Because everyone loves My Cousin Vinny.
But you know what no one loves? Iowa weather.
Seriously, it is April and it snowed yesterday. It is now cold and windy. All of the snow that had started to melt yesterday and turned into slush is now freezing into ice chunks. Awesome! On top of that, it causes unnecessary problems for everyone.
Case in point, the drive back to school. So begins the story of the weekend.
Now, this weekend was a particularly good one–okay…well, nearly every weekend for the past 2 months has been “a particularly good one”, so let’s just say life has been pretty sweet lately. Anyway, I went down to Davenport with Whitney and Will, after a somewhat awkward planning session in which I forgot to tell Whitney that Will went to ISU and therefore they’d be riding together–two people that have never met–for an hour and a half or so until I was picked up at UNI. We all made it safely home, and Will and I watched Wall-E that night. It was late, we didn’t get home until around 10:30.
We got up the next day and whittled away at this to-do list we had been compiling of stuff we needed to do over the weekend that we knew we’d forget. Around 5 or so, my parents swooped us up and took us to Biaggi’s, which is definitely not something about which one can complain. That place rocks. So we had pleasant conversation, delicious food, etc. etc.
THEN Will and I scurried over to Assumption to see West Side Story, which was the reason we were in D-port at all. Now, let me just say I am impressed with his fortitude. He is not a fan of musicals and he knew none of the people that swarmed me afterwards and shanghaied me into performing in our brief Godspell reunion. However, he agreed to go anyway, didn’t hate the show, and waited patiently in the wings of the stage while I flounced about the stage getting disgusting from exertion and bright stage lights. My friends, I appreciate fortitude and patience. I think I may be indebted now.
As for the show, now that’s a story. I will simply say…I have seen better shows at Assumption. …Well, alright, I was in them. But that’s not why they were better (I’m not THAT egotistical). The biggest flaw I found was the band. Don’t get me wrong, West Side Story is a very difficult show. The music has dissonance, strange melodies, odd rhythms…it is by no means a standard score. However…our band was just not polished enough to make it work. Parts of the show were great; second act had simpler music and it sounded very put-together and clean. The first act had a lot of huge, crazy songs and I don’t think the band could handle it. Apparently, LaCorte, Steph, and Catie all wanted to use prerecorded tracks (this is according to Brian AND LaCorte herself, so I know I’ve got this pretty close to correct). Hayman didn’t want to use them at all, she was vehemently against it. Wulfkuhle (I hope that’s how you spell her name, I know it’s a strange spelling) wanted to try learning it and then decide. Evidently Hayman won, as I can’t imagine anyone would want to not use tracks after finding out the band sounded like that. I do apprecite the effort they put in, but I think it would have improved the show as a whole had they used tracks. Oof.
As for the performance of the ACTORS…well, I really have seen better. Jessica was impressive, I was very pleased with her accent. Her singing was a little flat, but Maria is a REALLY HIGH role and Jessica is an alto, technically, so that just blows my mind. Kathleen, who is a soprano, got an alto role (right, these make sense) in Anita. And she nailed it. Her accent was very effective and she fit the role perfectly (despite not being Puerto Rican). Plus the girl can DANCE. Boy can she dance. Seth, who was Bernardo, can ALSO dance. I was very impressed with him–I knew he’d get Bernardo, though, since he is a much stronger dancer than singer and Brady was a shoe-in for Tony. …And you know? That’s a little disappointing. Brady’s singing is fantastic, yes, but his acting is reeeeally missing something. I wasn’t even convinced of his character until he was dying. That’s kind of how most of the show was, though. The cast was uninspiring, honestly. I feel like they didn’t put enough energy into the roles, especially the Sharks (though they had less to do–the women were fine, but the actual gang members were lackluster).
That being said, I still enjoyed the show. They really did much better than I thought they would after sitting in on a rehearsal. And Will liked it (though some of his complaints were the same, particularly with the band), so I would say it was a victory for AHS. And after the show, like I said, the cast of Godspell that was present dragged everyone on stage to do Bless the Lord, God Save the People, Turn Back O Man, and Day by Day, which made us all sweaty and disgusting (especially the people who had just performed in a show) but was highly fun. And then we were off.
We watched My Cousin Vinny that night, and then stayed up with the Food Network for a while. And that was Saturday.
Sunday was very disappointing. We were going to get up at 10 and chill until we had to leave at 2 or 3. However, my mom woke me up at 8:40-ish and informed me that the weather was going to be so awful that we should leave as soon as possible. Me being hormonal and ridiculous, plus wanting to hang with Will, this rather upset me. Not that there was anything I could do, the weather report really WAS awful. So I talked to Whitney and we ended up deciding to go at 11. Long story short, I woke Will up, we had breakfast and packed, and then we were off on the road.
You know, Iowa weather is really just stupid. We had no problems at all until we got closer to Cedar Falls, at which point it got close to whiteout conditions and the roads were slushy. We were behind a plow for a little while, which was good. We had a number of shenanigans, such as the windshield wiper starting to break (man, that plastic is like nails on a chalkboard when it scrapes against the windshield) and something on the bike rack making a rattling noise. Everyone got home safely, but it was just crazy. Why did this have to happen, y’know, technically in the spring? Grr.
That being said, it was still an awesome weekend. We finished it off by watching Dreamwork’s Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas over the internet. Wow, I had no idea that movie was so GOOD. Dreamworks’ 2D animated movies are really fantastic, I feel more people should take note of this.
Further, today my class was cancelled! Hence why I am here typing instead of in class. I suppose it wasn’t really cancelled, but we got there and waited for 20 minutes, and the professor never showed up. Considering we were allowed to leave at 15 minutes after–and almost everyone did–I would say it was completely legal to leave. Besides, it’s not fair of him to not show up for that long when we don’t even know how to start the next project. It’s not like we could have started working.
So this has been a delightful string of events (minus the weater). I am off to study a bit more for my Art History test, then the rest of the day should be mildly eventful. More later.
