Beauty and the Beast

I'm taking advantage of my coffee induced urge to chatter. This blog post is going to be the rough draft of an extra credit assignment I'm turning in for humanities class. Of course, I'll probably make it a little more formal before I turn it in and I'll format it correctly, blah blah blah... Oh, and actually proof the grammar/spelling. Anyway.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!
Rating: 9.5/10

I went to see the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, March 2nd. I was excited for months in advance because I love the Broadway season at the PAC, and Beauty and the Beast is one of the ones that really gets hyped up. The musical follows the Disney version of the story, so I knew most of the songs they sang. I loved the live instrumental versions of the music I've enjoyed since I was little watching the movie. My favorite songs were, “Belle,” “Gaston,” “Be Our Guest,” “The Mob Song,” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It was probably because these were the ones I already knew from the movie. I wasn’t as impressed with the new songs, although they did add something to the performance.

Belle's voice was really great. She reminded me of Bell from the movie, which is always a good thing when they're re-creating such a well-loved movie. The one voice I wasn't sure I liked was the beast's. He had this amazing, deep and booming speaking voice. However, I didn't think he sounded as great while he was singing. I did like the very last song he sang, but other than that I could have gone without hearing his solos. They completely created a song for Beast, which is probably to be expected for making a Broadway musical out of a movie.

My absolute favorite character was Lumiere, and Lefou was my runner-up favorite. Lumiere was energetic, wild, and perfect. His accent was over the top and it really made his character pop. I felt like he really carried most of the castle scenes. Lumiere got the most laughs out of the audience and out of me for sure. He also got the loudest applause at the end of the performance. Lefou was the source of the physical comedy. He was one of the most flexible men I've ever seen. He was always tripping and somersaulting across the stage, landing in awkward heaps of arms and legs. I also enjoyed the fact that his speaking voice and singing voice were both spot on from the movie character's voice. It really enhanced his character.

I really enjoyed all of the brightly colored costumes. The castle cast members were all wearing some very creative things. Cogsworth the clock was very obviously a clock. And Mrs. Pots had a great tea pot costume as well. Belle had a beautiful gold ball gown for the end scenes. I thought the beast’s costume was really well done. It stood out from the stage to me, and I was all the way up in the balcony. All of the villagers and other supporting cast had on vibrant, interesting outfits as well. I couldn’t find anything bad to say about this area of the production at all.

Overall, I gave the production of Beauty and the Beast a 9.5 out of 10. It was entertaining all the way through and only one of the newer songs made me feel like it was dragging on. Whenever intermission came I was disappointed that we had to wait for the second act. I know the audience, which included a lot of little girls in cute little sparkly dresses, loved it just as much as I did.

Thinking about joining Procrastinators' Anonymous...

...sometime later next week. Probably.
Seriously, this is bad. I won't have time to write this paper tomorrow or Tuesday, and it is due Wednesday. My New Testament paper over the portraits of Jesus in the four different gospels. Really, it is an easy paper. And I have my broadest, most general outline done, but that's it. I think the problem is that this paper is so easy it's just tedious. I mean, it is moderately interesting, and I'm glad I won't have to spend too much time on it considering I have a bunch of other stuff to do with my other classes, but yeah. Just annoying. Like one of the girls down the hall said, this paper needs to write itself.

Oh, and a disclaimer for the post below... I was feeling snarky, and that was the only thing remotely interesting that happened to me that day... So that is what I decided to snark about. I am seriously not hiding under my bunk bed in the fetal position wondering when my dorm is going to get blown up. I promise. :) It is still a sobering, scary thought but I am not paranoid.

I'm wanting After Dark Live to start soon (I got THREE twitter updates about ADL to my phone. Thanks, Jason. I don't think I'll forget it now) so that I have further opportunities to procrastinate until later this evening. Although my goal is to get to bed early so I won't be wanting to chuck my cell phone (read: alarm clock) at the farthest wall and hear it break into a million pieces before rolling back over and falling back asleep. I so miss being a morning person.

Anyway.. slightly pointless post. No real reason. Except procrastination. ^_______^

Romantic & Modern Humanities Was Invented to Terrorize College Students

(WARNING. THIS POST MIGHT INDUCE LARGE SCALE PARANOIA FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL SAFETY.)
...Seriously.
Yes. I need to somehow inject sunshine and rainbows into my bloodstream after that class. This is the third time we've watched a video (or a "film" as Mrs. Buckles calls it) about extreme Muslim groups. If the first couple times weren't bad enough (it was so long Buckles split it up into two class periods)... This time today was worse. And the first time included the knowledge that 98% of all peaceful Muslim organizations in America are just fronts for extremist Islamic organizations that want to kill all Americans.

Today, we watched a video that was creepily relevant to the turmoil in Egypt right now. Since the whole thing started, I've been reserving judgment on what I think about the situation. A lot of people are celebrating with Egypt since Mubarak stepped down, but just because a dictator leaves doesn't make the country automatically a democratic nation. Now, we have to worry about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over. This video made clear that while Mubarak was in charge, he made a fertile environment (not my words) for the Brotherhood to grow. And now, they probably see this as their chance to wipe out the copts, or Egyptian Christians. And even though Mubarak was a not-so-nice dictator, he kept the peace between Egypt and America, and my dad told me that he kept certain people from invading Jerusalem.

But anyway... Radical Muslims, I've learned, are a real and immediate threat. At the start of class today, Buckles said that she hoped this video would, "open your eyes to the real horrors that are out there in the world today." Gee, thanks. Now I'm going to be hiding under the bottom bunk in my room for a month wondering why ORU didn't make bomb shelters in the basements of all their dorms.

Anyway... I almost cried in class. And I don't cry. I literally had to blink back tears as this woman broke down on camera telling the story of this little four year old boy in Egypt. The parents were Christians (copts), and the doctors were Muslim. They used this little four year old for medical experiments, and then they wouldn't give him any blood infusions while he bled out from a head wound. The parents kept yelling for help, and they finally told the father they would give the boy the infusion he needed if the father would step into the next room to sign paperwork. When he left, they ripped the boy out of his mothers arms and restrained her while he spent his last minutes reaching for his mother and crying for her. All because the mother and father were Christians. (Isn't that uplifting? And today she didn't even read a Psalm before we started class!)

There were more stories about mothers forced to behead their own sons, or watch their own daughters be raped repeatedly. Every time a woman broke down and cried on camera I had to blink back more tears. I even sniffed once. If you don't know me that well... it takes a lot to make me cry... Unless I see someone crying right in front of me.

Those were the heartbreaking stories. The disturbing, terrorizing, traumatizing part of the video, was all of the footage of Islamic leaders and Muslim rallies with subtitles. They showed a massive crowd chanting "Death to America!" over and over, for what felt like an hour. I felt chills go down my spine. I might take a comforting blanket to class next time. An Islamic leader said, "whoever says 'I don't hate' is not a Muslim." He said that Muslims must hate the infidels. And when Muslims "hate" people, they usually go attack them. (With bombs, guns, or.. I don't know... airplanes.)

The saying "First comes Saturday, then Sunday" kept repeating throughout the video. It means, "first we kill the Jews (Saturday is their sabbath), then we go after the Christians (Sunday is our sabbath.)" America is now in the sights of the Muslim world, and they want to bring us down. I think a lot of people are either mislead about Muslim intentions, or they just want to ignore the problem. Right now, in countries where Islam is the official religion they rule by the sharia, which is basically the laws in the Quran. (And they are scary, scary laws. Islamic countries have dress code police for women, and those guys are WAAAY more scary than the dress code police at ORU. At least you don't get shoved into the back of an unmarked car to go who knows where at ORU.)

So now, everyone in the class is dead silent, watching women break down telling these horrific stories, and watching mobs of Muslim men wish death and destruction on us. And as we leave the room, my mind goes into worst case scenario mode, and all the way back to the dorms I'm envisioning the second 9/11, with extreme Muslim terrorists taking over the country (though they'll probably try to take over Egypt first, then attack Jerusalem, then come after us) and forcing sharia law on us all.

Can you imagine the field day Muslims would have with Tulsa? With ORU? I live not only in the BIBLE BELT, I live in the BUCKLE of the BIBLE BELT. And ORU is like a nice sparkly rhinestone in that buckle. This class is feeding a paranoia I never knew I even had! I sit next to one of my brother wingers in that class, and even he was a bit disturbed. His words were, "Its a sobering thought." I thought that was a slight understatement.
My mother refuses to let me tell her what I learn in humanities class now. Half of a conversation about the first video I saw was enough for her.
And did you know that Muslim schools even in the US are indoctrinating our young children with these ideals? And that American Muslims who say that Islam is a peaceful religion are either lying to us or are being lied to by whoever their religious leader is? We saw AMERICAN Muslims telling cameras that America is corrupt and needs to be brought down. AMERICAN Muslims that wanted the country to be run by sharia law. That law strips women of all rights and privileges. That law gives Muslim men the right to go on murdering sprees if those killed are infidels.



I think I might need some anti-anxiety pills by the time I take the final for this class. Much more of this and I'm going to turn into one of those little old cat ladies (but with dogs, not cats. Sorry cats.) that dresses like Umbridge from The Order of the Phoenix and passes out cookies with pink M&Ms in them to all the neighborhood kids to try and block out the horrible worst-case-scenarios that hound my every waking (and sleeping!) moment. Oh, and I'll have a bomb shelter. That's hidden. Because there were lots of stories about Muslims raiding bomb shelters that Christians were hiding in and making parents do horrible things to their children...

I'm just going to stop now..
I think it might be time for my daily devotional. Though I found myself doing a lot of praying in that humanities class. I don't think I've ever been so happy to remind myself about the love of God. At least its Valentine's Day... I'm getting lots of candy with pink, frilly wrappers. Eating on that while reading some Psalms might make me feel better.

Oh, and I apologize for any paranoia I may have just caused.

Big, Fun, Scary List!

So, since I failed NaNo this year even more horribly than last.. haha. I decided I would still try to participate in the Big, Fun, Scary goals that lots of Wrimos are doing for 2011. The idea is to do somethig big, fun, and scary... obviously. I've heard of people getting new jobs they actually liked, or learning to dance, or traveling to China... wow. I don't think I'll do anything expensive.. haha. But, I do have some ideas rattling around in this college-kid brain of mine that I'd like to write down and see how far I get.

BFS List

1. Take swing-dancing lessons. (Found a place 15 min away where the first lesson is FREE and every lesson after that is $7! Talk about cheap! :P)
2. Finish reading ALL of Jane Austen's books as well as Gulliver's Travels & Alice in Wonderland. (Well, they ARE all laying around my house. I'm halfway through Travels and have 1.5 of Austen's down..)
3. Run 3 times a week, every week, no exceptions. Unless I have a fever.
4. Finish at least all the scrapbook blank pages/refills I have this (2011) year.
5. Write on my NaNoNovel a little bit each week. Even if its crap. And even if its just 50 words.
6. Be more disciplined about writing in my prayer journal.

Aaaaand, there you have it. I don't know if any of these things by themselves are scary, or big. But altogether, at the same time, that is a HUGE, scary list to tackle. But I suppose once it becomes habit, it will be very, very fun. :-) Especially to look back and see how far I've come..

Anyone wanna do a BFS list with me?

Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Well, I only have 10 minutes until I have to leave for class, so here is my "quick and dirty" HPDH1 review! haha. My Rating: 8.5/10 I have a smaller list of disappointments this time! Woohoo! My 2 disappointments: **I wasn't too ecstatic about the soundtrack. I dunno, I guess I could have been distracted by the actual action in the movie to hear any variations of Hedwig's theme, but it just doesn't seem like a complete HP movie if I don't hear/notice some arrangement of that score the first time I see it. **Kreacher didn't "accept" Harry! Kreacher and Harry need to become friends. They MUST become friends. How else will Kreacher and the other elves coming to the trio's defense with kitchen utensils if Kreacher doesn't even LIKE or RESPECT Harry in Part One? They have to rectify this pretty soon into Part Two for me to be happy about this one... LOVELOVELOVED: **Word-for-word dialogue from the book. I was recently re-reading DH, so I recognized quite a few word-for-word conversations! That made for a very happy Tina. **George, with the toothbrush where his ear used to be, catching Harry & Ginny kissing. The only thing I can say to this is.... Pahahahaha! **The Harry/Hermione dance. Awww! **The Ministry scenes! They were great! I was on the edge of my seat (even though I knew what was going to happen), laughing, and cringing all within a couple of minutes. **The 7 Potters! The twins (heehee. Word-for-word!)... Fleur (baha.)... **Malfoy Manor. Creepy and perfect! **Bathilda Bagshot! Okay, I'll admit. I jumped a little bit. But at least I didn't scream and almost hit the roof like Kate did. Paha. Love you, Kate.

NaNoWriMo Time!

Well... National Novel Writing Month has come around once again... This year it is going to be even more difficult for me to make time!

As evidenced by the fact that it took me three tries to complete those two sentences without stopping in the middle to do something else. As of right now, I'm a day and a half behind (I only got 425 words in on the first day), but I'm not done writing for today. My fingers are sore from pounding on my keyboard, and half of what I've written already is crap. (But only half! woohoo! haha.)
Being a college student is exhausting. If NaNoWriMo was in December, then we'd be in business. Finals week ends the 10th, and I could easily write two times the needed amount every day for 10 days if all I had to do was go to work 3 times a week and decorate the house with Christmas-y stuff.

Anyway... getting ready to leave my dorm and go home for some free, non-cafeteria food, accounting help, and to hunt down my novel outline book! (I've already written over 2,900 words that I'm not sure were in line with my plan! Oh no! That's probably why I'm convinced they are crap. But its NaNo time, where perfectionists force themselves to fly by the seat of their pants and not delete anything! Auggghh!

I'm going to be SO happy when December hits!

Straight No Chaser!

Sooo, it took me for-freaking-ever to get this post typed up. But I couldn't just let it sit here unfinished. This concert was even better than the May 8th SNC concert! ^_________^

I met up with SJ for the Meet & Greet before the show, and also met Tina G, Pati and Esther! Since I'm writing this almost a month after the fact, I'm so sorry if I forgot anyone! :/
Anyway. Meet and Greet! The M&G beforehand really made my night. Really, EVERYTHING individually would have made my night, so I guess this made my month. :P I met SJ at the door to the theater after being in town for a couple of hours. We wandered awkwardly into the room, and had some lovely conversation before the guys showed up sitting at a little table in our library voices. :P haha. There was a big veggie tray set out, as well as cookies and rolls, and pretty much no one was eating from it. There were also little bowls of candy on the individual tables where people were sitting, and few people were eating out of those. Then the guys all come in, and swarm the food table. I think it was Ryan that made a joke about being starved, and then Walt picked up the veggie tray and started circulating it around the room.

SJ & I were sitting in amazing front row seats.. the only problem was the gigantic speaker sitting right in front of me. I remember sitting all the way back in my chair, then leaning forward and stretching my arm out to touch the stage. THAT is how close we were! It was fun. I was able to take pictures and video without even zooming in! I was so happy I was able to catch facial expressions, since when they came to Tulsa my tickets were so far back the zoom on my camera could only catch blurs of tan suits. :-P
Video links!
Billie Jean/Poison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q01-N--7ZyE
Chicken Fried: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd5zOVYYtkE
Lion Sleeps Tonight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oMnoqFVuyY
Miss You (a new favorite!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqe9KuhNAss
Come Together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eV0LN234-Q
Hi-De-Ho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtXQwNOqeZ0 *****My favorite video of the night. ^____^
12 Days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFS7uo1uOfE
In the Still of the Night (no mics): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akwIKF2FO9o
GAGA MEDLEY (!!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6_VuYvBFKA
Okay, I can't go through the whole concert, but I have highlights that especially stood out!
Gaga medley -SOOOOOOOOOOO much more amazing in person! It was absolutely hilarious, the choreography was genius, and of course their voices were perfect as always.
Rolling Stones' Miss You - It was the first time I'd heard it, and it was fantastic. Of course, I was feeling the #basslove during this song, but that's not the ONLY reason I loved it. :-P I really wish they would record this one and put it on an album!
Hi-De-Ho - Being five feet in front of Charlie, Walt, and Tyler while they sang it was amazing. A-maze-ing. Dude, its even more of my favorite song now. I could barely fit just the three of them in the shot, and my camera wasn't zoomed in at all. Listening to this song from five feet away = #basslove HEAVEN! And the tenor training wheels did a fantastic job as well!
Chicken Fried - A country song! haha. I have to enjoy it, if nothing else then for the fact that it is country, and it helps other people appreciate country just a little bit more. ^___^ But I did really, really like the arrangement! (So thanks for that, Tyler! Didn't he arrange it?) Though I still think Charlie would kill a Josh Turner song. Any Josh Turner song.
Also, I FINALLY got to see 12 Days in person! The first time I saw the 12 Days video was when it was FIRST going viral. In the Still of the Night was pure magic without mics, and everything else was just perfect! (I'm running out of adjectives...)

Waiting for the M&G line afterwards was hilarious with all the chasers... Especially Mila! When the line went down and we finally got to the table, Mila actually got up on it. haha. Watching the guys with her was adorable. I helped Mila down off the table and then started distributing my gifts... (http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs124.ash2/39522_1472503659734_1447920356_31228462_830865_n.jpg) The ornaments with penguins on them! And 5 Snickerdoodles for each guy. I loved Charlie's reaction when he realized the ornaments (which had been wrapped around the bags of cookies) were actually Christmas ornaments. And I got my winter tour shirt signed! Haha. The shirt made it down the table before I did. I felt kind of scatterbrained while I was going through the line, especially when 2-3 of the guys are asking you different questions at the same time. But then most of them came up to me after they got out from behind the table and thanked me for the ornaments/cookies again and I got lots of hugs! (I LOVE hugs. haha.) I got an individual picture with Randy & then a big group picture. Now I need to go back to another concert and get more individual pictures!

Its been sooo long since this happened, I wish I could recall actual conversations, but I can't. :-( Anyway, it was a lovely, lovely night and I began uploading pictures and videos immediately when I returned to the hotel room where I was staying with my parents. I had so much fun with all my subsequent notifications and such. haha.
Well, it seems like an abrupt and/or awkward spot to end this post, but that's all folks! haha. :-)