Night Oils Burning

Going to classes, working at Punahou, doing the play, and trying to maintain a social life has made Mat a tired boy. I have been pretty busy this week, but a lot of that has been using my free time to hang out with people or, more appropriately, forcing other people to hang out with me. :) So things are all that bad, just a bit overwhelming. Monday will bring some peace back to my life with the end of the play and all. So, that will be good. The play is going so well and everyone seems to like it a lot. Yesterday, after my scene where I'm a darling little boy and get kissed, I received the only applause in the middle of the scene. Cool, eh? I was being a bit of a ham, but they liked it so who cares? Tennessee Williams? Well, he drunk himself to death so he'll just have to "live" with it.

Here is a review from The Honolulu Advertiser:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Nov/15/en/FP611150361.html

I play the ghost of Allen Gray, a young collector, and the medical orderly.

I want a car...

It is hard to have a social life without a car. It makes being social and visiting friends and exploring the city so inconvenient, especially when it means staying out late and theBus stops running and you have to walk back or spend $10 on a cab. It sucks! On top of it all, few of my friends have places that lend themselves to just hanging out and chilling till late. And a lot of things close up pretty early in this wanna-be big city. So, you need efficiency and a car would help. It makes me stay home and not explore so much more often, especially when you keep a pretty tight schedule like I do. So, that's my thought. My Bank of Hawaii statement that I received yesterday precludes me from ameliorating the current circumstances, but perhaps in 2007 I will have the car that all the locals in Hawaii say you need in order to survive here. I'm beginning to agree.

The Show Is Officially Open

OPENING NIGHT ROCKED!!

Actually, it started with a cool Preview night on Thursday. Things went pretty well and I had a posse of 8 people cheering for me. They really seemed to like it which was really nice. And! The best part was four of them had written a letter on their bellies that when combined spelled out "M-A-T-!" which was super cool. :) And I got my second lei and chocolates and pretty flowers and hugs and it was a really great way to start the run. It would have been a great Kodak moment, but I totally forgot to take pictures. I'm sorry!

The official opening night was on Friday and totally rocked. The energy was there and the lead actress, Guen playing Blanche, was so on top of it. She was amazing. I had a lot of fun. And the house was HUGE! Over 300 people. I've never played to that many people before and they were really vocal and laughed and applauded and seemed to really enjoy it all. Afterwards, the director, Lurana, took us all out to late-night ice cream (her treat) in the old Leatherby's tradition. The place was called Bubbie's and was much more raunchy than Leatherby's, featuring tasty things like "Eat My Balls" and "Multiple Orgasm" and plenty of other things. It was a lot of fun. I have a weekend packed with two more shows...then a couple of well deserved days off.

Wednesday marathoning

work---eat---blog---rehearsal--------------------------------------------
-------home----sleep--WAKE UP!

I finally worked at Punahou today. I taught 7th grade English and actually had a lot of fun. I'm booked to teach 5th grade on Wednesday. I didn't have a lesson plan, so I made one up in about 15 minutes. The teacher will be surprised to find out that I gave them homework! Luckily the students were reading a play (perfect right?) and it was Iphegenia, a play that I actually worked on at Vanderbilt. So it was easier to invent a lesson for. I felt good cuz I was really teaching, not "subbing" (i.e. baby-sitting) which it can be many times.

The play is currently running near 3 hours long. Be prepared if you are coming to see it! It is good though. I just wonder if the technical elements will come together. I have a bunch of friends coming to see me act tomorrow, so I hope they figure it out soon.

I had a meeting with the director of the ELI (English Language Institute), the department I'll be teaching in next semester. It's pretty certain that I'll be teaching writing. There are three writing classes:
-ELI 73: Writing for foreign students
-ELI 83: Advanced writing for foreign grad students
-ELI 100: Expository writing (equivalent to the Freshman Comp class in the English dept)

I really wanted to teach the 100 class, but they want someone to teach 83. I told them I would be scared of grad students. The director said I had a fantastic interview and was the first person to be hired, so that was a great complement. It is always nice to know that people were fighting over you. And now I just need to figure out how to adapt my teaching methods and adopt new ones to meet college students. How exciting! I'm an English teacher officially. I never thought I would be teaching academic expository writing to adults, but here I am. I hated essay writing in high school. Actually I didn't like it much in college either (at least not in the literary analysis sense), but don't tell anyone that. I am much more comfortable with the kinds of research in our field though and enjoy that style of writing, so go me. I will be studying MLA format over break.

Hawaiian Fall for Halloween?

A few days ago I actually wore a long-sleeved shirt. Actually, I started off in a T-shirt and got soaked by some heavy rains and then really cold that I went back home and changed. I think it was the first day since I've been here that the majority of people were wearing long sleeves! Of course, later that afternoon the rain let up and it was a little warm for the long sleeves and it has been warm ever since. Still, a brief moment of fall was nice.

Yesterday I walked home from the supermarket with almost 40lbs of groceries (I weighed them!) and survived to tell the tale. Man, hitting the hills was soooo rough! What was I thinking?! I was desperate for some food I suppose. It was torture and I decided that I hate not having access to a car.

Oh! And Halloween. In case you haven't already heard, I dressed up for the first time in many years, although it was quite tame. I was a cowboy. I had a big wolf belt-buckle and a hat and a collared shirt and a wife-beater (that's the technical term, isn't it?), but no boots. I wore my hat (a really nice hat that I bought and makes me happy!) all day and (thanks to a dare) gave a presentation in one of my classes with my hat on (I know you shouldn't wear it indoors, but it was a dare) and I used a southern accent. I switched modes after class and really hicked it up by adding a tatoo on my arm (a longhorn steer with the phrase "Betsy Forever") and a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Classy.

I had rehearsal that night and then went down to Waikiki where they have this huge Halloween parade/party in the streets a la San Francisco. By the time I got there, though, almost all my friends had left, so I didn't get to see them dressed up, which is totally unfair because they all saw me. Leejin had waited for me so we walked around a bit and I was able to get a taste of the craziness. It wasn't all that exciting; I mean, you'd have to have more of a plan because just walking around could getting boring after a while. And everyone was so tired because we had that presentation to give (grrrr) and most of my friends also had this huge term paper due that day too (I didn't have one, but I was editing Leejin's late the night before). The best costume (in my opinion): a potted plant with pot and table. Not too practical for walking around crowded streets though. :)

It didn't feel too much like Halloween though. Maybe because not too many people decorated and it wasn't very fall-like. I also really missed carving pumpkins, baking pumpkin seeds, watching semi-scary/Halloweeny movies, trick-or-treaters, etc. But, oh well. Next year will rock even harder!