vanya

my parents and grandmother and i went to see Little Miss Sunshine today. definitely worth it. really funny and whacky and quite smart. the touching moments were actually that, instead of going overboard into cheesy. they were the right length, well judged and genuinely moving. good acting too! i really liked the scenes with steve carell's "pre-eminent proust scholar" and the son who doesn't-speak-because-of-friedrich-nietzsche. it's good to know people like marcel proust have your back in the teenage angst department.

i've made three witch masks for Macbeth -- kind of creepy, semi-mutilated looking things. paper mache built up on neutral white masks that i sliced into various shapes to get rid of the lower face. they're supposed to look like post-apocalyptic burn victims... good dinner conversation! perhaps i'll post pictures soon. but speaking of costume pictures, here are some others... the first two are macbeth and banquo (macbeth is the significantly more bloody one). he has a scottish lion spray-paint stencilled in red on the back of his coat. banquo has a coat-of-arms type X made of strips of his plaid, with a few metal studs thrown in there of course. that's sort of been the rule in this costume process: when in doubt, add more metal. the next two are the top front and top back of old siward's coat. in this Macbeth the english are sort of a more bureaucratic, semi-fascist power. so when malcolm goes for their help at the end he sort of sells out the scots, who end up having to shed their (punk rock!) scottish emblems/traditions in favor of the clean-cut, more "civilized" english practices. definitely a sour victory. (i think my friend ben, the director, got the idea by differently interpreting the macduff line, "such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'tis hard to reconcile." very cool.)






my grandmother is watching golf in the livingroom. to whoever is reading this: when i am 87, please. please. do not let me watch golf.