Even when it’s sad, which it often is, there is something lovely and haunting about it.
Anyway, when I was little, we still used tape players.
Oh yes, those ancient things, tapes. Not CDs (which are fast becoming antiques), not iPods, cassette tapes.
I lived in San Diego, so my parents did a lot of driving with me in the car, and I listened to books and music on tape.
My mom used to play these “We Sing” tapes.
Which were, in their essence, recordings of overly enthusiastic kids singing loud classic children’s songs. I used to sing along, but there were only three songs I really liked.
My favorite song was about a sweet Irish fishmonger who died. I know. Sad right?
I never knew the song title, and the tape got lost so I soon forgot about it.
But yesterday, after nearly 13 years, I heard that sad, Irish song again.
The Deep Blue Sea, a British film starring Rachel Weisz and my future husband, Tom Hiddleston, tells the story of a woman (Rachel Weisz) in loveless marriage and her attempted suicide following her passionate affair with a handsome young RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston).
Great film, but that’s beside the point.
Much of the film takes place in flashbacks, one of which is the protagonist, Hester, taking shelter from bombs raining down on London while a man sings a song called “Molly Malone.”
After 13 years, I heard it again and got so excited, singing along.
The song is told from the point of view of a man who met a fishmonger named Molly Malone.
Molly dies of a fever and the singer goes on to describe her ghost gliding through Dublin, still peddling fish.
“Molly Malone” is the unofficial song of Dublin. There was a statue erected in its honor, and Molly Malone Day is June 13 in Ireland.
On one hand, I like streaming free music and getting exposed to new artists and songs.
On the other, I hate not being able to select specific tracks, artists, fast forward, rewind, repeat or organize songs into playlists.
And then there’s the thing where you can only skip so many songs that you dislike… yeah.
I was driving to school the other day and hear a special on KCRW or maybe it was NPR… Anyway, I heard a radio program on the free online streaming site, created by Swedish startup Spotify AB.
It talked about the increasing problem of pirating music, with people using things like Pirate Bay and other illegal downloading services.
Spotify is a legal streaming service, created in October of 2008. It’s free and unlike Pandora, you can select specific artists and tracks. They have a surprisingly large selection of music and the search process is easy and intuitive.
You can link it to your Facebook account, and check out what your friends have been listening to.
I love sea shanties, and I found the most beautiful version of my favorite shanty, “Leaving of Liverpool,” by the High Kings.
There’s a free app for the iPhone called InstaCollageFree that lets you make super cool compositions.
Electing to exercise my assembling talents on my friends, I made a series of Catalina Sea Camp collages to pass time.
Sonia Grunwald, Melissa Ballard, Ursula Granirer, Isabel Kirk, Alex Dierking, Brooke Browning, Kimmery Galindo, Roxi Harvey, & me
The app gives you a bunch of different frames you can just load your pictures into. I personally like the one that looks like a postcard, with a stamp reading, “True Love” in the corner.
You can adjust the background color and the color of the lines between the pictures.
Melissa Ballard and Tristan Reinecke.
Rotating and resizing are a breeze. You can also add filter effects to each photo. Or Instagram it up if you’re into hip kid apps.
Melissa Ballard, Matt Carter, Marco Rossetti, Morgan Larkin, & Russell Maddock
There are also optional stickers you can paste on the pictures, but I never use that feature.
Sonia Grunwald & Greg Feiner
Sonia Grunwald, Lewis Brown & Melissa Ballard
Clearly, I love my friends.
I think they’re hilarious.
Collages are a great way to just jam all the best memories together.
Morgan Larkin, Melissa Ballard, Matt Carter, Greg Feiner, & Marco Rossetti
It’s a good app. And it’s, once again, free.
Mason Townley, Jack Phillips, Nick Riemen, & Ben Kaplan
A couple of weeks ago I bought a cotton candy maker there, on clearance, for $33.
It was absolutely bomb.
To a sugar-freak, cotton candy is actually the greatest food ever.
It’s also the most expensive food ever. If you want a bag of cotton candy the size of a basketball it’s anywhere between $3-7.
And when you go to ball games it’s closer to $10 sometimes…
Basically, it’s however many dollars for about 10 cents worth of sugar.
So yesterday afternoon, I plugged in my cotton candy maker and made some awesome cotton candy.
The cool thing about the Bella Cotton Candy Maker is you can take hard candies (i.e. peppermints, butterscotch, strawberry candies etc.) and turn them into cotton candy too. You don’t need special sugar, any sugar (or sugar-free sugar), just goes into the extractor head and you’re good to go.
It comes with reusable plastic cones, which is good because trying to use meat skewers is a burn.
Also, trying to use anything other than a cone or your fingers just ends up being a gigantic mess.
I’ve wanted a cotton candy maker my whole life. And now, thanks to Target, my dream has come true!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’ve been learning French, and I love everything about it.
It’s just the most beautiful, lyrical, sexy, romantic language in the world. And Paris just sounds like it would be the loveliest city. Also, my friend Hugo lives there and I miss him so incredibly much.
Anyway, I’m excited for my friends to go on the trip and take lots of pictures!
This is a truly great film. The beginning is brilliantly misleading. It starts off as a typical, romantic, boy-meets-girl story.
But as the movie progresses, it spirals down sharply into a nightmarish mess for Rachel McAdams, as her handsome suitor
becomes her menacing captor in a matter of seconds.
It’s not overproduced (underscored with tons of dramatic music). There’s not a gross amount of action (just the right amount). The stunts actually seem plausible and the twists are invigorating.
-Robert Dwyer Joyce, “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”
This poem was written about the 1798 Irish Rebellion, a conflict opposing British rule in Ireland.
It is told from the perspective of a young Irish rebel, torn between his lover and his desire to fight for his country.
He is about to sacrifice his relationship when a British “foeman” shoots his love, killing her.
He goes on to bury her, and take his revenge on British soldiers.
“Our Day Will Come.”
Irish rebels carried barley in their pockets while they traveled, as provisions. The rebels were often buried in mass graves, (called “croppy-holes” because rebels often cropped their hair), leading to barley springing up, marking the graves.
Barley is also said to represent the resilient and regenerative nature of Irish resistance to British occupation.
The title of the poem was borrowed for the 2006 Palme d’Or winning Irish war drama directed by Ken Loach.
It’s a beautiful poem that truly captures a painful moment in history.
Far away, far away
I wanna go far away
To a new life on a new shoreline
Where the water is blue
And the people are new
To another island
In another life…
I went back for my fourth year at Catalina Sea Camp on July 22. I was lucky enough to get all the girls I requested as roommates in my cabin. The eight of us were C2, and our counselor’s name is Kimmery.
But more on the anecdotal stuff later.
She played this song called “Far Away” on the first night to make us fall asleep. I was only half-conscious and the only part of the song I caught was “lobsterman’s wife.” So, much to my roommates’ dismay, I began calling it The Lobster Song. Eventually they joined in; I was pleased.
Anyway, after listening to it a few times we started to realize how it sounded exactly the way we felt about Catalina and camp.
So we decided to sing it as a cabin for the end-of-session talent show, TNT.
Coincidentally, there are eight verses, one for each of us and we just thought that was perfect and fabulous.
We sang the first verse together.
I will live my life As a lobsterman’s wife On an island in the blue bay
Melissa:
He will take care of me He will smell like the sea And close to my heart he’ll always stay
Roxi:
I will bear three girls All with strawberry curls Little Ella and Nellie and Faye
Sonia:
While I’m combing their hair I will catch his warm stare On our island in the blue bay
Isabel:
There’s a boy next to me And he never will be Anything but a boy at the bar
Me:
And I think he’s the tops He’s where everything stops How I love to love him from afar
Brooke:
When he walks right past me Then I finally see On this bar stool I can’t stay
Ursula:
So I’m taking my frown To a far distant town On an island in the blue bay
Alex got the bridge:
I want to go far away. Away away, I want to go far away, away, away I want to go far away, far away
And we ended together:
Where the water is blue and the people are new. To another life, to another life. To another shore line In another life
Catalina, our island in the blue bay, where everyone smells like the sea. And a lot of times when we’re on the mainland, we want to go far away, back to our island.
Ursula, Roxi, Brooke, Melissa, Kimmery, Isabel, Sonia, me & Alex
Bale, Oldman, Neeson and Murphy spoke with American accents in the film, disguising their English and Irish accents respectively.
Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Sir Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth
Gary Oldman as Sgt. James Gordon
Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard/Ra’s al Ghul
Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/the Scarecrow.
Bale, Caine, Murphy, and Oldman reprised their roles in The Dark Knight (2008).
English actor Tom Hardy will portray the new villain and French actress Marion Cotillard will also star in the conclusion to the Batman Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises(2012).
Tom Hardy as Bane
Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate
Iron Man (2008) featured Paul Bettany as the voice of JARVIS, Tony Stark’s computerized butler.
Paul Bettany as the voice of JARVIS
Bettany reprised his role in Iron Man 2 (2010)and The Avengers (2012).
Thor (2011) featured several European actors.
Though Thor himself was played by an Australian, Chris Hemsworth, the main antagonist was played by English actor Tom Hiddleston. Welsh Sir Anthony Hopkins and Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård co-starred as supporting characters. Minor roles were filled by English actors Idris Elba and Ray Stevenson.
Tom Hiddleston as Loki
Sir Anthony Hopkins as Odin
Stellan Skarsgård as Dr. Erik Selvig
Idris Elba as Heimdall
Hiddleston and Skarsgård returned in The Avengers.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) starred English actress/actor Hayley Atwell as the romantic lead and Hugo Weaving as the antagonist.
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull
The X-Men films have featured two prominent English actors.
The original X-Men Trilogy starred Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan from 2000-2006. They were then replaced by Scottish actor James McAvoy and Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender in the origin story X-Men film(s).
Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier
Ian McKellan as Erik Lensherr/Magneto
James McAvoy as Professor Charles Xavier
Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr/Magneto
And I conclude with the latest superhero movie release (as of Wednesday, July 12, 2012), the 2012 reboot: The Amazing Spider-Man.
English actor Andrew Garfield threw out his accent during the film, while Rhys Ifans got to keep his.
Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard
I don’t know why, but European actors have cornered the market on American superhero movies.
Although many of them have to hide their devastatingly attractive accents (or use different devastatingly attractive accents), they often emerge as the most popular characters in their respective films.
Ok. Favorite character rant time:
I know that even with an ensemble cast of huge Hollywood stars, relative newcomer Tom Hiddleston came out on top as the most popular character in The Avengers.
He was also the favorite in Thor.
Watch that ^^^; it will give you chills. Go to 0:39 if you’re pressed for time.
Tom Hiddleston is perfect. Period.
I, personally, liked Cillian Murphy the best of all the characters in Batman Begins.
Look at him. Isn’t he beautiful?
Sorry, Christian. You’re very close second.
Then, of course, there are the leading men in X-Men: First Class.
Their relationship in this movie is just hilarious. They’re so sassy and British; I LOVE IT!
And how about that new kid in The Amazing Spider-Man, huh?
He’s just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I’m not sure if Europeans expect more out of their actors or what.
But I do know that I enjoy watching them immensely.
The way they carry themselves, how they articulate, their mannerisms and their depth of emotion seem better to me somehow.
(With the exception of Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, and Mira Sorvino).
As you can see, “superhero” is my favorite movie genre.
"Far away, far away
I wanna go far away
To a new life on a new shoreline
Where the water is blue
And the people are new
To another island
In another life..."
infiniteblue 