Name:Evan Country:United States State:Ohio Metro:Dayton Gender:Male
Interests:all things Christian, all things musical and dramatic, and other various things which hold my passing fancy for a few minutes Expertise:singing and acting. That's pretty much all I'm good for. Occupation:Student Industry:Entertainment
I got the original cast album of [title of show] from the library
today. VERY interesting concept, and mostly the execution goes off well. It’s a
musical… about two guys writing a musical… about writing this musical.
Confused? Good, that’s the point. It doesn’t try to take itself seriously,
which is the main reason it works. There are only 5 people in the cast,
counting the piano player, and they play themselves, since they wrote the
thing. They basically wrote it as they went, turning every different event they
went through into a song. It has a sound that reminds me a bit of Godspell,
which is a good thing.
Anyway, it’s great, but it’s not a musical I’ll be able to
listen to in the dorm, mainly because there’s… a bit of cursing. Erm… quite a
bit. “Original Musical” has one words repeated about 40 times, for absolutely
no reason other than the fact that they could. But some of the songs are just
so fun that it makes it worth it. “Monkeys and Playbills”, for example, uses a
bunch of less than successful musical titles in a long string to tell an
incredibly silly story about a monkey on a speedboat.
Well anyway, check it out if you like un-serious shows and
aren’t too offended by off-color language. It’ll be worth it.
It is July!!!!
Do you know what happens after July? August! You know what’s
in the middle of August? GETTING STARTED WEEKEND!! Like, 42 days from now! That’s…
well… it’s not soon… but it’s less than before! Huzzah for the passage of time!
Oh, and Wall-E was, obviously, INCREDIBLE. I saw it twice,
but I don’t think my family liked it half as well as I did. To be expected, I
suppose, but there really is something for everyone in this film. Seeing as how
I like sci-fi, romance, AND apocalyptic/dystopian stories, I might be sorta
biased, but what can you do?
Well, I feel done writing. And as [title of show] says, “Ladle
into that barrel of monkeys that you call a head and scoop out an image monkey”.
Erm… that… didn’t have anything to do with anything, but I’m tired, so I don’t
care.
And... I’m done. Get comfortable in your skin, long-suffering readers.
Currently Listening The Producers (2001 Original Broadway Cast) By Mel Brooks, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Roger Bart, Gary Beach, Cady Huffman, Jesse Levy, Grace Paradise, Jennifer Smith Tony Kadleck Springtime for Hitler see related
WALL-E!!!
For the record, I have been extremely excited about WALL-E since the moment I saw the first teaser trailer over a year ago. Everyone I showed it to went, "meh, looks interesting," but I was just enraptured with the idea.
And I would like to also state for the record that I have been proven right, as review after review after review has called WALL-E a wide range of names, from "a completely perfect film" to "the first solid contender for next year's Best Picture Oscar" to "the best sci-fi/romance/animated film of the decade". No really, all those things have been said by the people who've had early reviews. I am SO seeing it this weekend, early Saturday at the latest, and I have no doubt that it will become one of my favorite movies.
Well, I’m stuck in a rut. I’ve been in this rut for a month
and a half, and it refuses to get any better with time. Admittedly, I feel a
bit better than the beginning of the summer, but that’s mostly because I can
get lots of time on my computer every day. If I didn’t spend hours on here, I’d
go nuts. I went to a few open houses, and that broke the monotony a bit, but
most of those are done by now. There’s a lovely countdown clock running on my
desktop, and it says I have 56 days, 9hours, 20 minutes, and 59 seconds till
Getting Started Weekend. I got it figured out that once I’m past the 52 day
mark, I’m half done.
So, I got a new iPod, and it’s amazing, obviously. Ya know
the feeling you get when you compare a piece of obsolete technology to a newer
model, or compare your life now with your life BEFORE you got that laptop or
video game system? It’s like you can hardly imagine surviving day to day
without what you now have. You know you could, of course, but it would be
unpleasant. Comparing my new iPod with the old one is like a CD versus a
cassette. Or maybe an iPod versus a cassette. It’s that much better.
Ooh, and the Spore Creature Creator came out! Now THAT is
freaking fun. Of course, the trial version only has about a quarter of the
creature parts and color patterns that the full version has, but I don’t feel
like shelling out $10 to play with them. In any case, my laptop doesn’t have
the fastest processing speed, so playing it goes like this:
Open program,
Window opens,
Window freezes, (CTRL ALT DEL)
Main Menu, click “create a new creature”,
Window freezes, (CTRL ALT DEL)
Basic body mold screen,
Move mouse over first body part,
Window freezes, (CTRL ALT DEL)
Etc, etc, etc…
Eventually, it starts running more smoothly, but every new
command or object I bring up makes my processor wet itself.
Regardless, the program is incredible when it runs as it
should, and I think I’d probably buy it if I could justify fighting my computer
every time I run it. The three pictures at the top of this post are only a few
of my creations, though I'm sure a few of you would recognize the one in the middle as coming from another's imagination.
If you want to try it, and if you ever wanted to make your
own animal, you do, you can play with it for free by downloading it here: http://www.spore.com/
Oh, and one more thing. I've pretty much decided on three of my songs for my senior recital. They'll be more modern and from Broadway, so they'll be at the end after all my (dull) classical pieces that every good singer has to do. At this point, I think they'll be: "Giants in the Sky" from Into the Woods "The Schmuel Song" from The Last Five Years "Make Them Hear You" from Ragtime
It's not set in stone or anything, and I'll have to make some alterations in order to make The Schmuel Song a piece that can be sung without a context, but I think it'll be a good way to end my performance. Entertaining, at the very least!
Well, I should be in bed, so I’ll post this and take a
snooze. Be creative with your time, temperate readers.
Really and truly, Parade is a wonderful musical. I can't believe I didn't take the time to listen to it before leaving school, since it's been on my iPod for over a year. Once I listened through all the way, though, I've found myself going through it over and over because of its potency and depth. Ya know what, I'm gonna write about it. Skip the next few paragraphs if you're uninterested, I just feel like doing this right now.
It's basically about a man named Leo Frank, who, in the early 1900's, was accused of murdering a little girl named Mary Phagan. Set outside Atlanta, Frank is a timid Jew from Brooklyn who finds himself under suspicion only because he is different. The media says he's guilty before the trial even starts, and many witnesses step forward, willing to lie about him in order to get "justice" for poor little Mary. Songs like "The Factory Girls/Come Up to My Office" and "My Child Will Forgive Me" are chilling reminders of how uncontrolled emotion can make anyone lose their morals and cause incredible destruction. At the beginning of the play, we're introduced to Leo's wife Lucille. We learn that the couple are rather estranged, and don't spend much time together. Through the musical, they gradually find themselves relying more strongly upon each other, and their song reflect that. Their first duet, "Leo at Work/What Am I Waiting For?" shows their distance, and "Do It Alone" shows how Lucille feels the distance between them cannot be bridged. But through Lucille's unending perseverance, Leo can give the jubilant declaration that "This is Not Over Yet" when Lucille convinces those in power to examine the case against Leo more closely, and eventually gets his death sentence commuted to a prison sentence. At the end of the show, their passionate and heartfelt duet "All the Wasted Time" shows the progress they've made together, and the audience can see the two are finally connected by the love they never knew they needed. What I love most about the show, though, are the musical motifs and repeated themes. The show's main song "The Old Red Hills of Home" is a ballad to the greatness of the South, and its tune is sprinkled through nearly every song if one listens for it. The penultimate number "Sh'ma" is less than 30 seconds long, and consists of a terrified Leo standing on a box, a rope around his neck as an angry lynch mob gathers around him, hungry for his death. All Leo can do is sing a quiet prayer to his Lord, and unless you're listening for it, you miss that the tune for his prayer is "The Old Red Hills". My favorite song is "There is a Fountain/It Don't Make Sense", where the townspeople gather for Mary's funeral. A steady rendition of "There is a Fountain" provides the counterpoint to a heartbroken litany of Mary's virtues, sung by her friends as they protest that "It Don't Make Sense" that 'they took my friend away' and 'put her in the cold and lonely ground'. The raw emotion is extremely realistic, and this song is the finest demonstration of how the logic of the mind is effortlessly undermined by the passions of the heart, and the real tragedy of the musical is the consequence of that unbridled emotion. And the most important part: the story is true. Leo Frank really was hung in 1913 by an angry mob in retaliation for Mary's death. The true murderer of Mary Phagan, a black man named Jim Conley who worked under Leo Frank, testified against his former boss and gave a gruesome and shocking narrative filled with holes, which is summarized in the show as the song "That's What He Said". After the trial and death of Leo Frank, many members of the mob that executed him formed a new chapter of the KKK, and more than half of the Jewish population of Georgia fled the state for fear of anti-Semetic violence. If you want more details (you crazy history buffs), you'll find it here.
OK, I'm done. Those of you with no interest in musical theater may now continue reading.
I'm getting a new iPod. It's not one of the new models, because the "iPod Classic" has, at minimum, 80GB of space, and I REALLY don't need that much. So it's one of the first models that had a color screen, but the Apple website says it's 'new' rather than refurbished. Well, I should see in a few days.
Tomorrow's graduation, innit? Weirdness. I'll be there, come hell or high water. Should be fun, albeit orange, which, by the way, clashes HORRIBLY with your purple and white robes. Just... ew.
Oh! I'm back at the Sno Shack, by the way. We've moved to the parking lot of a new Kroger building, but they kinda gave my boss the short end of the stick as far as location goes. Originally she was promised an open corner next to the Kroger gas station, but then they decided to place a fenced in garden sales area DIRECTLY in front of the Sno Shack front window. No, I mean less than 10 feet from the only way a customer can order a snow cone. It really makes it harder to see the Shack and makes it completely impossible to park within 30 feet of the area. They've told us it'll be moved out by two weeks ago.... wait... I mean this past Saturday.... or maybe in a few days. They just keep being dishonest about it, and it's quite irritating. But, as always, it's a relaxing and easy job that's always.... colorful, you might say. If you want to visit, the address for the Kroger is: 885 Union Road Englewood OH45322. Send me a message if you wanna know when I'm working. I know several of you expressed interest in a snow cone prepared by yours truly.
Well, I think I'll go learn about literature of the western world. Goody. Get something done that matters, incipient readers.
Well, it’s certainly been awhile since I’ve written. I haven’t
had the overwhelming desire to type out my thoughts for over a month. I should
probably try a bit before my mind explodes with pent-up thought processes.
I don’t want to be here. Fact. I don’t want to be at home
for one more day, and certainly not till August. I’ve got my room nicely
organized, which is good, but I also made a point of organizing things so they
could be moved out easily once Getting Started weekend arrives. How sad is it
that I’m planning for events 3 months ahead of time?
Ah well. A few days before Abby got back from Texas, I mowed
the lawn like my parents asked, then tried to put the mower back in the shed.
It was such a mess that I had trouble putting it inside, so I immediately took everything
out of the shed and organized the whole area. It was gross, of course, since we
hadn’t cleaned it since we had it built years and years ago, but it was also
incredibly satisfying to look in there and know that everything was clean
because of me. It almost made me feel like I was back at work on costumes in
the Cedarville drama department. I would move on to cleaning the garage and
basement, but I don’t have the faintest idea what to do with almost any of it.
Oh, and before anyone pseudo-asks, I will not come to your
house and clean it for you. I am not giving up on music education for a career
as a maid.
Speaking of, learning Chinese is simultaneously easy and
incredibly difficult. The grammar and basic idea behind Mandarin symbols are
simple and can be learned quite quickly. What’s hard is getting the pronunciations
for each consonant and vowel right, while trying to remember what each symbol
means when there are so dang many! I feel confident that by the end of the
summer I should be able to get around a Chinese community without accidentally
insulting someone.
Of course, I realized recently that I shouldn’t bring books
on learning the language everywhere with me. For instance, I rode the bus to
get to my good friend Craig’s open house on Saturday, and took a large book to
occupy myself on the ride both ways. What I didn’t stop to consider beforehand
was how many people at said open house would be interested in the enormous tome
I was carrying. After explaining my plans for the next few years to half of
those in attendance, I felt like quite a dunce. I might as well have been carrying
the book above my head shouting, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME, EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT MY
OPEN HOUSE!!!” Of course, I doubt Craig noticed, seeing as how was a little
busy being an actual important person. Still, it was uncomfortable.
So. yesterday was apparently the last official day for DC
seniors. And by seniors, I mean sophomores. Because it doesn’t seem right for
them to be so freaking old.
By the way, anybody know why graduation is being held at
Salem Church of God instead of Cedarville this year? I was looking forward for
an excuse to go back on campus for even a few hours, and now I don’t even have
that. And Salem’s main auditorium area is so…. Orange. Like, everything. Very
very late 70’s orange. It’s not really where I’d want to have graduation,
personally.
Well, I’m off to mow the lawn AGAIN, because it won’t stay
the right height, no matter how much I threaten it. Enjoy the sunshine,
emancipated readers.
