All Eyes on Me

Again a lovely weekend with Jared comes to a close, and again I try to dwell on the positive-- that I'm seeing him on a regular basis, that he may be back for good soon, that we are doing well despite the distance and every time we do see each other is great. Again, I try to be happy that our time together was so nice rather than sad that now he's gone. It feels good to be doing everyday things with him like dinners and seeing friends and watching movies. Positivity and hopefulness are not natural to me, but I'm beginning to see that in this situation they may be truly necessary.

laurion

Sunday I went to see usernamenumber in the MTG’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. I attended the Sunday matinee, and Bernie and Plesser were good enough to accompany me. I enjoyed Evil Dead there very much, and I know now that I should never miss a chance to see Brad act and/or sing onstage.

The production was decent and I enjoyed it, but it had issues. To put on my critic hat, as I threatened Brad I would, the biggest problem for me and the one that kind of pervaded the whole show was that the sound levels were really off. I had a very hard time hearing the singers over the band, which unfortunately made it harder to appreciate everyone’s performance. Judas was a good actor as well as a good singer, but he particularly got lost volume-wise. Brad of course was amazing, easily my favorite performance in the show. He has such a rich, strong voice, and I very much enjoyed how he conveyed the peculiar conflict of Pontius Pilate, particularly when he exploded with frustrated rage when the man he was trying to spare would do nothing to save himself. I also had no idea that wired_lizard could dance, and my compliments on her really fun costume work!

My favorite scene was the scourging of Jesus. They had a very clever, visually striking way of doing it. They had Pilate stand on a higher level than everyone else, cracking his whip and counting the lashes, as Jesus was seized by the arms and turned away from the audience, so that the ensemble could run downstage, dip their hand in a bowl of blood, and smack their bloody fingers against Christ’s back in time with each of Pilate’s strokes. I thought that was an incredibly clever way to do that. Other highlights include Greg Lohman’s really fun performance as Herod (his song is one of my favorites from the show) amid girls dressed as sexy security guards, and the tiny Asian guy with the BIG BASS VOICE playing Caiaphas.

I wish I could see it with Jared and hear what he thought. He's a big fan of the musical, and while I saw the movie a million years ago, I didn't remember it all that well. He and I had an interesting conversation as to how the musical is ambiguous about whether or not it sees Christ as truly divine. As for the group I went with, Plesser was the only one of us with real familiarity with the music. He was sorry that Pilate's Dream was played electric instead of acoustic. I was just glad that they did Superstar justice. And though I'm not sure I agree with every stylistic choice made by Andrew Lloyd Weber, I find his adaptation of them material very interesting. Recasting Jesus as a sixties-style revolutionary is a great idea because he really was a revolution. Religiously, socially, politically, ideaologically revolutionary. He did what every great social reformer means to do: he changed the world. And after all, as I've always said regarding the saga of Christ-- even if you don't believe it, you gotta admit, it's the greatest story ever.

Goodness me, wonderful weekend! Jared and I have been making the most of his visit, running around seeing friends and doing things. Saturday was mostly spent trying to hang out with people. We had a great lunch with a bunch of our undergrad friends in Usdan during the day, and a dinner with a different group at night. God, I wanted to invite everyone I knew to this dinner so they could hang with Jared, but sadly it's tough to host more than ten at a time at Elsinore. This is a primary reason I am endeavoring to have a rotating guest list. But being limited to ten was a real shame, especially because of how fantastic the dinner was.

Last week sometime, you see, I was struck with an idea of culinary genius. I would make a meal consisting entirely of different toppings for crostini. I would toast a big old basket of bread, and make three different kinds of spread to eat on top of it in whatever combination the guests pleased. I roasted eggplants for eggplant caviar with carmelized onion and toasted walnuts, I chopped up tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella cheese for a caprese, and sauteed mushrooms, leeks, and shallots in marsala wine for duxelles. I was particularly proud of the last one, because I changed the recipe I was using to include the marsala reduction, which I think improved it vastly, as well as pureeing it at the end. It's only recently that I've felt confident enough in my culinary knowledge to alter recipes, so I'm really pleased. Also, I tried a slightly experimental service option. I gathered up my rather large collection of ramekins (recently joined in the cabinet by a couple brought my Charlotte) and divided the various toppings between them, and had them placed one each of them at various intervals across the table. This made it so all the guests had easy access to a small amount of each spread, and everyone had knives and spoons with which to spread the deliciousness. The lovely guests brought amazing spreads as well-- garden-fresh-tomato puttanesca and roasted garlic and white bean from captainecchi and electric_d_monk, hummus from morethings5, tapenade from in_water_writ, and sweet potato-carrot from lightgamer, all unique, all delicious. I am going to give this experimental dinner style a big thumbs up, and I will certainly be doing it again soon.

Sunday Jared and I went with April to acousticshadow2's new larp, Nepenthe a Surcease of Sorrow. It  ran at WPI, and EB lent me a wedding dress for my costume. I painted my face with white greasepaint and wandered around with the air of a broken little girl whose sanity has gone just a little over the edge. The larp reminded me in many ways of Alice, a gothic game with strong literary roots-- as a big Poe fan, I was pleased  by many of the references --but a lot of the darkness in it was kind of over-the-top, which gave the game much more of a "pulp" and "melodrama" feel as opposed to that of "tragedy."  Given the connection with Poe, tonally that is fitting. We all had fun, and I encouraged EB to bid it for Festival this year.

Jared will be leaving this afternoon, leaving Boston and leaving me bereft. I am always so sorry to see the end of his visits, but as always I must just look forward to the next one. It's been wonderful having him here again, so I will try to let that carry my spirits.

Several things to report on, but most importantly, Jared is going to be in town! He is coming to visit from Thursday to Monday, and I'm hoping people will be around so that he can see them at some point during that time. Plans are not totally settled yet, but after I pick him up from the airport on Thursday we will be grabbing dinner in Boston downtown, and then heading to BSCF where I'm hoping for a lovely evening of gaming with friends. Yay! So excited.

The Great Move-en-ing has commence, though less smoothly than I would have liked. Our landlord said we were going to have a cleaning person come in yesterday to do the place from top to bottom (for which a substantial chunk was taken out of our security deposits, grumble grumble) but then the person never showed up. I am incredibly irritated, as we all went out of our way to get the house straightened up for it, and because blendedchaitea was out of town when it was supposed to happen, I even packed up her stuff for her so it would be cleared away in time. I was happy to help out, but I felt awkward just going through her things, and was really nervous that I would be inconveniencing her because she wouldn't know where I put everything. I called the landlord yesterday to ask what was up but didn't get a hold of him. Sigh. I'll have to try again today, as I was really hoping this would be done before aurora_knight and nennivian got here.

Yesterday I also went over to grad to help Plesser and Marissa move in. I finally got to see what the newly remodeled inside of grad looks like. It's actually quite nice, with all the walls and ceilings redone, and all new fixtures and appliances in the kitchen and bathroom. Grad is actually a decent place to live now, but of course, only now that Jared's moved out and I no longer spend half of my nights there. :-P There wasn't actually a ton of work to be done-- there were so many of us that the actual moving of stuff took like two trips --but I'm glad I made the effort. Plesser was in a rather nasty car accident lately, and though he's mostly all right, thank God, he still has blood in his eyes that make him look rather demonic, and isn't supposed to exert himself for the time being. He and Marissa have a two-person grad with a common room, which is quite nice, except that the common-room furniture that Brandeis had hitherto provided was not present. Since they moved in early, it may be that the school just won't deliver it until the last moment, but there is a possibility that they just don't provide it anymore. Which is pretty silly, in my opinion-- why wouldn't they just keep offering the stuff they've been offering in previous years? Oh, Brandeis, what a pain you can be, but I hope Jonathan and Marissa are comfortable there.

katiescarlett29

And all too soon, Jared is gone again. I am a bit low due to it, but trying to focus on what a lovely week we had together. And saying my prayers that soon enough he will be back for good. At the moment, I'm eating kiwis, a fruit I've never tasted before meeting him, in the way he taught me how to eat them.

This weekend has the last two performances of Love's Labor's Lost. We're in a tiny theater in Walpole call Footlighters instead of the gazebo in Medfield. It's a neat little space, but I do not relish the drive to get there. I have been driving constantly this week, and I am very tired of it. I even scraped the side of a pole in a parking garage, leaving streaks across Constantine's driver's side. :-P There goes another chunk out of the ol' savings account. Therefore I am not feeling very friendly towards cars at the moment. I think all next week, while I do want to do social things with the friends I feel like I haven't seen in forever, but I desire to do it without driving. With bribes of food, fun, and my own charming company, I will make the people come to me.

In an amazing stroke of good fortune, Jared will be visiting this coming week! He has not one but two interviews for jobs that interest him, so he'll be coming up Monday and staying until Friday. :-) I'm so excited; I really hope these work out for him, because if they do, it means he will be back in town! You have no idea how eagerly I await that. This was a very spur of the moment trip, so I don't have a lot of time to plan fun things to do. At the very least, I hope you'll all come to BSCF this week because he'd love to see and spend time with everyone.

Just two more days until he comes!