Music in the Movies
Have you ever been watching a movie and a song starts playing and you just think, “Man, that song was made for this moment.” Well this is a post that is dedicated to that very idea. Below are some of my favorite examples of great music in movies. Please enjoy!
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Sigur Rós – Staralfur)
Almost Famous (Elton John – Tiny Dancer)
Apocalypse Now (The Doors – The End)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Henry Mancini – Moon River)
Office Space (Geto Boys – Still)
Step Brothers (Will Ferrell – Por Ti Volare)
Empire Records (The The – This Is the Day)
Forrest Gump (Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird)
The Royal Tenenbaumss (Elliot Smith – Needle in the Hay)
10 Things I Hate About You (Letters to Cleo – I Want You To Want Me)
My Best Friend’s Wedding (Dionne Warwick – I Say A Little Prayer)
Trainspotting (Iggy Pop – Lust For Life)
Fight Club (Pixies – Where Is My Mind)
Anchorman (Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Steve Carell – Afternoon Delight)
Shaun of the Dead (Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now)
Reservoir Dogs (The Jeff Healey Band – Stuck In The Middle With You)
Say Anything (Peter Gabriel – In Your Eyes)
Wayne’s World (Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody)
Tuscaloosa: Day 3
Day 3 of my Tuscaloosa Adventure started with the usual: watching my friends play video games. Henry finally got all 120 stars in Mario Sunshine. At around 1 o’clock, my friend Manley came to pick me up, and I hung out at his house for a while. There was a really cute dog named Molly that belonged to one of his housemates. I watched him play COD: MW2 for a bit, but then we watched X-Men Origins. Pretty good movie for the most part, but there were a few hokey parts. Once it was over, Manley dropped me back off at the dorm, where I listened to Knowles and Henry plan out their next Dungeons and Dragons characters (not as exciting as it may sound). I ended up falling asleep. Then we went to eat dinner at the Lakeside Cafeteria. It was very reminiscent of my own beloved cafeteria at Tulane (Bruff Commons, what what!). After that, more video game watching ensued (Matt playing Resident Evil). I dozed off a little. Then we watch The Matrix: Revolutions. I slept through most of it. And then when the movie was over, I actually went to bed.
Tuscaloosa: Day 2
Day 2 of my trip to Tuscaloosa was less eventful but still very fun. I got out of bed at about 9:30 to a still sleeping dorm. It was about 11:30ish until Matt (after doing various other things) came into the common room and started playing Resident Evil. I watched him play that for a while. Henry came tumbling into the room at some point while this was going on too. After more watching of video games, Matt had to go to a chemistry review, so Henry and I just sat and talked about the Wheel of Time Series for about an hour. It was awesome. I haven’t had anyone to do that with in forever!
The map above shows the basic world that we travel through in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Henry and I discussed how we see some of the countries. Andor (the country where the main three characters are from) is very similar to England. Tear (down in the South East) is Italy; Tarabon is a Middle Eastern-like country, possibly India; Cairhien is France; Murandy is Germany, with their thick Lugard accents; Shienar is Russian; and Saldaea is an East Asian country, not really sure which one. We also discussed how we see some of the characters, but I won’t go into that (too intense). Henry is almost finished with the fourth book (The Shadow Rising), so I wasn’t able to discuss too much with him, but that was okay. It was still fun.
After our discussion, Matt came and picked us up to go eat lunch (this was at about 3:00 PM). We went to a place called Buffalo Phil’s. I had been there before (on my first trip to T-town in August), but it was still a pretty good hamburger. Matt finished a deep fried burger, and Henry and I were both very impressed.
When we got back to the dorm, Henry started to play Mario Sunshine again. He’s going for completion. He currently has 119 stars. I watched him play that until it was time to meet up with my friend Amber. She worked with me over the summer, and it was really nice to see her again. We went to eat at The Crimson Café. It was a lovely little place, and I had a delightful chicken pesto flat bread pizza. There were some things that I found rather interesting about the establishment. For one, they had chalkboards hanging on the walls, but they had printed out and laminated menus on top of them instead of just writing the menu with chalk. Another strange thing was this large stone fountain just chilling in the corner. It didn’t really go with the rest of the décor, but I let it slide. It amused me.
After dinner, Amber took me back to the dorm and I continued to help Henry get the starts for Mario Sunshine (apparently he had not moved since I left). I was reading off blue coin locations for him cause those were the only ones he had left (if you collect 10 blue coins, you can trade it in for a star). He made it up to 199 stars, but Knowles and Collin had come over so we could go to Midnight Breakfast, so he stopped playing and we left. Midnight Breakfast was exactly what it sounded like, except we went at about 10 o’clock. I went around and got the food that I thought I wanted and sat down the rest of the time. It was very much like a Bruff experience (the cafeteria at Tulane). I saw my friend Will there as well, so I talked to him for a bit (someone else that I worked with over the summer). It was a lovely event.
Once everyone was done, we walked back and watched The Matrix: Reloaded (Knowles had never seen it before).
Tuscaloosa: Day 1
Why, hallo Tuscaloosa! Day 1 of my Spring Break trip, and it’s been a great time. After being on the road for four hours (and attempting to save a bumblebee that flew into my windshield and got stuck in my wipers), I arrived in T-town safe and sound. I’m staying with some friends from high school, and it was a surprise to most that I was even visiting in the first place since Henry didn’t tell anyone I was coming. For the first few hours of my visit, I watched my friends play Super Mario Sunshine (and if you read my blog about video games, you would be right in guessing that I was not at all opposed to this). Then it was suggested that we take a walk. So that’s just what we did. I did my best to document the adventure.
The goofy looking kid sitting on the log is my friend Henry. The four in the middle are Walter, Henry, Darwin (a new friend that I met that very day), and Matt. Then there was a pretty mini waterfall of which I felt the need to take a picture. Then I took a picture of Matt looking epic alongside this tiny creek.
It was a lovely adventure. I was climbing over fallen branches and jumping from rock to rock on my bare feet. I love being barefooted. It’s one of the simpler pleasures in life. And then we walked off into the sunset.
After our little walk through the woods and down by the Black Warrior River, we decided to trek to a supposed “old abandoned playground”. We walked through a small patch of woods by the road, but instead of finding an abandoned playground, we found some mysterious stairs that led down to some sort of old stone structure (I think it might have been a fountain). We all decided that it was the site of the old Druid training grounds back when Tuscaloosa was called Druid City.
It was getting a little dark by this time, so we decided that we needed to eat dinner. So we walked to a lovely little place called Hooligans. Jokingly, I have been referring to it as Hoolahan’s, so I will continue that now. At Hoolahan’s, I got a bacon cheddar burger. It was okay. Then as we walked back to campus, we headed to a lovely dorm called Mallet. It was MalletCon 2010 at the time so there was a big party going on in the basement. Instead of spending lots of time down there, however, my friends and I ended up watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone dubbed over/narrated by Brad Neely. It was hilarious. I recommend it to all. I would say it was an eventful day.
Bears
BEARS! How cool are they? So cool. My friend Evan really likes bears, and we talk about how awesome they are all the time. I even got him a book called Bear Portraits for Christmas. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like: a book of portraits of bears. We both decided that if a Grizzly Bear were to fight a Silverback Gorilla, the Grizzly would win. Here’s my reasoning for it. Yeah, sure gorillas have hands and opposable thumbs and such, but they just don’t have the equivalent to the sheer force and power of a bear claw to the face. Gorillas can also use tools and such to help beat the bear, but we’re talking about a one-on-one fight in the middle of freaking nowhere (because, honestly, when’s a grizzly bear ever going to meet a gorilla?) so there wouldn’t be anything for it to pick up. Also, Gorillas are basically herbivores so they wouldn’t be used to fighting things other than more gorillas, while a grizzly bear has the potential to smack down a moose with one fell swipe. Plus in order to have the sizes of each animal proportionate, you’d be putting a fully-grown Silverback Gorilla against a pretty young Grizzly Bear. But yeah, if there’s a counter argument out there, just let me know, and I will somehow disprove it. Bears conquer all.
Anyway, I was Stumbling one day (www.stumbleupon.com), and I came across this story about a guy who raised a grizzly bear from a cub, and now they were best friends. I completely wish I had a grizzly bear friend. How cool would that be? Here’s their story:
I love bears.
Spring Break
Spring Break is probably the saving grace for most high school and college students. In my experience, some of the worst academic weeks are the two right before this momentous holiday (the worst is when you have two exams and a paper due all on the same day – why oh why do professors feel the need to schedule exams on the same days other professors do?). I think that most people spend their Spring Breaks going to the beach or some other grand destination (e.g. two of my friends will be backpacking across Iceland in a few days). Personally I have only had the whole Spring Break beach experience once, and that was in high school with girls I didn’t really know all that well and my mother as a chaperone (crazy times, I know). It was pretty fun, but I don’t really have any other experience to compare it to. And for my junior year of high school, I went to England and France. It was super fun, but it was also with my school (guided tours of cities aren’t really ideal for me – I enjoy exploring and being unstructured). (Below: This is me and some friends sitting on a bench in Paris. We bought bread/desserts from a boulangerie. The men behind us kept muttering about “stupid Americans” and “tourists”. Little did they know most of us spoke French and knew exactly what they were saying.)
I wish that my friends did the whole renting a condo in the Florida Keys or Destin ordeal, but that doesn’t really seem to be their style. I would also be quite content going somewhere other than the beach (like exploring a big city or hiking the AT), but they don’t seem to like doing that either. I suppose this is partly my fault as well because I never initiate anything. I’m sure my friends would want to do that kind of stuff if there was a plan to do it, but there just never is. So what am I doing for this year’s Spring Break?
I’m going to Alabama. Yes, I know. Sounds grand, huh? I’m visiting my friends in Tuscaloosa for a few days, and then I’m going to see my sister and some friends in Auburn after that. Then it’s destination: home, where I will most likely lay in bed for countless hours, play video games, and hang out with my sister (which doesn’t sound all that bad to me really). Relaxing Spring Breaks are my forte. I just think I get a little lonely sometimes. I was looking at my sister’s pictures from her Spring Break (she went to Key West with a bunch of her friends), and I kept thinking, “Wow, that looks like a bushel of fun. Why can’t my Spring Break be like that?” But guess what Anna: IT CAN! So here’s my goal for next year. I’m going to save my money and plan an awesome trip with my friends and go to some awesome place. I need to have a real Spring Break eventually. I want to be able to look back at pictures of my friends and me on a beach or in a city doing awesome things. Plus I’ll be 21 by that time, so there won’t be anything to hold me back. I’ll be able to do anything I want except rent a car (which I believe you have to be 25 in the United States to do). And both my sisters will be out of school so maybe we could hang out and do an awesome weekend thing (because they’ll probably be working during the week because they’re adults) in case my friends don’t want to do something super-mega-awesome-fun.
So there you have it. Maybe by this time next year, I’ll be posting a blog about the adventures of Spring Break 2011, pictures and all. Perhaps I should start thinking of destinations…
Sleep
Don’t you hate when you’re doing something and you feel like you’re going to pass out from exhaustion, so then you try to sleep and you just end up lying in bad, tossing and turning for several hours because, for some unknown reason, you can’t sleep? Yeah, me too.
Video Games
I love video games. My all time favorite video game is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If that were the only game left on Earth, I think I would be completely content because it’s just that amazing. I remember when I first got my N64. It was the game that my sisters and I played together. Margaret would play the actual game (it was her game, after all), Allison would read all the narrations (The Narrator), and I would tell Margie were to go (The Navigator) and play some of the side quests (like getting the bigger quiver and planting magic beans to get heart pieces). The first time we ran through the game, my sister just couldn’t beat the boss of the Shadow Temple, Bongo Bongo. It was so frustrating for her. She tried a gazillion times, but she kept dying (I felt sorry for those poor fairies she used). She ended up putting the game down and didn’t pick it back up for about a month. Allison and I finally got her to play it again, and (to our pleasant surprise) she beat it on her first try (no fairies were sacrificed this time either). It was a magical moment. Feeling empowered once more we finally finished the game. I love playing Zelda with my sisters.
I think what I like most about video games are the story lines. I am completely content watching someone else play the game as long as I don’t miss out on any of the action. Recently, my friend Sam beat my newest game (on my brand new Xbox, thank you very much) Batman: Arkham Asylum. I have added it to my Awesome Game List. It’s so cool! All of the Batman bad guys are mentioned (you even fight some of them) as you try to rescue Arkham from the maniacal grip of the Joker. Now I really want to read the Arkham Asylum comic.
Confession: I play World of Warcraft. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. Isn’t that how it is for everyone? As of this very moment, I am a level 60 Night Elf Hunter with a Snow Leopard named Scooter (refer to the picture below).
I started playing in late August 2009, and I’ve been trapped ever since. My friend Knowles “recruited” me, so when we played together, we got triple experience for the first three months. It was so much fun. I love playing with him, because he knows so much more about the game than I do. Plus it’s not as much fun to play when you don’t have anyone to talk to. He has a Human Priest (level 61 right now), and we used to quest and run dungeons together. My current goal is to reach level 80 before Cataclysm comes out (the expansion set to come out in November). I think I have a pretty good chance of making my quota. My friend always makes fun of me for playing it, but I don’t care. It doesn’t consume my life, and it doesn’t come between me and studying for exams. I have complete control over how much I play it. Don’t you worry.
anna-lyzing 