30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 19

Day 19: Your Favorite Movie

How can anyone ever answer this question?  You want serious drama, All About Eve.  You want a life affirming comedy, Auntie Mame.  You want favorite horror series, Hellraiser.  You want favorite dark comedy, the original Evil Dead trilogy.  Favorite buddy movie, The Last Lovecraft.  Favorite Sci-Fi, I stand by Event Horizon even though it could also be categorized as horror.  Favorite musical, Cabaret.  Favorite cartoon movie, though I love Malificent in Sleeping Beauty more than anything (best villain ever) I'm going to go with Disney's Robin Hood tied with the Reader's Digest Presents, The Little Mermaid (where she dies at the end).  Honorable mention should go to The Fox and the Hound and The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings/The Return of the King,  I wore out those VHS tapes.  Favorite vampire movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Seriously, I can keep going.  I LOVE MOVIES!  Movies are my jam and I love them so very much.  I seriously have an entire wall covered in movies.  I have VHS/DVD/Blurays, collections, boxed sets, promo discs, copies of movies burned on DVDs from movies that no longer exist because they never made the crossover to DVD and beyond.  I love flicks.

I was an only child and these were my best friends.  My dad had to work all the time and I was a latch key kid and nothing is ever on when you want to watch it, so I turned to movies.  If I had a bad day, I could choose to wallow or be cheered up depending on what I put in the player.  I could discover new worlds or visit those I already loved.  They were the background noise I needed to keep being alone in the house from being scary.  They were the familiar noises of my childhood.  They were safe and exotic at the same time.  So yeah, asking me something as simple as what's your favorite movie is much more complicated then you would probably think.

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 17

Day 17: Your Favorite Blogs

My absolute favorite blog is Bitches Gotta Eat.  There is nothing she doesn't write about and it's very matter of fact and hilarious.  Samantha Irby is a genius!  She is the author of the book Meaty which is collection of all new essays not found in her blog.  Yup, such a great blogger they gave her a book deal.  Dying for her book tour to come to Atlanta so we can go eat awesome food, drink and I can get her book autographed!

I do also like The Lingerie Addict.  I'll pop on there when I'm needing inspiration for a burlesque costume.  See if there's anything new out or a sale going on that will work with the costume image I have in my head.  It's a nice resource when I'm at a dead end.

Delightful Order is the blog that make me want to be a better person.  I suppose if I had the time, and the space and it was my job to be delightfully organized I would do all of these things.   Unfortunately a lot of her organizing ideas require you to have the space or permission to have built in cabinet, there are still somethings that work for a renter in a small apartment.  Either way, it's OCD porn.  If you longer for organization the go and stare longingly at the photos and day dream about how organized your lit could be...that's what I do.

Sew Many Ways is a craft blog, they also have recipes, etc...  I like to poke around in their recycle section and such to see if there's something I can do with weird crap I have around my house.  It's a raining day blog, AKA I'm stuck in side going stir crazy and need something to do!

21st Century Burlesque is the blog I read the most for "work".  It covers burlesque new, events, festivals, shows, etc... from all over the world.  It has a lot of valuable information about laws, trends, everything.  It includes blogs by different performers about different events which is really a great way to get behind the scenes of festivals and see different perspectives.  I hope that someone eventually does a blog about Southern Fried Burlesque Fest some day.

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 12

Day 12: Your Favorite Childhood Book

There was a book series called Book Trails that my dad read to me when I was little.  They were originally published in 1928, the set Dad had was the second printing from 1946, it came with a set of encyclopedias.  Do people even by encyclopedias anymore?  It was read to him when he was a kid and he saved it for when he had children, I was his only child.

It was an eight volume set that started off with very short poems and nursery rhymes in volume one and each book the stories got more complicated and longer.  The vocabulary and themes grew along with the child it was being read to.  It had poems, folk tails, fairy tales, adventure, pirates, and everything else that would help make a child's imagination grow while being read to each night.  I am fairly certain that Dad taking the time to read to me is why I love books so much.  It's why I have an imagination and probably why I have a decent vocabulary.  My love of books and reading also encouraged my curiosity.  If I had a question I could look it up and read about it, find a book about it and learn.  It made going to school much easier for me because I was a head of everyone else because Dad read to me.

Reading to children helps teach vocabulary, basic story structure, helps them develop a longer attention span, etc...  There's actually a great article HERE about the benefits.  I know it's hard to make time, especially if you're a single parent, but my dad made the time to read to me and put me a head at school because of it.  He was a single parent who worked full time so it's possible to make it work, you just have to make it a priority.  When ever I decide to get around to having munchkins I will definitely find the time to read to them. and I'll send them to their grandfather so he can read Book Trails to them like he did for me!

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 11

I am a day behind because I got super busy.  I suck.

Day 11: 10 Favorite Foods

1) The perfect food is a chili cheese dog.  It has all 4 food groups and is portable.  Seriously, think about it...

2) Bacon.  B always talks about how Bacon (really the entire pig) is a condiment.  Think about how many time you sprinkle bacon on things to make them taste good...see, you're starting to understand

3) The combination of Chocolate and Raspberry is my favorite sweet treat.  It's how I like my coffee and my candy bars!

4) Swedish Meatballs.  I'm not sure if it's a genetic thing or not, but I seriously love them.

5) Seafood pasta from Coop's in NOLA.  It's worth driving the 7 hours just for that.  Love that place so much!

6) Eggplant Parmesan.  It was one of my favorite meals when I was a vegetarian.  Yeah, I used to be a vegetarian, how funny is that?

7) Taco Bell, favorite fast food restaurant.  I really dig the ease and portability as well as the price.  Sure, it's 100 items made out of 5 ingredients, but it's delicious.

8) Sushi, sushi is awesome!  I don't even really like rice, but I love sushi.

9) BBQ Vienna Sausages are my guilty pleasure food.  I don't have them often but when I do I enjoy them way more than I should!

10) Cheese, all the cheese.  I actually could have just written about 10 different cheeses which is why this is number 10, I saved the best for last.

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 10

Day 10: Best Trip of Your Life

London.  Finally getting to go to London was amazing.  I had always wanted to go and it was the best time.  I got to go to the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, Camden, the Jack the Ripper Tour and 10 Bells Pub, and a slew of other amazing things.  I was there with a big group of friends.  I got to meet Pablo Picaso's nephew and hang out at his flat.  We went to all the Rubber Ball events.  We saw amazing shows.  

It sounds dumb, but having been raised on 80s PBS I had seen every British television show that had ever been sent to America.  These were the magical places of my childhood.  I might as well have gotten to go to Fraggle Rock or the Muppet Theater.  I realize it's a real place and I am not trying to suggest otherwise.  It was just an amazing segment from my childhood that I finally got to experience for real.

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 7

Day 7: Your 5 Favorite Songs

CRAP, 5 favorite songs?  Really, 5, only 5?  I don't know if I can handle that.  This is like that whole what 10 books would you take on a desert island thing which I also find impossible to answer.  I tried to do this the diplomatic way and looked at my iTunes, however, the most played songs are all songs I either have routines to or that I have choreographed for my students in class.  That was no help.

1) Cabaret is my favorite musical.  So can that be one of my 5?  Just the entire musical?

2) Once More with Feeling - BtVS - yeah, gonna put that whole CD on here as well.  What can I say, I LOVE Muscials.  Probably why I have that whole degree in Musical Theater thing.  It's fun, reminds me a good times with friends and amuses me, everything I need.

3) Poison, give me a best of CD, it's a guilty pleasure and I love it.  Go ahead, make fun of me, I don't care.

4) Soft Kitty?  Seriously I am drawing a blank.  I have forgotten the name of every song I have ever listened to.

5) ... Something I can sing along to!

I suck at this game...

30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 3

Day 3 - Your Favorite Quote

I used to always say "At night there is no sunny side of the street" which was something I came up with when I was all super goth and angsty around 13 years old.  Not really a very optimistic or positive outlook but very dark and gothy.

I used to use the phrase "I am a petite and delicate flower, DAMNIT!" all the time which made when I found the quote, "You may be a delicate flower but, hey, so is Belladonna and it can still kill people." from Heloisedevillfort on Tumblr that much better.  It's always a nice to be reminded that even the most beautiful things can still be deadly.

As far as traditional quotes, I do love, “You have witchcraft in your lips.” from William Shakespeare's Henry V.  It's just a beautiful quote that is beyond romance and passion.

I guess I don't really have a favorite quote. The closest to a favorite which I probably take to heart the most is, "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." from Auntie Mame. There's just something so true about people that don't enjoy and embrace life. Of course there are always things one has to do, but what you do with the rest of your time is what makes your life yours. You can either make the most of what you got and experience life or you can have regrets of all the things you meant to do and never got around to.  So there ya go, some random quotes for you.