This is Where I Live!

So the moment you all have been waiting for has finally arrived!!!!!!!

Here is a video tour of my apartment in Oakland. Feel free to love it ;)

I apologize in advance in regards to my terrible cinematography, and Dramamine may be be useful before viewing.

Watch the tour below!

Jesse McCartney in all his Lesbian Glory

As Netflix and my love for obscure (and sometimes bad) movies seem to collectively get the better of me, I ended up watching Keith. It stars Jesse McCartney, which initially made me quite hesitant to add the movie to my Instant Queue, but the synopsis sucked me in with its constant talk of some mystery that McCartney's character held. He's the new kid in school, "unwillingly" befriends popular girl Natalie when they are lab partners in an AP Chemistry class, and they fall in love... but there's some mystery, some secret in McCartney's life that is preventing them from truly being together... or something-- that's based off of the Netflix description.

Anyways, what honestly made me choose to actually watch the movie was McCartney's appearance on the Netflix-advertised-poster (seen above)- he looks kind of butch-lesbian-like, so it got me thinking that perhaps his secret is that he's really a girl (think Boys Don't Cry), which made the movie appear that much more complexly interesting, plus I had to see if that's what the mystery was (though i was 98% certain it was not, ya never know!). Within the first few minutes of the movie, it became very apparent that that was not the secret, and instead he was supposed to be more of a bad boy (which was my second guess based off the poster, but come on, you can't deny that based on that photo if his character was a girl-- which admittedly would be weird to see him actually play-- it wouldn't be that far out. he just has very soft features, i suppose)

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by McCartney's acting, though I've never really given him a fair shot after his Dream Street days (but who in their right mind would? talk about bad boy band!) and had beyond zero expectations; in fact, I had negative expectations. However, this is not your average coming-of-age high school movie; it has more depth, and is on the darker side. I liked it much more than I had thought I would, though some parts of it moved a little slowly.

All in all I enjoyed it, and would recommend it if you don't have anything else to watch, or if you really like Jess McCartney, because I know some of you do.

Melvin Goes to Dinner/ Jack Black is a Nid

I watched Melvin Goes to Dinner via Netflix. Directed by Bob Odenkirk and written by and starring Michael Blieden (writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon), this indie dramedy (and apparently it was a "festival favorite" according to Netflix) stars four people who inadvertently meet up for dinner and get to talking, which leads to truths and the deepest of dark secrets to be revealed. The four get truly candid and honest with each other, and I really did enjoy watching them interact and tell their stories. It's got a "real" feel to it given its obvious low budget, making you think that this could be you and your friends at dinner one night. It is an insightful movie that certainly had me smiling.

The film originated as a stage play (Phyro-Giants!) in Los Angeles, also written by Blieden, and starring the same cast.

Funny cameos by David Cross and Jack Black, the Jack Black scene being my favorite, which can be seen in its 4.5 minute entirety below. Odenkirk has a short cameo as well, but his bit is not humorous (nor is it meant to be).

The Notorious Kanye West

So I know it's been this year's trend to hate on Kanye West, though he did recently apologize via Twitter, which can be read in letter version here. I'm not saying that makes everything okay, but you know what I do think makes everything okay?* The fact that he promised to release one new song every Friday until Christmas. These songs are available on Kanye's website, and are FREE. Not only that, they're good. Actually, they're very good, and they've so far featured Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Bon Iver, and Kid Cudi... just to name a few. So, yeah. check out Kanye's free songs right HERE!

My favorites so far are Good Friday and Monster, and Devil in a New Dress is just a classic Kanye song. I haven't downloaded the Justin Bieber remix, well because it's a Justin Bieber remix, but if you listen to it, feel free to let me know how it is.

*Assuming that I actually care that he interrupted Taylor Swift. (I don't.)

UPDATE: I couldn't help but download the Justin Bieber remix. I've never really listened to a Justin Bieber song before, and now I know why. His singing is pretty much as gay as I had imagined, though he is a 16 year old boy. The Kanye parts are just okay for Kanye, and the Raekwon part is probably the best part. All in all, the song is not worth the hard drive space for me, so I promptly deleted it once it ended.

PS22 CHORUS!

Okay. So, you may or may not have noticed that I have been posting all these videos of a school chorus on my facebook. If you haven't noticed, don't worry. The PS22 School Chorus from Staten Island is just simply amazing. They're a group of fifth graders who have performed at the White House, live with various artists, on albums, and have received shout outs from Oprah, Perez Hilton, and Jason Bateman (JASON BATEMAN!!!) just to name a few. So, yeah, they're totally legit. Anyways, I managed to discover them after learning that they were the kids who sang on Passion Pit's album, Manners (The Reeling, Little Secrets, and Let Your Love Grow Tall).

Anyways, just watch a video because they're amazing and sing with so much passion it gives me the chills!

Some of my favorites are:

Phoenix's Listzomania: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZ1zV1l2KQ

Matisyahu & PS22 Chorus- One Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maVIZ30GPGU

Passion Pit's Seaweed Song (full): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC1S0_QpHcE

Passion Pit's Let Your Love Grow Tall (full): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNaSIj6ft64

Great! Right? And they're not a magnet school or a performing school or anything, just regular, inspired kids!

You can also check out their blog here.

The Journey Begins

I've been in California since late Sunday night, and have been in Oakland for 2 days now. Tonight is my second night in the apartment and I'm really loving it. I know everyone wants to see pictures, but I still have things to unpack so there's boxes around. I promise to post pictures and a video tour once everything is unpacked!

Anyways, today I bought weed at a store without a medical card. Weed is virtually legal in Oakland, and so my cousin Alison's friend's brother, Adam, who moved out here in April took me to this place. It was very underground and they had about 7 or 8 varieties of weed, several varieties of hash and hash oil, as well as edibles. I only got some weed this time because we were super high when we went and it was all kinda overwhelming haha. I ended up getting Sweet Island Skunk and Blue Dream... both are awesome.

After testing all the weeds Adam, myself, and his 2 friends got, we headed downtown for dinner and ended up getting authentic Cambodian food-- a first for me. The food was really good-- there are a lot of Asian restaurants in Oakland... Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Korean, everything. We got these tiny little egg roll things-- each one was about the size of my thumb, as well as garlic chicken with mixed vegetables, papaya salad, and a noodle dish. We also had Singha, a Thai beer... actually, the label claimed it's the original Thai beer. Either way, it was very good.

It's weird how cold it is here. It's been in the mid 60's since I've been here, not getting warmer than maybe 68 degrees. Funny how it's been so terribly hot on the East Coast, and so cold here- complete opposites, but it's certainly not too cold. It feels like a mix of spring and autumn.

I'm supposed to go to San Francisco with Adam tomorrow, so that should be fun.

Hope all is well with everyone at home :) I miss and love everyone!

Feel free to comment :)