¡Sarah!

I don't really get these memes that are spread out over multiple days (I imagine I'll cheat at some point), but I guess I'll do this one. It'll at least give us all a break from my introvert-with-nine-roommates rantings, y/y?

Day 01 - Your favourite song

I have NO IDEA how anyone could ever manage to pick a favourite song. There are just too many to choose from! My usual answer to this question is Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," but today I'm gonna shake it up a bit and call upon another song I rly rly love: Toto's "Africa."



It's so synthesized and eighties, and I think even the band referred to it as your typical white guy's song about a continent he knows nothing about, and I should probably hate myself for loving it so much. BUT I DON'T. My first bus this morning was playing this really epic, hour-plus mix of eighties songs (I knew all but one of them, one of only two that were in Spanish), and this song being included in that was kind of the highlight of my day.

Oh whatever, I'm doing Day 2 now too, I don't care.

( day 2 and upcoming days )

So on Saturday night one of the other volunteers and I were sharing our favourite J-pop songs with each other (thanks to him I woke up the next morning with "Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana" stuck in my head, ugh), and almost by accident I had him listen to "Energetic," off BoA's English album, and anyway I am currently sitting up here in my room studying Spanish and guess what song I can hear playing at top volume downstairs. xD

SEE I TOLD YOU GUYS IT'S AN AWESOME ALBUM~~~~!!!

Edit: So last night we had Easter dinner, which I wasn't too terribly involved in, but as I understand it was a big production requiring the purchase of several new utensils, including a potato masher. However, the volunteer who went to fetch it didn't realize he didn't have the necessary vocabulary until after he arrived at the store. So he found himself in conversation with a store employee, saying: "I need something that can transform potatoes from a solid state to a liquid state."

"What, you mean like potato juice?"

"Um, no, more solid than that ..."

In typing this out I realize it doesn't really work as a written story, but oh my god when he was telling us about this last night we were crying. >xD

OKAY EVERYONE

I KNOW I ASK THIS QUESTION LIKE EVERY YEAR BUT I'M ASKING IT AGAIN

I WANT TO KNOW YOUR TOP TEN FAVOURITE DISNEY SONGS!!

I'm limiting myself to just the animated movies, and one song per movie (and I'm leaving out "That's How You Know" because I already talked about it today) but you don't have to if you think a certain movie's soundtrack is vastly superior. xD

( MINE! )

I would say I'm sorry for posting twice in one evening about essentially the same thing, but ... I'm not. :D

After reading its Wikipedia page, I feel like kind of an idiot thinking I should rush to my LiveJournal to announce to the world how Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" is like the second coming of Ace of Base, right down to the way she sings the lyrics, but seriouslyyyy! I know I don't talk about them that much anymore, but from the end of elementary school and all through middle school Ace of Base was my favourite group, and so it is a big deal to me that someone would write a song so obviously influenced by them. Seriously, how did I not know about this sooner, I love it. xD

Movies!

14. Push, 2009
the_wykydtron and I had been sorta kinda wanting to see this for over a year, and finally we did! And I think that she summed it up best when she commented on some new plot point, "This twist would be really interesting if I cared at all!" This movie had a really cool setting and some characters that potentially could have been really compelling, but somewhere along the way the writing and the editing failed. Which is frustrating! I would still watch it again though, just for Dakota Fanning as a psychic thirteen-year-old who goes out and gets drunk when she's frustrated with the other characters for never doing as she tells them. Seriously, how randomly awesome is that. xD

15. The 300 Spartans, 1962
Rounding out our evening of movies that have no interest in creating any sort of suspense at all is this tale about the Battle of Thermopylae. I don't think I hated it to the same extent that the_wykydtron did, but it certainly wasn't great. I would love to see this film remade - less talking, more action, less secondary character romance, more greenscreen, and, I dunno, maybe that guy from The Ugly Truth in the lead. I mean, I dunno, I'm just sayin'.

16. Much Ado About Something, 2001
Lolariously enough, I don't think this documentary includes anything that the Wikipedia entry doesn't at least touch upon, but it was still an interesting watch. And surprisingly casual - we see clips from interviews that took place while the subjects were driving, eating in the cafeteria, and even gardening! Anyway, this documentary discusses the idea that Christopher Marlowe was not killed, but in fact went into exile, where he wrote all of the plays that today we believe to be Shakespeare's. I find the Shakespeare authorship theories kind of interesting, although I have yet to be convinced by any of them. This one doesn't rely entirely upon anagrams, which is a point in its favour, but I still didn't find it all that much more compelling. It basically goes like this: "Shakespeare wasn't smart enough to write the plays he wrote, but Marlowe was! Oh, he died in 1593, you say? Well, uh, no he didn't! He just went into exile! In, uh, Italy! Yeah, Italy! 'Cause Romeo and Juliet is set there! Here, have a list of lines from Shakespeare plays that are very similar to lines from Marlowe plays and obviously prove that they were written by the same person, completely ignoring how we already know that Shakespeare was a master at stealing inspiration from wherever he could get it!" So ... yeah. x)

While I'm on the topic: I have a bit of an inexplicable love for Christopher Marlowe, to the point that my favourite part of Shakespeare in Love is the way they handle his death. Especially when I went into that movie not expecting him to be in it at all! SO AWESOME.

I have spent pretty much the entirety of this past week on YouTube looking up covers and performances of MJ songs (and the odd Lady Gaga song) by non-American artists, and believe you me I am planning on making a monster post about it on my next day off (SHUT UP YOU'LL LOVE IT >xD ), but for now here's a teaser: "Dirty Diana" as sung by Piotr Cugowski, for the Polish film Kochaj i Tańcz. They even used the song in one of the trailers, how cool is that! brb, listening to this on repeat forever.

In ~longer letter later~ news (once again I am on LJ right before work), my flights are booked! From late March to late May, don't look for me in Canada, 'cause I'mma be in Peru!! xD

If you asked me what my favourite song of all time is, I have no idea what I would answer, but one song that comes pretty close is Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans":



(Is anyone annoyed by YouTube videos embedded into posts outside of a cut? If so, let me know! I don't want to be slowing down anyone's friends pages or anything here.)

I vote that one of my goals for 2010 should be to learn more about older J-pop, because I kind of love it even though, at the moment, everything I know about it I learned from Hello! Project's increasing selection of song covers. xD

( youtube spam because I can! )

I am always amused when people say their favourite kind of music is music that makes them think, because I continue to most enjoy music that you're not supposed to think about at all. xD Which is not to say that I don't think about it, but. You know.

Yay, I got interviewed again!! :D This time the questions are from frauleinfrog. ( News travels fast in Vienna. )

In other news, tomorrow I am going to This Is It for the second time in three days, and a Twilight t-shirt party for the second time in eight days. ahahaha, my life this week is so ridiculous but I love it. FANDOM ALL OVER THE PLACE!! xD Hopefully I can fit some studying in here somewhere. D:

With all apologies to athena_crikey, I've spent tonight watching more K-pop videos on YouTube - but in my defense, it was only through searching for something totally different than I happened upon what is currently my most favourite video ever:



Here we have K-pop group Girls' Generation (whom I first learned of through their song "Gee," which made the rounds a few months ago in a "Look at the crazy stuff you can find on YouTube!" sort of way) performing on a show that is apparently called Star Dance Battle. First they do Super Junior's "Sorry Sorry," which is awesome enough in itself because, while I don't think I ever mentioned it here, earlier this year I was OBSESSED with this song for like an entire month. (I discovered it through a Morning Musume fanvid that I can no longer find, but conveniently enough there's another one!)

BUT THEN THEY DO "SMOOTH CRIMINAL" AND IT IS SO FIERCE AND I HAVE WATCHED IT A BAZILLION TIMES ALREADY OMG. Seriously, that move at 1:35? FIERCE!!! And I totally lol at the "MOON WALK" text that appears onscreen, hahaha, this is not a video game!! xDD

I also found this video in which a few members of Girls' Generation dance to a mixture of "Jam" and "In the Closet," which is kind of amazing!! It's only for the first thirty seconds of the video though. When I was a kid, a group came to our school and danced to "Jam," and as I recall it was the highlight of my week. xD

In conclusion, I know I have asked this in two MJ communities already haha, but if you come across any videos of international artists dancing to his music, feel free to send them my way! I will watch the heck out of them. :D