To divert our collective FURY about Sarah Palin, let’s listen to a wonderful little R&B ditty that works in some “My Girl” beats. I’m half embarrassed that I love this song, but I also really enjoy listening to it every Friday as I plot the bad decisions I’ll make later that night:
Party like a rockstar, indeed. Happy Friday!
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, dance, music, pop culture, post-college depression, YouTube
I love outdoor concerts. I love live music in general, and being outside listening to live music makes me feel like I’m actually sort of outdoorsy. I mean, there are bugs, and I’m sitting on the ground, right?
This Labor Day weekend, I attended two truly American outdoor concerts, and I find the juxtaposition of these concerts to be very entertaining. On Sunday night, I went to the National Symphony Orchestra’s free concert on the Capitol lawn. The Capitol was behind us, the Washington Monument was in front of us, there was a ridiculously gorgeous sunset, and generally the entire event oozed classiness. Our view basically looked like this:
Of course, the only songs I really recognized were the suites they played from movies (um Harry Potter? AMAZING.), but still, it was classy. After the concert, we even went out for some classy glasses of wine at a classy restaurant AND took a cab home. I know, I’m an adult. (As long as you disregard the fact that we tried to bring wine into the concert and failed because they legit tear apart your bag looking for booze and weapons, so we had to hide the wine in the bushes. That wasn’t so classy.)
Unfortunately, my faux-maturity came to an end last night when I attended a Jimmy Buffet concert. You heard me. Jimmy Buffet. I know you’re jealous. Going into the concert, I anticipated dancing like a hippie alongside a bunch of people who looked like my parents. I wasn’t entirely off-base on that assumption, except instead of dancing next to a bunch of middle-aged white folks, I watched in horror as police tackled them to the ground and arrested them. I have never seen so many arrests in such a short period of time, and man, those cops were brutal! It was mostly entertaining/shocking to watch all of this stuff go down, but at one point I found myself alone right as a cop took down a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt, and I nearly started crying I was so scared. My favorite fight, by far, involved two trashy women who started going at it right in front of us. One of them was holding a child and screamed “Can’t you see I have my baby here?!” right before she smacked the other woman in the face. That poor kid’s gonna have some issues.
On the whole, the Buffet concert was a hell of a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed dancing around like a sweaty maniac to all of the songs I know by heart (har har), and for a dude who’s like 112, Jimmy sure puts on a good show. (Although we think he maaay have been lip syncing some of the songs…)
I loved that everyone at the concert went all-out when it came to tailgating. We were proud of ourselves for having Margaritaville brand margarita mix, but some people brought sand, decorated their cars like sharks (fins to the left baby), had baby pools to lounge in during the tailgate, etc. One little girl even had a sign that said “I missed my first day of kindergarten to be here.” Again with the good parenting.
The costumes in general were absurd. I saw more bikini tops on people who shouldn’t have been wearing bikini tops and shirtless dudes who shouldn’t have been shirtless than I ever wanted to see, and I started to get jealous that I didn’t have a parrot on my head. My favorite costume was this younger couple that was totally decked out in pirate gear, and I told them how much I loved their outfits. Then later in the night when we needed our car jumped, THE SAME PIRATE COUPLE stopped to help us. How’s that for karma?!
While hopped up on margaritas and Jimmy Buffet, I made a startling observation: Jimmy Buffet and Joe Biden are twins who were separated at birth. (And they even have the same initials…dun dun dun.) See for yourselves:
Right?!!
Now for your at-work enjoyment, take a listen to my favorite Jimmy Buffet song (and be sure to notice Jimmy’s mustache and the delightfully literal video):
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, drinks, music, politics, the arts
Kids, it’s time for a Hump Day Cry Face (one that’s actually on time, hooray!). I’d like to dedicate this particular photo to the cry facer in the middle, who just moved to South Korea:
Godspeed, Alicia. Bring me back a Hello Kitty cellphone charm.
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, cry face, food
Wow, so I’m a terrible blogger because I forgot the Hump Day Cry Face last week AND this week. To make up for it, I’ll give you two. Consider this a dedication to life in DC:
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, cry face
It seems that every so often, Kathleen or I get busy with exciting things going on in our real lives, and then we write a post apologizing for our embarrassing lack of blogging. I clearly just took a little hiatus myself, so let’s get you updated on my life, shall we?
The reason I’ve been more or less out of commission the past few days is that I made a huge, grown-up move to Washington DC. Hooray for me! I’m so mature that I even ordered our cable and Internet and bought (and put together!) my own bed. Chuckle all you want, but these things are huge for me. We didn’t have to do that stuff at my college. (Side story about the bed: I ordered it from Craigslist from this stranger boy, and arranged for it to be dropped off the next morning, while I was alone in my apartment. I told my mother this plan, and she immediately freaked out and assumed that I would be raped and murdered by said stranger boy. So naturally, I Facebooked him to see if I could gauge his rapist tendencies. Turns out, we sort of have a mutual friend, and also, he’s a professional lacrosse player. He didn’t rape or murder me, and now I get to sleep where a professional athlete once slept. Take that, Mom.)
Aside from slowly becoming a huge fake adult for the past few days, I’ve also been up in New York/New Jersey visiting some of my best friends from college. I hadn’t seen any of them all summer, and I was insanely excited to be reunited. The weekend did not disappoint.
For starters, I got to see the Counting Crows live, which made me giddy because they are my favorite band and I’d only seen them once before. Katie and I maybe had a little too much cheap wine before the concert, and we maybe forgot to eat dinner, and Katie maaaybe slept through Maroon 5, who opened, but it was still wonderful. I don’t care if Adam Duritz is old and kind of unattractive; he has dreadlocks and I’d like to marry him.
The rest of the weekend was filled with straight-up college-style debauchery, just as we hoped. There was drinking, excessive eating, obnoxious dancing, and enough stories to fill several books. Here are some highlights (and I truly wish I didn’t have to censor these, but if I’m ever going to change the world, people have to think I’m respectable):
Filed under adventures, blogging, celebrities, dance, drinks, food, music, post-college depression, religion, TV
As Kathleen mentioned, we are very sorry for being so delinquent the past few days. It may not seem like it, but blogging is stressful! Sometimes you just don’t want to blog, but then your millions of fans (or your sister) are all “Heeey why no blogging the past few days?? I’m angry! Write more!”
The reason for my lack of blogging is that I had a visitor this past weekend and was out actually living my life. Exciting, right? (I was extremely proud of myself for not looking at the blog for a full three days…normally I can’t last three minutes). My friend Katie was visiting from Maine, so we were running around doing lots of fun things. Most notably, we attended the Mile High Music Festival, which was absolutely amazing but also absolutely exhausting. Sitting out for hours in 95 degree heat is not exactly relaxing.
The first day of the concert, Kelsey, my sister Maddy, Katie, and I came — we thought — well-prepared, with snacks, flasks hidden under our dresses, and plenty of water. We didn’t consider the fact that water warms up pretty quickly when it has no ice in it, and so by about 2:00 p.m., our water was a few degrees away from boiling. From 3:00 to 4:00, I actually thought I might die. I was sort of limping from stage to stage, clutching my throat, and begging every beer man I saw for some of the ice that was keeping the beers cold. (“Please sir! Can I have some ice?!”)
Though my martyrdom was reaching epic proportions, I was aware that I wasn’t the only one at the concert who was dying of heat. It was very entertaining to see people fighting for the tiniest amounts of shade in the strangest of places: under a large pole, behind a row of porta-potties, beside a trash can, etc. People were getting desperate, man.
Luckily, things cooled off by about 5:00, and then everyone stepped away from the porta-potties, regained their senses, and focused on the music. It was about this time that we were upgraded to VIP tickets, which means we got free beer and wine, free food, a nice cool tent to sit in, and shuttle rides from stage to stage. Baaaaaller. Then we got to see Spoon, which got us all going (read: dancing like crazy, unashamed hippies). It was Michael Franti and Spearhead, however, that made the weekend for me.
Now, I’m not a huge Michael Franti fan. It’s not that I don’t like him; I just don’t know a lot of his stuff. But Katie, being the best fake hippie among us, wanted us all to go, and we obliged. His show was awesome. He had that intangible thing that only a few artists have that makes a concert truly kickass, whether or not you know the music. He had everyone in the crowd dancing like maniacs, and he was clearly having a great time, which makes a huge difference. After his performance, we were all blissfully happy and more or less remained that way for the rest of the weekend.
I won’t go through every single performance we saw over the course of the weekend (that could take a while), but let’s talk about John Mayer for a second.
The entire festival was extremely well-organized, and as part of that, all of the artists were very punctual. They started and ended exactly when they were supposed to, every time. So we’re all lounging around waiting for John Mayer to come on at 6:00 on Sunday, and at 5:30 people start cheering. We stand up and see that some dude has taken the stage and has begun to sing “Start Me Up.” We were confused. Our conversation went a little something like this:
“Wait, that can’t be John Mayer.”
“Yeah, why would he start so early?”
“And why would he be wearing a tank top?”
“And why would he open with a cover?”
“And since when is his entire left arm tattooed?”
“It must just be some random filler guy that they put onstage to kill time.”
“It really sounds like John Mayer, though.”
“Oh my god, is he wearing CAPRIS?”
The stranger onstage was, indeed, John Mayer, and he was, indeed, wearing a tank top, manpris, and black tennis shoes. Ouch. Other than the frightening wardrobe choice (where’s the womanly influence, Jen?), he was looking pretty good. Especially when he took his shirt off for the last song (sure, it was a little unnecessary, but who am I to complain?):
John, have you been working out?
Anyway…the concert was fabulous and you should all come next year. We’ll have a special SWTCTW section, with lots of ice and Coors Light.
Before I wrap this up, I have to recognize the two MVP’s of the concert. First, Mr. Michael Franti for reasons stated above:
Okay one more of him, courtesy of Katie, just because these are cool photos:
The second MVP award goes to Dave Matthews’ drummer, Carter Beauford, for being the jolliest human I have ever seen:
Carter, I dig you.
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, blogging, celebrities, crushes, dance, music
On Friday, totally spur-of-the-moment, Kelsey and I decided to go meet up with some friends in the mountains for the Fourth. I’ve never spent a Fourth of July in the mountains, but I figured it would be a pretty wonderful way to celebrate America’s birthday. (Among the mountains that inspired “America the Beautiful,” no less.) Picture this: two ridiculously happy girls wearing ridiculously large sunglasses, riding top-down in a convertible blasting Paul Simon, driving west toward the mountains. So cliche, and so amazing.
We went to watch the fireworks at this large field/sports complex in Fraser (which is near Winter Park, for those of you non-Coloradans), and got to enjoy a live band and delicious brats and Coors Lights before freezing our asses off for about two hours. (Your mom was right: bring a coat. The mountains are ever so slightly colder than the city, and sundresses do not keep you particularly warm.) The freezing-our-asses-off part was worth it, though, because the fireworks show was amazing. Somehow we picked the best spot on the lawn, and the fireworks ended up being directly over our heads. Fabulous. I love how fireworks amaze and awe people from three to 93. We were a bunch of 21- and 22-year-old boys and girls (by technical standards, adults), and we were ooh-ing and aah-ing and screaming “WOW!” like a group of toddlers who had no idea what those lights up in the sky were. I love that.
If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m completely and totally obsessed with the state of Colorado. I’m not particularly outdoorsy, but I love that my state is, and I love living in a great city that’s only two hours away from some of the most amazing mountains in the world. It doesn’t get much better than that. You know that Baz Luhrmann song about sunscreen? Where he says “Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft”? To that, I’d add: Live in Colorado once. Period. You may never want to leave.
My camera drowned in a Blue Moon shower last weekend, so I didn’t take any photos while I was up in Fraser, but the area basically looks like this:
And the drive up looks something like this:
Pretty great, no?
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, random
Okay so I know I said there wouldn’t be a lot of posts this weekend, but as it turns out, something’s come up. Something very important. Kelsey just showed me a video of herself that somehow I’ve never seen, and I think it deserves to be shared with the world. The setting is Prague, and the videographers are two British strangers that Kelsey and Sarah met (please note their brilliant commentary). The British strangers have encouraged the girls to take shots of absinthe without using their hands. Enjoy:
My favorite part is that Sarah initially just ignores Kelsey’s pain and finishes her shot. That’s friendship right there.
[Posted by Mallory]
Filed under adventures, drinks
Filed under adventures
Filed under adventures, blogging, dance, music
six words to change the world. 