I've been wanting to see Book of Mormon practically since it debuted on Broadway. So when we found out that it was coming to the Kennedy Center this summer, we jumped at the chance to buy tickets. And on Sunday Kevin, Sarah, Zach, and I climbed to the very top of the Kennedy Center and sat in the second to last row to enjoy the show.
The plot is pretty basic. Two young, optimistic Mormon men take off on a mission trip to Uganda. There they find themselves in a situation they never expected and aren't entirely prepared to deal with. The village to which they're assigned is under the thumb of a ruthless warlord, their friends and family are dying from violence and disease, and they're in no mood to listen to some preachers tell them about a better life. One missionary despairs and tries to get transferred to a cushy posting in Orlando. The other lies his head off, mixing the biblical stories up with his favorite science fiction and fantasy to give them a little more flair. They learn lessons about friendship and perseverance and helping each other and everything ends happily because this is, after all, musical theater.
The songs were a lot of fun. There was a great representation of the horrors of dysentery and a surprisingly dirty song about baptism. The show had a very South Park sensibility, which should come as no surprise, but it wasn't always my favorite thing. Arnold messed up the lead lady's name so many times that I left the theater unsure of what her name actually was. I felt like that joke, which wasn't really funny to begin with, had some serious diminishing returns. The guy complaining about maggots in his scrotum also felt cheap and offensive. But there was some great stuff in the absurdity of Mormon belief and in the yawning chasm between what the Africans imagined America to be like (all the flour you can eat! Red Cross on every corner!) and the reality.
I also liked the ultimate message of the play, which is that the specifics of your scripture matter a lot less than the message. So the Latter-Day Saints Americanization of Christianity (The Garden of Eden is in Minnesota!) ultimately doesn't matter as much as their message to be courteous and helpful in all things. Although they should probably do something about the racism inherent in their creation myth.
Ultimately this isn't my favorite musical and I have no desire to run out and buy the soundtrack. Though I have since listened to the whole thing on YouTube. But it was a fun evening with more laughs than cringes.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
Things That Will Happen When You Visit NYC
You'll download this Uber thing that everyone has been talking about to use but discover that you are too drunk to figure it out
You'll go out to a nice dinner and order the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu, which costs more than that most expensive bottle at restaurants you usually frequent
The next day you'll discover a bar where you drink steadily for 5 hours for a mere $35. This seems like a fair trade.
You'll spend a lot of time looking at pictures of the kids of people you went to school with and wonder how many people you graduated with have procreated by now. You'll spend even more time looking at pictures from college and immediately after.
You'll spend half an hour waiting for a brunch table for a party of four. And another half an hour waiting for your food.
Somehow, you'll still think you'll be able to find a brunch place that can easily accommodate ten people the next morning.
You'll wander wistfully through the enormous Barnes and Noble at Union Square, wishing your own city had a bookstore this big.
You'll discover shakshuka and fall in love and look up a recipe and realize that it's actually easy to make.
You will be sitting on the subway, minding your own business, wondering if you're awake and sober enough to concentrate on your book when a couple of guys will burst in, take off their shirts, and start pole dancing. You're still not sure if it was entertaining or annoying.
You'll spend the entire weekend feeling like you're just on the verge of figuring out the subway system. But then another station will be closed for weekend work and you'll be forced to walk the entire length of Times Square, cursing your lack of local knowledge.
You will, however, have left 45 minutes early for brunch in case that happened.
You will have the most delicious steak you've had in a long time, along with the most delicious spinach you've had in probably your entire life, and you'll spend the next hour with a mystery stomachache wondering what the hell caused it. (Probably the roasted garlic, since it's the only thing you ate that your husband didn't.)
You'll discover that it's possible to live in NYC for several months without ever visiting the grocery store or opening your own fridge. You will be vaguely horrified.
You will have many, many conversations with many old, dear friends about everything under the sun and remember why you love them all and how glad you are that more of them are moving to the east coast each year.
You'll go out to a nice dinner and order the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu, which costs more than that most expensive bottle at restaurants you usually frequent
The next day you'll discover a bar where you drink steadily for 5 hours for a mere $35. This seems like a fair trade.
You'll spend a lot of time looking at pictures of the kids of people you went to school with and wonder how many people you graduated with have procreated by now. You'll spend even more time looking at pictures from college and immediately after.
You'll spend half an hour waiting for a brunch table for a party of four. And another half an hour waiting for your food.
Somehow, you'll still think you'll be able to find a brunch place that can easily accommodate ten people the next morning.
You'll wander wistfully through the enormous Barnes and Noble at Union Square, wishing your own city had a bookstore this big.
You'll discover shakshuka and fall in love and look up a recipe and realize that it's actually easy to make.
You will be sitting on the subway, minding your own business, wondering if you're awake and sober enough to concentrate on your book when a couple of guys will burst in, take off their shirts, and start pole dancing. You're still not sure if it was entertaining or annoying.
You'll spend the entire weekend feeling like you're just on the verge of figuring out the subway system. But then another station will be closed for weekend work and you'll be forced to walk the entire length of Times Square, cursing your lack of local knowledge.
You will, however, have left 45 minutes early for brunch in case that happened.
You will have the most delicious steak you've had in a long time, along with the most delicious spinach you've had in probably your entire life, and you'll spend the next hour with a mystery stomachache wondering what the hell caused it. (Probably the roasted garlic, since it's the only thing you ate that your husband didn't.)
You'll discover that it's possible to live in NYC for several months without ever visiting the grocery store or opening your own fridge. You will be vaguely horrified.
You will have many, many conversations with many old, dear friends about everything under the sun and remember why you love them all and how glad you are that more of them are moving to the east coast each year.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
The Fourth
This year we took advantage of the Fourth of July to celebrate not just America in general, but Chev's official arrival in DC. She moved here on the third, and we were able to throw a pretty epic party to welcome her. Though I'm definitely getting less able to party the way I used to. I should have planned ahead and taken Monday off from work.
We had vague plans to play True American and go see fireworks. But those all went out the window in favor of beer pong. In true Mudd (I guess it's Mudd/Scripps now) style, we spent all night throwing ping pong balls at red cups and drinking beer. We also ate hot dogs and burgers and pasta salad and rainbow fruit (though the kiwi I bought were yellow instead of green).
I fell asleep early, as usual. But everyone else stayed up late into the night. The next morning we kept the party going with mimosas and pancakes. We played Smash and 7 Wonders, and then we went to the park to try out a game Jen and Steve had invented. It involved dinosaurs, volcanoes, and water balloons, and I won. Mostly by dumb luck, but I still won.
It was a great weekend. We're super excited to have lured yet another friend to DC. And while my rapidly filling social calendar is currently giving me some mild anxiety, I'm excited to spend more time seeing people. I'll find some down time somewhere.
We had vague plans to play True American and go see fireworks. But those all went out the window in favor of beer pong. In true Mudd (I guess it's Mudd/Scripps now) style, we spent all night throwing ping pong balls at red cups and drinking beer. We also ate hot dogs and burgers and pasta salad and rainbow fruit (though the kiwi I bought were yellow instead of green).
I fell asleep early, as usual. But everyone else stayed up late into the night. The next morning we kept the party going with mimosas and pancakes. We played Smash and 7 Wonders, and then we went to the park to try out a game Jen and Steve had invented. It involved dinosaurs, volcanoes, and water balloons, and I won. Mostly by dumb luck, but I still won.
It was a great weekend. We're super excited to have lured yet another friend to DC. And while my rapidly filling social calendar is currently giving me some mild anxiety, I'm excited to spend more time seeing people. I'll find some down time somewhere.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Progress
Between the summertime weather (hot, humid days, punctuated by thunderstorms) and Kevin being out of town (leaving me responsible for both of Kina's daily walks and Kevin's mom's cat's food and medicine), I've had a hard time getting bike rides in. I went two whole weeks with only one 7-mile ride. So when we finally got a perfect day on Sunday, Kevin and I decided to take advantage of it and go for a nice, long ride.
The problem is that everyone else had the same idea.
I don't do well with crowds. It's the reason I couldn't finish the 5K I attempted to run a few years ago. It's the reason I nearly had a meltdown in a Spanish train station. It's the reason I completely clam up at parties where I don't know many people. It's also, in a related way, the reason I used to fall nearly silent when I'd get high with more than 1 or 2 close friends. There's so much sensory input that my brain more or less shuts down any unnecessary functions (and then the necessary functions, like breathing). The difference is that pot also turned off the part of my brain that cared. I just let everything wash over me instead of stressing out about my inability to interact with the world.
Back to Sunday. We went for a bike ride, and there were a ton of people on the trail. It was difficult to pass anyone, both because people were going both ways and because there were large groups and families all riding together. West of Vienna there's a nice, long, downhill stretch of trail where I can typically maintain a speed of 17 mph for at least 2 or 3 miles. Getting to that speed, that feeling of flying through the world, is one of my favorite parts of riding my bike. But with so many people it was difficult to maintain any speed at all.
Anyway, this all culminated about 6 miles into the ride. There's a bump, and I usually enjoy flying down the back side of it. But there was a big family with a couple of kids who were wobbling all over the trail. And this had been going on the whole ride with no end in sight. And my heart rate was already elevated from going up the hill. And I was quickly losing sight of Kevin and getting dizzy and so I puled over and sat down.
It wasn't really a full blown panic attack. I caught it early enough and I knew what was happening and I was able to calm myself down. It also helped that I knew, in my blood knew, that Kevin would quickly realize what had happened and come back to find me. Which he did. I got my breathing under control and readjusted my mental frame. If we kept going, I'd have to go slower and accept that we'd be going slower, with all the people on the trail. The mismatch between expectations and reality is something else I don't always handle so well, and was another contributing factor to becoming completely overwhelmed.
We kept going and the trail cleared out as we hit less populous areas. We ended up doing a 23 mile loop, which isn't bad, though we maybe could have gone farther if I hadn't been scared of a repeat episode.
As scary as it was, it feels like progress. I recognized what was happening and forestalled it. I never felt like I couldn't breathe. I was able to keep going afterwards. As Kevin pointed out, I will get better at reading the trail, it just takes experience. And I'll become more familiar with that stretch of trail in particular. Both of those will help prevent this from happening again.
I've come a long way in the past four years. Keeping this blog has helped me see just how far, and it's provided the quick reference point I needed to help me see that quickly. Which also went towards making this feel like a more minor episode. So. It was scary, and I probably could have done a better job of recognizing the symptoms a little earlier. I still have some ways to go. But I'm counting this one a win.
The problem is that everyone else had the same idea.
I don't do well with crowds. It's the reason I couldn't finish the 5K I attempted to run a few years ago. It's the reason I nearly had a meltdown in a Spanish train station. It's the reason I completely clam up at parties where I don't know many people. It's also, in a related way, the reason I used to fall nearly silent when I'd get high with more than 1 or 2 close friends. There's so much sensory input that my brain more or less shuts down any unnecessary functions (and then the necessary functions, like breathing). The difference is that pot also turned off the part of my brain that cared. I just let everything wash over me instead of stressing out about my inability to interact with the world.
Back to Sunday. We went for a bike ride, and there were a ton of people on the trail. It was difficult to pass anyone, both because people were going both ways and because there were large groups and families all riding together. West of Vienna there's a nice, long, downhill stretch of trail where I can typically maintain a speed of 17 mph for at least 2 or 3 miles. Getting to that speed, that feeling of flying through the world, is one of my favorite parts of riding my bike. But with so many people it was difficult to maintain any speed at all.
Anyway, this all culminated about 6 miles into the ride. There's a bump, and I usually enjoy flying down the back side of it. But there was a big family with a couple of kids who were wobbling all over the trail. And this had been going on the whole ride with no end in sight. And my heart rate was already elevated from going up the hill. And I was quickly losing sight of Kevin and getting dizzy and so I puled over and sat down.
It wasn't really a full blown panic attack. I caught it early enough and I knew what was happening and I was able to calm myself down. It also helped that I knew, in my blood knew, that Kevin would quickly realize what had happened and come back to find me. Which he did. I got my breathing under control and readjusted my mental frame. If we kept going, I'd have to go slower and accept that we'd be going slower, with all the people on the trail. The mismatch between expectations and reality is something else I don't always handle so well, and was another contributing factor to becoming completely overwhelmed.
We kept going and the trail cleared out as we hit less populous areas. We ended up doing a 23 mile loop, which isn't bad, though we maybe could have gone farther if I hadn't been scared of a repeat episode.
As scary as it was, it feels like progress. I recognized what was happening and forestalled it. I never felt like I couldn't breathe. I was able to keep going afterwards. As Kevin pointed out, I will get better at reading the trail, it just takes experience. And I'll become more familiar with that stretch of trail in particular. Both of those will help prevent this from happening again.
I've come a long way in the past four years. Keeping this blog has helped me see just how far, and it's provided the quick reference point I needed to help me see that quickly. Which also went towards making this feel like a more minor episode. So. It was scary, and I probably could have done a better job of recognizing the symptoms a little earlier. I still have some ways to go. But I'm counting this one a win.
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