This evening at seven twenty-six of the clock, post meridian, I will be flying to Utah to enjoy my last true pre-college experience--my third and final year of the Young Ambassadors Singing Entertainer Workshop (YASE camp). There is precious little free time during this camp, so it is unlikely that I'll be able to post for the next few days. I may be able to post tomorrow, if Ben can spare the use of his laptop for a while. Anyway, once I return from camp, you can expect a full and (hopefully) exciting report of the week.
Packing is calling me, so I will leave you with a handful of videos. You can spread them out over the days that I'll be absent from the blog and maybe you won't miss me as much. Enjoy
Love,
Christian
These two videos (here's the first and here's the second) were the songs for the opening number of the YASE show in 2007 (that's obviously not us li'l campers in the videos). A little trivia: the boy singing lead in the videos was in Hannah Frandsen's graduating class at SFHS and the girl singing lead is the niece of the star of every EFY album, the mormon pop-star Jenny Jordan Frogley.
These two songs made up the finale for 2008. The choir doesn't sound amazing in the first, but I think Taylor (my prom date) does a great job of the solo. The second video is the Young Ambassadors cast of 2008-2009.
This is Becca Schwartz, a good friend of mine, from the YA cast 2007-2008. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best renditions of defying gravity on YouTube. She's a star.
I don't know if y'all can access this video, but this is my best friend Julia singing "Diva's Lament" from Spamalot at the YASE showcase last summer.
And here's ME singing "Who Can I Turn To" from The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd at the same showcase. Another bit of trivia: the Michael Buble/Muse/Adam Lambert hit "Feelin' Good" comes from the same show.
This is Taylor again performing "So Much Better" from Legally Blonde: The Musical, again at the same showcase.
Well I really do need to pack right now, so I will post more videos for your enjoyment tomorrow.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Independence Day
This post is just going to be awful. I'm sorry guys. I guess that's how it goes after a full day of working in allergy-inducing dust (the process of sorting through everything in my room). So what do I have to say about the Fourth of July? Not much. Is it horribly unpatriotic that I'd rather be living in Norway or the like right now? Not that I actually want to live there this moment, but I thought about what a beautiful home Norway would make several times today.
I suppose I should say something nice about liberty and other positively-connoted abstract ideas in honor of the Fourth. Well, in the process of cleaning my room I have liberated myself in a way. I have freed myself from the weight of lots of stuff. Though my lesser nature brings out pack-rat behaviors, I do truly believe that the less baggage (emotional AND physical) you have, the freer you are. In this same process I have also worked towards freeing myself of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I have forced myself to break stupid traditions like saving the cellophane wrappers of CD's. Though it is difficult, it feels good.
On a different note, I just watched Singin' in the Rain in honor of the fourth (that's a good old-fashioned American movie, right?) and was floored. I hadn't watched it all the way through in more than a year and I noticed so many more details this time around. Sure the dialogue is occasionally hokey and the deliveries are corny, but that cast is talented. Even the lowliest of ensemble girls was constantly in character. For an observant watcher who knows the film well, there are countless funny moments to be observed here and there--little bits that are brilliant but hidden. And the leads--they are incredible. Gene Kelly may have been a jerk, but he was an extraordinarily talented jerk; Debbie Reynolds is so likeable; Donald O'Connor is masterful and genius; and Cyd Charisse will always have my heart.
Here are two of my favorite clips from the movie:
--Christian
P.S. I removed the grey frame from the clip this time around. Compare it to the embedments from the previous post and let me know which you prefer. Thanks!
I suppose I should say something nice about liberty and other positively-connoted abstract ideas in honor of the Fourth. Well, in the process of cleaning my room I have liberated myself in a way. I have freed myself from the weight of lots of stuff. Though my lesser nature brings out pack-rat behaviors, I do truly believe that the less baggage (emotional AND physical) you have, the freer you are. In this same process I have also worked towards freeing myself of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I have forced myself to break stupid traditions like saving the cellophane wrappers of CD's. Though it is difficult, it feels good.
On a different note, I just watched Singin' in the Rain in honor of the fourth (that's a good old-fashioned American movie, right?) and was floored. I hadn't watched it all the way through in more than a year and I noticed so many more details this time around. Sure the dialogue is occasionally hokey and the deliveries are corny, but that cast is talented. Even the lowliest of ensemble girls was constantly in character. For an observant watcher who knows the film well, there are countless funny moments to be observed here and there--little bits that are brilliant but hidden. And the leads--they are incredible. Gene Kelly may have been a jerk, but he was an extraordinarily talented jerk; Debbie Reynolds is so likeable; Donald O'Connor is masterful and genius; and Cyd Charisse will always have my heart.
Here are two of my favorite clips from the movie:
--Christian
P.S. I removed the grey frame from the clip this time around. Compare it to the embedments from the previous post and let me know which you prefer. Thanks!
Don't Rain On My Parody!
I just love parodies. If a piece of comedy can effectively and simultaneously make fun of and pay homage to original and well-beloved source material, then I'm a happy camper. Sorry if that sentence was funky, it's late. Here is a great parody that I recently discovered. Yes, I've watched it multiple times :-)
P.S. I'm just learning how to embed videos, and I don't know how to
shrink the dimensions of the Web Site Story video to fit the width of my
blog. You can see it more clearly here. I hope you like it!
I also really love spoofs, especially when the spoof is expressed in a
medium different from the original source material. Here's the first
part of a spoof that the Musical Theatre kids at the University of
Michigan put together. I've only watched about the first seven parts. I'll
finish the entire thing at some point. My favorite moment is one
medium different from the original source material. Here's the first
part of a spoof that the Musical Theatre kids at the University of
Michigan put together. I've only watched about the first seven parts. I'll
finish the entire thing at some point. My favorite moment is one
particular character's entrance at the beginning of Act I, Part ii.
And now, just to honor the title of my post, here's the incomparable
Barbra Streisand at her finest (I apologize for the commentary, but thebehind the scenes footage is kind of interesting--click here for a
cleaner version):Enjoy!
--ChristianP.S. I'm just learning how to embed videos, and I don't know how to
shrink the dimensions of the Web Site Story video to fit the width of my
blog. You can see it more clearly here. I hope you like it!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Beauty
I spent the last couple hours at the Johnson's house. The intent was to play ping pong--Jeff, Ryan, and Chantal did--but I (not surprisingly) spent the entire time talking to Jeralee, first about her upcoming mission in Finland (I'm so jealous of her but I showed her the Helsinki Complaints Choir and the Sauna Championships on YouTube), then about Disney songs (with Jeralee, Jeff, and Ryan all leaving on missions in the next few months, we YouTubed classic Disney songs in Finnish and Portuguese--so funny), and then to music in general, of course.
The conversation on music stemmed from the Broadway version of "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Tituss Burgess, who plays Sebastian, (he was also Nicely Nicely Johnson in this season's revival of Guys and Dolls and he totally rocked the boat :-) ) wails on an amazing high G on the key change at the end of the dance break (round about three minutes--maybe a little after). I was so excited to show Jeralee because I thought she'd be just as wowed as I was. Surprisingly she hated it. While she was impressed with the technique and the range, she did not find it beautiful. As much as I tried to explain why it was so great, she would not agree. She explained that as a performance major, she was all about the product, not the process. She didn't want to be explained into enjoying something, she just wanted to enjoy it. That made me wonder if I truly found it beautiful. It was a strange thought, and it has come to me once before, backstage of a performance when a friend of mine was belting a money note. I asked myself if I enjoyed such vocal fireworks because of the difficulty and technique, or because I truly found the sound beautiful?
I realized immediately that I really do find the sound beautiful, but we talked for a while more about analysis itself, among other things. Jeralee's favorite type of music is music that can be enjoyed at any level of thought. If you just need some sound in your ears, then it's nice to listen to. If you really want to delve, then it's complexity is equally rewarding. But she doesn't want to be forced to analyze something just to enjoy it. I realized that analysis is second nature to me. I can't listen to something without analyzing it. I can't read something without analyzing it. I can't see something without analyzing it. I have to find meaning in everything.
Anyway, I've totally lost my train of thought. The point is, it was a great conversation--much more complex than I've communicated here. It was riddled with examples on YouTube, some good-natured vocalist-versus-instrumentalist jabs, and lots of philosophising about the respective values of complexity and accessibility and other fun topics.
I don't know if anything is important is in all those words I just wrote, except for the youtube videos. I hope it was enjoyable to read. I hope, but it's late so I don't trust myself.
Love,
Christian
Here's a cute and clever song from [title of show] called "Secondary Characters" so enjoy it :-)
The conversation on music stemmed from the Broadway version of "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Tituss Burgess, who plays Sebastian, (he was also Nicely Nicely Johnson in this season's revival of Guys and Dolls and he totally rocked the boat :-) ) wails on an amazing high G on the key change at the end of the dance break (round about three minutes--maybe a little after). I was so excited to show Jeralee because I thought she'd be just as wowed as I was. Surprisingly she hated it. While she was impressed with the technique and the range, she did not find it beautiful. As much as I tried to explain why it was so great, she would not agree. She explained that as a performance major, she was all about the product, not the process. She didn't want to be explained into enjoying something, she just wanted to enjoy it. That made me wonder if I truly found it beautiful. It was a strange thought, and it has come to me once before, backstage of a performance when a friend of mine was belting a money note. I asked myself if I enjoyed such vocal fireworks because of the difficulty and technique, or because I truly found the sound beautiful?
I realized immediately that I really do find the sound beautiful, but we talked for a while more about analysis itself, among other things. Jeralee's favorite type of music is music that can be enjoyed at any level of thought. If you just need some sound in your ears, then it's nice to listen to. If you really want to delve, then it's complexity is equally rewarding. But she doesn't want to be forced to analyze something just to enjoy it. I realized that analysis is second nature to me. I can't listen to something without analyzing it. I can't read something without analyzing it. I can't see something without analyzing it. I have to find meaning in everything.
Anyway, I've totally lost my train of thought. The point is, it was a great conversation--much more complex than I've communicated here. It was riddled with examples on YouTube, some good-natured vocalist-versus-instrumentalist jabs, and lots of philosophising about the respective values of complexity and accessibility and other fun topics.
I don't know if anything is important is in all those words I just wrote, except for the youtube videos. I hope it was enjoyable to read. I hope, but it's late so I don't trust myself.
Love,
Christian
Here's a cute and clever song from [title of show] called "Secondary Characters" so enjoy it :-)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sweet Messages
This will be quick and totally trivial. Over Christmas break this past year, I had a belated Birthday party. It was really fun and surprisingly successful. The best part was that three of my friends from BYU--Alyssa Simmons, Carson Twitchell, and John Hadlock (Lys and Cars live in orange county and John was down visiting them)--were able to come. Their present for me was my favorite of all the presents I received (though the many iTunes cards were also greatly appreciated and well-spent on some great music). It was a neon green candy poster, with the cleverest use of candy-bar names I have ever seen. Taped to the back was Coldplay's latest album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. I loved it so much that I didn't eat it but just looked at it and smiled. Eventually it made its way, still uneaten, from my bedroom floor to a hidden spot under my cedar chest. I took it from its hiding place yesterday while sorting through everything in my room. I dusted it off and smiled once more, remembering my friends. I decided it was time to eat it, so I started with the Reese's Pieces and, finishing those, moved on to the Air Heads. I have one more left of the six in the package and I will soon eat it. I'm really grateful that candy doesn't go bad (or hasn't gone bad yet--Mama says that chocolate can go rancid), I'm grateful that Uncle Kelly taught us thorough and proper tooth-brushing technique at the family reunion so that I can brush away all the plaque that the candy poster is sure to cause, and I'm especially grateful for my three kind friends. Well, that last airhead is calling me, so I'm out.
Love and Peace,
Christian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYSXJ1mnJEQ
Lyss and Cars are in this video :-)
Love and Peace,
Christian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYSXJ1mnJEQ
Lyss and Cars are in this video :-)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Summer Reading
Upon returning home last night, I discovered a lovely surprise from my sister Gabrielle. She sent me a book called How to Have Fun without Failing Out: 430 Tips From a College Professor by Rob Gilbert, Ph.D. I read half of it last night and the rest this morning. It was fairly helpful and very entertaining. It certainly didn't have four hundred and thirty distinct different tips to offer, but it did do a good job of hammering in several concepts (over-preparation, study habits, discipline, commitment, punctuality, health, et cetera) that are very important. I think its intended audience is a collegebound student without nine older siblings and plenty of college-aged friends to show him the way, but it was a fun way to officially kick off my summer reading.
I had unofficially kicked off my summer reading with The Chronicles of Narnia (it was so good to read them again now that I'm older--they are such beautiful stories) but I finished all except for The Last Battle while school was still in session. I also started The Lost Years of Merlin and The Hobbit while in Utah, but I am barely into those. How to Have Fun... was the first book I have started and finished this summer.
I'm very anxious to read a lot this summer. I have read some good books through my high school career, but I almost completely stopped reading for pleasure over the last four years. There simply has not been time. What's more, I did not finish a single assigned novel this past year in my English class, except for the "Outside Novel" for the second semester (we chose a novel of our own--from a list or with Mrs. Willshire's approval--read it outside of class and wrote analytical journals to be turned in and graded). In my junior year we only read a couple books (and they were of shoddy literary value--Silent Spring was among them). So my Honors English class in my sophomore year was the last time I thoroughly read and analyzed a body of respected literature.
It's no surprise that my writing abilities have significantly declined over the past couple years. The structure of my two AP English courses was such that the writing focused on quantity and speed. We wrote so much that I never had a chance to catch my breath and work on my craft. What's more, I wasn't adequately feeding my vocabulary and sense of style. I was a precocious writer in elementary school, middle school, and early high school because I read so much. I constantly learned new words and sentence structures. I was interesting and varied and talented. But when I stopped reading for pleasure and barely read for a grade, I cut off that corner of my brain from all nourishment.
This just won't do in college, and it certainly won't do in life. I miss feeling proud of my writing. I miss knowing that I had written something clever and interesting and unique. I miss knowing how to write. I need to read a lot of intelligent literature this summer to educate myself as a person and also to give my mind some much-needed high-nutrient brain-food. Hopefully a full summer of wading through literary classics and contemporary hits will revive my writing by osmosis, just in time for college. But even if my writing doesn't fully recuperate, at least I'll have a few more authors, books, and characters to reference and synthesize and analyze next year.
So here are some of the books on my list. If I miss any you think are important, please leave a comment:
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (as much of it as I can finish) -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Chosen -Chaim Potok (I read much of this during the year but never finished it)
The Stranger -Albert Camus (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Gullivers Travels -Jonathan Swift (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Heart of Darkness -Joseph Conrad (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
The Prince -Machiavelli (Mrs. Chahine gave us the option of choosing either Common Sense or The Prince and I chose the former)
Angels and Demons/The Da Vinci Code -Dan Brown (I know they aren't pieces of genius, but they're fun and I have never read either)
A Tale of Two Cities -Charles Dickens (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Mrs. Dalloway -Virginia Woolf (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Pride and Prejudice -Jane Austen (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Anything by Shakespeare
It will be a full summer, that's for sure. Any recommendations are appreciated. And there is a summer reading assignment for BYU that I will absolutely read, but I can't remember its title so I didn't list it there.
Here are the obligatory YouTube suggestions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwocqYj3f0
This girl was eleven when she sang this back in 1999. This video went viral in the Musical Theatre community a few months ago. I may have linked it in a previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2P0eteRzM
This is the incredible Natalie Weiss paying tribute to Jazmine. She practiced so hard to get those two riffs down, I would know, she told me on facebook. The crowd clearly went crazy.
--Christian :-)
I had unofficially kicked off my summer reading with The Chronicles of Narnia (it was so good to read them again now that I'm older--they are such beautiful stories) but I finished all except for The Last Battle while school was still in session. I also started The Lost Years of Merlin and The Hobbit while in Utah, but I am barely into those. How to Have Fun... was the first book I have started and finished this summer.
I'm very anxious to read a lot this summer. I have read some good books through my high school career, but I almost completely stopped reading for pleasure over the last four years. There simply has not been time. What's more, I did not finish a single assigned novel this past year in my English class, except for the "Outside Novel" for the second semester (we chose a novel of our own--from a list or with Mrs. Willshire's approval--read it outside of class and wrote analytical journals to be turned in and graded). In my junior year we only read a couple books (and they were of shoddy literary value--Silent Spring was among them). So my Honors English class in my sophomore year was the last time I thoroughly read and analyzed a body of respected literature.
It's no surprise that my writing abilities have significantly declined over the past couple years. The structure of my two AP English courses was such that the writing focused on quantity and speed. We wrote so much that I never had a chance to catch my breath and work on my craft. What's more, I wasn't adequately feeding my vocabulary and sense of style. I was a precocious writer in elementary school, middle school, and early high school because I read so much. I constantly learned new words and sentence structures. I was interesting and varied and talented. But when I stopped reading for pleasure and barely read for a grade, I cut off that corner of my brain from all nourishment.
This just won't do in college, and it certainly won't do in life. I miss feeling proud of my writing. I miss knowing that I had written something clever and interesting and unique. I miss knowing how to write. I need to read a lot of intelligent literature this summer to educate myself as a person and also to give my mind some much-needed high-nutrient brain-food. Hopefully a full summer of wading through literary classics and contemporary hits will revive my writing by osmosis, just in time for college. But even if my writing doesn't fully recuperate, at least I'll have a few more authors, books, and characters to reference and synthesize and analyze next year.
So here are some of the books on my list. If I miss any you think are important, please leave a comment:
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (as much of it as I can finish) -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Chosen -Chaim Potok (I read much of this during the year but never finished it)
The Stranger -Albert Camus (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Gullivers Travels -Jonathan Swift (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Heart of Darkness -Joseph Conrad (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
The Prince -Machiavelli (Mrs. Chahine gave us the option of choosing either Common Sense or The Prince and I chose the former)
Angels and Demons/The Da Vinci Code -Dan Brown (I know they aren't pieces of genius, but they're fun and I have never read either)
A Tale of Two Cities -Charles Dickens (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Mrs. Dalloway -Virginia Woolf (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Pride and Prejudice -Jane Austen (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Anything by Shakespeare
It will be a full summer, that's for sure. Any recommendations are appreciated. And there is a summer reading assignment for BYU that I will absolutely read, but I can't remember its title so I didn't list it there.
Here are the obligatory YouTube suggestions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwocqYj3f0
This girl was eleven when she sang this back in 1999. This video went viral in the Musical Theatre community a few months ago. I may have linked it in a previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2P0eteRzM
This is the incredible Natalie Weiss paying tribute to Jazmine. She practiced so hard to get those two riffs down, I would know, she told me on facebook. The crowd clearly went crazy.
--Christian :-)
Rebooting the Blog
Dear Readers--
So now that I'm all grown up and graduated, I'm going to try a different approach called brevity. The problem with my last wave of blogging efforts was that I couldn't stop myself from writing once I began a post, and that quickly became very exhausting and time consuming. So this time around I'll exercise a little more self-control in my writing and hopefully make leaps and bounds in consistency. Nothing philosophical for tonight besides my analysis of my past posts.
--Christian
P.S. I just discovered this girl a few days ago and she totally amazed me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfzXq1gcG4
So now that I'm all grown up and graduated, I'm going to try a different approach called brevity. The problem with my last wave of blogging efforts was that I couldn't stop myself from writing once I began a post, and that quickly became very exhausting and time consuming. So this time around I'll exercise a little more self-control in my writing and hopefully make leaps and bounds in consistency. Nothing philosophical for tonight besides my analysis of my past posts.
--Christian
P.S. I just discovered this girl a few days ago and she totally amazed me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfzXq1gcG4
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