On repeat

Snack on repeat: wasabi peas. Pro column: spicy and amazingly crunchy. If you put too many in your mouth, the wasabi shoots up your nose and clears your sinuses. Con column: contains MSG. Why, wasabi, why?

Song on repeat: It Will Rain by Bruno Mars. This song is a trifecta: it's a slow jam, it's from the latest Twilight movie soundtrack, and Bruno Mars happens to kind of be adorable.

Sometimes you go to a music festival and end up liking a bunch of hippies

I get pinkeye just from listening to this song

The Last Station

Watching The Last Station made me realize that I know nothing about Lev Tolstoy (other than that his original title for "War and Peace" was "War What Is It Good For?" and his mistress made him change it). So I did some light internet research, no big deal:

• Christian anarchist and pacifist. War What Is It Good For, indeed.
• Wealthy. Member of Russian nobility.
• On the eve of his wedding to Sofya he gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual history.
• Love your neighbor and God. Don't look to the Church or state for guidance.
• No meat, tobacco, or alcohol. Chastity.
• No Shakespeare.
• Excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.
• Abandoned his wealth and family at the age of 82.

The Last Station is really good if you are into the serious acting/Oscar contender/subtly humorous/time period-detailed/OMG is that Captain von Trapp as Tolstoy? brand of films. Here's a preview:

Some British humour for the holidays

Firelight

I keep coming back to how funny this SNL digital short is:



It is especially funny if you've seen the original Twilight movie or at least the trailer.

It also makes me think of Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein,



which is good entertainment in its own right, but incredibly hilarious if you compare it to the 1930's Frankenstein film, coincidentally something that my 10th grade English teacher did for a few weeks of class after having us read the book.

I have nothing to add regarding the latest Twilight movie, New Moon, other than GO TEAM JACOB.

Idol

Good Bye, Lenin!

Tonight, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I watched one of my favorites, Good Bye, Lenin!



It's a beautiful movie -- funny, moving, artsy, historical. Recommend, recommend!

Be prepared to know fluent German. Or to read subtitles. 

Dance Little Liar

I am currently having a love affair with this song:



Who can forget the unfortunate pink eye incident from the We Are Scientists show, but the Arctic Monkeys concert is another truly memorable concert-going experience. I came very close to being dead that night in New York City. Or at least I had overwhelming feelings of impending doom and imminent death when the high schooler mosh pit swallowed me up, sat on my head, and made me scream uncle. No joke, these kids were intense, almost maniacal, at least six years my juniors. And no, I did not feel bad about quickly figuring out the real purpose of my elbows. I spent that concert concentrating more on staying on my feet and having enough air in my lungs than on any band of brothers playing some tunes.      

This December, the Arctic Monkeys are arriving in DC on the night of my Tax-Exempt Organizations final. Which reminds me, did you know that Harvard's endowment is as large as the Gates Foundation's? And as an institution that is recognized as a charitable organization by the IRS, with all of the appropriate and favorable tax consequences that this status entails, instead of using its tremendous funds to perhaps assist its medical and law students in completing their educations without ratcheting up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in exchange for the students maybe providing their services in underprivileged areas -- you know, doing something charitable -- the school uses the funds to invest in a private equity and hedge fund portfolio. Do those investments sound like they promote a charitable purpose? Hardly. Is Harvard a charity?

But the point is, I can't go to the concert this year and redeem myself with the DC crowd. And the second point is, that one Tax-Exempt class last night was like sweet, sweet propaganda to my ears. A welcomed change from my War on High-Fructose Corn Syrup, it surprisingly came from a staffer who works for a Republican Senator from Iowa (who loves corn syrup). Worlds are colliding.

Sand painting art

Sand-painting artist, Kseniya Simonova, won the 2009 Ukraine's Got Talent Competition. This performance, depicting Germany's invasion of the Ukraine during WWII, is unbelievably amazing:



I teared up a little. Not sure if it was the nostalgic music, or the sight of the entire audience starting to full on cry, or the thought of my own meager talents in comparison -- my uncanny ability of 1) making at least two wrong turns every time I go somewhere new, and 2) always arriving at the airport three hours early.

Also, how did this woman know that if she poured sand over a giant light box she would be really good at drawing pictures on it? Did she experiment with different materials? Rice on a table? Beans in a pool of water? I mean, how do you discover you have such a talent? And once she figured out the sand on a light box combination, she must have had to choreograph her painting to the music. The entire thing just blows my mind. Respect.

(via kottke)

What Facebook Is For

(via swissmiss)

You're all chrome

Tickets to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show sold out in like 2 minutes while I was watching coworkers play a friendly game of softball. They are still on sale however on craigslist and eBay. FOR ONLY $70-$90. Heads will roll.

Babushkas sing Britney Spears

Bob Fosse

On tonight's episode of So You Think You Can Dance, one of the choreographers "paid tribute" to (ripped off the moves of, more like) Bob Fosse. From my favorite film dance sequence of all time, The Rich Man's Frug from "Sweet Charity":



My junior year of college, I took a jazz dance class, which for all intents and purposes turned out to be a Bob Fosse dance class. Armed with very little Bob Fosse knowledge, this class took me by surprise and I became obsessed with Bob Fosse that semester. We practiced many of the moves from The Rich Man's Frug. Being the overachiever that we all know and love, I rented all of the Bob Fosse movies from the College Park Potomac Video. I downloaded the "Fosse", "Cabaret" and "Sweet Charity" soundtracks. Even choreographed a Bob Fosse-like jazz routine (for a class assignment). Bob Fosse! It was truly a magical time.

Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

Enjoying this song a lot:

"Help I'm Alive" by Metric

Getting pumped up for the Depeche Mode concert in July and my Depeche Mode cover band some time in the future

This video gives me nightmares.

Pinkeye outbreak averted

I wouldn't want to preemptively make the call, but I think I left tonight's We Are Scientists concert at the Hard Rock Cafe without contracting a severe case of pinkeye or ear infection or bubonic plague. You may or may not remember my concert diseases from last year. I wrote this post after coming home from the concert but before waking up in the morning and finding out that I had turned into a full-fledged zombie. At that concert, Keith had walked out into the crowd, singing one of their songs. As I was swooning, I reached out and touched him, and then again when he was coming back to the stage. Then I blacked out from sheer joy and woke up the next morning ready to film Part II of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. Tonight, Keith walked out into the crowd again. The venue was tiny, and I was standing at the top of three steps leading up to the bar area, so not right on the main floor area. He made it to the steps, right in front of me, stood there for a few seconds -- I could have reached out to him -- and then had to abort mission and retreat as his mic cord got stretched out a little too far and he started losing sound. Come back! I want to make out with you! Give me more pinkeye! It was too late.

We Are Scientists tonight

Bloc Party tonight

It's Like That

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