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I have listened to the new Radiohead song released a few hours ago from their much anticipated new album so many times today, I can't get enough. So layered. So good. Perfect Radiohead. It has those quintessential Radiohead crescendos that give me goosebumps and fill my innerds with total sonic pleasure and glory! I can’t wait for the whole album to be released. Seriously....I CANNOT WAIT MUCH LONGER.

#Radiohead #BurnTheWitch #LP9

(NASHVILLESDEAD)

#SoundCloud #music #NASHVILLESDEAD #Rock and Roll

Oh right, I have a tumblr. My latest loves - smoothies and beauty blogs I guess.

I’m really tired today because I stayed up for hours until about 2:30am watching videos online. Videos of people blending things with their Vitamix. (It makes peanut butter! In one minute!!) I love Green Blender for smoothie recipes. I like Blender Dude for non-smoothie recipes (and for some late night reason, blender videos).

After OD’ing on videos about a goddamn blender, I somehow landed on this page and I think watched about 100 videos by “beauty experts” in total awe. It was like watching a cooking show or playing tetris. I just zoned out in a complete trance and couldn’t stop. These women have seriously made a living out of just being a girl and shopping. I know beauty blogs are a big thing but they’ve just never been my thing. Now I know exactly what to bring (and in what bag to bring it in) for my “next 3 day weekend getaway” (SUCH a common problem!) I know where to find the perfect white button down, the perfect denim jacket, how to stack bracelets, how to get beachy hair with a curling iron that does all the work for me, what top will give the illusion that I have totally flat abs, encouragement to wear Birkenstocks even in 2015 because Mary Kate Olsen wears them and how to trick people into thinking I don’t have bags under my eyes. It was glorious. The website is called joyous.com.

#smoothies #beauty

This 2 Year Old Is Ridiculous

Forgotten Songs

I’m a sucker for baby videos like this.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve

(Photo via this person)

I Take It Back...Now I Kind of Like The Newsroom

I finally finished The Newsroom. I don't think it's the best show ever made. But I don't hate-watch it anymore. I couldn't stand to watch it for several weeks after I had seen the first five episodes. But after marathon-watching the final 5 episodes...the sometimes cringe-worthy dialogue and characters grew on me I guess.

I can tell I've had a change of heart because now when something big in the news happens, I [more often than I'd like to admit] wonder, "so how's Aaron Sorkin going to spin this next season?" The fact that my mind even goes there obviously means I like the series.

Whenever I watch programs like Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show, I imagine interns running around crazy in the background. But Joe, Mika, Willie and Rachel are so smooth on MSNBC! I can't imagine they are ever freaking out a la the cast of Sorkin's show. I'm being admittedly naive right now, I'm sure it's chaotic. But the point is, I think a lot more about what goes into cable news. (Just like The Wire made me think a lot more about how cities are actually run.)

So well anyways, The Newsroom is not a perfect show or in the top echelon of dramas for me, but I enjoy watching it. I think Jeff Daniels is quite an amazing actor. (And I secretly have a crush on Maggie's boyfriend, Don. I HATED him at the beginning! I still sort of hate myself for liking him at all. He's pretty much an arrogant prick. I don't know WTF is wrong with me?)

I'll stay tuned until it get canceled one day.

OH MIKE.

I've never cared for a curmudgeonly homicidal drug kingpin criminal so much.

You need to watch the web series "Burning Love"

Have you heard of this show?? It's hilarious! Ben Stiller produces this spoof of "The Bachelor" and it's awesome. Each episode is between 8-11 minutes and there are 14 episodes; it's hosted by "Yahoo Screen" which seems to be Google's YouTube competitor, but focuses on well-produced shows and not user-generated content.

A fair amount of people from Party Down are on the show. Ken Marino plays the actual bachelor, Mark Orlando. (His real-life wife, Erica Oyama, wrote the show...I want to be that couple's friend.) One of my favorite people ever, Michael Ian Black, is phenomenal as the annoying phony host of the show, Bill Tundle. (Just look at his face!) The women in it are crazy. Ken Jeong is one of the "women" and as expected, he's ridiculous as the character "Ballerina." Here's the link: http://screen.yahoo.com/burning-love/

Enjoy!

I think I'm hate-watching The Newsroom at this point

I never watched The West Wing, I've only seen Aaron Sorkin's movies. I didn't consider myself a Sorkin hater or lover. After the series premiere of The Newsroom, I quickly learned that people really fall into one of these camps. I thought that the pilot was kind of decent though. A bit cheesy and I was surprised to see that they used a real-life event on which to report but whatever, that was fine with me. I wanted to see how the Maggie/Don/Jim love triangle worked out. I thought Jeff Daniels, as grating as his character is, was doing a fantastic acting job. I wasn't super highly vested in how his relationship with Mackenzie would play out, but enough to keep watching the show to see what happens.

There have been five episodes so far. I'm now completely irritated by Sorkin using hind-sight to "properly" report on the news. It's so arrogant - but so blatantly easy and obvious to do so. I get nothing out of the show. I'm not really learning how news is made because it's all too perfect on this show. They fail to show the "surprise" of any big news events because it's all perfectly reported on within 15 minutes. Aaron Sorkin is barely even creating tension to get me nervous about how things will play out regarding how they're going to make important decisions on reporting. I don't feel like I'm going back in time to the moment when the public didn't know what was going to happen (or what had just happened). Then again, the news they're focusing on in episode 5 is up to only a year and a half old. That's just too soon I think.

Alec Nevala-Lee at Salon.com stated this well, comparing it to how Matthew Weiner writes Mad Men:

And we can find sophisticated examples of historical irony even on television. “Mad Men” isn’t entirely above the kind of cute, winking effect we often see elsewhere, as when a character dismisses a politician named Romney as “a clown,” but at its best, it gives us plausible people dealing with history in real time, and it generates authentic suspense from our knowledge of what lies ahead, as when we’re shown the invitation for a wedding scheduled for Nov. 23, 1963. When characters display cultural foresight, it’s usually by accident: Paul Kinsey dates a young black woman mostly to delight in how progressive he is, and he signs up voters in Mississippi to score points with his girlfriend, who dumps him after three days.

As for the Maggie/Don/Jim love triangle, it's going nowhere. I barely believe she has intense feelings for Jim (which I think we're supposed to think?). Everything seems to be going rather peachy with Don right now, so where's the tension in that? Oh, and Lisa barging into the newsroom to yell at Jim for standing her up on Valentine's Day?? Excuse me but really? There's something called security in every building and you can't get up there unannounced - and also, who would be so crazy as to yell at a guy in front of all his colleagues when you've only gone out four times? It's just so lame.

At this point, the only drama I actually am now into is what I didn't care about at all in the series premiere - that is Will McAvoy and Mackenzie MacHale getting together. Sorkin is doing such a crappy job of creating tension and drama overall though so I feel like he may just get them together within an episode or two and leave us feeling "satisfied" with that resolution way too soon. That's the problem with this whole show...everything is resolved way too quickly. Even Will's dating antics and being fodder for tabloid headlines. He doesn't even care about it anymore. Weren't we supposed to worry about his reputation for a while? That lasted one, maybe two, episodes at best.

I read somewhere, whether reliable or not I don't know, that Sorkin is already writing an episode about the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado. It nauseates me to no end that he's going to now research for a year, let the police and authorities do all the work and get all the answers and then showcase an episode where Will gets it all right ahead of all the other news networks. It's just too easy - where's the challenge in that?

All this being said, I keep watching. I know I'm going to at least finish out the season. If I really hated it so much, I'd stop watching (like I had to stop watching The Killing after the horrific first season finale. I could only get so far as one episode into season two). I guess I'll just continue to be irritated. I must get some joy out of it. Slate Culture Gabfest recently did a podcast on the culture of "hate-watching" on May 9, 2012 actually. It was interesting...check it out:

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest/2012/05/maurice_sendak_art_market_economics_with_felix_salmon_and_the_phenomenon_of_hate_watching_on_slate_s_culture_gabfest.html

Wow, Piers Morgan

Piers Morgan interviewed John Edwards' baby mama Rielle Hunter. This was how he started off the last segment of the interview:

PM to RH: You've been a bit of a butt of jokes now for about 5, 6 years. A bit of a national laughing stock. Hated by people who don't even know you. What has that been like on a human level?

I don't care about Rielle Hunter any more than the next person. I'm sure she's a decent human and mother in her own way - I mean, who really cares. But Piers Morgan is just a bit of a dick is all I'm saying.

HBO's Veep is hilarious!

I figured I'd like Veep. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale...how could I not? But this cast has so much more. I can't believe how much I love Timothy Simons as Jonah Ryan (White House liaison to VP's office). He is absolutely hysterical! He is so dorky-confident, which to me is one of the funniest qualities of both real and fake tv people. You can say anything you want to them and they just don't give a shit because they think they're better than you anyways. It's a veritable utopia as far as insult-flinging goes. You never have to feel bad for calling them out on anything at all because they walk away thinking "I make more money than you" or "I'm smarter than you" or "I'm going to fantasize about my own pure genius tonight regardless of what you say to me right now about my taste in life." God I f'ing love that character.

I recognized Matt Walsh from "something" but I couldn't quite place him. He plays Mike McClintock on Veep who is the Director of Communications to the VP. Turns out in real life he's a comedian from Chicago (always love when people hail from Chi-Town...my hometown) and was one of the founders of Upright Citizens Brigade back in the day. His comedy shines on Veep and his insults against Jonah and the character Dan Egan (played by pretty boy Reid Scott - seriously he looks almost like he could be George Clooney's son...or nephew or...whatever he's super good looking). Dan Egan is such a manipulative egotistical bastard it's amazing. His insults against Jonah, Mike and Amy Brookheimer (from the 1994 movie My Girl with Macaulay Culkin...she's all grown up now) are right on par with everyone else's invective.

The swearing, super quick zingers and sharp dialogue without being so over the top and too pretentious to be believable make this comedy one of my new top faves. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is like an amped up version of Elaine Benes who gets to say bad words on TV now. Tony Hale is actually kind of Buster Bluth-y in Veep as far as his mannerisms go...and it totally works. It may be wrong for me to compare both of these actors to old characters. I'm not saying they don't have range. But I'm not NOT saying they don't have range either. Honestly I don't really care. They're so funny in Veep and that's all I'm concerned with for the present.

I challenge you to watch this show and not think it's an absolute riot.

Left to right: Sue Wilson (Sufe Bradshaw), Mike McClintock (Matt Walsh), Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons), Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky), Gary Walsh (Tony Hale), VP Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Dan Egan (Reid Scott *sigh*)

RIP MCA.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is a special day. It's my one week anniversary of knowing who the hell Jeremy Lin is. To say I am so caught up in this hoopla is an understatement. Nothing lights up my computer and TV screen like talk about Linsanity. The tweets, articles, buzz, and rallying around this nice humble kid is so exciting. What a great story all around.

The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

I'm Freaking Out Over LUTHER!

I got a one word message from my friend Jenny in San Francisco that just said LUTHER. Jenny has great tv taste (she's responsible for my Modern Family and Party Down addictions) so I started watching it on Netflix Instant. That's right - go run to your Instant and start watching like right now.

If you love that feeling when you're watching Breaking Bad and you're so stressed that you think you may have a heart attack from the anxiety the show instills...well then you'd love Luther!

Stringer Bell from The Wire (ok his real name is Idris Elba) is the star in this BBC crime thriller. Stringer speaks with his real British accent. He's a detective who investigates gruesome crimes. The show is deeply psychological and extremely gripping. Like Homeland, it has edge-of-your-seat tension and is a real nail biter. I was hooked within 20 minutes of episode one. At the end of episode three I took a deep breath just feeling total love for the show. When episode four finished, the breath was literally sucked straight out of me and I looked like this:

First season is only six 52-minute episodes. Second season is four episodes - not available yet on Netflix*. Stringer just won a Golden Globe for it a few weeks ago. Very well deserved! He is so good I can't even deal.

WATCH IT!!!

*Correction: Now available on Instant!

The Jesus and Mary Chain are reuniting for a US tour and I am one happy little girl. This video to Far Gone and Out is one of my absolute favorites. They're probably the kind of guys who are "above" owning a television, but whatever I'll ignore that. They define cool in this video.

#JesusAndMaryChain

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