Zycie w Blekicie ver 4.0 - Blue Girl in Snow

Thursday, May 22, 2003

Grupa MoCarta!!!

Fangirl mode engaged

I just saw them! In person! From no more than five meters or so away!

Right from the start, you knew this was going to be great: three of the four band members walk on stage, tune their instruments and begin playing a classic piece, at the same time glancing around and looking puzzled. A few bars later, the missing cello player pushes his way through the audience, holding his instrument above his head, gets to the stage and plays the part he has missed at high speed, as the others glare at him in mock annoyance.

It only gets better from there. The guys put on a show of incompetence, unsure what they should be playing, arguing among themselves with music and gestures (but never any spoken words), pausing at odd moments, aborting a well-known tune halfway through only to launch straight into another one. The whole thing is absolutely hilarious.

And that's just the opening act.

Then there's the violin race, then a number which uses cellphone tunes along with the music, then the guys play their instruments as guitars (at one point doing an air-guitar to heavy metal music from the loudspeakers), then a lovely semi-gymnastic number which they all finish by doing front-to-back splits. Wearing *tuxedos*.

Then Ireneusz Krosny takes over.

The man is a genius. He's a one-mime theatre, a comedy goldmine all by himself. He starts off doing a little series of actions that fade one into the next: first he's sweeping, then the broom turns into a rope he's pulling. He's walking along a street, then creeping along a wall with gun in hand, then feels his way to a door. Going through it he walks out on a tightrope, from which he promptly falls. And again, this is just his opening act.

He did a series of sketches, some of which I'd already seen. There was "the operation" (pulling out most of the patient's guts, pausing for a sandwich, consulting a book), and "the beauty returns" (removing make-up, eyelashes, nails, wig, breasts, teeth and finally eyes), and "visiting the boss at home" (getting mauled by his dog, listening to his kid play the cello), and "the burglary" (a not-so-silent operation).

My favourite sketch, though, has to be "The bodyguard". It's not exactly silent, since it uses a number of action-movie-like sounds, but they're just background for Krosny's performance. First, he dispatches phantom enemies with punches, kicks and other flashy blows. Then he pulls out an imaginary sword, which he waves around, slashing or gutting several of them. Finally, he makes a throwing motion, and points and grins in a "Ha! Gotcha!" way as another dying scream is heard. Then he pulls twin pistols from holsters and shoots around, scoring a hit every time. There's a pause as he looks around for more enemies, and suddenly someone groans. Without looking, he shoots down, and all is silent again.

Satisfied, he holsteres the pistols, and motions offstage for someone. Then he seems puzzled, glances around, looks down at the presumed pile of corpses, and suddenly falls to his knees in shock. Except for that last part, the performance might very well be called "Draegos' usual morning". ^_^

And then, for the third and final part of the performance, the quartet and the mime all do a few sketches together. In one of them, Krosny is a hung-over cunductor, who staggers in late, obviously sleepy, and with a serpentin around his neck. He pulls out a cocktail stick at first, then quickly changes to a baton, and leads them into a fortissimo of the famous 9th Symphony... or at least tries to, but clutches his head in pain after the first two bars. They play it again, piano this time, and then launch into Yesterday to show they sympathise. ^_^ They get him a glass of water, and play the "Mission: Impossible" theme as he adds two tablets to it, and as he drinks it they switch to a Polish song best translated as "Let's drink - to love!". Then there's the one where they get the audience to clap along, with Krosny using nothing but gestures to explain what they should do and getting rolling laughs in the process.

Then there's a sketch where Krosny mimes setting up an old gramophone with vinyl reconds, and the band does a wonderfully surrealistic thing: one of them reads the titles of the record over the mime's shoulder, and passes the word to the others, whereupon they play out the contents. The imitatation is perfect, complete with slight grincing (done by the second violin, who scratches his bow across the back of his instrument), skipping, and changes in tempo as the thing "winds down".

The first record is some bit of bring music, which is promptly thrown away in disgust. The second is an a capella number, which is not well recieved either. The mime seems happy enough with the third record. At one point the band break for lunch and the music stops. The mime acts puzzled, then begins to check over his gramophone, but finds nothing wrong.

Well, a while after the break is finished the mime breaks the wind-up handle by accident, and the band gradually grinds to a halt. The mime pushes the record along with his hand, and they animate for a moment. He does this again, and then turns on a TV or radio which spews some hip-hop or similar music, and does the "scratching" thing that DJ's do with winyls, the band playing along with little jittery motions. Then everyone breaks into a pseudo-hip little dance number, and finishes in random "cool" poses as the lights fade out. I haven't laughed this much in quite a while. ^_^

After the concert I went backstage where they were giving out autographs. I got one from each of them. I didn't glomp any, though. Didn't want to get locked away for behaviour more unnatural than the Constitution allows. They were selling CDs too, but I already had that one. When I was backstage someone walked in shouting "they're all out of CDs!". This was about five minutes after the show ended.

That was so cool! The music, the show, the autographs, everything! Best evening I had in a while. It was only missing one thing... or rather, person. I hope I can rectify this next time. ^_^
I'm so blue... 11:08 PM

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

Project Status: Not failing all my exams

Item: AIM hiatus

Doing quite well. Got to sleep early last night. Almost overslept in the morning. At least I got some rest. No e-mail from Scott yet. Getting nervous, but hanging in there.

Item: Time management

Lousy. Spent all last afternoon plaing Sailor Moon: Another Story. Still need to work on timetable. Have no idea how much time for studying I actually need.

Item: Actual work

None yet. Will try this afternoon.
I'm so blue... 2:29 PM

Monday, May 19, 2003

w00tage!

I just got a ticket to a Thrursday show of Grupa MoCarta, the cutest thing on stage since the Beatles. I love their style, I even have a CD to which I listen often.
I'm so blue... 5:27 PM

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Still cold. Colder than before, since I seem to have lost my parents.

Why can't we just *talk*? Every time I try, they end up speweing the same old tired advice. And telling them anything about myself just leads to long, ackward explanations that completely miss the point. How can I ever explain to them that I have freinds online? How can I explain role-playing? How can I explain what's happening with me and Scott?

I just keep being told that I spend too much time at the computer and should be studying more. Both are true, and both are only the symptoms of my problems, not their roots.

I'm lazy. I'm baisically, fundamentally lazy. And an escapist. How can I ever get past that? Every time I have something to do, be it a project for class, a drawing or an RP post, I'm fighting against myself to get it done. And bit by bit, "just five more minutes" by "just five more minutes", I'm losing. And the feeling that I should really be working right now stresses me out, and I escape stress by escaping work.

I know I'm going to fail some classes this semester, I just know it. How can I look my parents in the eye and tell them that? How can I try to explain the them the slow, painful slide backwards? On the outside it looks just like a cheerful neglecting of any and all obligations, and the end results are just the same. Who cares what I feel?

Translation of the above: Sure, I may be lazy, but at least I feel sorry about it. This is not getting me through my finals.
I'm so blue... 12:23 AM

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Gyah, it's cold...

A little cold spell in mid-May is nothing unusual. I remember learning about this in high school Georgaphy: the cold air from the polar regions, which is also the source of our lovely snowy winters, is responsible here. It's all perfectly reasonable and in accordance with Nature and stuff.

Still, it's quite annoying when the night temperature drops to 12 degrees Celcius (that's about 55 Farenheit) and I can't sleep with the window open because it gets too cold. It's worse than Winter in a way, because the central heating's offline already.

Good thing I have such a great bedcover. It's actually a sleeping bag, designed for temperatures as low as -20 C (or so the maker claims), zipped open all the way and packed up in a bedcover sheet. Light, keeps warm in winter, and not too stuffy in summer. Still missing a cute bish underneath, but nothing's perfect. :)
I'm so blue... 10:14 PM

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

You try to delude yourself that you're unaffected by it all... and then you wake up with some vague memories of having kicked the asses of a large number of identical, suit-wearing men. Dreams of me kicking ass usually mean my subconcious telling me I feel up to whatever I'm planning to undertake. In this particular case, a friendly swimming competition.

I don't think I'm quite ready, though. I haven't had any good sleep in the last two days because of screved-up priorities (mine) and a bishie (also mine). I also haven't trained nearly enough. I'll be lucky if I don't go floating belly-up after the first 25 meters. Ah well. It'll be fun to try... not as much fun as *winning*, but still fun.
I'm so blue... 8:11 AM

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Gone to the hairdresser's today. The wild lion's mane which had resided on my head has been turned into a nice, bowlish hairstyle by a process involving some seemingly-careless snipping and, most likely, a form of deep arcane magic. The difference is as night and day, or more accurately as a change from this:

void mystrcp1(char *s, char *t)
{
	char *i, *j;
	i = s;
	j = t;
	*i = *j;
	while (*j != '\0')
	{
		i++;
		j++;
		*i = *j;
	}
}

To this:

void mystrcp2(char *s, char *t)
{
	while(*(s++) = *(t++));
}

That is to say, it's functionally still the same thing, but much more elegant, lighter, and pleasing to the eye. I like it. (Both the code and the hairstyle.)

It seems everyone's talking about the sequel to that movie. I heard the other day they were already pre-selling tickets over here, which means that - oh wonder of wonders - I may actually get to see it a month after all my online correspondents, not between half and one year later as it is usually the case. I guess it's because this movie is guaranteed to be a hit, and thus doesn't need a test-run on the home field before being released to Everywhere That Isn't The US And Thus Not Important.

Strangely enough, X-men 2 is also due out soon, or possibly already here. Strangely, because the first part didn't do very well, getting lousy reviews and average sales. And no wonder: if my observations are correct, comic books are a much bigger part of pop culture in America than in our country. In fact, the general opinion here is that comics are for kids. (Violent or otherwise mature content is thus more shocking in this medium since it appears to target the pre-high-school population. But that's another story.) Looks like the "cultural invasion" still has some way to go.

Still, the US of A is home to some pretty cool things, and more than a few people. Hi Scott. :)
I'm so blue... 2:19 PM

Friday, May 09, 2003

Well, today was fun. I had this really neat exam in Linear Algebra, which was baisically three excercises exactly like the ones we did all year. It felt just like those wonderful times when I could waltz into an exam with little to no preparation and still get an above-average score... ::wipes a tear from her eye::

Anyways, Neverwinter Nights. I reiterate: multiplayer is *much* better than single, especially for a Ranger. Sure, you can get a sidekick (or whatever those people who follow you around are called). But they're dumber than two bags of bricks - get stuck on stairs, can't even heal themselves... It's definitely more fun to play with another person, especially someone you know well from online chat.

Tomorrow is the final stage of yet another English contest. Oral this time - talk in pairs about a text you will be given to read. Nothing very difficult - but at least I'll get to meet that one guy who did better than me in the second stage. I'm looking forward to it. I wonder if he's cute? Maybe we can find some common ground. I remeber when I was in that English contest back in High School, there was this really cute guy. I tried to talk to him after the exam, but I think I scared him off. Story of my life.
I'm so blue... 8:46 PM

April archives up.
I'm so blue... 3:40 PM

Saturday, May 03, 2003

Testing...

Who's Your Anime Boyfriend?

What Type of Sexy Are You? (with pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
I'm so blue... 11:06 AM