Training for college: a stupid pun

Well. The time has come, I suppose. Time to write a new blog entry. Now that I've officially chased everyone away by lack of posting . . . but it really isn't (entirely) my fault. I really have had very little free time lately.

Since I have like 4-5 weeks to catch up on, I'm going to skip all the minor little things and just get the three big things: seeing Ragtime, seeing Round Table (twice), and my weekend at the Train Station.

Before I get into that, since the primary thing in my life is Esther right now, just figured I'd say a few things about that. First: it's going well. Second: it's going to be AWESOME. Third: so y'all better come see it, or I'll be forced to resort to violence.

Oh! And when you come to see it, sit either in A 7-8 (to get pounded by the guards chasing Haman . . . and have Justin thrown into you) or 15 of almost any row (so that I can harass you).

Okay. Onto the big stuff.

First, Ragtime. A few weeks ago, I went with much of my dance class (minus Sarah, David, and Katrina and plus parents and Maria) to see a play called Ragtime at Performance Riverside. It was the story of a black man's struggle against death and injustice, and a story of the fight for equal rights, and other cheesy stuff like that.

It was really good, though. The choreography wasn't astounding, but the acting was really good. Or perhaps I was just too busy paying attention to the acting to really notice most of the choreography. But it didn't strike me as overly impressive.

And of course, like all good plays, it had a real car that was driven across the stage. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a real car. But it LOOKED like a real car, and it didn't look like there was any other way it was moving . . . unlike the Wardrobe, which had one door that mysteriously never opened. And guns. Ragtime had quite a few guns. At least like four people got shot. And one person beaten to death. And there was almost a huge explosion, but the main character saw reason a few minutes too early for that.

It was also surprisingly funny for a show of that type. There was one scene where a white guy wanted to help a gang of black people, so he went to their hideout place and was talking to the head guy (who also happened to be the main character), and there was a whole big song about how he (the white guy) wanted to say how he thought a great injustice had been done, how black people should have rights, and all this heroic stuff. But in the end, all he said was, “I know how to blow stuff up.”

Of course, that's probably not funny at all in writing. Get over it. Come see Esther. It'll more than make up for it.

So yeah. That was pretty much that. Afterwards, the Pelevs and Maria had to leave, but the Anackers and Mom and I went out to dinner at CBU (a weird place to eat, true, but it was actually really good). And, like every other parent in the world, the Anackers asked me how I like the “Biola thing,” which got us talking about books, which is always an interesting discussion with the Anackers (and I mean that in a good way).

Anyway, the next day, we went to see Round Table at Lifehouse. It's about a bunch of “quotable notables” (a Wayne phrase if ever one existed) who come from the past and have a long conversation.

Many people find it boring. I find it fascinating. Act I was Socrates, Martin Luther, Sigmund Freud, and Florence Nightingale. It consisted mainly of Luther and Freud debating, but the other two put their two cents in here and there. I personally found it extremely interesting (one thing Wayne's good at is doing his research, and the characters were very accurate) and very clever. There were also a few funny moments, such as when Socrates says to Freud, “You were so rejected in your own day that you had trouble finding work,” and Freud replies, “Yes. And you were so rejected in your day that you were executed.”

The second act wasn't as interesting, but I still liked it. It was Galileo Galilei (sp?), Charles Darwin, and Theodore Roosevelt. I was impressed with the second act, however, because Wayne actually allowed there to be a cuss word. I was astounded.

The highlight of the second act was actually when Galileo was talking about gravity. He had a gun, and was aiming it at Daniel (the sound tech) and talking about how long it'd take him to shoot and kill him. It was hilarious.

And actually, I just remembered something else that happened before the Train Station. We had Lit. Club last Friday. We were doing To Kill a Mockingbird, and I had forgotten all about it until that Sunday, so I had read the book in four days, and was happy that I finally got to see the long week of trudging through it (although, for the record, it was an awesome book, it's just that I was reading it practically non-stop all week) conclude in the Lit. Club. Seven o'clock (the starting time) comes and goes. No one shows up. Seth comes at about 7:09. Seth hadn't read the book (he'd had even less time to do so than me, so he just saw the movie). More waiting. Micah comes at about 7:14. Micah hadn't quite been able to finish the book, although he got most of the way through it. More waiting. More waiting. At 7:35, no one else has come. Dad decides that we'll do the book next time instead (much to my anger . . . I read the book in four days for nothing!!!!). But, so that Seth and Micah didn't come all that way for nothing, Dad felt that we had to do something. So we watched X-Men instead of discussing the book. It was a really good movie, but I don't feel like reviewing it, so I won't. But it was good.

Okay. That brings me to my weekend at the Train Station. If there are any out there who don't know, the Train Station is my brother's (and his friends') apartments (two — one for guys, one for girls). For this, I'm going to steal an idea of Megan's that I liked. I'm not going to go into detail about each little thing that happened, like I usually do, but instead I'm going to summarize it all in a long list of memorable moments and phrases. Here goes (and Megan, you can't kill me, because I gave you credit):

AJ late picking me up.
The “Man-walk.”
A girlfriend for AJ.
A long, serious discussion about family.
The “evil Anakin face.”
The secret attic.
66 different hugging combinations.
The Frog of Judgment.
Fun with AJ's camera phone and Jessica's hair.
A painful metal bar in the small of my back.
Bedtime: 4:00 AM.
Time to get up: 12:02 PM.
Weird bowls for cereal.
Mass cell-phone phonebook purging.
6 degrees of Kevin Bacon/Star Wars characters.
Star Wars violence.
Shooting myself in the head 11 times.
Unknowingly charging alone into the enemy stronghold.
Dying many, many times.
Yummy Dutch Pancakes.
More Star Wars violence.
Yummy chocolate Dutch Pancakes.
An inch between the dirty dishes and the faucet.
Stephen practicing throwing his sheath.
“Get out of the tree!!”
The Frog of Judgment - in the flesh.
Telepathically throwing cows around.
Stephen nearly killing Jessica.
Easy Mac.
Concept 6 wanting to sell CDs.
A weird flute-thingy.
Tuning a ukulele.
Breaking a ukulele while tuning it.
“Gap-a-goo.”
A completely black grilled cheese sandwich.
A not-so-black but just-as-ruined grilled cheese sandwich.
Yummy dessert crepes.
“I'd have thought that ultimate darkness would be more like” *kwosh* “That?”
“Benton . . . I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while.”
Doug's black shoes.
The gum-chewing aisle.
Farewell to the Train Station.

Many thanks go out to AJ, Stephen, Doug, Faye, Rae, and Jessica for their hospitality, to AJ for inviting me, to Stephen for letting me blow things up, to Doug for his shoes, to Faye for looking for AJ's g/f, to Rae for her fabulous cooking, and to Jessica for her hair, and of course for saving us from the Frog.

And I apologize if you wanted something a bit longer . . . but it was either this, or wait another day.