Oh my goodness... I bet this will be my longest post ever.
Poor Meese, she asks me to write an essay for Yearbook, and puts on the assignment page, a minumum of 2000 words. She shouldn't have made it so high, she knows I always double the reccomended amount. Lol ok here it is in full colour (or maybe not,) the longest essay in the history of LCVI. I really have no real way to prove this, but if anyone has written an essay more than 4553 words, go ahead and tell me. Gotta keep the record straight. Well here it is and please, bear with me, if you are thinking that 4000 words is too many to read, then don't be so scared, it goes fast. If you still are like hey what the F, then just please at least read the first paragraph, if you don't like it then whatev, if you do like it then please read on, and tell me what you think. I'm gussing that Sarah will get a laugh out of this. If only for the connection to yearbook.
Confessions of a Backseat Designer
I am, what most people in this world of worlds, consider a backseat designer. I would call myself a sit-behind-design-inspiration-conscience-editing-colour-picture quality-friend. This title unfortunately would not fit on a badge, woe. This gift, or as most call an evil ‘infliction’ causes much stress. I think its because people are too closed minded to listen to my ideas. They say I’m being annoying and crushing their dreams. Well… that’s actually funny that I mentioned dream crushing, cause that’s what this class will do to you. Wait… that’s exaggerating to a degree, it really depends on what your dreams are. Par examplé, if your dream is to live on a sugarcake island on a cloud with unicorns and happy-juice and sparkling rivers of gold and not have any stresses, living in the lap of luxury getting fanned with big huge leaves, (or expecting me to not have run on sentences), then you are mistaken, (sorry green line of word.) Nope, sorry… yearbook is not the easiest class you ever did see, it actually is about the biggest slap in the face for students who were expecting marshmallow candy parades, its something that takes dedication, time management, imagination, (mine’s on the fritz… what is a fritz anyways?) and an ability to not explode from stress and die in a gruesome pile of flesh all over Ms. G and the girls, and stain their lovely clothes. Ok… breathe Steve, breathe. Oh yeah… I don’t need to breathe to type. (Wait that doesn’t sound right does it?) Tell me if I pass out ok? Eh he. *prances* Ok yeah… I spend too much time talking to a gaggle of t00bish girls. Where was I, oh yeah! Yearbook is hard. But good. But hard. Ok… gotta try and make this essay slightly coherent.
Starting at the beginning. I can’t really remember back to September really… my brain just works in indesign and colour schemes but I remember it being kinda simple but eerily scary… like there was big monster sitting on my shoulder (or the mound of paper in my binder.) Everything started out real great, I felt like the only one who was in on a joke, as I have had Meese as a teacher many a cool, fun time before. I sat there daydreaming of all the wonderfulness that would occur over the next school year. Then came the stack of papers and the assignments to be done in Pagemaker. Why were we using pagemaker you ask? Weren’t we supposed to be working in full colour and with a brand new program? Uh huh. But yeah… for some reason or another, the shiny new programs had not arrived. (I seem to remember something about money and flowers, and maybe even a Chris Clarry brand thank you card.) But eventually the horrible bland horror that was pagemaker died, and was reincarnated as the lovely sweet colourful indesign.
The world became much more brilliant, but also finally became serious, we were in full yearbook making mode, with all the responsibilities and deadlines. The next one was fast approaching, and we were behind. We all had to work like little worker ants, struggling over that crazy hard learning curve,(which I actually didn’t find that hard,) to get to the deadline finish line. I worked on the second page in the book, the info page, ta da! I decided that I would take something from past books that I thought was a little flawed give it a digital revamping. I went out and took many pictures… with a camera that was as difficult as a two year old on a sugar high. “I don’t wanna take a picture… wait I’m tired, give me 20 seconds to save this one so I have the strength to take another, oh no… not bad lighting… my shutter speed is stuck.” That was my imitation of the cameras that we use, I detest the way that most digital cameras work, they are too slow and automatic settings are not friendly to a traditional photographer. So I got the pictures and went about cropping out the backgrounds and making the people all nice and comfy in the cozy collage. It wasn’t much later that I was snuck up on by the lithe forms or our editors, and they spun my computer chair and smacked me hard in the face with the word colophone. After I awoke from the coma, I went about the scary task of finding out what ever in the world this word could mean. I talked to Meese and got a clue, there was info about the colophone in the crypt of yearbooks past. I approached the big black box of oldness and sacred not so safeness, and then realized that I had forgotten the secret password, unfortunately open sesame did not work for me. I solved this problem quite quickly with the help of someone who knew the password, and was soon rummaging around the crypt searching for the illusive and mysterious colophone. I searched high and low, through yearbook and editor’s kit… and finally found something semi coherent about colophones. I brought my amazing find to be appraised by the all knowing, all seeing Ms. Gordon, and upon a discussion with the girls about the fact that the colohphone was basically just a bunch of mostly useless information about the printing of the book that we mostly didn’t know anyways, we decided to not include one on the page. And so ended the first of many wild goose chases that I have gone on in this class.
That’s another thing… there are no guarantees that anything is going to work out the way you planned it to. In yearbook, there is only one time things are totally secure and set in stone, when the book is finished. I worked on many pages and helped with many others, and there were times when my ideas were thrown out the window because better ones came along, this was alright for me mostly as the work that I did was still helpful. The one way that it became annoying was when I did something considerable one day, and had it scrapped the next for a totally new idea without being informed, its almost like a, “Oh my goodness, what happened to my baby?!?!?” type of situation. Ah well, on with the show.
The next few months after I finished the info page, (that’s right I said finished… I can do that *shifty eyes* why are you all staring at me?) were filled with deadlines and pages, my next one being the photo page… which was actually a double page spread… of DOOM! Ok scratch the DOOM part, but it definitely had some challenges. This story begins at the beginning of the class, when I made positively sure that I would get to work on the photo page, because I am so much of a photo nut, (my sister has made me into a super villain in her drawings called Camera-face man.) Taking on pages that were about things that I was interested in seemed to be the best way to go, cause as someone I can’t remember once said “Do what you know.” Or something like that. This idea worked well for me as it kept me interested, what didn’t work for me was my partner, Mr. Idon’tliketodoanythingbutgoonmyspaceallthetime. (That doesn’t fit on a badge either… its really hard for him to find a job anywhere.) So yeah… this guy, we’ll call him Mr. T for short, who was my partner, showed a real lack of enthusiasm for the page, and I had to drag him away from his desk while he whined about something or another, just so I could figure out a layout for the page. Once that nails on the chalkboard experience was over, I went about the task of setting our idea into motion. The idea? To use picture frames as borders around the pictures that were to be included on the page. So I went to it, finding pictures of frames on the internet, and edited them to work in indesign. This is all I managed to do before I caught the black lung from evil death spores that had been hiding in my walls (which my dad insisted upon ripping down all in one day… gotta love 150 year old plaster in your lungs right at the same time you have a chest cold, oh yeah!) and became so ill and weak that I couldn’t do more than cough. This was a lovely experience for me… oh yeah, just fabulous. So I didn’t die… at least I don’t think so… if I did then I have a sweet idea - Introducing M. Night Shamalyan’s The Fearbook! Anywhosums, I managed to get back to school, where I was immediately decapitated by two voraciously angry banshees, I mean editors. Now, this was just about the scariest thing ever… I’m recovering from being sick, and have left my partner with the work that needed to be done with a promise of coming in extra later to make sure that the pages got finished, and what do I get? Yelled at. Basically, Mr. T decided that he pitied the fool who even acknowledged the fact that he had any responsibilities and used his magic shoes to make them forget that he ever had any. I ended up being reprimanded for being sick, because it was my fault, and totally something I should have avoided. So I took my punishment, because there was nothing really more that I could do about it, and got working, and when I say working, I mean slaving… I ended up almost living in the library and the yearbook room trying to get the page done. Its sad but I can’t even remember if Mr. T even did anything to help in the production of the page, not like a fool would be pitied if he didn’t. I was almost finished the page, and the deadline was fast approaching, when I was hit in the head by a large falling ultimatum. One Emily Johnston threw it at me, in what I think was a misguided attack at procrastination. The ultimatum was to either have the page done by the end of the day, or suffer the consequences, which in this case were pistols at dawn, 10 paces then turn and shoot. Ok no, the consequence was that the page would be taken away from me and finished by her. I worked that day as much extra as I could, spending both my lunch and my spare right after lunch busily working away trying to get the page finished. Lets put into perspective quickly the amount of work I did on this page before it was taken away from me. Come children and I’ll tell you a tale, of how Steve found frames, photshopped them for hours, gathered student photographs, took pictures of the photo students, interviewed Mr. Widjedal and wrote an interview article on him, and then designed a page and tried to stick it all together, oh and don’t forget the consistent internal margins, can’t forget those. They’re the darned things that lost me the page, taken from me right before it was born, just because I couldn’t get the page organized quickly what with the different shapes of the pictures. So the page was taken from me, with little I could do about it.
This is just something that happened and I had to move on, the silly thing is that I think that I helped later with a bunch of other pages in that submission after school, but wasn’t allowed to keep working on the one I had started with. I seriously cannot remember which page I was working on when I stayed late, I know that I was in helping really late right before one deadline till 7:30 at night, it was the submission right near Halloween, and we were there trying to get all the pages finished. The very sad thing, is that I really cannot remember any of the pages that I helped with or what I did exactly, all I know is that I just kept working and working, had a break when I ate some Wendy’s that Ms. G went and bought for us, and then kept working, that’s really kind of sad I guess… well if you think about it, its not the only thing that I remember about the night, I can recall laughing at all of the silly things that we started saying while we were so stressed and the random little freak-outs where one of us would just make a little scream or spin around in our chairs and yell out nonsense. These sort of little experiences with the wonderful people in the class were amazing and I would go through a thousand stressful nights if they were all so tragically funny and beautiful.
There were many a more things to be done after the photo page and I had to keep working, forget about Mr. T and the ultimatums, and get started on my next project, which was actually nothing for a while. I busied myself helping everyone with their pages, and tangoed with the cameras a couple more times, before we realized that Drew Glenn had pretty much disappeared, taking his locker bling bling page with him (and probably selling it to the hock shop downtown, it was shiny.) The time came for me to step in and do another page, this time flying solo, and realizing that it’s the best way to fly, (well other than British Airways.) So a few ideas were thrown about, and we settled on a pictionary page, that would consist of drawings with numbers beside them that would explain what the pictures were if you flipped the book over. The page was fun to make, as basically all I had to do was get the class to play pictionary, scan the drawings and then photoshop them and stick them into indesign with a background, some rules and a title and voila. One of the most ironic things that I have ever seen was trying to get people to play pictionary. Normally on a good day, there are about 5 people actually working for the whole class, that get things done in a totally productive manner, the rest are mostly on the fringe, where they are working but will be very easily distracted, and then there are the ones that just watch movies and play games all class, no matter what they’re supposed to be doing. It seems that I caught everyone on a good working day, as I could barely find 6 people in the class to play that weren’t actually busy working, and had to get the help of Ms. G as one of the people so that the game would work. We played a dulled down version based mostly on the cards, and had little trouble doing this, except for when it was my turn and no one could figure out what exactly I was trying to draw. Ah well as Mr. Payette says, “Those who cannot paint, take photographs.” Or something like that, all I know is that he’s crazy because he doesn’t think that photography is an art. What is an art is the way that I got my page done and handed in early. It took me three tries to get it right, but I finally managed to get something done in the class before the due date. A feat that I don’t think that I’ll be able to reproduce again (unless I complete my time machine, but I doubt that’ll happen for a while, but you know, I’ll get to it eventually.) So, onwards and downwards, as I take up another page with my crazy amounts of typing, I apologize for the extent that I am going to right now, the thing is, I’m having too much fun now writing this to stop any time soon, and I think that the world would implode anyways if I wrote a short essay.
On to the next submission… the last submission of them all (until next year) oh my, gee golly wiz. So here we were at the last submission, the one that contained the dreaded grad section of ultimate destruction. It was like an endless consuming fire that burned our souls for all eternity. Ok, ok I’m exaggerating a bit, it wasn’t that bad, but it did have some strange side effects. This submission, I was put in charge of quite a few different things, at first, I got assigned to one of the grad dp spreads, and went about the task of decoding the differences in the legend for the grad surveys between the page and the surveys themselves. I sent away for a little orphan Annie decoder ring, but it only told me to buy Ovaltine and quit trying to use kiddie toys and listening to 50’s radio, oh and to stop watching movies like A Christmas Story. So, I got all of the stuff laid out on the page, only to be told that I did it totally wrong. Me? Wrong? I don’t think so mister, there must be some sort of mistake. There was, and I was the one to find it, the evil error coming from the quietest student in the class… a one D. Smith, he was such a good student all year that I don’t think that his name was ever uttered, he went about his business and never bothered anyone, so it was such a shock when I found a rather vulgar grad survey filled out by him in the word document that contained all of the processed grad surveys. I never would have expected this sort of thing to happen, but it did, and right when we didn’t need it. We then went through the grueling/maddening (i.e. Crazy) task of reorganizing and totally redoing the entire grad section. The lovely Vanessa and I teamed up for this one, and worked as quickly as possible to get everything done. We really didn’t have much more time, and near the end of the submission, I came back from being at a big swim meet and was already feeling pretty tired and stayed again and worked with Vanessa for hours, organizing pictures, matching quizzes to word documents, to people’s names, to their grad photos and then to the indesign page. This work was insane and drove us that way by the end of it. We went from being already pretty strange and twisted, to being past the point of no return, I was making random grunting and squeaking noises, and Vanessa was twitching and finger dancing, singing random songs and we were both mumbling stuff to ourselves constantly, the best part is when we randomly and without realizing it broke out into German accents. It was so very random, one second we’re working, the next, we’re talking like we’re Sigfried and Roy, the scary part is that neither of us thought about talking with a German accent, and we both did it at the same time. Very, very strange… the plot constantly thickens in the Fearbook.
Oh yeah, can’t forget that I also was working on my final page of the book, the page that came out of needing interesting filler space. Go to Steve, he’s the filler space hero, he can take a drab boring moment and turn it into something special, he’s got super powers, that’s what I’ve heard. So yeah, I had this idea that there could be a Back in: 1988 page in the grad section to go along with the graduating class’s year of birth. This idea was ok, but didn’t fit very well with the theme, so the wonderfully talented and totally understanding Ms. G (who understands me and my mental state better than anyone at school,) managed to take my idea and spin it into something perfect, a Trivial pursuit 1988 edition game. I started working on this page, and yet again was pegged with some taggers along. Lets call these ones for time’s sake, the ghosts, a certain two girls who happened to be best friends, and who’s initials start with NA and AM, were signed on to help. They managed to find some very interesting ‘facts’ on the internet that I couldn’t use, in-between constant trips for food and or to work on some other classes’ homework. Having dealt with Mr. T already, it was easy enough to forget about the ghosts and just keep working on my own. I used some sweet photoshop skills and scanned and drew over in photoshop a game board, and created my own cards as well. I then went about the task of finding usable info about 1988. This proved a little harder than expected, it seems that the internet forgot about 1988 almost entirely. The books I found in the library were hard to get any information out of, it was like squeezing a quarter and expecting some water to come out. I eventually got all of the info I needed and the page came together quite nicely, and is the page that I am definitely the most proud of that I have worked on, its crisp and funky and very school colourful. It also contains some of the best trivia there is to find on 1988, like that Charlie Kerfield, a pro baseball player was once kicked out of a game because an umpire found two twinkies and a hot dog in his glove. I guess the guy was hungry.
Well, we thought that everything in the submission was going great, we got down to the end of things and were ahead of schedule, so when the last day came around, we were feeling pretty gosh darned confident that we would be getting out of the school right away at 2:30. Oh boy, were we mistaken. Everything was going great until we found that the glitchy computers did the evil thing to us again, and with half of the photos from two pages. What’s the evil thing you ask, well we aren’t really sure, we first encountered the evil thing when Chris tried to scan a photo for me, and then sent it to me, only to find that it would not open, it had no thumbnail display and when I tried to preview it, it said that there was nothing there. Its as though there’s an evil electric gremlin in the computers that takes delight in doing this randomly to pictures that we really need. The problem came when we were trying to export some of the pages in the sports section, the hockey pages I do believe. None of us left at school were the ones in charge of the hockey and figure skating pages. We had to do some super sleuthing like the Three investigators, (I was Jupiter Jones,) to find out who was working on that page, and then dig even further back, to who took the pictures and edited them in photoshop. We found our man, a one Michael Douglas, I mean Mike Makinson, and called him up quick as a flash. We managed to get him to come to the school, and somehow, without even knowing how he did it himself, he fixed the pictures, the gremlin went home with its tail in between it’s legs, to its spaceship, did I mention that it was a space gremlin? Ok, so the submission was done, everything was all packaged up and we managed to get out of the school relatively early that day, (as in not 12:00 am.) Everything looked great, the book was mostly finished and all that was left were the final edits, oh my how many final edits. There were people in the book twice, Craig Ford went MIA again, and there was stuff all out of place, we realized that our brains must have been totally fried the day we packaged the submission. We dealt with it, fixing everything and sending it back to the company. I was one of the first to see the submission as I was in the right place at the right time, (something that happens to me a lot, I guess that’s one way in which I’m lucky,) and was able to see my Trivial Pursuit page, which looked so fantastic and seemed to be the only page in the book without any edits on it at all. YAY! WAHOOO! YIPPEEE! This was wonderful for me, a page I could be really proud of, the page that I could flip to in 20 or 30 years and say to my kids, that’s my page I created that! You know I’ll say that about the other pages, and in a small way about the whole book, except I think that I’ll always know of this year’s yearbook as our book, when I say this I mean the class, we have become almost a family in there between all of the freak-outs and the stresses, there were tons of laughs and lots of fun, (like going out to breakfast, Thanks Ms. G that was great by the way.) and bonded so much just because of the amount of time spent together. There were so many wonderful people in the class, and I am amazed at how many have become my close friends just from being in a class with them.
I have mentioned some pretty stressful and crazy things in this small novel, but I think I mentioned all of that stuff because that’s when I was having the most fun, when it was just a small bunch of us and we were sitting around slaving away over the work that we had to do, wheeling from computer to computer to fix one problem or another with each other’s pages and sleeping under desks and tables, (which should be known as the Emily special, she was very good at it.) This class has given me so much, its taught me things about life, about friendship and about stress, its also taught me a lot about myself, and the kind of person that I want to be. I wouldn’t trade this experience for any other one, I am sure that it will always go down in my history books as the best experience of my school career. Thanks for all of the fun times, and the cookies and juice. Oh and for reading this extra long essay. I am sorry that I more than doubled the expectation, I just had a lot to say, and the thing is, I stopped writing in the expository style, and went to the Steve Backman original, which is always first and foremost, very long winded. Alright now, I must be off, but don’t worry kids I’ll be back again some day, if you ever hear a computer chair rolling up behind you, and you feel breathing on your shoulder, you’ll soon hear an UMMMMM…. And I’ll be there! The backseat designer! Ok, now that that little piece of theatrics is over I bid you adieu, thank you once again and good night. Try the veal, I’ve heard its meaty.
----Alrighty then... I know some peoples are coming home... and it'd be nice to see everyone that is. Ok more bluntly put, if you're home... call me, if not, comment me here and I'll call you. End of story. Lol
Steve
Confessions of a Backseat Designer
I am, what most people in this world of worlds, consider a backseat designer. I would call myself a sit-behind-design-inspiration-conscience-editing-colour-picture quality-friend. This title unfortunately would not fit on a badge, woe. This gift, or as most call an evil ‘infliction’ causes much stress. I think its because people are too closed minded to listen to my ideas. They say I’m being annoying and crushing their dreams. Well… that’s actually funny that I mentioned dream crushing, cause that’s what this class will do to you. Wait… that’s exaggerating to a degree, it really depends on what your dreams are. Par examplé, if your dream is to live on a sugarcake island on a cloud with unicorns and happy-juice and sparkling rivers of gold and not have any stresses, living in the lap of luxury getting fanned with big huge leaves, (or expecting me to not have run on sentences), then you are mistaken, (sorry green line of word.) Nope, sorry… yearbook is not the easiest class you ever did see, it actually is about the biggest slap in the face for students who were expecting marshmallow candy parades, its something that takes dedication, time management, imagination, (mine’s on the fritz… what is a fritz anyways?) and an ability to not explode from stress and die in a gruesome pile of flesh all over Ms. G and the girls, and stain their lovely clothes. Ok… breathe Steve, breathe. Oh yeah… I don’t need to breathe to type. (Wait that doesn’t sound right does it?) Tell me if I pass out ok? Eh he. *prances* Ok yeah… I spend too much time talking to a gaggle of t00bish girls. Where was I, oh yeah! Yearbook is hard. But good. But hard. Ok… gotta try and make this essay slightly coherent.
Starting at the beginning. I can’t really remember back to September really… my brain just works in indesign and colour schemes but I remember it being kinda simple but eerily scary… like there was big monster sitting on my shoulder (or the mound of paper in my binder.) Everything started out real great, I felt like the only one who was in on a joke, as I have had Meese as a teacher many a cool, fun time before. I sat there daydreaming of all the wonderfulness that would occur over the next school year. Then came the stack of papers and the assignments to be done in Pagemaker. Why were we using pagemaker you ask? Weren’t we supposed to be working in full colour and with a brand new program? Uh huh. But yeah… for some reason or another, the shiny new programs had not arrived. (I seem to remember something about money and flowers, and maybe even a Chris Clarry brand thank you card.) But eventually the horrible bland horror that was pagemaker died, and was reincarnated as the lovely sweet colourful indesign.
The world became much more brilliant, but also finally became serious, we were in full yearbook making mode, with all the responsibilities and deadlines. The next one was fast approaching, and we were behind. We all had to work like little worker ants, struggling over that crazy hard learning curve,(which I actually didn’t find that hard,) to get to the deadline finish line. I worked on the second page in the book, the info page, ta da! I decided that I would take something from past books that I thought was a little flawed give it a digital revamping. I went out and took many pictures… with a camera that was as difficult as a two year old on a sugar high. “I don’t wanna take a picture… wait I’m tired, give me 20 seconds to save this one so I have the strength to take another, oh no… not bad lighting… my shutter speed is stuck.” That was my imitation of the cameras that we use, I detest the way that most digital cameras work, they are too slow and automatic settings are not friendly to a traditional photographer. So I got the pictures and went about cropping out the backgrounds and making the people all nice and comfy in the cozy collage. It wasn’t much later that I was snuck up on by the lithe forms or our editors, and they spun my computer chair and smacked me hard in the face with the word colophone. After I awoke from the coma, I went about the scary task of finding out what ever in the world this word could mean. I talked to Meese and got a clue, there was info about the colophone in the crypt of yearbooks past. I approached the big black box of oldness and sacred not so safeness, and then realized that I had forgotten the secret password, unfortunately open sesame did not work for me. I solved this problem quite quickly with the help of someone who knew the password, and was soon rummaging around the crypt searching for the illusive and mysterious colophone. I searched high and low, through yearbook and editor’s kit… and finally found something semi coherent about colophones. I brought my amazing find to be appraised by the all knowing, all seeing Ms. Gordon, and upon a discussion with the girls about the fact that the colohphone was basically just a bunch of mostly useless information about the printing of the book that we mostly didn’t know anyways, we decided to not include one on the page. And so ended the first of many wild goose chases that I have gone on in this class.
That’s another thing… there are no guarantees that anything is going to work out the way you planned it to. In yearbook, there is only one time things are totally secure and set in stone, when the book is finished. I worked on many pages and helped with many others, and there were times when my ideas were thrown out the window because better ones came along, this was alright for me mostly as the work that I did was still helpful. The one way that it became annoying was when I did something considerable one day, and had it scrapped the next for a totally new idea without being informed, its almost like a, “Oh my goodness, what happened to my baby?!?!?” type of situation. Ah well, on with the show.
The next few months after I finished the info page, (that’s right I said finished… I can do that *shifty eyes* why are you all staring at me?) were filled with deadlines and pages, my next one being the photo page… which was actually a double page spread… of DOOM! Ok scratch the DOOM part, but it definitely had some challenges. This story begins at the beginning of the class, when I made positively sure that I would get to work on the photo page, because I am so much of a photo nut, (my sister has made me into a super villain in her drawings called Camera-face man.) Taking on pages that were about things that I was interested in seemed to be the best way to go, cause as someone I can’t remember once said “Do what you know.” Or something like that. This idea worked well for me as it kept me interested, what didn’t work for me was my partner, Mr. Idon’tliketodoanythingbutgoonmyspaceallthetime. (That doesn’t fit on a badge either… its really hard for him to find a job anywhere.) So yeah… this guy, we’ll call him Mr. T for short, who was my partner, showed a real lack of enthusiasm for the page, and I had to drag him away from his desk while he whined about something or another, just so I could figure out a layout for the page. Once that nails on the chalkboard experience was over, I went about the task of setting our idea into motion. The idea? To use picture frames as borders around the pictures that were to be included on the page. So I went to it, finding pictures of frames on the internet, and edited them to work in indesign. This is all I managed to do before I caught the black lung from evil death spores that had been hiding in my walls (which my dad insisted upon ripping down all in one day… gotta love 150 year old plaster in your lungs right at the same time you have a chest cold, oh yeah!) and became so ill and weak that I couldn’t do more than cough. This was a lovely experience for me… oh yeah, just fabulous. So I didn’t die… at least I don’t think so… if I did then I have a sweet idea - Introducing M. Night Shamalyan’s The Fearbook! Anywhosums, I managed to get back to school, where I was immediately decapitated by two voraciously angry banshees, I mean editors. Now, this was just about the scariest thing ever… I’m recovering from being sick, and have left my partner with the work that needed to be done with a promise of coming in extra later to make sure that the pages got finished, and what do I get? Yelled at. Basically, Mr. T decided that he pitied the fool who even acknowledged the fact that he had any responsibilities and used his magic shoes to make them forget that he ever had any. I ended up being reprimanded for being sick, because it was my fault, and totally something I should have avoided. So I took my punishment, because there was nothing really more that I could do about it, and got working, and when I say working, I mean slaving… I ended up almost living in the library and the yearbook room trying to get the page done. Its sad but I can’t even remember if Mr. T even did anything to help in the production of the page, not like a fool would be pitied if he didn’t. I was almost finished the page, and the deadline was fast approaching, when I was hit in the head by a large falling ultimatum. One Emily Johnston threw it at me, in what I think was a misguided attack at procrastination. The ultimatum was to either have the page done by the end of the day, or suffer the consequences, which in this case were pistols at dawn, 10 paces then turn and shoot. Ok no, the consequence was that the page would be taken away from me and finished by her. I worked that day as much extra as I could, spending both my lunch and my spare right after lunch busily working away trying to get the page finished. Lets put into perspective quickly the amount of work I did on this page before it was taken away from me. Come children and I’ll tell you a tale, of how Steve found frames, photshopped them for hours, gathered student photographs, took pictures of the photo students, interviewed Mr. Widjedal and wrote an interview article on him, and then designed a page and tried to stick it all together, oh and don’t forget the consistent internal margins, can’t forget those. They’re the darned things that lost me the page, taken from me right before it was born, just because I couldn’t get the page organized quickly what with the different shapes of the pictures. So the page was taken from me, with little I could do about it.
This is just something that happened and I had to move on, the silly thing is that I think that I helped later with a bunch of other pages in that submission after school, but wasn’t allowed to keep working on the one I had started with. I seriously cannot remember which page I was working on when I stayed late, I know that I was in helping really late right before one deadline till 7:30 at night, it was the submission right near Halloween, and we were there trying to get all the pages finished. The very sad thing, is that I really cannot remember any of the pages that I helped with or what I did exactly, all I know is that I just kept working and working, had a break when I ate some Wendy’s that Ms. G went and bought for us, and then kept working, that’s really kind of sad I guess… well if you think about it, its not the only thing that I remember about the night, I can recall laughing at all of the silly things that we started saying while we were so stressed and the random little freak-outs where one of us would just make a little scream or spin around in our chairs and yell out nonsense. These sort of little experiences with the wonderful people in the class were amazing and I would go through a thousand stressful nights if they were all so tragically funny and beautiful.
There were many a more things to be done after the photo page and I had to keep working, forget about Mr. T and the ultimatums, and get started on my next project, which was actually nothing for a while. I busied myself helping everyone with their pages, and tangoed with the cameras a couple more times, before we realized that Drew Glenn had pretty much disappeared, taking his locker bling bling page with him (and probably selling it to the hock shop downtown, it was shiny.) The time came for me to step in and do another page, this time flying solo, and realizing that it’s the best way to fly, (well other than British Airways.) So a few ideas were thrown about, and we settled on a pictionary page, that would consist of drawings with numbers beside them that would explain what the pictures were if you flipped the book over. The page was fun to make, as basically all I had to do was get the class to play pictionary, scan the drawings and then photoshop them and stick them into indesign with a background, some rules and a title and voila. One of the most ironic things that I have ever seen was trying to get people to play pictionary. Normally on a good day, there are about 5 people actually working for the whole class, that get things done in a totally productive manner, the rest are mostly on the fringe, where they are working but will be very easily distracted, and then there are the ones that just watch movies and play games all class, no matter what they’re supposed to be doing. It seems that I caught everyone on a good working day, as I could barely find 6 people in the class to play that weren’t actually busy working, and had to get the help of Ms. G as one of the people so that the game would work. We played a dulled down version based mostly on the cards, and had little trouble doing this, except for when it was my turn and no one could figure out what exactly I was trying to draw. Ah well as Mr. Payette says, “Those who cannot paint, take photographs.” Or something like that, all I know is that he’s crazy because he doesn’t think that photography is an art. What is an art is the way that I got my page done and handed in early. It took me three tries to get it right, but I finally managed to get something done in the class before the due date. A feat that I don’t think that I’ll be able to reproduce again (unless I complete my time machine, but I doubt that’ll happen for a while, but you know, I’ll get to it eventually.) So, onwards and downwards, as I take up another page with my crazy amounts of typing, I apologize for the extent that I am going to right now, the thing is, I’m having too much fun now writing this to stop any time soon, and I think that the world would implode anyways if I wrote a short essay.
On to the next submission… the last submission of them all (until next year) oh my, gee golly wiz. So here we were at the last submission, the one that contained the dreaded grad section of ultimate destruction. It was like an endless consuming fire that burned our souls for all eternity. Ok, ok I’m exaggerating a bit, it wasn’t that bad, but it did have some strange side effects. This submission, I was put in charge of quite a few different things, at first, I got assigned to one of the grad dp spreads, and went about the task of decoding the differences in the legend for the grad surveys between the page and the surveys themselves. I sent away for a little orphan Annie decoder ring, but it only told me to buy Ovaltine and quit trying to use kiddie toys and listening to 50’s radio, oh and to stop watching movies like A Christmas Story. So, I got all of the stuff laid out on the page, only to be told that I did it totally wrong. Me? Wrong? I don’t think so mister, there must be some sort of mistake. There was, and I was the one to find it, the evil error coming from the quietest student in the class… a one D. Smith, he was such a good student all year that I don’t think that his name was ever uttered, he went about his business and never bothered anyone, so it was such a shock when I found a rather vulgar grad survey filled out by him in the word document that contained all of the processed grad surveys. I never would have expected this sort of thing to happen, but it did, and right when we didn’t need it. We then went through the grueling/maddening (i.e. Crazy) task of reorganizing and totally redoing the entire grad section. The lovely Vanessa and I teamed up for this one, and worked as quickly as possible to get everything done. We really didn’t have much more time, and near the end of the submission, I came back from being at a big swim meet and was already feeling pretty tired and stayed again and worked with Vanessa for hours, organizing pictures, matching quizzes to word documents, to people’s names, to their grad photos and then to the indesign page. This work was insane and drove us that way by the end of it. We went from being already pretty strange and twisted, to being past the point of no return, I was making random grunting and squeaking noises, and Vanessa was twitching and finger dancing, singing random songs and we were both mumbling stuff to ourselves constantly, the best part is when we randomly and without realizing it broke out into German accents. It was so very random, one second we’re working, the next, we’re talking like we’re Sigfried and Roy, the scary part is that neither of us thought about talking with a German accent, and we both did it at the same time. Very, very strange… the plot constantly thickens in the Fearbook.
Oh yeah, can’t forget that I also was working on my final page of the book, the page that came out of needing interesting filler space. Go to Steve, he’s the filler space hero, he can take a drab boring moment and turn it into something special, he’s got super powers, that’s what I’ve heard. So yeah, I had this idea that there could be a Back in: 1988 page in the grad section to go along with the graduating class’s year of birth. This idea was ok, but didn’t fit very well with the theme, so the wonderfully talented and totally understanding Ms. G (who understands me and my mental state better than anyone at school,) managed to take my idea and spin it into something perfect, a Trivial pursuit 1988 edition game. I started working on this page, and yet again was pegged with some taggers along. Lets call these ones for time’s sake, the ghosts, a certain two girls who happened to be best friends, and who’s initials start with NA and AM, were signed on to help. They managed to find some very interesting ‘facts’ on the internet that I couldn’t use, in-between constant trips for food and or to work on some other classes’ homework. Having dealt with Mr. T already, it was easy enough to forget about the ghosts and just keep working on my own. I used some sweet photoshop skills and scanned and drew over in photoshop a game board, and created my own cards as well. I then went about the task of finding usable info about 1988. This proved a little harder than expected, it seems that the internet forgot about 1988 almost entirely. The books I found in the library were hard to get any information out of, it was like squeezing a quarter and expecting some water to come out. I eventually got all of the info I needed and the page came together quite nicely, and is the page that I am definitely the most proud of that I have worked on, its crisp and funky and very school colourful. It also contains some of the best trivia there is to find on 1988, like that Charlie Kerfield, a pro baseball player was once kicked out of a game because an umpire found two twinkies and a hot dog in his glove. I guess the guy was hungry.
Well, we thought that everything in the submission was going great, we got down to the end of things and were ahead of schedule, so when the last day came around, we were feeling pretty gosh darned confident that we would be getting out of the school right away at 2:30. Oh boy, were we mistaken. Everything was going great until we found that the glitchy computers did the evil thing to us again, and with half of the photos from two pages. What’s the evil thing you ask, well we aren’t really sure, we first encountered the evil thing when Chris tried to scan a photo for me, and then sent it to me, only to find that it would not open, it had no thumbnail display and when I tried to preview it, it said that there was nothing there. Its as though there’s an evil electric gremlin in the computers that takes delight in doing this randomly to pictures that we really need. The problem came when we were trying to export some of the pages in the sports section, the hockey pages I do believe. None of us left at school were the ones in charge of the hockey and figure skating pages. We had to do some super sleuthing like the Three investigators, (I was Jupiter Jones,) to find out who was working on that page, and then dig even further back, to who took the pictures and edited them in photoshop. We found our man, a one Michael Douglas, I mean Mike Makinson, and called him up quick as a flash. We managed to get him to come to the school, and somehow, without even knowing how he did it himself, he fixed the pictures, the gremlin went home with its tail in between it’s legs, to its spaceship, did I mention that it was a space gremlin? Ok, so the submission was done, everything was all packaged up and we managed to get out of the school relatively early that day, (as in not 12:00 am.) Everything looked great, the book was mostly finished and all that was left were the final edits, oh my how many final edits. There were people in the book twice, Craig Ford went MIA again, and there was stuff all out of place, we realized that our brains must have been totally fried the day we packaged the submission. We dealt with it, fixing everything and sending it back to the company. I was one of the first to see the submission as I was in the right place at the right time, (something that happens to me a lot, I guess that’s one way in which I’m lucky,) and was able to see my Trivial Pursuit page, which looked so fantastic and seemed to be the only page in the book without any edits on it at all. YAY! WAHOOO! YIPPEEE! This was wonderful for me, a page I could be really proud of, the page that I could flip to in 20 or 30 years and say to my kids, that’s my page I created that! You know I’ll say that about the other pages, and in a small way about the whole book, except I think that I’ll always know of this year’s yearbook as our book, when I say this I mean the class, we have become almost a family in there between all of the freak-outs and the stresses, there were tons of laughs and lots of fun, (like going out to breakfast, Thanks Ms. G that was great by the way.) and bonded so much just because of the amount of time spent together. There were so many wonderful people in the class, and I am amazed at how many have become my close friends just from being in a class with them.
I have mentioned some pretty stressful and crazy things in this small novel, but I think I mentioned all of that stuff because that’s when I was having the most fun, when it was just a small bunch of us and we were sitting around slaving away over the work that we had to do, wheeling from computer to computer to fix one problem or another with each other’s pages and sleeping under desks and tables, (which should be known as the Emily special, she was very good at it.) This class has given me so much, its taught me things about life, about friendship and about stress, its also taught me a lot about myself, and the kind of person that I want to be. I wouldn’t trade this experience for any other one, I am sure that it will always go down in my history books as the best experience of my school career. Thanks for all of the fun times, and the cookies and juice. Oh and for reading this extra long essay. I am sorry that I more than doubled the expectation, I just had a lot to say, and the thing is, I stopped writing in the expository style, and went to the Steve Backman original, which is always first and foremost, very long winded. Alright now, I must be off, but don’t worry kids I’ll be back again some day, if you ever hear a computer chair rolling up behind you, and you feel breathing on your shoulder, you’ll soon hear an UMMMMM…. And I’ll be there! The backseat designer! Ok, now that that little piece of theatrics is over I bid you adieu, thank you once again and good night. Try the veal, I’ve heard its meaty.
----Alrighty then... I know some peoples are coming home... and it'd be nice to see everyone that is. Ok more bluntly put, if you're home... call me, if not, comment me here and I'll call you. End of story. Lol
Steve