THE OSCARS!

welcome to my politically incorrect and totally opinionated blogpost about the oscars!

while i blog about the oscars, i am currently residing at home in indiana in my seventies armchair. so obviously i took a weird picture of myself and labelled it SEVENTIES ARMCHAIR!

if this is your first time, here's my face.
read the rest of my stuff.

the best part about this picture is that you can't actually see my seventies armchair.

also while i blog about the oscars from my seventies armchair while watching the lion king, i have a guest in my room. her name is alexandria and she happens to be a tarantula. due to humanity's natural fear of spiders, i didn't feel the need to put a picture of her on here.

you can thank me later.

but i will be getting my own tarantula as a pet soon (alex is my brother's) and then i'll post ALL THE PICTURES! eheheh.

but now it's time for EMILY BLOGS ABOUT THE OSCARS!

due to the not so unfortunate circumstances of watching seventies variety shows with my parents, i didn't actually get to the oscars until nine, so i missed the first hour. this meant that i missed the wonderful christoph waltz getting his award for django unchained. i'm sure he deserved it. a lot of people that i follow on tumblr are really huge fans of the guy, so i didn't have go to far to figure out what i'd missed.

many of the posts went like this: CHRISTOPH KAEJSHGSG I CAN'T EVEN BABYYYYY CHRISPEARGH

this is how we type on tumblr. and as you'll soon see, how i type on twitter.

i am a notorious livetweeter. if you follow me on twitter, you understand this. if you don't follow me on twitter, you can find it @emilyyxh, but i guarantee that you do NOT want to follow me. simply for livetweting purposes. 

that and i also tweet uncomfortable things.

so i settle down for the oscars. get nice and comfy with my blanket on the basement couch. open up my laptop. 

first tweet: AAAAND EMILY IS LIVE AT THE OSCARS! WHAT UP BRAVE AND PAPERMAN?!

best animated film and animated short film. which were both well deserved. i can't speak to wreck-it-ralph because i haven't seen it, and i was also grabbing a large dr. pepper from the garage when the nominees were announced. but the guy for brave walked up in a kilt and i was like, ALMA COLLEGE DAS WASSUP.

i then learned very quickly that seth macfarlane, our fearless oscars host, had performed something called the boob song while i was watching uproariously funny seventies variety shows. i went to youtube to find it and came out with this:

i, for one, was not amused. and neither was that blond actress i forget the name of and charlize theron.

it was then announced that the cast of the avengers was going to be coming onto the stage and i promptly fangirled. the avengers, guys! the avengers! the movie i saw five times in theatres and bought the day it came out!

and then scarlet johansson didn't come out with them and this happened.

there are farrrr more twitter pictures coming. to show my love of twitter. and how i spent the evening.

no but seriously, where was the only female avenger?!

and then suddenly this blond guy with glorious locks was on stage accepting some award that i hadn't paid attention to because i was too busy being an angry feminist (which takes up a lot of my day). this guy had like, waist length hair and suddenly voldemort shows up on my twitter all like, nobody told me that lucius malfoy was nominated for an oscar!

well played, lord voldemort, well played.

the lucius malfoy guy (winner of best cinematography) was doing his speech and from the depths of the theatre emerged something terrying, electric, and worthy of pants-peeing.

jaws music.

at first i thought it was a joke. but i quickly realized it was the oscars' way of saying "STFU AND GTFO WE DON'T WANNA BE HERE ALL NIGHT, BRO."

this promptly showed up on tumblr with this caption:

"YOUR SPEECH IS TOO LONG MOTHERFUCKER"

that happened.

next came channing tatum and jennifer anniston, who seth macfarlane blatantly called a stripper. that was unsettling. what was more unsettling (on a personal level) was the backlash that i received on twitter for stating that channing tatum is not attractive.

uhhhh because he's not. i'm more into british men.

then the hobbit was nominated for something, i fangirled, it didn't get it, and i pouted. then in the background they started playing "do you hear the people sing" and of course this was tweeted.

it really was suggested.

there was a huge tribute to bond and i realized very quickly how few bond movies that i'd seen. then the stage got dark and a figure rose onto it through a dark mist... and i thought... ADELE!

wrong. it was not adele. i was disappointed.

i then got into an argument with kara nic over a retirement commercial. some old guy was like, RETIREMENT! THE AMERICAN DREAM! and my tweet was something like, "hey old guy in this commercial, my american dream has nothing to do with retirement, or america for that matter" and kara was like, "EMILY ARE YOU DUMB THAT'S TOMMY LEE JONES."

oh. sorry, tommy lee jones. but you still don't change my mind about my american dream and how it's actually about moving to england.

by now facebook statuses are cropping up. "watching the oscars with emily, carrie, annalise, and lydia on twitter. though we live far apart, we are together through tweets."

damn straight we were.

periodically, the oscars shows detailed clips of the nine nominated best pictures. lincoln was up next and while watching it, i discovered it was a movie that i didn't really want to see. at the end of the clip, seth macfarlane made this joke: "daniel day-lewis really got into lincoln's head. but i feel like the only person who really accomplished that was john wilkes booth."

i have never seen a more uncomfortable theatre in my life.

the following tweet is a direct quote of macfarlane's reaction to his joke: "150 years and it's still too soon."

next up was a short documentary and the only film that won was one that wasn't about war, starvation, disease, and death. the guys were really really excited and talked for wayyy too long and jaws ate them. very loudly. john williams will one day rule the world.

then it was a tribute to musicals. YES! MUSICALS! I LOVE MUSICALS!

first off was chicago. it was a wonderful performance, but i was off-put by the sexualized dancing on top of a piano. i've played the piano for sixteen years. that is an expensive, beautiful instrument. there is no need to shake what your mother gave you on top of it.

then it was jennifer hudson and good lord, that was incredible. THE SASS. THE BEAUTY. THE POWER. i literally screamed "JENNIFER HUDSON I WILL LOVE YOU SO GOOD" out loud at my TV and on twitter.

then it was les miserables.

right. they all came out on stage. they were all beautiful. they were all singing one day more. everybody on my twitter feed was crying.

and then there's me.

i have only heard one day more performed with the vocals replaced by... kazoos.

and it is seriously the funniest thing that i have ever heard.

my twitter feed is exploding with sobs and i am snorting into my giant bowl of popcorn while eddie redmayne looks like he's going to pee his pants he's singing with so much force. hashtag #mylife.

then ted came on stage. you know, the adorable teddy bear voiced by seth macfarlane. i was forcibly reminded of last summer when my grandma was like, "emily, i really want to see ted!" and i was like, "grandma, i don't think you understand how NOT cute that teddy bear is." 

while ted and mark wahlberg were on stage riffing off each other, the cameras panned to bradley cooper, one of my favorite actors, and i tweeted "bradley cooper is like, "awww this teddy bear is adorable but we ALL KNOW THAT IT'S NOT"" and i watched in horror as ted made a jewish joke. 

uh, how is that okay on national television? ted was like, "hey, your last name ends in berg, are you jewish? and you have a huge nose."

uhhhhhh.

THEN THERE WAS A TIE!

don't ask me what it was for. i have no recollection. i just know that life of pi won one of the tied oscars. like it won everything else. (not that i'm bitter. except i totally am.)

when skyfall got its first oscar, the guy that accepted it was straight out of the sixties. butt-lenghth hair. bad teeth. old suit. huge round glasses. the perfect man.

then it was time for the fourth biggest award of my evening: best actress in a supporting role. presented by none other than the wonderful christopher plummer.

i prayed hard for jacki weaver. but we all knew it was going to anne hathaway. and of course, it was. i love anne hathaway. she's a brilliant role model for young women. but like the rest of twitter, we were all expecting a huge acceptance speech. i tweeted about waiting for the jaws music. it didn't come. anne hathaway kept it short, snappy, and beautiful. i was proud.

i probably should've said this a whole lot earlier, but i'll say it now, and i tweeted it too: if silver linings playbook is nominated for ANYTHING, i want it to win. if anybody from silver linings playbook is nominated for anything, i want them to win. hands down. no ifs, ands, or buts. hence the jacki weaver/anne hathaway dilemma.

THEN ADELE WAS ON STAGE AND EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT. 

i didn't even tweet during her performance. i was that captivated.

then came a sad part of the oscars for me: the kristen stewart hating. she came on stage with daniel radcliffe, which got ALL of social media abuzz. i have a few things to say about this.

1. she was limping because she was supposed to be on crutches and they wouldn't let her take them on stage.

2. she looked high because taking pain medication makes you look high.

3. don't be all like, "euw she shouldn't be on the same stage as harry potter" because she is NOT bella swan, and daniel radcliffe is NOT harry potter. so just don't even.

4. just because she was in twilight does not make her a bad person or a bad actress. move on with your lives.

moving forward.

then it was in memoriam, which is always incredibly depressing. i felt a sharp pang for michael clarke duncan. i cried like the emotional fangirl that i am, and barbra streisand came on stage and sang a very heartfelt and upsetting song about remembrance. luckily i had a commercial break to compose myself in which tim burton talked about zombie unicorns for samsung galaxy note product placement.

adele got the best original song oscar as we knew she would, and then carrie and i wondered why the hobbit wasn't nominated for best adapted screenplay. then i pouted that silver linings playbook didn't get it. things were really starting to get rolling. awards people actually cared about!

then it was attack of the capslock just before best actress.

i obviously had my sights set on jennifer lawrence. i have seen silver linings playbook twice and there was no other way to go.

so. capslock. best actress.

jean dujardin is very attractive, by the way. and they did play lion king music. a bunch of people were like, "@emilyyxh, DID YOU HEAR THE LION KING MUSIC?!" so i responded. and then i fangirled about jennifer lawrence. 

we can talk about how she tripped on her dress, how hugh jackman and bradley cooper rushed to help her, and how she's so down to earth and funny. she is so great. and her dress was BEAUTIFUL. i told my dad that i could've lived happily under her train. on twitter, i protrayed my love of her dress in a different way, spelling errors and all.

excitement is bad for spelling.

then it was best actor.

when i first saw silver linings playbook, i wanted to blog about it. it's a movie that's very near and dear to my heart, and i see myself in bradley cooper's character, in jennifer lawrence's character. it's a movie about humanity, about mental illness, and about the reality of our lives, and i truly believe that it was the best movie of the year. and i believe with one hundred percent conviction that bradley cooper deserved that oscar.

when they showed a clip of his acting, they showed the scene where he has a panic attack looking for his wedding video at three in the morning. this was my third time seeing this clip, and it still does not get any easier, because i see myself when i watch it. and sitting alone in my basement, my fingers ready to tweet, i cried watching the thirty second clip of him. i sat there and i cried.

the oscar went to daniel day-lewis.

i do not want to undermine is role in lincoln or his acting. lincoln was a superb movie (although i haven't seen it) and i know that he is a truly gifted actor.

but i truly believe that that oscar should've gone to bradley cooper's outstanding performance.

then michelle obama skyped in to read best picture.

i was still upset about bradley cooper. i'd vented about it on twitter and tumblr. i was trying not to hate daniel day-lewis's perfect acceptable speech. and i prayed very hard for silver linings playbook.

well, you know what happened. argo got best picture.

i was pissed.

yes, i cried. i was very upset. i had actually forgotten that argo was even nominated. a true underdog.

but ben affleck's acceptance speech was beautiful, and i think it's something that we can all learn from. and now i have to go see argo.

i'm still thinking about doing a full post on silver linings playbook. i really am. i believe firmly that it deserved to win all of its nominations. it only came away with one for jennifer lawrence, and she deserved that award. i do believe that bradley cooper deserved best actor. and i do believe that it deserved best picture.

i also believe that if you haven't seen silver linings playbook that you should go see it.

i was drying my very real tears when seth macfarlane then sang a song about all of the oscar losers as a kind of send off for the evening. and when he made poked fun at bradley cooper not getting the best actor and then jabbed at silver linings playbook as a movie, i screamed obscenities at my TV and might've thrown a remote.

i was less than impressed by seth macfarlane's hosting. i found the boob song to be petty and cheap, his jewish jokes were not warranted at all, his jab at selma hayek was completely rude, and basically, he's a misogynist douchebag. i could say a lot more about it, but i'd just get angry. and right now i'm super chill, just watching the lion king and hanging out with my brother's tarantula.

the oscars were a great time. i sat on my couch with my laptop, my never failing dr. pepper, a bowl of popcorn, and twitter at my fingertips. i laughed. i cried. i retweeted. i got 56 twitter notifications. i was offended. i was ecstatic. i was angry. i was sad. i screamed. i threw some stuff. i said some bad words.

it was awesome.

if you want the full scale of my oscar tweeting (all four hours' worth), click here. you'll have to scroll down through my previous tweets to get to the oscars, but hopefully it's worth it.

you can learn a lot about a person through their twitter.

until then, "I'M JUST THE CRAZY SLUT WITH THE DEAD HUSBAND!"

it makes sense if you've seen silver linings playbook, i swear.

and finally, i leave you with a beautiful picture of bradley cooper and jennifer lawrence, whom i now officially ship.

i matter. you matter. we matter. we are stories.

i want to preface this by asking you to actually pay attention to the title.

i matter. you matter. we matter. we are stories. you are a story. tell it. 

rewind to the middle of december when i was scrolling through to write love her arms' website. if you don't know what TWLOHA is, please click HERE.

i clicked on their heavy and light tour button, looking to see where the tour was going to be headed.

i've always been unfortunate with tours. like, when frightened rabbit had their US tour, i couldn't go. it's always in places that are too far out of reach, like chicago. and then it's like, wait, i'm a broke college student, i can't pay for gas and food and tickets.

heavy and light was in detroit, two hours away from my college. tickets were fourteen bucks each.

i bought two without thinking about it.

they were at my house in an envelope within a week. i put them in a special part of my purse and brought them up to school. this was going to be a once in a lifetime experience.

i was going to TWLOHA heavy and light detroit with annalise.

annalise and i!

at three fifteen yesterday, annalise shows up at my room. i'm actually wearing makeup. i've been charging my camera all day. i'm wearing the TWLOHA deon i got online when i was seventeen and i first heard of their movement. annalise borrows a shirt that i bought when jamie tworkowski visited my college my freshman year. we get a quick middle of the afternoon dinner, tell my iphone to take us to detroit, get in my car, and we head off into the glorious michigan countryside heading to d-town.

most of the ride there is taking pictures of scenic snowy michigan, trying to find a decent radio station, and talking about family drama. we have dr. peppers. the music we can find is good. a car passes us with a license plate that says GOT MLK?! and annalise snaps a picture of it. we laugh about the fact that we're RAs and taking pictures so we can "document the situation". there's excitement. we sing "hey there delilah" in a terrible opera.

i haven't been to detroit in years. and annalise and i realize that we've didn't really tell anybody that we were doing this. we just... left for detroit for a night of music, conversation, and hope.

we cruise into detroit. it's all one way streets and large buildings and police cars and i feel completely out of my element. i have to pee. i'm thinking about the head and the heart concert that jacob and i went to and how this feels almost the same; pulling into a new place, a new city, getting ready for a once in a life time experience. we park, put all of our valuables in the trunk of my car, and then we're rushing into st. andrew's hall, showing our tickets and our IDs to prove that we're twenty-one.

the hall is big and open and we get as close to the stage as we can. we're shoved next to some guys that are pushing seven feet tall. my phone is dying from directing us all the way here. i'm tweeting about how we have ten minutes until jamie tworkowski walks into the stage and i can't even stand it because i just love his movement so much, and i'm remembering the time that he hugged me when he came to alma, and i know that this is what i need right now, that this show is going to blow my mind.

the lights go out. and there are words on a screen. words telling me that i am important, that i am a story, that i matter in this world. and that i need to live my story, that my story is unique, is important to me, to other people.

i am invincible and i matter.

jamie tworkowski.
i love this man.

and then jamie tworkowski came out and talked about heavy and light, the TWLOHA movement, and how tonight was a night of hope, stories, words, conversations, and music.

there is god in music.

the next three hours were a blur. the show started with noah and abbie gunderson who were breathtakingly beautiful. i tried to figure out how noah could play the guitar and the harmonica at the same time. then it was a small band called now, now that had two girl lead singers that looked like they were my age. they made me question that i'm doing with my life because when i looked at them, i thought i could do anything.

then anis mojgani came on stage.

he was a spoken word poet and the moment he opened his mouth, it felt like i knew what i wanted to do with my life, i knew what it meant to be loved, i knew everything that i ever needed to know. his words were beautiful and meaningful and my words trying to describe it will never, ever do it justice.

anis mojgani. check it out.

i sang with aaron gillespie and bryce someone from the rocket summer, and then the main show of the evening began after a heartfelt story from a heroin addict named dennis and a powerful message from jamie.

JON FOREMAN.

have you heard of jon foreman? probably not.

have you heard of switchfoot?

now you've heard of jon foreman.

jon foreman started his part of the show alone. he unplugged himself from any time of electrical outlet, stepped to the front of the stage, and started to play dare you to move. to the entire theatre sang it with him, all of our voices rising together. i have a video and you can hear me singing in the background, but it's hard to tell that i'm singing because i was crying so hard.

he was joined by his other band the fiction family and they played for a good hour. annalise and i held hands and swayed together, feeling what it was to live through music, to feel like we mattered, to feel like we really were a story.

we are.

too soon, all of it was over. we stood there for a while, not entirely sure what had happened. we had stood for four hours in a theatre surrounded by beautiful people, all their own stories, and we had listened to beautiful moving music and poetry, and all too soon, it was over.

i didn't know what to do. but i did know one thing.

I WAS HUNGRY.

after annalise had her heavy and light pamphlet signed by aaron gillespie, we managed to find our way out of the winding downtown streets of detroit. annalise tells me that she'll buy me dinner, even though it's eleven o'clock at night. i want doughnuts. we get onto the highway to head back to alma. about ten miles in we see a sign for tim hortons.

we scream. veer the car. get off in some detroit suburb that we've never been to before.

and we get doughnuts and coffee at tim hortons at eleven thirty at night.

doughnut. om nom nom.

the mocha that i get is absolutely disgusting. we snarf down two doughnuts each. annalise gives her latte because it actually tastes good. after a half hour of sitting alone in a tim hortons and laughing and talking about the greatness of heavy and light, we head back toward lansing.

annalise and i talk about all kinds of things on the way home. what would we do if we weren't held down by anything? if we could truly do anything we wanted to do? i would be a professional blogger. annalise would direct a music video.

what if we could just buy a plane ticket and go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted? have you ever just wanted to leave?

while we drive back to alma, we are invincible.

i tell annalise that i don't want to go back to alma, i want to keep adventuring. because when else are we going to do this? we're not going to do it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week. we've just gone to detroit and had this incredibly moving once in a lifetime experience. if we're going to do it, we're going to do it now.

she agrees.

so we blow by the alma exit and keep taking the highway toward lansing.

there was this moment where i panic. we're still cruising down 96 at seventy-five miles an hour, but now i have no idea where we're going because we've passed our exit. we can't just turn around and head back. we've done what we've always talked about; we've taken the exit we've wanted to, we haven't taken the exit we were supposed to.

we are adventuring.

we drive twenty miles to lansing. we get off at an exit to the capitol building, the capitol building of michigan. annalise's phone is barely keeping up with the car, trying to get us directions there. we turn on a one way street and follow it toward the large building, just blindly trying to get there as best we can, and we pull over in front of it, pay the parking meter, and it's one in the morning.

it's one in the moring and annalise and i have driven from detroit and somehow we've wound up at the capitol building of michigan.

capitol. one in the morning.

we bundle up. we run up the capitol building steps. we dance on them. we take pictures. we look to the heavens and shout. we did this, and we are invincible. this is our story. 

when it becomes too hold to hold onto my camera properly and it's nearing one thirty in the morning, we get back in my car and head back to alma. we get on 127 and start heading north, 53 miles to campus. we talk about the fact that we just did this thing, this thing where we purposely missed our exit, wandered around lansing, and danced on the steps of the capitol.

as we near alma, the radio plays we are young by fun.

it has never been more appropriate. we are young. we are setting the world on fire. we are invincible. we matter.

all day today i've thought about ways that i want to convey last night on this blog. i want to tell you everything that i felt, describe each tear that i shed while listening to testimonials, to poetry, to music. every scream that i gave when there was a musician, every shout of happiness, every shout of laughter. every sway of my hips, every clap along to the music, every time that annalise squeezed my hand to let me know that i wasn't alone in this room, that we were all people, that we were all stories.

i cannot do it.

all day today people have been asking me "how my concert in detroit was." i tell them it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

i don't tell them that i wasn't just a concert. i don't tell them that i came alive in st. andrew's hall in detroit, that i had a glimpse of who i am meant to be.

i tell them that it was fun and annalise and i went to lansing at one in the morning on a whim. they tell me it was lucky that we didn't get arrested.

i don't tell them what moved us to do this. i can't explain it. i don't have the words to convey it.

but if you take anything away from me attempting to describe my experience of to write love on her arms' heavy and light detroit, please take this away.

you are a story. and you matter.

now here are some pictures from last night for your enjoyment. :)

HEAVY AND LIGHT.

jon foreman was a badass.

st. andrew's.

annalise and i ate the capitol. :)