Batman, Hannah Montana and Me--I am about to have an unpopular opinion or two

Obviously, if you're not residing in Underarockville, then you are aware of two things: First, that last week one Benjamin Affleck was cast as Batman in the forthcoming Batman vs. Superman and second, that Miley Cyrus performed at the Video Music Awards last night.

As for the first. Holy shit, y'all...can you all just chill out for a few? I am only an amateur superhero fan. I know, outside of the various superhero films, a mere smattering. I've never sat down and straight up read a comic book (although I kind of want to read the new X-Files ones). So, the absolute fervor with which comic fans approach the film versions is outside the realm of my experience, but not beyond the realm of my understanding, because believe me when I say that I would be invested in the casting of the new Star Wars is an understatement. And to some degree, different, because beyond the Big 3, they're casting new characters. And Batman, well, he's a known quantity? But I think my problem with everyone's hyperbolic and hypercritical reaction is this...what exactly IS that quantity. I mean, obviously, the Batman/Bruce Wayne of the last decade is the extremely dark Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale creation. But it's not like there aren't any number of other versions. From the ultra-campy Adam West series of the 1960s through the three actors who inhabited the role in the late 80s and through the 90s, beginning with Michael Keaton in the Tim Burton-helmed Batman, which was dark, but weird dark, not DARK dark, in 1989 and then on to Bale. There are, in fact, different kinds of Batman. Or at least subtly different flavors.

And thus far, the only answers I've been able to glean as to what's wrong with Ben Affleck as Batman: "Daredevil sucked." Oh, yes. Yes, it did. It was awful. But it didn't fail because of Ben Affleck. It failed because it was a horribly written, hot mess of a movie. "Ben Affleck has a Boston accent." Yeah, except when he doesn't. Off the top of my head, I can name two completely non-Boston accents he's done, not to mention there are any number of roles where he's done Standard American. "He's just not Batman." Okay, how do we know that? Prior to his gig as the Caped Crusader, Michael Keaton's most famous roles were goofy, slap-sticky comedy--Mr. Mom, Gung Ho--or weird histrionic, albeit dark comedy like Beetlejuice, which may have led one to believe that he could play the Joker or the Riddler, but certainly not the Dark Knight. And I know that Christian Bale is super serious actor man. And I respect that. (I'm also a little terrified of the whole immersion in the character style of acting that he--and for that matter Heath Ledger--brought to this, because I think it's weird and in Ledger's case, dangerous. Method acting. It freaks me out, y'all.). But honestly, before his Batman run, I knew Bale from pretty much these things: American Psycho, Little Women, oh...and this:



Yep. That's Batman right there. (I never get tired of this particular bit of film past. I think that someone should have the full time job of following Christian Bale around and every time he acts like a pretentious douche, they should play this full volume on their iPad and say, "What was that, Jack Kelly?)

Really, of the four guys who've played the part since 1989, they've all been pretty different and the only one who I can really say was awful is George Clooney and like the whole Daredevil deal, I'm not sure that it's that Batman & Robin brings the massive levels of suck in and of itself. Of course, my personal favorite is, "I just don't like him." Okay, well, I just don't like Christian Bale with the tantrums and the grandiloquence and just...well, everything. But my preference for the two Tim Burton films aside, I think he was really good in the role. Different certainly, from Keaton, but good.

ANYWAY...here's what I think. I think that Affleck's really quite an excellent actor. I think that his resume is pretty varied, and I think that's good. I respect that rather than stick with one single genre he's kind of bounced around. That's WHY I think he's good. And in that eclectic resume, he has some truly outstanding performances, Chasing Amy, Hollywoodland and Argo probably being my top 3. I think he's handsome. Obviously, all the guys '89 and forward who've played Batman have been good-looking men. Bale and Kilmer are dark and intense hot. Clooney is...well, he's George Clooney. But I think that Affleck is in the Keaton line of All-American handsome. It's a matter of taste, of course, but I would guess that the consensus would be that at the least he's a decent looking chap. I cannot possibly guarantee that he's going to be phenomenal in the part. But there's nothing about him that says to me that he's NOT going to be. Now, he could very well prove me wrong. He could be worse than Clooney. This movie could be worse than Batman & Robin AND Daredevil. I just don't think it will be.

That means I'mma need everyone to relax. 'Cause we don't know what's going to happen. And freaking out until 2015 over this isn't good for you. Also, the internet petitions to get rid of Affleck? It makes you look like an obsessed weirdo. (This is coming from someone who admitted yesterday, on Facebook where people can see, that she's read not one, but ALL of the Star Wars nerd novels).

Which brings me to the more immediate Hollywood-related meltdown. And that's the one over the Miley Cyrus mess at the VMAs. People, I want you to think about something. You are in a tizzy because you think a pop princess performed a tasteless and raunchy number. AT THE MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS. Are you kidding me? Really....I feel like I"m being punk'd. Because the idea that people can actually claim shock at ANYTHING that happens at the VMAs is, at this juncture, ludicrous. If you're around my age, then I'm pretty sure that your first exposure to the VMAs, or at least the first that left a lasting impression was in 1984 and it was Madonna. In the wedding dress and the "Boy Toy" belt, writhing on the floor and humping the stage. Actually, I'm sure MANY of us, no matter our age, would start an answer to the question, "What's the most shocking thing you ever saw at the VMAs?" with "That time that Madonna..." (Or if you're a little younger, "That time that Britney...".).

So here are some truths: What Miley did was repulsive. But not for the reason you think. The reasons are these. First that there was absolutely no artistic merit to what happened on that stage. It was AWFUL. I mean really, really bad. Have you ever been to a truly heinous community theater production? You know, the kind where it's SO GODAWFUL that you cannot possibly look away because you might miss a millisecond of the horror. That's what it felt like. It wasn't music. It wasn't dance. It didn't have a message. It was completely incoherent. So there's that. But there was something that was even worse. It's something that I can understand intellectually, but cannot adequately express, so rather than just saying "It was racist and deliberately objectified women of color.", I'm going to direct you to this effing phenomenal piece which explains better than I ever could hope to do. Those are the reasons you should be offended by whatever the hell happened on Sunday night.

But that's not what 95% of the people who have gotten their knickers in a bind are talking about. What has pushed them all over the edge is the MORALITY. It's like America is Puritan Boston and Miley is Hester Prynne. She hasn't conformed to our beliefs and now she's gonna have to wear a big red letter. Or better yet, we'll make her have whole word "SLUT" tattooed on her forehead. Because that, to some extent, is what we're doing. We (general "we") are projecting OUR moral code on this young woman. We are slut shaming. And that is a practice that makes me absolutely LIVID. I have a friend, a really, really wise friend, who once told me that our morals shouldn't be delineated to us by society's expectations. He said that it's personal and that as long as it's not illegal or hurting someone else (hurting does not include offending their prissy-pants Puritanical sensibilities) it's a decision you have to make for yourself. Not one that you make for someone else or let someone else make for you.

I've also gotten a bunch of "Think of the children"-type arguments. THAT THE CHILDREN WATCHING IN THE LIVE AUDIENCE AND AT HOME ARE SCARRED. First, you have to be 16-or maybe 18--to attend that mess (if you're not some sort of Pinkett-Smith VIP). Second, I reiterate that panties, boobs, touching, foul language, simulated sexual activity and general weirdness are par for the VMA course. So if you're so damn worried about your Precious Sheltered Princess seeing that shit, then WHY are you letting them watch the VMAs in the first place?!? If you're worried about your own delicate, swooning self, then reach for the remote or dig your ass out of the couch cushions and change. the. channel. If the adults and almost adults in the audience want to be, as you say, "morally corrupted by watching PORN" well then that's our choice and I guess hell's awaiting. As for the related argument with regards to our darling bebes...and that argument is "But Miley Cyrus should be a role model." Uh, no. No she shouldn't. Let me give you some examples of role models: Helen Keller. Rosa Parks. Marie Curie. Pop stars and actresses, unless they are involved in some great philanthropic endeavor aren't role models. If they're good, by all means, aspire to be as talented a singer/actor/dancer, but they aren't guides as to the kind of person a kid wants to be. Some of them are awesome people, I'm sure. But conforming to a societal behavioral code isn't in Miley Cyrus's job description. If it ever was at all, her obligation to the youth of America as a role model ended the moment the Hannah Montana job did. If your kid is "tainted" by knowledge of the real life antics of their fave celeb, then you need to learn a sentence right now. That sentence is: "Different people have different expectations from themselves and their families about how they behave and at our house we don't behave like that." It's so easy.

And can we consider for a moment WHY Miley Cyrus did what she did? I don't think she's going off the rails a la LiLo or Amanda Bynes or even meltdown Britney. I don't think she's crazy. I think it's calculated (and also kind of brilliant, because the last thing you wanna be as a celebrity is the celebrity no one's talking about. So, you know, Miley? Mission accomplished.). Miley Cyrus spent years playing fresh-faced, slightly sassy Miley Stewart on Hannah Montana. And I think that because of that she was pigeon-holed into the "virgin" half of the FREAKING INSANE "virgin-whore" dichotomy that we, as a society, cling to so tightly. The minute she began to exhibit the barest HINT of her emerging sexuality (the prime example being her BARE BACK OMG THE SCANDAL in a Vanity Fair shoot when she was 15) everyone freaks right the hell out. Seriously. The pictures--taken by Annie Liebowitz, no less--showed NOTHING you wouldn't see in a bathing suit. Not a damn thing. And everyone goes to pieces to the point that she ended up apologizing and talking about how embarrassed she was. And everyone thinks that this is an a-okay message to send to both Miley and the young girls who knew about it? Being a little sexy IS NOT OKAY. SEX is not okay.

This girl is talented. I'm not a huge Miley fan or anything, but:



Holy shit! She's GOOD. But we didn't want even THAT. We wanted sugary, albeit annoyingly catchy, "Party in the USA". And I say this as an actor...she's not bad at that either. And despite the ranting of any number of people who don't know what they're talking about...she's not in the midst of some kind of Warholesque 15 minutes. At this point, she's had a career for something like a decade. So not so much a flash in the pan.


Everything that this girl has done that didn't comply with a rigid image--that of a perky, rah-rah Jesus, good girl--has been scrutinized, analyzed and criticized. Relentlessly. WE want her to be cute. WE want her to be sassy, but not too much. WE want her to wait for sex until she marries the boy next door. WE need to stop. Because in some ways WE made this.

We're the ones who think that it's, if not okay, then expected for Madonna, or Lady Gaga, or Britney/Christina to act like this. We're the ones who made sure that Miley knew that she couldn't. And misguided though that performance was (in more ways than one) we created the need in her to shock. We wouldn't let her grow at all. No bending of the mold for Miley. So she broke it. Loudly and forcefully.

Change of Pace: Outfits of the Week

Another blog I follow and love is Clarabelle. This girl is awesome and funny and she had Ah-Mah-Zing fashion sense and always take pictures in the CUTEST real people clothes. Plus, she always talks about stuff other than fashion, like how to be a good blogger--she has GREAT tips, y'all. And a while back she posted about how sometimes keeping up with cute outfit posts is stressful. To HER. Which made me think...I need to chillax about this. I mean, someone from real life asked me about the outfit posts and why I would do it for a while and then stop forever and a day and it kind of made me freak out and feel like the world's crappiest blogger. Because let's be serious--most people, even if they have a job where they have to look acceptable five days a week, are gonna have a day where they're like, "Oh, it's raining like a monsoon and a hurricane had a baby and the product was this storm and I can't possibly do anything more exciting that black pants and a white shirt today." Or if you're me, a day like that means, "I'm wearing yoga pants. If you're lucky I'll wear something fancier than an old sorority t-shirt. But don't hold your breath." And there are days that there's just SO much happening that I need to know that whatever I put on at 7 that morning is gonna work for me by the time I get to a dance rehearsal at 7 that night...so, you know, yoga pants. (To be fair to the pants, they're nice, Lulu Lemon yoga pants.)

I kind of was taking this attitude about blogging--especially when it came to the outfit posts--that if I did a post on Monday and then missed Tuesday, well, then the whole week was shot to hell and I had to wait and start over on the NEXT Monday. This is similar to the idea that I've always held about being on a diet--if you mess that sucker up in the middle of the week, then you should just eat what you want for the rest of the week and start over the next Monday. But then I had this thought...if you're going to blog about your life, whatever part of your life that might be, you don't have anything to blog about if you aren't doing anything except getting ready to blog. So if I'm taking an extra hour to get ready to take a picture--not that it would always take THAT long--and I'm only doing it to take the picture, well, that's a lot of pressure on me and it's wasting time that on that day, I just don't have. Thus, my conclusion is this: I'm going to take pictures on the days that I'm lookin' good (read that as "as good as possible under the circumstances"). And I'm not gonna stress that I take the pictures in a mirror with my phone and they don't look as awesome as other blogs, but if I have time, I'll experiment with doing it other ways--like with my real camera and tripod and timer. And if I have one picture at the end of the week that's cool and if I have six pictures at the end of the week--sometimes I do things on the weekends--that's cool, too. It is what it is, y'all. Which has kind of become my new life philosophy. About everything. So why not about blogging and what I wear, too?

Hence, this is the inaugural "Outfits of the Week." I only had two last week. And let's repeat to ourselves, "That's okay." I actually had a third day where I looked super-cute but the aforementioned hurricane-monsoon hybrid baby storm happened and I got absolutely SOAKED so that turned out to be a super-cute outfit, if one is into drowned rats.

First picture: Dress and sweater (Target); Shoes (Unisa from DSW-old); Necklace (Forever 21-old)
Second picture: Sweater (Target); Shirt (Elizabeth McKay-older); Jeans (AG from Anthropologie);Belt (Anthropologie-old); Shoes (same as above)

I don't know what's gotten into me this summer. I seem to be obsessed with orange/coral and what's more, with wearing it with navy. Which seems reasonable. Except that is some straight up Auburn colors. And I am dyed in the wool Alabama. It's just that the colors look so pretty together that I can't stop myself. I'll stop myself once football season rolls around, okay? If I had enough of these little knit dresses with a cardigan? Would wear that shit every single day. The problem is that cute little knit dresses shrink and they tend to shrink UP and I am completely paranoid about things being too short. And in my definition (at least at my age) "too short" is "anything where you can see more than the three inches above my knees." Which is why I'm wearing cuffed jeans and not shorts (like a normal human in summer) in the second picture. I'm so worried about my glaringly-white, vaguely-chunky legs. I have a good friend who (correctly) called me on my tendency to wear things that cover me completely and are sometimes too big. I can't deny it. I wear cardigans because I'm afraid my upper arms are fat. I won't show my legs. I don't like anything to be tight. I'm a mess, y'all. Plain and simple.

So, I guess we'll try it this way? See how it goes? I already have one in the bag this week so maybe this is gonna fly!

Because Paul C. said to do this...

This post is Molly and Paul's fault. Paul posted a link to an article about 16 unusual Walt Disney World facts on Facebook. However, the facts were (mostly) just flat-out wrong. Then Molly said that I could come up with 16 better ones. So, now I'm under pressure to come up with 16 facts that are both true and entertaining. So here goes...

1. That the buildings on Main Street, USA are built using forced perspective is pretty common knowledge. If you DON'T know this, what it means is that the first story of each building is of "regular" size. The second story is shorter than normal and the third is shorter still. This means that the buildings look much taller than they actually are. (This is also true of Cinderella Castle). Less known is that Main Street ITSELF is created with forced perspective. By making the street wider at the Town Square end and narrower at the castle end, it makes the walk up to the castle LOOK much longer. Conversely, when you're leaving at night and have tired feet, it looks like your walk is much shorter. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that approaching the castle Main Street is on a very slight incline--so you're walking up a hill when you enter and down when you leave.

2. I like Main Street trivia so here's another one. The windows on Main Street are filled with names. Most people know that these names are people who are in some way important to the Walt Disney Company and especially to Walt Disney World. The "business" with which their name is paired is often a further nod to either the contribution they've made or to some personal interest they have or had. (My favorite is that of former Disney President, the late Frank Wells which is for Seven Summit Expeditions, a nod to his desire to scale the highest peak on each of the seven continents.) But there's a deeper meaning to the windows. The Magic Kingdom is a show. Main Street is like the opening credits. The train station, which hides everything behind it, it like a curtain. The windows are the credits. The last window you pass (and the only one that faces the castle) is Walter Elias Disney. Just like in a movie, the last credit at the beginning and the first one at the end is the director. This is also represented by the statue of Roy Disney (the "producer")in Town Square and Walt Disney (the "director") in the Hub.

3. Aaaaaaand another Main Street fact. The sidewalks on Main Street are a deep pinkish-red. There are two reasons for that. The first is relates back to the idea of a show: the sidewalks represent a red carpet. The second is that the Disney Imagineers and Kodak worked long and hard to discover an EXACT shade of red paint that, in pictures, makes the Florida sky look exceptionally blue on a sunny day.

4. Two of the monorail loop resorts are connected with moments in history that are, if not historically significant, then at the least, historically interesting. President Richard Nixon made the his famous "I am not a crook." statement to reporters while in the ballroom of the Contemporary Resort. Meanwhile, in a room at the Polynesian Resort, John Lennon received the voluminous legal paperwork necessary to officially dissolve The Beatles and signed it in his suite, thus ending The Beatles at the Polynesian.

5. The outlying buildings which contain the guest rooms at the Polynesian Resort are called longhouses, inspired by the similarly named dwellings in the South Pacific islands which thematically inspired the resort. The longhouses are named for South Pacific islands. In the late 1990s the buildings were renamed so that the way they are geographically laid out in the resort mirrors the way they are ACTUALLY laid out geographically in the South Pacific.

6. If you stayed in a different room at a Disney resort every night, you would be able to stay in every room currently on Walt Disney World property...in about 60 years.

7. When you are in Liberty Square, the architecture is indicative of the East Coast--the Hudson River Valley for the Haunted Mansion, a New England fishing village for Columbia Harbour House and colonial Philadelphia for the area around the Hall of Presidents. As you walk further and enter Frontierland it's like you are traveling deeper into the American West. The Diamond Horseshoe building is based on the architecture of St. Louis, MO during the heyday of its time as the jumping off point for thousands of American pioneers. The next set of buildings become more rustic--log buildings with wide plank floors--and finally Pecos Bill's Cafe is an adobe building representing the Spanish influence of the American Southwest with the buttes and mesas in Big Thunder Mountain Railroad being the silver mining boomtowns.

8. Almost of the buildings and streets in the Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard areas of Disney's Hollywood Studios are based on real locations in and around Hollywood. Of course, geography and size have been fudged a little bit, but it's meant to evoke Hollywood, CA at a very specific point in time--1947.

9. At Disney's Animal Kingdom, the restrooms all have very large, reinforced outer doors with bolted locks. That's because in the EXTREMELY unlikely event that an animal escaped from one of the habitats, there's enough space in the bathrooms, theaters and restaurants for a capacity crowd at the park to be safely behind closed and locked doors.

10. The American Adventure building in World Showcase at Epcot is situated directly across from where you enter World Showcase, on the other side of the World Showcase Lagoon. Colonial buildings, like the those on which the American Adventure is based (it's not a specific one, but an homage to several buildings), were small, generally not more than two stories tall. A two-story building would be very insignificant from a long distance and almost completely hidden by the America Garden Theater. It would also be too small to accommodate the enormous theater where the animatronics are lowered from the stage and then moved on tracks and stored UNDER house of the theater while the other "actors" are performing AND which houses the largest rear-projection screen in the world. The Disney Imagineers employed REVERSE forced perspective on the American pavilion. It's actually five stories tall, but it only LOOKS two stories tall. It's built from more than 100,000 handcrafted Georgia red clay bricks.

11. Walt Disney World is the largest single site employer in the world, employing almost 70,000 cast members.

12. Disney horticulturists (of which there are more than 750) maintain a tree farm so that if a tree which is "onstage"--that's Disney for in a guest area--is damaged or sick, they can replace it with one that is almost an exact duplicate. They do this overnight. They can also completely change out the onstage flower beds, etc. This means that you can go on Monday and the Mickey floral is one set of colors and then go on Tuesday and it's completely different.

13. Since the day it opened on October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World's maingate parks have been completely closed--as in never opened at all--a total of three times. There had been days when the parks closed early due to weather (read that as a hurricane) and in 2002 there was a day when Epcot never opened because there was a power outage caused by a transformer fire overnight (although all the other three parks opened.) That said, in 1999, during Hurricane Floyd, for the first time in its 28 years of operation, the Disney theme parks ceased operations for a day. WDW also closed completely (although, obviously, resort guests weren't ousted into the storm) twice in a period of three weeks when Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne made almost identical landfalls causing significant damage in the Orlando area. On September 11, 2001, the Disney parks had already opened their gates--for a regular 9 a.m. rope drop, the turnstiles usually open at 8:30--when the first plane hit in New York. The public address system in Walt Disney World is the stuff of legends. It is almost NEVER used. That morning at 11 a.m. an announcement came over the public address system stating, "Due to circumstances beyond our control, all Disney parks are now closed." At that point Cast Members ushered all guests out of all shops and attractions and custodial Cast Members cleared and closed the restrooms. With all guests in the streets, Cast Members joined hands, forming human chains backed by Disney security and slowly walked to the front of the park herding the guests out in front of them. It took thirty minutes for all four parks to be completely cleared.

14. The only Disney theme park that has two gated entrances is Epcot. Most people use the main entrance at the front of Future World, but there is a second, much smaller set of turnstiles in World Showcase, between France and the United Kingdom. Boat transportation to Disney's Boardwalk Resort and Villas, the Yacht and Beach Clubs, the Swan and Dolphin (and eventually Disney's Hollywood Studios), as well as a walkway to and from the Boardwalk Resort are available.

15. The Streetmosphere performers at Walt Disney World are actors, particularly at the Magic Kingdom and Disney's Hollywood Studios, who interact with guests while remaining completely in character as various persons who are either Citizens of Main Street or Citizens of Hollywood. The Citizens of Hollywood have been around longer and, in fact have been a part of the experience in the park since it opened as Disney-MGM Studios in 1989. Kathryn Joosten, who is probably most known for playing President Jed Bartlet's secretary, Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing, was a later-in-life-getting-started actress. Her first acting job outside of community theater was as a Streetmosphere performer at the Studios when she was in her 50s.

16. Anything taller than 200 feet tall must, according to FAA regulations, display a blinking red light at it's highest point to alert low flying small aircraft. (There is, additionally, a no-fly zone that extends 3000 feet above and in a 3 mile radius from Cinderella Castle). Because Disney feels that a blinking light on top of the attractions would detract from the show, none of the attractions at WDW are taller than 199 feet--Tower of Terror and Expedition Everest are each 199 feet tall, the Castle is 189, Spaceship Earth is 180.

Sometimes, the 'Come to Jesus' you need to have is with yourself...

Since I am definitely (Disney-measured and confirmed) petite(ish), I can vouch for two facts. The first is that at my height--which is about 5'3 1/2"--every seven pounds of weight is equal to an entire clothing size. The second is that because of the first fact, I, like many ladies of shorter stature, have learned to dress so that no one can tell that I've changed an entire clothing size.

Or in the current case, TWO clothing sizes.

I think that it all started back in the fall. From last October until the first of May, I was constantly in rehearsal or production of a show. And sometimes the shows were overlapping. At the pinnacle I was juggling three shows--I was in production of the first while in rehearsal for two more which ran back to back over four consecutive weeks starting less than three weeks after the first one closed. And then I went to Walt Disney World for a week. If you've ever done theater then you know that while there is a good deal of working hard, there is also a greater deal of drinking, partying and eating weird things at weird times. And that's pretty much the definition of Walt Disney World--especially when you're on one of the meal plans where you feel like you're working under a theory of "Eat Everything That Doesn't Eat You First."

And that's not all. I have spent the a good portion of the last two years--starting in March of 2011--working twice a week with a trainer at the gym. And it just so happened that he was in grad school and started his student teaching in January and while I am REALLY glad for him, that meant that any motivation that I had to do...well, ANYTHING went right the hell out the window.

And here's the thing...between the shows and the trip and the new puppy I didn't realize that I was getting, shall we say, fluffier until we hit high summer. And I was trying to figure out why every single time I was getting ready in the morning, I was turning my entire bedroom into a federal disaster area. That is, if piles of discarded garments count as a federal disaster area. Which they should. You see, I was grabbing things that I LOVE to wear and then discovering that the pants were uncomfortably tight or that the shirt was gapping at the buttons and that outfit was going into a pile on the chair in the corner and staying there until after a couple of days I spent the half hour before bedtime hanging everything back up in the closet of folding it and sticking it back in the drawers.

Because here's the deal: If you HAVE gained weight, there's a certain part of your subconscious which probably doesn't wanted to cotton to this development. So there were things that I had taken out to put on several times. And several times it was too tight or wouldn't fasten or just looked weird and I somehow took it out again a week or three days later and surprise! It still isn't fitting correctly. And it's not like I'm going naked or anything like that. I have tons of clothes. I have WAY too many clothes, in fact. My penchant for sale rooms and racks and consignment shops and thrift stores has pretty much guaranteed that. And it took the proverbial straw and camel's back situation to bring this to a head.

I have this Lilly Pulitzer dress that I got two years ago. It is my FAVORITE dress. I usually get a couple of dresses at the big Lilly sale at the end of summer, but I also usually get ONE at the beginning of summer. At full-price. Full LILLY price. So it's nothing to sneeze at in terms of money. This particular dress is made of a patchwork of all the Lilly prints from that season on the bottom and the top is blue and white seersucker. I have worn this dress and worn it and then worn it some more. It has the honor of being the dress I wore for the first day of my 2011 Disney vacation, meaning that all of my pictures from Photopass in the Magic Kingdom are of that dress (and me in the dress). In any event, I took the dress out and put it on and...well, it was sort of hard to zip. This has never been an issue. Not even a little. I mean, this dress was SO not tight that I wore it once when I was taking a trip by airplane. I used it as a TRAVEL OUTFIT. And here I was trying to zip it and failing. And to be fair, I did eventually get it zipped. I even fastened the hook and eye at the top. And then I leaned over to put on shoes and the hook and eye pulled loose from the top of the zipper. And that, my friends, was the final straw.

I contemplated for a while. I've had a lot going on--the first couple of weeks of June were NUTS and then my parents visited for a week and my sister is doing a fellowship in NYC for the summer so she's been in and out and I've auditioned for and been cast in two shows (as a dancer in one, so, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!). And here's what I decided. That as long as all of those clothes that are too tight or gapping or look weird are in my closet, I'm going to pull them out and try them in the mornings. And the result is that I'm making a mess. And also since my closet is overcrowded as it is, I'm missing all of the things that DO fit me because after a little while I'm getting frustrated and going to the ironing/clean laundry pile and pulling something out of it and wearing the same damn things over and over. So last week, I went through every closet rack and every drawer and every single thing that I have that's too tight?

Is in "time-out". That's right. I have grounded myself from my clothes. I went to Target. I bought three big Rubbermaid tubs and if something was even a LITTLE bit out of my size range, it's in a tub. Now it's not like I locked the tubs in a tower far away. They're neatly stacked in the corner of the playroom, waiting. What's in those tubs? Every single one of my Lilly sheath dresses. All my Lilly shorts but one. My elephant pants from The Shirt Shop. My green gingham Nanette Lepore cocktail pants and shirt. All of my Ralph Lauren slimfit button downs. Y'all...it's a shit-ton of clothes.

And here's the thing...I am fully cognizant of the fact that any number of my favorite clothing pieces may not see the light of day this summer. And that's okay. If it motivates me to do something, well, then I consider this experiment a success.

Outfit of the Day--Tuesday May 14, 2013

Seriously, there was a point tonight where I was quietly sitting and watching/listening to the world happening around me and my only response was, "Surely this isn't real life. Because it's SO STUPID it simply has to be the universe in some manner PUNKING THE HELL OUT OF ME."

I'm not kidding. When the portion of your day that includes being at the car dealership service center before 9 a.m. is, by far, not the most unpleasant interaction you have with humanity? Humanity as a whole needs to reassess.

And that's not all...I took a picture of myself and was like, "Well, I look incredibly chunky." Plus, I have this thing. And that thing has to do with matching. See, a few years ago, I was obsessed, and I mean seriously obsessed with watching How Do I Look? and What Not to Wear. To the point that I would Tivo them if I was gonna miss. Now my being enamored of the former was about 90% to do with my utter adoration of the incomparable Finola Hughes, who was the host at the time, because having other people pick out your stuff seemed pointless. I wanted the poorly dressed people to LEARN. Which is why, Finola aside, What Not to Wear was actually a more useful show. Because one of the mantras repeated by Stacy about a jillion times was, "It doesn't have to MATCH, it just has to GO." Which, I really loved. I think part of it had to do with spending the majority of my life with girls who took making everything (including, at times, their offspring) match their outfit. And I always thought it looked silly and "trying to hard." So, when I got dressed today and realized that, although I really love the color combo of lime and coral (which in various shades is very "on trend" right now), every single accessory (except my purse which is the same as yesterday because I am notoriously lazy about changing purses) was lime green. And I though that maybe I looked like one of those match-matchy girls I despised and if I had kids I would have them all dressed in lime green (because kids=accessories).

And then...well, someone, in real life, tells me that I look really good. VALIDATION. That doesn't change the fact that I wear this dress so very rarely because it took me almost an entire episode of The Golden Girls to iron it yesterday. But still...it's nice to know that someone thinks you look good (even if there's chance he was just being really sweet when he said it.)



Jacket: Gap (old); Dress: Anthropologie (old); Shoes: gift from Mom who got them at a boutique in Alabama; Necklace: Anthropologie (old and from the sale room); Earrings: which you can't see but should know are tiny little lime green squares from Target (old)

Outfit of the Day--Monday May 16, 2013

So the percentage of my existence where I'm cold hovers somewhere around three-quarters of my life. I'm always cold. Al. ways. I spend 12 months a year watching television under a throw. It's a heated throw, although I don't always plug it in a crank it up--that's usually only about five months out of the year. Which is why I can't trust myself to judge temperatures outside. I mean, I'll be out in jeans and a sweater when other (I would assume normal) people are in shorts and sleeveless shirts.

Which is why I wasn't sure about yesterday's temperature situation. I'm always out with Charlie at 7 or a bit before and then I was in and out of the house all day until the last time I took him out at about 10 last night. And I kept thinking, "It's getting colder." Only, like I said, I CANNOT be trusted, so it's entirely possible that the temperature was only experiencing a normal day's fluctuation and I'm just a big freak of nature. Until I got up this morning and realized that it really WAS colder. To the tune of 45 degrees when I left the house for the first time at about 8 and saw the outdoor temperature when I cranked the car. It's May. It's the MIDDLE of May. And I saw people who weren't me out in quilted jackets this afternoon.

This is a pain in my ass. For one thing, it makes me feel a general sort of malaise. But mostly because it's hard to dress appropriately. It's not that I don't have clothes that are appropriately warm. I do. I have lots of them. But it FINALLY has started to feel like something approaching actual spring around here and we devolve into a string of days where the HIGH is something like 61. That's just wrong. I have a whole rack of Lilly Pulitzer that's sitting there waiting to be worn. And it's starting to feel neglected and sad. Instead, I wore this (because it kinda, sorta made me feel like spring):



Shirt and Skirt: Target (this spring); Sweater: Ralph Lauren outlet (old, but they always have similar); Necklace: Lord & Taylor; Boots: DSW (really old); Bag: Vineyard Vines (old, but again--they are a VV staple).

That Vineyard Vines tote? Y'all it's the greatest thing I've ever seen, heard or read about. It's goes with EVERYTHING. No really. It does. If it's an outfit that absolutely cannot be worn with my Frye boots and that tote. Well, then I don't want to KNOW that outfit.

Acute WDW Withdrawal Syndrome

Here's the thing...I either have bronchitis/asthma/allergies or whooping cough or my body is physically reacting to being removed from the Greater Walt Disney World Area.

It's true. On my second to last full day there, I woke up with a sore throat. On the last full day, I started with a tickly kind of cough. Which has, in the week that I've been home, developed into an actual full-on cough. Now granted, clean as it is, WDW has to be like a culture of germs. I mean, there's kids EVERYWHERE touching everything--I once saw my niece LICK a handrail in a queue--and there's no way you can wash your hands every single time you touch something, because if you did, you'd never get to ride anything or watch anything because all you'd ever do is wash your hands. Also, on the night before I woke up with a sore throat, we spent an hour sitting in the pouring rain waiting for Fantasmic which turned out not to happen. And it was COLD. Not just that night, but except for the first day we were there, pretty much the whole time. I had to buy a hoodie the night we watched Illuminations (where it also rained). I mean, I'm educated enough to know that, no matter WHAT my paternal grandmother used to insist, you can't actually GET a cold/cough/fever/flu from BEING cold. Although I don't think that it helps the situation when you've already managed to slurp up all the various germs that must lurk all over the Magic Kingdom.

Anyway, if you happen to encounter me in real life, I'm taking all kinds of meds. I'm not attempting to infect the general populace. I actually FEEL fine. And really, I don't think that it's possible for someone to CATCH Disney Ennui. At least not from person to person contact.

Outfit of the Day--Mother's Day 2013

I think that there's a general consensus among a lot of my friends that when I chose to major in history and English, it was a mistake. Not because I didn't love both of those things and not because I wasn't smart in both of those things. It's just that they think (and I tend not to disagree with them) that I really should have majored in fashion design and merchandising. As to why I didn't....well, that's a hard one. Part of it has to do with who I was when I was a tween/teen. Although I was often drawn to unique and one of a kind outfits, I was WAY to concerned with fitting in to actually wear any such thing. Oh, I had the occasional unique ensemble, but mostly I steadfastly clung to the idea that fitting in--at least with regards to my clothes--was a far better plan than standing out. To the point that it never even occurred to me that there was a whole world, a whole CAREER, where the PURPOSE was to look cool and cutting edge and maybe even help others do so as well.

That all being said, on the few occasions when I wanted to wear something different than everyone else, the lady who facilitated it was my mom. Which is one of the reasons that Mother's Day and today's outfit are a perfect platform for a reboot of a daily clothing post. Because like so many gals, my biggest fashion influence is my mom. This is a lady who facilitated my desire for: tweed knickers when I was seven, painted hair ribbons when I was nine, an entire new wardrobe when I was ten and started at a new school (even thought she knew the things I was buying were NOT my style at all and just my attempt to look mid-80s "cool"), wearing Keds without laces when I was twelve and a Rush wardrobe that was so awesome I STILL wear a couple of the dresses 20 years later. She has an uncanny ability to walk into a store that is TEEMING with customers and walk straight to the sales rack and find the most unique and spectacular piece on it. She taught me how to shop consignment and even better, how to shop thrift. If you can't find it in a store, she can probably make it (or knows how to find someone who can). I wish I had access to all of the family photo albums so I could show you her awesome clothes from the 60s and 70s. Alas, you'll just have to take my word for it.

What I wore today involves my mom, a consignment shop, her uncanny ability to find awesome stuff and a hilarious story.

Here's the deal with consignment shopping: There are consignment shops where you can tell they are super-selective about what they take to sell. There are consignment shops that have some truly amazing pieces, mixed in with rack after rack of relatively non-descript things from stores like The Gap. There are consignment stores where the staff is lovely and friendly. And there are consignment stores where the staff acts snootier than those ladies that snub Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The one where I got the dress I'm wearing today is on the super-selective side--but not the toniest I've ever been to--and DEFINITELY on the snooty side.

Last summer, my mom and I were shopping there and she pulled out the dress. It's colors I don't usually wear--tan and yellow--mixed with a color a love--purple--but would never think meshed together. However, it turned out to be absolutely precious and I got it. The story, though, isn't about that. It's about the signs. This store has signs up that admonish you that if you try on clothes in sizes that are too small and you rip them or break the zipper, you'll have to pay for them. I first want to clarify that the dress I tried on was NOT too small. It was a size 8. I wear a size 4. I just wanted to see if the color, which I'm not naming to protect the innocent (because I feel sure that a store clerk from an unnamed shop is going to figure it out and hunt me down where I live, which is something like 10 states away. Or something like that.), would work and if it did, would it be possible to take the dress in. As it turns out the color was fine, but my Fashion Advisor (read: Mother) said that taking it in would be a chore because of embroidery issues. So, I go to take it off. Now, know that side zipper on dresses are the bane of my life. They are fussy and persnickety and tend to get stuck at the waist. Which this one did. Only usually, I can either zip it all the way down and start over (if I'm putting it ON) or zip it back up to the top and ease it down (if I'm undressing). Not this zipper. It. Was. Stuck. I don't mean that fabric was caught in the teeth or that it was hanging on the seam between the bodice and the skirt. I mean that this zipper REFUSED to move in either direction at about an inch above the waist. Now, since it was two sizes too big, I could move it around my waist to work on it. Nothing. And even two sizes too big in the waist wouldn't go over my chest and shoulders (to say nothing of my hips). Worse still? It was about 105 degrees outside and when I asked for a dressing room, Snotty Shop Girl languidly informed me that the air-conditioning in that section kept freezing up and stopping so it was really hot back there. And she wasn't kidding. Maybe...MAYBE on a February day when I wasn't sticking to my own clothing, I could have inched it over my head. But this was just impossible. So I called for reinforcement. And after ten minutes of working with the zipper and trying to get it over my head, my mother was like, "Okay...were going to have to pop the zipper off the teeth." And of course I freak out, because I don't want to have to pay for the dress and you could just TELL that the girls working were the kind who would love to call someone chubby and make them pay--whether it was there fault or not. And my mom, who is AWESOME, said, "Don't be crazy. You're not paying for it. This is a cheap plastic zipper. The dress isn't too tight. I'm going to take the toggle off the teeth. You're going to take it off. I'm going to take it back and hang it up. You are going to pay for the things you're buying. And that's the end of it." I know...it's awful. I should feel bad. But here's the thing...whoever bought that dress was going to have to replace the zipper. It wasn't a good quality and it was going to get stuck. I just helped in letting them know that BEFORE they bought the dress and took it home. There...that is my horrible person confession of the day.

In other news...
Dress:consigned; Sweater:Target (2009); Purse: Marley Lilly; Shoes: Target (now).

"All you need is a light jacket..."

Today is like the Energizer Bunny. Seriously. You know that first Christmas Eve where you're old enough to realize that Christmas is, in fact, TOMORROW, but still young enough to be really, honestly excited about Santa? Do you remember how long that day felt like it lasted? Well, that's how today was for me. I've been messing around, organizing a closet and whatnot and I honestly thought it was going to be one of those nights where I turn around and look at the clock and it's one-thirty in the morning and I have been oblivious to the passage of time. Nope. I turned around and it was eight o'clock. And the thing is, it's not because of something awesome or exciting that's happening tomorrow. It's just that today has lasted forever. What's more? I'm exhausted, but not sleepy (if that even makes sense.) That is the one part for which I may actually have an explanation. You see, Charlie the Wonder Puppy has, since his arrival, slept in his little black carry crate which I put next to my bed. The larger crates which we had gotten for him were just ridiculously large at first--he only weighed a hair under four pounds. That said, he's grown immensely in the span of just under two months that we've had him. And as such we are attempting to wean him to his permanent abode, which will be a comfy crate in the kitchen. Our first step was putting his carry crate into a bigger crate in my room. Which, on Monday night, morphed into putting the big crate with his smaller one inside it right outside my door. The first problem being that it got much lighter, much more quickly and he woke up at the absolute crack. Now, that, I mitigated by covering the crate(s) with a blanket. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm now like a mom with a small baby that's just moved from his bassinet to a crib of his own and I'm pretty sure that I've spent the last three nights sleeping with one ear open.

Charlie, on the other hand, has been sleeping BEAUTIFULLY. To the point that he's been an absolute wild man in the mornings. Hence the beginning of my day which was get up and do Charlie's business of potty and food. Then in the space of time that it took me to brush my teeth and retrieve the papers, he shredded his puppy pad, pooped on it, turned over his food bowl and scattered it everywhere AND dumped out his water bowl, which he mixed with the food and tramped all over his sleep mat. Which all had to be washed. Then I got myself ready, folded two loads of laundry,went to Starbucks for coffee for everyone and picked up B on campus so he could leave for an overnight trip. All of that was by 10 a.m. I dropped the travelers off at the Trenton train station, went to the cell phone place and got a new phone, went to the bank for money for the Crazy Polish-speaking Cleaning Ladies, fed Charlie his lunch and took him out to, as we say, "run out his heebie-jeebies", went to my voice lesson, ran to the mall to get a white shirt, fed and let Charlie heeby his jeeby again, made dinner and then worked out making some sense of the labyrinth that is my closet.

That said today is April the 25th, y'all. It's the perfect date! Miss Rhode Island says so...



And she wasn't kidding! I was outside. In normal clothes. WITHOUT BEING WRAPPED IN A BLANKET!!!

I even have proof:

That's my feet! In summer shoes. And Wonder Puppy in the background.

And then a nice lady in a sleigh drawn by wolves offered me some Turkish Delight...

It is cold, y'all. I mean, seriously. It's the 23rd of April. It's William Shakespeare's birthday. That is SPRING. Or at least, it should be. Because as of now, we've had only the tiniest handful of really nice spring days. And only a couple of times have any of them been consecutive. I am beginning to think that I am a) trapped in Narnia when the White Witch has made it perpetually winter and we're all waiting for Aslan; b)living in a world where winter lasts for decades a la Game of Thrones or c)Lilly Pulitzer was actually some sort of spring fairy who waved a wand every April and her death has left a vacancy in the Spring Fairy position.

First of all, I feel bad for our poor, confused flowers. It's like they don't know what to do with themselves. We had this one freaky warm day back in February and the daffodils along the driveway started to push up and then it's freezing, even SNOWING a few times, with a smattering of warm days thrown in (for flavor and excitement?). That's not anything, though, on my personal confusion...when the weather SHOULD have been about to turn warm, I pulled out all of my spring and summer clothes. I didn't unpack them, but they were there waiting. Now, I'll admit that part of that was because I needed to pull some things out of storage for use in Legally Blonde, but there my lovely pastels and seersuckers and white pants sat. Sadly bereft. Finally, I had to make the call and pack up the cold-weather stuff. Of course, that meant that I spent an hour outside with the puppy this afternoon wearing my flannel pajama pants, my parka (okay, so it's not really THAT cold. It was in the 40s. But it IS that cold when you're sitting still in a chair while the puppy races around the enclosed garden.) and a scowl. I've also spent time out there wrapped in a blanket, which may or may not, make me look like Crazy Lady.

So, c'mon Weather...I need you to get your shit together and get with the program. I would like to clean out the garage and straighten up the attic without having to dress like I'm about to participate in the Iditarod.

Legally Bugging the Hell Outta Me

I was in law school when the Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde was originally released. I saw it in the movie theater twice and owned it from the moment it was released on DVD. I LOVED it. I mean, really, really loved it. I GOT it. I thought that all campy silliness aside, it did a fairly good job of portraying a sorority--especially one that seemed to be pretty closely based on mine, what with the pink and green and the letters being but a quarter turn from actually BEING mine. Several years later, I went to see the Broadway show with my best friend/sorority sister who turned to me during the opening number and said, "We have found it. You have to be in this show." And now, I am. Last weekend and this coming weekend, I am singing and dancing my way through Delta Nu and law school.

And here's the thing...Repeated (and I DO mean repeated) exposure to the show has made me...irritated. Beyond the fact that "I've got a chip on my shoulder, and it's big as a boulder" is one of the most dreadful lyrics ever written, there are truly some things about the show that just grate on my last nerve.

Here's my 10:

1. Omigod, you guys! Stereotype much?--I adore, simply adore the opening number. It nails so many things about a sorority. The excitement. The silliness. The can delighting song. It is spot on. However, from there, the sorority girls degenerate quickly into the most awful stereotypes of sorority girls imaginable. Not that they're flighty and silly--because if I'm being honest, that's a whole lot true. No...what bugs me is that they come across as dumb as a box of hair. Margot, Serena and Pilar are written as not just silly and flighty, but as completely vapid. And really, really stupid. And believe me...it's not like I didn't know girls in my own sorority who were not exactly breaking the bank with their GPA. But as a whole it's just a really lame stereotype. In almost every incidence, Greek women have a higher average GPA than both the all-campus and all-women GPA. I'm just saying.

2. Slut-Shaming 101--This is really a personal pet peeve, but Serena calls Margot a slut. The Greek chorus calls Vivienne a whore. Vivienne refers to Elle's Bunny outfit as her "skank" costume. Ew. I really dislike it. When anyone does it. But especially in a musical that lots of young girls go to see.

3. Elle is an IDIOT--I get that in order to make the point of the show, Elle has to come in and not get the point of law school and all it entails. Which I kind of understand. To some extent, I wasn't completely up on what law school was really going to be like when I started. But I was together enough, having read the packet the law school sent me (which I'm assuming Elle did. She showed up on time to the right class.) which told me what to have prepared for the first day. Then, we know from dialogue that not only does Elle get booted on the first day, but per Warner, EVERY day. I'll allow the first day in Callahan's class...but after that? Then she's just a full-out fool.

4. Speaking of Real Law School--When Warner dumps Elle and she makes the decision to go to Harvard, it's spring semester of her senior year. In the movie, it's much more ambiguous as to exactly when he dumps her. But in the musical, Elle is getting ready to take her LSATs in the spring. It is in the lyrics in as many words. In real life? Not so much. You take the LSATs in your JUNIOR spring, senior fall at the latest. If you're taking it in the spring of your senior year? You've missed the application deadline for law school.

5. What is it that Callahan teaches?--The answer, in short, is CRIMINAL law. Only the case where Elle finally "gets it" just sounds like Family Law. It's about a sperm donor's rights as a father. They throw in the stuff about it not being stalking because he's the father. Which would be a really dumb case because sperm donors don't have rights as a parent, so it's not an affirmative defense to stalking. But really the whole case is a set up to allow her to say "Masturbatory Emissions."

6. Math is Hard--At the beginning of the song "Ireland", Paulette states that her mother was 3/4 Italian and she never knew her father. But then she says her grandfather was from Ireland. Which, I GUESS could be possible if her grandfather's parents were Italian and Irish but both living in Ireland. But she has an Italian last name? So if she didn't have a father then she'd have her mother's last name. Which, again, is Italian. And would have come from her grandfather. Who, according to lyrics? WAS FROM IRELAND. I mean, I can make it work, but I have to go through hoops. As another cast member pointed out, there are a lot of lyrics in this show that make you think that while writing them, they just went, "Ah, screw it...no one will EVER NOTICE. Plus, this RHYMES!"

7. Shit, Elle...GET IT TOGETHER!--Okay, so in the movie, when Vivienne tricks Elle into showing up in costume to the party, Elle leaves and makes tracks to the bookstore where she buys study guides and a laptop and proceeds to become a law school superstar. On her own. In the musical, it takes Emmett dragging her kicking and screaming to do it. Which sets up another pet peeve I have about it which is directly related. When Emmett's making her study, he insists that she stay at Harvard over Christmas Break. Which...law school is like regular school. She would have finished her first semester. What the hell is he making her study?

8. What the blue hell did VIVIENNE do to her?--So, obviously Vivienne is kind of nasty to Elle from the beginning. But Elle's making it her business to, from the moment she arrives on campus, to try to get all over Warner. Warner dumped Elle AT LEAST six months before law school starts. It's not like Vivienne busted up the relationship. It's entirely possible that Vivienne didn't know Elle even existed. And yet Elle blames VIVIENNE not Warner. One more reason Elle is much more irritating in the musical.

9. And since we're speaking of Warner--How in the name of all that exists does WARNER get the internship with Callahan? I get Vivienne and Enid--they are hardcore. And I get Elle. If nothing else, it's to facilitate hitting on her. But Warner? He's bland, doesn't come across as exceptionally clever, and is the opposite of a leader (Viv is totally the boss of him). Of the characters we know something about, Aaron Schultz (Fulbright and Rhodes scholar) or Whitney (her dad's Speaker of the House) seem more apt choices from either an intellectual or connections standpoint.

10. Actually, Callahan's FULL of Stupid Decisions--So he teaches Family Law in his Criminal Law classes and he hires dregs like Warner, but one would think that a man who's running a BILLION dollar law firm, would be able to put together a better team for a defense in a headline-makng murder trial than four 1Ls, a first year attorney who he hasn't even made an associate, and himself.

Oh, in case you were wondering? You have a lot of time to think about things in the ensemble.

In defense of "Deranged Sorority Email" Writer

Part of my daily activity these days, is to take Charlie, our new(ish) puppy out into the fenced off garden in the backyard and let him run like a wild man for a while. I usually take him out there, weather permitting, for about 20 or 30 minutes in the morning and about an hour in the afternoon. Since there's wireless access back there, I usually take my computer or iPad and read or write or just mess around for a while. Which brings me to Saturday. I was trying to kill some time until the televised Alabama spring football game started. And then, I got an email from my friend, Taylor that read, "Have you seen this yet?" with a link.

This link.

I started out in open-mouthed disbelief, but I have to admit that by the end, I was laughing so hard that Charlie was trying to climb into my lap to see what all the brouhaha was about.

Because that was the funniest thing I've seen in FOREVER.

I want to start out by saying that the language she uses is COMPLETELY inappropriate. Not to mention that she uses both "retarded" and a gay slur as perjoratives. And that's not okay at all. And in fact, her now deleted Twitter posts (screen-capped here before someone, I'm assuming her, took them down) make her seem like a snotty, hateful piece of work. But then, I had to ask myself, if you took all of my Facebook statuses and Twitter posts out of context and you didn't know me, you might think that I was a snotty, hateful piece of work, too. I've made fun of peoples' tragic fashion choices and Senior day at the grocery store and my complete inability to convey ANY information to our Polish-speaking housecleaning ladies. Plus, I talk about General Hospital an awful lot, so that makes me look even MORE clever. And it could be that she IS a snotty, hateful piece of work.

That said, the original email is EXTREMELY well-written. I mean, it is some SERIOUSLY well-constructed prose. And, if I'm being honest about my opinion...she, well...she kind of has a point. When I, through tears of HYSTERICAL laughter posted the original Gawker link on Facebook, my friend, Donya, almost IMMEDIATELY replied, "Oh, the times that I thought this." In fact, I've had several friends who agreed, not with the way the point was made, but the point this woman was trying to make.

You see, I went to a big state school with arguably, the most powerful on-campus Greek system in the country. A Greek system of which I was a part. So, admittedly, I'm coming at this from a different, and possibly skewed perspective. But later on the same day that I read the email, I overheard people talking about it and realized that without the filter of knowing how sororities and fraternities and big universities and Greek Weeks work, it's impossible to grasp what's actually going down here.

I've seen a lot of comments about this incident on the internet and heard some in real life, so first, I should explain what Greek Week is and how it works. Yes, there are lots of parties. But no, that's not what it's necessarily about. What generally happens in Greek Week is that a sorority is paired with a fraternity (in my personal experience, sororities often had more than one fraternity partner because fraternities are smaller and there are more of them). Sometimes it was a fraternity where you knew a lot of the guys and a lot of the sorority members dated someone from that house. And sometimes it wasn't. Which is kind of the point. Throughout the week there are organized events involving all Greek houses on campus AND smaller events and parties organized by a particular sorority or fraternity for their Greek Week partner. It's about interacting with the entire community of Greek houses. It's about meeting new people. And it's about fun and friendly competition. When she's talking about cheering for the sports events, she means that there are intramural sports--soccer, flag football, softball--and the winning team gets points. At the end of Greek Week they add up all of the points you've won--for the sports, for spirit events like parties where you get points for how many members attend, for money raised in philanthropy events-- and the winning "team" gets money to donate to their particular philanthropy. Plus, you meet people, so that when your sorority does a charity basketball tournament, or a 5K race or hosts a BBQ dinner to raise money for your particular philanthropy, the people you've met during Greek Week will show up and buy tickets or enter the race or whatever.

My point is, that all of the people who think that this woman is telling the members of her chapter to hook up with Sigma Nus...that's not it. What she's ranting (in an admittedly hysterical manner) about is showing a basic degree of social skills, or really less than that...she's asking them to refrain from being out and out RUDE to their hosts. College-aged women should not need to be told that if you are at John's party, you shouldn't be talking about how you're going to leave and go to Bob's party later. It's rude as hell. And she isn't telling them to hook up with the guys when they're at the party. She's asking that they be sociable and conversational to their hosts. I mean, SERIOUSLY...when I was 11 I had a birthday party and all of the popular girls from my class showed up and clumped together and talked only to each other which was completely awkward for me and all of the other girls who were there who were NOT in my class. In other words, these adult women are going to a party and acting like the snotty, popular girls from my ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASS. And she's not asking them to get drunk and party...she's calling them out for claiming that they are ONLY comfortable when they're drunk. She's asking them to cheer for their team in the Greek Week sporting events. She's asking them exhibit behavior that will probably be useful and necessary later in life and careers--making nice at parties, being enthusiastic about things you might not care that much about, doing something you don't necessarily love to do. I may be completely in the wrong, but I consider these things to be LIFE skills. Not sorority skills or college skills.

The thing is, unless you were one of those girls who was doing the weird or dumb stuff in college, then I think that my friend, Donya, is correct: You HAVE felt like this at some point. Especially if you were an officer or in charge of something that was going to shit. Now, granted, I never sent a profanity-laced email (mainly because this was, for the most part, pre email) but I can think of two specific times when I was part of a "Seriously, ladies, get your shit together" movement. The first involved most of the Little Sisters of my close circle of friends (although, I'm happy to say, neither of MY Littles). We were sophomores, they were freshmen and we walked into the first big party of the year to find the whole group of them sloppy drunk from pre-gaming with Jaegermeister. I'm talking falling down, throwing up in trash cans DRUNK. This necessitated us dragging them out of the party, driving them back to the dorm and making sure that they got to their rooms/beds safely, which means that we missed a huge chunk of an awesome party because they didn't know how to act--and I had to to take charge of one of the fools whose actual Big wasn't there that night. Which meant that the next day, we pulled them all into one of our rooms at the sorority house and read them the riot act about their behavior. In a completely different kind of situation, my best friend and roommate was the scholarship chair for two years, one of which I was the assistant chair, so we would have this big printout of all of the GPAs at the end of the semester and I would watch Liz--who is the sweetest, most reasonable lady in the world--FREAK OUT as we went over the GPAs. She totally understood that you could have a bad semester and end up with a 2.5. But neither of us could ever figure out how people managed to come up with a 0.2, or worse an actual buckshot (the infamous 0.0). Which usually meant at the next chapter meeting she was going to stand up and read everyone the riot act for attempting to flunk out of college on her watch. I mean, I remember any number of late-night TV room conversations that revolved around, "How Hard Is It for People to Brush Their Hair and Put on Decent Clothes When We Have a Swap/Mixer." (Or put on shoes to answer the door, or not give the door code to your psycho ex-boyfriend, act like you've actually been to a publicly-held event of any kind--there were many of these conversations).

I want to stress this: The girl who sent this email. She was wrong. She freaked out. She said things in a completely inappropriate manner and she pretty much epitomizes why you should wait 12 hours after writing an angry email before you hit send. She comes across as completely crazy and out of control. Her Twitter postings seem to back that up. In spite of all that, I agree with the spirit, if not the application thereof. I also want to point out that whichever member of her chapter made the email public was also wrong. Yes, this girl went around the bend and made a huge, hateful mistake. There are, however, any number of ways to handle it. I'm talking ways within the bylaws of the chapter itself and the national sorority as a whole. Instead, some member of her sorority chose to make it public in a way that could potentially be damaging to the email writer for the rest of her career and life. And that's not cool. Sororities have internal judicial mechanisms for handling poor behavior of members. The consequences can range from social probation to expulsion from the organization. Outside of that, all collegiate chapters have an alumni advisor or an entire panel of almnae who oversee the chapter's operation. And even beyond that there's each sororities national office to whom a collegiate member could go. The point being, there was more than one wrong here.

And on a lighter note, there are now a couple of performance art pieces is what I would call them, I guess, of actors reading the email. I admit to being easily amused. I laughed 'til I hurt at these.



and here's a link to a possibly even more hilarious reading by Michael Shannon.

I feel like my life is swallowing me whole.

So, you know how sometimes you're having a casual conversation with someone. Maybe someone you see all the time, but that you don't really know. I'm going to use this example (although it wasn't the person with whom I had the conversation): Let's say that you're in Starbucks and you're in there a lot and they know you and they're like, "Oh, hey, Sally, how's it going?" and you're like, "Oh, you know. Super busy right now." and then they're like, "But that's good. Busy is good." And I get it. I totally do. No one WANTS to be bored, right? But sometimes there are periods where you're thinking to yourself, "Just an hour. I want just an hour where even if I'm not doing anything, I'm not thinking about the approximately 5 thrillion things that I need to be doing or appointments I have or meetings or whatever." And that's me right now. Now let me be fair...it's my own doing. I'm really involved with local theater. To the point where I have gone almost back-to-back working on shows in some capacity since last September. Tech, crew, performing...it's been a whirlwind, culminating in the period from January to the second week in March where I was in preparation for THREE shows at once. I'm down to one. And only one more weekend of that, to boot. But between the shows, and a spring that just can't seem to get here and stay, and a new puppy (I haven't slept past 7 a.m. in almost two months), AND attempting to do a massive household clean out/reorganization (and thanks to the Lupus Foundation of America for coming to pick up two black garbage bags FULL of clothes), I really, really, really feel fried right now.

Plus, I'm going through this whole thing where I'm trying to, well, to put it simply...figure shit out and get my shit together. I think, and this could just be the wonky weather and the general chaos of my life, that I'm at a crossroads. Maybe. I don't know what kind. Right now it feels like all kinds of things are in flux--on the verge of changing, in the process of changing, stagnant but NEED to change. I don't know why, but I feel like I'm in West Side Story and about to bust out into a chorus of "Something's Coming." Although I'm pretty sure my something isn't a dance-fueled gang war. I just have to figure out WHAT it is.

So that's the reason, or at least part of it, for my extended absence. It's not an excuse. Because there have been plenty of times when I've actually written something (in Word, not on the blog) and then not had the wherewithal to post it. And also of plenty of times when I thought, "I want to do a blog post about that." and then didn't. As well as times when I just sat doing absolutely NADA--not writing, not thinking about writing, not thinking about ANYTHING.

But like, I said...at a crossroads, I think. We'll see.

In My Closet--February 14, 2013

Dress: Lilly Pulitzer (older)
Tights: Spanx
Shoes: MIA (from DSW)(older)

First of all, please excuse the pile of hanging clothes stacked behind me. That is every shirt I own that's not a t-shirt. It was all part of the Great Closet Reorganization of 2013. Fear not...I fit everything back in there. Now, that's not to say it's not packed so tight that you pull out the two items on either side of what you're aiming to pull. But for now, it's gonna have to do. That said, I had this "Trying to Go to Sleep" epiphany last night about something that MIGHT work to alleviate part of the problem. It would involve a trip to Goodwill/Red, White and Blue, some Pinterest-y craftiness and a complete Soviet-era Re-Education as to what's allowed to be folded and what simply MUST be on hangers. I'm actually kind of excited about it to tell you the truth.

Anyway, yesterday, I mentioned that I had lost something. Other than my mind and my patience. Back in the late spring, there were still a few things in my closet that were winter-y. I guess they would be termed "transitional pieces". All the rest of my winter stuff--and I mean the REAL winter stuff like cords and wools--had long since been packed into Rubbermaid tubs with cedar blocks and stored away. But these things, I had left on the off-chance that the sometimes persnickety New Jersey weather took a turn. Only last spring, it never really did and so when it became clear that summer was really gonna happen, I took the clothes and put them, to the best of my memory, in a Kate Spade shopping bag, which I stuck in the corner of my room. The idea was that at some point, I would go into the attic for something else and at that point I could take the bag up and put it in the Rubbermaids with the rest of my stuff. Only...I don't remember doing that. And now I can't find the bag. I can't even remember what all is IN the bag, although I know off the top of my head three pieces of clothing that I cannot find anywhere. I know they aren't things I would have loaned to friends. I know they aren't things I would have sent to a better home. I wouldn't have even sent them away on accident, at least not in the Kate Spade bag, because that thing was HUGE and pretty sturdy, so I would have swapped it into a different bag. This is driving me BONKERS. I have looked everywhere in the house I can even begin to imagine I would have put it. Admittedly, the cold has made me reluctant to do more than a cursory search of the attic or the under-the-deck storage room, and if it's gotten lost or misplaced or picked up and thrown out because someone thought it was in the discard pile? Well, that's my fault and I can live with it. But LORD it is making me NUTS. Okay...it's making me nuttier.

So, when I post the pictures of myself, they are a day behind. What I mean is that I take a picture every day, but I don't USE that picture until the next day. What I'm really hoping is that I can post on Monday through Friday, but I'm ALSO hoping that I can grab a picture or two on the weekends (like this weekend? I'm going to NYC for brunch with one of my best friends so I'm going to need to look awesome.). That way, if I have a day where I'm cleaning closets and never leaving the house, I don't have to get dressed beyond yoga pants. Well...yoga pants and a shirt.

Here's what I like about what I'm wearing in the picture. Obviously, I like the Spanx tights. If you've never had a pair, they are a revelation. They're not as tight as actual Spanx, but the are definitely tighter than these amazing pantyhose my friend, Carrie, discovered in college that were super sheer in the leg but tighter than any control top known to man in the top and were known forever in the sorority house lore as "Suck 'Em In Pantyhose". They take away any number of bumps and lumps. The dress is an oddity in that of all the Lilly Pulitzer I own, it's one of exactly two Lilly pieces I own that's not ferociously summer season. The other is a cord skirt that's so old that it's got the 1990s tag with the Lilly logo in black. We have Lilly Pulitzer Signature store right in Palmer Square in Princeton. It's called Palm Place and it's absolutely lovely, as are the couple who own it. They have an incredible sale in August and pretty good ones at other times of the year. I got this dress--you can't see in the picture, but the pink part is pink high heels--right before Christmas before last when I was checking the sale rack to see if there was a dress for my niece's gift and ended up wearing it to my family Christmas party. It was actually in the pile of stuff to go in the Lost Kate Spade Shopping Bag when I decided to pull it out to wear over the summer and I ended up wearing it a couple of times, with a pair of sandals on days when the temperature dipped down into the 70s. But the real find is those shoes. I got them at DSW over a year ago to wear with one specific outfit and I have ended up wearing them over and over and over with EVERYTHING. It took me a while to get the hang of the wedge-heeled booties but once I figured out that it was okay to wear them with something other than jeans, they've become my shoe of choice. I got another pair of MIA wedge booties this fall in brown and I've worn the hell outta them, too.

In other news...I tried a different approach to the whole picture thing today for the picture you will see tomorrow. Part of that was out of necessity--everything I did today took longer than it should have in a sane world so by the time I stopped long enough to do it, it was so dark that I got NOTHING from my window (the easiest way to explain this is that my window looks, not outside, but into a small sunroom that's an addition to the house.) and partly because I wanted to see if this might be a better approach. And yes, this was one of the more exciting parts of my Valentine's Day. But for those of you who had awesome Valentine-y stuff going on--I hope it was great. And if you're STILL having awesome stuff going on--I hope it's STILL great. Happy Valentine's (or Single Person Awareness) Day!

In My Closet--February 13, 2013

Tunic: Anthropologie (old)
T-shirt: Gap
Leggings: Lulu Lemon
Boots: Frye

Okay, I'm going to have to complain about a First World Problem. I have too many clothes. There. I said it. And really the first step is admitting you have a problem, right? I love nothing more than trawling a consignment shop or thrift store. And here's where I admit to being an even worse person. I'm not looking for something cool that I can repurpose and make super hip. I just want...clothes. Sometimes I'm absolutely FLOORED by what I find: 2 pairs of Nanette Lepore pants, a Lilly halter-neck top with the tags still on it, a vintage Black Watch plaid Laura Ashley dress with a velvet collar. And those are from THRIFT STORES, not consignment shops. Anyway...maybe it's just me, but if I find a pair of Nanette Lepore pants for $3.99, well, they're coming to live in my closet whether I need pants or not. And I don't. Need pants, that is. What I need is closet.

I actually have two closets in my room. One is composed completely of shelves. Which sounds like it would be awesome. And on the surface it is. You can get some SERIOUS shit done with a (albeit single) closet with shelves--it's like Shoe Heaven in there. The problem is that the shelves mean the closet space isn't utilized correctly. They're VERY deep, so whatever you put on them has to be right on the front edge. This particular problem is compounded by the fact that there's no light in the closet. At all. I've put some of those little tap lights in, but the cavernous depths are barely thwarted by their meager light. The other closet is a double closet. It's got one of those design-it-yourself built ins. It's divided into approximate thirds--one-third for long hanging clothes, one-third is shelves and three drawers and one-third is a top and bottom hanging bar. This doesn't sound like a bad gig, right? The problem is, I don't have a chest of drawers in my room (and there's no place to put one if I did). This means that all of my folded clothes have to fit into three drawers, three shelves and the two smaller drawers in my bedside table. Not only that, there are two huge pipes in the section of the closet with the stacked hanging bars, which SERIOUSLY cuts into the available hanging space. I've moved stuff around every single way I can think of and I'm still not making it work. I am a closet failure. (Here's the part where I admit I'm closet spoiled. By the time I was REALLY into clothes in upper elementary school, I had a huge bedroom with a gigantic chest of drawers and a double closet, plus free reign of the coat closet in our playroom. My first apartment had a big ol' walk-in and my first place of my own? I lived alone. ALL the closets in the house were mine.) I'm GOING to figure this out. I refuse to be defeated by my own clothing.

I guess I need to stop obsessing and discuss the clothes, I've taken out of the tragic closet and put on, huh? Since this has gotten all confessional, I should tell you that I'm not wearing the bracelets that I usually wear with this tunic top because I couldn't find them. Why? Because in the midst of the great closet re-org which was happening sometime between soap opera and dinner time, I picked up my pink summer Kate Spade bucket bag and realized that I had put it away with stuff in it. Stuff included my square lime earrings, three pens, my Burt's Bees travel-sized hand cream, about five dollars in quarters, a tube of Clinique Black Honey lipstick and the bracelets that go with the tunic. Now considering that I would never have carried a cotton candy pink purse with that top? I have no clue how they got there. I'm just glad I found them (speaking of...lost items are my next topic. Tune in tomorrow.) What I REALLY wanted to share with the world is about investment pieces. Now, when the fashion magazines talk about "investment pieces" the mean things like Birkin bags and fur coats and Chanel ballet flats. And I would consider those things to be investments for sure. But not being independently wealthy, I have a different standard for investment pieces. The Frye Melissa Button Boots and the Lulu Lemon leggings. Y'all both of those items are SO worth it. To the point that I now have a second pair of the same leggings in a capri length AND a pair that are reversible. And it wasn't that I got them because I was afraid the first ones would wear out--they are seriously good quality pieces. I got them because I want to wear them every day and I didn't want to have to keep doing laundry. And the bonus is that if you get yours in a Lulu Lemon store? They will hem those bad boys for you free of charge. The boots...oh, how I love them. Especially since Frye makes them with extended calves (which is my all-time biggest rant subject). They're pricey, but so, so worth it. Treat yourself. You shall not be sorry.

In My Closet--Monday, February 11, 2013

Shirt: Old Navy (old)
Skirt: Gap (old)
Tights: Target
Boots: Frye (from Zappos)
Scarf: gift

I follow a bunch of blogs where the writer takes a daily (or something like that) picture or series of pictures, and talks about what she's wearing or fashion in general or just posts the picture and is like, "Bitches, this is how fabulous I look today." My favorite is Kendie Everyday, because she's funny and seems like real people and is wearing things that are pretty darn reasonable in the human world in which the rest of us reside. Orchid Grey is a little more funky, style-wise and often features pieces that are thrifted. If you want to drool over things you can't begin to afford, there's Atlantic-Pacific. It's stunning, but when I say "high-end", I'm talking about Valentino-Chanel-MiuMiu-Jimmy Choo-Manolo kind of high-end. In any event, all enjoyable for different reasons. What they all have in common, other than endlessly entertaining me, is that they all seem to be in possession of damn good photographers--friends, husbands, boyfriends, kind strangers on the street. I don't know who does all of their pictures, but they're always fantastic. And then there's Katie's Closet, which has adorable (and reasonable outfits) and she takes the pictures herself, in a mirror, with her phone. Although, I'm gonna have to assume that she has a better phone and better lighting (My room is softly and dreamily lit. Not an overhead light fixture to be found.) than I. So until I acquire a better phone, better lighting, a way to set the camera up on the tripod so that I don't look like a deer in headlights or a talented photographer love interest...I'm going to experiment and see if I can find something that works. So, the point is please excuse the picture quality until I get this squirreled away, as it were.

A couple of weekends ago, I was out for dinner with my friends, Katie and Laurie. We were on our way to see a friend's show and we were talking about Katie's forthcoming headshot appointment. And of course, since this was a conversation amongst girlfriends, it eventually turned to wardrobe. We had a little bit of discussion about color and style and I told Katie some of the things I thought she should wear. The next week, after Katie's shoot, she sends me a Facebook message that said, "The stylist at the photoshoot said you were exactly right and you must really know your stuff. Hell, while we were talking about it at the restaurant, Laurie said that she wished I would just come to her closet and show her what goes with what. This. This is the thing at which I excel. I can look at a piece and tell you what OTHER piece with which it needs to be paired. I also have a knack for looking at a jumble of stuff in the laundry and figuring out that two things which I never would have considered, should absolutely go together. Anyway, that would be a pretty awesome gig, right? I mean, it would be super to have it on a Rachel Zoe-level, I guess, but I find it ever so much more entertaining to look at someone's stuff and then pick out a few cool things from the sale room at Anthropologie or TJMaxx. But until I become independently wealthy and can boss people as to what they should wear at my leisure, I think we're gonna have to stick to this way. I'll take crappy pictures, tell you what I'm wearing, and then tell you WHY I'm wearing it.

At this point, I probably need some kind of twelve-step program over stripes. I would wear them every, single day. Although, when I think about that, it would make me seem like kind of a weirdo. Especially since the vast majority of my stripes are navy and white. I would look like a maniacal French sailor. The outfit that I'm wearing? It's one that if I didn't MAKE myself wear the other stuff in my closet from time to time, I would happily wear it every day. Is it kind of boring. Yep. It's pretty much all neutrals, not a color pop to be found. And sometimes, that's okay.

Normal? I don't do normal.

I think that I have lived pretty much every moment of my adult life at one of two speeds: full throttle or going in reverse. In other words, I always feel like I have way too much going on in my life, or I'm so bored that I could scream (or cry). It always shocks people who know me when I tell them that I consider myself to be shy. And I totally get why. If I know you, I'm outgoing and vivacious and I will talk to you for DAYS about pretty much anything. But if I don't? I'm a complete wallflower. This usually manifests itself as a tendency, when thrown into a group of people with whom I'm unfamiliar, to say as little as possible and kind of sink into the floor or my chair if possible. Part of this, especially since moving to New Jersey, has to do with me being self-conscious about my accent. Now in all fairness, I DO have an accent that is not the norm for these parts. Of course, for Sweet Home Alabama, my accent is pretty low key. Anyway, the point of that is to say that when I first moved to NJ seven years ago, I didn't know anybody. I didn't have friends who were already here. I didn't have acquaintances who were already here. Nothing, zip, nada. I think I spent the first three years (I DID have a good friend who moved to NYC my third summer here) staring at the wall. In other words...doing nothing.

So for quite a while, I was kind of on my own. I did get here right as football season was starting and I went into NYC to watch the games with the alumni association. The second year I was here, my sister was nearby and I did pretty much everything with her. It wasn't until the summer of 2009, when I had lived here for almost four years, that I dipped my toes back into the water of community theater. Theater has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember--first as a tiny audience member and then as a small performer and later an adult director/actor/costumer/crew/stage manager. In retrospect, it seems so odd to me. I didn't have any friends, y'all. For ALMOST FOUR YEARS.

I mean, obviously, I had friends. I had friends who came here to visit me and I talked on the phone to people all the time. But as far as a right here with me buddy? None. Which is why I am so, so grateful for discovering the theater community in this area. Y'all...I just want to take a minute to tell you that I have made some of the greatest friends a lady could hope to find. I'm talking about the kinds of friends who will talk you through a crisis, drive you to the airport, let you crash at their place when your power's out from a hurricane for six days and go get you medicine when you're too sick to drive to the pharmacy. I'm talking really awesome friends. And they're not just for crisis mode! There also good for lunch dates, shopping trips, movie nights...you name it, they do it.

That's the first thing I want to say. I have kick-ass friends.

The second thing that's buzzing about the noggin is that whole light-speed life vs. traveling backwards through time life. And it's related to the theater thing, because I think that the theater thing is causing me to experience the former, rather than the latter. I AM SO BUSY. And it's my own fault and I'm glad about everything I'm doing, but...geez.

First of all, I take an adult tap class. It's only the best adult tap class ever. I mean, I've taken an adult tap class before and it was fun, but it wasn't what I'd consider challenging. But this is awesome. It's SUPER fun and it's challenging my little feet right to the limit. Not only is it fun and I get good exercise and all that stuff...we are in the recital! Yep, that's right....come June, you can find me dancing to "It's Your Wedding Day" from The Wedding Singer while wearing an 80s formal dress and tap shoes. Please take a moment to enjoy the mental picture that brings.

THEN, back in December, I auditioned for Avenue Q which I didn't get cast in (we shall never, ever speak of my ineptitude at puppetry), but since I LOVE the company and everyone working on the show, I signed on to be their Assistant Stage Manager. Oh, and I'm also going to be in the ensemble of Legally Blonde (I'm going to have to do a ton of research to play...sorority girl and law student.). And then last week, because I'm a crappy auditioner who has approximately ZERO confidence, I auditioned for Cabaret to get some experience doing an audition for a role that is COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone, but doing it with a director with whom I'm completely comfortable. And then got cast as a part, well, completely out of my comfort zone and unlike ANY I've ever played (you'd be surprised at how rarely people look at me and say, "Yes. Nazi prostitute.").

Anyway, between dancing and ASMing and acting and acting...I am crazy busy. And it's kind of cool. Like a little test of myself to see how well I can handle a completely full plate. I will try to keep you updated. But like I said...freakishly busy. (I'm only here tonight because I skipped dance class 'cause I was feeling not sick, but icky...probably from exhaustion.)