I'm Not There, I'm Gone

nataliemguevara: Dennis Hopper checked out. I’ve only met him...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:10:01 -0400

Dennis Hopper checked out. I’ve only met him once, but in my head I cast him as this faraway, fantasy grandfather. I remember going to see him at this New York Times gala and asking him about a movie he directed, one of my favorites, Out of the Blue. This actress, Linda Manz, starred in it, she wore this Elvis blue jean jacket all throughout the movie that I’ve always coveted. Also: always coveted the way she talked, she had major ‘tude. He was so glad I had watched it and wanted to know more about it — guess everyone always prefers to talk about Easy Rider or Speed, ya know, or the many other iconic roles in his long career. When he was younger he dated Natalie Wood, and in our short 20-minute conversation he told me I reminded him of her, which made me unnecessarily sentimental, because I was named after her. He was really patient and he looked at you straight in the eye, but it wasn’t unsettling like I thought it’d be. You could tell he was a recovering addict of something because he totally threw himself into whatever he did with total intensity. Towards the end, it was hard to see the recent photos of him, just as heartbreaking a decline as Paul Newman’s, though Dennis Hopper was nowhere near as universally adored. He reminded me of when my grandfather was dying of colon cancer: lotsa life left in a surly man, trapped inside a dying body, all bones and teeth. Trained in Shakespeare, sick art collection, photojournalist, Midwestern boy, burned bridges, profound gaze, played it to the bone.

- from my journal, May 31, 2010

The Vampire Diaries teaches all how to make Atlanta feel like...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:45:00 -0400

The Vampire Diaries teaches all how to make Atlanta feel like New York, just hand an extra a Duane Reade bag.

thebluthcompany: Illustrated Arrested Development Valentine’s...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 23:38:53 -0500

thebluthcompany:

Illustrated Arrested Development Valentine’s Day Cards

15 Vintage Joshua Jackson Moments That'll Make You Squee

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:24:39 -0500

15 Vintage Joshua Jackson Moments That'll Make You Squee:

Squee indeed.

A Song to Pass the Time

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:42:56 -0500

What I just sung to myself listening to One Direction sing to me through my headphones while sitting in a room full of busy at work lawyers and law students:

(To the tune of “What Makes You Beautiful”)

This song lights up my world, like nothing else
This room would otherwise get me overwhelmed
Then I smile at the ground cos they can’t tell
They don’t know
Oh oh
They don’t know I’m listening to One Direction

(Oh yes I am lame)

XoXo Lonely Boy

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 02:38:03 -0500

thewatcherscouncil7:

I’m not gonna get too far into the hilariously awful yet oddly really satisfying Gossip Girl series finale, mostly because I don’t have time and having quit the show ages ago (only half keeping up by reading those great Vulture recaps) I don’t think I’m qualified to say much on it anyhow. But here’s a light image-heavy recap/review, highlighting my favorite moments of that terribly awesome finale.

Read More

Finals Times is Crazy Times

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:05:00 -0500

While paperwriting and finals makes me resemble these gifs:

The bleakness of it all leads me to derive incomprehensible joy from the oddest of things and places. For instance, one paper I’m writing just made me giddy for allowing me to construct this sentence:

“if someone who was not cognizant of pop culture in the late-1990s were to be introduced the WB’s Dawson’s Creek now, via DVD or Netflix Instant, they are likely not to connect the show to the song it made ubiquitous, Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait.””

I am that simple and easy to please during finals.

Sounds like “you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:23:44 -0500

Sounds like “you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes, and swallowed a pack of razor blades…after 3 nights without sleep”— official 9th Circuit Court description of Tom Waits’s voice

True Love, for reals. #PaceyWitter4Lyf Thanks Kevin Williamson...

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 14:31:00 -0400

True Love, for reals. #PaceyWitter4Lyf Thanks Kevin Williamson et al. and mostly thanks Joshua Jackson for making Pacey so perfect that all men I meet will be compared and fail to live up to that dream man. Joey Potter was a stupid twat for taking that long to make up her mind on that boy…ew remember when she briefly chose that Eddie guy (Oliver Hudson) over him? Idiot girl.

You only need this as proof: http://youtu.be/JNTdsm5Vu3w (HE BOUGHT HER A WALL PEOPLE!)

BONUS: Proof that it may just be Joshua Jackson that we’re all in love with…see Peter Bishop obsessive dad: http://youtu.be/UeKdGVSzRQU

"Great Smoky Dragon” was Wheeler’s phrase for a trippy concept in quantum physics that..."

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:04:00 -0400

““Great Smoky Dragon” was Wheeler’s phrase for a trippy concept in quantum physics that postulates that we live in a “participatory universe,” where consciousness creates reality, where we not only forge the future by our actions in the present, but we retroactively create the past, as well. (I think.) Wheeler had other terms for this nutty notion, too, including one with stronger Fringe resonance:
“Genesis by Observership.”
And remember: Genesis under Peter Gabriel started as a prog rock band, too. Or at least they became one with their second album, entitled… Trespass. Coincidence? In an episode all about trespassing and “In Your Eyes” romanticism and oblique prog rock references? I THINK NOT!”

- Fringe recap: While You Were Sleeping | Season 5 Episode 02 | EW.com

Jeff Jensen’s recaps on EW.com make my mind hurt in the most extraordinary ways, and whether I buy into all he’s proposing or not the observations and discourse still excite me. Mostly they remind me why I love genre television, and why I think why its so amazing to really be a fan. Being a pop culture obsessive, a perpetual fan of the “geeky” etc has often been a source of derision, but more its been something that people often have looked down on me for. Insinuations that I’m wasting myself or my time obsessing over something as “trite” as a TV show has always angered, frustrated, and mostly confused me. From my perspective being a fan, engaging in thought, discourse, and critical/theoretical readings of the shows I love has not only enriched my life by giving me the ever pleasant feeling of being truly passionate about something but its stimulated me intellectually and opened my mind to so much knowledge. Television is not the idiot box if you watch it right. We are living in a golden age of TV, where shows like Fringe, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Lost, Battlestar, and the Whedon-ouvre before it encourage viewers not to be passive but to study history, philosophy, mortality, etc, to ask the hard questions about human nature, identity, etc. Genre in particular has seemingly limitless possibilities to make us think, to read beyond the “text” (the show itself), and to carry what we’ve gained through the process of engaging with these shows into the rest of our lives. I am a firm believer that if I had not been exposed to and drawn into the Buffyverse when I was 12, I would be a much simpler, vapid, and flat out dumber person. Loving Buffy taught me how to care enough to think, question, and seek out knowledge. To be so engaged with something that you want to read up on quantum physics or existential philosophy in order to better comprehend is a beautiful thing: passion, even about something silly, is emotionally rewarding, and moreover intellectual exercises even with pop culture are never silly.

The best ONTD commentary on Taylor Swift’s new song...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:19:33 -0400

The best ONTD commentary on Taylor Swift’s new song “Begin Again” ….this is why I read comments. Internet wins!

Jessica's Dream

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:20:56 -0400

@JessicaCoro : Margarita this is what I want for a proposal …. Hansons singing in the background with violins and acoustic guitars on the top of the mountains beautiful flowers … Flowy gown … And peeta down on his real knee …Make it happen

…

Jessica: One of two things will happen … U know excitement and surprises make me violent .. a trait that s been inherited from my mother. I’ll probably throw one of the hansons over the cliff in shear joy and excitement Or ill cry to the point ill make the mountain a waterfall and tell my peeta to “shut the fuck up “

Sometimes the memory of home can be so sweet. This short film,...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:57:00 -0400

Sometimes the memory of home can be so sweet. This short film, “(A Toast) To Miami,” may not exactly portray my Miami, but its evocative nostalgia stirred something in me that made me smile. That thing that makes me proud to be from the Magic City. Walking down the streets of D.C. I often smile thinking of this town of transplants who came here mostly for work but also seeking a more interesting colorful place to call home, but me I come not from the mundanity of the Midwest or the uppercrustidiness of New England but from the strange exotic 305. A land where English is a second language, where the weird collides with the beautiful.

I’ll admit I hated Miami growing up, wanted nothing more than to leave. I perceived it to be a superficial, judgmental wasteland, where sunshine killed braincells and intellect went to die. But during my prolonged “imprisonment” in the Magic City, I found its other sides, the art scenes, a community of like minded smart kids who always talked about getting out but never did and instead hung in bars talking about how stupid Miami was not realizing through this talk we were changing it, making the city ours and making it special. I don’t think I’ll ever move back to the 305 again, the 3 Hs (heat, humidity, hurricanes) and lack of career opportunities that interest me have closed it off to me. But may be in realizing that I’ll never be permanently there again, I’ve become more ok with it, more proud to call that sun-drip paradise home, and I’ve come to miss it. Come to cherish the ridiculous aspects of it that I used to shun. And come to praise it for daring to be different, to be this strange wondrous place of astounding contradictions. Comparing it, DC just fails to be so daringly different and weird. So I grow nostalgic, missing home; craving a cortadito, some pastelitos, and a vaca frita with moros and maduros.

Miami in a a lot ways is me. Hispanic-American. Self-loathing yet deeply narcissistic. Strange, an outsider town that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the state or country. A place that always seems lost in dream, ignoring reality. A place that forces you to carry a cardigan everywhere you go though its 90 degrees out, because that blasting AC creates a different interior reality. What you see isn’t always what you with Miami or with me. Just always keeping you guessing.

We Think We Should Share

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 01:59:54 -0400

My frequent use of the royal “we” when I mean “I” sometimes concerns me. In High School I did write a paper on Disassociative Identity Disorder for my freshman health class… my research was based entirely on Vicki in One Life to Live and the 3 Faces of Eve.

Really the true sign of my insanity is that I say it a loud to absolutely no one. “We shant be watching that” (yes I also say “shant”)… I live alone, I don’t even have cats, its definitely just me and “the other mes.” So its either a future diagnosis of D.I.D. or schizophrenia I’m facing right? I hope I can get on a health insurance plan that includes mental health coverage before that, those pills cannot be cheap.

"If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire…if immigrants could leave behind..."

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:51:44 -0400

“If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire…if immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores…if women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote…if a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time…if a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream…and if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love…then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream. Because in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country – the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle.”

- Michelle Obama killed it. “The truth matters” - Salon.com

Last night Olivia (@boneyardbones) blew my mind.

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:06:00 -0400

Last night Olivia (@boneyardbones) blew my mind.

It was my birthday yester, in case you were wondering how old I...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:36:31 -0400

It was my birthday yester, in case you were wondering how old I turned see above photo. Unlike Matthew Perry in that film I will not be learning any important lessons about adulthood thank you.

Remember when I used to call my niece Amber a fat and useless...

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:44:00 -0400

Remember when I used to call my niece Amber a fat and useless baby? Well those days are over, because along with toddling, walking, and some semblance of talking she also developed quite the amazing personality. Not only is she sassy as all hell, but she’s also whip smart. At the tender age of 4, she’s taught herself some Mandarin and sign language (through some tv show that I doubt other kids have been smart enough to similarly utilize), and knows how to pick idols: me (note in the above picture how she too took a stab at cutting her own bangs, unfortunately has yet to develop my dexterity). She also braids her hair like she were a contestant in the hunger games, can do a full teaser Pilates move and knows what its called, and enjoys the music of the Civil Wars (huge fan of “I’ve Got This Friend,” song she’s jamming to in above picture).

But my favorite piece of evidence into Amber’s intelligence is her disdain for school. Don’t get her wrong, she loves knowledge and learning, she just knows she’s above all those uniforms, rules, teachers and other dumber children. This likely means she’ll end up like me, another early in life school-hater, and overstay her welcome in higher educational systems, because its cozy there…because that’s our curse. But in the mean time she won’t take this fact sitting down. In fact, Amber is convinced that the requirement that she attend pre-school is some form of bizarre punishment, for what crime? She has no idea, she’s just willing to do whatever it takes to get out of serving that sentence. Every morning as she’s being dressed in her uniform she says “Mommy, I’m sorry,” before departing “Don’t make me go, I swear I’ll be good,” outside the school door “I’ll clean my room instead.”

Then she lies to me and swears she didn’t cry, she just hates it is all.

mckaylaisnotimpressed: McKayla is not impressed with William...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 22:44:25 -0400

mckaylaisnotimpressed:

McKayla is not impressed with William And Kate

yes.

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:08:06 -0400

yes.