Textile arts

Well, I'm incapable of sewing a straight line (either by hand or with Grell the sewing machine), but I am capable of whipping a carpet bag accordion case out of my butt two days before I have to leave.

(By the way, yesterday's existential panic attack has finally passed. Whew. That was a stressful 24 hours.)

I went to JoAnn (again) and bought some clearance upholstery fabric that reminds me of Mary Poppins's carpet bag. I'm now in the process of assembling the pieces, filling in the batting, and attaching the old cello case strap to make the accordion carryonable. It's a majestic sort of a carpet bag - there's even a piece of a Cheerios box in there. Anyway, I'm in a bit of a panic over the new sewing machine thing. When I left New York last semester, I was forced to abandon several of my worldly possessions when they wouldn't fit into the storage unit I'm sharing with three other people (granted, most of the stuff is mine. Approximately 65% of it.) Included in the rejects was my tattered blue comforter, which will be sorely missed by all except Kelsey, who reacted to its loss by remarking "Good. It was ugly." Luckily, I have been working on a patchwork quilt, so I decided to finish the quilt this summer and take it with me to school in the fall.

Summer's nearly gone, and I leave for Manhattan in 2 1/2 days. I still have to finish the quilt, finish the carpet bag, and hopefully whip up some kind of petticoat from this great white fabric we found at Wall Mart. This is just textiles. I have the rest of my business, too. Cleaning and packing. It stresses me out to think about it.

A Diversion:

While at JoAnn, I also got a strip of fake fur for the secret plushie factory. This was brought on by Polly, who, when I was stressing about how to best craft Prototype Plushie L's hair, exclaimed, "The problem with L is that his hair behaves more like fur than hair!" Well, Polly, I got some fur. Prototype Plushie's feet may be of vastly different sizes; his torso may be oddly shaped because I forgot to increase for the butt; he may be severely pigeontoed; but this is why he is called Prototype Plushie L instead of simply Plushie L. By the end of the day, Prototype will have the softest, most sensually styled fur hair that any plushie has ever known.

What if...

So, I'll be going back to New York in three and a half days. And, as always, I really don't want to go. I didn't want to go two years ago when I first left. I didn't want to go last year. I certainly didn't want to go after either winter break (exchange mild 60 degree California weather for sleet and slush and subzero temperatures? I don't think so.)

Part of the reason is I'm lazy. Another part is I'm scared. Another part, the part I hope is the biggest, is heartbroken to be leaving behind my family, my friends, my town, and the home that I love so much. Although I've spent two years studying in New York, I haven't yet found my place in the mess of it all, and the feeling of being lost (spiritually and emotionally, as well as often physically) in a city that size is not something I want to relive.

I keep wondering: what if I did take a semester off? A year off? What would I do with myself? What would I change? I tell myself that it wouldn't matter if I took some time off - I skipped most of fifth grade, so I'd really be getting back lost time, not losing more time. When I come back, I'll be older, wiser, more mature, and better-adjusted to the adult world. I can take time to develop my other skills, to read, to write, to study. I can take time to just be, a concept that gets thrown around a lot by the hippies who shop at The Store but doesn't get a lot of practice by yours truly. I can figure out who I am.

Of course, this is all bullshit. I have no guarantee that I'll ever come back at all. I could easily settle into a lazy life at home, and I'll never again find the courage to move away. I'll work a boring job in a boring place with other people like me - bright, exciting people who have simply chosen a quiet life at home rather than reach for the stars. I could find a nice guy worth marrying, settle down with him, and raise a family.

This is the first time in my life I've thought that raising a family might not be a bad job after all.

Will I chicken out and stay at home? Probably not.
Do I feel like chickening out at this moment? Definitely.

What will happen tomorrow? I'm not sure.

Eight minutes

There is so little August left, and I appear to have lost my motivation to do these things.

I also have eight minutes to post, despite the fact that I got home over an hour ago...

I've been distractedly jumping between exploring my new phone and exploring my new cookbook all day.

The plushie now has two legs.

Melody and I went hiking today.

My dorm this year has hardwood floors - good for tap dancing.

Awkward quote of the day:
"One year ago today, your mother told me she wanted to break up. I think we're still friends, but I've decided that I'm going to start dating again."
- my dad.

The best part of this is that my parents knew they were breaking up for about a month before they decided it was necessary to tell me. I called my house one day last fall, and asked to speak to Dad. My mom's answer was, "Oh, didn't I tell you? ..."

Great, adults. Just great.

Wow, lots of angst. He's spending the night tonight for some reason. They're downstairs fighting right now.

Short post today.

Melody is very funny. I am really going to miss her when I go back to New York.

And I really don't understand Taming of the Shrew.

Inception (again)

I've just returned from my second viewing of Inception. I'm in the mood to start gushing over it again, but I don't think I want to do that. So let's talk about something else.

It is a little odd to think that I'll be going back to New York in less than a week. On the day I returned home for the summer, I spent my time as I usually spend it at home: visiting my old high school, driving my sister and my friends around, listening to a lot of Arcade Fire and singing a lot of strange songs in public places. Which is basically what I do now, except everything is different.

The people are the same, mostly. We do the same things. We listen to the same songs. We attend Dollar Scoop Night at the local Baskin Robbins religiously.

But - and I hope this is true for my friends as well - this summer has changed my life in impossible ways. Tiny events hold great significance; single scenes replay again and again, becoming clearer with each repetition. When I return to school in six days, these changes will have grown to define me.

At the beginning of this summer, I had never been to a comics convention. I had also never seen Yosemite. I had never read manga, watched anime, played the accordion, or crocheted. I had never met Polly. Invasion, the glorious train-wreck of a play that we closed last week, was nothing more than the seed of an idea. I had never stolen a stop sign. I had never had any sort of religious experience. I had never walked at midnight along a metal bridge suspended over a canal thirty feet above the ground.

It is as though this summer has been a bizarre dream, a dream which has planted the idea in my head that life is beautiful. Or that art is worthwhile. Or something.

It sounds so trite to build up the revelations of this summer only to clumsily define them as "life is beautiful" or "art is worthwhile." Like, duh.

But I think I'll be going back to New York an entirely new person. I'm ready to go back new.

Plushie prototype progress:
One leg, one half-leg.
Designed more effective foot.
No progress on the hair problem.

Bonus:
Acquired a new wig today.

Yarn Factory

I've been trying not to think about how much money I've donated to JoAnn this summer - between the Who scarf (still extremely unfinished), the sewing machine (an adorable mini-machine I've named Grell), and the fabric for the play (lime green and chocolate brown), I have enough craft supplies to last me a very long time.

So naturally, when they were having a gigantic yarn sale, I went back and spent still more money I got some teeny tiny double point knitting needles and a ton of very soft yarn for my secret plushie project. I can't tell the details of this secret plushie project, but it involves knitting adorable plushies and selling them at small-town cons for a tidy markup.

HuHuHu CORRUPT.

I'm actually very excited about this project - merch is expensive, and although I have little to no business or crafting background (hmm) I'm trying to create an adorable plushie that uses minimal materials (see: small) and knitting time (see: college student) but looks good, and can thus be sold for a reasonably low price while still keeping the crafter in food (see also: broke).

Or, given my personal record with things like follow-through, the secret plushie project involves knitting myself an adorable plushie. I have a foot and half of a pant leg so far on prototype plushie. I'll call him P.


Epilogue:
I have a secret desire to quit drama school and become a craft enchantress. With a craft factory in my living room. And cats.

This is a big development, because my usual "What if I quit drama school?" fantasies tend to involve handsome young husbands, children, and a California teaching credential. Not that this is a bad thing, but... I'm spending too much money on drama school to become a mother anytime soon. And my life isn't big on the handsome young husband thing. I can count the straight boys I'm on speaking terms with on one hand.

Oops

I completely missed yesterday for some reason. Not sure how that happened.

News of yesterday:
My phone is indestructible. It can apparently withstand being run over by my car.
Two of my best friends, Beth and Lexie, are leaving for their first year of college today. Best of luck to them!
I always thought that it took three weeks to build a habit. Apparently not, or I wouldn't have forgotten to post yesterday.

Crisis

If Episode 25 of Death Note helped me sort of realize why we do art and made me believe in theater and art again, then...

TVTropes made me sort of realize that art is pointless.

Backing up:
It's surprising that I made it this long without visiting TVTropes. It's just the sort of website that, had I discovered it at a different time, I would have worshiped. From my limited knowledge of the beast, it is a website that is dedicated to naming and cataloging each and every trope that appears in every single book, film, television series, manga, comic, game, etc. It is an excellent resource, and because it grew from the very stuff it was made to analyze, TVTropes is also quite clever in the realm of inappropriate pop culture references. (Example: the "Holy Hand Grenade" trope is used to describe any occurrence of a force of good committing horrific and violent mayhem. Hilarious.)

I was warned upon first visiting the site - TVTropes can be EXTREMELY overwhelming. My first visit was a mere 30 minutes (laughably low), and I still emerged shaking and questioning the nature of art and fandom (See: above. See also: this blog post.) When I arrived, I casually navigated to the Death Note page (being my fandom of choice at this moment, I thought, why not?) and by the time I left, each and every delightful plot device and fascinating character had been broken down into a series of unintelligible labels that they shared with countless other series, films, and games (countless = hundreds). The Abandoned Warehouse is meaningless, all character complexity has been reduced into "Alternate Character Interpretation", the note itself is an "Article of Death", and nearly all of the most exciting narrative moments have been weighed, measured, and found lacking:

Actually I Am Him
Adrenaline Time
Alone With the Psycho
And I Must Scream

This is all before we reach the Bs.

Battle Butler: (Watari)

Most of my friends know that when I decide to like something, I tend to go overboard. Every waking moment is spent thinking about it, if I am not otherwise completely engaged. This is how I end up saying things like "equivalent exchange" at work. See: both of my Gollum cardboard cutouts, my L t-shirt, my Harry Potter bed sheets. (I know, I know. Merch does not a hardcore fangirl make. But it helps.) See also: the stash of fanfictions behind my bookshelf. Some of them written by me. My nickname in middle school was Gollum Girl. It is all too easy - and all too fun - to

But lately, I don't think I want the nerd to outmatch the nerd. I don't want obsessive love for the item in question (LOTR, Doctor Who, Death Note) to eventually overshadow and nullify the beauty of the thing itself. I don't want to fall more in love with the L of countless fanfictions than with the simple, elegant, very, very limited actions of the original. I don't want the most profound images to be rendered meaningless by a six-hour marathon of shoddy AMVs.

In my drama classes, I've always thought of myself as a really good audience member, but not as a good artist. I love to watch the work of my classmates, but I have difficulty isolating the smaller components that make it what it is.

Once we dissect a thing until its particles are all tiny enough to be generalized, cataloged, and labeled, we begin to lose the ability to appreciate it for its beautiful, divine, mysterious self. I think that's what I'm saying today.

Problems I have with this post:
Am I advocating a mistrust of progress?
Am I contradicting my previous post about how awesome fanart is?
Is all art eventually going to be troped and sorted before anyone can experience it?

Craft ADD

The problem with reorganizing my craft box is that I keep finding half-finished projects that I really want to complete. I have a pile of jewelry that needs fixing, a gigantic Doctor Who scarf (appx. 25% complete), a quilt (appx. 70% complete), a new sewing machine (named Grell, after the first cosplay I plan to make with it, exactly 0% complete), and no time.

The problem with going through my old writing is that I keep finding half-finished projects that I really want to complete. I have a spiritual breakdown essay I promised to write, a Hamlet adaptation my friend Beth and I are working on (appx. 3% complete), an old novelling project that recently came back into my head (appx. 5% complete), a new serial idea (which has a complete soundtrack, though I have yet to decide weather it is a novel, a screenplay, a TV series, or a graphic novel, exactly 0% complete), and no time.

The problem with majoring in drama is I keep thinking of projects that I really want to complete.

And then I remember that I'm supposed to be doing pre-production work on my third year directing project. You know, that play I'm supposed to be directing for credit this semester? That one?

It's 9 pages of Hell. I have no idea what it means. Woohoo!

Guess what?

We made a profit! $83. Which means that everyone who worked on the show could be paid about $12 total. For the whole summer.

Stuff to do in the next ten days:
CLEAN UP
Beckett pre-production
Finish the scarf

Stuff I did today:
Calculated expenditures for the show
Watched The Hunt for Gollum
Learned to crochet

Another short one today.

The show is fine! My wrist is not.

Things that are not good for my wrist:
Typing while lying prone on my bed
Typing while lying supine on my bed
Ukulele
Accordion
Knitting a 15 foot scarf
Shoving several 300 lb risers into the back of my minivan. Polly helped with this one but her ankle's already broken so we're pretty much toast.

Things that are toast:
Me
Polly
Toast
The Theater

Days until I leave for New York:
13

Opening

The play opened! And it wasn't a disaster! And people saw it!

Well, I think we knew everyone in the audience... they were all either family or close friends. Except for the Mexican family whose car had broken down outside. We invited them, so they came.

Anyway, I've stopped eating cake and started eating normal food again. The last time I ate something normal was Tuesday, so salt was a welcome change. This is what happens when you end up with three birthday cakes in your house.

We have another show tomorrow. Meanwhile... other responsibilities? What are those?

Responsibilities I've ignored:
Cleaning my room
Pre-production research for next semester
Knitting the scarf
Hygiene

Fan-Performance Art

With the popularity of A Very Potter Musical and such, I am very excited about the birth of the genre of the fan musical. I thought that AVPM was the first of its kind, but the other day I stumbled upon another. I was innocently searching for pictures for a Grell Sutcliffe cosplay (yes, I'm starting to cosplay. One of many things that happens when you buy a sewing machine and become friends with Polly.) when I found out about the Kuroshitsuji musical. It's a full scale musical, not unlike AVPM... but it's in Japanese.

My only question? WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

I continue to be amazed by the glory of fandom - everything from inside jokes to favorite fan pairings to service organizations (Harry Potter Alliance, anyone?) has sprung from internet fandoms. People use it as an opportunity to practice their music, their drawing, their textile arts... and most importantly, for someone in my shoes (drama school-shaped shoes) to study how these amazingly engrossing stories are told.

Earlier this summer, my sister and I took a road trip down to Yosemite. I had just begun reading manga, and I spent half of the trip trying to convince her that we should dress up as Death Note characters and dance to CocoRosie songs. Melody hates CocoRosie, but that's not the point. On our last night, we went for ice cream in downtown Sonora (which is exactly like Auburn only not as close to Sacramento), and I remember dancing around the deserted parking lot, proclaiming, "Fan-Performance Art is the wave of the future!"

Well, I'm not sure about the performance art part, but I'm definitely excited by the development of fandom-inspired theater. It'll be kind of like theater-inspired fandom, only without Stephen Schwartz.

I wish I had more time to speak eloquently about this subject.

Note to self:
11:30 is not a good time to start an entry.

Add to list of things to discuss:
Fan theater.

Another note:
I did not talk about my play at all in this entry. I don't want to curse it. Let's hope the Bad Dress = Good Opening superstition doesn't also work in reverse.

Birthday

So, in my angst regarding yesterday's tech rehearsal, I sort of neglected to gush about my birthday as much as it deserved. I went in with the world's lowest expectations, as I had my work shift and the tech rehearsal and a bunch of other things on my mind, and because 19 is not a very exciting number, so I actually had a wonderful time.

Connor and I went out to breakfast (with my new corduroy backpack that my mother bought from The Store months ago and had been held hostage until my birthday) and then to the Roseville, where we drove around and talked about theater while I bought underwear and props. For you non-locals, Roseville is a town approximately halfway between Auburn and Sacramento, although in my opinion everything from Newcastle to Fair Oaks might as well be Roseville. Miles upon miles of housing developments and strip malls. Not a tree in sight. When I'm feeling particularly nervous about leaving for school, I love to spend time in Roseville because of the utter middle-America-ness of it all. Also strip malls and horizons are difficult to come by in Manhattan.

After getting my prop shopping done, we came back to Auburn for frozen yogurt downtown. We walked down the street to the shop that our friend Johanna is currently renovating into a tattoo parlor (as soon as it opens, I'm getting a tattoo. Foot.) By this point, it was time to go to work, which was excellent because my coworkers had made cupcakes! They also gave me the most unexpected present ever, a dress that I had been eying for months but hadn't the means to buy. I spent the rest of my shift bouncing around the store in my dress, very happy about everything.

Rehearsal wasn't actually as bad as I made it out to be, and afterwards we all went to In N Out for dinner.

So today, when I went to Roseville again to buy more props (and Melody's school supplies), it was as if my birthday hadn't ended yet. I bought myself the mini sewing machine from JoAnn that I'd been looking for (let's hope it works; it didn't cost very much) and some school shoes, which constituted my first ever purchase from Hot Topic. I had just bought the shoes when I turned around and saw a stack of L t shirts (which they hadn't had the day before. Yes, I check for the L shirt every day. I'm a merch stalker.) Before I knew it, I had made my second ever purchase from Hot Topic, and I now have an excellently dorky tech shirt. Watch out, cool people at school.

But my birthday still wasn't over.

When I got to rehearsal, Beth and Polly had made me the world's ugliest TARDIS cake. It had sort of collapsed or melted or something, so they used string and gigantic toothpicks to hold it up, so it came out looking more or less like a very spiky blue pile of sand. They made up for it with some very cute Dalek cupcakes, although both cakes were delicious.

I wasn't planning on celebrating at all until Friday after the show, but things have already been so fun! Looks like this is the birthday that refuses to end. Fine by me.




Conversation with myself:
Hey, so you just wrote an entire blog about your birthday.
Yes, I did. So?
Aren't you supposed to be speaking to people, not about yourself?
I guess so, but...
This is such masturbatory middle school crap. It's like a journal.
But I can't think of anything to write about!
Then don't write a blog.
But we're halfway through the month! I can't stop now!
We wish you would.
Since when are there multiples of you?
Oh, you have no idea...

Insert imaginary friends dance here.

Tech/ugh

Tech rehearsals are kind of universally terrible. Lay aside the fact that we're underrehearsed and still making script edits, and tech rehearsal would still be terrible. Add in the fact that we're performing in an auto shop with no air conditioning or technical system, one of our actors has seriously injured her ankle, and there are three other shows running in this town the same weekend, and we're pretty much set for a gigantic fucking shitshow.

Hello, Christmas lights as a lighting system!
Hello, laptop speakers as a sound system!
Hello, SIGHTLINE ISSUES.

I'm trying to have the faith that the show ultimately be ok, but for now there's so much to do that I can't concentrate on much of anything past the next five days. I've actually been quite zen about the whole thing (despite appearances) and would love to speak more on that...

I think I often say I will talk about something and then never do.

Things I say I'll talk about:
Spiritual breakdown
Reuniting with high school friends.
The Show

There you have it, a promise.

Thanks to all of the great birthday wishes, everyone! Despite the tech rehearsal part, I had a really lovely day and saw a lot of great people. It makes me feel bad that I don't go nuts with love and fun on a regular basis, because life really is shinier when it's your birthday :)

18

I must be one of the few people who is always, always sad on her birthday.

It's not terrible, it's just a kind of general depression about time passing. It happens every year. I remember my seventh birthday, getting ready to go out to Cheveys (which used to be the classiest restaurant in town) and bawling my eyes out because I realized I'd never be six years old ever again.

I'm sort of doing that right now, except now I feel legitimately old. I think the last few months of being eighteen have been the Custer's Last Stand of my childhood. I've been watching anime and reading comic books, and regretting that I never took advantage of my prime havoc-wreaking years as a teenager. OK, most of my teenage years were spent crying in a corner trying to be invisible. That's not even a lie. I've been panicking about the end of my childhood ever since The Deathly Hallows came out. I've been acting ridiculously childish all summer because I never want to grow up! From this side of the Big Legal, I feel very, very old.

So I think I'll take this time to be shallow:
Can 19 be a good year?
Can I take this moment to make some unrealistic goals for the next year?

By the time I turn 20, can I be:
130 pounds,
Very, very awesome,
and Not a virgin?

Thanks.

PS Today I bought a cargo vest. A real one, with usable pockets. Not like the fake one with fake pockets I found at the mall last week. And some dominatrix boots. Tomorrow I'm hunting for underwear and Doc Martins.

Hoodlums

I was about to go to bed (before midnight for the first time in months) but then I remembered BEDA. We're nearly halfway through... and I'm beginning to think I don't have the stamina to do marathon projects like this. It's not like blogging every day is particularly intense, I just get bored quickly.

Case in point: I've never finished a nanowrimo novel. I've never even passed 10,000 words. How's that for lame? Of course, November is always a busy month in dramaland, but that's no excuse to not have completed a nanowrimo.

Last week you read of my adventures with the roadside Lenin box.
Two weeks ago, we rescued an abandoned stop sign from the bushes behind Wall Mart.
And today, my career as a hoodlum is complete. We found a shopping cart.

Question: if the shopping cart was already a very long distance from its home grocery store when we took it into custody, is that still stealing?

Answer: YES.

We'll return it as soon as my play is finished, but for now, I have to load costumes and props in and out of a functioning auto garage every night for the next week. A shopping cart is an excellent roving prop table.

To Do tomorrow:
Paper tech
Back to school shopping
Clean room
Enjoy remaining time as an 18-year-old.

Geoffrey vs. Darren

My sister and I have just returned from seeing my old theater company's community production of The Wizard of Oz. And the entire time I was there, I had to reconcile myself with the fact that although they did a fantastic job with that show, I don't much like The Wizard of Oz to begin with.

Perhaps this is because I hail from the Wicked generation. I mean, yes, I was Elphaba for Halloween my sophomore year of high school. So it's entirely possible that my disdain for Oz is just leftover teenage angst, and the real reason that I don't like the show is that the Wicked Witch is misunderstood and all of those Ozians are paranoid and deeply prejudiced.

All the same, as I was mulling over the show at intermission, my brain turned (as it often does when faced with a text I don't like) to how one could possibly turn this text into something watchable. So I turned to my sister and said:

"What do you think about setting this show in Nazi-occupied Poland?"

Now, for all of you Slings and Arrows fans out there, I have a question:*
Does this make me Darren Nichols?

I like to consider myself a student of Geoffrey Tennant school of directing. I've been watching Slings and Arrows since before I became a director. I've basically modeled my directing persona after Geoffrey Tennant. So why do I want to set The Wizard of Oz in Nazi-occupied Poland? WHY??

Because that is exactly the sort of thing Darren Nichols would do. Actually, I'm pretty sure he does do this at some point. It might have been The Tempest or something, but Darren definitely directs an inappropriate Nazi show at some point in the series.


Edit from yesterday:
Mangas read - 5.
Male characters mistaken for female - 6.
This curve is not good.
Me = n00b.

*Referring to my readers en masse is pointless. Of the two people I know to read my blog regularly, one is leaving for Ghana in the morning and one is sitting in the next room. And as far as I know, Colleen hasn't watched Slings and Arrows. Melody has heard me say everything in this post already, because I told her all about it while we were driving home.

Not late

OK, I am late, so sue me.

I like to say that I operate by the Selfish Dating System. If I haven't gone to bed, it's still today - plain and simple.

I'm halfway through a detailed post, but I need to get up early tomorrow to do Invasion things before work, so a quick bitter quip and an off-topic endnote will have to suffice.

The other law of the Selfish Dating System is that I won't date someone unless I'm actually interested in being with them. None of this, "Eh, well he kind of repulses me. Maybe he'll grow on me." desperation crap. Actually, I'd probably benefit from a little desperation. How long has it been since I've been on a date? No comment.

Mistaken Gender Identity Log:
Mangas read: 5
Male characters mistaken for female: 5
Female characters mistaken for male: 1

(The fact that I make things like this might indicate a reason why no one will date me. Hmm.)

Rescripting

We now have eight days until the play opens.

Act 2 is in decent shape as of now... but Act 1 is overcomplicated and long-winded. We realized this when we nearly fell asleep during a walkthrough of the first act - a third of the way through, and Nikki and I were bored out of our minds. So it's back to the drawing board on the first act, and tomorrow we'll have to hash it out as quickly as possible.

It's really hit me now that I'm going to be directing and creating shows for a long time. I've started preproduction work on my fall directing project (a Beckett play), and after that, I'm planning on doing some sort of workshop over winter break. Add in design gigs and solo performance and writing and hopefully acting and I'm going to be busy for a while!

Actually, what worries me is that none of this is certain - it's entirely possible that my shows will be such complete failures that I will be banned from the stage. I could never be cast in another show, I could never be asked to design again. I suppose I'm just nervous because I'm so far away from that life - I hardly talk to my classmates in New York over vacation, and I would hate to get back to find all of the designer spots already filled.

Since it is vacation, my brain is not at all used to switching between creative projects so often. It's like,

Beckett!
Invasion!
Beckett!
Invasion!
aaaaaaaahhhhh.

It's very distracting.

While I should be working on the play:
Melody and I are watching The Prisoner of Azkaban, which is an atrocious film in so many ways. We're enjoying providing our own commentary and criticisms. My favorite so far is Melody's response to Mrs. Weasley chasing after the train ("Dooon't loooooosee himmmmm!!!")

"Hey Ron! RON!! DON'T FORGET YOUR PLOT POINT!!!!!"

Great man, my sister.

Immaturity

As I write this, I am bitter, tired, and angry.

The problem with this blog-every-day thing is that I seldom find myself with anything interesting to say. I'm also not presenting myself in a very good light here, because you usually catch me at about 11:45 after a long day of meetings, work, and rehearsal.

Although I had just begun to write what looked like a promising post, my mother stormed into my room and spent 20 minutes saying things like "Going out with your friends is a privilege." (I'm 18 and pay for gas), and "If you and your sister don't like me, you should just tell me," (uncalled for).

Yes, my relationship with my mother is probably more important that BEDA. But after having her attack me with meaningless accusations and pointless angry comments, I had completely lost the thread of what I was writing and it was nearly midnight. Right now, I'm simply in the mood where I don't want what I'm doing to be interrupted by a pissed off clingy older woman.

- - -

And now she's just come in again to start bitching about my dad. My parents are going through a divorce, and she's taking every opportunity to blame every problem we've ever had on something my dad did wrong. I'm not too happy with my dad now either, but I fail to believe that she doesn't realize how irrational her behavior is.

It's irrational because she went to bed two hours ago, and keeps waking up to come into my room to yell about something that doesn't make any sense.

Like I said, I'm just tired. And not capable of judging that I perhaps shouldn't use the blog to bitch about my mom.


So now you've seen the ugly side of this writer.


If it helps at all, the post I was going to write before she interrupted me would have been much more lighthearted.

Things this post would have included if I hadn't been interrupted by my mother:
Donuts
Puppies
Ice cream
Discount fabric
Finished scripts

Aren't you sad now, Mom? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOUR NEGATIVE ENERGY HAS DESTROYED?

Box

In the town where I live, there is a road.
On the side of that road is a cardboard box.
On the side of that box is a gigantic picture of Lenin.
It is worth mentioning that this box is very large.

I have a car.
My mother has a car.
My mother's car is larger than my car.
If my mother is in Disneyland with her friends, I get to drive her car.

The cardboard box will not fit in my car.
But it will fit in my mother's car.

Set design for free.

Traffic. Jam.

Complaints on a theme: Lots of bitching today.

Traffic 1:
This morning, I drove my mother to her friend's house because she is taking a ladies' trip to Disneyland. Unfortunately, on my way home, I got hopelessly lost and ended up heading the wrong way on 193, which led me almost to Lincoln. How did I eventually figure out that I was headed North and not South? The sun.

Jam 1:
Something important to realize is that my brain does not filter thoughts well. Rather, it takes thoughts, ideas, or obsessions of mine and blows them out of proportion until I cannot think of anything else. For example, at work today, I spent a couple of hours dusting the high shelves while poised on top of a step stool. What was I thinking about the whole time? Nothing important, just a single phrase, over and over and over again: That butler, perfectly poised! I haven't even read Kuroshitsuji (though I've been meaning to since it started coming out, I think.)

The rest of my time at work was spent thinking about L (again). This is a slightly bigger problem because, as my friend Chase said, "One should strive to be like L in all aspects of life." Here's the catch: once you start striving to be like L, you inevitably end up eating nothing but sweets and drinking far more coffee than is healthy. It might be helpful for a fictional line-drawn superdetective Christ figure; it is not helpful for real humans.

Also, while mourning for fictional characters can be fun, it is also very depressing.

Traffic 2:
The California Highway Patrol likes to set up a barricade of police cars at my exit to catch people speeding down the mountain at the end of the weekend. Not only is it distracting, but it also impedes the flow of traffic and suggests that we actually do live in a police state. I'd much rather they were out being real cops, doing things like investigating those strange gunshots I heard in my neighborhood two days ago. Yeah.

Jam 2:
Did I mention I'm directing a play? Well, we open in eleven days. I'm supposed to have the final script finished for tomorrow's rehearsal, and as always I neglected to realize how behind I was until far too late. So the next 20 hours will be all about scripting, scripting, scripting! The problem?

For once, I have too many ideas I'm excited about! I'm having trouble concentrating on the script because there are about six other fun things bumping around in my mind trying to demand my attention. There's my developing idea for this year's nanowrimo, a Hamlet adaptation my friend and I are working on, an idea for a COW I had recently (a COW is a play that's... oh whatever. It's a play.), and my directing project for next semester, not to mention L who keeps popping up to get me confused. (You are not my character. Repeat: YOU ARE NOT MY CHARACTER.)

But I will not curse this overabundance of ideas by complaining about it. Nope. Nope. Lips sealed.

I think this COW might be a song cycle. Just saying.

BACK TO SCRIPTING.

Edit for comedic effect/to prove a point -

Melody (my sister): You look like L. Maybe it's the posture. Or the dark... dark... general gray... darkness.

Writer's block?

The time for blogging has come, and I find I have nothing much to say. It's possible that between all of the projects I have going on I am simply tired and can't find the energy to write anything important. However, I can only take this as a good sign, since today I was relatively productive and I like where these projects are taking me.

So, I think I'll use today to geek out about the great material possessions I've been acquiring this summer:

1. My 120 Bass accordion, which I can't actually play but I will soon. I've named him Ed, after Edward Elric and Ed Kennedy, and although he seems a little touchy around the bellows I think he'll do very well for me. He was a long time coming.

2. My ukulele, which is much easier to play than the accordion. He is named L, after the Death Note Christ figure who may or may not have been the source of the August 4th incident... So my stage manager and I went to FYE, the only place in the mall with quality geek merch, and I got some pins to put on the case. One is just a letter L and the other is Ryuzaki sitting biting his thumb, as he often does. Speaking of Ryuzaki, I now come to

3. A gigantic cardboard L. My mother found this at the thrift store where she works part time. She'd heard me yelling about someone named L, so when she found a large piece of cardboard in the shape of an L (the letter, not the character. When I tried to explain it to Connor, he was confused. Lesson: don't give fictional characters homonymic names.) she brought it home to me. Sweet.

4. Also at my mother's thrift store, a huge plushie flower with a smiley face. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it's awesome.

5. A plaid newsboy cap in my favorite color of olive green.

6. An heirloom pocketwatch, which I found in the basement. I don't know whose watch it was, but I know whose it is now. My friend Ally calls it steampunk.

7. A steampunk pocket scale to match the watch. I'm actually trying to build a large collection of small steampunk devices, which I will someday hang off of a belt and carry everywhere I go. The funny thing about this scale: I've been working in The Store for over a year, and I hadn't noticed them until a couple of days ago. They're utterly inaccurate and, as my coworker says, "you can't use this for anything but drugs!" I bought it because it was cheap and it matched my steampunk watch.

8. A backup copy of Settlers of Catan, bought for a quarter at a rummage sale. Now I can keep doubles of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Flux, and Scrabble in both New York and California without having to worry about taking them back and forth. NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM MY BOARD GAME DOMINATION.

9. A flowered teacup I found in my kitchen cabinet. Me: Mom? Is this of sentimental value to anybody? Mom: I don't think so. Me: Good. *swipe*

10. A LOT of yarn. What am I knitting? This:


Now, let's hope I finish before I have to cart all of the yarn to New York with me.


Have I mentioned I'm directing a play? We open in twelve days, and we are not ready. Priority for tomorrow is to finish the script (I repeat: we are not ready) and make a tech list. I also need to figure out how electricity works, because I'd like to have a basic lighting system set up, but I'm not sure if the lights we have will set the building on fire or not.

Awkward conversation of the day:
Me: Oh - Excuse me.
Girl at the Mall: Oh my God! I thought you were a mannequin!

Spontaneity

I can be immature when it comes to many things, and one of those things is definitely work. I have a very nice, low-stress, part-time day job, where I work with nice people, listen to nice music, and get a nice discount on lots of excellent stuff. The only problem is that I detest going to work. And I mean a lot. I get bored, and folding T-shirts isn't exactly creatively stimulating work.

What it comes down to is this: I'm spoiled. And lazy.

But no matter how I try to convince myself that this job is just a support for what I'm really working on (budget-free amateur youth theater, a very lucrative field), working at The Store has been simply amazing.

Here's something to understand about most of my life: I live in an extremely stressful place (New York), go to an extremely stressful school (Playwrights Horizons Theater School, which is a branch of the Drama Department, which is a branch of Tisch School of the Arts, which is a branch of New York University), and spend approximately 75% of my waking time in classes, rehearsals, and meetings where I try to learn how to create theater and try to understand why it is important. Consequentially, the rest of my time is spent in artistic breakdown mode. The city is loud, filthy, and fast. The food is greasy. The people are scary. If it weren't for the fact of the brilliant education I'm getting as a result of all of this, I probably would have thrown myself off of the Brooklyn Bridge by now.

So, after each year of working to near exhaustion at school, shutting me up in a relentlessly chill establishment like The Store is about the kindest thing you could do to me.

Where in New York do I get a chance to stare at dream catchers and listen to Pink Floyd - 20 minutes of it - without being interrupted by a siren or an explosion or a subway train?

Where in New York do I get to talk to people - lots of people, lots of very strange people - without having to rush off to whatever very important thing I'm late for?

Where in New York do I get to smell something that isn't repulsive? Seriously, the aromatherapy alone in The Store is reason enough to work there.

And these are just the easy paralleled reasons. The social, moral, and intellectual benefits are far more complicated. As someone who could easily have qualified for the Most Sheltered Child in California pageant, working here has helped me to realize (duh) that all people are just people - no matter what they wear, how many piercings or tattoos they have, or what substance they just smoked in the parking lot. It has also given me a good combination of street smarts and balls - enough savvy to know what that thing is, and the strength to politely decline to inhale through it, all while maintaining a perfectly present and zen attitude. I've also become infinitely more chill than I've ever been before. When the manager let me leave work an hour early today, I went for a swim in the river. In my clothes.

A year ago, I never would have done anything so impulsive.
Two years ago, I was so freaked out about college that I don't remember quite what I was up to.

I love remembering that I live in a small town, and I love the more complex and more recent revelation that we are all just people living our lives on the planet - I may be here for now, but soon, I'll be 3,000 miles away in a place that (surprisingly!) is also full of people living their lives.

I'm all hippied out for now, and my sister made cookies, so I'm going to go watch a Miyazaki film.

And I've finally uncovered my hair. Feels good to let it breathe again.

Awkward conversation of the day:
Customer: 'All of these products are for tobacco use only.' Is that a joke?
Me: No, ma'am. It's the law.

Another teaser

The story of yesterday looks like it's going to become an essay, so once again I must stall on the full story. But, I did sign on for this Blog Every Day in August thing, so I need to write something here as well. Grr.

Here is a cryptic (or not-so-cryptic) excerpt from The Story of August 4th.


“I'm worried, Polly,” I speak dryly into the mirror, “This has never happened to me before.”

Polly pulls her hair out of its messy bun “What do you mean?” she asks, watching me warily through the mirror.

“Well.” My face looks pale in the reflection. With my hair covered by the black flowered scarf, I look like a cancer patient. I feel fragile and beaten. “As Connor was saying, by the middle section of Episode 25, you might as well be reading the Bible. Even I could see that.”

She nods, pulling an old horse's hairbrush from her purse and running it through her long hair.

“But... now, granted, this is Death Note. Ultimately, it's just some pretty shoddy anime, but I've never before been that affected by the real Christ story. I'm afraid I'll be struck down at any moment.”

Polly pulls an elastic from her wrist and wedges it between her teeth. Then, she gathers her hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck.

“I think...” She stops, shaking her head vigorously, before removing the elastic from her mouth.

“I think it is dangerous to underestimate the workings of God. Or His sense of humor.” She continues to speak into the mirror as I examine the pallid reflection beside her.

“If He's really as omnipotent as they all say, then he can do anything he wants. It is dangerous to limit this power by saying, 'No, this is not how He works.'” She turns to face me now. “If God wants to speak to you through Death Note, who's to say that He can't?”


On a sidenote, this is the first familiar essay I've written without the help of any vicious old NYU professors. Meaning, this is the first essay I've written that wasn't for a grade. We'll see how that goes. Of course, the only essays of mine that the professors ever liked were the ones where I embarrassed myself by
- by complaining about my lack of social skills,
- by expressing my undying love of one or many fictional characters, and finally,
- by generally making an ass of myself.

So far... in the spiritual breakdown/Death Note essay... check, check, and check. Damn.

Self-insults of the day:
Be a nicer director, you bitch! If you're so cranky, eat something. Not hungry? Well, why'd you eat so much Mongolian at lunch? And Seriously? Seriously? You've had your first ever spiritual awakening and it's about an anime??? YOU ARE LAME.

The greatest story - for another day

If yesterday was an awful, creatively draining day, today was just plain bizarre. I have spent the last hour composing a very long blog post detailing exactly what events led to today's spiritual breakdown, but unfortunately, the vampires in my head have poisoned that creative bit of nonfiction and I'm worried I will be certified insane if I post it without taking a couple of days to mull it over.

I'm not one for spiritual breakdowns. Emotional and mental breakdowns, all the time. But not spiritual. Well, today I've had one, or something that feels like one. It seems wrong to call whatever happened a breakdown, because I can't remember a time when massive internal destruction/creation felt so good.

I'm about to become completely incoherent, so bear with me and think of this as a teaser trailer for the rest of The Story of August 4th.

The plan for the day was to go to Barnes and Noble, come home, and work on the play until the evening's rehearsal.

The story of how I ended up dressed like a Polish widow, or how I terrorized my hometown's bookstores with my search for Joseph Campbell, or how I hope/fear that all reality will eventually devolve into epic storytelling, or finally, how a series of innocuous decisions led to Polly's truck exploding on the highway and the rehearsal being canceled due to everyone's sense of impending doom, is a story for another day.

Revelation of the day (one of many. This one had the least backstory to it): If we watch a character wash his enemy's feet, that's fucking biblical.

<3

What? No, it's still Tuesday...

There comes a day in every rehearsal process...

Where everyone decides that their efforts are useless
And they want nothing better than to chuck it all
And smash the nearest valuable object
And capoeira their cast members in the face
And cancel the show and everything
And get in their car and start to drive
And take a very long road trip
And stop in some horrible town in the Midwest
And get a job in a diner
And live out the rest of their days a spinster
And never return.

All because they are just a little too close to opening night.

That day was today.



Brought to you by What-No-It's-Not-After-Midnight-Look-Distractions! Productions

Tomorrow: Actually going to Barnes and Noble. Today was just a ruse.


PS Everything's fine now! Polly had the brilliant idea to use our negative energy to fuel the choreography for the Disaster Sequence, so we worked out our feelings by sweating and convulsing to angsty techno music. Then the cast all went to Dollar Scoop Night, which, we remember, will always be more satisfying and more important than theater.

August Panic

Yesterday, in my hurry to detail the excitement of working in a smoke shop, I neglected to mention what is actually frightening about this week:

August.

August itself might not seem so frightening, but the limits of the human lifespan are. Let me rephrase:

By the end of August, I will be:
- Nineteen
- Finished with Invasion (the play I'm working on at the moment), and
- In New York

Two of my oldest friends are leaving for college this fall, and it is all too easy to remember the terror of the final summer at home. Or, it is all too easy not to remember, as the only things I can remember about that summer were getting my wisdom teeth removed and working ten hours a week at a bakery. Apart from that, I think I spent the whole summer panicking about leaving home (and reading depressing books. I asked my sister what she remembers of that summer, and she said, "You read books about Poland." Ah yes, Poland. Panic.) But that doesn't change the fact that it was two years ago that I first left home, two years ago that I started college, two years ago that I supposedly became an adult.

And, if I start to think of things this way, I inevitably start to panic.

I was sixteen when I graduated from high school, and I will be twenty when I graduate from college. What this means is, all of my college friends are at least a year older than me, while most of my home friends are significantly younger. So, while I rejoice at seeing my friends get ready for college, I start to feel very old myself. Meanwhile, I have to ever-remind myself that many of these puzzles have no clear answer - how can I help my friends overcome their anxiety? How can I make the most of every moment of my life? How can I stop the time from going so fast?

The answer, of course: I can't.

On that cheery note, I leave you. It is 11:59, and I swore I would Blog Every Day in August, so darn it, I will!

Listening to: The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Plans for Tomorrow: Coffee and Fanfiction in Barnes and Noble.

Tip or Bribe?

Sundays are my toughest workdays - I say this perfectly aware of my own spoiled nature, as Sundays are really my only workdays. Oh, I do several half-shifts per week, and I cover my coworkers' vacations a lot, but only on Sundays do I regularly report for work in the little hippie store in my hometown.

But hey, it's summer break, and I'm a lazy art student. I would probably complain about work even if I got paid to hammock in North Carolina and set up sound systems (ahem).

Here is one problem with working in a hippie store/smoke shop/sex shop in a small town:
People you know will always come in to buy items of a controversial nature. Often, they will be more nervous than you are (case in point: one boy today refused to touch the adult toys he was buying for his girlfriend; he just pointed and muttered "that one" over and over again as I pulled down the toys and put them in his bag), but sometimes, watching an ex-schoolmate of yours buy porn is just too much information.

Here is another problem:
You have to help people choose their products without breaking the law.

Let me explain - It is illegal to sell items for drug use. However, it is NOT illegal to sell these same items for tobacco use. If a customer uses the wrong terminology in the store, I am not allowed to sell them anything. We have a relatively lenient policy, which usually involves a stern reminder that "if you use those words, I am supposed to kick you out of the store," and most people shut up after that, but unfortunately some people aren't very good at taking the hint.

Today, for example, I was helping a middle-aged space cadet and his wife select a pipe. Even after I established the "tobacco-use only" rule ("Sir, I am not permitted to sell you a bong. These are all water pipes.") the couple continued to refer to their frequent marijuana use. When I had mustered the McGonagall to correct their terminology once more, they finally seemed to understand and changed their demeanor.

"Oh," the space cadet replied. He was the birkenstocks-and-socks type. "I understand. Thank you for all of your help." Then he dropped a crumpled dollar bill onto the counter. I stood there with my mouth open as they took their pipe to the front register to make the purchase.

And here, friends, is another unpleasant side effect of working in a slightly controversial shop: paranoia. It happens all the time:
Was that a fake ID?
Did I forget to lock the knife case?
Are they really going to light up right in the parking lot?

And, in this case,

If he was a narc, can he arrest me for accepting bribes as well as selling drug paraphernalia???

See? Utterly paranoid. Later, when I asked my coworker about this situation, she told me that he was probably just trying to tip me for my helpful service.

Oh, I thought. I guess I'd forgotten to consider the good in people.

I took my dollar to the gas station and bought a coffee.



Current music: We Were Promised Jetpacks.
Current projects: Doctor 4 scarf, Invasion, caffeine tolerance.
Current obsession: Dark haired geniuses with addictive personalities (L, Gollum)
Current denial: August. School. Samuel Beckett.