Bloody Beauty

It has come to my attention that some people blog EVERY DAY! That's such a crazy fact to learn! I don't think i could come up with enough important stuff to put on a blog for people to read every day. I'm pretty sure my daily discoveries run somewhat like this: 'I got a bamboo last week! It's grown a lot since we got it.' and 'Did you know that chipotle cheddar cheese is good for catching mice?' and 'I ate Captain Crunch for breakfast this morning!' All quite true and respectable things, I just summed up what's bloggable in my life in like three sentences.

But off the record, much more interesting material has shown its face in the last couple of months (Oh God, it's been so long). I wore four-inch heels and ribbed nylons (pictured here)! I bought a recliner (not pictured, but available for sitting in most times of day). Jared and I named our apartment (Also not pictured, as it may or may not be appropriate for blog-readers of a young age. Of which I'm sure I have a hefty following). Besides all that shenanigans, I am proud to announce that I am really, truly, officially designing websites these days. I charge a lot less than most and do a lot more custom work, too. So hire me! I'm currently knee deep in a website for my other job, WaWa Canteen, as well as a costume designer/small business owner's designer. Good stuff!



I'm also in a rock show at NYU this fall! I just got done doing a new music concert with two great writers in the city - Sam Carner and Derek Gregor. I had a whole bunch of fun with them and am excited to work with them again, and then the rehearsals for The Fixstarted and I got buried in that process! All is well with the world, and I am so excited to get to play a seedy, back-from-the-dead politician. Should I explore the possibility of just being a zombie? That could thicken the plot, considering the writers' previous musical was 'Zombie Prom.' Sounds like a solid character choice to me.

Otherwise I'm just working at WaWa Canteen (the Asian food restaurant, not the gas station) and awaiting the madness that is about to strike. Senior year is gonna get bloody and beautiful, two words that don't normally go hand in hand, except for their catchy alliterated coupling (see title). I am going to carpe diem the hell out this year, and have a blastiem at the SAME TIME. Don't think it's physically possible? Watch me.

I also would like to state that the play on making 'blast' latin officially succeeds as the most awkward joke I've ever made. Stay tuned for the joke that trumps that one; I'm sure it will show its face sometime soon.

And despite all the work, I feel it is necessary to say that I am functioning at a pretty high level of optimism and happiness. You know me, though. All work and [some] play makes for a hellofan enjoyable lifestyle. Until we chat (once I have exciting news again) some time from now!

Sparkly Jaguar, my friend.

I've got me some new rocks in my rockbox! What is a rockbox? Well, listen and learn. When I and my brother were younger, we used to have these two boxes (I think mine had a glittery jaguar on the top) that we kept what were, in our vast little-kid knowledge banks, extremely priceless rocks. Cool shapes, multi-colored, sparkly, our rocks ran the gamut of beauty. Some kids collected Pokemon cards. Some collected movie ticket stubs. We collected rocks. Not a very taxing job to find a cool rock. I suppose they meant a lot to me, though, in retrospect. Having something that you had gone out and collected yourself that no one else had...now that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

The other version of putting rocks into your rockbox, which also applies to my still-mysterious initial exclamation, comes from one of my friends from home, who is still near and dear to my heart, though we hardly talk. Her idea, though I think it came from a book, was to have two mason jars and fill them with 10 rocks each. Every time something made her really happy, she would take a rock out of the sad jar and put it into the happy jar - the concept being that the jars are a physical representation of your happiness level. I wonder if people who study happiness use things like that?

Now that you know my two versions of a rockbox, you can guess that I have found some really cool rocks in the streets of New York and put them in a Sparkly Jaguar box, or taken rocks out of a sad mason jar and put them into a happy mason jar, or that all this is really just figurative and I'm really speaking in a metaphorical way as I am wont to do. I'd go for the last option, although it is informed by the other two choices. So what's going in and out of your mason jars?

In my life, a few things. I've started a book club. We're reading a book I've already read once before, Atlas of the Human Heart, but I love it so much I wanted to share it with my book-clubbers. It is such a joy to be able to have some time to sit down with these friends and talk about stuff that I feel never gets brought up in day-to-day crazed New York life. We can relax, chat about hypothetical trips to China, eat WaWa (wait, I do that like every day), and laugh about how things would be different if we had lots of money. If I ever wrote a book, it would be those kinds of conversations that I would want to characterize my twenties. Why is that banter relaxing and comforting? Maybe because it's the heart and soul of my feelings, I don't know. Simplicity doesn't employ me full time, but it's a nice temp job while I'm staving off insanity.

The end of my junior year beckons, and with it comes the realization that I have one measly little year left of my entire schooling process. Shit. That's preposterous. However, I stand here at the edge of the world with open arms, embracing the million-mile fall I know is coming. I bathe in the fear of the unknown. And, besides, I still have three papers to write, a final to struggle through that I know nothing about, fall auditions, and final juries to go through. To that effect, I'm still in Junior Year's sinister clutches. But the worst of it is over, so I'll persevere for the rest of week. There's no real reason to whine, right? I'm living life, and that's the only thing we can try for every day. Good or bad, rich or poor, living is better than not trying.

How to Have Incomprehensible Amounts of Fun

Ah, spring break. What a welcome breath from a semester that seems to be burying me under the pavement! Mind you, all the weight isn’t particularly malicious poundage; it’s mostly good shenanigans coming at me left and right. What isn’t good is just thrown under the rug in order to make way for what I can and do handle…that stuff can be addressed when I have time for it or ever deem it important enough to stomach. Which I probably won’t. In other words, I’m really optimistic about the goings on these days! Don’t have a lot of money (wait, that’s not news) and definitely don’t have a lot of time, as I’ve said, but I am finding a way to manage it all with my handy-dandy Stanley Family too-much-on-your-plate-is-always-just-the-right-amount gene.

On a defensive note, I don’t think there is ever going to be a line that I draw when it comes to hyphenating phrases. It’s just too useful to give up.

So let’s address the literal! I know, it’s this new thing I’m trying, I actually talk about things that don’t require heady metaphors. Don’t be surprised if I can twist the literal into the figurative, though; I’ve got a hankering for philosophy, and no good philosopher can make claims without painful metaphors.

I’m currently in two shows, which needless to say is a hefty horse. The first goes up next weekend and is a new show about a scared half-Jewish boy who learns to stand up for himself in Rio de Janeiro. If it isn’t obvious that I play an Instrument of God, then…well, actually, that’s the last thing I would have guessed. And yet I do and I am, and will be zealously grooving to latin beats in no time. The second show is comparatively more familiar: As You Like It, per Mr. Shakespeare. Talk about excited! I’m going to play the sinister older brother and romp about the woods. What excites me, though, is the Shakespeare; what a great opportunity I have been granted—I can’t wait to rise to the challenge and get into an ugly scrape with none other than my blood brother, Mr. Jared Nepute.

The third piece of news I must impart is that of my upcoming summer. While I wish I could say I was going to be spending the whole summer in that hot resort getaway, Filer, ID, I sadly must instead stick around New York for the month of May and then depart for Sharon, CT and a month-long production of The Wedding Singer. In it, I will be playing George, the keytar, and the tambourine. What is a keytar, you may ask? Ponder no longer, for this sweet baby is a keytar.

Success. I look forward to a June/July full of good weather, good friends, extreme rocking, and extreme drinking. Good plan? Definitely.

Speaking of, there’s a fair chance that the widely anticipated day of my 21st year of life is a week away. And what a day it will be! I’ll go to class at 9:30, not get out ‘til 6:30, and then dress rehearse my show until midnight! I anticipate I’ll be so funned out that I’ll just go to bed.

All the more reason to make this spring break full of adventure and mischief. Already I have written a three-page paper on Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, slept in until 2:00pm, and eaten three boxes of cereal (that’s actually not a joke, I’ve eaten three boxes of cereal in one and a half days). Again, I’m overflowing with an extraordinary amount of unique, unbridled fun. And with that, it’s time to brave the rain and journey towards some unrill gourmet mac’n’cheese before a 6 hour, 6-midnight rehearsal. Epic day? No doubt.

Texting With Scissors? Wait, That's Only Edward Scissorhands.

Is it possible to freeze the first layer of skin on your face? Because I think that's what just happened to me.

Either way, I sit now in this familiar, cozy little coffee shop (I assume that as long as I live they'll continue knocking on my door) and sip at the coffee that is one step beyond comfortable-drinking-temperature. There is not much of me that is prolific today, but the little that exists is twisting my arm about how many times I really have thought about things to say in the last few weeks. It seems as if the minute I get back into the swing of things, my mind begins to do the same. And that, brave adventurers, is the thesis of today's excursion.

I texted my mom the other day (Hi, Mom), excited about the phenomenon that had just occurred in my life. For much of the first month of 2010 (how crazy, though, right? 2010?) I have either given myself or slumped into, I don't know which, a sort of comatose routine; this includes doing a lot of nothing all day except for making coffee and chatting with friends and, admittedly, succumbing to that boyish video-game thing that hides like a vicious beast within all us strapping young adults. Now, let me say that I am not particularly proud of this stint in early January, but there is something about having a lot of free time that tends to force me into sloth-mode, seeing as how the other 11 months of my year are pretty much thoroughly mired in a swamp of obligation.

I sent a textual message to Mom (more on texting coming later; it infuriates me). I have risen out of my slump and dumped myself into the vat of obligation. How unattractive it sounds. How structured. How tedious.

And I love it.

Which is why, dear literary explorers, I told Mom I was so happy to get back into the swing of pressure and deadline and obligation and work! It is an amazing thing to realize how much happier I actually am when I am working hard. I suppose that could be the reason why Americans live to work. Have I talked about that before? Americans: live to work. Italians: work to live. I'll have to review and see if I've explained it, because that's another tidbit I'd sometime like to expound upon. O God, think my readers, more philosophy.

So, among other things, I love working. I love being busy, which I knew about myself, but I went and underestimated the effect that it has on my happiness. And now that you know what my #1 raison d'etre is, you know how important it is for me to stay busy!

What I'd like you to take away from this educational experience we've just shared is only that I tend to camouflage the things that really afford me happiness in favor of what is easier and more accessible. If I can hazard a guess, I'd propose that human nature leans toward this 'easier-is-better' mantra. Using my failure...don't give up!

And now that I have made this into an awkward 'is he trying to teach me something that is really obvious' lesson, I'll move onto my rant about textual messaging, requiring nothing but a pair of comprehending eyes.

TEXT MESSAGING SUCKS! Don't be fooled! It can seem like a really convenient way to get to know someone and then all of the sudden it will sidle up next to you, make you comfortable, and then rip the rug out from under you! You will fall, bang your head, and then allow that trickster to innocently help you up from the ground, all apologetic. After which, he'll DO IT AGAIN!

How malicious you are, text message. Unfeeling and guiltless. Damn you!

But if we were to, for a second, take a journey back into reality where text messages are not, in fact, real people, let me explain myself. Text messaging, as I have said, is not fun and dandy. It has become this form of communication that makes everything that you have to say seem easy. Want to quit your job? Text your boss. Feel like breaking up with your girlfriend? Text her. Need to get to know somebody you've just met? Don't worry, you don't have to actually communicate with them! Text them! It's not a problem, because if your boss or your now-ex-girlfriend or your new friend-who-isn't-really-your-friend get angry or upset, you don't even have to reply! If they call you, you don't have to answer. You've already won, because you got the information that you had to convey across already and don't have to deal with the guilt or the hassle of working anything out. That, and the fact that so much is implied or left out of textual communication: people (myself, guiltily included) read into every little detail. Maybe that's just me, but it feels like the collective community of texters feels similar.

It's my goal to stop texting so much; it'll go on the list of resolutions that I have. It's not a terribly long resolution list, but it's worth the trouble. It gives me things to do and tasks to complete, to bring my blog around full-circle. Thank God for ambition.

A List of Known Knowledge

I don't know a lot of things about my life, and I have trouble with a lot of situations. I don't know where I'm going to end up. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I don't know much.

But what I do know is that I am learning something more every single day. And I know that the day is coming when I will be able to know me as well as I would like.

I know a few more things, too.

I know that if I didn't have my music in my life, I wouldn't have any defining moments.

I know that my Number One raison d'etre, happiness, has been successful.

And I know that perspective is the most valuable tool I own.