what is hecuba to he or he to hecuba?

So....I'm bored.

Picasso is going really well! Except rehearsals have been canceled for tonight (hence the boredom) and tomorrow because of all the sickly lepers in our cast. I can't help but feel a little guilty cause I feel like I'm the one who started all of this when I got sick a few weeks ago. This was followed by Jess becoming sick, Tyree getting sick, and now Danvir and Max. Though I must say, I don't know if it's the stubborn, Black Knight attitude in me when it comes to rehearsals or what, but I didn't let some stupid fluish fever stop me from rehearsing. Then again, that may not be dedication so much as it is stupid and the reason everyone else is ill. But whatever, I've been feeling really connected with Suzanne lately and am in love with using the marvelous Kristin Chenoweth as an inspiration. It's so much fun! So everyone mark your calendars and come and see it!

In other news...I'm irate, to say the least, at the lack of action being taken by state governments to enforce voter integrity and make sure there's not voter fraud going on in major swing states like Ohio. My 11th grade history teacher (a now registered Democrat) told us how the Democratic party used to pay him to vote for dead people when he was a child growing up in New York...it's nice to hear things haven't changed much and no one's willing to do anything to stop it. So I can only hope that despite the deceitful, cheating methods of certain political parties, enough people will come together and vote for the one candidate who is truly qualified to run this country.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see...By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. - Hebrews 11:1-3

amen.

mjl.

"it's the price of fame, I guess"

I got cast in Picasso at the Lapin Agile! I'm playing Suzanne! Yay!

This is kind of old news, but I don't think I ever officialy said it. So now it's been said. (:

All glory and thanks to my Heavenly Father for the infinite blessings He's put in my life.

mjl.

naked teeth.

it is official.

the teeth are nude.

hallelujah. praise the Lord.

here's me...braces free.


in other news...
we had auditions for Picasso at the Lapin Agile last night (or technically two nights ago, since I do believe we are now almost 2 hours into Thursday morning).
I've been uberly excited about this for a while because I've never gotten a chance to work with the amazing Zoe Saba apart from when she directed Jess and myself for our Acting I final, and even in that short amount of time, both Jess and I had so much fun working with her and couldn't wait for this fall.

so anyways...yeah, I auditioned for Suzanne, who in the original play also played the Countess and the "female admirer" (which I was kind of hoping to do, cause getting to create 3 different characters would be too much fun (: ), but I believe Zoe has decided to cast separate actresses for each role, which is, of course, fine too. Moving on...Suzanne is not, by any means, my dream role. She will definitely be the most risque character I've had to play onstage (she speaks freely about her sex life and changes her shirt onstage, which will most likely be amended or taken out. so, as you can imagine, she is a 19 year old very different from myself).
I'm a little worried about my parents seeing their little girl up onstage talking about sleeping around but I'm hoping they'll remember that it's just a character and not me...no method acting involved.
Anyways...Zoe seemed pleased with my cold reading of one of Suzanne's monologues and had me read again with Danvir as Picasso and Michael as Gaston on Tuesday night; however, I was less than pleased with my cold readings and after Zoe dismissed me from the preliminary auditions with a farewell very similar to one I heard her give a girl last year who didn't even move on to callbacks, the anxiety and worrying grew exponentially.

So all last night and this morning was pretty much me convincing myself that I wasn't going to get a callback, let alone get cast in the show. (I have some serious self-doubt issues, so an entire evening + most of this morning to stew in my own anxieties was not a good combination for me). So when Jess told me she'd gotten the e-mail informing her of callbacks, I was suuuuuper stressed. I seriously refused to click on the New Mail link for like 5 minutes cause I had to pray and tell myself that it didn't matter if I didn't get cast. Thankfully, God, in his infinite wisdom, blessed me with the opportunity to perform again tonight because I did indeed receive an e-mail to get called back.

So call backs were really fun. I love getting the opportunity to read with different people and experiment with different stuff depending on who I'm working with, so this is usally my favorite part of the audition process.
Amazingly enough, when I arrived at callbacks, I was fortunate enough to see that I was the only one called back for Suzanne and Jess was the only one called back for Germaine (: So, at the risk of jumping the gun since we haven't officially been cast yet, there was much rejoicing from Jess and myself once we got to my car (mainly in the form of girly screams, haha). We've been through so many shows together, and have both had to go through getting rejected (we were both called back as freshmen last year for Lend Me a Tenor but didn't end up getting cast), plus she's one of my best and closest friends, so I'm really really happy for us finally getting our chance to have substantial parts in a real(as in, written by an actual professional) play on the mainstage at csub. that is, assuming we did get cast....cause there's still the chance that we didn't, i suppose.

So yeah. After some bad luck earlier in the week (I found out I have the misfortune of having to see someone I really don't care for every single day because this person is in a lot of my classes and i got a flat this morning), God has totally turned this week around and blessed me more than I could ask for.

I am completely and incandescently happy.
All thanks and joy to my Heavenly Father.

mjl.

first day of school! first day of school!

boo.

as much as i wanted to go back a couple weeks ago when everyone else was gone at school and i was stuck with my 2 day a week work schedule, i really am unprepared for tomorrow.

i just bought my books this morning on amazon, so they won't even be here for probably a week or two. plus i haven't even paid tuition cause the frekaing mortgage company is screwing my parents over with a $4000 a month house payment, so they didn't have my tuition money last week.

so hopefully they'll let me pay tomorrow without too huge of a fine.

whatever.

in other news.

i think i'm finally getting my braces off tomorrow!!!!!!

i know i posted a blog like this months ago, but this time, i think it's really going to happen.

pray for me all you out there in bloggerland!

until then,
mjl.

mama i'm a guitarist now

So, I finally taught myself guitar, and it's ridiculous how much easier it is to play by ear. After only a couple hours on my first real day of playing, I can pretty much play all of "S.O.S" by the Jonas Brothers and I did it all by ear. Arguably, it's a pretty simple song, but I'm extremely proud of myself.

After 14 years of being taught that reading music was the only way, I'm so happy that I can finally play an instrument by ear somewhat succesfully.

Today is a good day and just another example of how God spoils me.

In other news...


I think McCain took like a 10 pt lead in the polls today.

Hellz Yeah. The future of our American government is looking brighter everyday.

Mainly cause the prospect of higher taxes being used to pay for a universal health care system that will allow people to literally do nothing but sit on their butts since the government will pay for/take care of their health care does not appeal to me in the slightest. That's the thing about these facist/socialist ideals that many (not all) liberals have and I just don't get; why would you want a bigger, more obtrusive government butting into your life, forcing you to be exactly the same as everyone else? Because God knows it'd be horrible for you to want to work hard, succeed, and push yourself forward in life. No! That's too unfair to the people who don't want to have to work hard; which forces you to lose that which you're working hard for as the massive, Socialist monster takes your hard earned wages and gives them to everyone else.
Why can't we keep what we earn? Barack suggests income taxes as high as 50% for some people!! That is beyond ridiculous! Especially with the way the tax brackets are set up, families like mine, who barely make the minimum amount to be put in their bracket, get taxed just as much as families who make a substantially larger amount. It's so stupid.

Oh, and the idea that the republicans fighting these higher taxese are only doing so because they're wealthy, capitalist pigs and they'll get hit the hardest by the astronomically high taxes is ridiculous as well. Coming from a poor little capitalist who gets too much taken out of her minimum wage paycheck in taxes, people should be able to work hard without fear of having half their paycheck sent away to other people who may be doing nothing but taking advantage of this mockery of a health care/welfare system where it seems you can do almost nothing and reep financial benefits for it.

In the words of the wonderful Mike Huckabee, "I'm not a republican because I was born rich. I'm a republican so I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life poor waiting for the governemnt to bail me out."

*phew* Sorry, that was a lot of ranting, but I had to get it off my chest.

PLEASE REGISTER TO VOTE!!!!!



mjl.

you are the music in me

after 10 years of vocal training and 14 years of playing the old "eighty-eight", i'm finally starting to write music.

or, rather, i'm attempting to write music.

i'm still a little on the hopeless side of coming up with original lyrics that are meaningful and not overrun with fluffly pop stuff, but i'm pleased with how easily the chord progressions are coming to me.

it's becoming progressively more simple to hear the pitches i want in my head and then transfer them into a nicely harmonized chords on the piano.

but here's the rub, due to my lack of composition training, i'm kind of stuck on simple chord progressions with basic harmonizing octaves in the bass part (imagine the beginning of "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles), which is no fun for me because it makes me feel like a no talent poser who can't make original music, which may very well be the case, but i don't like feeling that way. so the goal is to make more original sounding chord progressions, which is working for now...but whatevz, this talk of chord progressions is boring me and i'm a musician, i can't imagine the pain i've just you poor blog-landers through.
bottom line = i'm just glad to finally be doing something with my decade and a half of musical training.

to whom it may concern (whoms being BC and CSUFullerton peeps), have an awesometastical first week of school y'all!
and to my pallys who have recently left/are soon leaving for schoolio out of town, i love you all, miss you already, and will see you laters!

Til Then.

mjl.

and if occasionally he'd ponder what makes Shakespeare & Beethoven great, him i could love til i die

i'm listening to a variety of classical music right now. well, i suppose after taking my music class this past spring, i can't in good mind call it "classical" since what i'm listening to really ranges from the romantic period (Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor) to, what i would imagine is, the modern period (movie scores from Pan's Labyrinth, Narnia, and Pride & Prejudice).

*sigh*

it never ceases to amaze me how truly beautiful music can be. isn't it fantastic and yet utterly bizarre to think that something as seemingly simple as an arrangement of varying pitches and tones can make you feel such an enormous range of emotions?
i mean, just from my own meager point of view, i have felt anywhere from ecstatic to utterly melancholy & heartbroken when listening to a song. and sometimes these mixed emotions can be derived from the same song! it's crazy! and then, to think that music can trigger certain things in one's brain and memory is even crazier!

it's like when God is talking to Job about creation and says that "the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy". CS Lewis used that idea of music being used at the world's creation and transfered it to Narnia where Aslan sings the world into existance. maybe it's just the music nerd in me, but that would be a phenomally cool way to create the world and would help explain why music has such an awesome influence on our brains.

though one thing's for sure, it makes me curious as to what it might sound like to hear angels and stars sing. it blows my mind even trying to grasp at how powerfully and magnificently beautiful that's going to sound.

alright, i'm done geeking out about music for now. hope my rambling didn't bore you too much. to whom it may concern, enjoy your first day of school! and to everyone else, enjoy your last few weeks of summer!

"Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders.
In a loud voice they sang:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”

The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped."

revelations 5:11-14

amen and amen.
mjl.