when i watch a movie or a play, if it's in any way effective, i tend to take on the mood of the movie or play, or empathize with the character(s) to such a degree that it's sometimes upsetting. i do this intuitively, almost subconsciously. like when i watched the movie memento twice in succession, that was strange-- i couldn't quite remember who i was. after tootsie i really wanted some falsies. when i watch wings of desire i feel like an invisible angel who can hear things other people can't hear. yentl, dazed & confused, annie, ... you get the idea. well, last night i watched an episode of ricky gervais's and stephen merchant's extras. it was an episode about a star who kept bragging about how he could kick the ass of another star, how he was "harder" and would have no problem nailing him in a fight. at the end the other star confronts the first star and the first star withers pathetically. though extras is meant to be funny, this ending was just sad and... well, no word describes it better than pathetic. and as i walked to my mailbox when it was over, i felt so ultra-pathetic, so sad and wrong. my job, the way i do my job, the way i don't do my job, my relationships, the way i do my relationships, etc., all these things started to point their fingers at me and laugh, sneering. what is going on!?!?, i thought. then i realized i had taken on all the patheticism of extras. i'm glad i realized it in time to stop it in its tracks, climb into bed, and read a little bit more of this fantastic book i bought: an anthology of graphic fiction, cartoons, & true stories, edited by ivan brunetti. a lovely, diverse compendium!
our musical opens tomorrow night. i have severe criticisms of it, as i almost always do. there's no unity in the cast, a lot of nebulous blocking (wandering around stage while singing), a lot of egregious lighting effects, a paucity of actual communication onstage. and no leadership from the director. after last night's rehearsal he didn't even bother to call everyone out on stage before he began to shout out the game plan for tomorrow, much less did he rally everyone to give notes. i have severe disagreements with his methods...
and ah well. and oh my. it's all so important isn't it... and all so temporary...
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
mower
more! more! there should be MORE posts on here! not one a week, dammit! there should be at least three a week!
well what should i write about?
anything! your rage! your tenderness! your utter apathy!
speaking of apathy...
the most recent assignment in theatre class is to write a monologue describing your own death. you can be old, young, or in between. you have to write it from your own point of view, and memorize it, and perform it for the class. i saw my 2 classes do these monologues last week and they were, for the most part, pretty darn interesting. people died in all kinds of ways. they were beaten, hit by vehicles, stricken by disease, and there were a couple of suicides. though the assignment sounds morbid, the students really seemed to get into it... a lot of them showed sides of themselves they hadn't shown before. one of my more thoughtful students decided to die of apathy. afterwards i asked her why she chose that, and she said she'd noticed that a lot of the kids she knew didn't seem to care about anything.
i care about things. but sometimes i feel forced to care about things i don't care about at all, like our current musical at the school. it has gobbled up time and space, and this week it will probably make all our theatre classes moot. i wanted to have nothing to do with it, but guilt has gotten the better of me and i am helping out with costumes. it's hard to be in this position of being 1/4th involved. i don't like it at all. in a week it will be over and i can move on to something i do care about, the one-act play.
last week i found out that my cutting of a lie of the mind had been rejected by the UIL state office because i didn't follow the rules in the way i submitted it. it was a hard blow. we were getting somewhere in rehearsal, and it got pulled out from under us. it sucked. so we're doing a one-act version of the seagull, which was already on the UIL "approved" list and which we have some experience with. it's ok. it will be fine. i'm currently waiting on the four van itallie translations i ordered in a blind fever to show up.
i'm not in a blind fever. in fact i'm clear and lucid. maybe that's what makes it so difficult!
well what should i write about?
anything! your rage! your tenderness! your utter apathy!
speaking of apathy...
the most recent assignment in theatre class is to write a monologue describing your own death. you can be old, young, or in between. you have to write it from your own point of view, and memorize it, and perform it for the class. i saw my 2 classes do these monologues last week and they were, for the most part, pretty darn interesting. people died in all kinds of ways. they were beaten, hit by vehicles, stricken by disease, and there were a couple of suicides. though the assignment sounds morbid, the students really seemed to get into it... a lot of them showed sides of themselves they hadn't shown before. one of my more thoughtful students decided to die of apathy. afterwards i asked her why she chose that, and she said she'd noticed that a lot of the kids she knew didn't seem to care about anything.
i care about things. but sometimes i feel forced to care about things i don't care about at all, like our current musical at the school. it has gobbled up time and space, and this week it will probably make all our theatre classes moot. i wanted to have nothing to do with it, but guilt has gotten the better of me and i am helping out with costumes. it's hard to be in this position of being 1/4th involved. i don't like it at all. in a week it will be over and i can move on to something i do care about, the one-act play.
last week i found out that my cutting of a lie of the mind had been rejected by the UIL state office because i didn't follow the rules in the way i submitted it. it was a hard blow. we were getting somewhere in rehearsal, and it got pulled out from under us. it sucked. so we're doing a one-act version of the seagull, which was already on the UIL "approved" list and which we have some experience with. it's ok. it will be fine. i'm currently waiting on the four van itallie translations i ordered in a blind fever to show up.
i'm not in a blind fever. in fact i'm clear and lucid. maybe that's what makes it so difficult!
Monday, January 22, 2007
whoa... sunshine
i've started a new morning pages regimen (writing three pages longhand every morning immediately upon waking up), and i was wondering if that would affect my writing here on the blog. but i don't think it will-- at least not adversely. i think i pick and choose what i write here, which is only natural-- i have a keen awareness that it's public. and i'm protective to the point of semi-paranoia. i'm not sure why this is. i guess i have a keen sense of potential retribution, or i am afraid of my shallowness being revealed. yet, by not revealing much, i am keeping myself in relatively shallow waters.
last night i watched orson welles's "essay-documentary" called F FOR FAKE. it centers mostly on a notorious art forger named elmyr de hory, who does beautiful matisses and modiglianis and has fooled many "experts" who took his forgeries as authentic. the movie also examines other related and unrelated fakes. it's very playful and fun. when it ended i laughed and felt satisfied; i've never seen a movie quite like it before. for welles fans, another must-see is dick cavett's interview (early 70's) with welles, who is not only a riveting raconteur but is also charming as heck.
though the ice days last week were a welcomed respite, overall last week sucked. i don't know, there was something off about it. i'm looking forward to a much better one this week. we are reading dylan thomas's UNDER MILK WOOD in theatre II. it's fantastic...
last night i watched orson welles's "essay-documentary" called F FOR FAKE. it centers mostly on a notorious art forger named elmyr de hory, who does beautiful matisses and modiglianis and has fooled many "experts" who took his forgeries as authentic. the movie also examines other related and unrelated fakes. it's very playful and fun. when it ended i laughed and felt satisfied; i've never seen a movie quite like it before. for welles fans, another must-see is dick cavett's interview (early 70's) with welles, who is not only a riveting raconteur but is also charming as heck.
though the ice days last week were a welcomed respite, overall last week sucked. i don't know, there was something off about it. i'm looking forward to a much better one this week. we are reading dylan thomas's UNDER MILK WOOD in theatre II. it's fantastic...
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
second snow day
no school yesterday or today. icy roads.
it snowed in san antonio in 1985.
during my last winter in california (2002-03) it snowed so steadily that an entire subdivision of our town lost power for over a week. it was beautiful and f r e e z i n g. my head became permanently hat-haired.
it was trippy living in all that snow. i loved the transformational qualities of the snow, the way it swaddled our little house by the hillside, how it made the sky look so blue. but i hated driving in the stuff, especially when i had to go over donner pass. putting cold chains on a cold car while pulled over on the side of a filthy, freezingly slushy highway was not my idea of fun. so i was really thrilled when i finally got a toyota 4-runner. it solved many problems.
here in my hometown, people don't know how to drive in the rain, much less on icy roadways. they go too fast and don't leave enough room between cars. and my dad made me sell my 4-runner.
i finally got out my chinese brush & ink set yesterday and doodled around a little.
it snowed in san antonio in 1985.
during my last winter in california (2002-03) it snowed so steadily that an entire subdivision of our town lost power for over a week. it was beautiful and f r e e z i n g. my head became permanently hat-haired.
it was trippy living in all that snow. i loved the transformational qualities of the snow, the way it swaddled our little house by the hillside, how it made the sky look so blue. but i hated driving in the stuff, especially when i had to go over donner pass. putting cold chains on a cold car while pulled over on the side of a filthy, freezingly slushy highway was not my idea of fun. so i was really thrilled when i finally got a toyota 4-runner. it solved many problems.
here in my hometown, people don't know how to drive in the rain, much less on icy roadways. they go too fast and don't leave enough room between cars. and my dad made me sell my 4-runner.
i finally got out my chinese brush & ink set yesterday and doodled around a little.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
fantasy dinner party
i loved zhang yimou's CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. i have been enamored of gong li since the nineties when i saw a zhang yimou film called TO LIVE. and chow yun fat is a righteous babe.
so i am compiling my fantasy dinner party guest list.
gong li
chow yun fat
bjork
rufus wainwright
joanna newsom
sufjan stevens
bill murray
bruno ganz
i could go on and on i guess... then i get stumped because... what would i serve?
so i am compiling my fantasy dinner party guest list.
gong li
chow yun fat
bjork
rufus wainwright
joanna newsom
sufjan stevens
bill murray
bruno ganz
i could go on and on i guess... then i get stumped because... what would i serve?
Saturday, January 13, 2007
breath
yesterday during rehearsal i decided it would be fun if we ran a lap around the track. it's about a quarter of a mile i think.
i am so out of shape it's disgusting. i could hardly breathe.
i gotta do something.
i am so out of shape it's disgusting. i could hardly breathe.
i gotta do something.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
cranium
we've started our rehearsals for the one-act play, which is sam shepard's a lie of the mind this year. the original cast, when the play premiered in the mid-80's, starred amanda plummer, harvey keitel, aidan quinn and geraldine page. our second read-thru was today and it's starting off slow and quiet. it feels perfect.
fran gave me some cologne for christmas that's making me happy. also, she brought me chicken soup yesterday at school. it was delicious.
there's an article about christopher guest in the december-january issue of paste-- a really irritating article. the author insisted on using a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS IN ORDER TO EMPHASIZE HIMSELF. the article is obviously written for comic effect, but fails in that regard, succeeding only in being irritating, and not telling us much about mr. guest at all. the author would defend himself, as he hints at in the article, by saying that mr. guest didn't give him much to work with. but that's a poor excuse for a professional journalist. plenty could have been done with what christopher said. i'm thinking about writing a letter to the magazine in order to mention these things; but the article is so blatantly bad that i'm sure someone else will do that for me.
i'm feeling better, snot is slowly receding, headaches dissipating...
fran gave me some cologne for christmas that's making me happy. also, she brought me chicken soup yesterday at school. it was delicious.
there's an article about christopher guest in the december-january issue of paste-- a really irritating article. the author insisted on using a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS IN ORDER TO EMPHASIZE HIMSELF. the article is obviously written for comic effect, but fails in that regard, succeeding only in being irritating, and not telling us much about mr. guest at all. the author would defend himself, as he hints at in the article, by saying that mr. guest didn't give him much to work with. but that's a poor excuse for a professional journalist. plenty could have been done with what christopher said. i'm thinking about writing a letter to the magazine in order to mention these things; but the article is so blatantly bad that i'm sure someone else will do that for me.
i'm feeling better, snot is slowly receding, headaches dissipating...
Friday, January 05, 2007
persnickety
i have a headache tonight. popped 3 ibuprofen. started feeling really ill about a week ago today and had a horrible weekend. not sure what it was... respiratory infection? bronchitis? missed my teacher workday on tuesday and first day back to school on wednesday. went to my doctor on weds and was disappointed and pissed that she didn't have time to see me, so i never found out what i had. got a flu shot, which fran said shouldn't have happened, since i was sick. made an appointment for my twice-yearly appointment and left. school yesterday and today was fine, though i had a lot of angst this morning upon waking up obsessed with my problematic second period. i've realized it's much more that I'M problematic; they're just being themselves. and so i get frustrated when i'm not able to let go, annoyed with my tendency to fret and EFFORTIZE. just let it go, release the fists into calm palms, fluff the aura, and move on.
i did fine today.
i did fine today.
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