The First Month

Well, almost. I haven't been here for a full month yet, but it doesn't even really seem that long. Actually, in two days it will have been a full month. That means that I haven't seen my parents, brothers, family, or beautiful dog in about thirty days. For the record, I do miss you guys, but I'm not homesick. I haven't gotten that way, and I doubt that I will. I'm way too busy here to be homesick, because that involves time to sit around and think about how lonely I am, but you can't really do that in New York City.

Here are some pictures for those interested: http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/Buran/New%20York%20City/

Classes are going well. I think that I am adjusting to college life a lot better than high school. In high school you had a little thing called homework which I pretty much could not stand. Here, there really isn't much homework at all. I think I've had maybe one assignment, besides reading of course, which you have to do quite a bit of. The only class that I'm having slight trouble in is Normative Ethics: Contemporary Moral Issues. Doesn't that sound really exciting? Well, it's not. It's really boring and we sit around listening to this man speak about God knows what, and I completely zone out for most of the class. Sometimes I fall asleep, just because I have no effing idea what the man is saying. Of course, when I am awake and I can understand what's going on, well okay, then it can be a little interesting. Last class, I seriously watched Flight Of The Conchords on my laptop with subtitles because it was two hours of listening to stuff that I didn't really care about, and he just reiterates what is said in the previous night's reading. He is a good teacher, I'm not saying that, the subject matter is just extremely bland.

I'm taking two theatre classes. Acting 1 and Props. Acting is really hard, because it's the only class that I've ever taken that requires so much humility from yourself. You have to be completely comfortable with putting your entire self out there for others to mercilessly scrutinize. Sometimes it can be embarrassing, but that is what acting is all about. It's being truthful to yourself completely feel and understand what is being said. That's not always easy, and moreso you have to be fully in-tune so that you're not meing melodramatic or overacting, or anything of the sorts. Plus, we did this excersize where we had to act like animals, and that involved crawling on the ground and I stupidly picked a rat. I cut my knees all up and it really sucked because it got infected, and it was disgustingly painful. Props is busy. Currently, I am serving as a prop master on All Shook Up and Summer and Smoke, and we are also required to put in at least three hours a week of outside classwork time. It's really busy, and I should get on that soon. Technically, I also have University 101 for theatre majors which is taught by this really awesome guy, Grant. He is the director of Summer and Smoke, and from what I gather, the young guy with huge plans for the university. Since there are two directing majors (including myself) in my year, I asked Grant if there was anything that I could do, so he advised me to sit in on all of the Summer and Smoke rehearsals that I could, and become a production assistant of sorts, so that is also what I'm doing. It's a good way to meet people, get my foot in the door, and get experience while I'm at it.

New York is nice. Like I said, there is always something to do. The unfortunate thing is that I have to take a subway mostly if I want to do anything after 10:00. Lower Manhattan tends to shut down around that time, unless if you want to go to a bar, where they don't card you. There are plenty of those, TJs, Hooks and Ladders, Blarney Stone, etc.. When I go, I just buy a soda, but sometimes I like to pretend it's hardcore alcohol. People think I'm pretty cool when I do that. (No they don't.) Sometimes I get the soda for free though, because it's just soda, so that's nice. But yeah, New York is good. I do miss some aspects of Bel Air, like the air not being as dirty, the greenness of it, the fact that Bel Air has Tess, you know, all of the essential things. It's very busy and crowded here, and there is a lot of noise, but it's really cool living here. If you want to do something, there is always something to be found. Also, I live very very close to the Brooklyn Bridge, so I walk that mostly every night. It's got a great view, and one of the only places in the city that you can see stars from. Plus, the view includes a whole bunch of cool buildings which look great at night, the water, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Statue of Liberty. Cool stuff. Oh yeah, there is this bum who lives on the bridge at nights. He's got a really cool pirate hat that he wears and has a shopping cart with like a Christmas tree of objects assembled in it. He's really awesome, because he does cool things like talk to presidential placements. I wonder what they are saying back to him. I'm very curious! One of the best things about New York is that there are so many things that I can get student discounts on. The coolest is student rushing broadway shows, where you pay like $26.00 for pretty good seats. It's very nice and handy for a bored night.

So, I've done a lot of these, so these are some of the highlights:

-Gypsy with Patti LuPone- I saw this Broadway show, and it was amazing. Patti LuPone gave the greatest performance that I have ever seen on a Broadway stage. All three of the main characters won Tony Awards for their roles, and it shows. It's a biography about Gypsy Rose Lee, and Patti plays her awesome stage mother.

-Broadway Flea Market- This huge flea market in Shubert Alley where they sold a whole bunch of props, playbills, CDs, autographs, etc. all to benefit Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS, so all of the money went to a good cause. I bought a lot of stuff and wound up spending like 20 bucks for it all. Great deals.

-Wicked- Got to see Wicked for free through Pace. They gave all of the freshman theatre majors free tickets if we wanted them, so of course I took them. It was great, and it's one of the coolest shows on Broadway. It's a spin off of The Wizard of Oz, if you were wondering.

-13- I got a free ticket to attend the first dress rehearsal for the new Jason Robert Brown musical '13' on Broadway. It was very nice, and I'd never been able to attend a dress rehearsal before, so that was really cool. I got to meet Jason Robert Brown afterwards, so that was very awesome. He wrote the musicals 'Last Five Years', 'Songs For A New World', and 'Parade'. He's very good, and the show was good stuff.

-Spring Awakening- One of my best friends, Doug, came up to visit and we went and student rushed Spring Awakening on Broadway. Great show of course, and we had seen it before. We went because Hunter Parrish from Weeds is starring it in. He was really good, and the show again was great.

-Insomnia Cookies - A store that sells freshly baked cookies, milk, and brownies. Open until like 5 in the morning. Enough said.

-The Drama Book Shop- Awesome book store which sells like any script ever. I have spent way too much money there. Wayyyy too much.

-Inside The Actors Studio- They shoot this show here at Pace, so we get to see like all of these stars. As Pace students, we get to go and get free tickets. I think that as a theatre major I am actually required to go to a few of them. The next ones coming up at Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Ricky Gervais (Creator of The Office, star of the UK version, star of new movie Ghost Town), and Laura Linney (Played Abigail Adams in the John Adams mini-series, has been in a bunch of movies and broadway shows.) Those are all in October, so I'm excited for that.

-Ben Folds- I'm seeing Ben Folds in concert on Wednesday, October 1st. That's going to be awesome because Ben Folds is awesome. Very very excited, and thankfully my tickets came in the mail after Mom sent them from our house where they came.

I'm sure that there are more really cool things that I am forgetting. My room is like a hole in the wall for anyone that is interested in knowing. The view out the window aint so bad, so that's okay. But still, it's small. Next year, my dorm will be much much bigger. The people on my floor are crazy. My roommate is cool though, and we do some pretty fun things. We take our phones and prank call people using George Bush and Rosie O' Donnell sound boards. Also, we take pictures of ourselves and photoshop them into pictures with famous people and tape them to people's doors. One night we dressed as ghosts and knocked on people's doors at like 3:00 AM. They weren't happy. We like to get the free scientology pamphlets and DVDs and give them to this girl Dara, and she gets mad. She chases us around the hall, so when she goes back to her room, we just go and tape them onto her door. Good stuff at Pace University.

I am incredibly popular and have trillions of ladies crawling over me all the time at any given time.

So yeah, that's mostly it. I'll be posting more soon, but it's hard to sit down and find the time to write all of this stuff out. Anyway, I'm going to go. I'll write more later.