(Friends only banner by ME! Fear my drawing skills!)

There's no reason why I've become sometimes friends only, but I figured I'd be cooler if I did. Plus, I really like friends only banners and it's not really right to have a friends only banner on a non-friends only journal (even if said banner is poorly drawn by me). Because then you might think I was crazy.

So comment and I'll add you. I'm not picky about adding people. You don't need to like anything I like or be super awesome or anything like that. It'd be nice if you were super awesome, but if you're not that's cool too.

That's it. I'm probably not interesting enough to be friends only, but I've accepted that and moved on. Possibly. I don't make icons (because I have no artistic skills. See above). I don't write fan fiction (because I'm lazy, have very little imagination, and probably wouldn't remember key details from anything I'd be writing about. No one wants a Remus/Sirius story where I talk about Remus turning into a giant Polar Bear every month). I'm not that involved in any fandoms (because I'm a pussy). But, um, my mom says I'm cool? I sometimes post mp3's to download, which is probably illegal and anything illegal is totally hot and you know you want to get in on that. And I always like new friends, because I'm ever so lonely.

IN SUMMATION: BE MY FRIEND ELSE I CRY!

This is a list of all the movies that I've seen this year that I've never seen before. Marvel at the classic films I've never watched! Try to figure out what movies I watched for film classes! Be amazed at how many movies I give A's to! As always, I've bolded the movies I loved and italicized the movies I saw in a theatre.
( Movies! )

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't stop stealing crafts from work and turning them into Friday Night Lights characters.

Lets discuss how I watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights in about two weeks! Or how Netflix on demand is the greatest? Or, more importantly, how I'm supposed to be finishing a paper on Thelma and Louise that's due today, but I don't want to do that, I want to talk about Friday Night Lights forever and ever?

A slightly abbreviated list of things I love about Friday Night Lights since I really should be studying for exams:
1. Everything.
2. Kyle Chandler.

Once final exams are over on Thursday and I've written way too much about Thelma and Louise, I will probably write way too much about Friday Night Lights and how it's the best show ever and about the time I watched ten episodes of season 4 in one day. That's the way to watch shows though, right? Just wait till they're over and then watch 76 episodes in two weeks? Can't shows just make five seasons all at once, with none of this waiting several months between seasons stuff? Just revolutionize the TV industry and whatnot. And five seasons is about the perfect number of seasons, because I would prefer shows to end while they're good, rather than go on forever so that I start to resent their very existence.

Speaking of shows that should go on forever so I can learn to resent them, I was way disappointed to learn that One Life to Live is not going to end up online after it's finale on ABC. It can't be over, I just started watching it! Soap operas, man! Jesus, ABC, how can you cancel a show that lends itself to YouTube video descriptions like this:

While on her way to Heaven (via spaceship!), Viki (who's actually in a coma) faces up against her alternate personality, Niki Smith.

I mean, that's like the greatest thing I've ever read. Who doesn't want to watch people in spaceships arguing with their split personality? Get it together ABC, everyone wants to watch that.

I went to Lollapalooza for the second year in a row like a month ago. Let's pretend like I updated right after I came back and not thousands of years later. Basically, it was great and then it rained a lot and I maybe would have, like, wept openly in public if not for the fact that I don't weep openly in public when The Mountain Goats played You Were Cool:



This is not even like the greatest song or anything, it's basically just the It Gets Better campaign set to music, nor is it anywhere near one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs, but I had to be all, "Do not weep openly in public!" during the whole thing. Stop making me feel all the feelings, John Darnielle! Aside from the Mountain Goats (who are the best forever and ever), I also enjoyed Big Audio Dynamite, Coldplay, Beirut, J Roddy Walston & the Business, Black Lips, Le Butcherettes, Lord Huron, and Bright Eyes. Big Audio Dynamite was my legit favorite of the weekend (I'm nostalgic for reunions of 80's bands I've never listened to before), followed closely by the amazing food. Also, I saw Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad being super adorable with a child and if I at all watched Breaking Bad I might be more interested in this anecdote. I would totally go again next year in order to not cry while watching fantastic bands.

My semi-summer break has mainly consisted of watching soap operas. I kind of obsessively watched a bunch of old Days of Our Lives tapes for most of the summer which prevented me from doing things like going out and having a life. But Days of Our Lives used to be so decent! And it used to have nice lighting and set design (I also took an Intro to Film class this summer so I'm clearly an expert on lighting and set design)! Now it has bad lighting and too many potted plants as background decoration. And boring plots, lets not forget the boring plots. Then about a month ago, I started watching One Life to Live, because why not pick up a decades old soap opera that's going off the air in January. It's actually kind of funny and good at the moment! I've never watched any other soap operas aside from Days of Our Lives, so I don't know why I'm so, yay soap operas! right now. I have questionable taste in everything. So now I stay up till four in the morning watching old One Life to Live plot lines on YouTube and I have little time for things like updating LiveJournal or sleep.

I have been conducting an experiment in television watching the last few days in which I watch an episode of Life on Mars and then I watch the equivalent Americanized version on Netflix streaming. For science. I have been partly doing this to be like, "I'm taking a class on television and now I'm pretending to be Professor Television!" and partly because I have to write an essay about The Sopranos for my class on television and I am very good at procrastinating.

I still don't dislike the American Life on Mars, even though it's poorly-written and too often settles for an off-putting comedic tone, when it should be exploring the darker aspects of the original premise seeing as how they cast Harvey Keitel as Gene and Harvey Keitel can be pretty dark (see also Michael Imperioli). Harvey Keitel is too old to be playing the part in the first place and is not really believably charismatic the way that Philip Glenister is, so I wish they hadn't tried to make American Gene so much like the original. It's almost problematic that Philip Glenister is so likable, because Gene isn't exactly a good guy and Harvey Keitel can play unlikable and dark (after watching the Red Riding trilogy, which is about police brutality/corruption, I have problems with the whole good bad cop aspect of Gene's character). Harvey Keitel maybe wouldn't have seemed so miscast if the stories had played more to his strengths, which is too bad because Harvey Keitel is amazing. My favorite part of the remake is still that drug trip is on Sam's list of why he's in the past (and frankly, though I've never seen it, drug trip has to be better than the actual remake explanation of what's going on). I didn't notice back when it was originally on, but not only is drug trip on his list, it's the second explanation he lists. To me, that heavily implies Sam thinks drug trip is a viable explanation, like present day Sam was into drugs, which strikes me as really funny. It's no original Life on Mars and everybody ever pales in comparison to John Simm, but I semi-recommend the American version if you have streaming Netflix. At the very least, it is not Viva Laughlin levels of bad remaking.

I know I framed this whole exploration of the shows as some sort of intellectual endeavor, but I must confess I started re-watching Life on Mars because I watched Exile with John Simm and he was extremely good-looking in it. I only knew that American Life on Mars was on demand because my mom happened across it and then I was like, "I'll act like this relates to my academic pursuits!" and began throwing around terms like narrative complexity so that I could pretend like my sudden re-watching of everything John Simm has ever been in wasn't so shallow. Forget everything else, Life on Mars vs. American Life on Mars boils down to John Simm is hotter than Jason O'Mara. Anyway, Exile was pretty excellent, it's a three-part BBC mini-series so it's a quick watch. John Simm plays the type of character he often plays (a sad person), but he's fantastic in it, so I recommend it for him alone.

I did a similar type of 'which is better?' thing for dinner tonight and got both Chipotle and Taco Bell. I don't think I came to any conclusions, except that it's probably not best to eat both for one meal and I'll probably feel bad in the morning. NO REGRETS!

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915), a review:

A heartwarming tale about that one time white people worried about African-Americans having too many rights, the right to use sidewalks being particularly egregious, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to fix all their problems. World peace ensued.



BOO-FUCKING-HOO. NO ONE CARES, D.W. GRIFFITH.

Grade: F+. The + is for cinematic achievements (such as pioneering the use of cross-cutting! Like in a scene where a white girl flees from an African-American man who proposed to her and then hurls herself off a cliff! Racist film editing at it's finest!); the F is for racism.

Film studies degree, please! I hope my Introduction to World Cinema class midterm requires everyone to review The Birth of a Nation so I can totally ace that thing. Unless you are taking Introduction to World Cinema, I would not recommend watching The Birth of a Nation unless you like dubious history and blatant racism.

I made a promise to only talk about school and American Idol and I am nothing if not incredibly boring and without a life, so American Idol! They have only kicked off girls so far (and when I say they, I guess I mean I, because Ryan Seacrest is always angrily informing the public that it is our fault people are going home, like if we really wanted to we could stage a revolution and start un-eliminating people so that season 10 would stay on the air indefinitely, but we choose not to because we are assholes), which I feel should be making me angry, what with me being, you know, a girl, but I can't bring myself to care. I think this season is amazing, but I think any season is amazing when I like more than one person. I like one and a half people this year, so I might even go so far as to say it's really amazing this season. People I like being Paul and sort of Casey and sort of Naima, but she's gone and she sang a song in an appalling fake Jamaican accent and kind of lost me.

Apparently, it was shocking that Pia got kicked off this week. I know this because I have read blogs and also J. Lo. openly wept for ages on the show itself. Get a grip, J. Lo. Let me sum up what had been said about Pia this season by the judges: "That was amazing! Also, boring," and "Stop picking ballads. They are boring everyone. You're amazing!" and "You're like the new Celine Dion! Amazing!" Are there people clamoring for a new Celine Dion? I barely want the Celine Dion we already have. Is that a thing in the music industry, trying to find a new Celine Dion? I hope it isn't and I am also glad that shockingly Pia was kicked off American Idol. Not glad, exactly, I just care so little. (Things I care more about: Paul F. Tompkins hilarious American Idol recaps for Vulture).

Next time, less American Idol. Next time, I will also not announce what I plan to update about for the next time.

What follows is a list of all the movies I've watched this year that I've never seen before. I'm not using a star rating system and I'm fairly generous with my grades, because movies are people too and they deserve to be praised even when they're mediocre and disappointing to their parents. Obviously, I'm not projecting my own neuroses onto this or anything. (I think reviews are more useful than grades or stars, but I don't write reviews, so grades it is). I typically adhere to the whole 100 movies in a year thing, but this year I'm not going to be held to some arbitrary number, so this is my Many Movies in 2011 list and no matter how many movies I watch, I'm a winner.

( Movies in 2011 )

Lollapalooza postapalooza time! (Clearly the worst thing about Lollapalooza is that Lollapalooza-based puns are inevitable and also the worst)

Lollapalooza was lovely. In the way that a super hot, super crowded three-day music festival is lovely. My parents had wanted to go to Chicago this summer and I had planned to take all last week off from work since I had tickets to concerts and such. Then we weren't going to go to Chicago, but Cleveland, even though that's less of a vacation and more of something we could do anytime. Then Lollapalooza happened to be the weekend of my vacation and I was like, "No, that's what we're doing." And my cousin is a fancy architect in Chicago and we hadn't visited him since he moved out there, so many good reasons to go to Chicago.

( Lets talk about Lollapalooza! )

Yay! Finished. Tonight I'm seeing the Black Keys. If that doesn't kick as much ass as I'm expecting, I'll be so sad.

So sorry for the unexpected hiatus. I moved out of my apartment and work all the time and I'm taking two online classes this summer. I have precious little time for the internets. (Spell check tells me internets is not a word. Go die in a fire, spell check!). But I had time to go to Lollapalooza on Friday and Saturday! And now I have time to update about going to Lollapalooza! Tomorrow though. By which I mean tomorrow tomorrow, not tomorrow two months from now.

LOLLAPALOOZA!

I may post pictures between now and tomorrow at my tumblr since I've also neglected that for a month or so now. So if more pictures is what you're after, check that out.

(Two thoughts: I remain utterly confused by Dirty Projectors, which is sad because I thought seeing them live would cause me to appreciate Bitte Orca. It didn't. Against Me! was my absolute favorite of the weekend because most times all I want is guys with tattoos screaming songs in my face for an hour. Not hipsters with xylophones or whatever tiny instruments Dirty Projectors play).

I don't really understand why the ratings for the Academy Awards are supposedly dependent on the relative box office successes of the nominated movies; why doesn't everyone just watch them every year because movies are awesome? People are weird. I wouldn't care if I saw nothing that was nominated, I'd still watch them. I also thought it was unfair to Avatar to continually say that it should win because it made so much money - I rarely heard that it should win because it's actually good. I kind of want to see Avatar again, because I honestly neither loved it or hated it and if I see it again, maybe I'd actually have an opinion about how it sucked or was awesome. I feel left out by being so wishy-washy about my opinion of it.

The Best Director race was the one I was most conflicted about, because on one hand I was like, go ladies! and wanted Kathryn Bigelow to win and on the other hand, I thought James Cameron deserved to win because he invented cameras and 3-D effects or whatever to make Avatar and that's impressive, and on the final hand, I love Quentin Tarantino, but he had absolutely no chance of winning. So yay, Kathryn Bigelow! I enjoyed The Hurt Locker a ton, though I still liked District 9 and Inglourious Basterds better.

I think they should have given Martin Scorsese some award just because he's Martin Scorsese. Like lets stop talking about this year's Academy Awards and start harping on Academy Awards from decades ago when Martin Scorsese didn't win anything. How was he not nominated for Taxi Driver? How did Taxi Driver lose to Rocky? Though don't get me started on how annoying it is to read about how inferior Ordinary People is to Raging Bull and that it's a travesty Raging Bull didn't win Best Picture whatever year that was. Ordinary People is one of my favorite movies ever and one of the few book to movie adaptations that I think improves loads on the book, so yeah, I love it a lot.

As you can maybe see, my plan to watch as many Martin Scorsese movies last week went incredibly well (I watched 9 in total) and I even rejoined Netflix in order to finish watching them without constantly going to the library. My first Netflix movie was supposed to be Mean Streets, because that was the only Scorsese/De Niro collaboration I wasn't able to get on DVD from the library and I'm sort of anal and I don't want to watch his movies with Leo until I've seen Mean Streets. I was excited to watch it after work today and I put it my DVD player without looking at the DVD and it turned out to be The Big Lebowski in the Mean Streets envelope. Damn you, Jeff Bridges! It's because I didn't go see Crazy Heart, right? The Netflix gods are punishing me. I kind of wished it would have been a movie I hadn't seen before.

So I will maybe have thoughts on how awesome Martin Scorsese is once I've watched a couple more of his movies this week. Basically, Martin Scorsese is awesome.