“We exist because of suburbia. Suburbia is a freak’s dreamworld, a world of extra rooms upstairs and long, lazy afternoons with no interference. A place where you can listen to your LPs for hours on end. You can live in your room, your own rent-free corner of the universe, and create a world of pleasure and interest entirely centered on yourself and your interior aesthetic and logic.”
—Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia
Look, I know, TOTAL white girl problems; a very wise decision on the filmmaker's part to give the main character epilepsy.
If there's one thing that my A in Writing the Essay has confirmed for me, it's that I'm really unnecessarily good at analyzing things. But while this skill can be helpful and therapeutic if learned early on in a high school setting where it's possible to decode social dynamics, it is actually totally crippling when applied in the real world. I'm 18 years old, and I hardly know anything. Nor should I expect myself to. And in a way this makes me worry that maybe I actually did peak in high school, but if the clarity I achieved during the end of my senior year was a "peak" of sorts, I only got there because I really struggled at first, having gone through this whole period of self-doubt over potentially wasting my adolescent years looking to grow up too fast. I don't want to make this mistake a second time in college, and this is precisely why I must retire from teen blogging (or as I like to call it, "blogging about my feelings"). Yes, I'm still a teenager, but I'm not in high school anymore, and while I am totally in love with going to school in New York City, doing so also means being totally stressed out each and every day by the sheer measure of power and wealth and raw talent that exists within it. It's not easy figuring out how to best live in the present, but to me it means taking my time, and not getting ahead of myself, no matter how tempting. I don't know exactly what I want to do with my life anymore, but I keep telling myself that's okay. It's fine to look to others' successes for inspiration, but there are no formulas to be followed, nor are there finish lines worth crossing in life. And I think I've come to realize that it's not so much the disillusionment that's worth romanticizing, but rather the fuck ups that remind us we're only human. As of now, I'm still holding on to illusion with all my heart.
So these were all the movies I was really psyched to see in 2011...
but I'm sorry to report that I didn't actually end up seeing any of them. Umm...my bad, I guess. I don't know. I love movies, but I don't love paying $13 to see them in New York City when I can experience live music for half of that and feel way more satisfied with the experience. Plus I'm majoring in Cinema Studies so I've sort of witnessed first-hand how lonely and pretentious excessively consuming cinema can potentially make a person. But that's another topic of discussion...
HOW GREAT was Bridesmaids, you guys?!
Breaking Dawn is technically the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life, but I'd still like to thank the film for inspiring me to write my most successful tweet yet! (statistically speaking, of course)
Whatever, movies. The world's probably gonna end in 2012 anyway, so everyone just chill out and watch these in preparation for the apocalypse:
I actually got to devote one of my radio shows to playing favorite tracks of 2011. (LINK TO THAT)
But here's an essential second list considering no respectable college radio station is ever gonna let a girl air Katy Perry, and I don't wanna try to act like I wasn't profoundly moved by these tracks. No frontin' necessary:
"Last Friday Night" // Katy Perry
"Gucci Gucci" // Kreayshawn
(For the record, I've never even heard another song by Kreayshawn, but HELLO--"I got the swag and it's pumpin' out my ovaries." Story of my life. Preach, girl.)
"Countdown" // Beyonce
"Born This Way" // Lady Gaga
(Yes, I'm still totally into it. Yes, I'm sparing you the video.)
Here are 10 albums I really loved in 2011. I'm actually pretty impressed that I was able to choose 10 albums (ignore the fact that I strategically set up this list to look like I didn't choose half of them from Slumberland Records). Remember when I wrote the mission statement for Music That Matters To Me? (lol @ only writing about Weezer before going off to college and getting a life.) In writing that post I didn't think I was capable of genuinely caring about an abundance of new music. But basically it's like this: give girl radio show, girl listen to more new music. That's what's up.
Belong Share the Joy Cry About It 7" Veronica Falls
(The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Vivian Girls, Bad Banana, Veronica Falls)
So I realized about week ago that my roommate and I (who are mutually vegan/share the same b-day) are basically the Olsen twins.
It's uncanny.
And it's really helpful that we are because I LOVE the Olsen twins!
Now, if you read Thought Catalogue, perhaps you recall the post Ryan O'Connell wrote earlier this year: "True Life: I'm Obsessed With The Olsen Twins". I think Ryan and I definitely reside on an equal level of MK&A appreciation, but while he's always been into them as peers, I'm eternally into them because of how I viewed them as a child. They were impossibly cool big girls! Impossibly cool big girls who taught an entire generation of young females the following: the fun you will have in your teens will only be measured by the number of stellar unsupervised vacations you go on, and the success you have in finding cute boys on said vacays.
But hey, I'm out of high school now, and totally fascinated with their sick glamorization of teenhood. I'm also fascinated with the seven years worth of VHS tapes ('93-'00) that showcased the twins singing original songs despite having no discernible musical talent whatsoever (and I'm not just talkin' "Gimme Pizza"; there are MANY gems). MK&A were just so profoundly girlie! #1 set of famous NYU twins forever! (no, really though).
"Can you imagine reading a research paper written by Mary-Kate? 'i like art pretty ethereal art Basquiat Lauren Hutton cool bye.'"
- Ryan O'Connell
Plus, I'm a big fan of the soundtracks to all those direct-to-video movies. I think my ultimate dream would be getting paid to pick the music used in MK&A films. Seriously, they should make more and let me do that; it'll be my super helpful contribution to improving mainstream teen culture.
I made this 8track because I was capable of making this 8track:
but I'm sorry to report that I didn't actually end up seeing any of them. Umm...my bad, I guess. I don't know. I love movies, but I don't love paying $13 to see them in New York City when I can experience live music for half of that and feel way more satisfied with the experience. Plus I'm majoring in Cinema Studies so I've sort of witnessed first-hand how lonely and pretentious excessively consuming cinema can potentially make a person. But that's another topic of discussion...
