April!?!

Okay, so I very clearly dropped the ball on this blog thing - but it's not my fault. Is anyone else SHOCKED that it is already the first week of April? It just dawned on me that these final papers that I feel like are a distant memory are, I realize they're due in just a month. WUT?!


Anyway, not too much has been happening here. Lots of work. Depression over Burger King discontinuing chicken fries. Scoping out the Gossip Girl set. I have been lucky enough to get pictures with Ed Westwick, Leighton Meester, and KayLee Derfer while picking the brains of production assistants on set to see how they got their jobs and how to get into that kind of business. I went to a Careers Outside of Academia panel and that was much less helpful than talking to these two guys for forty-five minutes.


I'm QUITE ready to be done with school. Anything I may have said about continuing on to get my Ph.D is a complete lie (at least for now). I want the hell out of school and to get working and make real money. Even if I'm at the bottom of the income bracket, at least it's more than a part-time, minimum-wage job, though it is going to hurt a little when I have to leave my BBW family.


I'm trying to find apartments for next year, but it is so hard to try and find a place to live, especially in the city. I wish I could just stumble across a great deal in Hell's Kitchen, because that would be my ideal situation. The  Village is nice and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to live here, but I don't like it. It's like living in a little mini-Pittsburgh, pretty much - people walk too slow, things are closed by like 10pm, only things are noisy so it's even worse because it's like living in the South Side on a Friday night every night. I'm looking at Craig's List and in general no-fee rental sites, so hopefully something comes up - but there's no point in really looking right now seeing as I don't want to move until August 1st.


My internship is good and super fun. I've made some great friends there and it's going to be a little sad when we all split up and go our separate ways at the end of the semester. I've learned so much and I'm really happy I got to intern with such a small and fun staff who seems to really care about teaching interns the ins and outs of their job. I also volunteered with the Tribeca Film Festival and that's starting soon, so I'm excited about that. I think it'll be a lot of fun and it'll be nice to see things from a film perspective to see if I'd rather stick around with television or flop to film and film festivals.


I FINALLY won the Wicked lottery, by the way!!! It was amazing. It's $26 for front row seats, which is a good deal. I think a few rows back would be better, but they were amazing and the cast was FANTASTIC. Chandra Lee Schwartz is the most AMAZING Glinda that I've seen (clearly Cheno doesn't count) and she's absolutely wonderful. She's so bubbly and has PIPES. She is absolutely hilarious. Jackie Burns was a GREAT Elphaba. I loved her Fiyero run in No Good Deed and her Defying Gravity. When she's just singing, I was not that impressed by her voice, but she can belt like no one's business and she was just adorable. I also loved Richard H. Blake as Fiyero. I was really excited to see him because I love him in Legally Blonde the Musical and he really shined as Fiyero. He was so adorable and I really loved the way he played him. He had a very good balance between being shallow and pretty for Glinda and secretly smart and caring for Elphaba. You should go see it immediately if you can.


I wish I had been able to get tickets for Seminar before Alan Rickman left :( I feel like that's my biggest NYC fail so far. However, on my bucket list of shows to see there is: The Columnist, The Book of Mormon, End of the Rainbow, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Newsies, Nice Work if You Can Get It, Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and A Streetcar Named Desire - yes, I just went through the list on Playbill.


Anyway, my last month here, I promise I'll get better with blogging. I'll even keep the periodic post while I'm home in Pittsburgh for the summer, with apartment news and whatnot. It's better, I swear.

The Semester in Review

It's the end of the semester. I'm getting ready to go home for Christmas on Monday. And you know what? I've had a very good semester. 


It was kind of boring until Halloween and even that was kind of boring (it was so crazy it was hard to do/see anything), but after How to Succeed in Business, things really picked up. After that, I saw Billy Elliot after unsuccessfully getting tickets to Wicked. It was amazing. It's probably my favorite show that I've seen on Broadway so far. It was really spectacular. I cried, I laughed, the music is fantastic. I'm really sad that it's closing in January. If you have a chance to see it, you should. It's touring right now, so you should definitely try and see it. Pittsburgh friends, it'll be in town at the end of January/early February. I was a little skeptical about it, because I love the movie, but I wasn't sure how that would adapt to the stage, but they really did a great job and remained true to the film as much as they possibly could. I love the song "Solidarity," it was probably the minute I realized I loved the show.


Thursday, I saw Bonnie and Clyde, which was also amazing. It is unfortunately closing WAY too soon (December 30th). I really hope there is a cast recording, because it's such a great show and it's great music. It's really bloody (duh, it's about Bonnie and Clyde), but it was kind of awesome. Jeremy Jordan was a PHENOMENAL Clyde. He's completed my trifecta of modern male stage stars that I love based purely on their talent, joining Norbert Leo Butz and Raul Esparza. Laura Osnes is Bonnie and that girl can belt like it's her job. She was amazing and I hope she bounces back quickly because she is too talented to not be the next Sherie Rene Scott. They have amazing chemistry and it was a fantastic show. If you're in New York and you can see it before it closes, you really should. I hope they release a cast recording :(


I also watched people arrive for Blair Waldorf's wedding, which was spectacular. I did not see Leighton Meester, Blake Lively, or Ed Westwick, but I did see Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Matthew Settle, Kelly Rutherford, Margaret Colin, Wallace Shawn, and Michelle flipping Trachtenberg!!! It was beautiful and everyone looked fantastic (except Michelle, but you know Georgie's up to no good). I wish I had been able to be there the day Leighton was spotted in the streets in her wedding dress, but I probably (unfortunately) had class. Next semester, I am all about creeping around on them in my spare time. 


I don't know how much spare time I'll have, because I got an internship with the Wendy Williams show! I don't know much about it yet, except that I got it and I am so excited! I went to her show one day with Laura and she was like "You need to work here," and I applied and got a call for an interview the next day. I'm so excited, you all know how much I love the show and I think I'm really going to learn SO MUCH. It's going to be great. Because of that, I don't know how much time I'm going to be spending in Pittsburgh for break (WAH), but hopefully I get more details soon so I can figure out my flight and my time home and such. 


HOME ON MONDAY! I'm so excited. I can't wait. I miss Pittsburgh so much :)