Well the semester has finally started and even though I'm taking less classes than in the Spring I can already tell it's going to be a busy few months!
I'm only taking one official class this semester which is American Sign Language. I had my first class last night and it was so much fun!! I think it's going to be a little bit challenging because I have to practice and remember what I've been taught but I'm definitely loving it. We learned just some simple things like the alphabet, colors, and a few expressions including "I like" and "I don't like". The instructor is really nice and I think this class is going to be very cool.
Here's a cute youtube video I found of the alphabet in case anyone is interested. :)
The other thing I have to work on this semester is my thesis. I'll try and keep my loyal readers updated with my progress. Basically right now I just have a proposal written out and soon I need to flush out an outline to work with. Basically I'm going to be creating a tv show for kids that will be distributed online that will teach simple signs and give kids the motivation to be interested in American Sign Language. So basically I'll be doing research on pedagogy, the deaf community, and what other similar things are already out there. My eventual thesis has to be around 30 pages I think in the end.
This weekend I'm going to try and get caught up with things and make sure I'm ready for my last semester of graduate school!
The week that Kari was here I definitely played tourist with her and had a blast! But I think she ran me a little ragged. I swear we did so much stuff that I don't even know where to being. So I'm going to take my usual cop out method and post my favorite pictures with subtitles of what they are and let you piece together our adventures from that. Huzzah for laziness! ^_^
Aaaand here we go!
Inside Toys R Us
Also inside Toys R Us
Our dessert pizza at Dylan's Candy Bar
At the Stardust Cafe
Inside the M&M Store
Walking around after the hurricane
Hurricane aftermath
At the Museum of Natural History
Walking around in Central Park
Getting ready to take the ferry to Staten Island
We had a really good view of the Statue of Liberty!
It has certainly been an interesting last couple of weeks. First, there was the earthquake (yes, I was completely fine, the building swayed for about 30 seconds and just as I could figure out what was going on, it had finished) and then my friend Kari was visiting (we had a lot of fun!) and during her visit there was the crazy hurricane (again, all is fine). So that leaves little time for posting :) Today I shall fix that! While my friend was visiting she wanted to see a bunch of shows (a girl after my own heart) so we did just that! I ended up seeing 4 shows with her and then she saw another 2 on her own (that I had already seen). Also...I'm apparently very into parentheses right now.
Anyway, here's my little blurbs on the shows I saw and in another post I'll write about the other adventures we had.
First show: Cirque de Solei's Zarkana!
This is your typical Cirque de Solei show. It was at Radio City so that was a cool venue to see it in for sure. I think this is the first time I've actually seen a real cirque show besides on TV and it was really entertaining. The whole thing is mesmerizing and they use some really cool special features throughout the show. I was also vaguely aware that there was supposed to be some sort of plot happening during the show but I have no idea what it was. Apparently this is typical of cirque de solei shows. At any rate, it was such an amazing show to experience and I'm really glad I saw it!
The second show I saw was something I probably wouldn't have ever seen except that the timing was correct. I saw a show called Hero the Musical which was playing for a short time at Lincoln Center. Here's how I ended up seeing it. When Kari and I were wandering around we ended up going on the tour of some of the Lincoln Center theatres and she saw the poster for the show and wanted to know what it was about. I knew I had heard of it but really didn't know if the plot sounded that interesting. We ended up touring the theatre it was playing in and inside the theatre they had a preview for it playing on the televisions in the lobby. Actually seeing part of it, it looked like it could be a really good show. I looked on TDF (the website I belong to where I can get discount tickets) and they happened to have tickets listed on there. So Kari and I decided we would go and check it out. I also asked my friend Ju Yeon who also invited her friend. Oh, I should mention this musical is entirely in Korean and was performed with English subtitles. Also my friend Ju Yeon is Korean.
This will probably be a terrible synopsis of the show but basically about 100 years ago when Japan was trying to take control of Korea, there was a revolutionary who shot the Japanese president and was caught and executed in jail. The musical is telling his story. The musical was of course very patriotic towards Korea but it was also an extremely well done show. The special effects were really cool, the music was captivating to listen to (it had 34 musical numbers!) and even though I was reading subtitles I felt myself being drawn into the story and the characters.
Anyway, I'm really glad everything worked out and I got to see this show because it was really great. Also, I forgot to add that it won a bunch of musical awards in Korea.
Here's one of the songs from the end of the show where the main character is getting tried.
The 3rd show I saw was Spiderman the musical. Sadly, all the reviewers have been correct about this show. It was a train wreck. The music was not memorable at all, the story and dialoge was silly and lame, and it was just an awful show. The only cool thing was when Spiderman and the Green Goblin flew out into the audience. But even that was made not as cool by silly voice overs of Spiderman saying things like "sorry I'm late!" and stuff like that. Oh, and even the actors were not that amazing. So basically except for a couple moments where you're like "ooo, how did they do that?" (and by a couple moments I seriously mean like 2 moments in the whole show), the show was pretty awful. I wouldn't say it isn't worth watching if you feel intrigued to see it, but certainly don't pay full price for it or you'll be kicking yourself.
And, since I don't really want to show the trailer for the musical (because of course it shows it as an awesome and wonderful show) and it's my blog so I can do what I like, I will instead provide you with a spoof from Sesame Street. Enjoy ^_^
But, on to the 4th show, and it certainly makes up for how awful Spiderman was. The last show I got to see was Follies. This is a limited run of the same show that was playing in DC at the Kennedy Center. It starred many acting greats such as Bernadette Peters and Elaine Paige. It was such a beautiful show. It's not the happiest of shows because it's mostly about how everyone is unhappy with how their lives turned out. But it was a wonderful show just the same. I feel so lucky that I've gotten to see Bernadette Peters perform live twice now (the other was when I saw A Little Night Music with my mom). She's so incredible. The rest of the cast was amazing as well. I'm so happy I saw this show!
Here's the broadway.com preview of the show.
And there you have it, my week in shows. I'll do another post with random pictures of our fun week :)
Yesterday I went with some friends to The Museum of the Moving Image. The museum is in Queens and is one of the places I can get into for free with my Columbia ID. This is an awesome museum. It's probably not one that I would have gone to normally just because it is a little bit farther away, but it was such a cool museum that I'm definitely planning a return trip.
Probably the best part of the museum is that currently they have an exhibit all about Jim Henson and The Muppets! I love muppets!! They had a lot of his drawings and storyboards from his earlier career as well as video displays with clips and interviews from his work. I've read quite a bit about him and I still learned a lot! They even had a Kermit the frog on display as well as some of the other muppets.
Some of their permanent exhibits include a collection of old cameras, and tons of movie props and costumes. They even have this booth where you record a 5 second video of yourself doing something and then in the gift shop they can make it into a flip book! There are other interactive displays where you can make your own stop motion animation film, you can re-dub over the audio of different movies, and change the sound effects. They basically take you through the different processes of creating a movie.
If you like movies and TV, this is definitely a good museum to visit! ^_^
Yesterday was a really fun day in the world of me. Even though I've lived here a year there are still things in the city that I haven't had the chance to do and this week is my week to do some of them. My friend and I decided to go to the American Museum of Natural History. This is one museum that I've really wanted to go to, but it is also one of the few interesting museums where I don't get in for free with my columbia ID :( It's actually kind of odd though. They run on a donation system. So they have a suggested donation fee of $22 to get into the museum. But, you can also pay $1 and still go in. I guess they want to make people feel like they should pay the full price but they also don't want to limit people to paying the full price or something. Well anyway, we went, paid our $1 and saw the museum :)
The above picture is an awful picture I took at the front of the museum. The facade is under construction so there wasn't really a good place to take a picture. So according to this picture I went to the American Mus. ^_^ The museum is really awesome. They have a huge dinosaur exhibit and all kinds of dioramas of the different animals. I would definitely like to go back again.
After the museum we went to Shake Shack!
The Shake Shack is a hamburger joint that is pretty famous in NYC. I had been to the location in Times Square but never this one. The line is always huge, but moves pretty quickly and they have pretty good burgers, fries, and shakes. My friend had never been at all so we decided this would make a good lunch stop. After lunch the weather ended up being pretty nice so we walked back to campus. The museum is at 81st St and I live at 120th. It was a day of a lot of walking but also a lot of fun!
I saw the musical Rock of Ages again! My friends really wanted to see it and I thought it was a lot of fun when I went so we ended up getting student rush tickets. Now, funny thing about student rush tickets. You never quite know what time you should show up. The tickets go on sale at 10am when the box office opens. Now when I did rush tickets for How To Succeed, we got to the theatre about 8:30am and were probably 20 people back in line. Knowing that Rock of Ages doesn't have any particularly famous people in it and it being an older show, I figured well we didn't need to be as early for tickets. So we showed up just before 9am.
We were the 4th, 5th, and 6th people in line.
Yeah....so maybe we were a little early ^_^ By the time the box office opened, however, the line had grown!
To 10 people total.
Yeah....
Oh well. It was a lot of fun! The show was fun and we decided to go 80's in our ensembles for the evening and it's always fun to dress up. I think in some of these pictures I look super young so maybe the side ponytail is not the best look for me. But it was definitely fun for one night.
You may have noticed I have a newish obsession...and that is the tv show Glee :) You may also remember that I went to a live concert of the glee cast and loved it a couple months ago. Well, what happened is the the Glee people like to make as much money as possible and try and squeeze every last cent out of their fans. So they filmed the concert and turned it into a 3D movie! Which I went to see Wednesday night :) Of course.
Here's the trailer for movie just to give you a feel:
The movie was pretty good. I think the concert was better though. The movie spliced in clips of the actors backstage (in character) and those were really silly and fun. They also spliced in footage of Glee fans talking about their favorite characters and about the show and they highlighted 3 glee fans who had inspirational stories. That was nice and all but to tell the truth I really just care about them. I don't really care about Glee's other fans. I think the movie would have been better if there were no fans and just the Glee cast.
Tonight I'm going to go see Rock of Ages (yes....also again). It's gonna be fabulous!!
Last weekend I ended up taking the train down to Washington DC. We ended up having a little bit of a partial family reunion which was really fun. It was my grandparents, my mom, my aunt, her sons (my cousins) and their wives, and my grandma's cousin. So lots of family!! It was basically your run of the mill trip to Washington DC. We took a tour bus tour around the city, did a tour of the capitol building, a lot of the touristy things like that. It was fun to be with family and I was glad to get to hang out with my mom again :) Also the last time my grandparents had been in DC was 49 years ago! So I think they had fun seeing all the sights and how the city had changed over nearly half a century.
Since I got back I've been trying to get caught up on all of my homework and my work work. My final exam is due next week and then it will really be summer, at least for a couple weeks. There is still quite a lot I need to get done for the fall in regards to prepping my thesis. Once I have a better grasp on what that exactly will be I'll post more about it, haha. So anyway, since there is so much going on this will mostly be a pictorial post of the trip. There were a ton more photos, but these are some of my favorites.
This lady has been protesting since 1981!
The FDR Memorial
The Korean War Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial
I'm trying to push over the Washington Monument!
And now I'm just chilling out, leaning against the Washington Monument
The likeness of Alan Alda on the Korean War Memorial
This is where my cousin works
Oh yeah, and I took my picture with the president ^_^
We were the talk of the town!
So as the photos probably show (I hope!) We had a great time touring around the city and just generally hanging out with family :)
Today is my second day in Washington DC, otherwise I would have written this post earlier. I'll write a post on the DC trip when I get home next week :)
Anyway, a couple nights ago my friend and I thought we'd try and enter our names into the lottery to see the new musical The Book of Mormon. We tried last week and didn't get our names pulled. BUT, it was our lucky day! My friend's name actually got pulled so we were able to buy two tickets (at $30 each) to a show that is sold out until November!
The winning ticket!
We were soooooo excited! I've been wanting to see this musical for a while because it has gotten amazing reviews and is clearly very popular since it has sold out so far in advance. We figured we'd have to go down there and play the lottery a lot of times before we'd ever be lucky enough to get a ticket. Basically the way the lottery works is that about 500 people enter their name for each show and probably around 10 names get pulled depending on how many seats they have open. Each name that gets drawn can buy 2 tickets. So if you go with a friend and you each enter once, you have two chances to win since if either of your names get drawn you both can go.
Standing in front of the theatre
For those that haven't heard the phenomenon that is this show. The Book of Mormon is the brain child of the guys who created the TV show South Park and the guy who wrote the musical Avenue Q. The musical follows two mormon missionaries to Uganda where they see the terrible conditions the local people are living in. Oh, and it's a comedy. The show is lively and funny, the music is great, and, oh, did I mention it has more curse words and other what could be considered offensive material than probably any other Broadway show ever? Basically this show is hysterical and I loved it but you do have to have an open mind when you see it. If you are easily offended...this is not the show for you. The show is definitely shocking but much in the same way shows like South Park is shocking. Basically the 2 1/2 hour show completely flew by and when it was over it felt like we couldn't have been in there more than an hour. It flows really well and you find yourself caught up with the music and the characters. This is a show that I would definitely like to see again if I get the opportunity.
I already posted a clip of this show from the Tony Awards (in my review of my favorite moments) but here is a pretty good interview and overview of the show from CBS Sunday Morning. The beginning also shows you what the lottery is like - and yes, it was just as crazy when we tried.
After the show we waited outside the stage door and got autographs. Since the actors in this show (while amazing and some of them are already Tony winners) are not as well known as in some other shows, there was not a huge population outside the door meaning we were able to be up close. All the actors were really nice and honestly seemed to enjoy the fact that there were so many fans of the show.
My signed playbill
Me with Andrew Rannells - one of the leads in the show
Me with Josh Gad - another lead in the show
Overall it was an amazing night and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to see this show!
Last night I finally saw one of the new tony-nominated musicals from the 2011 Tony Awards. We saw Catch Me If You Can! It is indeed a musical based on the hit movie starring Leo DiCaprio and based on the true story of Frank Abignale Jr, a con man who pretty much stole almost 2 million dollars before he was 21 through forgery. He also impersonated a pilot, doctor, and lawyer before he was caught. After he was caught he then worked for the FBI for 30 years helping them catch people doing exactly what he had done. (Hmmm, this also sounds like the show White Collar, is that a coincidence or is that show also based off this story?) The show is set up like a tv special narrated by Frank as he tells his story (with occasional interjections by others).
I was pleasantly surprised by this show. I had heard that it was "a good show, not a great one, but a good one". One of the things that really made this show great was the Tony winning performance by Norbert Leo Butz in the role of Agent Carl Hanratty, the main FBI agent who ends up catching Frank. Butz is not an actor that is widely known outside of the Broadway community, but he is brilliant. He was also in the original Broadway cast of Wicked and originated the role of Fiyero. Butz is who you will see singing the main part in the usual show clip found at the end of this post.
Catch Me If You Can is a good classic musical. The songs are lively, the story moves well, and an ensemble of maybe 12 people manage to be everywhere as both the backup dancers and every other smaller part in the show. Going into the show the only big name I knew was Butz, but I was surprised to see a couple other big time names in the show as well. Kerry Butler plays the romantic interest. I wouldn't have really known who she is, but after looking at her bio I realized she really knows her way around a broadway stage including originating the role of Penny in the original Broadway production of Hairspray!
The actor, however, who when I saw his name I thought to myself, well now he sounds familiar, some of my readers may know. Some of my readers probably know the name Tom Wopat? Yes, he played Frank's father in the show and was really good. Apparently Wopat has actually done quite a bit of theatre, but is probably best known for his role as Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard.
So there you go, I went in with low expectations and was surprised to find a fun show with very talented people!
And, as usual, here is your taste of the show from the 2011 Tony Awards.
I can't help putting this in too. If you found that interesting, here is an extended preview of the show, which showcases a lot of the other numbers and actors in the show.
One of the reasons we went to the show is that my friend's sister is in town visiting so afterwards we wandered around Times Square and got to play tourist a little bit. It's always nice to wander around a place that you've been a million times before through new eyes.
