"Now I hardly know them, and I’ll take my time. I’ll carry them over, and I’ll make them mine." ~the national

I can't wait until Christmas.

Tomorrow I'm going to a professional development workshop, which should be interesting. I hope it will be useful. I think it'll be a nice change of pace from being in school.

I'm trying this new widget that plays music. The song selection is limited and it's not letting me upload my own right now (and it's being very finicky), but we'll see how it goes. I'll kick it off with a track from The National, with whom I became obsessed last summer.

"I'm dying to know, do you do you like dreaming of things so impossible, or only the practical? Or ever the wild or waiting through all your bad bad days just to end them with someone you care about..." ~dashboard confessional

My kids are driving me absolutely insane. I nearly lost it today; I got so mad at them. I hold detention after school every day (today I had more than half the class), and it doesn't change anything; the classroom is still like a zoo combined with an insane asylum. You can't even imagine what this job is like. You really cannot imagine.

Grey's Anatomy is continuing to piss me off. First of all, are they just filling it with blood and gore to shock us and try to defer our attention from the crappy storylines? It's not working on me. The only good part about tonight's episode was the Mer/Lexie development in the last thirty seconds. Screw McDreamy, Mer's got a sister now and hopefully their relationship will continue to develop (although with Shonda & co., I wouldn't count on it; they like to throw blow after blow at Meredith). Gossip Girl was really good this week, though. I loved the Rufus/Lily moment.

I meant to post these videos a long time ago but forgot. I took them with my camera at the Dashboard Confessional concert I went to.

So Long, So Long featuring Adam Duritz:

Rain King featuring Adam Duritz and Augustana:

"I'd be so pleased to see you out of the classroom wearing the smile that I'll bring you." ~dashboard confessional

I'm just popping in to direct you toward the New York Times review of August: Osage County, one of the best plays I've ever encountered. The play opened tonight and got raves across the board, but I particularly like Isherwood's review. Highlights:

"It is, flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years....

It’s theater that continually keeps you hooked with shocks, surprises and delights, although it has a moving, heart-sore core. Watching it is like sitting at home on a rainy night, greedily devouring two, three, four episodes of your favorite series in a row on DVR or DVD. You will leave the Imperial Theater emotionally wrung out and exhausted from laughing, but you may still find yourself hungry for more....

Mr. Letts’s antic recombination of soapy staples is so pop-artfully orchestrated that you never see the next curveball coming, and the play is so quotably funny I’d have a hard time winnowing favorite lines to a dozen....

I’ll leave you with one that neatly expresses the bleak spirit of the play, which nevertheless manages to provide great pleasure by delving into deep wells of cruelty and pain. Recalling a night of youthful high spirits in sad contrast to the gruesome present, Barbara seeks to wise up her daughter to the decay of hope and happiness that often comes with the passage of time.
'Thank God we can’t tell the future,” she observes, “or we’d never get out of bed.'"

I really hope it wins the Tony for best play next year. It seems to have a very good chance based on the reviews. I am so in love with this play.

I went to a free advance screening of Charlie Wilson's War tonight. I enjoyed it. Aaron Sorkin's writing is great; it's very clever and satirical and the dialogue flows well. The movie is a great mix of humor and drama. Tom Hanks was good and Julia Roberts was fine, but Philip Seymour Hoffman stole the show for me (not that that should surprise you; I'm pretty vocal about my love for him). As always, he's hilarious. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, two of my favorite actresses, are wasted in supporting roles.

"Sleep with all the lights on, you're not so happy, you're not secure. You're dying to look cute in your blue jeans, but you're plastic just like everyone, you're just like everyone. And that face you paint is pressed, impressing most of us as permanent, and I'd like to see you undone." ~dashboard confessional

I know I already posted a long post today, but I have to post again to tell you how frakkin' fantastic August: Osage County was. It's now one of my favorite plays ever. It was written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Tracy Letts. I wasn't expecting anything else this weekend to be able to top Rock 'N' Roll, but August sure comes close. I might like it as much as or more than Rock 'N' Roll; I can't decide. They're very different. Rock 'N' Roll has an epic feel to it. It spans decades and continents and deals with broad social and political issues. It's long, intellectual, and dense. August: Osage County takes place over the course of a few days inside the same house. It's about one family's issues (and they have quite a few). It's over 3.5 hours long, which is a marathon for a play, but it's so watchable that the time just flies by. The dialogue is sharp and witty and harsh and real. It's funny and heartbreaking at the same time. The acting is strong. Jeff Perry is in it and it was hard for me to shake my image of him as Thatcher Grey in Grey's Anatomy.
This year's Tony race in the non-musical category is going to be extremely competitive, and I think I saw the main contenders this weekend. So now you have multiple plays to read. Start with August: Osage County.

"The snow's coming down, I'm watching it fall, watching the people around..." ~u2

Y'all are so lucky that I'm a clumsy loser who is so desperate not to write lesson plans that she will do anything to put it off. Actually, I'm not sure who 'y'all' is, because it doesn't seem like I have any readers, so I suppose this is mostly for my own amusement, which is fine. I have a few things to write about today.

Nic and I have made it through 4 of our 6 shows, and we're holding up well. Here are my reactions:
1. The Lion King (on Thursday evening) was entertaining. I've already seen it and it's not one of my favorite shows, but the costumes are very impressive and it's fun just because of the visual spectacle. And the music isn't bad.
2. Rock 'N' Roll (on Friday evening) was amazing. I almost cried a couple of times. It's so dense and confusing and requires such a great deal of concentration and thought that I'm still processing it, but I loved it. I will echo the command of one reviewer and tell you to "Beg, borrow, or steal tickets," because it really is fantastic. It further proves how brilliant Tom Stoppard is. Or, if you can't make it to the Broadway production, at least go read the play. It spans decades and continents and generations, and everything is tied together with rock 'n' roll. There was an insert in the Playbill about Czechoslovakia in the 1960's and Marx and Communism, and I was glad I read it before the play started because otherwise I think I would have been pretty confused.
3. Trumpery (on Saturday afternoon) wasn't bad. It focuses on Darwin around the time he wrote The Origin of Species. It was a little slow at times, and I'm not too interested in the subject matter, but the performances were good. Whenever Manuel Felciano spoke (he played Wallace), I couldn't help but picture him as Toby in Sweeney Todd (he was amazing in that role). His appearance has changed, though.
4. Is He Dead? (on Saturday evening) was great. It's a play written by Mark Twain in 1898, but it was never produced until now (it was just recently discovered). It's about a group of struggling artists who stage the death of one of them to raise the demand for his paintings. Norbert Leo Butz plays the main character and he is absolutely hi-larious. He is such a talented comedian.
Norbert and I (obviously not taken yesterday; this is from after a performance of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels):


5. This afternoon we're going to August: Osage County, so I'll report back on that later.

It is snowing right now. I woke up to see the ground covered with snow. Of course I had to do laundry today. I really was out of clothes, and I couldn't put it off any longer. So at 10:00am I ventured outside to walk 8.5 blocks to go do laundry. It was still snowing hard, and the sidewalks were not shoveled for the most part. I had my granny cart filled to the brim with laundry, and I slowly pushed it along through the snow. I nearly made it to the laundromat with no problems. About a half a block away, I hit a bump. My cart fell forward, and so did I. I ended up spread eagle on top of my cart, with some of my laundry spread all over the snowy sidewalk. Of course this happened directly in front of a store where a group of men were hanging around outside and a bunch of kids had just stepped outside. I had quite an audience. I just lied there for a few seconds in shock. Then I started to laugh. It was just too funny. So funny, in fact, that I decided to reenact it when I got home to show you what I looked like (I was wearing my pea coat, a hat, and my Uggs as well). Picture this in the middle of a snowy sidewalk, with clothes falling out of the cart and a huge group of people standing to the side watching and trying to hide their laughter:

I mean, you have to laugh, right? One of the men asked me if I was okay and if I could get up, and I answered in the affirmative to both questions. I clumsily got up, pulled my cart up and loaded it again, and slowly continued to plow through the snow with as much class as I could muster. Oh, how I dislike snow.