Meh....

So here's the deal "readers" (i.e. Kristen).  My bad.  Sorry I haven't blogged in forever.  I know...I am super unreliable when it comes to doing personal blogging stuff.  Here's my list of excuses.  Many are real.  Many are fake.  Guess the right ones and you win a cake.

1.  my life is pretty boring, and nobody wants to hear about it
2.  my life is actually not at all boring, and I'm so busy living a cool life that I forget to tell people about it
3.  I've been super busy
4.  I have a real like "hey I'm a professional artist" website now...so sometimes blogging seems moot
5.  I've stopped listening to audiobooks because they were lulling me to sleep in transit during my super cool life...so I didn't have anymore audiobook adventures
6.  When blogging...sometimes I found a million friends (obviously not entirely true) that had blogs and I felt like a bum if I didn't read everyone else's too
7.  My Jedi training has been super intense

Okay, done with excuses now for clarifications.

1/2.  Now...the first two, could actually both be true, depending on who you're talking to.  And like...you could be talking to me...just on different days...or moments.  Seriously.  My life is weird.

3.  I HAVE been super busy.  Not a lie.

4.  "hey I'm a professional artist" website <-- Check it out, yo!

5.  Audiobooks.  True.  I was listening to Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and nearly snoozed right off of the road..

6.  Other people's blogs.  True.  I feel like if I'm acting like other people should care about my life then I should show that I care about other peoples' lives too.  And I DO care.  But sometimes I don't seem to have the time to show it by reading blog posts.  If Emily Post knew about blogging etiquette...she'd probably tell me that I'm an unfortunate miscreant with no prospects for marriage.

7.  Lastly, false.  I finished my Jedi training like...years ago.

Anyway, I'm trying my hand at this again.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  Alaina's Blog.  The end.

So...yes, I guess I have like 7 months to catch you multitude of readers up on...but I'm going to wrap this up.  I'm either going to go read my book or watch Thor.  Yes, I've been told is pretty awful.  No, I don't care.  I like to decide these things for myself.  And I want to go watch something else because my brother is enforcing the "Tuesday is Deadliest Catch Day Rule."  I don't mind watching the show.  I actually like it.  But I'm not in the mood for it right now.  So I'm going to do the "mature" thing and pick up my ball and go home.  Haha.

But it's also almost 9pm.  And tomorrow morning is my third day teaching theatre to 7-11 year old kids.  It's awesome.  I love it.  Yet it does take energy.  I may just read my book and turn in early.

Oh the endless possibilities.

Night all, stay classy.

myTunes: Sons and Daughters by The Decemberists

The winds are blowing like crazy outside and I love it.  There's just something about the wind...the idea that the air that I breathe and that gives me life takes on a life of its own.  There's a natural strength to it.  Oftentimes it is a subtle strength, but on nights like tonight, it's a force to be reckoned with.  I think that we all have that inside of us.  Anyway, I just think it's awesome.  It actually has nothing to do with this post (well, I guess now it does, but whatever).

I really don't have anything to say other than those airy thoughts (pun intended).  It's just that I finished watching Tuesday's episode of Glee a little while ago and the final song from that episode got me to thinking about what my favorite songs on the planet are.  I'm thinking I want to integrate that into my blog somehow, but I'm not sure how yet, and I don't care to take the effort to even think about that right now.  Just wanted to share this song.  I took my brother to see The Decemberists for a graduation gift last summer.  Not this past summer, but LAST summer, you know?  I guess that doesn't really matter to you.  Oh well.

This has always been one of my favorite songs of theirs and one of my favorite songs, period.  When they closed the show with this song, I'm not going to lie, I cried.  Just so simply beautiful and beautifully simple.  No complexity.  Just hopes and dreams and the belief that we can make them so.

When we arrive
Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now

These currents pull us 'cross the border
Steady your boats
Arms to shoulder
'till tides will pull
our hull aground
Making this cold harbour now home

Take up your arm
Sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirigible
We'll leave our tracks untraceable now

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now
(We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now)

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
(Sons and daughters)
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon
(We'll make our homes on the water)
We'll make our homes on the water
(When we build our walls of aluminum)
(We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon)

Here all the bombs they fade away (x20)

That's all for now.  Just wanted to share that awesomeness with you guys.

Okay, now I think that I may be adding this as a section entitled myTunes.  We'll see.  I'm accruing a lot of sections these days, it seems to me.

SC,

LT

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection by Carol Burnett

"We sent penny postcards to every producer and agent in town inviting them to our show, the postcard being their ticket.

They came.

After our two evenings, three of us got agents.  It was right out of a Mickey and Judy scene in Babes in Arms, and I thanked my lucky stars that I had seen all those joyous movies growing up, telling me no pipe dream was impossible."

~Carol Burnett in  This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection


I dont' know where to begin...both when talking about this book...and this marvelous woman.  Ready for a stretch?  I'm going to try to make this all connect.  Okay here we go.

So, like I said...I don't know where to start.  Well...as one of the most iconic characters in musical theatre (that just so happens to have been played by Carol's best friend in the timeless film adaptation of The Sound of Music) once said..."Let's start at the very beginning.  A very good place to start."

(For those of you who did not follow that, the character is that of Maria von Trapp [technically Maria Rainer, because at the time that she sings this particular quote, she has not yet married Georg Von Trapp], and Carol's best friend...Julie Andrews.)

Anyway...the beginning to my story with Carol Burnett begins thusly:

My dad, who loved Annie, had bought the VHS of this movie for my brother and I when we were on some road trip as kids.  We were hesitant to watch it...it was probably some weird old movie...but we watched it in the backseat of the van on the little TV from the kitchen...and our parents may have experienced the first bout of peace and quiet on the whole trip.  Ever since then, I have never been the same.

My pre-acting childhood was, as you can probably guess, filled with impressions of people who WERE actors.  Most notably from this time period were Miss Hannigan from Annie and Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof.  I remember vividly numerous times when Kyle would ask me to do my Miss Hannigan impression for our friends (this was before me doing impressions became old hat...though I've made a comeback with him with Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama).

I absolutely loved the movie.  But in all honesty, I cared much more for the villain (Burnett) than the spunky little orphan girl with the dog.  I could start rattling off Miss Hannigan lines right now.  No...not could...will.

"If this floor doesn't shine like the top of the Chrysler Building your backsides will!"

"But it's in the middle of the night!" (Mocking Annie complaining about cleaning in the middle of the night.)

"Not even a nickel for the subway."

"She hadda go bafroom."  (Mocking Molly who is lying about Annie's whereabouts.)  I kid you not.  Kyle and I would rewind this part and watch it over and over and over again.

Okay, sorry...you probably didn't sign up to read transcriptions of a few of the millions of amazing lines that Carol delivered to perfection as Miss Hannigan....

Anyway...that was the beginning of Carol Burnett for me.  Then I watched her variety show whenever I could.  I watched her in anything that I could get my hands on.  This woman is just plain funny.  But then if you read this book...you learn (if you didn't know already) that not only is she funny...she's just plain solid.

This Time Together takes the reader (at least a reader starved for any stories from Carol) through a wonderland of tales from Carol's experiences, not only as a world class comedienne, but as a woman in the world that we all live in together.  From the beginning of her story...to where she is today in 2010.

The audiobook is read by Carol herself and the format is similar to the last audiobook adventure that I went on.  But while Carol's life did and still does have its ups and downs, I came away from this book much more uplifted than I did from Carrie Fisher's autobiography.

When I heard the passage that I began this post with...it just floored me.  It's so awesome to me to be reminded that the people who are living the dream now...were once dreaming a dream just like I am.  In the same way...it's awesome to be reminded that the people that I look up to have people that they look up to too.  The first chapter of this book is about Jimmy Stewart and the whole time I was thinking "Oh Carol, if you only knew.  You are my Jimmy Stewart!"  Where a lot of people might brush that off or be like "whoa, back off, I don't know you," I'm pretty sure Carol would be thrilled about that...and maybe a little taken aback at first.

Anyway.  The book.  This book shines a light on one of my most favorite spotlight dwellers of all time.  From The Carol Burnett Show, to Annie, to Mama's Family, to Stephen Sondheim's Putting it Together and many more...Carol has been lighting up my life and the lives of countless others for years.  And now, she can just sit and chill, and enjoy her life.  Knowing that she's done a billion jobs well done and deserves to make other people do the work for a while she'll probably just slow down...oh wait...what?  My sources are telling me something...what was that?

Oh I totally forgot!  (That's a lie.  I could not forget this.)

Carol is on Glee next week (as Sue Sylvester's Nazi hunting mother, no less)!!!!

If I haven't convinced you to read or listen to the book yet...do it.  If anything...it's worth it just to hear about how she got away from a mugger in New York!  Yeah...that's right...I'm not telling you...now you have to read it!

Stay Classy Guys,

LT

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Photo from bookcoverarchive.com.

"Happy is one of the many things I'm likely to be over the course of a day and certainly over the course of a lifetime. But I think if you have the expectation that you're going to be happy throughout your life--more to the point, if you have a need to be comfortable all the time--well, among other things, you have the makings of a classic drug addict or alcoholic." - Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking

Thanks to my friend Patrick's blog, Reading Under the Covers, I happened upon a read that was equal parts entertaining and eye-opening in Carrie Fisher's recent memoir, Wishful Drinking.  Check out Patrick's review of the same book here!  He's awesome so keep checking his blog.  You'll be glad you did.

For those of you that have happened upon this blog post during your first excursion out from under your rock (no offense at all...I find myself between a rock and a hard place all the time), Carrie Fisher played Princess Leia in the ORIGINAL Star Wars Trilogy.  Princess Leia, in her infinite wisdom and amazingness, takes the bull by the horns in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and famously puts Han Solo into his place by saying:

"Somebody has to save our skins.  Into the garbage chute, Flyboy!"

Now that's what I'm talking about.  Pure woman power!

Anyway, yes, I grew up watching Star Wars.  My brother and I know absolutely every word to the original trilogy, I think, and I'm pretty confident that we're pretty close with the prequels now too.  In fact, after finishing Wishful Drinking in the car (audiobook of course) on my way up North this past week, Kyle and I watched episodes 4 and 5 together this weekend.  Unfortunately we did not get to Return of the Jedi which has always been my favorite, but there will be other times.  But yes, it can be argued (it doesn't even need to be, as there really isn't much of a rebuttal) that I've always been a pretty huge dork.  I've never really been of the loud and proud persuasion of dorks...but at the same time, I've never succeeded when trying to hide it either, at least not to my knowledge.

So yes, onto business.  Aside from playing one of the biggest female science fiction icons of all time Carrie Fisher also became a rather iconic addict (oh, she was also in When Harry Met Sally...a personal favorite...check it out, for sure) among other things.  Wishful Drinking chronicles some of the deepest and darkest times in Fisher's life.  The memories that she has written about are ones that remain available to her after electroconvulsive therapy.  This being the case, this book acts not only as a window into an interesting life for the reader but also as a journey of rediscovery for the author.

The reclaimed fragments of Fisher's life are simultaneously hilarious and haunting...and I do not say this lightly.  Wishful Drinking is a fascinating read (or listen...the audiobook being read by Fisher herself) but it is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.  God bless her, Carrie Fisher is a riot...a truly rowdy woman...and I mean this only in the best ways possible.

Mentions of her feelings toward George Lucas and of the frantic call about Carrie's use of LSD made to Cary Grant by Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, are just two out of a myriad of highlights that make this tale both cautionary and comedic.

So to sum things up...the book was great and I'd definitely recommend it, with the minor caveat mentioned already.  Check out the video below, where Carrie herself promotes her one-woman-show by the same title.  If you see the video and think "my life may very well be incomplete until I read this book"...then I'd recommend picking it up and giving it a chance!

That's all for now, but more to come soon!  If you like reading my random rants and feel like clicking that "Follow" button...by all means, go for it (but no pressure)!  (Quick shout-out to the newest follower among the ranks, anchorman0718!)

Peace out, all!  Stay Classy!

LT

Guess what I use for a beanbag chair. A raisin.

So I'm watching the incomparable Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends while working on some costume design homework.  I have Moose and Squirrel on fullscreen but then I heard the familiar "bing" telling me that I had an e-mail.  Come to find out that it was a Facebook notification that a friend from work, Jackie, had posted a video on my wall.  I laughed so hard.  I am still laughing.  I am still watching it.  Over and over.  I wish I knew how these people made the mouth on Marcel the Shell because if I knew, I would totally make a video like this (because I definitely have the spare time).  Hmmm...well I do have a directing project due today...maybe I'll throw that together into video form just for kicks.  It won't be anything like this...but hey...what can you do?  Anyway, I'm staging Romeo and Juliet in a five section tableau with objects...what are these objects?  I will tell you...

...AFTER I present it at 1:00 pm!  How terrible would it be if I posted on here what my concept was and then somebody else came to class with the same concept?!  Surely someone is reading this right now...you know who you are (actually, I bet nobody is reading this right now, I'm just being silly and pretending that I have an idea brilliant enough to catch the attention of suave spies like Borris and Natasha [Can anybody say FULL CIRCLE?])...just trying to figure out what to do for our project for William today.  Alas, you non-existant hypothetical idea stealer...I am not an idea revealer!

Okay, this is getting dumb now.  I'm fully aware, so Kyle, if you're reading this, no need to point it out.  Anyway, the point of this was just to show everyone this awesome video!!!!



Stay tuned for Romeo and Juliet with objects!!!!

SC,
LT

P.S.  Go watch it on Youtube, if you want.  The blog kinda cuts off part of the screen.  By kinda I mean, it really does.

Yerba Mate

I was working on a biology paper this afternoon (at times it seems that that is all that I do anymore) and Kyle came home from having coffee with his friend/fellow Sunday School Teacher.  He walked into the house, greeted lovingly by Chance, Genevieve, and Nelson, and stopped behind the half-wall that divides the kitchen/eating area from the family room.

"I have an early apartment warming gift for you," he said, and further explained that it was also a gift because he noticed that I've been working very hard on these biology papers and he thought I might need some relaxation.

I closed my eyes and held out my hands, as instructed, and when I opened my eyes I saw that he had gotten me a traditional Yerba Mate Gourd and Bambilla.  The drinking of Yerba Mate is a common social practice in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, eastern Bolivia, and southern and western Brazil.  It's kind of supposed to be a miracle drink.  Sign me up!  Anyway, in some of its countries of origin it is consumed more than coffee in a ratio of 7:1.

I had my first try at it this afternoon.  I had about 3 or 4 gourds full.  Don't remember exactly how many it was...I was writing biology papers (shocker).  Let me tell you what...it has an INTENSE taste!  It was almost kind of overwhelming.  I'm thinking it's kind of an acquired taste.  But that's said about beer too and I've been able to acquire a taste for that just fine.

We're talking energy, antioxidants, blah, blah, blah...(those are reverent "blahs" not negating "blahs")...but it also...are you ready for this?

Get ready?

It kinda saves the friggin rain forests (which, due to my millions of biology papers, I know is very important to do) and by extension the friggin world!

And on top of that.  I'm kind of in love with the people at this company.  Check out this vid.

So...I'm looking at trying to make a conscious life change, here.  Those of you who know me know that I kind of do that all the time...but oh well.  Anyway, I'm trying this whole Yerba Mate thing out.  I think it could be great.  I was reading the pamphlet that came with it and it was telling me about the cultural gourd drinking ceremony...it's done among family and friends...loved ones.  

I said to Kyle "It sounds just like smoking Hookah." 

He said "...well yeah, or a peace pipe."

"Except drinking tea is better for you than smoking."

"Well yeah, Lauren...most things are actually."

You're welcome to those of you who were afraid of going through your day without a dose of Kyle's wisdom.

Peace out, Stay Classy!
Lauren Elizabeth

LTVlog goes to Florida: Day_01

Family Support

Kyle and my dad just got home from Washington D.C. last night (the Spring Break vacation that I had to stay home from to do makeup work).  It was great to have them back.  Now Kyle and I can work on homework together some of the time and veg out watching movies some of the time.  Anyway, that's not the point.

They got gifts for both my mom and myself which was really sweet.  Firstly, I got this fascinating new Tea Tumbler from Starbucks.  Kyle said, as he was handing it to me, that it really had nothing at all to do with D.C. but they wanted me to have it anyway.  It's honestly really neat.  When filled with tea (or another hot beverage) a design appears on the exterior...and...the interior is coated with a certain kind of porous clay from China that absorbs the flavor and aroma of whatever you put in it.  (For that reason you're supposed to use it for either coffee or tea, not both.  Also, I think I might need to pick my favorite flavor of tea and just stick to that.  At the moment, that would be Teavana's Samurai Chai Mate...so I think I'll go with that once I'm back in Indy this coming week.)

Thoroughly interested in my new tumbler, I was reading the card that came with it...researching...planning which tea flavor would receive the honor of being the exclusive tea for that cup, then Kyle reprimanded me for focusing on the tumbler when I had something else to focus on.  I wasn't aware that I had another gift, but I did, and the story behind it touched me to the core.

Once I put the tumbler on the coffee table, Kyle pulled a book out of one of their bags from D.C. and handed it to me.  The first two words on the cover were George and Washington so I was a little apprehensive...history is not my thing...AT ALL.  My mom loves historical biographies, and maybe someday I would enjoy them, but I'm still jaded from primary school social studies.  Being the strong person that I am though, I pushed through the pain of this being a potential history book and read further.  Upon doing so, I found that this was hardly a history book, but a collection of Letter's written by George Washington's adopted daughter, Eleanor Parke Custis, to her best friend, Elizabeth Bordley Gibson.  The letters span from 1794-1851.

So I was pretty excited about this to begin with...I opened it to read some bits and pieces but was told to wait as there was a story behind the gift.  Kyle and my dad bought me this book, George Washington's Beautiful Nelly: The Letters of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1794-1851, after seeing an actress somewhere in D.C. (in some important building, I'm sure) portraying Eleanor.  They spoke to the actress, who said that she had used this book as research for building her character.  They thought knew that I would be really interested in this...and they were right.  They got me the book thinking that maybe I could turn it into a one woman show.  I was so touched that I seriously almost started crying.  I am so beyond blessed to have such a supportive family that is emotionally and intellectually (not to mention monetarily) invested in my career.

After we talked about that prospect for a while, my dad added on this invaluable piece of information:

"Plus, we figured you could play her because she had hair similar to yours."

"Like curls?" I asked.

"Yeah, and color, too" my dad responded.  When I asked if she had red hair or my natural hair color, my dad, without even pausing for one moment, answered "both."

"Wow," I said, Kyle and I smirking at each other, "that's some hair!"

We laughed and went on with the evening...I must say that I'm really looking forward to reading these letters and seeing what comes from them.  Surely something thrilling...I mean...two-tone hair...in the 18th and 19th centuries?!  LEGIT!

I'm NOT Piscicidal...Honestly!

Those of you who know me are most likely aware of Spaz, the feeder fish that I adopted from Petsmart last year for 12 cents.  He's no llama, donkey, dog, cat, or bird...but he's a fantastic fish and I'm allowed to have him in my dorm room, which is a plus.  This past year I've been trying to find him a friend, not just for him to have some company, but also to keep his tank a little cleaner.

Plan A was to get a Red Cherry Shrimp and name him Jacques after the French cleaning shrimp in Finding Nemo.  I was rather excited about this prospect but there were two problems with it.

1. Petsmart did not have any of these shrimp.
2. Kyle thought that the name lacked originality and creativity.

From Plan A's failure Plan B was born.

1. Kyle decided that regardless of what kind of cleanly friend I got for Spaz, Kyle would be the one to name it and its name was to be Lee Harvey Oswald.
2. Since the shrimp were not in stock a nice young woman named Audrey, touted as the "fish expert" by her fellow Petsmart worker, told me that an Otocinclus would work quite well in my one gallon tank with Spaz.  She said that it would be good addition to help with tank maintenance and that its contribution to ammonia production would be negligible.  Sounded great to me.
3. And so it was...that on that day, in that Petsmart store, an Otocinclus was bought by myself, and as it was decreed by Brother Kyle, he was called Lee Harvey Oswald.

Plan B worked out pretty well...Spaz and Ozzy got along just fine most of the time.  Once in a while Spaz would have the need to nudge Ozzy around just a little bit, but it was nothing that my fishy little assassin couldn't handle.  Then, months later, Ozzy seemed to be kind of off...my friend Stephanny was over to work on some of the Woyzeck design with me and I informed her that it seemed as if Ozzy's end might be in the near future.  I checked around the tank and saw that some of the gravel pieces on the bottom seemed to have no more color to them, as if Ozzy had gotten a wee bit overzealous with his cleaning duties.  Shortly thereafter, Ozzy was no more.

Rest In Peace

Lee Harvey Oswald (Ozzy)

? - February 12, 2010

So I came up with all of my possible reasons for Ozzy dying.  I didn't know if it was from the gravel...or if he just died...or whatever...or if it was Kyle's fault.  In the long run, I decided to blame it on Kyle, thinking that surely only bad things can come from naming one's pet for an assassin.

Then came Plan C.

1. I got sick and rushed to the emergency room which prompted my mother to come down from home to take care of me.  (Yes...for anyone who was wondering, I definitely just slipped into my default phrasing for writing down the backwards dominos of action for Play Analysis in accordance to David Ball's Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays.)
2. During my mom's stay with me at school, she bought me a new Otocinclus to cheer me up/give Spaz some company.
3. Seeing as Ozzy died because my brother gave him an unfortunate name...I carefully chose the name of my new fish on my own.
4. I chose to call her Antigone, after the title character of Sophocles' tragedy.  For with such an honorable namesake, I reasoned, a fish would never die.
5. She died.

Plan D.

1. My mother decided to take me to Petsmart on Monday because she wanted to try once more, fearing that maybe Antigone was injured during the move from Indianapolis for Spring Break.
2. Learning from my past two problems with fish names/deaths, I decided before even laying eyes on this new fish, that its name would be Lazarus.
3. Then...after picking out the fish that I wanted...the unthinkable happened...when I asked the Petsmart woman to get me the fish that I wanted she started questioning me about what kind of fish I had at home...what kind of tank...yadda yadda yadda...she then told me that it was probably my fault that Ozzy and Antigone died, because my tank was not big enough to support a goldfish and another fish.  I was greatly saddened by this...but then she continued, telling me that my tank isn't even big enough to support Spaz himself!  "Well I have two goldfish and I have them in a 20 GALLON TANK!!!!" She says to me.  Basically she went on to tell me that I was suffocating my beloved fish by denying him the proper housing.
4. You could tell that she was at least making an effort to be nice about it...but her eyes told me that in her mind she could see Spaz's internal organs trapped in vice grips.
5. We left Petsmart...without a new fish...and much to Petsmart Girl's chagrin, without a 10 gallon tank.

In the car on the ride home I really felt bad about how I'd been stifling Spaz's ability to grow...but when I could no longer take the guilt I diagnosed this Petsmart girl that I don't know with a random mental illness and deemed her, therefore, an unreliable source of information.  That made me feel better for a while...and when I sat down to blog about these fish tales, if you will, I found the following article:

Italian Town Bans Goldfish in a Bowl

So the question is now this...is ignorance really bliss?  Because honestly, I don't find dead fish to be all that blissful.

Oh Hey...My Little Brother's an Artist Too

Hey Readers!

I don't know if you're really there, but I'm just going to pretend that you are.  Why not, right?

Anyway, I've been trying to recover from a little illness recently.  During that time, along with trying to stay caught up with life, I've been trying to get some things done on the computer that I've been meaning to do.  One of which was putting up a video of my little brother throwing a pot in his studio.  We threw the video together for a party we were going to over winter break and he had asked me to put it up on Facebook.  I finally did so today, and decided why not put it into a little blog post as well?

So without further ado...here's my brother throwing a vase.

Until next time, folks...look someone in the eye and smile at them.  It may take them off guard...but that's not always a bad thing.

Peace,

LT