181: Won't back down

She may not have won The Voice last night (and congrats to Javier Colon, who is an astonishing singer and whose win is well-deserved), but Dia Frampton will always be first in my heart among Voice contestants.  The song she sang in the finals, "Inventing Shadows," was all right, but the real highlight of the final two episodes was watching her duet with her coach, Blake Shelton, and with Miranda Lambert.  (How cool is that Blues Brothers-esque staging for "I Won't Back Down"?)

I don't really like country music, but I loved that.

180: Joyeux anniversaire

Sometimes you just want to make a five-second video instead of sending a card to Europe.

(First video I've shot on the iPod touch.  I'd say it turned out pretty well!)

179: Cruelty, thy name is unemployment

This was my facial expression at lunchtime today.

Rather unexpectedly, the higher-ups decided the project I was working on at my temp job (which was going along in fits and starts from the get-go) was over, and most of us who had been working on it were thanked for our time and sent home at lunchtime with a full day's pay as severance.  So...I guess I've got a lot more free time now.  On the bright side, I'm reasonably certain that if I still don't have a full-time job or am not in some kind of academic program, I'll be invited back next spring.  Until then, it's time to get my ass in gear and update my Etsy shop.

Temping, she is a fickle bitch.

178: Dead or alive

Sometimes you just run across a photo that you really, really like.  This is one of them:

via We Heart It

I'm not sure if this is part of someone's engagement shoot, or what, but it's a really great, well-composed photo.  Kudos, uncredited photog.

177: Bad things

via We Heart It

The new season of True Blood premieres tonight, and I am STOKED.  (Even though I'll have to wait until tomorrow or later to watch it on someone else's Tivo.)  Having read the book on which this season will be based, I expect some very, very fun times with Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard).  The great thing about the series is that they depart from the books when it comes to the lives of secondary and tertiary characters, so even those of us who have read Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire series can look forward to being surprised every now and then.  With Mad Men off the air this year, True Blood is my favorite summer series on television.

176: Who wants to fight?!

Finally saw Midnight in Paris with my friend E tonight.  Utterly charming, witty, and a lovely tour of the streets of Paris.  Also, guess who played Ernest Hemingway?

Yes, hello, Corey Stoll, AKA Det. Jaruszalski from Law & Order: LA.  As though I needed another reason to be deeply fond of him.  He was fantastic as Hemingway (and really ought to get a side gig reading audiobooks), and I also enjoyed Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali (crazy eyes and all) really stole the show.  When it hits the second-run theater, I might see it again with my mother.

Definite recommend.

175: Changing winds

Paris, France, 2007.

More from my time abroad in 2007.  Today, storms moving into Paris frame the Eiffel Tower.  It was a lucky shot in a photogenic city.

174: Dear diary

Montpellier, France, 2007.

Travel journal from my trip abroad in college, days before I wrote the truly hilarious (in retrospect) entry about hiking the Cévennes with a dozen college students and two donkeys.  True story.

173: I don't speak Italian.

via We Heart It

Humpday movie: Inglourious Basterds.  I liked it, but didn't love it, the first time I saw it.  Recently, I got an itch to see it again, and discovered that Eli Roth creeps me out even more the second time around.  However, Mélanie Laurent is fantastic, and Brad Pitt's accent is even more ridiculous this time, which I love.

Still, though, I'll take Reservoir Dogs over the Basterds any day.  Sorry, guys.

172: The Voice

I don't usually watch a lot of reality TV, but summer television is an utter wasteland, so I usually end up catching most of the America's Got Talent auditions.  This summer, though, I've made an effort to see The Voice.  The blind auditions were the best part, but the performances have been consistently good, and we've gotten to see the lovely Dia Frampton come into her own.  If you haven't seen or heard it yet, check out Dia's rendition of Kanye West's "Heartless":

And the awesome Beverly McClellan:

And Vicci Martinez (who expects that huge voice coming out of that tiny woman?).  She did "The Dog Days Are Over" tonight and it was kickass, but until that video goes up tomorrow, here's her last performance, Dolly Parton's "Jolene":

Not to mention the fact that it gives some prominent music stars the chance to prove they know what their stuff; during the blind auditions, Christina Aguilera made some surprisingly astute and fairly technical observations about the singers' voices.  She doesn't sound nearly as intelligent during the live shows, when they can't edit out all of her excess chatter, but all four celebrity coaches (Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton) seem like they're giving their artists helpful pointers and pushing them to move out of their comfort zones.

All things considered, it's good, clean summer entertainment.  The finals are next week, so I'll probably be browsing the full run of episodes on Hulu beforehand, just to make my picks for the top four.