SST: The "La La La" Song

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

A few months ago my sister Emily requested this Sesame Street clip for her birthday, which is today.



Emily and her fam are down here in Utah with us right now, so I'm enjoying the rare treat of spending a birthday with one of my sisters. (I was with Emily on her last birthday too - the proximity to Christmas definitely factors into that.)

Christmas Découpage

I spent a good portion of the morning helping my parents wrap presents, and like many activities that should be short and straightforward, I turned it into a silly arts and crafts project. My favorite wrapping job is above - it was the last present and I used nothing but leftover wrapping paper fragments. I'm just bummed that Gideon, my 22-month old nephew, probably won't fully appreciate my mad découpage skillz.

P.S. - Vote in the B Vitamin poll on the right sidebar.

J-14

Editor's note: I don't usually use this space for rants, but today I'm making an exception.

I flew into Utah last night and my flight was nondescript, which is what a good flight should be. I had a one hour layover in Chicago, during which I killed time by popping into one of those souvenir/magazine shops. I'm the type person who is usually aware of big current events but doesn't always bother to keep up with all of the extended coverage in the aftermath - I don't watch the news (unless you count SportsCenter), I don't look at newspapers (except to read Utah Jazz coverage and film reviews), and at the grocery store I never pay any attention to the People and Us Weekly-style magazines at the checkout. So yesterday at the magazine shop was quite a shock.

Of course I'm aware of the unfolding Tiger Woods saga - they cover it on SportsCenter, after all. But I have to admit that I was surprised that every single magazine in every genre, from the most respected magazines on down to the worst rags, had Tiger plastered all over the cover with the latest sordid headlines. Looking at the magazine rack was like looking at an Andy Warhol painting of celebrities that are reprinted so many times and painted over so artificially that they stop being human beings and they just turn into a blur. Whether it's Marilyn Monroe, Tiger Woods, or the celebrity of the week, these magazines turn human beings into mere page-filling content and America laps up every single drop of it. Makes me sick.

However, when I returned to the gate before boarding I saw something even more sickening. A girl who looked about 10 years old was sitting next to me reading a magazine I'd never seen before called J-14. It looked exactly like the trash magazines I had just seen in the stores, except for the stories were all about Miley Cyrus and the cast of Twilight. The magazine looked innocuous enough (I glanced over and saw one headline - Miley had an imaginary friend as a kid?! LOL!), but in reality it's a trashy magazine training course. It's preparing youngsters so that in a few years they'll be perfectly primed for grown-up celebrity scandals like Tiger.

There is a small moment in Tina Fey's Mean Girls that brilliantly captures how anxious the media is to give innocent young kids an apprenticeship in trashiness. They all go over to Regina's house and in the background we see her un-parentally supervised little sister in the background copying the skanky dance moves on the TV. That girl will grow up to be another Regina, perpetuating the cycle. Trashiness usually doesn't just happen - you have to be carefully taught. And that's why J-14* upset me so much.

* This post would have been so much cooler if my plane had left from Gate J-14. I think it was B-2 or something boring like that. But then again, Vitamin B2 is Riboflavin, the coolest of the B Vitamins. I always thought Riboflavin would be a cool band name. Thoughts?

Editor's note: Amy Jeppsen offers her retort to this post here.

SST: Oklahoma!

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

Today and Thursday the students in my voice class will sing their final in-class performance. Just as I did last year, I have assigned each student a Rodgers and Hammerstein song. In my opinion, the songs R & H are perfect for this type of class for various reasons: they are perfectly within the reach of beginning singers (but are also sophisticated enough to appeal to advanced singers), they promote healthy vocal technique, and down the road they will serve my students well as audition pieces.

Last year I was stunned that most of the class had never even heard of R & H, but my kids this semester are a little more musically savvy and they were very excited about the project. It was a fun project for me too - I had a good time digging through the entire R & H canon looking for a perfect match for each student. I stuck to the major shows (Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, Cinderella, and Sound of Music) but I tried to find songs that aren't too cheesy and dated (as some of R & H has grown in the past 50-60 years) or overdone. (I think the performance I'm most looking forward to is the brooding baritone monologue "Lonely Room," which is cut from many a production of Oklahoma!)

Each student in the class has already given three in-class performances, and so far every performance has been well-prepared and professional. Hopefully no one this week has an embarrassing memory lapse like this:

Still Alive, Still Singing

My recent blogging dearth has been a fairly accurate reflection of my social life recently. The last few weeks have been the busiest and most stressful since I've been at the U of M, which is funny because I finished all of my required coursework at the end of the last school year. But this semester I have been (1) teaching both private students and a voice class, (2) learning vocal repertoire like a madman for my first doctoral recital in late January, (3) preparing myself for my last round of preliminary exams also in January, and (4) writing a full-length script for my just-for-fun TV Writing class.

Of that list, the most time consuming by far have been items (2) and (4). The TV writing thing has been pretty well documented in this space, and I fear that I have given the impression that I have taken the semester off from music.

For my first vocal recital I am required to present a program with works in German, Italian, French, and English. I suppose I could have just thrown together a bunch of music that I already know, but I really dislike random and disjointed recitals. So I hit on this idea of putting together a program of songs whose texts were written by poets who were also accomplished novelists. The recital is called "A Novel Approach" and features songs by many different composers who set the poems of Goethe (German), Manzoni (Italian), Victor Hugo (French), and Thomas Hardy (English). I had a lot of fun searching for the most interesting musical settings of their poems, mainly focusing on finding narrative songs to fit with the novelist concept.

This 'novel' idea has lead me to find some really compelling songs that are a little off the beaten path, and when I presented the concept/setlist to various members of my doctoral committee they were really psyched. But the problem is that I'm learning fifteen entirely new pieces, and since most of them are narrative songs they can get long and wordy . I only get 12 voice lessons/coaching per semester, so I've had to prepare multiple long/hardy/wordy songs per week just so my teacher can hear that the whole program before the end of the semester. And it's not like you coach a piece one time and it's perfect. So that's been stressful, particularly since I have a hearing for the entire voice faculty the week that school starts again.

After the January barrage of faculty hearing/orals/first recital, the rest of next semester should be a little bit less stressful. I have to give a total of three recitals next semester and for the second one I am planning on doing an all-Brazilian recital, and that repertoire is more familiar to me and should come together quicker. And for the third one I think there's a fairly good chance that I can get an opera role in an upcoming production that would count as a recital.

Off to church!

SST: Noony Noony Noo

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I haven't been very active on the blogging front for the past two weeks, partially because not a lot of blogworthy stuff has been going on in my life, but mostly because I feel like if I'm sitting at my computer writing I should be working on my 30 Rock script for my TV Writing Class.

So to help me finish typing up my draft, I will invoke Sesame Street's foremost authority on writing:

Friday the 13th

Ever have one of those days where you go to talk to a professor during their office hour but you get there and there's a note on the door saying that they are out of the office that day? And while you're there you see a flyer for a paid psychological study and you run across campus to participate in it but when you get there they say that they started the session five minutes ago? And then you run over to the administration building to cash the voucher you got for doing a psychological study last week, but the teller window closed ten minutes before you got there? And then you give up and walk over to the bus station to head home but you get there three minutes after your bus left? So you have a half hour to kill before the next bus so you head across the street to the public library and blog about your bad timing that day?

Yeah, me too.

(The one nice part in all of that was that I just succeeded in talking a librarian into waiving a fine for me. Like my dad always says, "You don't get what you don't ask for.")

SST: Big Bird and Oscar Introduced

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

The very first episode of Sesame Street aired on November 10, 1969, exactly 40 years ago today. The show was a lot different back then: it featured a really strange opening, most of the sketches are properly introduced by the characters (à la Laugh-In), and the show featured weird segments featuring blank-faced Muppets called "Anything People" that would have facial features/personalities added or removed during the scene.

To commemorate the anniversary, today's clips from the very first episode. The episode spends most of its time introducing us to the human and Muppet cast and, as you can see, some of the characters were not quite finalized yet:





Happy 40th Anniversary, Sesame Street!

P.S. - Isn't today a cool date - 11-10-09? The Count would love it.

72 Hours

Last Sunday we had a special joint Elders Quorum/Relief Society lesson on emergency preparedness, given by roommate Peter. After the lesson, I dug out my 72-hour kit to show it to Peter. It was a gift from my parents two years ago and upon pulling it out again I read the label:

72 Hour Food Supply (Oct 2007)
Suggested Rotation - 2 years

Guess it's time to rotate. So, at Peter and Seth's suggestion, I am going to live off of my 72 kit for the next three days.* It comes equipped with a handy itemized meal list, so here is what I am eating for lunch today:

A cereal bar, three strips of beef jerky, and a fruit snack pouch. I'm sure that if a huge disaster had occurred I would be thrilled to have all that to eat. However, in this time of peace and prosperity, that doesn't look like a whole lot of food. I hope that I'm not starving all the time over the next three days, but maybe it will help me understand the importance of gradually implementing a more expansive food storage plan.

* One decision I have made is that if I go somewhere and they are offering food (i.e. cookies after FHE tomorrow night) I will accept (and probably accept a whole lot). I mean, if there were a real disaster and the Red Cross swooped down and offered me a cookie, I wouldn't turn it down.

Meeting a Legend

Over the past four years, the University Musical Society has pulled off an amazing coup: they have brought in four of the biggest legends in Brazilian popular music history to perform at Hill Auditorium. The year before I came to Ann Arbor they hosted Gilberto Gil (Que pena!), my first year I saw Caetano Veloso in concert, last year I missed out on Milton Nascimento due to some now-forgotten conflict, and this year they have brought in Gal Costa.

If you are a fan of Brazilian music, your jaw is on the floor right now. Those four are like the Mount Rushmore of MPB (Popular Brazilian Music). History remembers them not just as amazingly provocative musicians, but as leaders of the Tropicália movement, the artistic resistance against the military dictatorship that overtook Brazil in 1964. Tropicália was considered so subversive that Caetano and Gil were thrown in prison in 1969 and eventually exiled to England until 1972.

I mentioned to Peter that I was planning on going to the Gal Costa concert on Saturday night and he forwarded me an email announcing that Gal Costa would be holding a Q & A session on campus this afternoon. I was really disappointed because it was scheduled during a time that I would be in class and then I had a lesson to teach on the other side of campus right afterward. But my class ended uncharacteristically early and my student emailed me with a last-minute cancellation, so I was able to make it to the final fifteen minutes of the Q & A session.

Afterward Gal was mobbed by people, mostly Brazilians, wanting autographs and photos with her. The size of the crowd and the fact that I'm not Brazilian discouraged me and I almost left without trying to approach her. However, I asked a Brazilian lady if she would snap the picture for me and pushed through the crowd all the way to Gal. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked (in Portuguese) if I could get a picture with her and she politely posed with me.

Just when the Brazilian lady pressed the button to take the picture, the battery died. I explained to her in Portuguese how to turn the camera off and back on again. While she was fumbling with it Gal said to me (in Portuguese), "Wait, are you American?" At that point I got a little starstruck and I told her that I spent two years in São Paulo, and then I started gushing uncontrollably saying that I love her music, that she's amazing, that she's the wind beneath my wings, etc.* She told me, "Você merece esta foto mais que as outras pessoas aqui porque você aprendeu a nossa língua e a nossa música" ("You deserve this photo more than the other people here because you learned our language and our music"). She told me at least twice that I speak Portuguese really well. I get really excited when any Brazilian tells me that my Portuguese is good, but having Gal Costa was really touching and made me super-giddy. Then the camerawoman finally got the camera to work long enough to snap a picture.

It's not the greatest picture - the flash washed us both out - but at least the camera stayed alive long enough to take it. The camera failure actually turned out to be a good thing because it lead to Gal talking to me for about a minute solid.

For the uninitiated, here are Gal's two signature songs, both from 1968:

"Baby"



"Divino Maravilhoso"



*This reminded me of the time when my friend Kevin got to meet world-famous baritone Thomas Hampson backstage after a concert. Kevin shook his hand and tried to play it cool, but out of nowhere he blurted out, "YOU'RE AN INSPIRATION TO ALL YOUNG SINGERS!" Hampson smiled awkwardly and backed away. Luckily Gal Costa was not weirded out by me in a similar fashion. Maybe it's good thing that I didn't get to meet Drew Barrymore face to face. I probably would have breathlessly told her about my weird dream about her and she would have gotten a restraining order against me.

Halloween '09

My love of Halloween is well-documented (I did much blogging on the subject of Halloween last year: 1 2 3). This year I had an idea for a Halloween costume months in advance, but I failed to follow through with it (I couldn't find the right stripy shirt).

So since I volunteered to perform a song at the ward Halloween party, I decided that my costume would reflect my song choice. So I pulled out my stage makeup kit, put on my least favorite t-shirt (apologies to Olene Walker), and smeared around some cheapo red nail polish (the only blood-looking item I could find at Rite Aid two hours before the party - everyone was worried but it came off my skin very easily). Add it all up and voilà: your standard zombie costume.

My song choice for the evening was a song by computer-programmer-turned-geek-rockstar Jonathan Coulton. I was introduced to him by my new roommate Peter, who wrote a scholarly paper about him (The Music of Jonathan Coulton: Postmodern and Geeky) that helped him get accepted into the musicology doctoral program here at the University of Michigan (no joke). When I mentioned that I was searching for a Halloweeny-type song to perform at the party, he turned me on to a Jonathan Coulton song called "RE: Your Brains." It's a zombie saga written in the form of a bland interoffice email:

Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall. Good to see you, buddy - how’ve you been? Thing have been OK for me, except that I’m a zombie now. I really wish you’d let us in. I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand. But here’s an FYI: You’re all gonna die screaming.

The song features a part for a zombie chorus, so in the performance, Peter taught the crowd the part and lead them in the performance. I have a little snippet of the show here, starting with the second verse and going until the space on my memory card ran out:



I've become quite fond of Coulton's music - it's all very funny on the surface, but a closer inspection reveals some very sophisticated musical and thematic content underneath the comedy. You can listen to all of Coulton's music for free on this site (click on the little play arrow underneath in the 'Hear' column). In addition to "RE: Your Brains," I would suggest checking out the songs "Shop Vac" (the titular vacuum cleaner is a metaphor for a suburban couple's inability to communicate), "Skullcrusher Mountain" (a folk/country love song from an evil genius to his captive maiden - "I'm so into you, but I'm way too smart for you/Even my henchmen think I'm crazy, I'm not surprised that you agree"), and "I'm Your Moon" (a gorgeous love song written from the point of view of Charon, a moon of Pluto, who is consoling Pluto after being demoted from planet status).

Final thought: Nothing against Katherine Downie and her lovely tree in autumn costume, but the photo at the top of the post was cropped from the photo on the right. I cropped the photo to use as my Facebook profile pic, and as I was doing it I felt bad for chopping off a friend. So friends, I want to know: how do you feel about cropping friends out of your profile pictures? Have you ever been cropped out of someone else's photo? If so, how did it make you feel? Let the comments page serve as a cropped friends support group.

SST: The Batty Bat

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

As I mentioned in the previous SST post, in my TV Writing class I am working on a 30 Rock episode that features several Sesame Street elements, including The Count. Accordingly, I have been doing a little bit of research about him and I was a little bit surprised to learn this little tidbit (courtesy of Muppet Wiki):

The Count is now a friendly, non-threatening figure on the Street, but his early appearances in 1972 had a more sinister edge. He had hypnotic powers, and was able to stun people by waving his hands. After counting, he uttered a villainous laugh as lightning flashed in moody colors. He was often accompanied by creepy organ music. As the character matured, the sinister aspect of his personality was toned down, and his laugh became a throaty, [Bela] Lugosi-style chuckle.

Interesting, no? In honor of the Halloweeniest Sesame Street character around, here's a Count song I loved when I was little (I especially loved the sparkly bats):



Happy Halloweek!

The Big House

This was one of those weeks where you wake up Monday morning with the feeling, "Huh, my throat feels a little funny." Over the next few days your throat gets incrementally sorer and your nose gets snottier and snottier until you finally call it: you're sick. At first you try to go about your everyday life, but you continue feeling crappy until you have no choice but to shut it down. On Friday I woke up feeling so sick that I emailed my students and canceled all my lessons for the day. I spent most of the day on the couch eating hot chicken soup, studying 30 Rock episodes and Follow that Bird (both of which were assignments from my TV Writing teacher - I love that watching TV has become my homework).

After my day of rest I went to bed early. I woke up on Saturday morning feeling miraculously better. So well, in fact, that I took Nick up on his offer of an extra ticket to the Michigan-Delaware State game. This is my last year at the U of M and I was really hoping that I would get another chance to go to a game in the Big House. In my first two years here I only went to one game and it was not the greatest experience for numerous reasons:

1) Last year a friend told me a few weeks in advance that she was not going to be able to use her ticket to the Michigan-Michigan State game and she told me I could have it. In the interim between the offer and the game itself I broke my foot. But I thought that it might be my only chance to go to a game in the Big House, so I decided to go anyways. I was newly confined to a walking boot and I was nervous about walking long distances in it, but I discovered that the U of M provided a stadium shuttle on game days so I hopped aboard. However, the stadium shuttle dropped me off at C.C. Little, which seems about 1.7 million miles away from the stadium when you're making the trek in a walking boot. By the time I staggering into the stadium I was aching so bad that I just wanted to sit down. I found my seat in the student section next to my friend Jake Gee. I started to sit down, and Jake informed me that it is heresy to sit in the student section. So I had to stand the whole game and by the end my foot pain was eclipsed by my hip pain because the walking boot makes your legs unequal lengths and standing for too long throws your hips out of whack.

2) It rainy, freezing day and the sun did not come out at all. I stupidly left the house wearing a green jacket, green being Michigan State's color. Wearing the enemy's color in the student section will not fly, so I had to turn it inside out and wear the gray lining on the outside.

3) Michigan blew a late lead and lost in a very demoralizing fashion, dropping to a 2-6 record on their way to the worst season in the long and storied history of Michigan football.

Here are the ways in which yesterday's game was superior to my previous game:

1) No broken foot. A friend of Nick's at the hospital gave him a pair of unused season tickets located outside of the student section, meaning that we could sit down during the game. Last year it was fun to be in the student section and participate in all their special cheers and shenanigans, but man, it was nice to sit down. Sitting outside the student section also resulted in a serious overheard profanity reduction.

2) On the whole it was a bit of a chilly day, but several times over the course of the game the sun came out and it was pleasantly warm.

3) Michigan absolutely obliterated Delaware State off the face of the planet. At the end of the first quarter the score was 28-0 and it appeared like Michigan would keep up that pace and the final score would be 112-0 (the actual final score was 63-6). I actually felt bad for this poor little school coming into the Big House and getting so thoroughly trashed - I couldn't count how many times they botched a play and were subjected to an infamous chant lead by the student section and marching band - until I learned that Michigan gave them a $500,000 payday just for showing up.

It would have been more fun to watch a game that was actually competitive, but it was also fun to be a part of history. According to espn.com, in yesterday's game "the Wolverines set team marks with 442 yards in the first half and 727 total. They matched a school record with a 28-point first quarter and led 49-3 with their second-highest score by halftime." But the best thing about seeing a blowout in the Big House was being a part of the "Michigan Wave." At the beginning of the third quarter Nick told me that he had done some research the night before on Wikipedia and called out the various stages of the wave to me before they happened. Quoth Wikipedia:

The Big House is known for its Michigan Wave, taught to every student at freshman orientation. If the Wolverines are ahead during the third quarter of a game, the student section begins a pattern of non-traditional crowd waves. The spectacle begins with a counterclockwise wave, then another counterclockwise wave in slow motion, followed by one that that is double the normal wave speed, then a reverse wave that runs clockwise, and then finally it will split into two counter-rotational waves. The Michigan Wave is not performed at every home game, and traditional waves are typically stymied by the student section.

It was an essential collegiate moment and I'm glad I could be there to take part. I searched YouTube for videos of the Michigan Wave and none of could really do it justice, but this clip gives you the basic idea:



This post is so much longer than it ought to have been, so... The End.

SST: The People in Your Neighborhood

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I wrote in a previous post that I had wanted to take a screenwriting class, but after the first class I felt like I was in over my head so I didn't end up enrolling. However, I have continued to attend every class so far this semester and I have learned so much. I was originally intimidated by the other members of the class because they are mostly juniors or seniors in the screen arts and culture department and this is my very first film class ever, but after reading some of their work I feel like I can hang with just about anybody in the class. I was surprised to see that a number of people in the class have trouble stringing words together, let alone assembling a coherent story. I have been doing all the same assignments as the rest of the class, but it's kind of nice to just be observing so that I can work at my own pace.

I may be just observing the screenwriting class but I am officially registered for another screen arts and culture class: TV Writing. Through the first month of class I can honestly say that it is the most fun I've ever had in a college class. During the second week of class we watched an entire episode of Lost and analyzed its structure. I thought to myself, "How come it took me eight-plus years of college to discover that there are classes like this?"

I have always watched an excessive amount of TV, but now I can legitimately say as I'm watching that I am doing my homework. In the first week of class the teacher opened the class with a discussion of the various shows that class members had watched that week. The class discussed a half dozen shows and I had missed all of them. I felt for the first time in my life that I actually needed to watch more TV. Or rather, I need to spend less time watching things like Gilmore Girls reruns, Sportscenter, and Top Chef, and watch current scripted TV instead.

The difference between the two writing classes is really striking. Writing a film is a really solitary experience; you keep your ideas to yourself lest someone steal them. Writing for TV, on the other hand, is done by a staff of writers that all work in a room together, bouncing as many ideas off each other as possible. Our TV writing teacher has real industry experience and he strives to make our class as much like a real writers room as possible, so we all get to pitch our ideas and riff on other people's ideas. I personally find the TV model a lot more fun and I feel like I pitch well and throw out good ideas to the other writers in the room.

My final project for TV Writing is a full-length script for an original episode of 30 Rock. I've spent a couple of weeks working out the various storylines that the episode will feature, and as a teaser I will tell you that my episode (at least at this stage, it may change) incorporates this classic Sesame Street song:



Final anecdote: Last Friday we had a special guest speaker - a U of M alum who is now one of the directors from the show The Big Bang Theory (which I had never seen before). He was a Lakers fan and he made a basketball analogy saying that every show he has worked on has a flashy Kobe Bryant figure, but more importantly, every show needs a Derek Fisher. Derek Fisher is the glue that holds the Lakers team together, he explained, and the Lakers suffered when Derek Fisher was playing in Utah. I happened to be wearing some Utah Jazz apparel that day, and I mentioned that as Jazz fan I felt fortunate to have had Derek Fisher on the team, if only for one season. The two of us had a little bonding moment, which was cool because earlier in his lecture he had talked about how to break into the television industry, stressing the importance of making personal connections with established members of the television community. Gotta love any class where my obsession with both TV and the Utah Jazz is an asset.

Catching Up

Two weeks ago I was blogging up a storm with three published posts on this blog and one on my dream blog in a mere four days. But tomorrow is another Sesame Street Tuesday and I now realize that I haven't blogged since the last SST. So here's a quickie update on some of the goings-on in my life since then:

• My last post was published on the last day of my sleep study. On the two nights before that post I went to the sleep lab at 9:00 p.m., did a breathalyzer test (which I had never done before - .000 every time, baby!), spent about an hour and a half getting electrodes glued to my head and legs (it sounds horrible, but it wasn't that bad - I watched Cinderella Man as they glued me up). I then slept from 11:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m. while a tech monitored the readings from the electrodes all night. (Good news: I don't have sleep apnea, I don't grind my teeth while I sleep, and I don't kick my legs around when I sleep. It's hard to know these things when you are a bachelor.)

On the last night of the study, however, I had to arrive at the lab at 6:00 p.m., get the electrodes glued on, and then sit under red lights from 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. while they took saliva samples every thirty minutes to measure my melatonin levels. This too was not nearly as bad as it sounds. A lot of people in the study, including my roommate Seth, complained that the night seemed interminable, even though they were allowed to watch movies or read (I loaned Seth my DVDs of Pushing Daisies and he watched the whole season in one night).

My night of sleep-deprivation, on the other hand, positively flew by because my roommate Peter loaned my his Nintendo DS with the remake of Final Fantasy IV, one of my all-time favorite games from my childhood. (Peter made the offer while we were at an activity at the institute building and my reaction was waaaay too enthusiastic, causing every head in the room to turn to me. I don't feel embarrassed very often but I did just a little bit in that moment.) I actually had a really fun time in the sleep lab, and I slept incredibly well despite all the electrodes on my head. The only real unpleasant part was picking all the leftover glue out of my hair for the next few days, but the nice wad of bills they handed me on the way out the door made up for the glue.

Besides the money, I was hoping that the sleep study would help me get into a better sleeping schedule. During the ten days that I had to keep a strict 11:00 - 6:00 sleeping schedule I felt incredibly productive and responsible. Two weeks later I can honestly say that I have improved my sleeping habits tremendously. I'm not keeping the same strict sleeping hours (the study only allowed me to sleep 7 hours a night and I learned that I really need 8 hours of sleep), but for the most part I have been getting to bed near 11:00 and getting up at 7:00 or 7:30.

• I got a flat tire last week on the way to a friend's recital. I bought my tires at a Sears in Massachusetts during one of my New England wanderings last August, so I put on the spare tire and headed down to the the Ann Arbor Sears location. Unfortunately, when I got there I learned that Sears stores do not share a computer network, so the Ann Arbor store had no record of my tire purchase. I couldn't even remember the name of the Massachusetts town where I bought my tires, but after a bit of Googling I found the number for the Lanesboro, MA store and soon the Ann Arbor store hooked me up with a free tire. Good thing I paid for the road hazard coverage or I would have been out a couple hundred bucks.

• Our temporary roommate Nick has actually had quite a bit of free time while he has been here doing his plastic surgery rotation. It's been fun just to hang out and watch football/baseball with him or take him on Ann Arbor rites of passage such as the Zingerman's Tour de Food. He had all of Saturday off so he even spent a few hours helping Seth, Peter, and me with a major apartment cleaning/organizing project. Our apartment had long been out of control with junk sitting around everywhere, so Peter spearheaded an initiative to minimize clutter around the apartment. The results are amazing and I no longer feel like the apartment belongs to the junk and we are merely the junk's tenants. We had a Brian Presents: that night (The Lady Eve) and it was so much more comfortable than the previous uber-cramped Brian Presents:.

So there you go. This ended up being longer than I anticipated, so I think I'll wait to publish tomorrow's Sesame Street Tuesday post until a little later in the day so that I can get to bed on time. I hope you enjoy the waning moments of your Columbus Day.

SST: Everybody Sleeps

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I'm nearing the end of my sleep study, so sleep has been on my mind a lot. This song has entered my mind more than once in the last week:



When I was little, every time I saw this clip I thought, "Wait, wasn't it 'Everybody Eats'?" Indeed, there is another Sesame Street song with the same music called 'Everybody Eats'. And when I'd see that as a little kid, it confused me even more: "Huh? I was sure it was 'Everybody Sleeps!'" Those Sesame Street mind games.

I thought it befitting to accompany a sleep-themed post with a new post on my dream blog. You can read it here.

Appreciate!!!!

This flyer appeared in various locations in our building a few days ago. I kind of love it.

Lodgers

Many of you may not know that we had an Italian roommate for a month. A lot of the time I didn't notice he was there either.

Matteo is from Rimini, Italy, located right on the Adriatic sea about an hour away from Bologna, where he goes to school. His English is extremely enthusiastic but not always the most intelligible, so I'm a little hazy on some of the details of why he first came to America and what he was doing before he came out to Michigan. (Although I do know that he met an Italian woman somewhere - Phoenix? - and they got married in Vegas shortly before he came here. She went back to Italy and is going to meet up with him back in Bologna.) He eventually came out here to the University of Michigan to do some research (engineering?) for a month and and somehow (I don't feel like giving the whole big explanation right now) he found us and rented the empty room in our apartment.

Most days he would leave bright and early to head to school, come home really late, and talk on the phone in rapid Italian. I would go several days without ever seeing him, but once in a while he would come and hang out with us as we watched T.V. or sat around talking. He was always super-nice and really considerate the whole time he was around. He was so grateful for anything you would do for him. A few days before he left I asked him how he was getting to the airport and he said he was going to take a taxi, which would have easily cost $50 bucks or more. He was astonished when Peter and I volunteered to drive him, and he thanked me profusely for days. He even gave me a pair of nice running shoes that fit me perfectly as a gift (well, mostly because he didn't have room for them in his luggage). By now he should be safe and sound back in Bologna with his Vegas bride.

My only regret is that I didn't try to speak more Italian with him. I consider myself fairly functional in Italian since it is similar to Portuguese, plus I took a third-year Italian class at the University of Utah, I read the entire Book of Mormon in Italian, and, believe it or not, there are a number of operas written in Italian. The few times I did try to speak to him I would start out in Italian but quickly slip into Portuguese, which he couldn't understand, and then I would get embarrassed and switch back to English. I could understand him pretty well in Italian, but spoke really fast and a regional accent that I wasn't used to. However, listening to him speak English was like an Italian lesson because you often had to take what he said and mentally rearrange it to make sense in English, thereby inferring principles of Italian grammar. Here are some of my favorite Matteo-isms:

• One day he asked us if he could use our "vacuum generator." I assume he was directly translating the name of the object from Italian, but I found the name quite amusing. After all, doesn't the machine generate a vacuum in order create suction? (The scientists and engineers in the audience may correct me if necessary.)

• He was a really big baseball fan and played for an amateur team in Rimini. Who new baseball was popular in Italy? He liked to watch baseball "matches" on T.V. and he even went to a Tigers "match" in Detroit a couple weeks ago. I would say things like, "I like baseball games too. I want to go to a Tigers game someday." I thought he might parrot me, but he persisted in saying "match." Perhaps his English teacher/textbook was British?

• Right before he left he told me that he had "one shahm-poe" (emphasis on the first syllable) that I could have, referring to a leftover bottle of shampoo.

So Addio, Matteo. His departure makes room for yet another temporary lodger, my friend Nick Johnson. Nick is in medical school in St. Louis (I stayed with him and his little family on my trip back from Utah in May) and he is coming here to do a month-long external rotation in plastic surgery at the University of Michigan Hospital. I'm stoked for him to live with us, but apparently he will be at the hospital at 4:00 a.m. every morning and in bed by 8:00 p.m., so like Matteo I may end up not seeing him around very much. But at least I should be able to understand him.

Blood Embargo Lifted/Sleeping Lessons

The Blood Embargo has finally been lifted. The last time I was able to donate blood was in May of last year, right before my trip to the malaria-risk zone that is the Amazon, which landed me on the donation deferral list. I was eligible to start donating blood again on July 8th, but when July 8th rolled around I had a freshly broken arm. I figured that it would be a good idea to have at least one functional arm at all times, so I planned to wait until my arm went back to normal before donating again. But once my arm got back to normal I started working with Seth at the Art Center, and all of that heavy lifting day after day precluded blood donation. But on Saturday, none of the aforementioned obstacles could stand in my way any longer and I got back in the blood donation game. It's good to be back.

In other health-related news, Seth and I are both participating in a study about how alcohol affects sleeping patterns. No, we're not going to start drinking to be a part of the study. They needed healthy, non-drinking males as part of the control group, and midway through my initial interview the researcher said, "Man, you Mormons make really great control group members!" Today I went back for a second visit to have a physical and pick up my stylish new wristwear that will record my motion and exposure to light for the next week. I have to keep a sleeping journal for six nights and then I have to spend three nights in the sleep clinic with electrodes glued to my head. After the last night in the lab, they'll hand me a check on the way out the door. Making money for sleeping sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

But this sweet deal comes with one big asterisk: I have to maintain a strict sleeping schedule of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. from now until next Wednesday night. If I don't keep the sleep schedule, my wrist monitor will give me away and I may be ineligible to continue in the study and pick up my money. However, I am actually somewhat looking forward to this week because for years I have been both going to bed and getting up far too late (after hitting snooze a half dozen times). This could be like sleeping lessons to help jumpstart a lifestyle change for the better. I know I'm capable of it - during the two years of my mission I went to bed at 10:30 every night and I would cheerily pop right out of bed the second my alarm went off at 6:30. But today I can't even remember the last time I was up that early, so my question is: what on earth is there to do at 6 a.m.? I guess I could go running or read or learn to put little wooden ships into bottles, but after that I'm out of ideas. If you have any suggestions for early morning activities, let me know because I've got a week and a half worth of early mornings coming up.

Scare Tactics

Yesterday in the middle of my voice class, one of my students raised her hand, said she wasn't feeling well, and asked if she could go to the bathroom. The class all turned their heads and watched her make her exit. As soon as the door swung closed behind her, the whole class leapt out of their seats and made a bee line for the bottle of hand sanitizer in the corner. I them say such things as "I think she may have coughed near me!" and "I nearly rubbed up against her backpack!" I guess that means the hygiene campaigns and media frenzy surrounding H1N1 are working.

P.S. - Turns out the student just had a headache. She was fine.

SST: 12 Cans

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I spent much of the last two weeks working alongside my roommate Seth at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Seth works as the do-everything/fix-everything guy there and since they had an unusually large number of big projects to tackle, Seth hired me on as an helpmate. I spent the whole week lifting really heavy stuff, painting new shelves, knocking out walls, and getting generally filthy.

However, it seemed like we spent most of our time undoing and then redoing the work we had done previously. For instance, last Monday we rented a U-Haul truck, went to a really grody warehouse, loaded up a lot of really grody (and heavy) junk, and then stashed it away in a spare room at the Art Center. On Thursday, however, we found out that there supposed was to be a drawing class complete with a nude model in that same room where we had worked so hard to stash all that junk, so we had to move it all out into an adjacent room. As we were restacking everything in the new room, I thought about this modern-day Sisyphus from Sesame Street:



A few hours after we finished relocating everything, Seth and I were working on rearranging the cubicles in a downstairs office. A man stuck his head in and said that the model for the drawing class didn't show up and couldn't be contacted. He asked if either of us would care to model for the class, either with or without clothes. Since we were working on a project where I was basically stepping on Seth's toes, I volunteered to model.

When I went up to the class the teacher asked if I felt comfortable getting naked and I told her I would be just fine with clothes on. Did I want to just take my shirt off, since it was warm in the room? No, really, just fine with the shirt on.

This was my second experience as a model (well, technically my third). My first experience was very different - I posed for an oil portrait and the artist wanted to chat with me during the whole 2-hour sitting. He didn't mind if I moved around, and he even said that a small amount of movement from me helped him inject some life into the portrait. However, for this drawing class I had to keep perfectly still for thirty minutes at a time, which is not an easy thing to do for a hyperactive person like me.

But I got the hang of it and the last two 30-minute poses seemed to go by a lot faster. It's nice to know that if all else fails I have my modeling career to fall back on. It even pays slightly better than moving heavy things back and forth.

New Dream Blog Post!

After a three month hiatus, I have finally updated my dream blog again. Over the summer there were two main reasons that I lapsed in my dream-blogging: 1) My new laptop doesn't have a mouse, making it difficult to do the MS Paint illustrations that I make for each entry; and 2) a general dearth of interesting dreams. But my new roommate Peter just gave me a mouse for my laptop and I've started to have some fairly interesting dreams again lately. (Perhaps the two events are connected?)

The new dream post is actually a dream I had back in April when I was visiting my sister Emily in Minnesota. I had always meant to blog about it but I didn't feel compelled to follow through until I heard a piece of news yesterday during my visit to a screenwriting class. I am in the final year of my doctorate and I have officially finished all my coursework, but the university is allowing me to take a free class of my choice just for fun and I chose screenwriting. I went to the first class yesterday and I was in waaaaay over my head. The class is supposed to be taken by juniors or seniors in the film department and it requires a ridiculous amount of work that I'm unequipped to execute. Nevertheless, the class was enthralling and the teacher said he wouldn't mind if I wanted to come to just observe class during the rest of the semester.

During the class last night the head of the screenwriting department made a cameo appearance (cameo is a word us screenwriters use) to tell us that tonight (Thursday, September 10) the University of Michigan is hosting the world premiere of the locally-made indie film Whip It (featuring a cameo by our very own Katherine Downie), and that director/star Drew Barrymore is going to be present to answer questions afterward. How awesome is that? Drew-Freaking-Barrymore! And it's free! So if you are interested in going to the screening tonight (it starts at 6:00 but I think it would be smart to get there really early), give me a call soon.

P.S. If you want to know what the connection is between the Whip It premiere and my new dream post, you'll just have to read it. (How's that for a hook? Hook is a term we talked about in screenwriting last night).

SST: 'U' Really Got a Hold on Me/How I Miss My 'X'

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

So I've got a new roommate, one Peter Shirts, and on Sunday he learned of the existence of Sesame Street Tuesday. He excitedly told me that he had a clip idea for me. While I appreciated the gesture, I explained to him that his selection wouldn't exactly fit in with what we set out to do here, which is to celebrate the golden age of Sesame Street (although it should be noted that over the weekend the show won its 115th, 116th, 117th, and 118th Emmys, more than any other program in the history of the Emmy competition, in addition to a special lifetime achievement Emmy on the occasion of its 40th anniversary).

Although I may not be using Peter's suggested clip, it did get me thinking about the whole "popular musicians doing a rendition of their popular songs in a Sesame Street context" genre. There are many worthy choices, and in the end I decided to give you a double shot today. So here's Smokey Robinson and Patti Labelle, respectively:





Doesn't that make you wish you had a big, cute foam letter to squeeze (or to squeeze you)? Happy Sesame Street Tuesday.

Home Alone

My roommate Seth is finally coming back home today after a week down in Mississippi. Last week was a rare opportunity for me to spend an extended period home alone. If 80's sitcoms have taught me anything, there is a checklist of things that you are supposed to do when left without parental/roommate supervision:

#1 Trash the house and then race to clean it up in the last remaining hours alone: FAIL. The house was totally trashed when Seth left and I spent most of the week fixing it up for a get-together on Saturday night.

#2 Plan a small gathering that balloons out of control when unexpected guests show up: PASS. Saturday night I hosted Brian Presents: Hoop Dreams, the last in my summer series of supposedly more intimate film screenings, since many of my friends still haven't returned from their summer adventures yet. However, people kept streaming in at an alarming rate, completely exceeding the comfortable capacity of my poor little apartment. All in all, it was the best-attended (and most cramped) Brian Presents: of all time.

#3 Destroy a piece of furniture/family heirloom/beloved pet and replace it with an exact replica before the owner returns: FAIL. The wildest event at the party on Saturday night was a lengthy group discussion about the issues of class, race, gender, and the American Dream addressed in Hoop Dreams.

That gives me a failing grade of 33% for the week. I guess I'll have to bone up on my 80's sitcoms before I'm home alone next time.

Speaking of 80's sitcoms, I went to a farewell party for my friend Katherine Downie last night before she heads off to do her MFA in Grand Rapids, a whopping two hours away. They passed around a notebook wherein we were supposed to write her a farewell message. As I tried to summon some inspirational thoughts, these great words came to mind:

Thank you for being a friend.
Traveled down the road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant.
And if you threw a party,
Invited everyone you knew,
You would see the biggest gift would be for me
And the card attached would say,
"Thank you for being a friend."

Sitcoms in the 80's used to have such inspirational theme songs (which look really silly when you write them out). Here's a chance to test your inspirational 80's sitcom theme knowledge (click on the last line for the answer):

#1

Sometimes the world looks perfect,
Nothing to rearrange.
Sometimes you get a feeling
Like you need some kind of change.
No matter what the odds are this time,
Nothing's going to stand in my way.
This flame in my heart,
And a long lost friend
Gives every dark street a light at the end.

Standing tall, on the wings of my dream.
Rise and fall, on the wings of my dream.
The rain and thunder, the wind and haze
I'm bound for better days.
It's my life and my dream,
And nothing's going to stop me now.

#2

Show me that smile again.
Don’t waste another minute on your cryin’.
We're nowhere near the end
The best is ready to begin.
As long as we got each other
We got the world spinnin' right in our hands.
Baby you and me, we gotta be
The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreamin’.
As long as we keep on givin’
We can take anything that comes our way
Baby, rain or shine, all the time
We got each other sharin’ the laughter and love.

#3

I bet we been together for a million years,
And I bet we’ll be together for a million more.
Oh, it’s like I started breathing on the night we kissed,
And I can’t remember what I ever did before.
What would we do baby, without us?
What would we do baby, without us?
And there ain’t no nothing we can’t love each other through.
What would we do baby, without us?
Sha la la la.

#4

You and me, babe, livin' for dreams,
Lifin' for love, drinkin' for free.
Sittin' on top of an old robot,
Sharin' and carin' it out.
The memory's scrubbing you down!

How did you do? Hope you have an inspirational Tuesday!

P.S. - When I first arrived in Brazil, practically every Brazilian I met told me that I looked like the kid from the movie Esqueceram de Mim (They Forgot Me). I had no idea who they were talking until a few months later when we dropped in on a family that was watching They Forgot Me on T.V., known to us English-speakers as Home Alone. Mystery solved, but I was not exactly flattered by the comparison. Look at the picture at the top - do I look anything like that? Fortunately, the Brazilians collectively stopped comparing me to Macaulay Culkin when the first Harry Potter movie came out. I remember a few times when I knocked on a door, a little kid answered, and I asked them to go get their parents. They ran off and I heard them yell, "MOM! HARRY POTTER'S AT THE DOOR!" That's cool - I'd take Harry Potter over Macaulay Culkin any day.

SST: Bert's Goldfish

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

At the ward campout last weekend we went to a beautiful little lake where the water was so clear that you could take a few steps out into the water and see the fish swimming around your feet. And I'm not talking minnows - these fish were between three and six inches. If you stood still for long enough, the fish would creep up on you and bite your foot, which felt like a little kiss given the size of their mooshy little mouths. As I watched them pecking at my feet, I thought about Bert's goldfish that go "moomm moomm moomm":



I love to see a sketch where the great Jim Henson and the great Frank Oz are able to improvise together. Henson's Ernie throws a lot of unexpected questions at Bert and it's a delight to see Oz's Bert squirm a little as he tries to think up his answers: "It's uh... it's brunch now. It'll be lunch later." "That's Talbot's wife....Melissa." "I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS!" So much fun.

On another goldfish-related note, I must recommend Ponyo, the latest film by our greatest living filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki. It is an absolute marvel. Animation is one of the most collaborative artforms; one man alone cannot draw the hundreds of thousands of drawings that flicker by at twenty-four frames a second. As a result, most animated films feel as though they were made by committee, each moment the result of much discussion and compromise. However, Miyazaki's films feel like they come straight out of a single brain, as if Miyazaki had opened up his brain and poured his undiluted imagination straight onto the screen.

Ponyo is adorable and fun, always surprising and frequently bewildering, disarmingly simple and subtly complex. Miyazaki shows you sights you have neither seen nor imagined, presents ideas you have never thought of, creates characters you have never met, and takes you places you have never visited. It is a film that makes you feel young, alive, and invigorated. Everyone should see this movie - from my youngest nieces and nephews who love My Neighbor Totoro to the adults who don't think they would enjoy an animated film from Japan. And Ponyo should definitely be seen by those of you who love Sesame Street Tuesday.