I found out that I have been shortlisted in the final 20 of MTV's Student of the Year competition!!! I found out this fabulous news whilst walking up Egham Hill to Royal Holloway University (where I study) and fell to my knees in disbelief whilst myself and my friend screamed and danced around on the pavement. Apologies to any drivers who were distracted by this explosion of excitement!
This means, ladies & gents, that I am in with a chance of being MTV's Student of the Year and being given the KA-amazing opportunity to work for 3 months at MTV's HQ in Camden!! I will also be given the chance to win tickets for MTV's Europe Music Awards, and to the Isle of Man music festival, along with a holiday voucher worth £500!
I cannot express in words how much this means to me and this is where YOU lovely people come into play. I need you to vote for me via this link: studentoftheyear.mtv.co.uk/student/samantha-wynn, watch my video application and VOTE!
You can also share this on Facebook and Twitter and encourage your friends to do so too. And there's even something in it for you lot too! If you vote then you are instantly entered into a prize draw to win either a pair of camping or VIP tickets to the Isle of Man festival where you could be boogieing along with me to the likes of Paloma Faith, Primal Scream and Wretch 32!
Here is my video application for you to see why I am a worthy candidate for MTV Student of the Year:
Today is my day of rest after a fun weekend, drinking lots and eating lots more which is the best way to spend a weekend, right?!
I hope you all watched the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night! It is always one of my favourite nights of the year and since a very young age I have always made whoever I am spending the evening with watch it with me. I happened to be spending it with one of my besties who doesn't usually watch it (SHOCK HORROR) but decided to embrace the eurotrash and even got into the spirit by suggesting we make Swedish influenced food- Sweden, of course, being the home of Eurovision this year!
I, for one, was definitely up for making meatballs and smorgasboard! In the end we decided to take a twist on meatballs using turkey mince, serving it up with yummy sweet potato mash and braised red cabbage with pear.
Just mix it all together and roll into small meatballs with a little flour! mmm!
The red cabbage was braised with chopped pear, nutmeg, ground spice, lemon rind, vinegar, brown sugar and vegetable stock for approx. 45 mins!
Clockwise: (1) Meatballs ready to fry, (2) Meatballs warming in oven, (3) Côtes du Rhone- my fav red wine! (4) The masterpiece!
All this washed down with a nice glass of red wine and the dulcet tones of the Romanian entry (watch here) and I was happy as Larry.
How did you spend your Eurovision 2013?
Oh, and congratulations to Denmark, commiserations to Bonnie...I believed.
I trust you had a lovely weekend despite the downturn in the weather with thunderstorms and hail, or as one of my besties endearingly said the other day 'it's just God moving furniture around'.
I spent Sunday afternoon at the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at the Tate Modern. It is an exhibition I've been wanting to visit for a long time and it was well worth the wait!
It has to be said that it is probably one of the most popular and most spoken about exhibitions that the Tate has put on, but if anything I think it is great to see art become more accessible to a wider range of people. I'm not sure what it is about Pop Art that so many people love; whether it's the comic book style sketches or perhaps the vintage-retro feel that seems to still be on trend in 2013! Whatever the attraction is, it wasn't until I got up close and personal with Lichtenstein's paintings that I recognised the detail and pain-staking precision that has gone into these iconic creations.
What was even better about the exhibition was the new discoveries of this artist usually known for 'The Torpedo', 'Wham!' and 'Drowning Girl'. I even preferred some of his other work, particularly the sculptures that hinted at the art-deco, Great Gatsby mania that is also POPular at the moment.
For obvious reasons, I wasn't able to take any photos but here is a reminder of some his iconic works...
Oh, Jeff...I love you, too...But... : Lichtenstein: photo taken from articles.chicagotribune.com
Whaam! Lichtenstein: photo taken from tate.org.uk
Drowning Girl: Lichtenstein: photo taken from wikipedia.org
The exhibiton is open for viewing until 27th May 2013!
And so, I felt truly inspired by the Lichtenstein style that I decided to Lichtensteinify my face!
So I've been a little out of touch recently due to final graduate exams and essays but I am now FREEEE as a bird and have finally finished 18 years of education with no plans to do a Masters!
I hope you all had a lovely bank holiday weekend. I certainly did as I made the last minute decision to skip down to Cowes to spend the weekend with Mama and Papa Double You, sailing around the Solent. On the first night we took a serene trip down the river to a pub called The Folly Inn, only to spend the night rowdily dancing on tables into the early hours! And who said nights out with your parents were boring?!
The Folly Inn
Another highlight was a trip to Osbourne House, where Queen Victoria used to live. We took a tour around the stunningly beautiful house and walked down to the beach where Queenie herself used to be wheeled into the sea so she could take a dip. It was a beautiful day and I definitely want to go back there, even if just to lounge in the deck chairs and eat ice cream all day!
Osbourne House
What a lovely weekend! How did you spend yours?
I am now going to return to my death bed as I endure post exam illness!
Beyoncé absolutely shook the o2 stadium for what was the first London date of her World Tour. It was interesting to see the range of people that considered themselves Beyoncé fans, and the lengths people will go to get even an inch closer to the Queen herself. This did mean I had a woman's hand lodged under my arm pit as she tried to hold onto the barrier that I had queued 3 hours to plant myself in front of! Needless to say, I was the Survivor and she just had a trapped, sweaty hand.
So after much deliberation of where to stand, we definitely chose the right spot. I don't want to spoil too much for those of you going this week but 3 songs, (and 3 of the best songs) were sang to my face, only 5 feet away from the stage! I had shivers and was shaking from excitement!
She truly is a superb performer and had the crowd in the palm of her hand. She performs with an energy and excitement that it's as if she's performing on stage for the first time but obviously with the precision and perfection of someone who must not be human...
Apologies for the bad quality! I was jumping up and down!
I was the top celeb spotter for the night and spied on the likes of Mr Carter himself- Jay Z, Naomi Campbell sat next to him, fashion designer Matthew Williamson, and (I think) Princess Eugenie.
The band were superb, the dancers were insanely good and I'm now going to stop waxing lyrically and try to hold back my Beyoncé fan girl identity! Who am I kidding?!
To the left, to the left..
Beyonce excitement before the show!
I can safely say I now feel like a liberated, independent woman!!
Tonight's adventures took me to the Sundance Film Festival. And before you get excited...no I haven't hopped across the Atlantic! In fact, Sundance has come over to England's sunny green pastures for what will be the second edition of Sundance film festival here in London.
I'd won tickets to the film, Blackfish, courtesy of Dogwoof. I'd thought the film looked interesting but was unsure of what I was going to see. Nevertheless, I 'skipped' up to the giant yellow signs, greeted by an army of yellow uniformed stewards to point me in the right direction.
Blackfish is a documentary film directed by Gabriella Cowperthwaite, delving into the curiously hidden truths behind the fairytale sea parks such as SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. We are plunged into a harrowing story of killer whales (or Orcas) who are kept in captivity and the equally distressing stories of various Seaworld trainers, who have been attacked or killed by these supposedly dangerous creatures.
But are they really dangerous? Is it not the human race who are the true dangers? This is the question that is implicitly asked throughout the film.
It was a beautifully crafted documentary that had most viewers in tears from beginning to end. The subject matter reminded me of a french film I saw last year and featured at the Cannes Film Festival called De Rouille et D'os (Rust & Bone, starring Marion Cotillard.) The fact that this issue was portrayed in a documentary format suddenly made it even more heartrending.
The Q & A session revealed that the film had incited many viewers to want to know what they can do to fight against this $3.1 billion dollar enterprise. This is an enterprise that elaborately lies about the living conditions of the killer whales and even the details of the attacks on the trainers.
I found myself incredibly moved by both the stories of the trainers who were killed, and of the orcas, who continue to spend their lives in a concrete bathtub. The director had clearly made this film to make a change, for the next generation about to experience the likes of SeaWorld.
Needless to say I didn't 'skip' away from Sundance, but walked away feeling as though I'd been enlightened to a controversial issue that I knew existed but that had details and hidden truths that I most certainly was not aware of. As mentioned in the documentary, let's hope we look back on this in 50 years time and everyone recognises how barbaric it truly is.
Blackfish will be out in cinemas in the UK from 26th July 2013.
Happy Belated Record Store Day! (...they should start making greeting cards surely?)
And what a day it was!
That's right, yesterday was Record Store Day all over the world; a day where independent record shops open the doors to the public, boasting a range of Limited Edition RSD releases that can only be bought on that day. However, it is not just to sell limited copies of vinyl but also to promote the use of your local record store. Since the big names such as Virgin Megastores and HMV have arrived (and now left...awkward) our high streets, we have seen lots of these small, independently owned record shops having to close down.
Yesterday proved that music lovers still love going to their local record store to seek out a new release or even an old favourite they had forgotten about. The purchase of a vinyl is not just like buying a CD, you're buying a piece of art that will most likely become as precious as a family heirloom and stay with you for the rest of your music loving days!
So having seen pictures on Twitter of the queues
around the block at Rough Trade, I decided
to leave it until later and thought I would seek out
some other participating stores in London.
I went along to Berwick St. in Soho where
I was greeted by a full blown street concert, held by record shop: Sister Ray. It was such a great atmosphere and was made all the more better with the sun beaming down!
I went into two record shops on and around Berwick St. but both were jam packed full of people and I started to experience a mixed bag of feelings...overwhelming wonderment and claustrophobia. My head was screaming: 'I'm a small person in a small shop of tall, sweaty people! GET ME OUT HERE'...
...so I left...empty handed, but was not about to give up.
At the end of the day, I thought I would stop by where I wanted to go originally: Rough Trade. It is one of the biggest, if not the biggest record shop in London so I was perhaps defeating the point of Record Store Day, but I thought I would swing by and see what they had left in terms of the limited edition releases.
I rocked up at 5pm and there was STILL a queue, but I was let in within 5 minutes, into another great atmosphere of happy music lovers boogieing to the superb DJ, supplying the soundtrack to their shopping experience.
Luckily I still managed to pick up 2 of the 7 I had on my list and it was probably just as well otherwise I would've spent a fortune! I paced back and forth to the till as I tried to decide whether to buy Paul Weller's 7" double a-side single ;Flame Out/The Olde Original' or James Blake's Retrograde/Overgrown 12"...both of which were blown out of the picture when I spotted these two releases which I can now call my own....
Django Django: Hi Djinx! Remixes &
Mystery Jets Live at The Royal Festival Hall (SIGNED!)
I'd describe it as a kind of weird game of Snog, Marry, Kill...but with James Blake, Paul Weller, Mystery Jets and Django Django.
It was lovely to see people of all ages and families with young children coming out to celebrate what seems to have become a national music holiday (or so it should be)! If only everybody could use their record shops as much as they do on Record Store Day...I am also guilty of that.
Needless to say, it was quite a different experience to how I spent RSD last year. I was in the little town of Nantes in France, where I skipped along to my local record shop Melomane and perused through the collection at ease. I enjoy RSD France and RSD UK equally as much.
I'll leave you now with an interview I did with the one of the founders of Record Store Day in the USA, Michael Kurtz:
