31

Dec

Time to play ‘random fact catchup’. Now with extra bullet points!

As usual, when I’m off the computer and away from the internet I have all sorts of beautiful ideas for blog posts. Really, if I was to post every single idea that went through my head I would have a well rounded, frequently updated blog. Actually, I lie, I would have a odd, updated annoyingly often with short posts that only give you random scraps of mostly useless information blog.

At any rate, this is a  lead in to me using bullet points in a last ditch effort to categorize my thought process in some way, manner, or form.

Here we go.

  • I’m coming to the conclusion that I can predict the future through my dreams. Not all the time mind you, but my dreams have been freakishly similar to my life for a couple weeks. A good example would be the appearance of coffee houses, kings square,hanging out with a couple different friends, frequenting the library, and discussing specific subjects with specific people, all of these things which
  • These things have all taken place in my life over the last  couple of weeks.
  • I feel vaguely professor Xavier-esque.
  • That being said, I really hope the whole ‘dreams predicting my future’ thing wears off, because other wise I’m going to sink on the titanic, have my bus stop moved onto a dock, swim in three foot deep water to an island, have my mother attempt to marry me off and  be weirded  out by a pug dog playing video games back stage at the Imperial (the back stage of the Imperial having mysteriously sunk underground.).
  • In case you can’t tell, I tend to have odd dreams.
  • I’ve been really digging the cabaret genre of music lately. (not the bad-techno and overplayed lady gaga type of cabaret, the top hat, violin and belly dancing kind.)

  • It’s New Year’s Eve today. Which I’m perfectly fine with(ignoring the whole thing about the world ending in less than a year.). 2011, on the whole, I really didn’t care for you overmuch. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out!
  • I haven’t really thought of any New Year’s resolutions, although if I did they would probably be quite similar to last year’s: to become more peaceful, more creative and to spend more time on the things that matter. If I could add one thing it would probably be to have more patience. (and, yes, I know what a dangerous thing that is to request.)
  • Speaking of patience, I’m spending this new year’s eve with my youth group for an allnighter. I’m a little hesitant over it, but having never tried one before I feel I might as well.
  • Also on the news front, it’s going to be my birthday in a week. I suppose I could really quit writing that every New Year’s Eve. You guys have probably guessed by now that my birthday is on the same day every year. Funnily enough it tends to work like that.
  • Had a sleepover with Mozart Nerd the other day. We knit, we watched movies (we both can lip sync along to the entirety of the Princess Bride) and we ate lots of chocolate. I’d call that a successful sleepover.

I do believe that I’ve more or less caught this blog up. In a random manner, true, but I think that’s what people have come to expect of the majority of my blog posts.

Happy New Years!

Kaelen.

151 days ago Short URL Comments

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28

Dec

A Noob’s Thoughts on Cabaret. (And A Few Other Things.)

I already posted my thoughts on the wonderful performance that was Cinderella, but I found a few more pictures from the audience’s view (Yes, it is frowned upon to bring cameras into the theater….shhh.) which I wanted to share here.

The Imperial Theater is such a beautiful place.

The lighting and the camera combined to wash out the guitar, which is a pity, seeing as in person it was a bright baby pink.

Now, for my thoughts on Cabaret. I had been warned ahead of time that attending would probably scar me and cause me to run screaming to my homeschooled roots, never to return.

Well. Maybe that’s veering a bit into hyperbole.

To sum up, as a previously homeschooled girl with absolutely no experience in the world of school dances, this was most certainly jumping off the deep end into the dangerous waters of writhing hormonal crowds. For the first hour I didn’t enjoy myself at all, and had to keep reverting my eyes from…people. And what the people were doing. The last two hours I enjoyed myself for bits of it, after I let go of my dignity and accepted the fact that my friends and I were going to be the small group dancing without touching, in the middle of grinding couples (And threesomes. And foursomes. There was probably even a fivesome started at some point, but by then it was all sort of blurring).

I’ll go again next year.

Next year I will bring blinders.

 

Now, for the relatives, pictures of what I spent three hours on before going to cab. (Am I the only one who finds it odd that we get all dressed up just to dance to bad techno and avoid the couples attempting clothed procreation?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I had to make a list of pointers for people about to try out a highschool dance for the first time it might go something like this:

  • Don’t make eye contact with the grinding people. It’s awkward.
  • High heels are painful. Understand that at some point in the night you will probably have to take a trip to the sidelines and give your feet a break.
  • When people walk up to you and ask why you don’t have a date take it in stride as a very odd form of compliment.
  • The music will suck. It will suck badly. It will suck loudly. Don’t dance near a speaker.
  • Pop dehydrates you, buy water instead.
  • Be glad that the people at the coat check gave you your coat nicely after you identified as “That one three feet in front of me”, instead of keeping it because they couldn’t find the tag that matches your stub.

I’m afraid this post hasn’t completely brought you up to speed- I’ll have to have a post chockfull of bullet points and random bits and bobs soon.

Toodles,

Kaelen.

 

153 days ago Short URL Comments

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27

Dec

Christmas:

It went a little something like this.

I hope that your festivities went well, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or a Festivus For The Rest Of Us.

Kaelen.

(I promise that a proper blog post with pictures from certain dances and productions will be up soon. Right now I’m too busy fighting off the urge to crawl into my bear den for a long winter’s nap.)

154 days ago Short URL Comments

17

Dec

“It’s the Floating Market, silly. I told you already. It moves…”

Neverwhere. It was recommended to me  (Does it count as an recommendation if they pick the book off the library shelf and shove it into your arms before directing you to the checkout?) as one of Neil Gaiman’s non-mindscarring books.

***

Wow. The show is over. And although I’m sure I say this at the end of every show it’s only because it’s true; I feel like a large part of my life has suddenly been removed.

Our last showing, this afternoon, was (I thought) our best. I find it kinda ironic though, that you spend all this time perfecting a show until it’s just right, then you preform it a couple of times, and then…bang. It’s over.

And there goes your routine of staying uptown in between school and rehearsal, skipping school, eating lunch at the market with friends, and stealing wifi from various uptown hotsposts.

 

In the other I-act shows I’ve done we had our cast party right a week or so after our show, but this time we had it the evening after our final show, which was a matinee. It was nice to know that you were going to see everyone again in just a few hours, but at the same time I feel that if you have the cast party a week or so later it helps to drag out the ‘play mood’ just a little bit longer. Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Anywho, I spent the time in-between the ending of our show and the beginning of the cast party with my wonderful partner in crime, Julia. We got some present shopping done (‘subtly’ buying our christmas presents for each other in front of each other.), and just generally hung out until we finally walked to I-act only twenty minutes earlier than everybody else. (I’m usually in the group that goes to I-act an hour earlier than we need to, since the I-act building is warm, and they don’t mind if you randomly burst out into Shakespearean monologues there.)

During our hanging uptown time we searched out one of the big Cinderella posters that had been sprinkled around uptown so I could take a picture with one before they were taken down.

As we were standing by the poster so I could dig my Ipod out of my bag of never-terminating-depths a random woman and her kid walked up to us, and said, “Hey, good job on the show last night.”

An extremely simple thing to say, but it made Julia and I feel like rockstar celebrities. (How did she know who we were? Stage Makeup.)

 

Also up there with the random encounters, was the old guy who walked up to me as I was eating a bagel, and started talking to me in french.

Him: “something really cool and french sounding which means is your bagel yummy, and also why am I randomly talking to you, I don’t really know, don’t question it, I’m french, our logic is beyond your brain cell’s capacity.”

Me: “uh…….I don’t speak french.”

Him: “You don’t speak french? Frowny face.”

Me: “Uh…..um….Je parle anglais, j’étudie francais sur ma ordinateur.” (note: really have no clue if this makes any sense or not. Google translate seems to like it, and it made the old dude happy.)

After a minute or two of this he seemed satisfied, and walked happily off.

Dear Random Old French Man: you made me feel slightly bemused, in a good way.

 

Alrighty then, I’m going to go drown my end of show sorrows with Neil Gaiman and copious amounts of the Indelicates.

164 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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10

Dec

The Things That Are Currently Making My Life Awesome

 

  • Starting tomorrow, I will either be at I-act or the Imperial Theater at least once a day, for eight days.
  • The reason being, it’s production week for CINDERELLA THE FUNKY PANTO. Yes, you heard me correctly, I used full caps, because it’s Cinderella The Funky Panto.
  • And now you know that Friday the sixteenth at seven and Saturday the seventeenth at one you will be going to the Imperial and paying twenty bucks for adults, seventeen for students and seniors, to watch two hours of seventies flavored funky panto spangled awesomeness.
  • Anywho…
  • Today in art class we had a guest speaker come in, to show us how he created 3-d characters for animations, specifically characters designed for games. This was pretty cool for a couple different reasons, being A) 3-D character design is cool, B) My art class which is usually super noisy and obnoxious actually payed attention for once, and C) He designed the very first app I ever got on my Ipod, Trade Nations. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I deleted it because it kept asking for money, and got kinda boring kinda fast.)
  •  I’ve broken down, and finally admitted to myself that I will be attending cab this year. For those of you who don’t know cab is short for cabaret (no, not that sort of cabaret) which is the fancy christmas dance at my school. And all the awkard highschool couples apparently go to grind on the dance floor. (sorry for the mental image). I will be not going to grind, but to boogie and make a general ass of myself with my friends. (the hyper sort of ass, not the stupid and drunk sort.) Anyways, cab itself isn’t all that super awesmazing, (just a stereotypical teenage person dance), but some of the things connected to it are, namely being:
  •  The Variety Show. I’m pretty sure this is just a fancy name for ‘Talent Show That No One Will Bother Coming Too, As It Is Right Before Cab, And Everyone Is Going To Be Busy Doing Their Hair And Stuff’, but what the hey. I ‘auditioned’ by acting out a couple lines of my monologue that I keep in my back pocket at all times. (which reminds me, I should really memorize another, non-Shakespearean monologue.)

  • Another interesting thing about cab would be some of the conversations it generates. Namely, me (female, and despite what I tell my relatives for shock value, straight) walking up to my (female, straight) friend and asking her out as my cab date. Because couple’s tickets are cheaper than singles tickets. (it’s discrimination against all us forever alones.)
  • Pre-I.B. English class. This is the class I’m doing the worst in, yet it is also the class I think I love the most. (Actually, I lie, that’s art. But English is my second favorite.) We just finished our assignments on Romeo and Juliet, and as much as I love Shakespeare I was glad to reach the end of the assignment when I did. Not that I’m bashing the play, the play is great (the play’s the thing), but Romeo and Juliet themselves were pretty darn irritating by the end of it.
  • My adult friends randomly coming over to my house, and asking me to do their makeup, with instructions like, “Make me look kinda…um..feline. Like a crazy cat lady that got really into it.”
  • My friends in general, really. And, yes, I’m looking at all you I-act people. And Mozart Nerd. And the rest of you who are skulking in the corners. You know who you are.
  • Firefly. As in the show, not the bug. (those things are cool too, though. If you squish them on your hand they leave smears of glowing bug guts.) It’s like a western meets scifi meets steampunk (sorta) meets a whole bunch of random hippie mechanics…..it’s pretty wonderful.
  • Christmas break is coming up. Last day of school is the twenty third…and then I get until the ninth. Which means I also get my birthday off. So, yay-etty!

 

Okay, I think it’s time to wrap this post up now, seeing as it’s quarter to one in the morning, and I’ve reached the point where I’m typing words like ‘yay-etty’.

Goodnight!

Kaelen.

172 days ago Short URL 4 Comments

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02

Dec

I’m currently at school, in somebodies class room, standing around in some particularly uncomfortable (read: shoes with actual heels) shoes.

 Had pancake breakfast this morning, which seems to be a really big deal around here…. the premise is that you don’t have any morning classes, you wait in line for pancakes, and then you go watch an amusing assembly where all the teachers humiliate themselves. Afterwards you have the choice of going to a basket ball game like everybody else, skipping, or going to classes filled with two other people.

 I chose to not wait in line for pancakes, which caused concern my for mental state of mind amongst my pancake eating friends. Their words of concern for me (“You should be disowned from Saint John High!”) could possibly be slightly attributed to the fact that I chose to do English homework instead of pancake-ing.

 Anyways, the teacher’s assembly was hilarious and, sadly, not allowed to be recorded for youtube purposes.

 Lunch period I was going to meet up with a friend at the school library to do social studies homework. Anyways, I walked down to the first floor eating my sandwich, turning down offers to go do uptown related stuff…and the library was locked. Ack. Fail moment.

 I ended up hanging out with some people who I sorta-kinda know. As often happens at lunch everybody ended up nearly comatose in the middle of the hallway. Somebody in the group coined the phrase ‘lounging is good for the soul’, which may very well be my new favorite motto.

 Afterwards I went to go to my art class, rather excited that all the annoying kids would be at the basket ball game…and my art teacher never showed up. The teachers are just deciding to…skip.

  I mean, yeah, they can do that technically, I just never really factored that into my equation of ‘whether or not to go to class’. Because the thought of teachers and the thought of skipping doesn’t necessarily work together in that way.

 At this point I had dramatically thrown down my book bag, and was preparing myself to do English homework in the middle of the hallway, but the janitors were going through, telling us we weren’t allowed to hang in the hallways.

 

 Okay, so I don’t actually know if they are skipping or not, all I know is that I’m in a classroom full of kids who are in the same predicament as me. Which is really rather amusing when you think about it.

180 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

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