Locking the Gates

Somehow, the end of the semester snuck up on us, and with the end of the semester comes the end of After The Gates.

If you’d like, you can visit us at our personal blogs:

Robyn: QUEUED PAPER

Juli:  PRAGUE BLAGUE

-it’s been fun!

xoxo

Wednesday for Halloween

…and you, Miss Robyn?

So This is What a Birthday Looks Like

i usually hate birthdays, and originally wanted a goth party extravaganza.  but the room was too small for such an affair, and so i settled for dinner at The Red House.  I made everyone wear black!

half the dinner table

the other half (renegades!)

some gifts (RIP)

post dinner dancing.  i am twenty-one!

Happy Birthday Juli!

Happy 21st birthday, darlin’, this song is for you:

Head of the Charles

This past weekend was The Head of the Charles Regatta at Harvard.  Annually people gather to walk along the riverbank, watch the boats move languidly along the water.  Everyone is dressed in jeans, tan jackets, wrapped in scarves, looking like an LLBean catalog.  There is an unusually high proportion of tall, good-looking men with steel jaws and fair hair.  I attribute this to New England’s staggering population of ex-rowers.

The weather was beautiful – crisp, clean – autumn to the fullest!  My best friend Lisette (H ‘08, TFA ‘10) came up from Miami to spend the weekend.  We purchased disposable cameras and snapped up the day.

October in New England is by far the most beautiful time of the year.  But, like this past weekend, as with anything so perfect (falling in love, a blazing sunset, a first kiss) – it passes astonishingly quickly.  Just as it reaches its fullest, most brilliant height, it is gone!

The saddest sign I ever saw

In downtown Manhattan, last weekend:

Autumn with Thoreau

Spent yesterday afternoon rambling in the library. Stumbled upon Thoreau’s complied seasonal diaries. I’ve decided to spend Autumn with him, in an attempt to value my day to day life more, and not stress about the senior job hunt.

Oct. 15, 1858. If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones – uniformly deep, dark scarlet – will be the scarlet oaks. The next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon?), are the white oaks. Then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green, and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak.

Oct. 15, 1859. The chickadees sing as if at home. Theirs is an honest, heartfelt melody. Shall not the voice of man express as much content as the note of a bird?

This semester I *have* to make it out to Walden Pond.

Spotted: Columbia Business School Vending Machines

“Defend Your Dollar Specials” – BSchool is subsidizing vending machine snacks because, with the shit economy and financial crisis, well, none of us can really afford that lemon Snapple.

This is so depressing; It’s vending machine welfare.

xo, Robyn

DongWatch 2008

Welcome to Celebrity DongWatch 2008, where we at After The Gates give you the latest on the longest, er, where we talk about peen.

Just kidding.  Maybe.

So I procured a Columbia student seat (thru CUArts) to see Equus (the play starring an oft-naked Daniel Radcliffe) last week, and I have to admit, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to see…it.  Which would be pretty damn disappointing, if you ask me.  Imagine being in the same room as Harry Potter and his death stick and having a view of the back of some poor schmo’s head instead of, well, a different type of head.

But I was pleasantly surprised.  The student seats (center mezzanine) weren’t bad at all.  (They also had “on stage seating” which turned out to be those weird raised U-shaped things, nothing like the on stage seats at Spring Awakening.)  I snapped a quick picture on my camera phone before the usher accused me of tomfoolery and I had to pretend that I was Dutch and had no idea what was going on.

The view from the Columbia student seats in the center mezzanine (I was next to a bunch of CU students who also thought the seats rocked)

So my verdict?  The play is AWESOME, Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths are tremendous (in their roles, you pervs, although Griffiths is not the smallest dude on the planet), and if you’re wondering whether to shell out $100+ for orchestra seating or else suffer the $30ish student seats, opt for the student seats.  The view isn’t bad at all.

Running Away from School, Falling Madly in Love

This past Saturday evening I got an email confirming that I’d be on the list to see a show called The Last Goodbye in New York on Monday night, a reading of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set to Jeff Buckley’s music.  What did this actually mean?  I had no idea.  But after so many years of listening to the long-deceased JB, I jumped at the opportunity to see his music played live in any capacity.  Now, if you don’t know who Jeff Buckley is, stop reading right now, RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND, and go listen to him.

…did you listen?

Sure, I thought to myself, ‘Juli, you’ve got class on Monday and Tuesday; it’s senior year, you can’t just go gallivanting into the city whenever you please.’  But then somehow I had bought a round-trip bus ticket to New York, was rushing to catch the Red line to South Station, my weekend bag unzipped and my jacket falling off my shoulders, and the next minute was stepping out into the city.  Eh, classes could wait.  That lunch date – canceled.  This was going to be the epitome of everything I have ever passionately loved in my little life – Shakespeare, music, Jeff Buckley!

what a cutie.

Monday night rolled around and I took my seat at the theater.  The crowd was older – mostly men and women in their mid thirties, dressed in that brand of I’m-chic-because-I’m-poor that you might expect to find in ex-alt-grunge music lovers from the nineties.  The musicians on stage were noticeably nervous.  Hell, I was nervous for them too.  You know, cover bands always seem like a good idea.  But in reality they are always quite disappointing and depressing.  How can you really expect another human being to perform like Freddy Mercury, Robert Plant, Jeff Buckley?

The lights dimmed and the show began.  I won’t go into too much detail.  But suffice it to say that the show was…AMAZING (aside from the fact that I sprained my ankle during intermission).  It initially took some getting used to.  The performance was more musical-like than I had expected.  Actors would trade off, breaking dialogue to go up to the mic, sing a fitting JB song with the band (Forget Her, when Romeo is in love with Rosaline, Eternal Life, when Mercutio is dying, or Hallelujah when the townspeople find the dead lovers at the end), and then they would continue with their dialogue.  It was strange to hear songs that I’d known and loved for so long being sung by Shakespearean characters, used for Shakespeare’s agenda.  But the new format didn’t take any of the power away from his music.  Instead it shed light on how the two different art forms informed one another.  Jeff Buckley is the epitome of a Shakespearean character – tragically romantic, absurdly existential.  And Shakespeare’s play was given an altogether new, dark, and grungy dimension.  It was sort of like the effect you see with long-term couples: they tend to become more like one another, she taking on his habit of saying ‘dude,’ he acquiring her tendency to pause before answering questions.  Star-crossing lovers!

who wouldn’t want to look at picture upon picture of JB?

Overall, the actors were convincing and multi-talented; the musicians were for the most part spot-on.  However, Juliet must go, as she looked and acted neither young, feminine, or beautiful (all of which Juliet must be).  Romeo, on the other hand, was purrrrfect.  The boy who played Romeo was simply beyond anything in my wildest imagination.  He looked JUST LIKE JEFF BUCKLEY.  He sang JUST LIKE JEFF BUCKLEY.  I do not exaggerate when I say, HE IS THE LIVING REINCARNATION OF JEFF BUCKLEY (with curlier hair).  And I’m smitten.

One more performance tonight.  Yo if you’re in New York City, go see it at The Wild Project on 3rd St. between Avenue A and Ave. B.