[long pause]
i now remember why i never listened to music while studying. i am dancing around geo's apartment to "tale as old as time." why is mrs. potts australian?
[long pause]
i learned to play gin rummy last night!
November 28, 2009
thankeekindly
so, there are quite a few awesome things in my life right now, for which i am very thankful, and since i am a crier, ive been doing a lot of happy-crying recently. walking back from this huge thanksgiving potluck thrown by our class that was an embarrassment of riches, i kept blubbering on to jared about "how lucky we are" until he was like "you're gonna be feeling a little less lucky if you dont shut up." (the second part of that conversation is a complete and total lie. please excuse the defamation in the name of a more dramatic narrative.) but of all the things that make me smile, i really have to say that one of the top contenders for the title of most awesome is the glee cast radio on pandora. for example, i just turned it on as i sat down to write, and the two songs it has played so far are "dont stop believin" and the full version of "defying gravity." combined with the fact that i am alone so no one knows how cliche my musical tastes are, and that i just brewed up a cute little mug of french vanilla coffee, im pretty much set.
October 01, 2009
you say existentialism, i say fosse
well, this is really a moment i did not expect. i was sitting in our dramatic lit lecture, still reeling from the professor's announcement that "jordy is directing a production of les mouches," which could only mean one of two things-- that there is another person in our 50 person lecture named jordy, which would be really weird because 45 of those people are fellow ART students whose names i know, OR that i had blacked out for some indeterminate amount of time, during which i had developed a passion both for sartre and for directing, and decided to lead a cast en-tightrope over the existential canyon, which would be really weird for... well, a lot of reasons-- when suddenly our class rep, chris, told me that singing class was cancelled today because our professor had just texted him that she was sick. scanlan was tossing off quips about getting drunk with ionesco and burning potatoes when beckett called him on his homeline in his new apartment, and outside in the yard, there was a flash musical mob converging in front poor john harvard's statue, and suddenly i was faced with three hours of an unforseen break, during which i knew i could not go to the gym, because for god's sake, i am wearing ankle boots and tights and that just doesn't fly on the treadmill! so i sashe-d across campus to lamont and promptly got lost in the musical scores stacks.
rows upon rows of librettos constitute the architecture of both my psyche and my personal happy place, and during undergrad (and sometimes even secretly thereafter, while i was still living in manhattan), there were days when i would quietly disappear into the 7th floor of dodge hall, and i'd sit on a rotating stool and read music to myself like it was a fairy tale or a map to somewhere i'd never been. that sounds very, very hokey--im aware--and it's a great irony or paradox or something that the artform with admittedly the most potential for cheesetastic campiness is the thing that inspires in me the most genuine emotions of joy. today, after frolicking through the stacks and snatching grey gardens, candide, she loves me, camelot, and annie (ha!), i took my candy shopping a bit further and wreaked some serious havoc on harvard libraries' "request" button. i anticipate with bated breath the imminent receipt of emails telling me that my "urgent" and "immediate" requests for reefer madness, bat boy, dirty rotten scoundrels, the little mermaid, and jerry springer the opera have been fulfilled and are awaiting my loving arms and the protective plastic sleeves of my audition book! for while mystery-jordy-in-my-dramatic-lit-class might love when sartre has jupiter say to orestes-disguised-as-philebus, "The gods take pleasure in such poor souls. Would you oust them from the favor of the gods? What, moreover, could you give them in exchange? Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah, the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content," this jordy is a sucker for menken scoring for ursula to ariel, "Come on you poor unfortunate soul/ Go ahead!/Make your choice!/I'm a very busy woman and I haven't got all day/It won't cost much/Just your voice!"
rows upon rows of librettos constitute the architecture of both my psyche and my personal happy place, and during undergrad (and sometimes even secretly thereafter, while i was still living in manhattan), there were days when i would quietly disappear into the 7th floor of dodge hall, and i'd sit on a rotating stool and read music to myself like it was a fairy tale or a map to somewhere i'd never been. that sounds very, very hokey--im aware--and it's a great irony or paradox or something that the artform with admittedly the most potential for cheesetastic campiness is the thing that inspires in me the most genuine emotions of joy. today, after frolicking through the stacks and snatching grey gardens, candide, she loves me, camelot, and annie (ha!), i took my candy shopping a bit further and wreaked some serious havoc on harvard libraries' "request" button. i anticipate with bated breath the imminent receipt of emails telling me that my "urgent" and "immediate" requests for reefer madness, bat boy, dirty rotten scoundrels, the little mermaid, and jerry springer the opera have been fulfilled and are awaiting my loving arms and the protective plastic sleeves of my audition book! for while mystery-jordy-in-my-dramatic-lit-class might love when sartre has jupiter say to orestes-disguised-as-philebus, "The gods take pleasure in such poor souls. Would you oust them from the favor of the gods? What, moreover, could you give them in exchange? Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah, the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content," this jordy is a sucker for menken scoring for ursula to ariel, "Come on you poor unfortunate soul/ Go ahead!/Make your choice!/I'm a very busy woman and I haven't got all day/It won't cost much/Just your voice!"
June 24, 2009
the goods for yoo-ou!
every now and then, i think "perhaps i should update my facebook profile. i may have changed since i last itemized my interests, and it is of the utmost importance that my online presence reflect the most accurate possible portrait of myself." this usually happens when i am avoiding doing something, and in this case, that something is finishing packing for my move back to the east coast. i am exactly at that supremely annoying stage in packing where everything is folded and strewn in "organized" piles around the living room; some things (namely, winter clothes) are placed in open suitcases, but the piles are twice as tall as the walls holding them; shoes are lined up, standing at attention, but it is plain to the passerby that there is no way they are going to fit anywhere; those god forsaken yellow hunter rainboots that i cannot live without during monsoon season but that i hate with the heat of a thousand suns at all other times because they are impossible to pack and weigh a ton are trying their best to look innocuous in the corner of the room. i'll be wearing the same pair of workout shorts and a zip up hoodie for the next five days because i packed everything else. you know the drill.
anyway, i figured maybe i wasnt truly encapsulating my personality on facebook, and since ive spent quite a bit of time utilizing the "harvard" "grad student" "class of 2011" search filters and sifting through the results, i assume (hope, so i am not alone) that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is probably doing the same, and i wanted to be sure that i seemed, you know, sufficiently charming and idiosyncratic and enigmatic and succinct, and all those things that i work so hard to appear on facebook and then completely negate as soon as i sign into this blog.
but i realized that alan rickman, mariachis, and a video of miss tandi iman dupree falling from the rafters into the splits pretty much sums me up, and i just decided to leave well enough alone. but in looking at my own self-created reflection in this technological mirror, i suddenly noticed something i had forgotten about: COP ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i realized i had to share it with you.
caitlin elizabeth shure introduced me to cop rock during the summer of 2007, and it changed everything. you can read all about it if you enjoy wikipedia's "objective-where-fun-goes-to-die" tone here. (i love wikipedian synopses, because the commitment to formal writing produces such sentences as "Inspired by Dennis Potter's 1986 BBC drama serial The Singing Detective[citation needed], Cop Rock attempted to combine musical theater with the police drama." please tell me what is not to love about everything contained therein?) dancing law officials are ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA, so i was on board with this concept before caitlin had even opened youtube. but what really makes cop rock special is that it's produced with a dearth of irony akin to the writing in a wikipedia entry: this is serious, serious stuff.
allow me to introduce you to the chorus of the opening number from the pilot, entitled "let's be careful out there," which is sung by the sargeant to his police corps:
homicide, arson, robbery, rape!/
everybody gets their share/
crime never sleeps, so stay awake/
and let's be careful out there!
then he spins his podium around and surprise! it is actually a supersweet double synth keyboard! and the best part, i think, are the faces of the policemen listening to him sing: they are completely stoic. there are only three possible ways you could sit through this with a straight face:
1. you are blind, deaf, and dumb
2. they actually shot these scenes separately from the guy singing, or
3. they hired actual civic employees, for whom humorlessness is in the job description, a fact of which i was reminded when i went to get my liscence renewed at the dmv on monday.
i leave you with two videos-- the aforementioned "let's be careful out there," and arguably my favorite, "baby merchant."
anyway, i figured maybe i wasnt truly encapsulating my personality on facebook, and since ive spent quite a bit of time utilizing the "harvard" "grad student" "class of 2011" search filters and sifting through the results, i assume (hope, so i am not alone) that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is probably doing the same, and i wanted to be sure that i seemed, you know, sufficiently charming and idiosyncratic and enigmatic and succinct, and all those things that i work so hard to appear on facebook and then completely negate as soon as i sign into this blog.
but i realized that alan rickman, mariachis, and a video of miss tandi iman dupree falling from the rafters into the splits pretty much sums me up, and i just decided to leave well enough alone. but in looking at my own self-created reflection in this technological mirror, i suddenly noticed something i had forgotten about: COP ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i realized i had to share it with you.
caitlin elizabeth shure introduced me to cop rock during the summer of 2007, and it changed everything. you can read all about it if you enjoy wikipedia's "objective-where-fun-goes-to-die" tone here. (i love wikipedian synopses, because the commitment to formal writing produces such sentences as "Inspired by Dennis Potter's 1986 BBC drama serial The Singing Detective[citation needed], Cop Rock attempted to combine musical theater with the police drama." please tell me what is not to love about everything contained therein?) dancing law officials are ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA, so i was on board with this concept before caitlin had even opened youtube. but what really makes cop rock special is that it's produced with a dearth of irony akin to the writing in a wikipedia entry: this is serious, serious stuff.
allow me to introduce you to the chorus of the opening number from the pilot, entitled "let's be careful out there," which is sung by the sargeant to his police corps:
homicide, arson, robbery, rape!/
everybody gets their share/
crime never sleeps, so stay awake/
and let's be careful out there!
then he spins his podium around and surprise! it is actually a supersweet double synth keyboard! and the best part, i think, are the faces of the policemen listening to him sing: they are completely stoic. there are only three possible ways you could sit through this with a straight face:
1. you are blind, deaf, and dumb
2. they actually shot these scenes separately from the guy singing, or
3. they hired actual civic employees, for whom humorlessness is in the job description, a fact of which i was reminded when i went to get my liscence renewed at the dmv on monday.
i leave you with two videos-- the aforementioned "let's be careful out there," and arguably my favorite, "baby merchant."
June 22, 2009
June 10, 2009
a winkle in time
please excuse the following moment of earnesty, but i really get so encouraged any time someone mentions to me that they like my blog. it's because even though i am unabashedly addicted to the internet and will freely admit it to anyone in a trademark moment of self deprecation disguised as self aggrandizement disguised as self deprecation, i somehow also am in total awe and envy of people who are too cool for the internet, and i go in fits and spurts of wanting to be mysterious, and if anything is the opposite of cultivating mystique, it is blogging. especially blogging about nothing, or worse, blogging about blogging, as i am so frequently wont to do. (it's a terrible paradox that when i have time to write, it's because im doing nothing worth writing about. i guess out of this situation was born that niche genre they call "fiction.") but at least if i am to admit to myself, and by extension, the world, that i am actually not too cool for really anything, i suppose i should try to update with less embarrassing infrequency. (that is supposed to just mean "more frequency," but if you combine the rules of math and grammar and simply subtract the double negs, it reads "more embarrassing frequency," which really is so apt.)
i have been doing a lot of lollygagging around my own brain recently, sort of wandering through and checking out the scenery, if you will. i am very sure that the aesthetic of my neural landscape has a pop art meets americana collage/montage vibe going on; sort of a dada sensibility in an expressionist palette on art deco wallpaper. (it's a very colorful place to be, but not really for the neat freaks or the 5 paragraph essay writer types.) anyway, one of the things i have been considering a lot recently is whether it's possible for my generation/my friends/me to appreciate or process ANYTHING without running it through an ironic filter first. i have been really trying to figure this out recently, using the very scientific example known as "everything with which i come into contact in a day." (have no fear, the sample size is much smaller than it would be for someone who is, say, "employed," or perhaps, has a "life"). the most easily accessible example is songs on the radio. it was, in fact, kelly clarkson who inspired this introspection.
auditorily, i am pretty easy to please. as long as it is played at a volume appropriate to a given situation (driving the convertible with the top down, drinking cheap beer, having an impromptu dance party, working out = LOUD; other times = not), i pretty much can listen to whatever. but i literally LOVE kelly clarkson. this is not new, but it is new that i will unabashedly admit it for all the world to know. it's really "my life would suck without you" that did it: the song makes me smile and dance. no matter where i am. i am such an avid car dancer/hair tosser/steering wheel drummer. before this song came out, i liked kelly, but i had always assumed my enjoyment was ironic. i mean, her live version of beautiful disaster is unequivocally funny when your 24 year old long island born julliard trained male roommate sings an r&b version of it while walking around the kitchen wearing a plaid robe and eating chinese while will and grace plays in the background, no matter how good the actual song is. but i really realized the other day that it is no joke at all: kelly is awesome. she has a sweet voice, her songs are catchy, and they make me want to car dance. literally, there is nothing else: those three things constitute my definition of awesome.
so do i like kelly because she's a little bit campy? this brings another dire issue facing our generation to light: in the past few weeks i have used the term "campy" in the presence of a couple of straight males, and they have looked at me with utter confusion. this has been a really difficult situation for two reasons. the first is that i really thought that i chose my friends more carefully, ie. that i would never really have an extended conversation with someone who did not both fully understand and appreciate the societal necessity of camp. and the second reason is that it's insanely hard to define campiness. dictionary.com defines it thusly:
camp [kamp]
--noun
1. something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered of stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous or sentimental.
which is all well and good, especially the part i bolded, and defines the term with all the succinctness one has come to expect from a dictionary. but when webster is not on hand, "campiness" is one of those ideas you really can only hope to illustrate through example, and so you end up sounding something like this: "cher! feather boas! glitter! gilligan's island! lady gaga! slutty halloween costumes!" and instead of adding a new word to someone's adjective stable, you've just whetted their appetite for las vegas.
in any case, liking something because it's campy implies you like it ironically, or to borrow a phrase from the definition, your enjoyment is a "knowing amusement." but i think that i actually LIKE glitter and feather boas; like, they both bring me great personal joy, and it's society's fault that i feel i have to justify or make light of my enthusiasm. i suppose that makes me a source of camp rather than a consumer of camp, and you know, that is a mantle i am willing to assume. sometimes you just gotta be the light, people.
but there is another example that is troubling me (i literally feel like all of this thinking is going on in the part of my brain that is wallpapered with those optical illusion things that were on the wall of every male elementary school teacher's classroom where you started with it at your nose and then pulled it further away until you could see, like, horses frolicking on a beach in 3D for a hot second). there's a guy that's commented on a couple of my blog posts who writes a blog of his own based out of DC that is this totally misogynistic basically advice column for guys on how to land as many hot girls as possible. it's very well written but so rude, crude, and terrible, and i absolutely love it. i will forget that it exists for like a month at a time and then go back and read all of the posts ive missed, and i just think it's amazing. and i cannot, for the life of me, figure out just how i enjoy it. is it ironic? am i laughing at the author for his candor and ego? or am i actually enjoying getting a peak into a way i know a lot of guys actually do think, whether they make the effort to write provocative and incensing posts about it all? i suppose i feel the same way about him that i do about lindsay lohan: i think they are fascinating characters that i forget are actual people and whom i love to observe from afar but pray to all that is holy i will never actually have to meet.
so i suppose that's interest tempered by some sort of irony. thank god i can rock out to "i do not hook up" without that ambiguity. but i think i have spent enough time on this. im going to go put on a feather boa and throw glitter in the air. and love every minute, without an ounce of wink.
i have been doing a lot of lollygagging around my own brain recently, sort of wandering through and checking out the scenery, if you will. i am very sure that the aesthetic of my neural landscape has a pop art meets americana collage/montage vibe going on; sort of a dada sensibility in an expressionist palette on art deco wallpaper. (it's a very colorful place to be, but not really for the neat freaks or the 5 paragraph essay writer types.) anyway, one of the things i have been considering a lot recently is whether it's possible for my generation/my friends/me to appreciate or process ANYTHING without running it through an ironic filter first. i have been really trying to figure this out recently, using the very scientific example known as "everything with which i come into contact in a day." (have no fear, the sample size is much smaller than it would be for someone who is, say, "employed," or perhaps, has a "life"). the most easily accessible example is songs on the radio. it was, in fact, kelly clarkson who inspired this introspection.
auditorily, i am pretty easy to please. as long as it is played at a volume appropriate to a given situation (driving the convertible with the top down, drinking cheap beer, having an impromptu dance party, working out = LOUD; other times = not), i pretty much can listen to whatever. but i literally LOVE kelly clarkson. this is not new, but it is new that i will unabashedly admit it for all the world to know. it's really "my life would suck without you" that did it: the song makes me smile and dance. no matter where i am. i am such an avid car dancer/hair tosser/steering wheel drummer. before this song came out, i liked kelly, but i had always assumed my enjoyment was ironic. i mean, her live version of beautiful disaster is unequivocally funny when your 24 year old long island born julliard trained male roommate sings an r&b version of it while walking around the kitchen wearing a plaid robe and eating chinese while will and grace plays in the background, no matter how good the actual song is. but i really realized the other day that it is no joke at all: kelly is awesome. she has a sweet voice, her songs are catchy, and they make me want to car dance. literally, there is nothing else: those three things constitute my definition of awesome.
so do i like kelly because she's a little bit campy? this brings another dire issue facing our generation to light: in the past few weeks i have used the term "campy" in the presence of a couple of straight males, and they have looked at me with utter confusion. this has been a really difficult situation for two reasons. the first is that i really thought that i chose my friends more carefully, ie. that i would never really have an extended conversation with someone who did not both fully understand and appreciate the societal necessity of camp. and the second reason is that it's insanely hard to define campiness. dictionary.com defines it thusly:
camp [kamp]
--noun
1. something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered of stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous or sentimental.
which is all well and good, especially the part i bolded, and defines the term with all the succinctness one has come to expect from a dictionary. but when webster is not on hand, "campiness" is one of those ideas you really can only hope to illustrate through example, and so you end up sounding something like this: "cher! feather boas! glitter! gilligan's island! lady gaga! slutty halloween costumes!" and instead of adding a new word to someone's adjective stable, you've just whetted their appetite for las vegas.
in any case, liking something because it's campy implies you like it ironically, or to borrow a phrase from the definition, your enjoyment is a "knowing amusement." but i think that i actually LIKE glitter and feather boas; like, they both bring me great personal joy, and it's society's fault that i feel i have to justify or make light of my enthusiasm. i suppose that makes me a source of camp rather than a consumer of camp, and you know, that is a mantle i am willing to assume. sometimes you just gotta be the light, people.
but there is another example that is troubling me (i literally feel like all of this thinking is going on in the part of my brain that is wallpapered with those optical illusion things that were on the wall of every male elementary school teacher's classroom where you started with it at your nose and then pulled it further away until you could see, like, horses frolicking on a beach in 3D for a hot second). there's a guy that's commented on a couple of my blog posts who writes a blog of his own based out of DC that is this totally misogynistic basically advice column for guys on how to land as many hot girls as possible. it's very well written but so rude, crude, and terrible, and i absolutely love it. i will forget that it exists for like a month at a time and then go back and read all of the posts ive missed, and i just think it's amazing. and i cannot, for the life of me, figure out just how i enjoy it. is it ironic? am i laughing at the author for his candor and ego? or am i actually enjoying getting a peak into a way i know a lot of guys actually do think, whether they make the effort to write provocative and incensing posts about it all? i suppose i feel the same way about him that i do about lindsay lohan: i think they are fascinating characters that i forget are actual people and whom i love to observe from afar but pray to all that is holy i will never actually have to meet.
so i suppose that's interest tempered by some sort of irony. thank god i can rock out to "i do not hook up" without that ambiguity. but i think i have spent enough time on this. im going to go put on a feather boa and throw glitter in the air. and love every minute, without an ounce of wink.
June 08, 2009
bowing bows
i am sort of sitting here not knowing what to do, because i just finished my online traffic school course. now, this has been hanging over my head since i got that [super annoying and unnecessary and totally lame] speeding ticket in march, driving an f150 super crew somewhere just outside of barstow (gives hemet a real run for its money in the armpit-of-california-and-maybe-the-world race) en route from san diego to flagstaff, arizona. the end of the interaction with the cop went something like this:
me, holding ticket: so now does this mean i have a free pass to speed the rest of the way? like, i already got a ticket, so you cant do anything to me?
officer (very serious, taken aback): no. no, it doesnt mean that at all.
me: i was not serious.
officer: well you know, sometimes i even have to give tickets to nice people like you. and i just tell myself, maybe i saved a life today.
me: that's nice, but i can tell you right now that as soon as you drive away, my mother here is going to murder me, so you'll have that on your conscience. bye!
officer: drive safe!
mom: jordan, talking to a cop is not the time to pretend you are at improv rehearsal.
i have been not looking forward to traffic school, and then today when i logged on and it told me it would take EIGHT HOURS to complete, i really began to despair. so, after asking me a lot of identity-verification questions (do you wear glasses? do you have kids? have you been to hawaii? have you ever eaten sushi? have you ever taken a martial arts class? have you ever taken a marital arts class?) (only one of those questions was not actually asked of me.) to which literally every answer except the one about sushi was no-- dont steal my identity now that you know i dont do karate-- i dove head first into the first section. and promptly had an epiphany: something along the lines of "ah, hell naw." so i just skipped to the end of section quiz. four times. and i was done with eight hours worth of traffic school in 26 minutes. and so here i sit. i had mentally committed myself to being in this seat for so long, im not quite sure what to do with the remaining 7 hours, 34 minutes i've just been afforded.
i suppose i could rewatch the dvr-ed tony awards from last night 2.5 times, or just the end of the opening number, from when bret michaels eats it through the hair cast looking like they are experiencing more unbridled joy at their awesome lives than i can ever hope to feel, which was the first of several times i cried over the course of the night, and coincidentally, also the first of several times i was laughed at by my family. also, i just would like to take a moment to say that, far from respecting bret less for lipsynching his way through "good time," i am sort of obsessed with the fact that he decided it sounded awesome to perform on the tonys, and that he hob nobbed with angela lansbury backstage. that image alone makes me like both bret and angela a LOT.
but seriously, in the five minutes that follow bret sacrificing his nose for the sake of a few moments in the radio city footlights, you get stockard channing (i want to be you), DOLLY PARTON, allison janney (i would be you, too), LIZA BEING INSANE (literally, i am listening to it right now, and she sounds like a liza minelli muppet), and then the cast of hair, including the super dreamy will swenson, who apparently is taking hair's "free-love" message so much to heart, he's just left his wife, to whom he's been married literally forever, since they met at BYU, for the older and sultrier audra mcdonald, who also has left her husband! it was like campfest of the world. so campy that i did not even mention that elton john and three little dancing gaybys started the whole thing off!
in all seriousness though, it was a really cool show to watch. seeing tom kitt and brian yorkey collect awards was sort of surreal, since they're columbia and varsity show alums and all around awesome people. and then of course, there's diane paulus, the director of hair, who is beginning her tenure as the artistic director of the american repertory theater in cambridge, mass, where i will be beginning the MFA program in just under a month. she seems like a whole lot of crazy, and she's harvard undergrad columbia mfa, so im hoping our mirror image educational paths will mean we're destined for artistic puzzlepiecedom!
im off to harvard-mandated 3 hours at the gym! ill be reading chekov on the treadmill and hoping huge, campy bows on every dress will stay in fashion FOREVER.
me, holding ticket: so now does this mean i have a free pass to speed the rest of the way? like, i already got a ticket, so you cant do anything to me?
officer (very serious, taken aback): no. no, it doesnt mean that at all.
me: i was not serious.
officer: well you know, sometimes i even have to give tickets to nice people like you. and i just tell myself, maybe i saved a life today.
me: that's nice, but i can tell you right now that as soon as you drive away, my mother here is going to murder me, so you'll have that on your conscience. bye!
officer: drive safe!
mom: jordan, talking to a cop is not the time to pretend you are at improv rehearsal.
i have been not looking forward to traffic school, and then today when i logged on and it told me it would take EIGHT HOURS to complete, i really began to despair. so, after asking me a lot of identity-verification questions (do you wear glasses? do you have kids? have you been to hawaii? have you ever eaten sushi? have you ever taken a martial arts class? have you ever taken a marital arts class?) (only one of those questions was not actually asked of me.) to which literally every answer except the one about sushi was no-- dont steal my identity now that you know i dont do karate-- i dove head first into the first section. and promptly had an epiphany: something along the lines of "ah, hell naw." so i just skipped to the end of section quiz. four times. and i was done with eight hours worth of traffic school in 26 minutes. and so here i sit. i had mentally committed myself to being in this seat for so long, im not quite sure what to do with the remaining 7 hours, 34 minutes i've just been afforded.
i suppose i could rewatch the dvr-ed tony awards from last night 2.5 times, or just the end of the opening number, from when bret michaels eats it through the hair cast looking like they are experiencing more unbridled joy at their awesome lives than i can ever hope to feel, which was the first of several times i cried over the course of the night, and coincidentally, also the first of several times i was laughed at by my family. also, i just would like to take a moment to say that, far from respecting bret less for lipsynching his way through "good time," i am sort of obsessed with the fact that he decided it sounded awesome to perform on the tonys, and that he hob nobbed with angela lansbury backstage. that image alone makes me like both bret and angela a LOT.
but seriously, in the five minutes that follow bret sacrificing his nose for the sake of a few moments in the radio city footlights, you get stockard channing (i want to be you), DOLLY PARTON, allison janney (i would be you, too), LIZA BEING INSANE (literally, i am listening to it right now, and she sounds like a liza minelli muppet), and then the cast of hair, including the super dreamy will swenson, who apparently is taking hair's "free-love" message so much to heart, he's just left his wife, to whom he's been married literally forever, since they met at BYU, for the older and sultrier audra mcdonald, who also has left her husband! it was like campfest of the world. so campy that i did not even mention that elton john and three little dancing gaybys started the whole thing off!
in all seriousness though, it was a really cool show to watch. seeing tom kitt and brian yorkey collect awards was sort of surreal, since they're columbia and varsity show alums and all around awesome people. and then of course, there's diane paulus, the director of hair, who is beginning her tenure as the artistic director of the american repertory theater in cambridge, mass, where i will be beginning the MFA program in just under a month. she seems like a whole lot of crazy, and she's harvard undergrad columbia mfa, so im hoping our mirror image educational paths will mean we're destined for artistic puzzlepiecedom!
im off to harvard-mandated 3 hours at the gym! ill be reading chekov on the treadmill and hoping huge, campy bows on every dress will stay in fashion FOREVER.
April 24, 2009
snobs, blogs, & baconnaise
i spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, especially now that i am a) not employed, b) on twitter (@jlievers!), and c) trying desperately to figure out who my grad school classmates are through grade-A super google sleuthing, also known as being a huge creep. in rare moments i am not on the internet, i am doing yoga, reading all things ever written by ruth reichl, and/or admiring my new gladiator sandals. unfortunately, however, i follow The Ruth on twitter, so it all comes back to glassy-eyed clicking.
ew ew ew! i just went upstairs to turn off the tv, and it was oprah interviewing the inventors of baconnaise, WHICH is apparently and counterintuitively both kosher and vegetarian. OPRAH! colbert already did a segment on baconnaise. i know because i watched it on the treadmill and very nearly vommed.
anyways, i forget that i have a blog, because i have actively used my brain for a total of maybe 10 minutes in the last two months, one of which was while trying to figure out a way to get out of the speeding ticket i got on the way to arizona, and the other nine of which were spent just now unsuccessfully trying to think of times in the last two months that i have used my brain.
but today, when i was idly checking to see if i had any comments on the most "recent" entry (a very relative concept 'round these parts) i found a wonderful exchange about whether or not i have a condescending sense of humor, which i loved, because what?! what a funnyweird thing for people i dont [think i] know to discuss! in case you wanted an opinion from someone near and dear, my mom falls on the side of "yes jordy you are condescending"--today she judged me with her heart when i said thank goodness susan boyle got a makeover so i can listen to her amazing voice without being distracted by all the crazy. which i think is a valid thing to say! (unfortunately for us all, however, pandora and the music genome project have not yet jumped on the s.boyle bandwagon, and so i continue with the old silken-voiced standby, sarah vaughan.)
my old roommate ted wrote a book called the diamonds, which is available at a bookstore teen lit section near you, and i pretty much hit the roof when i flipped to the acknowledgements section and saw my name. theodore is one of the most hilarious people i know, and as i plowed through the whole thing in three hours, i couldn't stop picturing him shuffling around our apartment in his blue and green plaid robe, eating ollie's and singing original acoustic versions of obscure, obscene r&b tracks and/or danity kane's "damaged." in my googling of reviews of his book, i found one reader who called him "anti-female and anti-gay," and i literally burst out laughing. peeps can be so off-base, yo. except for people who call me condescending. i AM a monster snob. like i am super, super choosy about my monsters.
ew ew ew! i just went upstairs to turn off the tv, and it was oprah interviewing the inventors of baconnaise, WHICH is apparently and counterintuitively both kosher and vegetarian. OPRAH! colbert already did a segment on baconnaise. i know because i watched it on the treadmill and very nearly vommed.
anyways, i forget that i have a blog, because i have actively used my brain for a total of maybe 10 minutes in the last two months, one of which was while trying to figure out a way to get out of the speeding ticket i got on the way to arizona, and the other nine of which were spent just now unsuccessfully trying to think of times in the last two months that i have used my brain.
but today, when i was idly checking to see if i had any comments on the most "recent" entry (a very relative concept 'round these parts) i found a wonderful exchange about whether or not i have a condescending sense of humor, which i loved, because what?! what a funnyweird thing for people i dont [think i] know to discuss! in case you wanted an opinion from someone near and dear, my mom falls on the side of "yes jordy you are condescending"--today she judged me with her heart when i said thank goodness susan boyle got a makeover so i can listen to her amazing voice without being distracted by all the crazy. which i think is a valid thing to say! (unfortunately for us all, however, pandora and the music genome project have not yet jumped on the s.boyle bandwagon, and so i continue with the old silken-voiced standby, sarah vaughan.)
my old roommate ted wrote a book called the diamonds, which is available at a bookstore teen lit section near you, and i pretty much hit the roof when i flipped to the acknowledgements section and saw my name. theodore is one of the most hilarious people i know, and as i plowed through the whole thing in three hours, i couldn't stop picturing him shuffling around our apartment in his blue and green plaid robe, eating ollie's and singing original acoustic versions of obscure, obscene r&b tracks and/or danity kane's "damaged." in my googling of reviews of his book, i found one reader who called him "anti-female and anti-gay," and i literally burst out laughing. peeps can be so off-base, yo. except for people who call me condescending. i AM a monster snob. like i am super, super choosy about my monsters.
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