Another Post!!!

I guess it’s pretty ironic that I make a post about how I’m going to start posting again, and then post nothing for a month and a half . . . but in any case, the silence is ending now, and hopefully it won’t happen again. Knowing my track record, it probably will, but we can all dream. In fact, we all do, even if we don’t want to and don’t remember.

But anyway, I guess it’s time to get started. Unfortunately, most of the things I mentioned in the last post are fairly distant memories, so I might have to kind of breeze through them . . . but I will cover them, nevertheless, because far be it from me to break a promise that I’m sure tantalized so many people.

Music To My Ears. Well, way back on April 20th, some pretty crazy things happened. We went down to Orange County for the day because I was visiting Biola to meet with an admissions counselor and to tour the campus and because AJ’s long-awaited Senior Recital was that night.

First thing’s first, Biola. We got there, and had to wait a few moments before Jason Mundy called us into his cubicle. (Where, incidentally, he had a Mac.) (Yes, sadly, that was the first thing I noticed.) Mr. Mundy, besides looking painfully but inexplicably familiar, gave us a quick run-down on admissions and such, and talked to us about the film program and the Torrey Honors Institute (THI). He said that trying to do both (as is my desire) is a pretty tall order, since they’re both demanding problems. More recent studies have shown that, while I’m sure it WILL be difficult, THI covers pretty much all of the GE requirements for Biola, so if I get into both, then I won’t have to worry about too many GE classes. Wee-ha.

After meeting with him, we had to rush to catch up with the campus tour, which had started a few minutes before we got out of our appointment. Megan Burk, our tour guide, was having everyone introduce themselves and give a favorite Disney character . . . I said Jaffar, which got me a weird look from Ms. Burk, and a fist pump from a guy across the circle. Dad said Gepetto, because he was trying to think of someone nobody would’ve said yet. Mom said Sleepy, because she just didn’t care. After this wildly fun icebreaker exercise, we went off on the campus tour. There’s not really a WHOLE lot to tell about it . . . Mom was REALLY annoyed Ms. Burk. I think she has a natural bias against college-age blonde females. Not all of them annoy her (Jessica, for example, would be a notable exception), but the majority of them seem to be simply intolerable.

After the tour, we walked around Biola a bit ourselves, and then went to dinner somewhere, I’m sure. I think we went to Chili’s, but I really don’t remember. And after that, we moved on to the main event . . .

We arrived at the Little Theater at about 7:30, and AJ’s recital was to start at 8:00. The Vander Flippets were there, and shortly after Mike and Doug showed up. AJ was running around like a madman (and his hair certainly didn’t help dispel that image), and the excitement was rising. At something like 7:45, the doors to the theater opened and people began to flood in. It filled up quite nicely, with lots of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Uncle Ted came. Eleanor was there, Rae was there (with quite impressive boots), Rae’s fiancé was there, Stephen was there, Jessica was there (she proposed to me), and lots of other people were also there. I could continue the list, but I see no real reason to . . .

Anyway, eventually the recital actually started. I could probably give a run-down on every piece, but I don’t remember them well enough to truly do that well, and I feel that my lack of musical knowledge might make it an exercise in futility anyway. But they were all very good, and some of them were really interesting . . . Uncle Ted remarked afterwards that he’d be curious to know how AJ notated (is that the right word?) playing inside a piano.

And I probably could go on, but since I’m sure everyone who reads this was there, I don’t really think I need to . . .

There I Sat. Hopefully that will be the lamest of the event titles in this post, but no promises.

Saturday morning, May 5th, way too early to even conceive of getting up. Especially for a Saturday. My alarm goes off. Woe is me. But I must get up, for today I take one of the most important tests I shall ever take. Today, I take the SAT.

I get out of bed and go through the motions of my normal morning routine, trying to wake up. Mom graciously gets up and makes me breakfast. I drink coffee, that helps. I get in the car and play “Awakening” on the CD player, hoping that it will have a positive effect on me. Eventually I get to Redlands East Valley High School. I follow the large mass of people moving back into the area where we were supposed to be. I get there to see that there’s a really crazy amount of people there. I’m extremely nervous.

I randomly mill around for a while. Andrea comes and joins me in randomly milling. I’m clearly more nervous than she is. She attempts to calm me down. We sign in and whatever, and go to our separate testing rooms. The teacher-person (proctor?) in mine is eating breakfast. All of the students are sitting nervously, and I guess he wishes to put us at ease, so he says, “Hey, all you guys eat breakfast?” There is a collective nod. “Well, I hope your breakfasts were better than this crap,” he says, throwing his trash into the Carl’s Jr. bag and throwing that into the trash can.

Eventually everyone gets in and situated, and the test begins. Section one is the essay. This was the section that I really wasn’t terribly worried about, since I have to write an essay every two weeks for Torrey. So I was able to remain calm mostly through this, which thankfully set a tone for the rest of the test.

So all in all, it’s a pretty annoying morning. But eventually it ends, and we go our merry ways. And then, weeks later, I am awakened by a strange pounding on my door. I roll over to look at the door, and Uncle Ted’s head appears. “Your SAT scores are back!” says he. I jump out of bed, throw on my glasses, and run downstairs.

Reading: 730
Math: 630
Writing: 740
Essay: 11/12 (thank you, Mr. Selby!)
Overall: 2100

So I was extremely happy with that. Also because a 1360 on Reading and Math means that I qualify for the highest possible merit scholarship at Biola, which is a pretty big deal since Biola is insanely expensive.

”I belong to you, Margeruite Brighton, body and soul, and I am truly and sincerely yours.” That there is the closing line of Sincerely Yours, my first (and to this point, last) show at Heartland. I really only mention it ‘cause I said I would, ‘cause I really don’t know what to say about it . . . it ran through April, and it was fun. I got to play an antagonist for the first time, which is of course really cool, and I got to pretend I was playing a piano . . . and I made some new acquaintances, and so all in all it was a good experience. Unfortunately, Kristen stole my script, so I don’t have it anymore . . . but ah well. Life goes on. And this post will now do the same.

Most American writers should have a scarlet “W” fastened to their breast. The name of this year’s Torrey Academy academic term was Foundations of American Thought, and when you’re dealing with that, naturally you’re going to have to read some influential American literature. We read Hawthorne, Irving, Melville, Twain, and Poe. Well, we also read a few more, but those were the most notable in my eyes. Poetry-wise, we read Longfellow and Poe, and some others that I really didn’t care about. I’ll deal with Irving and Melville first.

You’ve probably heard Washington Irving’s name in association with either The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Rip Van Winkle. I’ve read both, although we only read Rip Van Winkle for school. My basic feelings towards him: “What the CRAP was the point of that???” His protagonists don’t really seem to learn anything or change throughout the course of the story, and all of the cool elements are ridiculously underdeveloped. Of Melville’s, we only read Bartleby the Scrivener. The only thing I’m really happy about in regards to that was learning the word “Scrivener,” ‘cause it’s lots of fun to say. And that should tell you how much I liked his work.

Of Twain’s we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Something Or Other That Involved Bluejays. Now, to be perfectly honest, I’m a fan of Twain’s. I loved Tom Sawyer, and the Bluejay story was fun (if stupid). But Huck Finn was, if I may be blunt, boring as heck. Most of my classmates enjoyed it, but I just found it boring and repetitive. Granted, it had Twain’s flair of wacky fun, but rather than the wacky fun being in the foreground and the serious issues as undertones, the serious issues were in the foreground, and the wacky fun was an afterthought. So I wasn’t a huge fan of this book.

And then there’s Hawthorne. Ahh, Hawthorne. We read The Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown. Young Goodman Brown is a creepy story about selling one’s soul to the devil (sort of), that I really couldn’t make heads or tails of. The Scarlet Letter is (in my opinion) a critique of Christianity in general and Puritan society specifically. I believe that there are two real points that Hawthorne is trying to make in this book: 1) hypocrisy is BAD. 2) repentance is futile, so just do what you want. So he starts out good, telling you not to be a hypocrite, but then he ends up telling you that you shouldn’t be a hypocrite ‘cause it isn’t worth trying to hide the sins that you’re perfectly justified in doing anyway. Or perhaps not “perfectly justified,” but at least unable to escape from. Now, while I obviously disagree with this, that alone is not enough to condemn the book as “bad,” because he’s allowed to publish his own opinions. However, I thought that while it was an interesting picture of hypocrisy and Puritan society, the book as a whole was boringly written. It had an interesting story and context, but the writing itself was boring. Kind of reminds me of what AJ said about Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, I suppose.

And then there’s Poe. Ahh, Poe. Poe was a breath of fresh, mountain air amongst the smog of downtown LA. Sure, he’s creepy, disturbing, and kinda messed-up, but hey, he’s actually a GOOD writer. His stories are interesting, and the actual way they’re written is interesting, too. Of Poe’s, unfortunately, we only read The Fall of the House of Usher and some poetry. My personal favorite of his poems (and of all the poems we read) was The Conqueror Worm, if you care. We determined as a class that the purposes for Poe’s writer The Fall of the House of Usher were: 1) to make money, 2) to be creepy, and 3) to caution his readers against the dangers of burying family members alive. I wrote an analysis of The Conqueror Worm as an assignment, and if you’re interested in reading that, you can let me know and I’ll give it to you to read. But I don’t want to bore you by making you read it if you don’t want to.

And then there’s Longfellow. Longfellow was the other poet that I really liked. His poems, while fraught with death (but really, whose WEREN’T?), were more musical than most others, and (I thought) more beautiful. I can’t really pick a favorite, but I was an especially big fan of The Grave and The Arrow and the Song.

So, all this to say: read more Poe and Longfellow, and read more British literature. All hail Lewis and Williams.

The Age that Doesn’t Jive. So I was talking to Sarah about turning 17, and she told me that being 17 doesn’t jive with me. Apparently 15 and 18 do, and 16 is okay, but not 17. Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t skip being 17, so I’m stuck with it until next April.

There wasn’t really a big to-do about it this year like there was last year (if that can be called a big to-do), ‘cause different people had different things going, so a birthday party was pretty much out of the question unless I only wanted like two people there. I DID go to see Spider-Man with Seth, Sarah, and Rachel a few weeks later, but that’s it. But AJ was in town because Jeff got married on the 28th, so he and I and Mom and Dad and Uncle Ted and Bev went out to Red Robin for dinner on the 29th, and then came back and I opened presents. Which consisted of four CDs (U2, Weird Al, Switchfoot, and Billy Joel), some add-ons to my movie software, two books (Outbound Flight and Till We Have Faces), Season Two of The Office on DVD, and probably something else that was tremendously important to me which I promptly forgot about. Additionally, Seth got me a gift card to Barnes and Noble, and Sarah is going to get me Start of Darkness (essentially a comic book . . . but it’s complicated) whenever it finally comes out.

I see fields . . . and dinosaurs . . . and pink butterflies . . . After Sincerely Yours ended, Pocahontas promptly started. I played the incredibly important role of Sgt. Jacobs, whose untimely demise on page 5 of the script leads to John Smith’s hostile take over of the English settlement. I also made a video of life backstage (and occasionally onstage) to show at the cast party, which I did.

When AJ and Eleanor graduated, since I couldn’t go to Eleanor’s graduation or party because of the show, I dedicated my performance to them. I even wore Eleanor’s graduation button under my costume that day. And that’s that . . .

I don’t really know what else to say about it, but it’s over now. I’ll be auditioning for Noah tomorrow (Thursday), and that’ll be that. I probably won’t get in, though, ‘cause it’s an 8-person cast, so . . . yeah. That’s that. And I really don’t know why I keep repeating that phrase. But ah well.

The cast party was on Sunday, and it was fun . . . Eric has a big karaoke machine that everyone was playing with . . . I never got up the nerve to go and sing myself, but it was fun listening to everyone else. I also got to play fooseball, so that was fun. Wyatt said, “Hey, can I whup you at fooseball?” And then I beat him 10-3 . . . hee hee . . .

So that’s pretty much Pocahontas.


And really, that’s pretty much my life these days. I’ve also gotten recently into Heroes, and I watched the whole first season online . . . I discovered that it’s possible to burn your finger on the turn signal if it sits out in the sun too long . . .

Oh, and I didn’t even mention that I got Firefly over Netflix, and watched all the episodes, and . . . Sarah’s right. It’s the best thing that ever happened to television. So, naturally, it got cancelled mid first-season . . .

But anyway, I’ll bid thee adieu now. I hope that I’ll be able to win back some of my loyal readers, and that I’ll be posting more consistently in the future . . . but I guess we’ll see.

Comments:
Stephen 1 and 2: I’ve heard good things about Babylon 5 . . . I’ll have to try it out sometime. And that comic was awesome

AJ 1 and 2: Dude, even I make typos sometimes. Forgive me for not proofreading all of these posts. And no, I never found the Matrix/Stargate wallpaper . . . but I did find a good Daniel Jackson one. It has since been replaced by a Firefly one, though. As far as the art of cinema goes . . . I must admit that I wasn’t really considering it as I wrote that post. However, I would say that it is essentially the same as theater. It combines all (or almost all) other forms of art within itself.