Showtime! Continued

I didn't bother writing too much in depth last night as I was absolutely wiped and wanted to just curl in bed and fall into a coma. Yesterday was craaaaaaaaaaaazy. Like there's crazy where you have a lot on your plate. Then there's crazy where you have a lot on your plate, a million things are popping up at once, everyone around you also has that going on and you're all trying to help each other out into a gigantic mess of logistics and chaos. I don't know where to start with the show, so let's start a few hours beforehand.

I woke up Saturday morning in a really surreal state. This was the day of the show; no re-do's, no more rehearsals, no more shows to do. This is it! However, before anything else I have to do something for my Chinese class: go to a show on Chinese folk art at the same place as my show. I go there with my mom and her boyfriend, and it all goes pretty well. I see some people from my class, avoid a few other people, etc. It starts off with a really intense drum routine with the guys screaming and using just about every single part of the drum I can imagine. Then a bunch of happy dance routines including the lion and dragon. The lion dance was so improvised because you see in the background the person in the front of the lion suit jumping onto the knees of the person in back and proceeding to "make out" with the other lion. As in taking the heads, opening the mouths, and smashing the heads together. It was odd. The dragon dance was awesome though. It started with all lights on stage off, then the dragon and the pearl come out lit up by LEDs. It was really awesome just because of that effect, and they did the same for the yoyo routine. I was pretty impressed.

Now come an hour before the show. By this time we are getting all of our acts down as far as we possibly can, people are calling and texting us and whatever to say "Good luck!", getting into all of our first outfits, and meetings are going on throughout the whole cast. I probably got at least 10 texts saying "Good luck!" or something of that ilk. Given that most of my friends for some reason don't have cells and/or the capacity to text, I imagine the other contestants got many more. Come the whole cast meeting, our director was apologizing for being an asshole to us and we were all like "You were a total asshole. Bitch." It was amusing. Now come ten minutes before the show, I'm dancing like crazy to keep from having a massive breakdown because you can hear the audience screaming from between multiple rooms. The contestants finally go onto the risers and have a group hug, I assure the hostess that she's going to work it. I'm on the verge of crawling in a little hole screaming when the curtains finally open revealing our silhouettes. The music starts playing and when the spotlight comes on me I hear an entire shower of screams from throughout the entire audience. I grin and strike a pose, the entire right side of my face twitching like crazy from nervousness.

Come sportswear! I do a massive joke on bodybuilders and heroic muscle men by acting like a total flamer. I think they mainly were laughing at the end when my sponsor A.H. drags me offstage and falls in the attempt to pick me up. I should've warned her I'm 20 pounds heavier since the last time she picked me up. Everyone gets a huge amount of laughs at each act, we're all very confident. Most of my acts involve huge amounts of audience participation, I end up talking to the people on stage during my dream date and try to get people during my talent.

Skipping a few scenes, we finally get to the last act: Q&A. The contestants have absolutely no idea what they're going to ask, so I'm terrified because I don't know what to expect. Before we go onstage, though, we have to get into tuxes. The entire deal with tuxes was a bitch enough because the person lending them to us decided to throw us through a million hoops. We finally finish the dream date when the host and hostess completely forget to stall the audience for us to get into tuxes. I'm all set because I wore a tux before and know how to put them all and because there's five scenes after mine in the dream date act. However, the other guys forgot to budget their time and come spilling into the dressing rooms after C.S1's scene. I'm nearly done and have to help everyone else. The director is running in to help, people are flying around with bags, sponsors are trying to help. It just looked like a total blur to me now because of how much screaming "HOW DO I PUT THIS ON?!" and people were climbing on top of each other. I barely manage to fully finish before they tell us to go onstage. Four more guys are still lagging so I try to help as much as I can before the director shoves me out.

I walk onstage with my sponsor when they ask me a question, "You walk out of your home and encounter a massive fire-breathing dragon. What do you do?" I space out for a minute contemplating my answer with a few people in my fan club screaming things at me. Most of my thoughts were either, "Turn up my gayness and out-flame him." or "Splash a bucket of water on it." but I finally say "Turn into a Na'vi and do that weird bonding thing they do." before internally face-palming. Creative? Relatively. Nerdy? Oh, hell yes. In retrospect, I should've said, "RuPaul, queen of drag, I choose you!" or something like that.

In the end, I didn't win. I imagined as such because everyone else is way more mainstream and know how to make most people laugh. I have a relatively obscure humor so some people didn't get my jokes. However, we're all happy that it's over and head off to E.C.'s house for a rager. As far as they said anyways.

However, by the time I get there it's nearly midnight and some people were about to leave because of their parents. I hang out in the hot tub for a while which was an absolutely jam-packed area. I'm squished up against J.C. for most of the time and nearly in a fetal position because the hot tub is designed for 7 people. We have about 15 people in there at any one time. After some people leave, E.C. decides to sit on me for a seat. I have no idea why so I'm really confused, but I'm not really complaining because this kid is pretty damn hot and I haven't had any guy sit on me for a long time. I kinda just lean to the side as cooly as I can- against my natural instincts to wrap my arms around his torso and just relax. More room clears up and he snags a seat behind me. I shuffle over to another edge to give him some room because as far as I know he's saying that he's straight. Some other guy who I completely go crazy for, J.S. pops up and decides to jump in the hot tub. So I'm now in a hot tub with three of the hottest guys in my grade and trying to decide what to do. Eventually, come 1 in the morning. Nearly everyone's left and it's really just degenerated into E.C., C.Q., C.S1, J.S., a couple of their friends and I just sitting by a fire talking about games I have no clue what to talk about. I eventually text my mom's boyfriend and go home. I stay up for another hour and go into a comatose state for 9 hours, which is about the most sleep I've had in a month.

Showtime!

Tonight was the night: I was finally a competitor in a massive school production. In this show, there's 7 guys who compete for the title of Mr. (school) in three different areas: Sportswear, Talent, and Dream Date. We each have one female sponsor who helps us out with any piece we need. Obviously, we need them for Dream Date and we have to introduce them during Sportswear. Talent, however, is entirely up to us because we write the scripts and everything.

So, up until about an hour before the show I was entirely calm and repeating to everyone that it's all going to work. Naturally, stage fright kicked in once the curtains opened revealing us. However, I got people laughing and cheering throughout the entire show. I also managed to engage the audience more than once! I have to say I've had one of the two largest fan clubs in the show, the other one being for E.C. It was pretty awesome, at the end of the show a swarm of people came flooding into the backstage to hug me.

Come after the show, E.C. says that there's going to be a party at his house. Everyone's all pumped and we all arrive there at like 11 after breaking down the set. Nearly everyone leaves at midnight or shortly thereafter. I'm still there but being the only person there that doesn't really play video games, by the time J.C. left all they were talking about was Call of Duty. I barely even know that game exists so I was sitting there in a bathing suit and a towel by the fire listening quietly. Eventually, I just felt awkward and left. And here I am!

A fairly atypical day

Today has been...interesting to say the least. Not like I would ever post something mundane on a blog, but relatively today has been off-kilter in many respects.

I needed to get all of my props in for my mock beauty pageant today, so I had my mom drive me to school. I go into the school carrying a chair with a white sheet draped over it tied with a black ribbon (A couch) and a box packed with stuffed animals to bring into E.W.'s room given that she's the director and could keep my props in her room. Come ten minutes of wandering the school looking for her because the door is locked, I find out that she isn't even in the school nor will be today! I finally dunk everything down in the auditorium with C.Q. and go off for breakfast.

Come Global Religions, we get the entire lab today because of a massive storm on Thursday night causing school to be cancelled on Friday. While this couldn't be better, I finished my project for Global Religions on Wednesday because I know the religion I'm doing so well. I go into Chinese and absolutely own the entire class because it's just answering a bunch of random questions about jobs and banks. Come Chorus class, I was off in singing but I really didn't care.

One of my friends K.B. and I are deciding to do a duet for a Cabaret show in a few weeks and to surprise our friends by doing one of the group's favourite songs together. The problem is that I'm a bass and have to sing the part of a tenor for the song. I'm planning on knocking all of my notes down an octave so I can actually sing the song without straining myself. Finally comes Humanities. We get the lab again for the entire block for the same reason as Global Religions!

So come mock beauty pageant rehearsal. I had to create a dance routine for the talent portion that I really dislike because the song is one that I've heard my entire life and E.W. has managed to badger me into doing it compared to bellydancing. I go onstage not knowing the dance because it was just created and a minute into the dance I get screamed off for not knowing the stupid thing and told to go print out the routine and practice. A half hour later filled with trying various computers across the school, I give up and go back to rehearsal. We're now on dream date, which my partner and I totally rocked if it weren't for E.W. interrupting us every other line to ask us about every little piece to it without waiting for the answer to her question like two lines later. A.H. my partner and I are kind of frustrated but now we have the scene down really well.

Along this entire rehearsal, A.H. and I are busy talking in the back of the auditorium about the people there. We've came to a consensus that the other director D.M. is flamboyantly gay and one of my cast members E.C. is extremely bisexual. If we use a scale of 1 to 6, 1 being extremely straight 6 being extremely gay D.M. would be a screaming 6, I would be about a 4.75 and E.C. would be a solid 3. It really amuses me especially because I see all of the other male cast members always touching each other and joking about it while considering themselves straight while I'm the only person there who's openly gay and refuses to touch any of the guys without any solid reason. You'd imagine all of these guys would be less... obnoxious and climbing all over each other because that would be portrayed as incredibly gay but no, they just bounce around smacking each other around while I'm sitting with a couple girls laughing my ass off at all of them.

I finally go home after a three and a half hour rehearsal covering two of the major scenes (most of it being the directors yelling at us for the questions being answered two lines later) extremely wiped. Good news is that I got a haircut which looks awesome and I have hair dye for tomorrow's escapade! I'm really excited for it and can't wait to see everyone looking at me this week where I come into school with something new added on every day!

Tuxcapades!

These past few days have been CRAZY! Usually I'd just get up, go to school, go home, and sleep. This is the usual procedure of a high school student, mixed with maybe a couple "Go downtown and get a burger" or something once a week. However, this week has been... interesting to say the least.

Yesterday, I did the usual routine. However, today I'm to be going to this peer mediation conference during school so I had to get my homework, which is just a little tweak. I'm pretty okay with this because it's not a huge transition like traveling across the entire country twice to see a bunch of pretty colleges, but after school instead of going to rehearsal all of the mock pageant guys met up in the meeting room for a special trip: a tuxedo rental store. I've been to one a few months ago for my close friend's coming-of-age ceremony, but it was nowhere near in the scenario of an en masse 8-men-need-tuxes-within-a-week. While this is normally pretty simple because we have quite a few tuxedo places near our hometown, we had to drive somewhere a bit... far off. Try a city about 10 miles away. Even then, it's not bad. It is when you have two teenage drivers who have barely just held onto their licenses for a year and an elderly woman who has the attention span of a gopher. I don't have neither my license nor a car yet, so I was stuck going inside one of the teenagers' cars because the elderly woman for some reason didn't feel like having people in her car. Turns out I picked the right car at the last second- I was running late because I needed to snag the stuff from my locker at school on account that it was pouring out and I needed my fedora. We got to the tuxedo store within 20 minutes and were nearly all entirely fitted before the other shipment of guys came pouring in. The driver of the other car apparently sucks at driving and the person in the front seat giving directions apparently wasn't helping at all. After a series of phone calls filled with my being able to hear a bunch of

"FUCK! WHERE ARE WE?! I'M LOST, DAMMIT!"

"I DON'T KNOW! WHY DID YOU TAKE A LEFT?!"

"YOU TOLD ME TO TAKE A FUCKING LEFT!"
"I MEANT THE OTHER LEEEEFT!!!"

from a few feet away, the store manager staring at us with a smug look like, "You are so desperate for a tux for this stupid show I'm going to laugh at you from afar," and people running around outside getting soaked from the rain in a frantic attempt to find each other, the other people waltzed in like nothing happened. Except the driver, who is clearly miffed and complaining to his girlfriend about it. Everyone gets fitted, and finally the woman running the entire show comes waltzing in complaining about traffic and blaming every little puddle she saw. We stand around for a few minutes figuring out every little logistic, then the guy who drove the car I rode in on the way there decided to leave us for the other driver. Slogging into the back seat of a massive Ford Windstar, I proceed to go on the longest 10-mile trip I've ever encountered. Not even within three minutes the driver (C.S1.) was lost and driving in circles, the guy in the shotgun seat (C.Q.) isn't helping at all, the guy (C.S2.) I'm sitting next to is beating up the guy in front of him (E.C.), E.C. is making really bad sex jokes, and the guy in front of me (C.D.) is going completely music ADD on us. Ten minutes later, we are parked in front of a YMCA asking someone's parents for directions to our hometown, C.S.2 is pummeling the back of E.C.'s seat, C.D. is still music ADD, C.S.1 and C.Q. are bickering over directions while still on the phone with the parent, E.C. is running out of the car fake-crying, and I'm falling over laughing at all of this. The entire fiasco could be translated into this:

"Want a bad roman- DOO, DO DO DODO, DO DOO DO, DO DODO-"
"SHE TOLD ME TO TAKE A FUCKI-"

"SHE MEANT THE LEFT IN FRONT OF THAT ONE-"

"GET BACK IN HERE-"

"WAAAAAAAA-"

"GET YOUR ASS BACK IN THAT SEAT, BIT- *snicker*-BAHAHAHA-"

"DOO, DO DO DODO, DO DOO- I want you psycho, your vertical stick-"

This continued pretty much this way for the next fifteen minutes, with a couple stops in front of cop cars with people's seatbelts off writing the word "asshats" on the fogged-up windows, creepy parks in the middle of the city, and random restaurants. I'm next to passing out from laughter this entire time because for some reason I get really giggly when stuck in a car with guys, and by the time we actually see non-rundown buildings our conversations devolved into C.S.1 and C.Q. cheering for knowing the rest of the way home, C.D. still music ADD, and E.C., C.S.2 and I screaming stuff like little kids. That can be translated into this:

"WE CAN FIND THE REST OF OUR WAY HOME-"

"DAAAD I GOTTA GO POTTY!"

"DAAD I WANTED TO GO TO MCDONALDS!"

"DAAAD WHY IS MOM A FILTHY WHORE?!"

"DAAAAD!"

"DAAAAAAD!"
"ARE WE THERE YET?!"

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!"
"I WANTED THE BLUE SHIRT NOT THE GREEN ONE!"
"I WANT A NINJA TURTLES LUNCHBOX!"
"NINJA TURTLES SUCK, I WANT A SPIDAMAN LUNCHBOX!"
"DAAD WHY IS UNCLE COMING OVER SO MUCH?!"

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!"

"DOO, DO DO DODO, DO DOO DO, DO DODO-"

By the time we get to my house to drop me off, our trip has taken over an hour. I never anticipated a trip to a city 10 miles away could be such a hassle.

In honor of the DOO, DO DO DODO song, I present the song of the day to you:

Streamline by Newton!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BugFniXE1rc