Hamlet DVD's Ready!

Pick-up at HCH available tomorrow from 12-3 (rehearsal) or during school hours. Includes over an hour of bonus video and a commentary track (so, that makes it, what?...technically four hours of extra goodies for you to procrastinate with?).

In other news, I'm gushing over Guys and Dolls to anyone who'll let me describe the blocking to them, which means that we're getting somewhere! Did I mention our cool lifts? Did I mention our weepy "Follow the Fold"? Did I mention the incredible realism of our Nathan and Adelaide? Did I mention an easily harmonizing Sky? Did I mention a chorus who are giving the leads a run for their money in upstaging? HA! Yes. Gush gush. Keep an eye out for me showing off tap dancing moves in our kitchen, and we know we've got ourselves a show!

Hwell, despite hopes for the Cloisters or the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum, Mums and I ended up going no further than the Olive Garden, Borders, and Jules and My Jaunt around the surrounding environs (Jules and My Jaunt fully protected under copyright law! ;P). But given the cold weather and the rain and the lack of lights in Massachusetts on any given highway, keeping to the Lands We Know was far preferable. Much needed. So good to be with Mom as Mom and not as theatre-y folk. Good, too, to build her up. Ich leibe mucho mucho meine Mumsicle. (And if that isn't mangled language for you, I don't know what is!)

Currently listening to Midaeval Babes and their Christmas CD which I picked up a few weeks ago and then forgot to listen to. The same fate awaits Loreena McKennit's newest CD, which I now own, and which will hopefully be listened to tomorrow! Huzzah! Muchly goodly music abounds! Now if only the same were true for books. I was browsing in Waldenbooks yesterday and poked about the fantasy section...and felt no urge to buy anything. Mom asked me if I was moving away from the fantasy genre, and I said, "No, because I keep thinking in fantasy plots" (when I work on my own books, etc. - or think about thinking about working on them), but rather I really cannot stand the lack of actual literature among those books. Fantasy above and beyond all others can be poetical - but I see nothing but rather plodding prose. And no plot so original among those hackneyed prose to tempt me. Booooo indeed. *grrrr*

Howsomever, I woke up this morning with a plot in my head (that must have hurt), or rather with the opening to a story (short? novella? novel?) that seems rather promising. The difficulty is that I need the time to daydream, wander and basically not write a lot. Quite a bit of writing is hitting sere quinking thietly. It's not a "do this now" sort of activity. It requires a lot of inactivity. Pencil tapping is a major part. Regardless, the opening paragraph and a bit.

Alicia's father was handsome. And he knew it. How could he not? He was the king and knew well his christening blessings and regardless he had twenty-seven courtiers to remind him if he forgot. He was also widowed. And this, too, he knew. For he had laid his wife's body in the earth with his own hands and needed no courtiers to remind him that his bed was cold and empty. And he was young - and this he knew best of all, for he was fond of mirrors and ladies fond of him.

And in his sorrow, and in his joy, he had forgotten his daughter.

But this, he did not know.

I think it'll then go on to talk about how fairy #6 or 7 blessed Alicia with a normal life, which so shocked the other fairies that, to make up for their sister's faux pas, they immediately each passed curses on her so that she would be assured of something happening in her life. One fairy will curse her with an overwhelming love for blueberry tart, which, when her sisters look askance of her, she'll reply with, "I panicked!" However, I think that'll mean that Alicia ends up falling in love with the baker's son. Dunno...I think it might be cute. Bring in the perennial evil stepmother.... Seems to be something rather Gail Carson Levine-y. Oh, for time!!!

Finally, a few things up on YouTube. The first is a comparison of how far (thus far) HCH Drama has come from Twelfth Night to Seven Ages. The second is a comparison of costume renderings to actuality in Hamlet. If I can find my other costume renderings, I might do up others for other shows. I had some great ones for Midsummer's, but they were lost. And I think I have some for Nutcracker, and I have a feeling I lost all of them for King of Fools. I have The Passion's, but I've no idea if it would be long enough to warrant a video. Ich weiss nicht. (Do I have Matchmaker's? Ich still weiss nicht.) Anywho, scroll down for the videos.

Recent thought: Evanescence's "Lithium" for a montage-y section of Romeo and Juliet? It's so going to be modernized, anyway.... I'd forgotten how good that song is.... And to finish as randomly as begun, huzzah for midterm week!

Mood: Really really super bon
Music: Medieval Babes - not to be confused with Opera Babes
Thought: Life really is beautiful