name: Angie B.
age: 26.
current location: Illinois, USA.
occupation: B&N bookseller, writer, full-time fangirl.

( We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one.Collapse )


PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU FRIEND ME. I just want to get to know you. There's a really good chance (near 80%) that I'll friend you back if we have enough in common. NOTE: Due to some issues, almost all of my future entries will be friends locked. I will try to continue to make link spam and pimping posts public, though.

FEBRUARY IN REVIEW

MOVIES: 7 (none new).
BOOKS: 5 (all new).
TV: 8 episodes (all new).

Instead of watching the Oscars, I did a Marvel movie marathon. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers. Good times. (Though I will say a part of me wishes I *had* watched the Oscars, if only for the pizza party, Ellen's perf hosting, and Lupita and her brother being flawless. I think Ellen just needs to host forever, and I'm pretty sure we all agree on that.)

2013 IN REVIEW

MOVIES: 220 (51 new).
BOOKS: 53 (20 new).
TV: 265 episodes (149 new).

Is this sad, or impressive?

I also:
• Got two new tattoos (my Doctopus and my Summoning Dark).
• Went to Austin, Texas.
• Went to New York and met Siobhan (siochembio) for the first time face-to-face.
• Met Neil Gaiman and got him to sign my copies of Good Omens and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
• Moved into our current townhouse -- VAST improvement over the old place.
• Won NaNoWriMo for the fifth year in a row and finished in toto my third whole novel, Sorry, We're Dead.
• Survived a tornado that destroyed almost a third of my town.
• Saw The Evil Dead Musical and The Pretty Reckless.
• Successfully completed my 31 Horror Films and 31 Fantasy Films in 31 Days challenges.


Spent my actual New Year's Eve on my couch, in my jim-jams, cleaning out my online stuff. Hid some people on Facebook, added another dozen things to my blacklist tags and went from following 530 to 398 blogs on Tumblr. Hopefully having fewer distractions and bullshit to deal with online will allow me to be a bit more productive for the next couple months.

I don't make New Year's resolutions because I always break them and that's a sure-fire way to set myself up for disappointment right from the get-go. But I'm going to try to read more, and more new stuff, and catch up on old shows and projects I've left by the wayside during the madness of the end of the year.

Hope y'all had a nice holiday season and will have plenty of time to recoup and relax now. ♥

this is my town right now after yesterday’s tornado.

more than 1/3 of it has been completely destroyed

almost all of town is without power. most people don’t have water. those that still do (including me) are on a boil order. the town’s also been locked down — to get in you have to have an ID that proves you’re a resident.

i know a lot of people who have completely lost their houses, and their pets. there are at least five confirmed deaths, but there will no doubt be more.

the apartment building i lived in last year is heavily damaged.

it’s so fucking surreal. it feels like i’m trapped in a syfy original movie or an apocalyptic tv show. houses a mile away from my neighborhood are completely gone and ashlee and i DIDN’T HEAR A THING. the storm lasted about fifteen minutes, and was perfectly sunny with blue skies afterwards. today is clear and beautiful and everything feels so unreal and dreamlike.

feeling hella fucking guilty since we were completely spared while good friends lost everything.

no idea how long it’s gonna take to get things even semi-normal again. months at least.

jesus fucking christ.

so a tornado hit my town today

pretty much wiped out half of it

entire town is out of power and water’s going in some areas

ash and i are fine; no damage to our place/neighborhood

family’s okay, and most of our friends suffered damage but are all whole and hale

so that happened.

31 of 31 Horrors: Halloween (1978) - Fifteen years ago, little Michael Myers inexplicably murdered his teenaged sister Judith on Halloween. When he escapes on the eve of another Halloween, his doctor knows Michael has gone home — as babysitter Laurie Strode and her friends discover all too late.

A slasher film that set the bar and remains above almost all others, with a minimum of gore and a maximum of suspense. Carpenter does a magnificent job of ratcheting up the tension, using Michael’s first person POV to unsettle and his minimalist score to grand and eerie effect. Halloween laid out a lot of the “rules” for the horror genre: sex = death, the trope of the virtuous Final Girl, babysitters in peril, the hulking and silent behemoth who kills without explanation or reason, and the doubting, skeptical police force. There’s a lot of stellar direction/cinematography in this, the debut of infamous Final Girl Jamie Lee Curtis, and it’s always fun to look back at movies that really got the ball rolling in a genre.

( Horrors 30-19 under here.Collapse )


The Pretty Reckless concert Saturday night was great, but I was totally wiped afterwards. Was pretty much unconscious the whole ride home.

Then Monday and Tuesday nights I had to do overnights -- 10 PM to 6:30 AM. And since I can't sleep once there's daylight in my room, and I don't have blackout curtains, I got maybe five hours total of sleep between Monday morning and yesterday night. Felt like utter shit, came home in terrible pain each morning, and I called in today because I'd hardly recovered.

Have spent the entire day on the couch. On Tumblr. Overdosing so I don't have the temptation to log on tomorrow when I should be writing. Also finally watched Despicable Me 2 and it was SO FUCKING CUTE. GOD SO CUTE. The minions! Gru being dad of the year! The girls! Gru and Lucy! AHHHHHHHH SO CUTE.

NaNo starts tomorrow and me being the wise person I am, I've decided to tackle TWO projects. Because I'm a totally indecisive masochist like that, and I just can't set aside Sorry, We're Dead for a whole month when I'm so invested in it. I'm going to try to alternate between Sorry and Weird, World, but we'll see if that actually happens. Apologies ahead of time for any histrionics you may have to witness here or on Tumblr.

And while we're talking Sorry, We're Dead, I've got more to add to the cast:

SORRY, WE’RE DEAD: a supernatural noir

Featuring:

• Sean Maguire, a bartender (Ty Olsson). By day he’s a bare-knuckle boxer, by night the barkeep at Mac’s. A good man to have in your corner.
• San Pascualito, a death god (Clifton Collins Jr.). Leader of the gang known as the Bone Daddies, he’s more than your average thug. And let’s just say he doesn’t need any makeup to look skeletal…
• Jack Malone, a jazz musician (J. August Richards). The saxophonist in the band at Dante’s and Helene’s latest paramour. A hot-blooded and violent man who is obsessively in love with Helene.
• Maggie Belladonna, a witch (Ksenia Solo). Need your palm read? Want to communicate with the other side? Looking for a true love potion? Mags is your girl. But if you hate cats, you can go elsewhere.

So in conclusion: this week has been hellish and I've still got two days of work left before I can properly collapse again AND NaNo starts tomorrow and I'm just so exhausted at a bone deep level it's not even funny and THE HOLIDAY RUSH IS ONLY GONNA KICK IN NEXT WEEK UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FUCK RETAIL AND FUCK MY LIFE SO HARD.

Although, at least I ate three meals today. So that's a step up from my usual self-neglect. Whargh.

13 of 31 Horrors: The Frighteners (1996) - Frank Bannister is a psychic investigator who uses his very real talent for seeing the dead to con people by sending his ghostly assistants to poltergeist their homes. But when he gets caught up in the middle of a decidedly paranormal rash of murders, he’ll have to rely on the help of a comely widow to stop the ghostly murderer and clear his name.

Everything about this movie is perfection. You’ve got the ever loveable Michael J. Fox as hero Frank, the great character actor Jeffrey Combs as the weirdo FBI agent Dammers, direction from Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson), the picturesque background of Wellington, NZ (including the house used in PJ’s first film, Braindead), and scads of ghostly fun with the likes of Chi McBride, Jake Busey, and John Astin. Oh, and one of horror’s favourite Final Girls: Dee Wallace. It’s just a rollicking, emotional, and fun horror comedy that should be required viewing this time of the year.

( 14-18 under here.Collapse )


So in the past week I saw Evil Dead: The Musical and holy shit was that fun. Ashlee and I sat in the splatter zone, BUT OF COURSE, and I sorta wanted to stop at a dive bar on our way home just to walk in looking like a murder victim and order a whiskey sour. “Man, you don’t even wanna KNOW the things I’ve seen tonight…”

Fun times all around, and the fellow playing Ash totally reminded me of Nicholas Hoult — similarly tall and pale and gangly, very angular face, floppy dark hair. GOOD TIMES, FOLKS. GOOD TIMES.

And then Ash and Melissa and I went to Tanner's to get apple EVERYTHING and we had lunch/dinner at Rasoi and watched horror movies.

This weekend we're doing all of our Halloween baking and marathoning more horror films and getting Mexican and it's gonna be gr9. So fucking ready for this three-day weekend because uggggh I feel like I've been doing nothing but working/being sick for the past two weeks and I'm really fucking tired and want to lay about in my jim jams with mah gurls and a giant stack of monster flicks.