The Opening Ceremonies are Tonight!!

As you know from the post I put up a month ago, I am incredibly excited for the Olympics. And guess what…they are finally here!

Tonight the Parade of Nations and Opening Ceremonies will take place. This is always one of the biggest highlights of the games for me. I love watching all the different countries from around the world proudly march in together. I love seeing what displays the host country has come up with to dazzle us. And I love watching the lighting of the torch.

One of the big joys each Olympic year is getting to see who has been chosen as the final torch bearer and lighter. It is usually some great sports hero for the host country or some other person of great significance and pride for the country. But this year, for London 2012, my little Whovian nerd heart sincerely hopes it is David Tennant. Yep. I have made it all the way through season 2 of Doctor Who in the great Merwho marathons (I still can’t discuss ‘Doomsday’) and I think seeing the Doctor light the torch as he did in the show would be un-freaking-believable. I mean, it has already happened, right?

Will you be watching tonight? What parts are you most looking forward to? Who do you hope will get to be the final torch bearer? Let me know in the comments.

Sometimes one change can make all the difference.

July is a very important month for me – it’s my birthday month (yes, I get an entire month ). In my family, birthdays were always a big deal. We would go all out. My birthdays were usually themed after whatever the most recent animated Disney movie was. The year of The Lion King we filled the foyer with red, green, and yellow crepe paper hanging from the ceiling and made brightly colored posters and moved all the plants around to make it look like a jungle. The year of Pocahantas we took blue crepe paper and made a river running through the house complete with a waterfall and brown paper bag rocks and we used green and yellow in the foyer to make it look like the sun coming through the leaves of a tree.

When I got older and no longer wanted Disney themes we found different ways to decorate. For my 13th birthday I had a Spice Girls theme. We turned the living room into a club with black lights and silver stars and in the kitchen we played on the word ‘spice’ and had blow up peppers and fiesta decorations. I also may have required everyone to dress up as a Spice Girl. My 15th birthday was a Hawaiian luau. Everyone got a lei and we had grass skirts, coconut bras, cardboard hula girls, beach balls, and paper umbrellas.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that even into adulthood I always look forward to my birthday and like to make a big deal out of it. Hence, birthday month as opposed to birthday.

But a few years ago things started to change. I became more aware of the fact that each birthday meant I was another year older, another year closer to the dreaded 3-0. And for some reason this birthday, my 28th, was coming down on me really hard. Instead of bringing me joy, the thought of my birthday brought me depression. All I could think about was how unhappy I was with my life and where I was at my age. I would only be two years away from 30 and I felt I had very little to show.

Then two months ago something changed. I made a decision and acted on it. I made a change in my life and my entire perspective changed with it. All those things that depressed me before were still true – I was still a college educated woman working as a nanny, I was still dabbling in writing and podcasting without any monetary compensation, I still had no idea what I wanted to be “when I grew up” – but suddenly life had new light. All I could see were possibilities.

Sure I’m only two years away from 30, but you know what, that is still young! The world does not close up around you just because you age a little bit. As long as I work and pursue whatever it is I decide I want, I can achieve it. I have the entire world open before me and all I have to do is step into it.

When my birthday finally arrived this past Sunday I was excited. I am thrilled to be 28 and to see what this upcoming year has to offer me. I don’t have a clue what’s going to happen, where I will end up, or what I will be doing, but I am excited to find out. I’m excited for new opportunities and discoveries. I’m excited to live!

Have you ever struggled with the idea of aging? What emotions do birthdays bring out in you? Let me know in the comments.

Did the Dark Knight rise to expectations?

This weekend I was able to squeeze out some time to go see The Dark Knight Rises and all I can say is wow. That movie was incredible. If you haven’t seen it yet don’t worry, I won’t spoil any of the plot details and surprises. You may read ahead without fear.

Ever since Batman Begins I have loved Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. There is so much heart and humanity infused in them that I find myself believing the story could actually be real. It’s not like Batman has any superpowers or mutations – he’s just an obscenely rich man who chooses to do some eccentric things with his money. Going into The Dark Knight Rises I was quite nervous. I knew that this was the end of the film series and wanted so badly for it to live up to its predecessors and was terrified it would not. Everything I had seen leading up to the release, though, filled me with hope and that hope was rewarded.

The thing that I have loved the most about this particular franchise is the attention that is given to the story. It is much too common for action movies to focus so much on the actual action sequences that they forget about creating an engaging story that makes the viewer care about the outcome of those sequences – this is not the case here. The Dark Knight Rises had a huge cast of characters, many of whom were new, yet I cared deeply about what happened to them. Even the villains were given proper motivations so that, while I wanted them to lose, I understood why they did the things they did and even felt some empathy for them.

I am not a huge Christian Bale fan by any means, but I think that he is an amazing Bruce Wayne/Batman. There are so many conflicting emotions in this character that are imperative to making him believable and Bale does a fantastic job at conveying that. Other returning actors that continued in their excellence were Gary Oldman  (Commissioner Gordon), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), and especially Michael Caine (Alfred). Micheal Caine may be my favorite part of all three films. The love and loyalty Alfred shows Bruce, in spite of all the antics Bruce puts him through, tears my heart to pieces.

And I must say, I was very impressed by all of the additional cast members. Anne Hathaway was, in my opinion, perfect as Selina Kyle (side note: I loved the subtlety with her alter ego. Just another example of why this version of Batman is so great and believable.) and Marion Cotillard was fantastic as Miranda Tate. Both women held their own in a very male-centric cast and showed that you can be both feminine and strong.

Then there was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as young police officer John Blake. Going into this movie all I ever seemed to hear was how excited people were to see him. I didn’t really get it. I don’t have anything against Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but I simply did not understand why people seemed to fawn over him SO much. I get it now. He was phenomenal. Somewhere along the line the goody kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun became an actor to watch out for.

I also need to take a moment to praise Tom Hardy who played the villain Bane. Wow. He was incredible. Bane was freaking intimidating without ever being over the top. His mere presence was enough to cause me to hold my breath wondering what he was going to do. Yet he was also able to show great vulnerability when it was needed. By the end of the movie I felt true compassion for this character. He was crazy and needed to be stopped, but I still felt for him.

That’s pretty much all I feel I can say without giving things away, so I’ll stop. Bottom line: go see this movie. But go into it expecting story and character development aided by action as opposed to action with occasional story. The Dark Knight Rises is a fantastic end to an even more fantastic trilogy. And, as my friend Coty would say, it made me feel all the emotions.

Have you seen this film or do you plan to? What did you think? Without giving away spoilers, were you satisfied by the ending? Let me know in the comments.

The Dark Knight Returns

Another weekend begins and another comic book movie is opening. This weekend it’s the end of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. This is the film that I have been looking forward to most of all the comic book films coming out this summer. So excited!

Are you excited about this movie? What are you most looking forward to? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: I put this post together last night before the tragic events in Colorado took place. My heart goes out to all of those in Colorado. Words can never express my sorrow at what has happened and my thoughts and prayers are with all who have been affected.

A Day at Ascendio

After I expressed my extreme Con envy last week I ended up getting to go to one for a day. It may not have been San Diego Comic Con, but the Harry Potter convention Ascendio was still a really good time.

Where I live in Florida is only a short drive of about two and half hours from Universal Studios in Orlando, and I simply could not pass up the opportunity to get to meet some of my online friends in person. So I drove down there for the day on Saturday. I had not been in the lobby of the hotel more than 30 seconds before I saw an Umbridge, Petunia (complete with the infamous plum pudding), and more Hogwarts students than I could count. Some of the cosplay I witnessed was out of this world incredible.

Naturally, Snape was a very popular character and man oh man were there some good ones. There was one guy who looked exactly like Alan Rickman as Snape – the feathery wisps of hair, the nose, the robes…everything. At one point he was walking in front of us and his robes were billowing out behind him so that I really felt like I was walking behind Snape in a corridor of Hogwarts. Then there was my favorite Snape: Vacation Snape. This Snape was decked out in white pants and a Hawaiian shirt – yeah, it was awesome.

But the absolute, hands down best cosplay I saw was Arabella Figg. This woman was incredible. She had the full on costume like the other people did, but she seriously never broke character. I watched her shuffle around, bent over, clutching her handbag no matter where she was. We saw her on multiple occasions throughout the day and without fail, she was still in character.

Vacation Snape

The friends that I was hanging out with had agreed to be in a skit of the “Tale of the Three Brothers,” which ended up being quite hilarious. But the story I want to tell happened after it was over. I went out to find my friends and I saw them standing at a table talking to someone. I went over to them and stood there quietly, not wanting to interrupt the conversation. I looked at the person they were talking to and all I could think was that he looked really familiar. Then he spoke. In a British accent. And I knew.

Let me just say, I am so proud of myself. I did not change my outside demeanor at all when I figured out who this guy was. Anyone looking at me would have had no idea that on the inside I was jumping up and down squealing something along the lines of, “OMG OMG OMG OMG!! That’s Chris Rankin!! I’m standing at a table with freaking PERCY WEASLEY!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!” And my friends were talking to him like they were old chums. Whatever, no big deal. Yeah, so that happened.

Later that evening was the Ball. I didn’t get to stay for much of that since I had to drive back home, but I could tell it was going to be a good time and there were even more people dressed in spectacular costumes. The friends that I was with do a podcast called Edition and they recorded live from Ascendio the entire weekend. If you want to hear more about the convention you can listen to it here. You may even get to hear a small snippet from yours truly during the interview with John Granger (Yep. I met him, too).

It may not have been the full Con experience, but it was still my first Con experience of any kind and I loved every minute of it. Fingers crossed that I will be able to make it to Leaky next month!

***If you want to see some more pictures, you can see them here.

Have you ever been to a con? Which one? Any fun stories to share? Let me know in the comments.

 

Con Envy

I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of friends who are spending this weekend at various Cons. There’s a writer’s conference in New York, the Harry Potter convention Ascendio in Orlando, and of course San Diego’s Comic Con. It is only day 2 of these various events and I have already had to endure an obnoxious amount of tweets and Facebook posts about all the awesome things these friends have seen and all the fun they are having.

The green eyed monster has reared his ugly head and is now stomping about like petulant toddler. I wanna go too!!

Show of hands, how many of you feel the same way? Yep. That’s what I thought. I see all of your hands waving in the air.

Thankfully there are places where those of us unfortunate to not be there can go to check out the latest happenings when our curiosity overrides our overwhelming jealousy.

A great place to go for Comic Con coverage is Hypable.com. They are even doing live blogs of several of the key events.

For those of you who, like me, are unable to attend Comic Con, which panels would you want to see if you were there? I’d want to see Merlin, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, and Glee (to start with ). And if you are one of the people lucky enough to be there, what panels have you seen and which do you hope to see in the upcoming days? Let me know in the comments.

Has it really been TEN years?

This past weekend marked a fairly significant milestone for me: my 10 year high school reunion. It is still so hard for me to believe that I have been out of high school for TEN years – that’s insane! Yet when I actually sit back and look at the past ten years I realize how much has happened and how much I have changed.

When talk about the reunion first started it was very interesting to me to see the mixed reaction. There were people, like me, who were beyond excited to see old friends and reconnect beyond the occasional Facebook status comment or “like” and then there were people who wanted nothing to do with it whatsoever. For me, looking back on high school always brings a smile to my face. I loved all four years and didn’t even stop to think about whether or not I felt successful enough or impressive enough or attractive enough to see these people I hadn’t seen in ten years, all I knew was that I wanted to go.

With a few exceptions, most of the people who I knew would be attending (and that I wanted to see) were people that I have either kept in close contact with over the years or recently reconnected with, but there was one group that I adored in high school that I wanted to see outside of the confines of Facebook more than anything. They called themselves the AWG, which stood for “Average White Guys,” and for whatever reason I always had a great connection with them. So of course I was thrilled beyond belief when I found out that all five of them would be attending and, even more awesome, they wanted to get together with me the night before the main event in a sort or pre-reunion reunion. Hanging out with them felt like I had I gone back in time 10+ years and it was more fun than I could have imagined.

I am so glad that I went to my reunion. Things that I might normally be embarrassed to tell people I have just met I was able share with this group without fear of being judged even though it had been so long since I had seen them because of the deep connections that still existed from such an important time in our lives. Even though so many years had passed we were able to look at one another as we all are today and still see the teenagers we had once been and the friendships we had once had. I never truly appreciated how precious that was before this and I don’t intend to lose it.

Have you had any high school reunions yet? Did you go? What was it like for you reconnecting with your friends of old? Let me know in the comments.

Was the New Spider-Man Amazing?

Sorry about the cheesy title, but I simply couldn’t resist. Last week I was able to find some time to go see The Amazing Spider-Man and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. I was excited about this film, but not nearly as much as the other super hero movies in the summer lineup. I told someone on twitter that I was expecting this movie to be good, but I ended up thinking that it was great. I personally liked this one better than the Sam Raimi films and I hope that holds true as this new series continues.

I feel I should mention that most of what I know about the Spider-Man canon comes from the Raimi trilogy and few old cartoon episodes I have seen here and there, so in other words, it’s not much. Thankfully I went to see this new film with a friend who has read the comics, so it was very interesting getting to talk to him afterwards and hear his take on things and I’ll add some of what he said in with my thoughts.

Anyway, the cast. I thought that the cast was incredible. It’s always strange to me when I see Rhys Ifans in a more serious role since my first two experiences with him were his very comedic roles in Notting Hill and The Replacements, but he is a very talented actor and did a great job portraying the war going on inside of his character as his good and evil sides collided. I had forgotten that Sally Field was going to be playing Aunt May, so it was a fun shock when I saw her and she played the role perfectly. Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Emma Stone – all of them did a fantastic job in their roles.

I think probably the biggest question on everyone’s mind going in to see this film, though, is whether or not Andrew Garfield would be a good Spider-Man. My answer is yes. I loved him in this role. I thought that he brought so much emotion as well as great sarcastic humor into this character and he just felt very real and believable to me. The friend I was with had a slightly different take. He felt that Garfield really captured the character of Spider-Man, but that Tobey Maguire was a more accurate Peter Parker. I thought that was an interesting perspective.

As far as origin movies go, I thought that this film did a great job setting up the story without dragging things along too much, which is often an issue. The development of quiet, nerdy Peter Parker into a sort of anti-hero and then finally into an actual super hero felt very organic. I felt that I understood his motivations at each and every stage he was in and when he took the next step it made sense. One thing I found interesting was the sort of juxtaposition of the characters of Uncle Ben and Captain Stacey. Both of these men were key factors in Peter’s development though in very different ways. As my friend pointed out though, each character had a big scene (without giving away what those scenes entail) that has tremendous impact on Peter and the film seemed to give more weight to the scene with Captain Stacey as opposed to Uncle Ben which was kind of odd. Didn’t bother me too much, but it didn’t sit well with my friend.

All in all, I really loved this film and am now extremely excited to see where it goes in the next installments. They certainly set it up in the post-credits scene to continue on and I am pretty much giddy in anticipation.

Have you seen The Amazing Spider-Man yet? What did you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

A Cover Revealed

Several months ago I recorded a vlog discussing the announcement of JK Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy. Earlier this week the book cover for the book was revealed. 

My initial reaction when I saw this was “blah,” but as I have looked at it more it has kind of grown on me. I like the sort of vintage feel to it and the simplicity. The box with the “X” in it I am assuming is meant to represent a ballot box since the book is about an election to fill a sudden vacancy on the parish council, so it seems like it is definitely paints an accurate picture of the story within which is good. I think that if I did not know what this book was and passed it at a bookstore I would do a double take and stop to look at it.

What do you think? Is it eye-catching or boring? Would it pique your interest? Let me know in the comments.

The Greek Gods: Poseidon

Today it is time to continue the series I started looking at some of the Greek gods. We have already explored the Titans and Hades, and today we are going to look at one of the other sons of Cronus and Rhea.

Poseidon

As I mentioned last time, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus decided who got to rule which realm by drawing lots. Hades was given the underworld and Poseidon was given the sea. As the god of the sea Poseidon was a very integral part of the lives of the Greek people. He was responsible for protecting people at sea and for keeping the earth watered and fertile so that crops were plentiful, but on the flip side he also caused earthquakes and storms in the seas when he was pissed off, which was a frequent occurrence.

Poseidon was moodier than a hormonal woman. He did not like for people to cross him and took harsh vengeance on those who tried. When he was forced to build a wall around Troy as punishment for something he did against Zeus, the King of Troy decided to renege on the payment he was supposed to give. As you can imagine, Poseidon was not cool with this. So what did he do? He sent a sea monster to attack the city. Fortunately for Troy Heracles came along and killed the monster, but that also left Poseidon with a grudge not fully satisfied, so he aided the Greeks during the Trojan War which didn’t end so well for the Trojans.

Then there was the time that Poseidon and Athena went up against each other to see who would be patron god or goddess over Athens. It was decided that each of them would offer a gift to the people and whoever gave the best gift would be chosen. The people decided that the olive tree given by Athena was better than the spring brought forth by Poseidon, so they chose her. And Poseidon flooded their plains.

He was also responsible for pretty much all of the trouble that befell Odysseus in the Odyssey as well as the creation of the Minotaur.

Poseidon was often seen as a god of fertility and boy did he live up to that calling. He had quite the sexual appetite and didn’t really care all that much whether the object of his fancy returned his interest. He had no problem raping women whatsoever. When the goddess Demeter was grieving over the disappearance of her daughter to the underworld, Poseidon decided he wanted her. Demeter spurned his advances and eventually turned herself into a mare so that she could hide among a herd of horses. When Poseidon realized what she had done he decided he would just turn himself into a horse and mount her that way.

And poor Medusa. Medusa was a beautiful priestess in the temple of Athena where she had taken a vow of chastity. Poseidon lusted after her and took her within the walls of Athena’s temple. Enraged by the desecration of her temple, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the snake-haired gorgon we know her as.

So yeah, not exactly a ton of flattering stories about this god to share, but in spite of his volatile mood swings Poseidon was a very powerful and important god to the Greek people. I hope you enjoyed reading about him and will join me next time when I conclude this series with a look at the most powerful of Cronus’s sons.

What do you think about Poseidon? Are there any stories I did not mention that you are fond of? Let me know in the comments.