I don't know why, but I'm in the strangest mood to be classified and cast. Not necessarily cast in a show, though that would be fun, but ... like in a quizilla quiz, except they suck. But I just feel the sudden urge to find out "what herb are you?" or "what super hero are you?" or "if you were a character from X, which one would you be?" Albeit they are merely hypotheses and nowhere near to scientifically accurate, but it still is fun, and for some reason I'm craving it.
The only cause I can think of is culture shock. I know I've dealt with it a lot in my writing, and I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not trying to hammer a point home. I'm trying to demonstrate the manifold responses to it, especially since it is a constant in your life - I'm constantly reminded that I'm not from around here, even just by talking to people. And it is ... I guess "disconcerting" is the best word. It puts you on your toes.
Also, like all other high school and middle school dorks, I was a huge fan of quizilla, so not only does it appear to be maybe a kind of apollonian response to tragedy (categorize me, order, make order! sort of a thing), but you could also read it as regression.
Or it's just an urge, if you don't like Nietzsche or Freud. I mean, I don't.
That said, if you would like to offer your own casting or categorization of me within any fictional universes, or as one kind of inanimate object over another, or something, feel free to post and say whether or not you want me to return the favor, because I will.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
English Weather
Usually it will just spit around here for a while, and be overcast with cloudbursts for months on end, but today was the first day that I actually saw it all out rain, even if only for a little bit, since we got here.
It was refreshing to know that rain falls on England as well as America like this. I kind of miss thunderstorms though. I kind of miss thunderstorms a lot.
It was refreshing to know that rain falls on England as well as America like this. I kind of miss thunderstorms though. I kind of miss thunderstorms a lot.
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Cadbury Fingers and Dildos
And never the twin shall meet. Hopefully.
1) Cadbury Fingers
I can't remember if I posted this already, but Monday I was food shopping at Sainsbury's and I found these little Cadbury creations that were biscuit fingers covered in Cadbury milk chocolate, and they were only 54 p!!! Even though that's $1.08 in real life it's very cheap for a box of yummy...scrumptious...adorable...sexy...
Oop, just trailed off there.
Cadbury Fingers, right, well I brought them home after paying only 54 p (!!!) for them and offered a few around to other people in the flat. Then I checked facebook and proceeded to eat them. All. The Whole Box. It was the only time that I've ever been angry at food for being so scrumptious but not presenting me with an infinite amount of itself that the only way I could eat it was by ravenously scarfing it down and all but growling at them as I did it.
2) Dildos
I've undertaken to direct a found-space version of Lysistrata that will only have four women and only be a maximum of forty minutes. I'm a little out at sea, because I imagine using the text to explore clowning, vaudeville, and the carnivalesque in theater, and, much like my experience of acting in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged in high school, finding and creating gags and routines as an ensemble and all that fun stuff. But it occurred to me I know very little about clowning, less about the carnivalesque, and virtually nothing about vaudeville. All I know of the production so far is that it will involve dildos. For lack of any other kind of directorial vision.
Also, as a post script, and for the sake of science, I just wanted to publish a bit of data I discovered. You see, at Exeter, you have a single, so if you want - in just the sense that everyone has to be naked at some point - you can just hang out in your room naked. What I have learned, though, is that this has certain limits. For instance: do not eat cookies while naked. Cause of the crumbs, they're obnoxious. Just trust me on that one.
1) Cadbury Fingers
I can't remember if I posted this already, but Monday I was food shopping at Sainsbury's and I found these little Cadbury creations that were biscuit fingers covered in Cadbury milk chocolate, and they were only 54 p!!! Even though that's $1.08 in real life it's very cheap for a box of yummy...scrumptious...adorable...sexy...
Oop, just trailed off there.
Cadbury Fingers, right, well I brought them home after paying only 54 p (!!!) for them and offered a few around to other people in the flat. Then I checked facebook and proceeded to eat them. All. The Whole Box. It was the only time that I've ever been angry at food for being so scrumptious but not presenting me with an infinite amount of itself that the only way I could eat it was by ravenously scarfing it down and all but growling at them as I did it.
2) Dildos
I've undertaken to direct a found-space version of Lysistrata that will only have four women and only be a maximum of forty minutes. I'm a little out at sea, because I imagine using the text to explore clowning, vaudeville, and the carnivalesque in theater, and, much like my experience of acting in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged in high school, finding and creating gags and routines as an ensemble and all that fun stuff. But it occurred to me I know very little about clowning, less about the carnivalesque, and virtually nothing about vaudeville. All I know of the production so far is that it will involve dildos. For lack of any other kind of directorial vision.
Also, as a post script, and for the sake of science, I just wanted to publish a bit of data I discovered. You see, at Exeter, you have a single, so if you want - in just the sense that everyone has to be naked at some point - you can just hang out in your room naked. What I have learned, though, is that this has certain limits. For instance: do not eat cookies while naked. Cause of the crumbs, they're obnoxious. Just trust me on that one.
Monday, 5 November 2007
...a beast?
So my tear jerker ended up being me listening to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack again. I can't help but empathize with a self-decpricating emo guy who locks himself up in his room and has to figure out a way to connect with people before his twenty first birthday or else he'll be trapped for ever.
England does this to you.
England does this to you.
More Than This Provencial Life
I walked out last night, and also tonight, and the air was sulfurous. It smelled like gunpowder.
Happy Guy Fawkes day.
I put on my Orvis walking jacket today (my idea of the epitome of Britishness) and my Orvis cap (also British) and I was wearing my Orvis polo (not very British but nonetheless, Orvis), and I was wearing a pair of my Orvis jeans (not particularly British at all), and I walked down to Roborough Studios to re-do some scheduling stuff. There was a pink sunset hanging by the mountains and I could just see, covered with mist, in the distance a second set of hills after the first rolling hills that you could make out for sure. I even thought I could see a third set, but I decided that those were mountains, leading me to conclude that a group of clouds should be called a "range."
I also ended up feeling very old in that jacket, in a good way. Like C.S. Lewis talks about the joy he had in taking walks: when I put on this jacket, I felt like I needed a walking stick. Or a cane. It was a very smug little jacket, it lightly rests on your shoulders just in case you're a frail person. It has these little leather details on the end that for some reason make me feel warm when I look at them. I got the sense that maybe I've been a forty year old man all my life and I'm just coming to understand it now.
Anyway, it put me in a very daydreamy, world-weary mood. So a couple of musings:
First, I'm currently under the opinion that if you want to learn how to direct, coming to England won't help. The theatrical traditions are very different, and while the journey will teach you a lot about directing, the fundamental, grokking point of that revolutionizes your understanding of the art by meditation on it is missing for me. Maybe you have to discover it on your own, maybe it can't be taught, but nonetheless, while my directing class is fun and I wouldn't really trade it for another drama class, I do wonder what would've happened if I had just taken Dramaturgy to begin with.
Second, I've been listening to the musical version of Beauty and the Beast, and - like my Christmas version of Twelfth Night - I've become obsessed with doing a reinterpretation of the musical away from its Disney roots and more towards a fairy-tale, gothic (but not in the White Wolf sense), folklore-y route. Mostly revolving around rose petals. Rose petals and flash lights (excuse me, "torches"). And at the end with the transformation the entire set collapses. That's how I'm envisioning it anyway.
I completed an impulse exercise from The Playwright's Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and turned it into a 16 page short play. And one about which I am fairly pleased. So I'm shelfing it for a few days and I'll come back to it and see what needs editing, which is probably a lot. Also, I want to try writing a scene, or short play, or theatrical script of some kind, dedicated to my son. I don't have a son. I may not ever have a sun. But that's why I want to dedicate it to him.
I need a tear-jerker tonight, I'm really in the mood for some serious catharsis. I think I'll watch Shakespeare in Love for the umpteenth time.
Happy Guy Fawkes day.
I put on my Orvis walking jacket today (my idea of the epitome of Britishness) and my Orvis cap (also British) and I was wearing my Orvis polo (not very British but nonetheless, Orvis), and I was wearing a pair of my Orvis jeans (not particularly British at all), and I walked down to Roborough Studios to re-do some scheduling stuff. There was a pink sunset hanging by the mountains and I could just see, covered with mist, in the distance a second set of hills after the first rolling hills that you could make out for sure. I even thought I could see a third set, but I decided that those were mountains, leading me to conclude that a group of clouds should be called a "range."
I also ended up feeling very old in that jacket, in a good way. Like C.S. Lewis talks about the joy he had in taking walks: when I put on this jacket, I felt like I needed a walking stick. Or a cane. It was a very smug little jacket, it lightly rests on your shoulders just in case you're a frail person. It has these little leather details on the end that for some reason make me feel warm when I look at them. I got the sense that maybe I've been a forty year old man all my life and I'm just coming to understand it now.
Anyway, it put me in a very daydreamy, world-weary mood. So a couple of musings:
First, I'm currently under the opinion that if you want to learn how to direct, coming to England won't help. The theatrical traditions are very different, and while the journey will teach you a lot about directing, the fundamental, grokking point of that revolutionizes your understanding of the art by meditation on it is missing for me. Maybe you have to discover it on your own, maybe it can't be taught, but nonetheless, while my directing class is fun and I wouldn't really trade it for another drama class, I do wonder what would've happened if I had just taken Dramaturgy to begin with.
Second, I've been listening to the musical version of Beauty and the Beast, and - like my Christmas version of Twelfth Night - I've become obsessed with doing a reinterpretation of the musical away from its Disney roots and more towards a fairy-tale, gothic (but not in the White Wolf sense), folklore-y route. Mostly revolving around rose petals. Rose petals and flash lights (excuse me, "torches"). And at the end with the transformation the entire set collapses. That's how I'm envisioning it anyway.
I completed an impulse exercise from The Playwright's Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and turned it into a 16 page short play. And one about which I am fairly pleased. So I'm shelfing it for a few days and I'll come back to it and see what needs editing, which is probably a lot. Also, I want to try writing a scene, or short play, or theatrical script of some kind, dedicated to my son. I don't have a son. I may not ever have a sun. But that's why I want to dedicate it to him.
I need a tear-jerker tonight, I'm really in the mood for some serious catharsis. I think I'll watch Shakespeare in Love for the umpteenth time.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
A Dream Post
So I woke up at 8 today, realized I had a few hours before Church, and went back to sleep. I promptly had the strangest dream. This is just a few pieces I can remember with some kind of logic throwing it together.
I was first involved in some kind of traveling play or something, I think Much Ado About Nothing, because we had to work on a dance at the end and I was saying how I might be able to remember the steps from the first time I'd done the show. Other actors included the guy who plays Warrick, from CSI, Ken Worrall, and a couple of girls that could have been many of the short, quirky, ephemeral girls I know but I couldn't quite put a finger on.
Anyway, after talking for a bit, a girl leads me away to go play a new video game she has, or something. In this game, Yoshi and Mario are on a train that is crossing a continent, and every time it stops there are X number of missions to accomplish before the train leaves again. And for some reason the enemies started going from outlaws to zombies.
The train eventually arrived in a big city, and Yoshi and Mario walked in the gate to see a newly constructed building just down the road in the town square - I can't remember which one it was but it had a title, was significant, and only about 2 stories high. There was a man running on top of it, and it turned out he was running towards the edge. He jumped, fell, and landed on the sidewalk. And not only did I watch the whole thing but I heard the thump. Then he started screaming as he was still alive and a bunch of doctors and paramedics ran over to help him.
Somehow we ended up in an old church in the city, and also this had zombies in it, so you had to be careful of where you went. It also had secret passages that we snuck through, and large chunks of history behind Yoshi. The church, it seemed, had served as a military school where Yoshi's grandmother had trained, disguised as a boy. It got to the point where we'd see reenactments of history like they were flashbacks, and all of them had a meaningful tone to them. For instance, Mario, who had really just reverted to the girl who was playing him at this point, found a letter from this elder yoshi, and in an abstract sculpture of swords the figure appeared, reading the letter, deciding to take a katana broken along the edge from the sculpture for her final exam before she was let out into the field. Then, a group of people rushed in, also part of the flashback, that we had met before. They were part of the do-good, badass, outlaw team on the train, and General (something, I can't remember his name) was leading them. He had burst into another part of the room, and noticed on a large rack of guns that one was missing. He had some sort of frightened exclamation, probably something like "he's got it!" cocked his rifle, and began moving his team around hurriedly. A huge wind blew by and all the curtains flew around, and the girl who played Mario said, "it's a powerful ghost we're dealing with." For some reason the missing gun was understood to belong to the group's enemy, and we were seeing a flashback of how he got it. Or something.
Then the girl playing Mario was panicked because she didn't want to just dodge the zombies anymore, she wanted to get them out of the church. So, despite Yoshi trying to hold her back, she ran into a room and placed a grenade there. It got very first-person-shooter/Medal of Honor/Saving Private Ryan at this point. She placed the grenade and we turned and ran, and it exploded, but we had a fast-moving zombie/undead on our tail. I yelled at her for attracting his attention, and I kicked myself for not having played Suzie Six-Shooters, a character I made from Changeling: The Dreaming that was designed to fight undead, since she can make things (like zombies) catch on fire, and undead tend to be afraid of fire. So, I decided that in order to survive that Yoshi just had this ability from Changeling, Pyretics, and in my head I rolled three ten sided dice. I didn't care what they came up, cause I was running from the zombie, and so I just said they were three tens, which is six successes the way I play, and the zombie caught on fire. "Undead are afraid of fire?" the girl remarked. "YES." I said, bitingly.
Then I realized I should probably wake up, and I did. Quickly I checked my cell phone, and it was 11:48. Church had started at 11, and was probably almost over by now. So, was I trying to frighten myself into getting up in time with this dream?
Any thoughts about the dream feel free to post them.
I was first involved in some kind of traveling play or something, I think Much Ado About Nothing, because we had to work on a dance at the end and I was saying how I might be able to remember the steps from the first time I'd done the show. Other actors included the guy who plays Warrick, from CSI, Ken Worrall, and a couple of girls that could have been many of the short, quirky, ephemeral girls I know but I couldn't quite put a finger on.
Anyway, after talking for a bit, a girl leads me away to go play a new video game she has, or something. In this game, Yoshi and Mario are on a train that is crossing a continent, and every time it stops there are X number of missions to accomplish before the train leaves again. And for some reason the enemies started going from outlaws to zombies.
The train eventually arrived in a big city, and Yoshi and Mario walked in the gate to see a newly constructed building just down the road in the town square - I can't remember which one it was but it had a title, was significant, and only about 2 stories high. There was a man running on top of it, and it turned out he was running towards the edge. He jumped, fell, and landed on the sidewalk. And not only did I watch the whole thing but I heard the thump. Then he started screaming as he was still alive and a bunch of doctors and paramedics ran over to help him.
Somehow we ended up in an old church in the city, and also this had zombies in it, so you had to be careful of where you went. It also had secret passages that we snuck through, and large chunks of history behind Yoshi. The church, it seemed, had served as a military school where Yoshi's grandmother had trained, disguised as a boy. It got to the point where we'd see reenactments of history like they were flashbacks, and all of them had a meaningful tone to them. For instance, Mario, who had really just reverted to the girl who was playing him at this point, found a letter from this elder yoshi, and in an abstract sculpture of swords the figure appeared, reading the letter, deciding to take a katana broken along the edge from the sculpture for her final exam before she was let out into the field. Then, a group of people rushed in, also part of the flashback, that we had met before. They were part of the do-good, badass, outlaw team on the train, and General (something, I can't remember his name) was leading them. He had burst into another part of the room, and noticed on a large rack of guns that one was missing. He had some sort of frightened exclamation, probably something like "he's got it!" cocked his rifle, and began moving his team around hurriedly. A huge wind blew by and all the curtains flew around, and the girl who played Mario said, "it's a powerful ghost we're dealing with." For some reason the missing gun was understood to belong to the group's enemy, and we were seeing a flashback of how he got it. Or something.
Then the girl playing Mario was panicked because she didn't want to just dodge the zombies anymore, she wanted to get them out of the church. So, despite Yoshi trying to hold her back, she ran into a room and placed a grenade there. It got very first-person-shooter/Medal of Honor/Saving Private Ryan at this point. She placed the grenade and we turned and ran, and it exploded, but we had a fast-moving zombie/undead on our tail. I yelled at her for attracting his attention, and I kicked myself for not having played Suzie Six-Shooters, a character I made from Changeling: The Dreaming that was designed to fight undead, since she can make things (like zombies) catch on fire, and undead tend to be afraid of fire. So, I decided that in order to survive that Yoshi just had this ability from Changeling, Pyretics, and in my head I rolled three ten sided dice. I didn't care what they came up, cause I was running from the zombie, and so I just said they were three tens, which is six successes the way I play, and the zombie caught on fire. "Undead are afraid of fire?" the girl remarked. "YES." I said, bitingly.
Then I realized I should probably wake up, and I did. Quickly I checked my cell phone, and it was 11:48. Church had started at 11, and was probably almost over by now. So, was I trying to frighten myself into getting up in time with this dream?
Any thoughts about the dream feel free to post them.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Mind 3? Time2? Roll Arete
Hey chillybeans-
I'm reminiscing about Mage, in particular Kenyon Mage. I found the file on my computer called "Mage Soundtrack." So I figured while I couldn't really upload the songs (I lack Correspondence), so I figured I'd rework it (some of the songs don't really fit) and write the new version down for y'all:
First Breath After a Coma - Explosions in the Sky
Soul Meets Body - Deathcab for Cutie
Clocks - Coldplay
The Ascent of Stan - Ben Folds [For the Kenyon Magers: Get it? Get it?]
Shades of Grey - Billy Joel
Don't Stop Believing - Journey
We Will Become Silhouettes - The Postal Service
Hallelujah - Cover by Jeff Buckley
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
Two Thousand Years - Billy Joel
With the following bonus tracks:
Desperado - The Eagles
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
And, as a general list, England has made me long for the following games:
In Nomine
Mage: The Ascension
Changeling: The Dreaming
And, since I'm longing for games, now, I want to write essays about rpging. But this will come later.
I'm reminiscing about Mage, in particular Kenyon Mage. I found the file on my computer called "Mage Soundtrack." So I figured while I couldn't really upload the songs (I lack Correspondence), so I figured I'd rework it (some of the songs don't really fit) and write the new version down for y'all:
First Breath After a Coma - Explosions in the Sky
Soul Meets Body - Deathcab for Cutie
Clocks - Coldplay
The Ascent of Stan - Ben Folds [For the Kenyon Magers: Get it? Get it?]
Shades of Grey - Billy Joel
Don't Stop Believing - Journey
We Will Become Silhouettes - The Postal Service
Hallelujah - Cover by Jeff Buckley
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
Two Thousand Years - Billy Joel
With the following bonus tracks:
Desperado - The Eagles
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
And, as a general list, England has made me long for the following games:
In Nomine
Mage: The Ascension
Changeling: The Dreaming
And, since I'm longing for games, now, I want to write essays about rpging. But this will come later.
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