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| royal crescent in bath |
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| jack's bday cake (decorated with the signature 'xxx') |
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| kenzie at anna nicole display-- the opera covered all art and sculpture in the theater with anna nicoles face |
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| overdue, but kahla and i at harry potter platform 9 3/4! |
Again, a little behind on this whole blogging thing. Hm- ok highlights of the past few weeks:
I went to Bath to visit Taylor. We had quite the amusing night attending the "storytelling" hour at a local pub. Basically a bunch of old men that gather in the upstairs of a pub and share stories--the only rule is that they not recite anything off paper and do it all from memory. The crowd was all middle-aged and older, with the exception of one young scruffy guy on the guitar who, naturally, both Taylor and I immediately fell in love with. Just as I was plotting our long life together, he started in on a rendition of "you are my sunshine" that just about melted my heart to a million pieces.....until i realized it was directed at his girlfriend seated behind us. Rats. He also did a rendition of "this land was made for you and me" except his was "this land was stolen from you and me." i guess it just wasn't meant to be.
As some of you know I have a bit of a track record laughing at inappropriate times but I have to say I was doing a pretty good job holding it together during the strange recitations of poetry and old men attempting to sing, that is until, "puppet god" got up to share his work. This 60 plus year old with a scraggly beard and weird silver necklace stood up and announced in the most dramatic way that "we all were the oompo loompas... and he was johnny depp" he then gave a long rant about the middle east. finally, he got to his recitation which involved an interpretive dance as him acting as a puppet attached to strings and falling all over the place. I, of course, was seated directly next to him in the circle so i had an up close and personal view of the accompanying facial expressions. Now, there were lots of pieces shared that night that i didn't really understand which I figured had deeper meaning or symbolism that i just wasn't catching on to -- but i'm fairly certain there was no hidden message in this piece. this guy was just legitimately crazy. he didn't help his case when at the end of his "performance" he said it had gone over much better here than it had when he had performed it earlier that day in the middle of the bath abbey. But, all in all, it was an extremely entertaining evening and Bath is extremely adorable town!
Haley came to visit from Budapest later that week and Kenzie flew in from LA on Saturday. They were both here Saturday night to celebrate Jack's birthday at Brick Lane-- we found a restaurant where you can barter for free wine AND bring your own wine. The food was good too. Haley left Sunday (but im going to see her in April!) but Kenzie was here for the rest of the week. The week flew by and we had a really great time. Kenzie studied here last spring so we didn't do much of the touristy things, in fact, it was almost as if she was showing me around. Sunday was a visit to brick lane market (its becoming a tradition) but i branched out this time and got turkish food instead of my usual pad thai. On monday we went to a exhibit on london street photography at the museum of london had a nice meal out and called it early night BECAUSE the next morning we were up at 6 am and in line at the national theater at 7 to get rush tickets. We had heard that their production of Frankenstein was incredible (Danny Boyle directed, starring atonement's Benedict Cumberbatch) so we decided to see if we could get rush tickets-- they go on sale at 9:30 but we'd also heard there's always a large "que" so we boarded the bus, scone and coffee in hand, at 6: 30. When we got there we were the sixth people in line and it quickly grew to around 50 people all waiting outside the doors to the theater. The first 30 minutes were kind of fun, caffeine induced, we chatted and made friends with the others in line (one woman had been there since 4 am!), then it just got cold. luckily at around 8:45 a guy came out and told us we could wait inside if we promised not to run around. The box office opened at 9:30 and we got the last 2 tickets to that nights performance--front row! After a stop at Ben's Cookies and Primark (that kenzie claims is the only store cheaper than forever 21- and even at that early hour we couldn't beat the crowds,) we came home and promptly fell back asleep. The show was totally worth it though-- it really was incredible. We sat in the very front row, which was great except for the one full-frontal scene. Awesome sets-- and most of all just really great acting (the two actors who play the creature and frankenstein switch off which character they play every other night) - I loved it. After the show we met Jack and his friends for a neon night at a local club-- it was a late night but im proud to report I still made it to my morning class!
Last night we went to go see a little less classy of a production and saw "Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera" at the Royal Opera House. It was hilarious-- a full on opera about the life of Anna Nicole and it was everything you'd expect to be, outrageous and obscene. I think it will the one time in my life I hear the terms "cum bag" and "slutwhore" sung in classical opera voices. The crowed was quite varied (i wondered what the old couple sitting in front of me thought they were going to see) but again the sets were awesome and the whole thing was just a bit too ridiculous to fully describe. After the show we again met Jack for a DJ-set by a famous BBC radio guy (so good!) and got home just in time for a late night kebab at the place next door... I love city life.
Kenzie left this morning and i was pretty sad-- but all is well because Willa comes tuesday and Karin and Hannah on friday.just call me hotel garretson-- contact me now for reservations!
This artist was also there last night-- I love her rendition of elton john's "your song"
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