It’s My Party and I’ll Buy What I Want To

I have such an interesting, ambivalent relationship with my post titles. Like this one sounds hugely consumerist, bitchy, privileged, and entitled.  But it rhymes with a song I heard somewhere that i feel like is a well known, even famous song but that i don’t remember. So now it will be stuck in my head and there is no better way to express that than putting it in everyone else’s heads as well.

The actual purpose of this post is the fact that it’s my birthday and I am 22 for the first time ever! It’s pretty great. I slept well, saw Dunkirk last night (amazing, expect news later), had a Dad-made celebratory peach pie for breakfast, and have finally started watching Django Unchained, which may go down in history as the second Tarantino film I don’t hate (shout out to Inglourious Basterds!)

The past few weeks I’ve been hunting down the things I’ve had on my wish list, and I thought I would share those today.

• Estee Edit Metallishadow in Wild Cosmos
• Nars Gouloue Blush Travel Size
• Nars Schiap Lipstick
• MAC Russian red Lipstick
• MAC Brave Lipstick
• Laura Mercier Caviar Stick in Cocoa
• Golssier Cloud Paint in Puff (I succumbed to the marketing and they sent me free stickers. I feel blissfully basic)

In hindsight, I’ve only bought makeup, which is very interesting. I do still have a bit of money left and I’m feeling very cosmetically satisfied. But I have realized, during the past week’s heatwave, that I could use more light dresses. This realization came about as I spent yet another day dying in a silk camisole and spandex shorts.

Top Films for Graphic Violence

Don’t hate Quentin Tarantino; hate the game.

Actually that’s completely hypocritical of me; I can’t stand Tarantino’s particular brand of brutality. I made it through Pulp Fiction with only a feeling of resignation. And I think I stopped Kill Bill during the fight scene between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu.
But Tarantino aside, blood and gore aren’t things I shy away from in movies.  I’m much more likely to avoid a movie focused on overblown and manipulative emotional scenes (i.e. why I haven’t watched Room yet) than a movie that unflinchingly shows blood and guts.

The criteria for this list? The film has to actually be good. No pain porn- an excellent plot is a necessity. The violence should enhance the plot, even if it does so a bit gratuitously.
No straight up horror.  That said, horror can be hard to define.
Lastly? Blood spatter.

And a disclaimer: I don’t claim to have seen all of the graphic films the world has to offer. I haven’t seen Sin City. Or Oldboy. Or Lady Vengeance. But what I’ve heard suggests that those might be at home on this list.

Winter Ball, the Last

“Winter Ball comma the Last”

It’s very weird because ballroom dance has been my big extracurricular all throughout college, and yes, I’ve had plenty of previous dance experience, but ballroom was never something I had done before. Now that senior year is drawing to a close (it still feels unlikely, but Lily was just telling me that her last final is two months from today), I can feel my ballroom aspirations and enthusiasms also naturally winding down. I’m grateful, because I don’t want to leave Yale and miss ballroom too desperately- I want the mental space to make new choices and try new things.
Of course I still love spending time with the team. Just as ballroom has been my main/only extracurricular, it’s also been my biggest social outlet at Yale. The people on the team are not just “my team” but some of my best friends, and I hope to stay in touch with them for many years to come. The fact that I’ve stayed in close touch with a few previous graduates bodes well.
Ballroom dance may end up, for me, becoming inextricably linked with my Yale experience- my college self- and being one of the sweetest parts. Just how horses and horseback riding is so much bound up with middle school and high school, and Girl Scouts with elementary.
If we can learn anything from history, it’s that if I leave ballroom behind I’ll still love it and miss it, just as I miss horses (but less so riding, which started to get very stressful when I reached a certain competitive level). And even if I leave ballroom behind chances are that I’ll still be dancing, somehow, somewhere. I’ve been dancing for more than ten years and I can’t imagine life without doing something like that (even if it’s only social or… in the privacy of my room with the music loud 😉 ).