Thoughts, on Pi(e) Day

Have you ever seen someone start to smile in the middle of a yawn? I find it mildly terrifiying. It's like when you watch rodents yawn-- their little jaws just seem to unhinge and you wonder, for a quick second, if that little mouth might not stretch wide enough to engulf the animal's own head. Or yours, for that matter. And there's an accompanying little glimmer in their eyes that just drives that nightmare home. Anyway, that's what it's like when someone starts to smile while they're yawning. The opposide (that is, a yawn in the middle of a smile) is not quite as unsettling. It just makes the someone look kind of goofy for a moment, but you can forgive goofiness. Giant unhinging rodent jaw with little eye glimmer? Not as much.

Tonight marks the halfway point of our run of She Loves Me. The Hales typically celebrate with Pie Night, when Linda provides delicious pies for the cast (I requested blueberry to even out the number of orders for creme pies-- chocolate mousse, lemon mirengue, etc). As luck would have it today, 3/14, is also national Pi Day. If that's not killing two birds with one stone, I don't know what is. We're going to top off the evening by watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That doesn't really tie in with Pi or Pie, but it's part of the plan regardless.

I've had recent opinions forming about the process of performing a show as a single cast. On the one hand, I'm grateful and happy to be single cast because 1.) my part is not enormous. I do not have to be quite so concerned about losing my voice, hurting myself, getting sick as other members of the cast. 2.) this run will pay for a great deal of my trip to England this summer. No complaints. 3.) after my Christmas Carol experience, in which I might as well have been single cast, I like having my own costumes, my own set schedule, being responsible for my own part, and attending my own tech/dress rehearsals/performances.

However, I have to say, I think the theoretical benefits of single casting do not come to realistic fruition. Running a musical seven times a week is exhausting, even though my part is, as I have said, not enormous. I can't even imagine how my full-time working castmates are handling their Real Life jobs and carrying the weight of a show on their shoulders to boot (without even the option of an understudy!). Sure, it's one thing if doing the show each night was your job, but around here, that's not the case. Okay, so maybe a theater will throw their cast a bone and cast understudies. Why not double cast, then? I, for one, would find it very difficult to decide if being cast specifically as an understudy would be worth my time, even if I was promised at least one show a week or whatever. Frankly, I'd be terrified to be single cast in a role bigger than the one I'm playing at the moment for a run longer than a month or so. I don't know. These thoughts are disjointed, and they're not even very detailed. I've got a whole stack of opinions still stashed away. It's probably not worth going on about anymore.

Things I Need to Ween Myself Away From
1. Most Haunted and ghostly things
2. Diet Coke
3. TV on DVD, specifically Arrested Development
4. Day dreaming
5. Dying my hair all the time
6. Nevermind, I like Most Haunted and ghostly things too much to be weened.
7. Same goes for Arrested Development
8. How about I just stick to unleaded Diet Coke exclusively?
9. #s 4 and 5 still apply.

Love Journal 2008

In high school, I had two cute friends who sparked a phenomenon amongst our circle of girl friends:

The Love Journal.

Our Love Journals not only chronicled every excruciating detail of our (mostly made-up) high school love angst, but they also contained quotes about love, pictures from romantic movies, notes from each other, lists of things like the number of "True Love Hugs" we received, and quotes from our daily lives that continue to make us laugh to this day-- since we all exchanged our journals to read and steal ideas for a more complete Love Journal of our own.

It was silly. There have been many times since 2003 when I have been so violently embarrassed about the ridiculous things recorded in my Love Journals (yes, there are multiple) that I've been tempted to burn them in a quiet, sentimental ceremony. Somehow, I think that burning ceremony might carry much of the same sentiment as the ceremony Kirsten, Heather and I conducted in the airplane bathroom when we flew to Disneyland for our choir tour...

Here is a little slice of what can be found in the Love Journals, because for all its humiliation, yes, I brought my Love Journal to college:

"To write a good Love Letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to tsay, and finish without knowing what you've written"
--Jean Jacques Rousseau

A Friend-- I think you're probably a good kisser.
Me-- What makes you say that?
A Friend-- Because of the way you hug.


Dear Valentine,
I love you. Whoever you are.
--Sally Brown

"Love makes me weak in the knees, light in the heart, and dizzy in the head-- it's kind of debialating."
--M. A. Ungerman

I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.
--Anne Shirley

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
--Matt Groening

Mr. Brower-- A wanton is someone who craves... bad stuff...
Gene-- Like french fries?

June 25, 2003
To every boy I've ever liked--
Yes, there have been a great many of you. I don't even remember most of you until I reread journals. Even then you are such shadows of my memory, it's hard to believe I could have been infatuated with you. Others of you I remember so well-- you're scratched into my memory for the rest of my life. But wahtever impact you did/did not or will/will not have on me is significant. The fact is each of you has helped mold my character and personality. You may not have ever liked me back or even knew who I was, but you and experiences I had with you have helped make me the person I am today. I hope your lives are wonderful. I hope you find someone deserving of you and live happily ever after. Thanks for everying,
Love,
Emily Llewellyn

"You know, Marissa's right. We write these Love Journals when none of us really know what love is. But that's okay, because the thing is--we're learning, one page at a time. And when our true loves do come along, we'll know the entire book--back to front."
--Heath the Feath

Reading through it makes me all kinds of nostalgic. There are many quotes I actually remember writing-- I remember where I was, who I was with, whose journal I was copying. It makes me smile.

For all their silliness, the Love Journals inspired a higher purpose. We all became obsessive journals, just generally speaking. The Love Journal phase petered out (I tried to continue it into my senior year, but it lost it's meaning, in part because my Love Journal girls had graduated and gone off to college without me), but the Journal itself pressed on. Soon our Love Journals and Dear Daughter Journals and Quote Journals and every other kind of journal idea that had been sparked-- soon all of our journals became one wonderful source of enlightenment, humor, sorrow, exploration.

They're how we caught up on each others' lives without having to repeat the same stories a dozen times. They were our alternative to passing notes. They became mini scrapbooks and memory books. I developed journaling habits in my junior and senior years of high school that have continued, though perhaps not in such detail, to this day. Maybe it's silly to admit, but thinking back on it literally fills me with an odd, but sweet, sense of emotion and longing. I miss those times. I miss those girls.

Fast forward to 2008. We've really begun our "growing up." We all went to college-- some of us have graduated, or are about to. Some of us have moved away. A handful of us have completed the Love story we dreamed of in high school and have gotten married. There are even Love Journal babies. We can never go back to high school when we sat in the front row of choir and blatantly read each others journals in front of our choir director, but it's okay because now we have:

The Blogspot.

Maybe it's less personal, and maybe we put less work into them as we did/do our hardcopy journals, but for all intents and purposes, our little blogs have taken the Love Journal tradition to the next level. Boil it all down, blogs serve a no different purpose than our Journals, except now our family and other friends read them too. We can still update, comment, and inspire each other. In some virtual, deep-down sort of way, we'll always have the Love Journals, and we'll always be those girls who write the Love Journals.

And for what it's worth, I still intend to write a young adult book series entitled The Love Journals.

A brief scene analysis

There is a scene from Pride & Prejudice that makes me squirm with dramatic-ironic delight every time I watch it. The Bennett family comes to collect Jane after she has stayed a while at Pemberly, being sick with cold and fever when she was forced to ride to the house in the rain. Lizzie and Mr. Darcy have established their mutual disaffection for each other, and yet, he offers his hand to assist her climbing into the carriage. Without a thought, she accepts.

Finding her properly climbed in, he drops his hand, spins on his heel and stalks off.

Their individual reactions to their unexpected but assumed encounter are unique but striking. Lizzie, obviously impacted by his actions and perhaps by her own, watches him walk off with a look of conflict, confusion, and intrigue.

Exciting enough for a general audience member, true. But ah! It's Darcy's reaction that is so entangling!

So much is conveyed in that simple hand gesture! Discomfort, dignified embarrassment, awkward propriety, excitement, repulsion, perhaps even a certain electricity he intends to shake out. Though we see his set jaw a moment later, it is his hand that expresses all we need to know about their exchange. His hand puts the audience directly in his place and we know exactly how we are meant to feel in that moment.

This, my friends, is why I love storytelling, in all it's forms.

Deutsch

ANGST. ANGST. ANGST.

Ich hasse Deutsch. Ich hasse, wie es mich macht, fühle dumm als ein Stein. Ich kanne die Wörter oder die Regeln nicht erinnern!!!

Das booooooo:(

What's happened to the theater?

Especially where dancing is concerned.

Hey. So, it turns out I'm in a play right now. Also turns out it's a pretty adorable show.


WHO: Me, but mostly a bunch of my talented friends and a Boston Terrier.
I wear fox furs, you guys. Like, two foxes scalped, stuffed, sewn together, and thrown around my shoulders. Also, these people I get to work with are pretty spectacular soo... bonus for you as an audience. The Boston Terrier's name is Maximus and he is a very good dog. Oh, and for any Timpview grads-- Mr. Chris Brower is playing piano and gracing the stage.

WHAT: "She Loves Me"
It's pretty much "You've Got Mail" only a musical, set in 1930s Hungary. I mean sure, you're not going to hear Tom Hanks say anything about going to the mattresses, but hello, The Godfather hadn't been produced in the 1930s. And letter-writing is WAY more cute than screen names like "ShopGirl."

WHERE: Hale Center Theater Orem
225 W 400 N
Orem, UT 84057
(801) 226-8600

WHEN: February 14 - April 5
It's true. You have almost two whole months to get around to stopping by. And LUCKY YOU, I'm appearing nightly! so you won't miss out. I mean, should you feel so inclined to come see it that is.

WHY: For the love of musicals/1930s fashion/Boston Terriers/adorability/Me
I'm not even tooting my own horn here, this is a seriously boss show. It's STINKING cute, and Jerry Elison makes us all cry with adorable heartbreak every single night. I hate overusing words, but really, "adorable" is all that comes to mind. Adorable adorable adorable.

HOW: It just might be your lucky day...
As luck would have it, I have a number of FREE VOUCHERS still available to use before March 13! What? How do you get your hands on one/more of these? Foist come foist served, my friends. I'll give them away till I don't have any more, but they are limited in number. But listen! Don't feel bad if I run out! You can still come see for a small fee. As an added benefit, most guys will easily impress their dates as their dates will be ready to fall in love with anyone by the end of the evening-- plan accordingly.


Anyway. There's my shameless plug. If you'd like to see me in fox furs or looking like Nancy Drew, now you know how.

43-- mildly well-read

Here is a list of top 101 books voted on by customers in an Australian bookstore. Bold the ones you've read:

1. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
2. Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
5. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
6. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
7. Harry Potter 1-7 (J.K. Rowling)
8. The Power Of One (Bryce Courtenay)
9. Magician (Raymond E. Feist)
10. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

11. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
12. Cloudstreet (Tim Winton)
13. Cross Stitch (Diana Gabaldon)
14. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
15. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
16. Tuesdays With Morrie (Mitch Albom)
17. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
18. The Alchemist (Paulo Coehlo)
19. Mao's Last Dancer (Li Cunxin)
20. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)

21. Little Women (Louise May Alcott)
22. The Bronze Horseman (Paulina Simmons)
23. The Bible (God and assorted others)
24. Eragon (Christopher Paolini)
25. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
26. The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
28. Tomorrow, When the War Began (John Marsden)
29. Ice Station (Matthew Reilly)
30. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

31. The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
32. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
33. Perfume (Patrick Suskind)
34. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
35. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
36. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
37. Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)
38. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
39. The Pact (Jodi Picoult)
40. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth)

41. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
42. April Fool's Day (Bryce Courtenay)
43. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres)
44. Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
45. Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts)
46. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
47. Tully (Paulina Simmons)
48. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
49. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
50. A Fortunate Life (A.B. Facey)

51. Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
52. River God (Wilbur Smith)
53. Wild Swans (Jung Chang)
54. Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell)
55. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
56. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
57. Persuasion (Jane Austen)
58. The Shipping News (Annie Proulx)
59. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
60. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)

61. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
62. Possession (A.S. Byatt)
63. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver)
64. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
65. My Family and Other Animals (Gerald Durrell)
66. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
67. Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding)
68. Dune (Frank Herbert)
69. Emma (Jane Austen)
70. Marley and Me (John Grogan)

71. Middlemarch (George Eliot)
72. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
73. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
74. The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
75. Chocolat (Joanne Harris)
76. Dirt Music (Tim Winton)
77. Looking for Alibrandi (Melina Marchetta)
78. My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin)
79. The Ancient Future (Traci Harding)
80. The Belgariad (David Eddings)

81. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
82. The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde)
83. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
84. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
85. The Stand (Stephen King)
86. It (Stephen King)
87. Northern Lights (Nora Roberts)
88. Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)
89. The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)
90. The Outsider (Albert Camus)

91. The Riders (Tim Winton)
92. Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
93. Across the Nightingale Floor (Lian Hearn)
94. Atonement (Ian McEwan)
95. Circle of Friends (Maeve Binchy)
96. Seven Ancient Wonders (Matthew Reilly)
97. Tess of the D'Ubervilles (Thomas Hardy)
98. The Godfather (Mario Puzo)
99. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
100. The Other Boleyn Girl (Phillippa Gregory)
101. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)