20 in my 20th: Make and record music with the people I love.

20. Make and record music with the people I love.

Some of my favorite memories of 2011 are of sitting in the "band room" or later, Kris' room at the house on Rosser where all my friends lived playing music together. A lot of the time it was less "playing music" and more everyone simultaneously singing/messing around on different instruments making up obscure harmonies while Linn made up hilarious lyrics. Sometimes there was a whole bunch of us, sometimes just a couple. Often we had had a bit to drink before hand which made it all the more ridiculous. Wonderwall was definitely played about 5 million times. There's video evidence of all of this on facebook and watching it again while writing this post made my heart feel like it was going to burst.

After Linn died there was less music, as he seemed to be the center around which the rest of us formed our parts. One day though, my best friend Kris and I decided to try singing some songs together while he played guitar. That turned into us attempting to record one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite movies ("got my list" from Dakota Skye) pretty much every night for quite a while until we finally managed to get through a recording without messing up, forgetting lyrics, laughing, getting distracted... yeah we sang that song a LOT. I think it was a way for both of us to express ourselves creatively in a time that we were both feeling pretty numb and uninspired, and I really cherish those hours (and hours and hours) spent singing and laughing in the middle of the night, probably annoying the hell out of our other roommates.

Here's what we ended up with:

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My favorite part is probably at the end where we finish the song, there's a few seconds of silence, and then Kris strums the guitar and I say "ahhh we did it!" and Kris says "We kinda sorta did it." It seriously took us forever to get through a recording.

I'm so happy for the videos on facebook of Linn singing nonsense into a fake microphone or making up rhythms on the drums while Kris plays the keyboard and the rest of us attempt harmonies or pick up other instruments.His essence is so incredibly alive and present in those videos, I can feel it when I watch them and it makes me want to cry and laugh and shout.

And I'm so, so, so happy for the time that Kris and I spent attempting and occasionally succeeding to make music together. It's like a wonderful, shiny happy memory that floats above an otherwise wholly dark and bleak time in my life and I am so unbelievably thankful for that. Love you Kris, thanks for letting me post this on here ;)

<3

Movie Mondays: Dakota Skye

Welcome to a new segment here on girl of a thousand faces- Movie Mondays! I started a segment once before called Saturday Night Tunes and (oops...) only did it once. But that was during like, the first 2 weeks of blogging and smack dab in the middle of spring finals. Who knows, maybe I'll pick that one back up pretty soon... but for now, with me being a media arts major and all, I thought it would be pretty hard for me to mess up a segment about movies.

I've always really enjoyed film, especially quirky indie films that not many people know about. Now as a film and television major, I see at least 2 and typically 3 or 4 films a week- for class alone. Then I go home and watch all sorts of other shows and movies on netflix, hulu, and fancast. My life is full of media and I love it.

For that reason, I'm sure I'll never run out of awesome movies to share with you! Today is one of my favorites of all time that I discovered on Netflix Instant about a year ago. It's called Dakota Skye.

Dakota Skye is an awesome awesome awesome indie film starring the adorable and spunky Eileen April Boylan (who happens to have the same birthday as me, which I just found out thanks to IMDB. Awesome!). She has also been seen as Betsy in the tv show Greek, and various other shows in minor roles. The film also stars J.B.Ghuman Jr. as Dakota Skye's (Boylan) jerk-ish musician boyfriend and Ian Nelson as her potential new love interest.

I don't want to give too much away about the plot, and I also don't want to go too into detail because when I first read the plot synopsis I thought this movie sounded totally laaaame. But I watched it one night because it was rated pretty highly and I couldn't find aything else and I am SO GLAD I DID. The story is about a teenage girl who was born with a superpower-ish ability to always know when people are lying. As she describes in the film, it's like in foreign films where someone says something and then words show up on the screen showing what they mean. When someone tells a lie to anyone and Dakota is in range, she always knows what they actually mean. As you can imagine, this might be a somewhat depressing existence because it turns out people rarely ever say what they actually mean.

And so, Dakota is a pretty cynical young lady who has pretty much given up hope in humanity- until she meets Jonah (Nelson), a boy who seems to tell no lies.

What follows is pretty much spectacular and despite the somewhat amateur feel of this film (it's definitely low budget indie), I love love love it and have watched it zillions of times. Here's the trailer:



Oh, and did I mention it takes place in beautiful, beautiful Arizona? I think Scottsdale, but the main characters drive up north to the grand canyon and you see at least one road sign for tucson, which makes me happy :)

DEFINITELY watch this movie. It's amazing!

Hope you had a stress-less monday <3

Love,
Em