frontman friday: joe kisselburgh

it's the last friday of february. what in the actual heck is going on here? i need to stop blinking because every time i do it's like a month later and i'm not sure where my days are going. i do, however, know that tomorrow is the second meeting of the HOT TUB CLUB and i'm pretty psyched on that. yay for friends, food, and hangs that warm the toes and the soul.

he'd probably come to the HTC: joe kisselburgh

i have a thing for boys with long hair.

he used to play guitar in: falling up

band shot from the early 2000's, gotta love 'em. 

he left falling up to form: the send

this album. good stuff.

this music video made my heart flutter

just watch that video and love.

that's all i got, it's the weekend and i'm out.

xo

babies; bear and bo.

i swear to you, everyone is either currently pregnant or just had a little bambino. my facebook newsfeed is filled with baby announcements, big bellies, and squishy little faces.

my family is no exception. my brother & sister-in-law just had a baby 3 months ago and my sister & brother-in-law are due this summer.

my brother and sister-in-law's baby boy is named cygnus bjorn. both are scandinavian names, cynus is a northern constellation meaning swan and bjorn is a constellation meaning bear. so obviously i call him baby bear. at some point it may transition to little bear. then eventually bear. 

baby bear, kids. isn't he just a little hunny?! he was approximately 3 weeks old when this picture was taken and i now have "holding babies" listed as one my skills on my resume. 

my sister just told us all that they are having a little boy and are planning on naming him bondurant franklin. i heard the story behind the meaning of these names but to be perfectly honest i forgot. i DO know though that i'm going to call him bo.

i think that's his face? i'm quite possibly the worst at seeing sonograms and knowing what i'm looking at. usually my response is "look, it's a baby!" 

DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS?! i am going to have a nephew named bear and a nephew named bo. um, hello, needtobreathe. that's right, my nephews share names with the brothers in one of my favorite bands. to round out the trifecta i guess that just means that i need to get married asap and have a son named seth. better yet, how about i just marry seth from needtobreathe and we can have (and by have i mean adopt) a baby boy and he can be seth jr. or seth the second. or just seth. i'm really liking this plan, you guys.

our babies would have all have long hair. 

mondays are for daydreaming.

xo

frontman friday: aaron gillespie

friday is here...raise your hand if you are excited for the weekend!
*raises hand*

there are a ton of people playing around my city tonight:
saints of valory at triple rock
hozier at first ave
jenny & tyler in burnsville
AND
judah & the lion have their debut late night appearance on letterman tonight!

what a good day to be alive.

he's also probably glad he's alive: aaron gillespie

nerd glasses and a slash t-shirt

he used to drum and sing for underoath but now plays frontman for: the almost

so many undercuts in one picture

he also has released some solo worship albums because he's got a lot of good things to say. this is his latest offering...it just came out a couple of weeks ago.

oh, and did i mention that he is out as a touring drummer right now? he's playing with a band called, paramore. maybe you've heard of them? 

dude has skills to pay the bills

and here's just the best part of it all, he's coming to play a show in minnesota! he's going to be at new life academy in woodbury, mn on thursday, march 26th! put it in your calendar now, kids.

class dismissed for the weekend!

xo

naked.

as a currently single female i feel like i'm supposed to hate valentine's day but i love celebrating pretty much any holiday (i mean, i'm not really sure how to celebrate columbus day but if you've got a good idea i'd love to hear it). just because i don't have fella in my life at the moment doesn't mean i have to be a giant bag of crabby and hate on love.

i was thrilled when i heard that LIGHTS was playing a show in my city on v-day. then when people gave me that pitying look and asked if i had any plans for the big day i could enthusiastically say, "i'm going to a concert!" yeah, i'm not just sitting around my house, wearing all black and eating cookie dough while watching he's just not that into you so feel free to keep your weird condolences about lots of fish in the sea to yourself. 

anyway, i'd never seen LIGHTS before so i was stoked to see her performance. she crushed it. great vocals, high energy, some of my favorite songs. if you get the chance to see her live you should do it.

but the song from the night that i cannot get out of my head was from her opening band, x ambassadors. it's not the type of song i would normally gravitate towards and i'm pretty sure i blushed when the lead singer said, "this is a new song, it's called naked."

but if you listen close enough it's got a halfway decent message about body image which everyone can benefit from, really. or maybe i just need to admit that i like a song where the chorus sings, "from my head to my toes feeling overexposed, i just wanna be naked with you," even though it makes me feel 20% awkward while singing it.

terrible video and not even from the show i was at but the only video

i could find of the song on youtube. the sound isn't the worst though.

it's not exactly NSFW but if you'd be uncomfortable with a coworker or your boss hearing your desires to be unclothed with another human being you may want to wait to listen to it until you're in the safety of your home or car. 

xo

a song for everyone.

love.

the most popular word in all of history. i have no factual grounds for this but i'm pretty sure it's true. books and poems have been written about it, plays and musicals have been based around it, and songs have been sung about it. love is wonderful and terrifying and i would guess most people want little more than to love and be loved. but on the road to finding that love there's usually some heartbreak.

in honor of valentine's day i polled some family and friends to find out their favorite love songs and their favorite heartbreak/screw you songs. and because asking dumb questions is how i get to know people, it's a phenomenal way to psychoanalyze someone...it's not weird at all, you guys.

anyway, here are there answers:

betsy:
love song: wanted by hunter hayes
hb/sy song: undo it by carrie underwood

jimmy:
love song: something by the beatles
hb/sy song: heart out by the 1975

geoff:
love song: she believes in me the me first and the gimme gimmes version
hb/sy song: i don't love you by my chemical romance

my mom:
love song: leather and lace by don henley and stevie knicks
hb/sy song: sometimes love just ain't enough by don henley and patty smyth
clearly my mom loves her some eagles' lead singer. frontman love runs in the family. she, too, is a sucker for duets. i swear to you we are the SAME PERSON.

jordan:
love song: ivory road by king charles
hb/sy song: ONE by yeasayer

terra:
love song: archie marry me by alvvays
hb/sy song: hate by the plain white t's

david:
love song: i believe in a thing called love by the darkness
hb/sy song: there's no home for you here by the white stripes

johnny:
love song: have you ever been in love? by celine dion
hb/sy song: where do broken hearts go? by whitney houston
this is my 48 y/o male boss. his answers make me so happy.

i asked my friend josh and his response was "i have no clue, i don't think i get an emotional response to songs like that." so yeah, he's dead inside.

no matter your mood this valentine's day my friends and i have you covered. if you're in over-the-moon-head-over-heels-in-love happy click on the first song in every set. if you're love-scorned-and-lonely those second songs are for you.

xo

things that happened over the weekend.

first: judah & the lion announced that they are playing letterman later this month! i know i have no right to feel proud of those boys since i'm not related to any of them or dating any of them or done anything to really advance their career (beyond preaching the judah & the lion gospel to everyone i know) but i am just so proud of them!

second: last night were the annual GRAMMY awards. awards shows can get long and boring and usually i tap out partway through and start doing something else so i totally get why people don't like them but i always watch them anyway. it's good watering hole fodder and whatnot. not to mention i like seeing what everyone is wearing and i get real jazzed on killer live performances. here are a few of my thoughts from last night (though i wasn't taking notes so this is just crap i can remember this morning...what kind of terrible blogger am i?) 

• not saying that sam smith and beck didn't deserve their awards but by the end of the night i was hoping for literally anyone else to win. 
• i have no idea who that letter was supposed to be from that shia lebouf read when introducing sia but kristen wiig was surprising and amazing. 
• there were at least 6 PSA's and everyone was trying to rip at the heartstrings with their ballads. it might have been one of the most heavy GRAMMYs i have ever seen.
• still don't get why everyone is so head-over-heels in love with prince (i mean, @&$#... that's how he spells his name now).
• auto-tuned kanye sounds a lot like my friend david from we are leo. i said "my friend" because that is the way everyone was introduced last night. in the music industry everyone is friends with everyone, i guess. 
• hated pharrell's shorts. 
• ed sheeran is effortless when he sings and annie lennox is scary intense but in a completely captivating way.
• needtobreathe was there but were never shown on tv so i'm gonna show you now because they were so handsome. 
  

we're only 5 days out from valentine's day so if someone could tell seth bolt that i like dark chocolate and iced white mochas that'd be neat. he's the one in the black suit with the man-bun in the picture above.

xo

frontman friday: gavin jasper

hello, sunny friday! so glad you're here.
jumping right into today's lead-singer lovin' because i'm proctoring classes for my boss and have approximately 10 minutes to write this post while i shove food down my throat.

just b/c it's rushed it doesn't make him less special: gavin jasper

he's the lead vocals and co-founder of: saints of valory

the first song i heard of theirs was neon eyes. it was played  on a local radio station (shout out to Cities 97) and i was like, "okay, i'm into this." 

fun facts: the band is originally from rio de janeiro, brazil...now they call texas home. also, they are playing at the triple rock social club in minneapolis on february 20th. i wanna go. who wants to come with me?! 

back to the classroom,

xo

ideal body types.

this post will have little to do with music...which is weird, i know.
there is music in the video though! it's the song raindrops by SNBRN ft. kerli so that makes it completely appropriate to post here. i am so good at justifying.

so buzzfeed (aka the-biggest-time-suck-on-the-internet, you go from pictures of the best man-buns to a quiz on which friends character you would be to a list of 90's facts and then your night is gone but i can't stop myself!) recently released a video that showed women's ideal body types throughout history. it's fascinating.

you watched it, right? good. even at my young (okay, relatively young. young enough.) age i've been influenced by three of these standards. i was born in the mid-80's so that "supermodel" mindset was probably well-etched into the brains of my mom and aunts. the 90's were my formative years where the "heroin chic" look was plastered all over television and magazines, as a pre-teen and teen those were THE source of knowing what was fashionable (because not wearing the "right" clothes in middle school is the ultimate crime). and the 2000's ideal body standard is what girls (myself included) have been attempting to achieve since i was in high school. 

you'd think that by this point we would understand that the "it" body image is going to change as fast as flared-leg jeans are in one day and skinnies prevail the next and that maybe we should just be happy that we have a functioning body but that's easier said than done. 

as much as i would like to complain about the fashion industry folding to body image standards and only making clothes that fit the mold of the moment, or complain about how all of the models in advertisements and magazines look the same conditioning our brains to think that that's the perfect way to look i'd wager a guess that the answer to why we feel the need to look a certain way mostly lies within ourselves. 

we're self-absorbed and insecure. we feel that if we look a certain way we will be accepted and maybe even praised. we want our selfie to look the best and get the most likes. we disguise it as "being healthy" when it's actually an obsession. the digital age we live in is a blessing and a curse. we carry around devices in our pockets and purses that keep us connected to basically anything or anyone on the planet and can do so in an instant but those same devices can crush our self-worth. in an article jon foreman wrote (yes, i can find a way to fit him into literally every conversation, it's one of my spiritual gifts) he said, "if comparison is the thief of joy, then our culture is being robbed blind."  

maybe if we stopped being so focused on ourselves we'd stop caring so much what other people think. there are so many bigger issues than thigh gap...human trafficking, homelessness, hunger, genocide, and cyclical poverty to name a few. 

so stop chasing an ever-changing beauty ideal because you can't keep up with that crap anyway. maybe your natural thinness was perfect for 90's but now your booty just doesn't measure up. here's the thing: if you're basing your value on someone else's opinion of you, you will always come up short changed. 

you're beautiful and you're loved. instead of worrying about changing your pant size, work to change the world. 

and post a couple less selfies.

xo

my thoughts on katy perry's halftime show.

i'm not going to lie, i was skeptical that she was going to be able to hold a candle to bruno mars' performance last year (he kept it pretty much about the music and nailed his vocals, two things that solidify your artistry in my book) but ms. perry definitely brought her A game. (i promise that will be the only sports analogy in this whole post.)

she came out on a large animatronic lion. that thing was cool, i want one. and i need four friends willing to dress in black and walk with me wherever i go to move the legs in a realistic walking motion.

she had dancers in horse heads dancing on a stage of moving graphics. the aerial view was trippy.

lenny kravitz oozes cool. he's got a rock vibe and i'm into it. and you can't not love him after seeing him play cinna in the hunger games movie. i sorta got the feeling that he didn't actually want to be there seeing as he only played part of one song but at least it was one of my favorite katy perry songs...what can i say, i kinda liked trashy katy perry more than inspirational firework katy perry.

there were dancing sharks and palm trees and girls in high-waisted bikinis. super colorful, really fun, made me wish i was at the beach even though i'm not a california girl.

missy elliot came out and that was an unexpected surprise. i wasn't a huge missy fan growing up, in fact i'm pretty sure i still couldn't name any of her songs and she did multiple last night, but always an interesting choice when you mix genres.

and then there were fireworks and katy perry riding on a shooting star. it was all a huge thing. 

the whole show was entertaining and lighthearted and had so many different elements it was almost hard to keep up but none of those things were what i found most impressive. what i found most impressive were her vocals and her clothing choices.

when it came to her singing, she crushed it. i'm guessing there were a few layers of vocals that were recorded to help aid her live singing to fill a stadium that big but i got the impression that her mic was all the way up and she was actually doing what she's paid to do: sing. and if there were no assisting vocals to help her out then i'm even more impressed. she sounded strong and her voice was full and she hit her notes but it didn't sound "recorded in a studio and tweaked just a bit" perfect just "this girl can sing" perfect.

when it came to her clothing i was surprised at how tame it was. i mean, this was the girl who was essentially kicked off of seasame street for being too cleavage-y. i'm not saying the costumes she wore last night would have flown on seasame street but i thought she might push the envelope a bit more. her music videos have shown that she's not exactly afraid of showing a little skin. but maybe she didn't want the night to be about her boobs? maybe she wanted everyone to know that she can actually sing? that she's an entertainer? that she does have some sort of talent, she's not a just a pretty face and killer body?
if so, kudos, katy perry, you proved your point.

xo

ps. a quick google search showed no pictures for me to steal. bummer.