So it was my birthday yesterday. It was quite lovely, thank you for asking. I'm getting quite into the list-making form of bloggery these days, so here goes.
Stuff That Made My 19th Birthday Awesome.
1. A bunch of old school friends showed up unannounced with cake, presents and a car to whisk me far far way for lunch so I didn't have to stay home and look at my homework and think about when to get started. Thanks guys. My love for you all exceeds the depth of the oceans. Really. I would know.
2. Sailors. On weekend leave at the local mall, all in their spiffy crisp white uniforms. We're not entirely sure if there were a whole bunch of them, or if we kept bumping into the same dudes all over the place. All the same, it was oodles of fun trying to discreetly (we thought we were, anyway) watch them buy flip-flops, sniff at tubes of toothpaste and browse through shelves of DVDs. And marvel at the flatness of their caps. I'd like to thank the God of the Seas for that special dose of birthday eye candy. You know how I like the uniforms.
3. Chocolate. Dangerous amounts of it.
4. The ridonkulously spectacular Barb over at Bad Tempered Zombie granted me a huge honour a few days ago, by rating my humble little blog here an "E" for excellent. Here be proofage:
And she went on to say enormously flattering things like how I am far too witty for my age and all that (which is actually true, you know), but all jokes aside, I am genuinely touched to receive such a heartfelt commendation from someone who is arguably the loyallest and most dedicatest reader and commenter (is that a word yet?) of the Bloggeddy Blog Blog. So much appreciation from this neck of the woods! I shall be sticking it up on my sidebar, to show it off in a showoffish manner.
5. Almost exactly a year ago, I was whining extensively about the lack of new Supernatural episodes, and now the Gods of Televisiondom have finally seen fit to smile benignly upon my pathetic little person, and present me brand spiffing new installments of season 4. Joy. The show is improving by leaps and bounds (according to its own standards anyway) and best of all, there is extra Pretty to ogle at this time around. In addition to the ever-present, ever-gorgeous Dean and Sam of the Winchesters...
We now also have Misha Collins, who plays the extremely broody and cryptic John Constantinesque and pacifist angel Castiel.
And I know it is very wrong -sacrilegious even- to be crushing on an angel of the Lord. But if you think about it really, I'm mostly attracted to the human body Castiel currently inhabits. So in my defense, I'm only sexually objectifying Jimmy the Tax Accountant. Technically. God will understand, I'm sure.
1. I have gone through two weeks of mock exams, which will be followed by my Majorly Major Life Defining Exam Version 2.0 in exactly a month's time. I am sorry to say that I didn't push myself nearly as hard as I should have, and as a result my results so far haven't been too stellar. I even decided that the mocks would be a good time to experiment and try answering the papers backwards - last question to first. I will never be that academically adventurous, ever again.
2. Behold the male equivalent of my intense and Epic adoration for Jake Gyllenhaal - only in this person's case, the entire scope of his deep, abiding and totally-not-creepy affections lies with Kirsten Dunst (who once dated Jake herself - 6 degrees and all that).
And the best part is that the song is actually good. It ryhmes and everything. And it is funny. And totally heartfelt, in all its creepiness. I only wish I could be as poetic as Ezra in my expressions of worship for my various celebrity love affairs.
3. I have been indulging my kink for military drama all over again through the Band of Brothers marathon on HBO, and the show is still as superb as it was when I watched it all those years ago. But it has led me to make a horrifying discovery; Matthew Settle, who played one of my favourite characters in BoB, is now on Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl. Seriously. He was once Captain Ronald Speirs.The Badassest Badass To Have Ever Badassed. He who looted, pillaged, machine-gunned, G.I Joed, and generally Badassed his way through occupied Europe and the Second World War. And while he wasn't looting, pillaging, or machine-gunning Germans, he doled out cryptic advice, traumatized young soldiers and looked hot as heck in soldierly face paint. And now he is in Gossip Girl, where he plays the whiny wimpy lousy dad to two equally whiny wimpy lousy fashionable hot New Yorker offspring. This probably means that Matthew Settle is a pretty awesomely versatile actor, but still.
Lt. Speirs and his Supreme Badassery do not approve of this.
4. Shoelaces. I can never get my shoelaces to remain properly tied for more than 6 hours at a time. By the time school is out, they're all loose and dangly and I have to tuck them in my shoes so I don't trip over them going down the stairs and kill myself. It may simply be a result of gravity, or is there something inherently wrong in my shoelacing technique?
And also, if you go to the youtube page for the earlier Kirsten Dunst song, you will see this :
It's a bit small here, but the very first video under the related vids tab is "Kirsten Dunst Granted Restraining Order". I believe that's what they call IRONY. Or something.
I have always had a bit of a fetish for military-themed films and books (with a particular affinity for World War Two). In fact, I watched the very EPIC Band Of Brothers when I was 10 or 11 years old. It was probably really really inappropriate viewing material for me at the time but thankfully nobody really noticed and I turned out just fine, thank you. So imagine my delight when I stumbled across another war miniseries on Cinemax, promising me hours and hours of Trauma, Man Pain, Deep Issues To Ponder Over In A Quasi-Intellectual Manner, Emotional Porn, and naturally also some fairly Pretty And/Or Ripped Marine Dudes.
Why This Show Be Awesome And Is Needings Your Love. Lots Of It.
"Traditionally, Recon Marines are not deployed for combat missions. Their expertise lies in stealth operations. But in Iraq, they were ordered to race headlong into combat -- in tin-plated open-air Humvees. This misuse of resources is at the heart of the series and provides Simon a through-line that will be familiar to viewers of The Wire: characters futilely fighting the bureaucracy in which they are trapped. "
Generation Kill is based on the book of the same title by journalist Evan Wright, who was an embedded reporter for Rolling Stone magazine during the first 40 days of the invasion of Iraq with 1st Recon Marine Batallion, notably Bravo Company, observing and chronicling (chronicling?) the soldier's experiences during those first six weeks or so. Naturally, the show takes more of a journalistic standpoint and avoids over-romanticizing war and soldierly camaraderie like Band of Brothers tended to do. Neither is there any blatant political statement, and hardly any time is spent bashing George Bush and his stupidity. It focuses more on the characters; the men and the shit they have to face every day, mostly from their own superiors than from the so-called bad guys. There is no well-thought out combat plan, resources are scarce and what resources the battalion actually possess are being atrociously misused, communication between ranks is virtually non-existent, commanders are making up missions for the heck of it (and to get a few medals and commendations thrown in, hopefully) and as a result lots of shitty and unwanted stuff happen to both civilians and the marines themselves. Like, marines in the desert are issued jungle camouflage uniforms. Even I don't need an explanation to know that that is bloody messed up.
The cast is truly what makes Generation Kill stand out ; they are a terrific bunch of actors and nearly all of them have mad amounts of chemistry with everyone else in their platoon, so you really get the feel that these guys have known each other for ages. The dialogue is brilliant and made up of equal parts snark, witty observations, zinging one-liners and the foulest language you ever heard on TV (and you definitely get a lot more laughs out of this show than you would expect) .There are roughly 12 to 15 main characters (and all are awesome in their own way) but I've narrowed down my favourites to just 3. I know. THREE. I impress myself.
Brad "Iceman" Colbert "I was one of those unfortunates adopted by upper-middle-class professionals and nurtured in an environment of learning, art, and socio-religious culture steeped in over two thousand years of Talmudic tradition. Not everyone is lucky enough to have been raised in a Whiskey Tango trailer park by a bowlegged female whose sole qualification for motherhood is a womb that happened to catch a sperm of a passing truck diver. " Played by Alexander Skarsgard (who also plays the baddest ass vampire on TV ever), the Iceman is so named because of his infinite levels of self-control, focus and his stoic, almost cold calm in the most dire of situations. This dude is huge, blond, never wavers and never loses his grip. Also he is super cultured and intelligent and sarcastic and uses really big words and long sentence structures peppered with exceedingly creative cuss words. Despite his mastery of the proverbial poker face and his cool exterior, Brad genuinely cares for his own men as well as for the Iraqi people and deeply affected by the suffering inflicted on everyone around him due to the callousness and incompetence of his superiors. Brad commands the respect and admiration of everyone else, because he is badass and he knows his stuff and is always right. Also, he is ripped.
Ray Person "Yeah, looks like Saddam's big bad Republican Guard hajjis got wind I was coming. As the great warrior-poet Ice Cube once said, 'If the day does not require an AK, it is good."
Ray Person, to put it mildly, is simply the most vulgar character on television. He swears, he makes insensitive comments, he eats like an animal, he cracks jokes at the most inopportune moments, he keeps running his mouth during every waking moment of the day and breaks out into song at random, yet if you look beyond the crudeness of his mouth you will see a dude who is actually far more intelligent, perceptive and articulate than anyone will ever admit to giving him credit for. And what makes him all the more funnier is the fact that the Iceman happens to be his bestest friend in the whole world. I smell irony. Or something. Anyway this 57 second clip will tell you literally everything you need to know about Ray.
Filthy.
Nate Fick
Now Nate, Nate is my favourite. Mainly because the very poetically-named Stark Sands is so goshdarnedPurdy. And I love the cinematography people for giving us all these huge ass closeups of his face so you can get a good look at his holy-shit-GREEN-eyes.
Anyway, Lt. Fick is basically in charge of Brad and Ray and all their homies, and he is proper prep school graduate material. His father was a lawyer and his mother a social worker, and he arrives in Iraq full of faith and idealism in the motives and goals of the mission. And it is heartbreaking to watch all his hopes and optimism perish in the desert because of the aforementioned messed-upness of all the higher officials. He genuinely cares about all the men under his command and often gets himself into trouble trying to protect them and help them stay out of unnecessary danger, and then he feels he has to carry the burden of all that on his own shoulders, alone (the guy literally does not smile for like, 6 episodes in a row) and he loses all his naivete and becomes reserved and strung up. And it is much sadder in his case because Nate doesn't really say a whole lot, and instead relies on his massive green puppy dog eyes to EMOTE in an EPIC fashion and convey all his deep internal struggles and make you almost cry. Also, Nate and Brad have a very special sort of bond (born out of mutual respect and understanding, mind you - as well as the fact that Stark and Alex have some insane chemistry together) , and they spend a lot of time either eyeballing each other very meaningfully or gazing very longingly out at something else.
And I haven't even mentioned the scores of other great characters; the endearingly psychotic Trombley, the pseudo-racist Poke, the gorgeous Fruity Rudy (who actually plays himself in the series) and all the commanding officers you just want to punch in the face. It's a bit hard for me to pass judgement on a show about war (hardly subject matter as light and fluffy as vampires or telepaths) but in terms of entertainment value and as a piece of fantastically-made film designed to provoke thought and challenge your opinions, Generation Kill, well, kills. And the ending made me cry. I mean, all that Johnny Cash and unresolved trauma-induced angst. I was pretty glad to be alone at home with nothing but cornflakes for company, thinking "Show, you are Awesome". In fact, the only unAwesome thing about this series is that it only lasts 7 episodes and was totally snubbed by the Emmys. Boo.
