A few nights ago I had a dream that alligatorandme (whom I have never seen or met, but I am mysteriously certain that it was her) and I were at a party together and we recreated the opening medley from this year's Tony Awards over by the buffet table. Well, most of it. We started with the Shrek song, complete with choreography, and plowed on through "9 to 5," but we kind of faded out when we got to Liza's song and everybody around who was singing along suddenly dropped out and expected me to do it all by myself, Liza fangirl that I am. Naturally, I dropped out right along with them and the whole number was screwed. Later, Andrew Lloyd Webber showed up and was not particularly interested in having his picture taken with me. He was willing, but he kept asking me to hurry up with it. I told him that I was looking forward to Phantom Fans Week and he told me that people who got there early would be in for a real treat, and I kind of panicked because my flight is already booked and I'm not getting there early. I think Michael Crawford might have been there too, but I wasn't as interested in him and he seemed like kind of a hanger-on the whole time anyway.

The next night I dreamed that I was walking around some kind of giant construction site with one of the Jonas Brothers. Kevin, I think. I'm not sure which is more frightening, the fact that I dreamed about a Jonas Brother or the fact that I know which one it was. Anyhow, he was really nice and we had a friendly conversation while we walked. I think he had his dog with him. John Cudia drove by in a pickup truck, and I'm totally not joking about that. Then we ran into Brad Little who was participating in some kind of ceremony nearby, and he stopped to chat with me before he had to go do whatever it was he had to do. At the end of the day I was horrified to realize that I'd forgotten to take my mouth guard out when I'd woken up that morning and had been walking around with it in and probably sounding cottonmouthed all day.

These are both real. I swear, just when I think my dreams can't get any weirder or more detailed...

David Shannon will become the new West End Phantom on November 9th. He takes over the role from Ramin Karimloo, who is leaving in order to destroy his career. Er, I mean, to star in Love Never Dies.

Tabitha Webb will become the West End's Alternate Christine in September.

Rumor has it Nigel Richards will become the West End's standby Phantom.

Brad Little arrived in Taipei yesterday and is preparing to don the mask again on July 10th. (Yay!) I will not be attending any of the performances during his run. (Boo!)

I've recently had a sort of creative epiphany and am now in the almost entirely unneccesary process of overhauling my Meg Giry fansite. Again.

...dude. An entire POTO post in which nothing is related to the current US tour cast. I must endeavor to change that. So, um, Trista Moldovan remains amazing. There, fixed it.

After chirping about it for months, I finally went into San Francisco to pester the theatres about employment on Wednesday, and you know what? It went well! I'm not newly and gainfully employed or anything, but I felt comfortable and well-received just about everywhere I went.

Orpheum Theatre: Alex and I stopped there first and just stayed long enough for me to grab a job application (which was actually for almost ten minutes because we ended up in line at the box office behind a couple of people that I can only assume have never purchased theatre tickets before in their lives) because my overwhelming memories of The Phantom of the Opera depressed me. I'm not joking, either, sick as I know that is. I was surprised by my own reaction to being there. My insides felt heavy while we walked by the stagedoor. I miss my show and my cast, waaaaaaah.

Davies Symphony Hall: Second stop. I hesitated outside because the Symphony is a rather imposing building, but some guy saw us standing outside and ushered us in so I could speak with the manager of the Symphony Store. He was very friendly and told me that the ushers and the store salespeople at the Symphony are almost all volunteers, and how the whole volunteer thing usually works and where to look for information. He then directed me down around the building to the office of the Director of Special Events and Volunteer Services. There was a security guy sitting at the entrance who made me sign in while he went and grabbed someone for me to speak with. The man I spoke to - who introduced himself and who I think was the director, but unfortunately I was too busy preparing to introduce myself in turn and so I'm not 100% sure on that - was also very genuinely friendly. He said he was thrilled that I was interested in getting involved and gave me a card, pointing out the Symphony's web address and telling me where on the website to find more information. The truth is that I've been to the site several times already and was hoping that showing up in person might make me look like a better candidate and get me more information, but whatever. I still think it was a good idea to do this. I feel like I made a good, if minor, impression; I got to meet some of the people in charge and they were both nice; and, if nothing else, I got to go down into some of the offices of the Symphony. I've never gone into the offices of any kind of professional theatre before, so that made me happy.

War Memorial Opera House: Our third and most unsuccessful stop. The man at the box office was very friendly, but really told me nothing more than to go to the website. Gee, thanks. Wouldn't you think a 21-year-old interested in volunteering at an opera house would be received a tiny bit more enthusiastically? I mean, it's not like I expected them to jump up and offer me the role of Marguerite in Faust or anything - although they are doing Faust next year, and I'm already half-convinced that it would make me a bad phan to miss it - but somehow I thought maybe I'd get a teeny bit more than "go to the website". I dunno. Whatever, at least I still got to tap through the pretty marble foyer.

Herbst Theatre: This little (in comparison to the others) theatre was our next stop. I only know of its existance because I saw Lisa Vroman sing Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins there with Raphael a few years ago. It's located next to the opera within a building that houses other businesses as well. We wandered in and found...no one. A few people who didn't look theatre-related walked through and glanced at us a few times, but no one said a word to us. We took advantage of having the entire foyer to ourselves to have a mini-photoshoot, because that's just what we do in that sort of situation. Then we walked into an adjoining room that was housing a vintage weaponry museum. The only attendant was a tiny, white haired, extremely old woman with a walker, a European accent that I couldn't place, and a sandwich that she ate noisily while Alex and I puttered around. She kept trying to tell us stuff about the weapons but we could barely understand her. She assumed we were tourists and offered us a guide to San Francisco, and it took her almost a full minute to scoot her walker around her little desk and grab it for us. I suspect our appearance in the exhibit was the most excitement she had all day. I take back what I said about the opera house: this was our least successful stop when it comes to my future employment, but at least we got a kind of interesting story to tell out of it.

American Conservatory Theatre: We happened to drop by just as a matinee was letting out, so we walked in and ended up speaking with the front of house director. She was by the far the friendliest and most helpful person I spoke to all day. We stood in the lobby and chatted with her for a good twenty minutes or so; she gave me information about ushering or working on the production crew and Alex information about auditioning. She also showed us ACT's Jujamcyn Theaters Award and Regional Theatre Tony Award! We drooled like idiots and I took pictures, and she told us that she fully understood: "I've been where you guys are." I really loved chatting with her, and she seemed to like us too. She gave me her card and said to email her so she could send me a job application. Hurrah, something vaguely resembling success!

Golden Gate Theatre: The last stop of the day. (We walked by the Curran Theatre and found that it was dark, so we just stayed long enough for me to wax poetic about seeing POTO there for the first time when I was ten.) The guy at the box office gave me a job application that was identical to the one I got at the Orpheum. It even says "Orpheum Theatre" at the top. I know the theatres are all owned by SHN, but I thought maybe they'd have at least slightly different job applications. Now I'm not sure if I should turn one in at each theatre or not. Will that make me look dedicated or stupid? Anyway, at least I got one at both. I'd gotten so used to hearing about volunteer positions earlier in the day that I requested information about volunteering rather than employment when I first got there. The guy in the box office window gave me a kind of blank look and then offered me a job application, saying, "Just so you know, we don't really have many volunteer positions since we're for profit." I said, "Oh good, I'd really prefer a job anyway," and he kinda laughed with me. Alex and I glanced around the side of the theatre just long enough to ensure that John O'Hurley wasn't randomly standing around outside the stagedoor waiting for me to get a picture with him and then high-tailed it back to BART so that Alex could make it back to his 7:30pm rehearsal back in the East Bay.

I did a whole 'A Day in My Life' thing all day, taking 700+ unnecessary pictures that will theoretically become a vaguely interesting LJ post in the near future. Assuming I can ever be bothered to do it.

All in all, a very good day. We also did un-theatre-related stuff - *gasp* - like grabbing free samples at a farmer's market on Market Street and repeatedly zooming up and down in the elevators at the Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square. Because we're mature like that.

If there is such a thing as Blogger's Block, I think I have it. Despite the fact that I've actually done some stuff - not terribly exciting stuff, but still, stuff - lately, I just haven't felt inspired to write anything down. I've even tried, but it doesn't come out. This is the most I've typed in almost a week.

What stuff have I done?, you may be wondering. (Or you may not be wondering. Actually, you're probably not. But I digress.) I had dinner with my ex-coworkers. I had dinner with my church friend Katie. I took pictures at my mom's company picnic and got into a massive and refreshing water fight at the end of the day. I hung out with my new friend Julia again and we had a mini photoshoot in her room that included, among other things, shots of me reading Playboy magazine. (Somehow I've never even opened a copy of Playboy in my life. Ever. I found a copy with the Girls Next Door on it because I have this weird emotional attachment to them. We'll file that under Things I'll Never Admit at Church.)

So yeah, nothing exciting. But it's kind of funny - funny weird, not funny haha - that I actually have something vaguely resembling a social life lately, and yet I can't find anything to write about. I'm going into the city with Alex tomorrow with the intention of hanging out and having fun while also throwing job applications and volunteer offers at every theatre I can get to, so maybe I'll have something interesting to post about soon. I've been thinking about trying to do an adayinmylife sort of thing; maybe I'll try that tomorrow. Because obviously days in my life are so incredibly exciting.

This will be the first time I've gone into the city since the closing night of The Phantom of the Opera. :(

OMG LIVEJOURNAL STOP WITH THIS NONSENSE I NEED ohnotheydidnt TODAY! *panics*

Brad Little is returning to the title role in Jekyll & Hyde...in Korea.

That's shortly after returning to the title role in The Phantom of the Opera...in Taiwan.

>_>

I've just suddenly noticed that my blog has become one of those annoying ones that only contains crap about the blogger's real life. I know that's kind of the point of a blog, but it's terribly boring (when it doesn't relate to The Phantom of the Opera, because obviously The Phantom of the Opera is endlessly fascinating). Let's see, what can I say to push my blog closer to being vaguely interesting again?

My friend Danielle and I had a rather prolonged conversation tonight about penises, and whether or not "penises" should in fact be the correct term for more than one penis. Perhaps it should be "peni"?

Meh. That's more interesting that what I had for lunch today, but not by much. Something else, then...

I've been inspired to write fanfiction lately, and have actually - *gasp* - been doing some research to help me. I've never done that before, which I know is wretched. But you know, I've never really needed to do any research for anything I've written before. I've always just done simple oneshots with no particular purpose. The characters were not changed or developed in any way, they were just existant in slightly new circumstances. And now I'm actually brainstorming an idea for something that might be a little deeper. I have no idea if this plot bunny will ever hop onto paper FanFiction.Net, but cruising around Wikipedia for ideas makes me feel very intellectual and dedicated.

I think the penis conversation was probably more interesting, huh?

Remember when I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd demoed a machine for a girl who offered to teach me photography for free? Oh, you don't? Well, I did. Anyway, we got together for the first time today and it was so much fun! We get along like we've known each other for years and ended up spending over five hours hanging out, only about 30 minutes of which was spent on photography. We met at a plaza and I got a sort of beginner's photography lesson by the side of a nice outdoor fountain, then we ended up driving around all over the place. We drove over the bridge and stopped by the waterfront to take some pictures, then continued on to a fantastic farmer's market so she could stock up on healthy groceries. Rather than finding a restaurant for lunch, we went back to her house where she made us salads with the produce we'd just picked out, and we also had bagels with hummus, and peaches and strawberries with frozen yogurt. And this was all on our first time ever hanging out with each other besides the 15 minutes I spent demonstrating a sewing machine to her at work one night.

Some other good stuff happened today too that I won't bother detailing, but it was just overall a nice day. And on the way home I passed a goose ambling down a busy highway at commute time. Just FYI.