When Flowers Bloom Even in the Springtime

In the good, lovely days where I still owned a VCR and my mother hadn’t thrown away all my VHS tapes, I owned a video called Barney’s 1 2 3 4 Seasons, which was a forty-five minute long movie about Barney teaching little kids all about the seasons, and what they looked like.  Unfortunately, Barney taught me to have high expectations for the weather.  Silly me, thinking climate should be constant.  In California, you can’t say “Bye bye, winter wardrobe, make way for my summer wardrobe!”  You don’t have separate wardrobes—both, combined, are your year-round wardrobes.

Last year, it rained the most during the summer and August than it had during November and December.  Last week, it was 70+ degrees all day, but this weekend has been pretty cloudy.  And I keep seeing pictures from blogs in New York with their cherry blossom trees and their pretty flowers and, well, I still haven’t seen nice flowers around here, so I thought I’d share my findings in case you haven’t caused spring fever either.

All pictures linked to their Flickrs!  Yay for credit!

This last picture’s from when I went to Legoland last year.

Black and White

In a desperate attempt to make my computer just a bit less slower, I tried to wipe as much off the memory on the hard drive as possible, starting by erasing the millions of pictures I’ve saved over the past few years.  Past the flings at “art” I made in Microsoft Paint and all the embarrassing self-portraits, I noticed I had a strange collection of Black-and-White pictures I have not a single clue where I found…  but I was glad I saved them somehow.

I do want to erase as many pictures as I can, because they’re of no use, but I didn’t want to let these go, so I think I’ll let them be kept safe in this nice little corner of the internet.

Black and white pictures, you were obviously important at some point, because I wanted to save you in my computer (except for Macca pictures, those were obviously there because I love you), and I don’t want to let go of you completely.  You can stay here.  I’ll come visit once in a while, maybe you’ll remind me of some sort of happiness.

Naturally, there’s a lot of Beatles and Parisian cafes.

1. Couple / 2. Seriously does anyone know who this model is? / 3. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire / 4. Couple / 5. Elvis Presley / 6. Claude Monet in his garden at Giverny / 7. Francisco (???) / 8. Couple / 9. Christ, I enjoy to torture myself / 10. Couple on a boat / 11. I give up (you guessed it—couple) / 12. Ummm…  band room. / 13. Anna Karina and Jean Luc-Godard / 14. The Beatles / 15. Paul and John / 16. George, John, and Paul has no idea. / 17. John and Paul, sittin’ in a studio, s-i-n-g-i-n-g / 18. Paul and Jane Asher / 19. Young dancers showing them ole goots how it’s done / 20. Ballerinas looking sad :’(((((( / 21. Hippies at a protest / 22. Young model showcasing a fashion collection / 23. Parisians at a cafe / 24. Snap, even more Parisians at a cafe / 25. Someone with fanTAStic hair at a Parisian cafe / 26. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire / 27. Sarah Whitney from Pandora’s Box / 28. Cool cats at a roller derby / 29. John F. Kennedy was a dreamboat / 30. Paul ruining my life / 31. George pretending to be mediocre, but actually being perfect. / 32. Une Femme Est Une Femme / 33. Beastie Boys

Marina Diamandis

“Vintage, cheerleader, and cartoon” is what Marina Diamandis describes her style as.  And when I first heard her music two years ago, as a completely influenced freshman in high school, I was hooked.  Finally deciding that I wanted to establish some legitimate taste in music, her bashing of “squeaky pop queens” and eccentric style intrigued me.  Especially as, obviously, a freshman, where I thought that my music preferences were better than everybody else’s, most whom were still humming “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha in class.

I’ve matured way past that, and I feel like she has too—she once mentioned she disliked Katy Perry and Dr. Luke, but she recently went on tour with Perry, and Dr. Luke produced her new single “Primadonna”, which made me fall out of my seat once I pressed play.

The entire music video is like someone fed and old lovely 50’s dream I had some caffeine and threw in some purple glitter.  My mouth was covered by fists the entire time, and I’m sure a single tear rolled down my cheek—the most adorable, aesthetically pleasing video in such a long time.  The perfect visuals, mixed with the surprising pop beats in the background, and her angelic voice gave me strange chills—not the “hearing-Adele’s-Rolling-in-the-Deep-for-the-first-time” kind of chills, more like the “I-really-wish-I-was-able-to-dance-even-a-little-to-this” kind.

Her different voice and acoustic covers of her songs (listen to the acoustic versions of Hollywood and Primadonna NOW) are what really set her apart for me in 9th grade.  Here was this beautiful Welsh singer (not important, I guess, but her lips are, like, perfect?) who wasn’t afraid to not be unnecessarily modest about the fact that she was clearly a fantastic singer.  At first it threw me off—couldn’t she try to tone it down?  But then I realized… what am I really upset over?  Am I trying to make an argument against someone who is proud over the fact that they’re great?  (Relevant: Nicki Minaj on how girls can’t be “bossed up”, and guys can.)

She’s adorable, her voice is beautiful, and you should have a listen now (that is an urgent italic, because it’s urgent you listen now.)