Monthly Archives: May 2006

Conclusions to the spring

piano.jpgWell, I took my last final today (I only had two, of course). We did a scene from Terra Nova. It went pretty well.

It’s also the end of the school year. All, well, most of the kids will scatter to parts unknown to chill out for a couple of months or get a job or take more classes at a school closer to home.

I’ve met a lot of great people since August of last year. I’ve been in several shows with them. I traveled to NYC with them. I’ve partied with them. I’ve laughed and talked and laughed.

And I’ll miss them.

I’m doubly sad ’cause there’s a really good chance M will be leaving me too. It would be nice if we had a chance for “us” time this summer since the last semester has been so crazy for both of us that we haven’t had much time together. But she’ll probably be interning somewhere. There’s nothing definite yet, but she’s got a couple of leads. She really needs to intern for her career and I support her in that.

But it’s gonna be lonely at home this summer.

Luckily, there’s the summer musical at SCT. I love my SCT peeps. I’m really looking forward to it. Auditions are in a couple of weeks. My first ever stage audition was for the musical last summer. Read about it in part 1 and part 2.

I still can’t believe how much I have learned since then. I’ve had three acting classes from two great teachers. I’ve been in several different kinds of shows. It has been so great. I still don’t know how I didn’t ever start acting/performing sooner.

I was talking to one of my new friends today after the advanced acting final and she couldn’t believe that Story Theatre last November was the first play that I ever did in my life. We didn’t know each other at the time and so it was very self-esteem-boosting to hear that she remembered my performance and thought I was an old-hand and also considering she’s a very good actress herself.

Who knows what the future holds? It’s exciting and I can’t wait.

Did I tell you ’bout the time I got shot in the back?

gun-smaller.jpgNo? Well it’s not very interesting, but I’ll tell you.

*cue transitional scene music* It was the summer of 1985. I was a young lad, clad in my green Izod shirt, out playing in the large yard of a neighboring house behind our apartment building. My brother, who is five years my senior, and some other kids liked to play back there because it was large and open but still had lots of trees and bushes and other foliage to play around and under.

It was a sunny day, a perfect day for…bleeding. From a gunshot wound. To the back.

Ok, well when I say gunshot wound, it was more like a BB, uh, shot wound. But it really hurt! See, we were playing and my brother was being the typical mean big brother and he threatened to shoot the other kids. He had one of those multi-pump BB guns. You could pump like 40 times and do some serious BB damage. So we all ran off back towards our apartment building.

Then, everything slowed down. My legs just wouldn’t move fast enough. I felt a white-hot heat on my back just before it exploded in pain. The next thing I know I’m being carried by some neighbors to our apartment. Mom’s on the phone calling dad and generally freaking out. I’m looking in the mirror at the bloody hole in my back and whimpering. I imagine my brother was hiding out at this point.

We make it to the emergency room and they dig around the hole in my back for about an hour and a half but they can’t find the BB. The hole goes about an inch and a half in. Eventually the doc says “oh well” and puts a bandage over the hole.

WHAT?!

Excuse me, doc, but I don’t want this thing in my back for the rest of my life. What about metal detectors at the airport? I don’t want to be labeled as a terrorist. And what if Magneto walks by one day? You know he’ll sense that BB in my back and won’t be able to resist ripping it out of my body. THROUGH MY HEART. And I’ll have to explain to every X-Ray technician what that little white dot in my back is on the film.

Well, here we are 20 something years later and luckily I’ve only had to worry about the last one. But don’t think that when Magneto escapes from jail in X-Men 2 it didn’t scare the poop outta me.

Runnin’ With Scissors no more

I forgot to mention that we had an improv show on Sunday the 30th. I hosted for the first time. I think the show went really well.

We are no longer known as Runnin’ With Scissors. We decided to change our name because of name space collision. Namely, there’s a book and a movie with the same name and also a performance group out of Chicago with the same name. Not to mention other more personal reasons among some in the group.

So we are now known as the Lab Rats. See, we started out and mainly perform in the lab theatre of McComas hall. So…now we’re spreading the comedic plague or or searching for the comedic cheese or maybe doing experimental comedy.

I didn’t get to perform in this show as an improver but it was fun hosting. I did get to play Questions, where you can only improv a scene using questions. If you repeat yourself or say a statement, you’re out and the next person steps in. We had two teams and I put out 4 or 5 of the other team. It was fun.

So we’re done for the semester. We are planning to host a comedy festival next semester. The first one in Mississippi as far as I know. We’ll be working on it over the summer and will invite comedy troupes from all over the southeast.

I’m off tonight from Smoke on the Mountain. The only break I get until the show wraps on the 6th. I think I’m going to the MSU choir concert tonight and do some quality couch sitting.