Good vibrations and our imaginations

Sunday afternoon we watched our friends' gig in the usual cafe and then set out in search of a mini adventure. 

I don't know if I've just been more observant lately or what, but the street art downtown is becoming more and more beautiful. 

Once spring hits, the city's inchworm population goes berserk. On school grounds and downtown is where I find them most. Covering the telephone poles and hanging from trees. We sometimes keep them as temporary pets. One of my friends named hers Huke Lemmings (lol get it instead of Luke Hemmings?) and brought it to dress rehearsal with her. 

Not much to say as of late, but this was a really lovely and relaxing day. Hanging out with some new faces was a nice break. 

title from the song Creeque Alley // The Mama's and the Papa's 

You're so Healthy, I'm so Junk

I've gotten so bad about writing and not just on here but in general. My life has picked up so much lately I haven't gotten any time to rest. I still don't technically. I should be studying for a French quiz right now. I've got so much to talk about though.  April hit and suddenly I'm doing jobs for people and going to parties and helping out friends and doing schoolwork in double time! Somebody help me.

So, while I FINALLY get some sleep, here's a wrap up of how March went for me:

Perfect Skin // Peace

Head On/Pill // King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard

Black Out Days // Phantogram

You know, girly stuff

There's nothing I love more than sunny days. As someone who's emotions mostly depend on the vibes happening around me, sunny days are much more preferable than gray and rainy days.

Today I present to you some of my new found favorite things:

1. Mac DeMarco

I'd heard of Mac DeMarco before from various friends and music websites, but with me it usually takes a few tries before I really start to like something.

My favorite song so far from Mac has been Salad Days from the album Salad Days. It's such a chill, easy going song. It's the kind of song where you're just sitting around with friends and you're all moving your heads along with the beat. NPR writer, Daniel Levin Becker, describes the Salad Days album as "sun-dappled". I think he was pretty spot on about that.
Another favorite is Ode to Viceroy off the album Mac DeMarco 2. Also a pretty chill tune, this one gives me a very "lazy morning" vibe. The entire song is about Mac's love for Viceroy cigarettes. As much as I hate cigarettes I have no problem singing along to this.
Some other Mac DeMarco songs I urge you to listen to are Let Her Stay, Goodbye to the Weekend, and Freaking Out the Neighborhood. If you like some laid-back, but cleverly written tunes, then this is the musician for you.

2. Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Yes Please is Amy Poehler's first book and autobiography. I literally finished reading it about 15 minutes ago and I am so glad I read it. I'm not sure how appealing a read it would be if you're not a huge Amy Poehler fan, but saying as it's an excellent book packed with lots of good life advice, I recommend it regardless. In the book, Amy talks at length about her childhood, her time spent in Chicago and New York, Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, her friends and co-workers, her trip to Haiti, and other life experiences. It really was a satisfying read and I feel like I learned a lot not just about the wonder that is Amy Poehler, but also life in general.



3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Yes I realize how late I am on this.
I am equally in love and in hate with this show. It's so cliche and the dialogue is literally so cringe worthy, but I love it so much. I finished watching the first episode and I thought to myself "oh my god why did I watch that." and then proceeded to watch three more episodes. I don't even think I have to recommend this to anyone seeing as it's already a classic. I just needed to express my love for it some how. Buffy's fashion sense makes me want to raid her closet pronto and I'm not sure what Angel's purpose is yet but I just want to stare into his mysterious, bad boy eyes forever. As for Willow and Xander, I think they're adorable and want to hug them for all eternity. Anyone else feel me on that?

Those have been my obsessions as of late, so if you haven't experienced any of these for yourself I honestly don't know what you're waiting for.

Straight Lines That Unwind You

~ Top // old tank top I adjusted 

Skirt // H&M

Sweater // Forever 21 

Boots // BooHoo 

Choker // Claire's ~

For the love of all that is good, please ignore my terrible photoshop skills. 

I've been in a such a rut lately. I think it's because I finished The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and now I don't know what to do with my life. This school week hasn't been helping much either.  The school system took away three days of our spring break due to missing so many days earlier this year because of snow. Only about half the student body showed up the first two days and today only about a third showed up. I had about nine people in each of my classes. Being someone who's always preferred big classes, I found this so uncomfortable. To make the boring days a bit better, my friends and I made sure to do enjoyable things after school let out. 

Monday, me and two friends caught a bus downtown. The original intent of this was to cat sit another friends' cat, but since cat sitting doesn't require much effort, we just wandered around her apartment for a bit and then got a late lunch. The restaurant we ate at was literally across the street from the apartment building and I'm absolutely in love with it. It's a little diner type place that was built in the 1930's and they haven't remodeled it one bit. It still looks exactly the same now as it did back then in every detail down to the cash register they use. So far I can confirm that their grilled cheese, fries, and apple pie are extremely delicious. I plan on taking more trips there in the future, especially to get photos. 

Tuesday, a group of us went to the rose garden again. In 'rose garden day' tradition, Rachel brought her Eno and we picked up a bunch of candy at Rite Aid beforehand. Are Eno's a popular thing anywhere else? Or is that just here? 

The weather was so so beautiful and perfect to be lying in a hammock in the sun. I think I'll post my pictures from that in another post because I took quite a few. 

That's all I have to report as of late. I plan on continuing my rut by watching Cabaret at least 3 more times and sleeping a lot. If any of you haven't seen Cabaret, I highly recommend it. Even if you aren't into musicals, you should at least give it a try. It touches on a lot of important subjects. 

Milk // The 1975

I Can't Drive, I'm a Goose

A good amount of things have happened since I last wrote on here. Things including the Parks and Rec finale (which left me with so many emotions), my birthday party (which was 90s themed and totally rad), a very big choral festival (I might have to write about that at some point), and a Stop Hunger Now event at my school (go look them up it's a great organization). I also got a spot on my school's newspaper staff for next year!
There was one other awesome thing that happened though, and that's what I'm here to tell you about this evening.

Last night, I and seven other friends had the wonderful opportunity to see an advance screening of Disney's new Cinderella movie. The screening was held in a movie theater about 20 minutes outside of my city and I just need to take a quick moment to appreciate how beautiful this theater was. The ceiling was even shaped in a way that your voice echoed and you could hear people talking on the other side of the lobby!

The whole event was just such a thrill. There were three super lovely security men that guarded our phones (we weren't allowed to have them in the theater) and even our popcorn when we asked them to. When we walked into the room for the screening, there was an entire row of seats reserved for local critics and other official people. Not enough showed up to fill the entire row, so we snatched the reserved signs off the empty seats before we left. What rebels we are.

Right before the movie started we got a first look at the cutest Frozen animated short. The overall theme was that it was Ana's birthday and Elsa was trying to make it absolutely perfect but at the same time she had a bad cold. It also featured a brand new song! It kept the audience laughing and giggling through out. After the movie we were greeted by a lovely Disney representative who gave us comment cards to fill out and was just such a cheery person in general. Nice people are my favorite.


Now to the actual movie:
What a beautiful remake. I mean seriously, I have been so happy with Disney lately and after seeing this movie I continue to be. It stayed very true to the original Cinderella movie but with more layers added on to it. The adaption went so much more in depth with all of the characters including both parents, the step-mother, Ella and the Prince's relationship, and the Prince's life. There was so much more to these characters. Another aspect that can't go unmentioned is the use of color and costuming to tell the story. The constant use of green and black in the step-mothers wardrobe to portray her greed and envy and dressing the step-sisters in very youthful clothing to show their immaturity. I even noticed that shade of the Prince's eye's would get darker or lighter depending on his emotions. Aside from the metaphorical use of color, the costumes in general literally made me want to cry. They were so beautiful! I mean PLEASE somebody give Sandy Powell another Oscar.

Cate Blanchett as the Step-mother with Holliday Grainger and Sophia McShera as the step-sisters

Richard Madden as the Prince

Helena Bonham-Carter as the Fairy Godmother

I also want to talk about Lily James because I've seen some things online saying that she wasn't "pretty enough" to play Cinderella, or that she was "too plain". That's utterly ridiculous. If they had made Ella anymore stereotypically prettier or sexier then I would not have liked this movie as much. I loved that she had kind of funny teeth and a longish nose. I loved that she had brown eyes instead of blue. Her beauty wasn't supposed to be a kind of "in your face" beauty. It was supposed to be subtle but still apparent.

Lily James as Cinderella 

That brings me to my last topic regarding this film: the moral of the story.
There were three main messages that were made obvious to me while watching. The first was obviously the main point because Ella repeats it to herself multiple times and that is "Have courage and be kind".  I think that's a beautiful message to be sending to an audience. That phrase literally becomes Ella's life motto in the film. The other two I picked up were 'love me for who I am' and 'forgiveness is key'. I'll let you all figure out where those came in when you go see it for yourselves.

One last shoutout I'd like to make to Disney because my friend Crystal wrote an email to the company last night when we were on our way home from the screening. The email basically just summed up her happiness about the film and just a little while ago she got a reply! The response was such a gracious one and so lovely to read. They even said they'd pass her email along to the production team! How awesome is that?!

You can see the trailer [here] if you haven't already.
All images are from imdb.com and the title is one of the funniest lines in the movie.

Not One Step Back, No Way

February 14th was easily the best day of 2015 so far.

What's the greatest way to spend Valentines Day? With your significant other being all cute and stuff? Wrong. How about marching through your city demanding justice and equal rights? That's more like it.
Yesterday marked the day of Moral March 2015 for the state of North Carolina. So naturally, a group of my friends and I headed downtown at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning to be apart of this incredible event. We marched with the organization Planned Parenthood in the name of equal rights for women. Of course I would've gladly marched with any other groups that were there but the reason we were all there was because of our school's Young Feminists club.

It started out with Planned Parenthood giving out pink beanies, stickers, and Keith Haring print condoms to everyone marching with them. Then the president of the organization was introduced by a nice lady dressed up as birth control. 

 My friend Matt looking very excited to be there.

Then everyone there gathered in front of the Memorial Auditorium and we listened to a bunch of speakers including a lady from the NAACP, the president of the "Raging Grannies", some local musicians, and finally the brother of Deah Barakat. That last one really got to a lot of us. Incase you don't know, Deah Barakat was one of three Muslim students who were shot to death a few days ago in Chapel Hill. Deah was a graduate of my high school, so it's been quite a big deal here. 

We spent a couple Young Fems meetings making really rad posters. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. Everyone there loved the vagina poster. 

I did plenty of other things during my Valentine's Day but this was such a big highlight. I've never been a part of anything like this but it was so life changing for me. 

Queen of Hearts

This past weekend was my school's big winter formal, also known as the Queen of Hearts dance. It is easily the most overly hyped thing that gets put on every year. It comes in four parts:

1. The assembly
2. The dinner 
3. The dance
4. The after party

The assembly and the dance are the only ones that the school itself actually does. The dinner and after party are customary though. I also apologize in advance for the watermarks on most of the pictures. I got them off of the photographers website.

So number one: The Assembly.
The reason we have an entire two hour assembly for a dumb high school dance is because we also have what is known as a "Queen of Hearts court". A certain number of girls from each grade level is voted onto the court by the student body and then during the assembly they are each presented to the school. It's kind of like that thing where you get "presented to society". I'm not sure if that's actually a thing people do, but I saw it on Gossip Girl. Along with the girls on court, there is the 'queen of hearts' (hence the dance's name) and her maid of honor. Every girl walks down a red carpet in a floor length gown, holding a bouquet of flowers, with a male escort on their arm. Then the Queen of Hearts comes out and everybody rises in her honor. THEN, everyone on court (plus the maid of honor and the queen) have to waltz with their escorts in front of everyone. How obvious is it that the whole thing is run by two older, southern, white ladies? It's made much less painful by different students performing during the assembly. My choral group performed a medley of songs by the band Fun. and a bunch of other people sang solos or duets. A couple dance teams did some stuff too, which was really cool. The only truly lame part is the skit they put on to go with the theme. I was holding out for the skit this year because the theme was Alice in Wonderland (!!!!!) but of course every time they have to throw in jokes to make the skit "hip and cool". The phrases "bae", "selfie", and "throwback thursday" were used way too often. The assembly this year was a particularly good one though, because four of my best friends got voted onto the court! Not only does this make me happy, but that means it is the first year in my high school's history that we had a gay woman AND a trans woman on court. I love being able to say that. One of my friends who was on court is also an extremely talented beatboxer. So as a surprise, there was a part during a dance teams performance where the music stopped and she jumped up from her court seat and started hardcore beatboxing in the middle of the gymnasium. Seeing her intensely beatboxing in her gown and white gloves made me ecstatic.

Number two: The Dinner
The dinner before the dance was probably the highlight of the whole night honestly. Unfortunately the boyfriend got grounded literally the night before, so I had to negotiate a deal with his mom. The deal ended up being he could go to the dance, but no dinner or after party. Despite having no date to dinner, just being with friends was great. There were supposed to be six of us total, but a friend of ours and her date ended up crashing our dinner reservation and there ended up being eight of us. We sat in the corner of a lovely local Italian restaurant and listened to my best friends date tell puns for about two hours straight. It was wonderful. I also applaud my friend Crystal for ordering nothing but dessert. You go girl. The main reason dinner was so great came as a big surprise.
We were all sitting and enjoying our meal when this older man approached our table. He started talking to us about how proud of us he was that we all looked so nice and were acting so maturely. He told us about how he still remembers going with his friends to his school dances and that we should remember life is short but these memories will stick with us for a long time. We thanked him for such kind words and he told us to have a nice night and left the restaurant. A bit later we were getting ready to pay when the owner of the place informed us that the man was a regular there. He comes in every Saturday night and she said even if he's out of town that night he calls in to tell them. Then she told us he had paid for our entire meal. THAT NICE OLD MAN HAD PAID FOR OUR ENTIRE DINNER. We were all shocked into silence. Once we processed that a bit better, we all agreed to buy him flowers and a thank you card. I mean that was ridiculously nice. I still can't believe he did that. It's really people like that man that make this world a better place.

Number 3: The Dance
I wish I had more to say about the dance honestly. I'll get all the negative stuff out of the way first. I got there an hour late because my boyfriend's mom wanted to take pictures beforehand, then the first thing my friends say to me when I walk in is "This dance sucks lets leave."I managed to convince them to stay a bit longer, but the band they hired this year was terrible and my feet kept getting stepped on and I was just so frustrated. Alright now to positive things. Some of my friends and teachers told me I looked gorgeous, I got to dance to "You're the One That I Want" with the boyfriend (my ultimate goal is to actually dress up in costume and lip synch to it but hey, baby steps), and the friends who didn't want to leave yet made great company.

Number 4: The After Party
I wouldn't say it was much of a party. It was a group of my friends and some of their dates snacking, lounging, and listening to music. We were all much too tired by that point to do much. To be fair, it was around midnight. My beatboxing friend did some of her DJing stuff for us, which was rad as always. I wish it had been more of a party but I liked what I got regardless.

So that was my school dance experience. There's also some exciting stuff coming up on Saturday that I can't wait to write about. You'll have to sit tight for that though. I hope everyone is having a lovely week.