"Bartender! Another round of O'Douls for me and my friends!"

The first time I ever saw beer I was probably less than five years old, hanging out with my parents and there friends at the bar after skiing during "happy hour".   Social drinking of alcohol was always something my parents and my family were involved in.  To me it just looked like adults having a great time.   Through my years of adolescence, I have noticed that my dad gives up alcohol annually during lent.  This is obviously not his idea, but my mother's way of attempting to lower his cholesterol, while following our Catholic faith.  My dad said it was embarrassing to go to the bar with his "boys" after a hard day of skiing and to watch all his friends order the best ale while he stuck to seltzer.  That is why he began to start drinking non-alcoholic beer during this time of year, so he could still feel like he fit in with his friends.

Now, I could understand where my dad is coming from, because social drinking was something I was always around while growing up, and I never really saw the negative side of alcohol until I got a little older. Were O'Douls created for people like my dad? Or was it for the recovering alcoholic who still craved his beer?

I would have to go with the first example because people who are looking to just get drunk would probably go for something harder than just beer.  Maybe it was created as a transitional drink, so that the man who wasn't six foot five and three hundred pounds like the rest of his friends, could still enjoy their company instead of falling off his barstool.

The reason non alcoholic beer is more appealing to men than women is because when women go out together, they are not normally sipping on malted barley and hops.  In most cases a woman's drink has to be sickeningly sweet, an eye popping shade and topped off with an umbrella. However, for the women out there who do drink beer, it is not even in the same category as men and how they drink beer.  If a woman gave up alcohol for lent, she probably would not be shouting "Bartender! Another round of O'Douls for me and my friends!".

Non-alcoholic beer was certainly not meant for people of my generation either.  This weekend's slew of Frat parties will not be waisting their money on kegs or anything in that matter with the label "non-alcoholic".  The term "social drinking" is not really prevalent in a college student's vocabulary.  Instead, the words "black-out" "belligerent" and "sh*t faced" are more commonly used in describing one's Saturday night.  I think this says something of my generation, and that drinking is no longer viewed as a social event, but a sport.

This can be said about all people in my age group though.  My dad even had told me when he was younger, he wouldn't be caught dead drinking an O'Douls.  So non-alcoholic beer is really about maturity.  Who knows, maybe when I'm forty-eight I'll be drinking one too...

My First Project wsc2

Claudio in love

Firstly, I still find this so funny because Claudio is my father's name, and I also find it coincidental because that is how he claims he "fell in love" with my mom, through his eyes.

So Claudio sees Hero, and falls in love with her on a first glance basis.  I find this to be so superficial and surfaced, but this seems to be the trend of all old plays and even Disney movies.  Think about it, do you think Prince Charming actually cared about what Snow White thought or had to say? No, he just loved her because she was the "fairest of them", all I guess.

Claudio's Hero really had nothing much to say, and basically kept her mouth closed throughout him courting her,  so Claudio must have found a quiet girl desirable.  Well so did Prince Charming (not the same Prince, Walt was just getting lazy with the names).  In sleeping beauty the princess and the prince barely even spoke, I mean the princess was knocked unconscious, for what... was it a hundred years or one thousand?  Either way she was a mute, and he loved her based on looks.

This just goes to show that first impressions are a huge deal to men, so ladies just be easy on the eyes and hold your tongues and you will have your own Claudio very soon.

Phantom Of The Opera- Masquerade

Masquerades...

         I for one have never been a fan of masks.  Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, especially since every little boy dressed up as "Scream" from about 1998 until the mid 2000's, scaring little girls like me.  It was not until one year when my mother dressed me up as cat for Halloween, that I really understood the feeling of wearing a mask.  I felt like I could do or say anything, because I wasn't being myself, and no one could see my face.  I'm not saying I did terrible things, I probably just meowed at fellow trick-or-treaters, but for me that was a mile stone from hanging on my mother's pant leg.

      Masks, and Masquerades allow people to dress up as something that they are not,  and it even gives people confidence to do things they probably would not do if their face was exposed.  In Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" , that is exactly what happens.  Also, while reading that entire act, I couldn't stop thinking about the scene from Andrew Webber's famous play "Phantom of the Opera", where they sing for what feels like twenty minutes about a Masquerade.  In my opinion, it is the best scene of the entire play, and with Halloween being tomorrow, i figured that it is appropriate.

Much Ado About Nothing. Huh?

Since this play was written during Shakespearean times,  I am almost positive that William would not waste his precious time really writing about nothing.  Although, this play really does seem quite simple minded so far, but that is because I am not yet on the downward spiral of the Shakespearean comic curve. Most of the conversations are pretty superficial and surfaced.    At this time there was no "TH" sound, so the word nothing, sounds a lot like noting.  So is it Much Ado About Noting? However, Shakespeare is not a poet of love, there is always something more cynical involved.  So what is he "noting"?

Cold-hearted Beatrice

I.i.121
"I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man tell me he loves me."
This quote carries out one of the many reoccurring themes Shakespeare uses throughout this play.  In this case it is animalistic qualities.  Beatrice finds it so irritating for a man, especially Benedick, to tell her that they love her.  Most women long for those three words, where as Beatrice loathes these very words and finds more comfort in the loud, earsplitting sounds coming from her dog.