Happy Hub: La La Land, Hamlet, Baracky Road, & More!

January 2017 sure has been a tumultuous month. There were as many highs as there were lows but today we're only going to be talking about the good stuff (like ice cream!). Nothing like going into a new month with a smile on your face! 😊

Tunes:

I am exhausting my Lin-Manuel Miranda material at an alarming rate and it is not looking good for me. You mean I now have to wait for his next project?! How will I ever go on??? I guess I could spend all my time listening to Hamilton, Moana*, and In The Heights. I've been holding off on it because I wanted a LMM project to fall back on but I couldn't resist any longer. It also counts for my monthly Broadway exposure so that's two birds. I love all the characters but Benny has to be my favorite. Chris Jackson for some reason always ends up being my favorite. I was going to list a couple of my most listened to songs but then I looked at the cast recording and realized I love every single track. I guess it'd be smart to start with In the Heights, then maybe Breathe would be a good one to listen to next and after that, I would suggest Benny's Dispatch... You get it. Can't go wrong with Lin. 

For about a week, I started obsessively listening to Spinnin' Around by Jump 5 and Upside Down by A*Teens. Like I literally refused to listen to anything else. My ears simply wouldn't have it. The Spinnin' Around music video had me longing for San Francisco oh so terribly so I'm glad we've got a trip planned for the Bay Area in just a few short months.

There was also a brief stint with Disney music, but that's no surprise. I get in the mood for those tunes every once in a while. That was mostly in anticipation for La La Land, and of course I listened to a lot of that soundtrack once I saw the film. I always find myself coming back to A Lovely Night, but the rest of the songs get an equal amount of airtime. I am an album listener, after all.

Films:

La La Land (x)

I bought into the hype and it was money well spent. La La Land is such a dream. I am so glad I was able to convince my cousins and brother to come with me. There is literally nothing wrong with this movie. At first, I was a little taken aback by Ryan and Emma's singing voices. For a while there I wondered if they should've cast actual singers but after some thought, I decided it made them feel more real. To be honest, I don't know if I got used to their voices or if they improved by the end of the film because I found them to sound much better than at the beginning. Mia and Sebastian's story is so compelling and I'm itching to see it again. There are so many details I want to pick up on and I just want to revel in the music. I mean it's an Oscar nominated film fourteen times over... You'd be doing yourself a disservice by not seeing it. 

Entertainment:

Hamlet @ KW (x)

I am always down for live theatre. Supporting the arts is an important cause to me and I, surprisingly, have never seen or read Hamlet. Seriously, what did I spend my high school years doing if not reading Hamlet? It's also been a while since I've seen a production at my alma mater which is both of our faults, I believe, but I was more than happy to rectify that. Often I go into high school productions with medium expectations and some of the performances in this production blew me away. I was never bored and highly impressed. I missed out on all the November/December productions so I'm very eager to see what these high schools have to offer in spring. So far all I know is that Kentwood is doing a comedic play called The Foreigner so it looks like it's time for me to do some research and recruiting. 

Miscellaneous:

New year, new opportunities to visit our beloved Mr. Alegado! After the election results came in, I made plans to visit Mr. Alegado as soon as possible because that is the type of energy I desperately needed. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts kept us from actually visiting until the first Friday of the year. I cannot think of a better way to kick off 2017. As always it was a good time catching up, chatting about geeky and nerdy topics, eating pizza, and killin it with my Star Wars inspired #hairoftheweek. Something that still makes me laugh when I think about it is the Thumb Wars (I'm traumatized) and trying to get the picture below. There were a few outtakes that are quite funny because our camera set up can best be described as "improvised" but I'll only include the nicest photo to save anybody from embarrassment. The internet is forever. We had such a good time and I think I can speak for all of us when I say we are all already looking forward to our next hangout session come spring/summer.

Is this squad goals or what?

Baracky Road @ Molly Moon (x)

Usually I'm pretty good about not giving in to gimmicky things but I am only human and words like "limited time" or "exclusive" has its affect on me. This worked in tandem with my desperate need to cling to anything related to the Obamas and my love for puns. And on top of that, who am I to say no to ice cream? All Baracky Roads lead to... Wait, is that how it goes? I digress. Molly Moon is a Seattle staple and they change up their seasonal flavors every so often. In honor of our 44th President, they brought back Baracky Road, which debuted in 2008 and made another appearance in 2012. As you can imagine, Baracky Road is a rocky road ice cream made with local ingredients. I'm not the biggest fan of chocolate ice cream, but I would die for the Obamas. In the grand scheme of things, eating a scoop of chocolate ice cream isn't so bad. For the picture's sake, I splurged and went for a waffle cone. Now that I think of it, I stood in the cold for ten minutes as the line slowly, slowly shrunk so I'm gonna tell myself I deserved that waffle cone. 

Blogosphere:

This blog post has been a long time coming (and it's only part two of three from my 2016 summer trip!) but I finally got it done and ready for the world to see! My Malaysia Travelog went up this month after weeks and weeks of me finding snippets of time here and there to work on it. It won't take you as long to read it as it took for me to write it but it's still a heavy weight so you're gonna have to carve some time out in your day for it.


It seems like a good amount happened this month but if you take a look at my Instagram, you'll see that most of the stuff in this Happy Hub happened over the course of one weekend. It was a busy one. Something I didn't mention was Chinese New Year! We didn't do much to celebrate this year aside from our family dinner and that's okay because school has not been a friend recently. I'd rather celebrate doubly next year than fail my classes now. Delayed gratification for the win! Please let me know what you've been loving this month in the comments below! The world is in an awful state right now and we need to take the time to remember the good in our lives.


Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette

*As much as I love La La Land, I also love Moana and I really hope How Far I'll Go beats out City of Stars and Audition for Best Song. Lin's gotta have that EGOT.
**I completely forgot that the day this blog post went up was the two year anniversary of xo, Yvette! Thank you all for reading!