Is It Just Me...

Or is Joss Wedon just as happy to see Tom Hiddleston as I am?

Wocka Wocka! By OPI

Hi Ho Ho Ho!  Xmas is Coming Up!  Yay!!!

I've been checking all over the Internet trying to figure out when the release date for OPI's Muppets  Collection was happening.  As far as I could find, the collection is supposed to be in November, so you can imagine that I was surprised to find the 2011 holiday collection in a beauty store in the North West part of Toronto and on September 30, no less!  Here's what I picked up...

Wocka Wocka!

Meep-Meep-Meep

Designer De Better

Warm & Fozzie

I stayed away from the glitter polishes, glitter is just not my big favourite thing but if you love it, you're sure to find something to your liking.

The first polish up is Wocka Wocka! It's a cherry/berry colour that photographed more like a red rather than the deeper colour it actually is and it's actually a little difficult to make out the shimmer as well.  As least I didn't experience the thin formula that I encountered with the Touring America collection and it applied well.  2 Coats gave the coverage needed so I hope that the recent dip in quality is just a bump in the road.

I don't know if the store I got this from wasn't aware of a release date, ignored the release date or if the date was changed.  It couldn't hurt to call your local retailer and see if they are in stock yet.

Coming Soon...Designer De Better!

Uh Oh, Roll Down the Window by OPI

I've been buying nail polish since I was in elementary school and I can safely say that this is the first time I have ever seen a polish that suggests it was named after a fart.

I Would Have Preferred Silent but Deadly

OPI's Uh Oh, Roll Down the Window is the guilty party here.  Even the Urban Decay line (when they debuted and were actually edgy...now they're very middle of the road in my opinion) with product names like Bruise, Oil Slick and Roach, they didn't go there with creative monikers but I guess OPI wanted to have a bit of fun.  I get the roll down the window quip is connected to the road trip theme for the Touring America collection but let face it people.  Farts happen everywhere!

And When They Do, They Leave Burn Marks On Your Carpet.

Olive green polish is also everywhere this fall but I think I'll keep my purchases capped at Uh Oh and China Glaze's Weekend Warrior.  Uh-Oh is a dark green olive cream that, in comparison to China Glaze's WW, is far, far less pigmented.  While WW was very opaque in 2 coats, Uh Oh's formula was thin & a bit runnier than WW.  I didn't get complete coverage in 2 coats like I normally do with an OPI polish and considering how much I disliked sister polish Color to Diner For's application, I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the quality of their polishes lately.  Especially since Uh Oh chipped after only one day of wear in which the most challenging thing I did that day was eat brunch.  I definitely like the colour but the disappointing formula makes CG's Weekend Warrior the better option. 

That juicy bum up in that screen grab belongs to one of my all time favourite cartoon characters, Stimpy from The Ren & Stimpy Show.  It was wildly popular during the early to mid ninties and for a time, you couldn't escape the show or its oddball sense of humour and my two favourite episodes were Space Madness and Son of Stimpy...

 in which Stimpy, the stupidest cat that ever lived, blows out a huge fart and becomes convinced that he's given birth and leaves home to find his lost "son":

Have You Seen This Fart?

How could something so gross be so heartbreaking at the same time? I don't how it works, I can only tell you that it does!  This show was created by animator John Kricfalusi, who I thought had practically fallen of the face of the earth in the last couple of years so imagine my surprise when I was watching The Simpsons and lo and behold:  The couch gag was animated by the one & only John K!  Long time no see!

Missed Those Crazy Lines!

China Glaze's Trendsetter

Trendsetter is the last of the polishes that I picked up from the Metro collection by China Glaze.  The first thing I thought when I saw it was "Well, that's different!"  Lord knows I have my share of green polishes but this one was really reminding me of something but I couldn't really put my finger on it. "Pea Soup!"  I thought to myself but when I took my 8 year old cousin with me to Fan Expo 2011, he let me know exactly what he thought this polish looked like: "I don't like it." he said.  "It looks like baby poop and barf mixed together and then it flew in some one's mouth!"  After I was done laughing I realized he was right: It does look like baby poop, but I still like it a lot.  The formula for this polish was pretty good considering how thick the other polishes from this collection were and it applied really well.  It's just not a colour that goes with everything.  I suppose that I might have been feeling a bit self conscious about looking like I had poo fingers, because when me and my family met up with actor Malcolm McDowell, I jammed my hands in my pockets for the photo...

This is Gonna Look So Awesome in the Family Album!!!

 A Clockwork Orange is, oddly enough, one of my family's favourite movies.  I love it, my twin sister loves it, my Dad loved it and even my Mom loves it!  She especially loves it when Alex (played by, of course, Malcolm McDowell) kills the skinny yoga instructor with her "piece of art" and some day when he's old enough, my cousin is going to love it too!  

Frozen Solid By Sally Hansen

Seriously, just look at the quality of that photo!  Terrible, just terrible it is!  Well despite that, you can still see how super shiny and very sheer Frozen Solid from Sally Hansen's redesigned bottle for their Hard As Nails line.  Even though Sally Hansen products were on sale at the place I picked this up, I only ended up buying this colour as I found the others in the display were too similar to ones I already had.  Although I like how this polish looks, I think that it just may be a little to light for my skin tone.  Some how it seems a little washed out to me.  If you want to achieve bottle colour with this one, you're either going to have to apply four or more coats (that's three coats in the photo) or you are going to have to start with a similar base colour. 

Frozen Solid, it made me think back to 1998 when I finally became a Madonna fan.  Not that I was ignorant of her emergence in 1983, I just didn't really enjoy the work she was doing that much.  I liked a few songs (Dress You Up, Express Yourself, Like a Prayer) but frankly I was weary of her constant omnipresence in the media that you couldn't go anywhere without seeing her belly button, ratty hair and gap teeth under a pile of rosaries, lace and jelly bracelets.

And Don't Forget, a Truckload of Makeup!

I guess I got used to her always being around, because when she released Ray of Light, I was blown away by it and now it's one of my favourite records of all time.  It just seemed to me that on this album, she finally abandoned shock value as a method of garnering attention and embraced genuine emotions for inspiration.  So I'll leave you with one of my favourite songs from that album, the appropriately titled Frozen.

Zombie Zest by China Glaze & Undead Overload

Sunlight

 I know I'm late to the 2010 Halloween party but I recently picked up a bottle of China Glaze's Zombie Zest from the Awakening collection..

With Flash

but somethings are better late than never. It`s a medium yellow green jelly finish with a large amount of shimmer/glitter.  The reflective particle colours vary according to the light it’s under.  In direct sunlight, you can see a lovely light blue highlight.  Under the flash, you still see the blue but yellow now comes into prominence.  This is two coats and, as you can see, it’s lighter on the nail than it is in the bottle but I think that three coats would have brought it up to its bottle colour.  One of the things that I like about this types of finishes is that they take less time to dry than say, a crème finish would (even though crème finishes are my favourite) I love green nail polish but I didn`t think that I would be so fond of a colour that looks like Linda Blair threw up in 1973.

I’m suffering from Undead Overload.  Zombies have become the fruit flies of supernatural pop culture, no matter where you go, they’re always buzzing around everywhere and they are hard to get rid of.  It seems like nobody will stop going on & on about them as if they had something new to add to their mythos.  I guess I’m just bored by the whole zombie rigmarole.  That doesn’t mean that I haven’t enjoyed anything with zombies in it.  Shaun of the Dead is one of my favourite films and so is 1985’s Return of the Living Dead and the hard to find 1974 Blaxploitation film, Sugar Hill.  What I really like about these two films is that they actually provide the zombies something that other films lack: motivation.

In Return of the Living Dead, the hapless humans capture the top half of a female zombie and point blank ask her why the undead are insane for our membranes...

It makes the pain go away...

OK eeewww!  But, that’s right!  Live human brains are the zombie crack that takes the edge off of being dead and continuing to decompose.  Thanks dead lady!  It makes so much more sense now! 

In Sugar Hill, the zombies are nowhere near as articulate but they still have motivation as they are the remains of dead slaves that have been magically raised up from the grave to take revenge on the white gangsters that killed the heroine’s boyfriend.  

So. Bad. Ass.

I’ll tell you one thing: some girls are not going to let little things like slavery and being dead for almost 100 years stop her from getting her nails did!

Seriously!  She is Wearing Polish!

In a Blink Blue with Captain America

This series of photos marks the last round of grainy, non macro images that I’ll take as I’ll be getting a replacement camera this week.  Yeah, digital photography has so many advantages (like giving me the ability to create this blog) but honestly, I still prefer a good old fashioned camera with film.  I felt more in control of the image somehow.  So until I pick up my new camera, enjoy these grainy and fuzzy images of Sally Hansen’s In a Blink Blue...

In a Blink Blue from the Instra-Dri line is a royal blue shimmer and to me it sort of looks like a superhero blue to me.  The formula was a bit thick and sticky and the brush so the polish dragged on my nails. Although the brush is wide, it wasn’t evenly cut so application was a bit of an issue for me.  The stickiness caused some bubbling on my thumb (which you can see in the photo) but it did dry quickly.  Despite the not that great formulation, I very much like it and I figure I’ll hang on to it.

Speaking of Superheroes, I went to see Captain America and I really enjoyed it a lot, almost as much as I liked Thor and that was awesome. When it comes to comic books, I’m a DC girl not a Marvel girl so it bothers me a little that Marvel Studios is pretty much kicking the ass of DC films (the Batman franchise is the exception) but Marvel’s decision to tie all their properties together and treat the films like the comics by keeping the characters in the same universe was a brilliant choice.  It makes you feel as if you have to see Iron Man, Thor & Captain America before the release of The Avengers.

But I Thought This Guy Was the Human Torch!

Basically it’s about an American 98 pound weakling who gains superpowers and goes off to fight Nazis during World War II.  Nazis!  Besides Neo-Nazis, who doesn’t love to see them get their asses kicked?  Nobody, that’s who!  So you pretty much can’t go wrong when they’re the main villains.  But you know what makes it even better?  When the main Nazi looks like this...

Dude, You've Got Something On Your Face!

What I really liked about this film is that it’s an old fashioned adventure movie, just like grandma used to make, or in this case, Steven Spielberg.  Because if you like Raiders of the Lost Ark, you’ll definitely like Captain America.  I don’t know what it says about me but I think I’m in the minority when I say that I liked Steve Rogers better before he had superpowers.  

Sure, he finally realized his potential and became a great leader when he gained superpowers but he was that person before all that happened.  He was so sweet and had so much heart I just wanted to punch anyone who was mean to him, especially since he was unable to punch anyone himself.   

I thought it would have been nice if his love interest, Peggy Carter, had shown him some real compassion, not politeness, before he became a Men’s Fitness cover boy.

How Do You Feel?  And By That I Mean, Can I Touch Them?

Sure, now she likes him!  If there’s one element that adventure films need, it’s a sense of humour and there are laughs in this movie, especially during a montage of Captain America and his Allied buddies run ram shod  all over Red Skulls operations:

HOOOOGANNNN!!!!!

I laughed so hard I could have wet my pants!  Hat’s off to Hugo Weaving for being so awesome that he can emote through all that latex.  

What was also nice was how involved the audience was with what was playing out onscreen.  They got mad when a trampy WAC hit on Cap and actually erupted into a chorus of “Woooooooooo!!!!” when Steve & Peggy finally kissed.  

You would have thought the scene was “filmed in front of a live studio audience”.  I don’t go out on dates that often, but I would actually call this a date movie...it’s got something for the ladies...and for a certain kind of man!

The Good, The Bad & the Amazing Hugh Jackman

I made it through the first week of my new job in one piece and I can certainly say that for an accounting firm, it's one of the more liveliest places I've worked at in a long time.  I'm hoping things keep going well!  But since I'm back in an office setting, I've got a nice calm colour to show you and a not so calm colour.  First up New York Color's Bryant Park, a muted gold with a nice amount of shimmer.  

Now, I know what you're thinking, enough with the New York Color already but, dammit, they make a good product!   If a polish allows me to apply it 1/2 an hour before I go to bed, then that's a polish I'll keep buying and using.

I wish I could say the same thing for Grape Fizz by Revlon, yet another scented polish and the second line of scented polishes that they have released this year.

Ok, I have to say it.  How awful this this polish?  It's not a question, it's a statement!  When I saw it in the store I thought "Oh, so pretty!  Like a cross between Urban Decay's Toxin & OPI's Merry Midnight."  I was not expecting the watery, see through washout you see in that photo.  That's three coats and it's full of bald spots thanks to its uneven application.  I took twenty two photos and that's the best one I could get with this massive disappointment of a polish.  It's possibly the worst polish I've bought in years and I have 436 bottles of nail polish.  To say this one's the worst is saying a lot!  Grape Fizz is $5 CDN that I could have flushed down the toilet!  The best thing I can say about it is that it smells like grape flavour.

I wore that terrible polish when I went to see Hugh Jackman In Concert last night at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. My sister & I took my Mom as a birthday present but to be honest, it was a present for me too!  Hugh Jackman has been bunching up my panties for 11 years now (looking at him should be counted as one of my hobbies) and I have sat through some horrible movies (Kate & Leopold, Someone Like You) and a couple of great ones (The Prestige, The Fountain) to gawk at the man that I can officially say is the most gorgeous male I've ever seen with my own two eyes:

That's Not  a Good Picture...

That's a Good Picture!

Being the big old Tony Award winning Broadway lover he is, I was expecting that the show would have a significant amount of cheese to it and don't get me wrong, I love musicals and I love cheese but I wasn't expecting Hugh Jackman to mount one of the most entertaining shows I'd seen in years.  I am not babbling through a haze of lust to say that the show is fantastic and if there's anyway you could see it, you should!  Jackman's energy and enthusiasm is infectious, he's a great singer, he's extremely funny and has a gift for comedic improvisation that had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe and my Mom can't stop talking about his ass shaking.  Yes, Hugh Jackman shaking his ass...

......!!!!

Whoa, sorry about that, I just drifted away in my own mind there for a minute!  Within the space of 2 hours  Jackman sang numerous medleys of the best of Broadway (including "I Feel Pretty"), did the Readers Digest version of The Boy From Oz (his Tony winning role), told amusing family stories, turned the intro of the Music Man into a rap, chatted up audience members, even dragging up a man from his seat and making the poor guy dance while he sang "Fever" and it was all awesome.  But the two real stand outs in the show made my evening for two completely different reasons.  Number one is this happened:

When Leia Met Logan!

"Carrie Fisher is in the audience tonight!" Jackman announced and being the nerd girls my sister and I are, we jumped out of our seats screaming "OHMYGODWHERE!!!"  Fisher is in town with her show, Wishful Drinking (that show's fun as well) so she stood up, they traded quips, hugged and giggled and probably inspired Fan Fiction.  Maybe I should write "The Tale of Princess Leia & the Wolverine" myself because I had a huge nerdgasm when all of this happened.  Geeks live for these moments!

Secondly, when Jackman and crew broke into Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of "Over the Rainbow", I cringed.  I really dislike that version of the classic tune and I didn't want to hear it again regardless of who was singing it but my attitude changed when two didgeridoo players came down the aisles (I've never heard them played live before) and Jackman was joined onstage by an aboriginal woman singing along in a native aboriginal language. It was amazing, people were crying. The woman was Olive Knight, who was a co-comissioner of the Bringing Them Home Enquiry that was established by the Australian government in response to efforts made by indigenous communities concerned about the lack of awareness of the history of the forcible removal of the Stolen Generation.  The work of Knight and her peers helped lead to the Australian Federal Parliament Apology in 2007.  It wasn't just a performance, it was an honour to be in the presence of someone like her.

I'd like to take a moment and welcome my new follower, Christina, to my blog!  I'm really glad you enjoy my prattle!  Thanks so much!

I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite songs of all time, Courtesy of Wolverine!