random thoughts
it is 3:16 in the morning. i have to be at class at 9 in the morning, so clearly the smart thing to do right now is ramble incessantly on my livejournal instead of, you know, sleep or something. it's just, have you ever been online and you just keep going back and forth between like 3 or 4 different sites (for me, it's facebook, my friendspage on lj, yahoo mail, and a couple different tumblr pages) and you just want something to update, but it's 3 in the morning and most normal people are asleep, so you just end up on an endless loop of boredom? that is possibly the longest run-on sentence ever (with the most superfluous commas ever.) or not. there's probably a world record or something. i'd venture to say there's probably a world record for most things in life, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds... the most mice stapled to a pair of jeans. the highest pogo stick jump on a surface of marshmallows. the largest collection of everly brothers memorabilia in one household... i have no idea what i'm talking about. i am so bored. i wish someone would update a ben/leslie fan fic. i live for that shit now. seriously, it sustains me.
i've been listening to the asssscat! podcast a lot recently, and i had an odd observation. is it just me, or do other people have an easier time identifying female voices over male voices in an audio-only situation? i have a hard time distinguishing which performer is speaking in a lot of the podcasts. the only person whose voice i can always pick out is besser's. i can sometimes pick out ian's voice, but not always. and i can never pick out matt walsh's voice among other male performers, which i find odd because i've heard him speak about the same amount as besser and ian in various ucb things. but asssside from asssscat, i find it much easier to identify female voices. maybe because they are more melodic or have more inflection or something. i don't know. i guess it's just a distinct way someone speaks as opposed to gender. walsh apparently just has a more generic voice, which is a weird thing to say considering the things he actually says are really clever and funny (when i can see him and attribute it to having come from his mouth.) this is a really random and weird conversation i am having with myself. anyway...
i tried to orchestrate an asssscat-type game with a gathering of friends tonight, and it didn't go how i wanted it to and i was very disappointed. the one friend was saying he wanted to play an improv game and the other friend has seen the asssscat dvd before and liked it, so it's not like i was forcing my obsession onto other people who weren't interested. two additional friends came over to hang out, and we decided to play. i described how the show works, and then instead of getting a word from an audience (since we didn't have one,) to have each of us write down suggestions on pieces of paper, put them in a hat, then take turns being the monologist who picks a word from the hat, and then everyone else does scenes off of the monologue. everyone seemed to get it and we all put words in. the first word picked was "hang-glider" and instead of giving a monologue inspired by the word, that friend improved his own scene based on hang-glider and had this story about his uncle steve hang-gliding through the grand canyon and mount rushmore and how stuff like that is in his family genes, all his relatives are into that stuff. so he finished this elaborate made-up story, and i had some scenes in my head that i wanted to start based off of things he said. like i wanted to start a scene where i was at a family reunion where everyone else had all these adventurous accomplishments and i was the disappointment of the family because i was just an accountant or lawyer or something, but it wasn't working because everyone else thought we were supposed to basically act out exactly what the monologist said (since it was this ridiculous, obviously made-up story.) so that didn't work, and i tried to explain again, and they seemed to understand. so i picked a word next and it was "crack squirrels," which is guess is a thing? but that reminded me of this guy i used to know who would always put beer in his cat's water dish to watch her get drunk, which is guess is a form of pet abuse, and i said some more things about that, but they kept jumping in with commentary and then it turned into a discussion between the group and no scenes were based off of that. then the next suggestion pulled out was "things are happening," which is something one of my friends always says. and this prompted the monologist to say "so, i had this really brilliant idea to get really stoned last night and watch 'nostradamus 2012,' and it was just saying all this weird stuff, and i kind of believe that at some point we'll go though a galactic intersection of predictions and reality..." and it went on with some other stuff (he may have been stoned this evening, as well lol) and then he finished. and then another discussion started about nostradamus. so i was like, "can i just sort of give an example of a scene i would do based off of that, to sort of explain this better? when the person is talking, listen to what they're saying and try to pick up on certain little moments in the story and start building some ideas for scenes in your head. like, he mentioned 'going through a galactic intersection' and i thought about getting pulled over for going through an intersection, but it's a galactic intersection so the arresting officer is an alien and then we cut to the prison where there are other galactic convicts and you just build a scene around little moments like that." and then it clicked for everyone (i really should have just found the bravo special on youtube and showed them that before we started...) but by that point it was after midnight and no one was really in the mood for it anymore. so we broke down into a game of kill, fuck or marry between sarah palin, ann coulter, and michelle bachman. and then that game got abandoned after that one suggestion. i'm pretty sure everyone was a combination of drunk, high and tired.
i left not long after that, thinking that maybe i'd get some sleep and be ready for my class tomorrow morning. clearly that's not happening. this class is so boring/easy, though, so it doesn't really matter, i suppose. financial accounting. so fun. but my company pays for it and i guess it will help to have a business degree if i want to go into small towns and open up community centers for lgbtq youth. it's not a fully-formed plan for my future, but it's something. i really want to be a comedy writer or the property master for a sitcom, but realistically, i know that's not going to happen. so i guess i have to make other things happen.
i was watching this live chat with amy poehler (from over a year ago) where someone asks her "eddie murphy or richard pryor?" and she says "you know, eddie murphy was personal to me because he was the guy that i grew up with when i was a kid. whoever you like when you're 13, you know, you love forever." that's exactly what i was trying to describe in the last post i made, about how i grew up with amy poehler and i've loved her since i was like 13. the fact that amy poehler just gave me the words i was looking for in describing why amy poehler is my hero explains why amy poehler is my hero. (which is a callback to this post about lily tomlin lol)
speaking of inspirational people, i started making these pictures for people who inspire me. i plan on making more, but these are the only two i've done so far...
i like making these.
oh, and here's some other stuff i've been doing to cure my boredom the past few nights... building a life for leslie and ben via the sims 3:
she's like a ninja crossed with a jedi, and ben can't get her off his mind.
ben and leslie go on several dates to parks and sit in front of wildflowers (even though they both prefer murals to the actual thing.)
leslie buys furniture that reminds her of ben, and she makes out with him on his face so often that it becomes a force of habit.
ben makes leslie waffles (courtesy of him) most mornings for breakfast.
leslie has never been more in love.
ben takes leslie to a her favorite park. she feels like she is flying, and it's only partially because of the swing.
ben makes an impassioned speech about the city of pawnee and its really nice blonde hair, and leslie should have seen this coming, but she is nevertheless surprised when he gets down on one knee.
she doesn't say yes. she says "absotutely," pauses, then scrunches her nose. ben has never been more in love.
i may have too much time on my hands. or this may just be my way of 1) destressing from my work projects and 2) tiding myself over until the new season of parks and rec is here. also, season 3 is out on dvd september 6th: best birthday present ever!!
i should go to sleep now. for realsies.