La Rosa Knows
Month
I’m headed to Florida tonight on the red eye special out of LAX. The reading I’m bringing with me for the flight: Mental_Floss, the lit issue of The New Yorker, Improvise, and The Chinchilla Farm by Judith Freeman.
For the past year I’ve been taking UCB improv classes, and after graduating 301 this past Saturday I decided it would be good to test out some other programs.
I’ve heard a lot about Groundlings. People either really for real like it, or they could care less. But mainly, I know that it churns out some fresh SNL faces and I’m ready to be around that kind of talent.
When I went to sign up for classes I discovered that it’s trickier than most. You have to attend a group audition for two hours before you find out if you can even take a class. I had to bring in a headshot and resume (what?), along with a snack so I wouldn’t attack if my blood sugar dropped.
I walked to the theater today (points for proximity), but pretty much upon entry knew this was gonna be hell. Hell because I encountered a girl named Sari (“pronounced like Kerry but with an ’S’”). She opened the door for me in an affected British accent and then asked me my name, but this time in a Valley Girl tone. This was not okay. Sari was going to be the annoying hair on my arm that you can’t find to pluck off and have to just learn to live with until further notice.
During our audition Sari debuted her Mexican, Jersey Shore, and “stern” voice, among others. Meanwhile, I sat snarling at her from across the room. All I could think was If I can just not look as crazy as this bitch, I’m in.
Two hours later I was back home and so mentally exhausted that I treated myself to a well deserved nap (see photo evidence below).
When I woke up I found that I passed the audition and am now able to pay to take classes at Groundlings!
Hooray for furthering my education and spending precious dollars to fund it.
These are some carefully chosen lines from Lindsay Lohan’s new porno, Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story. You think those crack whore years after Mean Girls were all just research?
I decided that since I have the summer off, and I “love to learn” that I would take some language classes to brush up on my skillz. First I called my mom to tell her about my idea, and she asked me what language I’d be focusing on. I threw out some ideas, “Well, I was thinking French or Italian because those are really hip…” to which my mother replied “Who do you know that you’ll be able to speak those with? People speak Spanish here. Take Spanish.” Obviously this was not the response I was looking for. I wanted her to say, “French, why, they speak that in France! You should move there for a year and eat baguettes and ride a bike and write novels while drinking wine!”
But the thing is, she had a point. I took Spanish all throughout middle and high school. When we went on a family trip to Barcelona I was the one who ended up ordering tapas at dinner and asking directions from the locals in their native tongue. That trip was three years ago. I now live in Los Angeles and plenty of people speak Spanish here. I’m from Florida, where most of the billboards and store clerks are purely conversing in Spanish at this point. I should know Spanish, and a brush up course would be helpful.
So, I put a call into the Beverly Hills Lingual Institute. A nice woman named Eva with a slight accent answered, and once I informed her that I had taken Spanish and was essentially not a beginner she proceeded to ask me some questions.
“How do you say ‘I have a dog’?”
“That would be 'Yo tengo un perro.’”
“Very good, and how about 'I left the book on the table.’”
“Oh, huh, well, okay now let’s see… I know the words for book 'libro’ and table 'la mesa’ but I cant really…”
“Okay, not a problem! How about we conjugate a bit, how do you say 'I am.’”
“Yo soy.”
“Good, and now 'They are.’”
“Eeee, yikes, um… not totally remembering now…”
(Eva laughing slightly) “We’ll move on, let’s try 'We are.’”
“Yup, not gonna happen.”
(Eva really laughing) “I think let’s start at beginner’s level for now, and if you get bored we’ll move you up. Okay?”
And so it seems my eight plus years of Spanish have completely failed me. If I had any knowledge of how to conjugate verbs, that apparently scrammed out the door immediately after our trip to Spain. I can tell you I have a dog, but ask me to say 'They have a dog’ and you’ve lost me.
I start my beginner Spanish class when I get back from my vacation in Florida. It will meet once a week and I have to buy a textbook for it. My hopes are that I will be the brightest in the class… We’ll see how that goes.
Fridayyyy it’s time to play!
This is the start to an actual question on the driver’s test:
It is a very windy day. You are driving and a dust storm blows across the freeway reducing your visibility…
I’ve spilled coffee on myself twice this morning.
Cracked.com compiled a list of the 5 greatest books with psychotic fan bases. Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that one of my favorites, Lolita, topped that pile.
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