A few lists

Right now chili is at the foot of my bed licking my toes. It's 1:35 AM, but it feels like 10:35 PM, so I have no desire to go to sleep. Instead I've been looking over some german and having an iTunes binge.

The first adjectives they teach you in this german course

• Old (alt)
• Working/Employed (berufstatig)
• Divorced (geschieden)
• Good (gut)
• Small (klein)
• Single (ledig)
• New (neu)
• Married (verheiratet)

Things I did on my 5 hour flight home

• Read a terrible teenage girl book that I bought at the airport (it was "Along for the Ride" by Sarah Dessen. I don't know what compelled me except the 'Oh-hey-I'm-in-an-airport-bookstore-and-want-reading-material' impulse)
• Read magazines
• Watched "Sunshine Cleaning", which was not funny but kind of interesting to watch
• Played with my chair. It was like the chairs at the dentist and you could move it with buttons... Mom got us into First Class again. She is beast that way.
• Drank a lot of water and tea
• Got up every hour. Which was approximately five times, seeing as it was a five hour flight...

Songs I just downloaded

• Blue Mind - Alexi Murdoch
• All My Days - Alexi Murdoch
• What Sarah Said - Death Cab for Cutie
• 405 - Death Cab for Cutie
• Elevator Love Letter - Stars [also known as 'the elevator song' to those who have known me recently in an elevator] [Oh dear, not in the biblical sense]
• Brand New Colony - The Postal Service
• The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service
• On the Wing - Owl City
• Swimming in Miami - Owl City
• Captains and Cruise Ships - Owl City

Things I miss about film camp

• The marvelous human beings who I won't bother to name seeing as there are few enough that it would be plausible but many enough that it would be annoying.
• The elevator
• A 13:2 male female ratio
• Being a "bra"
• Filming stuff
• Really lame pranks by the guys
• ... NOT
• Gay tuesdays (sort of)
• Business time!

Things I'm finding interesting right now

• Documentaries
• Pomona College (visited this morning and liked it a lot)
• Insomnia
• The name "Thisbe" and other such Ovidian names and their validity in modern times
• My dog, who has given up on licking my toes and is sitting by the door now. He likes Mom better.
• Long phone conversations that are inexplicably continued although neither party has much specific interest in speaking to the other, just hearing oneself talk, and that these conversations are enjoyable
• Just over a month of home

Love always,
Clara

One more day

Until I'm home. I've been away since the 14th and it was getting old. Although this hotel has those sweet matresses that you can jump on without knocking over your glass of wine. Or whatever.

Today we're touring Pomona and then flying home. It is a hella long flight.
I feel like I can say 'hella' because I'm in California right now. I've earned that right.

I hadn't exactly realized how much I would miss film camp. I do now.

Going home will be great though. Despite two hours of german classes every morning, home will be wonderful. Basically, to anyone who is in the DC area and reading this (and whom I know), CALL ME UP when I get home because I would rather hang out with friends, who I might not see for months, than my family, whom I will be seeing entirely too much of in the near future.

Love always,
Clara

In Palo Alto

And I just took a very long nap in the sun.

I forgot my drugs at camp, so mom gave me one of hers. Bad idea. I am in the most volatile state right now. Worst mood ever comes at the drop of a hat.
Very annoying to be a ticking time bomb. No more of mom's drugs.

So here's something cool: At film camp there was a film festival of sorts for all our videos. Since there wasn't time to show every single one (would have taken over an hour) we all ranked our top three and voted.
And somehow mine was #1.
Which is totally sweet.
Congrats to the rest of the top five- and sorry I couldn't stick around. Mom and I had to roll.

Now we're about to have dinner. I'm starved. Looking forward to it.

Love always,
Clara

Excitement

MY VIDEO IS HERE!

In the wake of Michael Jackson's death, Greg has decided the only appropriate response is to dance badly and grab his crotch more than would allow us to feel comfortable.
Really. It's creepy.
I'll embed the documentary once vimeo gets its act together.

EDIT: HERE

Connected from clara beyer on Vimeo.

Love always,
Clara

The final morning

So last night at like 1:15 AM Nicole and I were totally ready to go to sleep. Like, lights off, eyes closed, not talking.
Then there's a knock at the door.
It's the wonderful and kind Leo (whose real name is... LEONID!) and he wants us to write thank you notes for Sunshine and Tracy and Leila, his fellow staffers. So we think this is a good idea, but it's one in the morning and my only really coherent thought is "blehggugugughhheee?"

So we sit down and write these letters and I draw a really demented sun for sunshine.

Then we go downstairs to give them to Leo so he can do his sneaky business and we're so nuts that he actually asks, "Are you guys drunk or something?"
We weren't, for the record. But you know how I get when I'm tired.

Anyway, we didn't get to sleep until like two thirty. And although I had two cups of coffee this morning (one more than usual) I am a mess. CANT FORM SENTENCES.

It's cool, it's cool.

Love always,
Clara

This is us!

As I said once last summer, "LOOK AT US EXISTING!"
I was having a curiously euphoric moment. And here I am again, for a completely different reason.

Anyway, that's all of us. I know right? Only 15. But we are an awesome fifteen.

Love always,
Clara

What weird timing

There's a kid here, Greg, who loves Michael Jackson. He made his whole video about how Michael Jackson was the king of pop and whatnot. He does the moonwalk at just about every opportunity. He's obsessed in a literal way.

Anyway, is it strangely fitting that Jackson might have died today? We're not sure- some sources say heart attack, some say dead, we'll know for sure probably in like half an hour.

I feel like the fact that it's the last full day of camp, which has been full of Michael Jackson references due to this kid, is really weird. Because camp is *dead* and he's dead. Maybe.

It's an interesting coincidence. That's all I'm saying.

And in the event that he is dead, R.I.P.

Love always,
Clara

Oh the testosterone

At lunch-
David: I'm coming over here. I'm tired of talking about religion
Me: We're talking about vaginas
David: Yes! Now that's my kind of religion!

In the elevator-
Someone: Penis
Someone else: Vagina
Nicole: I'm impressed with the maturity in this bunch.

Also, it has been decided that i have a secret werewolf penis. What? I don't know!

This is a ridiculous place. I won't be able to be half-normal hanging out with my mom tomorrow.
Yikes.

Well, tomorrow I leave filmworld and resume my regularly scheduled insanity. Which right now includes college-searching, hanging out with everyone I can, and packing to move.
Which is really weird to think about, and even weirder to type, seeing as it had to be secret for so long.

Love always,
Clara

ROUGH CUT DUE IN LIKE, AN HOUR

SO MUCH TO DO!
I really haven't the time for this, but here I am.
It's an addiction.

The more I hear myself talk about blogging, in my documentary, the more I want to blog and have things to blog about.

Here's something awkward-
I was doing voiceover work in the hallway, sitting on the floor with a rough script and a camera. I started to deviate from the script because there was really so much more to say than what i had written. And what I was saying was trying to answer the question "Why do I blog?"
So I start joking around with myself (out loud, into the camera) and saying stuff like "Oh, i don't know. Maybe I just like to hear myself talk. Like, here I am sitting alone in a hallway talking to myself. Clearly I enjoy it"
Then the people down the hall realized my presence.
That was awkward.

Love always,
Clara

A moment.

I was kind of tired today.
Also, I like neurology.

Love always,
Clara

Youtube awesomeness

I have never been in a place with a higher concentration of people with extensive knowledge of cool youtube videos.



Imagine how long that took. Stop motion. Must have taken months.
Imagine walking by one day and the wall is one thing and then the next it's different and then you think you're hallucinating. Or I would.

Love always,
Clara

Such hilarity.

Yoon has decided I'm a pervert.
I'm not! I swear.
For the record, he's also decided that Nicole is his daughter. She's three years older than he his, but never mind that.

Today at lunch, he gave her some pretty solid fatherly wisdom.

"Daughter, if you died, I would go to your funeral."
"Daughter, don't marry someone abusive."
"Daughter, if you got divorced 24 times, I would still love you"

It's pretty awesome.

Love always,
Clara

Yoon! And being an alien.

A.k.a. My favorite thirteen year old korean boy ever

He blows my mind. Frequently.

Yoon: You know what would be funny?
Me: What?
Yoon: If you had a boyfriend who was addicted to heroin.

Brendan: What did I have for breakfast?
Me: Pea soup
Brendan: What did I have for lunch?
Me: Pea soup
Brendan: What did I have for dinner?
Me: Pea soup
Brendan: What did I do after dinner?
Me: Pea soup... Oh god.
Yoon: (suggestively) I bet you like pea soup

We were walking by a bunch of homeless people

Yoon: It would be so funny if you came by here at night and catwalked by them. I bet they would grab you.
Me: Yeah... that would be funny...
Yoon: You'd be like "I NEED HELP!" and they be like "Oh, we'll help you..."

He says these things like they're really wonderful.

Also, there's a video that I feel the need to share:



Love always,
Clara

Old youtube videos (OHMYGOD)

At film camp, for my super cool documentary on internet culture, it seemed like a good idea to examine my own role on the internet.
I remembered that I had a brief moment where I was a video blogger. A LEGIT one.

These are from freshman year, between the months of April and June. If you knew me then, or know me now, this kind of makes sense.

My first foray into the world of video blogging:



This one is great specifically for Will's voice. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense:



Back when I had school spirit. Does anyone else remember that kickball game?



And this has the most views. Probably because freaky youtube people like to search "tongue" or something. It got some pretty creepy comments:



I'd kind of forgotten about all of this. The aforementioned creepy comments dissuaded me from continuing. I went into fighter-feminist mode and told the creepers who was boss. You know, not all fifteen year old girls are vulnerable. I was a ninja. A totally scary one.
Anyway, this is a blast from the past for me.

Love always,
Clara

I'm a spaz, by the way.

As if you didn't know.

Last night we were all hanging out on the Berkley quad throwing a frisbee and throwing a football and reading and filming and generally being chill. I was filming mostly because

• it was relevant to my documentary
• I don't do things that require coordination.

So I found myself walking around, getting footage, being in the thick of things without really worrying about being good at sports.
And I'm standing there, minding my own business, filming something or other, and my peripheral vision sees a ball coming toward me (ish)
So my awesome reflexes say "OH MY GOD YOU'RE GOING TO GET HIT! GET DOWN! NOW! DANGER! AAAAHH!"
And I basically throw myself into the grass.

The frisbee landed safely... like, twenty feet away.

Overreaction? Yes.
Awkward? Certainly.

Love always,
Clara

If We Did It

(A short story in the style of OJ Simpson)

There was an epic and awesome prank played last night. I had nothing to do with it. But if I did, it would have been in retaliation to a very silly prank played on Nicole and I involving green tape and "wet floor" signs outside our door.

But we didn't do it.

But if we did, we would have gone to Walgreens last night with Tracy, because when three girls go to Walgreens with ambiguous goals, no one really asks questions.
And at Walgreens we would have bought Nutella, Axe body spray, duct tape, and cling wrap.
We would have come upstairs discreetly in the elevator. Then we would have come downstairs and played guitar hero like the epic beasts that we are.

Then, we would have set our alarm for 3:30 AM.

Upon waking up at 3:30 AM, we would have quietly slipped down the stairs to the guys' hall with our supplies. Then we would have noted which doors contained people we knew.

Then, we would have gotten to work.

We (hypothetically of course) would have duct taped cling wrap to their doorframes, so that when they opened their doors they would have been trapped by a clear layer of plastic. It would have taken like, an hour. I have heard it's really pretty hard to get cling wrap to not cling to itself for long enough to tape it to a door.

Then, we would have smeared nutella on the handle to the door of the bathroom. On both sides.

As a finishing touch, we would have sprayed the Axe all over the hall, so that it smelled like an overzealous 13 year old boy.
(No offense Chris)

But no, we slept soundly through the night. Of course we did. My god, we're not nearly that creative or stealth. Although flattering that you would think so.

Love always,
Clara

We played an intense game of Apples to Apples last night.

Today during what was for me breakfast, I had a great text conversation with Daphna about being a botanist at a steakhouse, drinking tea in a posh manner, and why it's good not to become Bristol Palin.

Now our treatments are being read, so we're chillin.
A treatment, by the way, is a written plan for a documentary or other film. Not like, a script, but more general. It's pretty cool.

Then we're going to San Fransisco. Legit. We've been in Berkley, but now we're going to San Fransisco.
I'm looking forward to it. I've never been there.
I suppose I'm going to interview 'men-on-the-street'. I look forward to this as well. I love talking to strangers.

I mean, I blog. Come on.

Love always,
Clara

Being on Boats

The infamous "I'm on a boat" video has reached a new level of fame here.

I am basically blogging for blogging's sake.

Also, David has a message for Daphna, but I can't post it until I get home. Sorry. It's worth the wait, I swear.

We've been playing several epic games of "what are you doing?", the game in which you do something, and then the next person asks you what you're doing, and then you reply with something else entirely, which is what that next person has to do. And so on.
Highlights:

• "I'm in love with Trevor"
• "I'm trying to do the macerena, but I have severe burn wounds"
• "I'm doing the worm"
• "I am beating a dead cat"
  
• "I am Britney Spears's greatest fan"
• "Greg killed my mother"

This is really fun, but I also can't wait to get home and try to scrape together whomever is in town to chill, before I find myself leaving on a jetplane.

Love always,
Clara

In five minutes...

... I will begin the most INTENSE hour of my life.
Or so Sunshine tells me.

Her name isn't really Sunshine, by the way, but she won't tell us her real name. Apparently we get a prize or something if we guess it. The overexcitable types have been guessing names pretty relentlessly since they found that out.
Oh, boys.

This intense hour will be a period of learning about things like 'logging' and other film-type terms I've never heard of. It's making me very much love my happy little ChangeCam, which I think does all these things for me. Going digital is phenomenal. I'm such a fan.

I am living in a world where a post-breakfast popsicle is not that unusual.

Also, I have created my ideal morning coffee drink- one part vanilla cappuccino, two parts coffee. It's wonderful. I love eating in dining halls.
There are also copious vegetarian/vegan options here. California is sweet.

Anyway, that intense hour is about to start, so my time is limited. I'll keep you posted.

Love always,
Clara

We're back, we're back in san fransisco

That's a line of a Vanessa Carlton song.
I'm currently in San Fransisco. It's sweet.
Film camp is cool in that there are fifteen of us, and my roommate is the only other girl. It's a good thing she's cool or that would be mad awkward.

I have a billion and a half epic documentary ideas. GET READY. I promise to post them here.
My problem in this is that I'm too philosophical. I'm like, "Okay, now I'm going to make a five minute film about the meaning of life. That's not hard, right?"

My parents, because I was flying alone and that's stressful and because my mom does things this way, got me into first class. Pretty sweet.
Also, I made friends with the Australian flight attendant on my way here. Our Real Conversation-
Him: What happened to your iPod (the screen is broken, by the way)
Me: Oh, I dropped my backpack
*small talk*
Him: You know, apple will fix it for sixty dollars if you send it in.
Me: Oh really? Sweet. I should do that.
Him: Although if you're riding first class you can probably just buy a new one. POUND IT!
*we do a terrorist-fist-bump*

I like making friends.

Love always,
Clara