Hopeless Dreamer

For Valentine's Day yesterday, I bought some Ghirardelli chocolates and went out to the movies with my sister and a friend. We were going to see Dead Pool. Perfect Valentine's Day movie, right?

I must admit, I didn't expect to like it. But I did. There was blood and violence everywhere, sexual jokes up the wazoo, and I still liked it.

The action was great, the romantic dynamic was perfect (they were perfect for each other - relationship goals), the main female character was both likable and interesting. The humor was genuinely funny. I think it was mostly in the delivery. Ryan Reynolds has always been funny, but here he really capitalized on that for the first time and that was fun to see.

I also liked the ending. For lots of reasons, but also because I liked how Dead Pool treated the main bad guy. I'm not going to spoil for anybody, but that was very satisfying.

I can definitely understand why it was rated R, though. Don't take your kids to see this movie. Don't be that douchebag who takes your kid to an R rated film, gets offended, and then ruins a potential sequel for everybody else.

I would watch a sequel. I would even buy this movie on DVD. I really liked it.

A lot of people are complaining that Dead Pool wasn't popular before this movie, but I kind of thought your favorite character becoming more popular was a good thing? Doesn't that lead to more movies, comics, and merchandise? My sister was always a huge Dead Pool fan, but I didn't really know much about him before watching the movie and now I'm a fan. Isn't that... a good thing?

I'm lost???

Anyway, I guess a lot of people are bothered by not having a date on Valentine's Day, but I'm not really one of those people. Relationships take effort, man, and I'm busy. I honestly had more fun with my friends than I probably would have on a date. Dates are nerve wracking and have expectations built into them. My ultimate dream is to find a guy funny and laid-back enough that I don't feel like he's putting expectations on me and like dates are a chore, but so far I have not found that guy yet.

Until then, my Valentine's Days are a friend zone. And I am happy that way.

I went clothes shopping with my 150 Christmas dollars today. So many of my clothes are old and tattered with holes in them, and some of them I don't even want anymore -- I just didn't have the money to buy new ones. Needless to say, I had an old and outdated look. I decided it was time for a new look! New look for a new year and a new life!

I already have new glasses -- square plastic black frames -- and a new haircut -- short, chin length. So my new clothes went with my new style. In total, I now have:

- dark leggings

- dark short shorts (the first two go together)

- one pair of purple skinny jeans

- three coats: a long wool coat, a black MCR letterman's jacket, and a checkered open sweater

- several band T shirts

- several funny T shirts ("The Struggle is Real", "We're All Mad Here", "This is My Costume or Whatever")

- a Marauder's Map "I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up to No Good" backpack

- a black with white cross Imagine Dragons tote bag

I even bought a cute little mini Black Parade era Gerard Way My Chemical Romance doll!

I went shopping all afternoon, and my sister was so patient as I tried on different things in the dressing rooms. In total, I brought home like five bags, from places as varying as Macy's, Hot Topic, and Rue 21. Then I took a picture with my new look and put it up as my profile pic on Facebook. It's already getting attention!

Merry Christmas and an Early New Years to me!

I went to see Spectre in theaters on Saturday, with my sister and a friend. I'm here to write a review.

First, I've got to admit, I love Daniel Craig as James Bond. He and the director really got together and made something special with this series. He's human and realistic while still being Bond and I love that.

The other supporting roles in this series are also really good, though, and that continued in this movie. Fiennes was especially fantastic. And there was an interesting lead female this time, interesting for a variety of reasons: she does important things, she doesn't fall into bed with Bond immediately, she understands Bond and, most importantly, SPOILER ALERT, she survives at the end.

And now I have to admit something: I did not like her and Bond ending up together.

First, there's the fact that James Bond has some very serious issues involving getting into bed with women. I'm not sure if him ending up with one woman is realistic at all. But more than that, it felt FORCED. Their relationship felt forced and it was not built up enough.

I also must admit that the plot was a little weak. I didn't get enough of a reason for WHY Christoph Waltz's character has done all these horrible things, and how he's orchestrated them. The subplot between M and C was a little better, I thought -- more details and rationale were added.

And of course, as always with Bond, it was high adrenaline and high octane and millions-of-dollar pieces of equipment were used, discarded, and completely totaled. So that was nice. The action was good. Some of the dry quips were greatly placed at all the right high-stress moments.

What I'm saying is there were good characters and action, but the actual plot felt a bit lost in the details. I'm still putting it under "favorites", though, because Daniel Craig and James Bond.

Anyway, now it's Sunday and I'm having Vietnamese coffee and watching football at home with Cowboy Bebop Dude. He brought over a little Vietnamese coffee maker, a coffee grinder, and some condensed milk. Vietnamese coffee is sweet, but very good.

I went with my sister and a friend of mine -- the older one from fiction class who's married? -- to the movies on Saturday. We pigged out on sweets. I saw Black Mass with Johnny Depp (and a whole host of other famous people).

Overall, I was really impressed. Johnny Depp was suitably terrifying, cold and calculating and precise. The deaths were suitably graphic. Morals were suitably ambiguous.

My only complaint would be that we didn't actually get much from Bulger's perspective, and I think that would have added an interesting dimension to the movie. It's never even directly confirmed that his wife left him after the death of their son. I feel like we got a lot about Bulger, a lot of watching Bulger, but not much from Bulger.

We got little hints, like the part at the end where he calls his brother on the pay phone, and those were great, but I was looking for something a little more.

Overall, though, it was a great movie. Fast paced and interesting, a true psychological thriller. I love those anyway, so I'm a little biased.

It was certainly better than The Invisible Woman, which I also watched on Netflix on the same day. Talk about a slow-paced, yawning bore.

I went out with my family today. It was the last time I was going to see certain extended relatives -- the aunt I went to the lavender fields with and my Papa -- before it was time for me to move away.

We drove down in heavy traffic to the seaport to walk around there for a while. There were homeless in the streets, and street artists set up by the water. Me and my sister got some cookies at the home-made cookie shack.

We went out to dinner at a seafood grill with a seaside view. There were beautiful paintings all along the walls. It was a really expensive joint. I ate something I didn't even know how to pronounce, picked all the shrimp and scallops out of it, and then I got to sample from the dessert tray.

There was a really hot waiter there serving us. He kept calling me "miss", which was pretty cool. He was kinda into me and my sister. He seemed to be checking us out, and later my Mom said he was "friendlier than he needed to be." He kept talking directly at us and smiling and complimenting us. It felt nice. It's not like he was the first guy ever to notice me or anything -- a friend of my friend's at Comic Con once gets that honor -- but it was nice. Sometimes it's just nice to be noticed.

Papa paid over two hundred dollars to take us there. My God.

My aunt was kind of a dork, but that's as usual. She kept asking me if I was going to see any of my "past flings" before I left for a different state. I think my aunt overestimates my love life. She was really popular in high school -- sometimes I think she imprints herself over onto us.

It was dark by the time we left, but there were lanterns and fairy lights lit up along the water. We went shopping, and got some Nightmare Before Christmas mugs.

I hung out with my friend -- the one I went to see Paper Towns with -- again tonight. It'll probably be the last time I spend any one on one time with her before I move away permanently.

I went over to her house and we made breakfast for dinner together. We had veggie-laden scrambled eggs, grapes, and toasted bagels. Her family was there, which made it a little awkward, but they're really friendly people. Their house is an eclectic mess and they have horses out back. Just your typical working class country home.

After "dinner", my friend and I watched August Rush and ate from a bag of chocolates. Her brother watched with us. We laughed and made jokes, and my friend and I both agreed Jonathan Rhys Meyers is really hot. (We think it's partially the accent. Aaron Johnson and Christian Bale are really hot, too.)

My friend and her brother drove me home at the end of the night, which I thought was really nice of them. "My father's probably in his armchair, with his shoes off, sleeping, so it would be nice if you could drive me home," I joked.

I had a fun time!

This might be the last time I'm seeing a friend in my hometown before I move up permanently to take apartment residence near my college. It's the friend I was talking about the other day -- the one I've known since I was six. So today, we went out together, and for once (on my behest) it was just the two of us.

I wasn't feeling well to start out with. I'd just gotten my period, so my stomach and back were in pain, I was hungry except not hungry, and I was going to the bathroom about every five minutes. But I felt much better after the day was through! A nice day out was good for me!

We listened to music on the drive to the movie theater, chatted, shared drunken stories -- my friend had just recently lost her phone while on a drunken misadventure. Then we went to see Paper Towns in theaters. It's based off a John Green novel. I love John Green's books. The Fault In Our Stars is one of my all-time favorite novels ever.

On that note, I loved the movie!

It made me really like Quentin, but that wasn't a big surprise because I had always liked Quentin. What was a bigger surprise was that they made me like Margo! I hated Margo in the book; I LOVED her in the movie. It made me see her in a whole new light.

The movie was funny, too. And not just for actual, movie-based reasons. A guy in the theater made the bathtub scene with Lacey HILARIOUS. He kept filling in Quentin's lines for him.

"Do you want to get in the tub with me?"

"YES."

"And I don't have chlamydia -- anymore."

"Oops. Better get outta this tub fast!"

It was the funniest thing.

One thing I noticed is that the search for Margo wasn't as intense as it was in the book. But I suppose they only have so much time. Not much room for mystery. I also noticed the actor who played Augustus in The Fault in Our Stars in the gas station scene! I did not miss that! Girls in the theater started gasping!

They changed the ending. I actually liked it better. I think this is the only book-based film where I liked the movie better than the book. (I actually cannot say that about The Fault in Our Stars, so this admittance is a big thing for me.)

After, we went on a great mission to have lunch and find my friend's lost phone. We didn't manage to find the phone, but the trip was fun. We sang and laughed over song lyrics, and made morbid jokes about how underweight we both usually were. (We both have an illness -- hers physical, mine psychiatric.) I also told her I had just reached a normal weight for my height, and she gave me a high-five!

We had pasta for lunch at a restaurant. The music there was pretty good -- I liked the playlist. We talked about people we knew who had gotten married too early, about our frustrations in not finding men who were mature enough for us and also our age, and she confided in me about some things. I'm a good listener, so people come to me to confide and ask for advice a lot.

This time, she talked about her friend's unhealthy on-again, off-again relationship, her divorced parents and pushy, controlling father, and about how she wants to start her own business but doesn't want to go back to school and finish her degree. She seemed interested in my virtual internship and asked questions about how I had gotten it. I told her I went to my school's career center, made an account on their website, asked them for help writing my resume, and then sent said resume to companies who had posted up ads saying they were interested in college students on the school's website.

On our way home, something really funny happened. Two military-looking men in a Jurassic Park truck were next to us. "Oh, cool, Jurassic Park!" my friend said. Then she looked closer. The two men were making out. And the look on my friend's face -- oh my God it was priceless! I laughed so hard!

We danced in the car and sang (loudly and badly) along to "Bringing Sexy Back" and "Blank Space" on the radio on the way home. It was the most fun I've had in ages.

Yesterday, Dad handed my sister something. "These have been in the safe for a couple of months," he said. "Should we get rid of them?" My sister looked at it, stared... and then slow disbelief came over her face.

"These are tickets to an Imagine Dragons concert," she said softly.

We looked wildly around at our parents. They were smiling. Surprise! We were going to an Imagine Dragons concert that very night! Me and my sister started freaking out.

When we got to the arena, tons of semi trucks and tour buses were parked outside. This was going to be a big to-do -- the amount of equipment they must have brought is amazing. There were long lines to get into the arena, and local radio stations had set up tents outside the doors.

I bought an Imagine Dragons tote bag as a souvenir, and a hot dog and some water at the concession stand. The water was so I could take my meds, according to my alarm, at nine o'clock. I was not allowed to keep the cap for the water bottle, as a rather strange request from the band.

We sat down, and at 7:30, all suddenly went dark. The screaming immediately began. And then Halsey came out on stage, with flashing lights accompanying all of her singing. She wasn't bad. She had lots of positive messages accompanying her singing -- something about a generation born of diversity that isn't afraid of change, and something else about how no one owns you but yourself.

When Halsey was finished, the lights came back on as equipment was moved around on the stage. I had the time to ponder just how many different kinds of people were out to see Imagine Dragons. I spied kids, preteens, teenagers, young adults, and older adults, all coming together.

Then Metric came out. Metric positively made me deaf. Another girl was the lead singer, which I thought was interesting. More positive messages about staying true to yourself, and more flashing lights.

There was another, longer pause, and then at 9:30 Imagine Dragons came out. And they. Were fucking. INCREDIBLE. Mom and I every so often looked over and grinned incredulously at each other throughout the absolutely insane performance. They pulled out all the stops: They made their silhouettes appear behind a screen before the screen fell to reveal them, just as Linkin Park had at Projekt Revolution. There were lights, smoke machines, lasers, and leaf colored confetti that fell from the ceiling when they were singing about fall leaves.

One moment was kind of funny. The lead singer was introducing the bass player, who was dressed all in white. "He was his high school class president, just in case you were wondering," he joked. "He also took a chemistry scholarship and used it to go to music school. And now look at him. What a disappointment."

People waved their cell phones around, stood, sang along to the music, clapped, screamed, waved, and danced around. I was up on my feet for most of their set, dancing and screaming and waving my arms around. The lead singer was a great showman -- he was all over the place, jumping around, getting the audience involved. He teared up a few times when people kept cheering in the middle of his song -- he said the band had come a long way in four short years, and he made sure to thank everybody for coming out tonight. He also said he'd struggled for years with depression, which I thought was interesting.

All in all, it was an incredible night. I'm so glad we went. We didn't get back home till midnight.