I never disliked Mister Rogers. But this has made me like him more. I really want to memorize the "new" lyrics.

On the bottle of Snapple White Tea I was drinking, it said:

"What is white tea? White tea is a baby tea leaf that is plucked when it’s young so it’s light in flavor and high in antioxidants....One sip, and you’ll love the naturally light taste and healthy flavor. So drink up, but quietly. The baby tea leaves are sleeping."

Which actually made me feel kind of guilty. It tastes great and it's actually kind of good for you. No downsides, right?

Wrong. It's made of babies.

So I got accepted to DePaul. Exciting stuff.

Like all colleges, if you're accepted, they send you a big envelope. And if that big envelope isn't enough certainty in itself that you made it in, there's bright colorful words on the outside that say, "Congratulations! You've been accepted to DePaul University!"

This is really weird. As I write this, someone is editing some audio. Specifically, "Pomp and Circumstance." How cool would that be? You start typing a patriotic speech and the national anthem starts playing. You write a Christmas post and Jingle Bells and sleigh bells start up.

Actually, that would be annoying.

So this accepted thing. I think I'm going on a tour of the place next Friday.

It's all kind of weird. It's the moments like these that make me feel old.

I'll probably have a lot of moments like that in the next few months. 

We have 29 days to get the mime show together.

This is a dream I had:

I was walking around the halls of Waukee High School. For some reason I was spending a day there. I wasn't really a guest student - I just walked around and dropped in on random rooms and classes.

The building looked like the new part of Valley, except it was much bigger.

Everyone in the halls seemed to know who I was. They were all very friendly. At first it was kind of cool; it quickly progressed to being kind of weird.

I carried around a pillow with me. I'm not sure why.

Sometime during lunch I decided it was time to leave. I stepped out the front door and someone had taken my pillow. Then I saw a big crowd of people. The big crowd was standing in a circle around a giant blue tarp. A very big man - perhaps the school bully - stepped out of the crowd and onto the tarp. He was holding my pillow. He held it high and then ripped it to pieces. The crowd cheered.

This made me more sad than mad. I wanted to ask him why he had just ripped up my pillow, except I knew that if I did, he would kill me. (Don't question my logic - if I didn't, so can you.)

The dream segued into something less memorable at this point. Later on, though, there was this image in my mind that worked as an epilogue to the dream.

I was looking at my bed. One of my pillows was missing.

Overheard at Central:

"Dude,  you smell like a deli."

"That's because I just ate my lunch!"

Pause.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing."

I'm getting kind of tired of this winter thing - specifically, the February part. I've never liked this time of year very much. Around this time, it feels like winter has overstayed its welcome. 

Fresh snow on the ground is pretty. School cancelations are awesome. Freezing cold every day, patches of ice, and piles of dirty snow lining the roads are getting old.

On top of that, we're at that point in the school year where we've gotten a good chunk of the year out of the way, but the end is not yet in sight.

Parts have been assigned for Sweeney Todd. To quote the Weezer: "My name is Jonas."

Specifically, Jonas Fogg. Honestly, I had no idea who I was playing at first (I didn't have a lot of time to read the script), but I was later informed that Jonas Fogg owns the insane asylum. He was also described to me as "batshit insane." I think I can do that.

My sister after watching this video: "This will one day be my child. Except he'll be less Korean."

Maybe the weirdest thing the election has brought about - BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com.

I wrote this over No-Internet Week.

This was a dream I had. It was one of the most detailed dreams I can ever remember having.

We were performing the Spring Show and we were completely unprepared. The skits sucked and we didn't advertise the show at all. When we began performing, the crowd was full, but then there was an intermission and no one was there.

There were a lot of OMG skits that flat out sucked. Some of them were "Boom, Checkmate" (came up with on the spot) skits we had shared before. Mary mentioned during the show that this would be the last time we followed Ted's advice in creating a show order. He told us that we weren't going to vote on skits or use our usual procedure; instead, we were going to come up with skits off the top of our head and just put them in the show.

We got some really awful reactions to skits. I only remember how one in particular went. It was called "Buttons". I was responsible for putting up the sign - of course I got caught in the sign light.

Here's how "Buttons" went: lights up. The stage is bare for an awkward amount of time. Two heads slowly peek out on the left and right sides of the stage. Blackout.

Right after intermission, we had an awesome set for an "Opening"-esque skit. It was a bright green flying saucer that spun. And then out of nowhere, big band music started playing and band kids started boarding the spaceship. The mimes decided this was not good, so we went out and pretended that they were aliens from another planet and wanted them to board the ship and leave us alone. Of course this was shown entirely in mime.

Eriq Brown came to the show. He sat in the back of the auditorium. He was mindlessly smiling the whole time.

Late in the show there was no one but alumni left. Even they were booing.

At one point I talked to Jordan backstage.
"This is horrible," he said. "This is the end of the Baker's Dozen."
I already knew this.
"I'm not worried," I said.
"Why?"
"I'm having a dream right now. None of this is real. I'm going to wake up." It was a weird feeling; I knew I was dreaming, but I said the words with a hint of disbelief.

The dream didn't end but kind-of-sort-of faded out like all dreams seem to.

I can't believe I've never plugged this before.

I use Google Reader on a daily basis. Google Reader is a web-based RSS reader, which means you can use it from any computer with an internet connection.

What is an RSS reader? An RSS reader allows you to view all of your favorite frequently-updated pages in one place. It's spectacular if you've got a blog/news/webcomic/etc. addiction, as most modern sites use RSS.

Subscribing to RSS feeds and reading through them is really easy. On top of that, it's completely free - all you've got to do is sign up for a Google account.

Engrish.com has always been particularly entertaining to me. In case you're not familiar, it's a site of nothing but the products of mistranslated english - signs, toys, and so on. In some cases the mistakes are understandable. In this particular case...not so much.

It snowed last night/this morning. I'm not sure when it was, but it's very pretty outside.

Despite the prettiness, though, I'm ready for spring. I'm tired of having to need either pockets or gloves every time I go outside.

All-State was yesterday. I just woke up, so I'm not quite able to organize my thoughts into coherent paragraphs. So:

All-State in Bullet Points

• My third and last All-State. Lots of fun, even being sleep-deprived and hungry. I heard a lot of: "This All-State felt really short" yesterday.
• Sleep deprivation and hunger makes me a generally less pleasant person to be around. In only months, I'll be heading off to college, and yet I'm still not much different than a baby or toddler.
• I watched a lot of improv and found myself disappointed. Too many scenes fell back on jokes about sex and pooping. I've got no problem with sex and pooping jokes, but like the judge (thankfully!) said: "It's hard to do five minutes of that."
• Joanna and Pichler performed a great scene yesterday. This is not home-school pride talking; I can say with certainty that there was no performance like their scene yesterday. 
• This has nothing to do with All-State: I was reading a journal about making a show at Second City. One revue wrote and choreographed a song about cell phones. If an audience member's phone rang during the show, the actors would stop whatever they were doing onstage and break into the cell phone song. Music would follow accordingly. How awesome is that?
• On nit-picky judges: if nit-picky comments are all they've got to say, then it means they're probably struggling to find big things for you to fix. Though it can be a bit frustrating to hear nothing from the judge but "step using your right foot rather than your left", it means you've got a grasp on what you're doing.
• I had the chance to watch Fairfield's Terra Incognita: The Atlas of Suffering four times (3 in rehearsal). Fantastic stuff. What especially floored me was their use of corporeal mime - a style in which you actually are inanimate objects. But anyway, four times may seem like a lot, but for that mime, it wasn't. It's like a good movie: multiple viewings bring new discoveries.
• And as always, a fantastic performance by The Taking of Our Nation. I love it for its innovative storytelling and so-fluid-they're-nearly-transparent transitions. The room choice, though, was a shame. The people in the back rows deserved to have the same experience as those in the front.
• I was surprised to hear that The Sea Monster didn't get the banner for Choral Reading. I have no doubt in calling it my all-time favorite choral reading.
• I wish they videotaped the banner-winning All State performances and put them all on one DVD. It'd be a lot of fun to watch.
• The group mime judges are so much fun to watch. I would love to see them perform some time.
• I'm very proud of my fellow and God wept at Nagasaki members. There was some fantastic cathartic energy going on.
• And lastly: congratulations to Valley as a whole. 
• Seniors: it's been fun. 
• Underclasssmen: keep having fun. 
• Coaches: thank you for everything.

Film Appreciation was an awesome class. This would have made it even more awesome.

Guess what I just realized? I looked at my calendar for the first time today and realized that it's this blog's sixth birthday. Six years ago to this day, I found this thing called Blogger and started messing around with it. Six years. I haven't even known some of you for that long.

I have a cousin who was born the same year as this blog. She's five. This blog is older than her. She's way smarter than this blog.

But anyway, thanks for reading. And thanks to the very few of you who've been reading since day one.

Saw Eagle Vs. Shark.

The film follows what might be the most awkward on-screen couple of all time. Lily (Loren Horsley) is a socially awkward girl who works at a fast food restaurant*. Every day at noonish, in stops the even more awkward Jarrod (Jermaine Clement, best known as Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords), whom Lily (inexplicably) harbors feelings for.

After an awkward hook-up at a "dress as your favorite animal" party, Lily goes with Jarrod on a trip back to his hometown. Why? Jarrod is obsessed with the idea of getting revenge on the bully who tortured him in high school.

The trailer for Eagle Vs. Shark makes it look like your standard indie comedy chock full of humor born out of awkwardness. And that's exactly what this movie is. If they ever need to write a dictionary entry for "stereotypical indie comedy", only four words will be necessary: "See Eagle Vs. Shark."

There's not much in terms of plot or character development, so the main you'd want to see this movie is probably for its humor. Once again: humor born out of awkwardness. Not "painful" awkwardness. More "social outcast" awkwardness - and lots of it. I've yet to see Napoleon Dynamite, but for some reason, I suspect it to be a lot like this film.

The jokes get old, and there's not much in terms of variety. It's really a shame. The movie's funniest moments are more clever than awkward - and one of those moments (involving a misunderstanding in a phone booth) is given away during the trailer.

Verdict: This wasn't a good movie. This wasn't a bad movie either. It wasn't even a "so bad it's good" movie. Eagle Vs. Shark is just a decent movie. It could have been much better, but it could have been much worse. And it's really really a shame. I hate watching decent movies. When I'm done watching them, I always find myself thinking, "Wasted potential."

*Every time I try to write the word "restaurant", I invariably end up misspelling it. This time I had to look it up. For some reason I found the dictionary definition of "restaurant" funny: "a place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises." 

The week of no internet is now over. I realize that I use the internet a lot for looking up random facts. Like, "What other movie was that guy in?" or "What views did Hobbes have on government?"

I've got a set of these big red books in my room. They were published in the mid-20th century and they smell kind of funny. There's roughly one book for every letter of the alphabet. And they're all pretty heavy. But anyway: it's like Wikipedia in book form! I actually used them a few times over the last week. At one point I tried to look up something about how much a DVD could hold and - get this - there was no entry about DVDs! Can you believe that?

And there was an article about popular music. The number of times they mentioned The Beatles: zero. And there wasn't even an option to edit the page.

But I've got the internet back. And thank God.

Oh yeah: a week ago today, I found out that Jordan and I didn't make it to All-State for improv. Of course it was a bummer and sucked and everything, but the loss didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would.

We performed a Good Scene at State. I might venture as far as to say that it was a Very Good Scene. According to the judges, though, it was not an All-State Scene.

Comparatively: you're probably aware that we had solo mime performances that didn't make it past districts. You're probably aware that they were Very Good Solo Mime Performances, too. And I think those performers, while disappointed by their ratings, didn't take it as attacks on their abilities/skits. They know better than that.

I'm feeling the same way. Yeah, it sucked we didn't make it to All-State. And last week would have been a great opportunity for me to sit in a darkened room and second guess my abilities as an improviser.

I took a different approach. Throughout life (especially life in the 21st century), we're bound to run into a series of systems - may they be standardized tests, college applications, classroom situations...you get the idea. You're probably very familiar with the concept anyway.

Thanks to time and experience, many of these systems work pretty well. But they've still got their flaws. And IHSSA is no different - not to mention the idea of judging art in the first place. It's an incredibly subjective process. You've got limitless variables to deal with: the mood of the judges, their sensibilities, their experience with the subject they're judging...

So that's why I think I had a fairly distant reaction to the news. I didn't think it was a failure on my (or Jordan's) part as a performer. I thought it was because of a flaw in the system.

Is that a narrow-sighted, cocky attitude? Maybe. Do I come off as arrogant for having it? Perhaps. How do I sleep at night? Very comfortably, thank you.

So I think this: I am good at improv. Jordan is good at improv. We performed a very good scene. Our mentors agree. Our peers agree. A bunch of people who randomly stopped us at State agree. 

Our judges didn't agree.

It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to stop us.

...that being said: break a leg to all of those performing at All-State.

Congratulations to everyone who performed at state. About 25 hours until we see who's going to All-State. 25 hours and I'll see if I'll have an opportunity to eat a giant ice cream sundae.

I already know Monday's going to be tough. It will become a Waiting Day. A Waiting Day is what it sounds like. It's one of those days that seem particularly long because all you're doing is waiting for time to pass. See also: the last day before break.

Speaking of 25 hours: as soon as All-State results are posted, I'm taking part in my now-annual Week of No Internet. I tried it last year and it was a neat experiment. No, I don't consider myself an internet addict; however, I do think we underestimate how large of a part the internet has in our day-to-day lives.

Unfortunately, for me to truly avoid the internet is kind of impossible. Existing networks (cable TV, cell phone networks) are so tied with the networks we use to surf the web that I'll likely accidentally use the internet a few times. But I can say this for sure: if you need to let me know something over the next week, telling me over the phone or through another person will be way more successful than a Facebook post or email.