attack of the hair!

what am i thinking?

.....i'm working towards that party in the back.....

reissue

Dad helped me renew my license by mail. This new nasty pink license will expire in the year 2012. I have taken the liberty of showing you what my license would look like if i would have taken a new picture today. I don't think i look extremely different..the smile is the same. But i'm pretty sure, i atleast look older than the picture that will be on my license until 2012 (i will be 27.) hahaha. that makes me laugh. we'll see how long i can stand my 16 year old picture.

in response to jon's blog

pre-school thoughts

as in the week before school starting thoughts. not that pre-school. my memories of being that young are few and far between, but i actually do have a couple of random memories of pre-school. anyway....

it's been interesting to see how my job here at publications and graphics has transformed into what it is today. the job title on route Y is "Media Production Specialist." which is funny, it should be "guy who will figure out how to do it because no one else has time....oh and does speeches." last year i wouldn't have thought that I would be doing what i am doing now, but it does allow me the freedom i need for school and extra curricular activities (such as julius caesar and random trips already brewing for fall semester.) plus i don't have a boss anymore. that's kind of fun.


this time last year i was really excited to start here at byu--my first semester after transferring from usu. in my mind, i had made the right decision, and at the time i was set on studying electrical engineering and sound recording technology. lucky for me, i decided that would be no good, and very quickly began plans for applying to the media arts program. (a success!) and since last year's credits were mainly audio classes, i have fulfilled much of my "emphasis" of my major. now all that is left is general eds, the core theater and media arts classes (TMA as noted on previous blogs), my religion requirements, and then whatever TMA classes i want to fill the rest of the credit hours with. if i stick on track to what i have planned out, i can graduate in two years. yay! it's nice to atleast see the direction to the light at the end of the tunnel (it will be atleast another year until that light is visable.)

as i am very well aware, i have a tendency to lose focus at the task at hand. i think this has come from a childhood of moving around, and always knowing that in a few years, i'd be somewhere else. in wyoming, after my first two years of high school we moved here to utah. i feel that desire to switch gears yet again. i have two years of school (credit wise) finished and some days feel like it's time to pack up and move somewhere else. it's almost a natural feeling, so the fact that i have to remind myself i still have two more years of school is a challenge for me. on the plus side, i think the fact that i actually have direction in my program and that what i'm learning this year will be a switch in gears will help this problem and mindset i have. i'll keep telling myself that... :)

also i'm an idiot! all this time i should have been getting internship credit for working at the castle. blast!

slap in the face

My Planned Graduation

i'm posting this just so i can reference whenever I need it:

Fall 06
Music 160
Music 251
Music 256
Music 351
Rel 121

9 Credits


Winter 07
Music 160
Music 257
Music 352
TMA 568
Rel 122
Ex 105
TMA 102
TMA 112

14.5 Credits


Fall 07
Anthro 101
TMA 105
TMA 185
TMA 114
TMA 187
Rel 333

15 Credits


Winter 08
Biology 101
Phy Sci 101
A Htg 101
Rel 211
TMA 292

14 Credits


Spring 08
TMA 201
TMA 291

6 credits


Summer 08
TMA 202
TMA 293

6 credits


Fall 08
Rel 324
TMA 391
TMA 477
TMA Elec
English 311

14 Credits



Winter 09
Rel Elec
TMA 498
Rel Elec
TMA Elec
Engl 324

13 Credits

above the law mentality

i must end this above the law mentality. i recieved a message in the mail saying that i have recieved 5 tickets in the past year on campus and that if i get two more i will lose my parking privlages, and if my car is found on campus, they'll impound.

yet i'm still not scared. and i need to still go fight two of them. blast!

the deed is done

well i stepped down from the seagull today. it took a lot of something to push the send button to tracey, but I can already feel the weight lifting from my shoulders. which right now is something i really need.

today tech week continues over from last thursday. i am completely exhausted, as to be expected. tech week's are known for how terrible they are. i think the sound designer is the pain in my side right now. when asked almost three weeks ago if we needed to sit down and work through what barta wanted his response was "no i'll be good for tech." bad news. the thing that takes the cake is his version of being ready. saturday he told me he was "ready." well ready to me should be "okay sound 1 standy, sound 1 go" etc, or something close to that. instead, he has a bunch of buttons on his screen that he's going to push to create a "masterpiece" and basically live mixed cues every night. this concerns me for more than one reason, but mainly because he is really the only one that can run sound. if he were to die tomorrow, we would be up a creek. (well i could probably finagle it to work, but that's beside the point.) yes, this makes me nervous. yes, i lose sleep over this. but, like it always seems to happen, come thursday we will pull through somehow.

for now, i'm in a heightened state emotion.

my new headshot, kind of

i've never had a real headshot taken. a cast member's wife took our pictures for the website. i think they look decent. my bracelet even made it in mine. haha

these are just a few pictures from the weekend. i got asked at the last minute to MC an activity for all the single's wards in american fork. i usually don't go to church activities outside of sunday, so i said yes to fill my quota. haha. it was called "the dating game." basically i stood on stage and cracked jokes while we hooked people up. i would have never put my name in the drawing to be a contestant, but being the one with the mirophone was quite fun. i dressed up in my "east coast" attire and made stacey be the dj. earlier in the day, i had been up at seven am to get breakfast (bagels, juice, etc.) for my cast so that when they showed up at 8am for rehearsal, there would be something to give them a little energy. then after a nasty comment made to me by the production manager, i stayed in the heat of the day (with the help of neal when i called him) and hung all the lights we could for the show. we must have borrowed more than i thought for macbeth. by that time it was about 3 and i was extremely tired. i tried to take a nap, but had too much on my mind to rest. so i showered, and met stacey for dinner at chadders, frantically ran home, and made it just in time for this MC gig.

i do really well in front of people. i may not be the best entertainer or jokester, but i can keep things moving and give people a good laugh here and there. must be the actor in me :)

after the activity, stace and i hit up the movie theater and saw Stardust. i have to admit, it was better than i thought it would be. some have compared it to princess bride. i can kind of see where they're coming from, but not really. so i recommend this film to anyone who wants to be entertained for a couple hours.

theater, life, theater-life

life is a funny word. type it over and over again, and then look at it for a while and then all of a sudden it takes on a new meaning. sometimes this happens to me when i type or look at the same word for a long while. wow--absolutely nothing on topic for my blog.

i enjoy theater. i enjoy all the aspects from the live audience even down to the costume designs. i guess that's why i involve myself in such an artform. but i would like to poll my readers (all two of you haha) on a question that i find myself asking with every production i involve myself with.

is it possible to involve yourself in drama without there being extra drama involved? it never seems to fail that as successful as the shows i've be a part of have been, there is ALWAYS unneccessary drama.

here are a few examples:

music man @ afhs -- two weeks before we open, neal decided he was done and that if our show was "spit* on a shingle" (* edited for michelle) it was our own dang* fault. the show was fun, but pretty much went down in history as a joke. we made seven dollars. granted we bought like 6000 worth of supplies and a new spotlight...so we probably made more than 7 dollars, but that's what neal tells us.

secret garden @ the scera -- first of all the drama with the warby's making an exit (the reason i did the show ultimately because there was a role to fill) one of our leads who we called "the chad" ALWAYS being late. lucky for me i was just acting and wasn't responsible for him :) and my favorite little girl.... SLAGOWSKI!

scarlet pimpernel @ the scera -- this show it was me, sadly, who was part of the drama. this was the nasty time when krystyna and i really started to part ways and she was in the show with me and was my dance partner for most numbers. an effort to save our relationship, nasty ending. mel also reminded me of the awful head butting between neal and mindy for who knows what reason.

macbeth @ the castle -- the whole delemma with strike. not even going to really get into this one. the wounds between me and the people it affected have been fixed and i'll leave it at that.

my fair lady @ the scera -- i don't remember a whole lot of drama happening with the show actually. i think the hardest part was having neal direct his wife and watch how they would sometimes fight. not the best of scenarios i think, but ultimately this show was fairly drama free. and as i remember a lot of fun too!

west side story @ usu -- riff came down with laryngitis. this was kind of fun drama, to be honest. i got to sing his songs into a microphone back stage while watching a monitor showing me the director from the pit. i couldn't see what he was doing on stage. we probably weren't together, but the sound coming from the speakers was GREAT! :) i made some good frineds from this show.

julius caesar @ the castle -- our production stage manager is falling apart as a person, leaving me to pick up the slack. something i ultimately don't mind doing because i want the show to be a success, but this person is also in the show and its affecting her acting and just her as a person. no one really wants to be around her because we're not sure if she's going to snap or laugh or whatever.

seagull @ byu -- haven't had much drama.... so far :) the only drama i see is that this show overlaps with caesar by a week or so. but that really isn't avoidable drama so i'm okay with it.

the rest of the unneccessary drama needs to go.... or does it? is it that drama that us theater geeks thrive on? i think part of me has to say yes. most of the time (when it doesn't directly involve you) it's entertaining to be a bystander. so as much as i really want this unneccessary drama to go away, it probably won't and i think i'm okay with that.

on a side note, film has a very similar unneccessary drama i'll save that for another post.

so two things i want to know from you: 1. is this "unneccessary drama" something that happens all the time?
2. i want examples. it doesn't have to be from a show. it can be any kind of performance. but i know it exists everywhere!

wednesdays

wednesdays are fun days for me to drive to work. from the moment i exit the freeway, there will be cars that will basically be following me to work. this, of course, is because many of these cars are going to the mtc to drop off missionaries. i try to observe the different cars and the emotions that the passengers are showing. some are happy, others are obviously crying, and then there are those cars that look like no one is saying anything. they're all just deep in thought. the best part of this drive on wednesdays is that I turn left into my work's parking lot before reaching 900 east. that's as far as i have to go. :)