a prank for people who don't want to be too mean

As stated on this page, I love to make a ruckus with my keyboard. I take piano lessons now, but one of my only regrets is quitting piano in the second grade. I don’t remember why I started playing piano originally. It wasn’t because my parents told me to, or because my friends thought it was fun, or even because I genuinely thought it would be a good skill to have. I have no idea. Well, I actually do vaguely remember thinking that it would be cool to play songs by Taylor Swift.

Regardless, I began taking piano lessons at my house from the music teacher at one of the public elementary schools. I also wanted to learn how to play the flute. Although now this has almost no appeal to me, it was something that I really thought was important that I do. My teacher suggested that I learn to play the recorder first, as sort of a “gateway instrument” to the flute. Thus, I started taking lessons, dedicating half the allotted time piano, half to recorder. Slowly, my interest in piano ebbed away as I realized that I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb, not You Belong With Me. Recorder edged piano out of my lessons, and I finally stopped playing piano altogether. Recently-ish, around the beginning of this school year, I started playing piano again. My friend is hardcore amazing at piano, and I kind of couldn’t live with the fact that I didn’t know how to play.

Mini life lesson: If you can’t live without doing something, do it.

I started taking voice lessons at the same time as piano, so I now do half-piano, half-voice lessons. This time, though, I really enjoy both piano and voice, so I don’t think I’ll end up quitting either one.

I love being able to play piano. Even though I’m not Beethoven quite yet, it’s still one of my favorite things to do. There are pianos in the band room in my school, as well as the drama room, so sometimes I’ll just randomly play the piano between classes and at lunch. It’s good to have a few actual songs memorized, because Heart and Soul can only be a masterpiece so many times. Speaking of which, Heart and Soul:

Heart and Soul in and of itself is one of my favorite pastimes. (If you are unfamiliar, skip to the video at the bottom.) More specifically, translating Heart and Soul into every key possible is one of my favorite pastimes. Let me preface this with the fact that I am not a person who loves pranks. Despite this, I love to play Heart and Soul in the key of A major. You may be very confused, and this is completely rational. How is that a prank, double question mark, you may ask.

Allow me to explain. Most people don’t automatically know what key a song is being played in upon hearing it. I’m sure there are some people who can, but the majority of the people I know don’t have that ability. Anyway, for those who don’t know, Heart and Soul is usually played in the key of C major. Therefore, if the bottom chords are being played in A major, pianist number two is expecting to join in with the melody in the key of C. When they do so, however, it sounds horrible and screwed up when the background is being played in A, and the melody chimes in, plunked out in C. It’s a really fun thing to do, and I highly suggest playing Heart and Soul in the key of A major. 

In order, the fingering for the chords for Heart and Soul in A major go as follows (keys to play with pink lines):

Original image from here.

You can play it any way you like, but here’s an example video:

Have fun screwing people up! I know I do, and remember: you’re doing no harm, so this prank is okay.

Cheers, and I hope this post made some sort of sense so that you can revel in your own piano playing glory.

xx Names are a box

people don't spend time in junkyards and there's a reason for that

This post is a detour, but a much needed and very important detour.

Humans spend a lot of time in the bathroom. It just seems to be a fact of life.

Spending time in spaces that look like this:

(picture from here)

…is not necessarily super fun. If your bathroom looks like the junkyard pictured above, or a different junkyard, or if you find things that look like this:

(picture from here)

lying around, or even if it just feels a little cluttered, here’s what you should do:

HOW TO CLEAN YOUR BATHROOM IF IT LOOKS LIKE A JUNKYARD

1. Start with the things you see right when you walk into the room. Don’t focus on drawers quite yet. (Just to be clear, I’m not telling you how to clean a toilet or a bathtub, more like a countertop.)

2. Clear the counter. For this step, I put all of the stuff that was on my counter in a big tub like this one:

, and put the tub on the floor and out of the way. 

3. Physically clean the counter. If you’re anything like me, your counter isn't just cluttered. There are hard-water deposits all over the place, especially around the sink, globs of things that you'd put on your face or in your hair if they weren't on your counter, etc.

To rid your bathroom of these, use a cleaner suitable for whatever type of counter you have (I have granite (?), so I used 409 Stone & Steel cleaner.)

the drama.

Sticky stuff will usually come off with a few good wipes of a paper towel, but luckily I didn’t encounter much of that this time around.

For hard-water deposits, I first used 409 and a paper towel, then 409 and a scrubby-bristly-brush thing, and then Lemi-Shine (For those who don’t know, Lemi-Shine is stuff that goes in the dishwasher along with… dishwashing stuff and it gets the hard-water deposits off of glassware.) This mostly worked, but it was hard to scrub in the tight areas around the faucet. I was more concerned about the clutter, but if you’re wanting to get really nitty-gritty, try using an old toothbrush to scrub the harder to reach spots.

4. Now that your countertop is spotless and sparkling comes the hard part. It’s time to sort through all of the junk. I sorted everything into piles of what they’re used for (i.e. hair, nails, teeth, face, etc.), just to make it easier to look at than one big heaping pile of hairspray, toothpaste, and lotion.

5. Then I threw away the stuff that was gross and  the stuff that I never used. At this point, you really do have to be willing to throw things away. Truly consider what you actually use on a daily basis. You don’t have to throw away everything! That said, be reasonable about it and don’t keep the never-opened bottle of expensive lotion that you bought three years ago.

6. Here, it’s a really good idea to have some sort of organizer. I got one for Christmas, but you can find them online here. I distinguished between things I use on a daily basis and things that I use every so often (or even never, but I saw no reason to throw away perfectly good chapstick). I tucked away the things I only use every so often in drawers, and filled the organizer with stuff I actually use.

7.  By now it’s really up to you as to how you’re going to organize everything. From previous experience, I would not recommend clumping, say, all of your hair stuff together, rather putting your bobby-pins separate from your hair ties. I’ve found that the less clear you make each item’s designated “spot,” the easier it will be for the whole thing to fall back into chaos. Again, though, it’s really up to you and what you know will work.

8.  Leave as few things as possible out in the open. A lineup of three bottles (detangler, dry shampoo, and a different hair thing that apparently has ten different uses), a big bottle of mouthwash, my toothbrush, a huge jar of coconut oil, and hand soap are the only things not in some kind of storage trinket. The fewer things without a specific spot, the less room for error (and the further in the future your next clean-out will need to be).

so nice

9.  Keep everything as nice as possible for as long as possible. Good luck!

Alright,

Sam

in which I explain how you can become a pig too

I was going to write a post about the ten out of twelve rehearsal we had yesterday. But I’ve just now decided against it, as that’s not necessarily a fun thing to experience firsthand, and in that case why would one want to experience it secondhand? So instead I’m going to talk about stage makeup. Because that ties in and it’s much more interesting anyway.

Stage makeup is absolutely ridiculous. I love it so much. It is the most fun thing to put on, so satisfying to take off, and just altogether a jolly good time. Right now, as you know if you’ve read any of my other posts, I’m doing Shrek the Musical, so there are some… interesting makeup looks taking place.

As a pig, I’m supposed to be pink. A funny thing happened where the girl who designed the makeup looks for fairytale creatures forgot to do the pigs, so ours was a last minute design. It’s adorable though, and all's well that ends well, so no hard feelings.

Get the look: Pig

You’ll start with the “normal” stage makeup look. That said, if your stage makeup looks normal, you're almost definitely doing it wrong.

First, you’re going to need some foundation. Lots of it. In fact, just cake it on there and see where it gets you. You’ll probably need more, but at least it's a start. Make sure it’s a shade or three darker than your actual skin tone, because you don't want to end up looking like a piece of paper under the lights.

Speaking of paper, you also don’t want to look flat. Even if you’re a pig who’s supposed to be chubby, you still need to contour. In fact, you can contour to make yourself look more chubby. Start by creating a shadow under your cheekbone. Rounding out this shadow will also round out your cheeks. The easiest way to do this is to make a fish face and draw two lines with your shadow colour where your cheeks naturally cave. Cave isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. Unless you don’t. Oh well. Anyway, draw two lines underneath your cheekbones and blend downward from there. To round out the cheeks, you can extend this line sort of to the bottom of your nose. You’ll also want to contour your nose a bit by darkening the sides and highlighting the bridge. Contour your jawline as well by darkening your neck and directly underneath your jaw. If you’re a guy and/or want a sharper and more masculine looking jawline, you can also highlight above the jawline. To finish off, just add some highlights and shadows where you think they'll work out. It’s really an in-the-moment process. 

a visualisation of what your highlights/contouring
should look like in a general sense

More contouring info can be found in this educational video, but keep in mind that you'll want to be about eight times more dramatic than this for stage.

The next thing you’ll need is some blush. For normal stage makeup, you can simply smile very widely and plop some blush on the apples of your cheeks. When doing the pig look, you can do this, but we’ll be putting on more blush later. Much more blush.

your blush look at this point

Now for the eyes. Remember that you’re going for a magnified version of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman look. Your eyes need to be dark and obvious as… Oh, I don’t know. Something very dark and obvious. First comes eyeshadow. Obviously, for this look you’ll do pink. Cover your lid with white, and add in some different shades of pink on the edges, in the crease, etc. You should probably highlight your brow bone as well, but that step never seems to actually work for me. Eh, do it anyway. Next, line your eyes with white. Yes, white eyeliner. Right above your lashes you should have a line of white, as well as some in the inner corner, outer corner, and in the waterline. This will help your eyes look larger. Draw a black line above the top white line and line the bottom in either black or dark brown under the water line. I like to blend out the bottom line, but that's optional. Actually, all of this is optional. Now, apply a ton of mascara (and falsies if they suit your fancy).

a lil step-by-step for ya

Fill in your eyebrows next. Almost all of the guys in Shrek literally use black eyeliner to fill in their brows, and the girls could probably get away with going darker than they are at the time being. You can hardly go wrong here.

For pig specific cheeks, you’ll need a ridiculous blush that looks absolutely like the colour your tongue gets when you eat a red lollipop. Or like a maraschino cherry. Or like the little number icon on the messages app. It’s whatever you please, as long as it’s ridiculously red. Take this red on your finger and smile really widely. Draw a circle on your cheek and fill it in. And then add more on top of that. In a circle.

There you go.

For lips, you can't go wrong with bright pink. I like to overdraw my cupids bow and my bottom lip a little bit, but it's really up to the discretion of your very own. Blot some concealer on them to reduce shine, which will be amplified x one million with the lights.

And of course, you’ll need a pig nose. I apologize in advance for how uncomfortable it is. When in doubt, just remember how cute you look as a pig and everything will be alright. In the end, you can always un-pig with Pond’s cold creme. Or coconut oil. Take your pick. 

(The pigs are German but I don’t speak that language and even though Google Translate is almost definitely incorrect...) auf wiedersehen.

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.