Jean Of mArc

On May 15th, I was able to go see the musical “The Wizard of Oz”, put on by the St. Joseph’s Stage Prophets at the Atlantic Festival Theatre in Wolfville… and what a show it was! I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan of the movie, but even so I was extremely impressed by this show and the talent that came out of it. It was the full show with (what seemed like) almost 100 cast members, from kids to teens to adults, and even a live dog as Toto. It was quite a large cast indeed!

All the lead roles were very strong, and everyone played their role perfectly. They were all completely believable. Shannon Coates played Dorothy, and did a fantastic job. I had the priviledge to work with her a bit during the Footloose production from February, and it was great to see her as a lead role. The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion were all perfectly casted as well to Allan Slipp, Jacob Sampson and Joe Gnemmi, respectively. Their acting was easily as good, if not better, than the film. All the supporting roles and chorus characters were also great. Even most of the children seemed perfectly in place in the land of Oz. The singing was strong, the acting was over-the-top (in a good, appropriate way), and everyone looked just right in their costumes. And the sets were amazing! It almost felt like a professional show. I say almost only because there were moments where things weren’t quite so smooth: forgetting the next line, costume parts falling, some ackward scene changes, etc. But all of these were minor when compared to the whole effect of this epicly-pulled-off show.

Something funny happened while I was there: I saw the Saturday Matinee, and the scene where the wicked witch melts arrived. The witch started to melt, and smoke came up from the trap. But soon afterwards we heard a loud siren, because the smoke had set off the fire alarm! The Tin Man started walking towards the exit of the theatre and said “Sorry folks, that’s the fire alarm, we have to evacuate the building.” Of course, it was all taken in good humour by the crowd, who was otherwise enjoying the show. It was quite funny for us all to leave the building, and all the characters come out, still in costume, on the side of the theatre with a football practice going on next to us. Any onlookers would have been amused or confused. They were going to continue it outside, but were told that we would be able to get back in soon, so we it just continued after we were allowed back in.

Overall it was a great show, and if you missed it… Well, you shouldn’t have.

A couple of years ago, I had a blog generously hosted by Pete Freckelton. However, I didn’t really have much to say, I don’t think anyone read it, and most people who did read it had probably already heard me say it to them in person anyway.

However, times and situations have changed, and I’ve recently had numerous requests to keep a blog. Why? Because I’m going to teach English in Japan. In the book Stuff White People Like, it says that every white guy wants to do this, and I’m no exception. The only difference is that I not only want to, I’m going to in July!

This means that for the first time ever, I will be living outside of Nova Scotia. Yes, I have taught some English at a Summer Camp in Hong Kong, and stayed in Calgary last summer working at Wycliffe, but in both cases I was only there temporarily. This time, I’m actually living at my own place, paying my own bills and making my own salary. Actually, this is the first time I will have a full-time job for more than 4 months at a time (usually I only have them during summer break). To go further with this, this will be my first full year NOT being a student! I guess these are the reasons that people want me to start keeping them updated on what’s going on. Besides, most of the time, blogs of people in foreign countries are more interesting than local blogs because they get into all kinds of unheard-of-in-our-land situations.

If you want to be with the in crowd and stay in-the-know on this blog, I recommend registering it with your favourite RSS client. If you want to be REALLY cool, then you’ll have to know what RSS is. Well, let me explain:

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndicate. Basically, it informs you of when websites update, rather than expecting you to check every single website in the world every single day, though if you prefer that method I won’t stop you. In order to be informed, you need an RSS client will show you the headline of the update, along with a line or two of explanation and a link to the site, much like getting an e-mail. There are hundreds of RSS clients out there, but here are three simple ways to get set up:

1. Go to Feed My Inbox, and simply type in http://www.jeanofmarc.com and then your e-mail address. After you click on a link in a confirmation e-mail, you will now get an e-mail every 24 hours IF there is an update. If not, then you won’t get an e-mail from them that day.

2. If you use Thunderbird, go to the “File” menu and select “New -> Account”. In the dialog box that pops up, select “RSS News & Blogs” and press the “Next” button. Enter “http://www.jeanofmarc.com”, press the “Next” button, and finally press the “Finish” button. Now you will get RSS feeds in a section of Thunderbird separate from your normal e-mails.

3. Subscribe to www.jeanofmarc.com with Google Reader. This is what I do. Basically, you can subscribe to websites using Google Reader, and rather than get them in your e-mail, there will be one page you can go to to read every website that you subscribe to, and view ONLY the posts you haven’t read yet. I don’t recommend this for my site though, since I will soon have other sections to browse through, and you won’t see those with Google Reader.

Anyhow, I plan to use this website for several things, not just to tell you about what I’m doing. My intentions include:

1. Music: I’ll upload any musical works that I have been involved with, past, present, and future. Well, not really the future, since when it actually gets put there it’ll be the present. Unless I use a time machine…

2. Japanese-Learning Stuff: I’ll be learning the Japanese language, and as such would like to upload some resources that will be useful for myself and anyone else learning the langauge.

3. Cooking: I really like cooking, and so it would be nice to have a section with recipes and such. Nothing fancy, but it’ll include any recipes that I get from people and they don’t mind me publishing it.

Anyway, those are just some ideas. I’m tired of typing, so that’ll do for now.