Holden Caulfield Has Nothing On Me

Day off!!

Today I went to the American Museum of Natural History (which ALWAYS feels awkward to refer to it as, so from now on I'm just going with "The Natural History Museum") and it was a nice day.  It's such an icon of my childhood (hence the Holden Caulfield reference) and I always love being there.  I took my camera in order to attempt some worthwhile photography, but I didn't really do anything I'm particularly proud of.  It was my first time taking the camera out during this NYC adventure though so it was still good.  So I'm gonna post some pictures and some funny stories from the day and I probably won't update for a little while after this since I anticipate nothing very exciting happening in the near future.

I bought some books at the museum -  a guide to shopping and activities in NYC for cheap, and then 1000 places to see before you die both for the whole world and then the US/Canada. I'm gonna use those to help figure out some travel stuff I can do during free time this year, depending on my work schedule and all that.

Big imposing dino!   This is probably what it looked like to me when I was 4.

Go away mean one!  Go away!

This was going to be the title of this post.  It's basically referring to just liquid lava in a continuous flow vs. massive eruption, but I couldn't help thinking about a volcano just gushing about how excited it was.

I was fascinated by this eel.  It's hanging in the hall of biodiversity right outside where you can take the elevator down in the room with the giant blue whale.  It looked cooler in the museum lighting but I couldn't get a stable image without using the flash.

Who doesn't love the giant tree??

After lunch at the museum cafeteria (yay dino chicken nuggets!!), I went to this little area in the hall of gems and minerals, which is one of my favorite places in the museum but which I always seem to get lost trying to find (it's tucked away in a corner).  I sat there for a while and then took some pictures, but I kept trying to take pics of all the little kids running around (it's designed kinda like an awesome little playground but the security guards are really harsh - I remember that very clearly from my youth.)  But I left after a bit because I think the guard might have thought I was a pedophile.

I sorta stalked these little kids around the hall.  That's really creepy, I know that, but they were cute with their camera and stuff.  But I couldn't get a good shot so I just put up this one because it's the first one I have of them.

This is just to illustrate how it's so hard for me to get good shots of strangers.  Ugh why am I so very very awkward?

precious pinnipeds!!

This happened as I was walking by this:

Little Boy: "Mommy, the one with the longer nipples is the girl, and the one with the longer..."

(I was in motion when I heard this so I didn't hear the rest, but I'm sure you can fill it in just as well as I can.)

Aaaah!

Friendly Turtle!

Angry Turtle!

This dino looks so confused

I just love this thing.

I capped off the day with a visit to the Rose Space Center.  It was pretty cool.

So yeah, I'd say I had a pretty good day.  Blech, more scanning tomorrow though.  But I'm seeing "Boeing Boeing" tomorrow night and then I'm going home Friday night for the weekend so this was a pretty good week all in all.  Much better than last week!

Sorry some stuff is randomly underlined -- I don't really know what's going on there.  The blog stuff is being kind of weird because of the pictures.

Sexy Secretary

I'm in a good mood right now because I had a pretty good day at work, and by that I mean I spent absolutely zero time scanning or renaming files.  Wonderful!  And I don't have work tomorrow, thank you Jewish population of New York City.

Today was kind of interesting though.  All morning I was manning the reception desk (10-2) because it's Jasmine, the receptionist's, day off.  (It's always hard for me to figure out how to punctuate appositives when there's a possessive... just a little thing that confuses me about grammar...).  It's not like anyone particularly interesting called, but it's fun to feel like I have actual power in the office.  Perhaps a holdover from my attraction to Stage Managing.

This one guy named Zachary kept calling because he's trying to get an internship with Barry, my boss for the Shakespeare Initiative, and his e-mails weren't going through so I was trying to help him with that but I was checking my e-mails on the internet instead of through Outlook so I couldn't tell if his attachments were coming through and it was this whole big thing.  But I hope he gets the job, mostly just so I can meet him.

But after reception I got to usher a staged reading, which was definitely a throwback to H-W and made me miss that performing arts department like mad.  Even more, the doors to the theatre were near the set construction shop and the set construction guys are really friendly.  It's not like I actually talked to any of them, but they all smile really genuinely unlike pretty much everyone I've encountered in NYC besides people I work closely with (not many people).  I looked in their shop as well and Rees Pugh would die if he saw it; it's so nice in there.

The reading was alright.  It was called "The Concubine," which is a musical adaptation of a novel with the same name.  It was kinda weird and not terribly coherent, but it was a staged reading for the purpose of a) working on it and b) showing it to producers/theater directors who, they hope, will give it a home for further workshopping to make it into a good show.  I don't know, maybe it just wasn't my cup of tea, but I wasn't too impressed.

So yeah, today was pretty much a good day.  :)

Kickin' It Ivy-League Style

So this weekend I went down to Princeton to visit Nicole and Matthew for the weekend.  It was really fun and it was nice to get out of the city and get some fresh air for a few days after being a little under the weather at the end of last week.

I got there in the early afternoon yesterday and Nicole picked me up from the train station.  We went shopping for some running shoes for Nicole so she can be a badass fencer/badminton player.  This hilarious guy named Daniel helped us find the right shoes for her "very narrow heels" and it was the most fun I've had shoe shopping since, well, pretty much ever.

We did some laundry, then Matthew and Nicole had to get ready for/go to their marching band thing for the football game, so I got passed off to Nicole's friends Mo and Joey.  They were pretty cool, very outgoing people.  They took me to the football game, and I discovered how awesome the Princeton marching band really is.  First of all, they have the best uniforms I've ever seen:

Also, they don't march like a traditional band, they're a "whistle/scramble" band, which means the drum major (or possibly the conductor, I couldn't 100% tell) blows a whistle, they just run around and do awesome weird stuff (like an impromptu game of Chicken) and then get into formation and play something.  The people in the band are mostly nuts, too, which is fun.  Their and president wears a kilt (by tradition) and has a mohawk (by awesomeness), and the conductor looks like an awesome old-school magician.  And they have a "trash section," which is a section of people who play "instruments" such as a stop sign, a drum set made up of four plastic flamingos, and, in Nicole's case, a cowbell (I know, I know, MORE COWBELL joke here).  It was pretty awesome.  And Princeton won the game, so clearly I am their lucky charm.  But it was rainy and wet so sitting on wet football stadium benches... not so awesome.

Then the three of us went to dinner at PJ's Pancake House, which is this awesome place just off campus, and we were all SO hungry it was a pretty quiet but VERY delightful meal.  Grilled cheese has possibly never tasted so good.

Then we all went back to Nicole's room, had a cute little slumber party (floor = not so delightful, but not that bad), and slept very well.  We had brunch in a dorm called Forbes, which had absolutely delicious Sunday brunch.  It was pretty crazy for college cafeteria food, not gonna lie.  Although I've realized a new reason to be terrified of going to college -- I will live on fruit punch and it will not be so great for me in the long run.

Then I took the train back to the city and now I'm just chillin in my apartment.  Yep.

Inaugural Post

Hey people. Pretty much everyone else on a gap year is doing a blog, so I figured I might as well jump on that bandwagon. I mean, this has all seemed pretty boring so far, and it is on a day-to-day basis. I'm not like Becca, who's doing this really awesome abroad program, but based on what I did last night I guess mine isn't too boring.

So here's what's been going on so far:

I arrived in New York City very late at night on Sunday, September 14. The next day I started work as an intern at The Public Theater. My job is in their literary department and it consists of scanning all the scripts from their archives and adding to the digital archive set up over the summer. The guy who did this over the summer doesn't seem to have been very good at it, since I've only been there two weeks and I've done as much if not more than he did in two months. I also do little jobs they need done, like copying scripts they're producing this season and running to the Food Emporium to get a cake for someone's birthday in the office.

Although the scanning thing is pretty boring, I've been reading a lot of scripts as I go along and some of them are pretty interesting. A lot of them are pretty screwed up, though. One I read involved coma rape, incest, and masturbation using a figure of Jesus Christ. Some are good, though. I read another based on the family of the first soldier to be declared "Missing: Captured" in the Iraq war.

The most interesting thing to read is the coverage of the scripts. The archives I'm scanning are The Playwright's Files, which are mostly scripts that were submitted and either rejected or given readings/workshops but not produced as part of the Public's main theater season. So some files contain write-ups from the literary department that are written for the artistic director to give him a sense of whether a play is worth his time or should just be sent back. It's really interesting to see what kind of plays the different readers like (there are a LOT of different readers with very different taste, which is unfortunate if you're a playwright and your play is given to the reader who is particularly disposed to not like your type of play).

Last week on Tuesday there was a big meet-and-greet for the big musical they're producing this theater season, "Road Show," which is a new version of a Sondheim show that's been formerly known as "Bounce" among other things. It hasn't done very well in the past but they feel good about this reworking. It's being directed by John Doyle, who did the amazing revival of "Sweeney Todd" recently and the less amazing revival of "Company." This new production is starring Michael Cerveris, who starred in the above mentioned "Sweeney Todd" and won a Tony for playing John Wilkes Booth in the recent revival of "Assassains." Anyway, Doyle, Cerveris, and Sondheim himself were at this big breakfast schmooze fest. I didn't get to speak with any of them personally, it was my second day and I was barely getting to know my fellow interns, but it was awesome to be at this event. At the end of the thing the artisitic director of the Public, Oskar Eustis, had us all stand in a big circle and everyone introduced themselves and what sort of work they did at the public (i.e. "Anne McGrath, literary intern"). So technically Stephen Sondheim, Michael Cerveris, John Doyle and I have all introduced ourselves to one another.

Then, later in the week when I was hard at work at the scanner/copier, Michael Cerveris walked by on his way to the microwave (the kitchen is right behind the copier I work at) and said "hey" to me when I awkwardly smiled at him. Then my friend Anne, an intern in casting, came by to get coffee since casting doesn't have its own coffee machine or anything. I started talking to her about how unfortunate it is that casting doesn't have its own coffee, since it's not very close to our side of the building, and Michael Cerveris kinda chimed in with sympathy about Anne's lack of proximate coffee. It was all very cool.

Then last night I went with John, my dad's business partner, to the opening night of "Equus," a play which he's a producer on. This particular production is what's also known as "The Naked Harry Potter Play," since it stars Daniel Radcliffe and features his full-frontal nudity. I thought the naked thing was just going to be like a moment but it turned out to be a whole scene of him running around naked. It was a little weird, since we were sitting really close, but his performance was really good and the show is gonna be a big success so congratulations to John and the rest of the producers.

Afterwards we went to the afterparty which was at Chelsea Pier and met up with my dad. I met some cool people, such as this man who bought the rights to "Harry Potter" before it had even been published, and subsequently made a ton of money when the books took off.

There were a lot of cool people at the party, none of whom I really got to talk to but it was still cool. James Lipton, of "Inside the Actors Studio," was there, and my dad tried to point him out but all I could respond was "I KNOW WHO HE IS; HE WAS ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT!," since that's clearly all that matters. Austin Scarlett, who was on Season 1 of "Project Runway," was there and is taller than I thought he would be and was wearing these absurd pants that were a cross between like old-school poofy pants and riding pants, I'm sure to be fashionably in the spirit of the play, but they were a little ridiculous. Also in attendance was Haley Joel Osment, whom I used to be obsessed with so that was exciting for my 10-year-old inner self. He's really short though, which I wasn't really expecting.

So last night was cool, some other stuff has been cool, I went home over the weekend and went to the opening of "9 to 5" which was also fun, and that's about all I've been up to so far. I'll keep this updated probably but I can't guarantee that anything else exciting is going to happen.

If you want to read something actually interesting, read Becca Title's blog:

http://www.mindthegapper.blogspot.com

She's in Ecuador right now and doesn't have access to internet except on the weekends, but it's really good writing and really interesting experiences so yeah, check it out.