Too much time on your hands Frenchie?

We watched this video in my French class, it's pretty dang funny! This guy plays calssical music on horns all over his body. Just watch it, it can't be explaned!

Here is another funny video we watched in French, my professor said she did this same thing once when she was 14.

This video is dedicated to Richelle, it's a really funny 3D cartoon called "The Last Knit". It's about obsession.

Pictures of life in Provo

Me and some of my best friends here getting ready to go to the corn maze at Thanksgiving Point.

Left to right: Amanda, Jared, Mary, me, Ava, Tiffany

Me and Ava in our Halloween costumes, a flapper and a gypsy.

Tiffany and me just lookin' good.

Tiffany, me, and Mary up to something fishy.

Kelvin and Brian going psycho!

Kelvin and me at the SDS football game!

Professor Trew...

Emma Thompson was on Ellen Thursday talking about Harry Potter, it was HILARIOUS! Click on Harry to see it!

Seeing triple?

Ok, so I noticed something strange (I just wanted to see if anyone agrees with my observation). I noticed that these 3 famous women look an awful lot alike: Stephanie J. Block, Maura Tierney, and Amy Grant. Now, hear me out before you make an Amy Grant comment (Bear!)- look at these pictures and tell me I'm wrong!



Do you see it!? They could be sisters right? I think this "coincidence" points to one explanation: cloning. The funny thing is: two of them can sing and one can't, and two of them can act and one can't. That leads me to conclude that Stephanie Block must be the original because she can do both. FREAKY! I am going to search for more evidence of celebrity cloning, I will post my findings here. Any observations you have made would help with my research.

Pumpkin Time!

This is a picture of my family home evening group and our awesome, contest winning pumpkins.
Pictured from left to right: (front)My roomate Ava, Jared, Adrian. (back) Michelle, Jeremy, my roomate Nicole, and me.

Pirates and Witches

Today I am experiencing what is called post-vacation let down. It occurs most often when a person has recently gone on an awesome vacation where they had tons of fun and then is faced with the reality of returning to their semi-boring life. It usually sets in during the flight home. My symptoms include: the need for more sleep than usual, the aversion to any food that has not been prepared in a restaurant or purchased from a vending machine/gift shop, phantom map-hand pains (when you can feel a map in your hand when not holding one), and the almost overwhelming urge to sing "Defying Gravity" very loudly in public (because I haven't been able to get it out of my head since I saw Wicked on Friday).

That is a good segue into my review of Wicked! So, as I mentioned before, this was my third time seeing the phenomenon that is Wicked and I honestly loved it as much as the first time. I felt like a little kid seeing Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, I literally sat on the edge of my seat the entire performance with a huge grin on my face (until it got sad, then I got all teary). But that's the point, even though I know the story inside out I still go on the emotional ride every time, all the way. The cast was wonderful, most of them I had seen before except for Elphaba and Glinda.

We didn't get to see Kristy Kates who is the normal Elphaba of the Chicago cast, so we had her understudy; intially that makes me nervous because the understudy is the understudy for a reason. But, as my sister pointed out, the understudy has everything to prove. And she was great, I thought she did a fabulous job. I really like the actress who played Glinda too, she might be my favorite Glinda I've seen. She was really funny and sung "Popular" better than enyone I've heard next to Kristin Chenoweth. All around, it was a great production; I can't say enough about how GOOD this show is. It is a solid show, the music is wonderful, the characters are well dveloped and compeling, the set and lighting is stellar and the costumes are fun and interesting. My dad and I say that Wicked is the show we compare everything to now, which means a lot of shows fall short and fail to satisfy because Wicked sets a wickedly high standard. But that's the magic of it, there is just something special about this show that's all I can say.

The second big event, and really the whole reason we went to Chicago in the first place, was to see the pre-Broadway preview of the new Musical The Pirate Queen. This show caught our attention because the actress who was cast to play The Pirate Queen Grace O'Malley, Stephanie J. Block, played Elphaba the first time we saw Wicked. She was really impressive so we knew she wouldn't disapoint. The other draws to this show were: the writers, Boublil and Schonberg, who wrote the music for Les Miserables, and the production company, Riverdream, who produced Riverdance. Needless to say this show has the pedigree of a box office smash and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.

My opinion of this show: I liked it a lot and it has a lot of potential. There were some really great things happening, the story is wonderful, Stephanie J.Block was flawless (I see a Tony for her, she was really THAT good), and some of the songs were fantastic, but they still have some work to do before it is ready for Broadway. I can tell that when it is more polished and trimmed it is going to be really good, maybe not the phenomenon Les Miserables has come to be but I have a lot of hope for it. My dad and I waited at the stage door to meet the cast and were able to get the autograph of the actress who plays Queen Elizabeth I, but missed Stephanie which was a bummer.

Overall, it was a great trip. Seriously I love seeing shows so much! I couldn't have picked a more perfect trip for myself.

To learn more about The Pirate Queen the show, and about Grace O'Malley (who was a real woman) click on this link. There is also a link from the show's page to the cast's blog (called castcom) which has a bunch of really cool videos from the cast and crew, check it out.
http://www.thepiratequeen.com/

Wanna' hop on board the Wicked train? The web site is a good place to start, they have a Wicked trailer with clips of performances and interviews with the cast and creative team and a good synopsis of the plot. (Incidently, Stephanie J. Block is Elphaba in the video!) http://www.wickedthemusical.com/chicago/

Here in the Second City

It's 5:52 pm Chicago time and I am sitting on my bed in the Allegro Hotel in downtown Chicago! In just 92 minutes I will be at the Oriental Theatre seeing Wicked! Holy crap I'm excited. This will be my third time seeing it but I am just as excited as the first time. What a fun weekend I am having. So, we got into O'Hare this morning and took a 40 minute train ride from the airport to downtown Chicago with these two teenage boys who were making up raps filled with coloful language the entire time! I thought my sister was going to punch one of them, and I really wouldn't have been able to blame her because they were SO loud. But we finally got to our hotel, which is this cool, old art-deco hotel, and ventured out on the streets to find some sustinance. We made our way to a Diner called Ed Dibevick's which came reccomended by two different people. The thing about Ed's is that their whole shtick is to be rude to you, seriously. The employees are all theater students so they get a nice, paying acting gig but I kinda hated it. It was just sort of weird! Anyways- we wandered around for a little while more and then came back to the hotel for a "rest", well everyone slept but me cause I was busy blogging and such. My sister just called herself "Drooly Andrews" by the way! So, I am going to get ready for the show so I will be sure to post my review later, and my review of The Pirate Queen which we are seeing tomorrow. Two huge musicals in, in Chicago in one weekend? Pretty much the best weekend ever!