I can't be funny when I'm terrified
The last few weeks have been a blur of activity, and rarely has any of it seemed noteworthy, particularly from the standpoint of Johnny Busyasallhell student in Design and Production. With all of those pesky little exam things out of the way, and my ass in my comfortable desk chair in (not so) beautiful Orlando, I think I can finally put all this stuff into this goddamn journal. I mean hell, I do have this thing for a reason.
I've always heard that things either go out with a "Bang" or a "whimper", which I've assumed meant they either go very difficult or quietly. If that is indeed the case, then Tartuffe went out with a series of loud bangs, followed by a few whimpers. The load in that we'd been told would only take 4 hours instead took about 32, including one 11 hour marathon crew on a wednesday night(2-6, 7-11, 11:15-1:30am) where poor planning forced us to stay absurdly late to drop the chain motors we'd said shouldn't go up that night. Sigh. Once loadin started we were constantly staying late, to a point where we joked that we should buy our TD a watch after the show. Please understand me when I tell you that we got out of crew on time twice out of 15 crews after the first day of load in. Terrible. Things are going to be different.
The entire show was a trainwreck that brought to the forefront several pieces of knowledge that I had never thought about before, or at least not very extensively. Most of the problems the show faced, it faced because of poor management decisions. The TD let herself be bossed around, and as a result everyone suffered. Observing this as close as I was, and being able to clearly see how each decision would and did play out, and how each one had consequences, I felt like I was learning a great deal. Likewise, I was reminded that I AM pretty good at this, no matter how I feel about my skill level at times. I'm not going to claim I'm the best in my class or even one of the best in the class, but I will say that I'm pretty good, and I'm willing to learn which says a lot about me. Second, I realized why I love what I do. I think of my job as being to make things happen, and watching what happens in a show that most would agree was a failure reminds me of why that's important.
Once all that was out of the way, I was free to waste time on the classes I'd fallen behind on. After stressing way too much on Scene Painting, I broke down and did a decent, if unspectacular job. C for complete. Word.
Props went about as quietly as humanly possible. I barely put a second thought into the paper I had to write. Who likes Bland's class? Ben likes Bland's class.
Shop practice went better than I'd have dreamed. I built a guide for one of the tools in the shop. It's not perfect, but it's nice and it's functional, which is awesome. I also had to do a draft of the roadbox I'll hopefully be building next year. I was expecting 20 hours of tough CADing to finish this thing. Evidently, I'm better than I give myself credit for. I finished the whole thing in just over 7 hours after the first round of revisions, and the whole thing is in 3D. Easy as cake. Troy(my advisor) was even impressed by it. I don't wanna tell anyone it took so little time. They'd make me draft more. And I don't need that.
Stagecraft. I more or less blocked this out of my head, and with good reason. I'd bet money that my lowest grade will be in this class, and a decent amount of the blame goes to someone who isn't me. We had a partner project, and my partner, Heather, did absolutely fucking nothing. For her to stand up on the presentation day and even pretend she helped was a slap in the face to me, and I think I'd be happy to never have to talk to, let alone work with that self-righteous, worthless bitch ever again. I'll hold my tongue though, otherwise the faculty might try and "learn me". But at least in part because of her lack of help, the door and doorframe we, or I, had to make looked like complete crap. The door looked decent, but the frame was horrible. I deserved an F. I have no idea what I got.
After that, all I had for stagecraft was a presentation on Aircasters. If you've never seen them, they're basically real life hovercraft. They're spectacular. I had a lot of fun with it, and Troy seemed impressed with my ability to not be nervous while public speaking. When someone else was going and said they were nervous, he tried to calm them by saying: "Don't worry, John, we all put our clothes on the same way. Well, except Ben."
Either that was a cool metaphor/compliment to me for not being nervous, or Troy knows more about my early morning habits than I'm comfortable with.
What else is there? General Studies? Psh. Western Thought was excruciatingly boring. I wrote is 5 page paper(got a B) and took his 2 hour test in 40 minutes. Pay me, Mathews.
Theatre history was a real treat, and I wish I could've taken it a bit more seriously. As it stood, I liked my A- paper, and I whizzed through his final. Cake, and I'm eating it too.
Last friday was portfolio review. I heard a description of it that it was: "A science fair where everyone is a winner" or something along those lines. Everyone sets up their stuff, and shows it off to the faculty. I was actually upset going in, because I didn't have that much to put out. Or so I thought. While I didn't have the same quantity of work as some of the design students did, I had a lot of very intricate drafting from my shows and CAD classes, and I'd put the two scene painting projects I put out up against anything any other TD did. They looked good, and I was proud of both. Passed time at my table by sifting through tool store brochures and talking to people. People had good things to say all around, and I really only got one negative comment, and it was about my resume. And come to think of it, that was Jack, who makes fun of everyone anyways. Benny Lecompte, a fourth year TD who is beloved by all, even wrote on my little faculty sign in sheet that I had gotten a rating of "badass" from the graduating class. At least 5 faculty members asked about it, and I was absolutely beaming when I told them. It feels good to be a gangsta. Even when I was asked about the Nutcracker/quickclamp fiasco(possibly the biggest catastrophe of the year, that was also 100% my fault), I could walk through the story, take full responsibility, and be confident that I wasn't going to lose anything in the long run over it.
That is also the night Beaux Arts starts. It begins with the Queen of NCSA pageant(Drag show for primarily modern dancers). I went to that for a while before ducking out in favor of Arthur's party at Erwin Manor. It became evident within 10 minutes of my arrival that I should leave, but at that point Arthur had already gotten me to drink a shot and a beer, so I had to wait 2 hours to leave. This was a rather uncomfortable 2 hours, and that is all limited to the verbal assault I took from one person while there. Thankfully this was spaced out as 20 minutes over 2 hours, but every second was me trying to smile. I was asked not to mention any of this, but since this is my diary and I dont' think I'm in the wrong, I'm going to talk about it. I will be polite and not mention names or specifics, but it's frustrating to hear people, who I have, or at least had, always liked, tell me that they think of me as inconsequential and being like a little kid(paraphrased and shortend, big time). More than that, it's frustrating to think that I'm going to remember a person I had always liked as drunk, and insulting me for no reason, or at least out of misplaced anger over a series of events that I had little to nothing to do with. I feel like there are better things to have as a dominant memory. In the meantime I played darts with Brian Russel and Benny. Fun all around. I like both guys. Same holds true for Craven and Art, who were also there.
The next day was the epic volleyball tournament. My team, known as the "Fuckin' Waffle House", fought bravely, and managed to finish third. We blew the semifinals game big time. I'd love to say that they cheated, but the truth is we just sucked ass for the last 6 points or so. I did however, have an absolute blast, and I'm 10 times better at volleyball than I would've thought I was had I not played. Playing also left my skin a shade of red I'd never seen before, which I'm still feeling now on Wednesday. After the tournament was over, I kept playing with some friends, in between going to the dunking booth and dunking some of my D&P friends. I dunked Anneliese and Molly, and was the only one who could consistenly hit the target. Fun was had by all, and I found myself happier than I had been in a very long time.
This led us into the Beaux Arts ball. The school puts this on every year, and it was usually an event. People plan their costumes for months, and in general it was a blast last year. This year they didn't provide alcohol as they had in previous years, and that made all the difference. As a result the whole party was dead for the most part, and those who did drink did so by showing up so drunk they couldn't see straight. But between the drunken stupor of some(Benny and Becky Morris are prime examples), and the absurdity of others(at least 40% of the girls came as hookers) there was little to be excited about. The liveband they had was a terrible 80s coverband, and the highlights of their set were fuckups. The best was when they said: "Who hear is a Rush fan?" and after like 2 people cheered, they said: "Well this is for you!" and played John Cougar Melloncamp's Jack and Diane. Next time I listen to Pearl Jam, I'm going to dedicate it to all the Savage Garden fans in the world. Wow.
I guess this is the part where I mention how I got thrown out of the ball. Well, part of the anti-alcohol policy was that they said that anyone caught drunk would be thrown out of beaux arts. I mentioned it was a costume party. Well, I went as Kurt Cobain, and part of my costume was this little Johnny's first guitar I found at K-mart. And I really wanted to go rock star and destroy it. So I handed my camera to a friend and had her video tape me slamming this guitar into the concrete. After it was properly smashed, I started picking up the pieces. It was at this point that a couple cops came over to inform me that I had to leave beaux arts, and they were going to escort me out. Apparently, they thought I was on drugs, and not just trying hard to rock, but I was forced to leave. I'd be upset, but a) Beaux Arts sucked and b) It's a far better story to tell people that I got thrown out of Beaux Arts for rocking too hard.
If you're wondering about the title of the entry, it was going to be explained by this last bit, but really: Who wants to hear about how some girl was trying (very akwardly) to seduce me?
Oh, and I apologize that I didn't LJ cut this.
I've always heard that things either go out with a "Bang" or a "whimper", which I've assumed meant they either go very difficult or quietly. If that is indeed the case, then Tartuffe went out with a series of loud bangs, followed by a few whimpers. The load in that we'd been told would only take 4 hours instead took about 32, including one 11 hour marathon crew on a wednesday night(2-6, 7-11, 11:15-1:30am) where poor planning forced us to stay absurdly late to drop the chain motors we'd said shouldn't go up that night. Sigh. Once loadin started we were constantly staying late, to a point where we joked that we should buy our TD a watch after the show. Please understand me when I tell you that we got out of crew on time twice out of 15 crews after the first day of load in. Terrible. Things are going to be different.
The entire show was a trainwreck that brought to the forefront several pieces of knowledge that I had never thought about before, or at least not very extensively. Most of the problems the show faced, it faced because of poor management decisions. The TD let herself be bossed around, and as a result everyone suffered. Observing this as close as I was, and being able to clearly see how each decision would and did play out, and how each one had consequences, I felt like I was learning a great deal. Likewise, I was reminded that I AM pretty good at this, no matter how I feel about my skill level at times. I'm not going to claim I'm the best in my class or even one of the best in the class, but I will say that I'm pretty good, and I'm willing to learn which says a lot about me. Second, I realized why I love what I do. I think of my job as being to make things happen, and watching what happens in a show that most would agree was a failure reminds me of why that's important.
Once all that was out of the way, I was free to waste time on the classes I'd fallen behind on. After stressing way too much on Scene Painting, I broke down and did a decent, if unspectacular job. C for complete. Word.
Props went about as quietly as humanly possible. I barely put a second thought into the paper I had to write. Who likes Bland's class? Ben likes Bland's class.
Shop practice went better than I'd have dreamed. I built a guide for one of the tools in the shop. It's not perfect, but it's nice and it's functional, which is awesome. I also had to do a draft of the roadbox I'll hopefully be building next year. I was expecting 20 hours of tough CADing to finish this thing. Evidently, I'm better than I give myself credit for. I finished the whole thing in just over 7 hours after the first round of revisions, and the whole thing is in 3D. Easy as cake. Troy(my advisor) was even impressed by it. I don't wanna tell anyone it took so little time. They'd make me draft more. And I don't need that.
Stagecraft. I more or less blocked this out of my head, and with good reason. I'd bet money that my lowest grade will be in this class, and a decent amount of the blame goes to someone who isn't me. We had a partner project, and my partner, Heather, did absolutely fucking nothing. For her to stand up on the presentation day and even pretend she helped was a slap in the face to me, and I think I'd be happy to never have to talk to, let alone work with that self-righteous, worthless bitch ever again. I'll hold my tongue though, otherwise the faculty might try and "learn me". But at least in part because of her lack of help, the door and doorframe we, or I, had to make looked like complete crap. The door looked decent, but the frame was horrible. I deserved an F. I have no idea what I got.
After that, all I had for stagecraft was a presentation on Aircasters. If you've never seen them, they're basically real life hovercraft. They're spectacular. I had a lot of fun with it, and Troy seemed impressed with my ability to not be nervous while public speaking. When someone else was going and said they were nervous, he tried to calm them by saying: "Don't worry, John, we all put our clothes on the same way. Well, except Ben."
Either that was a cool metaphor/compliment to me for not being nervous, or Troy knows more about my early morning habits than I'm comfortable with.
What else is there? General Studies? Psh. Western Thought was excruciatingly boring. I wrote is 5 page paper(got a B) and took his 2 hour test in 40 minutes. Pay me, Mathews.
Theatre history was a real treat, and I wish I could've taken it a bit more seriously. As it stood, I liked my A- paper, and I whizzed through his final. Cake, and I'm eating it too.
Last friday was portfolio review. I heard a description of it that it was: "A science fair where everyone is a winner" or something along those lines. Everyone sets up their stuff, and shows it off to the faculty. I was actually upset going in, because I didn't have that much to put out. Or so I thought. While I didn't have the same quantity of work as some of the design students did, I had a lot of very intricate drafting from my shows and CAD classes, and I'd put the two scene painting projects I put out up against anything any other TD did. They looked good, and I was proud of both. Passed time at my table by sifting through tool store brochures and talking to people. People had good things to say all around, and I really only got one negative comment, and it was about my resume. And come to think of it, that was Jack, who makes fun of everyone anyways. Benny Lecompte, a fourth year TD who is beloved by all, even wrote on my little faculty sign in sheet that I had gotten a rating of "badass" from the graduating class. At least 5 faculty members asked about it, and I was absolutely beaming when I told them. It feels good to be a gangsta. Even when I was asked about the Nutcracker/quickclamp fiasco(possibly the biggest catastrophe of the year, that was also 100% my fault), I could walk through the story, take full responsibility, and be confident that I wasn't going to lose anything in the long run over it.
That is also the night Beaux Arts starts. It begins with the Queen of NCSA pageant(Drag show for primarily modern dancers). I went to that for a while before ducking out in favor of Arthur's party at Erwin Manor. It became evident within 10 minutes of my arrival that I should leave, but at that point Arthur had already gotten me to drink a shot and a beer, so I had to wait 2 hours to leave. This was a rather uncomfortable 2 hours, and that is all limited to the verbal assault I took from one person while there. Thankfully this was spaced out as 20 minutes over 2 hours, but every second was me trying to smile. I was asked not to mention any of this, but since this is my diary and I dont' think I'm in the wrong, I'm going to talk about it. I will be polite and not mention names or specifics, but it's frustrating to hear people, who I have, or at least had, always liked, tell me that they think of me as inconsequential and being like a little kid(paraphrased and shortend, big time). More than that, it's frustrating to think that I'm going to remember a person I had always liked as drunk, and insulting me for no reason, or at least out of misplaced anger over a series of events that I had little to nothing to do with. I feel like there are better things to have as a dominant memory. In the meantime I played darts with Brian Russel and Benny. Fun all around. I like both guys. Same holds true for Craven and Art, who were also there.
The next day was the epic volleyball tournament. My team, known as the "Fuckin' Waffle House", fought bravely, and managed to finish third. We blew the semifinals game big time. I'd love to say that they cheated, but the truth is we just sucked ass for the last 6 points or so. I did however, have an absolute blast, and I'm 10 times better at volleyball than I would've thought I was had I not played. Playing also left my skin a shade of red I'd never seen before, which I'm still feeling now on Wednesday. After the tournament was over, I kept playing with some friends, in between going to the dunking booth and dunking some of my D&P friends. I dunked Anneliese and Molly, and was the only one who could consistenly hit the target. Fun was had by all, and I found myself happier than I had been in a very long time.
This led us into the Beaux Arts ball. The school puts this on every year, and it was usually an event. People plan their costumes for months, and in general it was a blast last year. This year they didn't provide alcohol as they had in previous years, and that made all the difference. As a result the whole party was dead for the most part, and those who did drink did so by showing up so drunk they couldn't see straight. But between the drunken stupor of some(Benny and Becky Morris are prime examples), and the absurdity of others(at least 40% of the girls came as hookers) there was little to be excited about. The liveband they had was a terrible 80s coverband, and the highlights of their set were fuckups. The best was when they said: "Who hear is a Rush fan?" and after like 2 people cheered, they said: "Well this is for you!" and played John Cougar Melloncamp's Jack and Diane. Next time I listen to Pearl Jam, I'm going to dedicate it to all the Savage Garden fans in the world. Wow.
I guess this is the part where I mention how I got thrown out of the ball. Well, part of the anti-alcohol policy was that they said that anyone caught drunk would be thrown out of beaux arts. I mentioned it was a costume party. Well, I went as Kurt Cobain, and part of my costume was this little Johnny's first guitar I found at K-mart. And I really wanted to go rock star and destroy it. So I handed my camera to a friend and had her video tape me slamming this guitar into the concrete. After it was properly smashed, I started picking up the pieces. It was at this point that a couple cops came over to inform me that I had to leave beaux arts, and they were going to escort me out. Apparently, they thought I was on drugs, and not just trying hard to rock, but I was forced to leave. I'd be upset, but a) Beaux Arts sucked and b) It's a far better story to tell people that I got thrown out of Beaux Arts for rocking too hard.
If you're wondering about the title of the entry, it was going to be explained by this last bit, but really: Who wants to hear about how some girl was trying (very akwardly) to seduce me?
Oh, and I apologize that I didn't LJ cut this.