Hollywood's horrible perceptions

Most smart people are aware that Hollywood represents ideals that are totally unrealistic. The so-called "lucky" few hundred people who live it are rich, famous, and beautiful but they don't represent the world's population. Unfortunately, too many people think they ARE the ideal representation of human beings. WRONG.

I was watching E! fashion police of the grammy awards. The judges were the extremely esteemed Jay Manuel, Giuliana Rancic, Joan Rivers, and Khloe Kardashian. Obviously these people are total fashion gods, and I care a whole lot about what they have to say.

I heard Joan Rivers' voice and decided to save my IQ points from dropping further and picked up the remote to change the channel, when I heard her talk about Jennifer Hudson

"Wow she looks great. She's losing the baby weight, but she's not there yet, but she's getting there"

she's not there yet?! but she's getting there?! My question is: Getting to WHERE?! Jennifer Hudson is a naturally curvy woman. She will always be that way and that is OK and perfectly fabulous. The nerve of this woman to say she's not there yet!!! Joan Rivers, with her skin falling off her face and a complete lack of understanding of beauty (obviously injecting your face with 1000 botox injections does NOT work dearest Joan) is criticizing Jennifer Hudson's post-baby bod? (which looks fabulous by the way) We cannot all be size ZEROES!

Jennifer Hudson is an Oscar winner, has a voice that can make grown men cry, and really does look great after giving birth. Joan Rivers (I could probably dedicate several blog posts to the LACK of her contributions and achievements in the field of acting, or art in general) = stupid.

Khloe threw a couple of gems in there like "she looks thin, she looks fabulous" (she was referring to Sandra Bullock) Obviously thin = fabulous. W.O.W.

I think the worst part about all of this is that E! decides to PUT these people on the fashion panel and allows their voices to be heard. Fine, there is free of speech. But, I really hope tweeny boppers, and people who actually watch the Hollywood's CNN channel are able to EDIT out whatever these women say because Hollywood will and should NEVER define beauty.

Kudos E! You guys did an awesome job picking fashion "mavens" who imparted their "knowledge" onto the rest of us. If you want to give us fashion "advice" and stimulate the economy by shoving products and ideas down our throats, pick smarter and more accomplished people next time..like TIM GUNN!!

Fashion is confusing

I don't worship fashion. To me, it's just another accessory in life. But, I do browze the pictures from the fashion weeks that happen around the world. I do like some designers (Proenza & Schouler, DVF, Rachel Roy) but I'd never spend that much money on clothing. EVER. So I was doing the usual browzing when I came across about the newest sensation at NY Fashion week. It was a 13 year old girl called Tavi Genison! She's a fashion blogger who's shot to fame thanks to her extremely intuitive insight. She dyes her hair grey, wears the clear plastic shoes that are red, and rocks mis-matched multi-colored tights. Designers are all over her and are courting her to come to their shows and actually care about her opinions! A couple of designers have also consulted her for their designer lines. 13 YEARS OLD?!

O.M.G. 13?! jesus christ. At that age, I was happy with my mom gave me persmission to buy a sweater from The Gap so I could tell the cool girls at school that I DIDN'T buy clothes from the salvation army.

So I decided to check out her blog and see what the hooplah was all about it. First of all, she does NOT write like a 13 year old. If I had a blog when I was 13, my entries would be something like this:

"It was a great day today. My mom let me buy a shirt from The Gap! I will be cool at school! I also like this boy named Jeremy. He is SOOO cute but only likes cheerleaders :/ :/ I wish I was pretty. I need to buy more clothes from The Gap"

She writes like that of an experienced fashion critic! Holy shizz. A lot of it is above my head because I simply don't know the intricacies of fashion. She analyzes and theorizes it and I have no clue what the hell she's talking about. But apparently, it makes sense to the connoisseurs of fashion, which finally brings me to the point of this entry...

Fashion is confusing to me. It really is. Or I think it's more of my lack of patience to try to understand it. I like to look nice, but I hate thinking too much about it. In my mind, fashion is something that should just come easy and be effortless. I understand others put a lot of thought into the way they dress, but what about just dressing in the way that makes you happy? I don't want to spend more than 6 minutes debating an outfit or how it goes well together.

I probably don't cultivate the patience to understand because it's due to mmy annoyance at the fashion industry because in their mind, you need to pay exhorbitant amounts of money for good clothing, especially when it's made for a fraction of the price. I do NOT believe that quality is only for the extremely privileged. I will NEVER spend even $400 on a dVF wrap dress no matter how classic of a piece it is. I can't justify spending that much on a single piece of clothing item when children around the world go hungry every day. Fine, you don't even have to go that dramatic, but there are people that can't afford to pay gas to fill up their cars in the US now.

So yes, fashion is confusing. I read through a lot of entries in her blog, and she's talented, especially in writing. She takes pictures of herself in funky designer clothing and talks about it as if it's art. Well, it is art because it's someone's creating. But, you know what..art is universal and should be accepted by all. I don't think Da Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh created their masterpieces thinking that one day, they will be sold for millions of dollars. They simply created art because it was beautiful and it was their passion.

A lot of designers do create beautiful clothing. But it's never with the right intentions because they ultimately choose to sell it to the upper-most crest of society. The rich people. Apparently, THEY deserve to look more beautiful than the rest of us.

I went off on different tangents, but ultimately: either I'm "uncouth" and don't really know how to appreciate fashion in the truest of sense, but I can't understand it when it's spoken to me in "fashion speak" aka Tavi's writing in her blog. Check it out.

Randomness

New Year's resolution: stop having new year's resolutions because they're silly and no one follows them after the first month...

I miss home :/ I miss my car, my friends, Thai villa, everything. Sure, I don't miss the fact that everything closes so early in Raleigh but oh well.

Moving onto more interesting topics...like how I now makeout with girls when I'm drunk.

Should I even be admitting this on a blog that "so many people" read (aka my four dedicated friends? ;) )

I think this is a good thing because it shows I'm more comfortable with myself! Ok no, I don't think i'll be experimenting my sexuality by starting a tumultuous hot relationship with some girl...although I know certain parties will be interested in that. No, I have no kissed multilple girls...just one!

That's the update on me. I also need to find a purpose for this blog! There has to be a purpose. My life is NOT interesting enough for this blog to take flight and garner millions of reads. My rants are like everyone else's...pretty lame. The solution to almost all rants is: 1) do something about it and stop whining or 2) it's out. you got it out so now move on to something else that pisses you off.

I will find a purpose and write and develop a new blogging career instead of hoping to slit the wrists of my customer everyday.

Don't blame yourself, blame Hip Hop!

I went to my first hip hop class here in Singapore yesterday. It was almost 2 hours long, fun, tiring, and did I mention fun? I'll write about it later, but a quick recap of hip hop culture is listed below. A lot of us are aware of hip hop, but don't really know the basic history of it. I've listed a few short bullets, but obviously there's way more.

1. "Hip hop is a cultural movement which developed in New York City in the early 1970s primarily among African Americans and Latin Americans[1][2]. Hip hop's four main elements are MCing (often called rapping), DJing, graffiti writing, and breakdancing. Other elements include beatboxing, hip hop fashion, and slang. Since first emerging in the Bronx, the lifestyle of hip hop culture has spread around the world.[3]" - wikipedia


2. "Jamaican born DJ Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell is credited as being highly influential in the pioneering stage of hip hop music[9], in the Bronx, New York, after moving to New York at the age of thirteen. Herc created the blueprint for hip hop music and culture by building upon the Jamaican tradition of toasting, or boasting impromptu poetry and sayings over music, which he witnessed as a youth in Jamaica.[" - wikipedia

The first one gives an idea of where Hip hop comes from and the second one is important because due respect must be given to pioneers!

Hip Hop DANCE came from hip hop culture:

"The dance style primarily associated with hip hop is breaking, which appeared in New York City during the early 1970s and came to be popularly classified as one of the four primary "elements" of hip-hop (along with rapping, DJing, and graffiti). Funk styles, such as popping and locking, evolved separately in California in the 1960-70s, but were also integrated into hip hop when the culture reached the West Coast of the United States." - wikipedia

Obviously, Hip hop dance is varied, and has many different styles, and is open to interpretation from a choreographer's standpoint. Hip hop dancing is really fun, but it's not that easy for me. I have to really work at it to make it look right and even then I know I don't have that natural "swag"

So I went to this class taught by a friend of a friend. It was pretty full with about 25ish dancers. The style of dance was more soul hip hop. There was a lot of choreography. I haven't learned a hip hop routine in a very long time so that definitely slowed my progress. It takes me a lot longer to learn an entire routine because I haven't practiced learning a lot in an hour. So I got some moves, and not others and kind of danced along until the end when they split everyone into groups to perform. This was by far my least favorite part because I SCREWED up and looked like a fool. YAY.

I really like hip hop but DAMN it can be hard. No worries. I shall persevere and get better at it.

My favorite choreographer!

Just Leave it be!

I'm trying to get to the bottom of this because it really bothers me. If you've been in a relationship with anyone for longer than 6 months, someone will ask the INEVITABLE question: When are you two getting married?

The question itself is not that bad. It's the idea behind that seems so one-sided to me. The reason people even ask that question is because of the horriblely skewed thought: you date someone so maybe one day you can marry them.

First of all, humans are not meant to be alone. We need people around us like our families, friends, and significant others. Humans like companionship. So when you're dating someone, you're with them because you enjoy being with that person. It's that simple. It doesn't always have to have an end result. I know women are guilty of the whole "wedding bells in our head" once we date a guy who we feel compatible with. I blame that habit on history, and also the way society puts SO much pressure on dating to MARRY.

I don't want someone to tell me I SHOULD marry my boyfriend because we've been dating for so long or whatever. No one should ever tell someone else to BELIEVE something they don't. I do believe in marriage and yes, dating someone does help you figure if you want to be with that someone or not. But that's not the case for EVERY relationship. I'm not going to date someone and think "hmm is it possible to marry this guy?" from day one. If marriage happens, it happens. If things so sour, I break up, eat a pint of ice cream, and move on with life.

The POINT of dating someone is to make yourself and the other person happy. NOT necessarily marriage!

Not everyone has the desire to live in white picketed fence house, complete with an electric dog fence for Fido in Suburbiaville, US. This isn't the 1950s. Times have changed and so have relationships.

People need to understand that there isn't a right way and wrong way in relationships because it's up to the INDIVIDUALS involved.

Amen

24 Strokes

Turning the big 2-4 tomorrow. Is there anything special about the number 24? Probably not. I still can't rent a car. I'll get a new license picture only NEXT year. lame.

But that's ok, I'll be making up cool things about the number 24. So here goes:

1) if you do 24 shots - you might die.
2) sleeping with 24 people makes you a P.I.M.P (male or female)
3) you're still in your 'early twenties'
4) 24 is the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root. it's divisible by 1,2,3,4,6,8,12,24...wow! :)
5) there are 24 hours in a day
6) current jersey number of Kobe Bryant
7) karat number that represents 100% gold. HELL yes
8)The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the Civil Rights-era amendments, abolishing poll tax requirements in federal elections.

YES.

I have no qualms about turning 24 :)

I miss girls part Deux

More than being homesick, I'm still girl sick. I really miss being able to just chat about random stuff with my girl friends. Sure, there's skype right now but 1) my internet at the apt is patchy 2) time difference 3) it's not easy as just picking up the phone and chatting.

It sort of became a tradition, but almost every Friday for about 2 months, I ate dinner with Aarthi and Svetty. We had similar tastes in topics of discussion and had very entertaining / heated discussions over dinner. There was always some random fact to be learned. There were also many embarrassing moments where we ended being the loudest table in the restaurant thanks partially to my raucous laugh. I really came to look forward to these dinners not only because we tried new restaurants (soo many in RALEIGH yeaaa), but were also able to just be ourselves. No topic was considered off-limits. No opinions were taken too seriously, no feelings were hurt. It was simply understood that we had strong ideas, but were intelligent enough to listen and remain open minded.

It felt SO good to talk about things other than WORK, or BOYS. Ok fine, so we talked shit about boys too but that wasn't the main topic of debate.

I had that same rapport with Megha. We talked twice or thrice a week over the phone and even though she was in NYC, it still felt so good to just..talk about things that we cared about like travel, or figuring out life, or plan vacations we'd never take.

I had the rest of my good girl friends to go out with, dance, receive good advice, just be myself with, and just be GIRLS and HAVE FUN! (shoutout: Sheri, Annie, Sammi, Kiwi, Carolina, Phammi)

If I want to talk and have a discussion these days, these are the following topics I have to know:

1) Sports (specifically all teams related to OHIO. cavs, browns, whatever baseball team is in Ohio)
2) Beer
3) Work (we already work long ass hours. WHY talk about work?!)
4) TV shows
5) Movie lines from cheesy GUY movies

They're nice guys. They're fun. We all work well together and have fun together. I'm good friends with some of them now but it's not just the same as being able to just CHILL and talk with girls.

blah.