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The Freshest Move I’ve Ever Seen

That quote comes from the most hilarious European dance video I’ve ever seen (“Something Good” from Utah Saints). It’s been a while since I watched it and wanted to share the awesomeness known as the Running Man. Emma and Minx, this one is for you.

Also, just because I’m feeling nostalgic, I want to dedicate a moment to the hotness that is David Bowie. He is the ONLY man I know who can still look smoking while wearing glitter. Yes….glitter. This is him a la Labyrinth, one of my favorite movies of all time.

My favorite line from the song? “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. I move the stars for no one.” What can I say? He’s the hotness.

SITE UPDATES

**SITE UPDATES**

 

I will be switching to a new host this week. If at any point you visit and experience slow load times or error messages, please go to my mirrored site www.michellelaurenbooks.wordpress.com. Hopefully, everything will transfer smoothly.

 

Writer’s Block Blues

It’s been one of those months for me. At the end of July, I was on a writing streak. I churned out two short stories, had just finished a 2k article, and was roaring to go on some new novellas. Then August 1st rolled around and…

Nothing.

Not a peep from my so-called Muse. I’ve tried prewriting, sketching out dialogue, changing scenery to jumpstart ideas. I even took time off, which is hard for this self-appointed workaholic. My muse is eerily silent right now and it stinks. Wanting to write something and not being able to is the worst feeling for someone in my profession.

I know from experience that these phases never last long. Usually, only a few weeks, and then I’m back in business. However, I dislike having to wait it out until my creativity returns.

How do you get over writer’s block?

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

OMG!!!!! I’m so thrilled that I stumbled across this at Emma Petersen’s blog, a link to the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog. I tried to view it once before but couldn’t. So, YAY!!!! Neil Patrick Harris (a.k.a. Doogie Howser) is in it and has an amazing voice.

This is hilarious. It’s a prime example of why I LOVE Joss Whedon. My favorite quote so far? “I have a Ph.D. in horribleness.”

John Hughes Bonanza

“Can I borrow your underpants for 10 minutes?”

 

First: If you don’t know what movie that line came from, where have you been the last 20 years? I shed a tear for anyone who hasn’t seen the nostalgic wonder that is Sixteen Candles. 

 

You’ve missed out on something great. In honor of that, I’m dedicating this post to the awesomeness that is writer, producer and director John Hughes (a.k.a. Edmond Dantès. Who wouldn’t like someone with the humor to allude to himself as the Count of Monte Cristo? Classic.)

 

John Hughes is famous for his coming of age films. He’s given us tons of classics, as well as canonized a slew of actors and actresses such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall (a.k.a. “The Geek”), Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. His films are some of the most highly quoted and alluded to in the film industry, in my opinion. They are instant cult classics. 

 

I’ve broken this post up into three sections: the meme; the quotes; and the clips. Feel free to add your favorite quotes or John Hughes films. Enjoy!

 

MEME

Below, I’ve listed all of his works from Imdb.com. For those of you who haven’t done these types of memes before, here are the rules:

Bold the ones you’ve seen; Italicize the ones you own; and Underline the ones you love.

1.   Drillbit Taylor (2008)  

2.   Beethoven’s 5th (2003)  

3.   Maid in Manhattan (2002)

4.   Home Alone 4 (2002)

5.   Beethoven’s 4th (2001)  

6.   Just Visiting (2001)  

7.   Beethoven’s 3rd (2000)  

8.   Reach the Rock (1998)  

9.   Home Alone 3 (1997)  

10.           Flubber (1997)

11.           101 Dalmatians (1996)  

12.           Miracle on 34th Street (1994)  

13.           Baby’s Day Out (1994)  

14.           Beethoven’s 2nd (1993)  

15.           Dennis the Menace (1993)

16.           Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)  

17.           Beethoven (1992)  

18.           Curly Sue (1991)  

19.           Dutch (1991)

20.           Career Opportunities (1991)

21.           Home Alone (1990)

22.           Christmas Vacation (1989)

23.           Uncle Buck (1989)  

24.           The Great Outdoors (1988)  

25.           She’s Having a Baby (1988)  

26.           Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)  

27.           Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)  

28.           Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

29.           Pretty in Pink (1986)

30.           Weird Science (1985)

31.           European Vacation (1985)

32.           The Breakfast Club (1985)  

33.           Sixteen Candles (1984)  

34.           Nate and Hayes (1983)

35.           Vacation/a.k.a. National Lampoon’s Vacation (UK)/American Vacation  (1983)

36.           Mr. Mom (1983)

37.           Class Reunion/ a.k.a. National Lampoon’s Class Reunion (1982)

 

QUOTES (thanks to imdb.com for the quotes)

** Note** I’ve altered some of the dialogue to replace the curses with milder language. For the uncensored versions, please see the quotes section of imdb.com for these films.

 

from Sixteen Candles

The Geek [Anthony Michael Hall]: Can I borrow your underpants for 10 minutes?

________________________________________

[on the phone to the police]
Howard: What was he wearing? Well, uh, let’s see, he was wearing a red argyle sweater, and tan trousers, and red shoes… No, he’s not retarded.

 ____________________________________________

 

Jake: I do independent study with her. I catch her lookin’ at me a lot. It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always lookin’ at me.
Jock: Maybe she’s retarded.
Jake: I’m being serious, ok. She looks at me like she’s in love with me.

            _____________________________________________

The Geek: How’s it going?
Samantha [Molly Ringwald]: How’s what going?
The Geek: You know – things, life, whatnot.
Samantha: Life is not whatnot, and it’s none of your business.

 

---

from Weird Science

Garry: That’s not a bad idea.
Wyatt: What?
Garry: Making a girl. Actually making a girl. Like Frankenstein… except cuter.
Wyatt: [stands up] You’re serious?
[Gary grabs Wyatt by the collar and pulls him towards him]
Garry: Look me in the eye. Do I look serious?
Wyatt: Gary Wallace, that’s-that’s gross! That’s sick! I am not digging up dead girls!
[Gary puts his hand over Wyatt's mouth and sits him down on the bed]
Garry: No, I’m not talking about digging up dead girls, Wyatt. I’m talking about your system, idiot, your computer!

 

Garry: We’re in.
Wyatt: We’re in trouble Gary. This is highly illegal.
Garry: We need more input. We gotta fill this thing up with data. We gotta make her as real as possible, Wyatt. I want her to live. I want her to breathe. I want her to aerobicize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

from the Breakfast Club

 

Andrew [Emilio Estevez]: We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.

 

---

Allison Reynolds [Ally Sheedy]: Your middle name is Ralph, as in puke, your birth date’s March 12th, you’re 5′9 and a half, you weigh 130 pounds and your social security number is 049380913.
Andrew Clark: Wow. Are you psychic?
Allison Reynolds: No.
Brian Johnson [Anthony Michael Hall]: Well, would you mind telling me how you know all this about me?
Allison Reynolds: I stole your wallet.

 

___________________________________________________________

Claire Standish[Molly Ringwald]: You know why guys like you knock everything?
John Bender [Judd Nelson]: Oh, this should be stunning.
Claire Standish: It’s because you’re afraid.
John Bender: Oh God, you richies are so smart, that’s exactly why I’m not heavy into activities.
Claire Standish: You’re a big coward.
Brian Johnson: I’m in the math club.
Claire Standish: See, you’re afraid that they won’t take you, you don’t belong, so you have to just dump all over it.
John Bender: Well, it wouldn’t have anything to do with you activities people being jerks, now would it?
Claire Standish: Well, you wouldn’t know, you don’t even know any of us.
John Bender: Well, I don’t know any lepers, but I’m not going to run out and join one of their freaking clubs.
Andrew Clark: Hey. Let’s watch the mouth, huh?
Brian Johnson: I’m in the physics club too.
John Bender: Excuse me a sec. What are you babbling about?
Brian Johnson: Well, what I had said was I’m in the math club, uh, the Latin, and the physics club… physics club.
John Bender: Hey, Cherry. Do you belong to the physics club?
Claire Standish: That’s an academic club.
John Bender: So?
Claire Standish: So academic clubs aren’t the same as other kinds of clubs.
John Bender: Ah… but to dorks like him, they are. What do you guys do in your club?
Brian Johnson: Well, in physics we… we talk about physics, properties of physics.
John Bender: So it’s sorta social, demented and sad, but social. Right?

 _______________________________________________

[Claire is doing Allison's make-up]
Claire: You know, you look a lot better without all that black stuff under your eyes.
Allison Reynolds: Hey, I like all that black stuff… Why are you being so nice to me?
Claire: Because you’re letting me.

 _______________________________________________ 

Andrew Clark: You don’t have any goals.
John Bender: Oh but I do.
Andrew Clark: Yeah?
John Bender: I wanna be just like you. I figure all I need, is a lobotomy and some tights.
Brian Johnson: You wear tights?
Andrew Clark: No I don’t wear tights. I wear the required uniform.
Brian Johnson: Tights.
Andrew Clark: Shut up.

 

CLIPS

**Coming Soon**

2008 Olympics

I’m a major Nastia Liukin fan. What she does on the uneven bars is just amazing. But what’s so great is that she can perform at an equal level in floor routines as well as on the balance beam, as shown below.

NOTE: I’ve made the pictures link to different things. The one below goes to Nastia’s official site, while the next goes to NBC’s Olympic Gymnastics page.

I’m eager to see how she does in the Women’s All-Around category. ** UPDATE** Nastia won GOLD for Women’s All-Around. CONGRATULATIONS!!   There has been some controversy over the judging last night. I think some of the judges were scoring Nastia too low. But either way, she still got her Gold medal, which was very deserved.

What was your favorite moment of the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

 

In Response to the BBC’s Big Read

*Update: someone was very kind enough to correct me about which Big Read this list came from. This is actually one from the U.K. and compiled by the BBC, whereas the NEA’s Big Read provides grants to communities. I was wondering why the NEA site didn’t have this list. So thanks to spcoleman for correcting me on this!*

While going over the BBC’s Big Read List , I felt a bit bad that I hadn’t read a majority of the 100 or so listed books. So I’ve listed some of the “classic” books that I HAVE read to make me look less like a literary slacker. Enjoy!

1. Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe

2. Paradise Lost by John Milton

3. Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

4. Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller

5. Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

6. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

7. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

8. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

9. The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

10. Selected short stories by Flannery O’Connor

11. Don Quixote by Cervantes

12. Selected works of Edgar Allan Poe (including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” my fave Southern Gothic short story)

13. The Oz Chronicles (Don’t hate. I know I’m not the only one on the L. Frank Baum love train. Own it, people.)

14. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

15. Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles

16. The Odyssey by Homer

17. Faust by Goethe

18. Shakespeare: Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, the Rape of Lucrece

19. The Giving Tree by Lois Lowry

20. The Little House on the Prairie series

21. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

22. The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (a.k.a. Julie Andrews the movie star)

23. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery

24. Deerskin by Robin McKinley

25. The Sword & the Crown by Robin McKinley

26. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede

27. The Prince by Machiavelli

28. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

29. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

30. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

31. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

32. Matilda by Roald Dahl

33. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

34. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

35. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

36. Holes by Louis Sachar (Yearling Newberry Award Winner)

37. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

38. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

39. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

40. Night by Elie Wiesel

41. Beowulf

42. Candide by Voltaire

43. Lysistrata by Aristophanes

44. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

45. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

46. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

47. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen

48. The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

49. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

50. Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

51. The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

52. Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

53. The Misanthrope by Molière

54. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

55. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

56. Volpone by Ben Johnson

57. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee

58. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

59. The Yellow Wallpaper byCharlotte Perkins Gilman

60. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

61. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer

62. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn

63. The Adventures of Eovaai by Eliza Haywood

Additionally, I thought I would have my own little, literary awards list for books. Without further adieu, here they are:

Most Terrifying Children’s Book

Watership Down (Trust me. You will never look at rabbits the same way again. This book did for rabbits what The Secret of Nimh did for rats–turned them into highly intelligent, militant creatures that will haunt your dreams.)

Worst Plot Ever

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Do you want the summation? Basically, the characters talk about going to the lighthouse. Nothing happens. They talk some more. Nothing happens. Someone mentions going to the lighthouse. Nothing happens. Years and seasons pass. They go to lighthouse. THE END.)

Best Series

Children: The Oz Chronicles (First Place); Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (Second Place) **I’m sure some of you wonder why I didn’t go for Harry Potter. See the next award.

Intermediate: Lord of the Rings

Adult: The Monere series by Sunny

Worst Series Ending Ever

First Place: Harry Potter. Why? I never got into the author’s writing style, though I like the movies. But the overall reason this series sucks for me? ALMOST ALL OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS DIE. This is like the narrative version of Heroes.

Second Place: A Series of Unfortunate Events. Why? Talk about an anti-climax. If you manage to get to book 13 in the series and find out the “mystery” of the fires and Beatrice, then you might understand my upset with this author.

Most Likely to Cause Narcolepsy

Moby Dick (Spoiler Alert: Crazed Captain Ahab is obsessed with finding the whale who maimed him and, after hunting him for hundreds of pages, dies. Ishmael survives.)

Best Battle of the Sexes

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

Most Confusing Narrative

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Most Obscure Love Scene

As I Lay Dying (Trust me. If you’ve read the book, you know what I mean. If you blink, you’ve literally missed it.) If I can find the scene again, I’ll post it.

<p>

Most Depressing Book

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Most Unbelievable Plot/Timeline

Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare. (I don’t know why Shakespeare expected me to believe that in two days –give or take a day– the main characters managed to meet, fall madly in love, get engaged, get into a duel, kill a cousin, get banished from the kingdoms, get engaged to someone else, consummate their marriage, concoct a fake suicide plan to escape marriage to someone else, accidentally kill themselves and get discovered. All this without the aid of time travel or clones. Nonsense.)

Most Pointless Tragedy

First Place: Romeo & Juliet

Why? Well, the entire thing could have been avoided by a less contrived plan. For instance, since Romeo had already consummated the marriage, why flee? The Prince wouldn’t have wanted Juliet if she was no longer a virgin and possibly pregnant with another man’s child. Or why not just both run and live somewhere else?

Second Place: Othello

Must I count the ways? First, Othello was such a jerk and incredibly oblivious to the obvious. Some guy you beat for a promotion suddenly turns all Cyrano de Bergerac and you listen, to the point that you take a handkerchief as valid proof of your bride’s infidelity and, instead of asking her and working things out, your solution is to strangle her? Utter nonsense.

Actually, I could add most of Shakespeare’s tragedies to this list. Keep in mind: I adore Shakespeare’s writing, but his vehicle for tragedies usually involved characters that were too stupid to live (i.e. King Lear).

Third Place: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Most Meaningful Books I Refuse to Read

Roots by Alex Haley. I’m sorry. I know how important this book is at exposing the violent history of slavery, of showing the triumph of human spirit, as well as the need for equality and freedom, but I can’t read this book or watch the movie. It just hits me too close to home and makes me emotional.

Most Paranoid Book

1984

Most Ridiculous Quest/Adventure Book

Don Quixote by Cervantes (Honestly–his quest was to defeat a windmill? Really? I know he was mentally unstable, but that’s sort of like an “epic quest” to unclog the toilet.)

Feel free to add “awards” of your own. Hope you enjoyed it!  (P.S. Sorry if the spacing is off. It seems to keep changing between when I post and when it loads to the page.)

The Big Read (X-Posted)

*Update: someone was very kind enough to correct me about which Big Read this list came from. This is actually one from the U.K. and compiled by the BBC, whereas the NEA’s Big Read provides grants to communities. I was wondering why the NEA site didn’t have this list. So thanks to spcoleman for correcting me on this!*

Hey everyone,

I was web surfing and came across Michelle Rowen’s blog and found this interesting list. I’ve copied the instructions from her site:

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible –halfway through
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –I’ve read MOST of his works
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker (This is my all-time favorite movie; however, I’m iffy on the style in which the book is written, so it’ll take me some time to get around to reading it)
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams—I will never read this book. Why? The cartoon of this movie terrified me as a child.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

**I added this one because it should be on here**101 Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston

Looking back at the list, I’m amazed at how many books I haven’t read. I have over 200 books in my personal library, including many of these classics. This list gives me something to aim for in the future.

So, how did YOU do on the list?

**By the way: If any of you are interested in learning more about the Big Read, click the name and go directly to the site.**

Waah!

I can’t add my Shelfari bookshelf widget to Word Press. It’s probably me because I’m doing too much stuff at once, but it’s so annoying. Here are the instructions from Shelfari:

To install the widget on WordPress.com, just cut and paste the HTML code below to the Sidebar Editor on WordPress.

I got the cut and past part. I went to my Widgets in Word Press and added one called “Text,” then pasted the code into the blank space. Nothing happened. Can anyone help me?