Midterm season. Or as I like to think of it, spring break is so near there's seawater in my eye. Moments from this weekend's massive procrastinarium:
Oh god the last Prince cookie...break it into pieces so it lasts longer.
Guess we won't be having milk for the next two weeks.
No, don't touch the face cookies - save them for the video you're going to make when this is all over...if this is ever over.
Peach candies - never again! But they taste so good...
I wonder if this cereal can double as granola.
...Oh god, the last of my stroopwafels from Amsterdam.
Thus my empty pantry. I'm really really really looking forward to kebab at the shady kebab place tomorrow.
24 February 2013
14 February 2013
How to Make a Love Potion
New video up! It's the first one since those Kinder Egg things, and I'm excited to be moving on to new ideas.
10 February 2013
Lazy Last Hurrah
新年快樂!
We had a joint celebration of the new year with a friend's birthday. Twenty something people crammed into an orange kitchen - five in the back corner rolling out circles of dough for dumplings; three circulating periodically, trigger fingers on cameras; and the rest dancing, talking, pushing past each other to get to the food before it disappeared.
The invite said to bring Asian food. The table lay covered with rice and noodles fried in someone's studio upstairs, frozen spring rolls from Carrefour, shrimp chips, curry, and instant noodle packets. A worthy new year's feast.
Afterwards we ran to the parking lot and tried to set fire to the sky. Then we played cards until dawn, serenaded by long-dead French singers with a penchant for rolling their r's.
Double Feature: The Scared is Scared | Fashion Film
Two short films that resonated with me this week. The Scared is Scared is based on a similar concept as our project, so it was interesting to see it taken in a different direction. A reminder to keep things silly.
I suppose the same goes for Fashion Film...hilarious perhaps because it hits a tiny bit close to home.
And now for your featurefeature presentation...
09 February 2013
08 February 2013
In Amsterdam...
In Amsterdam the buildings hang out like crooked teeth and the trees are green from head to toe and the ceilings are carpeted with flowers and coffeeshops belong on the cover of interior design magazines.
So much depends on word of mouth. When you think about it like this, those gold rush songs we learned in fourth grade aren't so farfetched.
...The sun so hot I froze to death...
...And when I see the gold lumps I'll pick them off the ground...
07 February 2013
Goedemorgen
Sneaking into the city at dawn, rolling silently past identical homes. In that way, it's not so different from my hometown, the difference being that these homes are identically more interesting. Pelted with snow falling violently from the sky, an aggressive welcome to this city of bicycles, canals, wooden shoes, and brownies à la eyebrow waggle.
Waiting for ten minutes at the tram stop, until a woman calls out from three stories overhead and points us to the one across the street. We yell, "Tag," because someone says it means thank you. But we could be yelling day for all we know.
Snaking past the zoo and its white melting dinosaur sculptures and peek-a-boo flamingos, the high concept trojan horse, and everywhere you turn a picturesque brick building, beauty stretching so high up in the sky you crane your neck like one of the flamingos to see where it ends, forehead lines be damned. Amsterdam in the morning is serene.
Hiding away in an underground restaurant barely peeking out of the ground to say "Yoohoo we have bagels!" Orange juice to replenish after a sleepless night and poffertjes well, because. Too much butter, not enough pancake. My husband will have a greasy yellow face.
06 February 2013
Waking Up in Amsterdam
After seven hours, we had crossed Belgium into the Netherlands. It would have been four or five, if not for the constant bathroom + food stops we made. I feel better about being less fit than everyone walking to school - I am damn good at sitting still for hours. Two hours is nothing, you of feeble ass. Thank you to LA car culture and international flights to Taipei for building up my butt endurance.
It's stranger still to think that in the same amount of time it takes for a spontaneous trip to Vegas, you can visit another country. We'd wake up at a gas station, whispering, "Are we still in France? What country is this?" and deduce from the souvenirs on sale where we were. Plastic Eiffel Towers? Still in France.
It was international travel at its most unassuming. No road signs, no border control checking your trunk for stowaway bananas. Just: these buildings look kind of Amsterdam-y.
A beautiful city, but a city that was being lived in. The aging walls reinvented by layer upon layer of event posters, street art, the fingerprints of hundreds of passersby. Never mind the details of what I did, although biking through sideways rain must never be repeated - Amsterdam, you were sometimes overwhelming but always pulsing with life, and that's the best thing a city can be.
01 February 2013
Who Will Go Home Tonight
They face me, all too conscious of their shaking knees and twitching fingers.
"Maria," I say, "you've performed exceptionally well." Pink blooms on her cheek, though she suppresses it as best she can. She's a minor character, unaccustomed to being called out, more comfortable saying a few words and then disappearing.
I turn to the next trembling candidate, "Eleven, you put up a good fight as well." She nods curtly, but won't look me in the eye. Will adrenaline alone be enough to keep her in the running?
Completing the trio is the largest of the group, Mona. A weird girl with a deceptive name - if it's going to be a short o, there really ought to be two n's - she has a tendency to wax on and on until someone asks her to please quiet down we understood the first time. You often find yourself in the middle of a conversation with her thinking, can we get on with it already...
"Mona...I'm sorry." The delete key hammers down from the sky as weepy music swells over the speakers. She turns and floats away into the ether of nonexistence. As though she were never there in the first place. The others return to their places, their breath baited in anticipation of the next round of revisions.
"Mona...I'm sorry." The delete key hammers down from the sky as weepy music swells over the speakers. She turns and floats away into the ether of nonexistence. As though she were never there in the first place. The others return to their places, their breath baited in anticipation of the next round of revisions.
/// /// ///
Script revision isn't nearly as dramatic as elimination rounds on reality shows, but I might have more trouble deleting lines if they could look at me with puppy eyes. Or I might flee in the opposite direction, flailing and screaming, the words have eyes. Eyes, I tell you, eeeeyyyyyeeess!
Honestly though, writing this movie is going swimmingly so far. Occasionally I come across gems like -
Amadeus referme la fenêtre et crouches down to peer through the floorboards.
One man's gem is another man's minefield.
Tonight I board a bus to Amsterdam with a hundred or so schoolmates. I have no plans and few expectations, only excitement to be venturing beyond France for the first time since arriving five months ago.
Unlike the Ones I Used to Know
Around four o'clock this afternoon, rain poured down in sheets, as if the sky were saying, "If I can't snow then I'm going to rain like nobody's business. Raaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnn!!!" I hid in the library, doing Internet things until the rain subsided. I should say tried to do Internet things. With each force close, it became more apparent to me that my hard drive is dangerously close to overflowing.
So here I am unloading photos.
My first Christmas market was a magpie's paradise. There was a bizarre Renaissance fairy show (complete with fire-eater), the siren call of waffles and crêpes, and Canadian stands for my Quebecois friend to judge for authenticity. And then the weird stuff, as in weird for a Christmas market: Japanese dolls, hermit crabs with painted shells, Halloween decor...
Louis XIV worked really hard to secure France's place as the world's leader in art and culture, but he didn't account for unicorn headpieces, suspiciously nondescript nail polish sets, and surprise LEGO displays.
There was no indication that LEGO was sponsoring the market, nor were they being sold - just this random display of LEGO sets behind the creepy "Castle of Enchantment" (seriously, glowing clown animatronics in a dark makeshift wooden castle). Though it reminded me of the LEGO store in Downtown Disney and thus of home, so I didn't complain.
And I can't go without mentioning caribou jerky. There, I've mentioned it.
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