What Happened in October?
Hello everyone! I bet you’re loving this spooky time of year. I know I am! Fall, as you all probably know, is my favorite time of year. The plants are dying, but they leave behind a beautiful show before they go. This month has gone by too fast! There’s already Christmas music and decorations in a lot of stores…gross! What about Halloween? Thanksgiving?! Oh well. I’m just happy that I’ve had another great month in 2019. Let’s get into what happened!
Technically This Happened Before October, Buuuut…
On September 30th, my dad invited me to go see Thom Yorke and Andrea Belfi in concert. He won the tickets through donating to the local radio station WCBE, and when he posted on Facebook if anyone would like to join him, I hopped on the chance to see Thom Yorke live.
You might know Thom Yorke from his band Radiohead, which he is the lead singer of. Radiohead is one of my favorite bands, and I’m always disappointed that I can’t go see them live whenever they come into town (I’m either working or the tickets go on sale and sell out before I can get to them!). This was an opportunity I couldn’t miss! Seeing one of my heroes live was one of the best experiences of the year by far.
Yorke’s solo stuff has always been different than Radiohead’s stuff, but as the years have gone on, I’ve noticed a blending of the two’s sounds into something that many people either love or hate. I’m definitely the former. I think that Thom Yorke tells a story with every song he creates, and every solo album he releases is so intricate and different than the last. I’m always amazed by his talent, so seeing him live was another level of amazing.
Andrea Belfi was his opener. I had never heard of him before the show, but after his performance I became a fan. He is an electro-percussionist, using different kinds of drums and soundboards to create his music. My jaw was on the floor the entire time he played. I’ve never quite heard anything like him prior, so I highly suggest checking out his EP Strata wherever you like to listen to music! It’ll be a new but great experience, that’s for sure.
2Spooky4Me: The Halloween Paragraph
Halloween is technically this week, but this past week was when all the celebrations happened! Early last week, my friends and I carved pumpkins, and over the weekend my friend Erin had her annual Halloween Party. I think about my costume ideas all year for the most part, but this year I was kind of stumped. I knew that I could get two costumes (one for work and one for the party). I knew that I could get everything I needed before the day of. I knew that I had one idea I had to try and pull off.
I’d like to think that I did a good job at capturing the essence of Joanne the Scammer (my favorite internet personality), but honestly I knew I was doing the bare minimum; the idea in my head was SO MUCH BETTER. That being said, I think that I pulled it off well! Everyone who knew who Joanne the Scammer was loved my costume, and everyone who didn’t know her liked it too. I really liked my costume, but I think the next time I want to be her, I’ll have to go even bigger!
I’m also salty that I didn’t get a full body pic, but it’s fine because I had so much fun being a different kind of boujee than I’m used to!
Since Halloween falls on a Thursday this year, I get to wear a costume to work too! I decided on being a doe after thinking long and hard about being Mary Potter (basically just me in my work uniform with a scar on my forehead and a wand as a pen). I felt like putting a little more effort into my Halloween look this year than the years past, so we’ll see how I pull off the doe look! (If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably see the look tbh).
My Best Friend is Falling Apart
This month, my roommate and one of my best friends had to go to the hospital. Damian is cool and dope and I’ve known him for over ten years (which is WILD, but that’s another story). He is a bigger man, but he is as healthy as a horse. My man could probably outrun me if he really wanted to, honestly.
That all being said, my man also fell up the steps coming home from work at the beginning of the month and fucked his ankle up. We think that this triggered the events of the month for him! After the ankle catastrophe, he felt a shortness of breath that he thought was just his anxiety taking over his sleep schedule, along with other weird symptoms. After going to the ER four (!) times, they finally realized that he had a small blood clot in his lung! I’m so happy he kept listening to his body. If he hadn’t, they would’ve never caught the clot!
Damian has recovered pretty well, and still is in the process of getting to 100%, but it was scary for a moment there. After all, this guy has been there for me for so long…I didn’t want to do him dirty by not being there for him. Seeing as I live with him, it was easy to take care of the things he wasn’t able to take care of while he was in the hospital (namely his lovely pup, Neoma). When I visited him in the hospital, we watched Zootopia and just kind of existed together (I think he was trying to get some sleep, so it was probably just me watching Zootopia, but anyway). Of course no one wants to hang out in the hospital, but I hope that me being there with him helped him feel not so awful.
October’s Music Obsessions
This month, I’ve been obsessed with trying to create a Spooky Playlist for you all. You’ll see that the beginning is strong, but I slowly realized that I didn’t want to add your typical “spooky songs”, so I did my own thing which is very on brand at the end of the day.
A lot of good new music has come out this month, including Hayley Kiyoko’s “demons” and Active Child’s “Set Me Free”, which you’ll find in the playlist. I also highly suggest checking out Andrea Belfi’s discography as well as Harry Styles’s latest release, “Lights Up”. I’ve been running this month’s playlist as well as those two suggestions on repeat this October!
I’m really looking forward to the shift in seasons, because that means that I’ll be listening to winter-y music more. I’m not talking Christmas music…I’m talking that dark pop and midnight vibe kind of music. In the spring/summer I tend to listen to brighter music, but in the fall/winter, it’s all about the darker tones. I don’t know if that’s because I tend to fall into my seasonal depression pretty hard, or if it’s just because I really do like the shift in musical mood, but either way, expect more heavy, dark music as the year comes to a close!
Angelina Jolie is Literally Perfect
“Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil” is a movie I’ve been dying to see ever since I heard they were making a sequel to 2014’s “Maleficent”. The first movie was so iconic, so great, so perfect, I wondered…how they were going to top it?
I won’t spoil the movie for people that want to go see it, but in short, the story picks up five years after the events of the first chapter. Prince Phillip proposes to Aurora, the Queen of the Moors and Maleficent’s daughter. Her saying yes gets the ball rolling on the fantastical story.
The story is wonderful on the surface, although it does have its share of plot holes. Honestly, I overlooked these plot holes because I was so invested in the magic and the characters’ arcs throughout the movie. Matt is really good at finding plot holes in stories, so that’s all he saw. He hasn’t seen the first one (I read the synopsis of the first one to him on the way to the theatre), but he says as a stand-alone movie, it was an 8/10 (6/10 if you can’t ignore the plot holes like him!).
Because I loved the first movie so much, I was slightly worried about the quality of the sequel. I had no reason to be, however. I took the story at face value and I enjoyed it. As a sequel, I enjoyed it because there were not a ton of callbacks, but just enough for fans of the first “Maleficent” to recognize and be happy with. As a stand-alone movie, I thought it carried itself pretty well. The first movie didn’t rely on the classic “Sleeping Beauty” story too much, in my opinion. The writers of the first movie were able to turn it into a new, fresh story. I think that this time around, they did it again and made an old fairy tale feel brand new.
Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer were perfection in this sequel. Pfeiffer was a very convincing villainous queen, and of course, Jolie’s Maleficent stole my heart once again. Ellen Mirojnick, the costume director, deserves a raise and an award for how perfect every single costume was in this movie. Don’t even get me started on the Dark Fae! I’m also very happy that Diaval (played by Sam Riley) had a little more screen time, seeing as he’s my favorite character out of the supporting cast.
All in all, I very much enjoyed “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”. If you haven’t seen the first one, I suggest watching it only if for the references in the sequel, but if you don’t have three-ish hours to spare you could go see the sequel and still have a wonderful time.
That’s it! That’s been my month! Other than that, I’ve been working a lot, but no one wants to hear about the ups and downs at Skyline…! I hope you guys enjoyed your October as much as I did. I’m excited for November, if only for Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday (sorry, Halloween) and no one really pays any attention to it because of Christmas! I like Christmas enough, but let’s take it slow this November. Let’s have a little sweet potato casserole and some turkey before busting out the Christmas Ham, am I right?
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