Tonight was the taping of Trust Us With Your Life. It was GREAT.
They gave us free beer/wine when we got there. Probably to try to make us laugh a lot. Didn't need it.
We got there early and somehow managed to be in the VERY FRONT row. It was ridiculous. I swear there was a guy kneeling with his camera in my face for over half the show. If I don't get airtime, I will be legitimately shocked.
The gist of the show is that it is an improv comedy show with four guys acting out different scenes from the "special guest's" life. They acted out each scene in a different way--one was rapped, one was putting words into someone else's mouth, another was a song, and so on. Very "Whose Line is it Anyway?"-esque. This show was created by the same guy who created Whose Line. He's a genius.
The special guest for tonight's show was Florence Henderson, or more commonly known as Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch. I'm kinda sad we didn't get a different guest--David Hasselhoff was the guest this past Sunday and I believe Ricky Gervais is tomorrow's guest. Oh well.
The brilliant comedians we had in tonight's show were Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Jonathan Mangrum, and some other guy. The host was Fred Willard, who is a good actor but a not very good at all host.
I had lots of accidental eye contact with Wayne Brady. It was awesome.
There were lots of laughs and LOTS of clapping. After the show they had to shoot a ton more footage of introductions and "links" and the ending and us clapping over and over and from every angle and my hands were quite tingly by the end. It was fun, though.
So the show will hopefully premiere next January in America on ABC. Watch out for the episode with Florence Henderson. You'll probably see me laughing. The other episodes will probably be worth watching as well. It's no Whose Line, but it does have hilarious moments.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
I'm still here.
It may seem like I've been neglecting my blogging, but fear not. I am still here. There just hasn't been a lot recently to report. I went to Liverpool for a class and am now on Fall Break until next Monday. I've been relaxing, kind of doing homework, seeing shows, and figuring out my classes for next semester.
It's crazy how many shows I've seen since being here. Most of them have been for my Shakespeare and Others in London Theatre class, but not all. I have seen Doctor Faustus, Much Ado About Nothing, War Horse, The Kitchen, 13, The Faith Machine, Wicked, Billy Elliot, and Jersey Boys. We are going to see One Man, Two Guvnors, Comedy of Errors, and hopefully Matilda the musical (put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company).
It's crazy how many shows I've seen since being here. Most of them have been for my Shakespeare and Others in London Theatre class, but not all. I have seen Doctor Faustus, Much Ado About Nothing, War Horse, The Kitchen, 13, The Faith Machine, Wicked, Billy Elliot, and Jersey Boys. We are going to see One Man, Two Guvnors, Comedy of Errors, and hopefully Matilda the musical (put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company).
ALSO this Friday I get to go see a taping of "Trust Us With Your Life", which is a new comedy/improv show with Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Jonathan Mangum, Greg Proops, and more. My friend won tickets for six of us to go and I am VERY excited.
So that's what's going on. Oh, and my wallet was stolen/lost last week. That's been fun. Poof goes 90 GBP (the equivalent of $145) which was my food stipend for last week and this week, my driver's license (good riddance, my picture was HORRIBLE), my debit card, and my credit card...which I got in case I lost my debit card....whoops...
But it's mostly all sorted out now. It was just very inconvenient for a few days.
Just a reminder that any sort of care package or letter is always welcome! ;)
So that's what's going on. Oh, and my wallet was stolen/lost last week. That's been fun. Poof goes 90 GBP (the equivalent of $145) which was my food stipend for last week and this week, my driver's license (good riddance, my picture was HORRIBLE), my debit card, and my credit card...which I got in case I lost my debit card....whoops...
But it's mostly all sorted out now. It was just very inconvenient for a few days.
Just a reminder that any sort of care package or letter is always welcome! ;)
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Deep Scottish Love. Och aye.
Scotland is the greatest place in the world. A little chilly and rainy, but the rest makes up for it.
I was there from last Thursday (the 13th) until Sunday (the 16th). Nowhere near long enough.
To live in Scotland is my new dream.
We took the train to Edinburgh, but only had a few hours there the first night. It was just enough time to go to dinner at an Indian/Thai restaurant and have some drinks at the hostel bar. It was a really nice hostel. We left Edinburgh at 8:30 Friday morning and didn't get to go to the castle or anything. :(
That was the saddest part of the trip.
We traveled around Scotland with a tour bus company called Haggis Adventures. I believe our tour was called "Wild and Sexy Scotland" and our tour bus had WILD AND SEXY written across the side.
Our tour guide's name was Kay (she told us to call her Special Kay), and she was AMAZING. She was hilarious and knowledgeable and had a fantastic accent. She spent the whole trip trying to instill in us the "Deep Scottish Love", or DSL. I had already started feeling it on the train ride to Edinburgh, but it got ridiculous by the time we left. I love that place.
Our first day was a lot of driving through the Scottish countryside. We made a stop at a wee little town called Dunkeld for a bit which had a pretty cathedral and stuff.
Our first real stop was at the Culloden Battlefield. It has a very sad history, which is explained here.
The rest of the day was a lot more driving and taking pictures until we arrived at Loch Ness.
We stayed at a hostel there called Morag's Lodge. The guy running the hostel was young and very attractive and Scottish. So it was pretty great. They fed us a great dinner and there was a crazy hat party in the hostel's bar that night, which was great fun. I didn't have a hat, but somehow I ended up with the attractive Scotsman's helmet.
Kay made the mistake of telling us that one of the rooms in the hostel was haunted but wouldn't tell us which one. I knew it wasn't my room, but that didn't stop me from waking up in the middle of the night convinced that there was a ghost in my room.
We left bright and early the next morning to go on a short walk through one of the most magical places I've ever been: Invermoriston. This was where J.M. Barrie came every summer as a child and based Neverland on. I can't even describe how amazing it was, and the pictures don't do it justice. It was just incredible.
After some more driving, our next stop was the Eilean Donan castle. It was very neat, but it was only (re)built in 1912, so it wasn't very old and spectacular. It has been in a fair amount of movies, though. According to wikipedia, "It has appeared in such films as The Master of Ballantrae (1953), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Highlander (1986), Mio in the Land of Faraway (1987), Loch Ness (1996), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Entrapment (1999), The World Is Not Enough(1999), Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Made of Honor (2007) and in the television series The New Avengers (1976) and Oliver's Travels (1995)." So that's pretty neat.
Our next stop was some random magnificent cliff where we took lots of pictures. It was awesome, but there was lots of sheep poop everywhere. It made it really slippery. And nasty.
Let's see...what was next...
Oh yeah. We stopped at another cliff on the Isle of Skye known as Kilt Rock. There's a story involving giants attached to it, but I don't recall all of the details. It's just a really cool rock formation. Plus there's a waterfall.
Kilt Rock is the foggy cliff in the background. It's kinda stripy and cool.
The stop after that was one of my favorites. The actual site itself wasn't anything truly special, but what we did there was awesome. Special Kay led us down to a little river and told us a story. Here's what I can remember of the story. Most likely some of it's wrong. So there's these two families that are fighting or something and these elvish folk don't want them to be fighting so they make one clan have the wife get pregnant with the hottest boy baby in the land and the other family's woman pregnant with the hottest girl baby. The idea is to make these two get married, which they are going to do, but on the day of the wedding, something happened and the girl got her face all smashed up and ugly-fied. She was like "Ach, nooo!!! Wha' am I gooing to dooo??" and she decides to just wear her veil down but her fiance made her take it off before the wedding to show his friends how hot she was and he was disgusted and whatnot. So the elvish folk decided to help out and enchant this particular river so that whoever puts their face in the water and keeps it in for five seconds will have eternal beauty. So she did and she was all pretty and stuff. I think she actually ended up marrying the younger brother of the hot guy because the hot guy was mean and the younger brother stuck his face in the river, so he was gorgeous now too. Yay happy ending.
So that's the story. I'm such a good storyteller.
This is a picture of Special Kay telling the story. She's in the hat with the pompom.
And of course me becoming beautified. It was insanely refreshing. Cold, but refreshing. The water is so clear that it is drinkable. Some of my friends filled up their water bottles with it. It was the best water I've ever tasted.
One of our last stops was my favorite. It was called Glen Coe and it was the most beautiful place on earth. It has a bloody history, though. There was a massacre there in 1692. You can read about it here.
With a stop at Trossachs Woollen Mill to visit Hamish the Highland cow and then a final stop at the William Wallace memorial, we were on our way back to Edinburgh to catch the train to London.
I was there from last Thursday (the 13th) until Sunday (the 16th). Nowhere near long enough.
To live in Scotland is my new dream.
We took the train to Edinburgh, but only had a few hours there the first night. It was just enough time to go to dinner at an Indian/Thai restaurant and have some drinks at the hostel bar. It was a really nice hostel. We left Edinburgh at 8:30 Friday morning and didn't get to go to the castle or anything. :(
That was the saddest part of the trip.
We traveled around Scotland with a tour bus company called Haggis Adventures. I believe our tour was called "Wild and Sexy Scotland" and our tour bus had WILD AND SEXY written across the side.
Our tour guide's name was Kay (she told us to call her Special Kay), and she was AMAZING. She was hilarious and knowledgeable and had a fantastic accent. She spent the whole trip trying to instill in us the "Deep Scottish Love", or DSL. I had already started feeling it on the train ride to Edinburgh, but it got ridiculous by the time we left. I love that place.
Our first day was a lot of driving through the Scottish countryside. We made a stop at a wee little town called Dunkeld for a bit which had a pretty cathedral and stuff.
Our first real stop was at the Culloden Battlefield. It has a very sad history, which is explained here.
The rest of the day was a lot more driving and taking pictures until we arrived at Loch Ness.
We stayed at a hostel there called Morag's Lodge. The guy running the hostel was young and very attractive and Scottish. So it was pretty great. They fed us a great dinner and there was a crazy hat party in the hostel's bar that night, which was great fun. I didn't have a hat, but somehow I ended up with the attractive Scotsman's helmet.
Kay made the mistake of telling us that one of the rooms in the hostel was haunted but wouldn't tell us which one. I knew it wasn't my room, but that didn't stop me from waking up in the middle of the night convinced that there was a ghost in my room.
We left bright and early the next morning to go on a short walk through one of the most magical places I've ever been: Invermoriston. This was where J.M. Barrie came every summer as a child and based Neverland on. I can't even describe how amazing it was, and the pictures don't do it justice. It was just incredible.
After some more driving, our next stop was the Eilean Donan castle. It was very neat, but it was only (re)built in 1912, so it wasn't very old and spectacular. It has been in a fair amount of movies, though. According to wikipedia, "It has appeared in such films as The Master of Ballantrae (1953), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Highlander (1986), Mio in the Land of Faraway (1987), Loch Ness (1996), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Entrapment (1999), The World Is Not Enough(1999), Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Made of Honor (2007) and in the television series The New Avengers (1976) and Oliver's Travels (1995)." So that's pretty neat.
Our next stop was some random magnificent cliff where we took lots of pictures. It was awesome, but there was lots of sheep poop everywhere. It made it really slippery. And nasty.
Let's see...what was next...
Oh yeah. We stopped at another cliff on the Isle of Skye known as Kilt Rock. There's a story involving giants attached to it, but I don't recall all of the details. It's just a really cool rock formation. Plus there's a waterfall.
Kilt Rock is the foggy cliff in the background. It's kinda stripy and cool.
The stop after that was one of my favorites. The actual site itself wasn't anything truly special, but what we did there was awesome. Special Kay led us down to a little river and told us a story. Here's what I can remember of the story. Most likely some of it's wrong. So there's these two families that are fighting or something and these elvish folk don't want them to be fighting so they make one clan have the wife get pregnant with the hottest boy baby in the land and the other family's woman pregnant with the hottest girl baby. The idea is to make these two get married, which they are going to do, but on the day of the wedding, something happened and the girl got her face all smashed up and ugly-fied. She was like "Ach, nooo!!! Wha' am I gooing to dooo??" and she decides to just wear her veil down but her fiance made her take it off before the wedding to show his friends how hot she was and he was disgusted and whatnot. So the elvish folk decided to help out and enchant this particular river so that whoever puts their face in the water and keeps it in for five seconds will have eternal beauty. So she did and she was all pretty and stuff. I think she actually ended up marrying the younger brother of the hot guy because the hot guy was mean and the younger brother stuck his face in the river, so he was gorgeous now too. Yay happy ending.
So that's the story. I'm such a good storyteller.
This is a picture of Special Kay telling the story. She's in the hat with the pompom.
And of course me becoming beautified. It was insanely refreshing. Cold, but refreshing. The water is so clear that it is drinkable. Some of my friends filled up their water bottles with it. It was the best water I've ever tasted.
One of our last stops was my favorite. It was called Glen Coe and it was the most beautiful place on earth. It has a bloody history, though. There was a massacre there in 1692. You can read about it here.
With a stop at Trossachs Woollen Mill to visit Hamish the Highland cow and then a final stop at the William Wallace memorial, we were on our way back to Edinburgh to catch the train to London.
The end. :'(
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Oxford and things...
Golly gee, this week went by fast. 'Twas a fairly ordinary week, as far as weeks in London go for me. Classes, trip to the Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew Gardens, visit to the National Gallery (for like the fourth time...), researching in the British Library, and seeing Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe Theatre. And then a day trip to Oxford, of course.
We went to the two gardens for my tea class. They were both beautiful. It was sad that I was there to learn and not just take pictures of the pretty flowers and crazy awesome trees. I ended up doing a little bit of both.
Here are some of the pictures I took at Kew Gardens. The orchids were my favorite.
The production of Much Ado we saw was decent, but it was wayyyy less awesome than Doctor Faustus, which we saw at the Globe a couple weeks ago. I was a groundling once again and somehow managed to elbow my way to the front so I could lean on the stage. Before the show started, there were two men on the stage with a bunch of oranges. One of the actors was literally a couple inches away from me and handed me a slice of orange. It was yummy. But sticky. I absolutely love being that close to the actors and being able to interact with them.
Thursday I began actually researching at the British Library for my tea class. It's really intense and frightening. You look at the books in what's called a reading room (I'm doing my work in the Asian and African studies reading room). You're only allowed to bring in pencils, notebooks, laptops (on silent)....and that's pretty much it. You are also only allowed to do research at the Library if you had a reader's pass, which we had to get. It's all just really intense. You don't check out the books, you can only read them in that one room. You have to order the books over an hour in advance and they bring them to the room for you. Today I was reading a 200-year-old book that smelled like tobacco. Some of my fellow group members got to look at ship logs that were huge and awesome and over 2 centuries old. They're terrifying to even touch. They seem like they could just fall apart at any second. It's almost impossible to read them, too, because the script is so fancy. I LOVE IT.
Oxford is a really great town. Oxford University is made up of a bunch of colleges, some dating back to the 13th century. They're sooooo pretty. We got to tour Christchurch College, which is where they filmed a few scenes for Harry Potter. It's dining hall was also the inspiration for the Great Hall in Hogwarts. We were all geeking out hardcore.
Also while in Oxford we went punting, which reminds me of the gondolas of Venice. You ride in a boat with several other people and one person has to stand at the back with a huge metal pole and push you along. I was too scared of falling in the water to properly "punt"(?), but I was excellent at using the pole as a rudder.
And that's what's new with me. Oh, also last night the fire alarm went off in our apartment building. It was like living in a dorm all over again. Someone started a little fire in their kitchen. We just had to chill outside for a bit while the nice fire brigade men hung out with us.
Today I was supposed to go to the Doctor Who Experience with a couple friends, but then we realized that Lauren was stupid and got the tickets for tomorrow instead of today on accident. It actually worked out quite well, but I wanted to go todaaaay. :(
Ah well, I still get to see the Doctor Who season finale tonight. :D
Actually, in about an hour. Yipeee!!!
We went to the two gardens for my tea class. They were both beautiful. It was sad that I was there to learn and not just take pictures of the pretty flowers and crazy awesome trees. I ended up doing a little bit of both.
Here are some of the pictures I took at Kew Gardens. The orchids were my favorite.
The production of Much Ado we saw was decent, but it was wayyyy less awesome than Doctor Faustus, which we saw at the Globe a couple weeks ago. I was a groundling once again and somehow managed to elbow my way to the front so I could lean on the stage. Before the show started, there were two men on the stage with a bunch of oranges. One of the actors was literally a couple inches away from me and handed me a slice of orange. It was yummy. But sticky. I absolutely love being that close to the actors and being able to interact with them.
Thursday I began actually researching at the British Library for my tea class. It's really intense and frightening. You look at the books in what's called a reading room (I'm doing my work in the Asian and African studies reading room). You're only allowed to bring in pencils, notebooks, laptops (on silent)....and that's pretty much it. You are also only allowed to do research at the Library if you had a reader's pass, which we had to get. It's all just really intense. You don't check out the books, you can only read them in that one room. You have to order the books over an hour in advance and they bring them to the room for you. Today I was reading a 200-year-old book that smelled like tobacco. Some of my fellow group members got to look at ship logs that were huge and awesome and over 2 centuries old. They're terrifying to even touch. They seem like they could just fall apart at any second. It's almost impossible to read them, too, because the script is so fancy. I LOVE IT.
Oxford is a really great town. Oxford University is made up of a bunch of colleges, some dating back to the 13th century. They're sooooo pretty. We got to tour Christchurch College, which is where they filmed a few scenes for Harry Potter. It's dining hall was also the inspiration for the Great Hall in Hogwarts. We were all geeking out hardcore.
Also while in Oxford we went punting, which reminds me of the gondolas of Venice. You ride in a boat with several other people and one person has to stand at the back with a huge metal pole and push you along. I was too scared of falling in the water to properly "punt"(?), but I was excellent at using the pole as a rudder.
And that's what's new with me. Oh, also last night the fire alarm went off in our apartment building. It was like living in a dorm all over again. Someone started a little fire in their kitchen. We just had to chill outside for a bit while the nice fire brigade men hung out with us.
Today I was supposed to go to the Doctor Who Experience with a couple friends, but then we realized that Lauren was stupid and got the tickets for tomorrow instead of today on accident. It actually worked out quite well, but I wanted to go todaaaay. :(
Ah well, I still get to see the Doctor Who season finale tonight. :D
Actually, in about an hour. Yipeee!!!
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