On Greeting a Stranger on the Street...

'Cause someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

I just want to create art. How hard is that, to go out and make something? For me, it's harder than you would think. I doodle a lot, make little scetches quite a bit on school assignments, in notebooks.. I fiddle around in photoshop every once in a while, and I write, sometimes. But this isn't what I mean.

These things are a product of boredom. I draw because class isn't interesting, photoshop when I've got nothing to do, and write when I've got absolutely nothing to do and the computer is off. Today I was downloading some music and waiting to see if anyone was doing anything, and there was a lump of sculpy (clay) next to my computer. I'm in advanced art right now, and I am really looking foreward to the sculpture part of it (and get over with this coat of arms crap - unless I end up painting it - i never paint) because we're sculpting human heads. Now I know that I've at least got some talent in sculpture - I've always loved working with clay, and I just seem to have a natural ability to mold and visualize in 3d. I've also taken to being increasingly interested in the human face as of late, usually just for something to draw, but because of this, I think I know the human face pretty well.

The other day I was looking at a batman messageboard as I do every once in a while, and I noticed that one of the sculpters on the board who makes cowls had a website in his signature. I followed a series of links to end up on some latex-mask site. Looking around, I found the profile of one man and his art, and I just studied his amazing busts for a while. I wondered how well I would actually be able to sculpt a face. So when I was fiddling with this sculpy, I started to make a nose. At first with no reference, just making a nose from memory. And it looked good. I wasn't so sure about the sides of the nostrils and the actual nostril size and shape, so I looked up some reference images and started to form and shape the nose I had made. I had really messed up on the nostrils in general, so I just kept working with it for about 10 minutes, and when I finished, I came out with what I think is a really fucking accurate (though not scale) nose. I could still work with it a bit more, smoothing it out and making both sides a bit more exact to each other, but other than that, it was great.

And I lost myself in it. I completely ignored everything, I wasn't bored at all and just created. And it just felt really good. Because I can't ever really get into art that much anymore, and I do really love making things. Maybe i'll dig out my giant box of sculpy and make more. But probably not. But not everything is good....

...My mom just set Steel Magnolias on my desk :'( It is truly the YEAR OF STEEL. No way in hell I'm going to watch it. She heard me making fun of it the other day, so she must be trying to get me to watch it.


Year. Of. Steel.

I found this wonderful site a while ago, Listen to a Movie, where you download an MP3 of the audio of a movie and just.. well... listen to it. I'd listened to Big Lebowski and Office Space a while back, and last night I nearly fell asleep listening to An Evening with Kevin Smith. Loved the part where he called the guy's boss during the show to try and get him rehired. And.. well, the rest of it I heard. I started drifting off about half an hour into it. On a completely seperate note, I went to the library earlier to pick up Dave Barry's Guide to Guys. I've read it 4 or 5 times already, but I'm going to read through it tonight to find a passage for individuals. Or maybe I'll do that after I finish writing.

Oh yeah, and yesterday was that crazy little thing called State. But I'll get to that in a bit. I had gotten sick on thursday with a bad sore throat and a cold, and so I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to perform on Saturday. Readers Theater practice last week was normal, same old everything, but Titus barely got to practice at all. I skipped out (with permission) on Readers Theater practice friday just so I could get a bit more Titus practice in, as Titus is a hell of a lot more important to me than readers theater - plus I don't need any practice in readers theater. So practice went pretty well on Friday.


Is it just me, or are these bunnies.. uhh.. on a grill?

Friday night was the artwalk. Hosbond set it up so a bunch of FHSers would be performing there. So after hanging out with people for a bit, we went to there. I guess we arrived right when it was starting (or maybe we missed a bunch of stuff?), but regardless, the first act we saw was.. Lemonman. Collin got his dad's guitar from his days of being in The Who (or something like that ;), heh), and Davey went up with him. Davey stood behind Collin and while Collin pretended to play, Davey made guitar noises to some song. It was beautiful. A bunch of people performed various things - from Speech Team stuff to singing to reading to.. well... Lemonman. Everyone was there (dont feel bad if you weren't and you still consider yourself part of my "everyone" - just go cry. Because I have no recollection of who was actually there and who wasn't. So I'm pretending you were) and I talked to a bunch of people and there were free cookies and such. At one point, I didn't think I wanted to do Titus at it because my voice was bad, but Hosbond convinced me to.

It went pretty well, and Tommy got it recoreded along with everything else of the night. But we'll get to that later (or maybe I'll forget about it). Overall, really fun night. A few surprises and cool little details, but nothing I really feel like writing down here. Fun times though.

I spent the night at Collin's for convenience sake. My awful cold of the past 2 days seemed to have been gone at 5 am when we woke up which was just peachy, but my throat wasn't doing too hot. I drank a bit of water. When Collin woke me up, he said some stuff and I mumbled some stuff, but my first clear thought was "..are you going to make waffles?" I didn't actually hear his answer, but... he didn't. :'( which sucks. Because he totally made pancakes last time I spent the night, and there was a waffle iron in the kitchen the night before. I got ahold of the Titus tape from the previous night and reviewed it - the first time I had ever actually watched it (a bit late to try to improve my performance, yes?) and found a few helpful things. Well we got to walking to school and saw Kris Johnson on the way there and walked with him a few blocks. We went on the first bus and I sat alone with Corey and people near me, but he was talking to other people, so I just ended up exchanging a few words with Bovard and David and then just laying there for the rest of the ride up.

When we got there, I helped Corey not hear that One Act had to unload their stuff and went to stake our ground. Once again, just like districts, we were first there. We set up our stuff near the TV - just like last year, and walked around a bit doing nothing. Evan's laptop and his 5 stepmania songs, old school Power Rangers, expensive Doughnuts, and many tissues filled my early morning. Hosbond gave me some tea to drink throughout the day and.. well.. thats about it. At around 7:30, I went with people to near the mime, watched Domo Arigato practice, watch Sammy and 5 other people try to scrape off her nail polish, and then went into the mime room.


This is a mime.

The first mime was some awful one about babysitting. They had no music, and nothing they did was clear at all. As Collin said, I would have had no idea what was going on unless I saw the sign. And even then I didn't get most of it. Neither of the people were very good at any part of mime as far as I could see, and.. well, it sucked. May have helped Domo a bit. They performed and it was the same as usual. Its good, funny, etc and I think the judges appreciated it. Regardless, they got all 1s. After that, I caught Sam in the hallway after, and asked him if he was about to perform, and he said yes, he was heading to the center. I was confused and said it was center 16. He thought it was 14. I checked the schedule and I was right. So we went over there with quite a bit of time to spare. He did his Solo Mime and was really well recieved by the judges (the fat one was just laughing the whole time - that one was an Allstate nomination right there). Sam changed quite a bit of stuff for the better since his almost-improv first one. Oh yeah, and I was a god at running the music. Or something.

I did god knows what for the next stretch of time, but fun, no doubt. After a while, I went off to watch Improv. Tons of people were in the room. Even.. like.. Stephen Hoffman, that Ayden guy, and Ronnie and Zoe. That was weird. But.. The improv was great, though not quite as good as the Sam/Sara/Nolan last year. A couple (Sam, Sara) out to get married, and the husband didn't fit into the tux, so they had to call the Tailor (David). He rode his moped over and hilarity ensued. Eventually they used the corset and a hammer to get him to fit into it, and then they went to get married, and Sam exploded all over. Good stuff. They also got all 1s. I hope they go to allstate; they deserve it. The one after them was good as well - had 2 people playing 2 parts - mom and dad, and son and daughter. It was good stuff, and even the one after was okay. Then we left to do something else. The details are lost on me.

Eventually, Pygmalion went. I got a bad seat - but at least I got a seat. They did it great, but I think their timing was off a bit on a part - Eric and Nandi both seemed to be hurrying to get to the right part in the music. But nobody but Hosbond and I would have noticed that, so.. whatever. They got all 1s, obviously. Before them was another awful mime about two women going fishing. One of them had good facial expressions, but was a really bad mime with objects and such. Well, everything about it was bad, really. Oh, and the mimes wore jeans.

I did fun stuff for a while - the details escape me for the moment. But eventually Hucke came up to me and told me he would have to judge, and we knew where everything was so we would be fine without him, and gave me the ballots (because I'm repsonsible, or something?). Well, at about 1:30 (we were to perform at 2), I was having people take stuff up, and.. where the fuck were the scripts and the stools? We had no idea, and none of the teachers were there. Darin and I went to look for the van, but couldn't find it. Panic ensued, but eventually Steve and someone went out to look for the van again and I guess they found and got into it. They came back triumphantly with the stuff, and we went up to practice. I went in the elevator (the only quiet place in the entire school) to test my voice for Vader, and was a bit disapointed that I wouldn't be able to go all out - the level at which I usually hold my voice I wasn't able to attain. But I could get kind of close.

We went in and performed. Not our best performance (that would be our Districts), but still pretty good, I guess. Chewie still got laughs, as did the pilot deaths, but it was good overall, I think. Carrie singing during the Vader/Luke part worked really well, I think. We got all 1s.


Hey look! It's me, and Me, and Katie, and Steve!

After that, I headed across the hallway to Improv - Collin/Chris/Evan were going to perform soon. The ones around them were pretty good. The one with the guy with the crazy guy and the weird chin was really good. The little kid who they kind of ignored should have gotten more of a Donnie (Big Lebowski) part.. "Shut the FUCK up!!" all the time or something. But it was really good. The grasshopper disecting one was pretty good at parts, too. But back to Collin's. It wasn't the most hilarious one of thiers, but it was extremely well done and well structured. Evan did good compared to what I normally think of his improv as, Chris was great, Collin was great (Happy Burger was great), neither of them had any questions, as far as I can remember. They got all 1s.

I missed His Girl Friday, but I hear they did well. They got all 1s. But at this time, I was off to Titus practice. There was a scare for a minute when everyone thought we had to go half an hour early (There was a sign next to the room that said "Prepare to go EARLY" that I saw earlier in the day when we went to check the room out), but Shea had just read the sign wrong. By this time, I was on my second thermos of tea and I had already had tons of cough drops. My throat was doing okay, but not great. We warmed up, and then eventually, went into the room. The blonde judge that i like(d) was in there, along with 2 I didn't know (Hosbond later informed me that the blonde lady was the one that gave a 2 to WSS at districts, so I dont like her now...), and Mr. Voorhees had come to watch us, along with our regulars and a few new faces.

Cliff messed up 2 lines, but nothing the judges would know - only wording things. I got "dear heart" right, instead of saying "dear niece" (she's my daughter, not my niece - so saying it wrong would be bad), the looks between Quinn and Cliff and I at the point that I usually really like weren't quite as intense as usual, but, again, nothing anybody else would notice, Kaycee didn't sob enough, Cliff was really strong on "Now let hot etna cool in sicily..," the hand cutting scene must have been a bit weird for one of the judges - she was at an angle where she saw Quinn and I switch hands, but other than that, nothing worth mentioning. I didn't think it went badly like I did after districts, so maybe that means it went well? I don't know how my voice held up, but reviewing the tape earlier that morning deffinately helped me. We got all 1s.


Its me!

I ran off to Madwoman after that. Kelsey was fantastic in it - I absolutely loved her performance. She was extremely attentive the entire time, carried herself perfectly, had a great accent, and acted everything really well. Unfortunately, the entire group wasn't as good. Emily had a good accent, but didn't have good presence and didnt act well, Robyn was... well......... *cough*, Abbe had a great accent, but I think it ended up way over the top in a bad way, but her acting was okay. Lisa had some good acting parts, but it wasn't consistant, and she was really weak at parts. Overall, the piece didn't have much flow, and there was no real meat to it, and the pacing was just.. off. I enjoyed it. It got two 2s and a 1.

I ran off with everyone else to Moulin Rouge, but got there about 2 minutes late. Everyone that came out of the door raved about how fantastic they were, and that it was just beautiful. Sorry I missed it. They got all 1s.

After that, we were waiting for other events to get over for a while. Quinn, Jenny, Nandi and I snuck off to a quite place and just sat around for a while. We found Collin and kept on doing the same. Quinn deepthroats moose.

See a pattern anywhere, though? Every single group but madwoman, that is 15.. FIFTEEN groups got three 1s. That is simply amazing. Congratulations to everyone who went to state. Your performanes were all top notch. You should feel proud of yourselves.


Yeah. We got 46 of these.
...not the yarn version, though.

Some hilights of the day: Kris, Givan, Justin, Sam K., Carrie, and 1 other girl had a contest to see who could get the most of the opposite gender's numbers - Kris got about 170, Givan and Justin similar figures, Sam got about 200, and I didn't hear the other figures. Collin-the-weak.com plates, meeting district chick, Laura, again. Meeting.. what was her name? Mary's friend from last year and thespians again. Meeting Sam's friend from thespians again. Davey and Corey's crazy hijinks, BAM! shirt, and.. god.. a ton of other stuff I don't remember.

Afterwards, a few of us went to Nandi's afterwards for a few minutes, pretty much just to get the car. We drove over to quinns to pick up a few others and headed to Jim's party to make an apperance. They were watching Jackass: The movie, which most of us weren't too hot on. I had a couple of sprites, a few pieces of pizza, talked to Corey, and then we all head off. We went over to Tiffany's and sat around for a while. Gemma and Jenny went upstairs to change, and we talked for a while... a bunch of people came over, then. Jed, Corey, Davey, etc. We put in a movie based on the play that His Girl Friday was based off of. The Front Page, I believe. It was good. Tiffany, Joel, Evan, and Kelsey went down to the basement to watch Roman Holiday and had taffy. After Front Page was over, I went down and talked to Kelsey for a bit, other people came down, then we all went upstairs and talked. Fun times ensued, people went home. I listened to An Evening with Kevin Smith and such, as stated above, and.. now...

I spent all day doing nothing while listening to Ani DiFranco, and now i'm about to read Guide to Guys to get an excerpt for Individuals and I'm having a tiny pizza. Yay.