SomewhereInTheBetween's Xanga

A Personal Credo.

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:28:07 GMT

I'm in a class at school where we do a bunch of random tasks that are considered essential for high functioning students. In essence, the class is a title; it makes me a "gifted" student. A student with a GIEP. Usually I do whatever task we're given without a hesitation, until today when I heard the prompt and did a double take. The task was simple: "write your own personal credo in the style of 'All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.'" I began with, "Just live." Then there was some elaborating jargon, discussing about how "life is the greatest gift" and that "we are our accomplishments." I got about halfway down the page before I snuck a peek at my neighbor's paper.

"Never fuck a ho with herpes." I was polite enough not to ask if it was a personal credo from experience or if it was just another "All I Need To Know I Learned From MTV." At that point, I returned to my paper and looked at it as if I had been drawing stars and pretty rainbows and I took the piece of paper and began to furiously scribble out everything, until the words were illegible. When it time to hand it in, I approached my teacher's desk and thrust the paper right in his face. He sighed with a disapproving look.

"You have until midnight. And that means a clean, typed, thoughtful copy." I scampered to lunch and at my table inspiration hit me. Actually, a low-flying sandwich hit me to the cheers of "L-O-L ... YOU GOT TOTALLY PWN3D, DUDE. LAWL LAWL LAWL." Later that night, I gave my last minute piece a name:

“All I Need To Know I Learned From The Internet.”

-In life, there are Macs and PCs.

-Everything you need to know is out there, most of it is impossible to find, or on Wikipedia.

-If you can imagine it, there is probably fetish porn dealing with it.

-The Chinese government is censoring you.

-Whatever you say will be misquoted and then used to offend others.

-File sharing is fun until somebody gets a virus.

-Your equipment may not be compatible.

-There are computers harder, better, faster, stronger and that have more RAM than you.

-It’s always a good time to upgrade.

-The next generation makes you obsolete.

-There is no god. Only Al Gore.

-Someone out there is wrong, and when you stop complaining, they will keep being wrong.

-It’s ok to steal, as long as the RIAA doesn’t catch you.

-Just because you are “1337” does not mean you are cool.

-No one reads your shitty blog.

-Politics can only lead to hate mail.

-Do not talk about 4chan.

-DO NOT TALK ABOUT 4CHAN!

-You have just lost the game.

-In the end, your life amounts to a 32-bit ISP.

-Some errors are fatal.

-All your base are belonging to us.

-You’re only as good as the people using you.

-Watch your cookies.

-The public domain lives!

-Having a 3.5-inch floppy is considered a bad thing.

-Spam is just another facet of life.

-Everyone is a little bit racist.

-Facebooking is a synonym for stalking.

-Love is one part eloquence, one part correspondence, and two parts profile picture.

-Whatever the idea is, someone has already thought of it.

-The world is a series of tubes, located in gray corrugated steel buildings.

-The speed at which you connect is everything.

-If it’s unprotected and there to be accessed, it should be considered free.

-Just torrent it.

-Your Asian counterpart will destroy you.

All suggestions are welcome. (Despite my essay already being sent!)

Edit... I wrote this, and then forgot to un-private it. Haha.

God Is Powered By Irony.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:56:28 GMT

It was Good Friday. I had been composing music for some time that afternoon, probably for a fair four hours or so, when at three o'clock I decided it was time to consume a late lunch. My current song had reached a snag and there was no way around the musical gridlock. I came to the conclusion I would feel better after a plate full of leftovers and I left my hovel in the basement towards the kitchen upstairs. I had hardly reached the kitchen when my father walked in and told me to fetch my brother. It was obvious that both of us had done something wrong to offend him and now our consequence was a lecture. Two minutes later when my father had us both standing before him, he began his speech, "You'd better sit down." Neither my brother nor I made any motion towards the couch. We knew this routine... never recede, never surrender. But there was something different, "Please," his voice was quiet now, "Please, sit for me." Nothing. We stood our ground and met his stare, which in that instant began to melt away into sorrow.

"Chuck's dead." My father choked out as he stumbled forward into us and began to cry. Shane and I had caught him awkwardly, and as we held him there it began to dawn on us what the news really meant. Our grandfather was deceased, gone, and dead. He would not be taking us on boat rides in the Chesapeake; he would not be getting plastered at our holiday party; he was not human anymore. My grandfather was now a corpse. And as we supported my father, whose grief was now falling in droplets upon our faces, I restrained my urge to cry with him.

After we had calmed my father down, I realized I didn't want to be home when my mother arrived. She would probably be worse stupor, Chuck being her father, and I couldn't bear to see her in as much pain as my father was going through. He was now taking up his spot on the couch, and went to snatch my coat so I could escape to the local park to walk of my elegy of doubt. I opened the door into the garage, and came face to face with my mother.

My mother doesn't cry. She walked into the house, past me, through me, and placed her gym bag on the counter. The door where she entered was still hanging open, and I stood there against the cold, unable to move. My father couldn't find the words to address her. I could hear his befuddled thinking from the other room, and my mother, who, for the first time in my eighteen years of existence, broke down. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, in that clichéd way where, suddenly there was nowhere to go. It was overcast outside, and I could see it on the other side of the garage. I wouldn't want to die on an overcast day.

My grandfather died in Florida. That morning, he and my grandmother went to the Tampa airport to pick up my cousin and uncle. The airport was ninety away. He drove and picked them up and drove them back to his house. There was a good three hours when he could've just had a heart attack at the wheel. He didn't. They got back to the house, changed into their bathing suits and went to the beach, my grandparents, my uncle and my cousin. They drove to the beach and began to set up shop... towels, blankets, sunscreen, and my grandfather got a big beach umbrella from the car. He slammed it into the ground, and just stood there for a moment, closed his eyes, and fell backwards into the sand... dead.

Now that Easter is over, the Funeral is tomorrow. I won't be around until Saturday because my precious computer and I will be parted for the duration. I don't know what to think of funeral. I didn't really know him that well. I mean, it's sad, but I'm sure he's a better place. Or a reasonably priced morgue. My mother hasn't cried since Easter morning. She's doing better, trying to look on the bright side. My family cancelled its Easter Luncheon, but the good news is for the next week I'll be consuming parts of an eleven-pound ham we didn't cook.

News keeps trickling in. Odd coincidences, some so unexplainable. Chuck was a damn good Catholic. Devout, if you will. He died on Good Friday. Right next to where they set up on the beach was a minister and his wife, who later showed up at the hospital with flowers. A teacher, who was evidently on the beach at the moment this all occurred, came to comfort my twelve-year-old cousin. Chuck didn't die at the wheel, other the entire family would've died. When he was declared dead at the hospital, there was a priest already there, and was going to a sermon at the hospital, but instead gave Chuck the last rites. The entire community where my grandmother lives in Florida decided to have a massive wake for him.

The most ironic part was that since my mother was six, Chuck had been telling his family that one day he would, "just up and die... right on the beach... of a heart attack." Fifty years after first making that remark, he made it come true. And against all that shock, the crying, the confusion, the drinking...

He gave us fair warning.

This Was Something.

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:50:28 GMT

It has been long Easter weekend.

I'll explain later, but I'm finished the movie score. Here is my favorite track:

An Instrument Of Divine Justice.

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:29:30 GMT

When I was a little kid, younger than I am now, I had always dreamed of being older and what special abilities it would bring. I could see myself driving and voting and holding a job. It was a great little fantasy world that seemed just beyond the horizon. "Someday...” I thought. "Someday, I'll have that privilege."

Surely enough, that day came and I was stuck with a part time job that paid minimum wage; most of which went to auto insurance payments and gas money. What a lovely existence, right? I mean, where was the fantasy or being able to drive around, unhindered by the lives of my parents? Now I can come home and complain about traffic. I thought my parents would give me a little more freedom to do what I wanted. Nothing! What a life, right? I just wanted a moment where I could appreciate not being twelve.

Today, that moment occurred.

I was out wasting gas on my way to my girlfriend's house when I decided to take a back road way through a residential section. The speed limit read thirty, so I decided to stay at a clean thirty-five and not get arrested. You could say that by this time, I was "cruising." I was taking my time, playing music, and just enjoying the experience of not walking. And as I turned down a long stretch of road I saw a line of three children, twelve years old or so. And their appearance shocked me.

The boy on the left was rotund and sported three nose rings. He wore eyeliner, and looked like he had just rolled out of bed five minutes prior to our encounter. He wore black cargo pants that were dragging on the ground over the tops of his shoes, and a gray sweatshirt six sizes too large.

The other two to his right were holding hands, a girl and a guy respectively. Both of them sported jet-black hair and dreadlocks, if you'd even call them dreadlocks. The girl was sporting a shirt that was black spotted with little white hearts and with a neckline plunging enough that any reasonable parent would've flipped shit. She also wore a pair of jeans that appeared to have been mauled by a bear. Her face looked as if it had been stretched and flattened with a rolling pin and there was enough mascara in her eyes to make them look like big sunken holes. Her boyfriend had the same pants as the other boy, except he was skinny and the pants were falling down, now to around mid-thigh. His one arm had a tattoo that looked like it had been drawn on with a sharpie marker, and his shirt was black with the phrase "It would be better if you stopped talking."

All three appeared to be obviously disgruntled middle-schoolers, and at that moment it dawned on me that I had to perform God's will.

I slowed down to about ten miles mph and let the car coast while I fixed the stereo on the dashboard just right. Within a few moments I had the bass, treble, and midrange set to max and my iPod set to play at the push of the button. Nearly there, I let all of my windows roll down. I was close.... closer... and suddenly in hearing range.

The strains of Jack Johnson's "Banana Pancakes" erupted from my '96 Jeep and brought all the attention that was focused on the middle-schoolers' "image" to my car and it's lovely, lovely bass. All three turned and stared, amplified by their hideous make-up and the scowls on their faces. Obviously, no one had informed them the youniverse revolves around me, not them. And it felt so good. I had the car, I had the iPod, and it was a quaint lesson in reality.

It also made a great story to tell my girlfriend.

But this notwithstanding, I felt like a real jerk later, despite Jack Johnson being one of my preferred artists I drive to. All I did was exercise my power over people smaller and more underprivileged than me. I know if I were a punk kid twelve year old walking through the rich side of town with my punk twelve-year-old girlfriend, I'd certainly be pissed and offended that the world doesn't revolve around me. It probably would've ruined my whole day. Mayhap I would've shouted to the asshole, "This is why we can't have good people in the world!" ...Actually, my apparent punkness would've probably translated it to, "Fuck off, dude!"

Afterwards, I closed up the windows and returned my stereo to a tolerable decibel. I now understand why people do bad things. Morally it feels wrong, but in the grand scheme of things it could someday make them more mature individuals. Or I'm just trying to justify being a bad, judgmental person. If getting older has made me anything, it has made me more judgmental and opinionated. I know who and what I support, what I don't like, and what I think is acceptable. This may or may not be a detrimental to the rest of my life.

But it definitely feels good not to be twelve.

Worst LSD Trip, Ever.

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:16:12 GMT

I only accomplished three things this weekend, which is good because usually I don't accomplish anything.

Saturday was an accomplishment within itself. I woke up at a reasonable hour after a good nights sleep of six hours. Why is this important? Because for the past week I've averaged four hours a night, due to over-scheduling and bad procrastination habits. So I got six hours, and that's only the beginning. I woke up at 8:30 and went to church choir at 9:00, where I learned that on Palm Sunday (the very next day) I would not be singing. (This becomes important later!) At 10:00, I went to the basement of the church for handbell choir rehearsal where our teen choir practiced "The Heavens Are Telling," a piano/handbell choir duet by Haydn. By 11:00 I was home.

During the afternoon, a few friends and I decided to go see Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland at a New Jersey high school. The drive was two hours and we watched Hook, a now seventeen-year-old movie. It was good, as compared to the musical, which fell flat on its face. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big theatre critic but I usually forgive most small error as a result of nerves. But this was a monstrosity! It was bad enough I slept through the second act. Alice had absolutely no actual emotion. She was being played by a puppet; a puppet with a squeaky voice and no acting ability whatsoever. To defend the choice of show, the program explained that it was "mainly done to show off the artist's abilities." The students choreographed, costumed, did make-up for, did tech for, and created the whole damn stage.

Where shall I begin? Only the White Rabbit danced. He was the only one. He was good, and whosoever that kid is, I hope he gets the leading role next year because he was the only saving grace. The tech was ok. The make-up was fine. The stage and set pieces were... bad. There wasn't a set through most of it. Maybe one tree onstage. There were two backdrops. One that was a hole, another that was a forest. During the scene where Alice "fell" down the rabbit hole, she spun around on stage "crying" (if you'd even call it that, maybe forcefully wailing) while the techies flashed a strobe light. (Which made a lady in the audience have an episode) But the real catch of the scene were the three stage hands, all dressed in black that came onstage and held above their heads wooden furniture that had been spray painted neon green and orange. Why? I have no idea. Their shoes were bleach white sneakers and that was all I could focus on. On the way home, we called our director's cell and told her about what happened. Her only response was a moment of silence, and then she began to mutter the Hail Mary. We hung up before she could finish.

In retrospect, a little part of me died at that moment.

That night, luckily, I fell asleep at ten PM after a conversation with my girlfriend. I awoke twelve hours later. Twelve! I had never felt so awake since... since... September. It was good feeling. The rest of Sunday was spent filling out my voter registration card. (Because the PA primary is actually going to mean something, despite being four months post Super Tuesday) I chose to be democrat, because McCain is already the Republican candidate. I don't even know what to think of the Democrat party candidates anymore. I don't particularly care for McCain, but with the Michigan primary being repeated, I can only see trouble on the horizon. I mean, I'm glad I'm able to vote in the upcoming election, it's my civic duty, but I don't even know what kind of a choice I'll have. The Democrats are in scramble mode, but everything is just kind of falling apart.

And, finally, today, now yesterday, I finished my English essay- my third accomplishment of the weekend. It's five pages long and took me a good four hours to complete, but I'm pleased with the result.

But for tonight, I'll leave you with the evil theme of Shane's flash movie. (It's more interesting than a five page paper, no?)

Three days until Spring Break.

Taking And Slowly Unwinds The Metronome.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:53:11 GMT

For the past three days my life has been a flurry of watching the clock and playing the time game, that is, seeing how much I can accomplish within as little time as possible. My father calls it "stuffing seven pounds of shit into a five pound bag" but only because he disapproves of me spending long hours into the night tapping away on my keyboard, trying to make sense of harmonic structures and melodic themes. And while that last part may sound eloquent, it really becomes a nightmare in theory, because the text doesn't come with the implication I've only been sleeping three and a half hours a night. This would usually make me a cranky, generally disagreeable person, but I just don't have the energy to argue. In the end, I did accomplish something in an expedient manner, which makes up for the apparent hangover that follows.

So what of it? The score was split into twenty-two sections I needed to write, and as of now that number that number has been reduced to seventeen through a number of discussions with the animator. As of last night, I had finished ten full sections and was planning to use today to finish another three, in order to keep up with my aggressive Monday deadline.

Then my mother intervened Wednesday morning. Her perspective was simple. I was ruining my good health (as of right now my girlfriend is sick too!) and I had my priorities scrambled. In my last post, I said I had TWO big deadlines. My mother dropped another on me like squashing a slimy bug. "You know you have that essay for college so you can double major in Composition and Education. Did you finish it yet?" But in my dense, I did have a premeditated reply, "No, but it's not due until April first and my English essay / Film Festival Score are due two weeks sooner." And her retort, "But many of the professors highly recommended you get it in early" was one more punch to the gut I didn't need. I left too tired to fight back.

At school, I visited the band director, who was going to loan me his recording equipment and room in a week, to show him my new and four times as long sixteen page score. I can't read his emotions, but I thought I saw him crack a smile, until the corners of his mouth turned down and he became very solemn. "Zak," he began, "This is great. But you're never going to get a clean recording like the MIDI file. If I were you, I'd take it and use it." Without fully realizing what he had said, I agreed with him.

That's right. The big letdown is there's no live band playing my score. On the contrary, my intense timetable has dissolved and Shane has the first ten tracks signed, sealed & delivered. So now the timetable is slightly different, to the point where my parents approve, albeit tentatively. Thursday through Sunday: Focus on English essay. Monday through next Friday: finish score.

So I came home and took the afternoon off, a godsend, save for a barbershop gig at a retirement community. We got paid just enough to stop for ice cream at Bruster's on the way home, where I tried their "birthday cake" flavor. Pro: tastes great. Con: leaves the consumer with a massive sugar headache.

So tonight I leave you with Shane's [untitled] movie's "Main Theme."

Enjoy.

They Don't Make Teeter-Totters Like They Used To.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:31:10 GMT

Well. It's Tuesday. I say this because, I'm just not a fan of Tuesdays. Here's my perspective: On Monday everyone is coming off the high from the weekend, and it's slightly depressing, but there's still that nice weekend-y feeling going around. On Wednesday, it's hump day, so we're all halfway there to another weekend. Thursday is just Friday part one and Friday is just Friday part 2. Saturday and Sunday are the weekend, which makes them exempt. But Tuesday? It's closer to last weekend than the previous, and all the weekend high is gone. This boils down to cold oatmeal and a constant nagging feeling that Wednesday is an eternity away. And I have done something stupid.

I have accepted two impossible tasks. This, in hindsight, was a really bad idea.

My father is about as crazy as my mother, who is an entrepreneur, which makes her as close to insane as the little scale goes. She networks through Facebook more than I do and has a gym Facebook group. Naturally, I have limited my use of the site as of late. But my father has an addiction. It's not smoking, although he did smoke at point, but is instead buying random shit on the Internet. Seriously. It's gotten bad enough that I can use his most recent purchase as an express metaphor for my life.

If you have no idea what an Indo Board is, then my advice would be to either google it or use your imagination, whichever is closer at hand. An Indo Board is like a plank of wood that is placed over a log and helps you train balance. This is accomplished by shifting your weight side to side in order to reach an equilibrium point. Now here's the metaphoric link: if you regard the floor as an eternal abyss of failure, the log as the turtle conjecture, and my life as the board, then you have the basic premise. All of my weight is shifted around on top, in one big cosmic, weight shifting movement.

On one metaphoric leg is my English term paper... a seven-page masterpiece that I haven't started yet. Now, don't get me wrong, high school has taught me how to bullshit an AP English paper, but it has left my grammar in an atrocious state. And my English teacher, a former actor and college drunken fool who punched John Stuart in the face, decides that for this paper, our content, focus, style and organization which be worth very little. All the big money/points are in conventions, aka grammar. He's using a three-strikes-you're-down-a-letter-grade policy, and this is a bad sign. It's due on Monday.

On the other side/hand/leg is my promise to my brother. The kid is fifteen and animates his own movies via Flash Professional 8. He's been doing this since he was eleven. His movies are funny, random, and usually use a plethora of music ripped my itunes library. Included are classics such as Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and The Fifth Dimension's "Let The Sun Shine In." His movie "Downtown" was featured in a film festival. Our high school is doing its Fourth Annual Film Festival in April, and due to a massive scheduling error all the movies are due in by March twenty-eighth.

But wait! There's more.

Due to the fear of copyright and protecting the artists and not stealing music, everyone needs to find their own music for their movies, not just by ripping songs. And here's the real kicker: the IMSLP has been closed since November. (Universal Edition makes me sick. Canadians are good people. Suing them isn't going to make them magically go away like when Harry Potter says, "mischief managed" to the big map-thing of Hogwarts. But I digress.) So Shane asked me to write the score of his movie. "Because," he says, "You're going into music education and composition for college. And it would be a great help if you could...” What really sells it is the sad, "cheer up, emo cloud" face.

So I accepted.

The jazz ensemble is meeting next Wednesday to record the music. Everyone in the group wants the music by this coming Monday. I haven't written it yet. The Indo board feels like it's sliding out from under my feet. So I'm taking my girlfriend's advice to schedule my time. To micromanage every second of my day so I can learn to not make stupid decisions. As of now, I have four pages, and if this whole endeavor doesn't have me hitting the ground when the floor is lava, I'll find a way to post the score in a format listenable by human ears.

It really feels like this is the last big push. Spring break is in a week and half, and by then I will've failed or not failed. I'm not worried. It's just a calm, stern approach to a common problem of being a wastrel. Where does relaxation become detrimental? Although I do like the feeling of writing music again, what with the musical and all I haven't had time. Now, I'm actually accomplishing something. Sad that it takes a deadline as an impetus to get me doing something I love. I'm pretty sure that's irony, even if the tasks are impossible.

Maybe this was a good idea after all.

Are You Referring To The Big Nipple In The Sky?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:38:45 GMT

My English class took a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum two days ago, you know, the kind of trip where seventy-five kids board one of those big, yellow buses and wander helplessly around the city. Our assignment was to find some work of art that could be compared to the material we examine in class. Usually, this would seem boring, but my folks are adamant that if I go to the city I'll be shot and as an added bonus, I was missing all my classes. So I was excited, to say the least.

The first place we stopped was a large Catholic cathedral. For the record, I'm not Catholic, and I've never been to one, but I can officially say that my first words after entering the cathedral were, "God Damn, Chris, this place is huge!" To which I was refuted by, "Zak, You're a dumbass." Honestly though, the building was enormous and I could only imagine the casual Philadelphian's odd stares as they observed seventy-five greasy white and Asian kids funneling into a cathedral.

So the first thing every one of my classmates does upon entering the building is pull out their compact cameras and camera phones and start taking picture after bloody picture of the art. Naturally, I decided to leave my DSLR at home, because according my parents that would "only give me a higher likelihood of death by homicide." For that hour, I amused myself by politely asking God to smite me and by mentioning in a more obnoxious way to the camera phone users that camera phones are the rape of photography.

I wonder if Chris ever realized I filled his water bottle full of holy water. (Is "holy water" supposed to be capitalized?)

Next my class hit the Redding Terminal Market. This was probably a really bad idea. I mean, I'm sure the crepe business there was happy for sixty new and hungry customers, but really, they all probably could've found their Orangina elsewhere. The ice cream business was booming as well, because we all know eighteen year olds do not know what a "balanced" lunch includes. Personally, I bought a pound of dark chocolate-covered espresso beans, a small brick of Muenster Cheese, and roll of genuine hot Italian sausage.

Ironically, I ended up sitting at table in the sushi bar section eating the entire meal with chopsticks. In my defense, the chopsticks were free and I honestly didn't think the feat was possible either. I was joined by Laura, Vicky, & Chris, my best friend who was still carrying around the holy water, unaware of it being closer to God than I am. He got California rolls from the sushi joint, which cost more than my roll of sausage cost, which I didn't inform him. At this point, he asks the three of us, "What's this green stuff on the side?" Ah, Wasabi, nature's little firecrackers. We gave him the lowdown and told him it was the equivalent of Japanese butter. After his first bite of "ARGH" and then, "fuck you, guys!" he started to take it like a crack addict. At first, just a touch on the first one... but it's not spicy enough. More on the second... he feels the burn. Adding to the third... on to the fourth... coughing in spicy on the fifth, overdoses on the sixth. Epic fail. I now understand the mentality of hard drug users.

Finally, because it wasn't the heading event of the trip or anything, we reached the art museum and climbed the same stairs as Rocky. Once inside, I came to a terrible realization. I don't understand art. Seriously. I'll prove it with another example:

Obviously, the first thing our eyes jump to is the color of chairs clashing against the drab background and the lack of any real "dark points" in the photograph. The use of reflection in the windows may be the artist commenting on society encroaching on nature's turf, and this thesis could be furthered by the evidence of rotting wood in the staircase and the sandy patch peeking out from the bottom-left corner. However, I just really want to know who in God's name would be stupid enough to paint chairs baby blue and not expect their neighbors to want to burn them someday. Are people really that ignorant? And why paint the chairs and not your house? Too lazy to hire some bum to paint your house for you? Yeah. I see how it is.

To conclude? I'm using Robert Rauschenberg's Flush and comparing it to Loren Eiseley's The Brown Wasps.

And now, the afterglow... On the bus ride home we started to play a new game. New for me, although I expect it's been around since the end of time. The game was simple; the players all sit in a circle with stern looks on their faces and each person, one at a time, says a phrase or word. If you break the stern look, i.e.: smile or laugh, you're out. Easy, right? Being stern at a funeral is easy. Being stern while your best friend is trying to say "Book Sock" in the most provocative way possible is not. And to win you've got to be the last man standing, and damn those Asian kids can just turn off the humor.

So what were the some of the game-ending words? Try words like, "Severance Pay" ... "Anglo Saxon" ... "Poontang" ... "Balzac" ... "Erect" ... "Magmor" ... & "Blunderbuss." After a while, however, people began to get wise and occasionally suicide bomb (laugh boisterously loud to get others to laugh with you) or combo off of other's words. This added a new level of interest to the game, where now we were into made-up words and were all getting a good laugh out of it. Then the epic combo occurred. If you have any imagination at all, I'd like you to picture a sweaty, just barely eighteen, pimply kid that's not me, trying to sound as promiscuous as possible while saying, "Areola." And the Asian child after him just retorts back with a blank stare off into the distance, "Areola Borealis."

And all of the simple minded AP English 12 students burst into a torrent of dramatically ironic laughter.

Take This Chiclet, Broken For You.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:49 GMT

The last two shows went as planned, no more, no less. We had few forgotten lines, a curtain fiasco, and my voice giving out on numerous occasions and pitches, but nothing too big. It was my senior musical, and I have nothing to say about it. It just occurred, as if, it's there in my memory, but I have no recollection of actually experiencing it. My lines are even beginning to escape me, only a few days after the production has been over. February came and went, and as expected we survived. For the first time I actually feel like a senior. Things are winding down, coming to a close.

I can tell they are because people from the cast have already approached me with the familiar handshake and the disheartening words, "we'll miss you." You know they won't, but it's still a nice gesture. The play was my thing. I hated it, and only did it for the people, but it was mine. It was my something. Maybe I could've been something too, it I had actually put forth the effort. To drown myself in vocal remedies and to kiss the ass of every teacher that walked my way. I could've sold my soul.

Rosemary actually told us that, word for word. "Theatre is about connecting at the very core of existence, of reality, to the audience. It is not half-hearted, you have to give your soul." Megan did. She gave everything for the role and became the role. She was revered as a hero, as our director's baby, her pride and joy. Rosemary is actually going to retire once Megan graduates. Our director has her own daughter to raise, one just entering the fourth grade now. That will be the death of the arts at my high school.

We went all out for this show, for this West Side Story. We hired a pit, we hurt people's feelings, and we gave Rosemary the flu. For my senior year we sold out, and not just by a little... over one hundred seats above fire code every night. The show was perfect, like the pit bringing about pure and raw emotion up on stage, like the great light from a shaking hand as the picture was taken, capturing that one moment.

And I've already said that the show has been for the people. But in reality, there is nothing more for the people / by the people than the cast parties. I say parties because my company is crazy enough to have two. There's the one after the Friday night show, where only about half the cast shows and usually is home and in bed by 1:30 am, and there's the one after Saturday night show, where everyone attends and it ends up being a very raucous, loud event. My family had last year’s Saturday one and I am officially banned from having another cast party again… ever.

This year's Friday party was, for the most part "chill." I guess I can describe it like that because it became essentially a basement Woodstock... a lot of music, people in odd clothes, and nine or ten people simultaneously playing acoustic guitar. Granted there was no crazy sex or excessive drinking or mind-altering drugs, but for all intents and purposes, we chilled and talked and sang a number of Death Cab For Cutie songs. It was the same people, just more mellow, unlike their backstage constant stream of sexual innuendos and egotistical demeanor.

The Saturday night cast party was a disappointment. Too many people, too much to do. There was no unification. People tend to fragment off if there's no substance to bring them to together. West Side Story was an ensemble, not a family, so once the final show had occurred, we all went back to being the same people we were, with the same stereotypes and it was like a number of strangers had decided to hold a party, for no reason. What were we going to celebrate? I ended up playing their Young Chang baby grand piano upstairs; a song in E-flat Dorian to my girlfriend, as of yet untitled. Even then, this party only holds two other memories that arise in the pertinent matter.

The first was a ritual of hope. My good friend Justin pulled aside Joe, Matt and myself to tell a story. We wandered into the kitchen and began to listen to his tale. "When we were freshman," he began, "and in Les Mis that year, I helped to clean up the auditorium after the final show. On the floor, I found a pack of gum and gave you each a piece and one for myself and we all agreed that we were the future of Theatre Company." We nodded in response, carefully removing the particular scene from the dusty shelves of our minds, and he continued, "I put that pack of gum on my dresser, and looked at it every single day since then, and now, I know we are the future. Matt and I for film, Joe for theatre, Zak for music. It is only fitting that we break this last piece in four and consume it together, for whatever may come." And astounded as we all were at one am, he broke the chiclet in four and we toasted to the future.

Ironically, it tasted like shit.

That notwithstanding, the second ritual happened later, when the lead makes a speech. So Joe got up on his high horse in front of whoever was listening and shouted over the noise, "Thank you. This theatre company is now my family, even moreso than my family is." He went on to say the normal things an orator dotes on, the academy, the actors, his girlfriend, but then he said something disturbing, I'm pretty sure only my girlfriend and I caught. "You all have saved my life. Without theatre, I don't know, I was so down and out, I don't where I would be now... if I would be now." Now stop. Did he just admit to partially suicidal thoughts? It still hasn't stopped bothering me. The concept of saving someone's life is just... too massive. I don't want to consider it. Too many ifs and variables.

So the party ended until Monday, the infamous set breakdown where I got to work side by side with the likes and dislikes of the crew of West Side Story.

This is Kim. She has her own blog, and is probably the quintessential stage crew member. She dyed her blue hair orange and it ended up green, so she kept it. Why her? She's the foil to Megan. Perfectly fighting against everything. I don't really know her at all, even though I used to write her letters almost daily, just about anything. I have a lot of respect for her, and I have no idea why. She's always fighting Rosemary, and today was their heyday, destroying what we had taken so long to create. It's a subversive culture, and I'm sure the stage crew is the only group who knows what being subversive is all about. It's not image, it's just not caring as much about what other people think. In fact, their motto reflects this quite nicely:

And so, my girlfriend, her two best friends, Kim and I got delegated the job of carrying crap from the theatre to dumpster. The weather was perfect, and we kept making jokes and coughing and singing and generally having a good time. We even named a hole in the dumpster "Aubrey's Vagina" and flung our wood pieces into the pile of junk with as much gusto as we could muster. It was perfect, not stage perfect, but good enough to make my day. I was free. For the first time in my high school life I was free from theatre and the culture and the director and the hierarchy and the people. I was literally taking my baggage and hurling them into Aubrey's Vagina with a broad smile on my face.

After that comment, you're probably shaking your head in dismay. I understand. So to make up for it, here's a picture of the keyboardist from my band, "Dirigible!" in one of his favorite superhero poses:

Next time I'll keep a more consistent update schedule.

It Was Funnier When The Corpses Got Up And Left.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:31:11 GMT

My mother wasn't the only person who thought it was a disaster. In fact, there was an army of mothers bickering and whispering during the intermission, discussing their precious children and the threat of opening night. The general consensus was simple: the result was passable, but the means by which it was achieved was a failure of epic proportions. Many even went so far as to say their children would not be doing the musical next year due to critical disillusionment. The conclusion? I'm not as crazy as I thought.

From the moment I got home, my mother approached me with a conundrum. I had barely wandered into the living room when I was told to put down my belongings and to sit on the couch to listen to her ramble. "Zak," she began, quietly at first, treading lightly, "I know that this whole experience means a lot to you. I know West Side Story is your favorite musical. And, you did well, so did your girlfriend. But Joe wasn't Tony to me. He was Joe playing who Tony should've been."

It was as if she was ashamed of the opinion. That I would hop on my high horse to defend him. I nearly did, speaking that we had sold out the whole auditorium and probably would've gotten a standing ovation if the audience wasn't composed of ninety percent senior citizens. But my mother just couldn't imagine him, or see him rather, playing, acting a lover. "It didn't seem right," she told me, "he sang it fine, but the performance, I felt, there was some sort of a disconnect." And secretly, I wanted to agree, but I held my tongue, because her speech wasn't finished.

"Anita & Maria held the show together. Without them, everything would've fallen to pieces. Both Megans became their characters." And with this I nodded. The two girls who accomplished these roles were, in my personal opinion, two of the finest actresses I have seen. "It was like the audience breathed a sigh of relief every time Megan or the other Meghan appeared on stage. They made it stable." I've felt that before too. Every time I see a play there are actors that just fill the stage. I've been to productions where the stage has felt like a giant vacuum, where the next botched line could mean a period of bad improvision. At these types of shows my mother gambles with the people next to her.

But this was all a big introduction to the heart of what she was trying to say. First the good, then the bad, and then the ugly. I always know the ugly is coming because she clears her throat and does that motion where she rubs her temples. "At intermission," she began, but was cutting off by me, "we left Bernardo and Riff's corpses on stage. I know. Our bad." She laughed. "I wish. So many parents that I talked to were just peeved at the Director." Then it dawned on me. People actually do talk to their parents.

The musical requires sacrifices. I'm pretty sure that this slogan was used any time someone was hurt, bruised, offended, or angry. We chose to be in this, and that means we have no rights. It's the either-or fallacy in every situation: as instructed to, or please kindly remove yourself from the auditorium. After two months, no one is crazy enough to quit. And so the parents heard the brunt of it, the silent complaining to someone who has no idea. The children's list of grievances included: cutting more people than were in the final cast altogether, removing the entire cast from two full days of school and then only using most people for an hour or two, cutting people from scenes days before the show as a sacrifice bunt because it's easier to teach ten people a dance than fifteen, writing all the bios by formula alone with no creativity for professionalism, making everyone buy their own costume and cut their hair with their own money, and all the sharks had to die their hair black and use sunless tanning oil.

And my mother reached the thesis statement of her dissertation. "Many of your friends, of your non-senior friends, this will probably be their last show. They're sick of it. Rosemary pushed everyone too far this time
and killed the dream." And then she kept apologizing and saying what a travesty it was, but I stopped listening and just sat there and tried to imagine life without hiding in darkness for four hours a day.

Life without the theatre friends that I've known for years. What will you do? Where you go? The people are the reason I do theatre. The people the people the people. Where else can you appreciate the fine art of stupid poses and dissect the anatomy of laugher? Do you know what it feels like to hide in darkness for hours, leave in darkness, wake up in overcast weather, take classes inside, and finally in the half and hour before practice starts sit outside in the grass and actually see the light? The people are everything, like these two, whose facial expressions astound me:

And it was worth the sacrifice.