I was gonna make a soul/sole pun, but palms are not called hand-soles.

Today has been an interesting day.

So I got up relatively early (considering it's a Lazy Thursday and I have no classes) and went to the campus Copy Center in order to sort out my Hitchhiker's script. While there, I learned two important things: one, that the Copy Center only uses WhoCash (a kind of Brandeis-only debit currency), which I don't have, and two, that they don't do scanning. Well. This left me with two equally annoying and time-consuming options: either go to the library, try and find/figure out their scanner, input the entire thing by hand and then farm out the picture files for printing, or type up the damn thing myself-- which will make for a cleaner, better-edited script, which the cast can print on their own time, but is a huge bitch for me. So I have to do THAT at some point, and won't that be fun?

Then I had to e-mail Lena and respectfully withdraw my application for Final Battle. I'm only now feeling well enough to record all my audition stuff, and so I hadn't looked, since I've been here, to see if I'd packed my camera charger. Which, fun fact, I didn't. So I'm stuck with two days until deadline, a still-sore throat, and a paperweight instead of a camera. Adding to that how incredibly busy I'm going to be this semester, I just... something had to give. However, there's still a possibility I can perform with them in the chorus or something, because Lena is AWESOME and is giving me a chance. But any thoughts I had about being, for example, Ginny Weasley... well, it ain't gonna happen. Which is fine; just a bit sad.

Then I found out J.D. Salinger died. I... I'm very zen about it; it hasn't made me want to cry or anything. He was a hermit, and very old, and all in all it was a good life. But the world is just a little more phony, perhaps, now that he's not in it.

So there are all these tiny things that add up to misery put together, even though I'm actually in an excellent mood and having a WONDERFUL time at school so far. When I'm in the thick of it-- hearing Professor Flesch lecture about Shakespeare; or meeting the COOLEST MIDYEAR IN THE WORLD named Rachel tonight at BCBC and talking with her for an hour about how fanfiction leads to better writers and readers when done right; or singing with my girls in UTO (we added two to our family last night!) I feel like I'm on top of the world. I'm engaged and learning and so, so happy to be here. But when I come home to catch my breath, and I start thinking about it all-- the stuff still looming in the distance, the homework I haven't yet done, how many directions I'm throwing myself in this semester-- it feels like I'm drowning.

So I called Hayley. And we bitched and moaned at each other for a while, sounding thoroughly wretched and cleaning out all the tiny nicks and cuts that add up to so much more. It's funny, because, like, we're both in a really great place... but sometimes, you just need to whine and complain.

Anyway.

My palms are on FIRE right now because the weather did this weird snow-rain-wind-blizzard-snow thing in the course of, like, an hour and a half, leaving a very fine coat of ice on the ground, which I then proceeded to slip on like a Stooge. Not my proudest moment.

So where do I stand? I have homework to do tonight--reading more stories from Arabian Nights, and studying up on Richard II for my first quiz tomorrow. Reading for Kosta's class, for the first time, which I'm sure will go over my head. I still haven't unpacked my suitcase. I have 70 some odd pages of script to transcribe asap, and a UTO meeting on Sunday that will dictate my schedule for the rest of the year. Have I mentioned we're recording a CD? We're going to pick our normal three nights a week to rehearse, then set aside who knows how many Saturdays to go to the studio and record. We're also selecting a date for our Spring Concert. Which would be fine, except I'M DIRECTING A PLAY THIS SEMESTER. I don't have a script yet, which means I haven't planned auditions. With no auditions there's no cast, and with no cast there's no schedule. Once I have that, I need to find the times where we can rehearse THAT, that won't interfere with the rest of my life, and cross my fingers and HOPE that Ryan didn't schedule a play performance for whatever night UTO chooses for the concert.

I'm sorry. I don't even know if any of that was coherent. The moral of the story is that I'm very stressed, and for good reason. So many tiny things. And the only thing that will solve it all is time.

Eep!

I know I know I know. I said this was going to be a daily blog, and now I'm starting to get lazy about the skipping of the days. I know. And I'm sorry.

I have been busy, my friends. Due to the courses I'm taking, I have a huge amount of reading to do for homework. UTO has been holding auditions, and tonight's the first night of BORG with the newbies, and, like, there's still the massive looming monster that is the play I'm supposed to be directing. Which is terrifying. All of this would be a handful on its own, but I'm also watching Doctor Who with Marlena, and as most of you know... once you start daydreaming about the TARDIS, it's incredibly hard to stop.

Anyway. I have a little two-hour window here to blog and get shit done before I run off to club administration stuff for the rest of the evening. So I guess I'll tell you an anecdote.

The other day, Kosta told us the story of how he met Rudolf Peierls, also known as one of the Manhattan Project physicists, and the guy who discovered that plutonium is even more susceptible to splitting than uranium. "It was in the 1970s, when I was just a Little Tsipis" Kosta said (which I love, because it reminded me of how Maureen Johnson refers to her past self as "a little mj") "and there was a conference about nuclear energy in the Balkans. Everyone who was anyone was there. Everybody important, and also Little Tsipis. I was freshly married, and so of course I brought my wife. Oh, she was a sexy thing! One of the nights of the conference, there was a dinner party. And my wife, well, she always wants to be noticed. So she came outside wearing this little skirt, probably as big as a, uh, like a napkin. And we hear a grouchy old man voice shout 'Go put something else on-- you're going to catch your death!' ... and that's the one time I met award-winning scientist Rudy Peierls."

I love Kosta.

And, oh. Because this is Sounds Passing Through Sudden Rightnesses, after all, I'll leave you with this excerpt from my Film textbook:

"The experience that art offers us can be intensely involving. We say that movies drew us in or immerse us. We get absorbed in a book or lost in a song. When we can't finish a novel, we say, "I couldn't get into it," and we say that music we don't like "doesn't speak to me," as if it were a sluggish conversational partner.

All these ways of talking suggest that artworks involve us by engaging our senses, feelings, and mind in a process. That process sharpens our interest, tightens our involvement, urges us forward. How does this happen? Because the artist has created a pattern. Artworks arouse and gratify our human craving for form. Artists design their works-- they give them form-- so that we can have a structured experience.

For this reason, form is of central importance in any artwork, regardless of its medium. The idea of artistic form has occupied the thinking of philosophers, artists and critics for centuries. We can't do justice to it here."

Take that, indie snobs who slather ideas to film like that makes it a movie. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Jim Jarmusch. Stop hiding behind that tree, Richard Linklater. I see you. THREE-ACT STRUCTURE RULES.

... I'm sorry. That went to a place. It won't happen again.

Bye kids!

Love, Today

To catch you up: I spent most of the weekend in bed, being sick. It's getting rather tiresome.

Last night I stayed up until an ungodly hour trying to help Marlena delete a virus from her computer, which wasn't very helpful for anyone because I had to get up early for UTO. We had our first rehearsal, and then sang at the Activities Fair, and then aggressively recruited for an hour and a half. Then, after a brief break, we went dorm-storming for the midyears. I haven't even THOUGHT about my homework, which is bountiful.

But I've been keeping myself entertained.

If you've never read them but love Doctor Who, PLEASE look at the Television Without Pity recaps. I mean, first of all, TWoP is a wonderful website full of very clever people-- Strega's Angel recaps are smart and stinging, highly critical but also very accurate... and they're the reason I call Angel's team the Ministers of Grace, which is fantastic. (Everyone needs more Hamlet references.) And hey, I still to this day think of Melinda Clarke as Lady Heather because of Joanna's work on The O.C. But the Doctor Who recaps-- done by a guy named Jacob-- are just... I do not have the words.

"Indescribably wonderful," I'll go with.

It's like taking a college course in Doctor Who-- or at least, the first two seasons. Things get sparse for three and four (but that suits me fine, because a) I haven't watched them yet and b) I'm a Rose fan) but from what I've read so far... wow. The close readings are so analytical on every level... it transforms a show that I dismissed as merely "cute and clever" into something far more cerebral, far more valuable. Jacob goes off on philosophy, on Campbell's Hero's Journey, on Milton, on grace. This guy is SMART, and he makes me see the series in a whole new light. Excellent, thought-provoking reading. If you like Doctor Who, or are an English major-- or, like me, are both-- this is can't-miss. Or if Doctor Who isn't your thing but you're a television buff, search the site. See if it has your favorite. I guarantee you'll learn something new.

For now: I have so, so much homework. I try not to think about it, but I'm going to have a SHIT TON of reading this semester... and until I get the script photocopied out of my Hitchhiker's radio play book and into a workable format, my hands are totally tied-- as well as the hands of my potential cast and crew. I've bitten off a lot for the spring; here's hoping I can chew it all.

[Edit: reading the series 1 finale recap, and Jacob just went literary alchemy on my ass. OH MY GOD HE'S THE JOHN GRANGER OF DOCTOR WHO. SO HAPPY.]

Oh, hello.

Weird moment... it's currently 20 to midnight, and I was staring at my computer, trying to figure out why I was feeling so restless... I'd kind of forgotten, today, that I had a blog. Like, at all. So I didn't plan anything to say.

Ummm. I'm still sick, which sucks. Getting really tired of it hurting to swallow and not being able to breathe through both nostrils at once and not being able to decide if I'm chilled or overheated. Sick blows. Not to mention, I still need to record all of my callback materials for the Final Battle, which are due by the end of the month, but I can't so long as I have no voice.

I had class today, which feels like a million years ago. Let's check in my notebook for interesting facts, shall we?

Oh man, Global Warming and Nuclear Winter (which, for the purposes of brevity I'm just gonna refer to as "Science" from now on) was such a brain-killer. Kosta is still adorable, but the thing is, his cute Greek accent isn't exactly a help when he's trying to explain Pauli's Exclusion Principle (which I still don't entirely understand). Not to mention, he fell off a ladder and broke his leg and shoulder over the summer, so his handwriting is uncharacteristically poor. I get why he wants us to have a rudimentary understanding of physics before we plunge into our actual discussions-- I mean, if we didn't, then this would be a politics course. But at one point he stopped and asked "How confused are you?" and one girl blurted "Remember when you said you wanted to make us NOT afraid of science? It's not working." I walked out of that classroom with a MUCH deeper appreciation of Leonard and Sheldon... because fictional physicists on CBS sitcoms should really be my benchmark for scientific knowledge.

But it'll be okay.

Shakespeare was awesome because Professor Flesch is super amazing awesome fantastico. He said he was considering posting recordings of the lectures as a podcast-- if he does, I'll be sure to link you. I dunno how many of you would want to listen to an hour and a half Shakespeare lecture when you didn't HAVE to, but believe me it is so totally worth it. We discussed Sonnet 73 and the first two acts of Richard II, which I kind of don't like so far, but whatever. At least the in-class analysis is interesting, even if the play itself isn't my favorite.

Short Stories with Plotz is also still fun... and I'm also still a total nightmare to have in an English class. I mean. I'm sure my professors appreciate it, but I'm also sure my peers can't stand it-- I just can't. make myself. shut. up. Granted, I'm at Brandeis, so I'm hardly the only overeager know-it-all in the room itching to contribute to class discussion, but... god, I even annoy myself sometimes. Some highlights from Professor Plotz:

"I dunno how fresh Moby Dick is in your mind, but-- well. I hope it's at least slightly fresh; there's nothing worse than rotting whale meat. Anyway--"

"The key to a lot of these fables is looking for two separate lines of interpretation. For example, is Oedipus the story of a-- oh dear lord, I almost said 'motherfucker.'"

"Right, see, it's like that dance movie, with the British boy... what's it called... Dance, Billy, Dance?"
"I think you mean Billy Elliott."
"I like my title better."

Stay in school, kids. College is fun.

An Uncommon Hobby

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that every once in a while I post these little cartoons; model sheets for things that I like. Outside of people I met through doing this, I've never heard of anyone with this odd little hobby-- so I was thinking I would explain it to you.

Around probably 2002 I found a wonderful website called Superbuddies, a forum where people talked about nerdy things in general and comic books in particular. Around this time, the animated series X-Men: Evolution was getting very popular. What a lot of the artists on Superbuddies did-- and what I then learned to do-- was take the model sheets of the characters, and "frankenstein" them. That is, mix and match parts, take things here and there from screenshots, to create new art from the old. It's not quite photoshopping and it's certainly not freehand art, but it does require a certain amount of skill. For the past near decade, it's a skill I've been honing, on and off.

Often, the mark that I really like something is that I'll end up creating art for it. Superbuddies is a really great community, and they were my only online friends for most of my teenage years. However, once I found the Harry Potter fandom on youtube, I kind of drifted away from 'buddies, which I still feel guilty about. Not to mention, my interest in art waned as I focused more and more on my writing. However, I'll sometimes still get the itch to make something-- especially if I know I have the "right parts," coming from a huge collection of cartoon art I've amassed over the years on my hard drive.

To make a long story much shorter, that's how come you've been staring at what is hopefully recognizable as an animated Rose Tyler while you've been reading that.

While working on her, I listened to the album Subcontrario (In Stereo) by my sister's friend Trevor Giuliani probably twelve times on repeat. If you're looking for new music in your life, here's a taste of his:



In about an hour, I'll be off for dinner with the UTO girls and our secret santa gift exchange. And I promise a slightly less media-heavy blog post tomorrow.

Witty Blog Title Goes Here

Hokay! To start off with, I’m going to talk about Bridget Milhokovich so Hayley will stop calling me a bitch. (As with yesterday, beware spoilers.)

First of all, a thing you should know about me: I tend to like the same sorts of characters, as everyone does. For reasons that are completely beyond me, though, my favorites tend to be either spunky little sisters (Phoebe Caulfield, Ginny Weasley) or vulnerable popular girls (Cordelia Chase, Quinn Fabrey). Hayley and I share a mutual, rare but deep love of Parvati Patil, for example. So it surprised exactly no one when I said that Bridget was my favorite character in the Jessica Darling series.

But it also has nothing to do with my personal preferences and everything to do with the masterful way Megan McCafferty wrote the books. I’ve read each exactly once—I’m hardly as good an authority as Hayley or Marlena, so bear with me if you don’t agree or if I get something wrong. But you know? I don’t think I am. Wrong, I mean.

Jessica, as a person, is… well, very interested in people. She very rarely likes them, but she’s highly observant, if highly opinionated. As narrators go, she’s not always the most reliable… but somehow, McCafferty’s hand bleeds through in really surprising and wonderful ways. Jessica will often fail to imagine others complexly… but even though Jessica refuses to see it, we as readers get the sense LONG before she does that Bridget is a worthwhile individual. We start paying attention to her, Jessica’s brief mentions and off-handed remarks, and we see things Jessica doesn’t. And it works for everyone else in the story, too. Do you think it’s an accident that Hope’s name is hope? Come on, now. Hope is the epitome of idealized friendship, far more of an idea than a person. And by showing us these things by using Jessica’s voice, McCafferty establishes her books as some of the most nuanced and rewarding reads I’ve ever had.

Anyway. Today is 01/20/2010, and a hearty congratulations to Bridget and Percy.

On to other stuff! How was my German Cinema class, you ask? Well. We spent a good half hour playing a Get To Know Ya game, which was all kinds of fascinating, I can’t even tell you. … well, no. To be fair, there was one pretty awesome moment. One of the things we had to say was our favorite movie, and a girl in the far corner finished her little speech not with her favorite but by declaring “And my LEAST favorite movie is Avatar. Bring it on.”

I love this girl, and want to be her friend.

We spent the second half of class watching, Black Rider, a 1993 short film about, well, a black dude ridin’ a bus. In Berlin. Next to a racist old lady. We talked about the Nazi-era undertones (a silent crowd, no one speaking up against xenophobic comments, the prejudices of the old versus the tolerance of the young, blah blah blah). It was pretty interesting, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy the class.

Because Adam was curious, here’s the list of films we’re going to see:

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• Pandora's Box
• The Blue Angel
• Maedchen in uniform (Girls in Uniform)
• The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
• Aimee und Jaguar
• The Marriage of Maria Braun
• The Murderers Are Among Us
  

Of those, I’ve only ever seen Caligari; yay for learning new things!

*returns to computer hours later*

Hello! I just went to my first BORG meeting of the year. We played Werewolf, which is my least favorite game, and people asked me when auditions for the play will be, to which I had to reply that I don’t know, because the play isn’t cut and I don’t have audition materials or a casting list or a room. Oops! Here’s what you missed:

“Man, now every time someone says ‘doctor’ I look up. It’s a problem.”
“Oh, have you been inDoctorinated?”
- Me and Matt

“So either Shannon is the werewolf, or she’s being very sneaky and has a devious plan.”
“It’s okay. We’ll be lynching her next round anyway; possibly for fun.”
- Katie and Mac

“By the way, guys, we’re gonna have the Dune discussion on February 10th.”
“Can we call it the Dunescussion?”
- Me and Matt

“See, I like Doctor Who because it’s the only world where Mal would make a better Companion than Inara.”
- Me

(Provided we remain entertaining, I may post BORG best-ofs every week. We’ll see!)

School is awesome!

QUICK NOTE: there are spoilers for Perfect fifths in the first two paragraphs of this blog post. Read at your own risk. (HAPPY, Marlena?)

Okay, so when I twittered earlier about TARDIS-related daydreams, Hayley texted to yell at me for not marking today's occasion: as it is January 19th, today is the day Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie cross paths for the final time in Megan McCafferty's novel Perfect Fifths. I promised her that I would blog about it so she wouldn't be mad anymore.

Well, I lied. But I have good reasons! First of all, the thing I want to actually discuss-- that is, Bridget and Percy's marriage-- doesn't take place until the 20th. So I can talk about it tomorrow and have it still be relevant. And for another, today was my first day of classes, and I would really like to talk about that while it's still fresh in my mind. So, sorry Hayley. But I'll get to it.

In any case!

Today I had three of the four classes I'll be taking this semester, so let's just tackle them in order, shall we?

My first class was Global Warming and Nuclear Winter, which I'm only taking because I need a science class. Luckily, the professor is very well aware of this. "I know why you're taking this course," he said. "It's because you want science credit. But I'm here because it's fun! So, you'll just have to suffer with me while I have fun." Hee! On the board, he'd written his fully notated name: Doctor Professor Kostantinos Tsipis. And yes, he is just as adorably old and Greek as his name suggests. One by one, he started crossing off parts of his name until we were left with just "Kosta," which is what he wants us to call him. Cuuute!

Anyway. 70% of the class is the final research paper, and he emphasized over and over again that he doesn't care about our grades: he just wants to make sure we learn something. This is so refreshing I cannot even tell you-- not to mention reassuring, given that this is a science class and that's scary. But he knows that! "I want you to become unafraid of science. Humanities majors are PETRIFIED of science-- they're allergic to it. I want to cure that!" The emphasis of the course will be on understanding the importance of numbers and why we quantify things; we're meant to ask questions. This is a class about humanity: the problems we face as a species, and our tendency to learn by experience.

(And in a perfect My Big Fat Greek Wedding moment, he handed out a scientific notation cheat sheet that had the etymological origins of the number prefixes. Like, for example:

Million = 10⁶ = mega- (from "μέγας" ["big"])

HOW. CUTE. IS. THAT? Also, he makes his lowercase "a"s like lowercase greek alpha: α, which is very confusing to read but also extremely endearing.)

My next class was Shakespeare, which is in a huge lecture hall. That's nice, though, because I really got a feeling of Brandeis community in there. Margaret, one of the girls in UTO, sat behind me; Tal, this one guy who ALWAYS ends up in one of my classes, because we're on the same academic track; Ian, the president of the Comic Book Club, and at least three members of Hold Thy Peace, the on-campus Shakespeare performance group... they were all there. As was the hot TA from my Indie class last semester, we'll see if I get him this time. The professor, Flesch, was highly recommended to me by Talia, and I can see why: he's dynamic and interesting and so, so passionate about his subject matter.

He's also a huge nerd. He talked about Star Wars when describing how Shakespeare's intentions towards his histories are evident in that he didn't write them in chronological order, and what his thematic treatment of Henry V's life said about him as a creator. And then, when we were discussing our Shakespeare's Complete Works copies, he talked about how radical an idea it was-- and still is-- to make a Complete Works for plays. In the Elizabethan era, "works" were treatises by Aristotle or Plato. They were not just ordinary plays. The first person to compile such a thing was Ben Johnson, a contemporary of Shakespeare's. "You have to admire the audacity of it," said Professor Flesch. "A lowly playwright publishing his own material in an anthology of 'works.' This is almost as if Joss Whedon would go and collect Buffy scripts and publish them... oh wait." HEE!

Oh, and later, when he was talking about the importance of iambic pentameter, he used not the example I was expecting ("My chest of drawers divide amongst my friends," thank you John Green) but one from Total Recall: ("You know how much I hate this fucking planet!" which is an example of a feminine ending) and one from regular life at a diner: ("I'll have the special and a glass of Coke," which is masculine. "Or 'diet Coke,' if you're worried" he amended.) In any case, we'll be reading Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra, and A Winter's Tale, which is pretty much a play per week and a half. I have to say, I'm excited to read A Winter's Tale, and I'm not sure if it's because it's the origin of the name Hermione, or because it includes the stage direction "Exit pursued by bear."

Tal followed me to my last class, Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics. It was immensely gratifying, because that class was filled with what I'll call my English Posse-- the kids I took the 100 intro course with, who will stay with me as we all fulfill our majors. Talia, Chef, Rebecca, Tal... it's really awesome that we have our own little corner of the room. We read three pre-genre short stories, and argued over what defines a short story and what makes them effective, and I've missed English classes. I love film studies and I'm glad I took two film classes last semester, but balancing them out with two English courses this semester feels right. I really love analysis and critical thinking and class discussions and defending interpretations. It's too bad one can't make a career out of it.

But hey, that's what this blog is for, innit?

Anyway, I think I've kept you long enough, Gentle Readers. Tomorrow I have my German Cinema: Vamps and Angels course (which I did NOT select purely for the name, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a contributing factor) and then I'll be mostly settled in for the spring. As for now, I'm off to check up on my favorite web comics and then probably rewatch the World War II episodes from series one of Doctor Who. Later, kids!