through the moonroof

Did you know ...

2008-04-18T16:53:00.001-06:00

... T9, that word spelling thing on cellphones, does not recognize the word 'bagel'?

13

2008-02-13T11:21:00.003-07:00

jenny chow opens tonite. we are ready. we could have opened a couple days ago, i think, but we are so ready for an audience.

i lost my ipod last tuesday. i think i know where i lost it but it is gone now. i have my number at all the lost and founds, and put up a sign, but i don't know what else to do. sigh.

the poetry readers have our meeting today to decide which poems move on to the final round. fun!

:D

2008-02-06T14:52:00.001-07:00

M is back.

:D

the nerd

2008-02-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

so i'm going to be in the one act i got called back for. it's called the nerd, that entire cast is boss, it's going to be awesome.

now, i can't make the first rehearsal because of jenny chow, but we expected that, didn't we?

internet rain

2008-02-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

wonder of wonders. i'm in my room and on the internet at the same time, something which hasn't happened since early december. i picked up a signal randomly last night, and it came back again tonite. it's not quite 1998 slow, but it's a little slow, and spotty obviously, but i'm grateful. i won't count on it, i will be like a farmer hoping for the occasional rain. internet rain.

and you won't believe the first thing i did. i downloaded peggle for my ipod. isn't the future amazing? it wasn't bad enough that it was sucking up time at home, but now i can take it wherever i want. i turned out useful tonite at rehearsal in the long gaps between my scenes, until i completely ran out the battery. i also downloaded a couple other games too, but in the shadow of peggle, not even worth mentioning.

so, other than that, the third week of school was pretty much a blur of class, work, and rehearsal. catching up on things from being out of commission last weekend. i met with VP about doing a course by contract for her advanced poetry class. she gave me some ideas and i'm really excited now.

what else? one act auditions, for which i received a record low of one callback. so i really hope i get any one of the three parts i read for. if the director wants me, she'll get me automatically since no one else called me back. we'll see. i really like the script and i think it would be great to be in another production for the end of the semester. what can i say? i love it, which is a good feeling.

so, yeah. staying in for a quiet late friday night. read some poetry. M will be home soon. i'm very happy right now.

i'm lost

2008-01-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

i didn't want this to happen.

i really, really didn't want this to happen. i've rationalized my way out of it twice already, but there's no hope. i'm gone.

i'm hooked on lost.

i didn't get it at first. i saw the first four episodes and the dialogue was so atrocious that i got turned off right away. when LHJE invited me over to his place a couple days ago to watch some episodes from the second season, i thought, 'this will be fine. i'll watch some episodes, they'll explain stuff that i don't understand, it'll be fine. that will be the end of it.' and that's the way it was. each episode is fairly well self-contained, and i was enjoying it (the writing got better). but then two days ago he invited me again, and i ended up going home with the complete first season. i'm lost. i've watched the first three discs already.

i figured out the formula pretty quick, for the episodes in the first season anyway: one third individual character backstory, one third learning to survive on the island, and one third discovering mysteries of the island, or as i like to call it, 'more weird shit!'. but each of the characters is so well drawn and complex that they are fascinating to watch.

the mystery is neat, i guess, but i'm pretty sure that the 'final explination' will not be as satisfying as wondering what on earth is going on. i like the metaphor of the button. i guess that's all i'll really say for now. i'm interested to know what happens in the intermediate episodes.

after a week

2008-01-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

i've been gripped by a certain compulsion. something about the way the week went has left me in a creative rapture. i wrote eight pages today and my brain still needs to let out more. it's a certain numb feeling that comes from all channels bursting at once that can only be faught by writing. if this is anything like what has happened before, i will be dry for the next week. but this is fine. you have to ride it when you're on it.

classes start tomorrow

2008-01-13T13:27:00.001-07:00

rehearsal for jenny chow started a couple nights ago, and i'm excited for how things are shaping up. we're off to a great start, i think. we better be, since we open a month from today.

the movement class is over and i can believe how much i've learned. i did things i never thought i could do ... i did a somersault over three people. someone stood on my shoulders. it was a great confidence experience, in addition to being a great fitness and acting resource.

life in the new apartment is a close call between frustrating and amusing. i'll leave it at that.

i started working out a new story idea a couple nights ago and i can't stop thinking about it. it's more of a thought experiment than a story, really, and i'm going bonkers. that's all i'll say for now.

hyena dream

2008-01-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

i had a crazy dream a couple nights ago.

it was like i was watching a movie, but i was in the movie, and i was will farrell. i went to south africa to study nursery care, working with infants. i was the only male in the class, except for the teacher, who gave me a lot of crap. later, at night, i fought a hyena with steel claws on my hands and feet. then i was underground waiting for the subway/bus. there was a bum, and i gave him a lot of change. then we both got on the subway/bus. somehow i learned that all the bums in the city were working together to kill me. there was a bomb on the bus and it was going to blow up, full of people. so i got off the bus, and tried to get everyone else to get off, but no one would. sparks were coming off the top of the bus when i got off.

we acted it out in movement class.

jam / moscow

2008-01-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

movement class still rolling, learning lots of new ... moves. no, seriously, its a great class. i feel really fortunate to be able to take it.

jam with LHJE and CB last night. after so much time it happened again! awesome! it was rocking and chill and i lost track of time so i missed watching american gladiators with the guys, but i saw the two hour special the day before, so i get the drift.

checked out some movies for help with my russian dialect for jenny chow. there's one with robin williams called moscow on the hudson. it was great to get the sound of the dialect. everything i read about the movie said it was a comedy, but i did not laugh. not a funny movie. but that's not what i watched it for.

first day of movement class

2008-01-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

i found new muscles i didn't know i had. lots of stretching and muscly sorts of things. monologues tomorrow.

still unpacking, will have internet in house soon. :D

what happened in the rest of 2007

2008-01-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

woo! happy new year! i'm back in greeley again, after a crazy break. i spent two and a half weeks in buenos aires, argentina, visiting M. lots of food, lots of interesting people from all over the world.

the end of last semester was so nuts that i didn't get a lot of time to blog, or do other things like that. i didn't end up finishing nanowrimo. i got to about 25k when i found out that i would be leaving the country and had to bump up my finals a week, and when it came down to it finishing nano again wasn't really that important to me. the novelty of the thing has sort of worn off, no pun intended.

i signed up for a winter interim movement intensive, which i thought started today, but apparently everyone was misinformed and it actually starts tomorrow. so i'm at the library, with a small packed lunch and some books, with nothing to do all day. awesome! everything on campus has been closed the last two days because of new years, and with the internet not hooked up at the new place yet, i have not been able to find an internet connection. but no one's been desperately trying to contact me through email, it seems, so everything is fine.

i've seen all three indiana jones movies in the last three days. take that, pop culture backlog!

i have a new year's resolution. i am going to write one hundred poems in 2008. this poetry thing is working out right now, so i figure i'll just keep riding it. i got a good batch in buenos aires so i have a head start. that's a poem every three or four days, which is a fairly leisurely pace, and with my advanced poetry class next semester, that should carry me through may.

that's me right now.

update

2007-12-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

i've been in buenos aires, argentina, for about a week now. i'll give you the details later.

auditions and callbacks

2007-11-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

auditions for the spring mainstages were this week. i wish i could have given you a daily play-by-play to have the suspense build up, but alas november novelling and end-of-semester looming absorb so much time. anyway, i got called back for four different roles, two for amadeus and two for the intelligent design of jenny chow. both were at the same time, so there was a lot of running up and down the stairs.

i got called back for two smaller character roles in jenny chow, the mormon missionary friend terrence, and the robot scientist dr. yakunin. reading the play, i had thought that the doctor was japanese, and was a little more than confused to my name on his list. however, when the director said he was russian, everything clicked, and i was thrilled, since russian is one of the only accents that i can pull off almost perfectly. so, i had a lot of fun with both of those, and after i read for dr. yakunin i knew if amadeus didn't work out that i had the part in the bag.

getting called back for the role of mozart in amadeus is an achievement in itself (for those of you who don't know the play, it's about the life of mozart), and it was an honor to be on the list. the character is so complex, so multi-faceted, that to just prepare a couple scenes was great to do. there was some amazing work that happened last night, and it was great to watch and be a part of. awesome stuff.

so afterwards, around 11:30 or so, JW and i and some other friends all went to qdoba for some food, and then headed back to see if the list was up. it wasn't, so we milled around for a while in a crowd of anxious theatre majors waiting for the verdict. amadeus was the first to go up (actually, tomato plant girl was the first to go up, but with a cast of three women i didn't really think i'd get into that one. my drag act isn't that good.). i wasn't on it, but my good friend KL got the part of mozart, and i really thought he deserved it. JW, who also got calledback for mozart and a handful of other amadeus roles, was also not on the list, and he got a little panicked. but, when the jenny chow list went up ... we were both on it! i got the part of dr. yakunin, as i thought, and he got the part of the stoner best friend todd. it was so exciting to know that we were going to be in a show together! our first mainstage! wheeeeeee!

so that's how it all played out. rehearsals start a week before classes begin, since the show goes up so early. i'm so excited!

that's democracy!

2007-11-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

weld county voting was yesterday, a fact i remembered only after seeing the front page of the tribune this morning. i fully intended to vote, but it completely slipped my mind, and after running through my schedule in my mind, there would have been no time when i could have voted anyway. every issue that i cared about (mayoral election, term limit changes, and public transportation tax) went the opposite way that i wanted it to (new mayor won, term limits increased, and 2b was turned down). oh well.

nano day one

2007-11-01T22:48:00.000-06:00

so i have officially flung myself once again into the clutches of nanowrimo, and i am beginning to question my sanity. but i am getting noticed in the nano community. one of my postings to the nano viddler group was chosen as the featured video a little while ago, and i also made an appearance on the first episode of this year's wrimoradio, although the way the clip is set up it makes it sound like i am from london. oh well.

but i've got a pretty good start. i got home from a disappointing halloween party at half past midnight, grabbed an energy drink, and plunked away until four in the morning. the whole thing made my body feel very strange. then i got in a few more words when i got up the next morning before class. all in all, i ended the day with 4144 words. not bad at all.

i'm using a new program called liquid story binder xe. i got it from the giveaway of the day blog, so it was free. i don't really recommend it, it's got a bit of a learning curve and about twelve million features you will never use. but i can turn on a little word count progress bar, which is perfect for nano. and while the auto-complete-word feature on open office is handy when i'm writing papers for class, it drives me bonkers when trying to write a novel.

i need sleep.

100 days

2007-10-29T19:12:00.001-06:00

is a very
long
time

new twists

2007-10-24T12:00:00.000-06:00

i had heard one of the other writers for touche theatriks, my good friend ZJT, and been talked to in terms of being edited for content as well. his piece depicts the murder of a prostitute and the subsequent raping of her dead body, which i understand may be offensive to some. however, as of this morning when i talked to him, he has not been asked to change his piece. this organization would rather see an act of necrophilia on stage than god portrayed as a homosexual.

as i said, ZJT is a good friend of mine, and regardless of his motives behind writing a piece of that nature, i feel he should have freedom to write whatever he wants. but, the fact that his piece has been left untouched and my piece as been excluded altogether tells me what this is really about. have i mentioned one of the girls in charge is mormon? this may be quite an important clue, my dear watson.

i have not yet decided what plan of action to take. i'm afraid anything more drastic than silence will be perceived as a whiny writer not getting what he wants. i have enough people on my side within the project that if i convinced them, i could probably shut down the whole thing. but that's not what i'm about, and i don't think it would prove my point very well. it's a student organization, and they can choose what their mission is. but i don't expect them to thrive on the path they're going down.

but, i am still an admin on the facebook group, which means can message all 101 members simultaneously at my discretion.

banned!

2007-10-23T16:25:00.000-06:00

i got the call today and it's official. the heads of touche theatriks have decided to not perform my new short play, god's existential funk. i have yet to get the official reason, but it probably has to do with god being homosexual. something like that.

of course, as soon as i listened to the voice-mail, i was ecstatic. it's absolutely thrilling, and vindicating. i've already got a handful of people behind me if i want to produce it, and excellent publicity: "come see the show deemed too controversial for thouche theatriks".

i was just talking to the head of the honors program several weeks ago, who mis-read my nanowrimo 'i write books' button to say 'i write banned books' (it was banned book month). i said, "i hope i write things important enough to be banned."

controversial

2007-10-19T19:57:00.000-06:00

i may or may not have mentioned this, but a student theatre group on campus called touché theatriks asked me again this year to write a short play for them as part of their project 'seven stage phrase'. you get a phrase to include in your piece, a set of actors, and a week to write, and then they put all the pieces up together for a night of theatre. it's a pretty neat concept. i had a few problems last year with them in terms of script length, but overall i support the project.

but apparently, my piece this year has been deemed too 'controversial'. when you give me a phrase like 'find the divinity', you better expect something about religion, and it just so happens that religion is controversial, especially what i have to say about it. when i got the call this morning from the ones in charge of the project, i knew something like this was going to come up.

i have several complaints. first of all, this is a student group, and if we can't break ground at the college level we're never going to. second of all, so what if my play offends people? is the group going to be shut down? no. and if it is, then we re-form and go underground. we don't need a venue, you just need nice weather. if you're that passionate about theatre, you'll find a way. third -- was i mistaken, or was the purpose of this group to give students the opportunity to express themselves? oh, that's right, we can express ourselves but only in certain ways. gotcha. fourth, controversy is the best form of publicity. finally, theatre has so much potential to be a platform for change, and if you're just going to put up half-ass pansy shit, then you're handicapping yourself. theatre that confirms what we already believe is masturbatory.

so i told them the script stands as it is, and it's their call whether they want to put it up or not. i don't even think the play is that racy, and everyone i've showed it to so far agrees with me. but i'm setting a precedent for myself: i will not let my work be watered down. do it all, or don't do it at all. if you won't do it, i'll find someone else who will.

in all honesty, i'm actually thrilled that they would even consider censoring my play. that means just the words on their own, sans performance, are powerful. it is a great honor.

rhinoceropolis

2007-10-18T21:56:00.000-06:00

tuesday night LHJE took SP and i down to denver to a 'concert' at the rhinoceropolis in denver. i use the word concert loosely because it was not your typical concert, and the place is not your typical venue either. it's a warehouse way outside of downtown, the front half is basically a concrete room with some art on the walls but no seats (we sat on the floor), and the back half is living arrangements, full of all sorts of cool stuff -- a canoe hanging from the ceiling, animal ribcages, spare keyboards tossed about, paintings and other strange pictures tacked to the walls, ladders going up to loft beds and couches. amazing. there was so much creative energy coursing through the place.

we hung out for over an hour until the first person was ready to play. and what performances! a woman with a microphone and an amalgam of noise-makers who recorded and played back loops; a guy with a drum machine, a korg keyboard, and a real drum who danced spasmodically with the rest of us; a girl wearing christmas lights while playing the guitar; and other combinations of solo singers with guitars, drums, and melodicas. every performance, every performance was moving, inspiring, and just plain awesome. these people are on tour, traveling together or separate, going to tiny venues like this, playing honestly and raw with no sense of pretension, showmanship, or expectations: these people just love to make music. it blew my mind. and for only five dollars.

the next morning when i woke up (rather late), i looked around, everything seemed a shade duller, a little too organized, a little too sterile. i had come from a fantasy land where only music mattered, and anything that didn't help you make wonderful sounds was simply, unremarkedly, absent. this was the real world -- comfortable, yes; predictable, yes; but a tad too much so. i stumbled through classes and lunch and work wondering 'why am i not creating something right now, this very second?' i didn't know, i still don't know, but i'm okay with that for now.

for now.

it's good to be queen

2007-10-14T13:10:00.000-06:00

so a couple of weeks ago BR and JH asked me to be in the drag show that GLBT was putting on. it sounded like fun, so i found some clothes at a thrift store and put together a little act where i read really terrible emo girl poetry. i didn't really tell anyone about it because i didn't know how good the whole show was going to be.

it was actually a lot of fun. the other acts were fun to watch, and the cast of rocky horror came down and did a couple numbers (i'm so excited to tech for them in november), and there was a pretty good crowd there. plus, there was a $250 dollar prize for first place ... and i won! i got a tiara and everything. i was actually really surprised. since most of the other people did musical/dance numbers, i figured that was what they were looking for. i wanted to do something different, and everyone thought it was hilarious.

the whole experience was surprisingly rewarding. i put some work into it, and it paid off. hearing them call my name (er, my stage name) at the end of the show was so thrilling, so vindicating, i really did feel like i was the prom queen. in high school, i had always wanted to be voted into the male spring talent show, but never was. my senior year, in fact, i was the only boy on senior senate that didn't get voted in, and only now do i realize how jealous and hurt i was. but it's all gone. when you're in the performing arts, winning a talent show is ... good times.

and now i can pay rent this month. hopefully i can get this nail polish off before our first chaos show tonite.

ooo

2007-10-13T15:15:00.000-06:00

lots to do, getting things done.

trying to figure out what i want next semester to look like, and how to get that.

more poetry, touche piece is coming along, despite disappointing requirements.

columbus day

2007-10-08T12:35:00.000-06:00

to combat the crippling condition of 'i don't have enough money', over the weekend i listed all my old, non-essential (read: non-theatre) textbooks on amazon in hopes of making a few bucks. i've already sold two, and they would be on their merry way, but ...

it's columbus day.

and the post office is closed.

who knew.

i certainly didn't, otherwise i wouldn't have taken forty minutes out of my day to go down there. it takes so long because the buses only run every half hour, so after riding down there, it's actually faster to walk back then to wait for the next bus.

the point is, columbus day is a dumb holiday. i was already of this persuasion before it inconvenienced me, since i tend to not to support the celebration of people who 'discovered' continents where civilization had already been flourishing for ten thousand years. i'd be down protesting the parade in denver, but it would take too long to walk back.

in other news, the nanowrimo forums are shut down for the first time in the event's history, which is both good and bad. good, because that means a lot of people must be signing up to slow down the site that much. bad, because now i have one less way to fritter away my spare time. well, actually, i guess those are both good things.

my pants don't fit

2007-10-07T22:18:00.001-06:00

did i lose weight?