Alli's Articles
INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, CULTURE PIECES, MUSICAL RAMBLINGS.
Here it is. The post that will finally do it. If anyone needed any embarrassing, personal, or even problematic dirt on me, this is the post you can find it on. I really have been JAM PACKED with stuff to do all week (volleyball, school, friends, and other strange obscure life things), so I thought this article would be a fun little thing to tide you all over until I get to the big stuff. So here are some little facts about me that I'm ridiculed by my friends about! 1. I Completely and Thoroughly Enjoy Vegan/Healthy Food. If you look at my Pinterest (I feel like the fact that I have an actually have a Pinterest should be a point on it's own), you'll see my foooooood board, Usually, on other people's Pinterests, these boards contain greasy burgers, fries, and other goodness. But noo, I find my pleasure in pinning Avocado Toast with Eggs. Vegan baked mac and cheese. Corn, black bean, and avocado salsa. Vegan buffalo cauliflower tacos. And HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT THE ACAI SMOOTHIE BOWLS???? Now I'm so hungry. Gotta bounce to Trader Joe's to get my organic stuff now! 2. I Love Wearing Vineyard Vines. Definitely going to get dragged for this one. Come on, that whale is adorable. How can I not spend more than 30 bucks on a basic long-sleeve tee with that whale on it???? And the hats are so cool. And so are the bathing suits. And the STICKERS!!! I feel like once you enter a VV outlet you automatically get transferred to a small beach town somewhere in New England. Vineyard Vines Shirt + Those Nike Black Shorts (you know the ones) + White Converse = My Basic White Girl Guilty Pleasure Outfit. 3. I Use Too Many Reaction GIFs. I feel like using GIFs too often is seen as cringey nowadays but I can't help it. There is a reality show GIF for actually anything. Big Brother, for example. If you check our Twitter a lot, you will def see a bunch of BB19 houseguests in the Media section. Sometimes words just don't express enough emotion, so you have to use a GIF to really get the message across. I literally have a whole folder dedicated to reaction GIFs to use at any given moment. Even though my excessive use of GIFs makes it seem otherwise, I promise you that... 4. I Make Playlists For Literally Any Event. Like really. Let me just read off some of the playlists that I have made this year. - Songs That Were Playing When I Got My Cavities Filled - My Dream Dinner Party - Songs That Played In The Restaurant After We Saw Kinky Boots - Volleyball Warm Up (Intense) - Volleyball Warm Up (Chill) - Songs Played In Art Class - Songs Played At Work - Songs That Played When We Went Tubing on NYE - The Third Of July - and My Fall Playlist So yeah...all of that should be pretty self-explanatory. 5. I Love Cheesy Lyrics. Other people might cringe at some of my favorite lyrics, but I don't care. Most of them are from basic indie songs. Do you even know how much I reflect over the lyrics to Cigarette Daydreams? Halsey always has lyrics I can theorize about, too. I think analyzing "fake deep" lyrics are an important part of a young teen's life. I think it's that part of all of us that loves "so bad they're good" things. I think that part of me is bigger than the average person's. Oh well. I'll still be here, freaking out over that one TØP lyric even though they've been over for 6 years. After writing this list, I don't think I'm ashamed about these things anymore. We're all people, and we all secretly enjoy embarrassing things. Sometimes embracing these things and making it into sort of a joke like I did with this article helps us to accept ourselves faster and easier. So I CHALLENGE YOU! Make a list of embarrassing things you enjoy and that you're not ashamed of. Nothing like....gross. Or inappropriate. Like, you know, normal and funny things. Secret hobbies. That one kids show or emo band you never grew out of. Stuff like that! Have fun with it. Have fun with this week too. I'll try to see you around, but I'm not really sure I can squeeze anything else into this busy schedule of mine! Heart you alll.
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Being in school on the night you're seeing the concert is intense. On one hand, you still haven't accepted that you're going, so you're chill in a way. Sometimes, you don't have any TIME to acknowledge it because your trigonometry teacher is taking forever to explain something and oh my God did she just say I have six pages of homework tonight??? Not doing that. I forgot this strangely numb feeling of stress and anxiety that I had before Hippo Campus up until Tuesday, the day I saw Arcade Fire. Planning and getting stuff done for this concert was so hard that I barely had time to be excited for it until I stepped into MSG. I had to scramble for people to go with, sell tickets, tell my coach I couldn't go to practice, tell my art studio I couldn't go to work, and delete 50 million applications off of my phone. All in like, a day before it even happened. So let's skip all the class stuff because they were all irrelevant in that moment. Of course, I had a student gov meeting right after school so I had to sit there while everyone discussed events happening in NOVEMBER LIKE WE HAVE, LIKE, YEARS TO PLAN IT WHY NOW??? I rushed out of there and to home as soon as I could, finished my physics homework, got dressed and did my hair, and left for Manhattan. I LOVE walking around the city, it's one of my favorite things to do ever. We were pretty early and had a lot of time to kill, so my mom and I ate at this nice little pub place four buildings right of MSG. The lady there was so nice to us and called us her girls. EX: "Hey my girls, need any more water?" I had the BEST cobb salad that I've ever had in my entire life. Mom got fish and chips, and the chips were amazing. We sat next to hipster millennials going to AF too. After we ate, we still had a half an hour, so we went into Starbucks and I had my first Pumpkin Spice of the season! It was delicious. I was extremely excited about it. More excited than I probably should have been. Does that make me a basic white girl now???? Anyway, while sipping on the delicious caffeinated fall drink, I got a little anxiety. What if my phone dies? Runs out of storage? What if I sit next to a pretentious snobby dude that questions my age and my Arcade Fire trivia knowledge? I also missed Sophia and Liah who couldn't come. I missed them a lot. But I was still going to try to enjoy this as much as possible, for me and for them. For I was an ambassador of the Mr. Q group chat, and I needed to experience as much as possible at this event. We finish our coffee and walk to MSG. While we walked, we noticed something. Three people carrying obscure instruments heading in the opposite direction. Who were they??? Backup players??? Oh my God. I think I bumped shoulders with one of them by accident. Am I famous yet? After that encounter, we walked in, did the whole security and tickets shabang, and I bought a shirt and a pin of an arcade machine literally on fire. Then, we found our seats. Literally as soon as we sat down, the opening band started playing. They were called The Preservation Hall Jazz band and they were the lit-est jazz band I have ever heard ever. Like, I want to listen to them now. I want to join the fandom. I have never heard a jazz band that wasn't at a coffee shop somewhere, or one that actually made me want to party. After them, Grandmaster Flash came on. My mom was very excited because she loves him and wanted to hear one specific song, White Lines. "My life would be complete," she said. He came out to this whole intro about his life, gave a shoutout to The Bronx where he lived, and explained his whole crayon to vinyl schtick. Everyone was pumped up and excited to hear some GMF songs..... ......but then he started DJing. Like, actual DJing. He gave tributes to artists that passed such as Bowie and Prince, but no original songs by him. Just songs by other people. Every time he played a new song a slide would appear on the screen of a picture of the artist that was literally made in iMovie. It was a cool party, but kind of disappointing. After that was all over, it was time for the party to begin. They walked on the stage, which was designed like a boxing ring, in a wrestling fashion. "Weighing 2,000 pounds collectively, 20 Grammys, 3 Kids Choice Awards, and one shocking Oscar loss, Arcade Fire!!!" They opened up with Everything Now and Nothing Now mattered, besides this. Honestly, I can write full paragraphs about some of the highlights, but I'm just going to do it in bullet point fashion: - When Will almost fell off the stage during Rebellion (Lies) - When Will waved the tambourine around creepily during Creature Comfort - Every time they showed Will on the screen and I took 3.4 billion pics - Willllll. ❤ - When Win yelled something about supporting immigration and everyone cheered - When they played The Suburbs for Houston after Hurricane Harvey (almost made me cry) - Every time Régine sung anything - Every time my brother's friend from baseball's dad texted us from the pit conspiring about commercialism - The couple that looked like Fred and Carrie from Portlandia that smelled really nice that it covered up the weed smell and I was tempted to ask them what perfume they had? - When they played No Cars Go, my first and favorite AF song and I transcended to Heaven up above - At the end where they played Wake Up and went into the pit after the song ended and played with the PH Jazz band again This whole article doesn't even do this concert any justice. So much happened and it was a legendary show. Totally look up the setlist, or you can even find it on my Concert Setlist MasterPlaylist. I hope you have a good weekend guys. I'll probably post videos where I'm NOT singing on the Insta, so keep your eyes peeled and your hearts ready for that. If anyone else has ever been in this circumstance let me know. You're watching a show you really like and then suddenly you hear something very familiar. OH MY GOSH!!! It's the first few chords to your favorite song!
After a couple days of watching that episode, you hear the song again. You can't help but imagining the scene that the song was in. The next time you hear that song, you DO IT AGAIN. That scene is forever attached to that song for you. This happens to me so often it's not even funny, so here are some songs I've heard in shows that I can never hear the same again. ***WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE SHOWS I MENTION. PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION.*** Hello my friends. Despite popular belief, I am alive and have some article ideas. Some. Like 1 or 2. That better be good enough for you. The reason for my absence has been sports. Yay varsity volleyball! It's pretty fun this year and I enjoy doing it, so I probably won't have a lot of writing time when that combines with school. Oh well. I'll still be messin' around on our socials and making stupid tweets, so keep yourself posted. I really enjoyed searching through music videos of the past last time, so I decided to do some more. This time, I didn't see the music videos the songs I chose when they first came out. These songs I just remember for the songs themselves and memories they hold. They just happen to have videos, so I will link them. Make sense? Goooood. Let's go. My mom's iPod is full of treasures. This song is just a glimpse at our extensive collection. I vividly remember me rushing to shut this song off because of the curses. My mom always loved this song, and I never knew why. After this song came and went, we never even heard anything about Lily Allen again. A couple years later, I rediscovered it, and realized that the reason I liked this song so much is because it became everything I'm personally against now. Becoming a different person for popularity. This song is bittersweet for me because it makes me think of all of my past friends and the way they changed for people, but all in all it's an effective way to relive some childhood car rides. After careful consideration, I think it's safe to say that Adam Lambert was one of my only long-lasting emo crushes of the 00s. Fall Out Boys come and go, but iconic American Idol runner-uppers that went on to tour with queen stay forever. I think the reason I discovered and liked this song was the iconic For You Entertainment cover. "Wow, his hair looks fabulous!" 10 year old me thought. During times of uncertainty and stress, times where I felt used and abused by everyone, times where the world was too demanding of me, I could always turn to this song. NEED A SECOND TO BREATHE. If you were a tween in '09 and you don't know every single word to this song, something's up with you. Hearing this song immediately takes me back to middle school dances and music class where every one of my friends had a designated part in the "tonight's the night" part. I was "fill up my car, DRAAANK." I swear, this song can take anyone in my town back to simpler times. It portrays a sort of lost art in music these days: just plain having fun. No love. No innapropro times. Just fun. Some days I just want to invite my old class, get the boombox my mom lent to me in 5th grade, and have a party in our old gym. Of course this song will play. Even though I kinda hate most of my old class now, it can all be forgotten when The Black Eyed Peas take us back to 2010 for a second. That's the power of nostalgia. I'm about to describe a really strange but vivid memory that listening to this song makes me remember, so hold on to your hats.
So when I was about 8, I was really obsessed with the movie Madagascar, specifically the lemur King Julian. So of course, this led me to get a ring-tailed lemur Webkinz and name him Julian. In the movie he had a crown a throne, so I tried to recreate those things. The crown was made using a half of a yellow fake plastic easter egg and some pieces of grass, and the throne was a tiny blue chair in my brother's room. I propped the chair on my desk, right next to my iPod shuffle, which was always blasting this song. I really hope that story didn't creep you out as much as I was creeped out at my younger self while writing this. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed these other four songs that were important in shaping my childhood! I really hope that in doing these, you guys learn a lot more about my history and how music has shaped me as an individual and lemur crown designer. Have a good holiday weekend y'all, and I'll catch ya later. |