I Am Seuss

 According to my sister, I sometimes look like a Dr. Seuss character. This comment made me weirdly happy.

I think I have my next Halloween costume.

Walk Off The Earth

YouTube is a really great thing. It shares things across the world, creates communities, and provides endless hours of entertainment. It's also a great place to discover new music. Recently a group called Walk Off The Earth did a cover of Goyte's song "Somebody That I Used To Know." It went viral, and it's not hard to see why. After seeing this video, I checked out some of their other songs. They do both covers and original songs, and they're awesome. As of today, the "Somebody That I Used To Know" video has 34.5 million views. It was posted less than 3 weeks ago. Check it out:


Some of my other favorite's by these guys are a kick-ass version of Adele's "Someone Like You," and Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory."

Snow in North Van

This last weekend, I made the trek back to North Van. The trip was mainly to meet my new kitty (see my previous post), but it was a particularly nice visit in all other aspects as well. It's always nice to see my friends and family back in North Van, and I had a lovely weekend of hanging out and watching movies and chatting with them in the comfort of the man-cave that is my basement in North Van. I also brought one of my roommates along with me, which was nice. She's from Saskatchewan, and had never been to North Van before. She loved it. Not only was she pleasantly surprised to see how warm, nice, and welcoming everyone was, but she was amazing by the mountains and big trees and overall prettiness of my home city. I'll be the first to admit it, sometimes I take North Van for granted. Although we were only there for a short time, seeing it with someone who was experiencing it for the first time gave me a warm fuzzy feeling of appreciation for the place I've lived basically my whole life. We even had a little bit of snow! Here are a few photos of a walk we took down to Twin Bridges (all photo cred goes to Laura!):

View down my street

End of Hyannis

Me and Chels. I look like a bear/boy because all my clothes were in the wash.

BESTIE.

No doubt about it, I love BC.

Kitty

I met my new kitty Charlie Rosie last weekend. She's adorable as all hell, and I miss her already lots now that I'm back in Victoria. Here are a bunch of pictures for people who like cute things (hi mom!)

D'AWWW ISN'T SHE PRECIOUS

Childish Gambino

Is there anything Donald Glover can't do?

"Donald McKinley Glover^[1] (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, writer, comedian, and musician. Glover first came to attention for his work in the sketch group Derrick Comedy, and is best known for his role as community college student Troy Barnes on the NBC comedy series Community. In 2011, Glover signed to Glassnote Records under his stage name Childish Gambino, with whom he released his first studio album entitled Camp on November 15, 2011." -from his wikipedia page

Not only does he write, act, tell jokes, and rap, but he's fucking good at all of it.

This last Christmas, I got my sister his newest album, Camp (she loved it- for a real writer's take on Donald Glover, check out her post about him here). Not even two hours after she'd unwrapped it, once she'd stepped out to do some Christmas day yoga, I snagged it and transferred all the songs onto my laptop. Since then, I've listened to it many times. He's crude, egotistical, and often superficial. However, he's also funny, sometimes thoughtful, and damn good. I think the main thing that sets him apart from many other actors is that he doesn't take his rapping too seriously; he does it because he likes to, and sometimes it seems like he just does it for laughs.

In his lyrics, he constantly uses pop-culture references to his non-rapper self ("Baby, I'm your hero, Donald for Spiderman," "When I wrote for 30 Rock, I was under 25") and to others, oftentimes in the form of a pun ("All I wanted was some more like Ashton," "I'm headin' west like I'm fuckin' blowin' Kanye"). Sometimes, his lyrics are just straight up stupid ("An elephant never forgets, so my dick remembers everythin'"). It's almost like he knows he can get away with saying ridiculous things, just because of who he is.

To be honest, it took a while to be able to listen to his songs without picturing Troy from Community (like, longer than I'd care to admit) rapping. But I've finally (and slightly sadly) separated the two in my head, and continue to listen to Camp, at least in part, almost everyday. The best part of the entire album, for sure, is that after 12 songs of crude language and angry/egotistical sounding rapping, three minutes into the very last song (That Power), it slips into 4 1/2 minute monologue that closes the album. OH MY. Surprise surprise, Donald Glover has a bad-ass, strangely gentle, speaking voice and, as he talks about his ride back from summer camp with the girl he likes at age thirteen, my heart melts a little each time I hear it.  You can listen to it/read this blog post about it here.

"This is on a bus back from camp. I’m thirteen and so are you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other dudes I hadn’t met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It turned out it would be me and just one girl. That’s you. And we’re still at camp as long as we’re on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us. We’re still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still smell like pine needles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you, but I don’t know if you do or don’t more-than-like me. You’ve never said, so I haven’t been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so on. A girl who’s smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh, is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who reads books that no one’s assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet

Back in the real world we don’t go to the same school, and unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we won’t go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something. The sun’s gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. We’re talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we know. And then I’m like, “Can I tell you something?” And all of a sudden I’m telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And there’s no expression on it. And I think just after a point I’m just talking to lengthen the time where we live in a world where you haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. And regrettably I end up using the word “destiny.” I don’t remember in what context. Doesn’t matter. Before long I’m out of stuff to say and you smile and say, “okay.” I don’t know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but there’s nowhere to go because we’re are on a bus. So I pretend like I’m asleep and before long, I really am

I wake up, the bus isn’t moving anymore. The domed lights that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and you’re not there. Then again a lot of kids aren’t in their seats anymore. We’re parked at the pick-up point, which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You might be in your dad’s car by now, your bags and things piled high in the trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our way off. It’s Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light, so I can’t really see her face, but I can see her smile. And she says one word: “destiny.” Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didn’t know you were friends with them

I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our house and camp is over. So is summer, even though there’s two weeks until school starts. This isn’t a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad, this is a story about how I learned something and I’m not saying this thing is true or not, I’m just saying it’s what I learned. I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isn’t a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But it’s a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t  ."

Books and the like

I'll be the first one to (sadly) admit it: I do not read very much. You could almost definitely count the number of books I read last year on your two hands, with the majority of the books read being devoured in two very short time spans: the two weeks after Christmas, and the week I spend on Hornby Island every summer.

This year, my goal (I'm steering clear of the word "resolution," although my resolution-success is about 50-50 the last few years) is to simply read more. The trouble is, I have very few problems with wasting hours on the internet, catching up on TV shows (or rewatching every single HIMYM episode... for the second time), but oftentimes when I'm reading, I feel guilty. Like, if I'm reading this book, couldn't I be reading a textbook instead? WRONG. I should probably read more books for pleasure, both fiction and non-fiction.

I just finished A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I got it from my sister for Christmas after hearing her talk about it for months, and I loved it. Probably the most common thing I've heard people/the internet say? If an author can make a chapter consist entirely of powerpoint slides, and make it one of the best chapters in the book, it's probably worth the read. And they're right! The PowerPoint slide chapter is just.... good. It's simple, intriguing, and (obviously) unique. This novel/collection of short stories (some debate here) intertwines a bunch of different characters, from the past, present, and future, in an awesome 340 page read. I recommend checking it out.

Also, because I'm a nerd and was having some serious insomnia type sleep issues last night, I drew this up after I finished the book. Nerdy, but oddly satisfying to have it all in front of me.

It's not the best quality, and I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate, but I think it's pretty close. Here's a full one I found.

Anyways, this is what I ask of you: I need some book suggestions to read. Fiction, non-fiction, short stories, whatever. I seriously need some ideas, so do me a favor and suggest me some books in the comments!

Clue & Bobby

Alright, so this is the first post of my "Movies of 2012" series. I'm not going to post about every single movie I see, but I'll post about the ones I especially like, and maybe just list the other ones I see at the end of each post. We'll see how it works out.

Disclaimer: For some reason I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. I didn't feel stressed, or excited, or anything. I just felt a complete absence of anything resembling sleepiness. Therefore, I've been up since 3am, and am currently running on about 2-3 hours of sleep, and a free Red Bull that was given to me at the SUB today (FYI: Red Bull at 9 in the morning is neither pleasant nor recommended). Anyways, my apologies if this post lacks coherency. My heads a bit foggy right now.

#1. Clue

  Yeah, you know that board game, clue? I always hated that game, but I never knew they had made a movie in 1985 based off of it, the first movie ever to be based off of a board game (and now, they're making movies based off of the game Battleship. Battleship.). Once I heard about it, I was curious. Isn't the whole point of the game that it's a mystery every time? YES. This movie actually has three different endings. While the version I watched shows all three, when this movie came out in theaters, only one ending would be played, and it varied from theater to theater. Pretty cool, right?
I actually quite enjoyed this movie. It's a lot more interesting than the game, and probably about the same length. (Is Clue a long game? I haven't played it in ages, but for some reason I picture it being akin to Monopoly, in that it never fucking ended). Tim Curry is awesome as Wadsworth the butler, and each of the other characters are as unique and different from each other as they are in the game. It's also set during the 50's, so there's some anti-Communism/McCarthyism slipped in there, which I found interesting, and beefed up the plot a little. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It had the simplicity that old movies tend to have, yet pulled off the murder mystery nicely. If you have time, this is a fun one to check out.

#2. Bobby

 Again, Netflix suggested this one to me. I don't know how I hadn't heard about this movie, because it has, easily, at least a dozen big name actors in it. Like, of the first 15 listen on the IMDb page, there were only 2 I didn't recognize (You can check out the full cast list here).
I was  blown away by this movie. Not only was the cast great, but I really enjoyed the structure of the plot, and the fact that it was based around a real-life event (the assassination of Robert F Kennedy). It follows the stories of about 20 different people in the day leading up to the assassination at the Ambassador Hotel. The actually assassination doesn't happen until the last ten or fifteen minutes, and by that point I was strangely anxious, what with all the expectation leading up to it. This film also uses real clips of Kennedy to portray him almost entirely throughout, which gives it a bit more authenticity. I'm sure some people wouldn't enjoy it being done this way, but I liked it. Also, Emilio Estevez both directed and acted in this movie. It's weird; he's actually getting a bit old, but I always picture him as looking the exact same as he did in The Breakfast Club. Really, he doesn't look too different.
I really like this movie. I was pleasantly impressed with my first two movies of 2012.

Other movies I saw: I re-watched Your Highness with my friend. It's still funny, in a I-don't-know-if-this-is-stupid-or-hilarious kind of way.

Netflix

(Alright, so it's been a while. I'm going to try to post a little more often during this semester, but- like always- I can't promise anything.)

Just a few movie-type things
Over the Christmas break, I signed up for a free months trial on Netflix. I'm not going to lie, it's kind of awesome. Not only does it have a pretty solid collection of TV shows, but it's got a massive selection of movies that, while it doesn't include many big blockbuster type movies, by adjusting your (incredibly specific) taste profile, can find and suggest movies that you might enjoy. It's a great way to find new movies that you might not have heard of otherwise. An example of the type of movies that my taste profile suggests for me? Visually-Striking Quirky Independent Movies. So yeah, it gets pretty specific.

Also in my wildly productive Christmas break, I watched every single episode of Community (there are only 2 1/2 seasons, but still). I watched the first season on Netflix in 4 days, and was hooked. I burned through the next season and a half almost as quickly. Holy shit, that show is amazing. It's consistently funny (although the first season was definitely the best one overall), the cast is great, and the writing is smart, unique, and, like I said, hilarious (I'm kind of glad I got into the show after the mid-season hiatus was announced. Otherwise, I probably would have been a lot more upset). Abed quickly became one of my favorite TV show characters ever. Danny Pudi is a near genius.

Finally, in movie news, I actually completed my goal of keeping track of/doing a (admittedly, sometimes incredibly brief) review of every single movie I watched in 2011. You can check them all out in the upper left hand corner, under the "Pages" tab. In case you're wondering, I watched 107 movies in 2011. Hmmm. I'll probably be doing a post in the next week or so about my favorites, least favorites, funniest, etc. I actually quite enjoyed doing this. While I got lazier about it in the end, and a few times had movies backed up for almost a month before I got around to writing about them, it was kind of cool to have them all neatly listed, sort of like a weird time capsule of my 2011 (but then again, maybe that's just my OCD/nerd side coming out). I might do something similar for 2012, but in separate blog post forms, rather than having them in a list on different blog pages. So if you like watching movies, keep an eye out for movie posts (coming soon to a computer screen near you)! The first one should be coming soon. I watch a lot of movies.

Anyways, Happy New Years! I hope you all had a lovely one. I'm back to school tomorrow, and I've finally reached that point in my life where this is no longer a dreaded thing. Yay for being all mature and stuff.

Also, if you have any movies you would recommend to movie-type people in general, let me know in the comments. Thanks!