Live Entertainment Appreciation, Thursday, Period 5

[furnaceface]

"Not all live entertainment is a spectator event," Jonothon said, giving his shoulders a shrug as he waited for the portal on the Causeway this week. "Though it's usually in a large part about spectacle, certainly. After all, it's hard to enjoy something that has difficulty catching your interest in the first place. That's why things like carnivals and fairs are so popular. There's so much going on, with lights and music and rides and contests and so on, that it's almost impossible not to feel engaged. There's generally a trade-off with that sort of thing, of course. You might have the time of your life, but queues are often long, and ride and game tickets are anything but cheap. If you're dealing with carnies and hoping you'll win a prize… best of luck. Their job is to make money out of you and lower the odds that you'll win that giant… half panda… half duck… plush… thing that you're aiming to get while throwing the ball at the milk bottles."

Jono was not exactly a carnival person.

"I'll be taking you to a carnival today, so that you can experience one for yourselves," he added as the portal appeared behind him. "The price of admission, plus all of your rides and games are covered for the afternoon, and we even get to fast-track you to the front of the lines since we've only really got the duration of class to enjoy ourselves. With that in mind, we'll all reconvene at the same place the portal dropped us off in an hour. Try to stay with a partner while you explore, and do stay out of trouble, hm?"

And with that, he waved everyone through the portal before he followed them through, himself.

And stopped. And blinked up at the large black mouse in the red shorts that was casually wandering by. And up again at the buck-toothed dog that wandered along shortly after.

"... Goofy?" Well, then. "Er. Emergency new class topic, then. We're not quite at a carnival, but an amusement park is nearly the same thing, only permanent. Enjoy Disneyland. Please don't steal bits of the park to bring back to the island with you. If anybody needs me, I'll be in Adventureland, appreciating the quality animatronics in the Tiki Room. If you get lost, ask a princess or a large anthropomorphic animal for directions back here to Sleeping Beauty's Castle."

Jonothon had a certain fondness for this place. He might even be persuaded to book an extra portal back to the island, for anybody who wanted to stay a little later.

[Open!]

Iron Chef Club, Thursday Afternoon (after classes), Cooking Classroom

[3girls-1core.livejournal.com]

Hopefully everyone in the club would appreciate the act of will it had taken for Zhari to come back from Disney on time, rather than taking the late portal back. Now Sholeh was sad and Zee wasn't speaking to her, but Zhari was ignoring them and even trying to grin as she stood up in front of everyone.

"Hi, I'm Zhari and welcome to the Iron Chef Club. I heard about the show and thought it sounded pretty fun, and I really like cooking and eating, so, uhh, here we are."

Zhari wasn't much for public speaking.

"Every week, our advisor, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, will tell us what the secret ingredient of the day is, and then we have to figure out what to make with it. Then we can team up--or not, I guess, whichever works for you--and make a dish that features the secret ingredient. Every week, we'll be choosing a different type of dish, like dessert, or breakfast, or soup, and your dish has to fit in with that, too. And at the end of the club, we'll share our dishes and maybe pick a winner. Or just sample neat stuff, you know?"

Look, there was food and they'd get to cook it and eat it. Zhari wasn't sure what else was necessary, here.

"Anyone have questions?" Sholeh prodded her. "Oh, right! Today's special ingredient is artichoke. And, for our first meeting, no dish theme, so make whatever artichoke dish you want."

[Open to everyone, including folks who didn't get a chance to sign up]

Current Affairs [Tuesday, September 26, 2013]

[professor-lyman.livejournal.com]

"Right," Josh said from his spot at his desk. "This week we're going to talk aimlessly without a good goddamn reason. We're going to call it 'Cruzing' in honor of Texas Senator Ted Cruz who talked for 21 straight hours on the floor of the Senate literally to listen to the sound of his own voice. He wasn't filibustering. He ended up voting for the procedure he was allegedly trying to delay. But we did get to hear him talk about Ashton Kutcher and read 'Green Eggs and Ham' so that was time completely wasted."

He ran his hands through his hair for what was clearly not the first time today. "Okay. Let me explain a little bit about what was going on. The Republicans hate the Affordable Health Care act, or as they call it, 'Obamacare' because everything with his name in it is clearly evil to their base. They hate it so much that they have voted 41 times in the House of Representatives to overturn it. They campaigned against it during the last presidential election. If you stand next to one and make eye contact for longer than ten seconds, they'll probably start ranting about it. Tough toenails, cupcakes, it passed, it was signed into law and it was upheld by the Supreme Court. Rational people would have moved the hell on, but this is the Republican Party and they stopped being rational back in the '90s."

He took a breath. "Right. So a good portion of the ACA rolls out next week with the new fiscal year in a non-election year because Democrats aren't idiots. They want the kinks to work out before next November when they're up in the midterms. The House, using the mature level we normally only find in kindergartners, passed a bill last week that would only refinance the entire government for the next fiscal year if we also defunded Obamacare. The Senate, being populated by grown ups, will never pass this version of the budget, which brings us to Cruz. He talked for 21 hours and 19 minutes in an effort to delay the vote on the Senate version of the budget bill, which includes the funding for the health care bill. Ironically, if you're into that sort of thing, even if they do shut down the goverment on Monday the health care stuff will roll out because it's not linked to the discretionary spending of the goverment--it's part of Medicare."

Josh glanced at the teal deer pushing their noses against the classroom window. He had been talking a while. Oops. "So Cruz talked for 21 hours, then voted in favor of the cloture--along with every other Senator--to bring the bill up for a final vote. So he affected nothing other than appeasing his own, clearly gargantuon ego, and comparing the members of his own party to Nazi-appeasing Brits for not joining him in a doomed and pointless exercise. So he made a lot of friends.

"Today, you're going to stand up and babble on as long as you can until a classmate interrupts you with a question or a recipe or whatever. The rules of the Senate fillabuster are pretty easy: you have to keep standing and you have to keep talking unless a colleague comes to help you out with a question. You can't sit down then, either, but you can get a glass of water. You also can't leave the room for any reason."

He sat down. "Okay then. Fillibuster away!"

Cheerleading, The Gym, after classes

[craftyladyparts.livejournal.com]

There were a whole lot of pom-poms in the gym today and with good reason! Some gremlins had gotten into the cheerleader equipment locker and started using the poms as wigs. They had been shooed out and the poms had been washed before the start of the cheer meeting, although they might still be slightly wet.

"Hi, everyone," Jessica said. She was already in her cheer uniform because why not, it was meeting time. "Welcome to cheerleading. Hopefully you've already signed up or you're going to sign up. Because if you're just here to watch, one, that's creepy, and two, it's the first meeting. Come on."

"Perhaps they do not realize how poor their decisions must be to lead them to this," Loki added philosophically. As one does. "Never mind that. We wish you luck in your auditions and to let you know that, truthfully, there is little you can do wrong to be rejected from the squad."

It was true.

"And we are always in need of plucky up and comers should we finally make it to regionals!"

"Maybe one day we'll even know what regionals are," Jessica said, rolling her eyes.

"I gather they are a mystical thing that must never be attained." Thanks, Loki. Thanks.