anonymouse

I just saw a girl running for the bathroom while wearing a Popples tee shirt. I have rocker Popples at home. Hee.

Oh shit. I'm wearing a nametag. I just walked all over campus while wearing a NAMETAG. And it's not even the "Hello, My Name Is" kind, so I didn't have the opportunity to write "fucktard" in the space alotted. It's the kind with my name printed out on a piece of paper with a Department of Psychology header on it slid into a little plastic nametag thingie with a safety pin on the back, and I feel dorky. Also, I think I'm going to be sick. As I mentioned before, the psychology department scheduled "Just Desserts," a cute little ceremony for brains such as myself that get on the dean's list or any other sort of honor roll, and it features nothing but desserts. It happened to be scheduled on my birthday. I have "I-ate-too-much-chocolate" mouth. My mouth feels like I ate too much chocolate. It's all chocolatey and... mouth. And I have "you-ate-too-much-chocolate-and-you-will-pay-for-it" gastrointestinal distress. Ow. Well, I would've stayed and stuffed my face more, but Sebastian the Ibis -- that's the school's mascot -- came out, and I always feel weird around people in those silly suits. I feel like I should be embarrassed for them.

Okay, so I'm going to reproduce the entry I lost as best I can sans rape-babble. I am going to mention that I think Joe Krutulis, Jr. is in rehab or therapy or something. He called me last night to apologize for sexually harrassing me in junior high and for conspiring to get me kicked out of Gulliver Academy. He was successful, of course. I mean, he's the fucking headmistress's grandson. Who are they going to believe? An unpopular little girl in the "freaks and geeks" clique and her little fairy friend or the headmistress's grandson? Yeah. You guessed it. I was "asked to leave," and by that, I mean my scholarship was revoked, and I was told I didn't fit into their school. And I didn't. I was going to a school with a $10,000 a year tuition, and I was one of the few kids who came from a family that didn't have maids and lived in a mansion. I mean, I was crushing on the son of a fucking BEE GEE, and Jeb Bush's son was making fun of me. Meanwhile, I lived in a bad part of Kendall in a small townhouse. Any part of Kendall is a bad part. But... the townhouse community -- despite the fact that it was on the same block as three different fast food restaurants -- had nice environs. There were two duck ponds. Ducklings! Every spring! Cute! But man, I really felt inferior. I was teamed up on a project in a class once with Gloria Estefan's son, and I worked at his house. Huge. HUGE. He got kicked out of Gulliver, too. For crank calling. He wasn't too bright. Caller ID?

But I digress.

That little fairy friend of mine who stuck up for me in Krutilisgate? Byron. He's a lovely little dancer with a bitchmom. He does an incredible impression of his mom, and he has ample opportunity to do so since she's in Milan doing La Scala or whatever. She was always somewhere in Europe doing something, and when she wasn't, she was putting down Byron. She wasn't proud of Byron for getting into the New World School of Arts. For the uninformed, New World is like the Fame School, only it's in Miami and Coco doesn't show her tits to some skeezy guy. Anyhow, she's constantly berating Byron, telling him stuff like, "Well I went to The Royal Ballet School when I was your age. You've accomplished nothing." Or, "Well, I won the Prix de Lausanne when I was your age. What are you doing? You're in the Miami City Ballet? Ha! I was in the Royal Ballet." And she called me fat. And Byron, too, which is ridiculous since he has no body fat. Well, at least he had a really nice nanny to raise him, right?

Anyhow, I took Byron last night because he introduced me to Carlos Saura's movies. He does a lot of dance movies, wherein a performance's cast and crew is interviewed, and then the performance comes to life. It's always a gorgeous combination of classic ballet and flamenco.

The evening got off to a rocky start, however. It started 20 minutes late, and then the festival's director came out and introduced a little clip show of his movies and actors I recognized from some of his movies and other people I did not recognize lauding Saura. Which is fine. But... The interviews were in Spanish. There were at least subtitles during the movie clips, but... I don't speak Spanish very well. I could understand maybe every fifth word. Byron wasn't faring too well, either. He can speak Italian, sure, but Spanish? Not so much. The little tribute movie was a half hour long, and we started whispering made-up translations into each other's ears. "I would definitely go gay for Maestro Saura, he is a cockmaster, I will suck his cock." And so on.

Then the director came out and presented Carlos with an award. And then some boring broad from Yale University came out and sat down for an interview with Saura. The questions were soooo perfunctory and soooo boring, and Byron and I enjoy his movies, but jesus. Also, I think some stuff got lost in the translation, or maybe the translater isn't good at telling jokes, but eh. Whatever. There was one interesting bit. Carlos talked about how his movies always have violent endings, but he's not a violent person. He said that if he wasn't making these movies, he would probably be in a psychiatric hospital somewhere. That's funny. Sort of.

And roll the film. As was expected, it was really, really good. In watching the performance, it became abundantly clear that it's not just dancing. There's a great deal of acting involved in the performance. When Ada Gmez, the woman who portrayed Salom, had finished the Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod, she was almost shaking. And not just because she was naked, but... Despite her nakedness, she didn't seem entirely vulnerable, although there was a sense of desperation in her performance. When her shaking hand sliced across her neck in a symbolic request for John the Baptist's head, there's a great deal of emotional resonance in that moment. It's just... wow. It's hard to describe.

What's more is that you'd think you might get bored while sitting watching people rehearse and talk about their careers in dance. It's not. It's an interesting progression. We start out watching people rehearse, getting the choreography right, practicing together, dancing, maybe screwing up a little bit. There are interviews throughout, and you learn a little bit about the dancers, the director (not Saura, the performance's director), and so on.

I liked Ada's interview. Apparently, she had fallen as a little girl while dancing and suffered a severe back injury, and the doctors told her she wouldn't be able to dance. For five years, she trained her body and danced in pain while wearing a brace that went from her neck to her waist. It's kind of clichd, I guess, but she's an amazing dancer. Her movements are very fluid. Almost literally. Her arms seem to movie like rippling water. It's just so much fun to watch.

After the rehearsing, it sort of shifts. We see the lighting, the costume design, and then the dancers put on their makeup. Then the dancers are stretching and freaking us (or me, not Byron -- I've seen Byron stretch, and he never ceases to freak me out with his limber bod... oh god, I just said "bod," kill me) out with their contortions. There's a little pep talk from the director, and they move onto the "dress rehearsal." Which brings us to the rest of the movie. The remainder of the movie, there is no dialogue. Just dance and music. It's quite remarkable how engaging something can be when no one's even talking. I wasn't bored at all, and Byron and I just stared at the screen enthralled with the movements onstage. Byron's pretty well-versed at all forms of dance, including flamenco, because of his education, but it's really foreign to me sometimes how people can move with their bodies. It doesn't seem possible at times.

When the credits began to roll, there was a real surprise. Q & A with Saura was expected, but Ada Gmez came slinking out from behind the wings and onto the stage. She was followed by Saura and the festival's director, Nicole Guillamet or whatever her name is. Then she started laughing while dancing and stopped, and she's just... a ray of sunshine, and that's clichd, but her smile is so bright and sincere. I think I have a little crush on her. She gave a mini-tutorial on flamenco, and I loved the way she described it. I'm paraphrasing here, but she said something like this: "From the waist below, that's the dangerous part [wink]. That part is connected to the earth. From the waist up, that part is also a little dangerous because that's the part that encompasses femininity and womanhood." And she differentiated between the flamenco styles, and showed us what she means by dancing. And she said that flamenco transcends dance, and she was very charming and pretty and wow. I think my crush on Ada is bigger than Byron's crush on Javier Toca, the man who played John the Baptist. Did they intentionally cast a hot black dude for that role? I don't know.

Oh. Oh! And I have pictures. I'll upload them somewhere later and link. Check back soon-ish.

Oh, after that, we saw Poolhall Junkies. It was kind of fun, and we were giggling and smiling during parts, and I'll admit right here that I only bought tickets because Michael Rosenbaum is in it. He's so cute. I could eat him. I could suck his cock. I could. Oh, that's dirty. I think dirty thoughts when I think about him. Smallville is a sucky TV show, but it's worth watching for just him. And John Glover. And also Allison Mack. I mean, because they're hot and can act.

I guess I should share my thoughts on Poolhall Junkies as a movie, rather than just something that will fuel my masturbation fantasies. Okay. It's a derivative piece of shit. It's like a crappy recombinated clone of The Hustler and The Color of Money, and it's pretty sucky. I can tell you what would've improved this movie: more Michael Rosenbaum. No, no. Even better! Naked Michael Rosenbaum. Ooh, better! Naked Michael Rosenbaum making out with naked Anson Mount. Oh, that's so hot.

Anyhow. Because the night started late, I couldn't convince Byron to head over to Churchill's. I wound up driving us home, and he crashed at my place. Then I dropped him off at his apartment on my way to school.

Ack! I'm 20! I'm no longer a teenager. That's scary. Cue Tom Waits "I Don't Wanna Grow Up."