Blogger Swap Awesomeness :)

 I participated in a blogger swap recently so I could get a little help with this list of 101 things I would like to do within 1001 days.

My partner, Miranda at Aimless Translation, sent me a lot of thoughtful stuff to help me out :) I got these about a week ago and the only excuse I have for posting this so late is that  I moved! and pretty much all the small things that could go wrong with that did so I haven't had time to sit down and blog until tonight.

 Here's a few photos  of what she sent me :) Her arrangement's so pretty too. I didn't even think to make mine pretty, just practical. I keep forgetting you can do both...

Thanks Miranda! This is what she helped me out with:

20: Go 2 weeks drinking only water (sugar free packets to make the water taste better!  - There's a strawberry lemonade flavor and a cherry which is my favorite flavor!

65: Hand write a letter a month to a family member - She sent me some note cards monogrammed with my initial. I'm already behind on this so I needed this extra boost

83: Find a new favorite cocktail: She sent me a recipe for what sounds like an awesome cocktail. I'll have to give it a try when we finally get this new place all set.

91: Fill every page of a journal: She sent me an adorable monogrammed journal that will fit perfectly in my bag. Hope to have this done by the end of 2012 :)

33 and 34: See a ballet and an opera in Seattle: Miranda looked up some productions for me and gave me the dates which was helpful because I hear about these things and then forget to look up when and then all of the sudden they're gone. I'd love to see how they do Snow White ballet style and I'm already looking forward to Madame Butterfly.

Thanks again, Miranda! And thanks Holly for putting this together.

Top Twelve Thursdays: Christmas Time!!!!!

Taking a lead from  Life.Love and posting my favorite Christmas songs of the moment! (I can't have favorites of all time, that changes literally all the time. Links are to youtube videos, some of which are fun to watch too. The first and the last are pretty special though. If you want to make your own, then you link up with Shauna at Life.Love  :)

1. Carol of the Bells - Mannheim Steamroller: a creepy instrumental version. PLUS the video I found for this is awesome. I'll just let you embrace it and not give spoilers. Trust guys.

2. White Christmas -  Bing Crosby: from the movie White Christmas

3. River - Robert Downey Jr. : from the only good season of Ally McBeal (shhh sorry I'm fun)

4. Where are you Christmas - Faith Hill : From How The Grinch Stole Christmas 

5. Christmas Tree - Lady Gaga: You have to appreciate Lady Gaga/have a sense of humour to appreciate this. It's dirty but fun ;)

6. Believe -Josh Groban : from the movie Polar Express. His voice is so deep and sexy but still innocent.


7. Only Hope - Mandy Moore: I KNOW, I know, it's super embarrassing that I like this song. I'm  also not sure it's technically Christmas but she sings it during the Christmas play in  A Walk To Remember. It's also embarrassing that I like that movie. There are other versions of this that are equally good. Help me find them!


8. Carol of the Bells - John Williams : the Home Alone version aka  the traditional version


9. Christmas Time Is Here - from A Charlie Brown Christmas : it sounds so sad, but I can play this on piano :) ...or could.


10. Silent Night - all Instrumental versions:  but if we need something specific then Enya's 

Oíche Chiúin works too :) 

11. Carol of the Bells - Hayley Westenra: I just discovered this! Not too creepy but not too traditional either


I'll find tons of other creepy instrumental christmas music, but I'll just leave you with this one for my twelfth. Enjoy ;)


12. Jingle Bell Rock - Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chalbert: this one's just necessary.

November 6th, 2011 - Packing for Mars

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void  by Mary Roach is a nonfiction analysis of what NASA's work on getting to Mars. What we know and what we need to find out.

Sounds boring, right?

It's surprisingly not. Mary Roach has a talent for picking up the weird minutiae and pulling a whole chapter out of it. Like: how do you shit in space? stay clean? eat? at what point do you reach your BO threshold and when does your skin stop accumulating oil. Is that story about Enos the chimpanzee being the first thing to orgasm in space even true? ( spoiler alert:  it's not...probably)

I'm definitely going to read her other books: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

By the way, they're using cadavers for crash test dummies now. I'm trying not to judge based on my initial reaction, but I'd be freaked out.

Anyway, I'm always hesitant about recommending nonfiction books, but if you once in your life had an interest in space you'll probably enjoy this one.

October 20th, 2011 - Saving Aimee

So, I know I saw this a couple of weeks ago but I haven't really wanted to write anything about it. So I didn't. I'm only doing so now because I don't want to screw up my record and leave my few readers in the dark for too long.

It's not that I didn't like this new musical with book and lyrics by Kathie Lee Gifford and music by David Pomeranz and David Friedman. It's more that I was kinda of 'meh' about it and I'm not entirely sure why.

Saving Aimee is a biography musical that takes us from Aimee Semple McPherson's teenage years and through 3 marriages, 2 kids, a possible fling/kidnapping, and the development of an extremely influential religious movement.

I'm not very religious; not quite an atheist, but when people start putting words in Nollij's mouth I get a little suspicious. So when I first heard that a musical was underway based on the founder of one of the biggest church's in LA, I started thinking that maybe this would be the one that would break my streak.

I went to the Spotlight Night to see where they were going with this, and learned that Aimee led quite the scandalous life, (she was the evangelical Kim Kardashian, basically) and they were going to focus on her entertainment impact just as much as her religious one.

So I saw it.

It was good story, but there was a lot to cram in there (three and half love stories will do that) and I didn't come away humming any tunes (although the music was good). There weren't a whole lot of characters you could get attached to either, since Aimee was always in the center of it. If she wasn't on stage, they were singing about her. Props to Carolee Carmello for pulling it off, however. She was very talented as was the rest of the cast.

Maybe that was what made it 'meh' for me, Aimee had no outside foil. She was both Beatrice and Hero and that just means there was no one to root for/against. It just kind of was.

I don't regret going, but I don't think I'd see it again is what I'm saying.

October 2nd, 2011 - The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller, written by Hugh Laurie - yes THE Hugh Laurie, more on that later - is a tale starring a sarcastic, loner, but eminently capable Thomas Lang who can play many different roles very well.

Sound familiar?

Ok, it's later. When I mean THE Hugh Laurie, I mean Dr. House in House, Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility, the voice of myriad animated characters, and apparently he was in Spice World? We love him best when he plays sarcastic, loner, eminently capable characters because we know he has a soft silly side.

In regards to The Gun Seller ever being made into a movie, he implied that it would be nice to play a small cameo part but he imagined they'd want someone stellar and action-figure like to play Mr. Lang.

He published this the year just after Spice World came out, just to put that comment in perspective.

Also he is now a musician. Life just isn't fair sometimes.

Anyway, back to the book. The Gun Seller is amazingly well-written with the zingers flying left and right and twists and turns in plot and lots of mystery.  But mostly you just want to take Thomas Lang and snuggle him so he can be sarcastic but snuggle you back. Because that's how he is. Sadly, he's just too busy saving the world from evil corporate multi-rotor ( I don't actually know if that was the thing that made them technologically advanced but something high techy) helicopters that can besiege a city faster than you can blink.

More importantly, there's not really a lady worth him snuggling until three quarters of the way through (so you can pretty much ignore her) - which was smart on Laurie's part because then all the snuggle-worthy ladies out there have their sights set on him, because Lang is Laurie in a fictional world where there are evil corporate multi-rotor helicopters that need stopping.

I know I made that sound a little frivolous, but there was a lot of thought behind the twists and turns and conspiracies of the plot. In fact, every once in a while I double checked the copyright date of this book because it was written in 1998 but he seems to allude to 9/11 and how Americans view terrorism when they're not a victim of it and how that would change if, flying spaghetti monster-forbid, anything should happen. (it was a pretty spot-on prediction in my opinion. )

I loved it and want a movie, but only if Laurie plays Lang.

Doesn't this pic just say

"Let's snuggle but just so you know, 

sarcasm means 'I love you' in British" 

September 11th, 2011 - Never Let Me Go

So my idea for this 9/11/11 meeting was to read something related to the 9/11, but received no response for that, so Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was selected.

(pro tip to future/current online book club organizers: If you build it, they will come. If you ask for feedback, all you'll hear is crickets*.)

Never Let Me Go is one of those books that reveal important details to you after you've spent 5 chapters trying to puzzle it out. So I'm just going to make my recommendation vague for those of you who don't want spoilers.

I'd say read it, or at least see the movie with Kiera Knightly and Carey Mulligan (I haven't seen it but I tend to <3 Kiera Knightly - yeah I know I'm weird). The story raises a lot of good points about how hard it is to go back from the comforts technological advancement and science can give us, and what that means ethically, and why we should stop shady things in the beginning. It should make you think. But it's not a happy story so be prepared to not exactly like it.

Also, it focuses more on the emotional reaction/result of the scientific achievement,  not how it theoretically works, so I wouldn't call it science fiction. I actually wish there was a little more background given, but I respect what Ishiguro was doing by leaving it out.

Oh and for those of you screaming, "How dare you say someone see the movie instead of read the book???!!!!" It's because I think the point is worth making and I recognize that not everyone out there reads 3-4 books a month like I do. Get over your hipster self.


*BTW GUYS! do you watch The SingOff on NBC? It's an acapella competition show and this one group called UrbanMethod did a version Airplanes by B.O.B featuring Haley this week (10/24/2011) and one of the guys started it off with cricket noises and IT WAS AWESOME!  I'm rooting for Pentatonix  though

August 11th, 2011 - Les Misérables

Les Misérables set off the 2011-2012 season of musicals at the 5th. It was preformed by a touring production that was celebrating it's 25th year with a set and costume and choreography redesign.

I had never seen the original so I have nothing to compare it to, but I thought the set design was beautiful and amazing and technologically up to date. I always get a little thrill when a musical can shock you with something you didn't know could be done, and this new set had a couple of wonderful moments. I know some people who dislike the movement towards digital backdrop, but I think these maintained the artistry that a handcrafted one would, while also adding a couple of extra features.

Unfortunately the thing they didn't touch (I'm assuming), the music, was disappointing to me. I of course had heard renditions of a few of their more famous songs "I Dreamed a Dream" and "On My Own", but I f kept away from the soundtrack for once and trusted the rave reviews. I do not understand why this show is so popular.  Yes the good songs are GREAT but maybe they're so great because of the 10 minutes of discordant nonsense you had to sit through to get there.

The book and lyrics assume that the audience is pretty familiar with the story - which is asking lot, have you tried to read Hugo's  Les Misérables? -  because it doesn't take a whole lot of time to introduce the myriad of characters and single out who you're supposed to care about. They just throw them in there and if you miss the name you're screwed.

I feel like they lyricists and musicians could have done a better job making the story more accessible. I had to dig way down into my memory of high school to remind myself what was going on rather than be gently reminded by the show. And while I agree that nothing kills a show faster than too much exposition, not enough left me with a bad taste too. Although what do I know, because this has been on tour for 25 years.

That being said, the actress who played Eponine, Chasten Harmon, was brilliant. Loved her.

And I'd probably see it again if it comes back just to figure out if I liked it or not. (I know it sounds like I didn't like it, but now that I know what to expect I'm hoping to have a different experience)

Also...apparently there's going to be another movie with Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway (what?), despite there already being one although the 1998 version wasn't a musical one.