I'm not artistically inclined, and I don't make up that many jokes. This is entirely my own work, but if you think it's funny you can use it. Creative Commons rocks, y'all.
.jpg)
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
No play my Junior year
1977 - 1978. My Junior year at CHS. This was the year I did not do a play.
Mr. Crouch had moved on to another job. His replacement was Mr. Stephenson. I don't know his first name, but obviously it inspired no cute pantomime. (I found him on Facebook - it's Clell).
I didn't do a show this year because this was the first year I encountered the audition process. What, you mean I have to try out for this thing? But, but... everyone knows me!
Um, no, they don't.
This year's all-school musical was Annie Get Your Gun. So, naturally, the director had potential actors do a cold-reading monologue from Fiddler On The Roof.
Huh?
Now, if I were to read this audition today, I'd kill. In fact, there's an audition for Fiddler coming up next spring. Hmmmm....
But, at 16, I did not have a clue what this was about. And my audition/monologue was quite devoid of character. Old me would not have cast young me, so I can't blame the teachers/directors for passing me over.
Oh, and I had to sing, because, you know, musical play. Having no audition piece prepared, I was asked to do sing the words from My Country Tis of Thee, to the tune of God Save The Queen. I sounded awful.
So, no play for me this year. How on Earth did I keep busy?
Well let's see. The previous year I'd started the Omega science fiction club. This year we sold candy (everyone sold candy, everyone still sells candy. I buy candy from co-workers who have kids selling candy) and used the proceeds to build a float entry to the Henry County 4th of July parade. If I find pictures I'll include them, assuming I can make the scanner work.
The theme for the parade that summer had something to do with Frontiers. So we built a flying saucer in Jim Harbaugh's back yard. Space, the final frontier, yeah, you get it.
This thing was huge. We stretched muslin over a wooden framework and tried to spray paint it with silver paint. That didn't take so we painted it over with glue and spray painted that. The top had a huge plastic bubble, and we put in a blue emergency vehicle light under that. The battery connections weren't stable, though, so during the parade I stayed inside the thing, holding the wires together. There was probably a better way. Jumper cables come to mind.
Still, it was an awesome parade float, and if the judges had played fair we'd have taken first prize. Instead, they changed the rules so that we fell into a different category. Ya gotta love small-town politics.
After the parade we didn't have the heart to just tear the float down. It sat behind the Harbaugh's poolhouse for months. More on this later.
This was the year I took Journalism. Our teacher was Mark Bubalo. When he went to school everyone called him Buffalo Breath, so he took indirect revenge on his tormentors by calling all his students the same name. Or maybe it was just me. I became Ad Manager, which basically means I sold ad space. I liked learning about design, layout, and newspaper writing. Ad sales, eh, not so much.
One of my first stops was the Crest Theatre. The manager insisted on creating his own ads, but he was a terrible procrastinator. Selling him an ad required more time investment than any other stop, but it paid off in other ways.
For instance, when Harold learned that I was one of the owners of a flying saucer, he offered several free tickets if he could use it to advertise a new science fiction movie coming out that year. The float needed some patching up, but it sat in the Safeway parking lot for a month with a huge banner that just read "Star Wars." I hit him up for enough passes for the entire science fiction club plus 10 to raffle off.
I nearly didn't make it to the movie, actually. I was working as a janitor in a local nursing home, and got called in on the very day we'd planned to go. I didn't have a car at the time. Ended up sprinting to my job, started mopping the floors two hours early, and called for a ride to the show. That little stunt earned me a reprimand, but at this point I didn't care. I only agreed to respond to their last-minute notice at all because my mom worked in the same place (as a cook).
Besides, the situation took care of itself.
I was making one of my many stops at the Crest to remind Harold about his ad for the school paper one day. When I entered the building he was dancing around like a kid on Christmas (which is exactly how he described himself). Turns out that I'd just missed the delivery truck that had dropped off his new projectors. I listened to everything he raved about - it took an hour to get it all and I didn't get my ad. But I did get a beat story for that week when I wrote up the news about the town theater's new Xenon-bulb projectors. Even niftier: my story scooped the town reporters. The article was printed in the town paper before the high school paper.
When I stopped by the next week for my ad, Harold was so impressed by my article that he offered me a job. That's how I learned to operate movie projectors. And movie popcorn machines, and movie soda fountains, and movie brooms & dustpans...
This, more or less, is how I spent my junior year. If I dig up my old school papers again I'll probably transcribe my articles here for preservation.
Thanks for letting me bore you.
Mr. Crouch had moved on to another job. His replacement was Mr. Stephenson. I don't know his first name, but obviously it inspired no cute pantomime. (I found him on Facebook - it's Clell).
I didn't do a show this year because this was the first year I encountered the audition process. What, you mean I have to try out for this thing? But, but... everyone knows me!
Um, no, they don't.
This year's all-school musical was Annie Get Your Gun. So, naturally, the director had potential actors do a cold-reading monologue from Fiddler On The Roof.
Huh?
Now, if I were to read this audition today, I'd kill. In fact, there's an audition for Fiddler coming up next spring. Hmmmm....
But, at 16, I did not have a clue what this was about. And my audition/monologue was quite devoid of character. Old me would not have cast young me, so I can't blame the teachers/directors for passing me over.
Oh, and I had to sing, because, you know, musical play. Having no audition piece prepared, I was asked to do sing the words from My Country Tis of Thee, to the tune of God Save The Queen. I sounded awful.
So, no play for me this year. How on Earth did I keep busy?
Well let's see. The previous year I'd started the Omega science fiction club. This year we sold candy (everyone sold candy, everyone still sells candy. I buy candy from co-workers who have kids selling candy) and used the proceeds to build a float entry to the Henry County 4th of July parade. If I find pictures I'll include them, assuming I can make the scanner work.
The theme for the parade that summer had something to do with Frontiers. So we built a flying saucer in Jim Harbaugh's back yard. Space, the final frontier, yeah, you get it.
This thing was huge. We stretched muslin over a wooden framework and tried to spray paint it with silver paint. That didn't take so we painted it over with glue and spray painted that. The top had a huge plastic bubble, and we put in a blue emergency vehicle light under that. The battery connections weren't stable, though, so during the parade I stayed inside the thing, holding the wires together. There was probably a better way. Jumper cables come to mind.
Still, it was an awesome parade float, and if the judges had played fair we'd have taken first prize. Instead, they changed the rules so that we fell into a different category. Ya gotta love small-town politics.
After the parade we didn't have the heart to just tear the float down. It sat behind the Harbaugh's poolhouse for months. More on this later.
This was the year I took Journalism. Our teacher was Mark Bubalo. When he went to school everyone called him Buffalo Breath, so he took indirect revenge on his tormentors by calling all his students the same name. Or maybe it was just me. I became Ad Manager, which basically means I sold ad space. I liked learning about design, layout, and newspaper writing. Ad sales, eh, not so much.
One of my first stops was the Crest Theatre. The manager insisted on creating his own ads, but he was a terrible procrastinator. Selling him an ad required more time investment than any other stop, but it paid off in other ways.
For instance, when Harold learned that I was one of the owners of a flying saucer, he offered several free tickets if he could use it to advertise a new science fiction movie coming out that year. The float needed some patching up, but it sat in the Safeway parking lot for a month with a huge banner that just read "Star Wars." I hit him up for enough passes for the entire science fiction club plus 10 to raffle off.
I nearly didn't make it to the movie, actually. I was working as a janitor in a local nursing home, and got called in on the very day we'd planned to go. I didn't have a car at the time. Ended up sprinting to my job, started mopping the floors two hours early, and called for a ride to the show. That little stunt earned me a reprimand, but at this point I didn't care. I only agreed to respond to their last-minute notice at all because my mom worked in the same place (as a cook).
Besides, the situation took care of itself.
I was making one of my many stops at the Crest to remind Harold about his ad for the school paper one day. When I entered the building he was dancing around like a kid on Christmas (which is exactly how he described himself). Turns out that I'd just missed the delivery truck that had dropped off his new projectors. I listened to everything he raved about - it took an hour to get it all and I didn't get my ad. But I did get a beat story for that week when I wrote up the news about the town theater's new Xenon-bulb projectors. Even niftier: my story scooped the town reporters. The article was printed in the town paper before the high school paper.
When I stopped by the next week for my ad, Harold was so impressed by my article that he offered me a job. That's how I learned to operate movie projectors. And movie popcorn machines, and movie soda fountains, and movie brooms & dustpans...
This, more or less, is how I spent my junior year. If I dig up my old school papers again I'll probably transcribe my articles here for preservation.
Thanks for letting me bore you.
Friday, October 8, 2010
A cat in my lap
Finally, I can no longer be called lazy.
A Cat in My Lap
I know I have a lot to do,
So many things - see them through.
There are clothes to clean, grass to mow,
Cookies to bake, seeds to sow.
But I really can't do all these things in a snap.
Because, you see, there's a cat in my lap.
He stretches and rolls and gives me a wink,
From his sleepy gold eyes - just a small blink.
I smooth his long tail and tickle his tummy,
He yawns and purrs to tell me that's yummy.
The telephone rings. The paper boy taps.
No move do I make. There's a cat in my lap.
Bright sunlight dances across the floor,
To warm my small friend just a bit more.
A happy prisoner am I in my chair -
Some moments of peace - not a care.
I think I'll take a little nap,
With this soft, furry ball, a cat in my lap.
~ Karen Boxell ~
I know I have a lot to do,
So many things - see them through.
There are clothes to clean, grass to mow,
Cookies to bake, seeds to sow.
But I really can't do all these things in a snap.
Because, you see, there's a cat in my lap.
He stretches and rolls and gives me a wink,
From his sleepy gold eyes - just a small blink.
I smooth his long tail and tickle his tummy,
He yawns and purrs to tell me that's yummy.
The telephone rings. The paper boy taps.
No move do I make. There's a cat in my lap.
Bright sunlight dances across the floor,
To warm my small friend just a bit more.
A happy prisoner am I in my chair -
Some moments of peace - not a care.
I think I'll take a little nap,
With this soft, furry ball, a cat in my lap.
~ Karen Boxell ~
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)