With fronds like these...

Staying in touch is hard. And I'm counting tweets and status updates. It's still rough. You really have to work to keep a friendship current and lively.

When you first get to college you'll keep in random touch with select friends from your hometown. Talking about parties or classes or how awesome (!) that football game was last week. Gradually, though as the semester ticks on you lose touch. With each class and encounter you scramble to hastily make friends with anyone, desperate to gain entry into some imagined crowd of incessant glory. New friends come into the picture and the farthest away they'll ever be is across campus on the top floor. And then winter break comes and you go home and you probably be able to schedule a get together or two with your dearest friends from grade school. But the people you'll probably see the most at home are the folks you thought you said goodbye a long time ago to. And that's how it will be every time you go home. Forever. And that group of people you have to engage in awkward contact with will grow. Forever. And you'll have to create a great profile of job, hottie significant other, and baller attitude or people will think you've failed. Forever. Growing up is fun!

Spring semester comes and you continue to meet new people at college. Of the friends you made in the first few weeks after move-in you'll have weeded out the ones that don't quite fit you. And in four years you grow "into yourself" (and who really knows when we're ever done with that), you evolve and the people you keep company with evolve with you. You'll make your great friends whom you trust with you life and plan to have in your wedding party on day. You'll have those friends that happen to be enrolled in the same classes as you and pursue the same major. You'll have club friends, drinking friends, friends that climb on rocks, study friends, muddy friends, even friends with chicken pox. (I'm so very sorry for that. It's hot. My brain is mushy.) And these friends will define you and you'll find yourself wondering how you ever flourished without them.

Okay now I need to stop. I MISS MY FRIENDS! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Back to keeping in touch. You'd think in an era of instant connectivity with e-mail, skype, twitter, and facebook we'd be better at it. But life happens and sending out a mass announcement of success or woe isn't exactly a comfortable thing. Of course, you could call those near and dear to your heart but we never do. And banking on a coincidental visit to the hometown if hopeful but quite a difficult affair. So these dear friends become more like the family members you see on holiday gatherings. I guess that's okay. These people are still very much a part of you, but they've grown as well and have made their own friends that better suit who they are and who they hope to be. And that's okay. It's lovely. It just makes keeping up to date with one another more difficult.

So what do you do? Many of my groups of friends have tried creating an e-mail thread and updating one another every one in awhile. It gets the job done, sure, but it usually dies out pretty darn quickly. We have to make time for one another. Maybe plan a weekend getaway for friends. Aim to settle on a hometown return in advance. When you first see one another again, and it's like old times once more, you'll be so thankful for some planning and for the journey you have been on that you will share with your oldest buddies.

I'm all talk right here, but I have every intention of shooting my lovely friends an e-mail...soon.

Now that I've made myself wistful for people I love and haven't seen in quite awhile I'm going to look at pictures of animal friends. Because I can.

.

Well if you're reading this I guess you got left behind in the rapture. No ascension for you! I will admit I did get a bit worried when the clouds rushed in and the sky went grey as I was waiting for a bus at about 5:59 on Saturday evening. But then the 27 finally made its way up Broad and I was on my way to Manyunk for my friend's band's cd release party. And I danced my face off. And it was good.

I'm sure you've seen these rapture bomb photos and I'm sure you've seen these amazing animal photos, but imma gonna post them anyways. So deal.

 These are brilliant. Props to whomever led the photo bomb brigade.

 Say whaaaaaa? Baby penguin AND a baby dolphin?!?!?!?! Can't. Handle. Cuteness. Overload.

This cat looks a bit snarky to me. 

more photos of Basset Hounds running 

now you want a baby pygmy hippo. but you can't have one. and i'm sorry for that.

this week brings a whole bunch of things to a close. I'll hopefully be hearing back from a marathon of interviews and auditions. I'm looking forward to a busy summer, so let's hope something works out! 

No-Name Dino: the adventure begins

This is the tale of No-Name Dino. I found him cruising around on a Mega-Bus. I bathed him in multiple squeezes of my hand sanitizer and then again in a Starbucks bathroom. And then the adventure began.

Meet No-Name Dino.

He is a pink dinosaur with blue patches on his back. He likes going new places and meeting new people and experiencing different swatches of fabric. Like this one below. No-Name Dino likes things with two colors like his back. He also liked the dog hair on it because it smelled like a dog.

No-Name Dino had never been to New York City before. He liked all the stripes on the ground. he didn't like when the cars drove over the stripes because he didn't understand that the stripes were just paint and that the cars couldn't hurt it. No-Name Dino isn't very bright.

He pretended he was a giant dinosaur made out of real dinosaur flesh and tried to cross the street. He didn't get too far before the cars scared him away. Like I said, not very bright.

No-Name Dino learns to mind the gap. I told him they only really say that in London. Mind the Gap is also a movie starring Alan King, but you didn't need to know that.

No-Name Dino gets overwhelmed by the concrete of the city and finds solace in a potted plant. 

OH HEEEEEEEEY!

All that traipsing through the jungle makes No-Name Dino very thirsty. A Bodega offers plenty of liquid options. He has trouble picking out which. 

Peach tea, green tea, which Arizona should he take?

No-Name Dino makes his decision based solely on golf swing. The result is delightfully delicious. Not to lemony not too heavy on tea. Dino is pleased with the Palmer. He considers taking up golf.

No-Name finds himself remarkably lonely in a city of millions. He hopes for a friend. He finds an egg. He assumes there is some baby creature inside.

This mystery egg perplexes Dino. 

[Not Pictured]: No-Name Dino, disappointed at the outcome of breaking open the egg drinks himself into a gooey stupor. In a scotch-induced fantasy he finds a friend.

In actuality...

he was talking to this guy the entire time --->

Bed time comes for our friend. He's drunk, he's tired, he's in dinosaur dreamland.

Update: No-Name Dino wandered away in the night. Perhaps he slept-walk. Dinosaurs are know to do that after drinking scotch. Look it up. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of No-Name Dino!

Paris in Philadelphia

So this Sunday marked the end of the Philadelphia International Festival of Arts. It was a huge festival with tons of stuff going on around the city. Of course, I was only interested in stuff that was free. And even then, I pretty much only made it to a couple of things. But they were good. Oh so good.

I actually worked the opening gala for PIFA. At $750 a plate you can imagine what kind of people were at this event. The Philly elite. After dinner the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts (yes there is one) performed. Using sandbags as counterweights they scaled the facade of Kimmel's Verizon Hall and did neato things while swinging above the ritzy people in the lobby. That night was also the premiere of the Eiffel Tower light show in the Kimmel Center Lobby. I've seen it thrice at this point. It's a nice little show. Much different that I had expected. A bit more abstract. Last Saturday evening we (really the beau) led the campaign to actually lie down underneath the tower and watch the show from inside. It was a beautiful perspective, if not totally overwhelming at times.

The tower will remain in the Kimmel Center Lobby for some more weeks and I believe they will still be doing the light show Thurs-Sat evenings. Go see it for yourself.

And last Saturday was the street fair. I really love when streets get shut down. Not when I'm driving though. Or when there are so many people roaming around you want to start flailing your arms just to clear some air. Broad Street was so lovely on Saturday, minus the people, minus the traffic, minus the overpriced vendors. There were patches of grass, benches, street performers, fountains, live music...it was nice. There was even a Ferris Wheel with a longer line that the porta-potties. The thing that everyone was waiting for, of course, was the aerial performance promised. La Compagnie Trans Express would be putting on a show a mere 100ft above our heads just outside of the Kimmel Center. But, rather than attempt to convey how beautifully whimsical it was YOU CAN WATCH MY VIDEOS!!! Most of these were taken on my blackberry. Not too bad for a smartphone.

So this is one of the performers sent to entertain us while they waited for the sun to finish setting.

And the performance begins! In the middle of that net thing there was a liberty bell that this one dude just sat there ringing the whole time.

And more video!

Keep in mind that this whole thing was happening way up in the air. From our vantage point we didn't quite get the full effect of seeing just how high up they were. 

The best thing about this whole performance? We didn't have to pay a single penny for it. HOOAH!

All in all, a lovely day. The weather was just gorgeous, the price was right, and the company I kept was pleasant as well. If you missed it, I'm terribly sorry. At least with the power of smartphones and youtube you can see what you missed!