dramaturgy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dramaturgy) wrote2007-03-11 02:34 am
dramaturgy) wrote2007-03-11 02:34 am
Friday/Saturday - Murder Mystery and Laundry
That's right. You read me correctly.
Friday daytime was an open rehearsal for the London Symphony Orchestra, which I shamefully admit I slept most of the way through. But it's not my fault that it takes forever to get to the Barbican. If it were, trust me, I would fix it. Class was thankfully light, we went to Sir John Soane's house museum. An architect of the Royal Academy who made his house into a museum to show off his talent (he looked nice enough in the portrait over the fireplace, but making one's house into a museum by one's own self seems a little hifalutin' to me). Admittedly, he had the alabaster sarcophogus of Seti I in the basement, so I guess that was cool.
Anyway, the real fun began Friday night. We basically took over the kitchen downstairs with the cooking and eating and generally being loud and having a ton of fun. It was BYOB, so I B'd, and got pretty drunk. Not gonna lie. I was hardly the most drunk, but there was no regulation of body temperature which means I am getting pretty toasted. </TMI> So we had a fantastic cast of characters including a self-absorbed heiress with poor social skills (me), her mother, her ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend's date the host and hostess, the hostess' two sisters, the cook, an MP (member of parliament), and an old lesbian couple (one being a retired professor and one being a lush who ran a charity for mentally handicapped children), and a rap artist. And of course, there was Christian, playing the fabulous butler, Mr Cotton. He rocked, for the record.
This picture features Parissa's (my mother's) hand, Sonia's head (the rap artist), Jessica (the ex's date), Jamie (the MP), Katie (the retired professor), and Megan (the lush). That's left to right.
John, playing our host, Rufus Billingsgate III! W00t! With our dessert, which was a croissant with a Hobnob (a kind of cookie) and vanilla ice cream, all drizzled with caramel and with fruit on top. DELICIOUS.
John is so quiet most of the time but he was so very deadpan. I kept breaking character because he kept cracking me up. Apparently Mr. Billingsgate made his money in pharmaceuticals, so when Viviane (Lauren, the youngest sister of the hostess and therefore his sister-in-law) made conversation, it went along with some VERY hilarious quotes.
Lauren: So, Rufus, what is your company working on now?
John: *thinking, as this game required a lot of filling in the blanks and working on our feet!* We're curing AIDS.
Lauren: Oh really?
John: Yes. I woke up one morning and I realized, "You know what. AIDS is a problem."
By this point, the three of us at the end of the table listening to this were dying of laughter. Okay, fine, I was dying, they were simply laughing. There was a bit more talk, and then the best part...
Lauren: So are you working on anything else? Trying to cure cancer?
John: No, I'm actually trying to spread cancer.
And thus we died. And then we proceeded to toast AIDS, John said, "The dollar is king" (I think we're all tired of living with the pound in this very, very expensive city), and Christian kept running his ass off pouring drinks, fixing up courses and serving them and seriously? The man is my hero. I would have said, "Screw you all, do it all your damn self." But no. (But you shouldn't drink continuously from a small glass and keep having it refilled. It becomes very hard to judge how much you've drank. When he gave me back my bottle of Smirnoff ice at the end of the evening I was like, "Woah. o_o")
Our after dinner game... Pictionary! There is Allison in the foreground as Catherine Billingsgate, our lovely hostess, and Lauren as Viviane. After the game we mingled on, like, literally all the floors of the hotel and then WHAM! We were informed that somebody was dead (the MP, Jamie! :( ) and were ushered into the classroom, explaining that the police had been called but because of the "big storm" outside, no police would arrive any time soon and none of us were leaving! GASP! So we got into a nice shouting match over whodunit (Catherine Billingsgate, because the MP would not support a bill in parliament that she supported despite all the $$$ that the family gave her campaign - we all went with it despite the fact that MPs don't run individually, the party is voted for by the people and then party members are put into office. This is my main beef with the movie What A Girl Wants, but I watch it because Colin Firth is a beautiful, beautiful man whose hotness blocks out the sun and I am a shallow, shallow girl).
The best part may have been when we were doing the "Whodunit" part of the night, and there were flashing lights outside of the window. The police had arrived! Christian opened the doors and jumped onto the balcony, waving his arms ultimately creating what must have been an interesting spectacle for anyone in the house across the street. Turns out it was only the garbage man. Boo. :( He also overturned a desk, and said, "I GET ANXIOUS WHEN THERE IS A MURDERER ON THE LOOSE!" Hilarious man.
Ultimately, it was a nice evening for all of us to spend together (except for Elena and Philippe, who were in Wales with Elena's parents), and just have some fun and drink a lot of alcohol... I mean have really good food.
So I waited up quite a bit, felt awkward as John talked to his girlfriend (I can only assume it was a girlfriend) on Skype, and drank some water to sober up a bit. Saturday was a day for work wherein I... have done laundry! That's something, right? Right it is. I've started a class response for Much Ado About Nothing in iambic pentameter because Neil asked for creativity and I am going to give it to him, by god. (Reason 428574208 to love this man: he holds office hours in the pub around the corner. Enough said.)
I thought I'd illustrate the experience of laundry at the Albert for y'all.
Now, when we first came here, we were under the impression we were going to have laundry facilities. We don't. We used to have a dryer, but it broke when some asshat tried to feed it euros instead of pound coins. Laundry facilities decorate the area but that involves going somewhere, and bringing it back up the stairs and spending money, but Allison decided against it early on. I climbed in the boat once my laziness set in, and so we've been using this little tub that she bought at Ryman stationary, which is a store that sells office supplies. It leads to scenes like follows.
See, the thing about handwashing is that you look at your clothes and you think, "Hmm. They don't look dirty. But it's been x weeks since I've done laundry. I'll wash it." Then you get water that looks like this:
And you go, "Ew. o_o" And this was probably the least dirty out of the five or six "loads" that I did today. And it's not a totally clean thing because I'm a human being, not an agitator, but at least it smells clean which is really the thing, anyway.
And then you get scenes like this when your laundry needs to dry.
It's not just a bunk bed ladder, IT'S A THING TO HANG DRYING CLOTHES FROM!
The heater is also highly utilized. Congratulations to whoever picked the cotton for that Gypsy t-shirt, it's even harder to dry than my jeans. Chairs are helpful because you can hang things off them... basically any place something can be hung (hanged?) from or draped over is fair game.
The ultimate decision? Not the best, but worth it since you don't walk around smelling like you've been in Europe for six weeks without washing your clothes. (It's late. My gift of colorful metaphor has already gone to bed.)
My parents have always been soooooooo proud of me.
My very subtle way of saying, "Iiiiiiiiiiii can't hear you!" Or maybe, "w00t Franz Ferdinand!" I don't really remember.
Tomorrow is touristing with Allison, Parissa, and their friends that arrived tonight. You might not see all that junk until Monday, where Parissa and I are stage dooring for The Dumbwaiter (or is it The Dumb Waiter? This could be important) to meet Jason Isaacs. I'm sure the other guy in it is great too, but Jason Isaacs. Tuesday is the day trip to Bath, Stonehenge, and Avebury (which is much less well known but you can actually go up among the stones). And I'll let you read my verse tribute to Much Ado at the Globe. :)
Friday daytime was an open rehearsal for the London Symphony Orchestra, which I shamefully admit I slept most of the way through. But it's not my fault that it takes forever to get to the Barbican. If it were, trust me, I would fix it. Class was thankfully light, we went to Sir John Soane's house museum. An architect of the Royal Academy who made his house into a museum to show off his talent (he looked nice enough in the portrait over the fireplace, but making one's house into a museum by one's own self seems a little hifalutin' to me). Admittedly, he had the alabaster sarcophogus of Seti I in the basement, so I guess that was cool.
Anyway, the real fun began Friday night. We basically took over the kitchen downstairs with the cooking and eating and generally being loud and having a ton of fun. It was BYOB, so I B'd, and got pretty drunk. Not gonna lie. I was hardly the most drunk, but there was no regulation of body temperature which means I am getting pretty toasted. </TMI> So we had a fantastic cast of characters including a self-absorbed heiress with poor social skills (me), her mother, her ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend's date the host and hostess, the hostess' two sisters, the cook, an MP (member of parliament), and an old lesbian couple (one being a retired professor and one being a lush who ran a charity for mentally handicapped children), and a rap artist. And of course, there was Christian, playing the fabulous butler, Mr Cotton. He rocked, for the record.
This picture features Parissa's (my mother's) hand, Sonia's head (the rap artist), Jessica (the ex's date), Jamie (the MP), Katie (the retired professor), and Megan (the lush). That's left to right.
John, playing our host, Rufus Billingsgate III! W00t! With our dessert, which was a croissant with a Hobnob (a kind of cookie) and vanilla ice cream, all drizzled with caramel and with fruit on top. DELICIOUS.
John is so quiet most of the time but he was so very deadpan. I kept breaking character because he kept cracking me up. Apparently Mr. Billingsgate made his money in pharmaceuticals, so when Viviane (Lauren, the youngest sister of the hostess and therefore his sister-in-law) made conversation, it went along with some VERY hilarious quotes.
Lauren: So, Rufus, what is your company working on now?
John: *thinking, as this game required a lot of filling in the blanks and working on our feet!* We're curing AIDS.
Lauren: Oh really?
John: Yes. I woke up one morning and I realized, "You know what. AIDS is a problem."
By this point, the three of us at the end of the table listening to this were dying of laughter. Okay, fine, I was dying, they were simply laughing. There was a bit more talk, and then the best part...
Lauren: So are you working on anything else? Trying to cure cancer?
John: No, I'm actually trying to spread cancer.
And thus we died. And then we proceeded to toast AIDS, John said, "The dollar is king" (I think we're all tired of living with the pound in this very, very expensive city), and Christian kept running his ass off pouring drinks, fixing up courses and serving them and seriously? The man is my hero. I would have said, "Screw you all, do it all your damn self." But no. (But you shouldn't drink continuously from a small glass and keep having it refilled. It becomes very hard to judge how much you've drank. When he gave me back my bottle of Smirnoff ice at the end of the evening I was like, "Woah. o_o")
Our after dinner game... Pictionary! There is Allison in the foreground as Catherine Billingsgate, our lovely hostess, and Lauren as Viviane. After the game we mingled on, like, literally all the floors of the hotel and then WHAM! We were informed that somebody was dead (the MP, Jamie! :( ) and were ushered into the classroom, explaining that the police had been called but because of the "big storm" outside, no police would arrive any time soon and none of us were leaving! GASP! So we got into a nice shouting match over whodunit (Catherine Billingsgate, because the MP would not support a bill in parliament that she supported despite all the $$$ that the family gave her campaign - we all went with it despite the fact that MPs don't run individually, the party is voted for by the people and then party members are put into office. This is my main beef with the movie What A Girl Wants, but I watch it because Colin Firth is a beautiful, beautiful man whose hotness blocks out the sun and I am a shallow, shallow girl).
The best part may have been when we were doing the "Whodunit" part of the night, and there were flashing lights outside of the window. The police had arrived! Christian opened the doors and jumped onto the balcony, waving his arms ultimately creating what must have been an interesting spectacle for anyone in the house across the street. Turns out it was only the garbage man. Boo. :( He also overturned a desk, and said, "I GET ANXIOUS WHEN THERE IS A MURDERER ON THE LOOSE!" Hilarious man.
Ultimately, it was a nice evening for all of us to spend together (except for Elena and Philippe, who were in Wales with Elena's parents), and just have some fun and drink a lot of alcohol... I mean have really good food.
So I waited up quite a bit, felt awkward as John talked to his girlfriend (I can only assume it was a girlfriend) on Skype, and drank some water to sober up a bit. Saturday was a day for work wherein I... have done laundry! That's something, right? Right it is. I've started a class response for Much Ado About Nothing in iambic pentameter because Neil asked for creativity and I am going to give it to him, by god. (Reason 428574208 to love this man: he holds office hours in the pub around the corner. Enough said.)
I thought I'd illustrate the experience of laundry at the Albert for y'all.
Now, when we first came here, we were under the impression we were going to have laundry facilities. We don't. We used to have a dryer, but it broke when some asshat tried to feed it euros instead of pound coins. Laundry facilities decorate the area but that involves going somewhere, and bringing it back up the stairs and spending money, but Allison decided against it early on. I climbed in the boat once my laziness set in, and so we've been using this little tub that she bought at Ryman stationary, which is a store that sells office supplies. It leads to scenes like follows.
See, the thing about handwashing is that you look at your clothes and you think, "Hmm. They don't look dirty. But it's been x weeks since I've done laundry. I'll wash it." Then you get water that looks like this:
And you go, "Ew. o_o" And this was probably the least dirty out of the five or six "loads" that I did today. And it's not a totally clean thing because I'm a human being, not an agitator, but at least it smells clean which is really the thing, anyway.
And then you get scenes like this when your laundry needs to dry.
It's not just a bunk bed ladder, IT'S A THING TO HANG DRYING CLOTHES FROM!
The heater is also highly utilized. Congratulations to whoever picked the cotton for that Gypsy t-shirt, it's even harder to dry than my jeans. Chairs are helpful because you can hang things off them... basically any place something can be hung (hanged?) from or draped over is fair game.
The ultimate decision? Not the best, but worth it since you don't walk around smelling like you've been in Europe for six weeks without washing your clothes. (It's late. My gift of colorful metaphor has already gone to bed.)
My parents have always been soooooooo proud of me.
My very subtle way of saying, "Iiiiiiiiiiii can't hear you!" Or maybe, "w00t Franz Ferdinand!" I don't really remember.
Tomorrow is touristing with Allison, Parissa, and their friends that arrived tonight. You might not see all that junk until Monday, where Parissa and I are stage dooring for The Dumbwaiter (or is it The Dumb Waiter? This could be important) to meet Jason Isaacs. I'm sure the other guy in it is great too, but Jason Isaacs. Tuesday is the day trip to Bath, Stonehenge, and Avebury (which is much less well known but you can actually go up among the stones). And I'll let you read my verse tribute to Much Ado at the Globe. :)