Questions without Good Answers
Hello again.

I figure I'd take a little break from the regular school grind to get a few more words out on the elljay. So I'm back at school and have been for the past week and half. Lots of things have come and gone. I came back to school early so that A) I could see people and B) to help out with Drama House Theatre Department stuff. This weekend should be interesting and will determine the course the semester will take with Todd Theatre auditions. I'm auditioning for the Lower Depths. My one last stab at Todd. Hopefully then Evan and Nat can come see my show. And everyone else here. I only want a small role (Goiter who's in three scenes) so that it hopefully won't disrupt my whole life. I've been working hard on behalf of the theatre department too during orientation, and I've definitely gotten on Nigel's good side. As he says "Flattery will get you everywhere."

I talked to Daniel "I thought I had enough but now I want" Mauro. He says that he can make it so the play won't conflict with OBOC, which is definitly a good thing. OBOC seems to be going quite well from the little we've had thus far. I'm directing one of the big group numbers, and as long as I can ensure that the choreography works out alright, it should be fun.

Now here's the part that sounds really conceited. I feel more popular than ever. In OBOC, Theatre stuff, Stingers, and all over. I think part of it comes from being around forever. I keep having these "Hey remember U of R back in 2002" moments that very few other people that are still here can have. So I mean, having lots of friends is one thing. But people all over seem really excited to see me. Like I'll walk into a room and people will be like "Wow, its David Lu!! That makes my day!" And while that does pump my ego and sound very self centered to say, its a good feeling. I can't pin it down what I'm trying to say. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was never "a cool kid" in high school (or middle school, etc...) and maybe even parts of college. But there's been at least twice in the past week where I've walked in front of a crowd to rampant applause and people screaming my name. And that my friends, is the kind of satisfaction that I've been searching for for years.

From 10pm Saturday to 11:30pm Sunday was the 24 Hour Play Festival. I directed again, with a cameo as the dead heroin addict. I worked with some cool freshmen and the irreplacable Shannon McCarter. Also, since that jerk Mike Caputo decided to not come back to UR this semester, I split a lot of the organizational responsibilities with Emily Pye. More or less, she ran the show, while I did crowd control. Which meant I got to explain the process to the freshies, and help pick who would do what, and then finally do the whole welcome speech at the beginning of the show. Which was cool.

The best thing from the entire play festival: It's the middle of the day, approx 16 hours into the rehearsals, and my cast is clearly wearing down. I figure we need something to jump start us again. So we all grabbed cups of water and went out back and practiced spit takes for 20 minutes. It's harder than you think, but it was well worth it.

Classes this semester are going to be awesome says I. TuesdayThursday I TA a lab session of CSC171, then have Meaning of Life, Black Holes and Time Warps, and Natural Language Processing. MonWedFri I have Philosophy of the Mind and Piano Lessons. Voice lessons will be in there somewhere. The two philosophy classes are exactly what I wanted. BH&TW is all about Eienstien's theories of relativity, something I should know much more about. It's also going to be a relatively easy class (ha, I made a funny), which will be useful if I do Todd. Natural Langauge Processing is turning out to be much more interesting than I thought, since it involves pretty much deconstructing English completely. Yeah, so...rock!

I've also abdicated my role as Emperor in Stingers to Mike. I just don't quite have the time to commit right now. But since I've done so, people say things are going better. They say I should resign more often. (jokingly). I've also got all of Drama House making South Park versions of themselves for the new and improved Drama House website. W00t.

My latest recreational project is watching more good movies. I decided that I'm going to see the Top 100 Movies listed on IMDB.com, hopefully by the end of the year. I've only seen 27 of them in full so far. I just borrowed the original Manchurian Candidate from the library for this weekend.

From Rochester, with Love,
David!!

P.S. New Rowlf icon = Love
PPS: Since the end of July, I've been listening to my music alphabetically again. I'll post what letter I'm on periodically.