5. We saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the fanciest theater I have set foot in since moving to North Dakota — leather seats that slightly reclined, an actually huge screen, the whole deal — and it was packed with excited people, which is always the best way to see any movie. It was a super responsive crowd from the start, so I knew we were going to have a good time and we did! We laughed and we gasped and we cried. No, like, cried a lot because despite some issues, it was a really good, well-paced package with a lot of heart. I was crying into my popcorn because GROOT, of course, and heard heavy sniffing behind me and turned to find the three teenage boys behind us fully wet-faced. Such a joy. I loved everyone in this and I really appreciated its existence as more of a standalone from The Avengers. Well, I’m also excited to see all the connections play out, but I would have loved it even if it were a truly separate universe. So fun and so good-looking and exciting and fun and funny.
4. I’m, like, 99% certain that the only reason Dope is this far down the list is because I only watched it a couple of days ago. Dope was so, so good. Crystal and I both thought it was a 90s period piece (Can you say period piece when it’s not set in like, 1863 or whatever?) until we actually started watching it and at first I thought I wouldn’t like that as much, but I ended up loving that they were able to do things with nostalgia for things from my childhood (I’m a sucker!) while also integrating new technology and the complexities of high school life in 2015. All these youths were so good! And the story was engaging and hard without being miserable. The image of Malcolm holding a gun in his shaking hands is going to stay with me for a long, long time (Give Shameik Moore 1000000000 awards!!!) but so is “How am I supposed to eat my pound cake?” Also, the music is SO GOOD. The 90s hip hop is great, but the songs from the in-movie band Awreeoh are AMAZING. Like, have been on repeat since I watched amazing. Can’t decide between sharing “It’s My Turn Now” and “Don’t Get Deleted” because they’re TOO GOOD.
3. I also saw Spy in a nice, packed theater full of responsive, laughing people and it was so fun and so entertaining, but I also rewatched it just about a week ago and it was just as funny and I loved it just as much. I love Melissa McCarthy so, so much and she and Paul Feig have really found a good rhythm together and I think their comedies are a nice mix of smart and stupid comedy. I love her physical humor, especially because it exploits her weight rather than blames it, and her delivery of those long, expletive-filled diatribes is always so damn on point. I was so excited to see Miranda Hart in a big movie and I really liked Rose Byrne a lot too. No one in this was disappointing and I laughed a lot through the entire movie, even when I was frustrated for Susan, which can be suuuuuch a hard line to walk. And, not only was it funny, but it was a good-ass action movie too!
2.20 Feet from Stardom was recommended in one of Kimmie’s documentary round-up posts and it’s the first documentary I’ve really enjoyed in years. Some of the stories were heartbreaking, some delightful, and all of them were actually interesting enough to merit their inclusion in a documentary. I’ve loved Darlene Love for a long time and it was nice to hear her tell her own story. I was also SO GLAD to hear so much of the music they were talking about, including some of the raw session recordings. Have you ever watched a music documentary that couldn’t get music clearances? I have and it’s hell. This is the documentary that convinced me that I could watch documentaries and enjoy them, which I didn’t really think was possible.
1.Grace & Frankie was pretty much the only new TV I watched this year and I am so, so glad that we made the time for it because it is funny and adorable and moving and I cannot wait for the next season. I love both Grace and Frankie and their husbands and kids. I like that the characters make mistakes and bad decisions. I like that the leads are Older! Women! And that they address age! I will admit to being bored of rich white people stories in general, but I still really like this one, partially because I love all of the actors involved (Sam Waterston! Lily Tomlin! Jane Fonda! Martin Sheen! Ethan Embry! June Diane Raphael! Ernie Hudson!) and partially because I feel like the people in the story care about each other and the life they share and that’s extremely important to me. And also it’s funny and makes me laugh a lot.
I read fifty books this year! 53 of my 50 book goal, actually! Joining GoodReads (PS: BE MY FRIEND!) was super good for me! Even though I haven’t finished a book in… a while. But I am reading! Inching away at A Little Life day by day.
Anyway! Among those fifty books, I read several I loved! A lot! Because books are one of the things I love most in the entire world and you should all listen to me when I recommend them because I have impeccable reading taste.
5. Courtney Milan, The Duchess War – As part of my 2015 “Be more open-minded and less of a dick” campaign, I also decided to try out some romance novels! I read somereallyverybadones, but I also got introduced to Courtney Milan because I am friends with people with very good taste! I can’t express how much joy this book brought me and how unbelievably good (and hot! and playful! and fun!) it is. Such a good surprise! The sex scenes are great (SO GREAT!) and the characters are engaging and likable and interesting and you fully believe that they are attracted to each other which is preeeeeeetty important for a romance. Also, it doesn’t fall into that trap where the conflict exists solely because two people won’t just TALK TO EACH OTHER which is one of the things I find most infuriating in romance-y type stories. I mean, there’s some of it, but you also kind of understand why these two wouldn’t just talk to each other already. I also really liked the prequel novella The Governess Affair and I will definitely read the rest in the series. I love that the non-romance stories are just as interesting as the romance and that the romance is funny and sexy and kind. Consent and tenderness are so, so key to her sex scenes and I live for them. Too good.
4. Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves – The first book in this series, The Raven Boys, was my very favorite book I read last year and I loved the follow-up as much, if not even more. The placemaking is phenomenal, the characters are awesome (Even the new ones! That can be so rare for a series!), the mythology is fun and expensive, and the characters and the relationships between the characters continue to develop in ways that are engaging and exciting. Stiefvater is a pro at exploiting the female gaze which is not only enjoyable, but refreshing, and writes dialogue that sounds real without actually emulating how teenagers talk. (Have you actually listened to teenagers talk? It’s mostly a nightmare.) I love everyone in these books, even when I don’t love them the way the author wants me to. I love the tension and the magic and the physical agony of anticipation. I love the villains in these damn books! I didn’t love the third book quite as much as the first two, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the series or make me any less overly amped for the next one. I love these books and I cannot wait until they get made into a terribly-casted monstrosity of a movie that I can scream about on the internet.
3. I finally read Bossypants this year and then I also read Yes Please! And Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and I really, really loved all three. I made a conscious decision to try to read more books written by women and people of color this year and it has 1. introduced me to a ton of really good books and 2. probably made me a better person tbh. I thought I was going to love Yes Please more than I did and I don’t normally love Mindy Kaling, so I expected to not like it, but I actually think I loved her book the most. Surprises! All three kept me engaged (often while stationary biking which is a hard place to keep me interested!) and laughing and even moved and I’m so glad that, even with the things I didn’t love (Comedians love problematic garbage sometimes! It’s awful! Do better, guys!) I took the time to read all three of them this year. I also read Miranda Hart’s Is It Just Me? which I also loved and regularly quote. I read Kelly Oxford’s book too (Women! Comedians! I was having a time.) but it was awful, so.
2. Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me – This book emotionally devastated me and I had to curl up in the fetal position and cry for like a half-hour after I finished reading it. Everything about it just felt so true and authentic and real, characters and setting, and it is so, so important to have that grounding in something science fiction like this. I have a hard time articulating why I loved this book so much, but I think it’s really because the entire time I was reading the story, I was just entirely inside of it. The world was so real and so emotionally resonant that it was almost overwhelmingly absorbing. This book not only made me want to write (always a sign of a really good book) but also made me miserably jealous that I didn’t write this actual book. Let me be Rebecca Stead! I read one of her other books this year as well and didn’t love it like When You Reach Me, but her writing was still wonderful and I will seek out lots more of her work in the future!
1. Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry – I absolutely lovedThe Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and though I loved When You Reach Me pretty much just as much, I did not expect to end up liking Fikry at all, so it gets the edge. When I say “didn’t expect to like” what I really mean is, “REALLY ABSOLUTELY HATED A LOT FROM THE JUMP” but then it just… It course-corrected in all the right ways without invalidating the things I didn’t like and it was just so good. I don’t ever enjoy media about unlikable characters and I was really worried that this book would end up as just another on a pile of books I ultimately felt were a waste of time because I couldn’t connect to their protagonists, but Zevin did some masterful character evolution in this without it ever seeming unjustified or forced. There are great secondary and tertiary characters in this (Lambiase!!!!!) and women who are awesome and real and fleshed. When we were considering having a reading for our wedding (We did not, ultimately.) a passage from this is the only thing that came up for serious consideration. So, so good.
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.
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.
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.
JAMZ: Okay, so I spent most of February playing “Uptown Funk” and Azealia Banks’ “212” on repeat, but I also got super into SBTRKT’s “Wildfire” which is best played at near ear-splitting volume while doing a kind of flailing, loose-limbed dance that involves far too much ribcage. March was spent listening to my extensive love song playlist while we ready wedding stuff, but it also brought me “Fade into You” from Nashville which I found in the comments of a wedding playlist post. It’s like… goth country, romantic and lingering. So pretty.
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 Natalia Kills’ Trouble quite a bit since it’s on my phone and it’s just a great listen, especially in the car with the windows down now that the temperature is often above 40! “Rabbit Hole” is my jam. I’ve been hitting this best of Miles Davis because I frequently turn to jazz when I’m feeling stressed, since lyrics can make me feel overwhelmed while I’m working. “Blue in Green” is a forever fave.
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.
lmao i h8 that i kno exactly how fucked up it is that i’m like 3 times more attracted to jk simmons after watching whiplash than i was b4
BOOK:When You Reach Me is the best and most moving book I’ve read thus far this year. It’s got a great narrating lead and excellent secondary characters and a rich plot and wonderful details and, like I said on Goodreads, I wish so badly that I had written it. What an awesome, perfectly, gently devastating book. I did not love The Paper Magician, but I did enjoy reading it more than, I think, every other book I read in March. I thought the magic was interesting, but found the characters lacking. There was some great anticipatory romance stuff — I even got kicky-feet! — but it played out too easily and too quickly. I prefer some torture with my romance, thank you, but still a fun read.
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.
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.
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.
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.
5. We saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the fanciest theater I have set foot in since moving to North Dakota — leather seats that slightly reclined, an actually huge screen, the whole deal — and it was packed with excited people, which is always the best way to see any movie. It was a super responsive crowd from the start, so I knew we were going to have a good time and we did! We laughed and we gasped and we cried. No, like, cried a lot because despite some issues, it was a really good, well-paced package with a lot of heart. I was crying into my popcorn because GROOT, of course, and heard heavy sniffing behind me and turned to find the three teenage boys behind us fully wet-faced. Such a joy. I loved everyone in this and I really appreciated its existence as more of a standalone from The Avengers. Well, I’m also excited to see all the connections play out, but I would have loved it even if it were a truly separate universe. So fun and so good-looking and exciting and fun and funny.
4. I’m, like, 99% certain that the only reason Dope is this far down the list is because I only watched it a couple of days ago. Dope was so, so good. Crystal and I both thought it was a 90s period piece (Can you say period piece when it’s not set in like, 1863 or whatever?) until we actually started watching it and at first I thought I wouldn’t like that as much, but I ended up loving that they were able to do things with nostalgia for things from my childhood (I’m a sucker!) while also integrating new technology and the complexities of high school life in 2015. All these youths were so good! And the story was engaging and hard without being miserable. The image of Malcolm holding a gun in his shaking hands is going to stay with me for a long, long time (Give Shameik Moore 1000000000 awards!!!) but so is “How am I supposed to eat my pound cake?” Also, the music is SO GOOD. The 90s hip hop is great, but the songs from the in-movie band Awreeoh are AMAZING. Like, have been on repeat since I watched amazing. Can’t decide between sharing “It’s My Turn Now” and “Don’t Get Deleted” because they’re TOO GOOD.
3. I also saw Spy in a nice, packed theater full of responsive, laughing people and it was so fun and so entertaining, but I also rewatched it just about a week ago and it was just as funny and I loved it just as much. I love Melissa McCarthy so, so much and she and Paul Feig have really found a good rhythm together and I think their comedies are a nice mix of smart and stupid comedy. I love her physical humor, especially because it exploits her weight rather than blames it, and her delivery of those long, expletive-filled diatribes is always so damn on point. I was so excited to see Miranda Hart in a big movie and I really liked Rose Byrne a lot too. No one in this was disappointing and I laughed a lot through the entire movie, even when I was frustrated for Susan, which can be suuuuuch a hard line to walk. And, not only was it funny, but it was a good-ass action movie too!
2. 20 Feet from Stardom was recommended in one of Kimmie’s documentary round-up posts and it’s the first documentary I’ve really enjoyed in years. Some of the stories were heartbreaking, some delightful, and all of them were actually interesting enough to merit their inclusion in a documentary. I’ve loved Darlene Love for a long time and it was nice to hear her tell her own story. I was also SO GLAD to hear so much of the music they were talking about, including some of the raw session recordings. Have you ever watched a music documentary that couldn’t get music clearances? I have and it’s hell. This is the documentary that convinced me that I could watch documentaries and enjoy them, which I didn’t really think was possible.
1. Grace & Frankie was pretty much the only new TV I watched this year and I am so, so glad that we made the time for it because it is funny and adorable and moving and I cannot wait for the next season. I love both Grace and Frankie and their husbands and kids. I like that the characters make mistakes and bad decisions. I like that the leads are Older! Women! And that they address age! I will admit to being bored of rich white people stories in general, but I still really like this one, partially because I love all of the actors involved (Sam Waterston! Lily Tomlin! Jane Fonda! Martin Sheen! Ethan Embry! June Diane Raphael! Ernie Hudson!) and partially because I feel like the people in the story care about each other and the life they share and that’s extremely important to me. And also it’s funny and makes me laugh a lot.
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.