Inside the KS Acting Studio - Paypal Accepted

Welcome dear friends and sit yourself down in a nice comfy folding metal chair. Today is the first and only class in the course you recently signed up for through our studios ....."Pouting your way through film : a study of the acting style of Kristen Stewart

Normally, I'd say grab a drink and snack but in all reality- "not eating" is key and this won't take very long.

Throughout the early 2000's primarily the world began to see the styling of an acting genius named Kristen Stewart. From her uncredited role as "ring toss girl" in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, to her roles in Catch That Kid, Zathura, or What Just Happened? she took Hollywood by storm with the subtlety and mystery in her acting. "Was she just acting?" some experts would question as they watched her films. Ohhhh was she.

As a privileged child with a screenwriter mother and a producer father you would think she had been exposed to training.

As these quotes demonstrate, she has put much of herself into her characters.

On the subject of working in smaller indie movies she had this thought "It's your movie and you can do anything you want, and nobody's going to have anything to say." Indeed, you do leave them speechless with your talent my dear.

"Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it's not." With this quote K shows how her acting both demonstrates that SHE is NOT the character but at the same time.....who IS the character?? Who IS anyone really. She then said "You should have the opportunity to be more than one person with different people - because you have that within you" Inner potential for multiple personalities......or for acting all the time with everyone- hard to tell which prospect I find more pleasant.

"I don't want to make movies for kids, and I don't want to make movies for adults either." The wise critic asks herself- are Kristen's movies really FOR anyone?

She has been pursued by paparazzi and asked many questions but in her view"Really, I'm incredibly disjointed and not candid. Just in general, my thoughts tend to come out in little spurts that don't necessarily connect." I just knew some of her lines were meant to be in a stream of consciousness.

And for those of you who thought the acting was joy enough.....she has plans to conquer the world with her writing. "I mean, I definitely will always do what I've been doing. I've also started taking a lot of pictures, and they help the writing. The pictures help the writing. I mean, I want to make books. I want to take pictures and then write all over the pictures. And then I don't have to say a complete story, because I have the picture, and I have just a word." Apparently these will be children's books or coffee table graffiti books? Maybe a new genre entirely.

Ahh the gems of knowledge we have learned from our esteemed K. Stewart. But you all came her not just to learn the theory but the practice of Kristen.

Let us begin.

1. Moisturize the lips. Carmex, vaseline, lip smackers...it matters not which one. But they need to be in pouting shape. No peelies or crackies!

2. Those pearly whites must be in evidence. I mean HUGE. If you cannot see the front teeth at all times, from any camera angle how will you emote??? No one wants to see tears or forehead crinkles....what the eye is drawn to in any emotional scene is the slight glare off the front teeth and how you use your lips to display them.

3. Now you must choose how to emphasize the lip/tooth connection. You may bite the lip at center to be coy or torn apart, bite to one side to show confusion or shyness. You may pull the full lower lip up to partially cover the teeth while mouth still slightly gapes open to annoyance.

4. If there is to be a kissing scene you shall lick your lips at the approach and then bite them. Even if this is an unwanted kiss, you will still show how pouty and inviting and moist your lips are.

5. These rules also apply to child actors. It is never too early to start the lip biting.

6. NEVER smile. You lose all credibility as an actor. No character in any movie is truly happy anyways. If you smile it looks like you're too connected to the part and not busy being half personal and half distant.

7. Having sloppy hair cut to fall over your eyes is essential. You can bite your lip all you want but if it is not followed by a toss of the locks, what have you really expressed?

8. Don't open you eyes too wide. Having a deadened stare or even better....a vacant one shows depth and history.

9. The tone of your voice should be deep and low. If the amount of emotion you need to display calls for loud shouting and or screaming which will fall into a womanly or girly tone....then only be as loud as you can in a low tone. No valley girl or breathless sighs. Of course if the director absolutely forces you to scream...say if you're having a bad dream that seems like an acid trip where your voice comes out of Nearly Headless Ed's head....then you can scream but you must follow it up with some manly grunts of reassurance that you're fine back in the low tones again. If a word is meant to be shouted, you can emote it in a lower tone successfully by repeating it many times over and over. Instead of NOOOOOO!!!! deeply intone No No No and shake your locks a few times for emphasis. Then say No No No again. More lock shaking. And repeat until someone says cut. The police have told me this is super effective and what most women do when they need to fight off attackers. A low no is the way to go. Catchy right?

10. I can't emphasize to you enough how tasty your lips are and how much you can't stop chewing on them.

I hope you have learned today class and opened your minds. Maybe you too can play Joan Jett or Bella Swan, or any one of various famous 13 yr old emo boys with the skills you have learned today. Your range is as unlimited as your talent.

Best Wishes.

The Staff of the KS Acting Studio

PS- Don't forget to take a poster of the star herself for inspiration.

The Tale of E the Gourmet

E was a good cook. This was a fact she knew like breathing in or breathing out. Not to be a conceited pain about it, but it is important to the telling of today's tale. E came from a family of good cooks who were constantly asked to bring labor intensive favorites to people's parties or to host dinner for holidays. E also learned very early on that she would make using the word "NO" an important part of her vocab so as not to get stuck making yummy treats on call for people all the time. She only wanted to cook for fun.

All this being said, E really loved to try new dishes. As a single girl she made desserts to take to events a lot, but didn't have much opportunity for entrees as she was normally cooking for herself(and no, I'm not crying..I'm just chopping onions to make a lasagna....for one)

E's dad's birthday was coming up(we shall call him Cheney). Cheney expressed no birthday present desires. NONE. She had already bought him every conceivable type of clothing this past year and even resorted to a theme for father's day of As-Seen-On-TV due to the options drying up. E suggested shopping at Kohl's. Cheney didn't need more clothes. No gun accessories. No garage gadgets or tools. E bought his some exotic soda and mustard but was stumped and needing something to up the ante and give something better than condiments and a six-pack.

For an extended length of time E had been telling Cheney to go and eat at Blue Mesa and try a delicious corn based dish. Cheney rarely ate out beyond the staples surrounding the family casa and had not yet ventured to try her suggestion. Suddenly E had a brilliant idea! What if there was a restaurant cheater website with Blue Mesa dishes??? She could bring Blue Mesa to Cheney and rock his palate with something yummy and new!

E quickly got onto the interweb and found that Blue Mesa itself had a website with recipes of favorites. E saw a personal fave- the Adobe Pie! YUMMM!! She found a few other websites with "stolen" Blue Mesa recipes and they all seemed to have quite different ingredients but that did not phase E, she would go for the difficult and authentic original.

After a trip to Central Market, and many stops to buy the "Standard" size of ramekin which apparently is NOT standard, E began her prep. She cooked chicken and mixed it with a green chile pesto and pico and prepared to use it to stuff her pies the next day.

Late Sunday afternoon E began her adventure with the main ingredient. Masa. A spanish corn flour made of corn kernels soaked in lime juice and then ground up.

The masa was mixed into a lovely dough with butter and baking soda salt and chicken stock. E used the masa to line the ramekins and then filled them and layered more masa on top. The ramekins looked pretty but E looked at the masa and thought to herself....I wonder how this becomes the lovely fluffy corn pie I remember from the restaurant. Little did she know.......

At the dramatic unveiling of the ramekins from their hot water bath, the hopes were high and the smell was delicious. The ramekins were flipped out onto plates and the lovely golden corn pies were ready to eat. E picked up her fork and dug in.

Cough Cough. BIG DRINK OF WATER. Wow!! Those corn pies were a little dry! And not in ANY way like the corn pie they served at the restaurant. E scooped a little sour cream onto her pie. Took another bite.

Chew Chew. Cough. Blech! It's like eating straight cornmeal! Somehow Blue Mesa had created a recipe that rivaled the feeling of shredded wheat stuck in your gullet. Score! And the corn powder-ey-ness was so overwhelming that it covered up the taste of the super yummy chicken and pesto. Grrrrrrr!

E's parents assured her it was delicious, but both left 90% of the corn on their plates. Riiiiight.

E looked at the recipe and she had done everything correctly. Blue Mesa had seriously sabotaged their own recipe to make sure no one could cook it the same. JERKS!!! On the recipe stealer websites crisco and cream and other delightfully bad for you ingredients were included in the corn masa dough. I wonder how it disappeared off of Blue Mesa's recipe?? Must be those magical internet recipe fairies that ruin the allrecipes and chefs.com recipes. OH WAIT. Those all turn out.

E vowed then and there that she would write about what dirty special event ruining rat-bastards the Blue Mesa website people are and warn all others that their recipes are CRAP.


E was just overjoyed that she had been able to talk up a recipe for a year and then serve Cheney a mouthful of dry cornflour. What a perfect birthday gift. Thank you Blue Mesa for making it possible.

The only good thing about the meal was that even the small amount of corn flour you couldn't avoid eating with the chicken filled you up for HOURS ON END. Maybe this recipe has diet potential for both an easy fast fill up and turning you off of food for life.

Delightful.

Guten Tag

I looked at my google analytics today and saw that I have a bunch of readers in Germany. Hrm. I don't know anyone in Germany so I am wondering if they speak German and this blog translates or if it's people who speak English or if it's military linked to Rammstein or something. If this is you please comment cause I'm fascinated.

I think I'm paranoid

Today's post my bloggy friends is about going "lady commando" aka bra-less. I know what you are all thinking....Yay! Erica's going to write a blog on boobs!

Let the fun commence. I have been working on putting in a tile backsplash in my kitchen. After training at work yesterday I put on my jammies and began the gross and horrible task of grouting the tile. It was even more awful than I could have imagined. I was about a third of the way through when I realized I would probably need another container of grout. It was 8:15 pm. I would need to make a quick run to Home Depot before they closed.

Here is where the critical decision was made. I was in jammies that were basically sweatpants and a tee. Why change? Yes I had taken off the bra for comfort but why go to the hassle of putting it back on just for home depot? I mean I would be in there 5 minutes max. And I was thinking ahead. I would put on a jacket to further cover up. No prob.

So I headed out with my fleece encased girls and walked in with a box of extra tile to return in my arms. The man at the return desk declined to help me and made me go to the service desk. Jerk. So I returned my tile and went and got more grout. As I walked down the main stretch to self-checkout suddenly JERK is back and in a very artificially cheery voice he asks how he can help me.

Waaaaaait. Weren't you the jerk who refused to help me? Suddenly all the paranoid thinking begins.....OH CRAP I had a box in front of me before. Is he suddenly being helpful because the has eyes with fleece-removing tractor beam vision? Was I walking with too much.....jiggle for my jacket to disguise?

In all likelihood the Jerk saw nothing but going lady commando made me so paranoid I was taught the valuable lesson to never do so again unless I wear a sumo suit or something.

Being lazy was just not worth the mental torture. I am just not a girl who was meant to be "free" .