We All Need Saving (Jon McLaughlin)

So tonight our a cappella group sang at the Prepare Speakout; a rape prevention/awareness event. The songs went really well (see the title song for a sample, as well as looking up The Fray's "Look After You" which the all-male Plead the Fifth sang) but, as expected, it was a really intense evening. There's a segment with the lights down where anonymous testimonials from rape victims were read. It was profoundly moving and disturbing all at the same time, and reaffirms my belief that there are some people who just shouldn't be alive. Good thing the Lord is more lenient than I am, I suppose. But yeah: the intensity and somber nature of the event is something I expected...I didn't expect it to feel so draining afterwards.

I sprinted from the Speakout early (right after the testimonials and our group's performance) in order to get across campus to watch this Egyptian film for my Middle East History class. The movie itself was interesting, but at the 9.15pm mark, I was more than done. What with quintet at 3, warm-up for the Speakout at 5, the Speakout itself at 6, and then straight to the film at 7, I'd been going practically non-stop for 6 hours at that point. The fact that I'd been in class and at the gym for the 3 hours before that didn't help, I'm sure, but then the movie was on...and between one character getting molested by her boss in the store room, another being persuaded against his better judgment to enter into a homosexual extra-marital affair (and then later raping his wife), and a third character getting raped in prison after being arrested for leading a fundamentalist protest, I've just been surrounded by ugliness tonight. Ew.

Luckily, I came back to the room, and my roommate and our friend were watching "An American in Paris" with the incomparable Gene Kelly. He's just so clean cut and adorable - and a phenomenal dancer! I was just on time for the long 20-minute dance interlude at the end of the movie right before he gets the girl. This of course inspired an impromptu ballet class in our living room. Old movies are the best.