Feb 1-3: Chinatown, Avenue Q, Pants, and Taite Modern

Soo I want to go back to reading Master & Margarita, and I have some homework left to do, but I know you all probably want to know where I've been for the last few days, so here's a quick rundown:

Feb 1
-Ended up going with Cat to a Chinatown all you can eat buffet thing, kinda small, but it was fast and I was hungry. They hid a service charge in the 'pay up front while we stare you down in our intimidating chinese restaurant owner' way, which meant we bonded with the old couple that shared the other half of our table (yeah, the place was stingy like that) and it was a lot of fun.

Then we saw Avenue Q, which was cool except I was having way more fun watching the sound/band leader guy on the two TV monitors they had set up hidden on the first balcony with the lights, which I could see only because I had really cheap-o seats. It was still good though.

Feb 2
Yesterday, we got up early and had a short lunch so we could have a special guest speaker come in and tell us about composing and the Black Dyke Mills Band, who we're seeing this weekend. The BDMB is reportedly the best brass band anywhere. We got to listen to a little of their stuff, and I'm excited to go. There were trumpets playing string parts, and playing notes faster than the ones I used to scoff at Alison for (by the way-PRACTICE YOUR FLUTE, WOMAN! You're welcome.) as being physically impossible. It was crazy!

Most of his lecture though was cool, but not what we went to listen for. He spent 3/4 of it having us listen to music he had written, briefly mentioning that he wrote the score for the Little Vampire movie, and about his life. It was neat, but not exactly educational.

Funny Story of the Day- Todd threw his pants in my room and went running downstairs sans pants because he forgot his key. Full story- In our student handbooks, FIE states that they will make us pay an extortion fee (known as the lockout fee or some other secret veiling straightforward babble) for having to let us borrow the key kept two floors down so we can get back in our rooms after locking ourselves out in our college student genius. Apparently Todd, having gone to grab something from the kitchen, was locked out of his room when, by some miraculous failure, the wind (assumeably) blew his door shut, which he states has never happened before. Wanting to escape this penalty fee, he remembered that when I was sick they let me use the key for free, assumeably because I was sick and pathetic-looking. Todd also wanted to gain this pity-vote, but as he was neither sick nor a decent enough sick actor, he decided the next thing that should go would be his dignity.

Thus, I sat in my room with Cat, playing Tetris, while he promptly pulled off his pants in the hallway, tossed them in my room, and ran downstairs before I could pull a camera on his bare arse-Just kidding. he was wearing boxers, but it still would have been an entertaining photo.) He did in fact manage to get the key without pentalty fees (I'm pretty sure they don't actually charge you, unless you forget your key consistently or you lose it) and he put his pants back on before anyone else knew of this ridiculousness. Until I put it on the internet, anyway.

Later that night we went to see Midsummer, a very much slightly slapstick comical play involving folk music and extremely adult themes. It was good, but I'm not really sure how to describe it. I did enjoy it though.

Feb 3
Today I did homework, emailed my advisor, went to the Taite Modern. My favorite part was this sculpture that had this weird story about lightning lighting up figures and a stag or something, it was convoluted and complex and didn't look anything like the sculpture at all. Then I renamed it to what I saw in the sculpture: You support a pile of sh*t (seriously! There was a support beam attached to the corners, holding up a lumpy brown "lightning bolt" that was thin at the top and fatty at the bottom, with little wagon "stags" and a bunch of brown turd-like squelchy "animals" strewn about the place) aaaaand then everything made sense. When pretending that the stuffy artiste actually meant for people to figure out the ulterior meaning, as I did, I think the person was a genius. If he really meant for it to be brown turd-like stags illuminated by a giant lumpy pile of dark poop-color lightning, then that wo/man was a fool.

My other favorite part was the box. It was a giant box. It had a ramp to walk up like it was a ship, and was in a dark corner of the Taite Modern (it was an installation, meaning it's one that changes a lot) and the inside was covered in soft black velvet so you didn't hurt yourself since you couldn't see the corners or walls or anything. It was like walking out into not existing, and seeing ghost-people wandering around you all afraid because they didn't know what was inside. It was a straightforward black box. It was Neat, capital N. With a period. Period.

Then I streamed Dollhouse on my laptop, made tuna and rice, bugeted out my food for tomorrow, and now I'm going back to reading. Cheers!