Jenna Marbles? Just a Joke or Just Not Okay?

One of the most popular entertainers on YouTube goes by the name of Jenna Marbles.  She posts weekly updates on everything from what is going on in her life to biting social commentary to ridiculous stunts.  A lot of what she says is said in a very light-hearted and sarcastic tone, making it seem like a joke, but some of the things that she says are still pretty offensive.  Before thinking about it, I thought that her videos were hilarious, pointing out common things that happen in life and pointing out their absurdity.  One example of this is her rant on women who dress up to go to the airport.  It just seems silly to me why anyone would need to be in their best clothes while traveling and I enjoyed her witty commentary.

But some of the things that Jenna Marbles says are a little bit more controversial.  For example in her video entitled "What Hip Hop Taught Me," she goes through several songs and says what she has learned from them.  She says that although she acknowledges that rap and hip hop music do glorify drugs, killing, money, and misogyny, they do have some important messages.  One of the lines she references is "Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks."  This is obviously extremely offensive and degrading towards women, reducing women to sexual objects.  Jenna's comments on this are "So by default, if you are not a bitch to begin with, that doesn't really apply to you.  So you're good!"  which undermines the whole point.  Misogyny is not going to go away unless women acknowledge that these songs aren't just about "some bitch;" they're referring to all women.

Later on Jenna Marbles goes on to describe other, more ridiculous lyrics such as Ace Hood's "Say I maybe gave a damn but I never gave a fuck" and points out how absurd it is for "damns" and "fucks" to be completely different things.  She also points out how Pitbull cleverly (I'm being sarcastic here) chooses to rhyme "Kodak" with "Kodak" in one of his songs.

Given the joking nature of the rest of her video, I'm inclined to think that she doesn't take the messages that rap songs send that women are purely for sexual pleasure seriously.  But I honestly can't really tell. She has never made a video stating that she's a feminist and uses the words "whore" and "slut" quite often in her other videos.  I'm still undecided on whether Jenna Marbles is funny, or just plain offensive.

I Like Big Words And I Can Not Lie

I like big butts and I can not lie.

This is one of the most known lines in a song to come out of late.  The tunes we like help brand us.  Those who like Joe Pug are oft deemed as at odds with PSY fans.  But why can't I like both?  Why can't I get a kick out of both pop songs whilst in my car, and yet choose less known tunes while I write?

Pop is fun.  Blues and rock have soul.  I want both.  Yet day by day I am forced to choose to be "deep" or to be "fun."  I feel daft when my friends bring up a song they all know that I have never heard.  But at the same time I love to make them hear new sounds and songs and watch and see how they like it.

If you're confused by my opening statement, that's totally okay.  It's just the first thing I thought of when given the task of writing with only monosyllabic words.  It's both famous and has to do with this posts topic (music), so I felt it was appropriate to give you a taste of the inner workings of my mind.

On another tangent: this was so hard!  I can't believe how many times I wanted to use lengthy words and had to refer to the thesaurus for help.  (This would be rewritten as: A side note: this was so hard!  I did not know that I used long words so much.  I had to search for new words in close to every clause that I wrote).  Eloquent, eh?

But as I was saying, I am coming out to you all as a pop and popular hip-hop music listener.  I usually prefer bands under the "indie-rock" genre, often with a hint of bluegrass.  So this seems quite contradictory.  But there's something just so freeing about listening to loud music that everyone knows the words to and singing along.

I feel myself either acting like Pop-Ariana or Indie-Ariana when I'm around different people.  When I'm around friends who only listen to top 40 songs, I sing along, being loud and outgoing.  But when I'm with my friends with a wider range of taste in music, I become a lot more contemplative.  It's not just about singing along or about how catchy the tune is.  It's about how you relate to the song and your individual style.

Sometimes I feel like a walking contradiction.  How can I know all the words (yes, I said all) to Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me Maybe" and love One Direction and have an obsession with bands such as Modest Mouse, The Mountain Goats, and The Thermals (just to name a few)?

I have come to the conclusion that I have Multiple Personalities Disorder.  I'm kidding.  But joking aside, I really can't account for my taste in music, especially because I really only listen to top 40 music when I'm driving.  I guess it's just one of those weird quirks that I'm going to have to get used to.  I think it makes me pretty awesome, though.

When The Dog Bites...

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not putting up a blog post last week.  It completely slipped my mind.  To make up for that, I am going to post both this week and next week.

Now that that's taken care of, I know you're thinking, "She was bitten by a dog?!!?" or some variation.  So let me clarify, no, my dogs did not turn evil and bite me, this is a reference to the title of my blog.  If you have never seen The Sound of Music, you should because it's a classic.  If you have seen The Sound of Music you should understand the reference to the song "My Favorite Things."  Anyway, something very scary happened to me recently that I think is worth blogging about, but is definitely NOT awesome.

Two weeks ago this Friday I got into a car accident on my way to school.  You may remember that day as the day I didn't show up to my first hour class.  Or you may remember it as the day where I and some of my peers at planned parenthood taught a Junior/Senior Health Seminar.  But I will always remember October 26 as the day that I got into my first (and hopefully, but unlikely, last) car accident.

Before I go on, no one was hurt in the process, and my car was only scratched.  The worst injuries were to my and my mother's emotions.

That Friday started out like any other day.  I woke up, brushed my teeth, took a shower, and threw on some clothes.  I live pretty close to school, so parking and walking from car to class takes about as long as the actual drive.  That morning I left five minutes early, prepared to park and (hopefully) get to class on time.

As I prepared to make a left onto Green Street from Lincoln, all my Driver's Ed knowledge seemed to go out the window.  I had a green light and so did oncoming traffic.  For some reason, I thought that I had the right-of-way and went ahead and started to turn into incoming traffic.  Someone saw me and honked their horn so that I would realize what I was doing.  I quickly awoke from my stupor and slammed on the brakes.  Unfortunately, my fender still grazed the side of another car.  Thankfully I prevented a worse accident from happening, but honestly I still feel pretty dumb.

What could have made me so out of it that I could completely forget not only the rules of the road, but common sense as well?

Well first of all, my mom was out of town, throwing off my schedule a bit.  But much more importantly, something is kept secret from high school students.  Although we are constantly bombarded with the myth that the senior year of high school is easy and you can slack off, this is far from true.  I am taking some of the toughest classes that I have ever taken this year.  On top of that, I have a pile of college applications to finish.  Senior year is not easy.  It is extremely stressful and anyone who says otherwise is either deluding themselves or is just much better at dealing with pressure than I am.

So as I was contemplating the seemingly never-ending mountain of mundane tasks I needed to complete, I checked out of reality.  The result was not catastrophic; but it could have been.  I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I were listening to loud music and hadn't heard the other car's warning.  The ticket and the cost of the repairs on the car I hit (which I have to pay for) comes to a grand total of about $1500.  I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had injured someone let alone killed a person.

My day was not great, but it could have been a lot worse.  I'm thankful that all that was taken was my license, and not a life.

Fantasy, Fun for all

One very under-appreciated form of entertainment comes in the form of fantasy and sci-fi shows.  Many of them are written off as for "geeks," while other people scoff at the low-budget special effects.  But I, in turn, scorn at those who are anti-sci-fi.  We get some of the best characters in all of fiction from the fantasy world.  Harry Potter, Buffy Summers, and Frodo Baggins have shaped my upbringing; so to write off fantasy television shows seems silly to me.

I guess I'll start first with the example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  First of all, Buffy totally kicks butt and has super funny catch phrases.  The plot is extremely engaging as well.  I relished the seven seasons until the last episode.  One of the biggest criticisms of Buffy is that the special effects are horrible.  Okay, this is completely true, but keep in mind this was in the late '90s to early 2000s, and technology for this kind of thing was not that advanced.  Also, Joss Whedon, the AMAZING producer of this show had a pretty small budget to work with (especially compared to his most recent film, The Avengers).  Buffy may have lame special effects, but that's part of what makes it so great.  When a vampire comes out looking like a disformed, yellow-eyed freak, you can't help but giggle a little bit.  Having really funny- looking monsters adds a comedic element that would be lost if they were actually fearsome.  My personal favorites are the werewolves that look something like evil clowns in gorilla costumes.  My favorite episode of Buffy is when a monster comes to town that makes everyone sing and dance their feelings.  The downside to this is when you get too into the music, you spontaneously combust.  Buffy is really funny but also in the fantasy genre, so it takes on some serious topics.  It has a great balance of drama and comedy and is one of my favorite shows.

One of my other favorite shows is a rather new one called Once Upon A Time.  It is made by the same people who made Lost.  If you've never heard of Lost, you probably live in a hole because I'd guess that it's one of the three most popular fantasy TV shows, the others being Star Trek and The X Files.  If you've ever seen Lost, you know that there are a lot of twists and turns, and the exact same is true with Once Upon A Time.  The premise of the show is that all of the characters used to live in one world where they were all characters from our fairytales.  Everyone existed from Snow White and her Prince Charming to Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio.  One day, an evil queen cast a spell that sent everyone in the fairytale world to our world.  Now everyone there is stuck in a town called Storybrooke, Maine.  Only one little boy who is adopted knows the truth.  He finds his birth mother and tries to convince her and everyone else in the town that they are really under the queen's spell.  To many, this may seem a bit childish, but I find how the past and the present, the real and the unreal are weaved together to be fascinating.  Again because it has a TV budget, the special effects aren't very good, but I really don't think you need them.

I absolutely love sci-fi and fantasy television shows.  I acknowledge that I'm a bit of an oddball, but there's something about them that keeps drawing me back.

Delighting in Dogs

This week I choose to talk about a much simpler form of pleasure.  This would be the pleasure of pets, or more specifically, puppies.

I've always liked dogs, but my love of them has developed more recently in the past couple of years.  At the beginning of my sophomore year, my older brother, David, who lives in town took in a stray dog to see if he could become responsible enough to take care of it.  I'm not even kidding, he wanted to prove to himself that he could take care of a dog.  Keep in mind this boy has a pretty severe ADD, so he can either be extremely set on something or become very easily distracted.  Thankfully for his new dog, he took the task of training her very seriously.  Tommy (it was the name she responded to, so it stuck) quickly became one of the best behaved dogs I had ever met.

Soon, my mom and I fell in love.  Tommy was just such a GOOD dog.  She didn't need a leash to stay by your side when you walked her and she loved a good belly rub.  We looked forward to the times when my brother would have to leave her at our house for the weekend.  We got to pretend we had a dog for a couple of days.  We felt spoiled.

When my brother decided to pack up and move him and Tommy to Portland the following August (about a year after getting Tommy) we were obviously very sad.  I had never really lived without my brother, so it was a hard adjustment.  But I'm not going to lie, it was a lot harder to get used to the fact that I didn't have a dog any more.  It was a luxury that I wasn't done enjoying.

So a little over a year ago, I convinced my mom to adopt a dog from the humane society.  We ended up getting a really cute puppy of unknown origins.  Although she does have an unfortunate preference for eating mail, our new dog, whom we named Rosie, was just what I needed.  She's a great snuggler and she loves to play.  She's really cute and always wants to be with me.  She's the perfect size (a modest thirty pounds).  Her ears are too big for her head and flop around when she walks.  She's wonderful.

So what could make me happier than my new puppy?

The answer to this question is two puppies.  Okay, not puppies exactly, but my brother decided to move back to C-U in April of that same year and he brought Tommy back with him.  Now, every so often I get the pleasure of having both dogs with me at once.  I have two dogs to play with and two dogs to snuggle with.  I honestly couldn't imagine anything better.

I don't know what I would do without the unconditional love of my dogs.  They make me feel awesome!  Plus their really cute.  I hope that one day, all of you will have a similar experience.

Here are a couple of pictures so you can appreciate the cuteness:

 

Billiards, Burgers, and Brew

One of the things that I appreciate most in this world is good food.  Sometimes the best food can come from the most surprising of sources.  My favorite restaurant in Champaign-Urbana is located in downtown Urbana and, well, isn't actually a restaurant.  It's a bar.  Crane Alley is known as a rather loud, dim, poolhall, with an extensive beer selection.  You walk in and see the TV's showing the latest sports games and think, "Eh, this is just a bar."  But this is not just a bar.  When you walk outside, you immediately realize that Crane Alley is named after a small alley adjacent to it.  There are charming tables all along this otherwise would-be creepy alley and the twinkle lights are draped across the side of the building making it seem very festive.

I discovered Crane Alley because of its pool tables.  My dad tried to teach me many skills as a kid, playing pool being one of them.  To his disappointment, I didn't pick up the art of billiards, but instead one day when we went to Crane Alley (one of the more "kid-friendly" bars in town, if you could ever describe a bar as "kid-friendly") I ordered something off the menu.  And let me tell you, it was delicious.

Since my days of learning how to play pool, I have been back to Crane Alley many a time.  And I have to say, it is the one restaurant in town that I have never gotten a bad meal from.  The food, albeit pretty traditional bar-food, is always made to perfection.  But they have a new take on bar-food as well.  For example, for a side, instead of fries or even their delicious sweet potato fries, you can get a quinoa salad.  In my opinion, you cannot go wrong if you get any one of their scrumptious sandwiches.  Not only do they have a great selection (from falafel to a burger) but every sandwich comes with fries.  French fries are probably my favorite food.  And whoever works in the kitchen at Crane Alley knows how to make me happy!

All in all, I would recommend this restaurant to anyone in the Champaign-Urbana area, especially if you're looking for something new to spice up your dining attractions.  Crane Alley is definitely 100% awesome.

Take One: Turtles and Tunes

This is a blog devoted simply to the things in this world that are wonderful.  In each post, I will tell you about different things that are, in my opinion, purely awesome.  I’m not really sure what this will be yet.  The topics could range from recipes to TV shows.  There are so many great things that I want to share with people and now I finally can without lecturing them on awesomeness.

So, to induct myself into the world of blogging (the blogosphere?), I would like to talk about the band Trampled by Turtles.  Although their name may cause some mild giggling, I assure you that this band is first rate.  I started listening to Trampled by Turtles (I’ll refer to them as TBT for short) just a few months ago as a suggestion from my brother.  Now I was a bit skeptical because my brother can sometimes be into really wacky music, but I try to give everything a chance.  And boy, was I blown away. 

The first thing that I noticed was the sweet banjo.  As a lover of all that is bluegrass, hearing such a prominent banjo delighted me.  The next thing I noticed was the violinist, or rather fiddle player.  I don’t know if I’ve heard music from that instrument sound any better.  The guitar and the mandolin round out the string section of this band, giving it a very complete sound.  But what makes TBT truly special is their lead singer, Ryan Young.  His voice is some mixture of traditional bluegrass, folk, and indie rock, which I not only found fascinating, but why not just say it, awesome.

What finally solidified TBT as one of my favorite new bands is when I had the sheer pleasure of seeing them live at Lollapalooza Music Festival this year.  Although there were many better-known bands, TBT by far put on the best show.  The vocals were flawless, melodic, and haunting.  Words cannot come close to describing how entranced I became by the mandolin and (especially) fiddle solos.  It was 100 degrees, and they sweat through their shirts in minutes, but they didn’t care!  To this day, it is one of the best concerts I have ever seen.

I could say so many more words of praise about TBT, but I would probably start to sound redundant.  Why don’t you have a listen?  Below are links to two of their most popular songs as well as a cover of the Pixies’ classic “Where Is My Mind.”  But if you like what you hear, by all means listen on!

"Wait So Long:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjdkc14-zwQ
"Alone:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejfMrZQU3Eo
"Where Is My Mind:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZvVeQI0heg