5 Reasons Why Twilight Annoys Me

New York Reflections (or probably the longest blog I've even written)

Every year for Easter I head to the Bronx for Easter. My grandparents and great-grandparents on my mom side were members of a German based Club off the ocean front (if you can count the Long Island Sound as ocean front). I put a lot of hype into the weekend even though as I get older the trill of it lessens. I'm at that point in my family that I don't fit in with the children, but I can't really identify with adults. (I know I'm 21 but I think I'm rather immature.)

Anyways.... The first day (Friday) we got to New York I spent like a half an hour in my Nana's, my great-grandmother, basement. She actually has a system of strings so that you can turn a light on from one side of a room to the other. And she has a root cellar. You probably don't even know what a root cellar is (wiki). Her whole house is suck in the 40's.

Usually the first night we are up there we get Chinese food for dinner but my mom had to do my Nana's taxes so we didn't have time to get there so we ran down the street to get pizza. Later that night we went to the Club bar and I tired a mudslide. There was way too much rum in it, but then again I not really a drinker.

Saturday we went to MoMA (I wanted to see the Tim Burton exhibit), because I had successfully managed to convince my mom to take us there because it takes less than an hour on the subway, and than five blocks from there. Over the years I had this jagged view that the subway was scary… it really wasn’t. There were some interesting people on the train, most of them asleep, and a lot listening to music. I didn’t make eye contact and prayed my grandmother would stop chatting with strangers, just in case. I’m usually over paranoid.

I wasn’t ready for how huge everything is. The moment we got out of the subway the first thing I did was look up and all I could see was the massive buildings. At one point when I was looking out the museum windows you would think the weather had changed from sunny to completely rainy. No. It was the shadows that some buildings made on others.

My mom had brought a membership to the museum because the exhibit had been sold out for the weekend. It was nice because the lines were pretty much insane. I usually enjoy museums, but this one was way too busy, you couldn’t walk anywhere without running into someone, and someone running into you without saying sorry. There where tons of hipster European tourists especially the French.

It may just be my opinion but when you go to a museum you are supposed to look at the art, but everyone was standing in front of it taking photos, especially in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. You can find a picture of it on the Internet; why would you take a picture of it when you can look at it? I want to see the brush strokes (which is something I’ve always wanted to see). Seeing Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was an experience. I’ve been told in my Art History class that some of these pieces are large, but it isn’t until you see a person standing in front of it that you realize how large it is.

Other artists I’ve learned about in class that I saw (long list, go): Cindy Sherman, Mondrian, Beckman, Malevich, Kandinsky, Rousseau, Matisse, Richard Avedon, etc. Some other works I enjoyed was a piece from Yin Xiuzhen series the Collective Subconscious (in which she altered a mini-van and stretched it out) Ernesto Neto’s Navedenga (I’m not sure how to describe that). I got to see Richard Avedon’s Golden Marilyn Monroe piece, not only do I love the fact it was much larger than the size I’m used to but he’s managed to capture some of her vulnerability. I got to see the famous Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cups (which were as long as a gallery wall), some Jackson Pollock’s, an artist I became really interested in High School.

Of course I can’t by without mentioning Marina Abromovic’s exhibit The Artist is Present. My sister walked and said, “What the hell is this?” I was basically thinking the same thing but I wasn’t going to mention it out loud. The idea of trying to blend performance art in a museum setting seems, some one said somewhere, was impossible. I’m not sure why she does some of the pieces she does, but for me its something that goes along with the shock value. In Modern Art class my professor mentioned that many artists do things just because they know they will shock people, and I know that I can respect her work for that reason. It made me uncomfortable, and that isn’t a negative thing. I read up on her and she’s done some pretty intense stuff, like spending a twelve days in a three-room structure allowing the audience to watch her in the process. Currently she is spending every day that MoMA is open during her duration sitting in the same chair for the whole day not moving, almost a living statue. If that it isn’t dedication to art, I don’t know what is.

The first thing we saw was the Tim Burton exhibit. I’m not going to lie I felt rather let down by the experience, but it wasn’t with Burton’s art but it was because of the massive amount of people in there. You had squeeze your way into see anything. I had no idea about the amount of work he puts into his films, the amount of sketches, and notes written down on paper. Also all sketches he done his entire life, the walls are covered in them. I’m becoming a huge fan of stop-motion animation so seeing the puppets from Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride where a treat. My mom enjoyed his witty pieces like, “Undressing her with his eyes” where a mans eyes were literally undressing a girl. My grandmother loved anything to do with Edward Sissorhands. In general I think the trip to MoMA is something my family won’t forget for a while, and will probably annoy me about for awhile because none of them are much of Modern Art fans, and especially the Artist is Present exhibit.

After going to the museum we passed by some famous stops, like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Rockefeller Center, and Radio City Music Hall. After getting off the subway we got a late lunch of White Castle. My mom took us to the area where she grew up.

Easter Sunday went by very quickly. Before dinner I went to church with my grandmother, and her small church is so much more diverse than my large church. There was a lady with a Jamaican accent, a guy from near Russia, and a Korean couple named Lee. It was kind of refreshing that her church seemed so much closer than mine. I barely remember dinner. Afterwards everyone went to the beach (I mean that sarcastically because its pretty much just a thin strip of sand now), and when the family left I stayed with my mom and grandmother at the bar as they talked to people we don’t see very often. I ended up talking to a distant cousin more last night then I have in my whole life. We went to my uncle’s shop after that, and I got to witness the comedy act of him and his friend, as they had switch glasses to see text messages. I don’t think they are too much older than my mom?! It was pretty funny.

Later that night I ran after the Mr. Softies Ice Cream truck (there has been an ice cream truck where I live in years), and the weekend was pretty much over. We left this morning, and I’m really tired. I can never sleep in my Nana’s house. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.

I'm going to post some more photos on my flickr pretty soon. I was fighting with blogger way too much just to get that amount on.

In non New York related news, I may get to go on a couple extra vacations this summer, and the new series of Doctor Who started. Matt Smith’s doctor right now reminds me a bit too much of David Tennet’s right now, and some of the same plot lines from other series are surfacing already, but I enjoy it so far, and I’m sure it’ll get better.

2010 movie count: 50 (Last seen Bringing Up Baby, I’m developing a Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn obsession)

STNG count: hell, I haven’t watched this show in a million years. Eventually I’ll get back on it.

P.S. Two Door Cinema is frikin’ amazing. Hannah can always call good music. Always. She never fails.

My mothers creative writing journals from the early 80's. The tape impression is funny, especially since it kind of disappeared in the 20 + years. I also quite like them because it makes me feel like there is a bit of her in me. Granted I think she mostly wrote poetry, and I'm more of a creative writing person, but its nice to know that you have something in common. Because it sometimes seem like my brother and my sister have all the attention because my sister is smart, and my brother is probably going to get a cross country scholarship one day because he is that good. I mean those are both things my mom was good at. But knowing that she used to write and take photos makes me feel included too. I wish I had more in common with my dad. I try- but he doesn't take well to me making comments on his photography- and he hasn't done it in forever.

Snows days are for....

Inspired by Hannah Good, who's creativity I am insanely jealous of & large 'bouts of avoiding homework (this is what I do with old converses):

LAME

The 2009 Edition of the "Best of"

Every year I make a list of my favorites.

So yea, here it is. And in comparison to my previous ones, this is pretty pitiful.

MUSIC.

Songs (no order, and well I couldn’t pick between some)

1. The Rake’s Song- The Decemberists (only the Decemberists could make you love a song with this subject matter)
2. Microphone- Coconut Records
3. Nothing to Worry About- Peter Bjorn, and John
4. Ulysses/No You Girls- Franz Ferdinand
5. I Got You Dancing- Lady Sovereign
6. Got Nuffin- Spoon
7. Laughing With- Regina Spektor (it grew on me. I didn’t like it at first)
8. Hello Seattle- Owl City (in my defense, I called Owl City about five months before they hit the airwaves).
9. We Are Golden-Mika
10. Lisztomania/1901- Phoenix (probably my most played song this year)
11. Good Girls Go Bad- Cobra Starship (it’s fun)
12. Aha!/Between the Sheets – Imogen Heap
13. Lollipop (Squeak E. Clean & Desert Eagles Remix) – The Chordettes
14. Hell- Tegan and Sara
15. Crying Lightning- Arctic Monkeys
16. DFTBA – Hank Green (Um, because its just freakin’ awesome)
17. Bang, Bang- Rye Rye & MIA
18. Don’t Stop Believin’ – Glee (ha)
19. Happy up Here/The Girl and the Robot- Royksopp
20. Moth’s Wings- Passion Pit (this is a surprise for me, since I was all about the Reeling/Sleepyhead earlier this year).
21. Daniel- Bat for Lashes
22. I’m on a Boat – The Lonely Islands (brilliant).

23. Walking on the Sun – Empire of the Sun

I should make a top albums list, but that would show you how awful I was with music this year. So I’m just going to mention my favorites out of the few I brought this year: Passion Pit- Manners, Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Peter Bjorn & John- Living Things, and Tegan and Sara- Sainthood.

TV

I actually watch a lot of TV… but its British. Uh yea, but I was totally all over the second series of Merlin this fall (I'm waiting to see if NBC will pick it up again this year, if they don't it'll be a shame). I'm still pretty obsessed with Bones. And I still watch LOST, although not as closely as everyone else does. I started watching How I Met Your Mother, and then managed to watch three and a half season within a couple of days. This season has been a little off for me so I hope they do something with that soon. I watch Castle once and awhile because Nathan Fillion is in it. I watch some other shows, but this list will probably become boring so there.

MOVIES

I was actually surprised by the amount of movies I watched from this year, (most of them not in theaters). My favorites were probably Star Trek (it would be wrong not to put this on the list after I saw it like ten times), The Hangover (before you say anything given the genre this was meant to be in, it was actually pretty brilliant), Up (the first ten minutes of this movie was brilliant all on its own), and Sherlock Holmes. I saw a bunch that I thought were “OKAY” but I’d probably never watch again, like The Inglorious Basterds, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and Angels and Demons. With Inglorious Basterds there were elements I really loved, likewise the Men Who Stare at Goats, but over all eh. Angels and Demons was better as a book. In terms of my romantic comedy guilty pleasures The Proposal and the Ugly Truth were instant classics. I saw a ton of other films, but I’m not really going to go into reviews of all that stuff. However I did watch the original first five Star Trek movies this summer. 


Movies I wanted to see? Whip It. New York, I love you. And The Princess and the Frog.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS

1. lights/creeping on other peoples trees

2. our christmas tree/christmas eve service at church

3. out of focus christmas tree/my earrings/my brother

4. stalking santa/my uncle george

5. christmas stuff in new jersey

6. frankie's stories/christmas dinner