Well, now they do.

Money.

I have to give most all of the credit for these to my roommate, since she knows enough about entertainment to know what For Your Consideration ads are, and told me about them. Also, she made all of these. She just doesn’t have a blog to put them on.

Also, we may be committing some type of copyright infringement here.

Here are some other For Your Consideration ads, so you can see what we are trying to do here. Most of these are actually made by the networks themselves, except the New Moon ones, obviously:
The Dark Knight
Big Bang Theory
And of course, New Moon

About 3 years ago, I was on youtube searching british accents. Eventually, I stumbled across this video, by a girl named Paperlilies, which led me to her personal channel, which led me to the first vlog I ever watched… ever. I’m pretty sure I had a paper due the next day, because that’s the only time I REALLY get obsessed with things (case in point, I read Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse during finals week of my last semester of college), and I watched ALL of Paperlilies videos. One of them was in defense of an Australian girl, who had apparently been ripped apart in a video by LisaNova (btw, I’m pretty sure none of these videos are still up), and Paperlilies was basically defending her.

That Australian girl was Natalie Tran. Known on the internet as communitychannel.

Now, I watch a LOT of people on youtube, but one of the people that I’ve loved most consistently, and for the longest amount of time, is Natalie.

So it just makes me so happy to see things like this, and see her speaking at international conferences and talking about what it really means to utilize new media, and essentially be a 24 year old student with a side job of a comedy show:

Sorry, I know this is just a random fangirl post, but I absolutely LOVE her.

alright, it’s porno music/comment time*.

*At the end of Natalie’s videos, she plays what she calls “porno music” and addresses some of the better comments from her last video. As a result, she has some of the most intelligent comments of anyone, because they try so hard to get in porno music/comment time. For the record, I was in it once!

“If you are an author who blogs, don’t use your best stuff on the blog, because you might want to just write it down, save it, and throw it in a Princess Diaries book one day.”

And while I do think this is good advice for any author (except maybe not the Princess Diaries part. Take that out), all this really tells me is that I could never be an author. Because I use ALL my good stuff on my blog. And, yeah, I know what you are thinking, buddy. Really? That’s her good stuff? There is more than ONE reason why she could never be an author… YES YES I KNOW. But the point is that I love blogging. I love the instant feedback, where immediately everyone knows what you wrote 20 minutes ago, and I love the way you can just throw your best stuff out there and just be you. The blog is such a lovely medium for writing, because it allows anyone to be a writer, a reviewer, a journalist, or whatever they want. The freedom is exhilarating. But, as with any type of thing where everyone can do it, the field gets a little, um, crowded. Thankfully, the good ones rise to the top. Because some people are just better at blogging than others. Some people just can get there and hold your attention. It’s the same with any kind of online writing. You have to be really good to stand out. It’s the same even when you are reviewing something. TV blogs learned real fast that online, snark and style gets you everywhere. Book review sites… meh. YA book review sites were a dime a dozen. So, you liked the book, so you didn’t. Great. Who cares. And then I found Forever Young Adult. Which is pretty much effing amazing.

Hello. Seriously. Let’s first start with how they evaluate books.

BFF CHARMS? BONUS FACTORS (ie the jordan catalano factor)? SWOONWORTHY SCALE? (I’d like to also add that “swoonworthy scale” has inched its way into my daily vocabulary. YES I TALK ABOUT SWOONWORTHY SCALES DAILY, GOT A PROBLEM?) and my personal favorite:

relationship status

rather than using stars or a numerical system, neither of which really captures how we *feel* about a book, we’ve decided to sum up our judgement in typical teenage fashion: do we *like* this book? do we like LIKE this book? do we actually want to spend all of eternity with this book because OMG LOVE? or will we totally avoid it in the hallways cos it’s really pesky and annoying and we wish we’d never said hi to it in the first place?!!

so yeah, relationship status… speaks volumes.

So basically stars and the like can just jump out the window now, kthx.

If this isn’t your favorite YA book review site by now, you are clearly deranged.

So a week or so ago, two of the FYA ladies announced that they would be going to BEA (Book Expo America).

DUDE REALLY? I’LL BE AT BEA TOO! LET’S MEET UP! That’s basically how the conversation went. With a little less “dude” and a little more Jellicoe Road.

SARAH/POSHDELUXE, ME, and JENNY

HEY-O yeah that’s a picture of me with Sarah and Jenny of FOREVER YOUNG ADULT. SO FREAKING AWESOME.

Also, they included ME in their post about day one of the zoo that is BEA. FREAKING AWESOME.

ALSO, FYA is starting a book club, and the first book is none other than BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver. Which is the best book I’ve read. In a LONG time. So there’s a summer reading assignment if I’ve ever heard one. A summer reading assignment. From Summer. HAHAHAHAHA!

Hokay, let’s wrap this one up before I kill you all with my hilarity.

It’s amazing how quickly we came to a decision after that.

LYRICS:

There are sixteen, there are sixteen
There are sixteen more books for this year
Even though Catching is not here
The death toll is high because of Fire
Because of Fire

Evolution, Evolution
Evolution, special interest
But I just really wanted Hathin’s fists
To roughly touch Camber’s lips three times
Camber’s lips three times

Just send your mind across all time
If you’re Lost you won’t be fine
When you reach me
With frogs exposed to pesticides
Or IM that you feel inside
Soon you will see

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Like Callie Vee
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
The BoB
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Archer’s baby
You’re not readin’ till you’re readin’
All sixteen

This is the BoB round up song
There can be only one
Oh please, please, please just tell me

We had no rain, we had no rain
We had no rain until we got Jack
The Selma kids were often attacked
Camp Half Blood is
Where I’d like to be at, just like PJACK

Claudette voiced her rights with words
Mila didn’t take her herbs
They both have kids!
We’re a saxophone & trumpet
Locomotion is a poet
But who will win?

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
With Grandma D
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
the BoB
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Archer’s baby
You’re not readin’ till you’re readin’
All sixteen

You can die, you can die
But you really should just try
Because you can’t only rely
On winning the tally, tally
Become the zombie, zombie
Straight to the Big Kahuna
Round and you’ll be the envy, envy, c’mon

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Like Callie Vee
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
the BoB
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Archer’s baby
You’re not readin’ till you’re readin’
All sixteen

This is the BoB round up song
There can be only one
Oh KPAT, please, please tell me

This is the potential winner song
Please just reveal who’s won
Which will it be? Which will it be?

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind while watching this.

-The actual Potential Breakup Song by Aly and AJ, is one of the greatest things ever created. We HAD to use it. Keep in mind that this song is a HELL of a lot harder to sing than Now or Never was. I mean, anything that Zac Efron can manage to sing in the middle of a basketball game can’t be THAT bad. So suffice to say, please excuse the singing.
-Unlike a certain sequel would suggest, The Hunger Games wasn’t thrown in the arena for a second year. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great books this year, but none that moved us to the degree that we felt comfortable completely ripping apart the rest of them. (Just to refresh your memories, TheRoommate lit a book cover with a photo of George Washington LITERALLY ON FIRE in our last video. The things we get away with…) So this video isn’t so much in support of any one book as it is in support of the battle. Because we like the battle. We are huge fans.
-TheRoommate is half Chinese, and I’m from Hawaii. So that part isn’t THAT random. I mean, 98% of you still won’t get it, but just FYI.
-We wrapped Storm in the Barn securely before its starring scene.
-We ARE aware that more happened in Fire than pregnancies.

*Fun Fact: This is where my youtube name comes from. Because “LEE AWESOME” can make most insults considerably less insulting. So I’m not annoying. I’m annoyingly awesome.

That aside, I’d like to share with you my latest project / accomplishment / thing I will be bragging about for the next 2 years and possibly longer:

check it out, yo! the cabling, the buttonholes, the beauty!

Yes my friend, I KNIT that! With my own two hands! (proof to follow):

yes, we have exposed brick walls. be jealous.

Anyway, here’s the pattern if you want to be a crazy person like me and want to kick off your knitting career with a neckwarmer that has CABLING EVERY OTHER ROW. You know what they say. GO BIG OR GO HOME*!

Totally cool, right? Please tell me that it’s cool, even if you don’t think so, because I will straight up cry if you do not.

another shot of the neckwarmer, this time in the coat. lovely, yes? YES IT IS! SAY YES! OR I'LL KILL YOU!

they call me crafty spice**,

*Okay, I’ve never actually said that. And I’m not really the kind of person who would. I’m much more of the “GO BIG if you think you can and weather permitting and no one of note is watching” type of gal, but what can you do. I’m badass… at knitting.
** No, they don’t.

There are four members.

From L to R: CL, Bom, Dara, and Minzy

Here is their music video for “I Don’t Care”

Now, if you can tell them apart, which takes a while at first, as they are always wearing crazy amounts of makeup, and CL looks completely different every time I see her, you’ll notice a couple of things, namely that CL is completely badass. Yeah, she straight up calls someone a “loser” at one point. Who is she talking about? I have no idea. But it’s freaking great. Don’t believe me?

CL and Minzy’s solo “Please Don’t Go”

CL is in the pigtails and Minzy has short hair.

So… basically the two badass girls were like, hey, let’s do a song together, it’ll be cool. Plus we are the babies of the group.

Wait, the babies? Yes, as in CL is 18, Minzy is 15, and Dara and Bom are both 25. TWENTY FIVE?!?!?! What? How did they even make it in this group? Well, Dara… okay with Dara I have no idea, but Bom’s story is basically

Hey, I want to be a singer, and then I graduated from High School, and then I graduated from Berklee (wait, WHAT?), and then I was like, okay I GUESS I could get plastic surgery exercise, and be in this girl group, even though I can’t really dance.
???
But honestly, Bom can get away with murder anything, because she created this:

Park Bom, You and I

which I’ve posted here before, but hell, I’m doing it again, because I love this song so much. Plus, it’s a bit rich for me to make fun of a 25 year old for pretending she’s eighteen, considering I’m a member of team VERONICA MARS MOVIE (which would force Kristen Bell to play Veronica Mars at 29), and at 23, I only read books in which the protagonists are about sixteen.

So basically there’s this huge age discrepancy between the members of 2NE1. I mean, ten years is a long time. Bom and Dara were in 5th grade when Minzy was BORN. And Minzy is pretty much in 5th grade, you know, NOW, so that’s a substantial amount of time.

It reminds me of the promos for Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, when America Ferrera and Blake Lively would go do interviews together, and it would be so weird because Blake is such a teenage girl, and America is such a woman. Well, it probably didn’t help matters that Blake comes across as about as bright as Serena van der Woodsen, but that’s really neither here nor there.

And don’t even get me started on Jackson Stewart.

But then again, if all these people can work out their age differences, 2NE1 must be able to, right?

and then I see this on the fanpage:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! See. That’s what happens when you put a 15 year old girl in your band.

****I know, from that headline, you THOUGHT you were getting a post about Nick Jonas and the Administration. Sorry.

1. I got a nosebleed for the first time… ever.
2. I got offered a job. At a publishing house. In marketing. In CHILDREN’S marketing. Needless to say, I accepted.

Oh… what a beautiful day it is.

ALL CAPS is a band/side project consisting of Kristina Horner of The Parselmouths and Luke Conard of Ministry of Magic.

So my goals for 2010 consist of… READING 50 BOOKS IN ONE YEAR. Guys, I STILL haven’t done it. EMBARASSING. IN 2008 I read 45, and in 2009 I read a pathetic 38. Bah. If you want to know which books I read this year, click the link on the top that says “BOOK LIST” where I regularly update the books I read. Or go be my friend on Goodreads.

Twenty-ten is going to be AWESOME, guys! Now off to the library!

Our apartment is the one with the slivers of windows showing.

Holding snow in my bare hands for the purpose of this picture is one of those things that seems like a really good idea until 20 seconds later when my hands were freezing and all wet.

But the craptastic thing concerning snow and myself is that I do not have snow shoes. And by snow shoes, I do not mean snowshoes like the kind you would wear while trekking across the Yukon, but I mean shoes that would be in any way appropriate to wear when it is cold. I have a two pairs of converse, and one pair of keds. And that’s like… it. Yeah, those get wet PRETTY QUICKLY let me just tell you. It’s lovely.

BLAH.

In other news: My family sent me christmas presents this year and THEY WEREN’T DELIVERED! And it was horrible and sad, and mildly depressing, and I was searching searching searching all over for them all weekend, but the good news is that I located it (at the post office, just sitting there, FOR NO APPARENT REASON) and I will be picking it up tomorrow! I can’t wait to see what my presents are! I’d like to say that I’m old enough to not have a fit when I have no presents to open on christmas, but really it was a tiny bit pathetic. Especially since I had opened my present from my roommate before she left (the complete series of Gilmore Girls, OMG I KNOW), so I REALLY had nothing to open on the 25th.

So, in the past three days or so, I’ve gotten really into knitting. Now if any of you recall, I started knitting a scarf about… oh… TWO YEARS AGO with my Grandma and still haven’t finished it. But I got a LOT done on it this weekend, and I’m already planning what I’m going to knit next and looking at fancy new needles. I know I know, I need to finish the first scarf first. But I’m really making progress, and I’m excited.

Another great thing about winter…. is FIGURE SKATING. Not that I can figure skate, but I love watching figure skating, and the WINTER OLYMPICS ARE ALMOST UPON US, GUYS! GET EXCITED!

I’m sure you are all wondering who to root for, besides Sasha Cohen, I mean. (That is if she even makes it, the poor girl. I mean I love her, but 2006 was her year, and it just didn’t work out.)

So, we are putting all of our hopes and dreams on Kim Yu-Na, from South Korea. What is it with me and the South Koreans these days? And if you are about to ask… what about the American girls???? Well, quite frankly, they suck. Sasha “I’m 25 years old and I’ve spent the last four years working on my acting career” Cohen has a pretty good shot at making the Olympic team again this year, if that’s any indication.

So on to South Korea we go. Here is my favorite Kim Yu-Na performance. She is so amazing, and pretty consistent, which is something I’m not used to, being a Sasha Cohen fan.

So her spirals aren’t as rocksolid as SC’s, and she isn’t as flexible, but I love the way she moves her arms, she’s like a little ballerina fairy! And she’s so expressive and fast and just so GOOD at skating it’s incredible. And every time she attempts a jump you don’t need to hold your breath like you do with Sasha. So she’s my pick for Vancouver.

Don’t worry Sasha, you are still my homegirl.

I love this performance from 2003. The quality is meh, but OMG she is stunning. I miss her Swan Lake program.
Do you see how her leg flies around when she lands her jumps! And the entrance to that spiral sequence (around 3:00) is INSANE. She doesn’t wobble AT ALL. My god I miss Sasha.

ANYWAY, said Lauren recently started a food blog that TheRoommate and I helped her design, and I’d like to brag about it for a hot second:

I mean look at that header! (Okay, admittedly, the header DESIGN was all roommate, while the ideas came from yours truly). Oh man… and a THREE COLUMN BLOGGER LAYOUT! We actually tweaked html to do that, since blogger templates are only 2 column.

Anyway, The Inspiring Truffle reviews restaurants in NYC, Hong Kong, Taipei and anywhere else she happens to be! She’s just starting out, but already has quite a few posts and you all should go check it out if you get the chance or will be visiting any of those areas! Or just go comment to thank to her for changing my life.

Speaking of changing my life.

Holy crap Park Bom. This song is now number SIX on my iTunes Top 25 Most Played. I’ve only had it for like 2 days. It’s SO GOOD. And the music video is absolutely adorable.

Look how gorgeous her kitchen is!
She’s wearing a crown!
She’s frosting cupcakes!
I want to die it’s all so awesome!