Ever since Daylight Savings Time began (last Sunday at 2am PST, in my world), the weather has been gorgeous. Nice weather means that summer is coming, so when it's warm out the Pavlovian effect of my years of student-hood is that I cannot focus on my work, home- and otherwise, because my brain is thinking, "A big long vacation must be imminent." Even though I have worked every summer since I graduated high school, I can't break the association of nice weather with carefree goodtimes...and with swimming. Luckily, Spring Break starts Friday, but I still have 5 weeks of student-hood after that until summer vacation (at which point I'll plunge into the terrifying abyss of regular person-hood...forever). Ironically, I am looking forward to summer because being free from school and homework will mean that I can find a nice grueling full-time job!
Perhaps with the thoughts of a potentially non-summery summer in mind, all I wanted to do on Sunday was float in a big ol' swimming pool. The world saw that and mocked me viciously. I went to the lab where my students were working and watched a man work on a film in which a girl jumped into a swimming pool over and over again. I walked past the McDonald Swim Stadium and saw a fully-clothed girl standing on the highest high dive platform and looking down at the water. I tried to go put my feet in the pool at my apartment, but I couldn't get my key to unlock the gate. Pathetic. True story.
I just finished reading two parts of Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives," entitled "The Good Anna" and "The Gentle Lena." Basically the stories are about women who spend their lives working hard at doing everything they ought to, and they are never happy and they die sooner than they should. So I was walking around thinking, This is a nice day and I shouldn't waste it sitting inside! (Well, actually I wanted to go inside a theater and watch "Compleat Female Stage Beauty," but when I got turned away that seemed like a sign that I should really go to the beach.)
So I called my friend and he did not want to go to the beach. He needed to go to Michael's (the store). Well, actually he wanted to go to a place called Hobby Lobby, but that store doesn't exist in California, as I had to remind him. And that's a stupid name for a store, so I'm glad it doesn't exist here. Anyway, he wanted to go to the closest Michael's, which is in Inglewood, but I told him I'd go along for the ride if we went to the Michael's in Santa Monica. So guess what? Next thing I know I've got my feet in the surf (and my friend is waiting for me on a concrete ledge next to the bike path because I tricked him and he doesn't want to walk in the sand).
In the past few days I was having a big debate with myself about whether I ought to move to New York City after graduation, but now I'm thinking that I haven't really had the living-in-LA experience. I've just had the going-to-college-in-LA experience. So I am probably not ready to leave LA yet. I like being able to go to the beach on a nice day. I know New York City has the Hudson River, but it isn't the same (only Kramer swims in it). Also, people seem to live in New York City because they hate LA (among other reasons-- and calm yourselves, I'm being facetious), and I don't hate LA enough yet to leave. I'm not really sure that I hate anything. My parents always used to say, "Don't say 'hate.' Hate is a strong word." It's interesting that the same word can have different intensities for different people. Also, would I really be hating LA, or my experiences with certain people here? (Or the traffic?) Just saying.
Okay, so my beach pilgrimage happened (the Chaucer kept running through my head: "So priketh hem Nature in hir corages/Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages"), and I was pleased that I really actually acted on something I really wanted to do (although I never actually went swimming; walking in the surf was symbolic). I took a few pictures, which came out well considering that I can't really see my camera's screen in the sun.
The beach thing was also appropriate because I had a dream a few nights ago that I was sitting at a little outdoor dining patio overlooking the water and a sort of shiny city beyond it (possibly somewhere abroad), and Carson Kressley and George Clooney were there too. Carson was wearing these cool glasses with dark blue square (okay, rectangular) frames, and the glasses actually had many other layers which could fit over them, including goggles (for SWIMMING?) and sunglasses (which, yesterday while I was driving to Universal, my passenger/friend put sunglasses on over his glasses). In the dream, I tried to take a picture of Carson in these amazing glasses, but I couldn't, because my camera was not really working, and then some other people wanted pictures with him and my opportunity was lost.
So then last night I had ANOTHER dream that I was trying to use my camera and it wasn't working/wasn't taking the pictures I wanted at the moment I wanted them, and then the moment was lost. This is an interesting new dream, because for years my things-are-wrong dream was the ever-popular teeth-falling-out dream, which is not very cool at all. I don't even need to try to breech my subconscious to know that I really AM worried right now because in two months I will need to start a new life with a new job and a new apartment and blah-de-blah and I have no major prospects yet...and really no minor prospects either. And also--I need to get a new camera. Mine IS kinda shitty.
Oh yeah, and I keep carelessly reaching into things and getting paper cuts. This is real life, not a dream...er, nightmare. I reached into my bag yesterday and got a juicy paper cut on my left middle finger, right on the pad...and I extremely dislike cuts (I typed HATE at first, haha hypocrisy). Then today I reached into my sound locker and got a cut on my right side-pinky. And I keep accidentally sticking my hands into crazy painful things like salsa and mango juice and In 'n Out secret sauce (I ordered my first "secret menu" item last night-- protein style!).
I just had a thought-- I always say that I had a lot of dreams, or I had a bad dream, etc...I very rarely say "nightmare." I wonder if other people would categorize some of my dreams as nightmares...it's all semantics, I say. It's all personal point-of-view.
My roommate read some statistics that claim that there are more suicides during the months when Daylight Savings Time is in effect. I can't really understand that because it's during the summer and there's more light later into the night...isn't that conducive to cheerfulness? I just went and looked it up on Wikipedia and it turns out that many countries (such as Kazakhstan) don't observe Daylight Savings Time because of possible health complications. I guess it really does a number on our circadian rhythms, that bumped hour (notice I didn't say biological clock...I love it when people confuse the two and accidentally make ridiculous statements).
My, look how the time has flown! And I thought I had nothing to post about.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Tampopos
This is the time of the semester when work really ramps up. I went from working less than ten hours a week to working about ten hours a day...but it will go back down after next Friday...and back up right around finals. Ironically when I'm working so much I feel really good on the making money and being a good worker/smart sound person/entertaining co-worker front, but things go totally crappy on the doing creative things/feeling rested/getting any homework done front. If I don't make any sense today, blame it on my lack of sleep.
Out of fatigue, today I'm going to use my a back-up story that I've been storing in my head and write about tampons. Yes, tampons. (Gentlemen, I understand if you want to avert your eyes, though I don't plan on going into any graphic details.) I didn't want to neglect the blog any longer, and I have to walk back to work in an hour or so. I could nap, but that's not very creative. Appealing...yes.
Girls (ahem--women): Remember when you were little, and tampons just seemed like the most awful idea ever? And pads seemed like a good idea until you realized that they were adult diapers? And then all of a sudden one day you sucked it up and tried tampons and they were a total revelation? Out of all of the inventions of the modern-day world, tampons are what make me glad to be a 21st century woman. Seriously, if not for the lack of tampons I would be totally willing to live in ancient Greece or 1955 or whenever. Tampons are the eighth wonder of the world, and if they had been invented back in ancient times they probably would have been hanging in the Gardens at Babylon.
Women: Remember when buying tampons was a totally mortifying experience? When a tampon falling out of your backpack would have been grounds for switching schools? I remember watching some sort of sex ed video in 5th or 6th grade where some girl gets her period and is walking around with a box of menstrual things and RUNS INTO HER CRUSH and he's cool with her big box of tamps. And I remember thinking, that is so totally unrealistic. And that's probably still true of high-schoolers, but now if I ran into my hypothetical crush while buying a big box of Super Plus Tampax Pearls (the best--I'm sorry, I know they're plastic and killing the Earth, but I love them anyway), I would find the situation hilarious, but not embarrassing.
I remember in books and sex ed tapes the girl would usually be pretty psyched about "becoming a woman" and her mom would want to throw a party or something. I was pretty much like, let's keep this on the DL (down-low), Moms. Both of my sisters were young-uns when I was pubertizing, and I...it sounds crazy but I don't remember thinking, "Oh, someday they'll be pubescers, too." It was more like, "Oh, they're going to think I'm a freak."
When I focus on my computer screen, the room feels like it's spinning. Kind of cool. Kind of a concern.
Growing up in Orange County, which is sort of the Bible Belt of Southern California, I had many friends who thought that wearing tampons was more or less akin to losing your virginity. That's pretty high on my personal internal scale of ludicrosity. One of my friends literally said, "I just don't know if I could go through with it [trying tampons]. Maybe if I got really drunk I'd be willing to try." Um, hello--it's not sex, it's a tampon. After you insert it you don't need to smoke a cigarette or get it to cuddle with you in bed. Am I alone here? The tamps will set you free, people! Haven't you ever seen the tampon ads with the girls in the bathing suits or wearing the prom dresses? It's all true! They're delightful! They're not scary or invented by the Devil! (FYI, the Devil keeps himself busy by inventing painful shoes and convincing shiteous people to audition for American Idol.)
When I was in high school I told my friend that I wanted to invent a line of tampons that would have really cute little wrappers to appeal to high schoolers. Well, Tampax Pearl totally stole my thunder and put little designs on their wrappers, and recently added several more colors and even cooler designs! Pretty much every good idea I've ever had has been instituted by someone else way before I was old enough to get the ball rolling. For example, I thought of the idea for the movie "Bicentennial Man" when I was a wee child. But whatever, I'll let Isaac Asimov have that one.
Recently on Jezebel there was a big debate over whether tamps ought to be flushed, and some people acted like it was a total given that flushing is okay. I always thought that they were supposed to be flushed until the day my sophomore year roommate (whom I almost never talked to) awkwardly informed me that she'd had to use her chopsticks to unclog the toilet while I was in class (this still brings much glee to my cruel little heart, because I had to act sorry but I really just wanted to laugh my stomach out). A guy I met once who worked with LA sanitation was like, you have no idea how badly the high school sewer lines get clogged, so for now I'm in the "don't flush" camp (I know, ew-- but did you know that some sorority houses have corroded pipes because of all of the acidic vomit?).
Okay, so by now you know that I am totally willing to talk about tampons. BUT recently I saw a scene in a movie that totally outraged me because I was like, "that is NOT realistic." The movie was "The Player," and in the scene Whoopi Goldberg plays a detective, and Tim Robbins in the suspect (and Lyle Lovett is some other quiet cop and he is kind of awesome but then he swats a fly and it's way too slapstick). Anyway, so Tim Robbins is sitting there waiting to answer questions about the murder (which he actually committed), and suddenly Whoopi starts loudly talking to her female co-worker. She says the following things, "Did you take my tampons?...Oh, here, I found my tampons...Oh wait, these aren't mine, I use the Supers," etc. She is pretty much waving the box in Tim's face. Then she unwraps one and swings it around by the string. I was watching this film in the class, and all the girls were going, "Oh no she didn't!" (Okay, I was leading the charge.)
First of all, if you have a client/suspect/man sitting at your desk, that is not the right moment to talk loudly about tampon usage and needs. Hypothetical tampon talk is okay in front of men, if you know them really well. Actual "can I have a tampon/I'm on my period" talk will skeeve guys out and is unnecessary. Unwrapping a tampon and swinging it around is beyond crazy. For one thing, tampons are crazy-expensive. At least 40 cents each. True story. Guys have no idea how much money they save by not having to buy tampons or makeup. Also, even though periods are not that bad, guys are totally clueless as to what it's like to deal with that. I just thank the Forces that Be for giving periods to women, because can you imagine if guys had periods? They'd probably be completely incapacitated. But anyway, that movie was writted by a man and directed by another man. They just don't understand. My professor actually said that the tone in that scene was so crazy that it almost sank the movie. Take that!
That was back in the day when tampons were in boring white wrappers.
But anyway, talking about tampons is totally liberating. Encourage your friends to use tampons. They will not lose their virtue. I cannot imagine being allergic to tampons. I shouldn't have said that--I don't want to jinx myself. I am going to go knock on all sorts of wood. Oh my gosh, best double entendre ever. (Upon rereading, there is at least one other totally unintentional instance of sexual imagery in this post...let me know what you find!)
I didn't think of it until after I typed it.
Oh, PS, I totally learned a new word the other day-- yonic. It's like the female (read: vaggy) equivalent of phallic.
Out of fatigue, today I'm going to use my a back-up story that I've been storing in my head and write about tampons. Yes, tampons. (Gentlemen, I understand if you want to avert your eyes, though I don't plan on going into any graphic details.) I didn't want to neglect the blog any longer, and I have to walk back to work in an hour or so. I could nap, but that's not very creative. Appealing...yes.
Girls (ahem--women): Remember when you were little, and tampons just seemed like the most awful idea ever? And pads seemed like a good idea until you realized that they were adult diapers? And then all of a sudden one day you sucked it up and tried tampons and they were a total revelation? Out of all of the inventions of the modern-day world, tampons are what make me glad to be a 21st century woman. Seriously, if not for the lack of tampons I would be totally willing to live in ancient Greece or 1955 or whenever. Tampons are the eighth wonder of the world, and if they had been invented back in ancient times they probably would have been hanging in the Gardens at Babylon.
Women: Remember when buying tampons was a totally mortifying experience? When a tampon falling out of your backpack would have been grounds for switching schools? I remember watching some sort of sex ed video in 5th or 6th grade where some girl gets her period and is walking around with a box of menstrual things and RUNS INTO HER CRUSH and he's cool with her big box of tamps. And I remember thinking, that is so totally unrealistic. And that's probably still true of high-schoolers, but now if I ran into my hypothetical crush while buying a big box of Super Plus Tampax Pearls (the best--I'm sorry, I know they're plastic and killing the Earth, but I love them anyway), I would find the situation hilarious, but not embarrassing.
I remember in books and sex ed tapes the girl would usually be pretty psyched about "becoming a woman" and her mom would want to throw a party or something. I was pretty much like, let's keep this on the DL (down-low), Moms. Both of my sisters were young-uns when I was pubertizing, and I...it sounds crazy but I don't remember thinking, "Oh, someday they'll be pubescers, too." It was more like, "Oh, they're going to think I'm a freak."
When I focus on my computer screen, the room feels like it's spinning. Kind of cool. Kind of a concern.
Growing up in Orange County, which is sort of the Bible Belt of Southern California, I had many friends who thought that wearing tampons was more or less akin to losing your virginity. That's pretty high on my personal internal scale of ludicrosity. One of my friends literally said, "I just don't know if I could go through with it [trying tampons]. Maybe if I got really drunk I'd be willing to try." Um, hello--it's not sex, it's a tampon. After you insert it you don't need to smoke a cigarette or get it to cuddle with you in bed. Am I alone here? The tamps will set you free, people! Haven't you ever seen the tampon ads with the girls in the bathing suits or wearing the prom dresses? It's all true! They're delightful! They're not scary or invented by the Devil! (FYI, the Devil keeps himself busy by inventing painful shoes and convincing shiteous people to audition for American Idol.)
When I was in high school I told my friend that I wanted to invent a line of tampons that would have really cute little wrappers to appeal to high schoolers. Well, Tampax Pearl totally stole my thunder and put little designs on their wrappers, and recently added several more colors and even cooler designs! Pretty much every good idea I've ever had has been instituted by someone else way before I was old enough to get the ball rolling. For example, I thought of the idea for the movie "Bicentennial Man" when I was a wee child. But whatever, I'll let Isaac Asimov have that one.
Recently on Jezebel there was a big debate over whether tamps ought to be flushed, and some people acted like it was a total given that flushing is okay. I always thought that they were supposed to be flushed until the day my sophomore year roommate (whom I almost never talked to) awkwardly informed me that she'd had to use her chopsticks to unclog the toilet while I was in class (this still brings much glee to my cruel little heart, because I had to act sorry but I really just wanted to laugh my stomach out). A guy I met once who worked with LA sanitation was like, you have no idea how badly the high school sewer lines get clogged, so for now I'm in the "don't flush" camp (I know, ew-- but did you know that some sorority houses have corroded pipes because of all of the acidic vomit?).
Okay, so by now you know that I am totally willing to talk about tampons. BUT recently I saw a scene in a movie that totally outraged me because I was like, "that is NOT realistic." The movie was "The Player," and in the scene Whoopi Goldberg plays a detective, and Tim Robbins in the suspect (and Lyle Lovett is some other quiet cop and he is kind of awesome but then he swats a fly and it's way too slapstick). Anyway, so Tim Robbins is sitting there waiting to answer questions about the murder (which he actually committed), and suddenly Whoopi starts loudly talking to her female co-worker. She says the following things, "Did you take my tampons?...Oh, here, I found my tampons...Oh wait, these aren't mine, I use the Supers," etc. She is pretty much waving the box in Tim's face. Then she unwraps one and swings it around by the string. I was watching this film in the class, and all the girls were going, "Oh no she didn't!" (Okay, I was leading the charge.)
First of all, if you have a client/suspect/man sitting at your desk, that is not the right moment to talk loudly about tampon usage and needs. Hypothetical tampon talk is okay in front of men, if you know them really well. Actual "can I have a tampon/I'm on my period" talk will skeeve guys out and is unnecessary. Unwrapping a tampon and swinging it around is beyond crazy. For one thing, tampons are crazy-expensive. At least 40 cents each. True story. Guys have no idea how much money they save by not having to buy tampons or makeup. Also, even though periods are not that bad, guys are totally clueless as to what it's like to deal with that. I just thank the Forces that Be for giving periods to women, because can you imagine if guys had periods? They'd probably be completely incapacitated. But anyway, that movie was writted by a man and directed by another man. They just don't understand. My professor actually said that the tone in that scene was so crazy that it almost sank the movie. Take that!
That was back in the day when tampons were in boring white wrappers.
But anyway, talking about tampons is totally liberating. Encourage your friends to use tampons. They will not lose their virtue. I cannot imagine being allergic to tampons. I shouldn't have said that--I don't want to jinx myself. I am going to go knock on all sorts of wood. Oh my gosh, best double entendre ever. (Upon rereading, there is at least one other totally unintentional instance of sexual imagery in this post...let me know what you find!)
I didn't think of it until after I typed it.
Oh, PS, I totally learned a new word the other day-- yonic. It's like the female (read: vaggy) equivalent of phallic.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
I'd Fancy a Cup of British Accent
Yesterday for the first time in about a year I did production sound mixing on a film (which in this case meant that I went to set and pressed "record" and "play" on the recorder while the boom operator boomed). At lunchtime we moved from the crazyness that was the handprints outside of Graumann's Chinese Theatre back to the USC area. Amy (the boom op/brains of the operation) and I got to the second location a little early and stood on the street waiting for the rest of the crew to join us (with lunch!).
I saw a guy walk over and look at the bus that we were all about to film on (after lunch), and I figured that he must be one of the extras. Since Amy and I were conspicuously crew members (we had our equipment), the guy approached me and said, "Ha um clays fremmark?"
"Excuse me?" I said, because that's the polite way to say, "What??"
"I'm Mark," he said, and the second time I realized that he had a British accent. I felt stupid because at first I thought that he was speaking in tongues, but he was actually just...proper. For the record, he said, "Hi, I'm Claire's friend, Mark," which makes sense because Claire is from London (but I knew that, so her accent didn't throw me when I met her).
Anyway, that flashed me back to my first dinner in Barcelona, the summer that I spent a month backpacking in Europe. My travel-partner and I decided to go out and try the famous Spanish dish, paella. I was super-excited to finally get to use my AP Spanish, although I was apprehensive because Barcelona uses a different dialect than the one I'd learned in school.
So we got to the restaurant and our waiter's first words to me were completely indistinguishable.
"Mas despacio, por favor," I said (aka please speak slower).
"I'm not speaking Spanish," he replied. Turns out that he hardly knew Spanish-- he had just moved to Spain from England. My bad.
This leads me to my famous hypothesis, which is that our ears have to adjust to be able to understand unfamiliar accents. When I expect to hear an American accent, my brain doesn't interpret the British until it realizes that it needs to use the British filter. Once I knew that these respective gents were British, I had no trouble understanding them. This has probably happened to me with other accents before too, but I always feel like a bigger dolt when these Brit-confusion occasions arise. I really don't want to come off as an Ugly American.
A couple of months ago I visted my friend Betty and we ate delicious homemade (by her) strawberry ice cream (that's totally irrelevant but it was really memorable) and watched her DVD of the newest bond film, "Casino Royale." She told me that most of her Taiwanese relatives--even the ones who speak English really well--have to watch films where the characters speak in British accents with English subtitles, because they can't understand what the people are saying. I laughed, but then I found myself having difficulty understanding some of the lines (which could have been partly post sound's fault or a DVD mastering issue, but I'd have to go back and watch again--and do some sleuthing-- to evaluate that, and I'm lazy).
Anyway, Amy, Mark and I went into Zemeckis to eat lunch, and when we arrived Mark introduced himself to the rest of the crew and the actors, and at first they seemed confused by his name. "Is it Mock?" "Monk?"
"No, it's Mark," he said, affecting a nasally American accent.
"Oh!" Everybody got it, "Mark!" "Sorry."
"That's okay," he said, "It happens all the time. Nobody gets it until I say it in American." Then he explained that people often have trouble understanding his accent, while he said it, he did this awesome thing where he switched back and forth between American and British accents. I am a little bit obsessed with accents (if this post hadn't clued you in), so I was totally enthralled. Maybe because the last British accent I heard was James McAvoy in "Atonement," (but in reality he's Scottish), Mark's accent kind of reminded me of Robbie's (McAvoy's character in the aforementioned film).
Our lead actress asked him how he had learned such a good standard American accent, and he said that he just immersed himself. One week he spoke nothing but American. "I even spoke it to myself when I was at home, chopping up vegetables for dinner." (I'm paraphrasing slightly there because I can't remember his exact words.)
He said that he knew when he had the American accent down because he dreamt that his British mother spoke to him in an American accent. He said that his German friend had told him that he knew that he could speak English well when his German mother spoke to him in English in a dream. Cool. I can't remember if I ever dreamt in Spanish.
You might be wondering why Mark worked so hard to learn how to mask his accent if necessary, and the answer is that he's an actor. But it's not just a question of learning the accent. He said that sometimes when he's speaking in an American accent, he accidentally says British phrases and throws people off. One example he gave was, "I'd fancy a cup of coffee." Try saying it with British vs. American accents. Imagine your American male friends saying it. Kind of hilarious. But beyond that, isn't it amazing that he can choose to speak one way or another? I feel like if most Americans tried to pass off British accents in London we'd just seem like idiots.
He also explained the hierarchy of British bad words, which most of us had totally backwards. "Wanker" is the worst, followed by "bloody" and another I can't remember at the moment, and "bugger" is actually sort tame, like "crap," although if you look up the origins of the word I find it the most offensive, because it has homophobic connotations. They also say, "Are you f*cking me off?" which sounds really strange to me. Also, if you do the victory sign but then reverse your hand so that your palm is facing you, that's flipping someone off (I think it has the same origins as our middle finger--it has to do with archers getting their fingers cut off).
Anyway, I was totally glad to hear Mark field everybody's questions, because it was the sort of discussion I always wanted to have, but I feel bad being like, "You have an accent! Tell me all about it!"
After we wrapped for the day I drove home, thinking about Mark and his personal accent immersion program. This semester I signed up for a class where I would have learned how to speak in New York, Southern, and British dialects, but I ended up dropping it because I felt like I needed more time for all of my other classes (and it turned out to be about theater performance and I wasn't really interested in the diva theater majors). I signed up for it to begin with becuse I have this fantasy about being a dialect coach's assistant (I don't have enough/any expertise to be the actual dialect coach). I bought the book about how to learn to speak in dialects, and even though I dropped the class I didn't return the book.
In the car I started trying to speak with a British accent. Sometimes it got kind of Southern, and other times it got sort of New Zealand/South Africa (other dialects I'd like to learn), thanks to my (I think) South African literature professor and my Flight of the Conchords watching/listening habit. I kept trying to recite this Emily Dickinson poem with a British accent, even though she was American. I wasn't really feeling Dickinson (or ED, as I call her in my notes, which always makes me think of erectile dysfunction) until we read this poem for Friday's class. I'm kind of obsessed with it right now:
861
Split the Lark-- and you'll find the Music--
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled--
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.
Loose the flood-- you shall find it patent--
Gush after Gush, reserved for you--
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?
For some reason that poem totally resonates with me. I think it can be interpreted in at least three different ways. When you say "Lark" with a British accent, it sounds a little bit like "Lock." Think about THAT. My professor pronounces "patent" with a hard "a" sound, but I don't know how the British say it (in American we generally use a soft "a"). None of my interpretations are particularly religious. In every lit class I've taken there's always one girl/woman who wants to put a Christian spin on everything we read. And I know it's there but...I'm glad we've been finding ties to Greek mythology in a lot of the stuff we're reading instead of just always jumping back to a big New Testament orgy.
It's funny because when I signed up for Women in British Literature from 1800 to Present, I didn't really know if I would like it, or if it would end of being some sort of radically feminist class, but I'm really enjoying the texts. Sometimes in class I come up with interpretations that are actually quasi-deep, and I think that I might actually like to get my MFA in Creative Writing but then go on to get my PhD in something litty (like a certain current professor of mine--his knowledge of grammatical rules alone is astounding, but that's a different matter). But there are only a few colleges that have a program like that set up, and one is Iowa (the best and the hardest to get into)...good luck with that, self. Also, do I really need a PhD? Some might argue that I don't even need an MFA...or don't deserve one...haha...sad. Also-- provided I want an MFA, wouldn't it be cool to go to a university in England or some place I might not get another chance to live in anytime soon (I'm thinking about visas, for one thing)?
In summary: British dialects--sometimes hard to understand if you're not expecting them! And can be learned on tape/by immersion rather than in a wacky theater class! Homemade ice cream--delicious! I wish I had more British friends! Student visa-- The Golden Ticket? I'm sorry if I misused the words "accent" and "dialect." And "orgy."
Bringing it full circle: Not being afraid to ask people about their cool accents--Why didn't I think of that?
I saw a guy walk over and look at the bus that we were all about to film on (after lunch), and I figured that he must be one of the extras. Since Amy and I were conspicuously crew members (we had our equipment), the guy approached me and said, "Ha um clays fremmark?"
"Excuse me?" I said, because that's the polite way to say, "What??"
"I'm Mark," he said, and the second time I realized that he had a British accent. I felt stupid because at first I thought that he was speaking in tongues, but he was actually just...proper. For the record, he said, "Hi, I'm Claire's friend, Mark," which makes sense because Claire is from London (but I knew that, so her accent didn't throw me when I met her).
Anyway, that flashed me back to my first dinner in Barcelona, the summer that I spent a month backpacking in Europe. My travel-partner and I decided to go out and try the famous Spanish dish, paella. I was super-excited to finally get to use my AP Spanish, although I was apprehensive because Barcelona uses a different dialect than the one I'd learned in school.
So we got to the restaurant and our waiter's first words to me were completely indistinguishable.
"Mas despacio, por favor," I said (aka please speak slower).
"I'm not speaking Spanish," he replied. Turns out that he hardly knew Spanish-- he had just moved to Spain from England. My bad.
This leads me to my famous hypothesis, which is that our ears have to adjust to be able to understand unfamiliar accents. When I expect to hear an American accent, my brain doesn't interpret the British until it realizes that it needs to use the British filter. Once I knew that these respective gents were British, I had no trouble understanding them. This has probably happened to me with other accents before too, but I always feel like a bigger dolt when these Brit-confusion occasions arise. I really don't want to come off as an Ugly American.
A couple of months ago I visted my friend Betty and we ate delicious homemade (by her) strawberry ice cream (that's totally irrelevant but it was really memorable) and watched her DVD of the newest bond film, "Casino Royale." She told me that most of her Taiwanese relatives--even the ones who speak English really well--have to watch films where the characters speak in British accents with English subtitles, because they can't understand what the people are saying. I laughed, but then I found myself having difficulty understanding some of the lines (which could have been partly post sound's fault or a DVD mastering issue, but I'd have to go back and watch again--and do some sleuthing-- to evaluate that, and I'm lazy).
Anyway, Amy, Mark and I went into Zemeckis to eat lunch, and when we arrived Mark introduced himself to the rest of the crew and the actors, and at first they seemed confused by his name. "Is it Mock?" "Monk?"
"No, it's Mark," he said, affecting a nasally American accent.
"Oh!" Everybody got it, "Mark!" "Sorry."
"That's okay," he said, "It happens all the time. Nobody gets it until I say it in American." Then he explained that people often have trouble understanding his accent, while he said it, he did this awesome thing where he switched back and forth between American and British accents. I am a little bit obsessed with accents (if this post hadn't clued you in), so I was totally enthralled. Maybe because the last British accent I heard was James McAvoy in "Atonement," (but in reality he's Scottish), Mark's accent kind of reminded me of Robbie's (McAvoy's character in the aforementioned film).
Our lead actress asked him how he had learned such a good standard American accent, and he said that he just immersed himself. One week he spoke nothing but American. "I even spoke it to myself when I was at home, chopping up vegetables for dinner." (I'm paraphrasing slightly there because I can't remember his exact words.)
He said that he knew when he had the American accent down because he dreamt that his British mother spoke to him in an American accent. He said that his German friend had told him that he knew that he could speak English well when his German mother spoke to him in English in a dream. Cool. I can't remember if I ever dreamt in Spanish.
You might be wondering why Mark worked so hard to learn how to mask his accent if necessary, and the answer is that he's an actor. But it's not just a question of learning the accent. He said that sometimes when he's speaking in an American accent, he accidentally says British phrases and throws people off. One example he gave was, "I'd fancy a cup of coffee." Try saying it with British vs. American accents. Imagine your American male friends saying it. Kind of hilarious. But beyond that, isn't it amazing that he can choose to speak one way or another? I feel like if most Americans tried to pass off British accents in London we'd just seem like idiots.
He also explained the hierarchy of British bad words, which most of us had totally backwards. "Wanker" is the worst, followed by "bloody" and another I can't remember at the moment, and "bugger" is actually sort tame, like "crap," although if you look up the origins of the word I find it the most offensive, because it has homophobic connotations. They also say, "Are you f*cking me off?" which sounds really strange to me. Also, if you do the victory sign but then reverse your hand so that your palm is facing you, that's flipping someone off (I think it has the same origins as our middle finger--it has to do with archers getting their fingers cut off).
Anyway, I was totally glad to hear Mark field everybody's questions, because it was the sort of discussion I always wanted to have, but I feel bad being like, "You have an accent! Tell me all about it!"
After we wrapped for the day I drove home, thinking about Mark and his personal accent immersion program. This semester I signed up for a class where I would have learned how to speak in New York, Southern, and British dialects, but I ended up dropping it because I felt like I needed more time for all of my other classes (and it turned out to be about theater performance and I wasn't really interested in the diva theater majors). I signed up for it to begin with becuse I have this fantasy about being a dialect coach's assistant (I don't have enough/any expertise to be the actual dialect coach). I bought the book about how to learn to speak in dialects, and even though I dropped the class I didn't return the book.
In the car I started trying to speak with a British accent. Sometimes it got kind of Southern, and other times it got sort of New Zealand/South Africa (other dialects I'd like to learn), thanks to my (I think) South African literature professor and my Flight of the Conchords watching/listening habit. I kept trying to recite this Emily Dickinson poem with a British accent, even though she was American. I wasn't really feeling Dickinson (or ED, as I call her in my notes, which always makes me think of erectile dysfunction) until we read this poem for Friday's class. I'm kind of obsessed with it right now:
861
Split the Lark-- and you'll find the Music--
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled--
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.
Loose the flood-- you shall find it patent--
Gush after Gush, reserved for you--
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?
For some reason that poem totally resonates with me. I think it can be interpreted in at least three different ways. When you say "Lark" with a British accent, it sounds a little bit like "Lock." Think about THAT. My professor pronounces "patent" with a hard "a" sound, but I don't know how the British say it (in American we generally use a soft "a"). None of my interpretations are particularly religious. In every lit class I've taken there's always one girl/woman who wants to put a Christian spin on everything we read. And I know it's there but...I'm glad we've been finding ties to Greek mythology in a lot of the stuff we're reading instead of just always jumping back to a big New Testament orgy.
It's funny because when I signed up for Women in British Literature from 1800 to Present, I didn't really know if I would like it, or if it would end of being some sort of radically feminist class, but I'm really enjoying the texts. Sometimes in class I come up with interpretations that are actually quasi-deep, and I think that I might actually like to get my MFA in Creative Writing but then go on to get my PhD in something litty (like a certain current professor of mine--his knowledge of grammatical rules alone is astounding, but that's a different matter). But there are only a few colleges that have a program like that set up, and one is Iowa (the best and the hardest to get into)...good luck with that, self. Also, do I really need a PhD? Some might argue that I don't even need an MFA...or don't deserve one...haha...sad. Also-- provided I want an MFA, wouldn't it be cool to go to a university in England or some place I might not get another chance to live in anytime soon (I'm thinking about visas, for one thing)?
In summary: British dialects--sometimes hard to understand if you're not expecting them! And can be learned on tape/by immersion rather than in a wacky theater class! Homemade ice cream--delicious! I wish I had more British friends! Student visa-- The Golden Ticket? I'm sorry if I misused the words "accent" and "dialect." And "orgy."
Bringing it full circle: Not being afraid to ask people about their cool accents--Why didn't I think of that?
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