Finished Video!

I mentioned doing my own version of The Twelve Days After Christmas to The Phantom of the Opera...I just uploaded it to Youtube about an hour ago. I was surprised how fast I was able to make it, once I planned it out. Generally because of schoolwork any music video of mine can easily take one or two months, but since a) I was really excited about this and b) I'm under deadline...need to finish before the holidays, I was able to create the whole vid in 2 days. I'm proud of this one ^_^

Quick Update

Feel free to yell at me because it's 12:25 am here and I still have to do English homework for The Scarlet Letter, but I couldn't resist telling someone about this.

For the first time, I'm going to attempt, and hopefully succeed, at making a Christmas-themed Phantom of the Opera video. Backstory: when I was in 8th grade choir, the 7th grade Boy's Choir performed a HILARIOUS parody of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in their holiday concert. Ahh, good times....they got a standing ovation at the end, and I still can't hear the song today without laughing for tears.

Luckily, the song was a bit more popular than I thought. SO, I just got a rendition of it off iTunes and I'm SUPER excited about this. Some parts of it will be difficult, but I think I can pull it off!

Here's the parody, called "The Twelve Days After Christmas"...with some ad-libbing by the Husband in this video. Enjoy!

Apologies in advance: RANT

I've been unable to download purchased items from iTunes for a long time and it's been making me SO frustrated lately like you can't believe. I've looked at all the troubleshooting links in Apple Support, emailed them three times and called them three times. And now I'm starting to realize how often when I or my brother asks my mom a question, she doesn't answer the question itself but says something else. I'm sure she doesn't do it on purpose, but it makes me so mad because it gives me the impression that she's avoiding the question.

Because I'm charging the iTunes purchases to my mom's credit card and paying her back in cash, this has been the source of many intense arguments between me and her. And these are made even worse because I see plainly how she doesn't give a Hoover Dam about my opinion and contorts the argument so that I can't convince her of anything. And for some reason, I have to tell her something 5 times before she even realizes it.

For example, I was about to call iTunes Support for the second time and she said something about how I should email Customer Service instead of Tech Support, and I told her that as far as I was aware, there was no distinction/difference between Customer Service and Tech Support for the Apple Company. I know she heard me. So I called, and when I got no real results and my mom ordered me to call again, she mentioned that I should call Customer Service. I told her for maybe the third or fourth time that there was no difference between Apple's Customer Service and Tech Support, they were one and the same.

And when I was about to call for the third time, she said that as soon as the person on line picked up my call, she wanted to talk to them, presumably about asking for a refund. But I knew that she didn't have as intimate an understanding of the issue, so I explained the issue to the other person, not her. The Apple expert on the other end, like the one before, said that the servers were down at the moment and they were trying to fix it, so just keep trying. I was mad that I hadn't gotten any real results so far, but I kept it cordial and thanked them for their help. When I hung up, my mom was mad, of course. She asked me why I hadn't given the phone to her. I told her that she didn't have as thorough an understanding of my problem as I did (She is not very tech-savvy and had just gotten an iPod as a birthday present from me and my brothers). She ordered me to call AGAIN and ask about a refund.

By that time I was just really sick of her stubbornness and life in general. She knew that I was working on another email to Apple Support explaining the situation. I told her that I would ask about the possibility of a refund in the email, and she said that was different than telling them in person. I became extremely annoyed and I said that IT DOESN'T MATTER. EITHER WAY, THEY KNOW WE ARE ASKING FOR MONEY BACK.

J f-ing Christ. What's wrong with her?

Anyway, I just REALLY WANT MY PURCHASED STUFF.

Seriously, why doesn't iTunes have the capability to rip DVD's to one's iTunes library? Because the thing I want most from the purchased-but-not-downloaded list is V for Vendetta. I already have the physical DVD, but decided to get the movie for my iPod as well, because even though it costs more in the long run, it makes much more sense than packing the DVD with me when I travel, then looking around for a DVD player when I arrive at wherever I travel to. Certainly the average person understands what I'm saying, right? (Because apparently my mother doesn't. Of course, I don't expect her to. She doesn't sympathize with a lot of my viewpoints these days.) I have the DVD and the software to rip it to my computer, but iTunes doesn't want to make it a new addition to my iTunes library. Why on earth did Apple design it like this?

Ah. I remember. So they can benefit the most. Because we can't rip DVD's to iTunes, any movies or videos we want to get on our iPod have to be purchased from iTunes.

Of course.

SCREW THE ENTIRE F-ING WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




EDIT: An iTunes expert went into my account and removed the defected file that was clogging up my download queue. So I can successfully download stuff from the iTunes Store again! YAYYYY! And regarding my mom.....well, I guess all moms are like that. =D I love my mom. Really, I do.

My Apparent Thing for Masked, Murdering Antiheroes

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot...

I see no reason

Why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

A couple of days ago on Youtube, I saw trailers for V for Vendetta on Youtube. I remember the TIME magazine article talking about it when it came out in 2005, and all of a sudden, I got a mad urge to watch it, which has been nagging at me all day until late last night, when I watched it online.

As my history teacher said, "You have to go back into the past in order to understand the present."

So, a bit of background that will make sense later on...

In 1605 in Great Britain, a man named Guy Fawkes was part of the Gunpowder Plot, a group of conspirators planning to start a full-scale revolution by blowing up the House of Parliament. On November 5, before the planned explosion took place, he was found, captured and executed. Britons celebrate Guy Fawkes Day on November 5 to this day. And you can also give Guy Fawkes credit for making "guy" a word in English.

That's all historical fact. Now THIS movie takes place in a dystopian, totalitarianist Great Britain in the future. You have the secret police, news anchors that actively lie to civilians, propaganda, all those things. If you've ever read 1894 or studied dictator-run regimes like Nazi Germany, it's pretty much the same thing. About 400 years after Guy Fawkes's failed attempt to bring order to Britain, a man, fresh with fury about his torture at a detention center for "untouchables" many years ago, swears vengeance against his torturers and promises to, once and for all, defeat the corrupted government by finishing what Guy Fawkes started.

That would be when you toss in the pretty lady. *laughs* And no, she generally does not look like that in real life.

Natalie Portman (Padme Amidala from Star Wars) plays Evey Hammond, a young woman from a family of activists who, having broken curfew, is about to be assaulted by Britain's secret police. V happens to come across her, and he saves her. From this point unravels an chain of events and deception that threatens to pull apart a nation.

My opinion? Not quite as fantastic as The Phantom of the Opera (indeed, I don't think anything can be better than PotO in my opinion), but still all-around awesome and a force to be reckoned with. Hugo Weaving (who also played Elrond, Arwen's father, in Lord of the Rings) does a GREAT job as V. Because he wears his full-face Guy Fawkes mask 99% of the time in the movie (he goes unmasked for, literally, about 7 seconds total out of his screen time), Hugo Weaving had to rely on his voice and body movements to express what V was saying. And even though V does go unmasked for a while, the audience never sees his face, so facial expressions are out of the question......and as much as I hate to bring the somewhat obnoxious and shallow fangirl perspective into it, he has a sexy voice. I just kind of melted at some of his lines.

Which brings me back to the screenplay. This is one of those films where you can find an answer to pretty much all of life's questions. V is, in a way, God. Subtle wisdom rolls off his tongue like it's nothing. Some of his lines zip by the audience, but five seconds later come back to their ears with so much truth in them that they start nodding in agreement. Here's two of them:

"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." 

"...A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world." 

Plus, although this is more of a futuristic thriller than a romance, there are several very dramatic scenes between V and Evey. I'm a pure romantic at heart, so I swooned during the sweeter moments. 

They also managed to slip some very cool scenes into this movie. One of my favorites is when Inspector Finch, the man overseeing the investigation into V's scheme, explores the ruin of Larkhill and finds the connection that ties together all the events of the movie that take place over centuries. This scene is intercut with shots of V setting up thousands of dominoes (22,000 of them) into his personal symbol, then knocking all of them down with a flick of his finger. (As a side note, these extensive domino structures and their falling-downs can be seen on Youtube. It will probably blow your mind.) Even though I had already seen several videos of this kind of huge domino-setup, this was the first movie I'd seen with this included, and it was beyond cool. 




I was skimming through the Wikipedia article on this movie at the same time and I read that many movie critics noticed many similarities to The Phantom of the Opera, both the novel and the movie. Both the Phantom and V are disfigured and wear masks to hide it. They are motivated by revenge and didn't expect love would come their way. They both have a thing for black, sword/knife fights and swishy capes. And Evey is Christine: Both women get a glimpse (or two) of V and Erik's home, which are both underground, and are forced to stay there for a period of time. In addition, Evey calls V a "mask-wearing genius", which is similar to what Christine says to Erik in the novel.



I also love the references to the number 5 and the letter V. Watch this movie closely, and you will see dozens. A lot of these are presumably details from the original comic book V for Vendetta is based off of, but it's still pretty cool. When V introduces himself to Evey for the first time, he performs a monologue that is saturated with the letter V. He holds two of his knives up in a "V" position before throwing them in one scene, and at one point, leaves an either accidental or intentional "V" mark on the walls of the subway after a fight takes place. In addition, V is the fifth-from-last letter of the alphabet, and E (for Evey) is the fifth letter of the alphabet. When V was held and tortured in the institution, he was held in Jail Cell 5. Because they used roman numerals for numbering cells, He was therefore in Cell V.
_________________________________________________

Sorry about that, I know it was long! Anyway, a great movie, well-liked by critics and casual filmviewers alike, and well worth watching. 

4.V OUT OF 5 STARS

Some more pictures for your viewing pleasure...

 

 (a random promo shot I found...It's cute that Natalie Portman is around 5' 3" while Hugo Weaving is a whole head taller than her...no wonder he got picked to play Elrond in LotR.)

Junior year kicks up a notch. Or kicks my crotch. However you wanna say it.

My English teacher wasn't here today, thank goodness.....! Her class is just SO INTENSE, you cannot believe it. It's incredible. Even though she wasn't here today, we were still in her presense. Read "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne and "analyze the hell out of it", like my friend's mom would say. Read it we did, all 10 pgs of it in 12-pt Times New Roman. Analyze it I can't.

Okay. I admit it. I ended up Googling for the analyzing/symbolism.

I tried. I really did. But all that stuff about consorting with the Devil didn't really stick in place until I read it online.

So anyway, I have to do an annotated bibliography that's due on Thursday. The idea is fairly simple, but it's going to take me several hours to do just one, and I have to do two of them. The basic idea is, you comb through a bunch of analytical essays about a certain "classic" book assigned for reading by your half-mad English teacher. The essays are uberlong and all written by scholars, so good luck with understanding what the heck they are saying. After you're done, you want to start off your annotated bibliography with an MLA citation of the article, and right after that you dive in with a summary of what the scholar was doing in the essay, which should be one paragraph. In the second one, you write about what kinds of theses the essay could support and for what use students can put it to.

See, it sounds very simple, but I'm positive in real life it's harder than that. I'm about to find out very soon.....

Junior Year

I haven't been blogging for a very long time...anyway...

Junior year...well, I don't know what to say about this school year. It's drastically different, in ways I can't even explain. But I'll try my best, and because of time reasons, I'll have to condense it:

• English Honors, Spanish 5 Honors and perhaps Biology Honors promise to be very tough subjects, especially English. Normally I don't have a huge problem with English, but I can't analyze. "Find 4 examples of satire in Babbitt." Um. I can't find any, I understand the plot when I'm reading, not the satire underneath......you see, readers, I'm going to be analyzing so much this year that my brain will start leaking out my ears or something similarly gross.
  
• My History class=20 people. Math=TWELVE people. These two classes are TINY for my school. There are 400 people in my grade alone. Naturally, because the classes are usually twice this size, nobody talks in those classes. I never understand that, personally.
• Choir class during school is a salve to me. The boy that I like is in that class, plus plenty of friends, so it's a real cool-downer.
  
• Is it normal that on the first weekend after school begins, your only homework is to read Obama's recent speech on education and comment on it in a blog?

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now off the top of my head. More to come later, perhaps..

Oh! The drama teacher in my school who's running the fall play and spring musical (I'm doing both this year) mentioned a PHANTOM OF THE OPERA field trip. Holy COW. Oh Em Jee. This is like a dream come true!!

Only thing is, after a major argument with my mom last night, this trip is probably out of the picture. She's not allowing me to go on the annual chorus trip, this year to Canada.

We'll see how it works out.

Creativity is flowing freely again....

Well, I've been pretty busy creating icons and computer wallpapers as of late. Most of these are Phantom-of-the-Opera related. Take a look (click to view in full size):

 

 

 

I'm very old-school, so I do the bulk of the work in Microsoft Paint and use the program GIMP for embellishing, like that red supernova in the wallpaper directly above this. Aren't they purdy? 

Anyway, tomorrow is the surprise birthday party for my friend. She loves Marilyn Manson's music to death. I have two of his songs on my iPod, but generally he's a *tad* too extreme for me (for those who've never heard of him, he's either gothic rock, industrial, metal...along those lines). But I took some time off my own Phantom obsession to create a computer wallpaper for her. The lyrics are from his song "Coma White":

 

Birthday friend and I were doing a Google Image search because she wanted to change her laptop wallpaper to a Marilyn Manson pic. At the time I had absolutely no idea who he was. Well, I did, but a very minimal idea; I was a little creeped by his gothic persona. However, we did manage to find this absolutely beautiful black-and-white picture of him performing, which is the same picture in the lower right corner.

Party's tomorrow....I made her two CD's full of New Age and symphonic metal and a few other things. The food will be awesome...We're meeting at a Japanese restaurant.


If you'd like to see more of my wallpapers, click here: http://s446.photobucket.com/albums/qq184/liveforlife2494/Phantom%20of%20the%20Opera/Made%20by%20liveforlife2494/Wallpapers/