"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

^Orson Welles

In unrelated news, I bought myself a Canon T4i! Riley made a sort-of cooperative but oh-so-adorable subject.

This is kind of a follow-up on my last post. Or, perhaps more accurately, this is a post about how I've reached the downside of my creativity kick: the feelings of creative inadequacy, the inability to accept anything less than perfection, the crippling self-doubt.

It seems silly for me to be so affected by these things. I mean, geez, it's not even like I have to do any of the things I set out to do. Maybe it's because I have unattainably high expectations for myself, because I expect myself to be great at everything and that I have to know everything right now. Maybe I'm just feeling intimidated by other people's intense and seemingly inherent creativity. I don't know, but I seem to have hit a wall.

I think I'm a creative person, at least in a broad sense. I like to approach everyday situations in unexpected ways, and I like to turn mundane things into strange ones. I've had entire conversations that were built on those very things: I've created a hypothetical world in which vacuuming is far more exciting than vacations and in which we live in a symbiotic relationship with our vacuum cleaners. I once improvised an entire theorem about how the Earth is actually a living dodecahedron coated in reptile scales inside of a universe-bowl. A couple of friends and I rewrote the history of the United States by re-imagining what the names of events meant. So apparently I can come up with interesting things when I'm not thinking about it.

But the moment I say something like, "Hey, I feel like writing a story," or, "I want to make a movie," or even, "Dang, this class is boring; I should doodle until it's over," my brain turns all stony and logical and I end up just staring at the blank page wondering where all of my creativity went and why I can't even think of something to doodle on my notes. Just a stick figure would do, really. A 30-second video. A short story. Something. Anything.

I guess there's some switch in my brain that detects the possibility of failure and shuts everything down. "STOP! You can't do that! It might turn out to be bad! And then you won't be successful at anything in your life ever!" (Things in my brain escalate quickly.)

So then I just become a frustrated non-artist with excellent intentions but nothing to back them up. And then my brain says, "Oh, geez. Now look at you. Can't even doodle. You'll never be successful at anything in your life ever!"

Now, when I have good ideas, they're really good. I'll give myself that. They're just so rare that when I'm in between them I get lost in this spiral. Then I'll watch a Terry Gilliam film or something and think, "Why can't I think like that?" And it's that kind of ridiculous comparison that leads to this very blog post. I mean, really, Courtney. Who else thinks like Terry Gilliam except Terry Gilliam? There is absolutely no point in comparing myself to a creative genius like that.

I think Orson Welles is right, though. Without limitations, everything is straightforward and simple. And art is rarely pure and never simple, to borrow from the incomparable Oscar Wilde (yes, I am aware that he actually wrote that about truth, but that didn't fit. So shush). So many of the most brilliant things come out of not having the funds or the materials or the time needed to do the things that were originally intended.

Maybe this is just my own limitation. I've always had a tendency to quickly get discouraged when I can't do things I feel I should be able to do (as in, well, everything, pretty much). I'll just have to be one of those people who has rare but awesome shining moments, and I guess that's cool, too.

When I started writing I had every intention of waiting to post until I'd thought some more about whether I really want anyone to read this or whether anyone would even care. But I know if I don't post it now I won't, and then I won't have learned anything. This is the kind of thing that usually I would stash in my brain and brood about for a long time until I get tired of it or something else takes its place. But in an effort to actually write something, and being (as usual) unable to think of anything else, I decided it was just as good to just be open for once. So here it is. An honest confession.

Until next time,
~Snooty Crumb

"And if you're paralyzed by a voice in your head
It's the standing still that should be scaring you instead"
~ Ben Folds Five, "Do It Anyway"
This just happened to be playing as I was finishing up and I thought it was appropriate. :)

"Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is."

^Stephen Fry. I'm slightly obsessed with Stephen Fry.

(I apologize in advance for how long this is. Sorry. I'm excited.)
New Year's Resolutions. In February.
I've never really made New Year's Resolutions, because I know myself well enough that I know I'm not going to keep them, so I generally don't even bother. Sometimes I'll have one in my head and think to myself, "It would be kind of nice if I did this," but that doesn't count, mostly because I do that all the time. But this year I made something of a little-r-resolution that happened to be kind of at the beginning of the year. So it's a new year's resolution, but not a New Year's Resolution. (For the record, I did make a capital-R-Resolution to get in shape, but... yeah, no)
Whatever the case, my resolution this year is to start thinking again.
"Wait, what?" (That's probably what you just said to your computer.)
Yeah. I want to start thinking again. I won't go into my very long rant about how little our public school system encourages creativity and free thought, but, in case you're wondering, it's basically not at all.
As I somehow made my way through high school, I found myself running out of creative ideas quickly and getting annoyed when I had to think of something outside the box. By my first year of college it was making me extremely unhappy, only I didn't realize that that was the reason.
I finally came to the realization that I'm happiest when I'm learning about things, and not just learning about them, but thinking about them, and not just thinking about them, but thinking about them in a broader context, how they can fit into other situations, how I can make them look different. I'm that annoying person who's always saying "Did you know that...?" at every possible moment, not because I'm a pedantic arse, but because I'm genuinely interested in whatever irrelevant fact I've just happened to remember.
(By the way, did you know that George Washington was taking his own pulse as he died?)
Last semester I found a podcast called "Stuff You Should Know" from HowStuffWorks.com (which is awesome, if you haven't been there). It's these two guys who talk about pretty much everything you could think of, from autopsies to exoskeletons. That podcast was kind of what got me started on this brain-improvement kick.
This semester I'm in a class called "The Films of Terry Gilliam," which is just as awesome as it sounds. Our homework for the first week was to watch Jabberwocky and make a collage. Last week we watched Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and Monty Python and the Holy Grail and made a comic based on a poem. This week we have to (read: "get to") watch Time Bandits and make a flipbook.

This is my collage. I was really proud of myself for making actual art with actual meaning.

The point of the class is not just to analyze Terry Gilliam, which is great anyway, but it's also to be creative and use our hands to make things. It's about taking our noses out of our technology (says the chick currently staring at the computer) and going back into the library, picking up markers and glue and scissors, and creating whatever we think is relevant or interesting or beautiful. This class is what really made me want to bring myself back into the world of creativity and creation and start to think more deeply about the things I see around me.

This is my comic, based on Keats's Sonnet XVII. If you can't read the text on the comic (you probably can't; sorry), it's basically a guy who can't decide whether he likes where he lives or not.

So I've started reading again. I took a trip to Barnes & Noble last weekend and used the gift cards I'd been saving for a year, and then that same day I stayed up late finishing one of the books I had bought for the first time in who-knows-how-long (it was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green--holy moly was it amazing. Totally worth being tired the rest of the week. Heck, I would have stayed up for days to read it).
I got some books of poetry from the University library, because I'm tired of not knowing anything about poets.
I've been looking around for German TV shows I can watch on YouTube, because I'm sad that I'm losing my German skills.
I brought my Italian textbook and a Danish Rosetta Stone CD from home because I want to expand my linguistic repertoire, which is a phrase I just made up. It sounds official, right?
And I'm back here, on my blog, where I've been neglecting to post anything, because, despite the fact that very few people actually see it, it's still a chance for me to do something interesting with my brain. And besides, I missed writing. Since my ideas are generally sparse, I guess writing about my weird self is an okay alternative.
There's a commercial for Lumosity.com where this woman talks about how much Lumosity helped her brain get smarter or whatever, and she says something along the lines of, "It was easy to work out my body, but working out my brain was hard!" It always makes me laugh and then feel a little bit weird inside. Maybe I'm just more of a nerd than I realized, but that sentence always seems backwards to me. Is it just me who thinks that push-ups are way harder than puzzles? Why should that be the case?
So this is my encouragement to you: Pick up a book. Find your box of crayons (I know you have one somewhere). Do a jigsaw puzzle. Make a movie. Do something that makes you think, but, more importantly, that makes you happy. It doesn't have to look good. Just distance yourself from the digital for a little bit and see that it's not the only place where you can find happiness. And, above all, be creative.
So long for now!
~ Snooty Crumb

P.S. I'M GOING TO LONDON THIS SUMMER!!!!!! Temple has a Study Abroad program that's just for School of Media & Communications students, so I won't just be in London, I'll be in London learning about the things that will eventually (hopefully) be my job! So if I don't keep my little-r-resolution to post more often this semester, I can at least guarantee that I'll be posting something while I'm there. But lots of things are going on right now, so at least one more post will be coming soon. Details will probably be there. :)

I've been thinking...

Before I write anything else, some disclaimers. First, I never, ever, ever, ever want to give the impression that I think I am perfect or know anything more than anyone else. Far from it. What I have to say is my opinion. That's it. I don't expect you to agree; it's just the way I see things. Second, the things I'm saying don't apply to everyone. Because, of course, generalizing about people is basically impossible. What I'm talking about just applies to the very vocal minorities with whom I happen to disagree. A lot.
Anyway.
I grew up Christian, and even though my family pretty much stopped going to church by the time I got to high school, I still mostly have maintained my Christian beliefs and values. But lately I haven't been seeing as much of what I always thought Christianity was about, and since I got to college I've been having a hard time believing what I always thought I believed in.
Our country is so unbelievably divided. Not just politically, but religiously, too. It's not just the Liberals vs. the Conservatives; it's the Christians vs. the Muslims vs. the Jews vs. the Atheists. It's "Us" vs. "Them" on all accounts. Maybe it's because of our individualistic culture, but whatever the reason, it's a battle of ideologies in which no one is willing to move an inch. It doesn't even seem to be about beliefs anymore. It's about titles. It's about doctrines. And I just don't think that's how it should work. Church leaders battling about which particular doctrine is better seems to be an utter mockery of what Christ must have envisioned for his people.
I have no intention of being at all judgmental. That would be profoundly hypocritical. But I honestly don't understand how Christians can call themselves true, loving followers of Christ when they pit themselves so pugnaciously against non-Christians and against Christians of other denominations. There is no way to be a loving neighbor when you see the world as us vs. them instead of simply a universal we.
The fundamental basis of essentially every religion is love of all people. Not "love of all people unless they're different from me." Or "love of all people unless I disagree with them." Love of ALL people. And it's hard to love someone when you're too concerned about shouting them into compliance with your beliefs. Part of being a loving Christian (or simply a loving human being) is being understanding and accommodating of other people's beliefs, lifestyles, and worldviews. Differences aren't sins. They're human.
I want to throw out a "controversial" statement: believing in God and believing in science are not mutually exclusive terms. Whoa. I know. But why can't it be that God made science? Why do those have to be separate entities? The Bible was written 2000+ years ago, when we didn't understand germs or the shape of the Earth, let a lone the structure of the universe or the way the human brain works. It's not that I doubt that the events happened. I just think that, in context, scientific discoveries can be a wonderful supplement to what's written in the Bible. The writers needed a way to explain the world around them, in much the same way as the Greeks and Romans did when they wrote their mythology. Albert Einstein (who was Jewish) always claimed that the reason he wanted to study science was so that he could better understand God. That seems to me like a wonderfully logical reason for inquiry. The fact that we've come so far in our scientific understanding should be a sign that we further understand our God and the world He created. And isn't that a wonderful thing?
The Dalai Lama says, "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims." If the Dalai Lama can say this about Buddhism, what's stopping us from saying it about Christianity? It's a futile struggle to try and ignore things proven to be true just to avoid admitting being wrong. It doesn't make anything better. It just makes everyone frustrated.
Look at our view of the universe. We've (almost) universally accepted the fact that the Earth is a sphere, not flat. We've accepted the fact that disease is caused by germs, not by demons. We've accepted the fact that the Sun is the center of the solar system, not the Earth. There was a time when saying those things would warrant excommunication or even execution. Now it seems silly to think otherwise. Where would we be if we denied basic scientific evidence for the sake of preserving something that wasn't intended to be preserved? We wouldn't be exploring Mars, our lifespans would be half as long, and you probably wouldn't be reading this on the Internet. We would be living at such a miniscule portion of our potential, and I'm sure that would sadden God far more than saying that the material of which the Earth is made came from stars. Anything that doesn't accept change is condemning itself to death. Languages, religions, empires, species of animals (humans included), all subject to crumble into nothing if they are unable or unwilling to account for natural changes. Our view of the universe has already changed. It doesn't seem right to stop changing it now, when scientific discovery is growing more rapidly than it ever has before.
Take these words from the Buddha: "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
In short, just think. Think about what something means. Think about where it came from. Think about the context in which it was conceived. Think about where you heard it. Don't agree? Then don't agree. There's no reason to contort your brain around something that doesn't fit with your beliefs. I know I'm talking about Christianity and using examples from Buddhism, but that's not what's important. What's important is the sentiment.
Neither of my sisters consider themselves Christian. And yet, they both lead such beautiful, kind-hearted lives that any Christian would be hard-pressed to condemn them. I can't see how any God would condemn them, either. I'm hard-pressed to follow a religion that says that, because my sisters don't call themselves Christians, they don't get to heaven, even though they lead far more "Christian" lives than so many others who feel benefitted by the title. So my question is this: why is it all about the titles when it should be about the way we live and love others? This isn't Republican or Democrat or Christian or Atheist. This is human.

“Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks.”

^Oliver Wendell Holmes

It's been a very long time since I've posted anything, generally because I haven't felt that I've done anything worth a blog post. And that's no fun. SO. I'm changing it up a little bit today!
I don't know if you know, but I love, love, love lists. Sometimes I make them compulsively. I have so many pointless lists of things that, for whatever reason, I decided that I desperately needed.
My current favorite list requires a little bit of explanation. You see, my brain gets bored sometimes when I'm doing everyday things like eating breakfast or brushing my teeth (or sitting in class.....), so I just start thinking about random, random things. Usually they're super mundane things that I suddenly realize are unbelievably strange. This has been happening quite a lot recently, so I've taken to keeping a list. So without further ado, here are some things that are totally normal and yet so, so weird.

1. Jack-in-the-boxes  Really. Who decided that this was a fun idea? "I know, let's put a scary clown into a box, then put a fun crank on it and play a catchy song, and then SCARE THE CHILDREN WITH THE CLOWN." I just don't understand.
2. Peanut butter and jelly  I love PB&J. Love it. But who thought it would be yummy to put those two things together?
3. Crying  I know it's kind of unfair to call this weird, but think about it. It's almost like laughing, except that water comes out of your face and your nose gets all stuffy.
4. Parades  These have existed for thousands of years. But I wonder who made it into this kind of institution. The basic idea makes sense, but regularly scheduled ones where people come out of their houses to watch other people who may or may not be famous walk/drive slowly down a street is a little bit weird. And then sometimes they throw things at you.
5. Museums  Again, I really like museums. But kind of along the same vein as parades: who thought to get a bunch of other people's stuff and put it into a huge labyrinth of rooms for people to pay to come look at?
6. Holiday meals  Who made it kind of a requirement that everyone eats turkey on Thanksgiving and ham on Easter, but Christmas is kind of a meat free-for-all?
7. If English muffins are just called "muffins" in England, what do they call muffins?  This isn't really weird, I just wondered.

These are the kinds of things I use to fill in thoughtless spaces. So if you ever wonder what goes on in my head... This is it.
I would love to continue my tradition of posting about good movies I've seen recently, but I sadly have not watched any new movies in the last couple months. Sorry. :(
Have a lovely day!
~ Snootycrumb

P.S. On this day last year, I posted this on Facebook (from another list):  "'Sort of a guys' night out. A G-N-O, if you will. A gno. Actually, it's more of a guys' afternoon in: a G-A-I. A gai. No. No. It's, uh, not gay, it's uh, it's a... it's a bridal shower for guys! A guy shower. An hour-long shower with guys.' ~ Michael Scott"

“I can't believe you people. I come for you, and you want to stay, I let you stay and you want to go.”

^Meet Joe Black

I’m in college. Whoa. What a weird thing to say. I’m more than halfway through my first semester at Temple University, and I’ve already scheduled my classes for next semester. Things are rollin’!

I came here thinking that I would be overwhelmed with homework and ridiculous amounts of long papers and all of that kind of great stuff, but this semester was shockingly easy. I’ve spent most of my time watching TV shows on Netflix (I’m currently hooked on about 20 different shows at the same time. It’s kind of a problem) because I just don’t really have any work to do. It won’t be that way next semester, though, because I’m now a double major (Broadcasting and Linguistics), and, since I added Linguistics halfway through the semester, I have to catch up. I guess it’ll be real college then, eh?

I’m absolutely loving being right in the middle of the city, though. There’s a subway station not even a block from my dorm (so that I can pass the ghetto where Temple’s campus is), so I can go pretty much anywhere I want. I went out by myself a couple days ago to write a paper in a coffee shop, and it was glorious!! Except when I accidentally stumbled upon the Occupy people—I purposely went back to campus from a different station so I didn’t have to walk through it again. There’s a train station just a little ways off campus, too, which I took with a couple of friends into Delaware to see Andrew Bird (which, by the way, was incredible!! And also quite an adventure). 

On an unrelated note, I sometimes get these weird compulsions to make lists of stuff, and it’s never really relevant to anything, but I really like lists, so I make them. So Sunday night I was on my Facebook and suddenly got this brilliant thought (sarcasm, anyone?) that I should document every one of my statuses. Ever. So I spent hours going back through my profile, typing out the dates and times of every status update since August of 2007, when I got my Facebook. A couple of hours in I realized what a dumb idea it was, but at that point it was far too late to stop, so now I have 77 pages of status updates. As tedious and kind of stupid as it was, it was actually kind of fun to re-live my life backwards and try to figure out what I was talking about when I left some cryptic note about events. It brought back a ton of memories, good and bad. And it was fun to see myself mature through Facebook. What a weird way to reflect. I guess I have my ridiculous anal-retentiveness to thank for that! I don’t recommend this, though. It sucks up time like no other.

Anyway, I can’t wait until Thanksgiving!! I haven’t been home since I got here at the end of August, because Temple prides itself on always being open, even when every other school in the world gets holidays. Pretty much everyone here hates this, even professors. We talked about Thanksgiving in my Italian class the other day, and since I’ve been eating pretty much nothing but school food for 3 months, I’m desperate for some home-cooked food!!

I’m sad to report that I haven’t watched a lot of movies since I’ve been here, since I’ve been so busy watching a gazillion different TV shows, but here are a couple.

1) Meet Joe Black—I watched this one because it was snowing (yep, in October. It was weird), and I was in need of a very long movie. It ended up being really good, too, and Brad Pitt was, well, Brad Pitt, only even more beautiful than usual, somehow. Basically, Brad Pitt plays Death, who makes a deal with Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins guides him around Earth to learn about humans and Hopkins gets to live for a few more days. It was fantastic!! If you have about 3 hours to spare, I highly recommend it.

2) Nosferatu—I watched this one for some Halloween fun. It was the first-ever adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which is one of my favorite books), and probably one of the more accurate ones, too. It was made sometime in the 1920s. The character Nosferatu himself was actually kind of creepy, I admit. It’s worth watching, if only because it’s completely a classic.

I’ve just about run out of ideas, so have a lovely day!

~Snooty Crumb

On this day last year, I posted the following on Facebook:

“Heart-shaped waffles!!!”

"You're not a nobody. That's the last thing you are."

^The Talented Mr. Ripley, one of my new favorite movies
Well. It certainly has been a long time and it's certainly been a very eventful long time. I'll keep it all very brief. So, here goes.

• First things first. A month after my last post (which, if you recall, was just after the so-called "Snowmageddon") I took a beautiful trip to Europe through a school program. We went to Rome, Florence, Assisi, Milan, and Pisa in Italy, and stopped in Lucerne, Switzerland, on our way to Paris, France. If I could pick anywhere to live, it would definitely be Florence. What an amazing contrast between gorgeous history and urban life! I would retire to Assisi (but only if I was in really good shape), for its peaceful, almost unreal mountain atmosphere. It was like being in a movie. And if I was rich I would get a summer home in Switzerland. It was a beautiful trip, and if I didn't have a million other things to say I would tell all of the weird things I learned there.
• Second. After a relatively uneventful summer full of countless jigsaw puzzles and a 17th birthday, my parents and I went to San Francisco to ring in the school year. Among other things, I ate some Ghirardelli chocolate ice cream, got hit on by a trolley car operator, met a former inmate of Alcatraz, ate garlic, rode a roller coaster standing up, played a Steinway piano, went behind some "employees only" doors at the Winchester Mystery House, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a lovely way to precede my last year of high school.
• On that note, I made it through a very long senior year. Somehow. I caught a pretty terrible case of Senioritis and it was all I could do to make it to school every day. Despite some frustrations, it did have some highlights. My last homecoming, a Victorian Ball (another History Club event that unfortunately didn't succeed last year), a musical, my first voluntarily attended football game, a very long banquet, some extremely strange items in my lunches (thanks, Mom), another excellent USO dance, my senior prom, a cruise with my class, Carboard gladiators, and the largest graduating class in the history of the county (maybe that's not necessarily a highlight...). We survived, and we're now alumni! On to bigger and better things.
• A couple days after graduation we took a very long road trip down to Florida to celebrate my grandfather's 85th birthday. It was wonderful to see the family, since occasions like this don't come often and we're all scattered across the country. On our way back we stopped in Charleston, South Carolina. Being the nerd that I am, I had to stop at Fort Sumter to see where the Civil War began. What a cool visit. Especially since this is the 150th anniversary. I also ate fried pickles. They were delicious.
• The week after that I had my freshman orientation at Temple University (Oh yeah, I forgot to metion that I'm going there!). Overall it was fun, and I met some cool people, including my roommate for next year, but it also consisted of a lot of presentations with some really redundant information. But what it really means is that I'm officially going to college!!!!!!!
• Oh, yeah, I'm an adult! My 18th birthday was about 2 weeks after we got back from Florida. I'm official! I had a little party with a few of my good friends and we played a game of Scene It (which I won...) and watched Beauty and the Beast. It was a good time. On my actual birthday I nerded out (again) and had a Johnny Depp fest, which consisted of 21 Jump Street, The Astronaut's Wife (which I had actually never heard of but which my friend gave me), Chocolat, and Benny & Joon (which is my all-time favorite movie). It was a wonderfully relaxing birthday. The next day we went out to dinner at the Russia House. It was delicious, as usual.
• Three days later I left to go on a mission trip to Ica, Peru, with the church that I play the piano for. We built a house for a family whose house was destroyed in an earthquake a few years ago. It was an amazing experience, and it was so rewarding to meet the family whose house we built and to see the appreciation in their faces. Also, I ate guinea pig. It was delicious. I learned so many things about Peru and ate a ton of new foods that I never thought I would eat (i.e., guinea pig, yuca, and passionfruit juice--okay, that's not food, but it was good). It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I would never have passed up! Today is Peru's independence day, so a shout out to everyone there!!!

I've been home since 4:30 Sunday morning and it's been relatively uneventful. It's only a month until I leave for college, so I can't wait!!!

In keeping with my normal format, here are some good movies that I've seen in the past... well, year.

1. The Talented Mr. Ripley- I already said this at the top, but this is seriously my one of my new favorite movies. I'm a really big Matt Damon fan (I mean, how could you not be?), and I like Jude Law and Cate Blanchett a lot, too. Besides that, it was a fantastic concept of self-acceptance and admiration gone horribly wrong. Watch it. Right now!
2. The Fountain- This was a strange movie, starring Hugh Jackman and directed by Darren Aronofsky, who also directed Black Swan. I'm not sure I got it entirely, but it was a really interesting concept of life and the connectedness of past, present, and future. On a side note, Hugh Jackman should always have hair.
3. M- If you can get your hands on this, I highly recommend it. It was the first-ever movie about a serial killer. It's an old German movie from the 30s, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre, both of whom became famous in America after escaping Germany (Peter Lorre was in Arsenic and Old Lace as Dr. Einstein, if you're familiar with that movie. If you're not, it's excellent). It was a really interesting movie to watch.
4. Batman: The Movie- To lighten things up a little, I'll throw this one in there. This isn't the Batman that we know now. This is the movie version of the original Adam West Batman. Oh man, it's awesome. Complete with "Pow!"s and "Kablam!"s in fight scenes and countless strange catchphrases from Robin, this is definitely a must-see. You'll be laughing through the whole thing. "Robin, get the shark repellant!"

~Snooty Crumb



At Pisa.



Looking across the bay from Alcatraz

Class of 2011!!

The family with my grandfather in Florida





Our mission team in Peru, with the family
and the construction team

"Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the Lottery."

Thanks, Bill Watterson, for the quote. You would be very happy to know that we have won a large lottery of snow. (Actually, if you kept it at 10 cents per inch, I guess we only won about 5 bucks.)

It's been called "Snowmageddon," which I think is quite funny. We thought that that big snow in December was big. Ha. This one was the snow to end all snows. We beat the record set in 1899 for the most snow at Reagan National. It was ridiculous. The first dump gave us about 28 inches at our house. We thought that was a lot. But then it snowed more, and there were at least 10 more inches. It was beautiful. I was stuck.

Since we live at the very, very end of a dirt road, plows do not often come all the way down here. This gets very irritating when there are 3 feet of snow on the ground. Once the road gets plowed (or ploughed, I suppose), we have to get somebody to come plow our driveway. Our driveway didn't get plowed until Friday afternoon, because our road didn't get plowed (for the second time) until a few hours before that.

The nice part of Snowmageddon was that there was no school that Friday or for the entire next week, with President's Day being the following Monday (as in tomorrow). We also had a snow day the Wednesday before the storm, so we got a lot of school off. The not-so-nice part was the being stuck inside for 7 days.

My mom and I got into this weird routine, in which I would wake up at about 10-ish, read for a while, and then go downstairs and eat some sort of food, after which my mom would ask, "So, what movie are we watching today?" We watched two or three movies together, stopping only to get some food, which we would eat while watching the next movie. When the last movie together ended, usually sometime between 7 and 8 o'clock, my mom would go to bed and I would watch another movie by myself. Since last Wednesday on our first snow day, I have watched 24 movies. 24. Ridiculous, I know.

We watched all sorts of movies: classics, not-so-classics, mostly old movies, and couple of genuinely weird movies. We saw a young and extremely attractive Marlon Brando, James Dean, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stuart, Bette Davis, Peter O'Toole (in what I can only describe as the weirdest movie I've ever seen, and not particularly in a good way). . . I can't even remember all of them. I can only say that I certainly made quite a good dent in my "101 Greatest Movies Ever" book. It was all very enjoyable, except for the fact that we had no way of leaving the house.

What's funny to me about this ridiculous amount of snow is that I had been complaining all summer and fall about how we never had any snow days anymore. We'd had all kinds of them when I was in elementary school (when I really loved school), and then when I got to high school and stopped loving school there was no more snow (and also our school system is terrible at calling snow days; last year or the year before they gave us a snow day when there was about an inch of snow and then made us go to school when there was literally a sheet of ice on most of the roads).

Well, needless to say, I've gotten my snow days. And now it's supposed to snow AGAIN on Monday night, so our 1 hour delay on Tuesday might turn into ANOTHER snow day. I think the weather thinks it's being funny. Very funny, weather. I get it now. You can stop now.

Anyway, we finally got out of our house yesterday. I had a read-through for my next play, Kiss Me, Kate. I'm a dancer in this one, which is fun, but not exactly what I was going for. But they made this one a mostly adult cast, so that's okay. I'm excited. We also got some regular tap shoes, and then after the read-through we went to see The Blind Side, which was a fantastic movie. Then I went to Border's, which is probably my favorite store ever, and got lots and lots of books. I have a lot of reading to do, which is very exciting. I'm trying to catch up on my classics; the Jane Austens, the Bronte sisters, the John Steinbecks, etc., etc., etc. (The King and I, anyone?).

Remember the one-act that I was doing? Well, the competition is finally happening this Wednesday, after being postponed twice. Saturday is regionals. Apparently only three schools are competing because most of them backed out, so only one school isn't going to make it to regionals. We'd better not be that one school, because regionals is being held at our school. How embarrassing would that be?? More news on that after that happens.

OH! And Bert came back!

So, until next time, enjoy the 12-foot snow drifts on the side of the road and the freedom to get out of the house.

Here's a list of the movies that I watched:

Undertaking Betty, You Can't Take it With You, Donnie Brasco, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Steamboat Bill, Jr., Phoebe in Wonderland, It Happened One Night, The Ruling Class, Planet of the Apes, Ushpizin, Calendar Girl, The Cider House Rules, A Letter to Three Wives, Forrest Gump, On the Waterfront, My Sister, Eileen, Little Shop of Horrors, Holiday, The Last Picture Show, Remains of the Day, All About Eve, Lady Eve, East of Eden, The Goonies, and The Blind Side. The only ones of all of those that I wouldn't recommend are The Ruling Class, Planet of the Apes, and A Letter to Three Wives.