Tag: celebrities

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, LIVE MUSIC, PHOTOGRAPHY, POP CULTURE, travel

IF YOU AIN’T FIRST, YOU’RE LAST!

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

So, I went on a road trip last week to see Melanie Martinez in Memphis, and that was really exciting and wonderful and I love her dear little Cry Baby heart infinitely – but there is something else a liiiiittle more important to do in Memphis that I’ve been wanting to do since I was a zygote.

Like, DUH! You go to see the King! People – after years and years and years of begging for what seemed like a trillion times to a trillion people, the stars aligned and I finally got to go walking in Memphis and see G-R-A-C-E-L-A-N-D! BUT! More on all that later.

Now that I have gotten better about flying, I was totally willing to fly in and out of Memphis so that we would have a little bit more time to vacation. There was one small fly in the ointment of my travels, however – if I drove, I would get to go to Mississippi and Arkansas. Two previously unchartered terrains on my growing list of states that I’ve visited.

So drive we did.

Ugh.

Driving.

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(This is me doing really well at being in the car for what turned out to be a nearly 12 hour stretch)

Continue reading “IF YOU AIN’T FIRST, YOU’RE LAST!” →

Posted in ASHLEY IN WONDERLAND, FANGIRLING, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, LIVE MUSIC, PHOTOGRAPHY, POP CULTURE

HAIM TIME

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland
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feel free to click on the photos for larger sizes/a better view!

Ciera & I saw HAIM last night at The Orange Peel in Asheville. It was SO GOOD. You know how you leave a show and you’re like, “hey, that was good.” and then you don’t think so much about it again – not this. THIS WAS SO GOOD. There was so much girl power in the room, I could barely catch my breath. Those gals are TALENTED, I’m serious – youtube some of their live performances or download some of their tunes (recommendations: “Send Me Down”, “My Song 5”, and “If I Could Change Your Mind”). I’ve been waiting to see them for YEARS, and we scored close parking and a decent spot at the show – I don’t really know how much more you could ask for. Well, a diet pepsi would have been great, but whatever.

(Side note: MAJOR PROPS to The Orange Peel for fighting NC’s stupid beyond belief bathroom laws for trans individuals – they posted signs on the bathrooms telling you to choose the bathroom you wanted to use, and if you wanted somewhere safer, there was a private bathroom available. SO many kudos to them for that.)

Highlights of the night: Alana’s bad ass drumming, Este’s Prince cover (one of my favorites – “I Would Die 4 U”), and Danielle’s voice is just literally siren song. Ugh. I loved it. I had so much fun. And no panic attacks! That’s a huge plus. I can’t remember the last time I was in a big crowd and didn’t have a panic attack.

My pictures aren’t great, but I’m sharing the few that turned out to be semi-decent. Annnnnd that’s pretty much it. I want to marry and spend the rest of my life with every Haim sister simultaneously, so if someone could get a message to them ASAP so we can work something out, that would be absolutely great.

 

Posted in FANGIRLING, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, LIVE MUSIC, POP CULTURE

SO PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE YOU WANT TO

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

On Saturday night, Tom & I met up with Stephanie in Athens to see Third Eye Blind. It was amazing, but it always is, when Third Eye Blind is concerned. Their music is honestly poetry to a melody, I can’t think of many other artists or groups that I find so lyrically impressive and impactful.

The older I get, the more special it is for me to see and experience the music that I have grown up with live. It’s just such a surreal thing – almost like you get to see a glimpse of your younger self, who you used to be, for just the tiniest of split seconds. At the show on Saturday, I was both 16 years old remembering how I used to bellow along to “Wounded” and bellyache about Taylor Hanson getting married, and 29 years old, present day, now having grown up to know what “Wounded” really means.

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“The only people who will ever know what this is like is us, man.”

Anyway, it was a great night. I could hardly see the band for the majority of the show because of the screaming drunk women taking snapchat photos, but that’s okay. I got to hear it all, and that is what matters. Also, there is a video of Stephan singing “Dopamine”, my favorite song, into my camera, and if I was smarter and knew how to upload videos from my camera, I would show that to you. Alas, earwax.

In close, as a special bonus, here are some glamour shots of Stephanie & I, because we looked like damn 90s supermodels, and basically these are my favorite pictures of us ever.

Posted in POP CULTURE

ALWAYS

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

Damn, what a week.

There is nothing that I could say about this wonderful man that hasn’t already been said by many wiser and better spoken than I could ever hope to be, but here’s my offering, my hat thrown into the ring:

I thank you, Alan Rickman, for the light you brought us all, for your talent, for your uniqueness, for your voice, and for everything that you did to help bring one of my favorite book series to life. Your enormous legacy will never be forgotten.

My wand is raised for you, my favorite head of house. Always.

Posted in POP CULTURE

BOWIE

Posted on by Ashley in Wonderland

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It always hits me really hard when a celebrity dies. I know, that seems silly and vapid and ridiculous, but it is true. You would think that at this point, death wouldn’t affect me very much at all – that given the amount of dead people and sad situations that I have been exposed to in my actual life on a daily basis, I would not feel this way – but I always do.

I can’t really say why it gets to me the way that it does. Of course, if I’m a big fan of the deceased (such as when Michael Jackson and Cory Monteith passed), I feel that profound sense of loss and despair that is a natural part of grief … but I tend to feel affected even if I was only a casual fan, or not even a fan at all. Maybe it’s the funeral director in me – because behind every stilled body is someone hurting, and I always think about that – the ones who are left behind. Maybe it has something to do with how loud their deaths are, how visceral. We have the outpouring of emotion and love from fans, the celebrity reactions, the career retrospectives, the dissections of final months, weeks, and days – it’s stunning, both disgusting and beautiful. It’s overwhelming.

Then there’s the selfishness of it. Until yesterday, I had never lived a day of my life that David Bowie wasn’t a part of – and I don’t mean that as a way to say that I have been a rabid Bowie fan since birth. I mean that he’s always been there, a wonderful and comforting piece of furniture in the annals of my pop-culture and music loving mind, a legend before I was even called into existence. And now we as a world have to come together in entering the post-Bowie part of our lives, and that feels weird and scary and sad. We (or at least I) always seem to take for granted that these people we adore and admire won’t go away someday, but they do, and life goes sadly on. Different, somehow. Lacking.

So for now, it is time to say goodbye to another legend, to another brave soul who bared and shared their heart and mind and reinvented themselves time and time again for the sake of creation – who changed the music world so profoundly that nearly half (if not more) of today’s artists owe him a thank you for boldly paving the way.  We will miss you, David Bowie. “Turn and face the strange”