"Right now, there are people watching this blizzard from 350 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Isn't that amazing?"

I was going to make this some long and philosophical post about today being the 50th anniversary of Vostok 1, but instead I'm just going to scream incoherently:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And some more:

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD!

Because I just got off the most magical phone call ever. I am sad because it is the last of these magical phone calls I will ever get because every time I've gotten one for the last four years it's been like getting a letter from Hogwarts.

In case you aren't following,

I just got a magical phone call from Blank Young Playwrights that Like a Dog in Space is in the festival!

OHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

PERFECT TIMING, I COULD KISS YOU. OH MY GOD.

SINCE I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, WATCH THIS.

I have terrible taste in movies.

So, the universe seems to agree that the 2010 Jude Law/Forest Whitaker vehicle Repo Men is terrible. I disagree. I think that it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, had this hilarious/amazing dark humor to it, and doesn't try to take itself too seriously. It is a bit over-long, but it's so much fun that I don't care.

The scene with the nine-year-old in the frilly dress performing invasive surgery, and the bizarre/beautiful violence-as-sex scene at the film's climax make the whole thing worth it. I know that the trope is interplay of sex and violence, but this was basically the most amazing idea ever. Kind of difficult to watch, but an amazing metaphor, basically about sex as a deconstruction/exploration of the self by the partner. I mean I guess it's not really sex, but it's things going into things and there was blood and guts and it was filmed really suggestively and at one point I turned to my friend and was like, "I can't tell if they're actually having sex or not right now, in addition to all that other stuff," but we decided they probably weren't because that... wouldn't really make sense. I guess other people don't think that much about this kind of stuff? It takes a dramatic writing major.

ANYWAY I'm kind of glad this movie got NO press coverage because it made watching it all that much better. SO I WILL NOT SPOIL YOU. :)

I THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY GOOD, I DON'T CARE THAT IT'S GOT LIKE A 14% OR WHATEVER ON ROTTEN TOMATOES. SOME MOVIES ARE JUST FUN, AND THIS IS A FUN MOVIE.

Also, Repo the Genetic Opera is one of my least favorite movies ever and I don't understand everyone's obsession with it, it is quite honestly overhyped and bad. Like, not even Rocky Horror So Bad It's Good. Just bad.

Also Jude Law might be one of the most gorgeous men on the planet. Even if his hairline is receding. That accent! I melt.

WHO HAS TWO THUMBS, AND JUST GOT AN A IN HUMAN EVOLUTION, PLAYWRITING 1, AND FUNDAMENTALS OF THEATER ARTS?

THAT'S RIGHT.

THIS CHICK.

(New American Gothic and Evolution of the Earth grades haven't been posted yet, but I'm counting on them being a B and an A respectively.)

Like some kind of weird fanfic (My friends are the best.)

So last night I finally sent my friend Caleb (who writes an amazing blog called Does This Make Me Look Hipster?) a copy of Like a Dog In Space since he's been begging to read the whole thing for literally forever. And he read it and loved it and raved about it, and then he was like, "I've had Katy Perry's song Firework stuck in my head this whole time."

Five minutes later, he was adjusting the song lyrics to vaguely summarize the plot of the play, and it was quite honestly the most awesome thing I've ever received.

With his permission, I'm reposting it here. (The first stanza is in capslock for some odd reason.)

DO YOU EVER FEEEEEL LIKE A DOG IN SPACE
DRIFTING, THE RUSSIANS LOSE THE RACE
DO YOU EVER FEEEEEL LIKE YOU'RE INANIMATE
HAVE NO WAY TO TALK, YOUR BEST FRIEND IS A ROCK
YOU HAVE TO FIIIILE THE PAPERWOOOORK GET MISTER PAPPEEEERS TO SIIIIIGN
JUST WEEEEEAR THE ROOOOOCK AND TRY NOT TO DIE
CAUSE BABY YOU'RE A MAAAAAAANEQUIN
FOR DECADES YOU WILL TRYYYYY TO WIN
MAKE US GO AW, AW, AW
CAUSE YOU'RE STILL NOT A COSMO NAW, NAW, NAW-UT
Do you ever feel like a dog in space,
Drifting past the moon,
No way to come back home?
Do you ever feel, feel inanimate,
Unimportant,
Like an old Maket?
Do you ever feel you’ve been decided for?
Your time’s already up and you have just barely begun.
Do you know that there’s
That there’s a guy for you
And he’ll help see you through
You’ve just gotta create
Your fate
And take
The bait
He’ll give
You life
Just open your eyes
‘Cause baby you’re a Mannequin!
Doomed from the start, never to win.
Show them all the mi- i- ight
The might that you personify-y-y.
Baby you’re a Mannequin!
Prove to them that you can win!
Make them go ah-ah-ah!
As you become a cosmona-a-aut!
You don’t have to feel like a dog in space.
‘Cause now you have a place
To help in the space race.
If you only knew
The possibilities
The opportunities
Borne from necessity
Could be they’d help you find
The place that you could go
A man whose sure to know a way to keep you comin’ home
Bring him a meteor
He’ll open up a door
It won’t be long before
He will help you create
Your fate
So don’t
Be late
He’ll set
A date
There’ll be no more dummy crates!
‘Cause baby you’re a Mannequin!
Doomed from the start, never to win.
Show them all the mi- i- ight
The might that you personify-y-y.
Baby you’re a Mannequin!
Prove to them that you can win!
Make them go ah-ah-ah!
As you become a cosmona-a-aut!
[This part didn’t need to be changed:]
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon.
It’s always been inside of you
And now it’s time to let it through
‘Cause baby you’re a Human!
And now you have a chance to start again.
Leave them all behind in fli-igh-ight
And redefine what’s wrong and ri-igh-ight.
Baby you’re a Human!
Papers let you start again!
Be what they all said you’re no-no-not!
You will become a cosmonau-nau-naut!
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon!
Boom, boom, boom,
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon!

IT'S DONE.

Well, first draft, at any rate. Weighing in at 75 pages, two acts and twenty scenes, let it be known that Like a Dog in Space has made it to the point that I'll be going over it ferociously with a ballpoint pen tomorrow morning furiously revising every last detail.

Also,

Let it be known that I do, in fact, understand the difference between Korolyov and Star City. Korolyov is mission control and manufacturing, and Star City is training. One is a suburb of Moscow and a city in its own right, the other is a military base that's slowly been evolving into a town since the 1960s. However, Korolyov was called Kaliningrad in the 1960s, which is incidentally also the name of a different, more major city further west, and it shares its current name with Sergey Korolyov (though in the play I've chosen to go with the alternate spelling Sergei Korolev, since this is the spelling I've seen used by actual cosmonauts). So, even though most of the action of act one more properly takes place in Korolyov/Kaliningrad, I've consolidated it into Star City for the sake of clarity, and also because... come on, Star City is a totally boss name.

(Incidentally, there are no less than four towns called "Star City" in the United States, in Arkansas, Michigan, Indiana, and West Virginia.)

Anyway, the point of that was that I really did do the research, and then chose to ignore it and exercise a thing called "artistic license." I was discussing this with a friend earlier and we came to the conclusion that the battle between factual accuracy and artistic license is one of the big dilemmas that comes with dramatic writing as a field. You want to do enough research to respect your subject matter, but don't want to include too much information that you sacrifice clarity. If you don't do enough research and just make shit up, then your name is Dan Brown and the Catholic Church puts you on their blacklist.

That and this is subject matter I'm really, really passionate about and I'd hate to do it any less than what it deserves. My geekiness must be shared!

Alright. Big day of revisions tomorrow. I'm off to bed.

Astronautically yours,

Leez.

PS - Did anyone notice I rewrote my bio in the sidebar? c:

Everything is better with dinosaurs.

It's eleven PM. I'm logging in to the school website to email the homework that I nearly forgot to do to the TA who has not been to class in weeks. This comes up on the login page as part of the random-photo splash page:

"Wait, what's that dinosaur doing in WSP?!"

Needless to say it made me a lot happier. :)

I promise this is the last post about random stuff for today. :)

GUSTER.

Was amazing. My brother has lots of pictures of the interior of the Beacon theater (Both Guster and their opening act, Jukebox the Ghost made a big deal about how it was "The most gorgeous room they'd ever played in.") so I'll get those from him and post them later. The opening act played about a forty minute set and I was pretty sure I had no idea who they were until they played this and then I was like, WAIT I'VE HEARD OF THEM. Anyway they were pretty cool, gonna look them up on iTunes later.

(Also, re: this video, last night I was thinking the song reminded me of Charlie Brown and hey look what they're referencing!)

At that point the theater was pretty empty and Max and I were eying each other like, "This is a sold out show?" but apparently the pros know to skip the warm up guys and show up sometime between 8:45 and 9. By the time Guster launched into their first song (Manifest Destiny, from Ganging up on the Sun), it was a packed house. So they played two older songs, followed by Stay With Me Jesus off the new album (Pattering to the audience, "We're a couple of Jews who don't really believe in God who went and wrote an album that keeps talking about Jesus") and people were still kind of filtering in and getting warmed up, but by the time they started on Ramona, everyone was singing along and it became very clear that audience participation was mandatory.

They played a mix of new and old stuff, a lot of crowd pleasers and favorites - at one point a guy somewhere behind us shouted "AIRPORT SONG," at which point they played Airport Song and I have no idea if he knew the set list or was a good guesser or they listened to him. (They did not respond to similar requests for Timothy Leary).

Some highlights:

"Do I pull off the white denim look?" - at which point they launched into an impromptu jam session about "White denim, black shades, white shirt, shoelace."

During Happier, Max turned to me and asked, "Is this new? I've never heard it." "No!" I yelled back. "It's really, really old!" And then joined the rest of the crowd in shouting "ONE MORE INCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH."

For the start of the first encore, they played "Diane," which has a really distinctive opening base line that will forever stick in my head as the first Guster song I ever heard and is still one of my favorites. This video isn't from the show last night, but it's a pretty good approximation. (People really do sing along to every single song at these shows. See!)

They played two encores, which the crowd seemed really intent on forcing to go on and on and on. Every time you thought they were done, one of the stagehands would hand them a different guitar and they're play something else. The second time they got dragged back out by popular demand, they came down to the edge of the stage and waited for the whole room to be quiet and played an acoustic of "Jesus on the Radio," which was an awesome way to end the show.

In total they played 25 songs in just under two hours, and it was absolutely awesome. So worth the jacked up ticket price I paid on Stubhub!

HERE, I FOUND A COMPLETE SETLIST.

Anyway, when I get Max's photos I'll post them but currently that is PFAD. (Post for another day. Max's word.)

/Get Excited/

THIS!!!! :D

The Tempest is easily my favorite Shakespeare play. Scholars call it "A problem play" - it's not a history, and it's not clearly a comedy or a tragedy. It also isn't, as it is commonly remembered, his "final play" - That would be Two Noble Kinsmen, written in collaboration with John Fletcher. However, it was the last play Shakespeare wrote on his own and I won't contest the trailer's claim that it is his "final masterpiece." I haven't actually read Henry VIII or Two Noble Kinsmen, but I would presume it's better than both of them. So sure. Why not. Final masterpiece it is.

At first I was worried about the casting - Hellen Mirren as Prospero? (Sorry, Prospera in this version.) Djimon Honsou as Caliban? (He's a terrific actor whose primary strengths are roaring in a most manly fashion and being shirtless, but isn't that a bit racist? Granted he's been painted gray, so I guess you can't say Caliban is black so much as he's played by a black actor.) Russel Brand? Alfred Molina? But I think the trailer's almost won me over. Julie Taymore, I was hoping you'd bring the same wacky sense of magical realism to this as you did Across the Universe, and this has my hopes up!

Also, is that Sigur Ros at the end of the trailer?

Oh, apparently it's Saeglopur. (I love Sigur Ros.) :)

The Tempest hits theaters December 10th, 2010. I can't wait!

Excited about movies again,

Leez.

Clearly the sexiest rendition of "To be or not to be" /ever/

Go here, watch this, and tell me if you don't agree. It starts around 59 minutes in, and you need to watch into the next scene to get the full effect.

Oh god I am so glad I found this version. :)

They fight crime!

Try this website:

theyfightcrime.org

And let me know some of your best results. :)

He's a deeply religious neurotic astronaut on the edge. She's a warm-hearted wisecracking research scientist in the wrong place at the wrong time. They fight crime!

XKCD is so true, so often.

Sometimes I wonder why I got out of Star Wars fandom... But every time I wonder, I realize I don't have the energy to get back in. I haven't spoken to most of my friends from those days in ages.

(I kind of miss them, but when some of them IM me out of the blue and I realize how much people change in five years, I don't miss them as much.)

Ongoing quest

I have an ongoing desire to acquire t-shirts with rocketships on them. Having accomplished my previous goal, I am setting a new one.

http://www.threadless.com/product/2324/Spaceboy

This! Isn't it so neat?

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.)