12.14.2011

Guilty Pleasures

My Top-Ten Musical Guilty Pleasures of 2011:

I blame Zumba class for getting my endorphines mixed up with pop music. I usually try to avoid pop music. It's increasingly idiotic and performed by talent-deficient individuals. Somehow I end up bopping my head to these tunes despite my disdain...

10. Party Rock Anthem- LMFAO: Despite having a truly ridiculous band name, this song is indeed a party rock anthem. Maybe it was because my zumba class played this song, but it makes me want to jump around every time I hear it. As for the rest of their songs- truly awful, like I-scrunched-up-my-face-in-distaste awful.
9.   Super Bass- Nicki Manaj: I fell for this song mostly because of a little girl, Sophia Grace Brownlee, wearing a pink princess dress and belting it out. Incredible. Also incredible, her little sidekick dancing scarily skanky moves for a small child on the side. Clearly, she's going to be that slutty friend when they grow up.
8.   The One that Got Away- Katy Perry: Make no mistake, there are few current female pop singers that irk me more for lack of talent and brains than Katy. Her songs are horrifically vacuous. So I'm ashamed to admit that this one has made it's way into my head. But it's so cheery and nostalgic. I wonder how Russell feels about this number. 
7.   We Found Love- Rihanna: Oh, Ri-Ri. I hate how you aren't a good singer but magically have taken over the airwaves. Why do I hear your songs every 5 minutes on my XM radio? This song is catchy despite having a total of oh, 20 some words in sum (at best). Why? Why do I listen to it?
6.  Mine- Taylor Swift: I'm totally embarrassed that I like this song. But it's so cute, and she's so sweet and earnest. And it's so catchy. Dammit.
5. Gotta Good Feeling- Flo-Rida: I'll be honest, either the lyrics are nonsensical or I just can catch enough to understand them, but for some reason, this song gives me a good feeling. I'm pretty sure the lyrics don't make a lot of sense. Why does he have a good feeling? What?
4. Give Me Everything- Pitbull: It just sounds so cheery and causes me to bop around. That's all I have to say about it.
3. You Make Me Feel- Cobra Starship: First of all, Cobra Starship?? What does that mean? Why? I'm not sure if the biography on Spotify is supposed to be funny, but it describes the lead singer pondering life and staring at the lights in the night sky until he became catatonic and a cobra come out of nowhere and bit him in the neck. The cobra tells him his purpose in life is to make sure the world goes out in style. WTF. Drugs much? Aside from that weirdness, the female lead is even a step down from Fergie, which is to say, not great. Regardless, in the same way Black Eyed Peas is catchy, this similarly styled group always catches my ear on the radio. In fact, this song is inexplicably in my head as I type. La la lalala.
2. Moves like Jagger- Maroon 5: I've never really been a huge fan of Maroon 5. But the hook to this song with the whistle and guitar riff slays me. And I always love to hear Christina Aguilera rock it.
1. Love You Like a Love Song- Selena Gomez: Oh I have a not-so-secret love of dear Selena. She's just stinkin' adorable and fresh, and she won me over when she played Beezus on Ramona and Beezus. The lyrics to this song are so silly, but are totally something a 17 year old would write for her boyfriend. Even the ridiculous and unnecessary riff in the song doesn't keep me from listening to this song on re-peat-peat-peat-peat.

10.10.2011

fall 2011 list

the A-list!

loving this fall:

1. 240sweet: artisan marshmallows! sweet, fun, tasty little gifts...



2. Kindle library books! This makes my dear little Kindle that much more awesome.

3. This week of 70 degree fall weather.

4. Ides of March. Cynical but very thoughtful portrayal of politics. Great acting and amazing filming of Cincinnati.

9.02.2011

all the benefits without the sacrifice..

I was reading this NYT article, "Hope, Fear, and Insomnia- Journey of a Jobless Man" over lunch today. Besides being a reminder of how grateful I should be that both Eric and I have steady employment, it also reminded me of the impossibly difficult situation the U.S. is in right now. Corporations have lost a sense of corporate responsibility to their home states and countries, the government doesn't want to upset corporations so much that they will leave for other countries, people are losing domestic jobs but we don't want to pay a little more and spend a little extra time to support renewable energy and local products. We're all losers here, because we're all going to lose when we've stopped thinking of ourselves as a collective and only worry about our individual needs. To make it all worse, we have only semi (or mostly) psychotic idiots running for president on the GOP side, and a disgusting political game of chicken taking place in Washington D.C. Somebody, please do something!

We need more of THIS sentiment: 
Nobody said it was easy/ It's such a shame for us to part/ Nobody said it was easy/No one ever said it would be this hard/ Oh, take me back to the start. -Coldplay, The Scientist.


7.12.2011

I still kind of love the movie Independence Day

I am going to be brief because I promised myself this would be the last distraction from studying that I will indulge today.

We watched some of Independence Day while eating dinner tonight. It came out the summer I started high school, which now was so long ago! It still is THE classic alien-invasion blockbuster. I love the scene where the Americans come up with a plan to disable the alien ships long enough to attack them- they send the word around the world, and then all these ordinary people are rounded up to fly planes and shoot missiles. (We'll just put aside all the technical difficulties of the concept of everyone just... er, shooting around nuclear missiles?!) And the big hero of the day is this crazy alcoholic who sacrifices himself by flying right into the beam of the spaceship.

The older and much more cynical person in me did a lot of snickering, but still, there is a part of me that is nostalgic. It's nostalgic for a time when Americans believed they could lead the world in coming together to fight for the common good, when we weren't reduced to a bickering stallmate over money. When unlikely heros can save the day. When people who think we should not care for the poor or stop citizens of another country from being massacred didn't have the loudest voice. There was once a really noble, idealistic United States, and I miss it. It's completely possible that I just wasn't as aware of things then... but I like to think that we once were bigger than ourselves as a country... and still like to think there could be hope that we could be that country again.

We really need to get it together.