This is a clever title.

Well . . . I guess it’s been about a month since I’ve updated, hasn’t it? Crazy how time flies when you don’t stop to update your blog.

So I suppose I should start chronicling what happened in the past month or so. Well, the first exciting thing that happened was on the Saturday after I posted (the 23rd, I believe).

David and I were hanging out (going to Gourmet Pizza Shoppe to eat), and we ran into Katrina and Brandon. So we were talking to them for a while, and David ended up getting a ticket to Pinocchio from Taylor’s mother through Katrina (and Katrina’s cell phone).

Then we ate, and then David looked at his watch and realized it was 7:10, and that he needed to be at Lifehouse in the next twenty minutes. So he said, “Hey, want to go to Pinocchio?” I really didn’t, but I figured I might as well, to save David trouble. I wasn’t extremely averse to going, so I just figured what the hey.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this, but this was opening night. And there had been rumors flying that this show was NOT ready to open (fueled by such as the fact that a few nights before there had been a gathering of pretty much every director at Lifehouse’s disposal at rehearsal).

We got there a little bit late, and actually ended up getting into the theater at the perfect time, just when Crickey (Lifehouse’s version of Jiminy Cricket) was saying, “Now, for those of you who’ve just arrived . . .”

After the show, we — wait, what’s that? What’s that you say? I didn’t review it, or give any indication whatsoever what I thought about it, after making a big to-do about how people were saying that it wasn’t ready to open?

. . . Darn. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.

Well, I suppose I might as well answer the question. The question is: Was the show ready to open? The answer: No.

Taylor did very well. She was extremely nervous, and her part was complete fluff (she was Angelina the Angel, and basically she just acted as a deus ex machina any time anything bad happened), but she did well.

Bill did very well, as always, but it wasn’t one of his better performances.

Mike did very well as Mr. Evil Puppet Person. Matt did very well as the Fox. Tina did pretty well as the Cat.

And . . . um . . . yep, that’s about it. I’m officially out of positive things to say now. I really despise this show anyway (I think it may be my single least favorite script in all of what I know of Lifehouse), and there really wasn’t anything to help that. The part of Pinocchio was played by a girl, which in itself was lame, but she wasn’t even good. Most of the choreography was so-so at best. Even the set was kind of drab and boring. And, worst of all, they had the same miserable problem they had last time they did this show: Pinocchio’s nose was extended via a string, and the string was very clearly visible. Which kind of destroys the effect a little bit.

Taylor also had some problems pushing the nose back in . . . but that was more amusing than anything else. And after the big transformation into a real boy (from puppet donkey), Pinocchio forgot to remove his (her?) donkey tail, and so she was laying on stage, completely human except for a random donkey tail. Taylor saved that one, but it amounted to adding insult to injury.

So yes . . . basically, I’d give this show a thumbs down. Which, as you’ve probably gathered, is fairly rare for me at Lifehouse (or really anywhere, when it comes to plays . . .).

Okay, moving on. After the show, I went to Denny’s with David and the cast, and sat next to a blonde female whose name (I think) was Lanae . . . David can correct me if I’m wrong. I’d never met her before. We were talking to each other for most of the night, as well as to Taylor, David, Nicole, and (eventually) Matt.

Oh, and a word to the wise here: when you have young children, don’t let them out of the house around David. Because he’s going to say things to them like, “You’re emasculating me!” or “Good-bye, little hermaphrodite!”

The next day, I found out that I had gotten into Scrooge. I’m Broker #1, a Gravedigger, a Spirit Dancer, and a Madrigal Caroler. I was originally only supposed to be Broker #1, a Spirit Dancer, and a Madrigal Caroler, but then Rebecca asked me to be a Gravedigger when Bill dropped.

Incidentally, Taylor and I came up with an incredibly lame slogan for me: “I’m Broker #1. Not #2, #1.” Yes. I don’t know, it was funny at the time.

(On that same note . . . Jen was trying to encourage us to come up with characters for ourselves in the songs, and she shouted to John [the other broker], “John! You aren’t Broker #1, you’re . . .?” And he paused, and then replied happily and with confidence, “Broker #2!”)

Rachel also got in, which of course made me very happy. Taylor, of course, is also in it (as may be gathered from the paragraph two up from this one), and Scrooge is being played by Mitch, which is of course totally awesome.

Not to use the word “incidentally” again, but isn’t it strange how the people that they always get (at Lifehouse, anyway) to play the parts of mean old men are, like, the nicest guys in the world? Like Jim (and Gary, actually) playing Mr. Pendleton . . . and Mitch as Scrooge . . . yes. Craziness.

Anyway . . . let’s see . . . fencing has been moved to Mondays and Wednesdays now, and we’ve started working on a routine for the Christmas recital, and Josh has elected to let us use the Megaman song that AJ sent us last time *happy dance* And, of course, AJ and David will be the only people who know what that song IS, but . . . everyone who reads this should have access to one of them or me, I’d imagine, so if you really care you could find out all about it.

So yeah . . . not a whole lot has really been happening . . . or least, wasn’t for a few weeks . . . maybe I’ll use that as my excuse for not updating for ages and ages . . .

So let’s fast-forward to when Scrooge rehearsals started. The first experience I had in the rehearsal process was interesting . . . I walked into Lifehouse, very nearly literally crashed into Taylor, and she said something along the lines of, “Ah! Mark. Rachel’s mad at you, ‘cause she got here before you, or something.” Then she shoved a CD in my face and walked away.

I stood there for a moment, bewildered, then Rachel snapped me out of it by yelling, “MARK!” So then I went over to her, and gave her a hug, and we went and sat down.

For the rest of orientation, it was basically just your typical orientation . . . I talked to Rachel all night while pretending to listen to Wayne and Mark drone on for ages and ages. Incidentally, Mark is NOT a public speaker. Whoops, I-I mean he’s a GREAT public speaker!! You can see it from this riveting part of his speech:

“I really want to, uh, stress memorization. You’re, uh, going to get sick of me using that word, uh, memorization. ‘Cause, like, if we’re not memorized, then, uh, we don’t have a show. And I’ve noticed that, uh, songs are usually, uh, harder to, uh, memorize than dialogue, so, uh, work hard on the songs.”

Although he DOES get major points for the following (which is as close to a direct quote as I can remember):

“. . . [Kelly] told me a lot of the quirky things that I did . . . although I wish she’d told me about my eyebrows. Nobody ever told me I’m the eyebrow monster.”

So, to avoid confusion in the future (since my name is Mark), I’ll be referring to this Mark as The Eyebrow Monster, or possibly just TEM.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Mark is the director . . . actually, he’s the co-director with Mary Lynn, who was the director last time I was in it.

The next rehearsal was at the Drayson Center, and I got there second (behind Taylor). I was somewhat distressed, because I had absolutely no clue where I was supposed to go, but a few minutes after I walked in the building, and was standing there awkwardly wondering what I should do, I saw this little blonde girl walking around the corner with urgency. I didn’t pay too close attention, ‘cause let’s face it, that’s just what little blonde girls do.

But then I heard a strangely familiar voice emanating from this little blonde girl, saying, “You!” I replied, coolly, “Me.”

By this time, I’d realized that the little blonde girl was Taylor. Dad might describe the situation as a “Flannery O’Connor Moment,” because my salvation (from having absolutely no idea what I was doing or where I was going) came from a very un-looked-for source, one that would be seen at first glance as being a bad thing (Taylor).

. . . And I get the feeling that I’ve been hanging around Taylor way too much at rehearsals . . . which of course means that I have to be mean beyond all possible reason to her here . . .

And probably the reason that I have to be cruel beyond all reason here is because I’m trying to be nice to her in person. Some of you (i.e., AJ and David) may have seen my post on my xanga entitled Signs of the Apocalypse. If you haven’t, it might behoove you to do so in the near future, to help stress the following passage (it’s really short).

On that same Monday night where Taylor acted as an FOCM, she came up to me after rehearsal and said, “I’ve decided something. I’ve decided that during this show, we’re going to be nice to each other.”

I replied, “You’ve decided? I get no choice in the matter?”

She responded by smiling and saying, “Nope!”

So to this point, we’ve been attempting to uphold this peace treaty, and that’s what brought on most of the situations in Signs of the Apocalypse. Taylor is also a workaholic, and this has led to her and I practicing a partner dance from Scrooge pretty much every spare moment of hers, which has been interesting.

Speaking of the partner dance . . . that was the third rehearsal or so when they choreographed it, and . . . well, let’s just say that the last time I was that frustrated, I was standing in the lobby at Lifehouse with a little blonde girl who was very frustrated with ME, because I was completely incompetent and had absolutely zero upper body strength.

I’m dancing with a very nice girl name Brooke, who is very light, but who doesn’t seem to like me very much. She seems to have issues getting within, say, a foot or two of me, which leads to problems when I’m trying to dance with her. Especially when, like, I’m supposed to throw her into the air and catch her.

So then that weekend, my parents went away for their 25th anniversary (congratulations to them), and I went to Seth’s for the weekend.

Well, actually, before that, on Friday, the Pelevs invited me to go with them, David, and Tina after dance class to go see One Night With the King, which (if you don’t know) is a movie about Esther.

Between dance and the movie, we went to Rubio’s for lunch, which was fun . . . but not really anything to report. So I guess I’ll just move on to the movie review . . .

“I don’t want to spoil this for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I’ll just tell you one thing . . . y’know, just to establish some context . . . this is a HORRIBLE movie.” — The Ninja

Okay, and that probably made no sense to any of you. I apologize. Actually, it wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that good. At all. Definitely a thumbs-down movie.

For one thing, they took WAAY too much poetic license. During the credits, it revealed that it wasn’t actually based on the book of Esther, but on the novel Hadessah by some dude. So, basically, it was loosely based on something that was loosely based on Esther.

The director (whose name I can’t recall) also had a crazy obsession with Lord of the Rings . . . for one thing, both John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) and John Noble (Denethor) were in it. And Xerxes had the same haircut and general look as Aragorn. And the big climactic scene (where Esther approaches Xerxes in court when she’s not supposed to) began with Esther shoving open the palace doors EXACTLY how Aragorn shoved open the doors to Helm’s Deep. Right down to the position of her head and the state of her hair. Exactly the same.

Haman also had a much smaller part than he should’ve (he was just kind of a shadow in the background for the first half of the movie), and he had this funky bracelet thing that his ancestor made for him (which was made out to be, like, this huge deal but really had no significance in the movie), and it was basically a swastika with bent edges. Which kind of annoyed me.

Esther also had this necklace that her parents had given to her before Haman killed them (apparently he’s a lot older than he looks), and when light shines directly on it, all these stars of David are projected across the room. And there’s one part where Haman is holding a torch, and it accidentally falls on the necklace and sends the stars flying everywhere. There’s a big suspenseful moment when we see the stars on Haman, but since they’re actually ON him, he doesn’t notice, and the moment passes without issue. What the director failed to notice, however, is that the stars ALSO would’ve been projected onto Esther, meaning that he was staring right at them and didn’t notice.

So yes . . . the costumes and sets were amazing, and there were some good performances (most notably John Rhys-Davies as Mordecai), and it wasn’t BAD . . . but it really wasn’t a good movie at all. If you like really pretty costumes and random stupid lines that are supposed to be cool (“Where are you from?” “I am of the wind . . . I fly here, and I fly there, and no one knows from whence I come.” “. . . Right.”), then go for it. Otherwise, let it go.

After the movie, David and I headed over to Andrea’s house, because she had enlisted us to help her with a huge girl scout project she has: making a movie about (as David so eloquently put it) the decomposition of society. Basically, it’s about how standards of speech, politeness, dress, etc. etc. are getting consistently lower.

We spent about an hour and a half or so going over basic conceptual stuff and beginning to write one of the scenes about bad cell phone use (during which, of course, David got a phone call and had to duck out for a moment).

After that, David dropped me off at Seth’s house, where I spent the rest of the weekend.

Most of Friday night was fairly uneventful we sat around talking for a while, ate dinner, Sarah came over briefly, went out for ice cream (at which time I ranted about One Night With the King to Seth), played SSBM, etc. But then, at around 10:00 or so, something happened that has changed both our lives forever.

We watched, for the first time, UHF. For those of you who don’t know (which I’d imagine is all of you), it’s a movie co-written by Weird Al Yankovic, in which he also stars. It’s about George Newman (Al) and a TV Station (UHF) that his uncle won in a poker game. George is named manager of the station, and he gets a lot of totally insanely wacky shows, and cool stuff happens.

And it is HILARIOUS. One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Of course, it’s Weird Al humor, so if you don’t like utter randomness with no real coherent plot, you probably wouldn’t like it. Seth and I decided that we think it was the original inspiration for Napoleon Dynamite. But, of course, it’s a million times better than Napoleon Dynamite.

A good deal of the movie is made up of parodies of other movies and TV shows (usually either as a TV show on UHF, or a dream that George has), all of which (except for one) are amazing. Imagine Gandhi holding a machine gun. And that’s pretty much what the entire movie is like.

As another point in its favor, it co-stars Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld), who is also (of course) amazing. So yes. BIG thumbs-up for this one.

Saturday was an interesting day. After sleeping half of the day (no surprise there), we were eating breakfast when we got a call from David. He told us that Mrs. Perry (my speech teacher from . . . I guess it was two years ago? I dunno . . . my old speech teacher, anyway, if you didn’t remember) was starting to work at Cope on Tuesday, and that they were in the process of converting a storage room they’d been given into a classroom. He said that she needed help, and the only help she really had was his family. So she still needed “tall help,” which naturally made him think of Seth and I. So we went down to Cope and spent the next seven hours helping renovate the room.

It was pretty cool . . . We spent most of the day measuring, cutting paper for, and putting the paper up on billboards to make them presentable. We also put posters and borders up on those same billboards, and Seth very nearly put my hand on the billboards as well (twice).

We also did other odd jobs (like hanging posters on the windows, taking out the trash, eating pizza, flicking thumbtacks across the room at David, drawing tombstones for the Monkey of Susa with David, and so on), and they paid us (as you may have guessed) with pizza.

Seth and I also acted as Mrs. Perry’s bodyguards after it got dark . . . of course, David’s blackbelt cousin was sitting in the classroom at the time, but Mrs. Perry elected for Seth and me to guard her instead . . . I miss Mrs. Perry . . . she makes me happy.

Anyway, that was pretty much Saturday. On Sunday, we went to the River, and . . . uh . . . yes. We went to the River. And we left. And I was happy when we left. The worship, as always, was great (Jeff and Bill rock), but the preaching was severely sub-par. They got a new pastor relatively recently, and I’d never heard him before, and . . . yeah. Not a good speaker. At all.

He actually reminded me a lot of the high school pastor at Trinity, although he wasn’t as good. But he had a similar preaching style . . . which is a style that works well for a high school group, but not for a whole congregation. To give you an idea of the quality of the preaching . . . he opened his sermon (after reading the passage from The Message Bible) with a clip from Everybody Loves Raymond, and things went downhill from there.

Much as I love Everybody Loves Raymond, I really don’t think it works well in church . . . not to mention that the part he showed really had absolutely nothing to do with what he was talking about (the episode did, but not the scene he showed).

After church we went out to lunch at Kay’s Café in Highland, and then back to Seth’s house. We spent the afternoon filming random scenes for a movie we’re making . . . which, speaking of which, I should get going on finishing it up . . .

Anyway, after that I went home, and then out to dinner with my parents. Then on Monday, the grind started again.

I had rehearsals all week long, but that’s about it until today.

Today, Sarah, Seth, Sarah’s dad, and I went to a Civil War-era Ball in Lake Arrowhead. Sarah wanted to go because “deep down, [she IS] a girl and [she DOES] like wearing a pretty dress now and then,” and she asked Seth and I to go with her, so we did. I wore a confederate officer uniform, Sarah’s dad wore a union officer uniform, Sarah wore a really pretty dress, and Seth (being Seth) wore jeans and a T-shirt.

We didn’t really do a whole lot, but it was fun. We spent most of the time hanging around watching everyone else (which included Sarah and Sarah’s dad at times) dance and just talking. We also ate for a while, and then after dinner I danced a couple of songs (if for no other reason than that I know my friends would never let me get away with going to a ball and not dancing), and then we left because Sarah wasn’t feeling good.

Some random quotes from the male Dr. C driving up and back:
“They have ALL of these national forests all over the country with live trees, they have to have ONE with dead trees.”
“Well, you know what the police have to do, is they have to [enforce the speed limit on freeways] with laser-guided missiles.”
*after seeing a guy with a camera randomly sitting on the curb* “I guess Russian spies have gotten less discrete since the Cold War ended . . .”

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Comments:
AJ: My sincere apologies. “Shuttle” was a typo, and I guess I thought there was an “of” . . . ah, well. Won’t happen again, master.

David: Thanks for the congrats . . . and you really shouldn’t be looking forward to it . . . I mean, I’M not . . . partially because it means I don’t have any breaks in the first act longer than a few minutes . . .

Rae: If I’m not mistaken, dear lady, it is currently Saturday night, and the week doesn’t begin until Sunday . . .

I suppose David gets the “best commenter” award this week (month?) simply because he had the most comments . . . but in the future, I’ll also be checking for quality . . . quality and quantity, folks!