Most of my friends hate Lady Gaga. They think she’s insane (look at how she dresses!), she’s untalented (she can’t fucking sing!), or that she’s a slut (she sleeps with her bandmates!). They don’t give her a shot–all they see are those crazy outfits and extreme bouts of eyeliner and suddenly, they’re able to form a valid opinion. Almost all of my friends can’t stand a single thing that Lady Gaga does.

I, on the other hand, can find various reasons to love the lady. I mean, hello–have you ever tried to attend an award show being viewed live by hundreds of thousands of people in an outfit like this?

Gaga at the VMA's. No sign of Kanye, thankfully.

No. I don’t think you have. In fact, I don’t know a single person with the confidence, personality, and edge to rock an outfit like that. Except, maybe Madonna, but she doesn’t count. She’s…like, a different species.

And then there’s the case of her music. I feel like some people are kind of ignorant when it comes to their knowledge of Lady Gaga’s past–she’s spent most of her career performing. Live. In bars, clubs, theaters. She knows what she’s doing. She’s got real talent; having some serious personality and practice with entertaining will do that to you.

I also think she has a strong voice. I mean, she’s by no means the most amazing singer out there, but she delievers, you know? She’s good at giving the public exactly what they want: something different from everything every other mainstream artist is putting out nowadays. Her songs are clever and catchy; she can sing, she can write, and she can entertain. What more could you want from a girl?

And that whole thing about sleeping with her bandmates and being a hemaphordite? Stupid rumors. Then again, what’s to expect from the next big thing in pop music?

Yes, that’s me in the picture to the side. I purchased that shirt yesterday for $14.98 from PacSun (<3) and I absolutely love it. It’s comfortable, cool-looking, and not too girly, which basically sums up my style.

I got the necklace for Christmas, but this picture totally alters it–it’s really a round, circular pendant from which you can attach various charms and is pretty epic looking. Sorry about the angle!

I’m wearing my favorite jeans, from Aeropostale, which is my favorite place to get nice-fitting, high-quality, cheap jeans. I’m not sure if you can see it in the picture or not, but I outlined my eyes with blue eyeliner from Milan (I got it in CVS, which I don’t normally do, but I had no money at the time, so I had to opt for cheap drugstore makeup).  I have on a light coat of lipgloss from Bare Escentials–Buxom Lips in…Celeste, I think? I’m wearing a bandana because…well, bandanas are my thing. Chances are you won’t see a picture of me without one for a while.

A few things I feel I must point out:

• I am not as pale as the picture makes me look. My skin is more olive-y; I always look sort of tan, which I do enjoy.
• I’m not very skinny. I sort of look like that in the picture, but believe me, I’m not.
• Yes, my hair is weird. Shut up. I like weird haircuts.

And, just because I love you, here are the shoes I’m wearing, even though it’s the dead of winter…

…and my awesome bangles, also from PacSun. $5.99, I believe, for the pack.

If you can’t tell, I want to see this movie again. I totally recommend seeing  it.

(PS–I hope everyone had a nice Christmas!)

If you’ve heard of them, chances are you know them by their smash hit, Fireflies, which became rapidly popular because of iTune’s clever decision to make it the free single of the week. (That was how I got into Owl City–I picked up the free version of Fireflies and was so entranced that I had to purchase the rest of the album.  Mind you, that doesn’t happen often with me.) You might also know them by their second most popular single, Vanilla Twilight, which has been on the iTunes top 100-selling-songs list for a few weeks now. Both, unsurprisingly, are two of their more catchy, radio-friendly songs. I’d definitely rank them among my favorite Owl City tracks.

Owl City is made up of Adam Young, who–if I’m not mistaken–does the vocals and most of the instrumentals for the band. And I do like his voice; it’s smooth and easy to sing along to, not to mention distinctive. In a world where Daughtry and Lifehouse and 3 Doors Down and all those other bands we can’t remember sound annoying alike, this is refreshing.

Owl City’s style isn’t the type of music I normally enjoy, either. iTunes labels it as “Dance & DJ” in genre; I think of it as more of electronic pop. Either way, I’m famous among my friends as the “hardcore rock” type–you know, a lover of bands like Linkin Park,  Three Days Grace, and MCR. But I’m weak in the knees when it comes to a band that’s got great lyrics and amazing instrumentals.

That’s where I can find the words to explain my love for Owl City: everything about them is clever. From the subjects of their songs to their lyrics…

“I’d rather pick flowers/instead of fights…”

“Leave my door open just a crack/ ’cause I feel like such an insomniac…”

“…’cause the spaces between my fingers are right when yours fit perfectly…”

…everything was clearly thought up with effort and care. I can’t find a single cheesy, cliched lyric in any of the Owl City songs I’ve heard. And they’re not one of those bands who channel all their efforts into solely the lyrics, either; the music in every one of their songs always fits perfectly with the words. Owl City has a rare and valuable ability to draw emotion from you with the simplicity and beauty of their music. Add in the killer lyrics and you’ve got yourself a truely epic band.

I call it overplayed-syndrome.

We see this in other areas of our lives, too–for instance, the whole Tiger Woods scandal. You’d think that the world would be sick of Mr. Woods and his 10 or 11 or 5,000,000 mistresses, but humans have a natural, sick desire to focus their attention on the faults and mistakes of other humans. We like to see people screw up. It makes us feel…well, not screwed up.

I think my favorite example of this is the Twilight saga. Oh, the Twilight saga–it’s one of those things you either loathe or are totally obsessed with. There was a time not so long ago when I fell under the “obsesse” category. I loved everything that had to do with the series–I’d reread the books more than three times each and had fallen in love with Edward along with Bella. I hated the Volturi, idolized Alice, and laughed at how pathetic Jacob’s actions towards Bella were. The books ruled my world…so you could imagine how ecstatic I was when I got the word that Twilight was going to be a movie.

That’s about when the whole mess started; apparently, the promise of big-screen movie wasn’t enough. No–the public went insane. Suddenly, I couldn’t walk into a book store with seeing an Edward Cullen figurine, or go to a t-shirt store without seeing racks and racks of Twilight t-shirts and pins and gloves and cosmetics and shoes and scarfs and shit.

It drove me insane–people were suddenly idolizing Rob Pattinson instead of Edward, Taylor Lautner instead of Jacob. They were forgetting why we loved these people in the first place, and the miracle book Mrs. Meyer created that started it all. Nobody loved Twilight anymore. They loved the franchise.

It was after that when I started to see the flaws in Twilight. With the excitment and anticipation gone, I noticed things that didn’t bother me before and suddenly jumped out at me: Bella was a weak, obnoxious protagonist who couldn’t see what was right in front of her. Jacob was conceited, even though he had the most personality and was always the most realistic to me. Edward Sparkles was too…perfect. Annoyingly perfect. My love started to fade away.

And then I reread the first book, and I remembered how great of a writer Stephenie Meyer is.

What am I getting at here? Well, a lot of things. For one thing, Twilight–like Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me–has been overdone and overplayed. And, for another, I’m fucking sick of Tiger Woods. If I hear his name one more time…*makes fist*

Has anyone else heard of the new 6 word memoir craze? This really cool idea is as simple as it sounds: you try to write an interesting, hint-ish memoir about yourself in six words. Six. That’s it. Sounds easy, huh?

It’s not. Trust me.

There are thousands of words in the English language–maybe even millions, don’t quote me. I’m not sure. But finding the perfect six–and adding in the pefect punctuation, spacing, layout, etc.–takes thought and effort. And, in the end, it’s worth it; your result is a neat piece of writing, hopefully one that can make an impact on whoever reads it.

For English class, the entire team I’m on (about 80 kids out of the 280 in the grade) wrote 6 word memoirs. It was interesting to see the things that some of my classmates came up with. A ton of the memoirs were thoughtful and interesting: see below…

Can’t win my life: no ammo. – RC
“Heroine-left,” director calls to me. – Kimja
Still playing pretend. Not gonna stop. -NJ

NOTE: NONE OF THOSE BELONG TO ME! (C) AUTHORS!

Cool, huh? Oh, and if you were wondering, here’s the one I submitted:

On the edge. Laughing while falling.

And then, as with every project, there are the people who don’t bother trying and…well, you know what happens. Blop. Down goes the average.

What’s my point here? I don’t really have one, actually. I just wanted the chance to share some great, simple writings from my friends, and promote a really cool idea and a really epic book. It’s called I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets, and it contains various 6 word memoirs from normal teens and famous teens. It’s an inspiring and fast read–my friends and I read through the entire thing in one period, and it was a ton of fun. I highly recommend buying the book.

Hope everyone had a great day! I know I did!

(Picture taken in Astoria, Queens. Thanks for taking me out, Alex. :3)

I’m a New Yorker–always been, always will be. I was born in Tarrytown, New York, and have lived in ______, New York (sorry, I’m trying to limit the stalkers coming my way) for 10 years out of the 13 I’ve been on this planet. I love me some good old-fashioned NYC bagels, NY-style pizza, and those damn NY Yankees (number one in the world! CHYEAH!). I don’t ever want to live anywhere but New York. I mean, I love traveling–don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely going to France, Australia, and Greece some time–but I always end up craving the epicness of New York. I truly believe that it’s the center of the world. I don’t think I’d have the heart to leave. I love this place.

I feel like I should specify: honestly, I don’t love my hometown. It’s not what I’d consider a small town–18,000 people, my dad says that’s technically a small town, but he’s never tried to get through the halls of my middle school after the second bell–we’re definitely edging towards overpopulation. The town is constantly in need of expansion; it seems like they’re building a new development every year. The schools are so overcrowded that two years ago (don’t quote me on that, I’m not sure) the parents of students at my school district voted on if the town should build another school district. To put it frankly, there are just too many kids.

That’s not really why I don’t like ______, though. I guess, when you compare it to New York City, it kind of fails. I mean, you can walk to the grocery store in NYC, for God’s sake. Whenever I want to get anywhere around here, someone has to drive me. It just so happens that none of my close friends live within walking distance. It’s a pain in the ass. Until I’m seventeen and can drive without a parent in the passenger seat, I really won’t have true “freedom”.

That really makes it sound like a have a grudge against the surburbs…which I kind of do, but why NYC specifically? Well, my mother grew up in Queens, and since I was a baby, she’s been all for taking me to Manhattan and where she used to live. I’ve seen most of the epic sites in NYC–Central Park, the Central Park Zoo, the various museums, Dylan’s Candy Bar, all of the big shopping places, Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza, you get the idea–and yet I still want to go back. I still crave more. NYC is one of the most central places in the world for fashion, the publishing industry, graphic design, art, history. The city is bursting with interesting places and personality. I think the only thing I don’t like about NYC is how ridiculous the rent for a miniscule aparment is.

Which is something I have to think about, because as far as I’m concerned, I want to spend the whole of my adult life in NYC, doing what I love the most.

I asked for three albums for my birthday, and P!nk’s Funhouse was definitely my favorite of the three. Oh, where should I start with P!nk…well, for one thing, I’ve always been a fan of her originality the the bitter honesty with which she writes her songs. Sober and Ave Mary A, two of my favorite tracks on the album, are proof of that. She can transition from heartbreakingly depressed and sick of her life to pissed off and a complete and utter bitch effortlessly. She’s got a great, strong voice–she can pull off soft ballads like Glitter in the Air and power songs like Bad Influence. I love the clever lyrics she uses, too, like, “If the darkest hour comes before the light / where is the light?” (Ave Mary A) and “The night is calling / it whispers to me softly come and play…” (Sober). My favorite tracks are Sober, One Foot Wrong, Bad Influence, and Ave Mary A.

Paramore’s Brand New Eyes…wow. Such a step up from Riot!, which I absolutely loved, too. You see a side of Paramore you haven’t seen before–nice, gentle acoustics like in Misguided Ghosts and The Only Exception and amazing notes hit with expertise in All I Wanted. The band sounds more like it’s label, alternative rock, and less like pop rock, which was the kind of feel I got from previous hits like Misery Business and Crushcrushcrush. My favorite songs are Brick by Boring Brick (“You built up a world of magic / because your real life is tragic…”), Careful, Turn it Off (“I scraped my knees while I was praying / and found a demon in my safest haven…”), The Only Exception, and Misguided Ghosts, but honestly, I can say I adore every track on this album and have from the first time I heard them.

Coldplay. I love Coldplay. My dad & I call the the Pink Floyd of the 21 century, only instead of being guitar-based, they’re a piano-based band. Viva la Vida is truly a work of art. Honestly, I’m normally sort of annoying by tracks that are 5 minutes long and half instrumental, but some of these songs are…wow. Just wow. So beautiful and moving and wonderful, I can’t complain.

There’s my favorite track on the album, Death and All His Friends, which I know I have talked about on other blogs but love so dearly that I must discuss it again: the main lyrics are, “No I don’t want a battle from beginning to end / I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge / I don’t want to follow Death and all of his friends.” These three simple lines really struck a nerve with me because they describe something I firmly believe: war is an endless cycle. The more we fight, the more we lose. I only ends when someone brave and bold has the courage to say, “Hey. This is wrong.” And then there are tracks like 42 and Cemeteries of London, which are so damn catchy and epic, it’s not even funny. You’ve got your radio hit and album namesake, Viva la Vida, and the gorgeous Violet Hill. Add in a few beautiful tracks with Chris Marten’s great vocals and the band’s wonderfully-composed music and you’ve got my favorite album of the year.

1. The food. It sucks. Enough said.
2. The homework. It sucks. We get too much and not enough time to do it.
3. The fact that for 5/7 of the week, we’re in school.
4. That stupid graffiti on the bathroom walls and the back of bathroom stall doors. I don’t know who the f**k John is, and I doubt he’s really smokin’.
5. The tests.
6. The annoying kids that terrorize the subsitute teachers.
7. PE. I don’t get why, but I have a 98% in that class. 0.0
8. The really, really, really picky teachers that FREAK OUT when you’re 20 seconds late to class, yet always manage to get to their 1st period classes after the second bell. Can I get a “hypocrite”?
9. The flourescent lighting. I mean, everyone, no matter how much makeup they pack on, looks terrible in flourescents.
10. How the teachers make us go outside when it’s under 20 degrees. Brrr.
11. MATH. *DIES*

Why I like school:

1. I get to see my friends for six hours a day, 5 days a week. Of course, this is just as good as it is bad.
2. TECH CLASS!!1! ZOKFHKMNDGUIMDGUIPN
3. English, Francais, Reading, Social Studies, Earth Science…basically anything that’s not math.
4. Lunch. Not the food, the break.
5. Most of my teachers–a good majority of them are nice, down-to-earth, geniune people with our best interests at heart.
6. Recess.
7. How we get to go home at three-thirty.

For example, Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and more recently, Leviathan, which I have yet to read, is the expert on world building (at least, in my opinion). I’m not joking about that. Whenever I feel like my writing is weak–like I’m having trouble imagining the scenarios, cultures, and/or settings that I’ve created myself, which is never a good sign–I look to some of my favorite works of his. What truly captivated me in the Uglies trilogy was the strength and believablity of the world he created. I could see Tally, the ruins, and all the crazy settings right before my eyes. (Part of this, I think, is the very frequent use of similies and metaphors in his prose. He truly is the master at this, though–when it seems to drag a bit, or when he’s almost botched us down in description, he adds in a clever line or mind-blowing scene that catches us off guard. Bravo, Mr. Westerfeld.) Such fantastic construction of a fictional world in something I definitely aspire to do.

And his wife, Justine Larbalestier, author of the amazing book Liar, has one of the coolest writing styles I’ve ever read. Liar–I totally recommend it, it’s fantastic–was written in first-person and alternated between present tense and past tense. Instead of the intricate, figurative language-ridden sentences her husband uses, she wrote in choppier sentences, many of which were in fact fragments. It was a total inspiration to read, style alone. When reading Liar, I often got lost in Micah’s thoughts, simply because of how the book was formatted and written. You feel like you’re getting the story straight from Micah’s head, even though she’s teasing with your brain. She’s a liar, after all.

Cassandra Clare, author the Mortal Instruments series, is amazing at building 3-dimensional, realistic characters in a completely fantastical world. I’ve had this theory for the longest time that any great book needs characters with weird, unique quirks–quirks that make us go, “OH! Yeah! I know someone like that!”– and…well, let’s just say she proves that theory right. I loved her books for all the same reasons I loved the Harry Potter series: little things. Things like having a gay character, the diversity of mythological creatures / characters, the character development. Actually, the latter is kind of a big thing–and she did a terrific job. You can really see the way her characters grow, both in their love lives and their character.

Now that I’ve pimped three amazing books / authors, I challenge YOU to do a pimping post. He he. Pimp away, folks.I don’t think that I’ll ever have a favorite author. I know that I love certain authors and hate certain authors, but it’s always for a particular reason. I have different authorly preferences for different elements of fiction.