week three: parade!

so dad might have told you by now, but i have become a new lakers fan.  this is because i live in los angeles, have never paid attention to professional basketball before, and i hear the lakers are awfully good.  also, they had a parade that went right by my house.  

yes, the lakers are the 2009 nba champs, so yes, they decided to have a victory parade (whats a $52 million deficit for the city of LA to stop that for?).  and because i live one block away from figureoa avenue, where the parade was, i decided to go.  kimmy, my roommate, is a big lakers fan, as are her boyfriend ryan and sister angie, and so they came to the parade with us.  the following pictures are courtesy of angie.

ryan, me, and kimmy, waiting for the parade to start!

this is my new favorite lakers player, pau, the center.  he is my favorite becuase he is 7 feet tall and from spain.  

i think i need to learn a little bit more about basketball.  but i like liking this team!  as long as they keep having parades.

week two

well, it's week two of my summer holiday.  one update: i have a new internship, with an acting manager.  a manager is someone who represents actors, gets them out on auditions, and supports them if they get jobs.  so now, every wednesday, i'll be helping this manager submit her actors for auditions, making calls to coordinate between the actors, etc.  i'm very excited; this is a part of the acting business that i know nothing about!

the exciting thing that i did this week was go to see the play "our town" at the actors gang.  my friends and i are trying to see a lot of LA theatre this summer, since it's what we all want to do, and because it's important to know the theatre scene.  our town is one of my all-time favorite plays, and many of you probably remember sitting through a version i did at good ol' shawnee mission east.  with no disrespect to the lancers, this version was probably much better.  it was a very simple, moving version of the play and i loved it.  i laughed and cried (if you don't cry at the end of this play, there is something wrong with you).  Here is a production still from the actors gang blog:

that's ma and doc gibbs, father of george gibbs, the male lead.   it was so good!

ta ta for now!

ellen

week one

week one of my summer holiday.

kimmy, ellen, and me at the end of hike in griffith park.

the highlight of this week was on saturday, when me, my roommate kimmy, and my friends ellen and kami went for a hike in griffith park.  griffith park is a city park at the top of the hollywood hills just north of los angeles.  you can hike all the way up to the top of the hill and get a great view of the entire city of LA.  you don't realize just how huge the city is until you see all of it.  cases in point (s):

this is the west part of the city.  the horizon is actually the beach.  

this is the east part of the city.  the tall group of buildings is downtown, and usc is just past that.  you can't see the school; the buildings are too small.  

i'll update next week!

ellen

it's the summer holidays

well friends,

after a long and tiring semester in which on holiday was sadly updated only sparsely, i am back!  it's the summer holiday, and i will be spending it in los angeles, because it is sunny here.  

these are the things i will be doing:

1. working in the usc grand street library:  this is the library where usc books go when they are unloved.  i shelve them and update the records.  but the best part is when i steal away, snatch a book from the shelves, and read in the book stacks.  books perused so far include: what to do with your money, best business schools in america, manifest destiny and the period before the civil war, and a 1928 copy of "vanity fair."  

2. interning at pacific stages.  they're an up-and-coming theatre company, and i will be helping to produce the summer season of staged readings.

3. planning lots of events and things for the girls that will join adpi in the fall.  this includes planning bid night, buying lots of thing with "alpha delta pi!!!!" written on them, and checking another email account.  

i promise to update weekly, with details of these happenings and also of the shenanigans that take place during the weekends.  i'm planning to "tour" LA and do things i've never done before, like to to griffith park and the la brea tarpits.  

xoxo

ellen

drinking legally

it is 21st birthday season. both my roommate kimmy and i became legal this month, which conseqeuntly opens lots of fun things that we can do in LA! these pictures are from kimmy's birthday party, where we went to LA Live, a new devleopment kind of like the Power and Light District. we celebrated at lucky strike, a swankified bowling alley, and yardhouse, a cool restaurant that has a late night happy hour from 10-12 with lots of flavored martinis. yum!

bowling shoes!
all the girls: kimmy, anna, ellen, amy, and me (all adpi's)

kimmy gets a strike!

ADPi invite

ah, invite time.  for the uninitiated (literally), invites a sorority and fraternity parties that are either in costume or semi-formal.  our most recent invite was costumed (aka AWESOME) and the theme was American Pi.  my date alex (you'll recognize him from the macchu pichu and argentina pics) had the good fortune of having two colonial wigs, so we went as george and martha washington.  pretty sweet.  here are the good pictures:

this is brad and my friend ellen (the only other one i know!) who i'm living with next year.  they were a stepford couple:

the next one is me and alex.  he's pretending to cross the delaware.

this is my roommate kimmy and me.  she was an apple, and her boyfriend ryan was johnny appleseed.

lear pictures

so, i just got the stills from king lear today, and they are awesome!  these got uploaded backwards, so don't try to follow the story.  it would be very post modern and confusing.  this first picture is the end of the play, cordelia and lear dead down center, the fool singing, dead edmund and goneril in the background.

cordelia and lear reunited.
regan and cornwall putting kent in the shackles, gloucester protesting.
the company, pre-show.
the first scene in the show, kent protecting cordelia and lear exiling kent.

aren't these great?  i miss london so!

what college students do in their spare time

if you're on facebook, you know by now the cult of "25 things you didn't know about me!". if you're not, please don't get one. facebook will take over your life and it will be horrible.
for the uninformed, 25 things you don't know about me is a note that you write about yourself...hopefully you have 25 interesting things to fill up the entry. so i was procrastinating yesterday, and i wrote one. i figured i'd post it here, too, just for fun.

drumroll, please!

a list. by ellen.
1. i really hate wearing pants. i don't think they're comfortable at all. which is why i love leggings. i wear them as often as i can. i like to think i look like a hipster.
2. i really love sunglasses. they make me feel glamorous.
3. I wish i was really into music and could tell you about this really cool indie band i love. i'm usually listening to the other people talking about great music, write the bands down, and go listen to them. it's how i earn my street cred.
4. i take my moleskine with me almost everywhere i go. i make lists, plan things, write important/funny things down. it's how i remember all the stupid stuff my friends say. ex, they WOUND their enemies (pronounced like winding thread)
5. i'm really proud of what i did in london.
6. i like to have life chats with mary joan negro. she gives me the courage to do the things that i want to do, deep down.
7. i really wish i was good at photography.
8. i think i am independent, to a fault.
9. onetime one of my "dear mr. president" letters was posted on mcsweeney's. it was one of my proudest white people moments.
10. the quote in the little box on my wall is from the website "stuff white people like". i'm not that self absorbed.
11. i really want to live my life doing theatre. i want to act badly. and i want to be an artistic director someday too. and i want to be good.
12. i love roofs with views.
13. i feel very silly filing this out.
14. my mom thinks i'm REALLY organized and that i manage my time well. i don't know where she got this idea. i mean, she used to live with me. and i'm filling this thing out.
15. if my parents get facebook, i'll freak.
16. i want to live in LA after i graduate. I like this city a lot, and I just started going out and seeing it.
17. i want to move to chicago and work in theatre after i graduate.
18. i'll go wherever hires me after i graduate, which might happen at the end of the fall.
19. i hate how women my age hate feminism. you're where you are now because of feminism, ladies. i don't know where this idea came from, that feminists have to hate men and not shower. i'm a girl. i dress up. i like being treated equally. i'm a feminist.
20. i'd love to marry someone tall, so i can wear heels.
21. i'm really glad i'm from the midwest.
22. i think south america is a wonderful place. i really want to go back.
23. i miss my friends and family when i'm gone, but i'm really terrible at staying in touch.
24. i hate my class on don quijote. probably becuase we don't talk about don quijote in class. we talk about los angeles and sci fi novels. it's making the experience of reading it...terrible.
25. i wish i had been in america when barack obama was elected.

back in sunny california

it's been taking me a while to get back into the swing of things here in sunny CA, but i'm trying as best i can. this semester i'm taking it slow, focusing on classes and my internship and kinda/maybe thinking about what i'm going to do with the rest of my life.
ah!
ok, so now i'm no longer thinking about my life plans.
that's about the amount of time i can stand to do that.

so, this semester, i'm working in the executive offices of center theatre group, one of the two big theatre companies in LA. everyone in the office is a lot of fun, and it's a very relaxing place to go to work. the executive offices are where the artistic director and managing director work. as the intern, i am at the very bottom of the fish in this pool. however, i do get to do lots of interesting things such as answering phones and filing. um...no, really, it's a great place to work.
i'm also making real money at the usc costume shop, putting away clothes in the basement and loosing all feeling in my fingers from sewing on buttons all day.

my travel plans for the semester are pretty low key, but i am going to seattle for a weekend to visit my good friend carly, who graduated last year. i'll be back in KC for spring break, too.

xoxo,
e