Musical keeps getting better...well, better attendance at least. For some amusement, ask Dan about his Buick, or if you can't wait/remember until Monday, here's the line our Friday night listeners missed. During the "Bachelor Party" scene, after the officer advises eloping up to Buffalo:
Dan: Yeah, I'll let you borrow my get-away car, (Officer gives him a look) Err...my Buick.

Alright, my curiousness has arisen: for those who have gone to the musical, what was your favorite joke, scene, song, etc.?

Yay, the audience keeps getting better: Today was Jiaz, D'Oraz, Jeff, Lulu, Shelly, Ting, Sonica, Keith (Happy Birthday Keith!), David Tedj., Veronica, Kevin, Nick (with black hair), Johnathan, Victoria, and anyone else I may have missed.

In non-musical music news, Graduated Viola player Kathryn Spraws came to visit us today in orchestra! And ended up playing spades with Tim, Edmund, and I (just when you thought the orchestra was strange to begin with). Btw, for those keeping score, Kathryn and I were kicking butt.

And in non-musical non-music news. There was another, totally random, questioning of my sexual orientation. Anyways, the short side of the story is: I was shouting across the half the parking lot (short length of the parking lot) to Nathan about not having seen Melanie and after which a group of little girls (were talking like elementary school age it sounded like) shouted "Hey boys." *giggle giggle giggle* "Are you gay?" *giggle* *giggle*. John and I were glad to see the next generation was hard at work at being even less of a promising hope, and no, I don't shout back yes, or on, or anything at all.

I'm sure that there's more I ought to be mentioning, such as Speed Blackjack, but that's a topic left to Jiaz to discuss.

Well. The musical has been going very well. It sounds like tons of fun to watch, but I'm stuck beneath all the action. Anyone who's coming should not expect to see me, cause I'm pretty much obscured by the big black curtain we have hanging from the end of the stage extension. Attendance has been decent, though not the sold out every night decent that was South Pacific. But on higher notes, Shabnam came today! There hasn't been anything to rant about about the musical, so there won't be any :)

Apparently something or someone took a sizeable chunk out of my bass. I'll analyze the damage later, mostly because I don't have the bass with me at the moment.

Anyone up for joining my army of liberal admission agency opinion altering liberals? No conservatives allowed, because I want to maim, not kill, or at least not kill them all.

In other news we've had a non-wartime helicopter related casuality in Texas (well, casuality isn't the word...death is the word). Apparently a forest service helicopter crashed while searching for pieces of the space shuttle. The question arises: Why was the forest service searching from a helicopter for presumably tiny pieces of a space shuttle?

I've decided that seemless Blog topic blending is bad form, so I'll see what there is to rant about the Musical tomorrow, today went well. Oh, and Mrs. Grey is like the perfect match for Mr. Grey...it's scary and cool.

Guys and Dolls and a bunch of people that I would like to beat with a large metallic object right now.

Okay, before I let all my anger froth over onto the keyboard like an overfilled mocha latte I would like to say that Guy and Dolls is an incredible musical and any complaints I have about its actually quality ought to be fixed be Thursday at the latest (hold that: WILL be fixed by Thursday at the latest or I'll see to it that certain reasons from complaints recieve very large objects dropped on them courtesy of my stagecrew friends). As I was saying, it is a fantastic musical of great songs, wonderful dialogue and plot, and some really really funny jokes.

[Rant] I'll begin by addressing a statement made by one Ian Buchanan whereby I do quote: "the orchestra has a range of pp to mf, the band goes mp to fff." I would like to respond by saying that that wonderful high volume range of the band is not a wonderful thing if the band is accompanying, and I'll repeat that in case someone in the musical on brass reads that, accompanying someone who does not have a dynamic marked triple forte, then perhaps playing double forte yourself is a bad idea. So yeah, the Band is way too loud. Not saying that the orchestra is always quiet enough, but there is certainly a recurring issue with the brass volume.

Part two, in this musical pit there are several people who, after only the first night of dress rehearsal, I desire to do away with. Firstly, we'll name Kathleen Berry, my fellow bass player who is a complete Bitch (I saw that in all sincerety, it's her self-chosen title) because she gets bored about 3/4ths of the way through and then stops really paying attentions. Now, I don't really feel too bad about her presence, because she is a good player, but if she'd stop enouraging Adam Bailey I'd feel even less bad. Adam Bailey would be our drummer and I really don't hate him personally, just drummers in general. He's good, I'll give him that, but he won't stop playing when the songs stop (which is typical for drummers, but damn aggravating, especially when he's covering the cast and there isn't even music to be playing too loud) The third is Palmer. Palmer has a major issue with being wrong. I admit that I also had this difficulty, but I overcame it in early FIRST GRADE. Face it Palmer, the song is too slow because you don't listen to Fossum when she tells you to do it in 2. If you're going to conduct half the cut-time stuff in 4 then there is no reason why this song in 4 can't be done in 2. Secondly, don't let people yell at Dimitri when it was your bad conducting that made him rush. I'll give you that Adam was rushing "Sit Down" but Dimitri was right with you on that song. And speaking of bad conducting, there was a good reason why we did the last song 4 times and the closing music (my only complaint with the musical, the musical has none, we have to redo old songs) twice: Not because the orchestra was too loud (which I give you, we were) You. The first time I do concede was Fossum distracting you with details, but the second time was you failing to retard and the third was you not knowing your cue.

In case you all can't tell, the pressure is getting to me at last. And if anyone gets offended by the scenes of New York City nightlife (not that I foresee it happening, but there's always one) please make sure I don't find out because I will, and I swear this, Hunt them down and kill them for being stupid and a prude.

[/rant]Well, I'm guessing that this is getting tedious for you all to read so I'll leave you to your regularly scheduled programming, the usual near nothing :)

Wow, professionals do a different version of Guys and Dolls, and ours is much better in my opinion, makes more sense and sounds better.

Song in my head: Guys and Dolls - Marry the Man

Crap, I nearly forgot the janitor rant too. As it turns out, this night was the night that the janitors were going to wax the floor which meant that I got yelled at for walking through the main hall and the B-hall to put my bass away. Anyone who wants to suggest a better way to get from the auditorium to the orchestra room without touching the floor or going outside (since the end of B-hall is locked) is welcome to explain to me how I should have gone about it. That was one pissy janitor and I was seriously wondering how long it would have taken someone to notice his absence if he kept up his attitude: "I want all of you kids out of this school in 5 minutes" (which would have been great if there weren't 25 pit musicians and over 50 in cast and stage tech and rehearsal ended just 2 minutes ago (thank god we didn't go on till 10 as planned, we'd have been stuck and I'd have a criminal record) and the cast still had to change to regular clothes, get off stage makeup, and debrief.

Well, we are now officially at war. There, that's all the comment you are getting out of me on the topic cause I really really don't want to talk about it.

Damnit, I need someone to hate, I've not got anyone to hate so it's building up inside to no end.

Quick, Colin's losing confidence, convince him that there is a point to Senior Prom, or is he?

Alright, time for some real world, present day stuff. Alledgedly taking the Econ Test tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. 85 on BC calc...which fits well with the 80-somethings on the past two Calc tests as well. Okay, so my work ethic sucks this year, but besides HOPE what do I really have to care about? Speaking of not caring D'Oraz, lets find a good creative distraction like say joint writing a story. No more of this lets make another blog stuff, I want something that I can do without having to work my way through Netscape and Blogger's errors.

Hmmm, Jazz band's playing at the Silent Auction and I have a whopping 1/3 of the songs. Damn Palmer! Damn Palmer! He just had to go behind his back and cave and change the line-up for the Spring Symphony Concert. I don't like his new theme, the old one was so much better. Now, it's still a secret irregardless of whether I like it or not, not that it matters cause those who are going to come are going to come no matter the theme (though I figure some might actually get turned off depending on their views of the theme, but only a very small irregular few).

Attention: Anyone who would like to do anything with Colin, I'm not free until Sunday the 29th thanks to the musical. The only exception to this rule being Jiaz cause we've got Lit to work on. Everyone else, be forewarned, I'm liable to be on a very short fuse during this time. Especially since I've still got something like 40 hours of playing to do until the 29th and my fingers are already sore for trying to pizz all the damn notes.
Isn't red such a good announcement color?

Song of the Moment: Move - Future Breeze. Yeah Jiaz, that is your fault, but very fun.

I think my posting has gone far enough. There wasn't anything of a supremely special nature about Islands of Adventure. All that is left to do is complain that we watched My Best Friend's Wedding and champion the fact that Christine Simpson and I, despite being down 415 to 80 beat Kasey Kask and Mr. Palmer in a mere two hands of Spades.

Day three of the orchestra trip.
We all got on the bus and headed over to Harrison School of Arts. Basically an Arts Magnet High School set right next to (ie: the buildings overlap somewhat) a regular High School. There we, first Sinfonietta, then Sinfonia, and then their orchestra performed. Sinfonietta sounded really good, we sounded about par for the course, and the Harrison group sounded really really good with some problem spots in the really really hard places but they had likely had their music for more than a mere month and worked on a block scheduling with dual orchestra and several music related (theory, keyboarding, etc.) classes so they got a minimum of 90 minutes of orchestra a day plus the additional classes. They did start off kind of rough, since the woodwinds decided not to play in tempo with the violas, or vice-versa, but Palmer was incredibly right in warning us that we might seem strange by having so many asians. They had a whopping 2 asians. One sat assistant concert master and the other sat first chair second violin (likely either 2nd or 3rd overall violin depending on how Harrison handles auditions/seating). Yichen (I seriously have no idea how her name is really spelled, but it's pronounced as 'E Chen' so that's my best guess) asked me if I thought Harrison was better than Sinfonia and I said that I couldn't tell from one performance, but I guessed that their Chamber was likely on par with us for the most part, if slightly better. The first chair bass player stopped playing after a large, high tempo 16th note passage to mark something in his music. It was a bit odd seeing someone stop to mark something mid performance. I'm not certain whether to be impressed by his musical dedication or slighted that he was taking this perfomance for us as a triviality.
After they finished performing, we got sent on tours with their people, where we say all the various low doorway'd room that they did speech or keyboarding, or theory in, the whole campus took perhaps 5 minutes to walk around with all the descriptions included. We then went back in and all got on stage (that was 3 Sinfonietta Basses plus 4 Sinfonia Basses plus 6 Harrison basses for a total of 13, with plenty more in the other sections). We played Psalm and Fugue, which is a piece I personally have sightread twice under Palmer and not liked by me either time, nor this one. The noise was rather impressive, even though several of our number were left in the audience by sheer lack of space. Then we scaled down to merely Sinfonia and Harrison Chamber (which was far larger than what one would conventionally call a Chamber Orchestra) and played "The Texians" by Carold Nunez, which Harrison had been working on for some time now, and our advanced players had done last year, except they took a slower tempo (so Chattahoochee rushed alot) and our players who hadn't played it were totally lost in sightreading the massively fluxutuating time signature changes. Actually, our group was slightly smaller than what it should have been because Harrison had only two cello copies of the music and Palmer had only one so that brought it down to seven cellos (only 3 from Chattahoochee) playing on 3 stands. That was the third Nunez piece that day, with Sinfonietta playing "Chapter One" and Sinfonia playing "The Chattahooche" which Palmer had comissioned for us. I came to the conclusion that he uses the same rhythm patterns very often.
We went to a mall for lunch where my meal total came to an uncanny $7.77 and was really tasty. We, this we being Keith, Sarah, Edmund, Jason, and myself, then visited several stores including an EB (yay, ZoE II is out and so it DMC II), a Hot Topic, an ice cream store which was sadly out of bubble pearl tea though it was on the listing of avalible things :(, and a Dollar Store (where Edmund got some badminton rackets out of randomness)
Then we went back to the hotel to get changed. Most of us gathered at the pool where I walked Palmer into a stalemate in Chess (I had 5 pawns, a queen, a bishop, a rook, and a knight versus his king, but he walked into a corner while I advanced my pawns to make more queens). Jerry Fu was somewhat teaching others how to play Chinese Chess (he wasn't totally a master at the game) which seemed inordinately complex since not only were there all sorts of odd rules, but the characters from each side were written differently, just to make Colin go insane I assume. Then we went out to Medieval Times, which'll get it's own post. After that we returned to the hotel and played some Smash Brothers: Melee in Joseph's room, where I learned that Jason is really good and can play a mean ranged Link and then want back to our room at curfew for some Bomberman and then sleep.

Day two of the orchestra trip.
Alright, the day was one of simple format, and it followed as such. After getting up and having a quick breakfast in the lobby, we got on the bus and headed over to Valdosta State University. Upon getting near the school, our entire bus was immediately bombarded by memories vocalized loudly by Nikhil, one of those on the bus who had done GHP. Edmund and Jackie reaffirmed his statements (which were nearly constant) though Edmund did little more than nod to do so. At VSU we performed for the orchestra directors who were Kirk Moss (former director at Walton, the guy that Holbrook replaced) and some other gentleman who was significantly older and was intent on making us sing while tuning, which didn't go so hot (the singing, tuning was fine). After playing for them and recieving perhaps a half hour of instruction on the kinds of nuances that Palmer would have gotten to had we been playing the music for longer than a month, and the kind of things that Dr. Holbrook focused on from the very start (strict terraced dynamics and musical phrasing).
After that we had Master Classes/Sectionals. The bass one consisted of walking to the Cello one, then being redirected to a room with 3 sofas, 2 chairs, and a very large thin business meeting table flanked by old rolling chairs (ie: rolling chairs that didn't look like they would roll very well). We (the basses) sat down while our instructor, a young graduate student played a Cello Bach suite for us on bass and then said that that was standard bass audition fare for graduate schools and orchestras (so much for Colin doing a major in bass performance, it looked like it was rough stuff play). He then gave us various lessons, most of which I had already had in one form or another, and ended by giving us all business cards, an odd young fellow, but decently competent and a good player.
Then we had lunch which was at "one of the 4 eating areas on campus" the other 3 being another cafeteria, and the two campus Unions which both apparently housed Chick-Fil-A. The food was decent, regular college cafeteria fare and conversation was amusing but not memorable (ie: I've forgotten). After eating Elizabeth, Sofia, and Emory went into some bushes to stand by a tree to get Edmund to take some pictures, and Elizabeth got ants on her sandals :(. She only got bitten once. Then we got a tour of the campus, or a small part of it. We started by going to one of the 20% of dorms that were not co-ed, this one being female (nope, no hot college girls) where we were taken in groups of a dozen to see a room. Edmund, Jason, Jerry (Jason's brother), and I all sat down, lied about already having gone when Palmer asked us, and got in two hands of Hearts. Our guide led us around some more, though there was nothing really of major note. While we were being led about, Sarah and Jackie got some valued practicing time in the music building.
After this excitement we went back to the buses where we again loaded our instruments and were greeted by Mrs. Green. Yes, that would be the assistant principal (Buck Green)'s mother, who had brought us candy, which was nice, though vaguely unsettling. We all got on the bus and headed off for the next hotel. That ride was accompanied by the movie Armaggedon. I don't know why someone brough it or why we watched it, but I do know that if you sing any Aerosmith around me besides Sweet Emotion or Walk this Way you may be abused. We got to the hotel and found that our room had a fold out bed/sofa as well as two regular twins, so we we're happy. The room lacked a Gideon's bible and the round table was very small in diameter and very low in height and there weren't enough chairs to set it between beds with two chairs on the other sides for a good card game, all of which was noted on the complaints card. Edmund went out to call Lisa and Jason and Keith went down to the pool because Sonica requested their presence, I lay upon a bed and promptly fell sound asleep. When my companions returned, they found that they had all left their keys inside and I didn't respond to their knocking so they got new cards. They tell me that they played Bomberman and Super Jump and Bumb (which I never did see, but I did hear on the first bus ride) very loudly, but I slept through. This process of falling asleep did cause me to take up the entire twin bed closest to the door and thus set the sleeping heirachy precendent for the rest of our nights at the hotel: I in the first twin, Edmund and Keith in the next, and Fu in the couch bed (which I think was really larger than a twin, but didn't really ever check).

Day one of the orchestra trip.
So, we loaded the two buses, one heavy with the baggage of cellos and basses, the other weighted down by the changes of clothing and other various items of a more personal nature than the blocks of chiseled wood and fiber wires and horsehair that we make noise with. We also said good bye to those among us that were not going yet turned out to say good-bye: Jinha Yang, Tim Shaw, and Christine Lee being the most painful to not have come though I feel it would have been fun to also have Louise's fashions and the other Elizabeth Wang for her violin talent and the fun of her shared name.
This ride down wasn't all the way to Orlando, thankfully, and we watched Monster's Inc. along the way. I still say that the movie short at the beginning is better than the movie, but that's not to say that the movie doesn't have it's moments. We got to the hotel rather late and went to our rooms after unpacking our suitcases. I was originally to room with Edmund, Jason, and Tim, but with Tim's absence we instead recruited Keith, whose last name I haven't the slightest idea of, who is one of the first chair first violins (Sinfonietta has dual concert masters, he's one (The other is the other Elizabeth Wang)). Although only a freshman, he was pretty cool, and made for a good forth person for playing cards, and a fairly decent bomberman opponent, but that's an entirely different story. Jason had borrowed a Chinese friend's laptop, which we laid on a plastic bag full of ice every night to keep from overheating. And ran ZNES (a Super Nintendo emmulator) to play Tetris Attack. Jason is better than Edmund who is better than me, and Keith didn't even try. It was fun to watch, and somehow Jason and Edmund managed a 6 minute game (note, 2 minutes is a long time, roughtly 1 minute is an average game and also the shortest).
Nothing special happened that day, just the ride and then cards and Tetris at the hotel and then sleep.

Well, tomorrow the orchestra trip departs so I'll be gone for a solid 4 days. When I return I'll hopefully have answers to some of the questions that still lay unanswered. Until that time, I make no promise of a long orchestra post since I can't vouch that anything will happen.

Alright, unlike Jiaz, I won't be getting my vaccination at school since Kaiser Permanente, aka Aon's , aka my father's employer, health care service, is offering the same thing, with alot less of a line, for only $15. I'd claim the savings of $70 that that equals, but I just lost a bet with my mother. Well, it wasn't really a bet, and it wasn't really something that I had a chance of winning. Basically the idea was that if I didn't play to par at my piano lesson, I'd be paying the $65 for this month. Now, of course, bringing my mother to my piano lesson was like the ultimate mistake, since it led my 30 minute lesson to be an hour and thirty minutes and included the same lecture about how I could do so much if I bothered practicing and how I ultimately needed to decide where I was going to college and so on and so forth and all that other crap I've been told so many many times.

There was no overall plot to this blog, I just wanted a non-rant form of venting. If you really want the rant, then, well, ask really nicely and perhaps you'll get the hot-blooded rant of the stupidity of orchestra competition, the downfalls of Colin, and why I only seem to learn the pieces of information I already know.

Pre-Weekend-Blog Update: It's presently Sunday @ just before 6:00 PM and I've still only done 8.1 for Calc. On the plus side I've gotten at least 6 hours worth of naps.

Otherwise: I want Audioblogger. There'd be a link but it, for whatever reason, keeps trying to make the link a subdirectory of my site.

Well. The orchestra concert went well, though it's really hard to say since you really can't hear yourself too well when you're in the damn middle of the gym, but that's ok. The concert wasn't the hard part though, it was moving the 300+ chairs from the gym back to the cafeteria. For those who like numbers better, we'll assume 300 precisely. So that's 300 chairs, stacked in sets of, well, ranging from 6 to 10 with 6 being the majority far more ofter, so 8 sounds like a good overestimate. Now, the elevator, the means of getting them up that level without stairs typically held between 2 and 4 stacks, mostly 3, so we'll use that. So now we have 300 chairs, being in stacks of 8, going up the elevator in sets of 3. I won't do the actual math, but let's just say that for a supposedly 1 hour concert (I'll give that it was fairly close, within 15 minutes of being only a hour) that started at 7, I didn't get home until 9:30 and I live close.

I did avoid having to work the damn debate tournament thanks to work, I probally could have shown up late, but I had and still have absolutely no information. Hell, I'm lucky I even knew that there was a tournament that I was supposed to work. But when I see varsity debators leaving after school and yet it seems that everyone of the speech team is required to do full tasking, I get a bit suspicious.

I have opted to go on the Orchestra trip, assuming that Palmer doesn't mind the field trip form being a day late (seeing as how I was given it the day it was due and really didn't feel like forging a parent's signature), so despite what reservations I might have about burning a precious sleeping weekend on a bus I'm in it for the long haul.

I got accepted to the Global version of NYLC (National Young Leaders Conference), and yes it is called the GYLC. I haven't checked with my other NYLC alumni to see exactly how common this acceptance is, cause I don't recall doing anything too momentous except defeating the low income housing bill, mostly out of spite, but that's a totally different story.

Well, I hope everyone had fun on that last day for a hundred years where you could write the date out as (03)^3.

The major phrase of the day, and perhaps one of the best ways to start any day: Coffee Pocky. If that didn't make sense to you, you are really missing out. And this was no ordinary pocky, it was pocky on steriods (err, performance enhancers if you prefer political correctness) so it was far more coffee flavored than a regular pocky stick would have been.

Mystery of Work today. What is a goniometer, how would you use one in relation to Cold War morse code, and how do you pronounce the word?

Weekend Blog, it's just so much more fun to do it this way. Plus, I wasn't home 'till well after Midnight either of the two previous nights anyways.

Saturday I went to work bright and early where Bill and I netted a gross $1600 or so. It was really an $800 day until two South Korean gentlemen shipped 3 boxes of documents back to Seoul with a good deal of need for haste for a grand total of $800. After that I joined Ian, David (yes, my brother), and John at Kyle's for some Street Fighter EX3 (yeah, it does seem a lot like Tekken with the flavor of Marvel vs. Capcom) and Shanghai Noon. I also played several games of Defense of the Ancients v2.3 for Warcraft III and found that some aspect of either that map or Warcraft III in general causes a driver compadability issue with Kyle's cpu that cause a memory dump. Finished gaming at about 2:30 AM and went home.

Sunday I slept a solid 8 hours then got up and wasted alot of time. I watched 5 episodes of Outlaw Star, stretching from "Final Countdown" to "The Strongest Woman in the Universe" which is a spree of episode 14 to 18. Then I went over to Kyle's and played Street Fighter and DDR Konamix. Ian and David didn't come so it was a bit more active for all since there was less rotating. After John left I did too much DDR; we're talking Colin doing roughly 15-20 in a row of the higher end songs, which is quite a burnout.

Monday was to be a day of D&D, but Destination Imagination practice ran long, Josh had other obligations come up, and I had to cover for Ting at work (a $2200 day). We got a good deal of stuff accomplished though.

Other notable events of this weekend. Well, my cat basically ensured that I won't have any futher siblings. No, not like that you sick person. Here, let me explain: my poor cat, Cinnamon, who is now 16 years old (which is 90 for those who count in cat years, though I have no idea how one would have originally determined how much a cat or dog year equates to) had cancer. Technically it was feline some-or-other, so we sent her away this weekend to get radiation treatment. So, for this week I now have a radioactive cat. I'm supposed to wash my hands if I pet her and she gets special litter that gets flushed down the toilet (yeah, way too much info eh?). Well, nonetheless, she likes to sit on my father's lap, so I figure that the odds of me getting a sister are below calcuations. Also, I got direct access inheritance. Basically since my Uncle passed on, my parents cleaned out his house and I got some of his old CD's and comic books.

As for next weekend, it looks as though I'll have a Sunday and that'll be about it. I do have a working bike and I owe D'Oraz a visit, so I think I'll have to capitalize on those facts. I also need to go game shopping since I could use some fresh electronics to keep me busy. Next Saturday I'm presently slated to Work (well, technically I'm not, but Kyle's got the other store and Ian's busy, so I am) and to 'help out' at the debate tournament. Oddly enough I think I had to work last time and Stein was pissed...well, I guess he'll have to get pissed again. I also started like 4 more comics, and finished then all except Penny Arcade, which I've only mostly finished at the moment.

On a related note, I've decided to dedicate songs to people so if you think you've got a song for yourself or someone else, send it to me. Oh, and anyone trying to submit Evil Queen for Cindy will be shot, comprende?