Sept. 9th, 100th Post!!!

Wow, 100 posts! I guess for a blog that's 3 years old, that's not that impressive. But still! I'm surprised I've made it this far, especially since my life is pretty average these days and I don't have that much to write about.
For the 50th post on this blog, I wrote 50 things about myself (read it here). For this 100th post, I'm not going to do that again. Instead, I'm going to write 10 Top 10 lists on various things.
Just to clarify, the top 10 things aren't necessarily in order, they are just the top 10 in that category (in my ever-changing opinion), and I encourage you to check them out. Enjoy!

Top 10 Movies (This list changes often for me)

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
3. Matilda
4. The Matrix Trilogy
5. V For Vendetta
6. Return to Oz
7. The Village (haters gon' hate)
8. Hocus Pocus
9. Clue
10. Tron: Legacy

Top 10 Nintendo Games

1. Legend of Zelda (all of them, but especially "Ocarina of Time" and "A Link to the Past")
2. Super Smash Bros. Melee
3. Animal Crossing
4. Super Mario World
5. Donkey Kong Country
6. Super Mario Galaxy (both of them - so fun!)
7. Pokemon Yellow
8. Mario Kart 64
9. Super Monkey Ball 2
10. Super Mario 64

Top 10 Classical Pieces (YouTube these!)

1. Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 (and 3!)
2. Saint-Saens' Dans Macabre
3. Respighi's Pines of Rome (especially the Appian Way movement)
4. Gorecki's 3rd Symphony, 2nd movement
5. Handel's Worthy is the Lamb/Amen (all of Messiah, actually)
6. Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, Allegro
7. Holst's The Planets (Mars will knock your socks off!)
8. Wagner's Tristan and Isolde Prelude and Liebestod
9. Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (especially the finale!)
10. Grieg's Peer Gynt
    And SO many more!

Top 10 Foods

1. Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
2. Tacos, Burritos, anything Mexican
3. Pizza!
4. Lasagna
5. Pasta! Any kind!
6. Kimbap - it's Korean and so good!
7. Artichokes
8. Salmon
9. French Fries
10. Homemade cookies

Top 10 Disney Rides

1. Soarin' Over California
2. California Screamin'
3. Space Mountain
4. Haunted Mansion
5. Thunder Mountain
6. Tower of Terror
7. Thunder Mountain
8. Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye
9. Toy Story Mania
10. Pirates of the Caribbean

Top 10 Books (Or Series) - This list will change constantly, but these are all books I'd read again.

1. His Dark Materials - Philip Pulman
2. Harry Potter - JK Rowling
3. Monster Blood Tattoo - DM Cornish (strange title, GREAT books!)
4. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
5. The Neverending Story - Michael Ende (if you judge this book by its movie I'll shun you forever)
6. Silence - Shusaku Endo
7. The Arrival - Shaun Tan
8. Coraline - Neal Gaiman
9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
10. The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin

Top 10 Plays (Musicals Too)

1. Sweeney Todd
2. Importance of Being Earnest
3. Phantom of the Opera
4. One Man, Two Guvnors
5. Midsummer Night's Dream (but only the production at the Globe in London in summer 2010)
6. Wicked
7. Viva Forever (Make fun and I will CUT you!)
8. Joseph and the Amazing Never-Ending Titled Dreamcoat
9. Wait Until Dark
10. Les Miserables (and in London! Phenomenal!)

Top 10 Bug I HATE

1. Earwigs
2. Grasshoppers
3. Spiders
4. Moths
5. Cockroaches
6. Mosquitoes
7. Worms (because they're gross)
8. Flies
9. Crickets
10. Wasps
    (Bees don't freak me out because they usually keep to themselves.)

Top 10 TV Shows

1. Parks and Recreation
2. Adventure Time
3. Tron: Uprising
4. Ocean Girl
5. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
6. Downton Abbey
7. The 10th Kingdom (it was a miniseries, so originally for TV)
8. The X Files
9. Malcolm in the Middle
10. Family Guy (Even though it's terrible, it makes me laugh...)

Top 10 Video Game Music (Click the Links!)

1. Super Smash Bros. Melee - Opening Titles
2. Mario 64 - Dire Dire Dock (also, this version is amazing)
3. Halo 4 - 117
4. Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambiance
5. Shenmue - Main Theme
6. Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand
7. Zelda - Everything! Especially Gerudo Valley, The Dark World, and Song of Healing
8. Super Mario Galaxy - StarDust Road (also called Space Junk Galaxy)
9. Portal - Still Alive
10. Okami - The Sun Rises

Ok, so there you go! 100 things to check out (or avoid)! I wonder how long it will take me to get another 100 posts here.... 3 years again? Will I even blog in 3 years? We'll see!

See you tomorrow!

Sept. 8th, Waking Up Early

I am not a morning person. I hate waking up so much that even when a nice breakfast is made that I still want to just stay in bed.
One way to surely make me an angry bear is to urgently or rudely wake me up. Someday when I have kids, I fear that they will be terrified of me in the morning. I've growled before at people in my waking stages because I was too sleepy/incoherent to say words to them to leave me alone.

On principle, I never set any alarm before 7 am, because up until then, it's still night.
Well, today I actually did have to wake up earlier than usual, since I had to be in my seat at a special event by 7:40, so my first alarm went off in the 6th hour - also known as the butt-crack of dawn - and I got up and ready and was in my seat on time.
The meeting was really good (it was a church one) and I feel like it was worth getting up so early to go. I might need a few days of recovery though....
I'm not usually one to go to bed early, which makes mornings hard.... I can remember getting in trouble typically on a nightly basis for playing after I was told to go to bed throughout my childhood. My brother and I shared a room, and I don't recall him really ever getting in trouble, even though I certainly wasn't playing only on my own.
I remember one particular threat in which my parents told us that our feet had better not touch the floor the rest of the night.

Introducing: Hot Lava! The game played by kids everywhere can now be played after bedtime! All you need is furniture and to the ability to jump and laugh quietly!
So, because I've always been one to stay up late playing or reading or finding shapes in the textured ceiling, I've never really been ready to wake up when I ought to.
When I was in 4th grade (a year of my life I'm surprised I made it through) I took class violin lessons EVERY DAY BEFORE SCHOOL. I'm surprised my parents insisted that I keep going rather than sleep in a bit themselves. Waking up super early, even when it was a school holiday, was awful. And I hated school and stuff too, so I faked sick probably 80% of that school year. My parents I guess saw through it though, because I only missed a few days in total. It was that year that I honestly wanted to be home-schooled because I hated school so much. Students who were bullies, teachers who were also bullies, early morning violin lessons....I think from that year alone I have earned a lifetime of not having to wake up early. Though that may be the case, I'm certain that employers won't recognize that and I'll have to drag myself to work at whatever time they choose.
Just understand that if and when I'm hateful and ornery in the mornings, it's not you, it's me, I promise.


And a plug for tomorrow: It'll be my 100th post! Come back and check out this momentous occasion! There will be free popcorn and money for this historic event.

Sept. 7th, Piano!

For almost a year, I've been taking real piano lessons. I've taken lessons before, and for a decently long time, but this time has been lots of fun because I am basically able to choose whatever I want to play. In less than two months I'll be in my third recital since I started last October. I've been working on a really fun piece for the recital, and I'm trying to memorize it, but the chords and key modulate almost constantly. Anyway, I'm going to be ready by October if I put myself to the task.
It's a Halloween recital, so I chose a really fun piece called "The Addams Family Waltz" by Marc Shaiman. It's from the 1991 film and this particular piece doesn't have the familiar theme that everyone knows, but instead is a perfect sort of Dance Macabre. I've only found one video of someone playing the piece, and they do a pretty good job. Do you like it?

Another piece that I'm working on is one that I've been wanting to learn for years, so I'm glad that I have a teacher who can help me finally learn it. It's "Aunt Marge's Waltz" by John Williams. I've posted it about it before, but I'll post the video again...

I love this piece! It's bonkers. I think it will take a lot of practice to get it right and as fast as it's supposed to be, but I'm determined!

I'm also working on a piece called "Bells of Freedom" by Jon Schmidt, but I'm not going to post a video of that one. I'm not that big of a Jon Schmidt fan, and probably that's only the case because it seems like every single other Utahn just loves him and knows all his music and is also learning his pieces on the piano. That's pretty shallow of me, I guess. I will admit that some of his stuff is rather good, and I'm glad for the success of The Piano Guys. Beside all that, it's a piece that my teacher suggested, so I obliged.

The other stuff I'm working on is the nitty gritty... scales and arpeggios. Scales I'm not too bad at, but I'm working on arpeggios a bunch and not getting much better. In all the years of piano lessons, this is the first time I've ever done them, and they are not as easy as I wish. My biggest motivation to get them right is that there are a few pieces I'd like to learn that have some hefty arpeggios...so wish me luck!

I still try to write little music bits here and there, and even though I'm not very prolific, I still have fun with what I do. Here's a quick and short (and not too original) piece that you'll probably recognize pieces of...

I should try to add more to it since it's so short and simple. Any suggestions?

Hopefully if you read this blog I'm not boring you to death. If I am, let me know what I should blog about (but tell me nicely!).
See you tomorrow!

Sept. 6th, New Title!

For the last, oh, I don't know, two years I've wanted to change my blog's name. It used to be called "Imaginative Irony" but I didn't really ever *love* that title. I just kept it because I didn't know what else to call it. So, I was asking a great friend what I should name it and we didn't come up with anything. I was drawing a blank(!) when I decided that could be the title. It may change if something else better comes up, but what do you think?
In the beginning of my blogging days, I think that I planned on being more sarcastic and not all sunshine-and-bubbles, but I soon learned that being sarcastic, even humorously so, is kind of negative and draining. Also, I didn't want to be a jerk and make comments about people who may get wind of it or even read it directly. That would be so awkward and I know I'd feel bad.  I've actually considered creating a separate secret blog where I can dish out all the dirt and be super honest and candid and never worry about being discovered, but it's enough work keeping one blog alive. Besides, if I can't say something more-or-less nice, then I shan't say anything a'tall.

Completely unrelated: I went to The Lone Ranger at the cheap theater in my town, and I went in with basically low expectations. I though the trailer wasn't that great, and I've had my fill of Johnny Depp, and the few reviews I read were pretty awful. But the movie was cheap and I wasn't doing anything so I went.
It was SO much fun! I don't usually like to read reviews because I feel it skews my opinion, and after I saw the movie and read more real-people reviews, they seem to have thought the same - several had "Don't listen to what the critics say" in their titles. The move was a little long, but the action-western was pure fun and really funny at times. I thought it was as fun as any other summer blockbuster, and I especially loved how the music used William Tell's overture so effectively.
If you haven't seen it because of "what you've heard" about it, I say you should see it eventually just for fun. Just be aware that, for a Disney movie (even a PG-13 rated one), it's quite violent, and not just guns and arrows, but disturbing implied/off-screen stuff as well.

This post is short, but I'll be back again tomorrow to wow the world with my deep and inspiring words. K bye.

Sept. 5th, Ugh - Poetry

First off, I don't mean to offend anybody with this post.
That said, I hate poetry. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
I DO enjoy Dr. Seuss and funny poems like the kind by Lewis Carroll and the like, but basically everything else is torture for me.
When I say that I hate poetry, I don't mean that I hate poems, necessarily, but I hate that they can be SOOO pretentious. I had a poetry unit in some of my lit classes in college, and some of my assignments were supposed to be done as a poem.
I did like the poetry units in school because they were really easy to do: the homework wasn't 200 pages of [insert literary tome here], the homework was 3 - 5 pages of poems that were usually not more than 30 lines long.
One of my assignments was to write about some life experience as a poem (this is in college, remember). I had no idea what I was doing, so I literally typed up my experience like a regular paragraph, then hit the Enter key every few words to make it look like a poem. Here's an example:

I go to work almost every day,
And normally, I enjoy it.
But as soon as a customer gets an attitude
With me or is rude to one of my co-workers,
I get super pissed. I'm pretty good
At holding my tongue,
But one of these times,
I
Just
Might
Snap.

Isn't it great?! With the Enter key, anyone can be a poet!
I just have a hard time feeling moved or touched from poetry - I think that prose can be far more effective and touching than what lots of poetry aims for.
I like poems that rhyme, which is apparently the lowest kind of low when it comes to poetry. I googled "best poetry" and found a site that had the ten best poems, and only one, by Sylvia Plath, had any sort of rhyme at all. Why is rhyming so terrible? Why is having a beat that is recognizable such a shame? I guess I like stuff that could sound like music, or be set to music, where the end of the line has a pause.

So, all of this leads me to a poem that I love, only because it is so viciously hated by basically everyone. It has literally been voted as the worst poem in the English language. I present to you an excerpt from "A Trajedy" by Theophile Marzials:

Death! 
Plop. 
The barges down in the river flop. 
Flop, plop, 
Above, beneath. 
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop… 
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop… 
And my head shrieks - “Stop”
And my heart shrieks - “Die.”…

I once read this aloud to a friend and we were both laughing so hard I could hardly finish my oration. All the flopping and plopping makes me think of a slimy black nearly-dead creature crawling towards me in hunched heaves and stuff. It's beautiful.

If you internet people are aghast at my snobbery/low-brow-ness when it comes to poetry, feel free to comment below if you think there's a poem I might like. I'll try my best not to hate it, but I'm not making any promises. Bring it on!

Sept 4th, What I'm Reading

I've loved reading my whole life. I was an English Lit major, and if that didn't totally burn me out for good, I think I'm set. I'm not that fast of a reader, and my interests are a bit all over, but I still usually have a couple books that I'm trying to get through at a time. Here's my current reading list:

"Sabriel" by Garth Nix
I'm only into chapter 3 at this point, and so far it's pretty interesting. There is a lot of terminology that is unique to this book, so getting things straight is sometimes a chore. It has pretty good reviews on GoodReads and Amazon, so I finally decided to see for myself. It has to do with a girl named Sabriel who has learned from her father certain kinds of magic - specifically to keep the dead, well, dead. She can go into "Death" where there are several different gates along a river, all of which is quite interesting to read. It makes me think of the alternate plane that wearers of the One Ring from LotR go when they have the ring on. I don't even know where this story is headed, but I can't help but think of how I would translate the scenes into film. There's also a map that helps enormously:

Fictional maps are so cool!

So far, Sabriel is only at the Perimiter Wall, heading into the Old Kingdom.
I'm liking the story so far, but it is a little confusing. Also, I can't be sure of the time period. There are colleges, cabs, phones...So it seems modern enough, but it doesn't have the "urban fantasy" vibe at all.
We'll see where this book goes...

"Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo
I say that this is still on my reading list, but in reality it's also sitting back on the bookshelf. I really like what I've read so far, and I haven't abandoned it, it's more like on hiatus... I'm reading the unabridged version, and I'm underlining the parts I like with a red pencil, and there are literally marks on every page so far. There's a lot of profound insights into human emotion and character and thought. I WILL finish this book someday!

"The Return of the King" by JRR Tolkien
I am actually listening to this one on audio. I've never read it before, but I've seen the movie so many times. I'm actually glad I saw the movies first - while the writing is nice and I actually LOVE the history sections, I feel like there's not much tension while reading or listening to the books in the Lord of the Rings. Great and Epic battles are in a single chapter and, to me, not that epic feeling. I'm glad that the films made the battles and wars huge and exciting, it really helps me to enjoy the books more. I especially love how vivid the descriptions of places are. Minas Tirith from the movie looks just like it's described in the book, and it's wonderful! I'm about a quarter of the way through this title.


I've also finished a few things lately, and here they are:

"The Shunned House" by HP Lovecraft
This is/was the very first thing I ever read by Lovecraft, an early 20th century horror author. I bought the complete works a few months back, but I wanted something to read on my kindle that was free, and The Shunned House was at the top of the list.
Anyway, I took my sweet time reading this short story (it's like 50 pages in print) and I really liked it. The atmosphere is so rich and the writing is beautiful. I guess I've read too much modern horror ('modern' being the Fear Street's from the 90's...bad example), but Lovecraft's style makes me think of the great classics, not horror at all.
The very end of the story was a little bit of a let down, but the ride was great. I could just picture everything he described, from the street outside the house, to the fungus growing by the hearth....I'll definitely check out more of his works.

"Will Grayson, Will Grayson" by John Green and David Levithan
This book was described to me by a friend back in college, and last week I finally got around to reading it. I was not able to sleep one night, so I began reading it on my kindle. I read half of it in just one sitting, which is impressive for me. It's about two high school guys in different towns who don't know each other at all, but they share the same name. The two meet by coincidence and the rest of the school year is heavily affected by their meet-up. At least, that's what reviews say. I didn't think it was that amazing of a book. The first 6 chapters or so are quite easy and get pretty interesting, but after the two guys meet, a different friend named Tiny becomes the focus of the book, as told by the two Wills.
There was some interesting characters and tons of really horrible language and teenage romance, and by the end of the book I just thought "meh." I felt like it had a very similar vibe as "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," which will be a dream come true for some people, but I wasn't too amazed by the end of either book.

"Shadyside Snark" by AM and LK Stine (Code names for sure)
Okay, so this one is not much of a book, but rather an entire blog.
I discovered this blog about a year ago when I got some old Fear Street books and wanted to read a review of them. What I found was this awesome blog that made me laugh and snort and giggle with every post.
The authors of the blog are sisters who went through and blogged a recap of EVERY R.L. Stine book up to about a year ago. They love/hate his books and their reviews and recaps were SO hilarious.
Shadyside is the town in which all the Fear Street books take place, and reading the hundreds of recaps made me question my tastes from when I was in middle school: the plots are so contrived and the characters are shallow and abusive relationships are every girl's dream, etc...
Anyway, I spent an hour or so one day copy/pasting every post and its comments into a Word doc and later I sent it to my kindle. It was a joy to read, even more than reading the books they recapped.
Reading all the recaps and the tropes that happen in all the books and about the shallow but endearingly dumb characters inspires me somewhat - I want to write a musical based on the Fear Street books. It would be a total comedy with elements from many of the different books and would be a hoot for a very specific group of people :)

Well, that's my "reading and recently read" book list. If you've read any of those titles, I'd love to hear what you think of them.
See you tomorrow!

Sept. 3rd, Tron: Uprising

I'll admit up front that I LOVE sci-fi movies. I'll see a movie solely because it's in the genre.
That said, sci-fi on TV usually isn't my thing, usually because it [often] looks cheap.
Now that you know those things, you can imagine my giddiness when Tron: Legacy came to theaters. I saw that movie I think 3 times, and even in 3D, which I'm not that crazy for.
Blah, blah, blah, I'm getting sappy.
Anyway, I bought the DVD/Blu-Ray when it released, and on it there was a pretty cool promo for a new show that was "coming  soon" called "Tron: Uprising," and even though it would be a TV show, it looked so cool. Here's the teaser that was released a LONG time before the show actually aired:

The animation was even slicker in the actual show (with some facial improvements), but when I first saw that teaser trailer I was so excited for the show. Eye candy is a big selling point for me!

Fast forward a year, and the show is finally being released. I was in Korea at the time, so I watched the show on the internet and was completely wowed and won over by it. It really is stunning. I watched it whenever I could find the new episode until about the 7th or 8th, but then there was a mid-season hiatus and I didn't watch it for another year.

The show only went for 19 episodes, which was cool that they were able to plan the pacing and arcs and such, but also sad that there would only be that many episodes.
Tron: Uprising apparently didn't do as well as they'd hoped (but Disney DID put it on super late on a school night on their paid channel DisneyXD, so I can only point at them) and the show wasn't (or hasn't yet been) picked up for more episodes. Sad, I know!
Amazon instant video and Netflix both have the entire show listed, so I finally caught up and finished all the episodes recently, and holy cow, that show was amazing! The animation and action was flawless, the music was perfect....I'm so sad there will be no more Tron: Uprising. There are petitions and stuff around the internet to bring it back, but I don't think a petition has ever brought a "kids show" back.

So, if you love a good show that has good conflict and themes of friendship and serious sacrifice, give Tron: Uprising a chance - you might just fall in love with it!

Here's an official music video featuring scenes from the last couple of episodes, all set to a pretty cool tune. Maybe this will win you over:

And finally (they should be paying me for all this promotion), the entire first episode is available on YouTube for free from Disney. Since there are already two videos here, I'll just provide the link and you can watch it there. I *really* hope you like it!
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbwVzJR8w4