Snarkastic

Fuck the Year in Review: Year Three

Then:

I had a great birthday. Nick and Jesse gave me the Best Present Ever. Got my lapamatop. Got a new baby cousin. Went to school in the Mediterranean. Studied film under a lunatic named Saviour. Began learning Spanish. Lost three grandparents and an aunt. Backpacked around Germany and Switzerland. Fell in love with Berlin. There was a war or something, too (tm Wendy). Made some fabulous friends, and a few fabulous enemies. Nick crossed the pond and we played Rich White Kids in St. Julian. An air-conditioned summer in the hotel. Saw Q and DJ Rap, then spent the 4th at the BT show in Chicago. Saw many great movies. Survived the Funeral & Fun Tour. Had efforts to learn Arabic thwarted twice. Started Russian instead. The best semester I've ever had in college. Moved in with a buncha boys. Harvested a bumper crop of new drama kids from a night involving two encounters with two separate police forces. Navigated eight of them through Judicial Review without a scratch or a slip-up. Tore the club up in Tortuga and Isla de Muerta. Got my first offer to drop out of school and be a roadie. Evaded capture by clowns time and again. Converted to the worship of Sutekh. Pirated a pirate sorority and brought it to UT. Ate seafood for the first time, Ever. Worked on the Best Show, Ever. Wrote loads of comedy gold, including my first stab at a musical and three or four advice columns. Fall Break in Boston. Broke up with 'Bus, then not so much broken up as got back together. Halloweened. Had four guys sleep at my (our) feet. Threw studies to the winds. Saw Batboy in Lexington. Attended not a single football game. Another BT show. Best Thanksgiving Ever. Several entertaining Chatty expeditions. Another fountain defiled, this time with less police. Made a hot tub in Castle Greyskull that Very Nearly Resulted In My Undoing. Lost a valued colleague to cancer. Lost an uncle and a cousin to illness and a car accident. Birthed Kaitlin from my forehead. Strangest Christmas Ever. Took close to 4,000 pictures (no joke). Broke a few hearts. Strengthened my and Joan's hold over Western Civilization; nay, The World. And then some. And that was Only The Beginning. And I Loved Very Nearly Every Minute Of It.

Cephalapod News

Merry everything, y'all. Love you.

Does it pull a hansom cab?

Alive. (Barely.) Sutekh almost got me by the ankles a time or two there, but more on that tomorrow. For now:

OMGOMGOMG!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, if you didn't see me rocking out in my RotK seat over this trailer, you missed Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen.

Also: Finally.

And: Funny, Joan, I don't remember us writing ourselves into a Redhead Papers entry. You?

Coming tomorrow: The 20 Questions/Nature of Things Comedy Project unveiled. Sort of.

Goodnight, noises everywhere.

I'm posting from the main reading room of the Library of Congress. No, really. No. Really.

Reading: Goodnight Moon and Alamo
Best Date Ever: I'm on it right now.

Kiss me, you fool.

I, on the other hand, AM the prettiest (though still not king, damn it all).

So Comcast lied, again, some more (TM TWoP). I'll pause for a moment to let you recover from the shock. my network card is not fried. I know this because I'm on the inter-web in a hotel in Virginia. If you didn't hear, I'm picking up 'Bus in the morning. We'll be back Sunday night and looking forward to any throwdowns that may ensue. Run, don't walk, to see RotK. 'Tis all.

Reading: Tour books
Seen: Down with Love and Return of the King

--

Reel.

The Greatest Trick

The End.

Happy gradjeeation, before I forget, to Joy and Grant. He remarked to me the other day that I'll be the last of the "old guard" to leave school. After I stopped laughing at the mental picture, I realized he was right. Our class is tiny. Chris and I are the only ones who stuck with it all four years, and he's graduating on time while I go of to the frozen northlands. Not that graduating with Joan won't be a lot more fun, but still...this is The End Of An Era.

This semester did something funny to us. Everybody who's anybody agrees that Secret Garden is the best work we've done in our CBT careers. As nearly as we can divine, it was that and the influx of new talent and blood, and the fact that everyone involved, me included pretty much threw their academics to the wolves to get the show up, and somewhere along the way we've been fused into a larger consciousness. I've spent many nights snuggled up to people I've hated for three years, and that's funny and all, but it's a sympton of something bigger. Hours of tears and days of hysterical laughter and miles of conversations in the dark have transformed the environment in which we're operating and cast a warm nimbus of communion over every meeting and made us all glow more than once in each other's reflected love and talents. Words aren't doing it justice. We make divine comedies and diviner art and our devotion to one another hovers just this side of fanaticism.

So here is to us all. Oh, Joan. Oh, Caesar. Oh, Kaitlin and Linda and Jay. Oh, Jeannine and Amanda and Cat and Stewie and Jacob and Harmony and Elyse and Chris and Fisher and Charlie and Leon and Kate and Greg, and Danny and Beth and Kat and Sandy and Casey and Sandrine and Joe and Michael and Mary Elizabeth and Lauren and Camden and Julianne and Gina. I never hated any of you for more than a few minutes at a time, swear. And when all those times I said I loved you More Than The Sun? Truth.

Reading: Valley of the Dolls (I'm lying.)
Witnessed: Angels in America
What do you want for Christmas? This.

Time casts its spell on you/but you won't forget me

WHOOSH
*shiver*
there it goes

I'm done, for all intents and purposes. God. Safe at last. Up next: AiA Soiree on Sunday. My place. LOTR Throwdown on Tuesday. Castle Greyskull. Heading for Roanoke on Thursday. Bringing Nick home on Saturday. Also, Happy Married-at-last-ness to Lindsay and Patrick, and Happy Not-Making-Too-Much-Of-A-Jackass-At-Your-Sister's-Wedding-Ness to Lucas. Sorry I couldn't be your date, love. ;) Also also, Pam and Omar wrote funnies about the Milkshake Song. Holla.

Reading: All those journals I fell behind on during finals.
Seen: Drumline

After the Sky

Oh, Adrock. I got to the end of your bitchery, was immeasurably pleased (Immeasurably Pleased, to be fair) by the shout-out, read the rest, and was going to give you a little comforting line or two here, but all I can think of is "Hee...Adam said y'all." My 'pologies. Also, I didn't think I did the Capitals Thing all that much, then scrolled down a bit, and, Lo! They Were A Damn Multitude.

Recapitulation:
I have a raw, beautiful journal entry about what went on this past weekend, but it's a little too intense for this medium. Here's what actually happened: The grads put on a great show in the Carousel, playing their antithetical characters from Winnie the Pooh doing a production of The Imaginary Invalid. It was amazing. That was Friday. Saturday night we got to the show. Caesar and I were sitting in one of the alcoves and I told him I had a bad feeling about that night, but couldn't place it. That's about when things went south. One of our deck guys had gone to check on our stage supervisor, who was recuperating from chemo and who we couldn't get in touch with. Everything's a blur from this point on, but I was standing in the dressing room when Senia came in crying. I didn't make the connection until Marta came in behind her and she was crying too. Our crew chief was dead. I don't remember how they got there, but the next thing I remember is hanging on to Joan and Caesar for my life and listening to everyone's sobs echo around the green room. It was a strange few minutes, having so much sudden grief concentrated in such a small space. I got everyone gathered together so Blake and Ron could talk to us. Everybody cried. A few people spoke about John, but I left my favorite story for later, when there were just a few of us curled up against each other and our coffee cups, steeling ourselves for the show:

I didn't work directly for him until the end of my freshman year. It was on Picasso and the only thing I really had to do was pull the giant shift at the end. John and I had never really gotten along. I was sassy and he was cranky and our environment was cramped. Then, in the second performance, my line just didn't want to move, and I had to throw my weight on it to finish the cue. When we were complete I mentioned it to him, and it soon became apparent that not all the flies had been unlocked upstairs, and that I had pulled my entire cue through a lock. He liked me after that. Godspeed to you, sir.

The show that night was strange. It had an almost desperate energy to it. There were more tears and less socializing, and we bumped our closing cast party to tomorrow. Sunday was nearly as emotional, with the added stress of closing on a matinee. Joan, Kaitlin, John, Sandrine, Camden, Harmony, Jacob, Charlie, Danny, and Stewie came over later that evening to bear witness to the sheer wonder, the phenomenon that is Angels in America. I mean, with Kushner writing his own teleplay and all, the thing was bound to succeed from the beginning, but there was a general fear that the wrong kind of directing would muck it up. Fear not. Kushner and Mike Nichols have created nothing less than magic. It's theatrical without being stagey, cinematic without sacrificing drama for trickery, like the live productions at once intimate and epic, and nothing less than stellar execution all around, flawlessly realized. Best of all, it's only half over. Cancel the Emmys and just hand out the trophies now.

Secret Garden is finished, but I don't have enough separation to talk about it yet. I get to see everyone one last time, tomorrow night. Maybe after that I'll have some perspective.

Reading: I'm not that lucky
Seen: The Last Samurai

And you think of all of the things you've seen
And you wish that you could live in between
And you're back again, only different than before.....

LORD OF ALL I SURVEIL

It is SO COLD in my bedroom that my fingers are shaking, so I will be mercifully brief and free of the usual statistical fripperies:

Quit your God Damned Whining, Already, The Pictures Are Finally Up, And Believe Me, No One Is Happier About It Than I Am. There's even one of me kissing A Girl!! (Granted, it was during a sketch in which my role was to Break Up Her Wedding because I Lurved Her The Most, but still, we take our Thrills Where We Can Get Them these days.)

So 8302 is having a Very White Trash Christmas this year. We have two light-up candy canes in the window, a small tree draped indiscriminately with tinsel and blue and white lights (of course); and, best of all, a big red plastic bow with the cardboard still on it masking-taped to the front door...and an equally large, equally plastic, light-up Nativity camel in the living room. Would I lie? Except, you know, for sport?

And this is months old, but I keep forgetting to link it, and it's Christmas, so help Sars out and Find Don.

DAS IST SCHLECHT FUER DIE UMWELT

I tried to think of a funnier M'lin-Holly-Dustin joke for this post, but that's all that I could get. I was looking at Williamsburg pictures, of all things, this morning, and I thought it was for no reason; then I remembered. Anyway. Happy birthday, Dustin. We miss you. M'lin, I miss you too, and I'm so glad you're coming home for Christmas. We'll call Keiran and go play tag in the snow. Ich bin der Sprechenchampignon! Haben Sie keinen Angst, kleines Maedchen!! Melinda, Dustin, Keiran, Megan, Judy...ich liebe sie. Mit oder ohne Schlagsahne.

We went to the movies this afternoon, right? And during the ROTK trailer I turned around, and in the window of the projection book, I see this guy wearing a cloak with the hood up just staring straight ahead. He sort of looked like Legolas. Joan saw him too. It was funnier than it sounds.

Also:

Find Out If You Are John Stamos!

WHAT KIND OF AN ACROBAT DO YOU THINK I AM?

When we last left our heroes.....

So about that last scene in the show? Friday night it didn't so much happen. Important fly cues were missed, and I was a little startled to realize that I was actually going to have to make the decision to try and fix things or not. Scene:

Holly: (thinks rapidly) Ok, Marta? If we're going to finish this, this needs to go here, that needs to go here, and we'll cover it up with blah blah blah.
Nearly Everyone Else: That won't work. It'll be too obvious. Bitch bitch bitch.
Holly: I know it will be obvious, know how, 'cause there's a show going on, and it will be happening onstage; that's why I'm choreographing it instead of telling you to just bring everything in. Just do it at this part in the music; it'll look great, I swear.
Nearly Everyone Else: Bitch bitch bitch no way.
Caesar: I'll pull this if you want it to happen.
Marta: ....Ok, let's do it. (waits for swells in orchestra, then makes calls in rapid succession)
Everyone: ....oh, wow. Oh, WOW!!! WHEEEEEE!!!
(Everything Looks Simply Marvelous.)
(As The Cast exits the stage following curtain call, they surround Your Humble Narrator and shower her with props (lol) and kisses.)

Aaaaaand....scene.

We made theatre! I love my job. Even after what happened the rest of the week. Our little family unit had a slumber party at Castle Greyskull Sunday night after photo call (at which I took many fabulous pictures that will be posted posthaste...x0r), and Things were going swell-ly. We watched Sixteen Candles, and decided to make a fast break for the hot tub. Only problem was, it wasn't working. Now, this was actually a lot funnier than I'm about to make it sound, but here goes:

Caesar and I decided it wouldn't be too hard to make a hot tub.

Stay with me here: Castle Greyskull has this nifty sunken shower, and we figured that by putting a plate over the drain, we could fill it up and splash around. I swear it would have worked if we'd found something to seal the plate with (and if we'd been able to find the switch for the other waterfall. Yes, the Other Waterfall. No, not that one.....the Third Waterfall.) After that failed, we all scurried, soaking wet, up to the bathroom upstairs, turned on the hot water, sat around the edge of the tub, and proceeded to have a rollicking good time. When we left, though, I took a rather spectacular tumble down the stairs, and am now a lovely purple color in all sorts of interesting places. Film at 11.

It's a good thing I took so many pictures this week, so I can remember what to write about. Monday night we took the kids (ALL the kids) to Kanpai for a simply smashing next-to-next-to last hurrah. Pix up soon. Also, I went to see Joan, Caesar, and Casey tear it up in Mel's directing scene from Star-Spangled Girl. Then came The Crunch: 8 am/8pm shows on Tuesday AND Wednesday, with All-Nite happening in the intervening might-have-been-sleeping time. Some Very Horrid And Inexplicable Things happened in both school shows, and as I did all four of them without sleeping, I can't remember which was which, but the perpetrators were a live bat and a bunch of flying scene pieces swinging back and forth for no reason and a host of small injuries. The best part was yesterday (I think) morning, when one of the black legs wrapped itself around the scrim and proceeded to folllow it offstage, taking first electric with it. This was funny not only because it was the first time I'd had to make a unilateral decision about getting the set back together in full view of the audience, but because I hadn't slept in about 30 hours at that point. So Bryan grabs this big wooden pole with a hook on the end of it, climbs up on the steamer trunk, and disengages the leg, but when he does, the pole (which was more than two inches in diameter) just SHATTERS, and I get wood shards and metal braces raining down on my head. Just a few scratches, though. To be fair, though, the Tuesday night show was prolly our best yet, and last night's was no slouch, either.

So it's been a bit of a week. I had to make two films in the middle of it all. One's done, one's not. The finished one I'm very proud of, especially considering the circumstances I was in when I made it, and was well-received by my classmates, though not by my prof (what did I expect, really? It was a performance piece.), and I was equally blown away by what some other kids showed up with. There's discussion of most of us taking it again next fall, which I would love. They're cool monkeys.

All-Nite was a blast, as ever, but last night I was a bit of a sleepy wreck by the time the show rolled around. I fell asleep in the Green Room after class, knowing that someone would eventually shake me, and ten minutes before call time Marta woke me up. I was apparently very entertaining. Marta was cooler than I deserved about my mental state, and after the show I was ordered home to rest. Yes, ma'am. ;)

So here I am. It's now almost two in the PM, and Joan and I have been convalescing for half a day. Time for more misadventuring. If you haven't seen the show....do. See you soon.

Reading: Still meandering through Schott's Original Miscellany, now that I have the time.
Last Vid Viddied: Ugh....Timeline. I didn't think it was possible to be offended by camera work.
Last Scene Seened: Mel directing Joan, Caesar, and Casey in Star-Spangled Girl. Y'all rocked the house down, and my face off, as ever.
Latest Comedy Gold Struck: I got the brilliant idea to have my hetero life-partners (Joan and Caesar) and our love-children (Mel, Kaitlin, and Julianne) go to K-Mart and get our portrait taken in big-ass Christmas sweaters. We will then send out wallet-sized pictures of us in Christmas cards (which will, of course, feature an artist's rendering of The Rock as The Scorpion King and say "Live Free. Die Well. Happy Holidays!!" and have all our names hyphenated) with no explanation whatsoever.

So, Merry Christmas from the Anderson-Williams-Ulen-Sheets-Berney-Steers!! Season's Greetings never looked so good.