Arks, Bards, and Horseshoes, Yordles and Blue Moons, Premiere Pro and Dovetails, and Wonderful x2

There's this great scene in Twinkle Wish Adventure where I think it's Minty who crashes her hot air balloon into a Christmas tree and topples it over, crying "do over! do over!" as she realizes her mistake. It's how I feel all the time. All of it.

It's Friday night and I'm staying in. It's gonna be a long post...

I mentioned in yesterday's post (and I totally should have called the post 6ish 3ngs instead, oops,) how I had three things from the night before, and a few things from that day as well. It fits into a mostly coherent narrative, actually, even dovetailing into today's events. Although, in order for it to do that, first we're going to need to go back one week.

There's some kind of block party going on (speaking in present tense about events that happened a week ago) but I'm at the Snow building instead (that's the music and theatre building, the one building on campus (besides the Spori and the MC) whose name I can remember consistently because this one is named after a dead white chick instead of a dead white dude,) and holding the doors open for the people entering for the piano concert apparently going on at the same time. I'm not going to the concert either, even though it's free; there's some business or other I want to attend to at home. But I stick around the Snow for a bit. And there on the bulletin board...

Well first off, they're putting on an adaptation of Dracula this October. With an old buddy from my mission on the sound board! And Twelfth Night in November; that's my favorite Shakespeare play for some reason!

But also on the bulletin board was (and I'm switching back to past tense, using the present progressive of last paragraph as a seamless transition) a casting call for an upcoming 10-minute student film. There was a phone number listed as well as an email address, the audition process taking place next Friday (today) at someplace called the Rockland apartments. You were to contact the director and he'd give you an audition time, where you'd need to be prepared with a monologue and your best improv skills. 

I emailed a few days later and was scheduled for 5:00, which was perfect as it would give me enough time to prepare while also leaving enough space afterward to make it to International Cinema night on time.

I scouted for the building yesterday night, in the rain for hours until I located its address within the Byzantine roadway system (the streets here are all named after their geographic location on a grid, yes, but the sun rises in the north here actually and sets in the south, which leaves the condition of the street naming system in a state I can't accurately describe without selective and judicious use of "sailor jargon.") It was good that I did that yesterday, because I had no time to be lost today. I'd meant to be productive today, get there early, but no. It was down to the wire, heading out only at 4:50ish:

League of Legends, you get a bonus 150 IP for winning a game the first time in the day, and what I'd planned on taking maybe half an hour took three hours instead as my team kept losing. It's such a team-based game that even just one of your teammates acting like a lump can cost you the whole thing, and so game after game was lost due to either one of my teammates disconnecting, or this one time Ezreal was being lazy or something, seriously we had their towers destroyed and massive damage to their nexus we were three inches from victory but allegedly (I didn't notice but that's what they said in chat) Ezreal just stood by and didn't help out deal that critical remaining damage. I remember the exact quote angrily sent over chat at the end of one of the rounds (in which I happened to be playing Rumble): All of you except for Rumble fed (feeding the enemy is when you die to them, giving them points and buffing them up; I had a dream wherein we solved our problems through diplomacy instead of fighting each other, and it was weird.) 

http://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/rumble/

That "except for Rumble" caveat made me kind of proud. But that was the last PvP match I played before falling back onto co-op against bots.

I wanted to finish watching Russian Ark today, checked out of the school library; it's a Russian drama/history film, one dizzying 96-minute long steadicam shot throughout the hallways of the Russian Hermitage Museum, going back and forth throughout hundreds of years of Russian history. The International Cinema night is tonight, which means that my 7:00 would be eaten up, and the library would close by the time it got out, so I needed to finish it by then (it being due today, school library DVDs having only a 2-day checkout,) and the audition being at 5:00 of course. Ideally I would have gotten the time to watch it somewhere before 5:00, but... man I just spent way too long playing video games today.

So with the League stuff I guess I can shoehorn the one thing from Wednesday I'd wanted to get to: I've netted a new champion for myself, and he is also pretty tight. I mentioned in the above-linked LoL-based post how most of my champions are fighters, but after saving up IP for weeks I managed to earn a support character. His name is Bard, and he, like I said, is awesome. I totally bit the first time I played him, like ate hardcore dirt, didn't know how to work him at all, but my teammates were so supportive of me in my learning experience that I made up my mind to get good at him, and I did, and by the end of the week I'd made up my mind to buy him, and (as of Wednesday) I did. I've earned an A+ score with him and everything, so yeah I'm pretty boss at Bard (Rumble's still my go-to; I've earned a S- with him, and Ss are even higher than As.)

http://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/bard/

Anyway, I guess I should get to today's audition: not feeding in League isn't the only good thing I dun today! The auditions went swell. The casting call sheet said they would be in a certain apartment, but there were signs pasted up at the complex that said they would now be in the lobby-- there were also arrows on the signs directing where to go, but having scouted the location out the night before (and even having utilized the lobby's "facilities,") I didn't need the arrows.

The woman with the 5:30 audition behind me had a resume printed out; all I had was a verbal one of those, just telling them, when asked, my history of acting and working on indie films. I delivered my monologue (and am led to believe it was a tad bit longer than the others' usually were) and was also given two improv prompts to riff off of. I think I did well, made a good impression and everything, and they'll be calling me back next week. 

There were snacks laid out on the table tennis table, and was told to take anything; I took a bag of popcorn for myself to watch during Russian Ark, but ate it all on the walk back home. Watching the movie, I got super tired about half an hour into it, and needed to nap (especially if I wanted to catch the International Cinema film du jour.) Which meant that I wouldn't be able to complete watching it in time, and would need to turn it back in unfinished.

I returned the DVD before heading into International Cinema night... but then it turned out I did have time to watch it, oh well!, because the International Cinema night tonight is, if possible, even more packed than the time they screened Hunt for the Wilderpeople. They're showing an anime movie, and planning on catching every International Cinema film this semester I'd forgotten which one, Your Name it turns out, but I had to track down one of the International Cinema posters to remember (which involved trekking around the Spori building until I found one, marching up the flights of stairs to find a bulletin board that happened to have it posted on; it was painful revisiting the location whereat all my last semester's work was thrown out, but I managed to keep it together.) That's supposed to be a very very good film, and apparently I'm not the only one who's heard so; as someone who attends every International Cinema night except for the ones screening films I've already seen, I can't help but feel a little bit that the students showing up only occasionally, just for the popular films, are something of poseurs.

I guess I've got the live action version of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time I can watch instead (having already seen the animated version and having checked the live action one out of the municipal library a couple days ago,) but I think Your Name is over by now anyway. That brings us to the present.

I need to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, meanwhile, because I accidentally told one of the guys at the audition that I know how to edit using it when I usually use AfterEffects. Like seriously, Premiere is kind of confusing to me. It just finished downloading now.

And as for the stuff that doesn't dovetail:

The two things are one thing actually, but in order to talk about that thing we're going to need to go back a few months this time...

meh, maybe later.


And meanwhile meanwhile, that's not even all of today. The latest Killers album came out today; it's finally out, and I've already listened to it! The fact that Battle Born came out five years ago, and I was around to blog about my first listen-through of that, makes me feel super, old, or something? This is another subject that feels like it should get a post all its own, so really I don't know...