Advice; DGAF.

Am I really that much of a spaz? Everyone keeps telling me to calm down when I can't even tell what I've said to provoke the statement.

Am I really that obnoxious? Do people like me because I'm obnoxious? Or is everyone secretly laughing at me as soon as I leave the room?

After such a great day catching up with a good friend, having crazy adventures and watching corny Hugh Jackman movies and getting caught in the rain, how is it possible to feel so alone?

Do I annoy you when I update this blog? When you read it, are you secretly waiting for the day when I announce I am going to crawl away under my bed and never come out again?

Feeling kind of quiet,

Leez.

You're like a fun vampire.

Some people just suck the fun out of everything. We all know these people, people who aren't content to just enjoy things, or let sufficiently advanced technology be indistinguishable from magic, or who will go out of their way to just be contrary for the sake of being contrary. These people are fun vampires. They suck the fun out of everything.

While there is nothing wrong with being inquisitive, and I find learning the secrets behind special effects to be pretty awesome, when it is time to sit back and watch the magic happen, I would really like to be allowed to sit back and watch the magic happen without some cynic elbowing me in the ribs and telling me it is all smoke and mirrors.

While there is a time for thoughtful analysis of a movie, right after you have walked out of a movie theater and are still processing the "wow" factor is not the time. I know that it's all a metaphor for fascism - it was kind of obvious, but you know what, can't I just enjoy the movie and its story and the emotions it played on without having an intellectual discussion about all the deeper meanings you are reading into it that are honestly not there? Everyone is not, in fact, Jesus in Purgatory. While there may very well be something slightly insidious and nihilistic about the plot of the movie, I do not need you to point it out for me - I'm a clever girl, I can figure it out on my own.

Why can't the magic just be magic? Why can't a good story just be a good story, without someone trying to shove their interpretation down my throat? Yes, Toy Story 3 was a brilliant movie. I loved it. I laughed. I whimpered. I shed girlish, girlish tears. But when you want to analyze it and break it down to its basic themes right after the credits roll, it ruins something for me.

Some people care about the pieces, other people care about the big picture. Some people care about the elements of the story, and other people care about the characters and the story itself. Some people care about what goes wrong in the DNA and how, and some people care about what that error actually does to the resulting person. Some people are cynical.

Just because I chose to feel for characters and story, and to believe in the magic of movies, does not make me any less intelligent or analytical. I am thinking about the events on screen. I am feeling for the characters. I am moved. But I do not want to break it down to elements of fabrication, not just yet. I would rather the magic linger.

Speaking of which:

I remember this book series from when I was in middle school, but I don't think I actually ever read them. As is my usual reaction when I see books being turned into movies ("Why?!" - I would rather someone exercise some creative impulse in coming up with a franchise), I was initially a bit dismissive. But then I kept watching the trailer. And I wasn't thinking about it being CGI until my mother nudged me-

"Look at the animation on this - all those feathers! It's amazing!"

I had, sort of, accepted that it was an animated movie, but I had let my own cynicism get away with me and missed the magic. I don't know if I'll see this movie, but it sure is pretty...

Still looking for the magic,

Leez.

blah blah blah computer talk

Mostly I'm just making blog posts to try to get past ten-per-month at this point.

I upgraded to Mac OS 10.6 this morning because my mother had to pay ridiculous amounts to buy a 5-install pack to upgrade from 10.4 (I was on 10.5). My disk space use tends to border on anorexic, something left over primarily from my old iMac, the first computer I ever owned, that had something like a fifteen gigabyte hard disk, of which about four gigs were free by the time I got it, so I'm hesitant to install things onto it. However my brother assured me that this install would actually free up space on my disk, so, tentatively, I ran the install.

Upon reboot I found myself with sixteen more gigabytes of free space. I don't understand how it works - my brother swears it was just deleting some PowerPC codes I don't use - but I like it. Still kind of fretting that I'll have to get a different computer, I'm still not sure what the actual tech specs published by our department are, but most of my friends have fifteen-inch screens at least, which makes me think I'm doing something wrong...? I'm not taking any film classes this semester, so I think I'll ask around and see if people who are recommend it.

Okay this is mostly a post about nothing.

I am a human pincushion

It is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to get an accutane prescription filled.

Today I had to do routine blood tests. They took me back, set me up, and stuck a needle in my left arm.

No blood.

So the lab tech takes it out, gets a new needle, re-sets me up, and sticks a needle in my right arm.

No blood.

So she says, "huh, weird, I'm going to go get the other lab tech."

I wait ten minutes, the other lab tech comes in, gets a new needle, sets me up, sticks it in my right arm again.

Blood on the first try.

So now both my elbows are sore.

Some thoughts on verbal development

Just some scribbling down of random musings I've been having.

The "S-word" phase:

There are two of them: "Stupid" and "Shut up." These are considered dirty words worthy of having your mouth washed out with soap until about second grade, when people stop caring whether or not you use them.

The "This is retarded" phase:

Second only in pure classiness (I use this sarcastically) to the "This is so gay" phase (which comes next), the "This is retarded" phase lasts from third grade until whenever someone sits you down and explains that, no, this is not, in fact, "retarded." A good parent or teacher can nip this in the bud and have a few months of peace before the next string of improper analogies is unleashed, or it can go on for years and years and years (See: Lindsay Lohan.)

The "This is so gay" phase:

Starts primarily among fourth and fifth graders who have no idea what the word even means. Generally allowed to last longer than "This is retarded" because no parent or school administrator wants to be the one to destroy youthful innocence. Among boys it can last into middle school or high school - most teachers seem to handle this one with "we don't use that word." Unlike the "this is retarded" phase, where I distinctly remember our whole class undergoing sensitivity training, I think we just got numerous reminders that "gay is not a synonym for stupid," all while never having the word actually defined. That comes later, in middle school.

The "Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you," phase:

With all more elaborate (and socially unacceptable) words eliminated from the vocabulary, middle schoolers begin experimenting with four letter words. While the other phases seem to arise spontaneously within the population of an elementary school (or at least I remember them this way), this one is learned from adults. It lasts forever. No one is amused.

Because we all need something to say when we stub our toes.

-Leez.

Where I come from, rain is a good thing.

I really have no idea what this title is, I saw it as someone's facebook status a few days ago.

Anyway, it rains a lot here. My first week home I didn't notice because it was May and not really summer yet. So I left for a few weeks and came back and suddenly it was June, and it has stormed every day this week. Like, crazy violent thunder storms that start around four and continue into the night. One night I was up until about one AM and it was still thundering when I went to bed.

I started on the new script last night. Not going to say too much about it, just that I'm hoping to have a working draft by the end of the summer.

Also, KPop. Because my friend got me watching it. And the music is kind of generic but the boys sure are pretty. Try not to think too hard about where the "bad touch" wires at the start of the first one could possibly plug in. ;)

Proof that my musical tastes never really evolved past 90s boy groups,

Leez.

Thoughts before sleep.

1. Why didn't I do accutane sooner? Like beginning of senior year sooner? Like as soon as the dermatologist even mentioned it was an option sooner? When your brother notices your skin is better without being prompted, you know there's been a dramatic improvement. And I would have spent less time picking at my face and giving myself scars. So there.

2. Since I've been home and going spinning with my mother, I've lost eight pounds. In basically two weeks (Since we are not counting Blank as "being home" since I did not go to the gym.)

2a. What am I going to look like at the end of the summer if this keeps up?

2b. Why didn't I do this sooner?

In short:

Why did I not give a damn about my physical appearance until I was eighteen years old?

In the past, I have looked at my childhood eating habits and wondered, "Why didn't anyone stop me?" In the last few weeks I have changed my mind. Now I wonder, "Why didn't I do anything about this sooner?"

And then I think that this is a sign of maturity, of taking responsibility, and then I feel empowered.

Also after this week I am not drinking tropical smoothie for a month because I have seriously been there every other day for my wisdom toothless brother, if I go there any more often the cashiers will know me by name.

A Sims-induced Coma

There are only two video games that I really play consistently and obsessively: Pokemon and The Sims. I've played The Sims in every version, more or less, since version one, although I don't but every single expansion pack. But yesterday I was buying my poor, toothless brother Spore and Ambitions was on sale and I was like, "Hey, why not?"

Good choice, except now I've been playing for two days straight. But the town that Ambitions ships with is based on the Louisiana bayou and it's just a lot of fun to play. Fog effects <3!>

I jumped right in and made a new sim just to test it out, a fiesty Chinese girl named Sally Chu. I played through the whole firefighter career with her (exciting!) and she was very successful at it, but part of the fun in the Sims is seeing where the genetics go, so once I was done with that I paired her off with a Townie and gave her a second career as an inventor. And so ended generation one.

I grabbed her daughter for the next generation, and played the Private Investigator career for a while while figuring out where I wanted to take the genetics next. The last patch changed the way skin tone inherited, so I decided to pair her off with the darkest guy I could find, just to see how it works (when I play the Sims, it turns into a mendelian eugenics experiment pretty quickly), but then I got bored with the family so I switched to a branching line of the family tree and decided to check back later.

After mucking around in the parallel branch for a bit and ensuring it would continue for another generation (I get kinda bonsai on my family trees when I like them - I've noticed that when you don't constantly maintain them, the population tends to experience mass bed death and not reproduce.), I decided to really test it out by importing a pair of pre-existing sims into the new town. And so Fish and Dwayne moved to Twinbrook.

This got a bit tricky, because they were made for the base game - their lifetime goals are, like, Leader of the Free World and Editor in Chief, but I've played through those paths a few times with these guys. So instead I mucked around with their traits a tiny bit, totally disregarded their lifetime goals, and made Fish an angler and Dwayne a sculptor, which are fun things to muck with. I'd never had a reason to actually figure out the fishing system before, but now that I've bothered I've gotta say it's pretty neat.

One of these days I'll go back and remake Fish and Dwayne to actually fit the EP. I think their face sculpts are way off model, too. (Fish has an ugly nose, Dwayne is too thin and doesn't look particularly distinctive.)

And then I wound up quitting before I checked back on my genetics and inheritance experiment, but the family preview image looked promising for the new inheritance patterns. So tomorrow we shall see.

I totally just wrote a really long blog post about The Sims 3.

Uh.

Yeah.

I've got nothing.

Leez.

STOP. WHINING.

A while ago, I typed up a really bitchy post complaining about certain persons in my general vicinity who need to grow a pair and stop complaining about things that, in the grand scheme of things lasting more than three weeks, are totally insignificant. And then I realized that was a dumb idea and I shouldn't post it. However, you really freak the shit out of me when you come into my room and scream about me about "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HOG THE INTERNET?!" and then go back into your room and crash into things screaming about how your life sucks and why do bad things always happen to you?

Please slow down and remember that you are a foot taller than me, of significantly more muscle mass, and that you could probably break my arm with your bare hands.

Yeah.

You're that scary.

No love right now,

Leez.

:(

Mass media headscratchers

I'm pretty sure there are more exciting things going on in the world for people to talk about than Sarah Palin's breasts.

There's the oil spill in the gulf. There's the mess in the Middle East with the flotilla. (I have never known how to pronounce that word. Is it Flot-ee-uh? Like, is it Spanish?)

I've been back from California for nearly a week... depressing. I keep trying to get ahold of the people from my internship but I've left phone messages and emailed and they haven't responded to either, so I figure that's the most I can do. The bestie is in tropical hell for the summer and begging me to rescue her, so I might be going to Key West in July... we'll see.

This is pretty wicked:

I'm about to get started in earnest on a new script, an idea I've been tossing around since second semester (when it was originally a proposal for a twenty minute screenplay... of course I realized pretty quickly that it takes place all in one little room, so maybe I shouldn't use it as a screenplay.) So I'm going to give it a shot as a play, see if it turns into anything worthwhile, and we'll see what happens. It's about sibling rivalry and my dad says it sounds a bit like King Lear, which I disagree with and don't think my dad has read that play recently... I would know, I had to study it not once, but twice last year!

But, then, TV Tropes says Shakespeare is the originator of a lot of tropes, so its sort of impossible to escape from him entirely.

Anyway, that's all for now. Gonna head out to the beach now... it's like a hundred degrees outside. Gotta love Florida heat.

Warmly yours,

Leez.

LOOK WHO I MET LOOK WHO I MET.

I am one of the chummier playwrights at Blank. By this, I mean "chummy" as a synonym for "unprofessional." Which is to say I like hanging out with the cast and crew. Before the show, we were informed we had a pair of "celebrities" in the audience.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

BEN AFFLECK AND JENNIFER GARNER.

THEY SAID THEY LIKED MY PLAY.

HERE I HAVE PICTURES TO PROVE I MET THEM.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. BECAUSE HEATHER MORRIS [Brittany from Glee] WAS ALSO THERE.

(This is a little more understandable because she is in week three of the festival.)

She's taller than I expected her to be.

ANYWAY HERE'S A PICTURE.

The end of the weekend is kind of bittersweet. While I was having a blast, I kept coming up with reasons to keep from leaving, because leaving means things have to go back to normal. In his closing monologue, Daniel Henning always says that the feeling of having people see our work and like it is what keeps us writing, and this year I really, really understand what he means.

I've got one more year of eligibility for Blank. I will definitely be trying to get back.

(One final cast and crew photo. Random people in the background for the win! I will crop that out at a later date.)

California Dreaming

Last night was opening night for Blank YPF and let me tell you it was AWESOME. I've always been thrilled with what gets done at Blank, and this year was just a perfect storm of cool stuff. I always aim for simple-to-no-sets, and this year finally managed to land a blank stage. (NO PUN INTENDED.) I've also got this thing for blue lights and neat goboes* (did I spell that right? I suspect I didn't), which I also got.

Also I really like talented actors. To say my cast is talented is the understatement of the century... Not that I've ever worked with anyone at Blank who wasn't brilliant, but they're just a terrific bunch. So yeah. Here's a picture:

Yours truly being the brown-haired girl second from the left, grinning like an idiot. Discounting me, from the left is Jessy, Dylan, Jay, and then our fantastic, fantastic director Kirsten. I always say that my Blank cast are my favorite people in the world during show week, but it's because I genuinely mean it.

Last night was seriously awesome. I was nervous going in... mostly because I was really, really aware that I had basically written a "teen suicide drama," which is a genre so overdone as to be done to death, and that I usually make fun of (because no one likes teen suicide dramas.) But I heard a lot of good things about the show, from people whose opinions I was really nervous about, even! So the next three nights should be easier. Of course it's always a bit scary each night with a new audience, but hey, anxiety is the spice of life!

Today, because my mother has a rental car, we decided to go for a drive up in the hills. Apparently Mulholland Drive is a designated scenic route - who knew?

We live in a beautiful world.

Appreciatively yours,

Leez.

*A gobo (correct spelling, I looked it up) is a metal stencil-type-thing that is placed over a stage light to project a pattern on to a surface. It is the saving grace of ugly curtains and can be used to create all kinds of neat effects!

REALLY I SHOULD BE BLOGGING BLANK.

FESTIVAL INFO I SHOULD HAVE POSTED: http://youngplaywrights.com/

Usually they put up opening night photos on Friday. Somehow I've managed to go through a week of practices without ever once posting on here about it. I guess I feel a bit conflicted about blogging about things involving other people, who have, you know, lives and careers to worry about, and this being a public blog... yeah.

Blank YPF is always such an awesome experience. This is my third year participating, and every year has been different. However I do write consistently small casts for characters roughly my age, and it winds up feeling like a really tight little family by the end of the week.

One of my worries with Bogus Ghost is constantly that if it's played the wrong way, it's a half hour of angst. It's meant to be a dark comedy, and the director and the actors totally get that, yay! Everyone working the show is hilarious, it's a laugh a second at rehearsals. I'm told they had to do comedy monologues for the audition, which is just so perfect. Anyway, it opens tomorrow, so I'll hopefully have pictures up sooner or later.

Also a friend told me to check out this band and you should check them out too: http://francisandthelights.com/

Also Allan is the guy from the AT&T commercial with the train. He's hilarious.

Also I lost my phone a few days ago, which sucked. But the less that is said about that, the better.

Yours from sunny California,

Leez.