| Three things I don't want to see in the next six months, and three things I do. |
[11 Nov 2008|12:32am] |
So, the election's over, and we've all gotten over Obama winning and McCain losing and the Dems picking up six or seven (or eight?) seats in the Senate. Well, no we haven't, but that's not really the point I'm getting at. See, in all the hype building up to the election, a couple of things happened. First of all, people got really interested in politics. Or if not politics, at least they got interested in reading about the election. This caused a boom in election coverage, which led to still more people getting interested in politics. And this led to more coverage, and this led to you getting the picture. Well, after all this build-up, the Obamajaculate of November 4th happened, and then, well, nowhere was your job in more jeopardy than if you were a McCain staffer or an election reporter. I shudder to think how Nate Silver's going to feed his family of five now.
Or, I would have shuddered, except that a curious thing seems to have happened. A curious thing that every single person in the world should have seen coming, that is. The reporters who used to cover the election have divided into two camps: those still covering the election, and those already covering the next election. American political events may have come to a relative standstill, but that's no reason for American political news to come to a standstill, is their thought on the matter. I disagree, courteously.
Despite my admitted addiction to the 24-hour news cycle (unrelated, but did you know that I was once a leading member (as in, co-president) of the Political Junkies Support Group in high school? True story.), it is my opinion that the country needs a break from political-news-as-usual, and so I propose three things that I absolutely do not want to see, hear, or read about in the next six months. Since I don't think it's fair to proscribe without suggestions as well, I will also offer three things that I would love to see, hear, and read about to excess in the next six months. Reporters, take note.
( THREE DON'Ts )
and
( THREE DOs )
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[21 Apr 2008|11:57pm] |
Right, so I don't post much on this ol' thing nowadays, but I figured this was the best way of bragging to exactly the people who would most appreciate what I'm bragging about:
I'm going to the Caps game tonight.
Game 7, with Ovechkin back in gear, in the Verizon Center, and I'm going to be five rows away from the ice, sitting behind the visiting goal.
see ay pee es caps caps caps.
(since when am I caps fan, you ask. well, since I accepted the offer to go to graduate school at Michigan State University. i'll be working for a Ph.D. in psychology, which is pretty nifty, and since i won't have shakespeare around, i've been looking for other things to fill my time. one of these is learning to play guitar. another is pets: i have two turtles, and will have a bunny. the third is hockey. i've always liked it, but now i'm learning how to be dedicated. the red wings are still number one in my heart, but they're in the other conference, so I feel comfortable with fanatic support for the caps right now. we'll see what happens when we get to the finals. hopefully.)
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[01 Nov 2007|06:08pm] |
So, I'm directing a show that goes up this weekend. Most of you probably won't be able to see it. Nevertheless, I'm posting the trailer here, so that you can know what you're missing, and also just to get a taste of its awesomeness.
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[30 Apr 2007|11:35am] |
I reread The Tempest last night for my Shakespeare class--it's the last class I need to complete my Shakespeare major, and this is the last play I'm reading to complete this class, and after this I'm probably going on to psychology for next year, grad school, and the rest of my life. So it felt appropriate, both in that 'now my charms are all o'erthrown' sort of way, as well as the end returning to the beginning sort of way.
Maybe my first play was 'Shakespeare in the City' (and maybe it was end-of-year English class R&J), but my first real play was The Tempest. I played Stephano, across from Zach Fithian's Trinculo and Ben Ellis's Caliban: we were, in the very best Shakespearean sense, 'we three.' If it weren't for the laughing, we would've given Erin and Claire both anuerysms.
Reading plays I've been in is always difficult, because I can never get the lines out of my head how they were said before. 'Moooon-calf,' for example. Or the sharp, staccato way Reidel always said 'the Duke of Milan.' 'Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a GOOOSE!' I was probably less funny than I remember being--after all, it was Shakespeare, and I had little to no idea what I was actually saying. I was just kinda going with it.
It would be so lovely, neat, and convenient to have this play tie up my interest in Shakespeare. I just finished a project with Hamlet (my loose end, in terms of the stage--I never got to play the role, only the halfway bastardization of R&G are Dead), and The Tempest is always a good place to end on. Except that over the summer I'm doing actual scholarly work on memorial reconstruction (I'm hoping to find something interesting enough to take to a worldwide Shakespearean conference), and that's no good for the conclusion.
I guess stories really do never end. Closure is nothing but an attractive illusion.
Besides, I don't really want closure anyway. Next semester, I'm directing Measure for Measure.
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[16 Apr 2007|08:22pm] |
I dreamt today, while sleeping off an illness, that in the bustle and commotion of consumerism, I found a tree in a room behind a locked door. And as I stared up through its thin, twisted branches, I caught images of all the things I loved.
I wept for the loss of life today.
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[08 Dec 2006|04:40pm] |
For all y'all who don't read Mary's LJ, my and her first review. (Erin also was in the play, though she's mentioned only indirectly as an orientation aide.) It's a little known fact that I changed my name to 'Wordshop' before this article was written. Nevertheless.
http://www.flathatnews.com/reviews/130/student-written-college-proves-hilarious
Just for some added context: I directed the play, wrote the first act in totum, and outlined the second and third acts (which were improvised from said outline, rather than being fully scripted). My intent was to provide a humorous interlude for the playgoers moreso than to create "high art;" the last act, however, was irresistably postmodern with a purpose (and a vengence). Ian (Dean Edwards) was a charicature of a TJ kid.
Yay reviews!
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| Don't celebrate quite yet. |
[09 Nov 2006|06:43pm] |
Source: BBC News World
Allen's concession may have secured the Senate as well as the house for the democrats, but in all the confusion, Canada was able to take over New Hampshire unnoticed.
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[15 Apr 2006|02:29am] |
I said good-bye to Matoaka tonight. I did it alone, because that was how it needed to be done, but I was scared to go there alone. I don't know why. It took two hours.
I wrote there, on the wall. Like when for Hamlet the stage was checkered and needed to become black once more, and before painting it over people filled the white space first with poetry and prose and words and images and import. This is what I wrote:
The moon committed suicide
To fill her half-whole dream.
Mostly I sat in silence, and watched the thunderstorm drift away, and watched the lake and the towers and the stage. I sang a piece of a Jim Croce song, and there was a time towards the end where I was watching the full moon and its clouds lit by lightning.
I had a bottle of sparkling cider, which I had intended to toast with, but you can't toast alone. Instead, I watched the flame of a candle flicker.
It's going to be under renovation for the next year; who knows what it will be when it's done and back and open again. That's why I said good-bye.
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| I want to share this with you. |
[18 Nov 2004|11:04pm] |
Around Williamsburg, there are a handful of pizza companies. Among such are Papa John's, Domino's, and this really great place called Chanello's. Chanello's had the brilliant idea some time ago in the past to serve little packets of ranch dressing with their pizzas, as a dipping sauce. It sounds weird, but I don't believe I will ever go back to eating non-ranch dipping sauce pizza ever again. Papa John's is awful, compared to Chanello's. Domino's is awful compared to anything, except for their two-for-tuesdays deal. Anyhow. Chanello's slogan is "Nothin' Beatsa Pizza from Chanello's." (Go http://www.chanellosnc.com/ for their jingle. it's catchy.) My friend Dan and I realized that this was quite a claim they were making. With such a wide world of possibilities, how can Chanello's make such a claim? We decided to email them. The following is our email.
( (Dan Piepenbring and Mike Mott present:) Your Slogan, Our Pride )
We were hoping that they would reply, but not really expecting it to happen. Twenty-four hours later, though, we received this. Look first at the bottom of it: apparently it was forwarded to the Williamsburg area Chanello's headquarters (and elsewhere, perhaps) before it was responded to. Dan and I like to imagine it was circulated around the office and got a couple of really good laughs at the water cooler before they responded.
( =TOO much secret ingredient )
And that's our story. Amusing? We thought so.
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[26 Mar 2004|11:54pm] |
first, salsa dancing. three cheers for unabashed metrosexualism!
rehearsal was the best thing ever. it makes me sad that I have to give back the part. But it makes me happy that I got all the time that I did with it. Mmm, memorization. Of lines that I probably won't ever use. I'm happy with how this week turned out.
And then post rehearsal conversation, and then driving home to Trail Mix, and then to Warren's.
Strawberry rhubarb pie. Commandeering kathleen's microwave. eating half a pie by myself. Ah, such bliss.
A good day, this one. A good day.
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[11 Mar 2004|07:39pm] |
Yes, so that thing I wrote in my LJ earlier about how Fithian should drop Moon Over Buffalo? It was a joke. Not meant to be serious at all. I thought that was made clear by the talk about the geosystems SOL, but apparently it wasn't. Please accept my apologies if you misunderstood my intention. My hope was to ease my own pain of not getting the part by joking about it; jokes make things easier to get over.
Fithian, you're an amazing actor, and I won't deny that I'm going to be terribly jealous of you during rehearsals, but you earned the part over me, and I respect the decision of the director, assistant director, and producer. I am glad that I have the honor of understudying, and while I may joke about you becoming incapacited, as all understudies do, I don't mean a word of it. It's going to be an amazing show, the cast is the strongest cast I've seen at TJ, and I'm happy to be a part of it.
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| you know you're happy when the posts in happiness_is are lowering your mood. |
[31 May 2003|10:46pm] |
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i'm quite pleased with the last two days.
and for the record, pieing AAron Krajeski in the face with whipped cream sprayed in a pie pan is great fun. You'll have to ask makeda, but I imagine taping said event is at least slightly more exciting than math class.
And that's the way the world wags. Sit, world. Roll over.
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[28 May 2003|07:57pm] |
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So either today was a really awesome day, or my spirits were so low that they actually reached China, and found that it's a sunny day in China. Trouble is, it's a sunny day here too, so unless my emotions start speaking chinese, I'm not gonna know which end of the spectrum I'm at.
Now, you'd probably think, "Now wait, Mike. If today was that crappy, how could you think you were happy?" Well, it's like this.
(First off, I'm probably significantly sleep deprived, having lost 3 hours from my norm in the last pair of days. But sleep deprivation is something that we all live with here at TJ.)
( Chapter One: Video Tech )
( Chapter Two: Sarah )
( Chapter Three: Froshfest/Council )
( Chapter Four: Video Oscars )
( Chapter Five: The sun )
So that's my day. I'm pleased with it.
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[27 May 2003|03:15am] |
gahh!
i need to write a novel, not a short story. I got to the sixth page, and realized that the story had only just left the exposition, and that was with me skipping 90% of what I wanted to include, so I decided to preemptively throw in the ending, and hope it just worked out okay.
It seems to read tolerably well, but I didn't have anything about the love between Alicia and Alexei, nor did I go into as much detail about Elizabeth as I wanted to, nor did I get to have very much of anything.
*frustrated*
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[26 May 2003|10:14pm] |
Boy, it rocks to be in M/V 2/3. Our SOL is .08 hours shorter than 6/7's. According to blackboard, that is.
still have a ten-page story to write, and it's due tomorrow. Gotta get them creative juices flowing, and then prep the cherry coke for tomorrow morning, otherwise I'll die on the SOLs.
scoff.
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[25 May 2003|10:35pm] |
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I love spending time with Sahm, because it always feels like everything has meaning, whether or not it actually does. Some, perhaps, find it hard to find meaning in a pillowfight. With Sahm, I'm sure there's meaning there.
But at the same time, with the world dripping with excess meaning, being with Sahm means that everything can wait. It's a moment so separate from the profound that it redefines the word and applies it to itself.
There are words that have needed to be said for some 9 days now, but still they remain in the clouds. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.
The vanilla creme soda was so good that it gave me a headache. Or maybe the soda was just good, and then the five spoonfuls of sugar gave me the headache...
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| maybe I should post this to happiness_is... |
[22 May 2003|08:10pm] |
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Thanks, larissa.
Today was good. Just more proof that clocks will keep ticking (unless they're traveling at the speed of light, in which case, even box clocks with laser pulses in them don't tick) and the world will keep spinning.
I'm back to happy, for the time being. I had a good day today...the sort of day where it seems like the sun is shining despite the fact that rainclouds are in store for the entirity of the next week.
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[20 May 2003|10:14pm] |
Recommendation got in, at long length. Thursday I choose paper for my book. (It'll be in Waldenbooks and Borders for something like $7, and all the sales go to the Help Mike Pay For College Fund.)
But we're dancing around the point. Tomorrow is show elections. That's the point.
I'm very excited about our show. I want very much for it to get picked, because it's ubercool. If it doesn't, I'll still be breathing, and there's solace in that.
et sic it.
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[14 May 2003|06:46pm] |
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i'm so proud of my mommy. she got into college! (GMU) She's gonna learn to be a nurse.
In other news, interview went well. Mr. Ehrlich seems pretty cool...i hope he thinks somewhat similarly about me.
And damn Mrs. Stegall. Her recommendation still hasn't gotten in. Will see her about that tomorrow.
Glass Menagerie is still good the second time through, for all who wonder. Have a feeling I'm gonna end up with Tom, but it depends on Overson and what he wants to do. We'll just see how the dice roll.
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