ooooh, i really hate yo ass right now

30 Day (ish - look I'm tryinggggg this is still the most blog posts I've done in a month!) Challenge: 5 Pet Peeves

1. Whining about things that are good: These things include but are not limited to whining about travel (ughhh I'm never home! I was just in Europe for two weeks and now I have to go to Asia), over-commitment with things that are awesome (oh fuck, I have an audition and a rehearsal and a callback AND another rehearsal and a staged reading), and why having a boyfriend isn't as good as being single (he bought me dinner AGAIN and all I wanted to do was stay home!). This might actually be my biggest pet peeve at present.

2. People who are not poor who say they are: If you ever openly admit in my presence that you a) don't have a job, b) aren't looking for a job, and c) intend to live off of mommy and daddy's money for as long as humanly possible without contributing at all because you for ANY reason feel that they owe you after the age of 22, the next time I say let's go to dinner if you say you can't because you're broke/it's expensive, I'M GOING TO STAB YOU. I have three jobs and I'm still way below the poverty line. Shut the fuck up, tell your parents thank you, and don't talk to me until you learn ANYTHING about the value of money.

3. Reading over my shoulder: A simple classic. Please. It gives me the heebie jeebies. I admit that I have an unreasonably high personal space boundary, but really. Just ask - I'll give you the book/magazine/newspaper or turn my computer your way.

4. Poor grammar: Another simple classic. Your and you're? Not the same. Ditto there, their, and they're. See again it's and its. Don't get me started on comma usage or incorrect plurality.

5. Being asked why I don't have a boyfriend: Dear men everywhere - asking me why I don't have a boyfriend in that bewildered, "you're so great" way is not flattering, it's annoying. It does NOT make me want to smile demurely or laugh or bat my eyelashes or flirt. It makes me want to say "I don't fucking know, so you'd better tell me what it is about me that strikes you as undateable" and then stalk away in my most enraged but still appealing way. This goes double if you and I have ever engaged in any sort of... flirtation and triple if we've ever actually dated but you're curious as to why I'm still single now.

[6. Honorable mention -the word moist. Seriously, my hatred of this word is so well known that people will say "that word you don't like" rather than say moist in my presence.]

dj blow my speakers up

30 Day Challenge, Day 6 (and change. so sue me.): Your views on mainstream music.

You know it's funny - when I moved to New York, I essentially altogether stopped listening to the radio, because I stopped driving. So for the better part of 3 years, I knew songs that became monster hits & songs that got played at bars, but I had more or less no idea what was "mainstream" music. Oh, except for songs that became part of the baller medlies. Obvs. This of course happened not because of a conscientious abstention from pop music but rather a matter of simple circumstance, rather than my younger days of trying to suit my music taste to fit that of my punk and alternative loving friends.

Then I began working at a dance studio, and my life was all top-40 all the time. A friend and I had a conversation last summer wherein he decided to see how many songs on the Billboard Hot 100 he knew - he came up with 6 in the top 10, I came up with 45 in the top 60. Which, though faintly humiliating, also lead me to a realization - of those songs certainly MANY sucked, but there were a good number I actually enjoyed.

I've spent most of my life having an extremely eclectic music taste - I've always said that I'll listen to anything as long as it's good. And yet, I've also spent quite a long time trying to make my music taste suit that of those around me - listening to alternative bands or indie bands or rap artists or hair metal bands because someone close to me said it was worth listening to, and pretending to like bands I love less because they were a cliche or obvious or unpopular choice. Then I got sick of that and decided that YES, I do love the Spice Girls in a non-ironic way and YES, I still count Something Corporate among my favorite bands and NO, I really don't actually like Taking Back Sunday. Etc.

Oh and by the way? Yeah. Some radio music is pretty fucking catchy and even really good.

So mainstream music? Yeah. Fine. This is me turning in my fake hipster card once and for all.

and so it is, just like you said it would be

30 Day Challenge: Things you want to say to an ex.

It's just...

I miss you. Not as my boyfriend, but just as you. Being in my life. I miss us as we were, but more than that I miss an us I'm not sure really ever was - I miss us as we could have been, I guess.

It's just. It's strange. It's too weird and it's too hard and it's all too far gone but... god I wish there was a way to start over.

It sucks knowing there's not a way back from this, and it sucks even more that just when I think I don't care I'm reminded that that's not exactly true - it creeps in without my being able to stop it, which I hate, but there it is.

...I could go on, but I'll stop, I think. Honesty was never really my style.

Lifestyles of the not so rich but hopefully soon to be famous

...I have to admit, the premise of this, though easy at first, now seems vaguely like the nightly reports I have to send to my boss at work, which is to say mostly unappealing.

Also I'm cheating, because I definitely won't get to this before the end of my day.

30 Day Challenge: Bullet your whole day

• Woke up before alarm because it's too damn hot in my room
• Went back to sleep for all of 20 minutes
• Woke up again 20 minutes later even unhappier about the heat
• Showered, dressed, makeup'd
• Bought coffee at deli
• Waited for fucking ever for the select bus
• Arrived late to work because of waiting forever & balls traffic on 2nd ave.
• Worked, waited many tables
• Broke plate at work, cut open finger on aforementioned broken plate
• Worked more
• Learned good news about a friend, was pleased to learn I was actually excited for her rather than pissy and jealous (AHA! maturity! i'm growing some!)
• Finished working, ordered food
• Bus home, ate food
• Reviewed where I was in 30 day challenge, saw this, saw tomorrow's and got a little concerned
• Was annoyed to learn that my cell phone isn't sending texts (wtf, cell phone)
• Short nap
• Drankin/reunion with favorites!

The end.

...On second thought, this was slightly less annoying than my nightly reports. On the other hand, it was also a complete waste of my time and that of anybody who read it. Thank you aaaand goodnight.

what do you read? words, my lord.

30 Day Challenge, Day 3: A book you love.

Aha! I tricked you with the title. The book ISN'T going to be Hamlet. Though I do love me some Hamlet to a nerdy and somewhat absurd degree. Okay slash I feel that way about all Shakespeare, let's just be honest. (I may or may not have made myself a list of all the Shakespeare plays I've never actually read - seeing or being familiar with doesn't count - while at the Globe and made it my project for summer. Errrr I mean I'm really cool).

I've strayed. The book in question today is The Great Gatsby.

Junior year of high school, I believe I deemed this book the only worthwhile thing we read in all of American literature - a lofty generalization, to be sure, but dear Harker - the books you cover in American lit are boring as hell. Just sayin'. Regardless, I loved it. LOVED it. The book came into my life at the right time the way The Catcher in the Rye (which by the way, I hate) finds most 16 year olds. Something about it captured me (and about 90% of Harker juniors before and since).

Interestingly, I had a conversation much later (around my 3rd or 4th reading of the book) with a dear friend who hated the book, on the basis that nothing happens. And in the course of this conversation, a third friend asked me to explain the plot and I... couldn't. Because in terms of action, minus the last, say, 30 pages, not a lot does happen. Which is interesting, come to think of it, because thinking about it this way Gatsby shouldn't've been a book I loved. I love reading, I really do, but I also get bored unbelievably easily - just ask anybody about my six-month sojourn with Catch-22.

But there's just something about it. Even if, sort of, nothing happens. I believe I've read it 5 times now, and I find something new each read. A new sentence to love, a new idea to think about, a new character to sympathize with who I didn't like last time. The book breaks my heart and makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside each time I read it.

Hmm. Perhaps I re-read when I finish with Richard III.

this I believe...

...That I am completely incapable of follow-through when it comes to this blog.

But but. Saturday I... well. No, no valid excuse there. Sunday I had auditions & work and was out of the house for like 6x longer than expected! Hah. Monday I... had to go to Mamaroneck for an audition that was so NOT worth commuting out to Westchester for. Yesterday I had no internet. Today I still kind of have no internet (because I am an idiot but for the time being I'll let that one alone).

Anyway. 30 Day Challenge, Day 2: Something you feel strongly about.

In London two weeks ago, I got in a small debate with my director over breakfast wherein he claimed that theatre that serves a political function - or any function beyond the purely artistic - was antithetical to the true nature of theatre. Now, this was hardly the first time this director and I had butted heads ideologically, but I was floored. A working professional in the New York theatre that said that theatre served NO function besides to entertain? ARE YOU KIDDING?

I was raised from before I had cognitive thought to believe in the importance of the arts - not because they are pretty or entertaining or make people feel good, but because they are necessary. Art serves a uniquely human function. We need it. Plain and simple.

My last year of college I took a class about contemporary American playwrights, and our final paper for that class had a rather unique assignment - touch on a theme that all these playwrights addressed when they spoke to the class, something that speaks to you, and write a 10 page paper. Go.

Plagued with a) laziness/senioritis and b) being overwhelmed by such a topic, at first I was like wait, what? Most. Pretentious. Topic. Ever.

But... somehow, as it always tends to do in my life, it came back to Shakespeare. That "the purpose of playing, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature." The quote that's made it into at least 50% of papers I wrote in college ultimately lead me to my topic. Because while all these people were wildly smart about art and literature, and were hugely funny and incredibly articulate, they were also very very insightful about people. About the world. And about why theatre matters.

It hasn't always been the easiest, among future doctors and lawyers and the like that comprise most of my childhood friends, to defend why theatre school is not only HARD (hello, 40 hours of class a week) but also important. Why it's as valid a choice as biology or political science. Why it's not an entirely frivolous career choice particularly when you, like me, don't come from money. But the thing is, nobody I know that's in the arts got into it because they want to divorce themselves from the world. Rather because those people, to whatever degree, think that the creative impulse can and should change the world.

In mindlessly auditioning, I had sort of let slide the fact that actually yes, not only do I love theatre for me, but I love theatre for what it can be. Probably because I haven't seen a play in a long time, truthfully. So in a weird way, thanks, director, for coming out with a statement so ludicrous, so dangerous in it's dogma that it reminded me what this thing of ours is. It's fun. It's art. But it's also important. And it's also powerful.

he's the man of my dreams...

30 Day Challenge, Day One: Five Ways to Win Your Heart

1. Have an accent. Really of almost any kind, provided it's charming rather than unintelligible. It is ASTONISHING how much of a sucker I am for an accent, especially of the British Isles.

2. Be smarter than me. I've been trying to figure out the non-pretentious way to say this, but to hell with it - I'm smart, okay? I'm articulate, I'm pretty well-read, I went to prep school, and I graduated from college early and with honors; I dislike feeling like I need to apologize for this. Oh but. Don't be pretentious.

3. Musical talent. Even if you play a dorky non cool-guy instrument, in which case I will probably still find it endearing because you are musical. Actually, if you're cute and into a dorky non-cool guy instrument I may or may not even like that more.

4. Accept that I'm neurotic. (Bonus points for somehow finding that charming.) Look I'm a little crazy. I know this. I'm slowly but surely working on it. In the meantime, pretend like I'm not or pretend it's cute that I am crazy.

5. Be straightforward. Okay so I know I just said I'm crazy, plus I'm a girl so I'm inherently a little prone to game-playing BUT I can't play the read between the lines with you game. I don't like being jerked around. Talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking. Communicate. I won't flip out, I swear.

...It's not like I'm asking a lot, right? Perfect men everywhere, come out come out wherever you are.

OH LOOK A BLOG POST

You likely wouldn't know this to look at how long I go between posts on this blog, but I keep a running list on my phone of topics I would like to cover blather on inanely about - it's just that these topics get 1/3 composed in my head, and then I get distracted and forget about them until the next time I'm in front of my computer, which is generally hours later.

So this one time, I was reading a friend's Tumblr and found the 30 Day Challenge. Aha! thought I - something to motivate me to write multiple days in a row!

...False. I made it exactly two posts. BUT THEN. I found a new 30 Day Challenge. And these topics are more asinine which fits my current level of brain power. So I'M GOING TO DO IT, AWESOME. And all four of you that read this blog should too! Wooo.

The challenge:

1. Five ways to win your heart

2. Something you feel strongly about

3. A book you love

4. Bullet your whole day

5. Things you want to say to an ex

6. Your views on mainstream music

7. Five pet peeves

8. What you ate today

9. How important you think education is

10. Put your music player on shuffle and write the first ten songs that play

11. Your family

12. Five guys whom you find attractive

13. Your opinion about your body and how comfortable you are with it

14. What you wore today

15. Your zodiac horoscope and if you think it fits your personality

16. Something you always think "what if..." about

17. Something you're proud of

18. A problem you have had

19. Five items you lust after

20. Your fears

21. How you hope your future will be

22. Your academics

23. Something that you miss

24. Five words/phrases that make you laugh

25. Something you're currently worrying about

26. Things you like and dislike about yourself

27. A quote you try to live by

28. Somewhere you'd like to move or visit

29. Five weird things you like

30. One thing you're excited for

OKAY. GO.