Which means that I've had rather a lot of time to think. And that's never good.
I spent a lot of time thinking about things that I've learned in my life-- especially the really odd things. So, today I bring you a list of (non)vital information for a rainy day.
* If you put thirty-five candles on a cake and light them all, you will set off the fire alarm and the fire department will come and shut down your opening night party.
* Nothing good can ever come from being in a Waffle House after midnight.
* It's a bad idea to wear a tank top and sandals on a late night walk in October.
* There's a song for everything. I mean everything.
* Some people should never have coffee.
* If you play a character that is stoned in a show, you will be remembered as "The Girl Who Was Stoned" or "Pot Girl."
* It's awkward when it's one of your professors who remembers you as "The Girl Who Was Stoned."
* Whenever people come to your apartment, there is a risk that they will fall asleep on your living room furniture.
* There's also a risk that your guests will break your dishes.
* There's always someone geekier than you are.
*Making a good grade in a foreign language class means nothing. Unless it's Japanese.
* Taco Bell is a brilliant idea.
* The bread at Olive Garden is not to be fooled around with.
* Hot dogs are made out of nasty.
* Kids shows will never be as good as they were when you were a kid.
* Calvin and Hobbes is still cool.
* It's always funny when friends who are drunk fall on their faces.
* Even people who love to read rarely have the chance to read for pleasure during the school year.
* It's far easier to sit in a coffee shop and talk for hours than it should be.
* Innuendo is everywhere.
* An hour spent watching YouTube videos is an hour well spent.
* Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Dr Pepper and Lemonade (sometimes) combine to make fruit punch.
* Adding "bitch" to the end of a statement makes it more authoritative.
* Carrying a wedding dress across campus will earn you a lot of strange looks.
* The word "epic" no longer has any meaning.
* The Wii is a dangerous thing.
* It is possible to injure yourself with a butter knife.
* The best stuff in the world hides in five dollar movie bins.
* Staying up all night with friends is, and ought to be, a regular occurrence.
I hope you're able to find some wisdom for a rainy day on this list. Or some random crap that got you to giggle. Either one.
When I was a little kid, I was a big fan of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. I really identified with Calvin, and still do-- we theater folks tend to have over active imaginations, and Calvin was definitely a prime example of that. Here are a few great moments from the comic strip.
So maybe I never need to promise daily posts again. Sorry, folks.
Anyway, if you were around the blog this summer, you know that I'm a bit of a bookworm
And that my job was horrifically boring. But I digress.
I found this thing on Facebook and thought I'd share it as today's thing that makes me happy.
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
I'm not able to verify the above statement, but I'll do this anyway.
Instructions: 1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. 2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE. 3) Star (*) those you plan on reading. 4) Tally your total at the bottom.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x+ 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x 6 The Bible (New Testament) x 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon x57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt x64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie x70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker * x+73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce x+76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt x+81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell *83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry x87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French, no less!) 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x+ 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Sorry about not posting the last few days. I've been busy. (And being busy is one of the things that make me happy, but I was too busy to post about being busy. Make sense? Yes?)
Anyway, I have a five page paper due Friday, so the thing that makes me happy today is procrastination.
To share the joy, here a few videos that can prevent you from being productive today, too.
Theater has always been something that makes me feel better when I'm down. Something about getting to forget who I am and what's going on in my life just really relaxes me. So, today's post is all about theater. I found this meme on Facebook a while ago, and I'm going to re do it, just for this blog.
LAST SHOW ADDED TO YOUR RESUME: Company
LAST SHOW YOU AUDITIONED FOR: Anything to Declare?
DID YOU GET IT: Indeed I did. I'm playing Madame Dupont.
LAST SONG YOU USED AT AN AUDITION: Well, we did songs from the show at Company auditions. Before that, I used "Taylor the Latte Boy" for Little Shop auditions.
FAVORITE MUSICAL: I have three favorites: Les Miserables, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Last 5 Years
FAVORITE PLAY: My favorite drama is Hamlet and my favorite comedy is either Noises Off or The Women.
FAVORITE ROLE YOU'VE PLAYED, AND FROM WHAT SHOW? The title role in Laura. It was not only my first lead, but also my first experience with SCT (such a great group of people!). And she was so much fun to play. Madame Dupont may make it to my top two--we'll see later in the process.
FAVORITE ROLE OVERALL THAT I WOULD LOVE TO PLAY: Wow, that's a difficult question! I guess my top three would be Clytemnestra in The Orestiea, Cathy in The Last 5 Years and Fantine in Les Miserables.
SUPERSTITION: I usually try not to think that I'll get a role during the auditions-- it seems like when I see myself getting a role, I don't get it. Also, I never say the name of the Scottish play on stage. Never. And I don't say good luck.
YOUR GOAL IN SHOW BUSINESS: Ideally, Broadway. I'd love to do national tours or regional shows, too.
FAVORITE DIRECTOR YOU HAVE EVER WORKED WITH: Dwayne Craft. But I've been fortunate enough to work with a ton of great directors.
WHAT WAS YOUR VERY FIRST SHOW?: If we're not counting dance recitals, An Evening with Ed--A Really BIG Show (a dinner theater with AUM). My first community show was Annie.
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A DANCE SOLO?: I had a dance duet in Pocahontas.
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SINGING SOLO? Yes.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN THE LAST PERSON TO TAKE A BOW? Only once-- in Laura.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO NEW YORK? Three times. The first time with the youth group at church. We didn't get to see any shows. The other two times, I went with the drama department at my high school.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO LA?: Nope. I've never been that far west.
WHAT'S THE SCARIEST PART OF AN AUDITION?: The waiting. Open auditions are most nerve racking for me, because I find myself comparing my work to the other people's. It doesn't bug me with straight acting auditions, but I can psych myself out so easily when it comes to singing auditions.
WHAT'S THE BEST PART OF AN AUDITION?: Seeing what a show could be. I tend to cast shows in my head at the auditions, so I get to imagine how it will turn out.
NAME A SHOW YOU WOULD NEVER DO AGAIN: Pocahontas and Sound of Music.
NAME A SHOW YOU COULD DO FOR YEARS: That I have done? The Good Doctor. I could probably do Last 5 Years or Les Mis for years if I had the chance.
WHAT ARE YOU AUDITIONING FOR NEXT? I'm not sure. Probably the summer musical.
DO YOU KEEP IN TOUCH WITH PAST CAST MEMBERS?: Yeah, most of the time. I've met some great people doing shows; it'd be a shame not to keep up with them.
ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW IMPORTANT IS GETTING PAID?: Well, I've never been paid for it yet. But once I'm completely out on my own, it will become very important. Unless I make a lot of generous and rich friends while I'm in school.
SOMETHING EMBARRASSING OR UNEXPECTED THAT HAPPENED TO YOU WHILE ON STAGE?: Well, pulling down the curtain during Laura was certainly unexpected. And embarrassing. It was a real shame, too, because, as far as acting goes, that was probably the best performance.
WHO IS THE MOST DIFFICULT PERSON (ON STAGE OR OFF) THAT YOU HAVE EVER WORKED WITH?: Probably best not to mention names here, I think.
EVER BEEN NAKED ON STAGE?: No.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN KILLED?: In Laura, everyone thought I was dead until the end of Act One. That's the closest I've come to that. There was one point in the process for Orestiea when I was always there when someone died.
BEEN DRUNK?: No, but I've been high. (On stage, of course.)
PLAYED SOMEONE HALF YOUR AGE?: Nope.
PLAYED SOMEONE TWICE YOUR AGE?: Haha--yes! I always play older.
CRIED?: Yeah.
FIRED A GUN? Nope.
BEEN DRENCHED? No.
BEEN IN A DREAM SEQUENCE? Yes, in Pocahontas
BEEN KISSED?: Yes, in The Good Doctor and in Laura.
A song that a friend introduced me to last night is what's making me happy today. It's called "Blue Hair" and is performed here by Cortney Wolfson, who was directed by Andrew Keenan-Bolger (check my blog roll for his blog).
I love quotes. I remember random witty or silly things that are said to me (or around me), and I cherish them. Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite quotes. Some are funny; some are deep.
"Everything I say is true. Except the mistakes and the lies. And the lies are just there for drama." Eddie Izzard
"A woman is beautiful when she is loved, and only then." Mr. Skeffington (Claude Rains) in the film Mr. Skeffington
"I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities." Tina Fey
"Does Heaven need our help to enforce its laws? Leave vengeance to the Lord, Sir; while we live, Our duty's not to punish but forgive And what the Lord commands, we should obey Without regard to what the world may say." Cleante in Moliere's Tartuffe
"I like my men like I like my tea--weak and green." from Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job
"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes; I am out of control and at times hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." Marilyn Monroe
"Be ashamed to die before winning some battle for humanity." Horace Mann
"In this world you can either be oh-so-smart or oh-so-pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me." Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) in the film Harvey
I realized today that a left out a character that I dearly love yesterday, so I'm continuing with yesterday's Justice League Unlimited post and count it as a separate thing (since there's just a few minutes left of today).
The character today is The Question. He's not nearly as well known as Batman, but fans of The Watchmen might think he seems a little familiar-- the character Rorschach was based on The Question.
(This post is actually kinda doubly fun for me-- The Huntress is another of my favorites.)
Continuing my list of things that make me happy, I came across this video from the Justice League Unlimitedtv series.
I am a closet comic book fan (...though I suppose I'm out now... oops). My love for the DC superheroes spread into an appreciation for the animated series. This scene is a great on for Batman, and Batman happens to by my favorite of the DC heroes.
So in the last post, I said I'd try to post something every day that makes me happy.
Today the thing that makes me happy is jazz music. There's something incredibly soothing about sitting around, listening to a softly playing piano and a mellow saxophone playing, while a velvety voiced woman sings, sounding. The image of a woman in a sparkling gown, singing into an old-style microphone in a dark, smoke filled bar is one that always makes me feel better. Here are some of my favorite jazz songs.
