I just heard on the news that there was an earthquake in London. How scary! Who knew London could get earthquakes? Now they'll know what it's like to live in California.
I'm wondering if I should give up on my blog. I've been messing with it now for about four hours. Talk about major procrastination! I should take that class my screenwriting teacher is leading on Procrastination for Writers. I probably need a class like that right now. My screenwriting teacher wants to meet with me before I start on the second draft of my screenplay. She's offered to hold me to a deadline, so I keep on writing. I should do meet with her, but she said I'd have to pitch my new story.
God, I hate pitching. It's something I know I have to get used to doing, but I hate it. My screenwriting teacher told me that if I want to sell a screenplay, I'm going to have to get really good at pitching so I can do in front on movie executives in Hollywood. Pitching your screenplay is like doing a 90 second sales pitch. It's totally nerve racking.
Part of the reason I'm trying to get back into shape is because when I go to down to Hollywood to pitch my screenplay, I want to feel as self confident as possible. Being the weight I am makes my self confidence go to negative 10. Not even a zero, but a negative 10. The other reason had to do with health. Being heavy was elevating my blood pressure, and now that I've lost some weight, my pressure has gone back to normal. My blood pressure isn't where it used to be, but I had low blood pressure anyway and I would prefer it to be normal. Having low blood pressure presented a whole other set of health problems for me, so I'm praying my pressure stays normal. My resting heart rate or my pulse is low too, hovering about 55. I wonder if that's too low.
I know I want to finish my screenplay before November. I think I'll do that National November Writing Month contest again. You write 50,000 words in 30 days in novel form. That contest was so much fun to do, and is a great exercise in disciplining yourself to write every day. You have to write 1,667 words a day, every day for 30 days, to get to the 50K total. It's exhaustiive, but at the same time so exhilerating. You're doing a 120 page freewrite because you have to keep writing to make your quota. You can't go back and edit. Maybe the NANOWRIMO will snap me out of my procrastination. It's free too!
Monday, September 23, 2002
I've been trying to change my blog colors, but everytime I made a change, something else went wrong. I think I'm back to my original colors, and everything is working except my tracker. I emailed the tracker site to ask them to look at my template.
I really want to change my blog around, but my limited knowledge of website building prevents me from making too many changes. I've been looking at the other available canned templates, but I don't like any of them. I guess I should just pick one, and then try to modify it, but that's such a pain.
I know if I just have to buy a book on building your own website, I'd figure it out. It would take awhile, but I'd figure it out.
If you see my template changing from time to time, it's because I'm experimenting. I'm just so bored with the look of my blog.
I really want to change my blog around, but my limited knowledge of website building prevents me from making too many changes. I've been looking at the other available canned templates, but I don't like any of them. I guess I should just pick one, and then try to modify it, but that's such a pain.
I know if I just have to buy a book on building your own website, I'd figure it out. It would take awhile, but I'd figure it out.
If you see my template changing from time to time, it's because I'm experimenting. I'm just so bored with the look of my blog.
Turandot was great. Since it was very warm today, the opera house was a little stifling. All those bodies close together and all that breathing makes for a stuffy balcony. The sets by David Hockney was fantastic, although I couldn't see all of it because I was up so high. I rented opera glasses, and that made sitting so high up not as torturous as I thought originally.
The balcony is an interesting place to sit. There is such a variety of people, including the very young and the very old. It's fun to see teenagers at the opera, or parents and their kids. I'm always amazed at the types of people you see at an opera, and the spent the breaks checking out what people were wearing. There was an older woman who was done up like Frida Kahlo. I don't think it was intentional however. She looked so fantastic, like she stepped out of a painting or something. I loved her.
The style of dress went from a young girl in a tshirt with cutoff sleeves, black bra strap showing, torn jeans and a body to die for, to my Frida Kahlo lookalike, to women in ball gowns. I don't know about you, but a ball gown at a 2 pm opera matinee is a little excessive in my view. A definite non-city, out of town, from the country/suburb look.
I loved the music of Turandot, but in the program I'd read that Puccini died before finishing it. Since the ending was a littel abrupt, I wonder what the ending was supposed to have been like had he not died. One article writer speculated that Puccini would have added a consumation scene between Turandot and Prince Calaf, which would have made the ending less abrupt. Oh well.
This is one of the most accessible operas that I've seen. The music is modern in that the singers get one chance to sing their bit. There are hardly any repititions like in other operas. I read about this in the brochure. And it's true. The singing is so much more dramatic because the singer has to put everything into the song, which makes for a highly emotional opera. I could hear sniffles in the third act, which meant people were crying.
The singer playing Prince Calaf, John Villars, was quite handsome as the prince. Turandot was sung by Jane Eaglen, who is an English Soprano, and Liu was sung by Patricia Racette. Nessun Dorma got a around of applause at the end.
I really got the feeling for what a macho guy the prince was, and how manly he was. He was so self confident that he would win Turandot. You do feel sorry for Liu the slave girl, and wish that the prince would fall in love with her instead, but then if he did there wouldn't be an opera. In marrying Turandot, the impoverished prince gets back what he lost, and I think this is what drives him partially, although I also believe that some people do fall in love at first sight.
What's diffcult to understand, is how Turandot goes from a heartless princess to one who can fall in love. To me it's almost as unimaginable as Juliet killing herself in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet starts off as a young teenager, and at the end becomes a mature woman who would kill herself because her lover has died. Very few actresses can pull that transition off. I'm not sure if the opera manages this kind of transition either, and again one has to wonder how different the ending of the opera would be had Puccini lived to finish it.
Turandot reminded me of the sleeping beauty myth, but in a twisted version. The prince in The Sleeping Beauty story has to cut through a wild thicket to enter the castle and kiss the princess awake, who was put under a spell by an evil witch. Turandot takes revenge of men, because some ancestor hers was raped, and in the end the prince kisses her and she comes to life. I was also reminded of the Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew. It's the universal theme of the icy, bitchy woman woman who must be tamed by the macho manly man, who himself must also undergo trials to have his love. And of course, true love triumphs in the end for the lovers.
I found myself identifying with both Liu the slave girl and the icy mean princess. I have played both roles in my life. The woman dying of love for a man, who doesn't know she exists or if he does, sees her as only a friend. And the icy woman, who lets no man near her out of some reason known really only to herself.
I never identified with the prince though, but I think that's only because I don't believe in love at first sight. I've met guys where I instantly knew that there was amazing chemistry and rapport, but I've never called it love at first sight. Lust at first sight maybe, but never love at first sight. I wonder if it's a guy thing, more than a chick thing.
The only experience I had that would come even remotely close to a love at first sight experience was in college. I saw sitting out with some friends enjoying the sunshine, when I saw this guy walk across campus. I immediately told my friend to check out the guy; he was really cute. I then told her, that I was going to go out with that guy some day. I never thought further about what I had said that afternoon. The following school year, that very same guy sits down next to me at a lecture on Russian Music. We talked for a bit and that was it. A couple days later while at a bar with a friend of mine, I again run into the guy.
To make a long story short, we both ended up going out with this guy, her first, then me. Very funny, I think. My girlfriend confided in me later that she thought he only really liked me, and went out with her to get to me. Whatever. He really was cute, and I think he's now a playwright in NYC. He was quite the romantic, and wrote me a poem, which I still have and one day will probably frame. He was into Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan at the time, so the poem reflects both these influences.
Not sure if this story quite makes it as a kind of love at first sight, or even one of those spooky coincidences story, because my college did have only 1,200 students, which meant that there was high probabality that I would run into this guy again at some point. I'm still chuckling at the memory of my friend and I dating the same guy, one right after the other. How college like!!
I watched the first episode of Ken Burns' Civil War series, and I have to agree with some reviewers. The series is very slanted towards the North, and towards slavery. Shelby Foote was in the series, and I want to get all his books on the civil war. In my elf girl chronicles story, I'm making the elf people were an agrarian culture which is the south was ike during before the civil war. I want to model some of the fighting in my story, on how the south fought in the civil war. The elf people are battling against the humans, who have more modern equipment and the civil war is perfect research material for my story. I also want to give the elf people many of the southern values of service in the military, strong family ties to the land, etc.
There will be no slavery though. The only slaves in the story will be the elf people, who are turned into slaves at the end and who were treated very much like the american slave population was in the time before the civil war. The humans will makes laws that will destroy elf culture, break up the families, take away freedom and landownership rites, keep the children apart from the parents, separate husbands from wives, etc. A background in civil war history, and a history of life in the south will defintely come in handy for my story.
The balcony is an interesting place to sit. There is such a variety of people, including the very young and the very old. It's fun to see teenagers at the opera, or parents and their kids. I'm always amazed at the types of people you see at an opera, and the spent the breaks checking out what people were wearing. There was an older woman who was done up like Frida Kahlo. I don't think it was intentional however. She looked so fantastic, like she stepped out of a painting or something. I loved her.
The style of dress went from a young girl in a tshirt with cutoff sleeves, black bra strap showing, torn jeans and a body to die for, to my Frida Kahlo lookalike, to women in ball gowns. I don't know about you, but a ball gown at a 2 pm opera matinee is a little excessive in my view. A definite non-city, out of town, from the country/suburb look.
I loved the music of Turandot, but in the program I'd read that Puccini died before finishing it. Since the ending was a littel abrupt, I wonder what the ending was supposed to have been like had he not died. One article writer speculated that Puccini would have added a consumation scene between Turandot and Prince Calaf, which would have made the ending less abrupt. Oh well.
This is one of the most accessible operas that I've seen. The music is modern in that the singers get one chance to sing their bit. There are hardly any repititions like in other operas. I read about this in the brochure. And it's true. The singing is so much more dramatic because the singer has to put everything into the song, which makes for a highly emotional opera. I could hear sniffles in the third act, which meant people were crying.
The singer playing Prince Calaf, John Villars, was quite handsome as the prince. Turandot was sung by Jane Eaglen, who is an English Soprano, and Liu was sung by Patricia Racette. Nessun Dorma got a around of applause at the end.
I really got the feeling for what a macho guy the prince was, and how manly he was. He was so self confident that he would win Turandot. You do feel sorry for Liu the slave girl, and wish that the prince would fall in love with her instead, but then if he did there wouldn't be an opera. In marrying Turandot, the impoverished prince gets back what he lost, and I think this is what drives him partially, although I also believe that some people do fall in love at first sight.
What's diffcult to understand, is how Turandot goes from a heartless princess to one who can fall in love. To me it's almost as unimaginable as Juliet killing herself in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet starts off as a young teenager, and at the end becomes a mature woman who would kill herself because her lover has died. Very few actresses can pull that transition off. I'm not sure if the opera manages this kind of transition either, and again one has to wonder how different the ending of the opera would be had Puccini lived to finish it.
Turandot reminded me of the sleeping beauty myth, but in a twisted version. The prince in The Sleeping Beauty story has to cut through a wild thicket to enter the castle and kiss the princess awake, who was put under a spell by an evil witch. Turandot takes revenge of men, because some ancestor hers was raped, and in the end the prince kisses her and she comes to life. I was also reminded of the Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew. It's the universal theme of the icy, bitchy woman woman who must be tamed by the macho manly man, who himself must also undergo trials to have his love. And of course, true love triumphs in the end for the lovers.
I found myself identifying with both Liu the slave girl and the icy mean princess. I have played both roles in my life. The woman dying of love for a man, who doesn't know she exists or if he does, sees her as only a friend. And the icy woman, who lets no man near her out of some reason known really only to herself.
I never identified with the prince though, but I think that's only because I don't believe in love at first sight. I've met guys where I instantly knew that there was amazing chemistry and rapport, but I've never called it love at first sight. Lust at first sight maybe, but never love at first sight. I wonder if it's a guy thing, more than a chick thing.
The only experience I had that would come even remotely close to a love at first sight experience was in college. I saw sitting out with some friends enjoying the sunshine, when I saw this guy walk across campus. I immediately told my friend to check out the guy; he was really cute. I then told her, that I was going to go out with that guy some day. I never thought further about what I had said that afternoon. The following school year, that very same guy sits down next to me at a lecture on Russian Music. We talked for a bit and that was it. A couple days later while at a bar with a friend of mine, I again run into the guy.
To make a long story short, we both ended up going out with this guy, her first, then me. Very funny, I think. My girlfriend confided in me later that she thought he only really liked me, and went out with her to get to me. Whatever. He really was cute, and I think he's now a playwright in NYC. He was quite the romantic, and wrote me a poem, which I still have and one day will probably frame. He was into Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan at the time, so the poem reflects both these influences.
Not sure if this story quite makes it as a kind of love at first sight, or even one of those spooky coincidences story, because my college did have only 1,200 students, which meant that there was high probabality that I would run into this guy again at some point. I'm still chuckling at the memory of my friend and I dating the same guy, one right after the other. How college like!!
I watched the first episode of Ken Burns' Civil War series, and I have to agree with some reviewers. The series is very slanted towards the North, and towards slavery. Shelby Foote was in the series, and I want to get all his books on the civil war. In my elf girl chronicles story, I'm making the elf people were an agrarian culture which is the south was ike during before the civil war. I want to model some of the fighting in my story, on how the south fought in the civil war. The elf people are battling against the humans, who have more modern equipment and the civil war is perfect research material for my story. I also want to give the elf people many of the southern values of service in the military, strong family ties to the land, etc.
There will be no slavery though. The only slaves in the story will be the elf people, who are turned into slaves at the end and who were treated very much like the american slave population was in the time before the civil war. The humans will makes laws that will destroy elf culture, break up the families, take away freedom and landownership rites, keep the children apart from the parents, separate husbands from wives, etc. A background in civil war history, and a history of life in the south will defintely come in handy for my story.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
I spent all afternoon cleaning out my computer, since it's been running very slowly this week. I copied a bunch of file to cd, cleaned out my mailbox, deleted old programs I never use, etc. I should probably upgrade my PC one of these days, since the old pc is an dinasour from 1998. Ideally what I'd like to do is just get a new hard drive, but keep my monitor, speakers, two two cd drives, scanner and printer. I'd like to replace my hard drive with a laptop, and use a docking station to connect to connect to all my peripherals. One of these days.
With my new austerity spending plan, I'm in no position to buy a new computer right now anyway. The only thing I can see purchasing is a Samsung laser printer, for printing out my screenplays and stories. The old color printer takes too long to print, and it freaked out when I printed my 117 page screenplay a fw months ago. Those Samsung laser printers run about $100-200, and I can definitely find a way to fit this amount into my budget.
I only lost a one pound this week, but at least I'm still losing. In six weeks, I've lost 12 pounds. Using the Dieting for Dummies formula, I recalculated my calories, and I now to need start eating less than I was before because of the weight loss. Sigh. Maybe two pounds a week is too ambitious and too austere of an eating plan for me. I stopped exercising for two weeks, and I'm sure this has affected my weight loss rate. Exercise definitely helps.
On a brighter note, I tried on a pair of jeans that used to fit me four years ago and it almost fits. I'm not quite ready to wear it, but at least I can button it without too much difficulty. I'm wearing a pair of stirrup pants, and they're very loose which feels very strange since they've always been snug. When I have lose weight in the past, the weight comes off my hips and thighs first before anywhere else, so maybe this explains my loose pants.
Tomorrow I go to see Turandot, and I'm excited about it, even though I'll be up in the rafters with the rabble rousers.
No musical selections today. I had the radio on and listened to this program called "Shamrock and Thistle", which is an hour long program of celtic (mostly irish) music. Now I just have the classical music station on.
I think I'll read all night and finish "The Jungle Book" and "The Age of Innocence". I'd like start reading my new books, which I borrowed from the library, Salmon Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" and Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart. I rented two movies, Dragonfly and Pay it Forward, in case I get bored reading. I'd also like to do some writing tonight, either 1,000 words for my short story or 500 words for my screenplay.
Ken Burns' Civil War series is being replayed on TV starting tomorrow. Although supposedly the series has a "northern slant", I'm going to tape it anyway. Ever since I read that Civil War book in WVA, I've been dying to see this documentary. I wish they would rerun Ken Burns' Baseball series. Instead, they're rerunning many of his shorter documenteraries. He's such a good filmmaker, I'm tempted to tape everything he's done. I have Jazz on tape, and love rewatching it. I love jazz music, and find the history of it fascinating.
With my new austerity spending plan, I'm in no position to buy a new computer right now anyway. The only thing I can see purchasing is a Samsung laser printer, for printing out my screenplays and stories. The old color printer takes too long to print, and it freaked out when I printed my 117 page screenplay a fw months ago. Those Samsung laser printers run about $100-200, and I can definitely find a way to fit this amount into my budget.
I only lost a one pound this week, but at least I'm still losing. In six weeks, I've lost 12 pounds. Using the Dieting for Dummies formula, I recalculated my calories, and I now to need start eating less than I was before because of the weight loss. Sigh. Maybe two pounds a week is too ambitious and too austere of an eating plan for me. I stopped exercising for two weeks, and I'm sure this has affected my weight loss rate. Exercise definitely helps.
On a brighter note, I tried on a pair of jeans that used to fit me four years ago and it almost fits. I'm not quite ready to wear it, but at least I can button it without too much difficulty. I'm wearing a pair of stirrup pants, and they're very loose which feels very strange since they've always been snug. When I have lose weight in the past, the weight comes off my hips and thighs first before anywhere else, so maybe this explains my loose pants.
Tomorrow I go to see Turandot, and I'm excited about it, even though I'll be up in the rafters with the rabble rousers.
No musical selections today. I had the radio on and listened to this program called "Shamrock and Thistle", which is an hour long program of celtic (mostly irish) music. Now I just have the classical music station on.
I think I'll read all night and finish "The Jungle Book" and "The Age of Innocence". I'd like start reading my new books, which I borrowed from the library, Salmon Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" and Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart. I rented two movies, Dragonfly and Pay it Forward, in case I get bored reading. I'd also like to do some writing tonight, either 1,000 words for my short story or 500 words for my screenplay.
Ken Burns' Civil War series is being replayed on TV starting tomorrow. Although supposedly the series has a "northern slant", I'm going to tape it anyway. Ever since I read that Civil War book in WVA, I've been dying to see this documentary. I wish they would rerun Ken Burns' Baseball series. Instead, they're rerunning many of his shorter documenteraries. He's such a good filmmaker, I'm tempted to tape everything he's done. I have Jazz on tape, and love rewatching it. I love jazz music, and find the history of it fascinating.
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