My Love/Hate Relationships with Social Networking Sites

So after lots of pressuring from friends and family, I finally joined Facebook today, and I felt a little excited, a little overwhelmed, and a little turned off, which was pretty much my exact experience with Friendster back in the day. I like the idea of being able to easily communicate and check in with a wide network of friends, but invariably, after a little while spent surfing around, looking at peoples' profiles, pictures, etc, I just want to get off the computer.

I guess part of it is that I really prize actual interaction- seeing people in person, talking on the phone, and I make great efforts to keep that up with the people in my life who are important to me. I don't know. I have lots of nostalgia for old timey things and as much as I love the benefits of the internet and cell phones, sometimes I long for the simplicity of life before these things when you could just go out for a walk and take in the people and surroundings and not be reachable and not be surrounded by people plugged into things. But I also want to embrace technology and I think it's really cool that people are using Facebook to reconnect with their friends from elementary school and studying abroad and stuff. So, in closing, I want to be open to the Facebook experience and I would love to hear from people about what they like about it, but for me, the jury is still out.

Ohio Favs

Nov. 4th Columbus, OH




Pretty Lakewood Trees and Obama Signs



This rules!



Awesome

President Obama

I'm kind of beyond words right now. I spent 12 hours volunteering for the Obama campaign today in Columbus and watched the returns on CNN with my Dad, and when Ohio was declared for Obama my phone was flooded with text messages. I have never felt so personally invested in an election and when Obama made his speech I must have cried like 10 different times, tears of admiration and hope and relief and awe and just pure happiness. My parents both said they've never seen an election like this, and it truly feels like we are on the cusp of a new era. Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to see who he chooses for his cabinet and how he deals with foreign leaders. A president I can look up to and be proud of...I can't wait to wake up tomorrow.

I voted early in Ohio YEEEAH!

This picture is taken from a 1912 Suffrage March in New York City. Sometimes it's important to take a moment to stop and appreciate the right to vote. It's pretty crazy that women have only had that right for 88 years.

Standing in line today in the basement of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in downtown Cleveland, I was only mildly irritated at having to wait for an hour and half to receive my ballot. Mostly I was just really excited to vote and the mood there was surprisingly cheery. Filling out my paper ballot I made sure to go over it multiple times just to make sure there was no way for it to disqualified, and then I sealed it and put it in the ballot box. Pretty simple.

4 More Days! I know there are a lot of people who are feeling really scared and cautious, understandably so, but I say, what's wrong with hope? Just go for it. Get excited. Put all your positive energy towards Obama out there. Believe.

People are Awesome

So I'm in Chicago right now visiting friends, which has been excellent, and a few of them turned me onto what's probably the best site I've seen to come out of this election. If you haven't already seen it, you have to check it out. Drag your mouse around and explore the brilliance.

And while I'm on the topic of awesome and funny political sites and videos, the McCain Obama Dance Off is another classic. I really don't know how people do this stuff.




Keep hope alive

I'm sick of you being so dark when I'm so impish and whimsical!

Now I'm suddenly all about the video links because I've finally learned how to do it. So this clip is from "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" starring John C Reily (DePaul Alum) and the movie is a touch on the dumb side but this Beatles scene had me hysterically laughing and this line that Jack Black says as Paul McCartney is one of my new favorite movie lines ever.

On to some high art. There's an interview in this weekend's NY Times with actor-director Simon McBurney who's directing the current Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" and he has some very insightful and inspiring words which cut to the heart of what I believe is so powerful and unique about theatre:

"The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ... But what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other. That is part of the definition of our humanity and, if you like, if it’s not a contradiction in terms, our animal humanity. Of course, that is part of what “All My Sons” is about."

Collective imagination. Animal humanity. Word.

A Little Theatre Humor for Ya

So you have to be a little bit of a fan of Beckett and/or Charlie Rose to fully appreciate this video, but it is just done so well that I had to share it. The more you watch it, the funnier it gets, truly. Thanks to Michael for the link and to Bob for helping me figure out how to post videos. I'm a little slow with the technology, so bear with me folks.

Clevelanders: 11 more performances to go for "Goldstar,Ohio" so come check it out

New Yorkers: 15 more days until I'm back in the city so get ready for that- i miss you!