Teen Girl With a Satchel

The newest musical by one of my biggest obsessions, Team Starkid – most famous for their viral web musicals A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel, which feature newest Glee star Darren Criss as Harry – was cause for celebration in my world. 

Starship follows the story of Bug, who lives on an alien planet and just really, really wants to be a Starship Ranger (a member of the human space explorer group). Filled with hilarious songs, jokes and characters, it was love at first (three-hour!) viewing.

Recently I was lucky enough to be able to Skype-Interview one of the members of Team Starkid, Julia Albain, who plays Crabbe in the Potter musicals and Starship Ranger ‘Specs’ in Starship. Julia, who gets to count Darren as one of her closest friends, has just published a short book titled A Glamorously Unglamorous Life about her year in New York City.

We chatted about her book (“I was leaving New York, and I was just like kind of getting nostalgic and reviewing the blog that I had kept while I was there, which was just something I really did for me and I saw, you know, what a journey I’d been on really and I thought, hmmm, maybe I could turn this into a book?”), Team Starkid (they love that they have such a large Australian fanbase, especially as we’re so far away) and life.

My favourite part of the interview, though hearing that she and roommate Lauren Lopez are planning a show of their own was great, was the advice she gave for teen girls about to enter the Real World. She said:

“There’s a lot of girls that I meet and talk to and they have just been made to believe that things that they dream aren’t possible so they stop dreaming and it just breaks my heart because it’s like the minute people stop dreaming, that’s where society starts to fall apart. It’s just crazy that if you have this strong desire or calling on your heart, that you wouldn’t at least try to go after it. Because it’s never going to be a mistake to try. It will never, ever, ever be a mistake to try. I just think that you’ve got to commit to dreaming and finding and really looking at what you want out of your life, and find a little piece of yourself that believes that you can have and do the things you love and want. Because, really, like, the things that you want, want you and that’s where you’re going to make the most impact and actually help the most people”. Julia’s book is available here in download or hard copy form.

I’m rather lazy when it comes to attending the cinema, and while I loved Robert Pattinson as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter, I wouldn’t call myself a fan of his at all, which is why I surprised myself by tagging along when my friends decided to go and see Water For Elephants. I was interested to see how Rpattz would perform when not playing a sparkly vampire, and I was pleasantly surprised. He was rather brilliant, as was the whole film. It was the perfect combination of humour, heartbreak, fear, and even one scene which made our packed cinema burst into spontaneous applause. I haven’t read the book, though everyone I know who has raves about it, but I’m sure this is one movie adaption no fan could complain about.

I’ve always been known amongst my friends as the one with questionable music tastes. I own every song the Jonas Brothers have ever recorded (rumours that they are coming to Australia in September will make my life if proved true), and a very large percentage of my ‘most played’ list are from Disney animations. Though I personally see no problem in this, when during a recent conversation I only referenced the songs I knew from Glee, it was decided an intervention needed to be staged. My friends let my mum know that ‘Groovin The Moo’ (GTM), a festival filled with all the artists they adored, was coming up and that they had a spare ticket. She’s always telling me I need more mainstream tastes, so she jumped at the chance to send me.

That was how I found myself listening to Triple J for the first time in my life while on a road trip to Bendigo, to spend all day seeing bands I had never heard of. While I ended up sitting by myself away from the claustrophobic crowds by the eighth hour, I did enjoy myself. Out of the numerous bands my friends dragged me to see, many were definitely not my taste, but I found myself begging my friend to give me all the songs by Darwin Deez and The Wombats she owned. The experience, while not one I really want to repeat any time soon, opened my eyes to a whole other part of the entertainment world.

Georgie @ Girl With a Satchel