i actually like 4th of july. it's like the essence of summer. because of last year's circumstances, i grew to hate 4th of july, but in reality, i actually lik bcse it. this year, for like the first time in forever, we're not at the country club. we're all having a nice little outdoor bar-b-que in our backyard, and it's certainly made the 4th of july a lot more enjoyable. when we're at the club, it's always good food, but it's like a constant struggle to avoid as many people as i can and get out of there as fast as politeness allows. but this is a lot better. it feels like our own 4th of july. like we're not just doing what we're supposed to do because we belong to the country club and that's what people do on holidays. and this is a lot more fun for me. i've always felt like 4th of july could be a really fun and awesome holiday and is for a lot of people, just not for me because of where we usually spend it. and isn't the 4th of july supposed to celebrate freedom? well, that's certainly not what i experience when i'm at the club....to me, 4th of july is supposed to be like that scene from the sandlot, where everyone in the neighborhood is having a block party, and just enjoying each other's company and the boys are all playing baseball during the fireworks. just classic and simple. and that's what this year has been. i just relaxed most of the day...we had lunch on the patio at the club, but that's just a normal lunch and there wasn't anyone else there so it was really low key and i didn't feel all aaaah i hate the club. then i got some groceries and helped get ready for our dinner thing and then my dad and i saw the incredible hulk...i loved it the second time....edward norton is sooooo hotttttt!!! i've officially seen all 26 episodes of summerland...it's kind of depressing actually :( i'm watching the first episode i ever saw, the one with founder's day and where ava goes on a date with cameron's dad...i think it's funny how nikki and cameron keep talking about the outsiders and the guy who plays cameron's dad was in that movie. i love that movie. now i feel like watching it.....okay, switching gears here, but you know what the 4th of july reminds me of? miss misery. i love that book. that's how 4th of july should be spent....on a rooftop party somewhere in alphabet city, watching the fireworks over the new york skyline, eating cath kennedy's lethal 7-layer dip...okay, minus the last part all of that is a definite possibility when i'm a twentysomething, and i most certainly hope to make it a reality. ha, i'm so lame. but that book is seriously underrated. why am i the only one who really likes it? it's so cute! they should really make a movie out of that book, i'd watch it all the time!!! anyway, i'm gonna go, i'm downstairs watching tv, so i'm being pretty anti-social. lataaaaa.

sandlot 4th of july scene:


hope you all have a very classic fourth of july, lol! :) :)

because i am officially obsessed with this book, and it is seriously my dream to be cath kennedy (even though i'd prefer her first name be spelled with a k) or on america's next top model (what, i have the potential, i'm five nine!), but anyway......:

miss misery.....elliott smith (duuuuuuh.....)
charlotte sometimes.....the cure
head full of steam.....the go-betweens
blue boy.....orange juice
shattered......the rolling stones
everybody needs somebody.....primal scream
not that funny......fleetwood mac
jacqueline.....franz ferdinand
beating heart baby....head automatica
ladyflash.....the go! team
metro.....berlin
crackdown....cabaret voltaire
dream police.....cheap trick
bonus mosh part II.....taking back sunday
okay i believe you but my tommy gun don't.....brand new
swiss army romance....dashboard confessional
to wish impossible things....the cure
july, july!...the decembrists
art is hard.....cursive
y control......yeah yeah yeahs
monday-paracetmol....ulrich schnauss
look up......stars
the good that won't come out....rilo kiley
house of jealous lovers.....the rapture
the two sides of monsieur valentine......spoon
still in love song......the stills
a new name for everything....the weakerthans
reptilia....the strokes
this is our emergency....pretty girls make graves
some girls are bigger than others....the smiths
we will become silhouettes...the postal service
mystery achievement....the pretenders
victim of the crime.....phoenix
falling and laughing....orange juice
love vigilantes....new order
if you knew her as i know her....mendoza line
cinnamon....the long winters
perfect skin....lloyd cole
evil....interpol
there's glory in your story....idlewild
nyc....interpol
sympathy...the get up kids
the trial of the century....french kicks
free.....freeway
calm before the storm....the bats

so here i am. back in the mc. period 4/5. bored. as usual. although i'm totally aware that there are about fourty thousand other things i could be doing...but whatever. i'm actually really hungry too. even though i ate eggs this morning. and i'm really tired. even though i got a lot of sleep.

i'm reading miss misery, by andy greenwald. (i <3 him). for the the fourth time. i read this book every so often because it's just so cute. it gives me such a good outlook of nyc. everytime i go there i think i'm about to enter this romantic indie world that i read about in the book, completely ignoring the fact that i go there at least twice a year and every time i'm there it's nothing like that.

nick hasn't talked to me in a while. i can't even lie about it, i kind of miss him. talking to him was special in it's own really fucked up way.

miss misery is so good. such good musical references too. it's like nick and norah, how i'm the only one that likes it probably because of the musical references and the romantic portrayal of the city and that's about it. but miss misery is kind of an attempt at existentialism, too. i mean not real existentialism like camus or anything, just like pretend existentialism. but whatever, I LOVE IT.

and i love how they talk about eternal sunshine. i'm about to go watch that again. i wish i could be that movie.....

Spin City: Emo Expert Goes LiveJournal Stalking in Debut Novel
Andy Greenwald's Miss Misery

by Akiva Gottlieb

January 17th, 2006 5:55 PM

Emo is the operative word of this debut novel, titled after an Elliott Smith song and prefaced by a Death Cab quote, a chronicle of "the tsunami of sadness and regret" in the wake of—what else?—a breakup. Having already written a definitive primer on the genre (Nothing Feels Good), rock critic Andy Greenwald follows fellow Spin-sters Marc Spitz and Dave Itzkoff into pseudo-autobio-about-self- loathing-NYC-media-professional territory.

Like most honest freelance writers, David Gould stalks adolescent hotties on LiveJournal blogs under the pretense of "book research." In lieu of his girlfriend and a social life, he pines after elusive Murakami-phile Cath (MzMisery) and fields Brooklyn-lifestyle inquiries and crestfallen emoticons from Ashleigh (TheWrongGirl87), a teenage Mormon malcontent from Utah. In desperation mode, David invents a club-hopping, coke-binging online identity that morphs into a living, breathing doppelgänger who defames the Gould name all over Page Six. Then, David's two ladies make separate pilgrimages to NYC and force him out of the computer cocoon. Reality bites.

Greenwald's pastiche of emo tropes (AIM conversations, annotated mix tapes), dime-store Freud, and corny similes ("a grip as loose as a Hilton sister") adds up to the equivalent of an overly earnest late-night blog post you regret in the morning. Our narrator myopically renders Manhattan as a cartoonish hipster playground, a desiccated wonderland of Mercury Lounges and secret underground bars. Though David denounces the Avenue A clique as "painfully hip," he fondly dotes on his vintage Go-Betweens T-shirt.

David lacks the shaggy-dog charm of the slacker hero in Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision, and the title character acts mainly as macguffin. Ashleigh is Miss Misery's only recognizable human, a resourceful teen who uses bands, bad poetry, and cyberspace to escape familial repression. Drop her into a better novel, and she's an Austen heroine for the MySpace generation.