I can't wait to see Wes Anderson's new film, Moonrise Kingdom. In Nashville, it's playing at the Belcourt today through July 5th. Preview & showtimes here.
My favorite album of the summer is Diamond Rug's self-titled album. They performed live on the Late Show with David Letterman Monday night. Watch here.
Speaking of late night, did anyone else see Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the other night when he worked out with LMFAO to "The Spin Class Song"? OMG. Watch here. Nice biceps, Fallon. Who knew?
On Friday night, Abigail, my 6 year old niece, spent the night with us. She loves our house. She loves our stairs; she loves Linda; she loves my jewelry; & she really loves my nail polish. I set her up a little nail station upstairs & she immediately started painting our nails.
Hilariously, she starts painting at the top of the nail & paints down to the cuticle & then covers all the surrounding skin. It's a pretty thorough paint job, albeit a bit messy.
I don't know how many of you have experience with 6 year olds, but they like to go through all your stuff & find things that you didn't think about them finding. I don't know, like your auxiliary makeup that you don't keep in your makeup bag.
Let's all take a minute to remember the lipstick & eyeshadow that perished this weekend. $24 NARS lip pot, you put up a good fight, but you didn't stand a chance against a 6 year old with a seemingly endless supply of Q-tips & a love of age-inappropriate vampy red lips. You'll be missed. Stila eye shadow palette, same goes for you. RIP.
This is the outfit she put on for dinner Friday night. She calls that silk slip her "tutu". You can't tell, but she's wearing easily 5-7 different necklaces. Also, that purse is weighed down with all the nail polish & makeup she could fit in there.
I had all these ideas about where to take her to dinner, but she wanted pizza & she wanted to go somewhere "new". I've already taken her to Pie In The Sky & Five Points Pizza, so we tried Pizza Perfect. She loved it. She wanted ice cream afterwards, so we went to Bobby Dairy's Dip. She hated it & kept saying that she had just wanted coffee ice cream like last time. I finally realized that she was talking about Jeni's. Oh well. There was a gaggle of teenage girls at Bobby's & she was content to sit there all night & stare at them. We left when they left.
I was not even aware that we owned a magnifying glass, but apparently we do & she found it & read herself to sleep with it. This is a big coffee table book on The Royal Wedding - Diana, not Kate. We're really into princesses.
On Saturday morning, she woke up at 6:30 & asked for waffles, so I took her to Pancake Pantry. Close enough. Afterwards, we came back home & she painted her nails 100 more times, we played school & she played outside with Linda. She was getting restless & downloading K-Pop from our OnDemand (?!?!). I had to have her home soon, so I took her to McKay to stock up on books for summer. She picked out a bunch of Dr. Seuss books & Disney books about princesses & then one book on sharks. She "read" me the shark book on the way home, "Sharks live in the water. They have teeth. Their teeth fall out & grow back. They have long tails. They swim really fast." And now you know. Sharks. Truth.
Yesterday was Father's Day & we spent the day in Smyrna. Note the hilarious message tee my dad wore. Ha! His day, his t-shirt. As my mom said yesterday, the apple didn't fall far....
I finished reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green over the weekend. After his earlier book, Looking For Alaska, made the local news by being banned in a few schools, Tiffany sent me his new book for my birthday (she sent me Looking For Alaska last year, which I'm now reading).
Both books are YA, but not Twilight-YA. I honestly didn't feel like I was reading a book that I'm too old to be reading. Sure, it's a book who's main characters are 16 years old, but it didn't feel juvenile or immature. In fact, it felt quite the opposite as it centers around a pretty heavy issue, cancer, & child cancer at that.
The protagonist, Hazel, is 16 & has terminal cancer. She meets & falls in love with Augustus, who lost his leg to cancer, but is currently in remission. I really liked both of these characters. They're kindred spirits & it's simultaneously refreshing & heartbreaking to watch their relationship develop.
Green tackles some big issues, like cancer, obviously, but also life, love & death. The book is for ages 14 & up, but this 36 year old thoroughly enjoyed it. In the few days since I've finished it, I've found myself thinking about Hazel & Augustus a lot & wishing their story continued.
I recently bought a Groupon for Hot Yoga Plus, but I had one class left in my package at Epic Yoga, so I went to Epic's 8am class on Saturday. When I got out of class, I had a voice mail from my friend Heidi, who works at lululemon, telling me to stop in & see her because their Align Ultra Mats (that I love) are on sale for $19. Done! While I was in there, I remembered I had a store gift card (thanks, Claudia!), so I bought a new tank top, too.
I hadn't had breakfast or coffee yet, so I treated myself (treat yo self!) to my fav Morning Glory muffin & latte at Whole Foods. I never shop at Whole Foods. I'm a Trader Joe's & Publix kind of gal, but while I was sitting in there, I remembered that we're out of coffee, so I strolled over to check out their selection. They had this awesome British guy working the coffee station, Kim. He told me he grew up in England, but with Italian parents, so he grew up drinking tea & lattes. He asked me all these questions about when I drink coffee, why I drink coffee, how I take it, etc. & then he helped me decide what to buy. He really pushed me to buy the Roast Inc. Brazil blend, but it was $14.99 for a little bag & that's way more than I usually spend, so I bought the Whole Foods Brazil coffee for less than half the price. I haven't had it yet, but I hope it's good. Oh! He also gave me a free bottle of Roast's iced coffee. Such great customer service! Well done, Whole Foods!
While John was working on Saturday night, I sat outside with a glass of red wine & caught up on some magazine reading. It was so nice out! I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner & decided to finally start watching Girls. OMG! Why haven't I been watching this show? I love it! I made it through the first 4 or 5 episodes. I think there are 8 so far. Love it!
My friend Jaime treated me to a guest pass at Bonnaroo yesterday. Being the 36 year old, working women that we are, we decided one day was enough. Bonnaroo Music Festival is a 4-day music festival that happens on a 700 acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. This year was it's 11th year, but it was my first time. I don't really do outdoor music festivals, unless, as I've learned, I have a VIP pass, including VIP parking. Above is Jaime & I at the beginning of our 7 hour day.
There's apparently a carnival? I don't know. It was too far to walk. Good picture though. Oh, & note the sky. It was grey, fairly cool & rained off & on all day. Thus, my lack of sunscreen & subsequent "bonnaburn"...
The Beach Boys performed on the main stage. It was awesome! That's Brian Wilson on the big screen. It was a kind of a rough start, but they pulled it together. It was super cool to hear all these songs that I've loved all my life performed live.
We found John at The Beach Boys show. Note the sunburn that I was still unaware of. So bad.... After The Beach Boys, we watched Ben Folds Five & the Shins. All three shows were really good, but the Shins win the prize. Hopefully I can see them again at The Ryman in October. We missed Bon Iver & The Civil Wars because my body turned against me. I think I either had sun poisoning or the beginnings of a fever, or maybe those are the same thing. Regardless, I was shivering & burning up at the same time, so we left an hour into the Shins show. I love you, Shins!
Disclaimer: neither this book, nor this review are for the faint of heart. Proceed with caution. And maybe don't proceed at all if you know me via a familial or professional relationship.
That's right. I read it. Oh, shut up. You know I've been watching Game of Thrones. It was a natural, inevitable progression.
So I downloaded Fifty Shades Of Grey onto my Kindle to read while flying to & fro NYC last weekend. I actually slept on the flight there & didn't read anything. When I got to NYC, my friend said she had read it on her flight. I told her I had it, but hadn't started it yet. She said to start it immediately & to be careful around the 20% mark because that's when it really gets going.
I had A LOT of time to kill on Sunday between returning the rental car, waiting on flights, etc., so I started reading it. It's a slow starter, but I'm a fast reader & I hit 20% in no time. I'm reading, reading, reading, watching the Kindle percentage slowly creep up, waiting on stuff to happen & then, like I had been warned, I hit 20% & there it is. And there it stays for the remaining 80% of the book.
This should go without saying, but this book is not for the faint of heart. Danielle Steele, it ain't. Fifty Shades Of Grey is like if American Psycho & The Flame and the Flower had a baby. And then that baby came out wearing a leather mask with a mouth zipper.
In typical fashion, I did my research AFTER reading the book. I did not know that this book/trilogy was originally developed as Twilight fanfiction & titled Master of the Universe. The books were released as e-books & relied on blogs & word of mouth for publicity. As you know if you've been on Facebook, or watching morning news programs, these books quickly went viral. So much so, that Vintage Books picked up the license & re-released the books in a new & revised edition in April 2012. And here we are.
The reviews are all across the board, although all agree on how bad the prose is. And it is, including numerous grammatical errors. All of that aside, my main complaint is the heroine's inner dialogue. Throughout the entire book, she is referring to her "inner goddess" & self conscious, consulting them as the proverbial devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. It was the most annoying part of the book for me. Also, & those of you with a uterus can back me up here, in the real world, homegirl would have been suffering from a crippling yeast infection. Truth.
I don't typically read books like this. I tend to stick with the classics. You know, like Harry Potter. Granted, I'm reading my way through the Sookie Stackhouse series & those are pretty risque, but nothing like this. For those of you who don't know, as I didn't, Shades isn't just sex. It's BDSM, a term I was unfamiliar with. According to Wikipedia, it is a form of personal relationship involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation & fantasy power role play. Um, yeah, it's intense.
As I'm sure you've heard, this book is referred to as "mommy porn". My friend & I discussed this & the sheer horror we'd experience if our mothers read this book. I'm obviously aware that I didn't come into being via immaculate conception, but the thought of my mom reading/enjoying this book is mortifying. In fact, just knowing that she'll read this post is uncomfortable (sorry, Mom!).
Now, all of this being said, I liked this book. I know, I know. I've been telling everyone all week, "It's the worst book I've ever read & I couldn't put it down!". If you're the least bit interested, I say read it. Live a little. It's a perfect beach/vacation read. It's super short. I read it in two days. If at all possible, I do recommend reading it on a Kindle though. Discretion is your friend.
I'll probably read the other two books in the trilogy. Apparently there are a million of these, just waiting to be published. I've heard reports varying from 6 - 14 additional books. Jeez. I don't know if I'll dedicate that much time to this weird series, but I'll probably read the next two. I mean, I don't see nothin' wrong with a little...
This was a really low-key weekend. I plowed through the second season of Game of Thrones. I'm almost caught up. I also exercised a lot. I walked the red trail at Percy Werner on Saturday with my East Nasty friend, Heidi. It was so hard! I don't know how you fools run that. Then on Sunday, I ran Belle Meade Boulevard with Cara.
Saturday night, we met friends for dinner at Coco's Italian Market. I strayed from my usual order of meatball pizza & went with the fettuccine & meatballs. Meh... It was okay, but I really regretted not getting the pizza. Live & learn.
