Yesterday I had the experience of giving away money for nothing. I was on my way to the PAC to perform in the show I'm currently in (the pit of) and due to our small little production having a performance the same night as the ballet's monster production of Dracula, parking was $5.00. Not having five bucks, this is not where I parted with my cash. Instead, I kept driving down 2nd Street and found a spot on the side of the road just past Main Street (about a block away from the theater) and, seeing as paid parking is free after 6, this is also not where my money left me.
I grabbed my sax from my trunk and started down the sidewalk. I was on the wrong side of the building so when I saw a small "Hey look, trees!" park thing right next to the theater, I thought I'd just cut through and be on my way. As it turns out, the opposite side of that grotto is totally not street level. It's actually about 20 feet above it. Being rather awesome, I could have easily survived the fall quite handily, but the sax wouldn't have. I didn't see a way down, only a bridge connecting to City Hall, and some double doors into the PAC. I went up to check them and naturally they were locked. They even had a convenient sign on the other side that, when read through the convenient glass, said that it was a convenient sign, conveniently located to inform you that those doors were, in all convenience, "Emergency Exit Only."
Now, this whole time I had had it in the back of my mind that this little nature preserve was picturesque in its setting for a horror movie. Now that I had reached a dead end, these thoughts came running to the front of my brain screaming bloody murder and telling me that a 20 foot drop wasn't such a bad deal. Fortunately I gave those thoughts a sedagive and turned around to head back the way I came.
Because of my navigational expertise, I had gotten myself into a corner with no exit were I to be accosted by a bum. I was accosted by a bum. He was now in the national park I had just passed through and intended to pass through again along my merry way. He pleaded for my attention with, "Sir? Sir!" and I, with no way out, gave it to him. He proceeded to tell me that all he wanted was a couple bucks to rent a cheap room so he didn't have to sleep in the rain. He promised he was willing to work for it (by washing my car or anything else I could come up with) and also that if I declined, he wouldn't hold it against me and that he had also never been to jail. That's what I caught, which is only about half considering how much he said I couldn't decipher. While Pearl Jam's Even Flow buzzed through my mind and I contemplated shifting my sax from the hand closest to him to my other one for comfort and whether or not he'd take offense to this "protective" gesture, I decided I'd give him some change and wish him luck. I dug into my pocket and grabbed only part of my change (still a lot more than I meant to), gave it to him, and walked off.
At that point, nothing happened. He didn't give me any special items or a tip to a hidden treasure or, in a massive logistical failure, a monetary reward. He said thanks, didn't give a "God bless." (thank God) and went on his way. I didn't get any experience aside from not to grab as much change. I didn't even get a deep rooted feeling of bettering the world or having done something good and right. The only thought I really left the encounter with was whether or not I had enough change left to get a 75 cent soda from the machine backstage. Maybe somewhere down the line he'll track me down after making billions of dollars and offer me a few million, but in all honesty, I seriously doubt he got the $7 he needed in time to sleep with a roof over his head.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
To Develop the Truest and Bes- WHAT THE HELL GREG!?
Really good weekend so far. It's a nice turnaround from the usual weekends that either end up being uneventful and boring, or just downright lame and lame. It all started Friday morning...
When I got up Friday morning, I actually got up for the first weekday in a while, instead of opting in for the "5 More Minutes" special. With that, I actually made it to piano on time, which was still lame. Got out of there and sat around in a freezing hallway for twenty minutes or so until Amber showed up as well. At this point I was thinking this day would be pretty crappy but when it came time for theory class it drastically turned around. Theory was good, we talked about wacky things, I got odd looks from Heidi, our instructor. And when it was all said and done we headed off to TU to go to band, which was made especially good because it had been declared an inside day due to the cold.
So we get there and proceed to play through Since I Fell For You a few times, and then we moved on to Stars and Stripes Forever. What would normally be a rather uneventful tune ended up being hysterical, with many a joke made at each others' expense (Sarge being the chief culprit) and an impromptu tuba gliss that had the whole band rofling their lmaos off. Band wraps up and we finish and I quiz Eric Noble on his lunch plans, to which he mentions Chick-Fil-A. So I walk with him and Jason Seabolt through a mucky field, past some vents in the ground billowing smoke (to which point Eric firmly believes TU is infested with pot smoking gophers) and over to grab lunch. Lunch was made all the more sweeter when Seabolt kindly offered to pay for mine, to which point I'm greatly appreciative. Over lunch with them and several other band people, we read an article in TU's paper about how the newly approved iPhone porn application will most likely cause the downfall of civilization as we know it (gotta love Oklahoma...). I also ran into a few people I hadn't seen since my time at Edison, which was a highly refreshing occurrence.
As the other people left Eric and I went around the corner to talk with a couple people from band, at which the conversation went on a 5 minute tangent about bears, their poop, and how everyone should know the facts about such. Amber and her boyfriend Jayson walked by and she kindly let me know I had a ticket from parking in the parking lot we're supposed to park in. I wasn't frustrated this time because Sarge had said to everyone that if anyone gets a ticket for parking in a lot that we're supposed to, bring it to him and he'll take care of it. Considering he did so for me earlier this week I believed him. We all checked our watches and noticed that we had places to be and things to do and decided to each head our own ways. I got back to my car and was very pleasantly surprised to see that Amber had actually mistaken another car for mine (turns out the only real difference is that they had a blue pine tree air freshener) and that I had no ticket on my windshield. Yay!
At that point I decided to be a super awesome son and see mumsy at work, since she worked nearby. So I drive over to AAA and head on up the steps to the main door. I go in and head past the front desk and slow to a stop when I look in the back corner and see nothing but an empty chair where she should be sitting. The receptionist finishes talking to whoever was at the desk, turns to me and gives me a warm welcome. She then says, "Ooooh! Today's her day off! You didn't know that?" to which I reply, "Oh yeah, it is!" She had only told me five or six times in the past twelve hours... So I head back out the door, and head on home, driving down the newly finished Utica to get there. I relay the story to my mother when I get in the door, we laugh, and then I just bide my time until later that night when Phi Mu Alpha is to do whatever they have planned instead of the camping trip, as it was canceled because our proposed camping grounds had become a swamp.
videogame babble starts now
When the time came to go hang out, it was a damned good one. I headed out 'round 8 to Blake's apartment and when I got there, there was only about 6 other people at the time, and we all just sat around for a few minutes waiting for others. Quickly it was decided to try and play four person Firefight on ODST (vidja games for those of you who don't know) and we found out that on that mode, one 360 only supports two players at a time. The movement to grab a second console was quickly passed before even being suggested, and so a few people left to go get one while the rest of us switched off on rounds on the console that we had there.
By the time the guys who had left to get the other 360 had returned, we had grown in number from 8-ish to about 15-ish. So we get the new 360 set up, connect the two with the ethernet cable, and start some 4-on-4 action with Halo 3 multiplayer. This opened up with some 4v4 Slayer (team deathmatch) in which my team beat the opposing team approximately 100v30 before we decided maybe we should switch things up a little bit. We did and the teams mostly evened out to where games weren't one sided and were generally unpredictable, sometimes swinging one way and then the other way for the win. We played a bit of slayer before going to a few rounds of rockets-only, then shotguns only, and then grav hammers only. When we grew tired of slayer, it was then suggested we do Oddball (steal the bacon).
At first it started out as just single round matches of oddball. We used standard weapons for the first set of matches and they were pretty close. Then we had the idea of playing rocketball. This is still Oddball, but the only weapons in the game are rocketlaunchers, which made things highly enjoyable. Adding to that was the competition we incited when we set it to 5 rounds. Two or three times my team swept the first two rounds, only to have their team come back for two, making the fifth round highly competitive (especially when both teams were near the 150 point limit and everyone was going for the ball at once). We switched to a few rounds of Ninjaball (Oddball but the carrier is very fast and weak) that we modified to make the carrier go 300% faster, have around 3 hits to his name, only be affected by gravity 50%, and be invisible. It was essentially like chasing an invisible rabbit through a forest, and while that may sound frustrating, it was actually incredibly fun. We finally closed the night out with a round of SWAT (Halo's version of Counter-Strike) and when it dragged on due to a wrong setting, we decided to call it a night. By that time it was 2 in the morning and my throat was in pure pain from yelling for 5 hours straight. Honestly I have no idea how Campo didn't knock on our door with a noise complaint.
videogame babble ends now
That was the end of Friday. I came home, slept, and woke up. Saturday was fairly uneventful until about 7 in the evening when I got a text from Eric Noble saying there was a cookie party over at his place. I head out and sure enough there was. It was a rather small affair with only 7 of us there, but in all honestly that was actually a good thing after the din of the night before, as much fun as it may have been. We started out bouncing back and forth between two or three college football games (all of which providing entertainment through some wacky plays) and when that was done, we were channel surfing. While looking at the guide, Natalie saw something that struck her as odd and simply asked, "What's Tool Academy?" Kurt then burst out laughing.
We switched the channel to catch the beginning of the episode and it was one of the most entertaining things I believe I have ever seen on television. The basic premise, for those who don't know, is that a girlfriend who believes her boyfriend is a douchebag tool will prompt this show to get ahold of them. Then they take them to a large house they treat like a boarding school and try to get them to be better boyfriends through a series of exercises. This episode was about "appreciation" and started off with them going to a mock funeral for their girlfriend, which induced all the guys but one into tears pleaded for them to not be dead, despite the fact that they indeed weren't. The one guy that didn't burst into tears was commenting in his interview, "And all I was thinkin' is that we totally have time to go have a quicky instead of this stupid funeral thing." After that the girls were arranged to go on dates with upstanding gentlemen while the boyfriends got to watch. The way they announced this was that they dragged the guys out to the front steps, drove the limo up, the gents got out in tuxes, and then they told the boyfriends what was going to happen.
Then, inducing many lulz on our part, the super buff tool just punches the lamp on the stairs. He's just standing there, and then it was like his fist had a mind of its own and just shot out to punch the lamp, quickly returning to its former position. Then, immediately after, he and two of the other tools decided to go beat the gentlemen up. So the big guy, his hand now leaking blood, and two of the others go down and head towards the gentlement while to producers and security immediately run on set and tackle them, causing many more lulz. The tools were taken back inside and were forced to watch the dates on a television, which most of them handled fine, excepting one or two. One of which was the guy that during the funeral exercise made the "quicky" comment. He stands up, freaks out, runs down the hallway (literally running full sprint), goes out onto the lawn, runs through the sprinklers, and when he's calmed down a little bit, he's walking away from the camera and just randomly rips his shirt off (rips it off, into two pieces). The episode came to a close and he was expelled (as we expected) and his girlfriend very grudgingly accepted his apologies and they rode off in the limo to a fate unknown. At that point everyone decided it was time to go and it was unfortunate, but they headed out. I meant to but I got wrapped up watching the last 15 minutes of Austin Powers in Goldmember with Eric and Kurt. After it was done I headed out, came home, and that was the end of the night.
Now it's now and I'm doing this. Yay.
When I got up Friday morning, I actually got up for the first weekday in a while, instead of opting in for the "5 More Minutes" special. With that, I actually made it to piano on time, which was still lame. Got out of there and sat around in a freezing hallway for twenty minutes or so until Amber showed up as well. At this point I was thinking this day would be pretty crappy but when it came time for theory class it drastically turned around. Theory was good, we talked about wacky things, I got odd looks from Heidi, our instructor. And when it was all said and done we headed off to TU to go to band, which was made especially good because it had been declared an inside day due to the cold.
So we get there and proceed to play through Since I Fell For You a few times, and then we moved on to Stars and Stripes Forever. What would normally be a rather uneventful tune ended up being hysterical, with many a joke made at each others' expense (Sarge being the chief culprit) and an impromptu tuba gliss that had the whole band rofling their lmaos off. Band wraps up and we finish and I quiz Eric Noble on his lunch plans, to which he mentions Chick-Fil-A. So I walk with him and Jason Seabolt through a mucky field, past some vents in the ground billowing smoke (to which point Eric firmly believes TU is infested with pot smoking gophers) and over to grab lunch. Lunch was made all the more sweeter when Seabolt kindly offered to pay for mine, to which point I'm greatly appreciative. Over lunch with them and several other band people, we read an article in TU's paper about how the newly approved iPhone porn application will most likely cause the downfall of civilization as we know it (gotta love Oklahoma...). I also ran into a few people I hadn't seen since my time at Edison, which was a highly refreshing occurrence.
As the other people left Eric and I went around the corner to talk with a couple people from band, at which the conversation went on a 5 minute tangent about bears, their poop, and how everyone should know the facts about such. Amber and her boyfriend Jayson walked by and she kindly let me know I had a ticket from parking in the parking lot we're supposed to park in. I wasn't frustrated this time because Sarge had said to everyone that if anyone gets a ticket for parking in a lot that we're supposed to, bring it to him and he'll take care of it. Considering he did so for me earlier this week I believed him. We all checked our watches and noticed that we had places to be and things to do and decided to each head our own ways. I got back to my car and was very pleasantly surprised to see that Amber had actually mistaken another car for mine (turns out the only real difference is that they had a blue pine tree air freshener) and that I had no ticket on my windshield. Yay!
At that point I decided to be a super awesome son and see mumsy at work, since she worked nearby. So I drive over to AAA and head on up the steps to the main door. I go in and head past the front desk and slow to a stop when I look in the back corner and see nothing but an empty chair where she should be sitting. The receptionist finishes talking to whoever was at the desk, turns to me and gives me a warm welcome. She then says, "Ooooh! Today's her day off! You didn't know that?" to which I reply, "Oh yeah, it is!" She had only told me five or six times in the past twelve hours... So I head back out the door, and head on home, driving down the newly finished Utica to get there. I relay the story to my mother when I get in the door, we laugh, and then I just bide my time until later that night when Phi Mu Alpha is to do whatever they have planned instead of the camping trip, as it was canceled because our proposed camping grounds had become a swamp.
videogame babble starts now
When the time came to go hang out, it was a damned good one. I headed out 'round 8 to Blake's apartment and when I got there, there was only about 6 other people at the time, and we all just sat around for a few minutes waiting for others. Quickly it was decided to try and play four person Firefight on ODST (vidja games for those of you who don't know) and we found out that on that mode, one 360 only supports two players at a time. The movement to grab a second console was quickly passed before even being suggested, and so a few people left to go get one while the rest of us switched off on rounds on the console that we had there.
By the time the guys who had left to get the other 360 had returned, we had grown in number from 8-ish to about 15-ish. So we get the new 360 set up, connect the two with the ethernet cable, and start some 4-on-4 action with Halo 3 multiplayer. This opened up with some 4v4 Slayer (team deathmatch) in which my team beat the opposing team approximately 100v30 before we decided maybe we should switch things up a little bit. We did and the teams mostly evened out to where games weren't one sided and were generally unpredictable, sometimes swinging one way and then the other way for the win. We played a bit of slayer before going to a few rounds of rockets-only, then shotguns only, and then grav hammers only. When we grew tired of slayer, it was then suggested we do Oddball (steal the bacon).
At first it started out as just single round matches of oddball. We used standard weapons for the first set of matches and they were pretty close. Then we had the idea of playing rocketball. This is still Oddball, but the only weapons in the game are rocketlaunchers, which made things highly enjoyable. Adding to that was the competition we incited when we set it to 5 rounds. Two or three times my team swept the first two rounds, only to have their team come back for two, making the fifth round highly competitive (especially when both teams were near the 150 point limit and everyone was going for the ball at once). We switched to a few rounds of Ninjaball (Oddball but the carrier is very fast and weak) that we modified to make the carrier go 300% faster, have around 3 hits to his name, only be affected by gravity 50%, and be invisible. It was essentially like chasing an invisible rabbit through a forest, and while that may sound frustrating, it was actually incredibly fun. We finally closed the night out with a round of SWAT (Halo's version of Counter-Strike) and when it dragged on due to a wrong setting, we decided to call it a night. By that time it was 2 in the morning and my throat was in pure pain from yelling for 5 hours straight. Honestly I have no idea how Campo didn't knock on our door with a noise complaint.
videogame babble ends now
That was the end of Friday. I came home, slept, and woke up. Saturday was fairly uneventful until about 7 in the evening when I got a text from Eric Noble saying there was a cookie party over at his place. I head out and sure enough there was. It was a rather small affair with only 7 of us there, but in all honestly that was actually a good thing after the din of the night before, as much fun as it may have been. We started out bouncing back and forth between two or three college football games (all of which providing entertainment through some wacky plays) and when that was done, we were channel surfing. While looking at the guide, Natalie saw something that struck her as odd and simply asked, "What's Tool Academy?" Kurt then burst out laughing.
We switched the channel to catch the beginning of the episode and it was one of the most entertaining things I believe I have ever seen on television. The basic premise, for those who don't know, is that a girlfriend who believes her boyfriend is a douchebag tool will prompt this show to get ahold of them. Then they take them to a large house they treat like a boarding school and try to get them to be better boyfriends through a series of exercises. This episode was about "appreciation" and started off with them going to a mock funeral for their girlfriend, which induced all the guys but one into tears pleaded for them to not be dead, despite the fact that they indeed weren't. The one guy that didn't burst into tears was commenting in his interview, "And all I was thinkin' is that we totally have time to go have a quicky instead of this stupid funeral thing." After that the girls were arranged to go on dates with upstanding gentlemen while the boyfriends got to watch. The way they announced this was that they dragged the guys out to the front steps, drove the limo up, the gents got out in tuxes, and then they told the boyfriends what was going to happen.
Then, inducing many lulz on our part, the super buff tool just punches the lamp on the stairs. He's just standing there, and then it was like his fist had a mind of its own and just shot out to punch the lamp, quickly returning to its former position. Then, immediately after, he and two of the other tools decided to go beat the gentlemen up. So the big guy, his hand now leaking blood, and two of the others go down and head towards the gentlement while to producers and security immediately run on set and tackle them, causing many more lulz. The tools were taken back inside and were forced to watch the dates on a television, which most of them handled fine, excepting one or two. One of which was the guy that during the funeral exercise made the "quicky" comment. He stands up, freaks out, runs down the hallway (literally running full sprint), goes out onto the lawn, runs through the sprinklers, and when he's calmed down a little bit, he's walking away from the camera and just randomly rips his shirt off (rips it off, into two pieces). The episode came to a close and he was expelled (as we expected) and his girlfriend very grudgingly accepted his apologies and they rode off in the limo to a fate unknown. At that point everyone decided it was time to go and it was unfortunate, but they headed out. I meant to but I got wrapped up watching the last 15 minutes of Austin Powers in Goldmember with Eric and Kurt. After it was done I headed out, came home, and that was the end of the night.
Now it's now and I'm doing this. Yay.
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