Category: The Arts/Media

Posted on

Dear Wayward Student…

Devon Hensel is an old friend of mine from school (since 2nd grade, I think, though I’m not sure if she’d want to admit knowing me that long). She’s currently a professor at Indiana University and occasionally gets frustrated with her students. As a way to vent those frustrations, she would write “Dear Wayward Student” status messages on Facebook such as the following:
_____________________________________

Dear Wayward Student: thank you for the email.
1) “Hhhhhheeeeyyyy there prof, I’m not it class cuz imma kickin’ it on beak on Paaaadrrreee.” I was not aware that the University had started “beak” four days early, but this clearly explains your five week sabbatical from the course.
2) “Like, here’s my paper. I wanna be sure to turn it in on time.” Class is from 6-8:40 pm on Wednesdays. It is now 3am….on Friday.
3) “It was aweeeeesome writing on my first relationship….I hope I get full credit for this paper.” Unfortunately, this paper was actually due three weeks ago….You know, the same day you missed the exam.
_____________________________________

I admit, I sometimes feel the same urge to stab myself in the brain when I read stuff like that. What goes through some of her students’ heads is just… wow. But there are always likes and comments whenever she writes a new one (it’s probably related to the “rubbernecking” phenomena when people really need to see the results of a car crash).

I don’t remember exactly what inspired me to do it, but I consulted with Devon briefly, then created a very basic “Dear Wayward Student” page on Facebook. It sat there, cold and alone, begging for some attention, but alas, nothing. Until Devon wrote a new Dear Wayward Student status message recently, at which point I reminded her about the page and BOOM! People get to start reading stories without having to surf through her timeline.

As a bonus, other teachers have been adding comments to the page that go through their heads, but they’re polite enough to not say anything out loud. Comments like “If you have to introduce yourself to me at the end of the semester, chances are your bid for higher participation points won’t work.”

So if you want to indulge in a little bit of Interwebs-based rubbernecking, Dear Wayward Student has a Facebook page and a Twitter account. One caveat: if you stab yourself in the brain, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Posted on

Marie Porter doesn’t make Canadian porn

This is an issue that came up on Facebook yesterday and my friend Marie is justifiably pissed.

The Young Turks has a page that shares a multitude of links to articles on their website, www.tytnetwork.com. I don’t want to misrepresent the organization, so I’m copying and pasting the “About” section directly from their page:
________________________________________

Plot Outline
Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. Young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations. (American Heritage Dictionary)

The Young Turks is The Largest Online News Show in the World.

The Young Turks (Winner – Best Political Podcast & Best Political News Site of 2009) were the first original talk show on Sirius satellite radio and the first live, daily webcast on the internet. But that is not the revolution.

We are a rare show that combines all of the news that people care about in one place. We are not afraid to talk about politics and entertainment and sports and pop culture. But that is not the revolution either.

The real revolution is in daring to be honest with people. We dont patronize our viewers or lie to them. We have real conversations and deliver the news honestly.
________________________________________

In reading that description, the problem isn’t that they’re lying so much as misrepresenting something they used for one of their posts. It’s got a header with three swimsuit models and has a link that sends you to an article called “Canada Wants More Canadian Porn”.

Note that if you click the link above, it goes to their Facebook post and not the article itself. That’s because 1) I don’t want to drive any more traffic to their website, and 2) they don’t use Marie’s picture on their own site, just on Facebook.

Theoretically, those three pictures could have come from anywhere on the Internet. Hell, they could have come from the swimsuit issue of “Sports Illustrated”. (Actually, it’s been a while since I read the swimsuit issue, but the Canadian models might be covering up too much for SI’s standards.) But the pictures didn’t come from just anywhere on the Internet. The middle picture in the header came from Marie’s website.

For those of you who want objective proof, I’ve got two pictures. The first is the post from The Young Turks page with the header on it. The second is from the Queen of Spandex website. I was tempted to take a big screen shot that showed a lot of women and men in swimsuits (rawr…), but decided that I should stick with the picture that they (shouldn’t have) used—it’s on the left side of the page about halfway down.

Take a look at the three women in the header...
Take a look at the three women in the header…
Yes, this is swimming weather in Canada.
This looks like a non-cropped version of the middle picture, doesn’t it?

This could have been a non-issue. Marie Porter does not want herself nor her swimsuit model to be associated with pornography, Canadian or otherwise. If The Young Turks took the post down or changed the header, problem solved. It would be the right thing, it would be the decent thing, it would be the smart thing, but they’ve done nothing. It’s still there and she’s still pissed.

Then again, one of the definitions of “Young Turk” is “young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations.” Marie may want to start searching for a lawyer now.

Posted on

Can I borrow Tiny Tim’s crutch?

About a month ago, I wrote about how I sprained my left foot during rehearsal for Scrooge. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was my foot or my ankle. Then I was sitting in Dad’s room in the hospital last week just kinda shifting my feet around on the floor and I felt a pretty sharp pain on both sides right at the arch. Yep, there’s definitely something wrong with my foot.

It’s been a few weeks since we finished Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations, so I’ve only had rehearsals on Saturdays for… God knows how many hours. (Today, we ran both acts twice and had a lunch break that lasted close to an hour. We started at 9:00 and finished about 4:45. That’s a lot of singing and dancing and I’m pooped.) But still, you’d think that having so much time off during each week would give my foot plenty of time to heal. That’s what I was thinking, but nope! Still hurts!

My foot is the problem area, but when I went looking at braces and wraps at sporting goods stores, all they had were for ankles. Some of them reached halfway up the shin down to near the ball of the foot, but they didn’t look like they provided much support for the arch. Thus, I headed to a store I could trust: Fleet Farm. Then I headed to the area of the store that had what I was looking for: the equine section.

In the midst of all the horse brushes and kettlebells for horses to hold in their mouths to exercise their necks (no, I’m not kidding), Fleet Farm sells a product called Vetrap. It’s good stuff. It’s basically a self-adhesive Ace bandage. Wrap it snug around something (like, say, the arch of your foot), squish it together and it’ll stay in place. Since all of it adheres to itself, it doesn’t move around, which is good for support and bad when you’re trying to take it off afterward. (You either have to find the end and peel it all off or just cut it with a scissors, which is way easier.)

I had some at home, so I used that today along with my ankle brace for safety and it worked pretty well. That didn’t save my feet as a whole since today was the first time I wore my new dance shoes for an extended period of time, let alone danced in them. But the arch and the outsides of my foot felt okay, so I decided I should go with that instead of buying a thirty dollar ankle brace (no, I’m not kidding about that, either) that might or might not help.

The only downside of the Vetrap I had was that it was purple. At some point during the first run of Act II today, I looked down and saw a very large blotch of purple on my foot. I was starting to freak out until I realized that the tongue of the shoe was sliding down the outside and I was looking at the top of my foot. Whew.

As much as I like purple, I don’t think it’d fit the color scheme for my costume. Thankfully, Fleet Farm sells black Vetrap. Not so thankfully, that section of the shelf was completely empty. Every single color was available except black. Shit.

I decided that my best second option was a dark blue: it shouldn’t look nearly as bright as red or pink under the lights. Or purple, for that matter. I’ll have to check my shoes once in a while, make sure the tongue isn’t sliding around, but I prefer that over going without any support and making my sprained foot worse. After all, walking like a cripple onstage is Tiny Tim’s job.

Posted on

Opening night draws first blood!

I know one of my lines is talking about being bitten by a snake, but it almost feels like some of us have been snakebit for real. If things continue the way they’re going so far, I’m hoping we won’t be missing any limbs by the time we finish the production.

I’m not sure where things got jinxed, but it started for me last Saturday while working on the choreography for Scrooge. We were all divided into three groups of four (we now have the proper male/female ratio for dancing in the background). At one point, each group was spinning in a circle ala ring-around-the-rosie and our little group… we may have been spinning a bit too fast. And the room was a bit too small. And we got a bit too close to one of the circles next to us.

In the middle of spinning around, I felt my left foot stop. Well, the inner half of it stopped. The outer half tried to keep going. I immediately let go of people’s hands and limped toward the side of the room. Feeling all of those little bones in your foot spreading out when they’re supposed to be closely connected is… unpleasant. Plus it kinda hurts. I was done dancing after that.

The bottom part of my ankle and my foot around it have been pretty tender since then. It’s not bad enough that I can’t stand or walk around, but it’s tender. I didn’t want to give any sort of self-diagnosis, but I decided that it’s officially a sprained ankle/foot when I looked at the outside of my foot yesterday and saw a bruise had formed below my ankle bone. I did some damage to the ligaments, they started bleeding, it eventually pooled into part of my foot that hadn’t experienced any direct trauma.

That in itself wasn’t a big deal. I bought myself an ankle brace when I drove home on Saturday and I’ve been wearing it off and on since then. It’s always on when I’ve been onstage for Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations.

There’s a scene where Joe, our lead actor, chases me around the room. That wasn’t a big deal last week, but a sprained ankle tends to limit one’s range of motion. But it got better! Or worse, depending on your perspective!

During the course of that scene, Joe was supposed to crawl over the back of a couch while chasing me, fall on the floor, then get up and resume the chase. They put some kind of padding behind the couch for him to land on, but it wasn’t as effective as they would have liked. Right after rehearsal that night, he drove himself to the emergency room and the x-rays revealed a newly-broken bone. We’re not sure if it’s his collarbone or his shoulder, but suffice it to say that his range of motion is really limited.

But the show must go on! We’re trying to keep him from moving his right arm too much, no one’s putting any pressure on that shoulder, someone is ripping off his clothing between scenes… that’s not a recreational thing, he really is supposed to be wearing different outfits during each scene in the first act.

Then there was the chase scene last night. Opening night. The first show with an audience that paid to get into the theater. And I ended up bleeding onstage.

The problem is that at one point, I’m sitting in a chair yelling at Joe. He turns and lunges at my left side. It’s a chair with large arms, so I can’t roll off to the side—the only way I can think of to escape is by lunging out onto the floor toward the right. In doing so, I don’t just land and stay there, of course. I skid a little.

There’s one spot on my right knee that’s felt a little raw during rehearsals the last week, but this was the first time I sat down and noticed some little dark spots in my pants where I’d bled through the fabric. Then when I got offstage, people pointed out that I had skinned my right elbow and had blood showing there as well. Translation: I need to figure out a better way to land when I throw myself out of the chair or I’m going to run out of layers of skin by the third weekend.

Aside from all of that, things have been going pretty smoothly. If something happens to make them go less smoothly, we could have a problem. After all, if I’m out of commission, they’ll need to find a replacement male to do a ring-around-the-rosie in the background for Scrooge.

Posted on

Jesus saves, passes to Moses, Moses scores!

That title may be thoroughly misleading, but I like the sound of it anyway. Plus this post is related to religion and Jesus and stuff along those lines, so I make no apologies.

I thought it might be a good idea to delay this post for a day or two after writing about Scrooge because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m going to back out of my offer to help with the show. I said I would, so I’m gonna. However, when I got home after that first rehearsal… part of me had misgivings and I’m not really sure why.

It’s not like it was a bad experience. It didn’t last long enough to be a bad experience. I was at the church for maybe three hours and not all of it was dancing and singing (I spent the first chunk of time finding a jacket and pants for my costume). Besides, I was in a musical theater revue group at college for two years—I’ve done this stuff before—so it’s not like the experience is going to leave an eternal scar on my soul.

The only thing that I could think of after getting home was what happened when we wrapped for the afternoon. The latter portion of rehearsal was singing; given that I didn’t know any of the songs, let alone the lyrics, I was reading everything off a sheet of paper and kinda humming and singing quietly. Consequently, the other three guys’ voices were getting smothered by the females. Not that I’ll make that much of a difference, but four is better than three. Or at least louder than three.

Incidentally, the person typing out the lyrics either didn’t proofread his/her work very carefully or just didn’t care, but whatever the case, some of the typos are pretty awesome. Aside from people telling each other to “Marry Christmas”, the females were supposed to sing “Gory to the newborn King.” I’m told the show has some really impressive special effects, but I doubt any of them involve fake blood.

After we finished, Pastor Vickie (the person leading the singing) had us gather around into a prayer circle. Not a big deal, I’m cool with holding hands and bowing my head. However, as she talked more and more about how we were doing it all for the sake of the church, bringing people in so they could experience God’s love… I don’t want to misrepresent the message she was sending, but it was a fairly long prayer and for most of the time she was talking, I kept thinking “Not true, not true, not true…”

I’m not saying I have no sense of faith or religion or spirituality. It was that message in particular. I didn’t agree to do this for the church. Screw the church, I’m doing this for my friend. Screw the church, I’m doing this for the audience. Screw the church, I’m doing this for me.

Just a second… nope, didn’t burst into flames. I thought I should wait for a moment, just in case. But here’s my thoughts on the matter: my understanding is that within the Christian belief system, we all have a direct relationship with God. He’s all-powerful, so He’s hugging me everywhere I go. I can stand anywhere and give a high-five to Jesus. For me, churches are unnecessary. I don’t need a conduit between me and the Big Guy Upstairs. Doing something for the church? Forget it.

I’m trying to make the world a better place. Helping my friend: another male townsperson will make her job as the director easier, give her a little more peace of mind. Helping the audience: making Scrooge a good show will put a smile on their faces (even if they aren’t visited by the Holy Spirit during the performance). Helping me: I’m helping other people. I’m trying to make the world a better place.

If that involves being onstage inside a church, no problem. If someone thinks the church is a required part of the equation and says so on my behalf, well, that might be what pushed the wrong buttons for me last weekend. I’m hoping it doesn’t happen again. I’m hoping I can keep going to rehearsal on Saturdays, work on my singing and dancing and eventually give the audience a great show. And if I do a really good job, who knows? Maybe I’ll be walking out to the parking lot after a performance one night and get a high-five from Jesus.

Posted on

My odds are better when I don’t audition

It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s been true when it comes to me and Expressions Theater.

Years ago, I auditioned for Mind Over Matt and was cast in the main role. In the spring, I auditioned for Wage Warfare and got shut out. 50% success rate. That by itself sounds pretty good, right?

However, for this summer’s production of Everybody Loves Opal, we were scrambling for a cast: not enough people auditioned for all of the roles. I was supposed to be just an assistant director, but since I’d been reading the Brad role during rehearsals for everyone else’s sake, I ended up playing that part for the performances as well.

Then there’s the fall/Christmas show that Expressions is putting on stage in November. I was planning on taking some time off, just relax and enjoy the season without acting, working backstage, etc. I got an email about auditions for Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations and promptly deleted it. Life was spiffy.

Then I got a random phone call one evening about a month ago. At least I thought it was random. Erin, the director from Opal and the assistant director for this show, was calling to ask if I’d accept a role in the play. (Cindy, someone who’s worked with Expressions in the past, was yelling in the background that I was accepting the role whether I wanted to or not.)

There are two males in the script: John (the main character) and his son-in-law, Dennis. John is supposed to be of grandfatherly age and four or five people auditioned for that role. With about an hour left of the second day of auditions, they were distinctly lacking in a Dennis. No 30-somethings showed up, so they called me.

I suppose I could interpret that as “We’re desperate, you’re at least a marginally okay actor and won’t make the show suck too bad.” I prefer to put a more positive spin on it: “We’re desperate, you’re a slightly-more-than-marginally okay actor and could make people not thoroughly regret the fact that they paid for their tickets.” It’s all about stroking my own ego, right?

And it turns out that my luck for lack of auditioning has continued outside of Expressions. I’ve mentioned playing trivia on Thursday nights here before, but I haven’t mentioned is that a lot of my teammates attend the same church. They’ve put on a production of Scrooge every year since… I have no idea how long. I’m guessing they started sometime after “A Christmas Carol” was written, but that’s the extent of my knowledge in that regard.

I also know that one of them is the director this year and she’s been sounding… reminiscent of Erin this summer when we were having trouble finding people to put Opal onstage. In this case, it’s because they’re having a problem finding male townspeople to sing and dance in the background for Scrooge. A MAJOR problem.

Because I remembered everyone’s distress this summer, I volunteered to help out. Up until the last few weeks before performance weekend, my rehearsal schedule for the show will entail about three hours every Saturday. Learning music and choreography… I think I’ll be okay. I hope. We’re doing this for a church, I’m sure God will forgive me if I totally screw up.

I discovered how big the problem was when I got to the church last Saturday. I had no idea where I was going, but I walked in the front door, followed some voices I heard in the distance, then got pointed in the right direction. When things finally got organized, we had all the townspeople in one room to practice choreography. There were 10, maybe 12 females there? And I was one of four guys. FOUR. When you need to have couples dancing and have to tell the girls, “Pretend there’s a guy here and a guy here”… that helps explain the tone of desperation.

So now I’m committed to two shows in the next few months when I didn’t audition for either. And if I could apply that luck to finding a girlfriend, I wouldn’t care nearly as much about what Cindy might be yelling in the background during a phone call.