Thursday, August 30, 2012

Your regularly scheduled general media update

The Things I Have Been Watching, Listening to, and Reading
1. Most recent: Dr. Who. I started it earlier this month, and am absolutely loving it. Honestly, I have no idea why; when I first began, I was really put off by pretty much every character, and even Google'd "How to watch Dr. Who" in a vain attempt to figure out what I was doing wrong. This led me to an article which suggested watching the first episode with Matt Smith as the Doctor, which I promptly did, and was inspired enough to go back and have another go at the first season. By the end, Christopher Ecclestion started to grow on me, surprisingly, and I was actually sad to see him replaced by David Tenant. I won't lie, the whole ambiguous romantic thing bothers me a lot, and if I watch it for too long I get the urge to speak in a British accent, but still. It's steadily climbing up there in my list of favorite television shows.
2. I've also returned to the vlogbrothers (hence all the references in the last post) and am now approximately 90 videos away from being up to date (considering I was about two years behind last time I went hardcore and tried to catch up, this is extremely impressive). Again, if I watch it for too long, I start to want to speak like John and Hank. It's sort of weird.
(I just watched three episodes of Dr. Who, and right now as I type this I am imagining Mickey saying all of it. It's exceedingly disconcerting.)
3. Fight Club. Read it, feel slightly disturbed, liked it more than Gatsby or Animal Farm though. Good writing/lyricalness but completely depressing worldview (may have been point, do not really care though).
4. The Dark Knight Rises. Saw it on a day off at camp. Not the biggest fan of Anne Hathaway; I felt that Marion Cotillard had waaaaay more chemistry with Christian Bale. Also, not sure how I feel about the return-to-first-movie plotline thing; in the first movie, the whole thing seemed far-fetched, and I felt the same way this time when they re-introduced the Brotherhood. I don't know, I just really like The Dark Knight because it felt like something that could almost happen. Not actually, but the Joker was just such an effective villain, and so completely terrifying, that it was always going to be a tough act to follow, and quite honestly, I find the whole idea of a Brotherhood of awesomefantasticninjafighters to be a little campy. I'm not sure if that effectively conveyed my feelings, but oh well.
5. Other movies I've watched: The Immortals (epic and bloody with hot people and I swore a lot while watching it), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (I wasn't as impressed as I wanted to be), A Knight's Tale (oh hey there Heath), Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog (I did not see that ending coming)

What I've been doing for the past two months

So the wheel of life keeps on turning, as it does, and things keep on happening, as they do, and wow I sound melodramatic. I am sure that's something anyone-who-actually-reads-this-on-a-regular-basis has missed.
I haven't written a post in awhile, despite the boatloads of time I have, mostly because I am lazy. I feel bad; I know there aren't really loyal readers out there or anything, but I really don't want this to turn into another side-project that I forget about and never revisit. It's just that senior year was absolutely 100% insane at the end, and then I was hanging out with friends and trying to do real life stuff as much as possible before I left for camp, and then I didn't feel like I had anything to talk about, and yeah. That's how you end up with three posts in 5 months.
Andbutso, I now have lots and lots and lots of things to talk about, and I don't know how. So, to steal a page from the vlogbrothers' book, I'm going to separate this post into parts; 7 of them to be specific, in chronological order
1. I got home from camp, and wrote a letter to camp because I was campsick, which is like being homesick but for camp. Yes. Sometimes I think the things I write would be so much more effective if I were reading them out loud, or rather, if John Green were reading them out loud. Like that sentence for example, try to imagine John Green reading it aloud in his fast voice, and it becomes so much better. If you're reading this and you don't know who John Green is, you should click the link to the vlogbrothers' Youtube channel above, because he and his brother Hank are awesome. We'll come back to this topic later.
2. After coming home from camp, I hung out with some people for a couple days, and then I went to Mackinac Island for our now-annual family get-together for my mom's side. It was not altogether that enjoyable, especially when we had to do the actually-hang-out-with-family portion. Like, I like my nuclear family - when I was just with my mom, dad, and sister, I had fun. And I like my extended family in small doses of time, when no one is stressed and there are adults supervising their own children. But I do not like being assigned the babysitter, particularly after a month of basically being a babysitter but also having real authority and not needing to deal with 5-year-olds, and actually being paid and yeah. I might have gotten a little angry after being forced to sit at the kids table one night for dinner. Also, our hotel was really far from like everything else on the island and also on a giant hill, and there's only bikes and horses on Mackinac, so guess what we did everyday. That's right. BIKED UP A GIANT HILL. Not so much fun.
3. I got a French exchange student, soon after I got back from camp. She was cool. I liked her. We did stuff. I also hung out with more friends during this period of time.
4. Exchange student went home, and I did more things with friends and people started leaving for college and I started vaguely trying to pack for college.
5. I found out where I will be living at college! It's the "communications" dorm, which means it has a lot of Radio/TV/Film (RTVF) people living in it and also two screening rooms and it seems awesome and I live in a single but that is okay because the rooms are suite-style so I sort of have like 7 roommates who I don't actually have to share a room with and there is a kitchen on my floor and a place to put luggage and bikes and my dorm's blog is actually legit and awesome and I am so excited fer kerllergeeeeeee.
6. I started work at the state fair. It alternates between mind-numbingly boring and semi-painful for my feet/knees/back, but I sort of like some of the people who also work there, so that's cool (also, making money is happyful). Many of them are under the impression that I'm about two years younger than I actually am, but whatever.
7. General books/movies/shows over the summer: separate post, because this one is already long and there are lots of things.