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Fashion / A Winter Capsule (With Books, Too)

posted on November 13, 2015

I’m not going to lie — when I say ‘capsule’ in the post title, I don’t really mean ‘clothes you can mix and match for maximum functionality’ this time (see previous capsules here and here). I’m thinking more about a receptacle in which you can live, like a cave where a bear hibernates, and the things you might want to have in it before holing up and not coming out until the sun does, like a bear when it hibernates.

These days I leave the house like, once or twice a week, usually the day after the wine runs out. I try to run all my errands at the same time, too; my town is pretty small so I might as well disrupt my routines as little as possible. I’m happy to tell you I’m no longer so unstable that going to the supermarket messes up my entire day, but I’m still lazy, and let’s be real, even if you go out every day, the best thing about winter is curling up on your bed or an armchair with a hot beverage, a book and your choice of ~~cat~~ furry pet, wrapped up in something warm and comfortable. Mmm, cozying up.

And so:

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

And just in case you forgot that a) I mentioned a book and b) I read, I come bearing book recs, too! Because I’ve looked forward to and tweeted about two fall releases far too much not to mention them here as well.

This fall, two of my favorite non-fiction writers released new material. First, it was the incomparable (shut up) Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess, who followed up Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, a book so hysterical I translated entire passages to my sister on the fly, with Furiously Happy. Furiously Happy is just as hilarious, but delves even deeper into Jenny’s experiences with depression and other disorders, including acute social anxiety, with passages as heartbreaking as they are, for me and many other people, massively relatable. Her flying fears are my flying fears! There are also (live) cats and (taxidermied) raccoons, and if you don’t think taxidermied animals can be fucking funny, you’re about to be converted.

The other new book I just started reading last night is Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell, who you may recognize from This American Life (a podcast I’ve only heard a tidbit of, though I mainlined its spin-off Serial) or appearances on The Daily Show (where I have in fact seen her; she was one of Jon Stewart’s last guests). I know very little about the period of American History in her book — or any other periods — though it’s getting a big fandom push lately with the Hamilton musical, which I swear I will listen to in time (Renee Elise Goldberry! My love, my light) — but I’ve inhaled about four of Vowell’s books, starting with probably my favorite, Assassination Vacation, and her writing style is just so goddamn engaging I know I will care. She probably shoulders 80% of the responsibility for my morbid interest in the Civil War era, so you know she’s got chops. Also, like, she’s Sarah Vowell. So give it a go if you don’t know her.

That should keep you cozy and entertained for a while! Now back to your cat.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. In fact most links are affiliate links. That means I may make a small commission if you purchase! And I mean small. But a commission all the same. Esprit unfortunately does not have an affiliate program that I’m aware of, but boy, am I in love with their collection… surprising absolutely no one.

Books Pop Culture

Reading: The Almost Truth by Eileen Cook

posted on October 15, 2014

Cover from GoodReads

I’ve been a fan of Eileen Cook since I read my first book by her, Unraveling Isobel. Unraveling Isobel has a little bit of mystery set on an island near Seattle with a side dish of stepsibling romance, so obviously I was hooked. Her writing is simply and engaging, just how I like my YA, and it’s extremely easy to read and read and not put her books down at all. Seeing as my attention span is limited, this comes in handy.

After Unraveling Isobel, I read Unpredictable, which was awful. You can read my review on GoodReads, which is appropriately tagged “enraging fail.” The main character is painfully lacking in self-awareness, and she pulls all these awful stunts that are unnecessary at best and plain old gaslighting at worst.

But I’m a sucker for YA (Unpredictable was adult), and I like to read things by authors I already know are capable of writing things I like. So after Unpredictable, I read The Education of Hailey Kendrick, which, despite some casual slutshaming here and there, was a freaking joy. It has a love triangle that’s more like a quadrangle, and it makes it work. I love when books do that.

So next I picked up Getting Revenge On Lauren Wood, which I believe is the book Eileen Cook is best-known for writing, judging by how it always says “Author of Getting Revenge On Lauren Wood” under her name on all her other book covers. Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood is revenge fantasy, which I find impossibly eh, but it’s revenge fantasy moored in high school tropes, which I find impossibly comforting. I was pretty into it from the beginning, and then it went better places than I thought it would. It was just nice lighthearted entertainment.

I read all of these books in 2012. Yeah, it’s been a while — and it’s been a while since I read a fiction book at all. But I was scrolling through my ebook library on Saturday night, and feeling a bit giddy looking at all the covers since I finally uploaded all my ebooks to Google Play Books, and my eyes fell upon The Almost Truth.

I basically inhaled it.

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Movies

Watching: Begin Again (2013)

posted on September 21, 2014

Last night, for the first time in literally two years, I watched a movie. A whole one. In one — okay, I did take two lengthy Internet breaks, but still finished it within six hours of starting it, which is huge for me.

The movie was Begin Again, and I found it rather underwhelming.

I should probably have expected it given it was written and directed by the same person who wrote and directed Once. Now, I know, okay, I know it’s weird that I didn’t like Once, but it’s my prerogative to be bored to near sleep by movies, and Once was basically a lot of super repetitive music that I wasn’t that into, telling a story that I wasn’t that into, showing little in the way of past or future or context for its characters, and giving them an understated ending… which I’m never that into.

With Begin Again, at least I was into the music, and the location, and Keira Knightley. I actually like Mark Ruffalo, too, generally speaking. In this movie, he plays a washed-up record label exec who most plot summaries forgo telling us has basically hit rock bottom in his personal life and has some alcohol problems. At the beginning of the movie, when he finds Keira playing a song at a bar, he’s drunk to the point where I’d honestly be really uncomfortable in Keira’s position, if he came up to me talking about how he wants to sign me and waited for me outside the bar. I’d be very, very uncomfortable. I might say sure to having a drink with him because in uncomfortable situations, I tend to let myself be strung along for a while until I notice I need to get the fuck out of dodge, but I’d be uncomfortable.

I will say for the movie that the first five minutes paint a very clear picture that it’s not going to be the rom com you maybe expected from the poster. And it’s not. It’s about how the dude I described above sees this woman playing this song, and he decides he wants to sign her but actually he no longer has any power at his company because his business partner is tired of dealing with a perpetually drunk idealist, and that doesn’t work out but they come up with this idea to record an album with the city as their studio. And Keira’s friend’s equipment that he’s picked up from studios that are closing up. I’m not sure what either Keira or her friend live off of. Mark Ruffalo’s life is fairly contextualized, but Keira’s is pretty fuzzy.

Not necessarily a big deal, that. You get a nice little drama with a hopeful ending and a few sweet songs (which I actually really enjoyed despite Keira’s voice sounding a little less than live), and everyone goes on their merry way. That’s fine if you’re into that.

The reason I was disappointed is… I’m not. I like happy endings and big sweeping romance — not heroic gestures, but swelling music and a kiss is nice. Even when I’m not that into the relationship between the leads, and this one is the kind you don’t get that into, a bit of triumph that’s had some buildup is good. But what Keira gets out of New York is a relationship that suddenly dissolves, and a live-ish album that sells 10,000 copies on its first day of being up for download, online, on her terms. Only she doesn’t want to record an album. She tags along with her musician boyfriend, and it’s implied that sometimes they work together, but she’s just tagging along. The scene where she actually says those words may have been her downplaying her role for the record label execs, but I didn’t get the impression that she wanted to put music out. She cared about integrity and authenticity, but she sounded more like a music fan than a musician there.

In fact, the beginning scene where she plays the song is brought on by her friend (James Corden, who I also like*) putting her on the spot and making her come onstage completely unprepared and despite her saying no multiple times. She actually does kind of get strung along the entire movie, come to think of it. So at the end of the movie, she has an album out and maybe enough money to pay the musicians. And what is she going to do next? There are some vague plans to repeat the city studio thing over Europe, but in the meanwhile? What does she want to do? I’d like to know.

At least she has a face, I guess. And she’s cute when she’s not telling Hailee Steinfeld that she dresses very, very sexy, cough cough slutty cough, and the problem is that she leaves nothing to the imagination and the boy she likes won’t be interested in her that way. Because it was completely necessary to slutshame the teenage daughter, and use her revealing way of dressing as lazy short code for “going off the rails” and “needs a father figure” (clearly stated, because it makes so much sense).

Hailee Steinfeld, though: also really cute. Really the only person in this movie I don’t like is Adam Levine, and he grows facial hair to look varying degrees of douchebag throughout the film, which I did find funny. But I haven’t liked him since that one 99 Problems incident on The Voice with Christina Aguilera, up to which I’d had quite a crush on him and his cardigans on that show. After (during) that incident, my crush crawled into a hole and died.

And on that note, the other thing that rubbed me wrong about this movie was the way the few characters of color were positioned and introduced. There’s Mark Ruffalo’s partner, who’s presented as ungrateful to Mark Ruffalo and a sellout, a bit like a villain; there’s Cee Lo Green, who is very grateful to Mark Ruffalo because apparently Mark Ruffalo gave him his big break, and he helps fund and promote Mark and Keira’s venture; there’s the pretty girl at the record label that Adam Levine leaves Keira for, even though it doesn’t last (these sellout music industry people, so fickle); and there’s the two musicians in the band of misfits Mark and Keira put together, which is composed of them and three white people, and guess who get names and mini introductions and Keira saying she’s making money to pay them and who don’t? It was so glaring. I want to give the benefit of the doubt and think maybe the mini intros for the two black guys were cut in post-production, but come on, really? Really?

My favorite bits were — James Corden and Keira Knightley being longtime friends, I found that really cute; and the movie does do that thing I love so much where it elevates “banalities” (as it calls them) into something worthy of attention by setting them to music — though it mostly only manages that at the beginning and during the scene where it outright talks about how setting banalities to music makes them seem deep and emotional all of a sudden. I’ll give them that.

So basically: watch this movie if you liked Once, probably. The faces are more familiar and the voices a little less raw, if I recall Once correctly, but the cinematography and the general understated realistic (eh) slice-of-life feel (or lack of context and purpose, which is how I read that aspect of these movies, unfortunately) are the same.

Personally, as far as Begin Agains go, I’d rather listen to Taylor Swift.

Closet Cosplay Pop Culture

Style A Shoot: All-Woman Casino Heist

posted on August 28, 2014

I’ve been toying with the idea of this series for a while now, and I’m ready to get started. Basically, I can’t actually be a stylist because it involves sourcing clothes and accessories and props, and I don’t have any money. But a girl can dream, right? And if nothing else, these posts could easily serve as moodboards for future shoots with someone else at the styling wheel.

For my first post, I’m dreaming up a casino heist shoot. It’s pretty influenced by Leverage, because I’m me (this is not the first time I use Leverage as inspiration) and also it’s weirdly hard to find heist movies that aren’t literally all dudes. I mean, I love Ocean’s Eleven, but come on.

I suppose next on the list would be scouting a location, but I feel like any high scale hotel lobby would do a fairly decent job. Though a casino would obviously be best. But I know nothing about casinos, and like, would they charge to let you shoot there? Would there be a conflict of interest re patrons’ privacy? Probably.

Regardless of location, during downtime throughout the shoot, we could go on www.riverbellecasino.com and play some online games such as roulette and slots to inspire us, right there from the comfort of the dressing area — you could even change outfits and retouch your makeup while you play.

You know, if you’re into actual gaming, and not just in it for the geekery of pretending to be in a heist movie. No judgment from me either way!

This post has been published in accordance with my disclosure policy.

Diaries Expat Wannabe Graphic Design London Mental Health Modeling Oxford Photography Poetry Pop Culture Things I'm Thinking Travel

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

posted on March 31, 2014

Or maybe you did! The original title for this post was “10 Things You May Have Missed About Me,” but that sounded unnecessarily snarky. Plus, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” is probably better for SEO. Yes, I think about those things. I also had a brief internal debate about using a video cap for this post rather than a proper quality picture from my Canon. This feels fitting, is more recent than the “good” pictures I had, and I asked Twitter and Twitter said “go with it,” so there we go. That’s thing zero.

1. I have been to London before (twice) and I loved it, but Oxford truly stole my heart. If I could pick a place to live for the rest of my life, to be based in, it would be Oxford. It’s gorgeous, it appeals to my love of culture, and it’s easy enough to get around in. It’s also just an inexpensive bus ride away from London.

I thought about this a lot last year when I was first seriously considering moving to the UK. I spent a lot of time on job ad websites looking for work all over the UK, and the truth is, Oxford didn’t have much at all going for it in that department, and it was nearly as expensive as London. I considered Glasgow for a long time as well, because I know someone there and my friend Annemari, who I want to move in with, liked it, but I’ve never been to Scotland, so London felt a lot less scary.

That said, writing this post is making me seriously consider expanding my flat search to Oxford. It’s just… heaven for me. It’s beautiful. I only wrote it off because I thought I’d be looking for a full-time job, and now what I really want to do is take my freelance work for a spin.

I hated the room I was put up in (another scholarship), the airline lost my luggage, I spent the first weekend there waiting for it, I was switched to a student house my last week, and at the end I missed my flight, my train and the bus back home from Madrid and I had to get a hostel room there. It was still a blissful trip.

2. [TW for creepiness] One day when I was in London the first time, in September of 2007, when I was seventeen, I was journaling on a bench in Green Park and some dude approached me and started talking to me. I kept trying to get rid of him; he kept going on about how age was just a number and I had kissable lips and other similarly disgusting things. He pretty much spoke in clichés, and he was Italian, and he was not even remotely attractive to me. I told him I wasn’t interested but he wouldn’t leave. So eventually I said I had to leave and I hid in the tube station until it was time to go to the showing of Wicked I had tickets for.

I went back home at 11 PM after that show. I was staying in North London and Wicked was (is?) on at the Apollo Victoria, so quite a tube ride away. I was wary of walking around London at night, especially the walk from the Bounds Green tube station to the residential neighborhood house my ESL school (a scholarship requirement) had put me up in, but Victoria was a busy area and the show was worth it.

3. Most of the modeling I’ve done since I started calling myself a model has been self-portraiture, or close to it; I model for my mom, but my mom is not a photographer — she simply follows my instructions. Oftentimes I set up the shot entirely, make sure the shutter speed is really high, and move around as she keeps the shooting button pressed. It’s incredibly fun. I don’t consider myself “model pretty,” whatever that is, and I don’t have amazing hair, and I’m not tall enough for the catwalk. I don’t have beauty instincts. But I love the hell out of it.

4. Despite #3, it is not true that I have never modeled for someone else who was comfortable with a camera. It was just for fun, but I got some gorgeous shots out of it (shots I call mine because a- I haven’t spoken to him in ages, b- modeling is an art, c- it was my camera, and d- I did all the post-processing, but they were very much collaborative work), and the realization that it was an absolute blast to play-act for the camera. This was a friend who eventually “broke up” with me friendship-wise because he thought I only used him for pictures. He… may have been right?

I’ve got makeup on in most of those many, many shots because I went out of the house and I used to always put on makeup when I went out of the house. I’ve even got a shoot inspired by a The Birds still I saw in Vanity Fair — shame about the setting (my building foyer at night, flash and no tripod), but I can sure work the horror vibe.

5. I asked to be seen by a psychologist once. He wrote in all caps, chalked up my social anxiety mess of a dorm experience to separation anxiety, wanted me to admire my abusive father, and brought my mom in with me. His tentative diagnosis was anxiety disorder, paranoia, psychosis, and Asperger’s syndrome. My psychosis is entirely passive, which wasn’t specified, but otherwise I think the diagnosis, unlike the methodology, session and his “day hospital” (going to and staying in the hospital for various therapy things, mostly group, every day from 8 to 5) prescription, was on the mark.

In other words, I’ve got paranoia coming out of my ears and I tend to avoid people. I don’t need to be warned; my brain is a scaredy cat all by itself.

6. I don’t have any formal creative education. For a long time I was a writer first and foremost, and I’ve got very strong opinions about writing that most creative writing courses would have clashed with hard. I did want to take a photography course for a long time, but I wasn’t sure how they worked and I was scared they’d be too technical; I wasn’t ready for technical photography learning back then. It may sound like an oxymoron, but I didn’t feel I knew enough to learn more! (I do now.)

For the most part, I just didn’t have money for classes (I would have hired a guitar teacher earlier if so, or gone for ballet, or for gymnastics as of 2012), and I couldn’t find any that appealed to me. Now I’ve got tons thanks to Skillshare and the like, but I still can’t afford them! And I’m not sure I can make the time for them right now, so I learn bit by bit with free tutorials, videos and experimenting.

7. Back to writing, though, I used to write mainly fanfic and poetry — fanfic on a regular basis, poetry whenever I was really depressed. I’ve got a self-published poetry e-book out (it’s available on Kobo and Smashwords, and translated to Spanish as well if you’re curious!), and I always meant to publish a second tome with my more recent work, which I’m prouder of than the stuff in the e-book, but then I opened that photography shop on Etsy and my Internet life (and career goals) did a 180.

8. I’ve done NaNoWriMo something like four times? I won the first year with 50,000 words of drivel barely 20% into my novel, and failed every year since. This project was my last. I wrote a little bit of it.

9. I got started on graphic design when I was fourteen and got Paint Shop Pro. I upgraded to Photoshop Elements a couple of years after, and got used to it quickly. I didn’t do much with it, though — mostly coloring screencaps for fandom and tumblr posts! Guess what, bloggers who aren’t in fandom: I know how to make gifs. It was a pain in the ass on my old laptop, though, and I haven’t had a reason to try on the new one yet. It’s not really satisfying creative work. More like frustrating and annoying, especially when you have to keep the filesize small enough for tumblr standards — which used to be even stricter than they are now.

10. Sometimes I post silly things on youtube for the benefit of my best friend. And before Instagram (and sometimes even now), I posted a lot of silly Photo Booth pics of me and my cat to Twitter as well. Have a browse and enjoy.

(I got that from Summer on The O.C..)

Pop Culture TV

TV Shows I’ve Quit And Why I Quit Them

posted on November 27, 2013

Look, it’s a TV post! I haven’t written a TV post in… a while. I’ve never written about TV on this blog, so it’s a first as well! I took a bit of a break from fiction this year — I’ve always had trouble dividing my emotional focus, and working on my business hoarded all of it. That means the only TV show I’m close to up to date with is Elementary (which I adore!). But this time last year I was watching a considerable amount of TV, and I intend to pick a lot of it back up.

This post, though? This post is about the TV shows I’ve cut ties with — deliberately stopped watching — and the reasons why I did.

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Books Making Things

A Book Cover I Love (So Much That I Sketched It)

posted on September 12, 2013

I saw this book chat link-up over at Life With a Side of Coffee and I thought I’d pitch in with a small post. I don’t have thoughts to share on covers — not at this particular moment, anyway — or an absolute favorite book cover — some I like, some I dislike, some I love — but the first one that popped into my head was the UK cover of Malinda Lo’s Ash, the one on the left:

Not that the one on the right isn’t pretty — it’s quite lovely — but it was the UK version my library bought on my request, and it was the UK version I read and, when I was done reading, decided to sketch. If you’ve known me for a while, you know drawing is very much not a talent I possess, and I’m fairly self-conscious about it. That’s why I don’t draw properly. When I do draw, it’s by black pen on a scrap of paper, something that doesn’t make me feel like I need to make an effort at all because hey, it’s just a doodle.

But I like how this doodle came out, so I kept it and now I’m showing it to you all. It seemed appropriate.

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