Six Degrees of Awesomeness

 I  remember taking family trips and trying to think of games we could play with each other to pass the time on a long drive. This was before people had iTouches or iPhones or Words with Friends and Facebook.


So instead car rides and wait times we're filled with silly games.


There's the A-Z game where you start with  "A" and find words on billboards that start with that letter and every letter after until "Z." Sadly, I played this during more than one family vacation.


There's the age-old "I Spy" game...


Lucky for me, I found a lovely substitution to these games 3 years ago.
You see, unlike EVERY. OTHER. PERSON. I. KNOW (take note Mom), I don't have an iPhone or iTouch that I can peruse apps on or browse Facebook with like my peers.


Nope. It's just me and my LG touch screen phone --without internet--  which isn't a whole lot of fun when you're bored or have time to waste (something I fully experienced two weeks ago). 


Two weeks ago, I took part in one of the most epic events of my lifetime, aka the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I.


Here's what went down.
My friend Laura, my roomie Vanessa (Vdawg), and I arrived at the theatre at 8:40. Just as we reached the front of The Warren movie theatre, they opened the doors and let people in our theatre (7) head to their seats. This is something that's really awesome about The Warren. At other theatres, people have wait in line and sometimes they are even forced to wait OUTSIDE of the theatre for midnight premieres. But the last several I've attended  there (fangirl alert),  we've been allowed to sit and wait inside our theatre, which is AWESOME.


Fast forward to Vanessa, Laura and I waiting in our seats for the movie to start... 3 hours and 20 minutes of waiting, folks. I tried to be studious and bring  my laptop to work on homework, but one of the managers said I wasn't allowed to have it out and there wasn't an internet connection anyways.


Vanessa had her Itouch..but she could only play games that didn't need an internet connection. Laura's iPhone wasn't working. What to do with no working mobile devices? Play six degrees, of course!


I'd always heard of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...but lack sufficient knowledge in Kevin Bacon filmology. I know of about 4 KB movies; I applaud you if you are any different.


Here's what you do: Players take turns thinking of the most random celebrity actors and actresses and try to connect them together through movies they've done with various costars. Generally, we try to connect them through less than six films, but for us its really about who can connect the two celebrities (through movies only) the fastest. 


We brought back the game while we were waiting at HP and it reaffirmed how much I love it. Never again will I sit waiting with friends and not have anything to do. Six Degrees is always on the back burner.


Here's some sample rounds we played at the Harry Potter premiere.




Cameron Diaz to Tom Hanks


CD   was in       The Holiday                            with     Jude Law
JL    was in       Closer                                       with     Julia Roberts
JR   was  in      Charlie Wilson's War          with     Tom Hanks






Susan Sarandon to Gerard Butler


SS   was in   Stepmom             with              Julia Roberts
JR  was in   Runaway Bride   with             Richard Gere
RG  was in   Amelia                 with             Hilary Swank
HS  was in   PS I Love You     with              Gerard Butler




Play it sometime!

Find of the Day #2: A jewelry delivery truck in NYC? A Duke student makes a racy PowerPoint?

In continuing with this "find of the day" theme I started here, I have some really great stuff to share. I'll get to that in a minute.

I heard on the radio the other day that the average American watches four hours of TV a day. I started thinking about it and I hardly watch one hour a day, but the number of hours I spend on my computer is, as Rachel Zoe would say, UNREAL. I've been working on stuff in Gaylord College (journalism school at OU) since 8:30 and it's 1:15 AM. The WHOLE time I've been on my computer. This really showed tofay when we got into groups in my Intro to PR class (something we NEVER do in college!) and listed as many networking/two-way communication sites we could think of. I started listing off websites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, etc. and none of these people knew what these sites were! At least I have a little something to show for my obsession.

One of the many things I've been wrestling with in the last week (yes, it's really minor but still worth mentioning), is how much I speak up in my PR class. It's a fairly good-sized lecture hall; there are around 100 people in my class. My professor is Russian and she always likes to ask questions (all of which are really easy, and she ALWAYS accepts your answer), and yet no one wants to speak up in the class. This is completely contradictory to one of my classes taught by a French professor (from France, accent and everything). I feel COMPLETELY inadequate in this class and even when I complete the reading I feel as if I have no idea what's going on. He asks all of these hypothetical, obscure questions and I want more than anything to be able to participate but I have no connection, no idea what to say on the material. It doesn't help that the professor is looking for a particular answer. Anyway, I literally spoke up in PR class for EVERY question our professor had and I don't know if my classmates are annoyed or not. I know firsthand what it's like to have a know it all speak up and answer EVERY question and I really don't want to be that person. But everything she asks seems so much more like a conversation than a professor giving a lecture. I mean we talked about Youtube today. I really don't want to be THAT girl.


OK, on to the cool stuff I looked at online.

Random, but cool.

First off, I found these TOMS shoes made specifically for the city of Austin. I'm jealous. It would be really, really rad if Norman could get some. But then, who wants a pair of shoes with the word Norman on them?

Second really awesome thing I looked at? Shenae Grimes, an actress on a TV show I watch, tweeted this picture when she was in NYC for Fashion week. Pretty sure I'm obsessed. Yes, this is an ice-cream truck for jewelry. As the last-minute, perfectionistic night-owl I am, I think it would be really cool to have delivery trucks for clothes and jewelry, especially in party cities. Can you imagine going to a drive-thru window or ordering clothes and accessories to your door before you go to a late night event? You heard it here first! ;)

The final discovery that's been occupying my time is reading about the Duke Sex Girl's escapades. I heard about the girl at Duke that wrote about sleeping with several players on the Lacrosse team in my Intro to PW class. Today while looking at a national online magazine for college women, I saw a post about this girl's PowerPoint and a link to it. A website had posted the PowerPoint, blacking out names and faces in photos. I read the girl's "report" and was amazed. It was a guilty pleasure that I even shared with several friends. I know it's wrong that she rated these guys sexually, that they are all embarrassed and going through a rough time as the media covers it, but it was still really interesting and entertaining.

She rates the guys based on physical appearance, performance, athletic talent, size, etc. If you are looking for something to do, take a peek at her ppt slideshow on Jezebel.com!

IMDB's 20th Anniversary

Twitter and Facebook are amazing, they really are. Millions upon millions of people all over the world use the sites every day (speaking of, if you haven't seen it, The Social Network is fabulous). I'll admit I'm addicted to them both, but I'll always have a deep and everlasting love for IMDB.com.

This love started early. When I was younger, I would watch TV shows and movies and wonder about the actresses and actors in them. I wanted to know and see more of them so I'd look up their name. This was before Googling was a verb, and there were other search engines like Dogpile and AskJeeves that competed with it. No matter what search engine I used, IMDB was always the first site suggested when I tried to look up a celebrity. 

Eventually, I created a username on the site, browsed through message boards and searched through Julia Roberts' movies I still needed to see. The site became my go-to guide to anything I wanted to know about pop culture. It's like a more reliable, more in-depth and accurate version of Wikipedia, but all the topics were related to pop culture. It's the ultimate pop-culture encyclopedia.

Using the site has become second nature for me. I don't even know what it'd be like not to have it.

Just this weekend, after seeing The Social Network, I went straight home and typed in the movie in the search bar on the site. I was in awe of the movie and wanted to relive the "zinger" quotes. Zinger quotes are what I call the most memorable quotes that viewers want to relive/revisit after leaving the theater, so we look them up online.

In honor of one of my top 5 favorite site's anniversary, I've listed what I love the most about it.

1. The Message Boards.

 Pop culture fans across the world unite in boards specified by need. If you can remember a scene from a movie but can't remember what it is, there's a board called "I need to know" for you to post your questions. My questions always get responses within 24 hours. There's also a message board that's dedicated to lists of movies related in some way. If you want to know the names of any movie made about dogs, or even as specific as Golden Retrievers for that matter, you can post your question on the message board and users will reply back with names of films that fit your inquiry.

2. My Movies.

It doesn't matter whether you're searching through old classics or upcoming releases, when you see information for the new Jon Hamm film, you want to write it down. IMDB gives you the choice to catalog your list of movies you want to see or absolutely love. On any IMDB page for a movie, there's the option to "Add Movie to My Movies." The My Movies feature keeps track of all the movies you've added and you're able to go back through the list and click the links for each title.

3. The Trivia pages.

This is probably my favorite feature of IMDB, and something a lot of people aren't familiar with. Every movie, TV show, actor and actress page has a link to a trivia page. Want to know how much the dresses Emily Blunt wore in The Young Victoria were insured for? Curious about the love affair between Cary Grant and Sophia Loren?  Didn't know Tom Hanks was once a hotel bellman for Cher?

4. The Quote pages.

This page is for anyone who's wanted to reread, requote, or relive a film's moment of greatness, but was scared they would remember or quote it wrong.



5. The purpose of the site (keeping record)

The fact that you can search someone's name and
see what movies they've been in, are filming, just finished filming, or are rumored to be in. GREATNESS.

Find of the Day #1

Among my friends and family, I'm known as The Girl Who's Obsessed With Her Computer. Since I spend a lot of time with my child, I mean computer, I tend to find really cool blogs or websites that none of my friends know about. Every day I find something new and interesting on the Internet that I'm excited about (almost always related to pop culture). It can be a funny Youtube video, a clever entertainment-news article or pictures of actors filming a new movie. I'm still developing the idea, but I'd like to incorporate these every-day discoveries into my blog. In an effort to blog more often, I'm considering posting ONE cool thing I looked at on the internet each day. It would be sort of an inside look on what I do when I'm on my computer for  long periods of time. For those of you wondering what I'm so fascinated by, you just may find out! Here are a couple things I've looked at in the last 24 hours.

Last night I found these really cool Harry Potter 7 promotional pics. They have them for many of the major characters..SO COOL!

  These are appropriate, because I have other related Harry Potter news from this week. OU just got its own Harry Potter club (Hogwarts on Campus). I went to the first meeting and it seems very exciting. It's a great group of people, kudos to the founders/executives for starting it up; they have a lot of great ideas.

 People who don't read these books: You just don't know what you're missing. SERIOUSLY. My brother used to make fun of me and now he's a huge fan. He went to midnight releases for books 5-7 with me! Book 7 is the love of my life, BTW.

Cool News about the Hogwarts on Campus Club: they're starting a Quidditch team for OU. Texas A&M, UT and Texas Tech (we Texans love our Harry Potter) all already have teams, so we could potentially play them in tournaments. Yay, Harry Potter! I can't believe this series has been a part of my life since fourth grade. No wonder I feel so emotionally attached to the characters. Did I just say that out loud??

Finally, you never know what kind of amazing surprises you'll find on Twitter. This person tweets from the perspective of Lord Voldermort and I absolutely LOL'ed at this tweet. See below.

It's true. Perez Hilton is a meanie. That's why I use Just Jared's website to read about upcoming movies or celebrity gossip. It's way less trashy and more professional. The site is justjared.buzznet.com. 

What's my future?

I've been thinking a lot this weekend about what I want to do after I graduate. Today, during my 6 hour shift at Bath and Body Works, I couldn't get the idea of being a teacher out of my mind.

When I was little, I wanted to be a teacher but I had HUGE temper problems and was scared I'd lash out at a student. I've gotten a lot better, but I'm still a little worried I don't have the patience for the job.

When we talked about why we deserve to be writers in class, it was really hard for me to come up with reasons why I should be. Don't get me wrong, I want to be a writer so bad, but it doesn't come naturally for me. I'm too much of a perfectionist and my mind is too ADD to stay on a topic for more than a sentence.

So, while standing behind the register at work this weekend, I once again found myself wondering what it'd be like if I was a teacher.

In elementary school, I used to give myself more assignments to do. Some kids played house growing up, I played teacher. I would think of fake assignments for students to do. All throughout middle and high school, I would think of ways I would assign things if I were the teacher. If I enjoyed a particular assignment or found an easier way to learn something I found myself making mental notes, like, "Too bad my teacher doesn't do an assignment like this. If I were a teacher I would."

I've also always had a natural curiosity about things. I can spend HOURS upon HOURS looking up things on the internet. Is there a job with this? Because I'm pretty sure I would rock it.

If you think I'm kidding about the hours on the computer, my friends joke that it is my child. The other day I went to a friends' house for dinner and she didn't have wifi and I was counting the minutes until I could go home and get on the internet.

I also love helping people out with things. I love showing people how to do things and helping them get it. I've always felt like I can make people understand things. Sometimes I feel like if I can understand it, then pretty much anyone can.

I've been going back and forth between an Advertising and Public Relations major, but I can't see myself  in these fields (unless I do something with a nonprofit.) I don't want to work at an agency, and I don't want to represent a company's communication department. I'm completely lost for what I want as a career, but I KNOW I would love to teach.

But I know I want to do more than teach, but I just don't know what.

What do I do now? How do I find the job I want?

"The Town"

Besides seeing The Town at The Warren on Friday night, I had a pretty uneventful weekend. I don't see a whole lot of action movies, but my old roommate Ashley is obsessed with Jon Hamm, so seeing the movie opening night has been decided since we first found out it. Since we both have an unnatural obsession with movies and Imdb.com, we've known about this movie way before the average person, at least for several months. 

I wouldn't say The Town the best action/heist movie out there, but I will say I didn't leave the theatre feeling disappointed or like I wasted my money. I don't see a lot of action movies, so I don't have incredibly high standards.

Ben Affleck wrote and directed the film.  I found several similarities between it and Good Will Hunting, which Affleck also wrote with pal Matt Damon (set in Boston, a guy stuck with a life he doesn't want but destined to get out and do something better, a girl who's "better" and can help him leave his past behind, etc, etc.) 

 THE TOWN in five

1. I was impressed with Blake Lively's performance as the slutty drug addict in love with Affleck's character. I could still see some Serena Van Der Woodsen in her character. 

2. One of my favorite parts of the film is when Ben Affleck is brought in as a suspect and Jon Hamm interrogates him. The verbal exchange between them is great. 

3. Rebecca Hall plays Affleck's BEAUTIFUL  love interest in the film. I was also impressed with her performance. She is one of those actresses that is so naturally pretty you feel like you could see her on the street or in the grocery store and it'd be completely normal. I couldn't remember where I'd seen her before, so I looked her up on Imdb after the movie. She was also in Vicky Christina Barcelona, which I saw some of. And she was born on my birthday! Cool.

4. Ben Affleck is cute and his acting is legit. This is probably one of his five best performances. 

5. Victor Garber has a cameo. Yay Alias! 

Stand Up to Cancer Telethon

My roommates and I stumbled on the Stand Up To Cancer special a week ago and I'm so glad we  did. Normally I think telethons seem really boring to watch, but it was amazing to hear and see all the different people who've been affected by cancer.


I had no idea all the greats who've died from cancer. Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, John Wayne, Jack Lemmon, Mr. Rogers, Peter Jennings, Farah Fawcett, Dennis Hopper, Patrick Schwayze...

I had no idea that Katie Couric was a widow. Her husband AND sister both lost their lives to cancer, and she is doing great things for cancer awareness. She had both a colonoscopy and mammogram ON AIR to raise awareness about both cancers.


It was also terribly sad to hear stories of everyday people affected by cancer. They showed a woman who lost her husband on her wedding day and a curly haired boy who lost his fight with the disease.

Rob Lowe from Brothers and Sisters wore a shirt that said "In Memory of Mom."

 Denzel Washington said some powerful lines about what life would be like if no one stood up for moments in history like Valley Forge, Iwo Jima, A bridge in Selma (civil rights),...etc.  He said, "We're here because they did ((stand up)), because we know what's possible when enough of us stand together."


What got me the most is when Patrick Swayze's wife spoke during the telethon. Her husband spoke at the first SUTC telethon in 2008, and it was  his first network TV appearance after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When she spoke on stage,  a video of Patrick's speech played on the big screen behind her. Patrick begins saying, "Tonight I stand here just another individual living with cancer." 


It was incredibly hard to watch Lisa Niemi (his wife) stand on stage as her Patrick's speech echoed throughout the auditorium. I can't imagine talking about my husband's death on national television, while a video of him speaking about the disease that would kill him played behind me. It was such a powerful moment in the telethon and I really admire her courage to speak about something so personal.

All of this inspired me to find out more about SUTC and see how I could help.

I decided to visit their website. This is what I saw when I went to the site.  It makes me happy.

I've always wondered how much you have to donate in order to talk to a celebrity for these things. It's something worth researching, that's for sure. Phone convo with George Clooney? Yes, please!

 Here's a guy who donated money to Stand Up To Cancer, and recorded his phone conversation with Aubrey Plaza, from NBC's show Parks and Recreation. He was genuinely surprised he got to talk to someone! Take a look.