Boring Updates (or all the things that make up my life)

Hey, guess what I haven't done in a long time? Updated the number of books I've read this year! My rate of reading has shown a remarkable decline in the past few weeks, but give me a break, next week is AP testing.
So: we're now at 31¹ for the year, which is sad, because the year's almost at the halfway mark, and I'm nowhere close to being near 50.
My family and I saw Jersey Boys this last Thursday. Now, I haven't been able to properly express my love of musicals on this blog for a little while now, and unfortunately, while Jersey Boys was amazing in its own right, I don't think it's one of my favorite musicals ever, mainly because it was more like a super long concert with some narration in between the songs than an actual musical-story. Not to say I didn't like it. I did. It was awesome.
I also saw Water for Elephants tonight. I enjoyed it; I've read the book, though I didn't really remember all of it so I had more of a feeling of deja vu throughout the entire movie than true recognition. I have to say, Robert Pattinson looks decent when he's not in horribly weird face make-up, and constantly making his constipated face (though never fear, the face still showed up in this movie for a cameo appearance in at least two scenes).

In other non-entertainment-centric news: I have a semi-job now! Hooray, I'm not a failure as a human!

It's cleaning (tidying up, vacuuming, swiffering) a neighbor's house once or twice a week. The neighbor and her husband are both gone a lot, and they have three boys and a cat, so...yes. It pays $12 an hour, and I can go over whenever I'm free. It's awesome.
I also passed all my certification tests! Hooray extra $25 a week at camp!
I'm going to fail my IB Music test this week! Hooray!



¹(For those interested the books read since the last update are...
The Glass Menagerie
In Defense of Food
A Long Way From Chicago
Garden Spells
Heart of Darkness
Sabriel
The Dark Lord of Derkholm
Sunshine
100 Years of Solitude
Ratus a l'hopital
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof -
Lirael

The return of my reviews of television shows.

...not interesting to anyone who doesn't watch it, but yeah, whatever.
I didn't realize that the season finale for Off the Map had aired! I thought that this it was just another episode, and avoided watching them because I assumed I was so far behind that I didn't even want to think about how much time it was going to take to catch up, so I was half pleasantly surprised, half disappointed, that there was only one.
I say half disappointed, because I genuinely like this show, which is surprising. I know that most of the time it's ridiculous¹,  what with the whole intense backstory thing, and everyone being "damaged" in some way, and sometimes the dialogue was cheesy as all get out (Mateo's little speech while he and Lily danced that one night springs to mind), but I ended up liking it. I loved Mina (Meryl Streep's daughter! Her name is Mamie! She's kind of awesome!) and her chicken, and Zee, and Fuller, and pretty much all the characters, except maybe Keeton, who's kind of too serious. So yeah. Kind of really hoping there's another season, because if there isn't and I never know what happens with Fuller/Mina I will be upset. Also, need to know if Mateo's going to die or not. Also, it kind of has good music.
So yes. All that.


¹ Honestly, most doctor/hospital shows seem silly when you think too much about them, because seriously, how often do intense crazy almost-death cases really happen?

Jane Eyre

I ever mention that I saw Jane Eyre? 'Cause I did. And while I love the actors/actresses more than any other version I have half-heartedly thought about watching (and then subsequently did not, because I didn't like the look of the actors/actresses), I don't think it managed to convey the story of Jane Eyre as effectively as some of the others probably did. At times it seemed to skip time and go too quickly, while other times (the romaaaaaaantic scenes especially) it went too slowly. I vaguely remember that when I was reading the book, the bits where she wasn't with the Mr. Rochester seemed to far outnumber the times when she was. I think in general the main issue was that the movie just seemed too short, even if it was two hours.
All in all: I liked it. I think I'd watch it again. Mia Wasikowski (eh, it's something like that. I could look it up, but that would take effort.) played it well, and the girl who played the young Jane Eyre was (according to my mother) a much better actress than some of the others who have come before her. And Judi Dench was in it, which automatically earns it twenty awesome points (God I love Cranford). Also, Michael Fassbender, while possessing a mildy unfortunate name as well as a horrible mutton chop-esque beard thing for most of the film (it turns into an even more horrible full-grown beard at the end¹), was still a) far more attractive than any other Mr. Rochester I've seen and b) maybe one of my favorite parts of the movie. Yes, I know. I'm shallow.

¹In general, hair in this movie was horrible. At first I thought maybe it was just Jane's, done to make her seem uglier. Nope. Not true. Everyone's was horrifying. Yes, I know: historical accuracy. Whatever. People had horrible hair back then, obviously.

Hi.

I'm still here, i.e., not dead.
I hate physics.
I love calculus.
It snowed here yesterday.
I can't find the book I was reading. I might have lost it.
I spent Thursday rewriting all my sheet music for the William Tell Overture down an octave because I have trombone music instead of tuba music.
I made a treasure hunt yesterday with some friends.
I want to see Jane Eyre tomorrow with my mom.
Lifeguarding class still sucks.
I miss France still.
I want summer.
Prom is coming up and there are no interesting couples going and I am disappointed.
I saw some friends play a show-thing the other day, and they are desperately in need of some good critical feedback. But I'm not that good friends with them so what's a girl to do?
I want to watch a romantic comedy.
I want my life to be a romantic comedy.
That is all. For now.

Hunger Games Debrief

So I know I haven't posted about France yet, but that'll be a longer post anyway - I figured I'd have time enough for a short debrief on casting decisions for The Hunger Games.

I would like to note that I'm not going to talk too much about race/hair color in this post. Hair color can easily be changed, so obbviously any complaints on that front are stupid. In terms of the whole race debate, well, first let's agree not to get offended. Second, let's agree that we are not going to come up with complex theories, but instead assume that the less complicated the answer, the better.
So: Katniss is described as having "olive" skin, black hair, and grey eyes.
Her mother has blond hair and blue eyes. We can assume this means Caucasian.
We don't know what race her father is.

Many people in the Seam (located in Appalachia) have the same looks as Katniss. Appalachia has many people who are generally (ethnically) lots of different types of European with Native American thrown in sometimes.

So: Katniss is maybe a "person of color". More likely, in my opinion, she is mixed Caucasian with slightly darker skin. (Remember, olive skin does not equal person of color, it equals olive skin. Not all Caucasians are pasty-faced and stark white.)

All of the above reasoning applies to Gale too, since he looks like Katniss.

In short, it's possible that even a "white" actress like Jennifer Lawrence could look like Katniss - her hair will (hopefully) be dyed, and Katniss is usually pretty dirty, making skin color hard to get extremely specific about in the first place.

1. Katniss Everdeen - Jennifer Lawrence

  Honestly: I can picture this one working. It'll depend on her acting, but I can maybe see her pulling it off. Unfortunately, I haven't seen her in anything so no judgement there.

2. Peeta Mellark - Josh Hutcherson

This one I'm almost completely okay with. I like Josh Hutcherson; I haven't seen The Kids Are All Right, but I've heard good things, and I liked him fine in Bridge to Terabithia.
He definitely has the solid, steady look that I envisioned for Peeta.

3. Gale [...something...] - Liam Hemsworth

...not sure how I feel about this one. He looks like a gorilla.

Not actually, but he does have the vague look of an ape. And also not appropriate for Gale - who should have been more brood-y and darker. Also, I didn't really picture Gale as being a...giant neck, football-y type of guy, more of an understated muscle-y guy - Peeta was always more traditional muscle man in my mind, while Gale was....I don't know. More subtle-strong.

In conclusion: the only one I'm not fully okay with is Gale.