This Is Halloween.

In the spirit of Halloween weekend, I've been recollecting memories of past Halloweens in my life, and thought I would make a post about it.

It is so humorous looking back at past Halloween costumes, just because of how I remember feeling very cool at the time, and feeling very stupid now. What was I thinking?!? But they are in the past, and there's nothing better than reliving the embarrassments of your past, right? Right.

Don't even ask me what this was. We actually had a piece of paper attached to our backs explaining, in full detail, what this was.

Can anyone guess who I am in this one? (Keep in mind, this one is a couple of years after the previous picture. I couldn't find any pictures in between - nor do I remember what I was for those years, actually...)

This year, for Halloween, I decided to go all out. Face-wise. It is important to note here that, in the past year, I have become increasingly passionate about makeup artistry after accidentally stumbling upon an AMAZING makeup artist, Kandee Johnson, who besides having a great personality, is a professional artist who really knows her way around a face. She's taught me so much about working with your own face, contouring, shading, color theory, tricks, etc. Among her more regular looks, she also has a great selection of character looks (which by the way, ACTUALLY look like the characters rather than "inspired by" looks). This year, after many months of watching and re-watching her videos, and adding to my collection of makeup and brushes, I decided to recreate her "Cheshire Cat" look. And here it is, my 2010 Halloween getup:

I hope y'all like it. The mouth area doesn't look at good as it can, because my mouth started getting dry throughout the night and I had to inevitably lick my lips. Otherwise, that part should've been completely covered, so as to look more like an actual wide grin.

Doing this look has re-fueled my love for Halloween. I've started creating a list of looks I want to do for future Halloweens to come. I think next year, I'm going to go as Scar, from "The Lion King". I really think I could do a great face, and I've got the black hair to tease and poof up into an actual mane. I'm so excited!

I think part of the reason I love Halloween so much is because I can unleash my creativity, and it is the one day/night of the year that I can go all out and become a completely different character. I personally love dressing up as non-human things, it's makes the costume so much more challenging and rewarding in the end. It saddens me when people stop dressing up for Halloween, because I suppose they reach a certain age when it is no longer exciting. I hope I don't reach that age, ever. There are too many more characters I want to become before that happens.

Happy Halloween to everyone!

Disney Disney Disney

Disney movies make me want to...

1. Find my own Prince Charming/Philip/Eric/Tarzan/Aladdin/Shang/Hercules/John Smith/Captain Phoebus/Dmitri/Adam (10 points if you can figure out where the last guy is from - it is a Disney movie).

2. Wear long A-line skirts that start at my waist and go down past my knees.

3. Grow my hair out long and thick.

4. Be selfless and caring to everyone.

5. Study anthropology.

I found the funniest picture the other day, whilst surfing the 'net for Disney pictures to satisfy my sudden obsession.
Do you see it?!? Do you see the humor?!? They're dressed up...as their own VILLAINS! Take a moment to try to figure out who each princess is supposed to be.

I've also been trying to make a single Disney movie my official favorite Disney movie, because that's how I make myself happy, but it's very difficult. Hercules was my favorite for the longest time, because I love Greek mythology so much. Then recently, it changed to Pocahontas, because I watched it after so many years, and it's has nostalgic memories attached to it.

Also can I just take a moment and say - there's this thing that happens when I watch movies after a VERY long time...like, I actually have not seen them in years. I'm watching the movie, and I remember the way the voices sound. The way the characters sound. When someone's voice goes up, and the way it goes up. The dialogue during the weird, forgotten parts. The way the characters move and react. As if when I watched it many years ago, I never payed attention to the words, but simply the pictures on the screen - that would make sense, because I was pretty young when I first started watching Disney movies.

Pocahontas will always be in my heart, because I remember my entire family liking it. I also remember my dad liking the one part in Cinderella when the king attacks the duke for letting Cinderella slip away, and he says "SABOTAAAAGE!"

Yeah. That's what he remembers about Cinderella.

Anyway, now I've decided that my temporary "favorite" Disney movie is Tarzan. There's something about a boy raised by gorillas that fascinates me. It just makes me realizes how quickly people and animals and living things adapt to their surroundings - Tarzan was completely normal human baby, but once Kala takes him under her care, he learns the ways of the gorilla. It's funny because you don't realize how much of a gorilla he's become until Jane comes along. Because the dialogue is all in English for the first part of the movie, everything seems normal. But then, Tarzan is suddenly put in front of "real" humans, and you get this shock because - he's not like them at all! You suddenly notice the little things that sets Tarzan apart from Jane; the licking of the fallen bullet casing, the slow retreat to a crouched position when he is confused, the sounds he makes, the movements. If you didn't understand before, you'll understand now why I want to study anthropology.

I could go on about Disney movies. I'm currently going through a phase where I'm watching 1 to 2 Disney movies per night. And there are only SO MANY, so dark will be the day when I finish.

Let's not think about that right now.

Celebrities Who Touch Other People

The title is a lot less perverted than you're thinking. I caught an episode of "The Late Show With Jay Leno" the other day - okay, it was an old episode featuring Ryan Reynolds, because I'm going through a very hard-core Ryan Reynolds obsession phase right now - and I noticed something odd. And by odd, I mean something that happens regularly, but I never really gave it much thought until now.

So Jay Leno comes out onto the stage, doing his little Jay Leno thing, and a hoard of people come up to him instantaneously, reaching for him, and pushing each other out of the way to get to him. Some of them, particularly the older men reach out an actual hand to shake hands with him (something I am told is normal in human culture) - that's fine. But most of them simply reach out a hand to touch him - and Leno complies, reaching out a couple of fingers just to touch these people.

If I were to ask what it was about celebrities that make us want to just touch them, that would be foolish and stupid, and hypocritical. Of course I would like to touch celebrities!

By the way, the more I write "touch" and "celebrities" in the same sentence, the more I feel like a sex offender.

You see what I mean?

It sounds weird, but it's so accepted.

They touch babies too!

Oh, and before I forget...

Nächste Halt...

It has been too long since my last blog spot, so I apologize to my excruciatingly small number of followers.

On the brighter side of life however, I do have stories to tell from my trip to Germany! My mom, being the avid traveler and sightseer she is, decided on a spontaneous trip to Germany right before my college started, which was fine with me because I had never been there before. Before I forget, I want to make note of a few things I noticed whilst thur, and wrote down specifically to remember later:

1. I spotted over 200 leather jackets. No joke. So much love for the cow.
2. We traveled solely by train or subway, which was actually a great way to familiarize myself with the place, but now I will never get the soft, cool, female voice saying "Nächste Halt..." (Next stop...) out of my head.
2. EVERYBODY wears skinny jeans. No room for fat pants.
3. The Germans love Eminem apparently. "Love The Way You Lie" was playing even in the most desolate of places.
4. They also love their ice cream structures (I will elaborate on this later, as it was my favorite part of the trip).
5. New song by Peter Fox, a German singer called "Alles Neu", which I love.
6. The villages of Austria had solar panels on their buildings. ROWS AND ROWS of solar panels. Talk about oxymoron.
7. I suppose with more than 1 billion people populating the country, not including the rest of the world, we all had to find a way to share the Indians somehow. Seriously, they're EVERYWHERE.
8. Listening to German exhausts me, especially when excited, little, 6 year olds are speaking.

As a little summary of our trip, we basically traveled all over the south of Germany, and a bit of Austria. Nevertheless, Germany was much colder than expected, and nobody was prepared. Of course, we did the usual tours and sightseeing, with castles and monuments galore. Here are some cliche pictures for your viewing:


But y'all know me. I don't like cliche pictures. I had said before that I would elaborate on the ice cream structures that the Germans seem to love so much. In fact, I spotted over 10 ice cream cone structures throughout Germany, and thought it would be fun to photograph all of them. I have a plan to enlarge the pictures and create a poster out of them to hang on my wall, for no purpose whatsoever but to entertain my soul.













I hope you enjoy those ice creams as much as I did. I wish I could have taken each one back and situated them around my dorm room, but that would be highly ill-advised.

And yes, German is a very exhausting language to listen to. I wanted to take a nap every time I heard someone jabbering away in German, and was even more dumbfounded hearing a 5-year-old jabbering away at 10 times that speed. How can you make those sounds with your mouth?

I felt that our visits to Austria were much more scenic than Munich, which makes sense because Munich is a big city with it's usual city-like grime and grit. I think when I grow old and retire, I'm going to live in those valleys in Austria (where, by the way, Julie Andrews had run around singing in The Sound of Music):



On a completely different topic, I have now become obsessed with the song, "Alles Neu" by Peter Fox, a German singer, whose music is a mix between hip-hop and reggae. The music video is in all honesty, very strange, but also strangely addictive, as is the song. There's something about the beat, and the drummers' groove that makes me come back to this video/song over and over again. I just hope I don't get tired of it:



Peter Fox is definitely an artist to check out in general. He has this unique way of mixing beats and creating rhythms that make you want to listen over and over again to figure it out.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find someone who enjoys this song as much as I do. Oh well.

Once I create the ice cream collage, I'll post a photo of it on my blog, so keep checking back for that!

My Weird Christmas Wish List

So I came across a video of a painting in progress today, on a blog that my friend directed me to. Check it out, it's actually a pretty cool blog.

First of all, I am highly jealous of the girl who writes the blog. Her unique tastes in fashion, music, and art give her something to write about, whereas I sit on the floor of my too-small room, looking around aimlessly, desperately searching for something unique in my life.

I'm going to Germany in a week. I'm really looking forward to blogging about that.

Anyway, this video that I came across, it was of an artist, Steven Lopez, from Pasadena, California, painting one of his original paintings from a project called The After Midnight Series, a series of paintings that pay homage to Neo-soul songstresses.




I don't know why I was so drawn to this painting montage, but once again, I was hit with an urge to spontaneously make something creative. I see a brilliant photograph by a brilliant photographer, and I want to take up photography. I see a great movie, and I want to be a director. Right now. Get me some actors.

I actually have a manila folder under my bed with sketches and rough drafts of short movies I would like to make some time in the future.

If I could, I would simultaneously act, dance, sing, direct, photograph, blog, film, document, paint something, while touring France, Ghana, South America, Prague, London, Australia all at the same time. Goddamn, if they had only perfected the cloning process for the masses.

Oh, and Germany I suppose. Since that's actually happening.

People always say to find the one thing you enjoy and desire to do life, and pursue it. I've realized, however, that it is never one thing. It will always be multiple things. Even if I do succeed at one of the bazillion dreams listed above, what happens to everything else? I can't just let go and not do them.

For the fall semester of my sophomore year in college, I decided to take a modern dance class, to fill up credits. I've always thought it be so cool to be a dancer. Suddenly I imagine myself as a dance major, going to rehearsals, performing in front of a large audience, being able to do such flexible things I could never dream of doing.

What the hell, man? I am never going to be a dancer. It's not that easy.

It's not that people don't pursue multiple dreams. It's just that sometimes, half of those dreams turn into hobbies, something that is done on the side, and don't go any farther than that.

But I don't want that.

I want to be able to excel at every single one of my dreams, to the point where people can't even identify my job.

"Oh, that's Esha, she's a...everything."

You know, if I weren't so creatively inclined, I would also like to become a doctor. It seems so exciting. But because I know I'll never be able to sit through multiple Chemistry and Biology classes, I resort to watching medical shows like House and Royal Pains.

Oh my god, this has to stop. This is turning into a weird version of my Christmas wish list.

But I have to say, Hinduism's got it down. Goddesses with multiple arms? I could use that. And multiple brains. And everything else.

I Have A Problem.

I think I know what my problem is.

Oh, I know I have plenty of problems. Everyone does, I'm not perfect. But I have one big problem that came to me while riding home on the bus back from New York (this is what happens when a certain someone perpetually - and sometimes purposefully - forgets her iPod during long trips).

I think I take on too many things at once. I always feel the need to do everything, meet everyone, sign up for this and that, and a couple more. As of right now, I am technically holding 3 different jobs. And I'm in that awkward phase, where one job is almost close to ending and another one is about to start, but that boss decided to have me come in a couple of days before my official start date, and the first job hasn't actually ended yet, and on top of that, the third job is in the same situation as the first job. Got all that? You'd think that, on the bright side, I'd be getting paid a lot, but I also tend to spontaneously shop. Last time I checked, shopping more than you get paid each week is the equivalent of eating a whole cheesecake after exercising. Let alone, one of the jobs doesn't even pay me (thankfully, that one is ending soon).

Not that I haven't been notified of this problem before. My mom takes it upon herself to remind me that I try to do too many things every time I want to do something that is a little off of the beaten track. Like...go to a concert. Oh, God forbid! Too much, too much!

But now, I've realized it for myself, and although she does take it to the extreme, my mom is not completely wrong. Just this week, I agreed to work 2 days at my new job "to get used to it before fall" (scheduled around my current work schedule at my current job), agreed to help a new friend out on a low-budget indie flick she's producing, tried to find a good to transport myself from work (which ends at 6), to home (time = 1 hour), to a friend's house (who lives over an hour away) for a sleepover at a decent time, but on a day that wouldn't conflict with my new work schedule, and with tentative plans to see a movie with another friend.

I wish there were a better way to word that last paragraph so it sounds less confusing, but that's exactly how I see it.

There are more things, but these are the ones that I have brought upon myself (first step in removing a problem - admitting you have created the problem). It's not that I don't try to fix anything. I'm smart enough to know that if you can't do something, you have to let it go, but not smart enough to realize this before actually making the plan. I guess I just can't say "no". Everything I forgo doing, I feel like I've missed an opportunity. Like how the first publishers to turn down JK Rowling probably feel right now. Regret.

Isn't it a saying though? That you shouldn't regret the things you do, but the things that you didn't do? Like turning down interviews to companies that really interest you, because you already accepted something else before this offer came up, so you weren't going to consider them anyway. On top of that, they don't pay. But don't worry, they have a fancy name to make up for it - an internship. Thank you for luring me in with your big offices and big names, I appreciate it.

I'm sure there is some psychological explanation behind it. Even when it comes to throwing away things in my room, I have doubt. What if I need it later? What if I'm in a crisis, and the one thing I need, I've thrown away? Regret, regret, regret. I know not being able to meet friends for sleepovers is not that big of a deal, but this is bigger than that. I don't want to go through life regretting the things I didn't do. I just want to do everything, so there will be nothing left to regret. Is that so crazy? To want to die happy and content with my life, with no regrets?

Okay, I'm starting to sound like some sappy mother from one of those Indian soap operas my mom watches. Excluding the depressing violin playing in the background, it's all true. Regret is overrated. You know what? I don't have a problem, it's man who has a problem for creating only 24 hours in day. What were we thinking?!?

Don't Forget To Clean Your [Insert Body Part Here]!

Is it just me, are there way too many things to take care of on our body? I don't mean to sound disgusting or un-hygienic, but I feel like the number of things to take care of has gone up ten-fold since we were put on this earth. Make that 1 million-fold.

Body care.

Hair care.

Ear care.

Face care.

Hand care.

Foot care.

Eye care.

Nail care.

Teeth care.

Health care.

Let's dig a little deeper, shall we?

Eyelash care.

Cuticle care.

Skin-around-your-eyes care.

Scalp care.

Lips care.

Gums care.

Behind-your-ears care.

Down-there care.

Eyebrow care.

Upper lip care.

Bone care.

Heart care.

Lungs care.

Kidneys care.

Muscle care.

Fat care.

Blood care.

Overall-body-equilibrium care.

Brain care.

The list goes on, and on, and...on. And for every part of the body we need to take care of, there are at least 200 different kinds of treatments for it. Creams, lotions, massages, exercises, gels, pills, tablets, diets, washes, the whole nine yards.

You think you got everything covered? I bet you missed a spot. Actually, I bet you missed hundreds of spots. Because somebody up there has a weird sense of humor and has made us into obsessive compulsive cleaning ladies, eternally doomed to find new places to clean, wash, tone, and scrub. I'm reminded of those moments working as a retail store sales associate, constantly folding and refolding clothes, watching customers blatantly mess up the pile of t-shirts I just organized, in front of me. Seriously? I just cleaned that. Now I have to do it again?
And what the hell is ear cream?
I don't want to sound disgusting. Of course I regularly shower, scrub, exercise, and generally clean my myself. There are obviously health benefits to doing so, and I get it. I guess it plays into what my dad always tells me (because I'm notorious for losing/breaking things I own):
"If it's yours, and you care about it, you take care of it. It's your responsibility."
I care about myself. Of course I want to look good, feel good. But this was definitely not in my job description, this constant paranoia about making sure my nails don't get too long, or that my legs are always shaved and smooth (and getting goosebumps on a cold day doesn't help me either). Remember when mom used to repeatedly tell you to clean underneath your nails when washing ? Now she yells at your for not moisturizing your hands, or not properly pushing back your cuticles. After all, keeping your cuticles clean keeps...the doctor away? What?
I have no answer to this, unfortunately. Unless our culture changes, or our bodies change to stop doing yucky stuff, or our health stops suffering from lack of care, we will forever be cleaning ladies. And none of those are ever going to change drastically, so here's to your supercilium. I hope it stays minty fresh at all times.
Ten points to the person who knows what that even is.