A GLORIOUS DAY!

And not just because the week is almost over, and i am madly excited for the weekend. No, today we discuss a Fantastic subject:

the man himself. quite pleased at this event.

Shakespeare's birth/death day*! I celebrated by wearing one of my three shakepearean shirts. You know, the one that has Shakespeare's picture on a bucket o' KFC with the caption "A secret recipe of Verbs and Vices". It narrowly lost to the Uncle-Sam-esque picture of Shakespeare with the the caption "Are YOU a friend of Bill S.?". Oh, punnery, how i love thee. I also counted how many Shakespeare plays/movies i've seen**, listening to a couple RSC radio shows, and getting "The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged"*** movie from the library to watch. I also told of my excitement to my aforementioned English teacher, Harb. He was not joyous, as one might expect from the birthday announcement of such a beloved poet/playwright****, but rather questioning on the actuality of this date. To be completely honest, this date as his birthdate is not set in stone*****, but its a fair bet, comparing to his baptismal records {Which they DID set in stone}. He proceeded to question if i would role pursue i would pursue when it came time to read aloud Romeo and Juliet- actual or cross-dressing? This is the point where i gave him a wide-eyed, i-cannot-believe-you-just-asked-me-that-but-if-you-had-given-me-due-time-to-think-about-it-i-would-have-a-whole-lot-to-say-about-it-believe-you-me***** and Ashley jumped in with a helpful "Maddi loves male parts!". THIS, believe it or not, is actually an inside joke as well as a real quote that i said last year******* in reference to my playing Sir Kay instead of Guinevere for "The Sword in the Stone!". He walked outside the room to escape the male-awkwardness of it all {have i mentioned that in my Honors english class of 16, there's only one guy? yeah.}

Later, i went to choir and kind of died. Judy [choir teacher] was being super spectacular and threatening to beat people up if they did not behave, which was much needed, considering we're going to states in a week, and I AM SO SICK OF THE PEOPLE IN MY TREBLE CHOIR WHO DON'T CARE! But then she pulled out the sight-reading music. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE sight-reading music. Its high-endorphine and thrilling and Weee! But Treble choir's sight-reading leaves a lot to be desired*******. Judy was getting especially antsy with us Altos, for not sounding good, and not singing strong enough, and singing wrong pitches and "We're too old for that!". She pulled her piano right in front of our section just to get us to sing the right notes {it was a chromatic scale downward. not. that. hard.}. But we just kept epic-failing our way through the piece. She had to stop the class and just work with us, scream at us, and move two girls before we could even barely get there. The worst part?
She was totally justified. Really! As we were leaving class, Rachel kept telling me how rude she was acting, and she must be stressed, and yadayadayada, but despite the severe butt-whooping i had just received, i found myself DEFENDING HER! Because she was right to criticize us and call us out on all those insecurities! WE NEEDED THAT.

*deep breath* Its just difficult, because i THINK i know what i'm doing all the time and what notes to sing, and i WANT to lead our section [and i think today, i may have been getting there] but i just am not THAT SURE. So it leaves me feeling "Ehhh". Whenever Judy says that there is something wrong with the alto's notes, i always have that self-conscious "eeEEee! That had better not be me! If that's me...."

So the moral of the story? WRITE DOWN ALL DATES, regardless if you think they matter. :)



*Alyssa doesn't like that he was born and died on the same day. Like "What a birthday present!" I, on the other hand, prefer to think of it as more of a "Oh, how old were you when you died?" "Haha, funny you should ask, but EXACTLY 52 years old!!" kinda thing.
**To date, and including repeats, 10.
***I've read the script. Yet another work of genius from the Reduced Shakespeare Company.
****Did you know this word did not exist when Shakespeare lived? Makes me wonder what he might've called himself.
*****They didn't do the best recording of dates back in the day. And in all fairness, they didn't know shakespeare would turn into...well, SHAKESPEARE...
******WOW. that was a really long word spaced with hyphens....But really, i have A LOT to say about this subject.
*******I had gone through my history of roles in my life and was shocked to discover that about 75% of my roles had been males, or male-but-we-don't-have-enough-guys-so-now-it's-a-girl. And i was pretty okay with it. REALLY. Guys get better parts! [Especially in medieval plays...]
*******To clear this up: I'm in two choirs. Concert Choir is mixed SATB, and i sing soprano for that. But i wanted to learn how to really read vocal music, so i joined Treble Choir {SSA} as an alto.