36. Single Scoop Delight

SoOo...if you're not going to Tiger at the Gates tonight, you should definitely go to the opening of the HappyHap "Perspectives of Happiness" Photo Exhibition instead! 

HappyHap is a Yale student organization founded by Sunnie Tölle in 2008.  The organization created HappyHap.com, a website where you can post a few lines, photos, or videos of a happy moment to share it with others based on the idea that happiness is contagious. The HappyHap team put together a photography contest this fall to collect photographs that captured different perspectives of happiness. I submitted a few photos and ended up winning first place(!) for my picture of a little boy eating (and wearing) vanilla ice cream. 

I took the photo in Paris during a 4-week black & white film photography course through Parsons a few summers ago. I'm so thrilled that my photo was selected, and now it will be shown in small exhibitions at Yale residential colleges until April when it will be in a 5-day outdoor exhibition on Cross Campus! 

So the opening of the exhibition is tonight at 7 in Silliman, and I unfortunately can't go since I am in "Tiger at the Gates" at the same time :( but if anyone is free and on campus, go and tell me how it was!!!

35. Tiger at the Gates

TONIGHT is the opening night for the Yale Dramat play we've been relentlessly preparing for the past month, "Tiger at the Gates" !!!!! The play is adapted from french playwright Jean Giradoux's "La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu" or "The Trojan War Will Not Take Place." Here is a brief description of the play from the Dramat website:

Cassandra is a cranky cynic. Paris, a spoiled prince. Helen is a dumb blonde, and, according to Queen Hecuba, "they don't last very long." Jean Giraudoux called "Tiger at the Gates," his witty 1935 play about this dysfunctional but lovable Trojan family, a "farce." And indeed at first it seems a far cry from the somber tale on which it is based, Homer's Iliad. But lurking behind this timeless play's sarcasm and humor, ready to pounce is a tragic story with an ending we assume is inevitable. But is it? While the poets and politicians push him to "fight for a woman," the heroic Hector begs them--and us--to instead imagine a world where, as the French title "La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu" suggests, the Trojan War will not take place.

I play Polyxene, the nine-year-old daughter of Hecuba and Priam who draws in her coloring book, fiddles with sea glass, and asks a lot of questions. I feel so lucky to be performing at the Yale Repetory Theater where actors like Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster have performed. This past month has been so much fun for me, especially since I haven't been in a theater production since the 6th grade!  Cannot wait to finally see it all come together tonight, wish us luck!

34. Half Mast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z8R38QrBhM&ob=av3e

Dreamy.

33. Time Away

http://vimeo.com/groups/nouvellevague/videos/10560007

So this video... I'm gonna go ahead and say is my all-time favorite on Vimeo. It. Is. So. Incredible. I first came across it two years ago and was happily reminded of it yesterday (thanks Eliza!). Surprisingly enough, it is a JEWELRY commercial for the Norwegian brand "Bjorg," and it so beautifully considers the wonders, deceits, and uncertainty of memory. And how the distance (or "time away") from an experience can make it all the more intriguing...

The images, music, and narration all work together perfectly to evoke memory's mysteries. The ache, the excitement, the disillusionment, the desire. I love how the entire film is made up of the same scenes just revisited from different angles or perspectives, or maybe just different moments of remembering them. The more times I watch it the more details I discover, too. I just wish that it was the trailer for a movie or something because I want more!!!

32. Summer School

Dusty libraries, heart-shaped branches, mythical climbing trees, fish-eye lomography.

Looking through old pictures and came across these from a trip to Hawaii I took a few summers ago to visit my friend Andie--a week filled with beaches, photos, and raspberry shave ice! Photo credit goes to Andie and her guru photography skills on these ones. Missing you andiepants!

Crazy moment though was when MONTHS later we come across this picture...

....

..!!!>*??...

31. You're a Stone Fox

"Lux lost it over Kevin Haynes, the garbageman. She'd wake up at 5 in the morning and lay about on the front porch like it wasn't completely obvious. She wrote his name in marker in all her bras and underwear and mum found them and bleached out all the Kevins. Lux has been crying on her bed all day."

*Most not my pictures. Via weheartit, tumblr, google, etc.

30. Swim Caps

Hi hello! 

I've been so busy back at school that my posts have been suriously slacking...but anyway! I just saw the video that I roped a bunch of my friends into last spring (again, YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST) that Victoria Hely-Hutchinson of Yale's Graduate Photography program put together. Her effortlessly cool aesthetic is inspired by her experience at an English boarding school. I think the "About" section on her website proves her cool-factor way better than I can:

So this video was inspired by a game she and her friends used to play with their swim caps in the pool. I had NO idea that a swim cap could stretch out like that and definitely never thought it could get big enough for a person to jump into! After many torn swim caps and hours in the (fReeEzing) water, here's the final outcome! Some screen shots...

There's something very effective about the gentle atmosphere in the video. And I love the moment at the end when the cap breaks because it is our 100% natural reactions, it was the very first take we did!