Links

Alternate Endings - The Titanic one is just the worst.

Linguistic Hedges - Seriously, like... totally.

Limerick Episode Guide - I don't know why this exists but I’m glad it does.

80s Toys - OMG I found these in a random Etsy shop and was immediately transported to my childhood. I had totally completely forgotten all about these! I have no idea what exactly I did with them, but I so clearly remember having them! It’s such an odd feeling to see something like this.

TV Show Write Ups - Interesting write-up of recapping TV shows. I had forgotten all about DawsonsWrap and how it became MightyBigTV before becoming TelevisionWithoutPity.

Election 2012

Presidential Election Map - All these different breakdowns are actually really interesting.

Candy Cane Oreos

Candy Cane Oreos
Candy cane Oreos. YES. I wants them. Since I was deprived of any candy corn Oreos for Halloween, I demand these at once!

Angry Birds

Angry Birds Star Wars!!!!

I CANNOT wait for Angry Birds Star Wars. The gameplay looks really awesome - I can't wait to see what all the birds do!

Plush Planets - These are so cute!!

The Evolution of Girls Halloween Costumes

Fairy Tales for 20-Somethings - Some of these hit kind of close to home!

Arrested Westeros - Some of these work really really well.

Link List!

Just a few fun links I found recently!

State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls - I find this endlessly hilarious.

Fictional Character Birthday Calendar - How was I not aware that Sookie Stackhouse and I share a birthday?!

OMG Space - Hoooly craaaap, I feel so small.

Mischief Managed: A Harry Potter Retrospective - If you have a hankering to rewatch all the Harry Potter movies, but don’t have 20 hours to spare!

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game

If I played this drinking game, I'd die of alcohol poisoning immediately.

Hunger Games Trilogy

So I finally finished the Hunger Games Trilogy. It only took me about 2 weeks, including the time it took for Amazon to ship the last 2 books to me. I could barely put them down, I was so engrossed in the story. Now I see why this trilogy has become such a phenomenon!

TV Show Names

This is a really cool look at the process of naming a TV show.

March Birchbox

Another month, another Birchbox! This one had items that they partnered with Teen Vogue to find. My box included:
Essie Luxeffects nail polish (a full sized bottle!!!!)
Kate Spade New York Twirl perfume sample
Kerastase Elixir Ultime hair nourishing oil
Tarte LipSurgence lip tint (another full size!!)
Twistband Hair Tie

WTF...

I don’t know what this even is but I think I like it.

The Artist

I finally saw the winner for the Best Picture for 2012, The Artist! It took a few minutes to get used to the silence, since this is a silent film and all. But it was super easy to follow even with minimal title cards. I haven’t seen many silent films, so I always kind of wondered how they could hold an audience’s attention without dialogue, but it was surprisingly easy to get into the story of The Artist. I didn’t totally love the movie, but I did like it and enjoy it. That it was able to be popular with audiences enough to get nominated and win Best Picture is certainly quite an achievement for a silent film. Actually, it was probably quite an achievement just to get made!

Sweet Valley

You have NO IDEA how excited I am for this!!

Pinterest

I’m obsessed with Pinterest. I could lose hours just scrolling through all the pictures, pinning craft projects I’ll never make, recipes I’ll never try, furniture I’ll never buy, and clothes I can’t afford. But it’s a lot of fun! And I really do get ideas for things I SWEAR I’ll do someday.

My Pinterest is here. Follow me!

Bossypants

I loved Tina Fey’s book, Bossypants. I thought she was awesome on SNL, and I’ve loved the few seasons of 30 Rock that I’ve watched so far. Her self-deprecating brand of humor extends to her autobiography, which details not only her time on those shows, but also her awkward childhood and early career. I really enjoyed reading about how she got her start in comedy, since that’s not a field I know much about but I think is insanely interesting.

The Daly Show

This is basically the cutest thing ever.

Oscars

This was one of the few years where I haven’t gotten completely hammered by the end of the Oscar show, which is too bad, because it probably would have seemed more entertaining if I had been. I thought Billy Crystal did a decent job as host; he’s a pro at this. Watching the Oscars is better when you’ve seen more nominated movies than I did, I think. I didn’t really have any vested interest in any of the movies. I watched a ton of red carpet coverage, though; thanks to my DVR, I was able to fast forward through the less entertaining parts, which there were actually a lot of. It just wasn’t a very memorable year for me. Next year, I hope to try harder to see all the nominated movies. Hopefully there will be better movies...

This Means War

Last night I saw a screening of This Means War on the Fox lot last night. This is easily one of my favorite movies so far this year! I loved the friendship between Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, and how they competed to win Reece Witherspoon’s affections. Obviously, some of the things that happened like wiretapping her phone and installing bugs in her apartment would, in real life, be problematic, but within with the context of this movie, it was hilarious! I just found the whole movie really enjoyable and fun!

Plus, I (well, my boyfriend) won a goody bag in the raffle before the movie! It was a reusable American Idol bag filled with 4 DVDs, plus a pair of Simpsons pajama pants!

February Birchbox

My new Birchbox came in the mail!! I got:
Benta Berry G-1 Moisturizing Face Cream
Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant
Jouer Luminizing Moisture Tint
Violent Lips Temporary Lip Tattoos
Supersmile Powdered Mouthrinse

The 25 Douchiest Bars in LA

I’ve been to like half of these, even went to one of them last night. I would have to disagree about a lot of this...

Ghost Rider 2

So I definitely liked this movie more than I liked War Horse... what does that say about me?! It wasn’t a perfect movie, either, but at least it was fun! Nicolas Cage got to bring out his crazy to the max, and it worked.

War Horse

I saw another Best Picture contender, War Horse. I was completely underwhelmed. I don’t often say that I didn’t like a movie, but... I didn’t really like this one. I guess it wasn’t a bad movie, exactly, it just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get into it, and I just didn’t care about what happened to that horse, at all. It felt like I was watching a BBC miniseries or something, not a Best Picture film by Steven Spielberg.

A Stolen Life

I finished reading Jaycee Dugard’s autobiography, A Stolen Life. It was very simply told, and had periodically had breaks in the story where she explained things from her current point of view, post-therapy. It’s both heartbreaking and perplexing that such thing could happen, that a girl could be kidnapped and held hostage for 18 years. The book really justifies why she didn’t try to escape; after all, she was just a little girl when she was taken and her kidnappers filled her young head with fear of leaving and fear of what the outside world was really like.

Valentine's Cake

A cookie cake trumps flowers any day of the week, but especially on Valentine’s Day!

Armageddon

I just finished watching the commentary on my Armageddon Criterion Collection DVD. Ben Affleck is hilarious!! He’s completely irreverent, yet somehow also intellectual. Michael Bay, meanwhile, spends 20 minutes talking about how “unsexy” NASA was. I love the other commentary too, the one with the technical guys. There’s a guy talking about all the things that are inaccurate, like fire in space and stuff.

Someone beat me to it and wrote a list of ‘61 Things We Learned From The Armageddon Commentary’. It’s long but it’s fantastic and worth a read, if you like Armageddon as much as I do.

Man on a Ledge

I saw Man on a Ledge last night. It was a fun movie if you don’t have a fear of heights. If you do, I bet this movie would be kind of hard to watch, like the way I can’t watch The Perfect Storm because I’m afraid of drowning. I like heist-y, action-y kind of movies, so I found this one pretty enjoyable. And I totally loved the ending, which I don’t want to spoil here, but it was kind of cheesy and that’s why I liked it.

The Hunger Games

I finally gave in and read The Hunger Games. I knew that I wanted to read it at some point, but when I was randomly at a Walmart and saw it, I immediately decided, why not now? I read it in about 2 days and absolutely LOVED it. It was the first time in a while that I’ve read a story where I didn’t have any clue where it was going. I loved the premise of a dystopian future that pits teenagers against each other in a fight to the death, and I loved the fierce main character, Katniss. I just ordered the other 2 books in the series on Amazon; I hope they get here really quickly. I can’t wait to read them!!

New Birchbox!

I just got my new Birchbox in the mail! It contains:
1. Juicy Couture fragrance sample
2. Miracle Skin Transformer Concealer
3. VMV Hypoallergenics Re:everything Eye Serum (for undereyes)
4. Zoya Nail Polish in Megan (a gorgeous lavender-gray color)
5. ‘wichcraft Granola
The great thing about Birchbox is that you get a chance to try out products that you would otherwise never get a chance to. Also, I find that I’m rarely ever able to finish a full-sized anything anyway, so these smaller sized samples are perfect for me.

Shopaholic

I just finished Mini Shopaholic, the 6th in the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. At this point in the series, I feel like it’s getting a little stale. It was fun at first; I could totally identify with Becky, buying things with fantasies of how it would change your life, magically make you into the person you want to be. But now, 6 books in, it feels like she should have become a little more mature, and not keep making the same mistakes she always has. If another book in this series is written, I’m not sure I’d read it. They’re a fun read, but I feel like this story has run its course.

Predator

Last night, my boyfriend and I managed to wrangle up 12 people who wanted to see a double feature of Predator and Predator 2 at the Egyptian. I’d never seen either of those movies before, but they were on my unwritten list of movies I should probably see at some point.

It was kind of amazing how different the 2 movies are, even with the same premise of an alien hunting down humans with a single-minded focus. I thought that maybe it would be like The Hangover, where the sequel is basically a retread of the original. The first one takes place in the jungle; the Predator is hunting down Arnold Schwarzenegger’s team of commandos. The second one takes place in 1980s Los Angeles, with Danny Glover as the cop who’s trying to figure out what’s going on with this invisible alien terrorizing the city. I haven’t seen any of the other Predator movies, though. I guess I should, now!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

I read the novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo after my mother found it too distasteful to continue reading. Who’d have guessed, but I also found it to be a little too much. I generally don’t like mysteries anyway, so there was little that the book could do to redeem itself. I just couldn’t really get into it at all.

And it turned out, the movie was much the same. It was okay; can any movie by David Fincher really not be? But there’s still just too much researching for it to be very exciting to me, just like in the book. I did think it was interesting that they kept it in Sweden, since there was already a Swedish version of the movie that took place there. I feel like most adaptations would have moved the location to New York or something. So it was good, at least, that they kept it true to the book.

Wicked

On Sunday, I saw Wicked at the Pantages Theater. Wicked is one of my all-time favorite musicals! All the songs are so great, and catchy enough that you’ll be singing them in your head for the next year. This was my 3rd viewing of this amazing musical. All 3 performances have had different actors in the lead roles, but they’ve all been fantastic and have each brought a little something different to their characters. And they’re all amazing singers, of course. This time, however, I had ridiculously good seats. The stage is expansive enough that really, any seat is good, but to be so close to the stage made it a whole new experience.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

I finally finished Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling, only like a month after I finished half of it waiting in line to get it signed by the author. The book is a series of essays/stories about Mindy’s life growing up and now. She wrote a bit about the play she wrote with a friend based on Ben Affleck and Matt Damon when they were writing Good Will Hunting. It’s so crazy because I remember reading about that play years and years ago, and now here she is, acting on The Office and writing a book! I love books like this, humorous autobiographies in essay format. Her writing style is so engaging and funny; it’s having a conversation with your most hilarious friend.

Young Adult

One of my 101 in 1001 goals is to write about all the movies I see. I’m going to amend that to ‘in theaters’ because otherwise that’s really a lot.

I saw Young Adult over the weekend. I like a movie that has such an unlikeable protagonist who does not at all redeem herself by the end, as most movies with such a character would do. Charlize Theron was amazing, as usual, as was Patton Oswalt. I loved that it was framed by the Charlize character writing a young adult book. I’m pretty sure it was inspired by the Sweet Valley series, which Diablo Cody, who wrote this movie, is also writing a movie version of.

Ugh, I don’t write reviews of films very well. Maybe this goal is going to be a little challenging...

Birchbox

For Christmas, my awesome best friend Erin got me a subscription to Birchbox. Birchbox is this thing where you get a box every month filled with deluxe sized samples of beauty products. My package for December included:
1. Ahava Mineral Body Lotion
2. Amika Obliphica Hair Treatment
3. Blinc Eyeliner
4. Kate Spade New York - Twirl fragrance sample
5. Alex and Isabelle Classic Hair Tie
Not bad, right?! I’m really ridiculously excited to see what I get the other months!