26

May

Boy Band Breakdown

NOTE: Pop Culture Boner has a new home and a new podcast. You can listen here, if that’s your jam. 

I was going to put off writing this for a while, but sometimes these things are too big to ignore. Hello One Direction, I’m looking at you and your ginormous fan base. For those of you living under a rock, or too busy pretending you’re cooler than me to pay attention, One Direction were formed on the 7th series of The X Factor and placed third. Apparently, third place no longer means fading politely back into obscurity, so they were signed to Simon Cowell’s record label and then proceeded to slowly take over the world. They pretty much caused a riot when they visited Sydney, and the guy from Kasabian doesn’t like them (shocking, right?). And that’s it in a nutshell. I’m not sure what it is about boys in tight pants with swooshy hair that drives the tween girls wild, but it works. I’m not here to whinge about One Direction. I mean, lookit ’em. They’re adorable:

Aww…Look how much fun they’re having!

Criticising them would be like kicking puppies or something. But I am going to lay the smack down and say that, as a child of the 90s our boy bands were measurably better. Also there were more of them. So. Many. More. As such, I have compiled a list of reasons why the 90s were the Golden Age of the Boy Band.

  1. Matching outfits – As far as I am concerned, today’s boy bands do not match enough. Sure, there’s a general theme running. Everyone having some red or blue somewhere. But why would you do that when you can have every member wearing a slightly altered version of the same outfit so that they all look like members of some bizarre cult? This photo of the Backstreet Boys is probably my favourite because, in spite of the individual tailoring for each bandmate, they all came out looking like some variation on ‘escaped convict.’

    We’ve come for your women.

  2. Synchronised dance moves – Having watched too many minutes of One Direction video clips, I’ve noticed that they’ve been trying to take the mickey out of dance routines. The boys will try to keep time for a bit before falling about in fits of giggles about how none of them can co-ordinate it and we’re all supposed to laugh ande squeal at their cuteness. Umm…NO! DANCE ROUTINES ARE THE BEST BIT OF BOY BANDS! If you’re going to dress everyone up the same, I expect them to dance in synch in increasingly complicated interpretive routines until they pass out from exhaustion. Otherwise what is the point people?! Check out 5ive’s If You’re Getting Down video:

    Honestly, the American boy bands were always a lot better at the dance moves than the UK acts, but 5ive are great because their routines are incredibly literal. They hold up 5 fingers a lot. When they’re getting down, they point to the ground and bob really low. When they want you to move it all around, they point at the camera…and then they wiggle a bit. This is obviously because they’re not very good at dancing, but I give them 10/10 for effort.
  3. Self-reflexive lyrics – I’m probably not being fair here, because One Direction does only have one album, but Bieber has two and he is a one man boy band, so I am throwing this in anyway. Both Bieber and 1D (yeah, I used an abbreviation…check me out) have lyrics about fact that girls are pretty and they’d quite like to touch them. That’s good. It’s a good marketing point, because the girls that buy these records are getting to the point where they think that band members are also pretty and that maybe they would like to touch them too. Everyone’s happy. But not only did 90s boy bands have songs about touching pretty girls, they also had songs about themselves, their music and their audience. Take for example, the Backstreet Boys Larger Than Life. The whole song is and extended interraction with their fan base: “All you people can’t you see, can’t you see, how your love’s affecting our reality? Every time we’re down, you can make it right, and that makes you larger than life.” Better than that though, is *NSYNC’s Pop. Have a look:

    Not just notable for the fact that Justin Timberlake actually says “Man, I’m tired of singing” before they have a 40 second dance breakdown, the song also helpfully points out that audiences never get sick of this shit. So suck it, critics!
  4. Theatrical film clips with intricate plot lines and high production values – That’s What Makes You Beautiful has the 1D boys running along a beach, splashing each other and kissing some girls or something. Uh… lame! Where’s the suspense people!? I want my music video to have a completely unrelated nonsensical plot line and maybe a car chase or something! I also want it to have cost more than a James Cameron movie to make, or at least look like it did. Here’s *NSYNC’s Bye, Bye, Bye video, which has all of these things as well as some top-notch dancing.

    I feel like at some point during the 90s, *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys got into an epic battle over who could have the best film clip and accompanying routine (although they were on the same label, so they probably just had the same choreographer). Anyway, I present to you Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) aka the greatest boy band film clip known to man. There’s costumes, vampires, a MASSIVE dance scene involving about 50 people and a ballroom, and a dubious plot with some even more dubious acting. Nothing will ever top this.

    Needless to say, this ridiclousness carried over into the touring shows, with the boys having as many costume changes as Gaga on a good day.
  5. Amazing hair styles – Honestly, someone needs to sort One Direction’s hair out. I know they’re only 18, but they actually look like people I went to high school with. And that’s worrying on more than one level. 90s boys had their hair so under control.
    Hanson had some seriously lush Jennifer Aniston shit going on there. Their hair makes me feel inadequate. I want to try harder to get that swooshy thing happening.
    You can only ever wish that your hair would be as perfectly straight and centre-parted as Nick Carter’s. It’s the unobtainable dream.
    I chalk JC Chasez’s hair up to Fabulous Feats in Blowdrying from the Late 90s. So much volume. So much style. So much sass. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg! Get googling people. If you ever need to freshen up your look, you need not go past pictures of boy bands for all your grooming needs. Man or lady, there’s something for everyone to leave you feeling fabulous.

Alright, so a solid hour and half later, I’ve essentially fallen into a vortex of boy bands and their glorious matching outfits. This blog post was essentially designed to facilitate my need for more dance routines in my life and I’m OK with it. In summing up, I would just like to reiterate the fact that this wasn’t a One Direction hate post (see: the thing I said at the top of the blog about kicking puppies). But I do still maintain that the 90s were a Golden Era for the boy band. I should really go now… the Backstreet Boys are playing in another window.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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18

May

‘Elementary’, my dear Watson.

NOTE: Pop Culture Boner has a new home and a new podcast. You can listen here, if that’s your jam. 

So, you or may not have noticed the kerfuffle that erupted online a couple of months ago when CBS announced that, following the success of the BBC’s Sherlock adaptation, they would be releasing their own updated version of the Holmes stories, titled Elementary. That in itself is not really news. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is listed in the Guiness World Records as the ‘most portrayed movie character’ of all time and there have been over 200 film and television adaptations. Johnny Lee Miller was down as the new Sherlock. So far, so normal – an English actor, albeit one with an overly large forehead. Whatever. The bit that got bees in the internet’s collective bonnet was the casting of iconic off-sider, Dr. John Watson. Or should we say, Joan Watson? Gasp. Shock. Horror. John was now a lady named Joan, played by Lucy Liu, who has left her former career as a surgeon behind in the wake of some as-yet unspecified drama. Cue outrage – rabble rabble rabble.

Unsurpisingly, I have a lot of feelings about this. The main one is that I think that the internet is angry for the wrong reasons. Let me break it down for you: complaints about Elementary seem to fall into two categories. The first is usually articulated thus – “Ahhhh! Why are they making another modern Sherlock Holmes so close to BBC’s Sherlock!? Does America have no original ideas!? You guys are shit! Wahhh!” The second usually runs something along the lines of “Joan Watson!? What the actual fuck!? Since when is Watson a lady!? Watson can’t be a lady! I will have none of this! Ahhh!” And to be honest, those two complaints are usually less grammatically correct and feature more exclamation marks. Now, I love (LOVE) the BBC Sherlock. I’m even willing to overlook some of the vaguely more problematic elements of the story-telling in order to continue to bask in the glory of Benedict Cumberbatch’s cheekbones, Martin Freeman’s cuddliness and the unadulterated joy that is a Moffat/Gatiss collaboration. So, I can’t say I’m completely for Elementary, but I do think both these arguments are stupid.

The first argument is pretty easy to dismiss. Like I said before, there have been literally hundreds of adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s orginal stories. Some are more successful than others. Some draw more obviously from the source text than others. Some are English, some are American. Some of them keep to the Victorian era, some of them take place in modern settings. Some of them might have slipped completely under your radar – you can’t tell me I’m the only person who took forever to work out that House was an interpretation of Holmes and that the name was totally a play on words (or maybe I’m an idiot, I don’t know). For those of you complaining about the proximity in releases I will just take a second to point out that the BBC’s release of both seasons of Sherlock coincided with the respective releases of Warner Bros’ Guy Ritchie-led franchise pieces. You may remember them. The giant blockbuster holiday films, Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows? Anyone? Robert Downey Jr? Jude Law? Alrighty. Point made (I hope).

The second argument is also pretty easy to dismiss, but seems to garner a lot more venom from people. I’m not sure exactly what it is about Watson as a woman that seems to annoy people, but I’m going to spell it out for you in plain English and hope that you understand. To date, Watson has been almost everything. There have been adaptations in which he is a robot, a cartoon mouse, a dog and even a goddamn tomato (seriously… Veggie Tales did it… Holmes is a cucumber). Why on earth are any of those things more acceptable than Watson being a woman? It reflects poorly on a fanbase (and on humanity, really) when we can be perfectly fine with an anthropomorphised tomato, but not a woman. If you’re one of the people who are having serious issues with a female Watson, you should consider the following: what has it been about your integration into popular culture that makes you so afraid of having a woman portray traditionally masculine roles? And if you’re female, you get a bonus question: why doesn’t it excite you? Watson is a badass, intelligent and loyal counterpoint to Sherlock Holmes. As if you don’t want a woman with all of those qualities on your screen.

Now that we’ve established what we shouldn’t be talking about, here’s what you should be mulling over. CBS has not only pulled a genderflip on (some of) the cast, but they’ve also put a woman of colour in a front and centre role. That is damned cool. What concerns me though is that they opted to do that for Watson and not Holmes. I’ve already mentioned my thoughts on Watson being a badass. I am not taking them back. However, I do think that there are some serious issues with not gender-swapping Holmes. Traditionally, the divide for the characters has been along the lines of heart vs. head. Holmes is a ridiculously intelligent, vaguely autistic, drug-addicted, damaged soul. He displays little ability to care beyond his friendship with Watson, but even then doesn’t let it get in the way of his relentless pursuit of the truth. In short, he is the head. On the other hand, Watson is a doctor and a husband. He is keeps Holmes in check socially, is loyal beyond a shadow a doubt and cares deeply for his slightly off-the-rails companion. Perhaps most importantly, he is in awe of Holmes’ brilliance. The heart, then. In a homo-social relationship this isn’t so problematic. When we genderflip only Watson, however, we get a woman who fulfils all the roles a woman is expected to in mainstream television – off-sider with a couple of sassy lines who provides all of the emotional insights that pass the brilliant but dysfunctional main (male) character by.

Without wanting to write it off before it’s even on the air, the trailer above does seem to play into this trope. 30 seconds in the only thing that Joan Watson has managed to do is squeak at the sight of a dead body – something she should be beyond anyway, given her history as a surgeon. The other problematic part of this is that they have stripped Joan of all the things that make Watson, Watson. She isn’t actually a doctor, though she is trained. There’s some unspecified nastiness there that I’m sure will develop into a story arc. There isn’t the military service. No one has mentioned whether she is still Joan ‘three-continents (worth of sexual conquests)’ Watson, but I’m not holding out too much hope. With all of that gone, there had better be some hardcore character rebuilding going on or things could go horribly, horribly wrong. In short, I’m worried that without genderflipping Sherlock, Elementary will end up with an unintentionally sexist portrayal of a hero-worshipping, emotional (because that’s what women do, don’t you know?) counterpoint to Holmes, who ends up completely detracting from the awesome factor of having Lucy Liu at the head of a cool TV show.

The other thing that’s worth keeping in mind is the fact that there is a lot of potential here for sexual tension, which I think would be completely missing the point of Sherlock Holmes. Yes, yes, I know. Homoerotic subtext, blah blah blah. The point of subtext is that it isn’t actually the text. You could just be reading into it. Unless Arthur Conan Doyle resurrects himself and says “Why yes, in between cases and bouts of intense opiate addiction Sherlock was rogering John on a daily basis. When I said that Watson walked with a limp, I didn’t mean he was war-wounded, I meant that Holmes had been banging him too hard the night before. I am, how do you say it? A Johnlock shipper” then yes, it entirely accurate to read homosexuality into subtle textual nuances. Until that day, it’s all just potential subtext and educated speculation. That’s fine, but the most beautiful bit of Sherlock Holmes (for me) will always be the relationship between to individuals who are very damaged in their own way. That and the kick arse crime-solving…because that’s pretty flipping awesome too. By making the friendship between a man and woman they have dragged up that dreaded potential for an actual sexual liason. If we get a sexy Holmes/Watson relationship rather than a rad criminal-busting, hetero-platonic friendship, I’m out (unless it’s really well done and I’m too emotionally invested). But I’ll be really disappointed if they do down that road, because it’s almost like no one who writes for television has ever managed to maintain a friendship with the opposite sex. All male/female relationships end up laced with potential lustfulness and that is boring.

Anyway, have a watch of the trailer. Are you dismissing Elementary? Are you excited? Are you a Sherlock fan? Let me know what you think.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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16

May

Marvel Mayhem: Assembling Some Avengers.

NOTE: Pop Culture Boner has a new home and a new podcast. You can listen here, if that’s your jam.

 

I know I’m not the only person who has a lot of feelings about The Avengers. I know this because after just 19 days in the cinema, the film has raked in just over $1 billion worldwide. 19 days! $1 billion! $103 million of that was just in the U.S for its SECOND weekend! You know what came second? Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s collaboration Dark Shadows. You know how much it made? $28.8 million! Do you see the difference!? I mostly don’t care about box office numbers, but my point is that a LOT of people have seen this film. It’s not just comic book kids. It’s EVERYBODY. Because this film is not just good – it’s GREAT.

I went and saw The Avengers the week it opened here. I was ridiculously excited. I dragged my (reluctant) flatmate from cinema to cinema until we found one that still had seats left and I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for it to start while he sulked about the fact that you couldn’t take beer into the cinema (long story). Needless to say, I flipping loved it.  But it wasn’t just me. My flatmate went in there with few expectations beyond the usual superhero explosions and with a beer-related tantrum brewing, and came out not just happy but EXCITED, quoting back all the best lines and asking about backstories to characters.

Like I said at the beginning, I have a lot of feelings (seriously…so many) about this film. I’ve compiled a dot point list, to make them more readable. (Otherwise it would just be me incoherently typing in all capitals, punctuated by brief interludes of “JOOOOOSSSS WHEEEDOOOON!!!” and sobbing.) I am trying to avoid spoilers, but this is probably a better list to read after you’ve seen the film.

  • Why do people not let Joss Whedon write and direct huge budget action films more often? The man had a gigantic ensemble cast and a huge chunk of Marvel universe to work through and he managed to do it in true fanboy fashion. Every character gets their moment to shine. The script is funny and memorable. The characters have relationships with each other that are so delicately handled amidst the millions of other things that are going on, it makes my soul hurt. The battle scenes… oh! the battle scenes! In short, I’m not watching the second one unless Joss is on board, because the man should be elevated to some sort of demi-god status immediately so that I can continue my unabashed worship of him without it being weird.
  • They finally got the Hulk right! After a bunch of really, really awful Hulk films they finally wrote a Hulk that encapsulated everything that the Hulk is supposed to be. I went in with zero expectations for Mark Ruffalo. This is possibly because the last thing I can remember seeing him in was Suddenly 30, and while I’m sure I’ve seen him in stuff since then, it wasn’t as memorable as Suddenly 30 and to me, that is sad. Then BAM! Completely unexpectedly, Mark Ruffalo is all up in my shit like, “I’m actually a talented, versatile and nuanced actor. Suck it haters.” He’s nervous without being overly camp, he’s constantly on the brink of bubbling over into unadulterated rage without melodrama and he’s LIKEABLE. He has some funny lines (and possibly the funniest smack-down in the history of superhero smack-downs) and some genuinely tragic ones. He’s not just a brooding hate-machine, he’s a person. It took 3 false starts, but someone finally managed to convey that.
  • Bruce Banner and Tony Stark – SCIENCE BROS! Just bros, doing science together! Casually saving the world. Whatever. High five for that relationship.
  • Agent Phil Coulson is a massive fanboy for Captain America and it brings so much joy to my heart. He has collector cards. They’re vintage. It’s the best.
  • Captain America is wonderful. How can you not love a character whose main powers seem to consist of gymnastics, volleyball and the ability to duck behind a shield? Steve Rogers is the perfect counterpoint to Tony Stark because he is driven by a desire to be good. Not good AT something. Just good as in pure.  Where Ironman is bells and whistles, showmanship and alcoholism, The Cap just gets on with the job. He does it because it’s right. Sometimes that sort of thing can be boring in a character, but on Chris Evans it works.
  • The reason this works on Evans might have something to do with the fact that he LOOKS like everything America is supposed to look like. Seriously. He won the genetic lottery and came out looking like the embodiment of American-ness, even in a slightly sub-par costume.
  • Speaking of looks, Robert Downey Jr should not be allowed to age that well. Unfair.
  • Let’s take a second to acknowledge the women in this film. All of them are fully formed, actual characters. None of them are defined by their relationships with men. All of them kick arse. Black Widow is awesome from the second you meet her. She takes down three dudes whilst tied to a chair, she outsmarts Loki, she beats the crap out of her best friend to give back his free will AND she closes the giant alien portal through space and time. SHE DOES ALL OF THIS BY HERSELF WITHOUT HAVING TO BANG ANYONE OR LOOK TO THE MEN AROUND HER TO DEFINE HER CHARACTER. High five to Scarlett Johansson. Futher fist bumps to Agent Maria Hill, played by Cobie Smulders, for being an impressive badass. Despite not geting as much screen time as other characters she still manages to be amazing and does so again, without needing men to define her character.
  • Special mention also to the equal opportunity hiring at S.H.I.E.L.D. If you look in the background, roughly half the people operating the computers and doing general henchmen legwork are women.
  • Samuel L. Jackson. That is all.
  • Hawkeye and Black Widow – SPY BROS! Just spying and saving the world and stuff. This could have so easily gone the way of romance. Not that there would have been anything wrong with that, but it was nice to have a movie where the guy and the girl are friends who care about each other without the pressure of sex. I like them better as spy bros.
  • Chris Hemsworth has come a long way since Home and Away. He is also some kind of man-mountain. Seriously. He’s huge.
  • The Thor and Loki relationship is gut-wrenching. I can’t even articulate thoughts on the matter. It’s just too much. All the awards for Joss Whedon and his ability to write things that destroy my capacity to function as an adult.
  • Tom Hiddleston as Loki is pretty much the most wondeful thing that’s ever happened. His ability to be a maniacal dictator and a sympathetic lost soul all at once is just superb.
  • I will never be able to thank this movie enough for letting Tom Hiddleston near throngs of waiting press. Just go watch some interviews and then tell me you’re not totally in love with the man.
  •  My only complaint would be that the villains in this film are a little under-developed. Scary alien-robot hybrid things that appear through a wormhole in space are fine. The fact that they want the Tesseract is also fine. But they don’t really have a motivation other than the fact that they’re evil and they want the cube of shiny energy that everyone else wants. That sucks a bit, but in a film this big with this much of a cast who all need to have air-time it’s hardly a huge fault. By the time the end comes you’re too caught up in all the other rad stuff that’s happening to really care what the bad guy’s motivation is.
  • Plus the fact that it’s part of the GIGANTIC Marvel universe means that there’s probably going to be about a billion other films to follow up with the villainy later on.

I have a lot of other feelings, but this is really getting out of hand. Just go watch the film if you haven’t already done so! You’re letting the team down! Go!Go!Go!

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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15

May

Kocks in Kardashians

NOTE: Pop Culture Boner has a new home and a new podcast. You can listen here, if that’s your jam. 

So over at IMDB today someone helpfully edited up Kim Kardashian’s bio to include some more… realistic (?) insights into the starlet’s life. Assuming it would be taken down almost immediately, I helpfully took a screenshot.

It kind of loses track of itself towards the end, but it’s a pretty amazing rant and one which I kind of find myself in two minds about.

On the one hand, the idea the Kim Kardashian and co are “emblematic of the shallowness of American culture” is something that I agree with. I don’t think you can really argue when its pointed out that she is simply “famous for being famous.” She doesn’t have any discernable talents. (I haven’t seen the sex tape but I’ve heard that’s pretty average as well.) She is well groomed and very good at making slick public appearances. Does that count as a skill? I don’t know. But I would argue that the most interesting person in the whole Kardashian affair is the mother, Kris, who displays an uncanny ability to translate her daughters into dollars without having them turn into some sort of Lindsay Lohan-style train wreck. Not only has Keeping Up with the Kardashians produced a number of spin off shows, but the sisters have fragrances, work out tapes and clothing, jewellery and handbags lines.

This kind of shallow fame makes me sad because it detracts from some excellent plot/performance driven shows that could be happening instead. When a network willingly (enthusiastically) shells out $40 million for four more years of a show that celebrates the rich for their wealth and capitalises on a “ditzy rich girl” image, it knowingly redirects $40 million away from other potentially amazing television. The show airs on E!, which is owned by NBCUniversal – so that’s $40 million that could be doing something really cool on NBC right now.

On the other hand, I feel like there’s a really bizarre dynamic going on in this bio with regards to the treatment of Kim Kardashian’s sexuality. Rather than criticising the network for committing to four more years of a really average show, the author has chosen to turn Kim’s sex tape into a metaphor for the “amoral prostitutes” in Washington. To me, that smacks of slut-shaming… which I have a problem with. Just because a woman (or her mother) chooses to capitalise on the fact that intimate videos of her leaked on the internet, does not make her any less of a person. It’s actually kind of impressive. Making a name for yourself in mainstream media, when the odds are that for the first few years of your career the only people that will recognise you have sizeable internet porn habits, is phenomenal. The fact that you can translate the essentially very boring and unsurprising fact that you have sex into a career and several million dollars is undoubtedly weird… but impressive, nonetheless.

Interestingly, all the criticism quoted in the article comes from working, white, male actors. Not that I’m not a fan of these men (Jon Hamm is a national goddamn treasure) but none of them criticise the broader social/economic mechanisms at play that allow people like Kim Kardashian to become famous. They all criticise her for acting like an “[expletive] idiot” rather than directing that criticism at people who might actually deserve it… like the television networks, who have so little faith in the intelligence of their audiences that they’re willing to cancel shows with a plot arc and replace them with ‘reality’ TV.

In short, I do think that Kim Kardashian is emblematic of things that are wrong with American television. This is not because she fits as broad social metaphor for amoral politicians, or because she made a sex tape that launched her career. It’s because  shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians require are so mindless – they reflect the complete lack of faith network television bosses have in the intelligence of the population at large. They won’t take risks with shows that might be a little kooky or interesting. Hell, they won’t even play shows that are just well-written. They are going to keep rehashing the same ‘reality’ crap over and over again because it’s a formula that works for them. To me, Kim Kardashian symbolises a generation of T.V-makers who have no interest or belief in their audience. That is what upsets me most.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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15

May

Ahoy!

NOTE: Pop Culture Boner has a new home and a new podcast. You can listen here, if that’s your jam. 

My name is Alex. I have a lot of pop culture feelings. So many, in fact, that they were starting to garner complaints from people who
actually know me. So, in an attempt to maintain actual relationships with real people who exist, I created a blog to dump all my feelings about fictional charcaters (and some “non-fictional” celebrity characters). Sadly, it will probably be updated more regularly than anything else I do, because I’m just that kind of girl.

Either way, before we get started I figured I’d introduce myself. I’m going to endeavour to do so in the least pretentious way possible, but lists of things like this inevitably make you sound like a hipster dick (“I like tea, polaroids, oversized knitted jumpers, skinny jeans and underground dancehall music produced by Japanese girls who play the oboe.” This is an example of a thing that I am trying not to do.) Here goes:

  • I am 22. I live in Sydney. I have two housemates. They are nice, but they don’t really get the whole pop culture-junky thing. One of them recently started watching Game of Thrones though. I consider this a minor victory for myself.
  • I study journalism. I don’t think I’m very good at it, but I try and people always told me that was half the battle.
  • I work. I am not going to tell you what I do because I do a job that makes most people want to throttle me as soon as they meet me. So let’s just say it pays the rent.
  • I become excessively emotionally involved in the novels I’m reading and the films I’m watching. This leaves me with a kind of book/film/television hangover a lot of the time, which means that as soon as someone asks me “how was it?” I immediately vomit emotion onto them in an Excorist-style fit of head-spinning and shouting, until they regret ever asking.
  • I tweet. A lot. More when I’m  on public transport. I think I’m hilarious, but most people would probably categorise me as mean.

So that’s me, in a very snug little nutshell. I should probably give you a list of things that I am currently reading and watching and whatnot as well, just to give you an idea of what you’re in for.

Reading: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, although I’m a bit sidetracked at the moment so what I am reading is actually more like academic essays for university papers.

Watching: I have seen The Avengers twice in the last week. I love it. I will probably post about it later because, by God, do I have thoughts. I am watching the second season of Game of Thrones, but I’m not entirely caught up yet and I was too exhausted to do so this morning. The BBC Sherlock has briefly taken over my life and will continue to do so until they make a new season in 2013. There are a lot of things that could go here. The list is way too long.

Listening: I’m actually terrible at keeping up with new music, but my flatmate isn’t so I usually bludge things off him. I’m also vaguely obsessive (I don’t know if you can tell, ha!) so I often listen to the same thing over and over again until I can’t stand it any more and then I move on. So my feelings on bands are often either on the scary side of groupie or right down the other end of the spectrum at ‘completely devoid of emotion.’  I am quite proud of myself though, because this week I found a beatboxer on Youtube called The Petebox who I really enjoy. You should look him up.

Anyway. Those are a few things about me. When I get home from uni I’ll probably get into the meaty stuff that I want to think about. (There’s a couple of things that have happened today that warrant discussion.)

See you in a few hours.

 

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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