Categories
Pop Culture

Is it possible to love Pitch Perfect any more than this?

Pitch Perfect

I rented Pitch Perfect from Amazon Saturday night, and not only was I pleasantly surprised, I totally fell in love. This movie is wonderful! The characters, the story, the music, and good lord but Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins are hilarious. “Nothing makes a woman feel more like a girl than a man who sings like a boy.” One of my favorite running gags is Lily, the girl who speaks so softly that I’ve watched the movie three times so far and I still haven’t figured out all of her lines, but here’s a taste of some that I have caught: “I ate my twin in the womb,” “I did a turn in County,” and “Anyone want to see a dead body?” And I love the sexy confidence of the only slightly absurd Fat Amy. “You call yourself Fat Amy?” “Yeah, so twig bitches like you don’t do it behind my back.” Not to mention the marvelous cameo by Christopher Mintz-Plasse in the two audition scenes.

I’m right this second watching it for the fourth time in 48 hours, and I’m still catching new things (Quidditch Club!). I’ve downloaded the soundtrack and several of the original source songs from iTunes. I totally need to get this dvd.

I am so in love with this movie! Go! See it! Love it!

Categories
Travel

Idyllwild

Yesterday my friend Jane and I took our friend’s dog Ernie up to Idyllwild to see snow. It’s a two-hour drive (a little less if you drive like Jane) and sits atop a mountain at an elevation of 6200 feet–a perfect day trip. It was a gorgeous day in the high-50s/low-60s, and yet we still managed to find snow in the state forest above the town, where kids were sledding, adventure groups were hiking further up the mountain, and trucks were slip-sliding in the parking lot. (Google is not helping me find the name of the park–I thought it began with an “H”, but all I can find is reference to the Mount San Jacinto State Park.) Maintaining my marvelous record, I even managed to fall on my ass while trying to take the least slippery route down the hill back to the car. We lunched at the Red Kettle in “downtown” Idyllwild and did some random driving around the area before heading back down the windy road to the city.

Categories
Links

This might be my next theme, after I get tired of this one

It’s a four day weekend (woo!) and I spent several hours today helping a friend set up her very first WordPress site. While browsing for education-y themes, I found this awesome theme that I totally want to use:

http://www.freewordpresstheme.info/theme/medieval-book.html

Totally awesome!

Categories
Hobbies Video

Improving my 8-ball game

Totally spaced on posting yesterday, sorry about that.

League was last night–another two-win night, not that great. Talking to Delayne made me realize I’ve been ignoring a valuable tool for learning more–YouTube. I’ve been reading a lot, and asking questions from the better players in the league, but really, how could I forget about the wealth of info to be found on YouTube?

Having since corrected my lapse, I’ve learned that my stroke probably sucks, I’ve been under-appreciating the importance of the tangent line, and I tend to aim too low for the ever-troublesome draw shot. Here’s one of the videos that I think is particularly well-done (despite the frequent misspelling of “possible”):

Who knows, maybe this is the season I’ll learn how to make a jump shot!

Categories
Gratuitous Picture Post Hobbies

Portrait of Riley

This is the portrait of my nephew that I mentioned yesterday:

Portrait of Riley
Portrait of Riley, charcoal and acrylic (Xmas present for Nan and Todd)

It was not done free-hand, of course–I suck at drawing. Instead, I took an existing photo of Riley and used Photoshop to simplify the lines and brighten up the colors and contrast. After printing it out, I charcoaled the back of the paper, then traced the image onto the canvas. After that, it was just a matter of coloring it in–a challenge in itself, of course. I couldn’t get the perfect strawberry-blond color of his hair, and the shadows under his arm and chin refused to conform to my will. But I think it’s still pretty damned good for my first portrait ever.