I already told you these stories, but I need to write them down so the universe doesn't forget and I learn my lesson

I don’t know why I think celebrities will fall in love with me. I don’t know what makes me think they want someone “normal” and “real” like me. Especially since normal people don’t even fall in love with me and that’s probably because I’m really less of a “normal” person and more “crazy” person and the pool of crazy people lovers is very very small and, to my dismay, includes very few, if any, celebrities. Nonetheless, I spent this entire morning fantasizing about what it would be like if one of the Freaks and Geeks boys fell in love with me after exchanging a few words (and meeting my enchanting, yet “real” and “normal” eyes) at this reunion panel thing and then they would come to my clown show and we would make hilarity forever, taking California by storm. Watch out, here comes the mildly famous, funny looking guy, and that normal girl who he just ran into at a talk and never left. I guess it’s my own version of “discovered in a soda shop” only I know I’m not movie material.
What I apparently don’t know is that celebrities aren’t huge fans of sick, raspy voiced, pimply faced, girls in layer after layer of dirty sweatshirt who tell them “I was so excited I almost peed in my pants”. John Francis Daley’s response to this was a fumbly “Oh, I hope that had nothing to do with anything we did.”
What, exactly, makes me think celebrities find incontinence sexy? I mean, yeah, it’s “real” I guess, but only for the elderly and debilitating drunk. Neither of which, (I’m guessing) is what celebrities are looking for in their down-to-earth-take-the-world-by-storm-in-hilarity-love of their life.
Do you think Martin Starr wants to hear the words “clown school” over and over again and then likes being reminded how to spell his name because he’s doing it really slowly (I thought this would be a fantastic joke. But even now that I think of someone else doing it to me, it seems like possibly one of the most irritating things anyone could ever do after they ask for your autograph)? Yup. Turns out, he’s not really into it.
Also, his answer to “Does every girl tell you she was in love with you” is…surprisingly, no. And he doesn’t look up to answer you, though, and this is my one success of the day, he did laugh when I followed his response with “That’s awkward”.
But maybe the best part was when I asked him to take a picture with me and instead of getting one of the many people waiting in line to take a nice picture, I just took it of us myself. And then they said, “are you sure, your hands are all shaky.” To which, in my most composed self of course, I responded “Well I’m really NERVOUS” and looked at the ground and tried to shuffle away.
To redeem my pride, I guess, Martin got my attention before I could leave and did what he did with everyone, introduce himself. “It was nice to meet you. I’m Martin.” “Nice to meet you. I’m Anna” “Good Luck” he said…
And I may or may not have yelled out clown school! again.
Oh well. A consolation prize, I guess, no celebrity love, but at least some luck.
But if you’re out there Martin Starr, I’m waiting for you at my clown show, and I’m ready for love.

You are failing

you have ONE job to do. write SOMETHING. you are busy, but this is a test for both of us, and my part cannot happen without your part.
I know you have started a post, i know it exists, just publish it already.
because right now you are failing.

in school, in the beginning, we learned one of the most important parts of being a clown. you have to fail all the time because you have to take risks and the risks you take will be something from deep in your soul. So when you fail. it hurts.

here is something we were told to do: you throw your arms up in the air and yell "I FAILED!" it is exciting.
try it right now
BECAUSE YOU ARE TOTALLY FAILING!

i want to hear what keeps you going because I am sick and kind of hating myself.
love,
A

commitment

Well, this is just so embarrassing, but I'm not giving up. I will keep on until I can pin you down and make you contribute. I know you are back now from New Hampshire as I write this, though you are probably reading this, if you DO read this, in Michigan.
I am still in California, it is wet and it is cold, I guess it's what they call winter. What they lack here by the bay are really exciting seasons. We had strong winds and rain last week, that was kind of exciting, but also kind of comforting, the kind of rain I'm more used to: loud, rough, knock-you-down-and-ruin-your-clothes storms. What they especially lack here is lightning. My mom used to make us all come out and watch exciting lightning during storms, almost as if she had never seen it before...and that's the thing with weather like that, it's punch-in-your-face fresh start. Which is a great segue to today's class...
Yesterday and today we had a visiting teacher who mainly teaches at a physical theater school further north. People tend to love him or hate him because, though giving and generous, he is not gentle. To get a point across he will throw heavy objects across the stage ("keep you on your toes"), or tell you and everyone in class just what is wrong with you on stage (you have to know who you are before the audience does). We were given an exercise which was basically to come on stage. do something little that we find funny and laugh at it until all chaos ensues (until it is "horrific" he said at one point, which may or may not have been meant ironically), then we look up as to notice we have been caught. Stop completely, relax it all, (imagine dancing naked in your house before you notice that you have a visitor. only instead of being able to run you stop, you look back, you wait for the angel to pass in the silence), and then your laughing thing starts up again and you make your way off stage.
I volunteered first, which, i kind of forgot, is risky with this teacher because he only tells you half of what he is looking for at the beginning. I played as I thought I should, which I am good at, I am good at getting completely lost in playing with something i think is funny, especially when it is dancing around yelling about butts, which is what i did. He nailed me as soon as it was done. Not with an object so much as with a declaration of fact, how I am holding back blah blah blah. It was all true, he was right and he made me stand still on stage, holding my hand (and you know how comfortable I am with people in my space), making me recite a poem while looking at everyone. I tried to get away with it at first, do it just to do it or whatever, but then I wanted to cry. I mean I couldn't start because I was going to cry if I did. oh shit, i thought, this is what everyone is talking about.
I think the hardest part was, for the first time, really acknowledging how terrifying it is to be on stage. you know I get up there all the time and sometimes i do really great stuff but I never really see anyone and I barely ever breathe in a fashion that allows human beings to survive. I hold my breath, I see faces as blurs, I get by, i get jokes out, I get laughs and i imagine many are incidental, are because I am funny looking (not a bad thing). or are not as big or true as they could be because I don't acknowledge the ENTIRE stage and the ENTIRE audience, eyeball by eyeball.
This is survival. I would probably cry half the time if i actually did this and that's actually not that funny to watch. But it's defensive. and once I was able to speak, my voice was louder, my breath was strong, my hands were still, the poem made sense, the dust settled, the stage was real.
Oh fuck! the stage is real!!!!!!!!
what do I do now? i don't know.
In other news, I told you things were going well with that boy I had a crush on but I don't know anymore, I may hang out with him tonight, and I sure I will update you then. My round-offs still suck but yesterday I finally figured out how to climb up the rope correctly and my fish flops are, i think, awesome...but I can't actually see them.I am going to talk to my teacher from last semester about what I should do after school is over, here is what i am hoping he'll say "you are hilarious, here is this amazing place you should audition for, I will call my best friend who is the director and you will get it and they will pay you enough to live on, to save a little bit and also give you health insurance."
my fingers are crossed.
Love,
A

Take 2 maybe?

Well, so, I guess this is a little awkward for me...
But today is
your big day, as in a big day for presidential candidates, which also
means it's a big day for you. So, congratulations on your big day!
Maybe it's really exciting and with all the adrenaline and passion pulsing through the veins of the live free or die state, you are happy, fulfilled, thrilled even. Or maybe it's stressful and dirty and you would rather be in a gutter with a bottle of wine.
Don't worry, we've all been there.
I haven't been able to talk to you so, of course, life is very very hard for me. Sike, but I am being political too, insofar as I am helping with a kind of insane dance/acrobatics piece to be performed at the mayor's inauguration tomorrow night. Except that, according to today's radio news, the inauguration was actually today? I don't really understand, but that's kind of how it goes with circus things, you just smile and nod, not sure what you'll be doing, or for whom or where but you just do it because you want to perform, or because you want to sew holes and make copies (ummm so maybe I signed a paper committing to something I had no business committing to...It's a problem I have sometimes, words are spoken and I don't listen to them and then a paper is passed around and I sign my name.).
I think i describe too much of my life with the word "insane" these days. i will work on that. So, is New Hampshire insane?
My round-offs are doing ok, but I wuss out about half of the time, on thursday I start a weekly class that I'm pretty sure will kill me.

Love,
A

So I have this great idea.

Oh man. blogging is hard. So far this is what I have done:
1)Had an idea to start a blog where you, my cousin, and I, me, will alternate
days writing about all the fascinating things in our world and our
brain.
This will accomplish
many things, first, it will make you write and finish something in one
day. You cannot edit forever, you cannot wait til you are hit with the
hilarity bomb, or smote with the sword of wit, you will just have to
write me--or rather, the blog--something. It will be amazing. Also it
will help me finish something I have started, and that doesn't mean
another one of my notorious 3 foot scarves (a very uncomfortable scarf
length) because I decide it has to be done before it's over. I will
actually keep something going through the good times and the bad,
through the boring and the hilarious, through the wit and through the
terrible, terrible puns
2)Called you up and described to you my really nerdy idea.
You agree and then admit that when you
heard my excited (overly-excited and stumbling over words, actually)
voice you assumed I had made out with the boy I have a crush on. This,
of course, was not it because that is not an activity I can do alone in
my room in front of a computer until I have to go to sleep at 11(and
really, that's all I do now so, for future reference, if you are
thinking maybe I did something that must be done out of my room, out
from behind my computer and with other people ...or at clown
school...you are probably wrong in your assumptions).
How many parenthetical phrases can I have in one blog post...well we'll just
have to see, won't we?
3)Got off the phone and went to blogger to set up our new blog.
This failed miserably, I signed in on my gmail about five hundred times before I decided to give up on that one. I think it had something to do with Safari so I went to firefox and through gmail created the blog. (This leads to the next problem I have to solve, what is my password and how does anyone really sign into the blog so I can tell you how to do it. So far I think it has something to do with magic, but apparently theinternet functions more on codes and "programs" than it does on magic sooooo this may be a while.)
4) Got onto our new blog. Named it and stuff. Wrote the title for my first post
5) Accidentally pressed publish post. making my first post just a title.
6)Tried for a while to figure out how to get back into a post and edit.Finally I find
the little picture of a pencil (because, really, words would be too
much to ask) and proceed to "edit" my first post...aka write something
more than just a title.
7) Um and now here we are so I'm done with the numbers.

I am in San Francisco, you are in D.C. and we are carrying on two pretty
different lives right now but I think we could both gain a lot from this
little project. Let's try and not give up on it too soon.

Here's a little something from me for today:
These are things I want but can't really afford
1) a ukulele because my ukulele rockstar dreams will just not die. (ok so I'm lying. i can kind of afford this so I'm buying one this weekend)
2)glasses. I um accidentally sent
mine through the wash a few months ago and now they fall off my face
constantly. They still work though so I can't really buy new
ones.
3) an ipod. i give up. i feel left out.
4) pants that fit. you know...just because

Today
I babysat a three year old and so we were dancing and she refused to
let me stop dancing which I think is pretty great so I didn't. Also,
she explained to me the "real" way to juggle necklaces and it is
NOTHING like you'd expect it to be.

now to figure out how this internet thing works....

your cousin,
A