RIP Joe Paterno

I didn’t really get into college football until 3 years ago when I started dating Alex, who is a huge sports fan. Even before that I knew that Joe Paterno was the best of the best. A sports legend, and someone who has changed the face of the NCAA.

Growing up relatively close to Pennsylvania helped define the legacy that is Penn State. As kids, it was one of those dream schools little boys would dream of when they all wanted to be football players and sports stars. In college hoards of us would apply to the school, sitting and waiting to see if we could make it into University Park or if we would be stuck at a different , dreaded campus. It’s still a school I respect, and regret not attending at times. Joe Paterno’s name goes hand-in-hand with that legacy, so of course it is a tragedy to have lost him.

Part of the tragedy is the bad timing of his loss, with his name having been tainted at the very end. It’s something I hate to bring up, because it is still a really sensitive thing for me to talk about as it hurt what I stood for within my career so much.

The original release of the news and reaction of the Sandusky arrest was the biggest moment of doubt I’ve ever had in my time as a journalist. It really killed me to see the witch hunt that formed from a couple of angry bloggers without enough information. To be honest, we still don’t have any real information about the situation, and to bring up such a dark and questionable time at a moment when we should all be celebrating a legend is really classless. I guess that’s the price you pay for being active in social media, but I can still be upset about it.

I hope that we can now put Joe Paterno’s name to rest with respect and with the dignity and honor that he has earned. It’s definitely a heartbreaking day.

This Just In: SOPA is Dead!!

We did it!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Judiciary Command chairman Lamar Smith have postponed SOPA/PIPA from the test voting, in light of recent events.

What’s that mean?

Everyone hates it!

After the blackouts from websites all over the Internet, the bad guys that thought up this dumb plan have decided to back down. They said all this mumbo jumbo about bringing it back up once the pressure has come back down (AKA the fight from all of us who weren’t going to take it), but let’s be serious. If we all hate it this much now, we’re certainly not going to love it tomorrow!

That’s right, we stopped them!

I can’t help but be super proud here. Through all of this, I wanted so badly to still be able to trust my government. I mean, if you can’t ultimately trust the people running your country then why live there? I’m so proud that they heard our voice, and shut down what was wrong.

Next stop… gay marriage?

Radio Songs That Got to Go: January

I am one of the few people left in the world that still listens to the radio. My iPod is really old and dies pretty quickly, I don’t have a CD player or satellite radio in my car, and I don’t want to waste the battery on my phone for music.

As I am kind of subjecting myself to the radio every day, I probably shouldn’t be complaining, but I’m going to anyway.

The radio needs new music.

Every couple of months I reach this breaking point in the radio: a point where I am yelling at it to stop playing the same songs on every single station. Seriously, I flipped through three stations playing the same song at the same time last week. So I’ve decided to chronicle the songs of this current time that need to go. Of course in a month or so I’ll have a whole new list, but here are the songs of now that make me cringe to think about.

1.  Moves Like Jagger: Maroon 5
First of all, I’m surprised that Maroon 5 is still a band. Second of all, I can’t believe that this song is still on the radio. It came out months ago to promote The Sing Off (I might have the name wrong, there is seriously about 2 billion singing contests on television with all almost-identical names) and, as the show prepares for it’s second season, I am still forced to hear Adam Levine’s “…ooOOOOooOOOOoooOOOOves like Jaggerrrr” 900 times a day.

2.  Pretty Pretty Please: Pink
I try my best to really be into Philadelphia-born artists, no matter what their genre, but gosh darn I can’t stand Pink and her decade-old hair style, or this song. I mean, as soon as I hear her overly-raspy-but-not-in-a-cool-way whine come on my motor skills kick in to instantly turn the channel.

3. It Will Rain: Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars is a fairly new singer, and his first couple of songs were really cool, but this one is the epitome of flops. I feel like the fact that he’s such a trend got this song on the radio, because honestly, who likes hearing Bruno Mars whine for three minutes? I can’t even understand the words: all through December I could have swore it was a new Christmas song.

4.  Love You Like a Love Song: Selena Gomez
I like Selena Gomez. She’s totally adorable, and when this song came on I loved it! It’s classy meets a little fierce. But I hear this song on almost every radio station all day, every day. And no, I don’t want to keep hitting repe-pe-pe-pe-pe-peat.

5. Mr Know-It-All: Kelly Clarkson
Oh, Kelly. What are you doing? How many times can one person rhyme the word “all” with itself in one song? Seriously, the next time you hear this song stop, listen to the lyrics, and actually process them. They don’t say anything! It’s so un-creative and lazy on so many levels.

6. Give Me Everything: Pitbull
Some may know this song by it’s original title, “That Song That Was Shoved Down Our Throats Endlessly While Promoting That Movie About New Year’s Eve.”  We get it, Lea Michele looks cute when she laughs and Ashton Kutcher is always up to some wacky antics. Pitbull is the Lil’ Jon of this decade, he is in every single song. Please, radio, pick any other one of those and stop playing this one!

7. The One That Got Away: Katy Perry
When Katy Perry isn’t singing about parties or crushes on boys (or girls. Hey, that’s what got her start!) or anything else cutesie I really don’t have any interest in her music. Katy Perry is another star that totally smothers the radio with all of her songs right now. If she’s going to do that, put out some new ones that we can at least bop our heads to.

8. Not Over You: Gavin DeGraw
I am over you, Gavin…

Come on people, that song title was begging for it.

9. Stereo Hearts:  Gym Class Heroes and Adam Levine
There’s a line where they talk about skipping tracks on a record. Since this song has hit the airwaves, it sounds like a skipping track. My heart is not a stereo, it is an mp3 player, and it’s on shuffle, so… new song!

10. Headlines: Drake
What’s the deal with Drake? Who likes this guy? He sounds like he has a cold in every song he has ever put out! Somebody get this guy some Mucinex!! And then, on top of that, all he raps about is how successful and rich he is! I don’t want to hear about your DeGrassi (yea, he was the kid in the wheelchair on DeGrassi, IMDB it.) money! That’s just in bad taste!

Runners up include: Good Life by OneRepublic, Without You by David Guetta and Usher, Last Friday Night (also) by Katy Perry, You Make Me Feel Like by Cobra Starshop, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, You and I by Lady Gaga, and It Girl by Jason Derulo. Time for a change, radios.

Vide-OH! of the Morning

I love this new Jason Mraz song, and the lyric video is super interesting and cool! Plus, I follow his ex-fiance’s blog and she’s a really awesome artist and person in general so I secretly hope this song is about her (the girl in the video does look like her!) and they fall in love again and have talented little babies… but that’s just the girl in me going crazy. Listen to it on loop like I have all morning.

 

Vide-OH! of the Day

I know that the “Shit ___ Say” trend is fading fast, but this is definitely one of the funniest ones. Best part? Definitely the “Whitney” mention. Because, of course, “Whitney” is the worst show on television.

 

Hey! Look at this cool thing I bought!

I’ve decided to be a grownup this year. That means not blowing my entire on paycheck on clothes, restaurants and really stupid, immature and pointless things. I’ve got a hardcore budget I set for myself and I’ve actually been doing a fantastic job of sticking to it (insert pat on back here).

The only problem is Valentine’s Day weekend is coming up. As a way to get ready for grown-up life, Alex (this cool boyfriend that I have, if you haven’t been reading my blog/known me for the last 3 years) and I have decided to live at home until we’ve both gotten full time, salary-based jobs and have a pretty big large sum of cash saved up. We probably won’t be close to leaving home for like another year, but by then we’ll have some money saved, I should have a car in which all of the door handles work and the paint isn’t chipping away, and it will be a much easier to get settled into an actual life. Here’s the thing about living at home though…

It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

I’m not one to use a lot of annoying type in my blogs, but its the only way I know how to express that. There’s just so much about it that sucks. Not being able to just lie around without a million people asking what you’re doing or what’s wrong, cooking a meal for two and subsequently having to provide an additional gaggle of people with “little tastes” until you have nothing for yourself, settling down to watch a show only to lose television rights or be asked 6 million favors. Walking anywhere near the door and being bombarded with questions about where you’re going, when you’ll be back, why your jacket isn’t buttoned and why you have to leave… you know. Just a few of those things.

The thing I miss the most about school is just being able to be totally and completely antisocial with Alex.  Sitting around and doing nothing for a few hours without having to answer to someone. As a way to protect our sanity and keep our relationship from being completely smothered by outside influences, we decided to spend Valentine’s weekend in Philadelphia. Of course living 10 minutes from Philly we have no need to see sights or any of that, so we’ll be staying in a really affordable hotel, going to restaurants we’ve always wanted to visit, taking a lot of naps and pretty much doing nothing. I get chills from anticipation!!!

Anywho, Alex is taking me to brunch at this amazing Stephen Starr restaurant called Parc, which is basically a French bistro that got dropped into Rittenhouse square. It is gorgeous, and I have wanted a Croque Madame since I visited Paris in 2009. So obviously I needed an adorable France-on-Valentine’s-Day brunch dress for the occasion.

Special occasion dresses usually don’t mix well with a tight budget, but thankfully Christmas left me with an Old Navy gift card and I got this little number! It’s cheap already, around $35 dollars, but with my gift card it cost me less than $10!

It’s funny because I used to  be the only person in the world that hated getting gift cards as gifts. I thought it was so impersonal and lazy. But now that I’m on such a tight budget, I see them as a way to offer some relaxation and luxury to another person.

With this dress I am going to rock these amazing coral heels I got from Primark in London two years ago with some jade accessories during brunch with my hair down, and a pair of brown boots at night with red accessories and my hair up for the night out. I’m wearing it right now, actually, and have gotten at least three compliments! The one thing I’m not totally thrilled about this the sleeves, but luckily I took a semester of sewing classes in high school and am now legally a fashion designer, so I’m going to roll them up to elbow length, put some darts in, and make it three-quarter length! I guess you can’t really mess with a classic print and a pretty fabric.

I’m in love!

SOPA… more like NOPE-a

Hahaha, my title is hilarious!! Okay, back to business.

If you haven’t heard about SOPA/PIPA well then you have a lot to catch up on. I don’t quite feel like explaining it here, because I wouldn’t do as good of a job as other reporters and bloggers, so Google it, or do your research on it! It’s a shame that such an important event is receiving such minimal coverage, but this is our Internet, get off Facebook and use it for good, not evil.

Lots of websites have joined a fight against SOPA/PIPA: Wikipedia is down today (so that means all you college students have to go out and actually research your projects today… sucks!), and Google, WordPress, Flickr, Wired and the browser Firefox have joined in to fight for whats right.

My fear is that through all of this, big media outlets will take over and cut out any chance for smaller, up-and-coming projects to develop. Big companies- like a certain partially-eaten fruit we’ve all become so addicted to- will be able to sue and block littler threats… basically shut them up. That sounds wrong doesn’t it? This is going to limit artists abilities to get their art seen and heard. Bad example for some, but Bieber wouldn’t be the star he is if not for YouTube covers. If this passed, he would have been locked up for posting those videos. How can this type of censorship even seem like a remotely good idea to anyone?

Listen, I agree with the government in some ways: things need to be done to protect the copyright and to keep online media flowing in an illegal and effective way to the viewer. Without it the music, movie, artists, photographers and journalism fields are suffering- trust me on the journo bit. But throwing our freedoms onto a fire like SOPA/PIPA? That’s insanity! We are in the early stages of this crazy battle against piracy, and to jump to such ridiculously over-the-top conclusions is, well, jumping to ridiculous and over-the-top conclusions! There should be better options for the viewer/listener/reader. We should be more focused on a more affordable and organized outlet for media, not focused on shutting down anything that is questionable or different. The world is full of people that do bad things, and our Internet can be a reflection of that. The government is not allowed to censor what goes on in the outside world, so why should this be any different online?

If you’re like me, and think that we shouldn’t be limited in our online choices, check out FightForTheFuture.org, and sign their petition to let our government know that we want our voices heard. They also need to know entirely banana bread this whole idea is, then get sent to bed with no dessert for being so bad.

Vide-OH! of the Day

When I have kids, I hope they’re adorable little bullies like these two!

Happy Birthday, Benjamin Franklin!

That’s right everyone. It is Benny Frank’s b-day! Let’s go crazy!

I love Benjamin Franklin, he’s my dude. Seriously though, I’m his number one fan. So much so that I had his poster up in my dorm room until (several) room mates told me it was weird and I took it down. My pet turtle (may he rest in piece) was named Benjamin Franklin, and I like to think he was smarter because of it. And now, settled into my office like the working girl that I am, ol’ Ben sits behind me, looking great as always.

If you have the time or the enthusiasm, hop onto Amazon’s Kindle site. They have free classic e-books available, a really good spread that also includes Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. It’s fascinating, and free, so give it a go!

Happy birthday, Ben. You’re the man.

Vide-OH! Of the Day

When traveling in Paris, I wish I had seen this first. Maybe then my response to every French person wouldn’t have been the weird smile and awkward laugh imaginable.