Sounds Like Me: My Life (so far) In Song by Sara Bareilles + Song of the Week | Review Revolution

Hello, my lovely Nurds!!


If it isn't already apparent from the title, I'm reviewing Sounds Like Me: My Life (so far) in Song. I had anticipated on reading this since I heard that it came out back in 2015.

A little back story, last summer (while on hiatus from this blog), when I was starting college apps, my second wave of depression was arising and lurking around a corner. I knew where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, but couldn't do anything. The feeling of being held back by some strong forces (e.g. family, school, etc.) is not a good feeling, and while I have yet to overcome this depression, I'm glad I had Sara Bareilles along with me. In a musical sense, of course. And there's no better way I would have preferred that. 

Let me explain. 

I was starting college apps and was pretty uncertain. I knew Sara Bareilles' more mainstream songs, namely "Love Song", "King of Anything", and "Brave", but that's basically it. As the school year started, I really acquainted myself with Waitress the Musical, which, if you don't know, is the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly's movie of the same title.

I had definitely been around when the movie came out around 2007 and had seen parts of it, but my eldest sister claimed that it was "too inappropriate" for 9-year-old me, so I wasn't exactly familiar with the plot until I really researched it, coming to find that Bareilles' most recent album What's Inside: Songs from Waitress wasn't just her singing songs from the musical, but also her singing the songs because, well, she wrote them. She discusses how this came about near the end of the book. 

With that said, I acquainted myself with Jenna, the protagonist of both the musical and movie, and found myself gravitating toward her and the powerhouse song "She Used To Be Mine" (of course written and performed by Bareilles, and provided below to the right) because Jenna and I had been in the same situation more or less. Sure I had not been pregnant or in an affair and abusive relationship, but I was lost, which I would've found myself hard to admit at the time.

After discovering all of this, I'd clicked songs that were recommended on Youtube and immersed myself in as many songs I could hear from Bareilles. Of course, there are a few I'm not a fan of, but for the most part, I love the majority. 

So, eventually, I got the book (because I felt that I deserved to buy something for myself after saving my money frugally for the past four years) and I wasn't too disappointed. Yeah, scratch that. I got a fucking paper cut opening up the fucking package, so besides that, everything was pretty damn good.

I'm going to start this article with the cons and finish off with the pros, so that you all end on a light note, but as you can see below, I'm giving this book a 4.5/5 hearts. Let me explain why.

Con #1: The book was incredibly short (under 200 pages)

Considering that she is a beloved singer with a lovely history and music like no other, I would have wanted more. I do appreciate, however, that she did open herself as she did; it must not have been an easy thing, as she admits within the first few pages. Her writing does justify a lot of her struggles and experiences, but I would have hoped for a bit more for someone who's written several albums and who is a five-time Grammy nominee.

Con #2: The grammatical and syntactical errors

When I'm reading, I want to know that I don't need to annotate my book when it's not obligatory. Apparently, the lack of quotation marks around song names completely passed by the editor throughout the entire novel. As a novelist myself, I intuitively feel like adjusting novels when I think my creative processes and ideas get the best of me and when I see fit. However, this book was hardly a novel and there's not much I can change when it comes to someone else's life (a.k.a. nonfiction), so I thought I was going to read pen-free. I guess I was wrong. Sure, I didn't have to make corrections, but it's really irritating when I'm reading and find grammatical and syntactical errors, so that was kind of blah.

Pro #1: She has an incredibly unique story to tell. But also, I like that it wasn't a narrative. 

Reading comments on Goodreads, I have found that a lot of people prefer books with a chronological order of events, but I liked that each chapter wasn´t in that order. However, that's not to say that it wasn't organized. Okay, upon first sight, you might wonder What does "My Life (so far) in Song" even mean? I had an idea myself before I read it, but was astounded to find that it was structured such that the chapters were names of several of the songs that have influenced her the most, namely: 

Each chapter is crafted with a spectacularly witty and life-altering experience that has shaped her in some way, whether that be coping with her parents' divorce, experiencing rejection after rejection from shitty people from her record company, or even a breakup (cue any Taylor Swift song here). She does not shy away from discussing her struggle with her weight, image, and self-esteem, which, she admits, still linger today, even as she is a grown woman. Yet, her

She includes the struggle of starting a new path, being lost, and being the odd one out in a seemingly singular and narrow-minded industry.

The entire layout of the chapter "Beautiful Girl" is written as letters to herself--the younger, formative, and current versions of herself. They are letters reminding herself that she is imperfect and has insecurities, assuring herself (and the reader) that everything will be okay as she accounts the experiences she had growing up at different stages of her life, kind of in the style of telling her childhood and formative and current self all of her adult wisdom.

Pro #2: She includes guest writers and pictures.

I'm not sure if this is because the struggle of writing a book eventually became real and she needed to fill pages because she ran out of content and words and laziness set in store or if she genuinely felt that her book needed guest writers to make her book seem more authentic, but I'm glad that she chose to include photos from throughout her life and the guest writers.

Guest writers include Jessica Vicker, a personal fan and friend of Bareilles; musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer Jack Antonoff; and bandmate and musical director Chris Morrisey.

These offered a personal touch to the book that couldn't be tangible otherwise. For example, Bareilles accounts her personal connection with her fans on several occasions.

For instance, Vicker mentions that no one experiences music the same way. Music is personal to the musician and the listen, who have different backgrounds, but nevertheless, the same message is felt.

Bareilles responded to this in her book about performing her song "Satellite Call" in concert:
"It took my breath away when I opened my eyes to see the entire audience had held up the flashlights on their phones, creating a blanket of thousands of tiny, twinkling, swirling lights, surrounding us. . . . it felt like a symbolic exchange. Of being heard and seen. Each little light represented somebody out there who was listening, and collectively, they created a sea of stars. A sea of souls, rather, and I was honored to be among them."

5 Reasons Why I Continue Blogging

Hello fellow Nurds,

So I was thinking about it only en route to my summer classes: Why do I still blog if seemingly no one is listening? And a lot of ideas, which could only be condensed into five solid ideas, swarmed into my head, before I nearly drifted to sleep a few minutes away from campus (obviously).

1) Blogging opens my horizons

Through this blog, I am able to explore my music, art form, poetry, and other areas of creativity in ways I wouldn't otherwise experience. This blog gives me an excuse to explore other outlets that inspire me 

avoid reality in a way. By posting weekly (and with that said, a deadline), I'm keeping this blog grounded and open-minded. With my outlets, namely Youtube (and the various channels it has to offer), of course of world of literature, inspiring women out there (especially women of color)m, and now Tumblr (if you haven't heard from last week's post, I created a Tumblr, so check out that post here and my Tumblr page here).

2) Therapy

Blogging just exposes a part of me that I cannot share to even the closest people in my life. That's not to say that I'm going to be ranting about peeps in my personal life. I want to discuss real content--events and phenomena that are actually happening in the world as well as any personal experiences that I could possibly offer from being multiethnic, transgender, and a multipotentialite.

I hope that the next nurd who stops by can get a sense of what this blog is all about (or rather what it will be about), you know, before they decide to never come back. Haha the point is, I hope this blog has some inch of influence, whether it be something learned, something thought upon, or something, reflected in some way. With that said, if someone stumbles on this site and I happen to help said someone who's struggling with the same issues or overcoming something I previously went through, then I'm glad this said helped them in whatever way it could. 

3) The opportunity for improvement

Even while on hiatus, I've been improving my blog mentally. The time away gave me an opportunity to rediscover and redirect the focus of my blog. I have been introduced and even reintroduced to outlets that support my focus on social activism and what I feel should be discussed in this light. I'm still fine that no one may be listening, but I hope to expand and I think optimism will get me there! There was an opportunity for change and I'm taking it. I look back at old blog posts and so many mistakes I've made, that I now know what direction I want to go in (even though I'm damn well sure I'm going to continue making mistakes). Oh well. It's all a learning process, right?

4) I have bigger and better plans

Yes, peeps. Although this blog may not seem like much more than me ranting or expressing my thoughts via one-ended discussions, I still do have plans to expand this blog to be what I've always envisioned it to be, but lost touch visualizing. As you may know, I was on a huge hiatus and even though I wasn't blogging, I was still thinking and planning. I found a direction. Not much will be said about these plans, but keep your eyes open. Currently, I'm attempting to code animals to adorn this blog, and more specifically, endangered species to raise awareness to these species that isn't publicized. So instead of me being a plain panda bear, I'll be a red panda bear!! YaY :D

On a side note, I'm doing a UCLA - College Talk series here come late August, so look out for that!

5) I WANT TO!  

Does this really need an explanation? This is my decision and my blog and what I say goes. So I'm glad I have the authority to make decisions for this blog that I can't make in my life. As someone who's been so limited, growing up as a lower-middle class citizen, it's just assuring to know that I am in control to some degree. 

What ideas do you peeps have for me? Anything you want to see on this blog? Just let me know in the comments below! :)

SO I CREATED A TUMBLR!!

Hey Nurds!!

I had a blog post created for the day, but it wasn't quite finished and there would need to be some time to finish it, so I thought I might want to create a relatively short post this week, which should be a relief to all of you because I can write and type--A LOT!! With that said, I have finals and I'll just publish that post next week, after my finals end.

In other news, I'll be coding a unicorn by which I hail unilords. Yes, I did say unilords and I worship them pretty hard. There actually a huge part of the animal dynamic of this blog. In fact, I'm think about making this blog more animal-oriented and create a page with several animals and their whole purpose on the blog.

As you may know, pandas are pretty huge on here, but I'll be switching the whole panda theme to a red panda theme (in which I will code more red pandas, so look out for those pretty soon), because red pandas are endangered and I think it's important to raise awareness to red pandas while I have a voice and degree of influence online, despite my affection for these furry creatures!

Am I not cute anymore?

Getting right into the actual purpose of this post, I STARTED A TUMBLR!! Y'all can check it out here and don't worry, I've linked all of my blog posts from here to there so you can check me out on this platform or Tumblr with little difficulty. The format is not as up to par as I would have hoped, but it was a bit of a hassle getting all of that content on there in the first place, so I'm pretty content and knd of impressed that I actually did it. In any case, you have all of that Funky Nurd glory on yet another platform so enjoy!

With constant love,

Joss Glenn

P.S. If you're not appreciating the whole black-and-white panda to red panda thing, hopefully these pictures will convince you that the change won't be too much of a dilemma.

Aren't I cute?

I'm adorable and trust me, I know it.

LOVE ME!!!

Milk | Review Revolution

Rated R | 2008 ‧ Drama film/Romance ‧ 2h 8m

Starring: Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Emile

Hirsch, and Alison Pill

Hey Nurds,

I wasn't expecting to do a movie review, but I have planned on watchin this movie for awhile and it just so happened to be an extra credit assignment for one of my classes (read more about my summer plans and classes here), so I thought why not? Nonetheless, here is a little impromptu movie review with a scoring scale! I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to do my Review Revolution book/movie review scale, so check out my scoring guidelines here for more on that!

The movie began with the end: the tumultuous outlook of post-assassination. The streets, the riots, and public outrage against Dan White (Josh Brolin) and his assassination of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), who had been loved, supported, and admired, gaining the trust of the people--straight and gay.

“It’s not just about winning,” Penn says in the movie; he wanted to start a conversation, addressing issues regarding gay rights, including, but not limited to the gay working class, bigotry, and just the gay lifestyle in general. A businessman of sorts, he gained attention with his charm and promise. Although he was a Republican man, he became politically active, despite scorn, death threats, and constant push backs. He gained the support and trust of straight and gay people alike by understanding people’s stories on a personal and individual level and taking to heart the stories of those who nearly took their lives out of fear of being in the closet. With that said, near the end of the movie, he takes an emotional toll when his own lover commits suicide.

I like the documentation format of Sean Penn’s character recording his journey and encounters should he be assassinated, in such a format that, as the audience, we experience dramatic irony, because we know that he was assassinated and even Milk could predict it himself. The historical exigence of Cleve Jones going to Spain and his account of experiencing a memorial riot while in Spain that was at the center of supporting gay rights and gay individuals who were essentially persecuted for being queer, despite the totalitarian reign of communist Franco at the time, was a particular effort at providing context as supplement to the 70’s style of clothes, home, vernacular, and architecture. Additionally, there were actual primary sources of interviews and footage from the actual time era at which the events of the movie had depicted, including footage of Anita Bryant, Dan White, riot after riot, and yes, Harvey Milk himself. Anita Bryant and many others opposed him and his allies on a religious perspective, which is still common of an argument to this day.

Milk and White agreed to work together on an initiative White was supporting; however, when Milk disagreed with the effects of the initiative, White voted against a gay ordinance regarding limitations on anti-gay discrimination in the workplace out of retaliation. The movie depicts Dan White perhaps as homosexual himself and resented and murdered Milk because of that.

Harvey was not only a beloved man, leader, and activist, but also a groundbreaking man who pushed barriers and was okay with being controversial so long as he was starting a conversation about what affects everyone--heterosexual or not. It is really important to understand that the efforts of Milk and his allies as well as the push-backs from his opposers are a foundation to modern efforts at achieving equality. Even today are we still struggling for the same goals and initiatives and experiencing the same disapproval and religious intolerance that sparked more prominently when Milk arose as a leader. As a young activist myself, I feel that Milk’s efforts were inspiring and integral to what I feel still needs to be achieved and discussed.

There was a fine discrepancy between feeling emotionally aligned with Penn and understanding that Milk was a real person and that the events that the movie depicted actually happened more or less, but the movie kind of crossed that line, I would say. Penn’s portrayal of Milk and the supporting cast were impeccable; the performances were authentic and the ensemble convincingly resembled the people they were meant to portray (so props to the casting director). And of course, Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter for his impeccable script that conveyed the exigence and emotional resonance of the film incredibly well. Plus, he’s a UCLA alum, so I’m kinda biased here.

Collaboration, passion, and sentiment. That was all there; however, and I do like how the cinematographer incorporated this, it seemed that Milk started the campaign and running for office for the mere purpose of filling a void in his life. Either that was true or this was one hell of a pre-mid-life-crisis. Despite this, he was loved, raining in a candlelit vigil of supporters and even those who regret disagreeing with him. His purpose and dedication to gay rights live on! That's #PRIDE right there.