Harry Potter and Yinz-ers

Just watched episode number three of the Pens/Caps HBO special. Magnificente! It's a good thing we beat them last week because those Caps fans did a lot of talking.

In other news, I got my Deathly Hallows tattoo with Tina on Wednesday. Afterward we went to the Blue Dust and got amazing food and yelled along with some drunk people as the Pens lost in the shootout against the Islanders. We went back to her house and watched Harry Potter 4 & 5. On the way to the shop we got lost in Shadyside, because any time Tina says she know how to get somewhere, it's probably best to bring along the GPS.

Here's how they turned out:



(sorry for the awful picture quality. It was taken on Tina's cell. My foot's the huge one)

Twas awesome. The pain was a lot worse on the left side (the side by my big toe), than on the right for some reason. Still nowhere as bad as my wrist tattoos. They took about 20 minutes each. Chris, the guy that did my Rosie tattoo, did both of them.


Let me tell you, it is very odd watching a cute guy shave your foot.


But anyway, any time I watch the Pen/Caps thing I realize even more that I love my city. Now, I don't live within the heart of Pittsburgh, I'm like 15 minutes away when traffic isn't atrocious. Pittsburgh has a fair share of uppity jagoffs, but Pittsburgh tends to be a city of more genuine, largely working-class, people. When talking with people who left Pittsburgh for another city then came back, they say Pittsburgh has a certain genuine-ness that a lot of other cities lack. We're a tiny city compared to a lot of others, yet we have a lot of influence. We got the G-20 and the Winter Classic.

We have the best teams in the NHL and NFL. Don't even try to argue with me. I'll let Philly handle baseball, but that's it. There's a plethora of awesome little restaurants and shops, especially in South Side and Squirrel Hill. The weather sucks, and driving sucks, but it's to be expected. There's a certain brand of badassness that comes with Pittsburgh. I love it.

So what if we butcher the English language?
I'm proud to be a yinz-er. I haven't been to many other places, but I think I'd have a hard time calling any other city home for an extended amount of time.

Black Swan

I just saw Black Swan. I can't audibly explain how I felt about it. It's kind of like the first time I saw Clockwork Orange and I just didn't know what to do with it. I went on to love Clockwork Orange, but IDK if I'm going to end up loving this movie.

There's a few spoilers ahead. I don't think there's enough to spoil the movie because I don't think I could explain it if I tried. But if you're a purist and plan to see the movie, don't read on.





It was crazy-intense. The story centers around Nina (Natalie Portman), an aging ballerina and her obsession with being perfect. There's a skanky rival ballerina named Lily (Jackie from that 70s show), a weird French ballet instructor, a straight-out-of Carrie mother, a crazy drunken Winona Ryder, and a lot of snotty younger ballerinas.

Oh yeah, some weird steamy self-lesbianism as the result of drinking and ecstasy. Lost? Me too. I went with Tina, and looking around, we couldn't figure out why the audience was full of dudes. I mean, if I mentioned a ballerina movie to Tony or my brother, they'd scoff. Well, after some crazy sex-ish scenes, I think I could guess why a lot of the audience was male.

But the sex-ish scenes were almost grotesque, more out of a horror movie than a porno. It was all very surreal. There were a decent amount of cringe-worthy scenes.

If I was more mature I could probably love the movie, but I'm not. I love the last like 1/2 hour. I want to know more about Nina's relationship with her mom. There's something really weird going on there.

There was a lot going on that wasn't consistent with the character. I don't know if that was the point of it or not, based on other things that were going on in the movie. I don't know. I just can't articulate what I'm feeling about that movie.

It was all just very surreal and very strange. I think I'll have to process it overnight and do some google-ing.

I found out that it's directed by the same guy that did Requiem for a Dream, which makes sense.






I'm watching my brother skype with his GF after just spending a whole afternoon at her house. It's so cute I want to puke. Ricky Martin in on Access Hollywood talking about being gay.

I watched Eat, Pray, Love with my mom and Tony today. Totally not as good as everyone was saying it was. I have a hard time believing Julia Roberts as a genuine person. She's better in bitchy sassy things. Probably because I don't watch them.

Also, I made an important discovery, Paula Deen is a cyborg. And I finally figured out who that Bieber twat is, though I don't understand why he's a pop-culture icon. Perhaps someone could explain it to me.

Tattoos

I love tattoos, and there's no way around that.

I have five now;

1 and 2. Black stars on my wrist with "Radio Radio, When I got the music I got a place to go" split between my wrists, written with fun script. I got the stars on my 18th birthday. I skipped out early on my Senior picnic at school and left with Tina and Brandon to go to the tattoo shop. Brandon was in the trunk of my car because (there was another girl I was kinda friends with in the backseat, she asked me to take her to work and I agreed) we were convinced the security guard would turn us in for skipping the picnic because it was considered a school day.


Well, he didn't care. And Brandon got a brushburn on his elbow. He jumped out of my trunk in the Kennywood parking lot, getting us a couple strange looks from people.And so we went to the shop. Tina paid for the tattoo as a present for my birthday. I went back like a year-ish later and got the lyrics put by the stars. They're the lyrics to my favorite Rancid song, "Radio."

It was done by Matt at Body Shop tattoo in Pittsburgh, though their shop was in Dravosburgh when I got mine done. He's awesome. The stars were $50 and the lettering was $100.3. Dagger tattoo on the side of my left calf. I got it because my pap was in the navy during WWII and got a dagger tattooed on his arm while he was stationed in Maryland. I decided to go get one because he's always been a big part of my life, and his alzheimer's and other health issues were becoming apparent around the time I got the tattoo. The tattoo's gorgeous. It's really colorful and has flowers and patterns running through it. It doesn't look like his at all, but I think that speaks to the way I've taken what him and my gram had raised me with and made it my own.

The ink was done by Doug at In The Blood in South Side. I don't think he's there anymore, but the ex-singer of The Last Hope owns the shop. It was a bit of a fiasco. The day I was supposed to get my tattoo, the shop was robbed and a lot of their stuff was either stolen or destroyed. I waited a few months to get the tattoo, but it was worth it. I think I paid around $250 for it.

While my uncle was in Ireland, he also got a dagger tattoo for my pap. Mine's a lot bigger, lol.
4. Rosie the Riveter on the back of my left calf. I am so damn proud of this tattoo. It's perfect. I had wanted it for a long time, and after seeing Tina get a gorgeous pin-up girl tattoo on her back from Matt at Body Shop, I was confident that he'd be up to the challenge. He was. It took two sessions and nine hours for Rosie to be done. I got it because I had always loved that picture, and the "Rosie" movement was one of the defining moments of feminism. After that, a lot of women were no longer happy being housewives. After the 50's cookie-cutter lie, people were fed up with having to be the nuclear family. And so Rosie is on my leg. I get a lot of people asking me questions about it. I think I paid about $300 for it.
5. A half-assed Jack Skellington head behind my right ear. I love Nightmare Before Christmas. I got it at a $20 tattoo party at a bar with some friends. It's not done very well, the color's not consistent the whole way through, but I love it. I think it's bad quality gives it some character it would lack otherwise. Right after I got my tattoo, the bouncers at the bar kicked us out because 3/4 of us were under 21, thought it didn't say anywhere on the flier that you had to be over 21 to go to the tattoo party. Oh well. It was fun.



These are all great, but now I have a problem. I am addicted. I love seeing anything I want becoming material on my skin. The pain and the after-tattoo itchiness sucks, no doubt, but the payoff is awesome.

I'm getting the symbol of the Deathly Hallows tattooed on my foot next week, and so is Tina. We've been wanting to get a tattoo together, and there's nothing more "us" than a Harry Potter tattoo. First our idea was to get "muggle" tattooed on our feet, but it changed to the symbol after we reread book 7 and saw the movie. I'm excited. Here's the symbol:

I'm having a dilemma when it comes to the rest of the tattoos I one day want to have. Only a couple are set in stone. I'm getting a portrait of my grandma when she was working as a kitchen girl at a factory. She's gorgeous. It'll be black and white, maybe with red lipstick, on the same leg as Rosie and the dagger tattoo. But I don't have the money for that right now. I also want the girl from Night of the Living Dead tattooed on me. I love horror movies, zombies in particular. She's the least grotesque zombie I can think of, and she's in the film that launched Romero's career. Here she is:




My mom would probably kill me if I got my favorite zombie, Bub from Day of the Dead, tattooed on me. This is Bub:




I think I'm going to get something Ireland-related, probably something like the framed clovers and embroidered "forget me not" that belonged to my grandma on that side of the family. It'd be a cool ankle tattoo. Idk, I never had the same kind of connection with them as I had to my mom's side. I also think I want something Cherokee related because I'm a little Cherokee from that side of the family and I feel pretty close to that time in history.

I'd love to get some Sailor Jerry type-stuff, but I'm having a hard time getting something just because I think it looks cool. I don't really have a connection with it, other than that I like it a lot. I want sparrows and a sugar skull, but I have to find some kind of connection.

I also want tattoos relating to books, but I don't want to get words. I wish I could get the point across with a picture. The Fountainhead, 1984 and Cat's Cradle are the books I'd want in some form on my body. Maybe some Chuck Palahniuk too, and possibly one of the illustrations from The Little Prince.

Pens vs. Capitals

I love my Pens. I'm still more into football than hockey because it takes less commitment and I understand it a little better, but HBO's 24/7 Pens/Caps special part one was awesome.

There's something just amazing about how young they all are. Most of the star players are like with 5 years of my age, and they act like it. They have a thing called "mustache boy" where, at one practice per month or so, they have a shootout. When you make a shot, you're out. The last guy left has to let a moustache grow in till the next guy looses. Fleury makes all of these goofy saves and tries to trip the guys as they're shooting. It was really funny.

Max Talbot is such a goofy-looking dude, but he seems pretty awesome with his goofy sweater.

I'm watching this Bounty Hunter movie just because Gerard Butler's in it. This is probably going to be a really stupid movie, but I'll watch it anyway.

Deryk Engelland is a badass of the highest degree and Matt Cooke's smile is hilarious. I hope there's more Tanger in the next episode. They only had him wrapping his stick in this one. Hooray for dirty-sounding hockey references.

I'm actually feeling kinda bad for the Caps. Not enough to offset how much I love the Pens, but still. I feel kinda bad. Especially for Nicklas Backstrom, he seems like a good guy, and he's pretty talented, but the Caps are having a pretty hard time doing much of anything. They had a scene of him ice skating with some kids, one little boy says something about how they've been losing games, and Backstrom starts apologizing.

Oh, and by the way,

I was going to go try and meet Tanger while he was signing at a local mall, but you had to spend $50 on winter classic stuff to meet him. I can't afford that. But one day I WILL meet him.


And yeah, this movie sucks. Forsure.

Oh English....

I've been having to do a shit-ton of work for my English classes lately and it made me think about why I'm an English major....I've come to the conclusion that I'm an English major for purely selfish reasons, and not in a bad way. Let me explain:

I don't ever expect to make money because I have and English B.A. degree. To do anything vaguely worthwhile in upper level English studies in the U.S., a person pretty much needs a PhD. In this lifetime, I will never have the money to get a PhD; I'll be working 40 hours a week from the time I get out of college till I die. Sad but true.

I would love to go to school forever and work in academia-land, but it's just not going to happen for me. Maybe if I was someone that came from money or if I was outstanding in some way, but I'm not. I'm just Kelsey. I have good grades, but that's about it. No one gives you money for that.

I like writing, I like theoretical ways of thinking, I like exploring things like Feminism, Queer Theory, Marxism and Critical Race Theory. It's escapism for me. It lets me deny my reality in favor of finding the structural similarities of Melanie and the bird in The Birds, exploring I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as a coming of age story in Angelou's ideas about race, talking about how Emerson and Thoreau make us better citizens, tearing apart American hypocrisy with literature, exposing the gendered practice of getting coffee and finding the relationship of base and superstructure in Ode on a Grecian Urn. It's lame, I know, but I love this stuff. It makes sense to me. That was just a short list of stuff from this semester, I've done a lot of other cool things in my English classes, like:

1. Analyzing masculinity and the structure of the love story in Fight Club
2. Giving a 10-minute presentation on swearing. I got to say "cunt" in the classroom. I was stoked.
3. Writing and illustrating my own fairy tale in ENGL101. I'm still pretty proud of that thing.
4. Building a portfolio of original poems
5. Giving a ten-minute presentation and 8 page paper about how stupid the religious argument against Harry Potter is.
6. Giant, exhaustive research paper on female roles in zombie movies
7. Seriously bashing the founding fathers and the Christian right in Early Am Lit

What I love about it all is that you can take just about anything and make it interesting, and relate it to something you care about. All of my papers tend to be about female roles and stereotypes, racism, bashing organized religion or the government because that's what I care about. But you can make it into anything you care about.

After I took 122 with Mike Sell, I knew English was where I was supposed to be and he's probably the best professor I've ever had. He's challenging, makes you simultaneously love and hate him, and gives you as much as you give him. I'm really trying to have him a third time before I graduate.

English studies isn't going to pay the bills or cure cancer, but I feel most at home with this stuff. I wish I could just drop journalism entirely and do more with English, but I have to make my mom feel like the money she pays for me to go to school will eventually pay off. I'm really going to miss going to English classes after I graduate.

Here's some pictures from the Mattress Factory that I posted about yesterday, taken by Melissa Clark, because I didn't think we were going to be allowed to have cameras:

Douglas Perez, Ecosystem, 2009. Click for detail shot, the grey-ish looking bones
are actually bodies.






Yayoi Kusama, Repetitive Vision, 1996.


View from the mirrors on the ceiling. I'm reppin' the Hines Ward jersey.


Greer Lankton, It's all about ME, Not You, 1996.








Romantic Dollarscape Series, 2003. Pedro Alvarez.








There were another set of paintings I really liked by Armando Mareno with the tilde over the "n." http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm?event=ShowArtist&eid=96&id=488&c=Current

Oh, and RIP John Lennon.