Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Pair of eyes with a "come-hither" gleam

I probably should get my realtor's license, sell one fancy house a year and spend the rest of my time eating peanut-butter-filled pretzels and writing a memoir.

If Tamra Judge can do it, then I certainly can.

The only problem is: I don't like sales and I don't like people. So, maybe it's not the right career move.

In other news, I'm sleepy...and listening to this isn't helping:





Zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Margaret

P.S. I love this part:

Mr. Sandman (male voice: "Yesss?") bring us a dream 
Give him a pair of eyes with a "come-hither" gleam

P.P.S. Anna and I once wrote new lyrics to this song. We replaced 'Mr. Sandman' with the Inglemoor High School German teacher 'Frau Zakowski'

Frau Zakowski...
JA?
Do bit sehr nett!

P.P.P.S. "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci" -- that's an actual lyric! Pagliacci? The pizza parlor? My former place of employment? It certainly made my ears perk up.

P.P.P.P.S. Fun facts about The Chordettes.

  • Janet Ertel's daughter married Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers.
  • Jinny Osborn was born right here in Seattle, Washington!
  • They started out as a folk band but switched to barbershop.
  • In 2012, Lynn Evens (still alive) performed 'Mr. Sandman' on a public broadcasting program. In the YouTube comments someone has written, "How did I get here?" I can truly relate. 

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Saturday, July 18, 2015

17 July 2015 blog



I wish I could write a long, hilarious blog post full of delightful sentence fragments and sentences beginning with "and" and "but" (typical Madgespace). But I can't. Instead, I have an 'almost live' video for you, the diehards, to watch. It's about my drive home to Kenmore from Fremont. Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

This is a pretty surreal commercial

Watch it:




Why do I find it so unsettling? I'm not 100% sure. Here are some theories:

1. The eclectic casting.

2. I had no idea that Arnold Palmer is still alive. For some reason I'd grouped him with old dead athletes from black-and-white-TV-times like Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio.

3. It's trying to be funny, but it's not trying hard enough.

4. I have trouble believing that Xarelto is pronounced Zeralto.


Unfortunately for your life, that's it for the blog tonight. I'm off on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Seaside tomorrow and I best be gettin my laundry on. Those sweaters aren't going to Woolite themselves!

Tschuss!

Margaret

Friday, July 3, 2015

I rarely laugh

I rarely laugh. I guffaw quite a bit though. And I politely chuckle A LOT.

Still, genuine, full-blown laughter is increasingly rare. So rare, in fact, that afterward I find myself sighing and saying, "Ahh, that was a good laugh..."

What's wrong with me?

Why can't I be like my niblings (again, I promise that's the official term) who laugh hysterically at their dumb, made-up jokes (e.g. mailbox elbow, graham cracker leaf)? Why can't I be like Andy who walks through life in a permanent state of laughter? Why can't I be like that giggling buffoon Anderson Cooper? Or that maniacal hyena Tom Cruise? Why can't I be like Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in the photo below?

Dat Boris Yeltsin standup. Always a knee-slapper. Watch here.

Image by White House Photographic Office via Wikimedia Commons

The last time I remember laughing—really laughing—was when I saw Borat in the theater sophomore year of college. I suppose there were also the few times Andy decided it'd be a good idea to tickle me, something he now knows to never do again1. But that's about it.

I suspect it's because I'm uptight. I need to take a deep breath, relax my shoulders, let my bowl cut down and be open to all the potential laughs out there in the universe2. I need to stray away from things that I find amusing or interesting or ironic and move in the direction of untimely farting, footballs hitting crotches and rakes to the face.

To kick things off, I will present to you one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time:





ROTFLMAO,

Margaret

P.S. Speaking of Anderson Cooper, remember when he was the host on that AMAZING reality game show 'The Mole'? His career will never be able to top that.


1 Tickling is torture and I can't be held responsible my actions whilst being tickled. I WILL kick you in the face.

2 My mom went to Mirval (that fancy spa that Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick went to in an attempt to save their relationship) and when she came back she said she noticed that people use the word "universe" a lot. "That's a new thing," she said. "The way people say universe all the time—that's new."

Monday, June 29, 2015

Heat wave

Seattle is so hot right now you could try to fry an egg on the sidewalk. It won't work (trust me, I've tried many times), but it's hot enough to convince yourself that it just might work.

Image by Pockafwye via Flickr

Today Andy and I spent his last day of his holiday doing that most Seattley of pastimes: sitting in traffic. The AC in my dad's truck quit a while back, so we were roasting like Thanksgiving turkeys. As soon as we got back to K-town, we grabbed a couple River Rats and made a B-line for the lake. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.

In case you're wondering about the forecast for the coming weeks, I've enlisted my meteorologist pal Arthur to provide an exclusive weather report:




Yes, definitely no jackets needed.

I also recommend lots of ice water, sleeping outside, cold showers and listening to this chill track off Raffi's latest album.

What are you doing to beat the heat?

Stay cool,

Margaret

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Facial isometrics

Want a beautiful, youthful-looking face?

Can't afford pricey plastic surgery?

No problem!

Facial isometrics is the answer! Do them with me.


WIDE MOUTH




TINY FACE




SILENT SCREAM




LIZARD




LIZARD


LIZARD



LIZARD



FEEL THE BURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



But hey, don't just take my word for it. Take Clarisa Patterson's word for it. As I discovered tonight, she's YouTube's resident facial isometrics expert, and a true star. I hope this blog can be the catalyst that finally gets her the attention (and YouTube hits) she deserves. 

Gag on her eleganza.




Now, if you'll excuse me, I must ice and elevate my face.


Cheers dahlings,

Margaret

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Breaking News

OK, I'll admit. The title of this post was a real bait and switch. I don't have any breaking news to share. I just want to talk about the concept of breaking news. Sorry to get you here under false pretences, but hang with me.

We need to make a rule about what constitutes 'breaking news'. Here I am sitting on the floor after a vigorous 8-minute DIY yoga session and trying to read the very important comments thread on a very important article in The Guardian ("How to make the perfect cup of coffee"). All of a sudden, I'm interrupted by this giant red pop-up that says the head of Sony Pictures is stepping down following the hacking scandal.

Um, I guess that's interesting. But could it really not wait? Would it have been that horrible for me to continue reading the coffee comments for another few minutes before clicking back to the homepage and discovering that some lady quit her job?

Image via Wikimedia Commons

I still remember when KREM 2 local news in Spokane cut into the Orpah show to announce that, and I quote, there was "heavy puddling" on Spokane's streets due to, and I quote, "rain".

This is not the clip, and it's not even breaking news, but it does feature some vintage Orpah.

Oh, by the way, I'm not misspelling Orpah. I recently learned that's her real name. ORPAH. She changed it when people kept mispronouncing it, but I prefer the original. ORPAH. Say it with me. ORPAH.



Here's what you can interrupt regularly scheduled broadcasting for:
  • Live hostage situations
  • Death of a famous or interesting world leader (Obama, Merkel, Putin, Kim Jong-un, etc.)
  • Alien invasion
Here's what merits a news ticker at the bottom of the screen:
  • Death of a relatively unknown or boring world leader (Cameron, Abbott, Jinping, etc.)
  • Bey/Jay official divorce announcement
  • Stock market crashes (unless it's the next Great D'presh, nobody cares!)
Here's what needs to wait until the normal news show:
  • Heavy puddling on Spokane's streets
  • The mayor did or said something
  • Lohan, Bieber or Bynes hit something with their car
In unrelated news, Andy (spouse) has what Freddie (nephew) had last week. Stomach flu. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say it smells like a dairy farm in here. All I can do is sit on the couch, nervously eat my dinner-for-one and wait for it to hit me. Every stomach gargle puts me on edge. It's the calm before the sh*t storm.

Good evening,

Margaret

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Guest post: Miss Teen South Carolina

I did it again. I said I would do a bunch of work that I didn't really have time for! It's all due tomorrow. Andy has agreed to help me because he's now contractually obligated to be nice to me until death do us part. But seriously, what a guy.

Anyway, I wish I could write more tonight. I have a lot on my mind. I've been going crazy thinking about the concept of free speech, boob sagging, Jamie Lynn Spears, The Golden Globes and the rise of wearable tech. Also, today on the way home, our bus had a staring competition with another bus in the lane next to us. We were stopped at a traffic light and everyone in their top deck just stared into our bus. We all stared back. None of us gave a rat's ass. It was fantastic.

Hopefully I'll get to all that important stuff soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd ask my girl Miss Teen South Carolina to fill in for me with a guest post.

Take it away girlfriend!


I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhh, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.






Thanks for that, MTSC. (Admit it, you were looking for an excuse to watch it again)

I had a stab at trying to find it.



Love,
Margaret

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Answers to your burning questions

When does the next season of Drag Race start?

Terrible news. Despite RuPaul confirming a January air-date back in November, the network now says Season 7 won't air until "the spring". What!? Let's hope this is some sort of tragic mistake.

What's Carson Daly up to these days? 

Wow, looks like he's still doing that show Last Call with Carson Daly.

How much money do famous YouTubers make? 

So much! Millions! Especially considering how annoying most of them are. According to Forbes, Swedish vlogger 'PewDiePie' makes around $4 million a year. Holy moly, I think it's time I switched to the spoken word. I'd have to get rid of this vocal fry, but where there's a will, there's a way.

What was World War I all about? 

It was kicked off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. That was the spark. It just so happened that Europe was super flammable at the time. The rise of Germany had upset the power balance and destabilised what was, up until then, about a hundred-year period of stability in Europe.

So, when Serbian nationalists shot Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary mobilised for war against Serbia. But then Russia stepped in and said, "Hey! Don't bully Serbia, they are our buddies." But then Germany got involved and was like "Wait a second, Russia. Austria-Hungary has the right to be mad at Serbia."

Before you know it, Germany declares war on Russia and France. Germany tries to march through Belgium, so Britain gets involved (Britain and Belgium were mates. Countries that start with the letter 'B' have to stick together). What about Italy? At first they sided with Germany, but they changed their minds halfway through and switched to Team Britain/France/Russia.

In the end, Germany lost. They had to massively downsize and promise to never start a war again. And they never did.

Fin.

Who's doing the Super Bowl halftime show this year? 

Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz. What a bizarre pairing!

How do you get chewing gum out of your hair? 

Smother it in peanut butter and gradually massage it out of your hair. If that doesn't work, cut it! Bowl cuts are in right now. 

What's the best Real Housewives franchise? 

Beverly Hills.

It's a tough call, but Beverly Hills wins for featuring the richest, yet somehow most likeable, housewives. In other cities, their problems are more 'real' (husbands going to prison, houses foreclosing, massive family feuds, assault charges), but since those are actual, real-life problems, they hide it all during filming and make up their own drama for the show. In Beverly Hills, however, they don't have any 'real' problems, so their ridiculous, petty drama is real.

Does that make sense? Also, since they don't really have any serious problems simmering under the surface, you can watch it without having to feel sad for them.

What should you make for dinner? 

Easy. Homemade pizza. It's not as hard as it sounds. The dough is just flour, yeast, olive oil and a dash of salt. The sauce is just canned tomatoes or fresh ones chopped up and cooked with olive oil. The toppings are whatever you have in the veggie drawer, plus mozzarella cheese.

Who is Rita Ora and why is she famous? 

 She's a singer from the UK (although originally from Kosovo). I used to refer to her as 'British Rihanna'. One of her biggest hits was 'How we do'. She also sings on the Iggy Azalea track 'Black Widow'. Back in the day Rob Kardashian claimed he once got her pregnant, but she denied it. Now she's a judge on The Voice UK. 


This is Rita Ora.
Image by Neon Tommy via Wikimedia Commons.

Why does the moon only affect the tides but nothing else? 

 This question was posed by Andy, and it's far more difficult to answer than the other questions on this list. But here goes nothing.

The gravitational pull of the moon does affect everything, but the effect is tiny. So tiny that it's immeasurable. It's just because the oceans are so massive that we can perceive and measure tides. Oceans are ginormous, but still the moon only causes them to move a few metres. And even though the water level only changes by a few metres, it can seem like more because of the topography of the ocean floor. 



Hopefully I covered them all, but let me know if I missed any of your burning questions and I will endeavour to answer them at my earliest convenience. 

Thank you,
Margaret Kay

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

The saga continues

...and it looks like Ringo's to blame.

No, not that Ringo.

RingGo the cashless parking solution! Turns out, it hasn't solved anything! It's just created more problems!

Andy has received five parking tickets in the past month. FIVE. His defence: he paid through the RingGo app in every instance for which he's accused. He claims he was charged for the parking and the money has been taken from his account.

This was his response to Edinburgh Council's Department of Parking Services:

Spelled 'correspondence' wrong - but don't worry, he caught the mistake. 
I'll let you know how he gets on.

In other news, I cried at an HSBC commercial today.

The plot: a Chinese-American 20-something who works in a hair salon gets a cheque from three of her old lady customers to pay for her fashion design school tuition.

Cue the waterworks! I mean, yes, HSBC is a bank and banks are evil. But on the other hand, I've never claimed to be emotionally stable and HSBC refused bailout money back in the day so I have a bit of a soft spot for them.

Oh heck, just watch it for yourself.

 

Found out I don't have to work tomorrow, which means a good blog post is coming your way soon. Look out for it!

Love,
Margaret

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Max Kay guest post: Late night TV update

Today is a special day on Madgespace. For the first time in the blog's seven year history, I'm featuring a guest post. It's from none other than Max Kay, my brother and fellow member of M&M (our a cappella whistling band).

Today's contributor, Max Kay. You can follow him on Twitter at @kay_max.

Without further ado...



As a belated birthday present to my baby sis, I offered to write a guest post to help ease the burden of her Every Day For a Year streak. Think of it like a sitcom that offers a new episode only for it to be a clip show – it is still technically a new episode! Hopefully this will be slightly less disappointing than that.

When trying to come up with a pop culture subject with plenty of links to match the vibe of this space, I started thinking about how I got into late night talk show TV in college. Like millions who have come before and after me, by sophomore year I had learned to carefully arrange my class schedule to be as late in the day as possible. My friends and I stayed up to hang out and do not much of anything, and that involved watching hundreds of hours of Letterman and even Craig Kilborn, who we thought was the new face of comedy (we were dumb). 

After I got a job that involved mornings (and Kilby fell off the face of the earth), I rarely watched any of the late night shows.  Years went by and the comedy scene evolved.. sort of. We got the rise of Stewart and Colbert and the fake news format, groundbreaking shows from Chappelle and Louis CK, a new golden age of SNL, and we could watch pretty much anything else on YouTube. But the late night guys – Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, Ferguson – remained in the same format that had been invented before Johnny Carson over 50 years ago. 

On the rare times when I did tune in, this always struck me as strange. Entertainment is always evolving to stay current and get ratings, and while networks continuously copy each other’s stuff they are at least changing formats every few years (see: rise of singing competitions, kitchen showdowns, CSI-type detective shows, and on and on). Late night talk shows have been the one constant – like baseball and saltine crackers, we can count on them to be what they have always been: curtain, monologue of seven jokes, introduce the band, desk, commercial, guest, commercial, musical guest, see you tomorrow night! It is basically the same show our grandparents watched.

So I was intrigued when I heard that Fallon’s 'Tonight Show' was bringing in more music elements in an effort to shake things up. Apparently it has been wildly successful, with the show pulling in almost as many viewers as Kimmel and Letterman combined. At the same time, 'Tonight' has smartly packaged many of its best segments to be re-watched on YouTube so millions more of us can catch the best bits. 

My favorite of these are the Lip Sync Battles. Supposedly conceived by Stephen Merchant, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, a Lip Sync Battle is a goofy competition where three people, in this case two guests plus Fallon, each lip sync two songs and we find out who is the best.  

Why does this format work?  A) lip syncing is funny, and b) some celebrities are really good at it.  


Check out my favorite battle, which is Merchant + Fallon + Joseph Gordon Levitt (supposedly the first to be done on the show). 


Great things about it:


1.       Merchant coming out of nowhere. This originally aired in 2013 when most of us thought of him as a talented and witty guy that would always be in the shadow of Ricky Gervais. Writer, stand up, sitcom guy sure, but stage/dance?? He steps out and crushes his first number (to the point that Fallon seems genuinely surprised) and then beats it with his second number. 

2.       Fallon as host/performer. Fallon has to introduce/welcome both guys, perform himself (which he does well, just not as well as the other guys) and work the crowd all at once. Hard to think of anyone else who could pull this off.

3.       Levitt is absolutely amazing. Merchant is so good that you think he has to win, but Levitt shows he has another level in him as a performer. No wonder SNL loves him as a host. How can someone actually be great at something so dumb as lip syncing? 

This was over a year ago, and Fallon has done a few more since, like the latest with Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton. And there’s other good musical stuff, like sing-alongs with the Roots and the iPad app thing.  

To all of it I say kudos for getting guests to do something different that is live, funny, well-performed and entertaining.  Best of all, you don’t even need to stay up late to see it.



Wonderful! Thanks for the update, Max. I loved hearing about the late night gatherings in the dorm, around what I presume was a huge square TV with a curved screen and an ass the size of Coco. 


The TV Max and his dorm buddies watched Kilborn on. Look at the booty on that thing!

Photo by High Contrast via Wikimedia Commons


Cheers, 
Margaret

P.S. Yes, JGL is a pretty good lip syncer. But nothing compares to Dida Ritz lip syncing for her life in front of Ms. Natalie Cole herself on RuPaul's Drag Race.

P.P.S. In the UK, they call lip syncing "miming". 

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Takin care of BIZ-NASS!

I remember, a while back, my sister Char telling me about the highly productive morning she was having. So productive, she told me, that without really realising it, she had been humming "Taking Care of Business" by Bachman–Turner Overdrive to herself the whole morning. Isn't the human mind a glorious thing?

Well, speaking of productivity, I was on FIRE this morning! Writing dope copy, making a dentist appointment like a seasoned adult and replying to emails so fast it would make your bloody head spin, mate.

This is what showed up for 'business woman' when I creative commons searched Google Images. But wait, is she wearing Laga Gaga horse hoof shoes? 


Being efficient just feels so good. So why can I be like that every day? Or even most days? For every day like today, I spend at least three eating mealy apples with peanut butter and scouring the Internet for any reality show I can get my hands on (if you've ever found yourself in the midst of a 'Princesses Long Island' marathon, then you'll know what I mean).

Side note about 'Princesses Long Island'. Did no one think for a second that maybe, just maybe they should add an "of" in the name? 'Princesses of Long Island? Wouldn't that have made a bit more sense?

Anyhoo. As all us biz-nass women do, I even scheduled in a bit of socialising! I walked down to Newhaven (a part of Edinburgh down by the shore) and met up with my friend Gemma for some grub. As I was walking, I realised what my dream job would be: writer for a funny TV show. I think my forte would be coming up with characters who remind the audience of people they've met in real life.

What's your dream job? And don't say "ice cream taste tester", because people always say that.

Email my heart,
Margaret

P.S. I don't normally share stuff that everybody's already talking about. But just in case you haven't yet, watch the cutest video ever (and just so you know, he's saying "sprinkling").

 

P.P.S. Don't think I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to punctuate around quotations. Most of the time in British English, you're not supposed to put the comma inside the quotation mark unless you're writing an entire, complete quote. I've gotten suckered into doing it that way and, dare I say it, I actually agree with the Red Coats on this one.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

My Oh Miley

Firstly, let's just enjoy this photo from my shaved-head-grow-out phase:
 


OK, now to the meat of this post: Here's to having an open mind!

Raise your glass. It's truly something to cheer about!

Thanks to an open mind, and a late night YouTube exploration, I landed on Miley Cyrus' channel and discovered her 'Backyard Sessions.'

Yes, Miley is annoying and yes, as my friend Kaley pointed out, she talks like she has the world's largest permanent retainer stuck to the roof of her mouth, but these videos are great.

Also, I watched an interview with her on Ryan Seacrest's radio show (it's funny that they film radio shows now) and (again) she was annoying, but relatively self-confident - which is not true of many former child stars.

I liked this song the most:



So there you have it. I am a 26-year-old woman and a Miley Cyrus fan.

In the spirit of open mindedness, let me know what your not-so-guilty pleasures are in the comments.

More blog posts to come in the near future. I have been working on my work website, so apologies for the lack of Madgespace action!

Cheers,
Smadge
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