The movie Endless Summer is on TV and I'm watching and I feel like I'm 13 years old, because that's the first time I saw this movie. I've seen this movie like about a dozen times all before the age of 18 and it brings back so many good memories of home and being in warm water and body surfing and laying out at the beach on Sunday afternoons.
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Friday, June 21, 2002
I also decided tonight that I'm glad I didn't pursue acting. The fun of being somebody else and doing it in front of other people has definitely lost it charm for me. God, you're like a trained dog mouthing somebody else's words, telling somebody's else's truth and not your own.
Writing is so much better! You get to do what you do in private and you get to create and speak your truth and no one else's. No amount of applause and face recognition is worth the opportunity to speak your truth for the world to hear.
Writing is so much better! You get to do what you do in private and you get to create and speak your truth and no one else's. No amount of applause and face recognition is worth the opportunity to speak your truth for the world to hear.
I just saw the play Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson and I feel bad because the play was for the most part really boring. I don't know if it was the acting or just the play itself, or maybe it's me, because I'm so used to watching TV and movies, but plays are just boring.
First of all, the characters never talk like real people. Dialogue must always be snappy and sparkling and I don't know about you, but I've never been in a conversation where the dialogue is snappy and sparkling like it is on stage, or if they have spoken that way, they could sustain it for more than a few minutes. In a play, the sparkling dialogue has to go for over an hour, maybe even 3 hours.
Then there are those long monologues and speeches. God, nobody ever talks for more than a minute in real life. And usually if someone does like that, they're like some stuffy professor type or something.
I feel bad because I go to plays now and I sit there thinking, this is the reason why the theatre in America is dying. It's boring, stuffy and unrealistic and the stories and ideas being put forth seem irrelevant somehow.
And this play, Angels Fall, should be relevant because it's about people stuck in a church after some disaster. It's so 9/11. But, I don't know. Watching it felt so artificial. Has 9/11 made me think that theatre is so irrelevant now? Granted Angels Falls did premier on Broadway in 1982 and 1983 and was even nominated for a Tony award for Best Play that year, so it it a little dated, but it was more than that.
I think I finally got tonight that the difference between plays and movies, is a play is about ideas and doesn't necessarily have to tell a story. A movie is storytelling in visual form and can be about ideas, but the movie's job is to tell a story. A play doesn't have to tell a story. And this play did not really have a plot.
Two couples along with a priest and a young boy are stuck in a church in some remote part of New Mexico after a mining accident at a uranium mine closes all the roads. Thatt's the whole plot. The rest of the play shows them interacting, having conversations and telling each other and the audience the story of their wretched lives. There's hardly any action, just people walking off and on stage. The only action is in the dialogue, that sparkly dialogue, that artificial way people talk only in plays.
One could even say the title of the play, Angels Fall, refer to the three male characters in the play, who have all been put up on pedestals by their groups and by each other. In the play, we see that they're just human, not divine, that they have free will and choice and they sometimes don't make very good decisions. And in a secondary theme, the play was also about doing what you love doing and not letting anyone tell you to do otherwise no matter how well intentioned.
I'm going to have to think about this play some more. I can't tell whether I liked it or not. The author is no slouch. He won a pulitzer pruze for a play called Talley's Folly". So he has to be a good writer. But I didn't like the other play of his I saw, Redwood Curtain either. It's definitely just me and not him. I think I expected more storytelling and instead I got exposition and ideas, And it's the lack of storytelling that makes for a me, a very boring play.
First of all, the characters never talk like real people. Dialogue must always be snappy and sparkling and I don't know about you, but I've never been in a conversation where the dialogue is snappy and sparkling like it is on stage, or if they have spoken that way, they could sustain it for more than a few minutes. In a play, the sparkling dialogue has to go for over an hour, maybe even 3 hours.
Then there are those long monologues and speeches. God, nobody ever talks for more than a minute in real life. And usually if someone does like that, they're like some stuffy professor type or something.
I feel bad because I go to plays now and I sit there thinking, this is the reason why the theatre in America is dying. It's boring, stuffy and unrealistic and the stories and ideas being put forth seem irrelevant somehow.
And this play, Angels Fall, should be relevant because it's about people stuck in a church after some disaster. It's so 9/11. But, I don't know. Watching it felt so artificial. Has 9/11 made me think that theatre is so irrelevant now? Granted Angels Falls did premier on Broadway in 1982 and 1983 and was even nominated for a Tony award for Best Play that year, so it it a little dated, but it was more than that.
I think I finally got tonight that the difference between plays and movies, is a play is about ideas and doesn't necessarily have to tell a story. A movie is storytelling in visual form and can be about ideas, but the movie's job is to tell a story. A play doesn't have to tell a story. And this play did not really have a plot.
Two couples along with a priest and a young boy are stuck in a church in some remote part of New Mexico after a mining accident at a uranium mine closes all the roads. Thatt's the whole plot. The rest of the play shows them interacting, having conversations and telling each other and the audience the story of their wretched lives. There's hardly any action, just people walking off and on stage. The only action is in the dialogue, that sparkly dialogue, that artificial way people talk only in plays.
One could even say the title of the play, Angels Fall, refer to the three male characters in the play, who have all been put up on pedestals by their groups and by each other. In the play, we see that they're just human, not divine, that they have free will and choice and they sometimes don't make very good decisions. And in a secondary theme, the play was also about doing what you love doing and not letting anyone tell you to do otherwise no matter how well intentioned.
I'm going to have to think about this play some more. I can't tell whether I liked it or not. The author is no slouch. He won a pulitzer pruze for a play called Talley's Folly". So he has to be a good writer. But I didn't like the other play of his I saw, Redwood Curtain either. It's definitely just me and not him. I think I expected more storytelling and instead I got exposition and ideas, And it's the lack of storytelling that makes for a me, a very boring play.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
I've been reading this great new book called The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity by Catherine Ponder. It has this one exercise where you write about things from your past and present that you wished happened or could have happened a different way. Then you can also write out how you wish things to happen in your future.
I did the past and present part of the exercise on a break at work and afterwards, I felt like a big burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, not big ones anyway, but there a few things I do regret. I also wrote down incidents I had with other people that I wished had gone a different way and I got a few insights into why certain people might have acted the way they did. I felt very compassionate even for the people who I thought wrecked havoc on my life.
What else. I decided I needed more underwear for my upcoming trip, so I went to Victoria's Secret again. I was actually standing in line with my purchases, when I noticed the cashier ringing up a bra for a woman that cost only $10. Like a mermaid siren calling to a love starved sailor man, I was drawn back to the sales bins of underwear. And like the sailor, my hopes of finding anything in my size and in a colour I wanted was once again dashed brutally on the rocks of nothingness.
What is it about bins of sale items that make me want to dig through judiciously hoping against hope of finding something that fits in a color I like? You can go to 10 different stores and look through all their sale racks and bins and maybe find one thing you like after hours of hours of digging and combing through the ugliest pieces of clothing imaginable. There's a reason why the Victoria's Secret sales bins are full of thong underwear. NOBODY WEARS THEM! Despite what the media may be telling you, nobody wears butt floss. The sales bins and racks at any underwear department are proof of this widely known fact.
The other thing to know about shopping at underwear sales is all the big sizes are gone, which leads me to conclude that most women in America and in the SF Bay Area have huge rears! The small and medium bins are full of underwear in great colours. The large and extra large bins are full of thongs and other freaky coloured underwear. Why they make underwear in freaky colours is a mystery to me. The stuff never sold when it first came out and it's certainly not going to sell now when it's dirt cheap. Isn't it nice to know though, that most women do have beauty standards for their underwear.
I did the past and present part of the exercise on a break at work and afterwards, I felt like a big burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, not big ones anyway, but there a few things I do regret. I also wrote down incidents I had with other people that I wished had gone a different way and I got a few insights into why certain people might have acted the way they did. I felt very compassionate even for the people who I thought wrecked havoc on my life.
What else. I decided I needed more underwear for my upcoming trip, so I went to Victoria's Secret again. I was actually standing in line with my purchases, when I noticed the cashier ringing up a bra for a woman that cost only $10. Like a mermaid siren calling to a love starved sailor man, I was drawn back to the sales bins of underwear. And like the sailor, my hopes of finding anything in my size and in a colour I wanted was once again dashed brutally on the rocks of nothingness.
What is it about bins of sale items that make me want to dig through judiciously hoping against hope of finding something that fits in a color I like? You can go to 10 different stores and look through all their sale racks and bins and maybe find one thing you like after hours of hours of digging and combing through the ugliest pieces of clothing imaginable. There's a reason why the Victoria's Secret sales bins are full of thong underwear. NOBODY WEARS THEM! Despite what the media may be telling you, nobody wears butt floss. The sales bins and racks at any underwear department are proof of this widely known fact.
The other thing to know about shopping at underwear sales is all the big sizes are gone, which leads me to conclude that most women in America and in the SF Bay Area have huge rears! The small and medium bins are full of underwear in great colours. The large and extra large bins are full of thongs and other freaky coloured underwear. Why they make underwear in freaky colours is a mystery to me. The stuff never sold when it first came out and it's certainly not going to sell now when it's dirt cheap. Isn't it nice to know though, that most women do have beauty standards for their underwear.
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