(no subject)
I got a random email from one of my friends from high school yesterday at my seldom used AOL account with the simple "Bill are you there?" header and no message. I wrote back with my yahoo email address and gave an oh-so brief description as to what I'm doing right now, not thinking much of it.
Today (or was it yesterday?) I heard from a few more from that group including my friend Janet who had become my first older sister figure. Janet had found something I had written for them while we were doing "Camelot" - my first real show - back in '89, which was not so much a parody of the show as it was our lives called "The Quest for the Holy Bouja" and she scanned a copy into a PDF file and set it to "the group."
A "bouja" was what they called "anything that is canine, feline, or in the case of Jewish bunnies - rabine" (oh that still makes me giggle). The Quest was headed by King Larry, who happened to be playing Arthur and the rest of us were knights and maidens as we scavenged a Long Island that had quickly turned itself into a medieval world in which jousts were done with cars held together by tape and kings were carted around seated in a solid gold swivel chair mounted on the back of my own bicycle. "God" was the head of the theatre department - a woman who only a year later I would vilify because she chose to do "Mame" as our senior show and...other reasons. Her court was the music department heads. Antagonists became like characters from the show - the guy Michael who played Mordred was "cleverly" called "Mike-dred." Our friend Kathy, who played Nimue was called "Kathy the Tree Tramp" - it got worse from there but no one seemed to mind.
Done in installments, it strangely became the thing to appear in - I'm as confused by that fact now as I was loving it then - and people continuously asked to be in it. I felt like a rock star, but in reality I just had a few really supportive friends.
That's MUCH better than being a rock star any day of the week.
They were in the class above mine and were popular by just being. From marching band, to the history club, to the drama club - it seemed like they were everywhere and I knew of and respected them long before I knew knew them. Through marching band and the band camp the summer before my junior year, they gradually took me in and I worshiped them. Before the Bouja Quest, I had started writing Top Ten Lists and they were the ones I had written them for - while I knew I wanted to write since I was in the second grade, they were the people I first got laughs from for doing it.
As life happens, I lost touch with them, but only because time goes by (what a great idea for a song...). I'd been thinking of them recently, which is why it struck me that my friend Erik had emailed me to see where I was. Getting a response to my new email address from Janet was great, but when I saw that she had attached the Bouja Stories and had sent them to the others - scattered across the country - and the kind words that were said back and forth, it made me feel even better. It’s strange to me that something I had written for people I looked up to and admired almost twenty years ago would go from something we’d read aloud at someone’s house for laughs to...
I’m glad it means something to them - that in and of it self means a lot to me. I may not ever have a sitcom, or a talk show, or a column in Rolling Stone, but I’ve been blessed to be able to have an impact on people who have had an important impact on me.
How does it get better than that?
(it would get better if one of them knew Alicia Witt or Kristen Bell...)
Today (or was it yesterday?) I heard from a few more from that group including my friend Janet who had become my first older sister figure. Janet had found something I had written for them while we were doing "Camelot" - my first real show - back in '89, which was not so much a parody of the show as it was our lives called "The Quest for the Holy Bouja" and she scanned a copy into a PDF file and set it to "the group."
A "bouja" was what they called "anything that is canine, feline, or in the case of Jewish bunnies - rabine" (oh that still makes me giggle). The Quest was headed by King Larry, who happened to be playing Arthur and the rest of us were knights and maidens as we scavenged a Long Island that had quickly turned itself into a medieval world in which jousts were done with cars held together by tape and kings were carted around seated in a solid gold swivel chair mounted on the back of my own bicycle. "God" was the head of the theatre department - a woman who only a year later I would vilify because she chose to do "Mame" as our senior show and...other reasons. Her court was the music department heads. Antagonists became like characters from the show - the guy Michael who played Mordred was "cleverly" called "Mike-dred." Our friend Kathy, who played Nimue was called "Kathy the Tree Tramp" - it got worse from there but no one seemed to mind.
Done in installments, it strangely became the thing to appear in - I'm as confused by that fact now as I was loving it then - and people continuously asked to be in it. I felt like a rock star, but in reality I just had a few really supportive friends.
That's MUCH better than being a rock star any day of the week.
They were in the class above mine and were popular by just being. From marching band, to the history club, to the drama club - it seemed like they were everywhere and I knew of and respected them long before I knew knew them. Through marching band and the band camp the summer before my junior year, they gradually took me in and I worshiped them. Before the Bouja Quest, I had started writing Top Ten Lists and they were the ones I had written them for - while I knew I wanted to write since I was in the second grade, they were the people I first got laughs from for doing it.
As life happens, I lost touch with them, but only because time goes by (what a great idea for a song...). I'd been thinking of them recently, which is why it struck me that my friend Erik had emailed me to see where I was. Getting a response to my new email address from Janet was great, but when I saw that she had attached the Bouja Stories and had sent them to the others - scattered across the country - and the kind words that were said back and forth, it made me feel even better. It’s strange to me that something I had written for people I looked up to and admired almost twenty years ago would go from something we’d read aloud at someone’s house for laughs to...
I’m glad it means something to them - that in and of it self means a lot to me. I may not ever have a sitcom, or a talk show, or a column in Rolling Stone, but I’ve been blessed to be able to have an impact on people who have had an important impact on me.
How does it get better than that?
(it would get better if one of them knew Alicia Witt or Kristen Bell...)