MadMup.com

Years: 1989-90
Teachers: Mr. Braughler, Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Morris, Miss Oh, Mr. Sturgill

(It seems like it would be good to finish this series in the year I started it. Don’t worry, I won’t be attacking my college years any time soon.)

It’s stranger to think back to my senior year than almost any other year. Remembering the year makes me remember the feeling of being on the verge of “growing up.” I realize now, of course, that going from being a senior in high school to a freshman in college isn’t really growing up, but at the time it seemed huge. My classmates were talking about moving away and going off to school somewhere and it seemed strange to me. I visited a college in Florida my junior year, but I had pretty much figured out by this point I was going to go to college where I was going to high school, close to home and familiar. Still, at the time, senior year seemed huge. We were on top of the heap, and even if the heap was small (less than 100 kids in the high school), it was still a heap – “big fish in a little pond” and all that.

Since I attended a parochial school, our class officer list included the position of chaplain. My senior year I was elected chaplain, a surprising turn of events that still makes me shake my head in disbelief all these years later. I was expected to give a short challenge in our monthly class meetings, and it was good practice for me – organizing, studying, speaking in front of others. I don’t know how I did, but I did it.

I made the decision to not play football my senior year. I had started playing as a way to get out of piano lessons (a decision I’ve rued more than once since), and I continued to go out because it was the thing to do. There was a form of peer pressure going on that wasn’t necessarily spoken aloud, it was just assumed that if you went out for football before, you’d do it again. I was starting to figure out that I wanted to be who I wanted to be and not do things because “everyone else was doing them.” I don’t recall my decision causing too many waves. I wasn’t such an integral part of the team that they felt they needed me. I don’t remember getting any impassioned pleas from the coach or other team members, and the team went onto have a 5-2 season without me. I was never much of a competitor and never really bought into the gameday mindset that other people took to so easily. I wasn’t missed and I went to games as a spectator as I was able.

The basketball team had a new coach this year, and he had his own person he wanted for taking stats. I moved into videotaping the games for them to watch later, but it was kind of boring, as I couldn’t cheer for my friends like I wanted to, so I did things like fiddle with the settings and turn the camera on its side while taping. It got some chuckles from my friends in review sessions, but I realize now it must have been pretty irritating. I think the coach was pretty happy when I said I couldn’t help out the second half of the season because I joined the wrestling team.

The wrestling team had a few empty weight classes and that meant in tournaments they’d just give up those points. After talking to Phil P. and some others, I joined up with the team to at least keep them from losing points automatically. Now, granted, they still lost points because I wasn’t winning matches, but they weren’t losing as many. I didn’t get pinned much, and I seem to remember that a team member losing on points wasn’t as big a hit to team points as just giving up the slot. I helped a little, which is my forte. The highlight of my wrestling career was the one pin I got… which may have actually happened my Sophomore year, I’m not sure. It fades together. I did come in second in the Conference tournament and got a nice medal for it even. In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I ought to mention that there were only two of us in the weight class for that tournament, but I only lost by a point, so that seems to diminish the “accomplishment.”

The Thursday before Nationals a Canadian girl in our class received a care package from her parents and brought all manner of oddly-flavored potato chips to class, one package for each of the 32 of us. There was salt-and-vinegar, dill, ketchup, and one other flavor I don’t remember. I opted for ketchup, as it seemed the least weird. The first one or two were okay, as I recall, but all of a sudden I got really, really sick to my stomach. I can’t really describe how awful I started feeling. There was this overwhelming aftertaste that was so sickening I could barely move. I spent the next class period spitting (discreetly!) into an emptied milk carton. I spent the class after that on the floor next to the trash can, fully expecting to … uh… hurl, and kind of hoping to. It was Physics class and there were only four of us in the class, so it wasn’t as overwhelmingly distracting as it might have been in a larger class. After that class, my friend Eric N. took me down to the health center, where I spent the rest of the day with my head hanging over the edge of the bed, trash can at the ready. After school he drove me home, and I spent the evening feeling as awful as I ever have, the aftertaste still present. When I woke up the next day, I felt fine. I don’t remember how I got to school, but I was able to participate in the wrestling tournament and get beaten by the requisite number of opponents – still only losing on points, though. The end of my wrestling career left me with a 1-11 record. The end of the ketchup chips debacle left me with a difficulty to even tell the story. Even as I’ve typed this the memory has come back and I can start to taste the taste and I’m starting to feel ill. While I can eat ketchup on fries and a few other things, I can’t eat pickles because the pickle aftertaste is too similar to the ketchup chips aftertaste.

As I mentioned, our Physics class had four students: Eric N., Josh W., Phil P. and me. I was drawn to the class because I liked math well enough and the presence of three of my best friends in the class sealed the deal for me. Everyone else in our class took Speech that hour. Pretty quickly into the semester I realized I had made a grievous error. I didn’t “get” physics at all. It was outside of my sphere of understanding, and the only reason I passed it was that Miss Oh was incredibly easy to talk into walking a person through problems step-by-step, even during tests. There are few classes I’ve taken in my career that I feel were worthless for me to take and sadly Physics was one such class. I should have taken Speech.

Up to this point, of course, I didn’t know speech was something I liked doing. I’d only had a little experience with it, with seventh grade speech being just about my only stab at it. This year was my first year trying out for the school play, even. I didn’t end up being cast. The director, who happened to be our senior English teacher, wanted me to run the ticket sales for the play. Whether that was her way of not casting me or something she really thought I’d be good at I’ll never know. I was pretty bummed at the time, but I threw myself into the ticket sales as best I could. I don’t know that our committee’s efforts made any appreciable difference in sales from the previous year’s, but we did what we could and people showed up, so I guess that’s something. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I’d be cast in a play, and after that I found fairly steady work in that arena.

Our English teacher, Mrs. Morris, was fresh from college and we were her first class. To this day I feel bad for her, though she seems to have turned out fairly well. Some of the stuff we pulled I have to blame on her, though. She had a reputation for being… well, dingy. One time she told us about a teacher she’d had in high school that was so “out of touch” that during class one day they passed a roll of toilet paper from person to person, wrapping the chair legs and she never noticed. When they got up and left the room after class, the teacher was so surprised. Mrs. Morris made the mistake of saying, “I can’t believe she never saw us! That could never happen to me!” If there are any future teachers reading this let me just point out that these are exactly the sorts of things you should never say to your class. Sure enough, we decided to try it soon thereafter. And, sure enough, we pulled it off. When we got up and left after class and she saw the chairs all wrapped, she exclaimed rather loudly, and then I’m pretty sure she laughed. I think it would have been pretty hard for her to be mad at us for something she pretty much dared us to do.

I sang bass in the concert choir and tenor in the smaller Academy Singers this year. I couldn’t really do either well, but I was placed so I did as best I could. During the Spring Concert Mr. Braughler asked me to sing the solo on the second verse of “The Navy Hymn.” “Asked” is the wrong word, really. “Convinced” is a better word and “forced” would be too strong. During the concert my throat constricted, I got through maybe the first line and then was unable to continue. When the song was done and we left the stage, I headed outside behind the gym, embarrassed like I hadn’t been in a long time. Even though I don’t remember his exact words, I’ll never forget the gist of what Mr. Braughler said to me. As soon as he was able to leave the concert, he came looking for me. Someone told him where I was and when he found me he said to me, “Don’t ever turn down the chance to sing. Don’t let this determine your decisions in the future.” While I can’t say I’ve heeded his advice completely, I do think about it often.

I have other little snippets of memories here and there, but these that I’ve told you are the clearest. Here are some of the snippets:

• having a crush on a Canadian girl (a different one than the one that brought the ketchup chips!)
• getting a pitcher of root beer spilled on me by Phil P.
• seeing The Princess Bride for the first time
• beginning what would be a two-year dating relationship
• finding out my cat Shadow had diabetes
• going to Washington D.C. on our Senior Trip (it’s odd I don’t remember more about this)
• Gas was $1.07 a gallon. I didn’t actually remember this. I have this written in my senior yearbook.

And I also remember that I looked like this:

Me in 1989

Labels: school memories

3 comments

So at what point in the late-night VH1-and-then-Scrubs marathon do you just give up and realize you're not going to get any sleep at all? 3 comments

Being involved with the improv group has given me opportunities I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve met people I would never have known, I’ve performed places I never would have been, and I’ve made (a little) money I never would have.

One of the members of the group works at the local TV station. He “produces,” which I’m still not entirely clear on what that means. What I do know, though, is that he also creates commercials for local businesses. He’s used other members of the improv group in some commercials and I always thought it would be neat to be in one.

About a month ago I got an email from him: “Hey, I have an idea for a commercial with a place for you – interested?” I tried to respond in a calm, cool, and collected manner and failed horribly. I think my response was along the lines of, “YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” with maybe a few more exclamation points.

He explained that his idea was a sequel to a commercial he’d made that was already running. In it, a college student has bought a CD player that turns out to be defective – it shoots CDs out of it like rounder, less-pointy throwing stars. The end of the commercial has him getting hit in the face with an ejected CD. The point of it is that… uh, the store sells used books. Or something. I’m not entirely sure. It’s a commercial for University Bookstore, so it had something to do with textbooks. In the sequel, I’d be playing the part of a sleazy shop owner that the student was trying to return the CD player to.

We filmed the commercial at the local TV studio, and it was neat to see behind the scenes. He gave me a quick tour and I saw the set where the newscasters… uh, cast the news. I also saw the control room and the editing rooms and even the extra sportcoats and ties they have available for the anchors.

Our “set” was the storage room upstairs. There wasn’t much room – the camera was set up on the stairs, there was a guy under the table the CD player sat on, and the two of us “actors” in a little area, crouched down so we could fit in the frame. After a few takes, someone came and told us that they could hear us in the studio where they were prepping for the 5:00 newscast. Whoops. We went outside and ran through it a few times and killed some time until they were done, then went back up to the “set” and got it on tape… after 15-or-so takes.

A couple weeks later at improv rehearsal I asked the producer how it went. “Uh…,” he started. “The good news is I brought you a copy!”

The bad news, as it happened, is that the business opted not to use the commercial. He didn’t know why, as they hadn’t given any reason. Since it was a direct sequel to a commercial they had opted to use and it used many of the same elements and addressed the year-end issue of returning textbooks, there was really only one reason they could possibly have had for rejecting it. It had to be because I was in it – I was the only changed variable, so it must have been the reason.

Ah, well. It was a fun experience, and I’m glad I had the opportunity. He’s said he’ll try to get me in something in the future, but I’d guess if he wants to stay in “the biz” he’ll realize his folly and steer clear of me.

I have two options for you to view the commercial if you’d like. First I have a downloadable file (4Mb, requires Quicktime to view). That’s a little higher quality, but the following YouTube video might be more accessible for the average user.

And there you go: an exclusive, never-aired and never-to-be-aired commercial starring yours truly.

Labels: new things, video

10 comments

There’s a Rose in Bethlehem
With a beauty quite divine
Perfect in this world of sin
On this silent, holy night

There’s a fragrance much like hope
That it sends upon the wind
Reaching out to every soul
From a lowly manger’s crib

Oh, Rose of Bethlehem
How lovely, pure and sweet
Born to glorify the Father
Born to wear the thorns for me

There’s a Rose in Bethlehem
Colored red like mercy’s blood
Tis the flower of our faith
Tis the blossom of God’s love

Though its bloom is fresh with youth
Surely what will be He knows
For a tear of morning dew
Is rolling down the Rose

There’s a Rose in Bethlehem
With a beauty quite divine
Perfect in this world of sin
On this silent, holy night

Merry Christmas, friends.

Labels: Christmas

4 comments

My dad's favorite thing to do at Christmas is to obfuscate wrapped packages. Some of his more famous wrapping have included chains and logs, for example. Square packages end up rhomboid, the original present might have something else inside it -- mysteries wrapped in enigmas wrapped in conundrums.

We had our family Christmas this past weekend, and for some reason, dad's history never crossed my mind. Well, it actually did cross my mind when I saw a package with my name on it and I hadn't the slightest idea what it could possibly be. I figured there was creative wrapping going on and didn't put too much more brain power to it.

When it came to to open presents, Mom said, "You kids all need to open your presents at the same time." (Kids = me, my brother, and his wife) Dad added, "And open them carefully."

We knew something up, but we didn't know what. So we all started tearing off the wrapping paper... to find another different layer of wrapping underneath with a card taped to it that said, "This present actually belongs to _______." We swapped and opened to find things we'd all wanted.

Pretty sneaky. We all agreed this one'll go down in the archives as one of his best efforts.

Labels: Christmas

3 comments

I think my next-door neighbors have moved out. This is weird for a couple of reasons.

First, we would converse frequently when we saw each other outside - no, I couldn't tell you any of their names, but we would talk, at least - so it seems like they might have told me. In fact, the last time I talked to the fellow, he said they were planning to move to San Francisco in the summer, which tells me they've got a few months left around here.

Second, the neighbors on the other side of me moved out a long time ago. Like maybe six months. Rumor has it (from the more-recently-departed neighbors) that while I was gone one weekend, they'd had some sort of too-raucous party and had been ... asked to leave. The place has been empty since. (Frankly, it was kind of nice when they left, as the teenage son used to play some kind of music really loud in the afternoons. I could only hear the bass - more "feel" than "hear," really - and it actually nauseated me. That got old pretty quick.)

So now I'm in this row of townhouse-type apartments with no one to either side. Please understand: I'm not complaining. The newly-gone folks had three very loud young children and a dog. I was glad we were on friendly terms, but I do not miss the yelling. It's just... weird.

On top of all that, I've started hearing some sort of scrabbling, scratching sounds occasionally in the ceiling/floor between the upstairs and the downstairs, so now I'm thinking of mice, which makes me think of rats because everyone's leaving and rats always abandon a sinking ship, which makes me think there might be a Kraken gonna swallow the whole place up and I don't even really like pirates so I'm not sure what I'm going to do because it freaks the cats out, too, and what kind of rotten thing is it to be eaten by a Kraken and is there something I can do to fend it off and maybe should I be leaving, too, or maybe play some music to soothe the thing and what kind of music does a Kraken like, anyway?

Hrm.

I'm sure my current situation will have no affect on me nor cause me to go stark raving mad, so I guess things will be fine. 3 comments

It's generally difficult for me to come up with "Top Five" lists on my own. If given a list of things, I can put them in order, but I can't pick from, say, a vast field of movies and pick my favorite five. My default answer to "What's your favorite movie?" is Batman (the Tim Burton one), most likely because I've seen it more than any other movie (and because, well, it's awesome). But rounding out the rest of the list is difficult. Ghost Busters, Garden State, Unforgiven -- how do you rank things so vastly different?

So I tend to speak in nonspecifics - "This movie's in my top three," "that song's in my current top ten" - that kind of thing.

This movie's definitely in my top three: Grosse Pointe Blank. John Cusack movies are in their own category (reference: Better Off Dead), as he's got this certain character that he does/is that's infinitely cooler than any other movie characters out there. I've heard it explained this way: Girls want to be with him, guys want to be him. I've heard rumors he's not so cool in real life, but let's stick with Martin Blank, Lane Meyer, and Lloyd Dobler here, shall we?

(There might be spoilers ahead, I don't know. You've been sorta-warned.)

In Grosse Pointe Blank Cusack plays Martin Blank, a hit man who goes to his 10-year high school reunion. He's in town to do a job, but he's also wrestling with seeing the girl he left on Prom Night ten years ago without so much as a "by your leave." On top of that he's got competing hitmen trying to kill him and some government guys after him, too. He's been kind of down lately and has been kind of seeing a shrink, a guy who really doesn't want to talk to him because he's afraid of Martin.

Debi (the girl) finds out he's a hitman after stumbling across him over a recently deceased "bad guy," and any sort of "we might be okay even after the ten year absence" thing is quickly destroyed. But then Martin goes on to save her father's life and the end of the movie sees them heading off into the sunset together. Too pat? Maybe. Unbelievable? Sure. Hoped for? You bet.

I love the movie for many reasons. Cusack, of course, and the traditional Cusack snappy dialogue. The humor. The juxtapositions. The music.

But it hit me recently what I liked most about it: the redemption. Here's this guy who kills people for money. He loses his taste for it (not quite the same thing as "realizes it's wrong," but, hey) and wants to pick up where he left off with the girl he loved. Not a chance, she says. In fact, after she finds out what he does and she is storming out, he tries to call her back. She whips around and says very deliberately, "You don't get to have me." Translation: You messed up, and because you did, I'm forever out of your reach. It's a powerful, sad moment. Of course, by the end of the movie things are different, but right then it's big. She leaves and Martin lays on the bed, knowing he's out, he's done, he has no hope of ever being with her.

Then he does something heroic, saves the day... and gets another chance. I love that. Sure, we don't know what happens after the movie ends (can we get a sequel already?!?) and he could go on to mess the whole thing up in normal, everyday ways that people mess up relationships, but he gets that second chance and to me that's awesome.

I've recently had the opportunity to re-meet people I used to know "way back when." They've been happy to see me, and it's weird. I kind of feel like I'm getting that second chance myself. And I see how they've done since I last saw them (and some of them are doing really, really well) and it reminds me of the reunion - Martin's going through this great crisis of life and he's meeting happy mothers, succesful realtors, near-death experience survivors - all these other people, and it throws into contrast what he's been doing the last ten years.

At one point during the reunion, he sits down at a table with a friend from high school who has her very young baby with her. She asks Martin to hold him while she gets something from her purse. Martin initially balks, but then holds the kid on the mother's further insistence. There's a good minute or two of Martin looking at this baby, and you sense he's realizing he might want to settle down and have one of these himself (which would, of course, require him getting out of the killing people business).

The baby's mother at one point asks Martin, "So, how's your life?"

"In progress," he responds. He's right on the edge of big changes and he senses that things could maybe turn out right.

"In progress." I like that. It's going on and I'm doing stuff and who knows how it'll end?

"In progress" indeed.

Labels: life, movies

4 comments

Earlier this year I bought an iPod. At the time seemed like the best solution to my music-playing and –holding needs. And, really, the iPod’s a good device. The things I don’t like about the iPod are endemic to me:

• I don’t like the scroll-y wheel. It’s touch-sensitive and that’s cool and all, I just never liked it. I don’t like the “feel” of it and I don’t like using it.
• I don’t like that I have to change a setting in the main menu to randomize my music, and that my music is either randomized or not.
• I really, really don’t like that I have to use iTunes to manage the music that goes on the iPod. I know that I am in a very small minority here, because any time I mention that I don’t like iTunes people look at me like I have a hand growing out of my scalp and they say, “Really? I love iTunes!” I’m aware that people use it and like it. I’ve used it and know how to use it, I just don’t like it. I don’t like how it organizes my music, I don’t like how hard it is to get the correct album cover picture for individual songs, and I don’t like its layout. (As an aside, I’ve also had iTunes completely mess up two separate Windows installs, to the point where I had to reinstall Windows completely. For my iPod I actually used my G4 Mac and its iTunes so it would stay happy in its own environment.)

But, really, the iPod is a fine piece of equipment and I have no problem recommending it to people.

A couple of months ago a friend at work started talking up the Microsoft Zune, a soon-to-be-released MP3 player. I had heard about it, of course, but he was pretty fired up about it. I liked what I was reading about it, but already had an iPod, so what was I going to do about it?

As it happened, some of us techs met for lunch on November 14, the day the Zune was released. Ryan (the aforementioned friend) and I were talking about going to Best Buy after work to play around with one and the question came up, “Are you going to buy one?” At this point I must say I was interested in getting one, but I didn’t really see how I was going to work it. Ryan was planning to get one for Christmas, and even had his wife talked into it already. I said, “If I could find someone to sell my iPod to I’d probably get one.” Ryan’s answer: “eBay!!!” (This isn’t just his answer to this, it’s pretty much his answer to just about anything. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had stock in the company.) I, of course, don’t trust eBay and don’t want to mess around with it, and that doesn’t help me get a Zune that very day.

At this point another tech spoke up and said, “I’ll buy your iPod from you.” Sweet! We worked it out that he’d get me the cash after work, and after his cash and the nice little Best Buy Rewards discount coupon I had, I didn’t end up having to spend any of my own money on the Zune. Super sweet!

The Zune comes in three colors: white, black, and brown. I had no interest in white and was planning to get the black. My iPod was black and it seemed to make the most sense to me. Enter Ryan:

“No, dawg! You gotta get the brown! That’s the distinctive color! It’s what all the cool kids’ll have!”

I’ll never be exactly sure why, but I let him bully me into the brown. The salesguy said there was only one brown left, a bunch of black had sold, and that NObody had bought a white one. Okay, fine. Brown it is. Done & done.

I’ve had my Zune for almost a month, now, and I have to say: I love it.

• I like the bigger screen. Yes, it’s the same resolution as the iPod screen, but it’s bigger. Album art takes up the upper two-thirds of the screen when the song is playing, and it’s easily visible. I don’t know if it’s exactly a golden rectangle, but it’s in that direction and I wonder if that’s part of why it’s so pleasing to me. Pictures and videos are actually shown in widescreen (you hold it so the controls are on the right), and look really, really good.
• I like the simple menu interface. When you go into an album or an artist list, you are giving the option at the top of the list to “Play all” or “Play shuffled.” I really, REALLY like that. (For some reason, though, it doesn’t give you the “Play shuffled” option when you look at a playlist. If I want to play a playlist shuffled, I have to do the same thing I did on the iPod – change a setting in the main menu. I hope this gets changed in a future software update.)
• The click wheel is just that: clicky. I like that, too. I must respond to tactile interfaces, as The radio dial in my car has a “click” feel when I turn the knob and I like that as well. The Zune “wheel” actually functions more like the arrow keys on a keyboard, and its specificity is right up my alley.
• While it’s not a big deal, I also like that I can set any picture I have as a background for the main menus.
• The software used to manage content is basically a slightly different version of Windows Media Player, so it’s familiar and easy (for me) to use. It seems to me that it would have been easy to just use WMP for the content management – in fact, I would have preferred it. Oh, well. I still much prefer the Zune software to iTunes.

One of the big selling points for the Zune is that it has wireless capabilities. Right now that means you can send pictures or songs to other Zunes, but there’s hope for more functionality later. The music transfers have a 3-day/3-play policy – after one of those milestones is hit, the receiver can’t listen to it any more and would need to get their own licensed version. There’s been a lot of griping that it’s only 3-days or 3-plays, but I think it’s a neat feature for introducing someone to new music. Pictures don’t have the time limit on them. This transferring is the basis for Microsoft’s adline for the Zune: “Welcome to the social.”

I have yet to play with the wireless transfer, but have seen real-time videos of it working and it’s speedy and easy to use. “Oh!” you say. “You can test the wireless transfer when Ryan gets his at Christmas!” A fantastic idea, certainly. What better way to put the player through its paces than by testing it with another tech? There’s only one problem: it’s hard to test things with someone who’s a welsher. Ryan’s decided he’s not getting a Zune and instead has ordered a Creative Zen. Hoser.

I don’t really care, though, because I really do like my Zune. I might never transfer music to anyone from it and I might only use the FM radio feature to show other people it can be done, but it holds all my music and the rip of Garden State I did looks really, really good on it.

I’m just a little bummed that there was no ice cream involved.

Labels: music, new things

16 comments

My friend Kat has gone back to school this year to pursue a Graphic Arts degree. She already has one or two other degrees, but after working in a design-related job for a few years, she’s decided she wants to be more formally educated in the subject.

“Good for you!” I said when she was planning her collegiate return. “It’ll be tough and you’ll be busy, but good for you. I’m all for it!”

It was easy for me to back her decision because

a) I wasn’t the one going back to college.
b) It didn’t really mean any extra work for me.

While a) is still dependable and trustworthy, b) has decided to laugh at me and poke me with sticks while dancing around me singing, “I lied! I lied! Ha ha, I lied!”

See, a Graphic Arts major starts off in art classes. While I have been the subject of a few “30-second sketches,” it still wasn’t really any extra work for me. But then, a few weeks ago, I got this call:

“Monkey?” (Everyone’s “monkey” these days. I’m not sure how it happened, but it’s there, so what can you do?) “Monkey, how would you like to go to an art showing with me?”

(If you touch a pill bug, it will curl up into a little ball. If you suggest weird things to me, one eyebrow will raise and one will lower. They are the same sort of involuntary, programmed reaction.)

“An art show, eh?” I said. “I’m not so sure about that…” All art shows, as I’m sure you are aware, are pretentious and ridiculously self-important. There are no exceptions to this rule. I had no desire to go see a Barbie doll tied to a panda with tooth floss as a way to represent the subjection of women in China. I had no need of a “students whose work means something” injection. My immunity was plenty built-up, thank you.

But Kat can be very persuasive, and she was going to get extra credit for going to these things. So I went. And… it wasn’t that bad. There were even several pieces I enjoyed. In fact, I had many different reactions to the many pieces, so the showing had the desired effect. On one I liked the colors. On another I liked the emotion expressed. This one was juvenile, thrown-together, and ridiculous, but that one used layers in an interesting way. Honestly, after we left, I admitted that I had actually enjoyed it.

You know what that means, right? It means I get to go to more showings. The second one we went to was similar to the first one – several different artists, some good some not so much. The third showing was one artist, sort of a graduate thesis kind of thing. While I could appreciate the thoughts and feelings behind her paintings, I didn’t really care for the paintings themselves.

The fourth showing was actually the same night as the third, in the room right next door. This was an undergraduate show and looked like one. Remember my fears of going to a showing of “students whose work means something”? Yeah, that’s what this show was. The room was dark, there was a DJ doing the whole techno-music-with-turntables thing, and there were all sorts of ridiculous “pieces:”

• a girl sitting under an umbrella with big plastic raindrops labeled “war” and “hunger” and what-have-you suspended over her
• a guy tied with thick ropes cutting himself free with an ACTUAL BUTCHER KNIFE
• a girl knitting yarn using 10-foot knitting needles
• a girl standing on… something, wearing a 6-foot hoop skirt
• some sort of segmented, jointed dragon-thing hanging from the ceiling
• a guy dressed in all black, bound, gagged, and blindfolded lying on the floor under papier-mâché scissors suspended from the ceiling

That last fellow almost got himself kicked a few times just while we were there. Lying on the floor of a darkened room doesn’t seem like a good career move, but should get him nice and used to suffering for his “art.”

As soon as we walked into this one, Kat grabbed my arm and warned me not to “make fun of this one until we left.” It was difficult, but I did my best. Afterward she agreed it was ridiculous and I reminded her that this was exactly the sort of thing that caused my eyebrows to do what they do. She had gone specifically for the grad student show, but felt we really couldn’t pass up the right-next-door freak show while we were there.

This past Friday we went to a show that had three parts to it: a collection of one woman’s paintings, a collection of technical drawings from a few different people, and some wire-and-glass sculptures done by two women. This was a return to some sort of normalcy for me, and I went back to liking some and not liking others. I particularly enjoyed the computer-rendered technical stuff, which wasn’t too surprising.

After that show there was another one downtown that we went to. Most of the shows are named, I just can’t remember what they’ve been named. This one, though, was named “Blink,” and featured a few works of an electronic nature. One piece had participants defending Earth from alien attack by singing karaoke (Kat participated, saved the Earth, and got a patch/badge for her troubles). Another piece was a big balloon that flashed when touched. And the biggest piece was BioHEX41, complete with the two “artists” dressed in DEVO-like outfits surveying people on their eating habits and moods before having those people “interact” with the sculpture and recording the results (the results were a series of flashing lights, and it seemed to be interesting to them that my results included flashing red lights near the “tail”). While this exhibit was in the direction of the freak show, it was more enjoyable – most likely because the participants seemed to be having a bit more fun, and also because it was electronic in nature.

Art is a funny thing. To some, the best art is realistic, recreating humanity at its best and worst. To others, the best art is abstract, recreating… man, I don’t know. I’ll never be a Pollock fan myself, but I sort of understand that other people can be. In the end, I’m learning that art is about extracting some sort of reaction, and thoughtfulness, revulsion, and amusement can, in this case, sometimes be equal.

But I will always believe that there’s a reason some will be “starving artists.” It’s because they should be. Weirdos.

Labels: art, new things

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Years: 1988-89
Teachers: Mr. Braughler, Mrs. Carlson, Mr. Flaming, Mrs. Jackson, Mr. Weniger

(It’s at this point that I’ll go ahead and warn you that there’s a lot of sports stuff coming up. Even though I’m not a “sports guy,” it seems like I did a lot of sports things my Junior year. Sorry about that. If I’d known then that I would be blogging now, I might have tried to do more exciting things.)

My Junior year was a big year for me, a year of changes. For one, my brother was no longer at the same school as me, having graduated and gone off to college in South Carolina. Though I would still occasionally get called “Mike” by a teacher, to anyone coming to the school from this point on I would be how they knew the family name.

The school also got a new principal my Junior year. We’d had Mr. Akins up to that point, and he was also the football coach. Though I don’t believe it ever happened to me, I’ve heard from fellow students/players that they occasionally received more leniency in punishment during football season because they were needed on-field. And after having typed that, I now realize why it never happened to me: I was never needed on the field.

Football was even a change for me this year. I went from playing random line positions (both defense and offense) to stating that I wanted to try tight end, a sort-of line position that had me running downfield for passes, too. My timing couldn’t have been worse, as my Junior year was also the year the team started breaking in a new quarterback. I’ve explained it to people this way: “The year I decided to try being a receiver was the year we had predominately a running game.” On top of that, I was an every-other-play guy, as coach used me and the other tight end to run plays into the new QB. We had a game mid-season against our rivals Ethan Allen where coach finally had me in every play, though. Somewhere mid-game he took me out and had Chris Z. (the other guy) go in for the rest of the game. I think he (Coach) was testing to see how the two of us would do in an “every play” situation. The very next play Chris was in, the QB threw him a pass in the endzone. Touchdown, just like that. It was kind of funny, really.

Still, I ended up with impressive stats at the end of my Junior year of football: I caught 100% of the passes thrown my way and had an average of seven yards gained. This is because I was thrown exactly one pass and I caught it. I was tackled immediately thereafter, largely because I wasn’t exactly sure what to do once I caught a pass in a game, as I had never done it before. The play was “Quickie to the Left End,” where I would sprint off the line and look for the ball immediately, a play designed to catch the defense off guard. I remember catching the ball and turning to see three defenders on approach vectors… and that’s it. The story was told later that I caught the ball and then didn’t do anything – “froze” I think was the word they used – and I took some ribbing over that one for quite some time.

This was the same game where a weird penalty was called (something like “team members pushing the running back forward” or somesuch) and I was on the sideline and was asking people around me what the deal was. Coach Flaming, in the midst of being mad at the refs, overheard me and yelled, “If you’d quit wasting your time playing videogames and learn more about football, maybe you’d know what was going on!” While the penalty called was obscure enough that I doubt he was right, I find it somewhat amusing that once I started playing football videogames in college, I learned way more about the way the game is played than I ever did in high school. And I have yet to see that particular penalty called in any football videogame I’ve ever played.

If I don’t point it out he will, so I better go ahead and mention that one touchdown my friend Dave (a runningback) got was due in some small part to what he calls “a fantastic block” on my part. When tight ends aren’t running downfield on a pass pattern, they’re blocking. On this one play, Dave was coming right around my end of the line. This was apparently the one time I was able to contain the defender and Dave was able to get past and go on his way to the endzone. I only remember this because he pointed it out when the team was watching the game tape the next week in practice. So there’s that.

Our class got a new English teacher this year, Mrs. Carlson. She was… hmm. I’m not exactly sure how to describe her. After a year of running roughshod over Miss Swank, I think we probably needed a teacher like Mrs. Carlson. Talking in class was punished by push-ups. Late assignments might have you skipping around the classroom singing “A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket.” Using the word “ain’t” would get you a nose-tweaking (a Mrs. Carlson practice not limited to the classroom, as she would tweak noses of visiting chapel speakers or whoever else happened to be around her). I never had to sing in class, but I do believe I led the class in push-ups by the end of the year.

Mrs. Carlson had a habit of dragging her teacher desk over the wooden floor – she would drag it out of the way and then drag it back – a couple of times per class. It made the most horrible scraping sound you can imagine. While I am not one for pranks, my friend Eric and I hit on an idea one day. We and some other people were using her classroom after school to make decorations and we decided to nail her table to the floor. It had little removable rubber caps in the bottoms of the hollow table legs, so we removed them and nailed them to the floor and then put the table back over them. The next morning we waited for the inevitable table-pull. Sure enough, she tried. And then, with a puzzled look, she tried again. She came around front to see who had their feet on the table impeding her progress, scowled, and tried again. By this time most of us were busting up, as news had spread of our attempts to thwart the awful noise. She finally noticed us and asked us what was going on. On finding out, she laughed and laughed – luckily for us! – and admitted she knew it was awful that she pulled the table so frequently. The nails were removed after class… and she went right back to her old ways the very next day. There’s no teaching teachers!

I had the opportunity to be in the Academy Singers my Junior and Senior years, a smaller-than-the-concert-choir singing group that had occasion to travel different places and sing. Some time in December we had the chance to be part of some Christmas celebrations by doing some singing on a street downtown on a Saturday. I distinctly remember Mr. Braughler saying “no coats!” I showed up wearing my suit coat and no winter coat… and froze to death for the next hour or so. He apparently meant “no suit coats under your winter coats” but hadn’t made that abundantly clear to the more thick-headed of his group members. There’s a picture in the yearbook of us singing downtown, everyone in nice heavy coats except one lone idiot who looks slightly blue, even though the picture is in black and white.

I joined the basketball team my Junior year… sorta. A good number of my friends were on the team and they always told great stories about going off to tournaments and stuff and I wanted to be a part of it. The team needed a stat-keeper, so that’s what I did. Somewhere along the line I wrote new lyrics to “Goober Peas” along the lines of “Stats, stats, stats, stats / Keeping ev’ry stat.” At the end of the season when Coach Flaming was being pressured (a little by me, but mostly by my friends) to let me letter in the sport because I’d been at every game and all that, he said, “If you sing your ‘Stats’ song at the pep rally, I’ll let you letter.” Done & done. I guess I’ve always been an entertainer at heart, even if those I’m trying to entertain aren’t very entertained. I think there were maybe three people entertained, but I got my letter for basketball!

One day in February I was running late for school – I needed to pick up Phil and Eric and get to Academy Singers practice – and as I was headed out my dad said, “Don’t go the back way today. The roads are bad this morning.” I think I said okay, but I needed to make up some time and the back roads were the best method. I wasn’t a mile from home before I spun around a couple of times and ended up in the ditch. I spent the walk-run across the fields to my house wondering how I was going to explain to Dad that I’d gone the back route. I’m sure he was mad, but what I remember more is that he got his tractor and went and pulled my car out of the ditch. The accident scared me, and I made some specific spiritual choices following it that I still think about to this day. Aside from that, there are two other things I remember about the accident:

1. My car never worked quite the same after that.
2. There was a Kenny G song on the radio when I went in the ditch. I only tolerated Kenny G at that time but have been annoyed by his music ever since.

I played baseball again in the spring, my second and last season doing so. We had a new coach who didn’t like me much, but he let me play second base and had someone else hit for me. I was a pretty decent second baseman, really. Not outstanding, but decent. But I couldn’t hit to save my life. Our pitchers would hit (and hit well, in some cases!), and coach would use a pinch hitter for me. Somewhere along the line he found that another player could play second okay but could also hit, and I spent the rest of the season on the bench. Meh. I was only there for fun anyway, so it didn’t matter too much (case in point: while on the bench, I wore a baseball cap that had Vulcan ears on it). I did have one shining moment before my early retirement, though. It was shining enough that Phil, who was our Mr. Sports (meaning he was really really good at any sport he played and was really really serious about playing – I’m not sure why he liked me, frankly), and also wrote the baseball blurb for the yearbook mentioned it. We were playing Ethan Allen and a fellow came up to bat, and there was a man on first. I remembered that on his last at-bat he had hit it straight up the line over the second base, so I moved over a bit closer to the base (second basemen are actually normally placed between first and second bases). Sure enough, he hit it almost exactly in the same place, so I was able to scoop it up, step on second and throw the ball to first for a double play. Double plays are rare enough in high school ball that it was pretty exciting – I think Phil just about fell over from shock. I don’t think it would have worked out so well if our first baseman, Josh, hadn’t been 6’3”. I seem to remember him having to stretch pretty much full-length to reel that one in. Still, it was the highlight of my baseball career and I was commemorated in the yearbook with these words: “Several things from the ’89 season will be remembered […], Mark’s spirited and ‘gnarly’ encouragements from the bench, as well as his double play at Ethan Allen.”

I remember my Junior year being a pretty good year, overall, and that’s in spite of the fact that I looked like this:

Me in 1988

Labels: school memories

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