i tried to be like grace kelly

I AM SO EXCITED THAT AGENT CARTER GOT PICKED UP, YOU GUYS. I want it to be September already. I wonder if it means that there will be previews of it during Comic-Con?

Speaking of conventions: I only learned last night that this weekend was Dallas Comic-Con. One day I will go to a convention. One day.

Anyway.

Last minute strokes of genius are the best. I ended up working late Thursday--like, we got out after midnight late--and I was exhausted and couldn't even think of any theme for my show on Friday. I was so tired that all I did was write a note that was basically "play whatever you want, just add the music to your folder in the morning." When I got up, I was in between doing "anything goes", which is kind of a cheat in my opinion, and "80s Day". Just when I started raking through my folders, I started thinking of a variation: why not mix 80s songs with songs by people born in the 80s? And eventually I ditched the general 80s-ness and went with "Made in the 80s", and the results can be viewed here. (follow me and send suggestions, feedback, and etc, if you'd like!)

I had a doctor's appointment on Monday. It went pretty well, and I actually feel good for asking some questions about general things that I hadn't asked about before. (ADULTING!) I did have to get some blood drawn, and I was doing fine until I happened to glance over after everything was done and I got kind of faint at the sight of the vials. Well, not faint, but really lightheaded and it felt weird. That has never happened to me before.

The other thing was that I really not happy with my weight. But I'm gonna save that for a later day, 'cause I don't want to get super-into it right now.

OH GOD HOW IS IT MARCH ALREADY.

Sometimes I have to count little things in my "did I do something to make myself seem like the responsible adult I know I can be" file. Today it was cleaning my room. I still have a stack of laundry I need to attend to, but, you know, baby steps!

I also want to make like, five different mixes for no good reason. For almost two years, I've wanted to make a mix with cover songs and their original versions on it, back to back. And then today, I was listening to "Footsteps in the Dark" by the Isley Brothers, and it made me want a mix with songs that have a sample and the songs that the sample comes from.

One day.

And hey, what the hell, why not do this?


I LOVE CANDICE BECAUSE...

One of the worst feelings in the world is re-adding music to your media player of choice after you've wiped it clean. In addition to trying to remember what you had on and liked (as I tend to clean off everything when I'm fed up with trying to go through and individually delete tracks I'm not that fond of), you have to shuffle through playlists, take off singles and add the album versions, and refresh the album art. Hand to God, if ugly fanmix covers don't stop popping up on actual full albums (especially the cover for some Twilight fanmix that for reasons unknown ALWAYS seems to pop up on my copy of Little Voice), I am going to scream.

This post was going to go much, much differently than originally planned.

And that is because I saw this.

Here's the thing: I have made a lot of progress on the "no shame in liking what I like" front, and I have been griping about not having been on a real vacation in forever to anyone who will listen. At the same time, around the start of July, my mom told me that my uncle's girlfriend invited us up for Labor Day weekend. Said uncle lives in the New York metro area. I also have a longtime friend who lives there too.

So, theoretically, I could have a place to stay should I go on this endeavor. There are but four flaws in the plan, and they are:

1. School will be back in session, and I'll miss (at the most) two days of classes,
2. $200 for the tickets to this thing, and that doesn't include
3. Airfaire.
4. I've never traveled on my own before.

BUT, since I could possibly be not-leaving on a Wednesday/Thursday, it might not be too terribly pricey if I look up tickets now or something, right? There's still the factor of finding a place to stay and having spending money, and, I mean, I have a little bit in savings.

And really, as far as fannish things go, this is much, much more feasible for me right now than Comic-Con. 

I just really want a vacation, y'all. And to meet my teen idols, okay? I JUST HATE SPENDING MONEY.

I should rich text this to add bullet points, but I'm too lazy.

1. Is it possible to be happy about something but also kind of pissed off about it? If so, I'm absolutely feeling that right now and it's just weird. Also, the situation at hand is making me a little bit anxious and paranoid that I'm a terrible person and people secretly hate me. I'm acting like a twelve year old over it. God.

2. Anyway. I don't know if it's still a Thing or not, but I still love Texts From Last Night, especially when you get gems like this: "(617):How would I get in touch with Carly Rae Jepsen if I wanted to thank her for the loss of my virginity?" I REALLY want to know the backstory for this. And while we're talking about "Call Me Maybe", here, have a video of the Harvard baseball team car dancing to it.

3. TOMORROW IS JUNE FIRST, AND I CAN GET TO CAMP NANOING! YUUUSS.

4. Here is a random video of Chris Evans macking on a girl in a parking garage. I don't know if it's the environment or what, but I find this absolutely hilarious. And I know that this profile is old (read: from last summer), but I will never get over it. I mean, this is the opening:

"chris evans pecs. how do they FEEL? like smooth stone from the souvenir shop?"

...is the instant message that pops up on my computer one Monday morning in April. My friend Kyle follows it up with a link to the gossip pages of the New York Daily News: I am being described as the "mystery maiden" Evans introduced to his mother at a premiere party; we held hands, the paper is reporting, "in a flirty manner," and he even placed "one of them on his chest." Oh.

When I started working on this profile, I decided on a "say yes to everything, try to be cool" approach, with the idea that maybe I'd capture something real about the star of Captain America: The First Avenger—or as "real" as could be hoped for/faked in the time we had together. But in the days since my first interview with Chris Evans, I'd drunk myself under the table, snuck out of his house at five thirty in the morning, bummed a ride home off a transsexual, been teased mercilessly in front of his mother, and now—this bit in the paper.

I don't remember touching his chest, which is too bad.

And it gets progressively weirder/funnier as you read on. When I realized that one of the editors from The Hairpin wrote it, it just made it better.

5. I am seriously considering looking in to how much it would cost to hire a maid for the day, because good Lord, my room is a mess and I am not angry enough to clean it. I have to be angry to clean my room. I do not know why.

I survived the paper, and I survived yesterday, and I have to say that after the near panic attack I had over that paper, this has been an awesome week.

For starters: I did a quick sneak into the restroom on Sunday at work to check Twitter, and nearly dropped my phone and shrieked in joy because this was one of the first tweets I saw. It was even more surprising/strange to me that I'd just been thinking the day before, Wouldn't it be awesome if Kevin showed up at one of the London dates of the tour, like he did in LA last summer? And then this happens, and [insert gif of Abed from Community silently screaming]. It makes me feel a little bit ridiculous that it took one concert last year to kind of fall back into loving this one pop group that I loved when I was much younger, but I'm past the shame portion of it, you know? I like what I like, and that's it.

But yeah, AHH KEVIN IS BACK WITH BSB. THE EYEBROWS ARE BACK!

Anyway.

Then there were two things on the fandom front, in terms of me making stuff. First, I signed up for my first ever big bang. The details of this are sketchy as of present, but, oh my God, people really like my completely crack pairing idea a lot, and I'm genuinely surprised and kind of going, "I could easily make this into 25k instead of 10!", while also going, "...the longest fan fiction I've ever written was just under 5k help." And secondly, my mix won First Place for art at waywardmixes! As someone who is pretty much always a little insecure about her fanart Photoshop skills, this was pretty cool news.

And now, the Avengers portion of the entry!

I did the marathon at Studio Movie Grill, because the AMC one was sold out by the time I went to get tickets. Out of the pre-Avengers movies, they didn't show The Incredible Hulk, and on top of that, they didn't show the movies in chronological order! First was Iron Man (I realized halfway through it that counting that viewing, I've officially seen that movie in a theater five times), then Thor, Captain America (third time in theater), and Iron Man 2. The marathon at SMG was definitely not as promoed as AMC's, as I'm pretty sure there were about five people total who watched all the movies and then stayed for the midnight show. Like, for IM there were maybe seven of us total in the theater, and the number only slightly increased with every movie that lead up to The Avengers. I think it peaked around the time that CA and IM2 came on.

There was about a 30 to 45 minute break in between movies, so I went out and Did Stuff while I waited. I went to the bank in between IM and Thor. In between Thor and CA, I walked to Old Navy (the theater's in this shopping center, and Old Navy is a parking lot and a half away) to look for superhero shirts, and I ended up buying the last women's Avengers shirt in XL for $6. (And then I tried on some ridiculously high heels at Famous Footwear, but whatever.) In between Cap and IM2, I sat in my car and played Angry Birds.

Iron Man 2 ended around 10:50, and I was going to be in the same theater I'd been in all day for Avengers, since I wasn't seeing it in 3D. Well, I made the mistake of stepping out of the theater, and then got told I had to go get in line with the rest of the people. Which I didn't mind too much, honestly, and besides, it meant I got to get free stuff from Lone Star Comics, and see people in costume! I took a horribly blurry photo of a woman dressed up as Peggy Carter, and then there was this group that contained all the Avengers, plus Loki and Nick Fury. Honestly, waiting in line for the actual movie felt way longer than anything else during the course of the day.

OH, AND THEN WE HAD MOVIE! I know that LJ has spoiler tags now, but I'm cross-posting from Dreamwidth, which does NOT, so ( everything goes behind a cut. If you are a spoilerphobe, DO NOT PASS THIS LINE, HERE BE DRAGONS. )

I was going to go see it again after I got out of class today (I ended up wearing my new shirt to school, and a girl in a Hulk shirt saw me walking to my car and yelled, "Your shirt is cute!" at me), but various familial entanglements and the weather prevented that.

To close, this post. The tag was my exact thought as soon as I saw the picture. I like superheroes and boy bands, and I neither know nor care what this says about me. If you want to discuss the movie, go ahead; I have all weekend ahead of me and plenty to talk/possibly gush about.

I didn't have class today, so I loafed around, watched Zac Efron on The View (I am still LOLing at him dropping a condom while walking the red carpet for The Lorax; seriously, if you had told me five years ago that I would be smitten by him I would have called you a liar), took Pepper for a long-ass walk, and then took one of those late afternoon naps where you intend to just lie in bed for a little bit and then you wake up and it's 7 PM.

Other junk:

- A while ago I downloaded the first episode of Bomb Girls, but I didn't get around to watching it until last Friday. And after watching that, I mainlined the other five episodes ASAP. I am so glad it's coming back for a second season, because leaving it the way that they did would have been cruel and unusual punishment. I'm kind of hoping that somehow it makes its way to the US. I mean, people are all about Downton Abbey, right? PBS loves its period dramas, right? Can this happen?

- There are twenty-one days until The Hunger Games is out, and I'm trying to get to an early release... but at the same time I want to do the midnight show experience.

It's so weird for me to say that. Like, I remember during junior year of high school these guys in one of the computer tech classes that was near mine (I'd go over there to use the scanner and because the teacher was really cool and my comm tech teacher was always leaving us high and dry) were talking about going to the midnight show for whichever Matrix sequel came out in 2003, and I remember rolling my eyes and thinking, How lame is that? And after having two midnight shows under my belt, I totally get it. I've more or less decided that I must see The Avengers at midnight, so why not this movie as well?

- On a related note, some of the cast members from THG are supposed to be doing some mall tour thing at the Galleria next week. I hope I'm off on Friday, 'cause I kinda want to check that out. And, oh man, I have not been to the Galleria since prom night. Lord.

- I got bored and started rereading posts at isurrendered. Can we make that meme come back again?

- I am starting to get a bit hooked on The Wanted. Can they please come back to the US soon?

It's the end of the first week of the year, and I've already finished three books. SPEAKING OF BOOKS, I started a side Tumblr called What I Read This Year, so that I can post short reviews about all the new books I read. I don't think I'll talk about any of the books I re-read, unless it's an all-time favorite. But really, I tend to read more new books than to read old ones, so there's that.

While I'm on the topic of books: THE FAULT IN OUR STARS IS OUT ON TUESDAY. And I have seven library books out. All of the first run's autographed, right? So that means if I buy a copy at Barnes and Noble it'll be signed, right? I think I'm just gonna go ahead and finally buy my preorder on Amazon to be safe. That book has been in my shopping cart since Thanksgiving.

Beauty and the Beast 3D next Friday. Of all the movies that came out during the 90s Disney boom, that was the big one I didn't see at the theater. It's weird when I think about the fact that the first time I saw it, I didn't like it, but years later I've more or less fallen in love with it, and I've even seen the musical on stage. My first Disney movie at the theater was The Little Mermaid, and I've had an affinity for that movie ever since. Ariel's always been one of my favorite princesses; plus, "Part of Your World" is possibly the best I Want Song in the Disney Animated Canon.

Work related thing: I feel embarrassed when/if I see any of my former teachers/professors at work. I shouldn't, because I have to get money somehow, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with me working at The Job (also, academic assistance, which I need to use more). But at the same time, it just doesn't... feel right. It always makes me worry that somewhere in the back of their minds (especially when it comes to my high school teachers--and my former assistant principal, once) they are thinking, "That poor girl."

I had a moment like that on Monday, when I saw my former screenwriting instructor. He asked me how I was and what I'd been up to, and I responded with, "Oh, just hanging out... working..." And he adds, "And writing?" I didn't have the heart to tell him that the bulk of my writing over the past year has been for a novel, not for a screenplay. (But I still want to write my demon script! And I will, once I do some research on demons and what have!)

RANDOM LAST THING: I know we're a week into 2012, but if I did a post with the songs I listened to the most last year/favorite songs of 2011, would you all still be game?

You know how there are little things that whoever you're attracted to will do that just... does it for you? It could be something simple or something that could verge on being a fetish or a kink, but when someone attractive does it, it just makes you FEEL THINGS.

( That happened to me yesterday. )

In unrelated news: in Art and Gender today we watched part of La Dolce Vita, and one of my classmates knew exactly what I was talking about when I called Sylvia a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Also, we're going to watch one of Antonioni's movies next class, and I'm pretty sure that I remember a reference being made to him in a Peanuts movie. I love it when I randomly remember pop culture references from books or cartoons that I was into as a kid.

I really, really want to see Maroon 5 on Christmas Eve. And Kelly Clarkson in February.

- This is quite possibly the most relaxed I've been on Sunday night in a while. My story is in, I got to watch the first part of Prohibition on PBS (I have liked Ken Burns documentaries since we watched parts of the Civil War one in fifth grade), and right now I am watching Pan Am and getting a cramp in my right leg.

- I need headphone help! The pair that I had suddenly went weird on me; I kept hearing a distorted squealing in the right side. I'm looking for inner ear earbuds--this is important, because I can't do regulation earbuds as they always hurt my ears--or earphones that hook behind your ears. Either is fine, but I just need them to be reasonably priced. Like, under $50 reasonably priced. Preferably under $25, but I need some good headphones.

- Is it wrong of me to still sort of dig Jennifer Lopez songs? "If You Had My Love" came on at work last week and I still knew all the words.

- Yesterday when I was at school editing my story, one of my classmates from reporting came into the editing lab after I got back from the recording booths in the radio lab. It caught me completely by surprise because A.) I had been thinking about him before I got up there and B.) I kind of have a minor crush on him. I was almost done with my story, just had to type up my script and put it into EZ News, so after I finished adding my VO I logged onto my Amazon Cloud Music account and put it on shuffle, thinking that he might at least comment on what I was listening to. I got through two Sondre Lerche songs and Corinne Bailey Rae's cover of "Is This Love" and nothing. Sigh.

- Did I mention that the In-N-Out near my job opened? Their fries are really good.