Kristen Bell, Hunger Games, and Community

It's Fangirl Friday, unofficially brought to you by Splitsider.

From the Huffington's Post interview with Kristen Bell, promoting House of Lies:

Now, "The Hunger Games." I know you're a big fan.

It's all I think about.

Anything new in your campaign to be Johanna? Is that still happening?

I mean from my campaign desk here on my full-size bed in a back bedroom in my family's house in Oregon, there are no new developments [Laughs] -- other than the fact that I am trying to stay on top of it and not age too rapidly so that I can still be cast.

For Halloween, were you Katniss?

No, but my 30th birthday I themed after "The Hunger Games" and I put District numbers up around. I put District 4 for water over the pool. I put District 2 for electronics over the stereo and iPod. I had a blow-up castle bouncy house on the front lawn and I put The Capitol over the bouncy house. And over my front door, I put District 12. All my friends dressed as the characters and I dressed as Katniss. I was head-to-toe in spandex with a fire cape and carried a bow and arrow.

That sounds pretty damn epic.

Oh yeah, it was pretty much major. I had friends that went all out. I have friends that like do it. They do not mess around. I had friends who came as Cato and Clove and were dressed in weird sewn-together fabric leaves and army colors. They had the football black under their eyes and they had taken all the knives in their house, even the butcher knives, and wrapped them in duct tape so they wouldn't be too sharp and flung them over their body like sort of ammo lines. They had all these knives taped to them -- it was amazing. I had a couple Effie Trinkets. It was pretty exceptional. People dressed up like tracker jackers. They were like bumble bees, but with huge horns.

Next themed party I have, I need to have you plan it for me.

Oh absolutely. Themed parties are pretty awesome.

[via Splitsider]

YES themed parties. If it had been around when I was 13, I totally would have loved a Hunger Games-themed bat mitzvah party. Not that I would have been cool enough to throw it myself, but I definitely would have attended. I also find it interesting to see which previous roles are cited in interviews. Burlesque? Really? It's never Reefer Madness. Sigh.

In other fangirl news, Community is definitely coming back in the spring! Here's a gem from the set, via Fat Neil's Twitter:

[via Splitsider]

I guess we can count on a Simpsons episode?

And if you just watched the Season 2 premiere of Portlandia, you might be interested in this interview with Carrie Brownstein.

Full Hunger Games Trailer

Finally:

I know a lot of people are complaining about the white-washing Katniss (and Gale), but right now my biggest issue is how clean and pretty Jennifer Lawrence looks while still in District 12. I know it's hard to hide how f-ing gorgeous Lawrence is, but she's already hairless, etc. in the forest and Reaping shots that I fear her transformation in the Capital is going to be less impressive (even though it is mostly about the outfits). Well, I'm excited nonetheless--I had goosebumps from the moment Prim's name is called. Also, I'm hoping for music as haunting and inseparable from the movie as the Harry Potter theme, and the whistle at the end bodes well.

[via io9]

Better Know a District

I'm torn between excitement for the films and mourning for the visuals I imagined while reading, which get harder to hold on to every time I see something like this:

More character posters after the jump.

Beautiful and Creepy Comics

Outfoxed by Dylan Meconis is a good one. The limited color palate lends itself well to a folkloric feel. You can read the whole thing here.

[via Drawn]

I love it when illustrators put thought into the way their work is going to be consumed on the web. Outfoxed does a good job of using page click-throughs to maintain a sequential feel, and Emily Carroll often makes one scroll down a long page length to build suspense. I think not knowing how many pages there are in an online comic keeps excitement high.

While I'm new to Dylan Meconis, I cannot recommend Emily Carroll enough. Gorgeous illustrations, and since Halloween is coming up, I recommend the chilling His Face All Red. All of her comics are great; when I read them I feel like I'm making sharp turns around corners, unsure of what's going to be on the other side of the wall. 

The Robot Matrix

From a recent Lapham's Quarterly:

[via Flavorwire]

I like that mythological and future robots are included, but the one thing I take issue with is having the Furby so high on the intelligence scale. Sure, they appeared to learn English (i.e., that owner's input [teaching] changed the Furby's output), but really they were all programmed to slowly switch over from speaking "Furbish" to English at a pre-determined rate, regardless of how much one spoke to them. Which makes the whole "banning Furbys at confidential meetings" craze ridiculous for more than just the reason that people were bringing Furbys with them to work. 

Career, life, future angst

trumspringa
n. the temptation to step off your career track and become a shepherd in the mountains, following your flock between pastures with a sheepdog and a rifle, watching storms at dusk from the doorway of a small cabin, just the kind of hypnotic diversion that allows your thoughts to make a break for it and wander back to their cubicles in the city.
[via my favorite tumblr Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows]


Fleet Foxes- Helplessness Blues

Every Thing On It

Wish list alert: The posthumous book of Shel Silverstein poems, Every Thing On It, came out today! Pick it up at your local bookstore or Amazon.

[via Jezebel]

Fantasizing about food in fiction

Over at The Hairpin, they're drooling over food that have appeared in books and movies. Turkish delight (from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) is the first thing that pops into my mind, although in fairness, most of that may have to do with having watched the creepy animated movie as a child, and less from reading the book. Other mentions include the edible teacup from Willy Wonka, "the cake that Fauna makes" in Sleeping Beauty, and the medicine in Mary Poppins (the movie). And this:

Katie: “The Gray Stuff” - Beauty & the Beast 
I know Lumiere says it’s “delicious” but also, it’s gray. What is it? It looks like a pile of some kind of whipped cream on top of a cracker, but GRAY. Belle sticks a finger in it (rude) and looks upward like she’s contemplating the taste, but I can’t tell if she thinks it’s great or not. It is, however, one of just three bites she takes at that entire feast (the others being a cherry and another rude finger full of some ... brown stuff) so maybe she saw it and was like “OMFG I LOVE the gray stuff.” Who knows! (I need to.)


What else? Pretty much everything in Harry Potter. Also, maybe this is weird, but I really wanted to try watercress sandwiches after reading E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan.

Door to the past

I meant to post about this last week: if you missed it, the essay "If This Door Could Talk..." in the NY Times book review is a quick and interesting read. 

The Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin launched an online exhibition around an old door from a popular bookstore on Christopher Street in the Village circa 1920-1925. When the bookstore, Frank Shay's, closed, the manager removed the door, and the Center bought it in 1960. Some 200 customers' signatures on the door have been identified, including those of Sherwood Anderson and a couple of Zigfeld girls, along with the designer of the KitchenAid mixer and many others. 

There are still 50 or so (more) obscure names that have yet to be identified, and visitors are invited to examine the door up close and help out. 

Hunger Games teaser

A teaser for The Hunger Games has surfaced! Almost wish there was no voiceover, but at least we get to see Katniss shoot an arrow . I picked up a free promo poster at the movies recently, and it's good and simple--just the Mockingjay in flames on a pitch black background with, "May the odds be ever in your favor." Gives me chills.

Beautiful Brain

As seen on Design Milk, a collection of covers for Oliver Sacks books, created by Cardon Webb.

I love how each cover has its own distinct type/layers of head cross-section, but still form a puzzle together. Although not included in this collection, let me recommend Sacks' book Musicophilia, for a fascinating and easy to understand survey of how our brains interact with music. This includes stories of a type of synesthesia much more interesting than my own.

Speaking of the Decemberists...

Colin Meloy is writing a YA series, and his wife, Carson Ellis is illustrating. You can download the first four chapters of Book One, Wildwood, here.

The Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment

NPR has posted a music video for the Decemberists' new single, 'Calamity Song', and I have not been this excited to watch a music video since the Spice Girls A to Z Girl Power Countdown.

Directed by Parks & Recreation showrunner Michael Schur, the video is inspired by the Eschaton scene in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

A favorite (and laugh-out-loud hilarious) part of the novel, Eschaton is a game played by the kids at ETA, and simulates global domination via tennis balls and a very complex mathematical formula (Eschatology: the study of the end of the world). If this make no sense/you've never read Infinite Jest, you'll still get it from the video.

I wonder why they went for rain over snow?

Decemberists + Infinite Jest + Michael Schur = All good things

I still don't think any visualization of this scene will ever make me laugh as hard as reading it does. Although this photo from Infinite Summer is kinda perfect: