I'm benignly gentile.

Part I:

The best way to learn new words is by reading. However, if you’re kind of ridiculous and are against that or, like me, don’t have time at the moment because of what is known as the fiery pits of homework, music is a good, less time consuming alternative (pop, ha).

Por ejemplo, “benign” means “not harmful.” This was one of my vocabulary words in English, but I knew the definition beforehand because of a lyric in Marina and the Diamonds’ (aka the actual queen of the world) song “Hollywood.”

“Your mind is just like mine, all filled up with things benign…"

the Marina and the Diamonds concert AHH

Part II: Now, to musicals: an alternative to Hebrew School? (NOT REALLY)

The Last Five Years taught me that “goyishe” means someone or something that is not Jewish. “Shiksa” (as in “Shiksa Goddess”) is a gentile girl or woman. Finding this out lead me to look up what gentile means (which is also "not Jewish").

Shrek the Musical lead me to look up the word “Kafkaesque,” in turn leading to extensive reading of Kafka (as in Franz)’s Wikipedia page, thus leading me to find that he was a Jewish German-speaking author of novels and short stories during the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.

The Fiddler on the Roof explained that “l’chaim" is a toast to life, and a billion other things about Orthodox Judaism. I saw it with my friend Rachael, who happens to be Jewish. At intermission, I grilled her on everything Jewish mentioned in the play, which is literally everything because the whole plot, for those who don’t know, is about an Orthodox Jewish village in Russia during World War II.

zees eez rachael and iy goeen to feedlare oan zee rouf

These definitions, and probably others to be totally honest, leave us with the task of figuring which of these conclusions is true: 1.) The world of musical theatre is fascinated in Judaism 2.) It just so happens that three of the musicals I’ve seen/listened to/been involved in recently have all had major references to Judaism (it’s all a big coincidence/the universe wants me to know more about Judaism) or 3.) Judaism is a super-big, worldwide religion that comes up all over the place and it’s only natural that musical theatre is included in that. In all honesty, it’s probably the third one, but I like to think that things happen for a reason (because imho life is more fun that way).

Just as a general side note, most (if not all) of the Jewish people that I’ve met have been some of the nicest people I’ve known as well. Who knows if there’s a correlation (and that’s not to say that your religion defines you or that any religion besides Judaism is inferior! Or superior! I’m not Jewish, or any other religion for that matter, so this is totally not meant to be offensive to anyone; it’s just my minuscule compilation of experiences.) Additionally, for much of my elementary school life I was fascinated with Judaism and actually kind of wanted to be Jewish (mind you, I’ve never been religious so I had nothing with which to compare it).

Takeaway:

Marina Diamandis can help you ace your English tests.

If you have any interest in subtly learning about Judaism, look to musicals.

Anyway, ttfn. Nice seein' ya.

wishing I were German + a mini lesson

Accents are pretty weird things. Everybody has an accent, and it’s not difficult for us to talk in our own, but it can take a lot to learn other accents accurately and be able to speak in them.

I’ve always been an accent type of gal. I’ll randomly switch from my own accent to British to Indian to Aussie to Russian to Scottish to Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor knows what else (ha). The research behind this habit has originated in the caves of random life experiences and seeped its way into my cerebral sponge from movies, exchange programs, the internet, other human beings (if you can believe that), etcetera. I’ve never had to learn an accent for any purpose other than wanting to do so. Until now...

As a pig in Shrek the Musical, I’m supposed to be German. Let me just say that being German is pRETTY GOSHDARN DIFFICULT THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I hardly even have three lines, but I feel like I’ll be able to better impersonate my character if I put myself in a German accent mindset (think in German, sing in German, etc.) (also, German is kind of a classic, you’ve gotta be able to do German) (also, it's way more fun to be German than American, let's be honest with ourselves here, kids).

I watched a few videos of some Germans speaking English, and then a video of a British voice actor doing a German accent, and then listened to the International English Dialect reading whatever whatever website. Even after all of this, I still manage to sound Indian, Russian, or French when trying to sound like I'm from Deutschland, although I do admit my German accent is now only slightly worse than okay. 

Anyway, as a person who’s generally alright at accents, this has been a new challenge (that I 100% brought upon myself because I could do an accent that sounded enough like German to get by in saying lines before I even embarked upon this journey).

Not-so-side-note that I thought I’d point out: The German accent is really pleasing and beautiful. It can sound harsh, especially when one is actually speaking German, but even then it has this good… GAH, I don’t know. I like it a lot. In English, which is mostly what I have been listening to (actually, all of what I’ve been listening to), it can sound sweet or comical (and surely many other things as well) either/any one of which is alrighty-okay with me.

A mini German-accent lesson from someone who clearly doesn't know what she's doing at all:

a little chart of consonants that I found on the top of my head

Other points:

Vowels are a nice Ice Mocha Blended between British and American. Kind of.

Earlier today, my friend advised me to speak like I was complaining, which sounds eh but helped me a surprising amount.

Germans don’t speak with their mouths open very wide, which is a useful thing to keep in mind.

At the end of the day when you come home to me and you're another day older and all is said and done, and when you’re simply much too tired to remember all of these rules thank you very much, there’s always that coughing up phlegm thing. You know what I mean. You know exactly what I mean.

in which I explain how I became a pig

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.First, some background information that slowly dissolves into the story:

My high school is putting on Shrek The Musical this year.

I auditioned mostly because, well, why not? At first, I was going to audition for the auditioning experience, as at the time I was still on the swim team and I thought I wouldn’t have enough time. But of course, when I got there and saw all of my people-that-I-actually-like theatre buddies, I decided that, as a matter of fact, I did want to be in the musical.

I was not expecting to be called back, especially because on my audition form I had written “auditioning to audition” where I was supposed to write the name of whatever character it was my heart’s desire to portray. Also because the casting director was age-ist. But that’s whatever.

Anyway, when the callback list was up, I was on it. I wasn’t called back for any major roles, but I was okay with it. When I got to callbacks, we were informed that they had been expecting more people to audition, and that everyone had been called back. Of course. Still, I said “I’ll take it.” Considering my lack of on-paper experience (or any other experience, for that matter), I couldn’t expect to get a lead, or even a role with lines or a solo. And that's totally okay, because if it's fun, it doesn't really matter how many lines you have.

In the end, I was cast as a Duloc citizen, a guard, and a happy village person, as well as a fairytale creature tbd by costume availability. Alright, I thought. I can deal.

About forty people had auditioned. The teacher had been told to expect sixty, which is sort of a mess to begin with, but again, whatever. Right off the bat, a few people crossed their names off of the cast list. Within the first few rehearsal days, a bunch more people had decided that they no longer wanted to be fairytale creatures (which I honestly don’t understand. Who wouldn’t want to be a freak?).

At this point, our group numbers looked kind of ridiculous because we had gaps everywhere (well, have, present tense).

Now, with five weeks left to rehearse, we have twenty six people in our cast. TWENTY. SIX. PEOPLE. At the very least, the cast is supposed to have forty to fifty members, and we have TWENTY SIX. Okay.

More backstory:

This one girl literally showed up for rehearsal two and a half times. I’m not even exaggerating; I’m fairly certain that's an accurate approximation of her attendance. She was the third little pig. At this point, you can probably guess where this is going to end up, but I’ll tell you anyway just for the health of it (I saw that on a paper towel dispenser. Clever paper towel manufacturers). And because I probably shouldn’t end a post in the middle of a story.

So.

We arrived at rehearsal last Friday and this girl is not there. AGAIN. Not only that, she also didn’t tell anyone that she wasn’t going to be coming. AGAIN. The director said "She’s cut," and that we needed a new third little pig. Short-story-shorter, she picked me.

Some minutes later, the girl showed up. The director took her into another room, and, from what she later told us, gave the girl the option of either playing a smaller part or dropping the show. The girl dropped.

So now I’m the third little pig.

this is who I am now (picture courtesy of GazetteXtra)

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.

time takes time, and so does everything else

I recently began an essay with the definition of the word “immigrant.”

I’m going to begin this blog post with a definition, albeit not the same one.

Time. Time is primarily defined by the dictionary on my school-issued Mac as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”

When someone says, “I need more time,” they do not literally mean that they need more of the indefinite continued progress of existence. What they usually are referring to is the dictionary-app’s third definition of time, which is "time as allotted, available, or used.”

We need more time is (sadly) something that is said far too often in rehearsal for the musical at my high school. We cannot, however, have more of the continued progress of existence, and we also cannot have more time set aside to rehearse. When I questioned as to why this was, I was greeted with an answer that had something to do with the fact that we couldn’t rehearse during the summer. To me, the answer seemed simple: push the play back a few weeks in order to give us more time to rehearse. For reasons having to do with holidays and people who make decisions for schools, this plan wasn’t put into action.

Some people are planners. (e.g. the people who make decisions for schools). They set specific times (second definition: a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon) for everything they do, even counting to the second as to not throw their day into chaos.

My cousin has a professor who begins walking to the podium at the front of the class exactly twenty seconds before 10:15 am (when the class is scheduled to begin). If students aren’t in their seats by the time she reaches the podium, they are to leave. Her TAs are like guards, making sure no student comes into the class who wasn’t present at the given minute (or, in this case, second).

My aunt reached the JFK airport at some amount of time that is represented in minutes by a number greater than 60. For those of you so uneducated as to not be familiar with the specific rules of the John F. (which, as it turns out, stands for Fitzgerald) Kennedy International Airport, one must arrive at exactly one hour before the time of their flight departure (or boarding time, or something like that). (I’m joking of course; I do not expect you to know the policies of that particular airport, nor would I be offended if you happened to.) Anyway, by the time my aunt got through the horrendous security line, it was, you guessed it folks, 59 minutes before whatever that particular time was before which she needed to arrive 60 minutes. Because of this strict time rule, my aunt was not allowed through security, and something happened along the lines of she-missed-her-flight-and-had-to-go-to-the-trouble-of-booking-a-new-one-oh-bother. Or something like that.

Time is also important in my life. Although I am not a super-planner (I rarely plan even a week in advance), I participate in many activities which take up time. For instance, I have rehearsal every day after school (which ends at 2:25, 1:45 on Mondays) until 6:00 pm, possibly before. On top of that, I started taking dance classes, which are about a 30 minute drive away, as well as a new theatre class, also 30 minutes away, each of which are from one to two hours long. On top of those, I also have the general high school homework load of endless biology reading and math assignments, with the occasional essay or memorized speech.

What I sometimes look like after a day filled with filled time.

I very much enjoy doing all of these things. There was a time (ha) not too long ago that I did activities that I did not particularly enjoy. They were fine; however, they were not my PASSION/I didn’t have any passion in doing them. Passion is, as they say, a whole nother (dear FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT nother is not a word) corn grove (well, actually, I’m fairly certain that I made that one up, and that no one, or at least almost no one, has said that ever in the history of the world.)(Wait a second. Does corn not even grow in groves?! That's trees, gah. Cornfield.) Point being, I used time for things I didn’t like. Now I use time for things that I do like. Everything is much more fun. Shocker!

Even though I enjoy all of the things that I use time to pursue, sometimes I feel a bit… stressed out. I cannot, for whatever reason, get more time; I can only use less time to do things that I like in order to dedicate more time to things that need to be done, such as homework, that I don’t necessarily like, but I also don’t necessarily dislike. This is a constant dilemma. At this point in time (wow, I’m good), I’ve decided to just stick with the stuff, because I’d rather be doing lots of things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like than be doing some things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like and then have some time where I’m not doing anything at all.

If that makes any sense.

So, just to summarize...

1. Time is important.

2. Don’t use time to do things you don’t like.

3. Do use time to do things you do like.

4. Eat ice cream when you want it, even if it’s late and the ice cream has caffeine in it because it’s coffee ice cream.

5. Carpe diem ^^^ (or night, depending on what time 'tis)

6. Wait, what?

7. Never mind; I was just testing you.

8. Oh, okay.

9. Get to JFK International Airport more that 1 hour prior to whatever the time is to which you need to be 1 hour prior.

 10. Stress isn’t always bad, it’s just a side effect of using time to do many things that you like. 

11. In conclusion, do whatever you want, as long as you have time (and it doesn’t negatively affect anyone else), because there is only so much time anyway, so why spend the time in which you could be doing things you enjoy to do things you don’t enjoy that you don’t have to do.

Today has been a day of wordy explanations. I could talk about time for all time. Maybe I'll do a Part II sometime.

Anyway.

Ciao.