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This is what I’ve been listening to for the last 11-ish months There are no albums on this list this year because in the entire year of our LAWD 2015, I failed to listen to a single entire album that wasn’t some sort of holiday compilation. I’m a tragic, elderly, embarrassing person. 5. How I Became the Bomb, “Ulay, Oh” This song is like, almost physically devastating to me in a way that I can’t explain. I know that the video went ~viral but I hadn’t seen it until I was writing this post, so I didn’t even have the background to explain my reaction to it; I just happened to hear the song on some playlist on Spotify and immediately started weeping in my office. I also cried (a looooooooot) while getting caught up in the video this morning, so. I love songs that make me feel intensely and this one hits me from the very start. So good. 4. Goodbye Tomorrow, “Jay Z” This is just… so good. So, so unbelievably good. Every song I have really loved this year has been endlessly repeatable and has made me want to play it really loudly while I drive around with my windows down and I did that with this one a lot. It hadn’t occurred to me that this sounds like a Kanye track until I read it in a post this morning, but that probably explains part of why I like it so much. A great example of the ways in which hip hop is supremely good at being both fun and powerful. “100K” also jams. 3. Tech N9ne featuring B.o.B & 2 Chainz, “Hood Go Crazy” I honestly can’t actually count how many times I’ve listened to “Hood Go Crazy” this year because my iPod died before I could sync it and get the true count, but it has to be into the hundreds? I don’t know what it is about this song, but I could not let go of it earlier this year and I still think it’s an insanely good jam/perfect loud car jam. Also, the way “Kansas City” is said in this delights Crystal (Mostly because she can’t imitate it, no matter how hard she tries.) to no end which is a solid bonus. 2. Major Lazer & DJ Snake featuring MØ, “Lean On” I have loved Major Lazer since the first time I heard “Hold the Line” what seems like a million years ago when it was the first (and only…) time I got the jump on my cooler friends with music. This is just good, rhythmic jamming and I listened to it everywhere. It’s also a particularly good gym jam for me because it matches my natural step rhythm. It also regularly demands that I get up from my desk and move around in my personal imitation of “dancing” which is very bad and involves way too much waving and flailing of my limbs. “Light It Up” also rules. 1. Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk” Hooooooooow is this song so, so good? I’m sure people who work in retail or listen to the radio are sick of it by now, but I don’t so it’s still as good for me as the first time I heard it. I love Bruno Mars in general, obviously (He is also Crystal’s current “Only Man I Would Leave Ash For” which is complimentary and stressful because, like, what if she meets Bruno Mars somewhere? And they fall in love? I fell in love with her! He obviously would too!) and this is just such a good, fun, catchy-as-hell jam. The video is goofy and delightful and stylish and it’s just all good. Extremely good. Excellent, in fact. Honorable Mentions: OMI, “Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix)” | Sophia Grace, “Best Friends” | BØRNS, “10,000 Emerald Pools” DISCLAIMER: I am posting these videos with the disclaimer that I haven’t watched any of them except for How I Became the Bomb & “Uptown Funk” because I don’t have the attention span for music videos. “Ulay, Oh” is excellent and I recommend you watch. And obviously “Uptown Funk” rules. Apologies if the others are NSFW/problematic/generally terrible. 
I recently received an Influenster VoxBox* with some of the Dessange line from Target and after three weeks with the shampoo and conditioner I’m actually really happy. I like the way they smell (in the bottle, it’s not super great on my hair, but it also doesn’t last long) and my hair did actually seem a little glossier and brighter. My hair is really fine and really flat, so best of all, they don’t weigh my hair down, but still manage to make it soft and detangled. I’ve also now tried the Color Correcting Cream two Sundays in a row and I’ll definitely be buying it again. It not only keeps the gold tones in the dyed ends of my hair at bay, but it also seems to brighten the darker, natural dishwatery blonde at my roots. Awesome.
Also, most of the restaurant openings here have gone less than smoothly, but Culver’s seems to be the exception. The service is really friendly and seems organized and efficient, which is pretty much unheard of here, even for places that have been open forever. It’s kind of insane how much you learn to live with terrible service and how stark the contrast is when you have good service again. LINKS: This photo series, this comic, this post from an eternal fave – Epiphora, “The Babies in the Freezer which I read right after Ghost Child, This Is My Baby Right Now by Mia Mercado who is on the verge of blowing up and being too awesome to respond to me on Twitter anymore, this A Softer World, #thedress and the Rise of Attention Policing, My Eating Disorder Had Nothing to Do with Barbie or the Media, How Flawless Became a Feminist Declaration, Remembering John Jerde — I am obsessed with the architecture of public spaces and I want to learn everything about this dude, In Defense of Literal Ass-Kicking Heroines, this A Softer World, On Confidence and the Kimye Effect, and 5 Irrefutable Reasons Why “Tank Girl” Is Absolutely Not A Terrible Movie. *: I got these products for free from Influenster for testing purposes.  This here is the first post in a new series for 2015 where I talk about things I loved this month! Because I don’t spend enough time doing it at the end of the year. Obviously.
JAM: Because I have functioning ears and have also been alive for the last two months, my favorite jam is currently “Uptown Funk”. Bruno Mars is everything and it’s just SO GOOD. I love late 70s/early 80s era funk and “Uptown Funk” hits all the right notes of nostalgia and homage while still feeling really fresh and new and alive. Even with as much airplay as it’s been getting and as much as I’ve been listening to it on my own, I am still not sick of it. Also, the performance from Ellen was too much and Crystal won’t stop watching it at work and getting overly amped. AMAZON | ITUNES
ALBUM: This may seem seasonally inappropriate, but I think if you listen you’ll find that Low’s Christmas is actually wildly appropriate for January when it’s dreary and cold and Christmas is over and winter seems as though it will never end and you are going to be trapped in the cold and snow for so long that you transform wholly into some kind of frost creature. “Taking Down the Tree” is definitely my favorite here, but “Long Way Around the Sea” is also excellent. ITUNES
MOVIE: I only watched two movies in January — We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Maze Runner — and though Kevin was great, The Maze Runner wins for being more fun (Obbbbviously!) and also improving upon the weak-ass book that spawned it. I like Dylan O’Brien enough, but I thought the secondary characters were a lot more compelling and drove my interest more than I would’ve bet. I didn’t love it, but I was just amazed how much better it was than the book. That’s rare, so it’s worth noting. AMAZON | ITUNES
BOOK: I finally got the sequel to The Raven Boys on to my reading schedule last month and it was so, so gooooood. I would say The Dream Thieves is maybe even better than the first book? I continue to not like Adam as much as Maggie Stiefvater wants me to, but everyone else is genuinely awesome and complicated and interesting and Stiefvater continues to effectively and EROTICALLY exploit the female gaze in ways I love. I genuinely cannot wait until the third one comes up in my schedule. AMAZON
BATH & BEAUTY: I am allergic to traditional deodorants and since I quit wearing them in 2011, I have been on a quest to find a good “natural” deodorant that is 1. not a pain in the ass, 2. effective, 3. cheap, and as most of those efforts have failed, I have mostly accepted that I will usually just be a little smelly. I’m okay with it, Crystal is okay with it, and it’s better than getting huge growths in my pit follicles. Then I found Arm & Hammer’s Essentials and I don’t really smell bad anymore! It doesn’t have aluminum, it lasts all day and through even my long workouts, and it’s magical. The fresh scent is a little toilet cleaner-y, but that doesn’t really bother me and the unscented isn’t really — it’s sort of a light citrus-y smell. I’m in love. AMAZON
STUFF: Goodreads is my favorite uncategorizable thing I loved this month. I finally signed up at the start of the year so I could join the Reading Challenge in hopes that it’d help me hit my 50 book goal for the year and then I decided I’d write reviews of what I read all year too and it’s been really fun! I like seeing what everyone is reading — and how fast y’all read! — and it really has helped me keep up on my challenge. And I’m constantly adding things to my Amazon wishlist because I see other people reading stuff I haven’t heard of. It’s awesome, let’s be friends! I also really liked this New York Times article about product naming, this A Softer World, this A Softer World, this post at thefrenemy.com, Dear Teen Me, this comic, and retroj.am. LMAO months later, I realize I forgot one of my most favorite categories: television. Thankfully, I only really watched a couple episodes of Brooklyn 99 and New Girl, so nothing all that new to talk about. Oops. |
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JAMZ: Okay, so I spent most of February playing 
ALBUM: Working full-time has totally destroyed my music finding and album listening. I’ve turned into a single-loving repeater and a safe-for-work Pandora station listener. But! I have revisited 
MOVIE: Crys and I both really loved Gone Girl and I was so grateful to see that they fixed some of the things I’d found so lackluster/frustrating about the book. I thought Rosamund Pike was fantastic and can’t wait to see Carrie Coon in more stuff. Gone Girl was great, but Whiplash I really loved. In the first few minutes I thought this was going to be one of those media experiences I hate, where I am frustrated utterly for the main character and end up furious, but the payoff in this is so intensely, weirdly satisfying. I want to watch Miles Teller mouth “Fuck you” while drumming angrily until I’m dead. And then it should be the holographic projection that runs over my grave 24/7. 
BOOK: 
TV: The Parks and Recreation finale was so, so good and was so sweet and so positive which is what the show always was when it was at its best. I’ve talked about how much I love P&R plenty before, but that finale was a really wonderful way to end a really wonderful show.
We’ve also been watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix, slowly, and I really love it. I think relentless positivity in the face of adversity is just something I’m really attracted to generally and I love how well Ellie Kemper’s face carries it off. Kimmy wears everything on her sleeve and I love watching her react to the world around her. I also love Jane Krakowski — generally of course, but particularly in this — because even she isn’t immune to Kimmy’s positivity. The speech she gives her stepdaughter about leaving Kimmy alone was like, genuinely moving. So good.
BATH & BEAUTY: I grabbed a couple of the Kate Moss by Rimmel matte lipsticks while we were in Billings in mid-February and I have been obsessed ever since. But, like, I can’t find them anywhere on the entire internet, which is genuinely terrible. I bought a deep red, a Ruby Woo-esque red, and an amaaaaaazing nude (#104, if you happen to see these somewhere!) that has pretty much replaced my usual Revlon ColorBurst Balm Stain in Honey as my MLBB because it’s matte. They have a weird-ish perfume smell, but I love them so much I don’t really care and will definitely grab some back-ups if I see them in stores again.
STUFF: Despite the oil slow-down, we’re is still expanding and we got a Culver’s recently, which rules and their Chocolate Covered Strawberry Concrete Mixer is pretty much the most best thing I’ve eaten in forever. Their custard is rich, but not overly sweet, and the combination of strawberry and chocolate is perfect. The beeeeeeeeeeeeest.
