Wow...when I decided to go grocery shopping today, I obviously wasn't looking at what the weather would be like. I really don't want to drive in the snow, but there is no food in my apartment. Gahhh.

Also, I put my skinny jeans in the dryer and now my legs feel like sausages in casings.

And lastly, I woke up this morning singing "Fire drill, fire drill, we just had a fire drill." This is a song that my kindergarten teacher used to sing--when else?--after we had a fire drill. He was very cool, had an earring, played the guitar.

I may write an entry about my trip to New York, auditions and friends and Mannes, but at the moment I'm gearing up to go drive around in the snow. Yuck.

~Anne

"NINE" WORLD PREMIERE :-
LEICESTER SQUARE, LONDON



This film sounds great - in fact, any film boasting the double whammy of such an illustrious cast, and being directed by the man who brought us the film adaptation of "Chicago" has to be something to write home about, don't you think ?!!

The World Premiere of this was held last Thursday, here in London, at our Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square...and there were quite a few celebrities who turned up for the evening to walk the red carpet and to be photographed and interviewed, and generally be seen...

( Come and see who was hot, and who was not... )

Northwestern is going to the Outback Bowl!! Also, the women's basketball team is actually GOOD this year!

In other news, I think I may have over-committed myself with yarn projects. I didn't do any work on any of them during November, and plus a deadline I thought I had awhile on (baby blanket) got moved up due to unforeseen circumstances. That one is due by the 14th, but otherwise I have a hat and scarf (matching-ish), plus fingerless gloves, plus socks which aren't probably due until January. And I was going to make three other pairs of socks but those aren't happening, and I have the yarn for my brother and that's not happening either. So I guess those people will just be getting purchased gifts and crafty times later.

well, I've just finished reading Infinite Jest (finally)

just thought I'd inform the Internets for no particular reason. I find myself with an disturbing curiosity regarding / desire to try pentazocine hydrochloride.

It's not that I'm discouraged by any feedback I get about my voice. It's just that I'm not interested. It's terrifying to me to think that I might actually not want to be an opera singer after all. In which case...what DO I want to do?

And then what if I do want to sing for a living? How do I motivate myself to care about it? I feel like just improving my voice isn't a good enough reason to go to grad school...apparently most people make more progress when they're working full time and trying to find time to practice afterwards when they're exhausted. I mean, yes, year off is good. But I honestly don't believe that much is going to get done technically with my voice until I'm back in school.

Arrrrghhhhh existential crises!

~Anne

"SONIA RYKIEL FOR H & M"
LINGERIE LAUNCH PARTY...



This event was held last Tuesday evening at the Grand Palais in Paris, and what a spectacular show it was...an amazing extravaganza featuring a fully illuminated model of the Eiffel Tower, a lit up ferris wheel, a Carnival-like parade of floats with hundreds of models in skimpy lingerie and - er, lots of geese...

( Come and see... )

the world cup draw just finished. let's prognosticate:

group A: france, mexico, uruguay, south africa.
the hosts are horrible, and france will be too busy palming in faux-goals and whinging about not getting seeded to care about actually winning a very winnable group. mexico first, uruguay 2nd.

group B: argentina, nigeria, south korea, greece.
the argentines won't get past the round of 16 with their current coach, but they'll take second here. the rest of the spots are seriously a toss-up. i'll take nigeria 1st, greece 3rd.

group C: england, usa, algeria, slovenia.
neither the english nor the americans could have asked for an easier draw and legitimately expected it. expect plenty of 1950 comparisons. and expect usa and england to tie for 1st, with slovenia 3rd.

group D: germany, australia, ghana, serbia.
australia won't sneak up on anyone this year, but that doesn't mean they won't progress from this group. germany will win it, but i think it's a toss-up between ghana and the socceroos for 2nd. i'll give it to the oz.

group E: netherlands, cameroon, denmark, japan.
in most other years this would be a group of death. not this time (wait for group G). the dutch continue their high-flying form from qualifying and win here, with denmark and cameroon duking out for 2nd. cameroon will probably take it, but that won't stop me from rooting for the scandinavians.

group F: italy, paraguay, slovakia, new zealand.
this is italy's to lose. and 2nd place is paraguay's to lose. this means one of them will, probably, lose it, and allow slovakia to sneak into 2nd. i'll predict paraguay in 3rd, and new zealand are just happy to be here.

group G: brazil, portugal, cote d'ivoire, north korea.
group of death? yep. especially if you're north korea, who may as well not show up. then again, at this rate, who knows if DPRK will be able to afford to send them to south africa? at any rate, brazil and the ivorians are 1 and 2 here, sneaking past the portugeezers.

group H: spain, chile, switzerland, honduras.
the FIFA rankings don't lie, here. this will likely be how they finish in the group. that is, unless the swiss and their bigoted, minaret-hating ways figure out that chile don't have much defense. but at that point, they'll be down 4-nil and it won't matter.

knockout predictions to come.

if i had the energy and the writing ability to write my own sports blog, i'd love to call it "cheeky backheel" or "one-point safety". if you have other better names -- names that might actually inspire me to do a 2-3x weekly sort of thing, let me know. i've not been doing well lately as far as the whole blogging thing goes, but motivating myself in one direction or another would likely help. on to actual sports: two big stories...

the big ten just won its first acc-big ten challenge, on the 11th try. the annual college basketball series, which pits one big ten team against one acc team of (usually) equal placing, had won the first 10. some of these were won by small margins, including last year's 6-5 triumph, but a decent number have not been close. does this signal a changing of the guard in college basketball? not necessarily. what it does signify is a rising of the middle of the big ten to a group of teams that are getting their act together before the big ten season. sure, the big ten are good for around 6 tournament teams a year, but, if the acc-big ten challenge is any indication, the RPIs of those non-conference-winning teams are inflated by playing in a conference with 2-3 potential final four teams. this time around, the big ten won this year's challenge with their unranked teams taking out favored acc squads, many on the road. northwestern, illinois, and penn state were all road warriors, dispatching nc state, clemson, and virginia, respectively. both illinois and NU will likely be pointing to their victories in this series as "quality wins" in mid-march when it comes time to choose teams for the big dance. normally, the big ten would have relied on more dependable squads, like indiana, minnesota, or michigan, to win the challenge. but this time, when they faltered, traditional bottom-feeders northwestern and penn state pulled it out. it could be a changing of the guard in the big ten, but if the big ten win again next year, you can bet folks will think it's not a fluke that the big ten deserve consideration as college hoops' best conference not called the "big east".

second item: the world cup draw is tomorrow, and the pots were announced yesterday. "pots" are what FIFA use to separate teams out into groups of relatively equal team-strength and geographical location, to ensure even groups and to ensure that four european teams aren't beating each other up during the group stage in south africa. we'll leave that to the hooligans. the seeded (top-ranked) teams in pot 1 are not much of a surprise, a combination of traditionally-strong squads, and teams that absolutely destroyed the competition during qualification. noticeably absent from the seeds was france, whose #7 world ranking ranking pales in comparison to the fact that their dubious qualifying campaign required a cheat-goal against a gallant irish team, never mind that they were second to a decent, albeit not elite, serbia. never mind that #5 portugal aren't seeded, nor bellyaching about their lot. france shouldn't be whinging about not getting favored status (because they cheated). they should realize that les bleus are lucky to be there in the first place (because they drew twice to romania and got smacked down by austria). as for ireland, they certainly played well enough to deserve a place, finishing second in their group to italy, and owning the run of play against france in a drawn tie until thierry henry decided, quite literally, to take matters into his own hands. that FIFA offered nothing in the way of retribution, sympathy, or apology to the boys in green might be indicative of the suits' desire to have the most powerful nations in the world cup, no matter what. granted, if this were the case, slovenia wouldn't have been allowed to triumph over russia, but then again, russia have never won the world cup.

the france issue aside, the composition of the pots is far more based on geography than any other factor. the seeded pot has the hosts (south africa), and europe's five best teams (it's true), and then world #2 brazil and argentina, who qualified despite the best efforts of coach diego maradona. pot 2 has the qualifiers from north america, asia, and oceania. africa and south america are in pot 3, with the other eight european qualifiers in pot 4. it's arguably the best way to separate the groups of teams, though it also provides the opportunity for a massive group of death to be composed. it's plausible, with this setup, for spain (FIFA world #1), france (#7), cameroon (#11), and the usa (#14) to get drawn together. we could also see also-rans slovakia (#34), ghana (#37), north korea (#84), and hosts south africa (#86) in the same group, carrying the same weight as our aforementioned supergroup. sadly, that's the luck of the draw. unless we want the groups composed by going strictly by FIFA world rankings, we're stuck with a draw system that, almost assuredly, will give us something worth whining about.

i don't care about tiger woods. golf isn't really a sport.

FREAK OF THE WEEK !!

This week, the British High St. retailer H & M launched their new lingerie range designed by fashion designer Sonia Rykiel on an unsuspecting Public, and they held a great big Launch Party to celebrate that fact...hurrah, we love a good party !!

There were an awful lot of very stylish guests there of course, who I may well natter about in another post...but one guest in particular caught my eye - not only caught it but managed to tossed it up in the air several times and throw it back with a disdainful laugh, that I should be so unstylish as to be gobsmacked at what she was wearing to this exciting event !!

( Come and see who raised the biggest titter... )

That is all.

CHRISTMAS AT PETER JONES...



Seeing as a lot of you are fairly new to this Fashion Journal, you may not know what I actually do for a living when I am not criticising celebs for their appalling taste in fashion....

In fact, I am a Visual Merchandiser, and spend my days creating displays at Chelsea's favourite department store - Peter Jones, in Sloane Square - where we have recently installed the Christmas scheme...

Therefore you are all most welcome to come on over to my other journal and have a look...

wendylady1.livejournal.com

Time to write the rest of the story! (I took tomorrow off work for purposes of emergency noveling, and I feel that I might sleep in, but also I hope to write a bunch more. Certain people known as gwaihiril and my brother might conspire to make my life very difficult over Christmas if I haven't provided an ending.)

I think I need to put away "Trübe Augen." Every time I sing it, I feel like I'm hitting a brick wall and at the end I need to take a nap. It shows a lot of great things about my voice, but right now it just sounds strained and like there's no space. So probably not the best thing to bring to auditions.

Which means that my list of arias looks more like this:

Deh vieni
Du gai soleil
Monica's Waltz
O wär ich schon
Piangeró la sorte mia

And I probably won't bring "Piangeró" to grad auditions, since nobody asks for more than four arias anyway. So...that's a lot of arias with no coloratura. Oh well. I found a lovely little Donaudy song called "Ah, mai non cessate" that has some nice runs in it, or I could also throw in "La pastorella dell'alpi" with its staccato arpeggi.

God, this all makes me SO tired. Maybe when I'm not running around like a madwoman or working at the job from hell (tomorrow is my last day--huzzah!), I'll feel better about singing. But right now I just want to sleep. And find that bottle of iced tea I bought and promptly lost in my studio apartment. I am so frazzled.

*yawns*

~Anne

I decided to apply to Seagle Music Colony for next summer. They're doing Le Nozze di Figaro, and I was like, YAY. But they're also doing Carousel. And part of me would just kill to play Julie Jordan. I just miss musical theater, and I find that things click into place really well when I sing it. So along with "Deh vieni," I sent them the recording of "Till There Was You" from my recital. Not exactly contrasting, but Mozart vs. musical theater...we'll see what happens.

I'm having trouble getting excited about grad school and performing as a career right now. Maybe it's just because I haven't really had time to practice, and I've been talking SO much (Thanksgiving with the family, training the new girl at work, etc.), and I have these auditions coming up that I don't feel technically ready for. Ahhhhhh. Just have to go in and sing the best I can.

*sighs* Where is the joy? I need to get the joy back.

~Anne

Soon you'd leave me,
Off you would go
In the mist of day,
Never, never to know
How I loved you,
If I loved you.

which is kinda neat, since i'm sitting at port columbus right now. there's a dude attempting to hit on the girl next to me by talking college football. i interrupted the conversation by talking about dallas (the television show, not the city). business as usual.

i'm on my way home from thanksgiving, where i've spent the last couple days in ohio. i only remembered that i'd been in nebraska for thanksgiving last year a couple days ago. i kinda think that no one else from my family remembered that, either.

at any rate, october and november have been okay. not great, but okay. annie's impending return is a marvelous thing to look forward to, and work has been doing a decent job of keeping me out of trouble. i want to put more effort into the band, and possibly start homebrewing, but that can wait until next year. halloween was fun, i dressed as magritte's "the son of man" and went to a wedding. the next few weeks will be christmas insanity and tons of sugar. honestly, anything to bide the time until i can bug annie 24/7 will be welcomed.

i don't know if i'm ready for the holidays or not, but i guess that's as much prep as i'm gonna get. let's at least get a dusting of snow though, yes?

also, i got 3.5 hours of sleep last night and have no idea if this is coherent.

AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS 2009



This is one of the most important events in the musical calendar - in the U.S. at least, and so I duly went off to the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles for quick look-see...

I have to say though, that for an event as big as this, I would have thought that the Nokia Theatre could have at least created a backdrop for celebrity press photos that didn't allow all and sundry to wander around behind whoever was being photographed - there were so many pictures that had various random people walking through the press area, that resulted in bits of arms and legs, and sometimes whole people, which were definitely surplus to requirements - and they all seemed totally oblivious of the fact that there was a celebrity being photographed by the press directly in front of where they were walking...it was sometimes very difficult to find the picture that I wanted without any distracting extras...

Grrr !!
Anyway, I digress - on with the show...

( Read more... )