Happiness in Magazines?

Yes, it is in fact Friday.  Though instead of posting THAT song to the social network of your choice, why not listen to one of these classics instead?

The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
Shed Seven - She Left Me On Friday
The Beatles - 8 Days a Week
Boy Kill Boy - Friday Friday
Lily Allen - Friday Night

My friend Ana decided to book a trip to Thailand at the last minute and she's documenting her travels at The Adventures of IndiANA Rodrigo.  Go follow her!  A few wise words to her from personal experience -

• Beware of flying cockroaches
• Drink lots of fruit smoothies
• Get your nails did as it's dirt cheap
• Go for the oil massage, it's so much better than the Thai one

By the way, I got the capital of Vietnam wrong at trivia, it's Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh City.  Shows how much I paid attention while I was there.

Sooo, I totally got a job!  A good job too!  My first week is finished (and I was home before 6 pm every day, jealous much?)  So far so good, just lots to learn.  And don't even get me started on the company store, I have heart palpitations every time I think about it. FYI, I'm working at a cosmetics company (because I'm worth it if ya catch my drift.)

I received flowers from my boss on my first day, how nice is that?? On top of that, Dave's parents were visiting with a back-to-back visit by Jay, both of whom got us flowers. Our apartment smells rather fragrant at the moment and looks quite pretty as well.

In other non-important news, I'm drowning in magazines (you'd think I would have learned my lesson from the Time debacle, but nevertheless...)

I'd been receiving Rolling Stone for the past few months and couldn't figure out who subscribed me.  I thought it was either a gift or a random promotion (a bit odd considering I'd dropped their subscription years ago as I couldn't stand most of their political views.)  Well, I get the dumbass award for this one - turns out I resubscribed myself and lost all memory of having done so.  To be fair, they never billed me and, um, I was probably so busy the past few months that I simply forgot I'd done it.  Anyhoo, I went to unsubscribe (the annual fee is only $20 but I just didn't want it due to my piled up backlog) and they actually pulled a "will you continue subscribing if we offer you 26 issues/year for only $10?"  Well, it worked.  If everyone knew they did this can you imagine how much money they'd lose??

I recently bought a Time Out NY subscription on Groupon - weekly issues for a year for only $10 (oh Groupon how I love thee.)  I already skipped last week's issue and am on track to miss all of this week's events as well.  So all in all a great purchase.

On top of that, I just started receiving Glamour, another magazine I really couldn't care less about - the last article I read was titled "Hey Guys, Let's Talk Sexting!"  Really?  People do that so much that it gets a dedicated article?  Wow, I guess I'm old (or just not so Glamorous.)  I found out that my United miles were about to expire, and I had so few that it was down to redeeming for two $25 Restaurant.com certificates and a magazine subscription.  With options like Cigar Aficionado and Diabetes Forecast in my mileage range, Glamour truly was the best option.

Dave's had a subscription to Scientific American that he did not subscribe to for the past year as well.  When I brought this up last week in passing, his mom told us that it was a gift from his grandma.  Proper mystery solved!

Oh, and I've been getting Teen Vogue for free too!  I swear I did NOT voluntarily subscribe to that one.

Dave is playing Limbo now and it's totes scary.



Time to win the $312M Mega Millions.  See you on the flip side.

I Only Want To Be In Your Record Collection

Things I've been up to lately:

- Traipsing through slush

- Adding all of my music from my iPod to my new Macbook (this includes manually re-adding to/reordering ALL of my playlists)

- Hula hooping (well, sometimes)

- Going to an InterNations mixer and not mixing outside of my friends

- Playing guitar on hard on Rock Band (only took my three years)

- Cleaning out my inbox

- Stuffing my face with Peanut Butter Puffins

- Reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

- Updating my to-do list

- Eating Korean food

- Debating if I like Korean food

- Sorting through all of my CDs and finally trashing the ones I don't need (why do I have Nappy Roots and The American Pie soundtrack again??)

Check out some fab CDs and some stinkers here (I had to document the mess):

Why yes, Interpol and Moby did sign those for me 

And yes, that is a Backstreet Boys CD

Can you guess what the CD with the germs on the cover is?

I flipped this one upside down just to freak you out

On my last day of work I had to give back some company-owned things.  As sad as that was, I was relieved to give back my crackberry.

Now in the hands of the authorities

Bye bye empty desk

I've been trying to make the most of my time off.  I've therefore gone to see Late Night With Jimmy Fallon - guests were Dana Carvey, Minka Kelly, Ricky Martin, and Yngwie Malmsteen playing with The Roots.  I also went to a taping of Live! with Regis and Kelly (not that exciting, I'm obligated to include the ! in the name) - guests included a pre-taped Matthew Perry which was NOT okay, and Chris Colfer from Glee.  Kelly and Reg talked to my friend Jon about his Cookie Monster iPhone cover, so that was cool.  I also took the online test for Jeopardy! (not that exciting, I'm obligated to include the ! in the name.)  That test was horrific and the questions are not at all like what you see on TV.  If I'm lucky I maybe got 5 out of 50 questions right, so you won't be seeing me on that show anytime soon (or ever.) I just applied for tickets to The People's Court and Rachel Ray.  Is Cash Cab truly random or can you actually apply to be on it?

Recent clothing purchases include two bridesmaid dresses, stretchy pants from Express (I like to call them lazy pants) and pink and white baseball socks from American Apparel (let's just be honest here - that's the only thing I can fit in at that store.)  Oh!  We FINALLY bought a flat screen TV as you can partially see in the CD photos above, as well as a cordless iron and towels because that's what married people do.  Our final purchase was renters insurance so don't even think about breaking in here to take our awesome iron.

Another recent key purchase were cherries at a bargain price of $1.99/pound.  I have made a mental note to add this to my "Justifications for Living in Astoria" list.

This is my favorite video right now:

We recently went to the re-opened Museum of the Moving Image.  Yes, there really is a museum in Astoria, and it's in walking distance from our apartment.  The pics didn't come out so great though.

I got in trouble for taking this photo so I hope you like it

Model used in The Exorcist

Good Ole Yods

 Mrs. Doubtfire's head

Afterwards we went across the street for 5 Napkin Burger's slider happy hour.  $2 options include regular sliders, as well as veggie burger, turkey meatball, pork taquitos, and wings, plus $4 beers. Total yum.

The other day we walked from our apt to Roosevelt Island over this ghetto bridge made up of metal grates.  I do not recommend wearing heels on that.  

I also do not recommend going there on the windiest day of the year. We walked through the middle of the island (it looks like something out of 1984, a total Communist-type village), stopped for a bite to eat (yes, there really is a restaurant) and hightailed it out of there on the tram worried we had permanently lost feeling in our extremities.  

This is seriously what all the island's businesses look like, regardless if it's a florist, post office, or library.

The church, seriously

Have some tram views (after all it is the London Eye of New York)...

It's coming!

It's here!

Obligatory tourist photos

Bye bye RI

I am enjoying my freaky reflection photo

The ride was surprisingly steady

Second avenue here we come

Once we got to Manhattan, we didn't know what to do and it was freezing so we played in FAO Schwartz.  You can make muppets there!  I want to make one but they are like $100 bucks or something stupid like that.

Did you know that this muppet is a shrimp?!  I did not.  Pepe the prawn:

Also, I finished watching Mad Men season 4 OMGsogood.

More spare time activities included attending a focus group (love the cash in hand) and seeing Billy Elliot on Broadway.  I think something to add to my to-do list this week is creating a list of all the Broadway shows I've been to (I can tell you off the bat that my all-time favorites are Blood Brothers and Tommy.)

I've also been seeing friends who had babies, friends who bought houses, and friends who are teachers that are off from school this week.  Speaking of, how cute is Heather's slow cooker all buckled up ready for the Super Bowl?  Speaking of which, Dave won the half time in the pool.

I think I'm going to start a Tumblr of randoms things buckled up since I already have these in my library:

Check out my bootiful Valentine's Day fleurs:

So, using the Sitemeter at the bottom of my blog, sometimes I'm able to tell how someone landed on my page.  Also, using another new-ish tool that Blogger has implemented, I can also now tell which posts of mine get the most hits, and similar stats.  The page that's consistently been hit the most over the past few years has bee this one: Come To Jamaica and Feel Alright.  I knew it couldn't have been the fascinating photos of us eating New England cuisine, or my amazing rendition of "Train in Vain" that kept drawing people in.  Turns out that the hits all come from people clicking on the second photo (which I will not re-post here) which leads them directly to that blog post.  I thought I was in some major photograph-rights violation this whole time, but it only occurred to me to today to see the rank of where the photo pops up when searching for "Jamaica, Queens" in Google Images.  Well, mystery solved indeed.  Why don't you Google image this yourself and see where the photo placement is?  And also, how did this photo get linked solely to my blog??

Space Cadets Dressed in Fibreglass

Wow, my 2010 "Top 60" is way late. I've come to the obvious conclusion that my taste in music gets shittier every year, as you'll see below. I think I'm just purely too lazy when it comes to seeking out new bands, though I do honestly feel that some of the craptastic pop in my top ten is acceptably catchy. And I know there's absolutely no reason to have "Fireflies" in there but I think it's cute. 60 Rihanna - Rude Boy 59 Owl City - Fireflies

58 General Fiasco - Ever So Shy

57 Mystery Jets - Flash a Hungry Smile

56 Lady Gaga - Alejandro

55 Plan B - Stay Too Long

54 Delphic - Doubt

53 Taio Cruz - Dynamite

52 One EskimO - Kandi

51 Wakey! Wakey! - Almost Everything

50 Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly - Collapsing Cities

49 Miike Snow - Sylvia

48 Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Jackson's Last Stand

47 Marina and the Diamonds - Hollywood

46 Goldfrapp - Rocket

45 The Naked and Famous - Young Blood

44 The Script - Break Even

43 Rihanna - What’s My Name?

42 RPA & The United Nations of Sound - Born Again

41 The Joy Formidable - The Last Drop

40 Usher feat. Pitbull - DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love

39 Ash - War with Me

38 Arcade Fire - We Used To Wait

37 Klaxons - Echoes

36 Broken Bells - The High Road

35 Trey Songz feat. Fabolous - Say Ahh

34 Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce - Telephone

33 We Are Scientists - Ambition

32 Badly Drawn Boy - Too Many Miracles

31 B.o.B. feat. Hayley Williams - Airplanes

30 Tired Pony - Dead American Writers

29 Ash - Return of White Rabbit

28 Hot Chip - I Feel Better

27 Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg - California Gurls

26 Carl Barat - Run with the Boys

25 The XX - Islands

24 I am Kloot - Proof

23 Yeasayer - O.N.E.

22 Jamie T - Emily's Heart

21 The Temper Trap - Science of Fear

20 Kings of Leon - Radioactive

19 Civil Twilight - Letters from the Sky

18 Kate Nash - Kiss That Grrrl

17 Mark Ronson & The Business International - Glass Mountain Trust

16 Fenech Soler - Lies

15 Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

14 The Joy Formidible - Whirring

13 Ke$ha - Tik Tok

12 Everything Everything - Schoolin'

11 Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work

10 Calvin Harris- You Used To Hold Me

9 Mark Ronson & The Business International - Bang Bang Bang

8 Ke$ha - We R Who We R

7 Two Door Cinema Club - I Can Talk

6 Everything Everything - MY KZ UR BF

5 The Wombats - Tokyo

4 Cee-Lo Green - F**k you

3 Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

2 The Courteeners - You Overdid It Doll

1 One Night Only - Say You Don't Want It

I seem to be going to less and less gigs each year. I'm just too tired! Also, I feel too dumb to take photos so there's only one (I probably should have stopped snapping pics years ago anyway.) Here's my list in alpha order -

Gigs '10

Ash - Santos House Party
Athlete - Bowery
Badly Drawn Boy - Le Poisson Rouge
Better Than Ezra - Webster

British Sea Power - Koko (Mairead made a good point about this on NYE - since they played before and after midnight, what year does this gig actually fall under?)
Everything Everything - Music Hall of Williamsburg
Florence and the Machine - Terminal 5 (the April show, not the bandwagon one)
Howie Day - City Winery
The Joy Formidable - Bowery
Julian Casablancas - Irving Plaza
Mark Ronson & the Business International - Webster

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Radio City

Two Door Cinema Club - Webster

Vampire Weekend - Bowery

Hands down Rodrigo y Gabriela takes the cake for best show of the year times about 29372536. I'm giving Mark Ronson and his all star band an honorary second with The Joy Formidable in third.

I have not been doing much as of late. On Friday night we went to two tapings for Comedy Central hosted by John Oliver (yay for free activities.) One of the comedians was making fun of a video game called Heavy Rain. I guess I should have known about it being that I work in video games, but anyhoo. What I took away from his jokes was that it's total drama, and not the video game type - basically, your youngest son gets hit by a car and dies, your wife leaves you, you're having issues with your older son, then the game actually starts when a killer comes to town. It's all psychological decision making. I want it but it's only available for PS3 BOO.

Check out the trailer, it totally looks like a movie:

On Saturday night we went to dinner with Liz and Graham at The Smith where I mainly spit globs of fat from my steak not-so-discretely into my napkin. After that we went into a gay bar that had a two-for-one drink special: two Grey Geese and two beers for $15! Also, we watched Miss America there which may have been the most appropriate place to watch a pageant ever. PS I can't believe that busted blonde chick won - what state was she from anyway?

Yesterday we were completely useless - we went to the diner and then sat on the couch all day watching Dexter Season 5. Who plays Cole? He looks so familiar. Okay, thanks IMDB, he was Whistler on Prison Break.

Today we spent half of the day (literally) waiting for our landlord to show up, to check on something to do with the "architecture", aka the apt. is set up illegally and maybe he got caught?? Anyway, he was supposed to come between 9:00 am - 12:00 pm, then at 12:30 pm we received a call that he'd be here at 1:00 pm, then nothing. No call or visit at all = GRRRRR! At least I got my crappy old laptop working while I was waiting for him, so I've basically spent the whole day pulling photos, documents, and music onto an external drive before the computer breathes it's final breath (I'm only on H bands - if the system fails and Haddaway doesn't transfer, someone will be held responsible.)
gthzjng
Oh, we also made meatloaf yesterday so that was of course a highlight.
gthnzjng
By the way, I went to London for Xmas. Here are a few photos...

Dave and his new hands (I think this is the funniest thing ever; also Hunter Mountain people should be having a flashback)

Then me, Dave, and his mom hula hooped

I barely went into London this trip ($50 roundtrip for the train!!) but at least I got to see some peeps (Laura, Kat, Joy, Andi, Maristela, Sunil, and Jon who happened to be in town as well.)

Kat and LauraAndi, Joy, Me

On New Year's Eve I was sick but forced myself to go to Camden since we'd already bought tickets to see British Sea Power. Holy mother of God you should have seen the girls on the train from Essex, it was the Whore Express! I know girls get more dressed up in the UK than in the US, but boobs hanging out, stilettos, and no stockings with skirts so short that I can see your twat is NOT okay!!

At Koko (where I was fully clothed), it was me, Dave, Laura, Mairead, Mike, Rich, and some of Alex and Emily's friends (they didn't go bc Emily was sick.) BSP were good but played a pretty short set. New Years came mid-set and one of the dudes climbed up to the canon.

BOOM!

Happy New Year

We were fortunate enough to see the British Sea Power bear!! Of the 8 or so times I've seen them, this monster had only appeared at Glastonbury '04.

You'd think that an NME night with British Sea Power headlining would equal indie music. Apparently it actually means dance music, therefore I did not dance. We stayed until about 3:00 am and knew we had to stay out till the first train back to Essex. Dave and I headed into central London to walk around and kill time. I was completely sober since I was ill (seriously, Diet Cokes consumed all night), so watching all the drunk girls walking barefoot, falling over, and puking was quite hilarious. We contemplated taking Boris bikes to Liverpool Street but decided to just take a picture on them instead.

Then I discovered something slightly unappetizing

We went to Bar Italia, which is one of the few places that stays open all night in London. I had the best panini of my life.

This is Dave after an espresso and a coffee at 4 am

We caught the 5:07 am train back to Essex and stayed at Eggman's house since our train wasn't leaving for another few hours. We finally made it back to ours around 1:00 pm. I was feeling so sick that I didn't get out of my pajamas for the rest of the trip.

Now Dave is playing Fable III and his avatar just burped in someone's face. I heart my husband.

Things I Disliked - 2010 Edition

Let's kick this off properly:

Nicki Minaj

Simply awful. How can anyone listen to her "music" and say it's good with a straight face, let alone get by without their ears bleeding? Someone had to say it and now everyone else can feel free to follow (you can thank me later.)

30 Rock

I still don't think this show is funny AT ALL. Am I missing something, or is it just childish humor that somehow goes over my head? Not funny, and quite bad actually (sorry Emmys Foundation but you're wrong.)

The Red Hot Chili Peppers

It's not really their fault, it's more so 101.9's issue, but I can't hate the station solely because of Matt Pinfield. If you haven't been exposed to WXRP between 8:00 - 9:00 am on weekdays, I'll have you know that hearing a Chili Peppers song is 110% inevitable, and it's been like this every day for at least the past year. It started off as the principal that pissed me off, but now I've convinced myself to actually hate them. They do this with other bands too (ahem Foo Fighters, no thank you), and they recently began repeating The Black Crowes, and I certainly hope they stop because I don't want to dislike them. I know I could change the station, but it's not really an option when the alternative is Z100 playing Justin Bieber and talking about The Human Caterpillar.

Exhausted Phrases

Fail/Epic Fail/For the Win/WIN! These stupid phrases were funny for a nanosecond. If you still say these things you deserve to die.

Vampire Weekend's "Holiday"

This song was fine until they started repeating the Honda Civic commercial non-stop for the past month on both the TV and radio.

Synergy (Astoria)

Words can't describe how much I hate this gym. There is nothing wrong with the physical equipment, my problems are:
1) The instructors. This doesn't go for all of them, but there are a select few whose machismo is intolerable. Being harassed (sexually and being yelled at in general) are not what I paid for.
2) The chick who does "cardio dance" doesn't actually dance. I moved my feet back and forth a few times but that was it. FOR 45 MINUTES. I burned more calories watching the clock in that class.
3) Most of the time the instructors don't play music. NO MUSIC! How can you conduct an hour-long class and not play music? The only thing silence motivates me to do is want to punch you in the face.
4) The few classes I have experienced that do play music have been Eurotrash techno crap which I presume a majority of the 20-30 year old population of Astoria listens to (unfortunately this demographic includes my upstairs neighbor.) This is the one circumstance where it's actually better to not play any music.

Believe it or not, there were some things I liked, and even greatly enjoyed in 2010, such as:

My Fendi Sunglasses

I don't think I've ever owned a pair of sunglasses that cost more than $10 and not bought from a street vendor until now. Hooray for quality.

Dexter and Mad Men Being late to the game is never a bad thing.

Also, one more show (my favorite of the three?) -

Skins (UK version)

I'm totally obsessed with this show and maddened that my following "like" is not streaming Season 4 yet. And while we're talking about this, doesn't Sid look like Badly Drawn Boy's son?

Netflix

How did I not discover the wonders of Netflix sooner? This has basically changed my life - for the better for me, but for the worse for anyone who actually wants to socialize with me.

Mark Ronson

I knew a handful of songs from his first album, but I heard a lot more upon discovering that we had the NME channel while staying in an apartment in Spain. I went to see him at Webster Hall since and can't stop listening to his latest album. "Bang Bang Bang" and "Glass Mountain Trust"for the win! deserve a listen, or 12.

"Bang Bang Bang"

The Bed Intruder Song

51 million youtube hits, what's not to like?

Light Up Beer Pong
Okay, I don't actually like it that much but I thought I'd post new photos.

I'm sure I'll think of more things that pissed me off this year so stay tuned. Ho ho ho.