I liked Pinocchio I'll never know), but I was way excited to see it because its Tim Burton! And he can't go wrong. (Rumor is he's directing Sleeping Beauty next!!!). So I go to the theatre, put on my 3D glasses and watch a Friskies commercial in 3D. It was weird. Then we see all the previews in 3D!! COOL! Seriously, most of the previews I had seen before, but 3D made them all soo much cooler! And it made me way more interested to see them!

So then, the moment of truth. The movie started. From the get go it was beautiful, visually stimulating and just a trip. (Not a drug trip which Jessie thought I was referring to, but like a vacation trip) I was transported to Tim Burton's magical fairy land, full of drugged caterpillars and the over-sized head of Helena Bonham Carter. It was fabulous.

I loved every minute of its 3D bliss. It was sooo amazing. Bravo Timmy, Bravo.

Go see it.

P.S. Johnny Depp is always a treat. Always.