Thankful

Here are just a FEW things I have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Note that I'm home and using my brother's computer and he doesn't have Photoshop : O
Back to MS Paint, the old-school way....








If you're reading this, I'm thankful for you! E>

Happy Birthday Christie!

Today is a special day...

It's Christie's B-Day!!!

My favorite female roommate is 20 years old today and I hope her day is as amazing as she is!


E>

Haircut

Omgz, I finally got a haircut!! And trimmed my facial hair too!

BEFORE:


AFTER:
So how do I look better?!?!

Kansas

For my often talked about Witch in Literature class, I was assigned to do a presentation of Gregory Maguire's book Wicked.

We all know from L. Frank Baum's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland that the Wicked Witch is truly wicked.

The book (which turned into the musical of the same name) is about how the Wicked Witch of the West became wicked. Maguire offers an explanation as to why a green-skinned girl becomes a witch who is angry with the world. I loved the book and was excited to do a presentation on it.

I decided I should do a musical with a similar theme.

I wanted to write about someone who is seemingly innocent at first and through their circumstances are suddenly known as evil, much like Elphaba. And I wanted to tie this in to the actual witch-hunts, where you only needed one accusation against you to be hanged as a witch.

So I thought of these characteristics of witches during the witch-hunts:

-Having a familiar (a pet that is in league with the devil)
-Following the instructions of a powerful man
-Killing others
-Having 'strange dreams' that involved much dancing and merriment as well as horrors

And I realized that if this one girl were really alive during the times of the witch-hunts, she'd DEFINITELY be called a witch:

Yes, beloved Dorothy Gale.

So I wrote the musical (the script and the songs) about how Dorothy 'comes home' from Oz and is accused of being a witch and eventually is hanged for her experiences in Oz. After all, Toto is her familiar, she took orders from the wizard (all-powerful man), killed TWO people (Wicked Witch of the East and West), and had a dream where she was dancing (with a talking animal and a heartless man I might add)!

I put all the info in a cool Playbill for the class. The cover:
And the back cover was an ad, much like in real Playbills:

And then it happened!
My class really liked it and I think my teacher was impressed! So I'm very pleased with the outcome. In the play, I was Uncle Henry, who is the one who accuses Dorothy and Em of being witches. Here I am with Toto!

And because people probably are curious as to how it went, here's a video of me singing (awfully) the final song of the play.

Please note that I DO NOT like acting. I like singing (when I'm by myself), but acting is not my forte. So you'll have to forgive the way I'm just standing around while I accuse my wife and niece of being witches.

And yes, I did warn my class that none of us in the musical are actually singers. haha.

: )





Oh, the things I'll do for an A...

Tam, The Candy(wo)man

The day after Halloween, Tam looked at the leftover candy she had.

*I have no real pics of Tam, and this was the first picture of a woman that came up when I Googled her name*

"Oh no! What am I supposed to do with all this leftover candy?!?!" she screamed. She then remembered that her favorite blogger loved candy.

So, she sent it off to him.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Normally, Enrico's mailbox looks like this:


But one day, he went to his mailbox and it looked like this:


"¡Que bueno!" Enrico shouted, pulling the package from the mailbox.


He gladly ripped open the package and removed the candy . . .


. . . and a note.


So Enrico followed the instructions and shared candy with Richard Parker.

THANKS TAM!! E>

Workshop

So my Creative Writing class has finally entered the workshop stage.

In workshops, students must submit a poem or two and the class comments on the piece and says what needs fixing.

I was the first student to be workshopped. I submitted two poems, but the second one was so perfect that no one had anything to say about it. The first one didn't go as well.

The assignment was to "write as the other," so I chose to write as a pregnant African-American woman.

So for the sake of a blog entry I decided to share my writing for the first time ever!
Here it is (I still need a title!):

Sometimes when it’s too hot
To stay in the crammed kitchen
I lie in the backyard
on cool damp grass
and stare up at swollen stars.

With one hand on my belly,
I feel something inside me,
too young yet to kick
but big enough to make my belly round
and my summer dresses stretch.

Rita says she better have my hair
cause her daddy’s hair is too thick
and exactly the kind a young girl
building up her self-esteem
don’t want to have.

I think she’ll have my legs
and my sense of adventure
and love the way I used to
before her daddy drove away with part of me
in the passenger seat of his old truck.

And if she gets all the right ingredients,
she’ll be just what I should have been
and walk these roads in high heels
and a wide-brimmed hat like them
girls wear in Hollywood.

Then one day some lucky bachelor
with dark skin and light eyes
will recognize she’s a lady
and scoop her up in his stretch limousine
to take her where she belongs.

Then we’ll only get to see her in TV commercials
and crowd around the radio to hear her voice
on those good days when we get reception.
But we’ll be so proud of her
that the distance won’t matter.

Standing in front of that old stove
I feel the world rotating beneath my skin
and I know she will soon become all I have.
And I hope it’s not a ‘he,’ because
I never want a man to be all I have again.

I throw water on the hot frying pan
and watch it sizzle
while Mama stands on the front porch,
the features of her sharp face
veiled through the screen door.

I wonder if she’s proud of me
for waiting a whole year longer than
she did, or ashamed to lose me
before she could parade me around in a white dress
and tell everyone how good I turned out.

Here are some of the comments I got (and yes, many of these are REAL).
And of course, Shia = me.

So that was basically a great success.

I learned that to make my bad poem into a good one, I need to... listen mostly to the advice of my teacher :P

Apple Peel

My Witch in Lit teacher told me to do this fun activity on Halloween night.

First, you steal get an apple.
Then, you CAREFULLY peel it from top to bottom, in ONE continuous strand.
You look into the mirror, and throw it over your left shoulder and say:

"Peel, peel
Please reveal
The first initial
of my true love."

The peel should fall in such a way that it makes a letter of the alphabet. This letter should be the first initial of your true love!

After many unsuccessful attempts at peeling the apples in ONE strand, I finally got one all the way to the bottom.
Ok, well there was a LITTLE left, but it was good enough.

Here's what I got:

So I was pretty surprised this does actually look like letters! You're only supposed to get ONE letter, but I think I got "OW" (kind of in a lowercase cursive way, right?!)

My first thought was, "Ow?! Does this mean I will be HURT when I fall in love?!"

But then I tried being less pessimistic and thought maybe this is supposed to represent first AND last name initials!

My friend suggest Oscar Wilde, but that seems unlikely. Another said Owen Wilson. Again, unlikely.

But either way, I guess I'll be on the lookout for whoever has those initials...