Saturday, June 30, 2007

Scott Buchanan: Bachelor of Arts and Irish Tourist. Damn him!

The University of Windsor is located underneath of a bridge:



The most recent article to be published by internationally recognized faculty: "The Property of Billy Goats and How to Catch Them"

My brother, as always, is too cool for the family:



Fortunately we managed to loser it up, by throwing him a tiny fan in line and by Mom having a few too many celebratory drinks (seriously Mom, stick with that story)


After the long... long ceremony:






And finally, for those of you who are unaware of a serious epidemic involving hand-held communication devices, here is "Scott's Graduation Crackberry Edition":





Thursday, June 21, 2007

Stolen from the Book of Face

Instructions:
"FACEBOOK (ahem Blogger) SCATTERGORIES.. it's harder than it looks!
Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question."


Your Name: Liz

Famous Artist/Band/Musician: Leonardo DaVinci/Led Zeppelin/Lou Reed

4 letter word: Luck

Vehicle: Lexus

TV Show: Little House on the Prairie

City: Luxemburg

Boy Name: Liam

Girl Name: Leah

Alcoholic drink: Liquor

Occupation: Lawyer

Flower: Lupin

Something you wear: Lace

Something you do: Love

Something that you dislike: Lying

Celeb: Luke Wilson

Food: Lemon

Something found in a kitchen: Ladel

Reason for Being Late: Lost track of time

Cartoon Character: Lisa Simpson

Something you yell: Leave me alone!


**************************

Also I think that this would have made a nice addition to my last post... but here it is now anyway:

"A view from the desk of Dilbert creator Scott Adams"

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Gee Ma I wanna go to Southern Ontario!

I am heading home tomorrow evening for a few days in the thriving metropolis of York Ontario (not to be confused with the region of York in Toronto which actually is a thriving metroplois). I will be visiting with family and friends and with ANY luck I will be attending my brother's graduation in Windsor. Also, I am auditioning for the Acting for Film and Television program at Humber. The very cool thing about this program: not only is it taught by some very sweet Second City and Toronto School of Film alumni and former staff, but it also gets me a credit towards ACTRA and gets my feet wet in Toronto in a slightly less frightening way than showing up in the city with no job and no money.

Which is of course plan C :)

On another, and equally important, note: Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End is, thus far, in the lead (as far as I'm concerned) for summer movies. I think that it may be time to put my I heart Captain Jack Sparrow button back on my purse.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Liz the Conservative

This is what makes me a lousy politician. I don't know whether I even agree with his politics, but I would vote for Bill Casey. He is in fact dissenting from the Conservatives for not being Conservative enough (as I gather).
On the surface, as a liberal, I probably ought to agree that Nova Scotia should share its wealth with the other Atlantic provinces in this instance- I guess- truthfully I don't understand the situation nearly enough to expand.

What I do understand is integrity: a rarity in politics, but a quality that I hold higher possibly even than the politician's beliefs themselves.
I feel that by defying his party and standing up for his province, whether right or wrong, Bill Casey showed integrity. And we all know what happens to those with integrity in Ottawa...

Conservative MP Bill Casey was booted out of the Tory caucus hours after he broke ranks with his party on Tuesday night and voted against a bill to implement the federal budget.

The Nova Scotia MP said he couldn't support the budget because it doesn't allow his province to fully benefit from offshore oil and gas revenues without losing equalization payments from the federal government.

When Casey rose to his feet to cast his "Nay" vote, cheers and shouts erupted in the House of Commons.

The budget implementation bill, which sets the Conservative's March 19 budget into action, still passed by a margin of 158-108. It was a preliminary vote, with a third and final reading of the bill expected later this week.

Bloc Québécois MPs and all Conservatives except Casey banded together to ensure the bill passed on Tuesday. The Liberals and the NDP voted against it.

Casey, a veteran backbencher, said the government had promised Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador that it wouldn't include offshore oil and gas revenues in its equalization formula.

"I believe that the government of Canada signed a contract with my province of Nova Scotia and it's not being honoured," Casey told CBC News earlier Tuesday in Ottawa.

"Whether it's by accident or not, the budget was amended, and that amendment was not agreed to by the provinces, who also signed it. So only one side of this agreement changed it and approved this amendment.

"I don't think that's right."

Casey wanted Flaherty to make changes to the budget before the third reading, but Flaherty rejected calls Tuesday in the House of Commons to do so.

The current budget offers the two provinces a choice between two options:

- A new, enriched equalization formula that includes a cap on the amount of offshore oil and gas revenues the provinces can keep.

- The old equalization formula, with the benefits from the Atlantic Accord on offshore oil and gas revenues that was negotiated by the former Liberal government in 2004.

Casey, who was first elected to Parliament as a Progressive Conservative, said the new budget could cost Nova Scotia up to $1 billion.

With files from the Canadian Press

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Notes on failure

Some time ago I made a wonderful discovery. I auditioned for that show I was in last summer, A Comedy of Errors, and at first I thought that I hadn't been cast. When I first began to absorb the defeat I realized something. I was pretty OK with it. More so than I had been with any other show. Mostly because when I thought back to my previous failing (see all 800 posts about how I wanted to be Ophelia in Hamlet sept-nov 2005) and thought, well hey this isn't nearly as bad as that was. Probably no role will ever crush me like that. Not just because it was Ophelia, but a chance to play it in my final year of university in a show with my close friends. It sucked a lot. I worked very hard and I didn't get it. But I made the most of it and moved on with life. Most importantly I know now that I can audition for anything and nothing will ever hurt like that again, so I will always be able to take the high road and move on.

So that is how I shall regard my latest sour news. I did not get in to York Univeristy's MFA program. This was also largely based on an audition as well as several letters of intent and recommendation, a CV, transcripts and a whole lot of work that is feeling slightly in vain now. I spent a lot of time and money and energy on that school and I have to admit, despite my best attempts to remain level headed, I really wanted to get in. It has been a tough pill to swallow, but it was the school that I wanted the absolute most. There are going to be a lot of no's in the world of acting for me, so it is good to have hit a big ass one right now. The program may have been very cool but there is nothing stopping me from reading plays and learning more about acting on my own.
The important thing now is to move on, so that the next time I am applying to school or for an actor training program I will have this experience to teach me that I am capable of carrying on.

Theatre and acting have probably had the ability, even more than love, to make me my happiest and most destroyed. My happiest moment in all of high school was having the play that my friends and I wrote win at the Sears Drama Festival while we all won awards for acting and writing. Being a theatre student at Laurentian was probably the greatest time in my life so far. I will never forget the first time I really felt "it" on stage, or rehearsing Taming of the Shrew with Josh, or watching Brie's face as she walked off stage after her monologue for the Vagina Monologues, the standing ovation we got at the end of Isobel, or the overwhelming response Andrew's performance earned in Hamlet, or doing my scene with Frank in Aminta . These are some of the greatest memories I have and it is in these moments that I know I'm alive and none of the other crap in all the world really matters. I'm there on stage or back stage or just in that damn theatre with all my energy and heart poured into every minute and something wonderful happens.

I guess I can't really describe it.

"I found a whole bunch of friends with the same dream, and that makes us kind of like a family..."


So that's where it's at. Life feels pretty miserable right now, but that's only because I love theatre so much and it has made me feel so wonderful. It might not always make me happy, and I don't know if it's the ONLY thing I can ever do. But people who say "the only way you'll ever be an actor is if it's the only thing you can ever see yourself doing" are idiots. If you can't see yourself being anything other than an actor how the hell are you supposed to be a fire fighter or a CEO or a teacher or any of the other thousands of roles you will have to be in a play. If I'm going to get good at this art what I have to do is keeping on living like an artist.
Even if it hurts.

Well I'll let Butters tell you the rest:




GOTH KID: Well I guess you can join up with us-
GOTH KID #2: Yeah, we're gonna go to the grave yard and write poems about how pointless life is.
BUTTERS: Uh, no thanks, I love life.
STAN: Huh? But you just got dumped!
BUTTERS: Well yeah and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feeling is a beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.
GOTH KID #2: Yeah.
STAN: No Butters, that doesn't sound stupid at all.
BUTTERS: But thanks for offering to let me be in your clique. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a $#%&$@ goth kid.

Friday, June 01, 2007

What would the movie of your life be called?


QuizGalaxy.com!



Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com


Working title: Lord of the Bongs- The Fellow-ness of the Liz