What do Romeo and a slumber party have in common?

And so the red sun sets, and so I shall attempt to, once again, grace the readers of my blog with an update. And once again, I hope that they comment, because they were much better about it last time.

So really, only two things of consequence have happened the past week or so, minus camp (which I’d rather forget about for the time being).

The first was that on Wednesday, I went to see the Broadway Expressions production of Romeo and Juliet. I went for two main reasons: Katrina was Juliet, and I wanted to compare that cast with the other cast (performing this week; I’m going to see it tomorrow night). I was supposed to go with Sarah, but then it became apparent that she had miscalculated how much school she had to do, and so she was unable to come. I went, therefore, all by my poor little lonesome self.

I’ve decided that Megan has to be one of the most interesting people in the world to be greeted by. Every time I see her, it’s something different . . . sometimes it’s violent, sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s downright scary . . . and usually it’s some combination of all three (example: after the dress rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast, she came back stage and came running at me full speed with her arms flung wide). This time, it was a simple, shouted, “YOU!” To which I replied, nodding sagely, “Me.”

After that highly intelligent exchange, I bought a ticket and went and sat down. I read the program (was somewhat frightened to find that Carrie was playing a guy), talked to the Milligans (who were everywhere . . .) for a while, and then talked to Daphne (who sat next to me) until the show started.

The show was very good. The language was a bit hard to follow at first (I’d imagine that’s a pretty common problem with Shakespeare), and it bugged me because at times it would go into verse for no apparent reason and then go right back out of it again a moment later. But the acting was good, the fighting was good, and they were very good at playing dead. Which is good, because with a gunshot like the one they got, Juliet isn’t going to be doing anything else.

Yes, a gunshot. It was set in the 1950s, sort of meant to be a gang war type of thing, I suppose. Most of the characters carried switchblades, and Mercutio and Tybalt were killed by them. Juliet, as I mentioned, killed herself with a gun, and that was too bad, because a knife would’ve been a lot more convincing. The gun kind of went, “pop?” whenever it went off, which left me laughing rather than deeply moved by the emotion of the scene. (I also laughed when Tybalt died, because a muffled shriek came from the back of the audience, where a certain blonde sat gripping her face in terror.)

I was also informed by Mrs. I-Took-A-Shakespeare-Class (Daphne) that “Juliet” is pronounced “Jule-yet,” rather than “Jule-ee-et.” I was not aware of this, so I figured I’d pass this information on to the wonderfully eager-to-learn readers that my blog attracts.

After the show was over, I was sort of drowning in Milligans (I would be talking to one for a while, then they would leave and another would come and take his place), trying desperately to find a way to go talk to Katrina and John and Carrie and other such non-Milligan people from the show that I knew.

In the end, I simply told Josh, “Well, I have to go, and I want to talk to Katrina before I do, so . . .” and mercifully he took the hint. I DID talk to Katrina, although it wasn’t a terribly interesting conversation other than her informing me that she was “E-LATE-d!” I’m still not entirely sure what that meant, but I’ve learned not to question people in situations like that.

I worked my way slowly but surely towards the door, where I encountered and spoke with Carly for a brief time, and then David for an even briefer one. As I was there talking to David, however, Megan came up and sparked what has to be the single most intelligent statement of all time:

Megan: *slapping me* “Stop growing!”
Me: “I’m sorry!”
David: *to me* “I could drive you . . .”

And rest assured, this statement was not in reference to anything that we had been discussing before Megan came over.

So that was that. Then Thursday, camp happened as usually, and I said to myself all the day long, “This is the last day of the week . . . this is the last day of the week . . . this is the last day of the week . . .” And I apologize to the poor kids, it’s just that there’s a certain few that I did NOT miss over the weekend . . . this camp has given whole new meaning to the verse, “And may Canaan be his slave.” (There is a child named Canaan who I wish would respect authority in the way that slaves respect their masters.)

On Friday, dance happened for the first time in a month or so, although nothing terribly interesting happened (except trying to do the tap routine with only half of the class).

On Friday afternoon, Seth showed up at my house to be transported (along with me) to Preston “Vander Flippet”’s birthday party (Vander Flippet is the last name given to the family by David, who can never remember their actual last name). We were the first ones there, and we hung out in Preston and Jordon’s room and insulted their cheap speakers while listening to Johnny Cash. Exciting times.

Then other people showed up and we went swimming, and had a major war, which I would claim that my team (me, Seth, and Jordon) won, although those who opposed us (Blake, Zack, Preston, and Josh) would say that they won. But since at the end of the battle, my team had four out of the five weapons and were totally destroying them, I’d say that we won.

Then we played Marco Polo for a brief time, in which Jordon and Seth kept tagging one another. Then we went inside and ate, and then we played Cold Apple (they didn’t have any potatoes), Drop the Eraser into the Apple Juice Jar, and Hula Hoop for Longer Than Everyone Else. I completely and utterly failed at all of these games. Although with Cold Apple, I got a crap throw from Jordon which I had to lunge halfway across the room to retrieve, and while I was retrieving it the music stopped, eliminating me and not Jordon. Curse him.

After that happened most folks went out and had an air-soft war, but Seth and I weren’t enthralled by that prospect and instead harassed Kelsey for a while and watched a video of Mrs. Vander Flippet when she was in high school (which was quite amusing). Then Mr. Vander Flippet hooked up his projector and sheet and put some Twilight Zone up on the big screen.

I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not sure I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone. I saw one a long time ago with Dad that wasn’t scary but sure as heck wasn’t interesting or entertaining in any way, and then I saw the beginning of one here that was funny just because it was made so long ago. It was about this man (William Shatner . . . the other reason it was funny) who thought he saw a gremlin on the wing of a plane, and the gremlin looked basically like a guy with mime make-up in a tail-less beaver suit. But it wasn’t interesting or funny enough to hold my attention.

A while later (after some cake and nighttime swimming with glowsticks and the creation of our own personal whirlpool), we watched another episode . . . one that I actually did watch to the end. And it was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. It was about this guy who loved to read (and I mean LOVED to read . . . he was obsessed with reading), but who never could because his wife didn’t like him to read at home, and his boss didn’t like him to read at work. He’s kind of a dorky guy, with big Ron Rifkin glasses and dorky hair and all that. So one day he’s at work (he works at a bank), and he goes down in the vault and starts reading the newspaper. The front-page headline reads, “H-BOMB CAPABLE OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION.” Naturally, the instant he reads this, everything starts shaking and we hear a ridiculous explosion. He exits the vault and walks around to find that the H-Bomb was, apparently, capable of total destruction, because nothing else seems in tact. But then he finds the grocery store and, while the store is blown to bits, the food is all perfectly fine, so he eats a little bit and then takes a nap on a convenient couch which he finds right in front of the store.

When he awakens, he wanders around, desperately hoping to find the company of someone. When he fails, he picks up a gun from the local arms salesman and holds it to his head. His finger is tensing on the trigger when he suddenly spies something . . . a fallen pillar reading “Public Library.” The library is no more, but the books are all miraculously unharmed. He therefore spends a long time going through the books and organizing them into piles to read each month. He then sits on the stairs and says to himself, “And the best part of it is . . . now there’s TIME. There’s nothing to stop me from reading them, and I can just read them all the time, for ever and ever.” He sighs contentedly and scratches his face. But in the process, he knocks off his glasses. They his the ground and break.

Meaning, of course, that now he will finally be able to read all he wants, but he is unable to see. He breaks down crying and shouting, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” and then it ends.

It was so freakin’ depressing. Like, I had to go and be silly to the point of ridiculousness with Seth just to cheer myself up while the rest of the group watched another one. After that, we hooked up the Gamecube and played Melee for a while. Then we went to bed.

A while ago, however, a devious scheme had been concocted by some devious minds . . . those of myself, Seth, and Ben. We determined to play the good ol’ whipped-cream-in-the-hand-tickled-nose prank on whoever fell asleep first (it was a slumber party). Somehow word of this plan had leaked to the ears of Jordon, who of course leaked it to the rest of the group. As a result of this, Preston got very upset and went and told his mom, claiming that, “She won’t allow pranks.”

Mrs. Vander Flippet, however, turned out to be a very cool person. When Ben went to explain things to her, instead of saying, “No. We will have no pranks in this house,” as Preston had indicated she would, she replied, “Well, you can’t do the whipped-cream thing, because that gets really messy. But if you wanted, you could take the streamers and tie them around people.” So not only did she give us permission to pull a prank, she gave us an idea of what prank to pull.

When we thought everybody was asleep, Ben, Seth and I went out and ripped down the streamers and such and brought them in to arrange over our victims. Preston, thinking he had won, stood up and announced triumphantly, “I’m not asleep!” He had thought we were coming for him. We replied, “No, but THEY are! Shhh!” So we streamered, toiled papered, glow sticked, and otherwise pranked Josh and Tristan, and Tami actually came out and helped us.

After it was over and Tristan and Josh had both woken up, we sat around a metaphorical campfire and Tami told us stories about her childhood and what kind of pranks SHE had pulled when she was an evil child. She and everyone not part of our team (everyone except Ben, Seth, and me) then planned to prank US in the morning. They planned it in careful whispers, so we couldn’t hear them. They told us that we would be pranked when we woke up.

Little did they know that I’m not a very heavy sleeper, even when I’m really tired. And even if I was (which, in all honesty, I am), you aren’t supposed to put the items you’re pranking with on the face of the victim. I felt something fuzzy brush across my face, and I awoke to find Jordon standing over me with a Barbie doll. “Go away,” I said, “you’ve failed.” Or at least something along those general lines.

Then I heard Tami moving around a while later, and with their dog Buddy’s help (he came barreling into my face at Mach 2), I sat up and smiled triumphantly, knowing that I had escaped en-prank-ment. Ben and Seth, however, were not so lucky. They were adorned with anything that could be found in Kelsey’s room. As you can imagine, this resulted in some quite amusing predicaments.

After we’d all had a hearty laugh at their expense (and Ben had chastised me for not waking up my fellow prankers), we ate breakfast burritos and then played some more Melee. We did this for much of the day, and spent the rest of it in the pool, aimlessly doing pointless stuff.

All in all, it was a fun time, although I was very tired both Saturday and Sunday. And that, basically, was my life this past week.

Oh, and AJ showed up on Sunday night, and I hung out and talked to him for a while about lots of different things. One of which has bearing here.

*Note: Some of you have, no doubt, already seen AJ’s post about this on his blog. If that’s the case, my apologies for making you read about it twice.*

No doubt y’all remember my DT’s . . . Deep Thoughts . . . Delvings into the depths of rational thought, questioning any and all things that came along. No doubt y’all also remember that there were only two of them. Well, they’re coming back. But so that they don’t interfere with the weekly chronicle on this site, I have devoted a Xanga to them. This xanga is http://www.xanga.com/So_Thoughtful. I started it a long time ago as a sort of journal, and then I realized that that was dumb because people could happen upon it and read all sorts of things that I wouldn’t want complete strangers to know about me. So I decided that I’d use it as a “random thoughts blog” back in March, when I did a piece called, “On Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” a (if I do say so myself) brilliant eye-opener about murder and barbershops. I later made a quiz on quizzila.com, and posted the URL on this site for reference.

The last post on the site is the quiz URL in April. That will not be the case for much longer (quite possibly not even by the end of tonight). I’m going to be posting DTs on there (although they probably won’t be so labeled or numbered) as often as I can think of DTs to post. So you should check it out from time to time (the link has been added to my sidebar) when you want insights into the world from a slightly lighter perspective than many are inclined to take in this day and age.

And on that note, I bid thee all adieu.

Comments:
AJ: Okay, maybe water-under-ice cold. Go to Pirates first, it’s better. No.

Stephen1: Ooh . . . that’s brutal . . .

Rae1: Yes . . . well . . . the dive-bombing tree kind of got overshadowed in my mind by the winds, because they were more obvious to me. Hmm . . . well perhaps I just saw a clean episode of Flying Circus then. I saw Flying Circus on TV, AJ and I rented ANFSCD a long time ago and watched the first ten-fifteen minutes, then turned it off. And yeah, I’ve heard good things about the Cheese Shop.

Rae2: Yep. Yay for finally having enough time to actually figure out how to do it. And for finally having a picture worth putting there anyway.

Stephen2: Hm . . . well, I may have been a bit rash. Laughing one’s swords off is definitely a worthy and original endeavor. You’ll have to forgive me for assuming that the S stood for Socks.