Blog Stew

Sometimes, it's just too consuming to condense my conscious conceptualizations into a concise and creative copy of correspondence for my caring cult of cohorts to consume. Damnit I used consume twice. It's hard, I'm tellin' ya'. So here's what you get instead: disjointed stream of consciousness! Well, not quite that bad...more so "breadth without depth".


Snyder Lecture
Some wealthy alum (alumni? alumnus? aluminum?) donated a bunch of money to get good speakers to come and talk about controversial things.Well, lots of rich people do this, actually, but in particular, I attended one of these funded by Mr. Snyder. The speaker was a Harvard professor (stop booing) Michael Sandel. He spoke about Aristotle, flutes, golf, and gay marriage (in that order). It was interesting (don't yell at me, Moxey); the overall messages were (1) we should discuss/debate more, not feat it and debate less, in order to better society, and that (2) when discussing an issue, it's useful to get at the heart of the matter which, according to him, is the purpose of the matter being discussed (in a gay marriage conversation, one must discuss the purpose or function of marriage). Simple enough, cool comparisons, though. He called on a dozen or so of the few hundred of us to give opinions, I was among them. I said something about the purpose of marriage being legitimacy, seeing as two need not marry to procreate (nor need two procreate if married), but seeing as people like having their partnership recognized (usually prior to procreation; that's aside the point), and so, if the point is legitimate recognition, we can't abolish marriage recognitions (a proposed compromise to the debate) as that helps no one. My Politics professor was there for that. Yeah.

Oleanna
It's a play. I went to see it. Actors (2) were incredible. Drama was crazy scary. Premise? Erm, teacher/student, frustration, struggle to learn; all of the sudden: anger, retaliation, sexual harassment claims, legal action, emotional harm, heated argument, cursing, physical violence...! It was intense. And frustrating! Each character was so - human. They made mistakes; didn't listen to one another, mixed up priorities, exaggerated or misread the situation, angered one another - the escalation was incredibly well created, but overall, I came out of that thing angry, as though I had just been in the worst fight of my life with my parents and friends. It was so real it was scary, and so scary it was real. I encourage reading Wikipedia's summary; it's short enough. Anyway; best performance I've ever seen. Everything else (especially pesky musicals) seems like child's play after one realizes what theater can really be used for.

Alchemist
Incidentally, I also saw "The Alchemist". In particular, the set was amazing. They took apart the theater and built staircases and large windows and chandeliers. And they painted the floor. Kind of intense. Acting great of course. But compared (retrospectively) to Oleanna, it can't compare.

Bubs + Glee
Glee is a TV show. The Beelzebubs are an a capella group on campus. They recorded music to be lip synced the show, because apparently Glee can't find actors who can sing (as well as Tufts students). Apparently their song then proceeded to top the iTunes download charts. That might just be a rumor. I'm occupied and can't investigate further right now (comment below if you have a link). Another rumor: more of their stuff to appear in future episodes.

Pretzel Night
It's a show. By freshman. I'm in it. It's funny. And odd. Premise: Tufts student writers were given beginning and ending lines, had to create scenes between. When put together, each scene opens with the closing lines of the previous scene. Makes for a cool effect. Makes for crazy story-telling. Is fun. Rehearsals involve drama games. I miss those. We didn't do much of that in high school. But they're fun.

Mock Trial
Competition this weekend. Thus; gotta go.

Shout Out (in advance)
It's my brother's 14th birthday Friday. In case this is my last Blog post until then, HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I command all readers to wish him a happy birthday below: