Top 5: Fictional Crushes

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you're probably aware that The Hunger Games opened in theaters this weekend. From what I've heard it's raked in $155 million on opening weekend - coming in at the third largest of all time, after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Dark Knight. Not to shabby, huh? After seeing the film, and reading this great article on Hello Giggles about embracing you inner teenager and all her giddiness, I was inspired to choose a fun topic this week: fictional crushes.

The real reason women
watch this show.

We all have them - movies that you say you love for the storyline, but really it's just because the leading man is swoon-worthy. You know Grey's Anatomy wouldn't be as popular if it weren't for McDreamy and McSteamy. Below are my top 5 (current) fictional crushes. Who are yours?

5. Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre (2011)

Michael Fassbender as Rochester

If you know anything about me at all you know I love the story of Jane Eyre, and with that comes a love of Rochester. He's your typical Romantic male lead - dark, brooding, and emotional. Kind of a jerk sometimes, but that's just a ruse to cover his emotional side. In the newest Jane Eyre the actor playing Rochester was perfect. He managed to pull off wearing a vest, a scarf, even a cotton nightshirt with ruffles. It takes a special kind of guy to make a nightgown look manly.

4. Peeta Mellark, The Hunger Games (2012)

Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark

I may have only read The Hunger Games in the past month, but if you've read the series, you can probably agree that Peeta is the perfect guy. He thinks of others before himself, he refuses to let the games change him, he endures torture to protect what is right, and is exactly what heroine Katniss needs: a level-headed good guy who just wants what's best for her. He's also had a secret crush on her for like ten years. How adorable is that? Plus it doesn't hurt that he's pretty adorable himself.



3. Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything (1989)

John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler

Admittedly I have a weakness for 80s teen movies, but honestly, how can you not like Lloyd Dobler? He's witty. He teaches kickboxing to little kids. He can be friends with girls and not want to make out with them. He's a good brother and uncle. He sends his girlfriend a love letter in the mail. And when she breaks up with him, by giving him a pen, of all stupid things, he shows up at her house and plays their song outside her window to try and win her back. Basically, he's the perfect 80s boyfriend, with the boy-next-door looks to go with it. I have this movie poster and hung it in my apartments all through college, probably to the chagrin of my roommates.


2. Max/Johnny, Penelope (2006)

James McAvoy as Max, or Johnny, or whoever he is

Penelope is one of my favorite go-to feel-good movies. Christina Ricci is a loveable lead character, a girl cursed with a pig-nose and looking for a guy who will love her for who she really is. The one guy who gives her a chance is named Max, who comes in singing, picking her favorite book off the shelf, and generally sweeping her off of her feet with charm and an indie musician image. She runs away, and he's not really who he says he is, but in the end it doesn't matter, because he has pretty eyes and great hair.


1. Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Matthew Mcfayden as Mr. Darcy

First of all, Fitzwilliam Darcy has been a heartthrob since Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813. He's shy, thoughtful, intelligent, happens to be wealthy, and says things like "I love you most ardently." I mean, seriously? Who does that? Second, to anyone who says Colin Firth is the only Mr. Darcy, I say, meet Matthew Mcfayden. He makes 19th century sideburns look attractive. In the rain, even. I say I like this film because it's beautifully shot and Lizzie is such a strong female character, but let's be honest, it's all about Darcy.

Ohio County or Popular Baby Name?

We all know that Ohioans give their towns weird names. I was looking at a map naming the counties of Ohio the other day and it dawned on me - I know a lot of kids with similar names. Very odd. I started thinking, I wonder how many of our county names are also on the most recent baby names list? Turns out, some of them are! Check out the list of names below, and cast your vote: is it a Ohio County, Popular Baby Name, or Both?

1. Adelaide
2. Allen
3. Avery
4. Harper
5. Harrison
6. Henry
7. Jackson
8. Knox
9. Lawrence
10. Logan 
11. Lucas
12. Madison
13. Morgan
14. Violet
15. Wyatt 

How did you score? Check your work against the answers below. 

The Hunger Games Trilogy

*Spoiler Alert: I'm going to talk about all three of the novels, so if you haven't finished them yet, don't read any further! I also ruin a couple other novels, so be careful.* 

I'm not one to give into trends just because everyone else is doing them. Just because something is popular doesn't necessarily mean that it is good, so before I read a trendy book or shell out the money to see a big-name film, I check to see what critics are saying about it and how friends with similar tastes feel. I put off reading Eat, Pray, Love because every Oprah-watching soccer mom I ever met swore by it, and I don't usually have the same tastes in books as they do; but after seeing the author speak in a TED talk, I gave the book a chance and loved it. I was anxious to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, especially after a movie adaptation was announced, but after the advice of a similar-minded friend who said "don't waste your time," I chose not to read it.

So when everyone and their mother started talking about The Hunger Games, I was only somewhat interested. Another YA trilogy about a teenage girl? There are a million of those out right now, filling up the somewhat depressing "Supernatural Romance" shelf in the teen section at Barnes & Noble. Not worth my time. But then people started telling me I needed to read it - people I majored in English with at college, well-read people studying to be teachers, basically everyone who loved the same books I did. So I decided to give it a chance, picked up a copy at the bookstore - and read the first book in less than two days. I was hooked.

I described the first novel to my sister as a cross between Harry Potter and The Giver. Suzanne Collins writes much like J.K. Rowling, with simple fluid words, captivating characters, and forward-marching plots that leave you telling yourself, just one more chapter, then I'll stop for a while. And much like when I read Rowling's books, I couldn't put them down and devoured them almost all in one sitting. The Harry Potter series, The Giver, and The Hunger Games trilogy have one pivotal thing in common: they are using the experiences of a single character in order to teach the reader a much larger lesson about life. Potter is about friendship, loyalty, doing what's right in the face of adversity. The Giver is about remembering your past, gaining knowledge, learning what it means to be human. The Hunger Games is about protecting the innocent, ending senseless wars, and doing what is right for your community.


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Top 5: Spring Flowers

It's spring! Well, not quite, but it looks like spring, feels like spring, sounds like spring, and even smells like spring, so I'm calling it. The local ice cream stand was even open today, which in my hometown means the new season is in full-swing. For me, springtime means flowers (and SweeTart's Chicks, Ducks, and Bunnies for Easter, but that's another story), so in honor of the gorgeous weather this weekend today's Top 5 is featuring my favorite spring flowers.

5. Daffodils

One of the sure signs that warm weather is here for good is when daffodils start blooming all over the countryside. My mom has them planted in long rows along a fence and in a flower bed in front of our house that become a bank of sunny yellow in the springtime. I love that they basically all grow to the same uniform height, it looks like they grow that way on purpose.

4. Tulips

Tulips aren't necessarily one of my favorite flowers - they're kind of a boring shape - but I love that a garden near where I live plants scads of them. Every year people start asking "Are the tulips at Kingwood Gardens open yet?" Once they're blooming the park is gorgeous and people (meaning me) love to stroll along the brick pathways, admire the plants, and hope to see one of the many peacocks that stroll through the grounds. It's a great way to spend a warm afternoon. 

3. Grape Hyacinths

These are random little flowers - they look almost like weeds, they're so simple and tiny, but they have always been a favorite of mine. They only grow to about 4 inches high and have bright purple round blossoms that resemble a tiny bunch of concord grapes. They bloom in the same shape as full-size hyacinths but are almost perfect miniatures, which is probably why I have liked them since I was a little girl and would pick them from the yard to take to my Grandmother's house.

2. Crocuses

You know spring has officially sprung when the crocuses sprout in the ground and start blooming. We've had snow on top of blooming crocuses here before, but it's Ohio, so things like that are to be expected. They're also purple and grow close to the ground, but have six large petals that open to reveal that they fade to white in the middle and have a bright saffron-yellow center. You can't really pick them but they're still lovely.

1. The Tiny Wildflowers that Grow In My Backyard

My absolute favorite season in Ohio is the few weeks during springtime when all the tiny wildflowers bloom in my backyard. My family lives up in the woods - my dad actually cleared out trees to make space for our house - so all of the land that is now our yard used to be part of a strip of woods that runs through our neighborhood. These tiny flowers usually grow amongst trees in the damp leafy soil and spring up in large patches around our house, giving the grass a blanket of pinkish white blossoms just a few inches high. According to Ohio-Nature.com they're simply called "Spring Beauty," which is a perfect name, in my opinion.

Honorable Mention: Dutchman's Britches! These are the most hilarious of all spring wildflowers. And they actually do look like a bunch of upside-down bloomers. I just want to know who named a flower after pants, how weird is that?

Top 5: Disney Channel Original Movies

This past weekend I found myself home alone one evening, flipping through the channels, trying to find something interesting to watch. It was Friday night so there was nothing on but reruns and random films that are just recent enough to debut on cable but old enough that no one wants to watch them. So I did what any person in their twenties would do: find the kid's channels and see if there is anything on to be nostalgic about.

Children's programming from the 80s and 90s are a big part of our generation's history. We love this stuff not because it was particularly good, but because we grew up with it (don't laugh, Baby Boomers - you have an entire channel dedicated to I Love Lucy and the Andy Griffith show!). Something I loved growing up was Disney Channel's Original Movies - the ones before High School Musical - and still watch them if they're ever on. Here's hoping that someday they start a channel just for made-for-TV kid's movies!

5. Halloweentown (1998)

I'm not usually a huge fan of Halloween, but this was a fun and bizarre movie a bit like Hocus Pocus. Basically it's about a girl who finds out at 13 that she's meant to be a witch, and is trained by her grandmother, played by Debbie Reynolds. Like most Disney movies the main character has to save her family, stand up for herself, and learn some valuable lesson. I was always a fan of the actress who played the lead, a girl named Kimberley J. Brown, because she was more normal-looking than most "gorgeous" Disney teen stars. She also starred in another Disney film, Quints,




4. Life-Size (2000)

This movie was originally aired on ABC but was made by Disney, so I'm going to count it.  This is a ridiculous film starring still-innocent Lindsay Lohan back in her Parent Trap days as a football-playing tomboy who recently lost her mother and wants to bring her back to life. She finds a spellbook (where do all these kids find magical items? Are there a lot of irresponsible witches and wizards in the Disney universe?) and attempts to ressurrect her mom but inadvertently brings to life her Eve doll (read: Barbie) played by none other than supermodel Tyra Banks. Seeing Tyra play a life-size fashion doll is actually pretty entertaining - she actually thinks she can do all of the jobs her doll has had over the years and experiences eating for the first time. I really need to watch it again and see if it is as cheesy as I remember.

3. Sky High (2005)

I babysat for a family with four kids when I was in high school, and they introduced me to this movie. It's about a kid who has super hero parents and has been sent to a high school for super heroes - but doesn't actually have any super powers himself, and gets put on the "sidekick" track. That is, until his powers kick in and change everything. It's your typical tween movie, with action and morality and a little romance, but I love it. It has great actors like Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Lynda Carter, and Cloris Leachmen; characters have awesome names like Warren Peace and Royal Pain; and the theme song is "Melt With You" covered by Bowling for Soup. If I'm home alone and it's on TV, you can bet I'll be watching it.


2. Smart House (1999)

This was one of the coolest movies ever back when I was thirteen. It's about a boy who wins a "smart house" in a contest - a house that knows what you're favorite foods are and keeps them in the fridge, turns the lights out for you, does everything buy itself. It's controlled by a computer named PAT, who portrays itself as a 50s housewife played by Katey Sagal. Over the course of the film PAT gets jealous of the woman the boy's dad is dating, and starts to over-protect the family, going so far as to seal the doors and keep all of them from going outside. What I didn't know about this film before I looked it up on Wikipedia is that it was based on a short story by Ray Bradbury and directed by LeVar Burton. No wonder it was so awesome!


1. Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (1999)

This is, hands-down, the most awesome movie ever to be made for the Disney channel. Forget High School Musical, forget Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire, Zenon is the movie that defined my early teen years. It is set in 2049, which looks suspiciously like 1999 (complete with the new Volkswagon Beetles that were on every girls' MASH list), but some of the population lives on a space station. No big deal. Zenon lives there with her parents, and gets sent to her Aunt's on Earth when she is (literally) grounded. The space station ends up in danger, and only Zenon can save it, and the plot is totally predictable, but that's not the part that mattered. It was the awesome 90s-inspired fashions of the future, the crazy futuristic catch phrases, and the weird music of the future which sounded a lot like 90s boy bands but played by a fictional musician named Protazoa. The shiny hot pink fabrics! The tiny microdisc earrings! Zetus lupetus!

February Novel: Jurassic Park

I am a Michael Crichton fan, so it wasn't hard to decide to put this classic on my 2012 reading list. I was first introduced to him the summer before my junior year in high school. My English teacher for the next year gave us a reading list for the summer, which included The Grapes of Wrath, The Crucible, and inexplicibly, Crichton's recently published Timeline (I was a junior in 2003, it was released in 1999). Seeing as the rest of our list was classic novels written during or about American history, this one seemed a little out of place. But my friends and I read our books anyway, writing the required 1-page reflection on each one, and brought them to the first day of class like we were told. When we asked our teacher later why it had been required reading, she said something along the lines of "I thought it was a fun book and that you guys would enjoy a break from the heavier stuff." I have to give her credit, she was probably the teacher who influenced me the most when it came to enjoying and analyzing literature. She also introduced us to The Goonies, for which I am forever grateful.

Anyway, after my first brush with Crichton's work then, I scoured my mom's bookshelves for his other novels. I loved his techno-thriller genre mixing and detailed scientific information infused with fiction. Not literary fiction, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely a fun and engaging read.

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Top 5: Oscar Moments

I've been on an awards show kick this year (as you probably noticed in the lengthy Grammy post) which means today's post must be about last night's Academy Awards. It's regarded as the piece de resistance of the awards show season and has tons of viewers each year, critiquing every little thing from fashion choices to awards speeches. I'm sure you will hear hours of coverage on every entertainment news outlet known to man, so to add to the melee here are my top 5 moments of the evening.

5. Zach Galifianakis pronouncing his own name wrong

I loved Zach and Will Ferrel's matching-white-suit-banging-cymbals entrance and award presentation. They were over the top in a funny way - and not in the awkward way most of Billy Crystal's jokes were. Best part? Galifianakis pronouncing his name wrong, on purpose, since no one else ever says it right anyway.

4. Tom Hanks' shout-out to the seat filler guy

Early in the show Hanks mentioned a veteran seat-filler who has been to every Academy Awards ceremony for the past 59 years. Fifty-nine years! That means his first year was in 1953 - when Audrey Hepburn won Best Lead Actress for Roman Holiday . He was wearing an awesome powder blue suit and ruffled shirt, which made me wonder if he'd had the same outfit for the past 59 years...

3. Jim Rash mocking Angelina Jolie

We all know that Jim Rash is hilarious as Dean Pelton on the show Community. What we didn't know, before Sunday night, was that Rash is always that funny. Case in point: Rash, along with Nat Faxon and Alexander Payne win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Descendants. The award is presented by Jolie, who poses ridiculously in order to show off her leg in her Oscar dress. During the acceptance speech Rash does what any good comedian would: show up Angelina Jolie.

Screenshot from NY Daily News. I love that they specified Jim was on the right, just in case you couldn't figure out who was who.

2. Miss Piggy on the Best Dressed list

Who doesn't love the Muppets? The new movie is a huge hit, and the two most famous stars, Kermit and Miss Piggy, showed up at the Oscars dressed to the nines. I was hoping to see them interviewed on the red carpet but no such luck. I loved Piggy's dress - and so did a lot of others, because the lovely swine was listed as one of the night's Best Dressed!

Miss Piggy wearing Zac Posen

1. Octavia Spencer's standing ovation

If there is anything more satisfying than getting an Oscar for your performance, it must be receiving a standing ovation from your peers on live television in recognition. Spencer, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Help, was speechless onstage after accepting her statue. She also won a SAG, Golden Globe, and Critic's Choice awards for the same role. Congratulations, Octavia!