Contrary to popular belief, I am alive. I’ve just been really busy so this is the first chance I’ve gotten to write anything. A lot’s been happening so I’ll try to give as brief a rundown as possible:

 

1. Last Saturday I went to Laura’s and we watched a bunch of stuff. First we watched a VH1 All Access Spotlight on “Time Travel” (inside joke that only Laura will understand-oddly enough, at the same time our local PBS station was playing another special in relation to “Time Travel”). It was actually pretty entertaining especially since I was watching it with Laura. After that I got out the “Bonus DVD” that came with my magical time-traveling CD. I hadn’t watched the DVD before because I ordered that version of the CD by accident (instead of the regular version, which doesn’t have a DVD) and thought that the idea of a “Bonus DVD” on the making of the CD was rather lame. Laura wanted to watch it, though, so I finally relented. Instead of being dumb, it was mostly pretty boring, except for a small bit where they’re arguing about whether berries on bushes are poisonous or not. Once that was over we decided to switch to a different kind of time travel and watch some Inuyasha (using my music video as a segue). Laura was actually willing to watch subtitles because she wanted to see the movies, but apparently her computer did not. It wouldn’t play the first movie at all, and it kind of played the second movie. It would work fine for a while and then it would spaz out and get all choppy (the sound stayed consistent, but that didn’t help much since the movie was in Japanese and neither of us speak Japanese). Oddly enough, the instances where it spazzed out coincided with all the battle scenes (so apparently Laura has a really pacifist computer). Laura liked the movie, but she wants to see it again on my computer, since the file actually works correctly on my computer. After the movie, we watched some episodes in English (mostly because we like Inuyasha’s voice better in English, although there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Japanese voice except when he yells, in which case he always sounds like he’s being strangled). Now I miss Laura and I want to call her but it is too late because she goes to bed really early.

 

2. Speaking of Inuyasha, Cartoon Network has changed their April schedule. It used to be that Inuyasha would move to Saturdays and that two episodes would air at 11:30 pm and midnight starting April 24. Now it’s being moved to Thursday nights at 11:00 (one episode, not two) starting April 29. That means that there is only going to be one episode of Inuyasha per week (compare that with Aqua Teen Hunger Force-a show I do not like-which will be on six days a week in two episode blocks). The Adult Swim people are being kind of nasty about it on the website, too. The moderator who announced the scheduling change ended with “The Japanese only get one Inuyasha per week, and you don’t see them complaining.”  

 

 

3. I got my ticket for the Joshua Bell concert, and chances are that I’ll get to meet him (though I will have to skip a class to do so).

 

4. We had DISA elections last week, and Anusha’s probably pissed because she lost her run for president again (in case you didn’t know, Anusha has two moods: control freak and pissed off; she tends to think people like her more than they really do, and if you’re a girl and you so much as casually mention her on-again-off-again boyfriend’s name, she will immediately decide that you are lusting after him and it is your life mission to steal him away from her, and she will hate you with a passion; one other thing I’ve noticed recently about Anusha is that her once very strong Zimbabwe-British accent is fading extremely fast). This is the third time she’s lost in two years (we had to have two presidential elections last year because our original pick for president got hit with a DUI charge and so she was not allowed to hold office in any extracurricular, so we had to do another election; Anusha ran and lost both times). Our president-elect this time around is Asya (who was also Anusha’s only opponent). Her election surprised me (mostly because she’s usually very quiet), but I’m happy about it, because she seems to be a really nice person.

 

5. I got a 92 on my Physics exam.

 

6. I got a 100 on my 20^th Century Music exam.

 

7. The housing lottery is finally over with, and I never have to go through it again.

 

8. I got an email from an army recruiting officer. He wants me to join the army Special Forces. Um, that’s all good except for a slight gender problem (Women are not allowed in Special Forces). I have half a mind to write him back telling him I’m “interested” (I’m not; even if Special Forces allowed women I still wouldn’t be interested) and see how long I can keep it up before he realizes I’m a girl.

 

9. The Sunset C drunk people were more interesting than usual on Wednesday. In particular, a large group of them were walking down the sidewalk when suddenly a guy and a girl started play-fighting with plastic pirate swords. The weird thing was that they looked like they almost knew what they were doing.

 

10. I have temporarily lost my swimming buddy. Liz accidentally stabbed herself in the arm with a linoleum cutter. It left a very deep gash about 3 inches long (deep enough that she could see the fatty tissue layer). She obviously had to go to the hospital and they ended up putting staples in her arm. Now she can’t go swimming for two weeks.

 

11. The microwave is dead. This is odd because it is a brand new microwave (we finally got a new one after months of complaining about the old one, which you couldn’t read the numbers on the LCD display and the door didn’t shut all the way). Tonight I went to make some popcorn and put in the normal popcorn time, but about a minute and a half into the popping, it started to smell weird and bright yellow smoke (I kid you not; it was bright yellow) started billowing out of the microwave’s vents. I stopped the microwave and got my large fan out of my room to blow the smoke (which now filled almost the entire lounge) out the window. At that point, Lindsay (the RA) walked in and called security, and they told her not to let anyone use the microwave (duh) and to unplug it. Tawsy (the girl on the first floor who bears a strong resemblance to Marisa) opened the microwave and discovered that the entire inside was coated in a greasy brown residue that resembled coffee. We’re not sure what that’s about, but none of us are going to trust the microwave anytime soon. I’m surprised the smoke alarm never went off.
    
    
    
12. The Honors Program is offering tickets to see Starlight Express in Columbus next month.

 

Wow, that was long. I guess I’ll end this blog with a silly quote (or dialog is probably a more appropriate term).

 

(On TV: A “time traveler” is showing the VH1 camera crew around his new apartment)

TIME TRAVELER: “This is my new home. I’m finally living on my own, like a big boy.”

ME: “Ha! I’ve been living on my own longer than he has.”

LAURA: “Yeah, but you’re still supported by your parents.”

ME: “Um, he definitely doesn’t need his parents’ support. We have a slight…economic difference.”

 

 

 

 

COMING SOON TO A STAGE NEAR YOU…

I don't have anything major going on in my life right now, so I'll discuss Broadway musicals today (good a topic as any, I suppose). More specifically, I've been seeing a huge amount of stage musicals-in-planning that are based on books and movies, and some of them seem rather strange for musicals. Here is a list of all that I know of:

The Vampire Lestat

Spamelot (based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

The Color Purple

Dracula

A Little Princess

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Little Women

The Wedding Singer

Legally Blonde

Mary Poppins

It’s a Wonderful Life

Lord of the Rings

Batman

 

Elton John’s doing The Vampire Lestat, and his previous two musicals (The Lion King and Aida) were both really good so this shouldn’t be any different. I believe The Color Purple and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which was already a movie musical, but I didn’t think it would lend itself well to the stage) are either about to premiere or have already premiered. Dracula may or may not develop, and if it does, it’ll probably be a while, because it’s produced by Frank Wildhorn (who’s known for taking forever with his musicals; Jekyll & Hyde took over 10 years). Mary Poppins is already a movie musical, but it’ll be kind of weird without Julie Andrews. All I know about the Lord of the Rings musical is that the songs are going to be co-written by India’s premiere Bollywood lyricist (I can’t remember the name). In my opinion, Lord of the Rings would be extremely difficult to make into a musical, but that’s not my problem. I still think the strangest one on the list is Batman. Marisa’s excited about it (she just wonders how they’re going to get the Batmobile on stage). I can’t really picture a singing Batman. Tim Burton’s directing it, though.

 

Sorry for dropping off the face of the Earth for so long. First, I was busy working on my Computer Music project (the software plug-in eventually screwed up so I wasn’t able to finish it in time), then I had to study for a Physics exam. Spring Break started on Friday, but I’ve spent the last three days at my grandma’s with no internet connection, which brings me to this point.

 

I keep trying to watch the Two Towers extended edition DVD, but I always fall asleep before I get through the whole thing (not because it’s boring, but because I always seem to start watching it really late at night). It’s actually pretty enlightening, but it’s raised a few more questions I did not previously have (and Marisa’s the only person I know who has the answers, since she’s read the books).

 

I’ve previously lamented that there seems to be a cinema purist-led rebellion against Titanic (which I don’t agree with), and everyone complaining that the Academy Awards were boring this year (they weren’t). Now there seems to be a rebellion (most likely spurred once again by cinema purists) against the Special Edition versions of the Star Wars trilogy. In case you didn’t know, Lucasfilm is releasing the Star Wars trilogy on DVD in September, but only the Special Edition, not the original theatrical versions that came out in 1977, 1980, and 1983 respectively, and the masses seem to be furious (check out a recent IMDB poll for further evidence). I can’t help of think of them as a bunch of hypocrites. Everyone seemed to like the Special Edition back in 1997, so what’s the problem? I’m not afraid to say that I like the Special Edition, even better than the original theatrical release.

 

Well this post is long enough, so I’ll be back tomorrow.

For the first time, Xanga appeared in my dream last night. I'll just say that the dream involved the deaths of two famous people (not my doing) and I really wanted to write a Xanga post about it. I'm not sure why my subconscious was feeling morbid last night, either. It's no better than the last dream I had. In that, Chris had started smoking and I kept trying to ask him why, but he kept changing his reasons (and for some reason, we were at Pizza Hut during this discussion). First he made some comment about masculinity and sexual orientation (which sounds like something he might say, but still makes no sense). Then he mumbled something about peer pressure, but once I started to acknowledge his answer, he tried to get me into an intellectual discussion about the rhetoric of smoking. At least that dream made sense and I can see how my subconscious came up with it, unlike last night. The only weird thing was that the cigarettes he was smoking were really flat, like he had stepped on them beforehand. Oh, well. I remember him saying something once about he dreamed he was in a parallel universe and my double was smoking a cigar. I'm not sure why I just remembered that.

Fencing last night was certainly entertaining. Just so you know, we usually end up practicing in the racquetball courts during the winter (since intermural basketball gets first dibs on the gym). For the past several weeks, one of the racquetball courts has been occupied by a bunch of guys actually playing racquetball (unlike us). They're so loud we've started calling them "the Pirates of the Racquetball Court" (according to Cherie, Pirate Day was invented by two guys who were playing racquetball; they sent their idea to Dave Barry, and he's the one who made it famous). What made this week different is that we were fencing sabre instead of foil (usually we fence foil). The thing about sabre fencing is that the attacks and style remind you a whole lot of pirate swordfighting, so when someone (probably me) mentioned that the Pirates of the Racquetball Court had left (so we were able to use that court as well), that put us into a rather silly and showy mood, especially Cherie (which is weird because she says she didn't like Pirates of the Caribbean, which I don't understand since it is exactly the type of movie she would like; Her roommate likes it, though, thanks to me). Milner (who also plays racquetball, so I guess he would be the one with shifting loyalties) started up with "There's buried treasure underneath this court." Cherie declared herself captain of the "ship," but I reminded her that I happen to be captain of the Denison Swashbucklers (believe it or not, that is the official name for the fencing club, and apparently it has been that way since before I came to Denison). She playfully glared at me. We then fought a "pirate duel" with the sabres, while trying to carry on a conversation in pirate talk at the same time (which I discovered I suck at). I ended up beating Cherie 15 to 2, and the duel only ended then because I accidentally whacked Cherie pretty hard in the wrist (Sabre is the type of fencing that you're most likely to be injured in, simply because the attacks involve slashing instead of straight lunging). Then she got stuck in pirate speech and couldn't get herself out of it. What did our instructor have to say about all this? "That's swashbuckling at its highest."

Spring Break starts in two days, but I still have to finish my Computer Music project and I have a Physics exam on Friday. At least the 20th Century Music exam today wasn't really all that bad. The only thing I'm worried about is if I correctly identified the Vienna School. I got a 95 on my Economics exam, but I actually missed only one question (unfortunately it was a multiple choice question worth 5 points). Almost everyone else got scores in the 70s or 80s (or lower). I just don't get it. This is probably the easiest class I've taken at Denison, and the other students (some of them Econ majors) still don't understand it. Apparently there was one score higher than mine (a 97), and I think I know who it is (a guy who actually understands things so well he can't figure out how to explain it to anyone else).

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. Apparently, my dad got her 5 books about Lord of the Rings (books about the movie, not the actual Tolkien novels), and she's decided he's obsessed with buying her Lord of the Rings stuff. I'm inclined to agree, since (taking a suggestion by my dad) I'm getting her the Two Towers extended edition DVD.

Now I must go work on my Computer Music project. I'm hoping to get 99.9999% of it done tonight (and right now I think I'm at 45%), because tomorrow I need to study Physics, plus I have a Denison Democrats meeting, and Liz will probably want to go swimming.

 

What a coincidence.

I was watching Mythbusters last night, and they were discussing a myth about some medieval villagers who built a cannon out of a tree. They were trying to re-create it, and the voice-over narrator mentioned that they would have to simulate medieval gunpowder. The exact second he said "gunpowder," there were several loud explosions outside that sounded a lot like gunshots. SIDENOTE: I don't think they actually were gunshots, otherwise we would have found out about that by now. They were probably fireworks or something, but it was still weird timing.

I told Punya about the naked guys, and she said they had been on the east quad a few days earlier. Liz said it was probably a fraternity thing, but Nik told me that it was the rugby team. I'm still not sure what that was all about, but one of my friends had an away message that said "National Naked Week? What's that? Damn, I was in the shower. Come back streaker boys..." (or something to that effect).

In other news, the puppy's back. I could hear it crying all afternoon. The girl apparently tried to negate that by leaving her TV turned up all day, but it didn't help. Now I just heard them leaving, and already the puppy's starting to holler.

 

About two minutes ago, there were five guys walking down the sidewalk behind and below my side of the dorm (my dorm is basically built into the side of a hill, just so you can picture it). One of the guys was banging on one of the plastic recycling bins we all have in our rooms. Another guy was banging on what looked like a large white plastic container. Of the remaining three guys, two were completely naked.

Does anyone else think this is weird?

Last night was a very good night.

 

In case you haven’t heard, Return of the King not only won Best Picture, it won in every category it was nominated in. That means it’s tied Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most Oscars won (11), and it’s broken the record for number of Oscars won in a clean sweep (the previous record was 9, shared by Gigi and The Last Emperor). I ended up watching the momentous event in Slayter because I had gone over there with Liz to get food. In his acceptance speech, Peter Jackson mentioned “Meet the Feebles,” one of his early films. Liz started laughing and told me “It’s the R-rated Muppets on acid.” Once we got back, she found a site that had video clips of it, and all I can say is that it’s gotta be one of the most demented things I’ve ever seen. I’m sure glad Peter Jackson got THAT out of his system (then again, the guy who directed Pirates of the Caribbean also directed The Mexican, which is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen). I told Liz that it looked a little too weird for my taste and I had no desire to see the whole movie. She said she didn’t blame me.

 

Whacked-out Muppets aside, it was a great ceremony. I don’t get how everyone’s complaining that it was boring, because it wasn’t. It would’ve been boring if it involved a bunch of movies I never saw and didn’t care about (such as the year when American Beauty won). As it was, I was happy every time Return of the King won something, and Billy Crystal, although not my favorite host, was certainly more entertaining than Steve Martin was last year. At least he was funny (something that Steve Martin often was not). His jokes about there being no one left to thank in New Zealand were funny. His opening when he inserted himself into movies was not funny (as I expected, I still find to be creepy), except for the shot right at the beginning where he’s in the movie theater and he’s setting up a video camera next to him. Once he got pulled into the movie, I stopped watching and focused on talking to my parents on the phone. Did I hear right that Michael Moore and Geoffrey Rush made cameos in that piece, though? They still had that stupid “Sounds of Oscar” thing, but I didn’t mind as much this year because they brought back the acting clips.

 

By the way, I won the Oscar Picks this year (even though we just choose our favorites instead of predicting, we always give ourselves points when our favorites win), 12 to 9. Both of us got Best Picture, Director, Animated Feature, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Film Editing, Original Score, and Original Song. In addition, I got Supporting Actor, Art Direction, Cinematography, and Sound Mixing, and Marisa got Visual Effects. I’m starting to sense a pattern: Whenever my pick is the front-runner, it wins big (granted, this is only the second time my pick was the front-runner). I kind of wish Pirates of the Caribbean had gotten something. However, the only two categories in which it wasn’t competing with Return of the King was Best Actor and Best Sound Editing (which used to be called Sound Effects Editing, just like Sound Mixing used to be just Sound; if anything I think renaming them makes distinguishing the two even more confusing). I knew that Johnny Depp probably wouldn’t get Best Actor (even though he deserved it; Liz and I were both cheering him on while the nominees were being read), but I thought it had a good chance for Sound Editing. Instead they gave it to Master and Commander (which I arbitrarily picked for Cinematography and it ended up winning; Weird). Then again, I didn’t expect Pirates of the Caribbean to even be nominated for anything, since it’s not really the kind of movie the Academy usually pays attention to (as much as they should).

 

Oddly enough, I even had comments on some of the commercials. I thought most of the Diet Pepsi commercials were pretty dumb. My parents told me that one of the networks at home has been showing the Pepsi commercial with the bears, and right when they get to the store, it switches to a Tropicana commercial, and this apparently happens every time. The M&Ms commercial with Judy Garland is also pretty dumb. The anti-drug PSA with the girl drowning while the other girl watches is kind of creepy. On the flipside, the AFLAC duck is back (yay), and the Mastercard commercials with the lost dog are just too cute.

 

There were some weird moments, obviously. Like the orchestra playing “Hail to the Chief” as Tom Hanks was walking out (well, they played “Louie Louie” for Angelina Jolie). And Liv Tyler putting on her glasses EACH AND EVERY TIME she went to the podium (Why didn’t she just leave them on?). My dad joked that she was taught to speak by the same person who taught Jackie Kennedy. I also noticed that every time she was at the podium, after putting her glasses on, she always clasped her hands and slowly brought them down “gracefully” in the exact same way each time. The fashion was pretty good this year, with the exception of Diane Keaton and Uma Thurman (and Liv Tyler’s hair, although her dress was nice). I spent the first half on the phone with my parents, and my mom kept saying weird stuff like, “Ooooh, there’s a string of Hobbits sitting there” (of course, she was referring to the four actors who played the Hobbits in the movie, who were all sitting together in the audience, but it didn’t make it any less weird). The Blake Edwards presentation was kind of funny (just so you know, he came zipping out on stage in an electric wheelchair and deliberately crashed through a wall; All the while Jim Carrey was onstage doing a mediocre job of overacting). As usual, they played familiar and/or pretty music during all the film tributes and compilations, and I once again cannot identify them and I would like to. Does anyone know of a website that has this information?

 

Anyways, I’ve gone on long enough, so I’ll just say that it was an extremely good Oscars and I don’t have a damn clue what I’m gonna do next year.