The Bird and the Bee - Polite Dance Song

I've never before seen a near-riot over the destruction of a 7-foot snow bunny...

Slightly disturbing if you don't like seeing elderly people backing their thangs up.

Chester French - She Loves Everybody

All I know about Chester French: (1) They were formed by Harvard students, (2) band member Max Drummey married the 19-year-old Peaches Gedolf in Vegas last year, and (3) Pharrell Williams is obsessed with them. Now I am going to repent for my poor academic behavior. How I managed to sleep through an entire 90-minute physics lecture after gulping a tall coffee... I still don't understand.

Blue - All Rise

I was going to post some pretentious hipster music but then I got all nostalgic about travelling and non-skeezy male artists and had to put this up. Because we all need some Boy Band in our life sometimes yeah? It was a tough choice between this and One Love but I felt that this one ultimately trumped OL in lametardedness. <3

Hahah. I cannot believe this was cool once. But it's damn catchy... I feel like dancing in a synchronized formation now.

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance

Another amazingly creative video... I love the part with the scarf, and when she falls into the water.... that's some sweet stop-motion. And the song's not bad either :)

She fights for her life
As she puts on her coat
And she fights for her life on the train
She looks at the rain as it pours
And she fights for her life
As she goes in a store
With a thought she has caught by a thread
She pays for the bread
And she goes...
Nobody knows

Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

Haha this is a cute video!

Meiko - Boys with Girlfriends

Living is so tiring to me. Maybe it's the way I allocate my time that exhausts me so quickly--recently I've been inserting blue boxes into every white space on my Google Calendar without taking into account how much ballroom exhausts me or how much time I need to get ready or where I need to leave time to breathe. People at Penn impress me so much with their work hard, play hard mentality and how they manage to keep it all together through it all (or at least keep a reasonable front). They seem to able to make Monday classes with hangovers, get straight-As yet not be one of those studious "missing" people.

In New Zealand, things were all about meeting people and exploring which was absolutely awesomely relaxing. But as evidenced by the independent project I took up and the winter job search and the side work I started on my portfolio while I was there, something in my nature stops me from sitting still for long periods of time. I constantly need to push myself, I need to be better... I need to go out on Fridays yet I need to work on my demo reel alone tonight. But unlike most of my peers, living this double life is way-y-y beyond my capacity. So I end up stretching myself out until the breaking point and I dissolve into a blubbery mess over existential/quarter-life crisis of-the-month. It's almost as routine as my menstrual cycle. (OH MY GOD. Correlation. Haha.)

I can't stop. I can't stop wanting even though it's wearing me down. And I know it's a stretch to say I'll never truly be happy chasing my desires 'round and 'round, but it really scares the shit out of me to think that there's so end in sight. It almost makes me want to give up now and sleep for the next twenty years. Except I'd wake up all pissy everyone else got their degrees and dream careers while all I accomplished was... nothing... I can't even stand the thought. That's not happiness to me. Somehow, idle happiness is not happiness to me.

How do you do it, summa cum laude fraternity boy? How do you take seven classes, ballroom dancer? Where do you find the extra time and energy--and how much are you willing to sell it to me for?

MIA - Ten Dollar

I'm feeling inordinately pissy right now. The carrot-cake-flavoured Clif Bar I'm eating has real bits of carrot & looks like one of those rubber gag barf splatters. Ballroom sucks. I am growing horizontally. Don't want to study for Physics tomorrow.

What can I get for ten dollar? Anything you want.

Junior Boys - In The Morning / Daft Punk - Technologic

I don't know what happened to me between the last fourteen years of my education and this semester, but all of a sudden I'm making it to my early-morning class consistently on time. Every time the fifth alarm on my cell phone rings at 8:30am I'm certain I won't think consciously again until I awake with a start four hours later, but then I surprise myself by dashing down the stairs and making it. And staying alert and interested throughout 90 minutes of lecture.

I'm sort of scaring myself.

What brings me to Annenberg two 9ams a week is a class called Communication and Persuasion, taught by Professor Cappella--yeah, I'm trying to learn their names now. *(When I took Physics I didn't realize my prof was Hollebeek and not Fortune for, eh, a month or so...) This is a boring topic for someone completely uninterested in advertising, politics, or anything that requires this manipulative skill, but the lecturer makes it interesting in the way he speaks and presents his points. I've had too many teachers (unfortunately in compsci, math, and other technical fields) that don't speak well or don't engage their class in the topic, and because of this I inevitably lose interest and stop attending class at all. And he's very clear, which I realize is important when I place him next to my engaging but hard-to-follow World Film prof (he throws in so much film jargon that goes way over my head). He's making me freakishly excited about formulating a Health PSA to practice persuasion techniques; he even makes me want to raise my hand in a big lecture class. He shows the Colbert Report and Blagojevich interviews in class that are entertaining yet intregal in my understanding of his examples. This is really a good teacher. For once, I feel like I'm doing good in spending (as my one-time Biology prof informed us) the $4000 we do per class at Penn.

Rediscovering Van Pelt in between lectures while rediscovering So You Think You Can Dance music from 2007 while avoiding Physics. I haven't been a good student since college, a straight-A student since 9th grade, a top student since 6th when I moved from near-rural Massachusetts to the Three Village School District. I know grades are all relative, but I wonder if I can make this education worth it after two years of slacking off.

Listening: Junior Boys - In The Morning (this song is so hot, in a sleazy way) | Daft Punk - Technologic (after the Humans are Dead robots will go clubbing to this song)

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

This is your brain... this is your brain on drugs. While hobbling to Student Health this afternoon every song on my iPod seemed too loud, too fast, too offensive... except for this one! Fever-head manifested as a melody sounds like this. Lalala.

Just a perfect day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone good

Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

This is one of my favororororitest songs of all time--it's so pretty I can't describe it in words, you'll have to listen for yourself. A friend of mine introduced it to me in freshman year, during which I remember many nights listening to it on my iPod, lying awake in bed and thinking. Strangely happy memories :)

I am gluttonously devouring a tub of cereal and blogging. Too much dance and class and sickness and deadline-ness there's no time to breathe. And think. And happily become a fattie.

Aretha Franklin - My Country Tis Of Thee / Itzhak, Yo-Yo, co. - Air & Simple Gifts

Aretha and her gargantuan bow

Yo-Yo Ma is so smiley :D

MGMT - The Youth

Wtf is up with the glittery hipster children in this video? I never liked this song but it got very stuck in my head for no reason on Saturday.

This is a call of arms to live and love and sleep together
We could flood the streets with love or light or heat whatever
Lock the parents out, cut a rug, twist and shout
Wave your hands
Make it rain
For stars will rise again

The youth is starting to change
Are you starting to change?
Are you?
Together, together, together, together...

Chopin Ballade No. 1 (from The Pianist)

Kind of want to see this movie again.