Okay, the first round of pictures will be coming either tonight or Thursday (probably not tomorrow because we’re going to Denison to return equipment). In the meantime, Marisa posted a booklist and it occurred to me that I hadn’t posted one in a long time (I checked, and the last time was last October). Since then, I have finished six books: 3001, Crystal Line, Wielding a Red Sword, Night Mare, The Black Gryphon, and Muse of Art. 3001 is the final sequel to Arthur C. Clarke’s famous 2001. It’s pretty good, but not nearly as engaging as the first sequel, 2010, which I consider to be the best of the four books. Crystal Line was a re-read, and is the last book in Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer trilogy. Wielding a Red Sword is the fourth book in Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, which I’ve gone into detail about before and which I consider to be his best series ever (I strongly recommend you read it, starting with the first book, which is called On a Pale Horse). I’ve already started the fifth book in the series (there are seven in all), Being a Green Mother. Night Mare is the sixth book in Piers Anthony’s most famous series, the Xanth novels. Warner Brothers recently bought the film rights to this series. Xanth is very lighthearted and comedic in a “riddles and play on words” way, and not irreverent like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams (not that that kind of humor is bad, although it seems Terry Pratchett is just turning out to be a bit too British for me; I’m still trying, though). I have started the seventh Xanth book, Dragon on a Pedestal (and there are over 20 Xanth books and he is still writing them, so I’ve got some catching up to do). The Black Gryphon is the first book in Mercedes Lackey’s Mage Wars series, and is kind of odd in the sense that it’ll have blocks that are pure page-turner and exciting, and then blocks that, well, aren’t, and take forever to plow through. I’ve bought the second book, The White Gryphon, but I haven’t started reading it yet. Muse of Art is the final book in Piers Anthony’s Geodyssey series, which is another excellent series, at least at the beginning. It’s basically a novelization of human history, from evolution to the near future. It uses the same characters throughout the entire book, but each chapter takes place in a different time period. Each book is set up that way, using different sets of characters for each book (although characters from previous books may make cameo appearances). I highly recommend the first three books in the series, Isle of Woman, Shame of Man, and Hope of Earth (Marisa will attest to the first one as well). I don’t recommend Muse of Art quite so much because it seems that Piers Anthony lost his touch with the series at that point, and it isn’t quite as engaging as the other three (Hey, I finished the first three in a single month and it took almost two years to finish Muse of Art).

Here are the books I’m currently reading:

• Lady of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
  
• Lasombra (Richard E. Dansky)
  
• Juxtaposition (Piers Anthony; this is a re-read)
  
• Dragonflight (Anne McCaffrey)
  
• Being a Green Mother (Piers Anthony)
  
• Dragon on a Pedestal (Piers Anthony)
  
• Spindle’s End (Robin McKinley)
  
• Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
  
• Guilty Pleasures (Laurell K. Hamilton)
  
• The Color of Magic (Terry Pratchett)
  
• The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan)
  
• The Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin McKinley)

In other news, I’ve found out some more musicals-in-planning that are based on movies, and some are even more bizarre than the first batch I discovered:

Tarzan (the Disney version)

Catch Me If You Can

Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Secondhand Lions

Spiderman

Fight Club

Catch Me If You Can might be fun, but I’m not sure about the others (well, I don’t know enough about Secondhand Lions to judge that, however). The only two on the list that I’ve seen are Catch Me If You Can and Tarzan, by the way. However, Spiderman is the second superhero musical in planning that I’ve heard of (the first was Batman), and how the hell do you make a musical out of Fight Club? I keep imagining Brad Pitt singing his “The first rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight Club” line, and it doesn’t sound right. However, I’ve saved the most bizarre for last, and yes, I’m completely serious about this, (it’ll be opening in Los Angeles in the near future): The Ten Commandments musical, starring Val Kilmer…

Okay, another deal with the Florida pictures is that my digital camera kept acting weird a lot of the time we were there, so there are a bunch of pictures I have to get from Laura, and I haven't done that yet, so I'd like to ask you all a question: Would you prefer I just start showing my pictures and then post a few of Laura's pictures later, or would you rather I wait until I get the pictures from Laura and hence be able to post them in a more chronological fashion?

Finally, I have a question for you photo people: How do I reduce the file size of a digital picture without changing the image size? In other words, how do I knock the quality down a little bit? As of right now, my digital pictures are way too big to store on Xanga. Thanks!

Pictures are coming, I promise, but for now, I found this on andromediva’s site, and I thought it looked like fun, so here goes:

Step 1: Open your iTunes, MP3 player, Winamp...etc.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first 30 songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing.

1. “The Prayer” (Charlotte Church & Josh Groban)
   
2. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana)
   
3. “Born on the Fourth of July” (John Williams)
   
4. “Un Amore Per Sempre” (Josh Groban)
   
5. “The Mecha World” (John Williams-AI Soundtrack)
   
6. “O Fortuna” (Orff-Carmina Burana)
   
7. “Dear My Friend” (Every Little Thing)
   
8. “Somethin’ Better Comes Along” (Kermit the Frog & Rowlf)
   
9. “M”-HAL’s Progress Mix (Ayumi Hamasaki)
   
10. “Pehla Nasha” Remix (Billy Sagoo)
    
11. “Liturgie de Cristal” (Olivier Messiaen)
    
12. “Dirait-On” (Morten Lauridsen)
    
13. “Poeme Electronique” (Edgar Varese)
    
14. “Unbreak My Heart” (Toni Braxton)
    
15. “Summer of ‘69” (Bryan Adams)
    
16. “One Year of Love” (Queen)
    
17. “Heaven” (DJ Sammy)
    
18. “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us” (Starship)
    
19. “Suite Madame Blue” (Styx)
    
20. “Inolvidable” (Laura Pausini)
    
21. “Don’t Let It End” (Styx)
    
22. “Audience” (Ayumi Hamasaki)
    
23. “Variation For Orchestra-Variation IV” (Schoenberg)
    
24. “Renegade” (Styx)
    
25. “El Tango de Roxanne” (Jose Feliciano & Ewan McGregor)
    
26. “Surrender” (Evanescence)
    
27. “Fanfare for the Common Man” (Aaron Copland)
    
28. “Heaven” (Bryan Adams)
    
29. “Sometimes When We Touch” (Dan Hill)
    
30. “Anytime” (Bryan McKnight)

This has led me to discover that I must have thousands of mp3s, and they’re certainly an eclectic mix. Then again, a whopping five of them were mp3s that I had to listen to for my 20^th Century Music class (Numbers 11, 12, 13, 23, and 27 if you’re interested), and both versions of “Heaven” came up.

EDIT: It seems I hit my second Xangaversary a few days ago...

Anyways, that’s all for now. I promise, I’ll post pictures soon.

I'm back!!!

My internet is being really slow right now, so I'm not going to post much. I've got a bunch of pictures, which I'll being posting soon (maybe later today, if I have time). Anyways, Florida was great and the vacation went by way too fast.

Finally, go wish Marisa a happy 21st birthday.

Talk to you guys later.

Well, I'm off to Florida for some fun, R & R, and adventure. I'll be back on Friday, but I probably won't post until the weekend. See you then!

Hey, just checking in. I'm not sure when I'll be posting again since tomorrow we're picking up a boom mike I'm renting, plus my mom keeps wanting me to cut up carpet in the living room, Thursday we're going to Denison with Audren, Shannon, and Andy (which means I'll have to get up about 5 am since we should leave around 7 am and it's a three hour drive), and Friday I'm filming at Collingwood with Shannon, Tim, and Andy. My plane on Sunday leaves at 6:40 am, meaning I have to get to the airport at around 5:15 am, which means I have to leave the house at about 4:30 am, which means I have to get up at about 2:30 am (actually I'll probably just get up around 2 so I don't have to mess with setting the VCR timer to tape Inuyasha). Did I mention I'm not a morning person? Actually, it's not uncommon for me to go to bed at 2 am. Any advice for dealing with early-morning flights such as these? (Yeah, I suck. I've never flown before).

I have an additional question for you sports fans out there: Am I in danger of getting beat up if I wear Detroit Tigers shirts while in Florida?

I woke up this morning to find my mom in my room, messing with my TV and wondering why she couldn't get any channels (Reason: My TV has no antenna). She said John Kerry had picked his running mate and I was right that it was Edwards. It's a decent pick, I guess, and I'm seeing generally positive responses around the internet. The New York Post probably isn't too satisfied though (For those who don't know, the Post's original cover story this morning was an "Exclusive" story that Kerry was picking Gephardt. Oops). I didn't see any more coverage of it after about 2:00, though, because all our local stations decided it was far more important to carry live coverage of a gas leak on the west side. They didn't have any other stories on the local 5:00, 5:30, and 6:00 broadcasts, and then they pre-empted the national news in order to continue their coverage. Now, a gas leak is a serious problem, but isn't that overdoing it a little bit? They did end their coverage in time for Jeopardy, however.

Musical Thought of the Day: I may have no interest whatsoever in seeing Troy (and from what I hear, it's pretty lame anyways), but I will say it's got a pretty awesome soundtrack.

I've been reading a lot of books lately, and I've finished quite a few. I'll try to post an updated book list next time.

Bye for now.

Sorry for the delay (again). Just so you know, I probably won’t be posting much next week because I’ll be EXTREMELY busy, and the week after that I’ll be in Florida, so don’t abandon me just because I’ll be more sporadic than usual, okay?

Sarcasm101: Thanks for visiting my site. I tried to visit and comment on yours, but the page won’t load correctly. All I get is a background image, music, and a bunch of jumbled/condensed text that I can’t read, so don’t think I don’t care, and please, feel free to come back anytime you like.

Marlon Brando died. It’s sad, even though the only Brando movie I’ve seen is A Streetcar Named Desire (and part of Julius Caesar). I found out during a rehearsal I was holding for my movie. Shannon, Tim, and Andy (three of my actors) didn’t recognize the name. I said, “The Godfather,” and Shannon then realized who it was. Tim got him mixed up with Al Pacino, and my mom needed to give a few more examples before Andy recognized the name. An inadvertently funny thing happened later. I was watching (of all things) the BBC World News, and they were covering it (obviously). They showed a clip from The Godfather, and it had to have been the worst film print ever. The picture was really dark and grainy. The funny thing happened at the end, when the anchor was doing a recap of the day’s headlines. She started with the story about the Iraqi deputy foreign minister asking for Arab troops in Iraq. However, as soon as she said “Iraqi deputy foreign minister,” they showed the video of that Godfather clip again. All I said was, “That is NOT the Iraqi deputy foreign minister.” I know it sounds dumb, but I still found it funny.

As I mentioned, I held a rehearsal today with three of my actors. I’ve worked with many willing and unwilling actors before. Working with willing actors is okay. Working with unwilling actors is frustrating at the very least. However, I’ve never worked with enthusiastic actors until now. Granted, they’re high school student actors (my fourth actor is in college, however), but I still think they’re easier to work with than Denison students. I choreographed the swordfight today, and they had a ball with that. I’m holding another rehearsal on Monday, then on Thursday, I’m going to Denison with Shannon and Audren (plus Andy as a crew member) to pick up video equipment and stage rapiers and to tape a few scenes. Next Friday I’m going to shoot scenes with Shannon, Andy, and Tim at Collingwood. Hopefully after that I’ll have at least 95% of the shooting done, with only two scenes left (at the most) to film after I get back from Florida. I can’t wait until shooting wraps, because it’s definitely NOT my favorite part of production. Then I can spend my entire senior year at Denison editing, which IS my favorite part.

That’s it for now. I’m going shopping tomorrow for clothes to wear in Florida. Wish me luck (I hate clothes shopping).