two posts in one day? i know, i'm going nuts, but while i was writing the last one, i realized that i have been neglecting my responsibilities.
what responsibilities?
to share my opinion, of course!!
now, those of you who know me, know that i really don't have opinions on very many things. so, what am i going to talk to you about?
dance!!
i'm going to post my favorite performances from So You Think You Can Dance every week (just from the performance show, i'm not going to annoy you with the group dances or with people dancing for their lives, unless it's ridonkulously good.
here's my favorite from the first night of couples competition (20 dancers)
first of all: props to caitlin for that sick handstand at the beginning. second, this dance is incredibly intricate. every hand movement means something, and if you mess it up, it could possibly mean something very different. and just look at all the energy they had. i almost didn't pick this as my favorite (because there really basically was a 4-way tie), but i think that the amazing control they had while still having so much energy is enough to get them on top of my little list.
here are the other three that i really, really liked
olutely love this style. i love these choreographers. i wish that the hip hop routines i've done were anywhere near this cool. i love the emotion that they show. i don't think they performed quite as well as chelsie and mark did their lyrical hip hop last season, but when you consider that this was the very first routine of the very first show of the season, what they did was absolutely amazing.
the lifts make this one. yes, the dance quality itself is really, really good, but the lifts are absolutely amazing. the lines that they create are gorgeous.
for this one, there's some fast forwarding, but all the shorter videos didn't look very good. sorry.
this one is all about the chemistry. watching this, i would never suspect that she is married, or that these two hadn't met before just a few weeks ago (if it was even that long), and i would never,ever think that this was the first time they had danced together. it was super good.
this is going to be a fantastic season and i am so excited to keep watching.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
I didn't Need the Pain
It was my freshman year at ASU. I was in my very first English class of many, many English classes in college. Unfortunately, it was ENG 101: dumb people English. So I found the one person in that class that I trusted to edit my papers, and everyone knew that Gabe and I would edit any of their papers, and that we would let them edit our stuff, but that there probably wasn't much that they were going to be able to fix. (Yes, that sounds really snobby, but I was forced into the realization that I am an elitist, so I am now forcing everyone else to realize it too.)
One day, I was listening to Gabe discuss with our teacher (who actually wasn't a moron, thank Buddah) the idea of the memory of pain. He argued that there is no such thing as a memory of pain, only pain itself. He claimed that by remembering pain, you recreate the pain. Logic follows that if you are recreating the pain, it is no longer a memory, but something that is actually happening to you.
Apparently this idea has really stuck with me over the years, becuase it was the first thing I thought of when a friend of mine suggested a related, but opposing idea: we don't remember the pain we felt, but we remember being in pain. To relate an example: someone doesn't remember what it felt like when she burned her hand on the top coils of a heated oven, but she remembers that it hurt a lot.
Now, I don't know that I agree 100% with either of these ideas, I'm just throwing them out there to anyone who wants to ponder something that is probably fairly pointless, but interesting nonetheless.
I think that I favor the first idea more than the second. As I think about my friend burning her hand, my own hand is starting to shake and I can imaging the pain she must have felt, and that wasn't even my memory. More personally, as I think about slicing my finger open with a gobo, I can feel exactly where the scar on my little pinki finger is, without needing to look at it or feel it with my other hand.
Maybe the second idea is more appliciable to emotional pain, since that is what this friend and I were actually talking about. I, however, can't think of an emotional pain strong enough to be worth remembering that didn't also have physical manifestations, so I can't test this theory.
I don't know. This is just me sharing random thoughts with the world.
And, because I'm in a huge dance mood, I will leave you with the video that introduced me to the song that inspired my title for this post, which also happens to be my favorite dance from SYTYCD last season. : )
Totes.
One day, I was listening to Gabe discuss with our teacher (who actually wasn't a moron, thank Buddah) the idea of the memory of pain. He argued that there is no such thing as a memory of pain, only pain itself. He claimed that by remembering pain, you recreate the pain. Logic follows that if you are recreating the pain, it is no longer a memory, but something that is actually happening to you.
Apparently this idea has really stuck with me over the years, becuase it was the first thing I thought of when a friend of mine suggested a related, but opposing idea: we don't remember the pain we felt, but we remember being in pain. To relate an example: someone doesn't remember what it felt like when she burned her hand on the top coils of a heated oven, but she remembers that it hurt a lot.
Now, I don't know that I agree 100% with either of these ideas, I'm just throwing them out there to anyone who wants to ponder something that is probably fairly pointless, but interesting nonetheless.
I think that I favor the first idea more than the second. As I think about my friend burning her hand, my own hand is starting to shake and I can imaging the pain she must have felt, and that wasn't even my memory. More personally, as I think about slicing my finger open with a gobo, I can feel exactly where the scar on my little pinki finger is, without needing to look at it or feel it with my other hand.
Maybe the second idea is more appliciable to emotional pain, since that is what this friend and I were actually talking about. I, however, can't think of an emotional pain strong enough to be worth remembering that didn't also have physical manifestations, so I can't test this theory.
I don't know. This is just me sharing random thoughts with the world.
And, because I'm in a huge dance mood, I will leave you with the video that introduced me to the song that inspired my title for this post, which also happens to be my favorite dance from SYTYCD last season. : )
Totes.
Monday, June 8, 2009
like a hand-print on my heart...
Here's the thoughtful post I've been promising you. I posted it on facebook a few days ago, so sorry if you've already read it, but I can only have so many thoughts in one week... : )
Warning: this is a little sappy... but it's late, and I've been thinking about this for a long time. Also, I'm in a "Pam at the end of season 3" mode right now, where I basically just tell everyone what I'm thinking, and how I feel about them... so, yeah. You've officially been warned.
I've been facebook stalking people a lot lately, with all teh extra time I have, it just comes naturally. As I was staling a girl I went to high school with, I saw that basically all of her friends are friends we had in high school.
Later I was stalking a girl I went to junior high with. Now, she went to a different high school than I did, so she has a lot of friends who I don't know, but I can identify almost everyone in the vast majority of her pictures as the girls she hung out with when we were in orchestra together in junior high.
After considering the amazing relationships that these girls must have with these other people who they've known and been friends with for so long, I got a little bit sad.
Yes, I have facebook friends from high school; I even have a few from junior high. However, do I ever talk to them? I have one friend who I know I could talk to whenever I want, whose house I will always be welcome to come to and just hang out, even if said friend is not home, who I have known for as long as I can remember—literally: her mom babysat my sister and me when my mom couldn't get home from work in time to pick us up from the bus stop.
I have another friend whom I love to pieces who has been my best friend since seventh grade. We became best friends because we were the fat Mormon girls in the click that we were in, and ever since then we've basically shared a brain. I consider her to be my family more than anyone else I've ever known (who wasn't actually family, and even more than some who are family).
Then I have another friend who I met in high school who I share more interests with than anyone (except the aforementioned 7th grade best-friend). She keeps me updated on everything that happens in the theatre world, and lets me live vicariously through her as she performs in show after show. I enjoy few things more than getting to work backstage on a show that she's in the cast of, and I love our weekly trips to get dessert and just be happy, intelligent, theatre-nerd friends.
And that's about it. Those are my three friends who I have known the longest. I wonder how different my life would be if I had kept the same friends my entire life. How different of a person would I be? I can't speak for these girls who have had the same friends since junior high, or even high school, but I'm pretty positive that, for me, that would not have been a good thing.
My entire life I've kind of thrown pity parties for myself about how people always leave me. In elementary school I had a different "best friend" every year. In junior high my little click of best friends got torn apart first by one of the people being a stupidface, then by going to different high schools. Then my senior year my best friend moved a billion miles away and just a few months after that I lost another incredibly close friend to an even farther away destination. Then my sister left for her mission and never really came back to be my sister; she just got married right away. And I could keep going and get much more detailed, but I’m not going to.
I know that I would not be the same person that I am today if I hadn't had so many wonderful and different friends throughout my life. I won't lie: I still have an incredibly hard time saying goodbye to people, but I know that the things I have learned about people, the church, and life in general, I would not have been able to learn had I always been surrounded by the same friends.
I am thankful that I have the relationships that I have with my friends. I am also thankful for the relationships I’ve had and lost, because I am so much stronger because of them.
Warning: this is a little sappy... but it's late, and I've been thinking about this for a long time. Also, I'm in a "Pam at the end of season 3" mode right now, where I basically just tell everyone what I'm thinking, and how I feel about them... so, yeah. You've officially been warned.
I've been facebook stalking people a lot lately, with all teh extra time I have, it just comes naturally. As I was staling a girl I went to high school with, I saw that basically all of her friends are friends we had in high school.
Later I was stalking a girl I went to junior high with. Now, she went to a different high school than I did, so she has a lot of friends who I don't know, but I can identify almost everyone in the vast majority of her pictures as the girls she hung out with when we were in orchestra together in junior high.
After considering the amazing relationships that these girls must have with these other people who they've known and been friends with for so long, I got a little bit sad.
Yes, I have facebook friends from high school; I even have a few from junior high. However, do I ever talk to them? I have one friend who I know I could talk to whenever I want, whose house I will always be welcome to come to and just hang out, even if said friend is not home, who I have known for as long as I can remember—literally: her mom babysat my sister and me when my mom couldn't get home from work in time to pick us up from the bus stop.
I have another friend whom I love to pieces who has been my best friend since seventh grade. We became best friends because we were the fat Mormon girls in the click that we were in, and ever since then we've basically shared a brain. I consider her to be my family more than anyone else I've ever known (who wasn't actually family, and even more than some who are family).
Then I have another friend who I met in high school who I share more interests with than anyone (except the aforementioned 7th grade best-friend). She keeps me updated on everything that happens in the theatre world, and lets me live vicariously through her as she performs in show after show. I enjoy few things more than getting to work backstage on a show that she's in the cast of, and I love our weekly trips to get dessert and just be happy, intelligent, theatre-nerd friends.
And that's about it. Those are my three friends who I have known the longest. I wonder how different my life would be if I had kept the same friends my entire life. How different of a person would I be? I can't speak for these girls who have had the same friends since junior high, or even high school, but I'm pretty positive that, for me, that would not have been a good thing.
My entire life I've kind of thrown pity parties for myself about how people always leave me. In elementary school I had a different "best friend" every year. In junior high my little click of best friends got torn apart first by one of the people being a stupidface, then by going to different high schools. Then my senior year my best friend moved a billion miles away and just a few months after that I lost another incredibly close friend to an even farther away destination. Then my sister left for her mission and never really came back to be my sister; she just got married right away. And I could keep going and get much more detailed, but I’m not going to.
I know that I would not be the same person that I am today if I hadn't had so many wonderful and different friends throughout my life. I won't lie: I still have an incredibly hard time saying goodbye to people, but I know that the things I have learned about people, the church, and life in general, I would not have been able to learn had I always been surrounded by the same friends.
I am thankful that I have the relationships that I have with my friends. I am also thankful for the relationships I’ve had and lost, because I am so much stronger because of them.
Totes.
HAIR!!
First of all, I don’t know what happened to my picture; it disappeared without my permission. It can also be said that it went AWOL.
That was me showing how smart and well-rounded I am: I even know military lingo… jk. : )
So, the Tony Awards were tonight. They were probably the best Tonys I’ve ever watched, and I’m very opinionated about theatre stuff, AND I’ve watched more than your average 22 year-old, so that's saying something. Also, I’m glad West Side Story didn’t win best revival of a musical, but that Karen Olivo won for best featured actress in a musical. She’s amazing. I’m very upset that Sutton Foster didn’t sing when the cast of Shrek performed, because I love her. I wished that the clips of the plays that they showed had been longer, and I saw snippets of some plays and some musicals that I would like to see.
I’ve decided that there’s something truly magical about theatre, even when it’s on tv, and it’s just a song or two. I have NEVER watched an awards show where the audience is just so happy and truly entertained as they are every year at the Tonys. Yeah, there are really good musicians at the other ceremonies, but there’s not the whole package of singing, lights, sets, costumes and a story that comes with the song, and that’s just one song. Imagine an entire musical that has somewhere between 10 and 20 songs. And I don’t mean to take away from plays at all either. It’s true, I have a very heavy bias for musicals, but plays are also amazing. There’s just something about amazingly talented actors combing their talents with the lighting designers, sound designers, set designers, costume designers, lyricists, composers, writers, choreographers, directors and musicians that is breathtaking.
I often wonder if “normal” people know just how much goes in to producing a play or musical.
You should look into it. I’m fairly involved in the world of theatre, and I am still frequently shocked at how much goes on that I completely miss.
Also, I just looked up the touring cast of Legally Blonde; there are TONS of amazing names in that cast. If you get a chance, you should see it and get the following autographs for me:
That was me showing how smart and well-rounded I am: I even know military lingo… jk. : )
So, the Tony Awards were tonight. They were probably the best Tonys I’ve ever watched, and I’m very opinionated about theatre stuff, AND I’ve watched more than your average 22 year-old, so that's saying something. Also, I’m glad West Side Story didn’t win best revival of a musical, but that Karen Olivo won for best featured actress in a musical. She’s amazing. I’m very upset that Sutton Foster didn’t sing when the cast of Shrek performed, because I love her. I wished that the clips of the plays that they showed had been longer, and I saw snippets of some plays and some musicals that I would like to see.
I’ve decided that there’s something truly magical about theatre, even when it’s on tv, and it’s just a song or two. I have NEVER watched an awards show where the audience is just so happy and truly entertained as they are every year at the Tonys. Yeah, there are really good musicians at the other ceremonies, but there’s not the whole package of singing, lights, sets, costumes and a story that comes with the song, and that’s just one song. Imagine an entire musical that has somewhere between 10 and 20 songs. And I don’t mean to take away from plays at all either. It’s true, I have a very heavy bias for musicals, but plays are also amazing. There’s just something about amazingly talented actors combing their talents with the lighting designers, sound designers, set designers, costume designers, lyricists, composers, writers, choreographers, directors and musicians that is breathtaking.
I often wonder if “normal” people know just how much goes in to producing a play or musical.
You should look into it. I’m fairly involved in the world of theatre, and I am still frequently shocked at how much goes on that I completely miss.
Also, I just looked up the touring cast of Legally Blonde; there are TONS of amazing names in that cast. If you get a chance, you should see it and get the following autographs for me:
- Christian Borle
- Nicolette Hart
- Manuel Herrera
- Kate Rockwell
- Dani Spieler
- and Ashley says that Courtney Wolfson is in it too, and I thought I remembered her being in it, but she wasn't on the list on the site, so, if she's in it, get her autograph for me too.
k thanks!
PS. This was intended to be an insightful blog with just a little one-paragraph update bout how happy I was with the Tonys... This is what happens when Brigette starts talking about theatre. Sorry, I'll post a thoughtful blog later. : )
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