*ding*

Are we up and running again, blog?

Oh, goody! I see we are. *claps hands*

For the past ten-ish day my parents and I have been in London for general tourism purposes. I will start by saying that our government could take the money they currently spend on meaningless homeland security are-you-color-blind? threat levels and put it into the airlines. British Airways definitely has the right idea! Head cushions, meals that one might actually find at a restaurant (still small, but what can you do?), and an actual movie menu. I caught up on a couple more recent movies, such as Pan's Labyrinth and Pursuit of Happyness. The latter jerked no tears. I also saw The Man Who Would Be King, which I enjoyed.

We managed to squeeze a fair few stage shows in there, seeing Othello at the recreated Globe, which was quite cool, The Phantom of the Opera (amazing), The Lion King (good), Les Miserables (very good), and the musical version of The Lord of the Rings.

LotR, to be frank, underwhelmed me. The music mainly consisted of New-Age-ballad songs and pseudo-Celtic wailing. Nothing too awful to listen to, but stil not very memorable. The stage consisted of a series of independently rotating concentric rings which also split into a radial sections that could raise and lower. And did raise and lower. A lot. I think the director had a lot of fun with that stage. One aspect that rather threw us was that the actors had been dressed up to resemble Elijah Wood et al as much as possible, but they sounded entirely different.

Considering the limitations of a live performance, I thought the special effects were quite impressive, with the exceptions of the Balrog (whose paper-mache appearance was very disappointing) and the Nazgul. The Nazgul I'll forgive somewhat, but even splitting uhe costume into rider and gorse rather than a single cloak for both would have improved. As fo the balrog, leading up to its appearance Gandalf delivered his lines while facing up and out amid a volcanic lighting and whirling smoke. That looked quite good, and the director should have left it at that.

Gollum stole the show. Great acting on his part, and the contortions though which he put himself would have made Andy Serkis proud. Example: Act II opened with the stage covered by a (retractible) wall of tangled vines. Muttering "to himself," Gollum came crawling down the wall head first. When Gollum came out for the cutrain call my dad actually whooped. I've never hear him do that for a curtain call before.

Les Miz was as fantastic as ever except for Javert. The actor had a wonderful voice, but (I'll assume this is the director's fault) he barely used it for singing. Most of his delivery consisted of, "pause, rapidly deliver several words in a pattern vaguely resembling the melody, repeat." Furthermore, he showed very little reaction to anything. Still, a wonderful show overall.

This being England, we of course had to dine at a pub or two, where I discovered that I do actually like onions if they are pickled. Other than that I strongly dislike the "pizza vegetables:" onions, mushrooms, black olives, and bell peppers. Okay, so mushrooms are fungi. I strongly dislike the "pizza non-animal eukarya." How about that?

Additionally this being England, we had to see much pageantry. We gave the Changing of the Guard a miss, but we did see the Ceremony of the Keys (our guide's sense of humor alone was worth the price of admission), and the Trooping of the Color happened to land on the weekend we were there, so we managed to obtain tickets. Quite the dress code: men were recommended to wear tails! In my case they had to settle for slacks and a blazer.

We spent most of our time in London at a small hotel, but the last couple of nights were spent at the house of a friend of my mother, a very nice lady indeed. The four of us (myself my parents, and the friend) spent our last day at a raptor center, observing, learning about, and handling various birds of preay, ranging from kites to turkey vultures to owls. Our guides were very helpful.

But I got back from London on the 19th, so what has occupied me since then? The removal of my wisdom teeth, which has caused my face to look not unlike that of Vito Corleone. This included my first experience with nitrous oxide, which did not go as I expected. I remained entirely unaffected (or at least it felt that way) fo a good several minutes which I spent talking with the doctors, then..heh heh...ah, here we go. Whee...Hm. Gone again. A few more minutes, then another wave of laughing gas, during which anaethesia was applied. *slice schlurkt stitch* Apparently while I was in the recovery room the doctor informed my mom that I was "a happy drunk," to which I replied, "I'm not drunk! I'm stoned!" I have no memory of this, but it sounds like something I'd say. The first couple of hours at home were highly frustrating: I was drooling like crazy--which I couldn't even feel, thanks to lingering painkiller--and a gold star goes to anyone who could have deciphered my pitiful attempts at speech. Fortunately, the wasted/incapacitated phase has long worn off. I still can't open my jaw fully, however, and I need to periodically have a salt water rinse.

Oh, yes: I got my grades today. Fifth semester in a row I made the Dean's List, so no complaints there. Now I just need to worry about how I did on the SAT subject tests.

I promise I'll start on my Death Vally journal tomorrow.