London blogging: my Emily Blunt non-sighting

OK, so as you may or may not know, I am in London right now for a 3-week internship at the Blue Elephant, a little fringe theatre in Camberwell. It's a for-credit short study abroad program, in which we basically pay to go to London and work for free. I will be blogging about my adventures intermittently if and when I find the time.

Today, I just HAD to share a little story about what happened (or rather, didn't happen) to me this morning.

So we got in yesterday morning and were up basically for two full days at a time until last night when we finally were able to get a night's sleep. And naturally, I wanted to sleep in. I actually wasn't feeling well in the morning, which exacerbated my desire to sleep in, take a long shower, and mook around the room getting organized, instead of going out and randomly walking around. But that's what the other kids here wanted to do. So they did that, and right when they got back and we congregated, we had a convo that went basically like this:

Elizabeth: "OMG!!! This morning, on the street, we saw Emily... er... Emily Bl-- Br-- Emily B--... um...

Me: "YOU SAW EMILY BLUNT!?"

Elizabeth: "YES!!!"

Me: "OMG why wasn't I there!?!?"

Elizabeth: "We saw her right there on the street, she passed right by us! And I wanted to talk to her but I was too busy doing THIS: (makes silly, dumbfounded look)"

Me: "I can't believe I wasn't there!!! That is the best celebrity sighting EVER!"

Elizabeth: "I should've asked her how to get to the tube station!"

Me: "You mean as if she were a complete stranger?"

Elizabeth: "Yes."

Me: "She would've figured it out, but she probably would've told you anyway. You should've been like, 'could I please have directions to the nearest tube station... and YOUR AUTOGRAPH???'"

Elizabeth: "Yeah but I didn't of that until it was too late. We saw her go into an art gallery thing, where a bunch of people started looking at her funny, and we figured they were about to cause a scene and we shouldn't be part of it. She's SO pretty, even more in real life than onscreen. She was wearing all black, including really cool black boots."

Me: "She's totally prettier than Anne Hathaway. But Anne Hathaway is like even skinnier than her, which makes it funny that they joked about how she was fat."

Elizabeth: "She's totally skinnier than Anne Hathaway."

...

Anyway. I was pissed. A primo celebrity sighting on the very first day, and of course I missed it. Damn. Hugh Grant apparently lives in this neighborhood, so we might see him around. But still, even if he did, that's not as good as EMILY fr*king BLUNT. I don't give two pips about Hugh Grant. But if I saw Emily Blunt all the street, all bad-ass in her gothic attire and fabulous boots, I'd scream like a little girl.

Of course other things happened to me today, but nothing as cool as that. And it didn't even happen. Damn damn damn

Stay safe, Barack.

Ugly Racism, Part 2

Ugh.

You should be watching it:

Start with the miniseries. You'll be glad you did.

WHO'S HOTTER: (special nostalgia edition) Jamie Bamber or Michael Trucco?

So, it just occurred to me that WHO'S HOTTER? ended without my asking THE. MOST. IMPORTANT. QUESTION.

JAMBIE BAMBER or

MICHAEL TRUCCO???

True BSG fans will understand the urgency here. As the two main pieces of man-meat on the best show on TV, these two deserved a place in this competition. But I was neglectful. So I'm rectifying that now.


















You guys obviously know where I stand, from the post below. But I shan't underestimate the carnal appeal of Captain Apollo (that's Jamie Bamber to you... sigh... why do none of you watch this show?). If you recall, I previously posted a sexy video of Jamie Bamber and also declared his famous towel slip the #1 most amazing thing about the show.

And still, I prefer Trucco. By a hair. I like the bad boys, what can I say?

Plus, when he takes his shirt off, he looks like THIS:

But he's actually not the "bad boy" type on the show... he's actually steadfastly loyal to his wife... but he looks like a bad boy, and all that's important. In fact, his being a lamb in fox's clothing (so to speak) just makes him that much more appealing.

But then again, Jamie in a towel looks like THIS:

Plus, Jamie is British and does a killer American accent. That takes talent.

Starbuck obviously still can't make up her mind. Can you?

Michael Trucco might just be the hottest man ever.

If his torso doesn't get you to watch BSG, then I don't know what will.

Unbelievably Stupid People, Part 2

This was awesome.

For the record: shouting doesn't automatically make you right.

Wow, people SUCK.

My favorite is the woman who thinks Obama's a muslim. When confronted with the fact that he's not actually a muslim and was not raised as one, she replies:

"...but I don't agree with that."

Of course, "not agreeing" with facts is a widespread problem in this country. But this is in its own realm of ridiculous. And from a self-proclaimed democrat, at that. And then when asked whether she thought the muslim story was meant to be a smear on Obama:

"Yeah I do think it's a smear tactic, BUT I think we still have the right to know."

Um, if by "know" she means "form our own hateful, completely unfounded 'opinions' while ignoring the facts," then fine, fair enough. That's her right as a bigoted ignoramus.

I was in such a good mood earlier, too. Gaaaaaaaaaaaah

The List: The 39 Steps (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

This is out of order, but I had to watch this today for my London study abroad prep class, as part of the "history of British cinema" - a snapshot of British film in the 1930s. So I figured I might as well do an entry about it. The whole "chronological order" thing was kind of a pipe dream anyway.

Anyway, what struck me most about this fun little early Hitchcock thriller was how much Robert Donat (the lead) seemed like a youngish Clark Gable. In fact, I thought maybe he was a youngish Clark Gable... such is the depth of my ignorance of early film. So yeah, I was fairly tired this morning when I watched this (first day of summer school, don'tcha know), but basically Robert Donat aka "Richard Hannay" encounters a beautiful but enigmatic young female spy who is killed, and then spends the rest of the film being hunted down after being accused of her murder. Eventually one skeptical woman is forced along for the ride, and later learns the truth and helps him fight for his freedom.

It's fun to see this kind of old-school spy thriller, even though it's rather pedestrian by today's standards. I am curious what compelled UM's committee to choose this particular Hitchcock as required viewing, when gods know he's done plenty of worthy stuff. There is of course other Hitchcock on the list, too. But I forget which ones. I guess you can never get enough Hitchcock. But this is not one of my favorites of his. Whatever.

The point of watching it for this particular class is to see what Hitchcock's (and others') films were like before he (and they) came to America. I, for one, never even realized he was British. Whoops.

P.S. This entry was way longer than I'd planned. If I wrote this much about all 200 of these, I'd go nuts. This was supposed to be just a paragraph. So expect that much in the future.

totally random best Jake Gyllenhaal/Ellen clip EVER

He is so fetching.

The most amazing thing you will ever see:

Green Porno

Isabella Rossellini just got even more amazing.

The Golden Girl

No, not "The Golden Girls" (Glenn). Something even more ridiculous.

This is my friend Brody's musical that he recently finished. It's utterly ridiculous because he's totally insane, but I love it/him for that. It's worth a watch if you wanna see me sing and dance around with bleached hair and a beard in a scruffy military getup. Plus the music is catchy. Watch:



You know you wanna comment on it. How could you not?