The end is nigh

No, seriously, it is.

TWO WEEKS UNTIL WINTER BREAK! TWO WEEKS UNTIL WINTER BREAK! Except between now and then I need to revise a full length play, outline the revision for another, write a book report, turn in a term paper (already written, thank the lord) and do a final project for FSA.

I'm expanding Like a Dog in Space back out to a full, two-act length play as part of an Emerging Jewish Artist Fellowship I got through Bronfman center. This involves getting to explore a lot of themes in ways I didn't get to explore in the first draft. This also involves deciding once and for all who the fuck these characters are, besides just ambiguously supernatural.

In fact, fuck ambiguously supernatural.

You heard it here first, Mister Papers is god. Because I am perfectly allowed to do that because, you know what, this is my play and it's a fairy-tale and in fairy tales god is allowed to be a bird or an old man or a woman or a soviet bureaucrat in a cheap suit. Also because it opens so many awesome doors.

Also sometimes I wish my name was, like, Sarah or Cathy or Cecelia or Annie or Virginia because no one ever writes songs about girls named Aliza.

OKAY THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, BACK TO WRITING.

So it's about ten at night...

And I am finally settled in to my dorm! A lot of people thought I was crazy when I described my place for this year as a "Single Bedroom Triple" but it's really not so bad! It's bigger than any room I've lived in so far and is super-quiet and has AMAZING VIEWS. WINDOWS ON TWO SIDES. SO MUCH NATURAL LIGHT. It took me longer to get unpacked than I would have liked because I wound up helping my friend try to assemble an IKEA shelf unit at his new apartment and... we were not handy enough. But the place is literally the size of a shoebox so it doesn't surprise me that we didn't have room to maneuver. Also he's probably paying more a month than I am and besides the part where I have two roommates I think I definitely win, because his place is dark and awkward and basically a glorified hallway. I mean it has windows but they're airshaft-view. :|

So that's just me checking in! Had a really delicious dinner at a little Japanese place in St. Marks - a big Buddha's Delight style udon soup with like a metric ton or mushrooms and sliced carrots and tofu and scallions - even had enough left over to take some home to eat tomorrow (which is good because I haven't bought groceries yet! Oops!)

Let's not talk about the nervous breakdown I nearly had moving my stuff over from storage, ok?

:)

-Leez

One sleep and then I'm there~

So I head back to NYC tomorrow! This is terrifically exciting except it reminds me that I never typed up my pitch for my play idea and class is on tuesday and I really ought to probably do that tonight. I'm really looking forward to this year, though. I'm excited about basically every single class I'm taking - the pair of anthro courses should be awesome because basically the earlier back in human history it is the more I like it and one is paleolithic archeology and one is human evolution so COME ON THIS SHOULD BE AMAZING. And also Playwriting II is going to be the most incredible thing ever, not even exaggerating, and FSA should be cool, and I AM TAKING A TAP DANCE CLASS, HOORAY.

Got my hair cut two days ago... it wound up too dark and my bangs are still kind of uneven and a little too short but it's better than the shaggy shaggy sheepdog look I was rocking. They'll grow out and look a bit better, whereas before it was just sort of like "Well, okay, I can't see."

So, what else...

I got the disk drive in my MacBook replaced because the original stopped reading things, and since it boots the disk drive when the computer starts up my computer makes a completely different noise when it boots now?

I need to email the internship I was trying to get and find out what's up?

I need to get on the ball with AUSA stuff?

And etc.

OKAY COOL.

NEW SCHOOL YEAR GO.

Doldrums

I feel like I hit this kind of blogging doldrums every summer where there's nothing terribly exciting going on in my life, so there's nothing terribly exciting for me to write about. Or else if there is stuff (which I guess there is?), it's nothing I feel is particularly appropriate to post on here. So it's really Catch-22.

I don't go back to NYC until September 3rd, but I'm practically counting down the days. I guess I picked a sort of inconvenient time to leave and there are some things I had to drop for three weeks that I really hope I can pick back up from where I left off. And if not?

Phbbt, well, that was dumb of me.

Sometime in the next week and a half I need to type a summary of the play I want to write next semester, and maybe one other. I feel like I'm kind of copping out because every semester I go in /knowing/ which idea I'm going to actually pursue, and I still need to put in another one, so I have the same play that I keep pitching over and over again that I never, ever plan to write because there's so much about the world I haven't figured out and don't want to figure out but its' one of those ideas that is roughed out in such a way that it sounds like I actually put work in...?

But really I just want to write about superheroes next semester.

Time to get back to the city, but it's still a week and a half away.

Also my mom called the house at 7:40 this morning and woke me up and I generally can't get back to sleep if I get woken up after 7 AM so grrrr. :|

Eeeeeeeew

So let's talk about disgusting things in this dorm room kitchen. Like that there's less than a square foot of usable counter space, and less than a square foot of room in the fridge, and I keep my dishes in my bedroom.

Or we could just talk about this.

This is a pot of greasy noodles, old cheese, and rancid meat that my suitemate cooked for herself four dinner AT LEAST four days ago. It sat on the stovetop for at least four days, and then she came home earlier today and MOVED IT but did not dump it out. I dared to SMELL this shit earlier and it has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

HELLO, HAVE YOU NOT BEEN LIVING IN A DORM FOR TWO YEARS. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT THIS STUFF NEEDS TO BE REFRIGERATED OR IT SPOILS? 

I AM DISGUSTED.

EVERY DAY THAT IT SITS OUT, I AM JUDGING YOU.

I CANNOT WAIT TO MOVE OUT ON SATURDAY, BECAUSE AT LEAST I WILL NOT BE LIVING IN THIS STYE THAT THESE GIRLS CREATED BEFORE I EVEN GOT HERE.

Wheeee

Summer classes are fun! :) I'm doing well in both and we're going to Governor's Island tomorrow to learn about oysters. Should be fun! I just hope they don't expect us all to eat them because, uh, I don't. But did you know Manhattan used to be famous for its oysters? No? Well it's hard to imagine anything that spends 100% of its life imbibing water from NY Harbor these days, but they used to be some of the most sought-after oysters in the world.

I was waiting to post until I had maybe acquired some photographs from persons with cameras and could make a proper post about my Great Uncle Maury's 100th birthday, but so far I haven't managed to acquire any just from facebook stalking. Oops! So I guess right now you'll have to settle for a link to the Florida Times Union Article  about the event. Just know that he's an incredible, incredible man and one of these days I'm going to take the videos I recorded of his war stories and edit them into something useable. 

I've been really busy, but I'm trying to do a bit of work on Like a Dog in Space when I have time. It's weird that I spent most of June mooning around feeling like I didn't know where to begin on corrections and then opened it up a few days ago and realized I was basically up to a point where I just needed to start adding previously-deleted stuff back in because it's Mister Papers and when it's a 45-minute script Mister Papers needs to learn to shut up but when it's a full length he is allowed to talk as much as he wants and Mister Papers loves to talk. All the other characters in the play are pretty reticent but Mister Papers is enamored with the sound of his own voice and it makes him fun to write. There's just so much going on with his character and the concept behind him that I want to fit into the play and it's actually a struggle to reel him in, because he has this tendency to run away with every scene he's in. He's a great dramatic foil, and writing other characters is just so easy when they're in conversation with him. 

(At this point I need to probably take a deep breath and remind myself that Ivan is my protagonist.) 

I'm also wondering if I ought to go through and apply proper Russian naming conventions to my characters (patronymics, standardized nicknames, etc). I almost want to aim for a tone bordering on a folktale in terms of telling, but I'm not sure how it would go over. 

THAT'S NOT MY NAME AND I'M GOING TO STOP ANSWERING TO IT.

In the last hour I have been called:

Eliza

Alice

Uhliza

Eleza

Eluza

Elaza

And basically every other combination of consonants and vowels that sounds vaguely like my name without actually being it. I have also been interrogated about my belief in ghosts, the afterlife, and Michael Jackson (as my lord and savior, amen?).

Anyways I have a midterm tomorrow and then I get to go home to celebrate my great (fantastic!) uncle's hundredth birthday and hang out with all my cousins and marvel at how amazing life is.

But right now I have notes to study and the sinking suspicion that no one in this apartment actually knows how to pronounce my name.

Leez out.

NO MORE NEGATIVITY

THERE HAS BEEN TOO MUCH NEGATIVITY ON MY BLOG LATELY AND IT IS INTOLERABLE. TO ALLOW THESE PEOPLE ANY MORE SPACE IN MY LIFE THAN THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN IS AN AFFRONT AGAINST MYSELF. IT IS TIME TO FOCUS ON SOMETHING MORE POSITIVE.

FOR EXAMPLE, THE ENTIRE TWO HOURS OF ARCHEOLOGY THIS MORNING WAS ABOUT NEANDERTHALS. IT WAS AMAZING. NEANDERTHALS ARE AWESOME. I NEED TO GIVE MY SCREENPLAY ANOTHER GO.

ALSO I AM GOING TO GO SEE HARRY POTTER AS PART OF A DOUBLE FEATURE (PARTS ONE AND TWO) ON THURSDAY NIGHT. IN NEW JERSEY. WITH ROMA. AND IT WILL BE AWESOME. AND WE WILL BE, LIKE, CRYING.

BECAUSE, MAN, THIS IS THE END OF OUR CHILDHOODS.

AND I WILL FEEL PITY FOR ALL THE FUTURE GENERATIONS THAT DON'T GET TO LITERALLY GROW UP WITH HARRY POTTER AND KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WAIT FOR THE BOOKS.

BUT MOSTLY I WILL JUST CRY AND GRIN AND CRY AND GRIN AND THINK TO MYSELF,

MAN.

LIFE IS JUST AWESOME.

Breathe in. Hold it.

This is the first time today I've really had a chance to chill out, and I'm about to go see if I can brave the crowds at Trader Joes and Duane Reade in exchange for groceries and toiletries... looks like a daunting task! But I got my bedding and dishes out of storage and feel like a super hero. I also vacuumed my dorm room and threw away a lot of rancid food from the fridge because apparently our suitemates don't understand how to clean up after themselves, but that's not really appropriate to go into on the blog.

Later tonight I'm planning an expedition - either solo or with friends - down to Battery Park City to watch the fireworks. Should be fun, right? More fun if I find friends, but either way.

Okay time to go find groceries.

Leez, over and out.

So I'm thinking of picking up a foreign language next semester...

What do you guys think? I could do a higher-level French class (Good to retain what I know, possibly the most useless language to take, though) or Spanish (useful as all get out, but I'd probably just mix it up with French), or Hebrew (good if I go to Israel next summer like I'm thinking about, and I already read it and speak a tiny bit), or Mandarin (probably the most "useful" next to Spanish, but I doubt I'd get much use out of it and it's supposed to be tricky to pick up) or Russian (Really, all I want to do with my life is learn how to read Cyrillic, because it looks awesome.) course sign ups for Speaking Freely don't go up until fall semester, so I've got a while to think on this, but I'd like some opinions. So! What language should Aliza learn next semester?

So, children, what have we learned this year?

I learned that you can dick around with a screenplay idea for a semester, write sixty pages and four treatments, and still not have anything that resembles a finished product, and still not have wasted the semester as long as you plan on someday coming back to the idea and actually writing it the way it's meant to be written.

I learned that it's not actually essential to do the Anthropology homework readings, but it's better if you do. And by better, I mean, "Do you want to pass the class?" So maybe Professor Grant was on to something when he said to do them. Which I did.

I learned that I am not a person who can be ignored.

I learned this after finding it written on a fortune cookie at the start of term and taping it above my desk.

I learned that I don't entirely know what I want to do with my life.

I also learned that this is okay, because I'm studying things in vaguely the right field and sooner or later I'll get it figured out.

woah, we're halfway there.

It's weird to think that in a few days I'll be halfway done with college. Four semesters down and four to go. It means a lot of pondering about what I want to do with the next two years and the rest of my life. The anthropology advisor recommended that I go for the honors degree and write a thesis if I think I'll have time, so I probably will. I finished my term paper for human society and culture and turned it in and think it turned out pretty well, and now I've got a voucher in my wallet for a free trip to the museum (with special exhibits! 8D) that's just begging to be used (There's a special dinosaur extra I haven't seen yet.) I'm just kind of nervous to try to use it in case it's turned down, which I doubt it will be since a tour guide gave it to me when she heard about my project, but who knows.

In the end I had a pretty good time in Human Society and Culture, but it doesn't get me excited the way Human Evolution did last semester.

Basically I'm still totally up in the air about what to do with my life. One exam and a final project left and then I'm done and I'll be able to think coherently again. Which will be nice.

Got to page sixty on my screenplay.

Exhausted. Pondering how much better it would work as a stage play where I can have, like, a thesis or something.

Sometimes my majors interact in weird ways.

Good night.

late at night and I'm kind of ramble-y

When I was in elementary school, I was really into sewing. I remember that there was a brand of fabric glue my best friend and I used when we were making stuffed animals that had a very, very distinctive smell. I close my eyes and I can still smell this stuff, the odor was strong and could give you a headache after a while, but it's terribly nostalgic.

Once I got to college, I realized that the closest analog for what this stuff smelled like is the cheap marijuana my neighbors like to vent into the hall, and into our bathroom. I guess I'm thinking about it because they've currently managed to stink up my apartment.

On a totally unrelated note, Like a Dog in Space made it to the semi-finals of Blank Young Playwrights 2011! Hooray!!! Fingers crossed, let's see if I get in!

Like a boss.

Teacher: "So, Leez, why don't you pitch your screenplay to the class?"

So I pitched it.

And she was like, "Nice, did you practice that before hand?"

And I was like, "No."

And she was like, "It was really good."

LIKE A BOSS.

Rewarding myself with movies...

So yesterday, after biting two pages out of my anthropology midterm paper (finished it today, thank you very much), and reconstructing most of my screenplay after the file corrupted itself (for really expensive software, Final Draft suicides surprisingly often), I decided I deserved a break. Now, when I'm writing I tend to be on Wikipedia and TVTropes researching facts and pop-culture, because I'm the kind of person who aspires to show her research and do it in a brilliant way. I'm not quite there, but who's counting?

Anyways, there are a bunch of tropes relating to cavemen/neanderthals and while skimming the pages, I became aware of a movie called The Man from Earth. It looked really interesting, so I looked it up on Netflix, and lo and behold, it was there and it was interesting! So I made a note to go back to it later and kept working on my paper.

Later came, I watched the movie, it was relevant to ALL of my interests.

Some things:

• In terms of film-style storytelling, this isn't really a film sort of film? To me it felt like a novel or a play that had been shot in order to reach the widest possible audience.
• ACTUALLY I think this would be an amazing play and I wonder if the screenwriter is aware of the fact?
• The trailer spoils one of the big twists, but it's such a part of the premise that it doesn't even matter. Like, I don't think the twist is so much that he's a caveman so much as what he's been doing for 14,000 years.
• IT GETS WEIRD.

I don't think that subtlety is really this movie's strong point, but that's not the point - it's good because it's a thought experiment and an exploration of a high-concept piece of Sci-Fi without any special effects, taking place entirely in more or less one location. And that's what's so interesting to me - it's a huge, epic science fiction story boiled down to like eight people in a room, reacting. And the story is as much about their reactions as it is to the story being told, so I don't even mind that you could say this is a major breach of "Show, don't tell." In fact, if there were flashbacks in John's story, I daresay they would have ruined the movie.

(Huge, epic science fiction stories boiled down to tight human dramas are one of my favorite things. It's part of what appeals to me so much about Makoto Shinkai's work.)

Anyways, have a trailer, and check this movie out, because it's really, really interesting.

Oh, and I made a tumblr.

Looking for a way in...

Beginnings are hard. Let's just face it - if you don't hook your reader in your first two pages, you don't have them. I imagine it's hard when you're not writing a genre piece, and once you compound the words "alternate history" and "political allegory" (not to mention "my heroine is a Neanderthal"), it gets even trickier.

I need a way into this world, and I think that's what's been giving me so much trouble on getting this started is that I've sort of lost mine. I mean, I had a good one three drafts ago, but I'm starting somewhere completely different now and it seems like my fastest way in is through the eyes of a sort of peripheral child character.

Kids are really great for exposition because they'll ask a lot of questions with near-total disregard as to whether what they're asking is appropriate or not. Th problem with child characters, I think, is that they also tend to become really precocious really fast, which translates to obnoxious. Child characters in science fiction get a really bad rap - see: Abigail Breslin in Signs, or Dakota Fanning playing what is basically the same character in War of the Worlds. Or even Jake Lloyd in Star Wars: Episode I. After a while, everyone just starts hating the kid.

Not that I'm actually planning to have this child character stick around - it's a major plot point that he doesn't. But I'm nervous to use him as my "in" into the world, which would explain why I'm writing a blog entry about not being sure about where to start the screenplay as opposed to sitting down and just writing the damn thing.

But as it were, he looks like my best bet right now. So here we go.

And miles to go before I sleep

I got my cuts and revisions done and sent off my entries for Blank YPF '11. (Post for another day: Young Playwrights Competitions and You, a handbook.) So that's one massive thing off my to-do list for break, meaning... I still have to write a 6-page anthropology paper by next tuesday, and a 30-page screenplay by... when? I have no idea, seriously. Maybe I should look this up. Yeah? Yeah.

I feel like I should reward myself for finishing my Blank stuff, but so far all I've managed to do is play ten minutes of pokemon. :/ Maybe I'll play the Sims for the rest of the night before trying to start the screenplay tomorrow? Or not, because it's a full-screen game and I don't feel like locking myself out of the option for doing anything else. (Also it takes for-fucking-ever to load, and it runs kind of slow on my computer? It didn't use to. :|)

Alright. Going to go start my screenplay. Yeah? Yeah.

We made a movie

A few weeks I participated with some friends in the Tisch 48 Hour Film Festival. There was very little sleep, a lot of hilarity, and a ridiculous amount of talking like Sean Connery involved in making this movie.

Enjoy!

Thank god that's over with.

Yesterday around ten PM when I was up to my eyeballs in homework and stress and panic and stress and homework, I made a promise to myself: I was going to finish all this shit, regardless of whether it wound up decent or not, and then tomorrow I was going to go to the gym, because every time I told someone how freaked out and shitty I felt, they told me to go exercise and calm down. Around two AM I finished all my work and crawled into bed, where I proceded to lie awake freaking out about every single little thing in my entire life for the next half hour.

Apparently I can never remember what position I like to sleep in. I always start out curled up on my side, because I remember sleeping like that as a kid, but sooner or later I realize NO WAIT A MINUTE, I sleep on my back. When I'm stressed, it seems like I never realize this. (AND YES, I re-discover this EVERY NIGHT.)

Anyway, I turned in all my shit, got out of class around noon, and went to the gym.

I feel the crummy and the stress seeping out of my pores with the sweat.

Ahh!