I'm not using this blog for anything productive, so how about something completely juvenile and self-interested? My facebook liveblog during the Silverhawks movie was legendary (among the eleven people who read it) so why not try it all up on the blogger? Special thanks to Netflix Streaming for making this possible.
Ready, set, go!
*After the standard DC logo there's a pointless title sequence zoom through a comic book store which A: is only carrying DC comics and B: appears, if you pause it at 38 seconds, to have Conan O'Brien reading DC Showcase #55, featuring Dr. Fate and Hourman fighting Solomon Grundy. Lots of bizarre comics appear in this weird title crawl that don't really have relevance to Superman, the Captain Marvel family, or even modern DC in general. Just below Superman/Shazam on the rack is an issue of Kamandi. Less than a minute into the film and I'm already unsure what they're pitching.
*Casting Arnold Vosloo as Black Adam is both awesome and slightly racist (in that Yul Brynner way.) I mean, animation is the one medium where an actor's appearance really shouldn't matter, but Vosloo does play great villains so I'm down with it for now. Sidebar: Speaking of racial miscasting, whatever happened to Fisher Stevens?
*A second look at the title of the film, in case you missed it the first time. No seriously you guys, this is the return of Black Adam. Did you see how he just murdered all the teenagers at lookout point? He's so hardcore you guys! Seriously, and Superman and Captain Marvel are in this movie too! Truth and Justice, everybody.
*Billy Batson's Superman T-Shirt is a cool nod to the interplay in the comic series, but what is wrong with Fawcett City that a homeless kid squatting in a large, empty third floor apartment (with hardwood floors and no plumbing problems) goes completely unnoticed? Also that bag of bread looks like a liquor bottle at first glance. I had to watch the scene twice just to get it. I think the animators could be a little more cognizant of that.
*The cheery pizzicato strings are doing their damnedest to underscore Billy's unreasonably chipper mood, but they just seem out of place. I guess if I were going to a free pancake breakfast I'd be in a good mood too, though.
*Nice to see Billy flirting with his local hooker.
*Apparently your average Fawcett City alleyway is thirty feet wide, seventy feet long, and all the graffiti is painted by people who are twelve feet tall.
*God, that's some ham-fisted writing/animating. The buck toothed punk whose bling says "Foolish" openly professes that he's stealing money to buy beer.
*That black homeless dude is totally Tawky Tawny in disguise. I wonder how long that will take to come out.
*George Newbern has officially replaced Tim Daly as the voice I expect to hear coming out of Superman's mouth. They're quite similar, but Newbern just has a bit more character to his delivery, it captures Superman's slightly pedantic innocence a little bit better.
*I love that Clark is doing real journalism for a change, and a piece on the child homelessness problem in Fawcett City, is deeper than his usual fare, but this is the kind of thing where you go "hey, wouldn't Superman actually be better equipped to raise awareness of this issue?"
*Billy's little Hard Knock Life monologue could've gone on for two or three more seconds. Same thing with Clark's pep talk. The script is so much in a hurry to get to Black Adam that both moments were shortchanged.
*Dammit Vosloo... he's trying so hard not to be the Evil Arab that he sounds Vaguely Russian. Now all I can think of is Black Adam on the hunt for "Moose and Squirrel."
*Is it just me or did Superman just use tactile telekinesis to ward off Adam's lightning? What is that glowing pink shield thing?
*Convenient twelve story obelisk. Every major metropolis should have one.
*For as direct as Black Adam's personality is, he spends far too long floating with a menacing look when he could be murdering his target.
*Ok the way Billy's hand is animated, Tawky Tawny's glowing subway token REALLY looks like Tawky Tawny's glowing condom. This is the second of Billy's "questionably adult" animation accidents. One more and we get to make up a drinking game.
*Billy got a contact high from the token and is hallucinating.
*End of the line: The Rock of Eternity subway station.
*There is something utterly awesome about the fact that the statues of the seven deadly sins have never been updated, when so much of the Shazam mythology has.
*Poor James Garner. I know they want someone with "presence" to play the Wizard Shazam, but seriously he sounds like he has no idea what is going on. He sounds like Maverick's grandpa.
*This whole bit with Billy figuring out his powers is kinda cheesy, but in a Big Red Cheese sorta way.
*Black Adam having more aerial combat expertise than Superman is a nice touch, especially if this one has been alive for five thousand years.
*God. A hydroelectric dam? Really? Can I call it the Sha-dam?
*Tawky-Tawny, ladies and gentlemen. Let's bluff Black Adam into committing suicide. Truth and Justice, everybody!
*Dead as a Doorknob? Really?
*
Friday, April 1, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Mondays is for drinking
Here, now, more words.
The first day of the quarter is always particularly unsettling for me, because I've developed an uncanny propensity for interpreting facial subtleties. I'm not saying I have superpowers- I'm not the Mentalist or whatever- but I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what is on someone's mind based solely on the intimations and sussorations in their manner. Unfortunately, I'm not the master of first impressions, so this leads to a lot of superficially negative feedback, which may or may not be reflective of someone's eventual opinion once they get to know me. What this does is put me on the defensive right away, and my natural instinct is to feign confidence and attempt cleverness. It's a strange cycle, and most of my college friends have an impression of me as both confident and clever. These are not two adjectives I'd ever use to describe myself, even jokingly. So, in summation, the fact that I am secretly neurotic leads to a vague standofishness, which manifests as an overwhelming sense of vain superiority which, when tempered by my self-loathing, expresses itself as confidence. But don't tell anyone, I have a reputation.
The first day of the quarter is always particularly unsettling for me, because I've developed an uncanny propensity for interpreting facial subtleties. I'm not saying I have superpowers- I'm not the Mentalist or whatever- but I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what is on someone's mind based solely on the intimations and sussorations in their manner. Unfortunately, I'm not the master of first impressions, so this leads to a lot of superficially negative feedback, which may or may not be reflective of someone's eventual opinion once they get to know me. What this does is put me on the defensive right away, and my natural instinct is to feign confidence and attempt cleverness. It's a strange cycle, and most of my college friends have an impression of me as both confident and clever. These are not two adjectives I'd ever use to describe myself, even jokingly. So, in summation, the fact that I am secretly neurotic leads to a vague standofishness, which manifests as an overwhelming sense of vain superiority which, when tempered by my self-loathing, expresses itself as confidence. But don't tell anyone, I have a reputation.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Marcellus Dolorossa
Philosophy of a Hero Killer
The full text of Sophia Martel's "Parva Sub Ingenti," the so-called Common Man's Manifesto, was only published once: by a short-lived Populist Party outlet in Paris, in the Spring of '81. A half-dozen of the constituent chapters have made the rounds among private collectors. Occasionally full pages turn up in university databases, and a few broken passages appear here and there on the net, but not one complete, intact copy has ever been found. The most popular quote attributed to Martel, of course, is "Misérables possèdent les promesse" which, roughly translated, means: The meek shall inherit promises. The common assumption is that Mme. Martel was implying that the meek shall inherit empty promises, that the hopeless state of existence characterizing the lives of the poor and oppressed will continue to be hopeless, and that religion- specifically Christianity- fails to provide a fulcrum by which the meek can improve their lot in life. While this is far and away the most popular scholarly interpretation, it is also incomplete. Sophia equated evolution and revolution, and advocated force in both. While her words are often quoted in socioeconomic or sociopolitical contexts, Sophia's original intention was to address the posthuman problem created by the existence of superheroes. She thought that the promises of previous generations were also challenges to be fulfilled, that ordinary non-superpowered people had a responsibility to not only better themselves but to force ingenuity and innovation to keep the posthuman population in check. I don't have a copy of Parva Sub Ingenti, and if I did I'd sell it and take my million. I was, however, raised by Mme Martel in her spartan flat overlooking Metro Anvers in Montmartre. My father was a poor butcher in Amatrice who moved to Paris believing he'd get rich by investing in Air France. When he died he was still a poor butcher. My mother opened a small café upstairs, and Mme Martel would stop in and visit every single day and always order the same thing: black coffee, and a half-glass of red wine. She'd spend the better part of the afternoon scribbling away into her journal. Occasionally she'd get the Bucatini Amatriciana, because she said that in Paris only an Italian would go to the trouble of making soffritto instead of mirepoix. When the Jupiter League turned the café and everyone inside into a smoldering crater while saving the world from Grandmother Dragon, Madame took me by the hand and led me to her house, where I lived thereafter. When I turned sixteen she put me out on the street with a packed lunch, her old journal, and a head full of dangerous ideas.
Jean St. Caligula saw himself as a hero. I met Jean in Cyprus, although I didn't know it at the time. His target was the Bronze Wheel- a North African slave trade masterminded by a Turkish general whose heart and lungs were burning crystal constructs. The entire judo sub-philosophy of Sophia's book is excised or marginalized in most interpretations, but it formed a foundation for most of her writing. Without these ideas, she can only be considered another existentialist revolutionary. It was the focus on human/metahuman inequality that made Parva so important. Jean was living in the occupied north masquerading as a Sunni, but it didn't take long to discover that he wasn't Turk, Greek, or even a Cypriot. He was American, although he rarely spoke English. It was futbol that outed him- a real Turk would've recognized the game was a rerun. We became fast friends, and I learned from observing Jean's methodology. Here were the high points to fill the practical gaps in Sophia's philosophy. As much as he got it wrong with his typically American faults, (that love of theatricality and an obsession with the psychological,) his score is still very much ahead. Jean was the one who showed me the applied technical judo that exploited strength, leveraging and manipulating with scrabbling claws until a superhuman could literally be killed by his own power. The microwave gun was a brilliant start, if an ultimately incomplete solution: variable settings allowed it to reach behind invulnerability and destroy the soft internal organs beneath diamond-hard skin. An easy modification let it warp and pervert cellular regeneration. All this built from simple parts that you could make or scavenge yourself, for under 400 dollars. Unfortunately it became a liability in North Camden and I had to discard it- I keep telling myself I'm going to build another one. Jean's weakness was in his bravado, in his recklessness, in his disregard for the safety of innocents, but ultimately his greatest failing was the belief that his technical proficiency made him the equal of those he sought to bring down. I still regret it sometimes, my first. It isn't the greater good, or the common man I was concerned with that day, as much as I pretended. I wanted to see if I could do it, to take the life of another man, a man with noble intentions who earnestly believed he was doing good deeds. So much of who we are is wrapped in how we see ourselves, it wasn't until Jean that I really saw myself.
Miss Bengough was an American and a psychologist- and with those two strikes against her it's a wonder we ever became friends. A philosophy and a methodology are both worthless without practicum experience. The time she and I spent together in Arnhem proved invaluable, and I have no doubt that if she hadn't come to trial in an election year her life's work might have been published just like Sophia's. The entire Benelux region is so desperate to achieve any manner of international acclaim that scientific research is generally only restricted by finance. Bea taught me to be scientific, methodical, and observant- to account for and control all circumstances, and to always record your results. You might've heard that The Jupiter League's Mighty Sollus died in an asylum in the Netherlands while patiently waiting for the proper legal channels to clear. Yeah, that was us. The investigators lost two coroners and a very expensive robot before they called off the autopsy. Depending on what you believe Sollus' corpse is now either buried in a bunker in Siberia, powering the Pentagon defense grid, or being used to purify wastewater on the new International Space Station. So yes, Bea holds a very special place in my heart because even though I hunt vigilantes, I had to go through that revenge experience myself in order to really understand the concept for vengeance. She talked me through the emotional catharsis as we used Jean's inventions to strip-mine layers of Sollus' stomach lining. I'd say I owe her, but Bea was never not working, and I was as much an experiment to her as any of the patients we treated. Orchestrating her miscarriage broke her more than I expected, but it was the one piece of mercy I could manage- to spare that unborn child the misery of an existence with the two of us as parents. She lost touch with the science after that, she became unnecessarily cruel and sadistic. I left Arnhem a full year before the now-infamous police raid, but I'll always look fondly on my time there. The scientific detachment I gained allowed me to reaffirm my commitment to such a blasphemous cause. I am not simply seeking vengeance. I am a hero killer by design.
I spent nearly a quarter century married to the research, avoiding the inevitable. Study the art of killing superheroes long enough, and you will come to the same conclusion I faced: to really get anything done, you need to live in America. As a Parisian my options here were limited. I became a New Yorker, where my Italian accent and eye for detail made me a perfect candidate for the NYPD's fledgling Metahuman Investigations Division. I also got the chance to feel like I was giving back- I got to apply all of it; the theoretical and the practical, and hunting superpowered thieves and murderers allowed me to fully experience the self-righteous bloodlust of the heroes I hunt. At the same time, it is a detective's job to hate vigilantes, to curse their names openly and shoot at them whenever the chance presents itself. That pantomime seemed tailor made for a guy like me. I got the best of both worlds, and as a police detective I had unprecedented access to information and resources. It could've ended there, with my days and nights spent in perfect lock-step, killing heroes and villains, slowly making the world a safer place for the common man. I saw a chance for more. The first promotion came inside of a year, I made captain in three and I was the head of the division by '97. I received a medal of commendation from the Jupiter League's October Queen a month before I investigated her death. We were able to pin it on Penny Dreadful, which in retrospect was a windfall for the department since most of us were on Penny's shitlist. We had succeeded where the League had failed, in finding the October Queen's murderer and bringing him to justice. Designing the clues was a thrill, I can see why some guys become obsessed and choose that life. The October Queen thing taught me another important lesson though- nobody is invulnerable to bad press. While we were transporting Penny Dreadful to a maximum security facility, most of my guys bought it in a firefight with Beacon, who was attempting to avenge his teammate. More bad press for the League who, lacking options, reluctantly handed him over to attempt a degree of damage control. The public felt betrayed by their heroes, the League felt like it had betrayed itself, and when Penny and Beacon both showed up on a slab in the same week, there wasn't much anyone could do but murmur about how far the Jupiter League had fallen. The trauma of taking a couple bullets and losing my men, coupled with the controversy surrounding October Queen gave me a good excuse to wash my hands of it all. I retired with full benefits. It was time for a career change anyway. Did you know that you only need to have been a citizen for nine years to run for U.S. Senate?
It has become popular recently to say I won my first re-election because I had the balls to stand up to the Jupiter League on the Benedict Sanction. It didn't pass, of course, but I never expected it to. The idea was planted, and to be honest the media did a great job running with it. Eight months later, when the satellites fell, I looked like a martyr and the League looked dangerously incompetent. Similarly, it has become popular for my opponents to claim that I won the second re-election with a pity vote. It's true, the hired assassins who took out my metahuman bodyguard with Beacon's signature wing-thread bullets certainly helped quite a bit. It looked like someone in the League was trying to send a message. Obviously this endeared me to the general population, but to be honest getting rid of Captain Courage was well worth the price on its own, even if the operation to dig those old bullets out of my femur left me with a limp. There are a bevy of reasons that seem to guarantee my continued employment , but if I had to guess, I'd say it was actually youtube. The video of The Mighty Sollus, deranged, damning all mortals and promising violent retribution was something I thought I'd only ever be able to privately enjoy. As it turns out, Sollus' rage was a more effective driving force than any publicly demonstrable action I could take. The other reason I keep winning, the secret reason, is this journal. Sophia never fully grasped how to use it, and I suspect the rough draft of Parva found its way into these pages- a clue as to why that book is so elusive. Whatever is written within becomes invisible to all but the author, and no amount of psychic prying will uncover any thought that has been written on its enchanted pages. Truth be told, even without all these benefits, there's a good chance I still would've taken it. People are ruled by their emotions, and polarizing voters is part and parcel of the electoral process. Emotional decisions don't carry a lot of rationale or logic, but the world doesn't run on logic. Once my constituents saw the Benedict satellites burning up on re-entry, heard the tearful farewell of the astronauts trapped inside, and decided the Jupiter League was to blame, I knew I had a job for life. The League disbanded last year, and of the four surviving members, three now work for this government. The fourth, Dr. Gemini, disappeared a month ago without a trace. It's funny, I've always told myself I would rebuild Jean's microwave emitter someday, but it took having someone to use it on to really get me motivated.
The full text of Sophia Martel's "Parva Sub Ingenti," the so-called Common Man's Manifesto, was only published once: by a short-lived Populist Party outlet in Paris, in the Spring of '81. A half-dozen of the constituent chapters have made the rounds among private collectors. Occasionally full pages turn up in university databases, and a few broken passages appear here and there on the net, but not one complete, intact copy has ever been found. The most popular quote attributed to Martel, of course, is "Misérables possèdent les promesse" which, roughly translated, means: The meek shall inherit promises. The common assumption is that Mme. Martel was implying that the meek shall inherit empty promises, that the hopeless state of existence characterizing the lives of the poor and oppressed will continue to be hopeless, and that religion- specifically Christianity- fails to provide a fulcrum by which the meek can improve their lot in life. While this is far and away the most popular scholarly interpretation, it is also incomplete. Sophia equated evolution and revolution, and advocated force in both. While her words are often quoted in socioeconomic or sociopolitical contexts, Sophia's original intention was to address the posthuman problem created by the existence of superheroes. She thought that the promises of previous generations were also challenges to be fulfilled, that ordinary non-superpowered people had a responsibility to not only better themselves but to force ingenuity and innovation to keep the posthuman population in check. I don't have a copy of Parva Sub Ingenti, and if I did I'd sell it and take my million. I was, however, raised by Mme Martel in her spartan flat overlooking Metro Anvers in Montmartre. My father was a poor butcher in Amatrice who moved to Paris believing he'd get rich by investing in Air France. When he died he was still a poor butcher. My mother opened a small café upstairs, and Mme Martel would stop in and visit every single day and always order the same thing: black coffee, and a half-glass of red wine. She'd spend the better part of the afternoon scribbling away into her journal. Occasionally she'd get the Bucatini Amatriciana, because she said that in Paris only an Italian would go to the trouble of making soffritto instead of mirepoix. When the Jupiter League turned the café and everyone inside into a smoldering crater while saving the world from Grandmother Dragon, Madame took me by the hand and led me to her house, where I lived thereafter. When I turned sixteen she put me out on the street with a packed lunch, her old journal, and a head full of dangerous ideas.
Jean St. Caligula saw himself as a hero. I met Jean in Cyprus, although I didn't know it at the time. His target was the Bronze Wheel- a North African slave trade masterminded by a Turkish general whose heart and lungs were burning crystal constructs. The entire judo sub-philosophy of Sophia's book is excised or marginalized in most interpretations, but it formed a foundation for most of her writing. Without these ideas, she can only be considered another existentialist revolutionary. It was the focus on human/metahuman inequality that made Parva so important. Jean was living in the occupied north masquerading as a Sunni, but it didn't take long to discover that he wasn't Turk, Greek, or even a Cypriot. He was American, although he rarely spoke English. It was futbol that outed him- a real Turk would've recognized the game was a rerun. We became fast friends, and I learned from observing Jean's methodology. Here were the high points to fill the practical gaps in Sophia's philosophy. As much as he got it wrong with his typically American faults, (that love of theatricality and an obsession with the psychological,) his score is still very much ahead. Jean was the one who showed me the applied technical judo that exploited strength, leveraging and manipulating with scrabbling claws until a superhuman could literally be killed by his own power. The microwave gun was a brilliant start, if an ultimately incomplete solution: variable settings allowed it to reach behind invulnerability and destroy the soft internal organs beneath diamond-hard skin. An easy modification let it warp and pervert cellular regeneration. All this built from simple parts that you could make or scavenge yourself, for under 400 dollars. Unfortunately it became a liability in North Camden and I had to discard it- I keep telling myself I'm going to build another one. Jean's weakness was in his bravado, in his recklessness, in his disregard for the safety of innocents, but ultimately his greatest failing was the belief that his technical proficiency made him the equal of those he sought to bring down. I still regret it sometimes, my first. It isn't the greater good, or the common man I was concerned with that day, as much as I pretended. I wanted to see if I could do it, to take the life of another man, a man with noble intentions who earnestly believed he was doing good deeds. So much of who we are is wrapped in how we see ourselves, it wasn't until Jean that I really saw myself.
Miss Bengough was an American and a psychologist- and with those two strikes against her it's a wonder we ever became friends. A philosophy and a methodology are both worthless without practicum experience. The time she and I spent together in Arnhem proved invaluable, and I have no doubt that if she hadn't come to trial in an election year her life's work might have been published just like Sophia's. The entire Benelux region is so desperate to achieve any manner of international acclaim that scientific research is generally only restricted by finance. Bea taught me to be scientific, methodical, and observant- to account for and control all circumstances, and to always record your results. You might've heard that The Jupiter League's Mighty Sollus died in an asylum in the Netherlands while patiently waiting for the proper legal channels to clear. Yeah, that was us. The investigators lost two coroners and a very expensive robot before they called off the autopsy. Depending on what you believe Sollus' corpse is now either buried in a bunker in Siberia, powering the Pentagon defense grid, or being used to purify wastewater on the new International Space Station. So yes, Bea holds a very special place in my heart because even though I hunt vigilantes, I had to go through that revenge experience myself in order to really understand the concept for vengeance. She talked me through the emotional catharsis as we used Jean's inventions to strip-mine layers of Sollus' stomach lining. I'd say I owe her, but Bea was never not working, and I was as much an experiment to her as any of the patients we treated. Orchestrating her miscarriage broke her more than I expected, but it was the one piece of mercy I could manage- to spare that unborn child the misery of an existence with the two of us as parents. She lost touch with the science after that, she became unnecessarily cruel and sadistic. I left Arnhem a full year before the now-infamous police raid, but I'll always look fondly on my time there. The scientific detachment I gained allowed me to reaffirm my commitment to such a blasphemous cause. I am not simply seeking vengeance. I am a hero killer by design.
I spent nearly a quarter century married to the research, avoiding the inevitable. Study the art of killing superheroes long enough, and you will come to the same conclusion I faced: to really get anything done, you need to live in America. As a Parisian my options here were limited. I became a New Yorker, where my Italian accent and eye for detail made me a perfect candidate for the NYPD's fledgling Metahuman Investigations Division. I also got the chance to feel like I was giving back- I got to apply all of it; the theoretical and the practical, and hunting superpowered thieves and murderers allowed me to fully experience the self-righteous bloodlust of the heroes I hunt. At the same time, it is a detective's job to hate vigilantes, to curse their names openly and shoot at them whenever the chance presents itself. That pantomime seemed tailor made for a guy like me. I got the best of both worlds, and as a police detective I had unprecedented access to information and resources. It could've ended there, with my days and nights spent in perfect lock-step, killing heroes and villains, slowly making the world a safer place for the common man. I saw a chance for more. The first promotion came inside of a year, I made captain in three and I was the head of the division by '97. I received a medal of commendation from the Jupiter League's October Queen a month before I investigated her death. We were able to pin it on Penny Dreadful, which in retrospect was a windfall for the department since most of us were on Penny's shitlist. We had succeeded where the League had failed, in finding the October Queen's murderer and bringing him to justice. Designing the clues was a thrill, I can see why some guys become obsessed and choose that life. The October Queen thing taught me another important lesson though- nobody is invulnerable to bad press. While we were transporting Penny Dreadful to a maximum security facility, most of my guys bought it in a firefight with Beacon, who was attempting to avenge his teammate. More bad press for the League who, lacking options, reluctantly handed him over to attempt a degree of damage control. The public felt betrayed by their heroes, the League felt like it had betrayed itself, and when Penny and Beacon both showed up on a slab in the same week, there wasn't much anyone could do but murmur about how far the Jupiter League had fallen. The trauma of taking a couple bullets and losing my men, coupled with the controversy surrounding October Queen gave me a good excuse to wash my hands of it all. I retired with full benefits. It was time for a career change anyway. Did you know that you only need to have been a citizen for nine years to run for U.S. Senate?
It has become popular recently to say I won my first re-election because I had the balls to stand up to the Jupiter League on the Benedict Sanction. It didn't pass, of course, but I never expected it to. The idea was planted, and to be honest the media did a great job running with it. Eight months later, when the satellites fell, I looked like a martyr and the League looked dangerously incompetent. Similarly, it has become popular for my opponents to claim that I won the second re-election with a pity vote. It's true, the hired assassins who took out my metahuman bodyguard with Beacon's signature wing-thread bullets certainly helped quite a bit. It looked like someone in the League was trying to send a message. Obviously this endeared me to the general population, but to be honest getting rid of Captain Courage was well worth the price on its own, even if the operation to dig those old bullets out of my femur left me with a limp. There are a bevy of reasons that seem to guarantee my continued employment , but if I had to guess, I'd say it was actually youtube. The video of The Mighty Sollus, deranged, damning all mortals and promising violent retribution was something I thought I'd only ever be able to privately enjoy. As it turns out, Sollus' rage was a more effective driving force than any publicly demonstrable action I could take. The other reason I keep winning, the secret reason, is this journal. Sophia never fully grasped how to use it, and I suspect the rough draft of Parva found its way into these pages- a clue as to why that book is so elusive. Whatever is written within becomes invisible to all but the author, and no amount of psychic prying will uncover any thought that has been written on its enchanted pages. Truth be told, even without all these benefits, there's a good chance I still would've taken it. People are ruled by their emotions, and polarizing voters is part and parcel of the electoral process. Emotional decisions don't carry a lot of rationale or logic, but the world doesn't run on logic. Once my constituents saw the Benedict satellites burning up on re-entry, heard the tearful farewell of the astronauts trapped inside, and decided the Jupiter League was to blame, I knew I had a job for life. The League disbanded last year, and of the four surviving members, three now work for this government. The fourth, Dr. Gemini, disappeared a month ago without a trace. It's funny, I've always told myself I would rebuild Jean's microwave emitter someday, but it took having someone to use it on to really get me motivated.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Actual Computer Magic
As someone whose Photoshop skills are indistinguishable from his MS Paint skills, the full potential of available software is something of a crutch when creating or editing images (something that happens far more often than you might imagine.) This youtube preview of Adobe Photoshop CS5's "Content Aware Fill" option is one of the more amazing things I've ever seen.
Click here to check it out.
Click here to check it out.
Friday, March 5, 2010
And now back to our regularly scheduled apostasy...
...almost. New bits will be up by the week's end. Since I know what's coming, I'm going to temper it with this:
Why not go ahead and vote for the Young Americans on this thing? Tell your friends.
Why not go ahead and vote for the Young Americans on this thing? Tell your friends.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Young Americans, Part 3 (First Tours)
Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.
I walked into the first day of my first tour rehearsal with a decidedly substandard understanding of what I was about to do. I had seen a single show, and had talked to my friends who had been on tour, and that was the extent of my working knowledge. Luckily, about sixty percent of that cast was in the same boat as I was, and two of our cast members- Autumn and O, didn't even have the luxury of a New Kids experience to fall back on. Bill was up in Michigan rehearsing an entirely different cast to go to Germany, and so Robyn put the show together by herself. (To this day only a handful of us can say we've been conducted by Robyn during choral.) There is still something idyllic about that first tour rehearsal experience, start to finish, that made me love YA rehearsal. I honestly enjoy it far more than performing. Young Americans, on the whole, is a testament to the educational doctrine known colloquially as "flow theory," and nowhere is this more apparent than in the intensity of the rehearsal process.
In terms of innate performance ability I am easily one of the least talented people ever to tour with the Young Americans, and I can comfortably say that I am far and away the least talented Young American ever to tour eight times. There is no feigned humility in the statement- I'm also smarter than 95% of the people I've ever toured with (dammit Jeppy!) The reason this is important is that in 2003, the show we were touring with had already been all over the country, we were the last cast that was going to perform those numbers. This is the same show I had seen two years previous, and it wasn't a great fit for the cast. We had a fairly wide margin for error, which was alternately comfortable or debilitating, depending on the kind of person you are. At that time, I was the former.
This isn't to suggest that the cast itself wasn't capable. Some of the most talented performers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing were on that cast (O sang Take My Hand, so you know THAT was amazing,) but as a whole the show really didn't do much to showcase that assemblage of people. What I didn't understand at the time, but would later come to realize, is how little this actually mattered. The first act I had seen- nearly identical to the one I later got a chance to perform- was a collection of moments, and most of them (like seeing Sam play the Bass) were based on a sort of visual acuity that existed independent of the cast as an entity. I hesitate to use the word "formulaic," but there was most certainly a calculated simulacrum of the show I had seen nested somewhere within the one I was performing.
It is impossible to forget your first time teaching with The Young Americans, mine just happened to be extra memorable because it was the hometown of my three New Kids roommates and by the time I arrived there, I knew far more about Grand Island, Nebraska than all of the other cities on that tour combined. It was also where I got the opportunity to teach my first soloist, a guy named Derrick who would later become a Young American himself. Lucky for me Derrick was a patient guy- he could tell I was new at this. Another soloist, TJ, four towns later, also became a Young American and ended up as the Company Manager for my tour to Germany. One of my homestays, (remember that word?) a guy named Nick, became a Young American and a good friend. Nick and I drove a truck from California to Michigan one summer.
I have been on many casts since that first tour, but none of them have ever been quite as magical. Bill told us, when he came out to direct, that we were such nice people that even if we had been terrible performers he wouldn't give us one single note on the show for fear of damaging that sense of kindness. Nebraska tour spoiled me for a lot of things, and it took three years before I was able to really enjoy another as much. The tour staff was both humble and genuinely interested in the workshop. We toured with flats, the old floor, the old curtain, the big scaff AND the tinker scaff, and two-story tall spot towers (rolling death-traps) and we consistently loaded out in half an hour. We also never had lights set up until the second day, and it never made a difference in the workshop. (Sorry for all the emphatic formatting, I get carried away sometimes.)
There were singular experiences on that tour that carved my ideas of what a Young American should be in stone. In Kansas we taught two split two-day workshops to two separate age groups simultaneously, while casting and performing two different shows. We consistently set up and struck the show at top speed without any machismo, cheerleaders, gaff ball awards, or stage manager edification bullshit. Some Fridays after a 12 hour day of workshop, every YA would independently make the same decision to go cheer on the local high school football team. (There were times when our cast of 40 doubled the number of spectators at the game.) This wasn't an enforced decision. Hell, it wasn't even a suggestion. It was simply something that everyone decided to do. Our cast meetings were short and to the point without anyone telling us they should be. Literally everyone on the cast voluntarily ate with the kids, including the staff. On days off we tended to stay as one big group. If you were never a Young American and are thinking "I don't understand," take comfort in the fact that every Young American who reads this and wasn't there is thinking the same thing. This was not atypical behavior on an individual basis, but collectively, unilaterally, it was exceptional. Of course, at the time, I assumed this was the norm. Then I went to Michigan.
That next tour, the one that started in Michigan and ended in UK, gets a bad rap, mostly because of March 15, 2004 in Coloma, MI. How the heck could I possibly remember that date? It was my birthday. B&R had started the tour as our directors (we sang for Muhammad Ali in our first town, Bill's home town,) and then they had buggered off overseas to work with the Germany cast. Apparently, Young American tour casts are like bonsai, and if left unchecked overtime they can require some pretty severe pruning. This was probably the most cited example of the aforementioned psychological warfare for my "generation" of Young Americans. Unfortunately the directors went a little over the deep end in their dramatic exaggerations, and most of what is remembered today is played for comic effect. (At one point Bill told us he'd rather have a cast member smoke a cigarette center-stage in a spotlight than ever have one person use sarcasm. In retrospect this was maybe not the best thing to tell sarcastic people.) This is easily the angriest I've ever seen both of them, and the reality check of going from the bliss of Nebraska to being a total disappointment in Michigan was thoroughly devastating. Being relatively new, it was completely unclear to me what I had done so wrong, other than use sarcasm. If being sarcastic was inherently bad, I was- by inference- probably one of the worst people alive, (the sarcasm hides the sensitivity, see?)
If I had to characterize the entire difference between my experiences in Nebraska and Michigan I could do it in one sentence: "In Michigan, we had a solo section." For those of you who don't know, a solo section is a kind of arbitrary medley where everyone in the cast is showcased on their own, albeit momentarily. It is also a good metaphor for how that tour operated. Forty brief lives, completely independent of one another, attempting to achieve a common goal without first establishing a common dialog. There were some great moments, like the first time I saw the Boyne stage, and getting to make my parents laugh in Cincinnati, but these are largely overshadowed by the negative memories.
Most of the cast went on to tour another three months in the UK, but six of us stopped after Michigan (for whatever reason.) Of the six, I was the one of only two who hung around in California to do the spring production with the resident company, the oh-so creatively titled "Really Big Show." This involved hundreds of students from dozens of elementary, middle, and high schools across Southern California, and was up until that time the largest group of kids I'd ever seen in a single show. Later, as a result of not getting to go to the UK, I was given the opportunity to travel to Ojai, California with the newly returned Germany cast and teach a workshop with them. Although it was only a single workshop, I have always felt that this experience helped redeem a lot of what the Young Americans was for me. It was also an amazing chance to see a brand new show that had largely been written around the Michigan cast take on a life of its own and fit perfectly on the Germany cast. Those three days in a thirteen person homestay (with one bathroom!) were enough to convince me that I wanted to keep being a Young American. The baggage from Michigan wasn't gone, however, and it helped pave the way for trouble to come.
I walked into the first day of my first tour rehearsal with a decidedly substandard understanding of what I was about to do. I had seen a single show, and had talked to my friends who had been on tour, and that was the extent of my working knowledge. Luckily, about sixty percent of that cast was in the same boat as I was, and two of our cast members- Autumn and O, didn't even have the luxury of a New Kids experience to fall back on. Bill was up in Michigan rehearsing an entirely different cast to go to Germany, and so Robyn put the show together by herself. (To this day only a handful of us can say we've been conducted by Robyn during choral.) There is still something idyllic about that first tour rehearsal experience, start to finish, that made me love YA rehearsal. I honestly enjoy it far more than performing. Young Americans, on the whole, is a testament to the educational doctrine known colloquially as "flow theory," and nowhere is this more apparent than in the intensity of the rehearsal process.
In terms of innate performance ability I am easily one of the least talented people ever to tour with the Young Americans, and I can comfortably say that I am far and away the least talented Young American ever to tour eight times. There is no feigned humility in the statement- I'm also smarter than 95% of the people I've ever toured with (dammit Jeppy!) The reason this is important is that in 2003, the show we were touring with had already been all over the country, we were the last cast that was going to perform those numbers. This is the same show I had seen two years previous, and it wasn't a great fit for the cast. We had a fairly wide margin for error, which was alternately comfortable or debilitating, depending on the kind of person you are. At that time, I was the former.
This isn't to suggest that the cast itself wasn't capable. Some of the most talented performers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing were on that cast (O sang Take My Hand, so you know THAT was amazing,) but as a whole the show really didn't do much to showcase that assemblage of people. What I didn't understand at the time, but would later come to realize, is how little this actually mattered. The first act I had seen- nearly identical to the one I later got a chance to perform- was a collection of moments, and most of them (like seeing Sam play the Bass) were based on a sort of visual acuity that existed independent of the cast as an entity. I hesitate to use the word "formulaic," but there was most certainly a calculated simulacrum of the show I had seen nested somewhere within the one I was performing.
It is impossible to forget your first time teaching with The Young Americans, mine just happened to be extra memorable because it was the hometown of my three New Kids roommates and by the time I arrived there, I knew far more about Grand Island, Nebraska than all of the other cities on that tour combined. It was also where I got the opportunity to teach my first soloist, a guy named Derrick who would later become a Young American himself. Lucky for me Derrick was a patient guy- he could tell I was new at this. Another soloist, TJ, four towns later, also became a Young American and ended up as the Company Manager for my tour to Germany. One of my homestays, (remember that word?) a guy named Nick, became a Young American and a good friend. Nick and I drove a truck from California to Michigan one summer.
I have been on many casts since that first tour, but none of them have ever been quite as magical. Bill told us, when he came out to direct, that we were such nice people that even if we had been terrible performers he wouldn't give us one single note on the show for fear of damaging that sense of kindness. Nebraska tour spoiled me for a lot of things, and it took three years before I was able to really enjoy another as much. The tour staff was both humble and genuinely interested in the workshop. We toured with flats, the old floor, the old curtain, the big scaff AND the tinker scaff, and two-story tall spot towers (rolling death-traps) and we consistently loaded out in half an hour. We also never had lights set up until the second day, and it never made a difference in the workshop. (Sorry for all the emphatic formatting, I get carried away sometimes.)
There were singular experiences on that tour that carved my ideas of what a Young American should be in stone. In Kansas we taught two split two-day workshops to two separate age groups simultaneously, while casting and performing two different shows. We consistently set up and struck the show at top speed without any machismo, cheerleaders, gaff ball awards, or stage manager edification bullshit. Some Fridays after a 12 hour day of workshop, every YA would independently make the same decision to go cheer on the local high school football team. (There were times when our cast of 40 doubled the number of spectators at the game.) This wasn't an enforced decision. Hell, it wasn't even a suggestion. It was simply something that everyone decided to do. Our cast meetings were short and to the point without anyone telling us they should be. Literally everyone on the cast voluntarily ate with the kids, including the staff. On days off we tended to stay as one big group. If you were never a Young American and are thinking "I don't understand," take comfort in the fact that every Young American who reads this and wasn't there is thinking the same thing. This was not atypical behavior on an individual basis, but collectively, unilaterally, it was exceptional. Of course, at the time, I assumed this was the norm. Then I went to Michigan.
That next tour, the one that started in Michigan and ended in UK, gets a bad rap, mostly because of March 15, 2004 in Coloma, MI. How the heck could I possibly remember that date? It was my birthday. B&R had started the tour as our directors (we sang for Muhammad Ali in our first town, Bill's home town,) and then they had buggered off overseas to work with the Germany cast. Apparently, Young American tour casts are like bonsai, and if left unchecked overtime they can require some pretty severe pruning. This was probably the most cited example of the aforementioned psychological warfare for my "generation" of Young Americans. Unfortunately the directors went a little over the deep end in their dramatic exaggerations, and most of what is remembered today is played for comic effect. (At one point Bill told us he'd rather have a cast member smoke a cigarette center-stage in a spotlight than ever have one person use sarcasm. In retrospect this was maybe not the best thing to tell sarcastic people.) This is easily the angriest I've ever seen both of them, and the reality check of going from the bliss of Nebraska to being a total disappointment in Michigan was thoroughly devastating. Being relatively new, it was completely unclear to me what I had done so wrong, other than use sarcasm. If being sarcastic was inherently bad, I was- by inference- probably one of the worst people alive, (the sarcasm hides the sensitivity, see?)
If I had to characterize the entire difference between my experiences in Nebraska and Michigan I could do it in one sentence: "In Michigan, we had a solo section." For those of you who don't know, a solo section is a kind of arbitrary medley where everyone in the cast is showcased on their own, albeit momentarily. It is also a good metaphor for how that tour operated. Forty brief lives, completely independent of one another, attempting to achieve a common goal without first establishing a common dialog. There were some great moments, like the first time I saw the Boyne stage, and getting to make my parents laugh in Cincinnati, but these are largely overshadowed by the negative memories.
Most of the cast went on to tour another three months in the UK, but six of us stopped after Michigan (for whatever reason.) Of the six, I was the one of only two who hung around in California to do the spring production with the resident company, the oh-so creatively titled "Really Big Show." This involved hundreds of students from dozens of elementary, middle, and high schools across Southern California, and was up until that time the largest group of kids I'd ever seen in a single show. Later, as a result of not getting to go to the UK, I was given the opportunity to travel to Ojai, California with the newly returned Germany cast and teach a workshop with them. Although it was only a single workshop, I have always felt that this experience helped redeem a lot of what the Young Americans was for me. It was also an amazing chance to see a brand new show that had largely been written around the Michigan cast take on a life of its own and fit perfectly on the Germany cast. Those three days in a thirteen person homestay (with one bathroom!) were enough to convince me that I wanted to keep being a Young American. The baggage from Michigan wasn't gone, however, and it helped pave the way for trouble to come.
Young Americans, Part 2 (New Kids!)
Continued from Part 1
Ostensibly, my Young Americans experience started the second I met Alex Jones. Alex was one of three assigned roommates, and the only one home when my parents and I first arrived at my new apartment. He showed us the way to the building I would come to refer to as "The Warehouse," (back when there was only one!) I met another roommate, Don, the office manager Kat, and one of the directors, LB. They were laying dance floor in this building, turning it into a rehearsal space. Kat not so subtly suggested that I should drop my things off and come back and help. Manual labor, on my first day in California? Screw you, lady, we've got tickets to see Leno. Besides, who knows when I'm going to get to see my parents again? (Turns out it was three months later.)
My roommates informed me that our fourth member, Jason would be joining us in a week. They all knew each other from high school, an excuse I used to never really try to get to know them. After all, these guys had grown up together. These were show choir people. What would we even talk about? Later that evening more Young Americans appeared: Joel and Mystique. Joel seemed like a decent guy; I wasn't too sure about Mystique. Slowly but surely, over the next few days the rest arrived. We met Courtney and her then-boyfriend Tom, who was an "Old Kid." I met John, Bryant, and Gweedo, and immediately wanted to live in that apartment instead. The benefit of hindsight makes these admissions somewhat embarrassing. My Roommate Don would go on to be my stage manager at my first Young American dinner theater and Jason would follow suit as the stage manager on the fall tour immediately following that. Alex Jones is a coworker, I saw him today.
Our first YA-related function was a pizza party at (I think) Cameron Coy's brother's house. Miss Robyn talked to us and introduced us to our New Kid directors (it would be another two months before we met Bill or Milt,) and made it a point to remind us not to suck up to Kat, because Kat didn't decide who goes on tour. I remember thinking "woah... what a slap in the face," but I didn't particularly like Kat so my sympathies were only marginal. I suppose it is worth mentioning that Kat sat next to- and conferred with- Bill and Robyn at every tour audition for the next four years. This is the first instance I can recall of what was to become a curious trend: namely where the leadership of the Young Americans dabbles in unrestricted psychological warfare. What was said was in direct conflict with the observed data, and no explanation was ever offered. This wasn't a condition endemic to any single person; years later I would hear at least two other directors (both of whom happened to be from my New Kids class) quote Machiavelli's The Prince: "It is better to be feared than loved, but it is best to be feared AND loved." This remains a sore spot with me, in part because The Prince was written as a satirical criticism and not an instruction manual, but mostly because these kinds of people are impossible to maintain an honest friendship with.
The first Young Americans rehearsal held an absolutely life-changing moment for me, but it also helped set a precedent I've always regretted. While learning the dance to The Lion King I stood in the back corner. I quickly let my frustrations overcome me, having never danced in my life and being much bigger than most everyone there. I've always found learning new choreography to be painfully embarrassing. I had literally never NOT been good at learning something before, and the Young Americans inopportunely chose that specific process to gauge our capacity for learning. In my anger I gave up. F(orget) this, I'm not dancing. I was on the verge of just walking out entirely when the rehearsal suddenly switched gears. The assembled "Old Kid" cast, who were about to depart on a tour to the East Coast, surrounded us and sang "One by One" from the Lion King. That sound! I had never heard anything like it.
People tend to compare choirs to angels, but this wasn't in the least bit angelic. This was real, dirty, tangible sound. It was rooted in passion, in anger and hope and fear and love, in the earth and in every part of the body. It was a moving wall of palpable emotion, a wave that knocked you down, swept away your defenses, left you naked and vulnerable, and then picked you up and carried you, connecting you to a room full of other vulnerable people. A family, born of necessity from that moment of vulnerability, a framework to build a new world, a context on which to hang the stars. Ok, I'll stay.
The intervening three months brought a bevy of diverse experiences. There was one crazy night with a meteor shower and a bunch of naked people in a hot-tub. There were Ice Cream and Brownies and movies with Courtney, Comics and strippers (don't ask) with Drew, and "prospecting" with John and Gweedo. I drove to Hollywood with Kristy Bonner to meet some guy who was filming a commercial for MADD. Ellen brought me a sandwich, just to be nice. On an intensely personal note, since the second grade I had been medicated with a cocktail of stimulants (Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall) and antidepressants (Celexa, Paxil) all of which I stopped cold when I moved to California. As a consequence, I spent the better part of my New Kid semester in withdrawal; either asleep or wishing I was. That part isn't an experience I'd ever like to repeat.
The New Kids Show came and went. It had its moments, like everything else in Young Americans, but when most people think of the show they remember me, shirtless, running around the stage as The Genie. I also sang Old Routine with Gweedo, and nobody but the New Kid Directors noticed that we switched parts mid-song. This was meant to be impressive, but it went wholly unnoticed. This was the slow start of an eventual lesson that, in a YA show, blatant and ridiculous beats subtle and clever every time. I would eventually learn to find the balance of this, whereby blatant and ridiculous can showcase subtle and clever, but not for a very long time.
The first Christmas Show rehearsal brought my second experience with the YA Director's brand of psychological warfare, employing my parents as unwitting adjuncts. "You can really tell the kids who want to be here." No, you're right. I didn't want to spend my day sitting silently, trying to cipher some meaning from people I've never met (because they were all on tour,) who half-remembered what they did a year previous. I would've liked to spend the day with my parents, since I wasn't able to go home for Christmas. Didn't bother to ask, did you? As I mentioned previously, I love the group with all my heart, but this tactic has only ever served to infuriate me. No sugarcoating. Christmas show was a mild diversion that year, (lightyears away from the joyous occasion subsequent years would become,) and as everyone left I settled into a long mild winter depression. On New Years Eve I took my sax and played Auld Lang Syne on the street corner. It was meant to be cathartic more than anything, but I managed to make eleven dollars in an hour.
That spring semester of Young Americans was... empty. My apartment was lonely, all three of my roommates having made their first tour. All of my close friends: Gweedo, John, Bryant, Joel and Drew had likewise gone on the road. Courtney was still around but that was complicated by a burgeoning unrequited attraction ("unrequited" was a trope that would reiterate itself throughout my entire YA experience.) There was no Overture program, no classes during the week, nothing at all to do but hang out with the same two guys who spent most of their time smoking pot. Hilariously, this association-by-default caused me to be acquire a label I've never entirely shaken. The habits I'd learned from a semester in withdrawal didn't help much either.
The abject hollowness of this period of time helps counterpoint the rare important moments. Bill told me, in our first actual conversation, that I was loyal to my friends. This compliment still seems largely baseless to me, but the pollyanna psychology has a way of tickling one's ego. He also later told me that I was inconsistent, which was absolutely true. There were a total of fourteen Young Americans around for the week of Dance Excellence in 2003, and nine of us were New Kids. Every Young American who reads that previous sentence is going to do so at least twice. Those seem like fictitiously small numbers. DE was almost a disaster that year, and the company show relied heavily on those four or five old kids to do everything. Bill pulled the New Kids aside and really laid into us, one of only two times I've ever seen him that frustrated and far and away the most understandable. What he told us was 100% accurate, and he was justified in being upset. Nobody likes to be yelled at, but in a strange way it made me feel important. I had never imagined that I had any impact whatsoever on Bill, but I had skipped just one of his classes that day (classes that had 150 other people) and he knew precisely which one.
The tours returned home in time for all YAs to perform a spring show together (an incredible experience that has since been supplanted by Tarbell,) and then audition for Summer dinner theater and Fall tour. Two unique things happened then. First, I saw Bill and Robyn call up a random line of people, ask them to stand in a specific order, shift them around a bit, and then divide them in half and announce two dinner theater casts simultaneously. The second is that my name was announced to go on the midwest tour. This made me happy, but it seemed to make a lot of other people happy too. Apparently people had been rooting for me. My friends who I was about to tour with seemed to be more excited about me than they were about themselves. This is a phenomenon that would only repeat itself one other time, almost exactly four years later.
Continue to Part 3.
Ostensibly, my Young Americans experience started the second I met Alex Jones. Alex was one of three assigned roommates, and the only one home when my parents and I first arrived at my new apartment. He showed us the way to the building I would come to refer to as "The Warehouse," (back when there was only one!) I met another roommate, Don, the office manager Kat, and one of the directors, LB. They were laying dance floor in this building, turning it into a rehearsal space. Kat not so subtly suggested that I should drop my things off and come back and help. Manual labor, on my first day in California? Screw you, lady, we've got tickets to see Leno. Besides, who knows when I'm going to get to see my parents again? (Turns out it was three months later.)
My roommates informed me that our fourth member, Jason would be joining us in a week. They all knew each other from high school, an excuse I used to never really try to get to know them. After all, these guys had grown up together. These were show choir people. What would we even talk about? Later that evening more Young Americans appeared: Joel and Mystique. Joel seemed like a decent guy; I wasn't too sure about Mystique. Slowly but surely, over the next few days the rest arrived. We met Courtney and her then-boyfriend Tom, who was an "Old Kid." I met John, Bryant, and Gweedo, and immediately wanted to live in that apartment instead. The benefit of hindsight makes these admissions somewhat embarrassing. My Roommate Don would go on to be my stage manager at my first Young American dinner theater and Jason would follow suit as the stage manager on the fall tour immediately following that. Alex Jones is a coworker, I saw him today.
Our first YA-related function was a pizza party at (I think) Cameron Coy's brother's house. Miss Robyn talked to us and introduced us to our New Kid directors (it would be another two months before we met Bill or Milt,) and made it a point to remind us not to suck up to Kat, because Kat didn't decide who goes on tour. I remember thinking "woah... what a slap in the face," but I didn't particularly like Kat so my sympathies were only marginal. I suppose it is worth mentioning that Kat sat next to- and conferred with- Bill and Robyn at every tour audition for the next four years. This is the first instance I can recall of what was to become a curious trend: namely where the leadership of the Young Americans dabbles in unrestricted psychological warfare. What was said was in direct conflict with the observed data, and no explanation was ever offered. This wasn't a condition endemic to any single person; years later I would hear at least two other directors (both of whom happened to be from my New Kids class) quote Machiavelli's The Prince: "It is better to be feared than loved, but it is best to be feared AND loved." This remains a sore spot with me, in part because The Prince was written as a satirical criticism and not an instruction manual, but mostly because these kinds of people are impossible to maintain an honest friendship with.
The first Young Americans rehearsal held an absolutely life-changing moment for me, but it also helped set a precedent I've always regretted. While learning the dance to The Lion King I stood in the back corner. I quickly let my frustrations overcome me, having never danced in my life and being much bigger than most everyone there. I've always found learning new choreography to be painfully embarrassing. I had literally never NOT been good at learning something before, and the Young Americans inopportunely chose that specific process to gauge our capacity for learning. In my anger I gave up. F(orget) this, I'm not dancing. I was on the verge of just walking out entirely when the rehearsal suddenly switched gears. The assembled "Old Kid" cast, who were about to depart on a tour to the East Coast, surrounded us and sang "One by One" from the Lion King. That sound! I had never heard anything like it.
People tend to compare choirs to angels, but this wasn't in the least bit angelic. This was real, dirty, tangible sound. It was rooted in passion, in anger and hope and fear and love, in the earth and in every part of the body. It was a moving wall of palpable emotion, a wave that knocked you down, swept away your defenses, left you naked and vulnerable, and then picked you up and carried you, connecting you to a room full of other vulnerable people. A family, born of necessity from that moment of vulnerability, a framework to build a new world, a context on which to hang the stars. Ok, I'll stay.
The intervening three months brought a bevy of diverse experiences. There was one crazy night with a meteor shower and a bunch of naked people in a hot-tub. There were Ice Cream and Brownies and movies with Courtney, Comics and strippers (don't ask) with Drew, and "prospecting" with John and Gweedo. I drove to Hollywood with Kristy Bonner to meet some guy who was filming a commercial for MADD. Ellen brought me a sandwich, just to be nice. On an intensely personal note, since the second grade I had been medicated with a cocktail of stimulants (Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall) and antidepressants (Celexa, Paxil) all of which I stopped cold when I moved to California. As a consequence, I spent the better part of my New Kid semester in withdrawal; either asleep or wishing I was. That part isn't an experience I'd ever like to repeat.
The New Kids Show came and went. It had its moments, like everything else in Young Americans, but when most people think of the show they remember me, shirtless, running around the stage as The Genie. I also sang Old Routine with Gweedo, and nobody but the New Kid Directors noticed that we switched parts mid-song. This was meant to be impressive, but it went wholly unnoticed. This was the slow start of an eventual lesson that, in a YA show, blatant and ridiculous beats subtle and clever every time. I would eventually learn to find the balance of this, whereby blatant and ridiculous can showcase subtle and clever, but not for a very long time.
The first Christmas Show rehearsal brought my second experience with the YA Director's brand of psychological warfare, employing my parents as unwitting adjuncts. "You can really tell the kids who want to be here." No, you're right. I didn't want to spend my day sitting silently, trying to cipher some meaning from people I've never met (because they were all on tour,) who half-remembered what they did a year previous. I would've liked to spend the day with my parents, since I wasn't able to go home for Christmas. Didn't bother to ask, did you? As I mentioned previously, I love the group with all my heart, but this tactic has only ever served to infuriate me. No sugarcoating. Christmas show was a mild diversion that year, (lightyears away from the joyous occasion subsequent years would become,) and as everyone left I settled into a long mild winter depression. On New Years Eve I took my sax and played Auld Lang Syne on the street corner. It was meant to be cathartic more than anything, but I managed to make eleven dollars in an hour.
That spring semester of Young Americans was... empty. My apartment was lonely, all three of my roommates having made their first tour. All of my close friends: Gweedo, John, Bryant, Joel and Drew had likewise gone on the road. Courtney was still around but that was complicated by a burgeoning unrequited attraction ("unrequited" was a trope that would reiterate itself throughout my entire YA experience.) There was no Overture program, no classes during the week, nothing at all to do but hang out with the same two guys who spent most of their time smoking pot. Hilariously, this association-by-default caused me to be acquire a label I've never entirely shaken. The habits I'd learned from a semester in withdrawal didn't help much either.
The abject hollowness of this period of time helps counterpoint the rare important moments. Bill told me, in our first actual conversation, that I was loyal to my friends. This compliment still seems largely baseless to me, but the pollyanna psychology has a way of tickling one's ego. He also later told me that I was inconsistent, which was absolutely true. There were a total of fourteen Young Americans around for the week of Dance Excellence in 2003, and nine of us were New Kids. Every Young American who reads that previous sentence is going to do so at least twice. Those seem like fictitiously small numbers. DE was almost a disaster that year, and the company show relied heavily on those four or five old kids to do everything. Bill pulled the New Kids aside and really laid into us, one of only two times I've ever seen him that frustrated and far and away the most understandable. What he told us was 100% accurate, and he was justified in being upset. Nobody likes to be yelled at, but in a strange way it made me feel important. I had never imagined that I had any impact whatsoever on Bill, but I had skipped just one of his classes that day (classes that had 150 other people) and he knew precisely which one.
The tours returned home in time for all YAs to perform a spring show together (an incredible experience that has since been supplanted by Tarbell,) and then audition for Summer dinner theater and Fall tour. Two unique things happened then. First, I saw Bill and Robyn call up a random line of people, ask them to stand in a specific order, shift them around a bit, and then divide them in half and announce two dinner theater casts simultaneously. The second is that my name was announced to go on the midwest tour. This made me happy, but it seemed to make a lot of other people happy too. Apparently people had been rooting for me. My friends who I was about to tour with seemed to be more excited about me than they were about themselves. This is a phenomenon that would only repeat itself one other time, almost exactly four years later.
Continue to Part 3.
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