UNpublished: March 2013

March 30, 2013

More Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good (Live on the Russell Brand Show)

Amy Winehouse - There Is No Greater Love (Acoustic Live BBC 2003)

March 23, 2013

New Glass Candy

Glass Candy "The Possessed" with Ida No and Johnny Jewel:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012, US)

In all honesty this film was just okay. What made The Perks of Being a Wallflower somewhat bearable was the attractive casting. Have a looksie yourself:

I thought maybe it was just me. That I have become too much an adult, grown too far away from what it is like to be young and full of life and hurt, to remember what it is like to be in high school.

But then I remembered the film Dazed and Confused, and the T.V. show Freaks and Geeks, and I realized no, it isn't me. I'm still connected to that. And how could I forget? Those years shaped and shifted me into the person I am today. My conclusion is that director Stephen Chbosky (and also author of the book) wasn't able to portray the feeling he maybe wanted to. If I read the book then I will know. Overall the film felt a bit contrived and the character development rushed. Maybe my expectations were too high. I mean, I once heard that Bob Dylan's son Jakob named his band The Wallflowers because of the book! But I just did a little research and the band formed in '89 while the book came out in '99. Either Jakob Dylan can peer into the future or what I heard is a myth. I vote for the latter.

But I did like the characters and most would be people I'd like to know in real life.

To being young!

Rebecca Part II

Her website: We Are Wellness

An ode to Central and South America

*sigh*

Delaying The Real World

My friend Phillip handed me this book about 2 years ago. He said it was mine, that I left it at his house. I swear to you I've never seen this book until that day. But it was meant for me. The people writing these stories and this book get me.

Delaying The Real World breaks down the many options we have to AVOID the typical 9-5 slave job. It is the very book that nudged me in the direction of getting yoga teacher certified so I could travel the world with the skill. I already got the idea when I saw a volunteer opportunity for a yoga teacher in South America, but when I read the following passage, I knew I was going to do it fo realz:

"I had known for a while that I wanted to go to Mexico after I graduated from college. After eight months of working and saving, I'm finally on my way there. One of the first things I did in preparation for my trip was to sign up for a one-month yoga teacher training program in Colorado. It was fairly pricey (certification costs almost $2,000), but fortunately between working at a restaurant and using graduation gifts, I was able to pay for it.

After getting certified, I returned home and began giving private yoga classes. Since I was living with my parents, not spending any money on rent, and being extremely careful (perhaps stingy) with extra expenses, I soon accumulated an amount of money that may seem insignificant by U.S. standards, but will go far south of the border. While stockpiling my every cent, I googled yoga and Mexico and got the names of many hotels and retreats. I sent a bunch of emails out on a whim, explaining that I had just graduated from college, was a certified yoga instructor, and was about to start backpacking Mexico on a low budget. I said that I would love to practice yoga but couldn't afford hotels or retreat centers. I asked if they had any work study opportunities.

One place emailed me back right away and said that in exhange for teaching some yoga, I could be a full participant of their retreat. So although I won't be making any money, I will get a $1,500/week package at no cost. And then I will have plenty of time to backpack around the country on my own! I am of course both excited and terrified - trying my best to keep my expectations in check and just hope that my path will unfold on its own. Somehow, it always does." (p.134)

Yup yup yup yup yup yup yup. Yup.

Riding a bicycle across the U.S.

Last year it occurred to me to ride my bicycle across the United States. But then other stuff happened and I made other plans and momentarily I forgot about this. However recently this plan resurfaced. And I want to do it even more now.

My Uncle Darrell (196?-2002) was a good man. He loved nature and took me on many excursions out at sea, in the desert, opal hunting, hiking to waterfalls, ATVing, and 4-wheel driving across barren terrain. When his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, he bought an RV and a bicycle and she and their son followed him across the country as he pedaled his heart out to raise money and awareness for breast cancer. He made the local news in addition to making some really cool handmade shirts. I watched him create each one with a stencil and airbrush paint spray gun. It was waaaaaay cool.

Then I stumbled across this website - We're Really Doing It - and I found two guys who didn't "train," but just did it (back to the theme of JUST DOING IT).

And now that they've done it, they are doing more. Right now they are doing the Grand Canyon.

Yes, please.

I want to travel up the California coast, through Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana...these are all the places I have wanted to visit.

And now that I think of it, why not throw Mexico in the mix!

Eat, Pray, Love, the book and the movie.

The first I ever heard of Eat, Pray, Love was when my friend called me up and said, "Hey, let's go see a movie."

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

He ended up taking me to see Eat, Pray, Love, and within the first 5 minutes I knew it was a book. How did I know? Because the story felt so rushed. And after watching the full 2 hours of the movie, I had the sense that everything that could possibly be squeezed into 2 hours, was.

I didn't like, either, that 5 minutes into the film, after portraying a woman living in a big house in New York, who was obviously making very decent money and appeared to have loving, caring friends, found the biggest challenge in her life to be wanting a divorce. She kneeled down on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night praying and crying, saying "I'm in big trouble." If needing a divorce is the biggest obstacle she's had, then I can hardly relate to that. Seemed like a very 1st world problem to me. Although being unhappy is a big dilemma, it's not the most horrific of suffering out there.

Then, at the end of the film, just after taking a year to get to know and build herself up, she meets a man. And at the end of the film, when she is unsure about entering into yet another relationship (she expressed earlier in the film how she's never taken a break from men since she was 15 years old), her companion tells her something along the lines of, "If you don't come into this relationship, you forfeit the opportunity to be happy." I laughed at this. Oh, I see. So she needs a man to be happy.

But who knows? Maybe she does.

Part 1: Eat, or Italy.

Part 2: Pray, or India.

Part 3: Love, or Bali.

After seeing the movie and being somewhat entertained as much as I was disappointed, I was, of course, interested in the book. Less than a year later, I borrowed a friend's copy and read it quickly. It was good, to say the least. There were still the 1st world problems, but the adventure and the writing made me forget about that in no time. Here is this woman, a writer, traveling, being independent. Sounds a lot like me (minus the money). I would recommend the book to anyone, period. Plus, I love me some memoirs.

So yesterday I saw the movie at the library and decided to give it another go. I have been ITCHING to travel. I mean ITCHING. It's an itch I haven't scratched. I've tried to put calamine lotion on it, but it does NOTHING to tame the intensity. So all that I can do it scratch it. Scratch it scratch it scratch it. And the time to scratch it is coming near, I feel it.

In the meantime I can read my Jack Kerouac novels and watch movies of other people traveling. And what I got out of Eat, Pray, Love this time was travel and adventure and just DOING IT. Just GO. Come one, GO.

I ignored the rest and drank up the scenery and feeling of what it would be like to be me experiencing all that.

Soon. It would be too soon.