Ranting Details

A Gorgeous Gain.

(Nick, David and Carson prepare for "Eurydice," but aren't sure whether they will leave feeling sexy, angry or pithed.) 


Last night I took three of my favorite people to see "Eurydice" at Second Stage Theater.  It was my second time going and I was bringing Nick, David and Carson on the wings of my glowing recommendation.  For me, I don't think there is much more pressure than taking people to a piece of art that you fiercely admire.  It's a nerve-racking experience filled with stolen glances to my sides to see how my guests are enjoying it.  I should have had little doubt seeing that "Eurydice" is a gorgeous piece of theater full of incredible emotion, design and performances. 

When the lights came up after the 90-minute, intermission-less, gut-wrenching play, I could tell by the stunned looks on their faces that they had enjoyed it.  My second viewing didn't have quite the impact that the first did but there are so many gorgeous moments in this production to still elicit a response even though I knew what was coming.  Relief flooded me as we walked back into the swirling vortex of death known as 42nd Street on a Thursday night.  After seeing their reactions to "Eurydice" I am more convinced than ever to plug it on the blog and urge people to go and see it!  It just extended AGAIN so grab a ticket before it goes away!

LIVE BLOGGING SYTYCD 8/8/07

Since it's 8pm on Wednesday and I'm sitting at home with nothing better to do, I figured what better way to spend the evening than by live blogging the events of "So You Think You Can Dance"! IF YOU'RE ON THE WEST COAST, PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

8pm: Show begins and we've dwindled down to six dancers. Looks like everyon is doing their usual bag of tricks, Pasha gyrates, Neil turns and the world turns.

8:02- Cat Deely's outfits have been vastly superior to last years but her sparkles tonight MAY blind me.

8:04- Pasha and Lacey are the first pair of the night with Hip Hop and Smooth Waltz. The two of them should be able to rock the smooth waltz, but hip-hop? As Missy Elliot would say "Oooh, baby let me fix my weave."

8:06- Pasha and Lacey begin their hip hop routine and it's clear it's going to be a doll meets human situational. Most of the best dances this season have been based in little scenarios. Lacey sometimes has used the glazed doll look before so it's perfect for this although I don't think that either of them have the sharpness required for hip-hop. Pasha is such a charmer though and with his little dorky glasses (can the costume department learn how to secure the accessories?!) he certainly is a talented performer.

8:08- Solos are back this week and Sabra brings us the first of the night, dressed in a frightening competition costume which she looks amazing in. I tend to really dislike the solos on this show and even though Sabra dances well, they always come across as a little scattered and rushed.

8:12- Danny and Lauren together doing contemporary and disco. Should be fabulous. Mia wants it more "alien." Hmmm is she trying to tell us she is one? She's super emo. Ooo they are charging on and Danny is the shirtless one this week. Oh god Celine Dion. Never a good sign. Fits with the alien theme. Lauren's line isn't nearly clean enough for this type of dancing. There is a lot of running in the his routine but not the best Mia creation. Were they running from Celine's voice?

8:15- The jidges are raving and sometimes I think they must be sipping happy juice out of their cups. Debbie Allen says it's "Passion and Power, Personified." She's a fan of aliteration. FAS.

8:17- Pasha is doing a solo, which is always a hard time for the Ballroom/Latin dancers. So he brought on a manequin with a dress on it. And decided to dance to "Total Eclipse of the Heart"....if only it had been the version from "Old School." I REALLY like Pasha but that solo didn't do it for me tonight. He does have a nice sharpness to his movements and beautiful fluid arms.

8:24- It's Neil and Sabra as the final couple of the night and they'll be doing Jazz and paso doble. Mandy Moore (not the pop singer/movie "star") but the fun 80's fabulous jazz choreographer. They're using a prop. A table. I'm dubious. It starts and it's a fun power struggle between the two and good use of the table until half way through when they forget it's there and do some fun jumps. Still really fun choreography throughout. Neil does really well with more "acting" oriented routines. Sabra needs to win, she's gorgeous.

8:28- Lauren begins her solo and I still feel like she's the least polished of the remaining dancers although it's her best solo yet.

8:31- Preview for "The Bourne Ultimatum" reminds me how much that movie rocked (the word of the night.) GO SEE IT! Matt Damon running around and brooding=edge of your seat excitement. It's followed by an anti-drug commercial with a REALLY creepy talking dog. If that's not enough to make people stop doing drugs, I don't know what is. Ugh Debbie Downer. It's like "Babe: Crackhead in the City."

8:34- Smooth Waltz with our partner pro Pasha (two can play at this game Debbie Allen!) Lacey's in good hands. It's a battle of the faces as they work the smirks and looks to maximum effect. It's a beautiful routine though and they (especially Pasha) seem to glide effortlessly in circles across the floor.

8:37- Did Debbie Allen put on more jewelry? Her earrings got bigger or her necklace grew a third stone....or maybe it's the blindingly red head wrap. Hmmm....

8:40- Neil starts his solo with...surprise, surprise, TURNS and a 540! What follows is one of his calmer solos until he starts flipping. It's nice overall. He toned down the eyeshadow this week.

8:41- We just caught glimpse of Lauren's disco costume and it is confusing because there are a bunch of shimmery blue straps over her boobs with flesh colored fabric underneath. You think you are about to see her nipples but nope....hmmm? Wardrobe department strikes again. I'm dubious.

8:44- Danny and Lauren are back with flashy disco. Did people dance like this all drugged up at Studio 54?! The chemistry between the two seems a little forced and I'm not as big of a fan of this choreography as Doriana Sanchez's work earlier in the season. Danny's sleeves are made out of wrapping paper from the 80's that you ordered from school sales. That routine just really didn't work on second viewing. You can hear Mary cackling....whatcha laughing at Mary? Care to share?

8:45- I feel like Lauren never really does her hair. Are the jidges ever going to say anything bad tonight?

8:47-Lacey is shaking her hips in a dress that really moves when she gyrates. It's a better solo than last week but still comes across a little too sexual and a with too little dancing.

8:52- Sabra and Neil are the last couple of the night with a Tony Meredith Paso Doble. Hmmm I think Neil MIGHT be wearing the puffy shirt from Seinfeld crossbred with Michael Flattley....LORD OF THE DANCE! Whoa, Sabra just wrapped her body around Neil's head and grabbed her heels before he shimmied her off (Inner monologue: "Girls...ewww!") and dragged her across the floor like an animal carcass.

8:54- Nigel loves it but I don't think it's Tony Meredith's best (his has been SO good this year) and I'm confused at the constant praise of EVERYTHING by the jidges tonight.

8:56- Danny is the final soloist of the evening and is pretty beautiful. His solos always seem to have the most structure and aren't as much a string of random tricks (although they still kind of are.) Uh oh, he found the camera when he decided to "Little Mermaid" bathe off the side of the stage. "I'm ready for my closeup!"

WRAP UP:
Sabra and Neil were probably the strongest couple of the night, benefiting from their great Mandy Moore routine. Pasha and Lacey's Smooth Waltz was another highlight. Lauren will be the girls to head home but the boy is much tougher to decide. If it's Danny that is a real shame but his routines tonight weren't the most impressive. I could see any of the final three boys leaving. Who will it be?!

Oh no, the crap fest "Don't Forget the Lyrics" just started before I could change the channel and I might have been sucked in!!! SAVE ME!

Blog Plugging.

I just want to take a minute to alert some readers of two wonderful new blogs that you should stop by and support.

1) Tennis Chatter- This is Nick's (pictured above licking a Subway ad) wonderful blog about the world of Tennis and other musings about life. Nick is a talented journalism major at Seattle University who is interning at Tennis Magazine this summer. On top of being one of my best friends, he's a great writer! Today he has a fun account of the horrible traffic delays happening all over Manhattan. Enjoy!

2) Keenan Blogger- Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Broadway performer (he's appeared in "Seussical" and "Beauty and the Beast") turned blogger extraordinaire. He recently graduated from the University of Michigan's Musical Theater Program and spent his summer performing in North Shore Musical Theater's production of "High School Musical." Fortunately, that gig got him creating some of the funniest video blog's I have ever seen and he's decided to keep them going. Check out the latest for his hilarious Daphne Rubin-Vega in "Les Mis" impression. Priceless.

And just because more people need to read it....

3) Four Four-I don't know the guy that runs this blog personally, like the other two above, but his writing has me laughing out loud consistently. His latest post, a recap of Lindsay Lohan's disaster fest "I Know Who Killed Me" is HILARIOUS. Check it out.

‘Spotted’ Spotting.

Last night Nick and I took the crosstown bus over to the West Village to meet Jackie for a little dinner at a restaurant of her choice, The Spotted Pig. I had heard many things about this trendy eatery before arriving at its door and after Jackie had mentioned the 45 minute wait, I was hesitant to say the least. Part of me buys into the trendiness of West Village eateries while simultaneously despising it. Half the time it's all scene and poor food but last night was all scene and INCREDIBLE food.

When we opened the door to step into a room adorned with various ceramic pigs, a woman exiting offered us "good luck"...never a good sign. Crowded into a tiny room with the worst traffic patterns ever, we noticed the abundance of burgers as people crowded the bar while waiting for their table. Jackie was casually mentioning her love of the incredible show "Weeds," when who else but Mary Louise Parker herself walks in, mere inches away from us. It's always with the true actors (said with heavy British accent) that I become the most star struck. If it had been Kirstin Dunst(long time no mention) I probably would have turned my head right back around, but Mary Louise Parker was so strikingly beautiful I couldn't help but stare. Of course, being an actor she was whisked out the front door and in the back entrance to jump in front of the 30 other people waiting for a table. My simultaneous love and hate of establishments like this resumed but when my roasted carrots with avocado salad hit my lips, I was transformed into a Spotted Pig advocate.

Going Zenadu.

Today I'd like to share something rather personal, which I haven't done for quite a while on the blogo. Sometimes I don't know why I put things like this out into the world, I can only hope that someone, somewhere can get something from it.

Over the past few months I've tried seemingly endless amounts of remedies for my health. Some have healed for short amounts of time while others have been rejected just as quickly, but the hardest thing to work on has been my mindset. I keep asking myself what I am going to learn from this difficult time and why my summer had to be spent sitting inside rather than roaming around in the sun. Perhaps it's to save my Irish skin from melting like plastic on an iron but even if it's purely for vanity reasons, I still have had a lot of difficulty being so isolated.

I've always prided myself on being independent and capable of solitude but the past four months have tested that to the limit. Until recently I would have nights where I'd want to melt into my mattress or scream loud enough to cause all of my neighbors alarm. Then I started meditating.

A friend of mine from home, Matthew, has had long discussions with me about his use of meditation as a way of centering his mind and spirit and it's roots in the Buddhist belief system. Libby offered to lend me some meditation tapes, and a recent episode of "Friends" that I watched found one of the characters being hypnotized by such a tape to break him of his habits. Instead of basing my meditation strictly in any one set of beliefs or a soothing voice on tape, I chose to build my program as I go along. I've had a little help from my wonderful witch doctor (I only joke, he's just an incredible healer) Choi, in the ways of gathering the energy of the surrounding world and utilizing it to heal the mind and body.

Of all places to meditate, New York has to be one of the most difficult. If I sit in my apartment, I'm bombarded by the noise of the TV next door and if I sit outside everything is sirens and construction. I've found though, that I enjoy the process of sitting outside and working on eliminating the stresses around me. My meditation destination has become my fire escape where I can hover four stories above the ground and make out faint outlines of stars all while hearing the bustle of the city beyond the courtyard below. By closing my eyes I can begin to escape the draining distractions of the outside world.

At first I feel completely foolish and my mind is racing at the absurdity of sitting on my fire escape doing breathing exercises but then I slowly melt away that layer of self consciousness and give in to meditation. There is the added layer of the difficulty for a dancer to sit still. I realized how little time I spent with all the noise cut off, no TV, or music, or cell phone, and just sat and really spent some time completely alone. With each breath in, I gather the positive energy of the world and with each exhale I banish the unnecessary negative energy.

Perhaps I won't come away from this sickness feeling like I've been taught some profound lesson but even something as minor as learning how to calm myself in a rough period seems like an invaluable asset. As people we thrive so much on creating drama, whether it's the way you treat your friends, your cab driver, your waitress or even something as trivial as comments on a blog, when it is almost always utterly unnecessary. There is a difference between being passionate about your beliefs and being unwilling to budge. In a book I recently picked up that my friend gave me a while ago called "Living Buddha, Living Christ," the author talks about how we all believe that we have a monopoly on the truth and that our unwillingness to listen is almost always the root of our problems. I find this to be the case with both myself and many others that I know but through meditation I am working on releasing the negative energy without drama.

To end, I'd like to share something that I wrote after I came in from meditating the other day. I don't really know what it is, but here it is.

Sometimes I sit on the fire escape
And meditate for unknown amounts of time.
If I don’t check, it could have been hours
But perhaps it was just minutes.
I close my eyes
Touch my hand to my chest and
Feel the beat of my heart
As it pumps me further forward
And I envision all the noises surrounding me
And their different attributes.
The motorcycle’s throttle is my anger
The air conditioner, my monotony
The rest is white noise and for all I know
I could be hovering fifty feet above the ground
As long as my eyes are closed,
I can’t be sure.

What I feel could or could not be.
What I hear might be imagined.
But if I open my eyes and see the steel bars
Of the fire escape,
Suddenly it’s a literal prison
I can’t escape.

The motorcycle is just a bike
The humming and the beating
And the roaring just surround me
And don’t inhabit me as they did just minutes ago
Or was it seconds?


Has anyone else tried different meditation exercises?

This Can’t Be Good For You.

Part of my long road to recovery has been eating healthy food, and nothing is as healthy this loaf of french toast deliciousness.

All during Met Season I would get phone calls from friends talking of their late night after show dinners at Landmarc, the uptown branch of a popular restaurant that recently planted itself in the Time Warner Center. Until today, I hadn't ventured up to try it myself but after the pain perdu (as they so haughtily deem their french toast) I could burrow deep within the eggy goodness and bathe in syrup. If you're in the mood for a sugar fix, I can't recommend this highly enough. I don't know how anyone would eat one by themselves but after splitting one with the lovely Libby and Carson, I was in a glorious food stupor.

(The pain perdu was so sweet, Carson's hair morphed into a Hershey's Kiss.)

Shock and Awe.

The human body never ceases to amaze me.  Being a dancer, I'm amazed at the way our bodies hold up to the wear and tear of our unnatural routine as long as they do.  Sure, I'll probably have hip replacement surgery at some point in my life, but the fact that that day hasn't come already is a miracle. 

In the past two years, there were two articles in particular from "The New Yorker" that stood out to me.  One was last summer in an article documenting a radical new operation called a hemispherectomy that removes an entire half of a person's brain and replaces the empty space with sterile ping pong balls (I kid you not.) They are then able to teach a person to function almost normally using only one half of their brain.  Even a year later I'm still stunned by that article.

Now this week comes an article about the advancements in artificial limbs.  Much is said about how technology is basically allowing us to replace typical prosthetic limbs with robotic smart limbs which react to nerves from the severed part of the body. 

The article chronicles the struggles of a young woman whose arm was torn off during a horrific motorcycle accident; I knew there was reason my mom warned me never to get on a bike.  She is being used as a guinea pig for researches who are working on retraining the nerves and muscles of her upper pectoral to send signals to the robotic arm that allows it to raise, lower, grasp, and release. 

One of the semi-finalists this year on "So You Think You Can Dance" was astonishing in her fluid movement despite having an artificial arm.  Neither my father or I noticed until she pointed it out to the TV crew.  Due to these developments, people are now able to carry on a more functional life without the older prosthetics that used pulleys and wires to conduct movement. 

Of course none of this would be possible without the incredible human body.  For those of you who haven't already heard about the horrific fall of pro-skater Jake Brown last week during the "X-Games," it is just mind numbing that he was able to walk away from this relatively unharmed.  After completing the first 720 in skating competition, Brown lost control of his board and fell over 50 feet before crashing into the ramp below.  A warning for those who don't like seeing accidents, this one is pretty ghastly so proceed with caution. 

The fall was hard enough that his shoes flew off but he was able to save himself by falling properly.  I can't even imagine what must have been going through his mind as he hovered mid-air with arms flailing and all eyes seeing his inevitable slam into the ground.  His brain was quick enough to realize that he needed to flip onto his back to absorb the shock.  Talk about a near death experience.  This guy must have nine lives.

Funky Blogger.

For some reason after I switched over to the new version of Blogger (my blog host) it has made using an image as my header impossible. Even though the new software is supposed to make it easier, mine refuses to show up. I'm working on it, but for now you just get some boring red print. Grrr.

Lazy Post of the Day: Weekend Escape.

You may want to sit down for this one. It's heavy, but I think it's time to tell you the truth. Are you sitting? Since you are at your computer I'm going to assume that yes you are sitting, and not doing jumping jacks in the nude.

Today while I was cleaning up my apartment I decided it was time to be honest with myself. Suddenly it hit me that I don't have anything to blog about. "It's time," I thought, "time to just let it all go." Why keep hiding the person that I truly am? That person is beautiful, and these pictures represent the most flattering poses I've ever seen on camera. Ever. Nigel Lythgoe claimed that Mia Michaels' flower dropping, ode to her late father routine was the most beautiful thing he'd seen. Ever. Well apparently he hasn't visited this blog. Thank god someone was there to capture it, so now I can put my shaky face in the dictionary next to the word "sexy."

These are pictures that I've been saving for a rainy (or ridiculously hot) day and now is the time to reveal them to the world. In case you aren't familiar with the "shaky face" craze let me explain.
1. Be bored as hell.
2. Grab a camera and point it at your friend.
3. Have them take a moment to relax their face, take a deep breath.
4. Shake your head ferociously from side to side (imagine your reaction when you saw the pictures of Britney Spears without underwear on) and kill as many brain cells as you can.
5. Stop.
6. Repeat.

The following pictures were taken during my time in Montana and were the perfect therapy for a time when I wasn't smiling very much. I was also about 15 lbs lighter than I've been....scary!

(Leah demonstrates what happens when you don't QUITE relax your face enough.)

(Michael demonstrates what happens when you relax your face TOO much. It almost flew off.)

(Some people, such as Michael, find that noise helps them shake correctly. Some people, like me, find that noise hilarious and therefore lose all control.)

(My new headshot. Siamese twin sexiness.)

(Sometimes your eyes start doing crazy things.)

(Or just roll back in your head altogether.)

(Sometimes your scene partner tries to eat your face.)

Hope that provided some laughter while you are inside escaping from the August heat. If you have a camera and a friend, SHAKY FACE IT UP!

Working On Changes….

FORGIVE THE APPEARANCE FOR A WHILE!