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All right, that was Sunday. It's now Thursday. We'll see if I leave anything out, because the most intense days were the last few. I am indeed back, by the way. And pretty sorry about it.
The dress rehearsal I zoomed off to may have included the most amusing moments in my life to date. Jorge and I stood off on the sides of the greens running lines while we weren't actually on, and he was already sleep-deprived and wasting away of a high metabolism, so he was getting everything either sideways or backward. It's impressive how much you can change the meaning of Shakespeare and yet still have it make sense by switching two words in a line... I'll provide some examples, if I can remember them.
Oh, in the scene which we are both in for the first time, he's wondering where I've been all this time with the money he gave me, and threatening to beat me if I keep making jokes instead of answering (so he thinks; what actually happened is that I really don't know what he's talking about because the person he just met wasn't me by my twin with the same name). So he says, "As you love strokes [as in beatings], so jest with me again". Well, he switched two words and I fell down laughing. I do love jests, but... It was a hilarious afternoon, and then we actually performed the play.
I'm not an expert at counting, but I think our audience got up to the 30s. Susan came (bringing my costume and the clothes for the party that was later that evening), and liked it, despite the prodigious amount of flubbed or forgotten lines. It actually was surprisingly good, given the lack of a stage, any costumes but what we could scrape, and most props. In the crazy whispering scene, when everyone knows Antipholus of Syracusa (Jorge had this one) and he gets freaked by it (the people think he's the other Antipholus, a well-known philanthropist and all-around good rich guy), they thank him and whisper his name and give him stuff. Well, Jon came up with... or maybe he didn't come up with it, but he implemented the idea. As he walked by, he put two containers of yogurt in Jorge's hand. It enhanced the scene to no end. Most of the audience had been in Mill Lane 3 when the yogurt-in-pockt incident happened, and Jorge had promised there'd be no yogurt in his pocket in the show. Well, it wasn't in his pocket. It was a surprise to him. There was yogurt all over the grass by the end of the play.
And then, after it was over that day, was the James Bond party. It was less James Bond than high school dnace and dress-up, but Susan and I had a fun time watching people fall off the mechanical "Bucking Broncho" (it must have been Italian), and switching off between sitting on a bench there and one closer to the tent with the live band (who, surprisingly enough, played real music. The girl was good at Blondie, and they played Best Days of Our Lives (Summer of 69) a couple times, often enough for it to be declared the theme song of this year's CCP). The atmosphere was great, and a guy who had been in line next to us and struck up a conversation kept following us around (he was trying to sidle, subtly, but it's hard to sidle subtly across a grassy expanse empty of people to a bench), and eventually asked us to dance. We didn't, but he seemed to realize it was nothing personal. I kept wishing for another epic, but I guess I had used my wish up in Stratford. At the end when they were dividing us to walk home in groups with deputies, one of the landmarks they had us congregate under was a huge James Bond symbol that they shone on the wall of the courtyard. It was a fun night.
The next day was London all day, a surprisingly calm and uneventful day. They dropped us off in front of the Tate Modern, but we walked across the Millenium Bridge to St. Paul's with a group of people (same ones who'd had a fun conversation with us in Covent Garden; I think her name was Ann), before we went in the Tate. Susan and I spent about half an hour under the exploding piano (Concert for Anarchy was its proper name), which was the only thing (other than some huge stone statues of stylized naked people) I liked much. Then we sat in the cafe for about and hour, sipping very minty tea and a blackberry smoothie and eating pineapples and pineapple ice cream with lime sugar. And then Susan was stoned. We sat on the bench being hyper and perverted till it was time to get back on the bus, and then we went outside. I had a panic for a little while, because I couldn't remember if they'd decided to change the show that day (Monday) from 5 or not. I found some cast people, though, and they knew what was going on, so we bused back in peace.
It was indeed 5 (or as soon as we got back, which was close), so I went from the bus to Sidney to the preshow preparation stuff. We had a bigger audience that day, and Jorge's opening patter was better (he did the credits at the beginning of the show, which would have otherwise been infinitely confusing). There was no yogurt this time, unfortunately for the audience. It was really quite a good show; Jorge declared afterward that he hates overacting, but it worked and I think he had fun doing it. I certainly did. I wish I'd got to act more with Martha, but it was fun enough loafing and not working at rehearsals with them. Lisa was pretty cool, but I didn't get to know her well.
After ours, it was decided that the cast of Comedy could see Midsummer without signing in or ticketing! So we walked to Peterhouse (I declared Susan in the part of a street-vendor, so she got to sit with us) and sat in the front row of Midsummer. Jorge was already fainting with he heat, and then he chased the usher-fairies around with Equal while they stole his hat. He wilted a bunch throughout the show, and collapsed half-jokingly at intermission. But he was as engaged with the show as I was, I think. Well, theirs, I must admit, was better than ours.
They doubtless had direction, but they did some things that never would have occurred to me, and I'm surprised they didn't occur to the Rice kids when they did the Britten opera Midsummer (well, they were also being directed, so maybe it did occur to thm and they didn't get to do it). It was all very subtly obscene and fairyish and good. I loved it. I took lots of (nonflash) pictures. The face (and body) painting was also good. I'll stick the pictures up when I've archived them all properly. After the show they walked us in groups back to the colleges, but it was really hot (comparatively, for England. Surprisingly, it seemed really hot at the time, though now I'm back and just went to Home Depot in the 114-degree car without any problems), so there was a group of boys at the door who were contemplating taking their shirts off. Our group didn't stick around to see. Apparently, it had happened before and they went running about town like that, and got breath-tested, even though they'd had nothing to drink. Sounds like fun; sometimes I wish I were male. They have cool structure. Other times not.
Actually, that came up in a rehearsal, once. We were sitting around on the fringes not doing anything, and I picked up Jorge's hand to admire it. I find people's reactions to hand-admiration amusing; they reveal a lot about the person. But he insisted on knowing why I picked up his and said Phu frustratedly; he has really cool hands. Almost exactly like Afri's. Very nice proportions, cool bone visibility, and a good size. I told him why eventually, after he bugged and bugged me to know. Anyway. Yeah, guys have cool structure.
So then it was Tuesday. We had one last lame-duck class, and I read my epic for Writing (they liked it), and accidentally walked out before I got my evaluation. Oh, well. I don't really care what I got, and I have a feeling it was good anyway. Then there was no Class II lecture, so we had three and a half hours for lunch. Susan and I cleared out the refrigerator, and ate the "Faggots, Mushy Peas and Mash" (I kept the box to show JR and them) and the "Bangers and Mash" (a lot of English food has obscene names). Then was Class III, and for our last Egyptology class we had a little practical archaeology; there were five tables, and we rotated; each had a different aspect of archaeology on it. I liked the pottery table best. She'd smashed up some stuff the night before, and we were trying to glue it back together and see what it could tell us about her culture. There was also a botany table, with real ancient Egyptian seeds and lentils and stuff, and one with some animal bones... It was fun.
And then we were out forever, with a pseuodobarbecue, the Talent Show and afterparty to look forward to in the evening. Problem was, I was stressed because of the pouch I'd left at a rehearsal a couple days before, with all my props on the prop table, and it hadn't been there when I went back. It had the credit card, check card, calling card, IDs, and room keys (which, I discovered to my horror, were 40 pounds to replace). So I checked at Corpus's plodge (oh yeah, that's porters' lodge), and was on my way back to Sidney (where the rehearsals and performances were) to check again at their plodge and the green where the show had been, when the Comedy director rode up on his cycle and asked me if I knew I'd lost something. He told me he'd dropped it off at the Sidney plodge that morning, so I headed that way. Then I ran into Jorge. I had a present for him, anyway; I'd drawn two pictures and cut one out of my sketchbook the night before, for him, Sophia, and Susie, another deputy who asked for a picture with a flowing Renaissance dress in it at Warwick). His was himself (he's a furry, did I tell you that? He rps as a raven, and has for 9 ears. I heaven't even had the internet that long) with one of the hats he always wears, and a yogurt in his claw, with Catian writing around him (I translated it for him. It said lame stuff about how good of company he was) and a label, "Yogurt Bird of Syracusa". So I gave that to him, and decided that if the pouch was in the plodge it'd still be there in 15 minutes, so waited while he got ice cream and put the picture in his backpack.
Then we walked to Sidney, with interesting conversations on the way, and he stood around while I asked the porter. It wasn't in there, so the porter sent me to the main office, and they spent an hour looking and calling the porters to make sure they weren't being crotchety and telling me it wasn't ther when it really was, and calling other plodges and the director (he wasn't home, and his wife said he was going to Edinburgh that night and she could maybe get him at a certain pub because he didn't have a mobile phone) and various in-charge type people, when a helpful deputy went to check in the plodge one last time, and he found it in a platic bag with somebody's jeans. So I was relieved.
I found at the pseudobarbecue that Jorge had actually stood around and waited for me for quite awhile, after he realized I wasn't in the plodge anymore. I felt awful about it. But I still had a good dinner, and then was the talent show. we got herded into the tent, and Nia and I got pretty good seats, though we couldn't see the dancers' feet, when there were dancers... And Irish dancing is only feet.
There were some good acts, and some bad acts, and overall it was a lot more mediocre than I expected. There was a lot of singing to cds with the voices still on them, and none of them was impressive. There was a kind of Stupid Human Tricks guy, though his most impressive trick was the song he'd written about an hour before the show, about what dorm he was in at Fitz and how he liked to have fun, and hoped the girls didn't think he was ust a dork... it was amusing. There was Irish dancing, Indian dancing (less cool than I expected), Venezuelan guitar (he was all right, though he couldn't get through the first song he tried, so did a different one), two girls who played their own compositions on the keyboard (I wasn't unduly impressed, but I suppose they were pretty good), a pair of Oklahoman rappers (quite funny), a guy they called the Pride of Nashville who wrote a song supposedly for this girl he'd met in London who didn't speak English, and he thought the music would carry them through... it was hilarious. I can only remember one of the verses that he wrote, and then the deputies asked for audience suggestions.... but there was this one:
You are the oyster
I am the pearl
You are the oyster
I am the pearl
Sweet little oyster of mine
cover me with mucus until I shine
And there were others like that. The Audience-submitted ones got on to other topics, including Brit-vs-American, and Brand (which a lot of people didn't like)
You are the Brand
I am the audience
You are the Brand
I am the audience
Sweet little Brand of mine
Total and complete waste of time
and deputies-vs-students, and other highly amusing topics. It was fun.
During the short intermission, enough people left so that Martha could get up and dance to the music that was playing, and Jorge did some, too. They were good.
A guy also sang and played Daydream Believer (Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean is the chorus, and what people know it by... it's by the Monkees), and he was pretty good. And then the deputies all got on the stage and sang it again, except the words were about us... the chorus I can remember, mostly:
Goodbye, CCP
Oh, how time still flees (or something)
But we'll chase you forever,
'cause we're the deputies...
A lot of people cried. It was quite sad. And then, a deputy named Andrew who had done some of the pre-class II activity announcements told us we had till 11:00 to "boogie", and he pronounced it phonetically, like bugi. Amusing. And the other deputy who'd done annoncements in Mill Lane 3 (the classII lecture hall Suz and I were in)... well, I guess I'd better explain about him.
He seemed relatively shy, for a person in a position of authority, and was the kind of cute, small-boned quasi-nerd that appealed to the more mothery of the preps, and so at the last announcements-session he got a spontaneous standing ovation, cheers and fanatic screaming and all. Then, after he finally got it to calm down and finished the announcements, a chorus of girls yelled, "Take off your shirt!" This provoked gales of laughter, as he answered "Not gonna happen. I'm too English." Then, the classclowns were encouraged, and some boy yelled "No, take off your pants!" The expression on his face was priceless. He was heckled all the considerably long way out of the lecture hall.
Anyway, so at the talent show, it basically happened again. He got attacked (with genial good nature all around, of course), somebody nearly managed to get his shirt off... it was funny.
Then they turned the music on, and eventually the colored lights. Susan and I planted ourselves firmly by one of the two poles holding up the tent, and watched people's stuff for them as the night ground on. We were only asked to dance once, fortunately. A very solid shirtless boy wiggled up and quasi-accosted us. I fixed him. We were set to watch. It was quite entertaining to watch. Some poeple are definitely better than others, though the dancing ranged from actual ballroom dancing (I only saw two people doing that, for only a couple songs, and one of them was Jorge; he was very good at it) to a grinding excuse for clothed sex. Martha had her own eclectic brand of partnerless gyration that was amazing to watch; I took a lot of pictures.
Near the beginning, Jorge set down his sword and stuff by our pole and asked us, with guilt evident in his face, to watch it. He came back intermittently to talk (or yell over the music) to us; he wondered if Susan was one of my sketchbook people (he'd paged through it at a rehearsal) and I confirmed his thought. He was quite curious about what friend it was that he reminded me so much of, and wasn't fazed a bit when I reassured him that it wasn't the gay part. He has a girlfriend. But his personality, his face, and even a lot of his mannerisms, remind me so much of Afri that it's uncanny. I ended up wearing his hat while he went off and danced some more; he saw I was watching him and smirking, and thought it was a reflection on his dancing. During a lull in the decibels he came over and said "I'm a dork, so?" I replied we were the dorks for not dancing. We agreed that there's nothing wrong with being a dork.
I didn't dance, but I wiggled; Susan was amused to note that I was rocking over Jorge's sword all night. Well, it was eventually 11:30 and they made us go home... back by 11:45 but we had to get up at 3 for the buses, so I figured I wouldn't sleep. So I made up for all my lack of dancing. I danced like a crazy person in the room, with my headphones and Led Zeppelin, and then took it outside where it was cooler and when Susan collapsed on her bed. I even took a couple steps on the forbidden grass. Nobody saw me, though. Well, people saw me, and said hi, but not while I was on the grass. And eventually it was time to put checked luggage in a pile in the plodge (I didn't have any, but Susan did). And then the bus.
I started thinking about it on the bus to the airport and how it was that in all probability I'd never have another rehearsal with these coolest of people, never walk a cobbled street with them having a random conversation or listening to theirs (they had better ones when I didn't talk; it always seems to work out that way)... and my face hadn't stopped leaking but intermittently even by the afternoon I got back home. But I'd been thinking and realizing and bursting (wilting, really) into fresh tears at each thought of how never again... I saw Jorge in the Heathrow check-in line as I zoomed by with a deputy for my 7:55 flight, and decided against yelling a last adieu. Not sure why; we're both dorks, so nobody would have been embarassed... I didn't see Martha anywhere besides the departure from the last dance. I didn't get her ol contact info so hopefully Jorge will answer my email and give it to me.
I arrived home to find my room emptied and putty all over the cracks in the sheetrock. David had come, and fixed it and helped Mama move all the stuff out of there into a pile in her room. It's an impressive pile of boxes. So I'm still living out of my suitcase. Good thing I did laundry reasonably close to the end of the trip. It was int he process of laundering during the dress for the first Comedy, so Susan brought me my costume when she came to see it....
And so we had to go find paint today at Home Depot. It's so weird. All the money is green, and the food is ridiculously cheap (we went to Sam's for batteries and a hot dog after). And it feels like 6:00 in the morning (it's 9:19 at night now, I started this entry even before we left). So I'll crash now. Nighty night. I wish it weren't over. I found a good quiz in Sam's journal.
FIRE is your chinese symbol!
What Chinese Symbol Are You? -- Updated (7/21/03)
brought to you by Quizilla
The dress rehearsal I zoomed off to may have included the most amusing moments in my life to date. Jorge and I stood off on the sides of the greens running lines while we weren't actually on, and he was already sleep-deprived and wasting away of a high metabolism, so he was getting everything either sideways or backward. It's impressive how much you can change the meaning of Shakespeare and yet still have it make sense by switching two words in a line... I'll provide some examples, if I can remember them.
Oh, in the scene which we are both in for the first time, he's wondering where I've been all this time with the money he gave me, and threatening to beat me if I keep making jokes instead of answering (so he thinks; what actually happened is that I really don't know what he's talking about because the person he just met wasn't me by my twin with the same name). So he says, "As you love strokes [as in beatings], so jest with me again". Well, he switched two words and I fell down laughing. I do love jests, but... It was a hilarious afternoon, and then we actually performed the play.
I'm not an expert at counting, but I think our audience got up to the 30s. Susan came (bringing my costume and the clothes for the party that was later that evening), and liked it, despite the prodigious amount of flubbed or forgotten lines. It actually was surprisingly good, given the lack of a stage, any costumes but what we could scrape, and most props. In the crazy whispering scene, when everyone knows Antipholus of Syracusa (Jorge had this one) and he gets freaked by it (the people think he's the other Antipholus, a well-known philanthropist and all-around good rich guy), they thank him and whisper his name and give him stuff. Well, Jon came up with... or maybe he didn't come up with it, but he implemented the idea. As he walked by, he put two containers of yogurt in Jorge's hand. It enhanced the scene to no end. Most of the audience had been in Mill Lane 3 when the yogurt-in-pockt incident happened, and Jorge had promised there'd be no yogurt in his pocket in the show. Well, it wasn't in his pocket. It was a surprise to him. There was yogurt all over the grass by the end of the play.
And then, after it was over that day, was the James Bond party. It was less James Bond than high school dnace and dress-up, but Susan and I had a fun time watching people fall off the mechanical "Bucking Broncho" (it must have been Italian), and switching off between sitting on a bench there and one closer to the tent with the live band (who, surprisingly enough, played real music. The girl was good at Blondie, and they played Best Days of Our Lives (Summer of 69) a couple times, often enough for it to be declared the theme song of this year's CCP). The atmosphere was great, and a guy who had been in line next to us and struck up a conversation kept following us around (he was trying to sidle, subtly, but it's hard to sidle subtly across a grassy expanse empty of people to a bench), and eventually asked us to dance. We didn't, but he seemed to realize it was nothing personal. I kept wishing for another epic, but I guess I had used my wish up in Stratford. At the end when they were dividing us to walk home in groups with deputies, one of the landmarks they had us congregate under was a huge James Bond symbol that they shone on the wall of the courtyard. It was a fun night.
The next day was London all day, a surprisingly calm and uneventful day. They dropped us off in front of the Tate Modern, but we walked across the Millenium Bridge to St. Paul's with a group of people (same ones who'd had a fun conversation with us in Covent Garden; I think her name was Ann), before we went in the Tate. Susan and I spent about half an hour under the exploding piano (Concert for Anarchy was its proper name), which was the only thing (other than some huge stone statues of stylized naked people) I liked much. Then we sat in the cafe for about and hour, sipping very minty tea and a blackberry smoothie and eating pineapples and pineapple ice cream with lime sugar. And then Susan was stoned. We sat on the bench being hyper and perverted till it was time to get back on the bus, and then we went outside. I had a panic for a little while, because I couldn't remember if they'd decided to change the show that day (Monday) from 5 or not. I found some cast people, though, and they knew what was going on, so we bused back in peace.
It was indeed 5 (or as soon as we got back, which was close), so I went from the bus to Sidney to the preshow preparation stuff. We had a bigger audience that day, and Jorge's opening patter was better (he did the credits at the beginning of the show, which would have otherwise been infinitely confusing). There was no yogurt this time, unfortunately for the audience. It was really quite a good show; Jorge declared afterward that he hates overacting, but it worked and I think he had fun doing it. I certainly did. I wish I'd got to act more with Martha, but it was fun enough loafing and not working at rehearsals with them. Lisa was pretty cool, but I didn't get to know her well.
After ours, it was decided that the cast of Comedy could see Midsummer without signing in or ticketing! So we walked to Peterhouse (I declared Susan in the part of a street-vendor, so she got to sit with us) and sat in the front row of Midsummer. Jorge was already fainting with he heat, and then he chased the usher-fairies around with Equal while they stole his hat. He wilted a bunch throughout the show, and collapsed half-jokingly at intermission. But he was as engaged with the show as I was, I think. Well, theirs, I must admit, was better than ours.
They doubtless had direction, but they did some things that never would have occurred to me, and I'm surprised they didn't occur to the Rice kids when they did the Britten opera Midsummer (well, they were also being directed, so maybe it did occur to thm and they didn't get to do it). It was all very subtly obscene and fairyish and good. I loved it. I took lots of (nonflash) pictures. The face (and body) painting was also good. I'll stick the pictures up when I've archived them all properly. After the show they walked us in groups back to the colleges, but it was really hot (comparatively, for England. Surprisingly, it seemed really hot at the time, though now I'm back and just went to Home Depot in the 114-degree car without any problems), so there was a group of boys at the door who were contemplating taking their shirts off. Our group didn't stick around to see. Apparently, it had happened before and they went running about town like that, and got breath-tested, even though they'd had nothing to drink. Sounds like fun; sometimes I wish I were male. They have cool structure. Other times not.
Actually, that came up in a rehearsal, once. We were sitting around on the fringes not doing anything, and I picked up Jorge's hand to admire it. I find people's reactions to hand-admiration amusing; they reveal a lot about the person. But he insisted on knowing why I picked up his and said Phu frustratedly; he has really cool hands. Almost exactly like Afri's. Very nice proportions, cool bone visibility, and a good size. I told him why eventually, after he bugged and bugged me to know. Anyway. Yeah, guys have cool structure.
So then it was Tuesday. We had one last lame-duck class, and I read my epic for Writing (they liked it), and accidentally walked out before I got my evaluation. Oh, well. I don't really care what I got, and I have a feeling it was good anyway. Then there was no Class II lecture, so we had three and a half hours for lunch. Susan and I cleared out the refrigerator, and ate the "Faggots, Mushy Peas and Mash" (I kept the box to show JR and them) and the "Bangers and Mash" (a lot of English food has obscene names). Then was Class III, and for our last Egyptology class we had a little practical archaeology; there were five tables, and we rotated; each had a different aspect of archaeology on it. I liked the pottery table best. She'd smashed up some stuff the night before, and we were trying to glue it back together and see what it could tell us about her culture. There was also a botany table, with real ancient Egyptian seeds and lentils and stuff, and one with some animal bones... It was fun.
And then we were out forever, with a pseuodobarbecue, the Talent Show and afterparty to look forward to in the evening. Problem was, I was stressed because of the pouch I'd left at a rehearsal a couple days before, with all my props on the prop table, and it hadn't been there when I went back. It had the credit card, check card, calling card, IDs, and room keys (which, I discovered to my horror, were 40 pounds to replace). So I checked at Corpus's plodge (oh yeah, that's porters' lodge), and was on my way back to Sidney (where the rehearsals and performances were) to check again at their plodge and the green where the show had been, when the Comedy director rode up on his cycle and asked me if I knew I'd lost something. He told me he'd dropped it off at the Sidney plodge that morning, so I headed that way. Then I ran into Jorge. I had a present for him, anyway; I'd drawn two pictures and cut one out of my sketchbook the night before, for him, Sophia, and Susie, another deputy who asked for a picture with a flowing Renaissance dress in it at Warwick). His was himself (he's a furry, did I tell you that? He rps as a raven, and has for 9 ears. I heaven't even had the internet that long) with one of the hats he always wears, and a yogurt in his claw, with Catian writing around him (I translated it for him. It said lame stuff about how good of company he was) and a label, "Yogurt Bird of Syracusa". So I gave that to him, and decided that if the pouch was in the plodge it'd still be there in 15 minutes, so waited while he got ice cream and put the picture in his backpack.
Then we walked to Sidney, with interesting conversations on the way, and he stood around while I asked the porter. It wasn't in there, so the porter sent me to the main office, and they spent an hour looking and calling the porters to make sure they weren't being crotchety and telling me it wasn't ther when it really was, and calling other plodges and the director (he wasn't home, and his wife said he was going to Edinburgh that night and she could maybe get him at a certain pub because he didn't have a mobile phone) and various in-charge type people, when a helpful deputy went to check in the plodge one last time, and he found it in a platic bag with somebody's jeans. So I was relieved.
I found at the pseudobarbecue that Jorge had actually stood around and waited for me for quite awhile, after he realized I wasn't in the plodge anymore. I felt awful about it. But I still had a good dinner, and then was the talent show. we got herded into the tent, and Nia and I got pretty good seats, though we couldn't see the dancers' feet, when there were dancers... And Irish dancing is only feet.
There were some good acts, and some bad acts, and overall it was a lot more mediocre than I expected. There was a lot of singing to cds with the voices still on them, and none of them was impressive. There was a kind of Stupid Human Tricks guy, though his most impressive trick was the song he'd written about an hour before the show, about what dorm he was in at Fitz and how he liked to have fun, and hoped the girls didn't think he was ust a dork... it was amusing. There was Irish dancing, Indian dancing (less cool than I expected), Venezuelan guitar (he was all right, though he couldn't get through the first song he tried, so did a different one), two girls who played their own compositions on the keyboard (I wasn't unduly impressed, but I suppose they were pretty good), a pair of Oklahoman rappers (quite funny), a guy they called the Pride of Nashville who wrote a song supposedly for this girl he'd met in London who didn't speak English, and he thought the music would carry them through... it was hilarious. I can only remember one of the verses that he wrote, and then the deputies asked for audience suggestions.... but there was this one:
You are the oyster
I am the pearl
You are the oyster
I am the pearl
Sweet little oyster of mine
cover me with mucus until I shine
And there were others like that. The Audience-submitted ones got on to other topics, including Brit-vs-American, and Brand (which a lot of people didn't like)
You are the Brand
I am the audience
You are the Brand
I am the audience
Sweet little Brand of mine
Total and complete waste of time
and deputies-vs-students, and other highly amusing topics. It was fun.
During the short intermission, enough people left so that Martha could get up and dance to the music that was playing, and Jorge did some, too. They were good.
A guy also sang and played Daydream Believer (Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean is the chorus, and what people know it by... it's by the Monkees), and he was pretty good. And then the deputies all got on the stage and sang it again, except the words were about us... the chorus I can remember, mostly:
Goodbye, CCP
Oh, how time still flees (or something)
But we'll chase you forever,
'cause we're the deputies...
A lot of people cried. It was quite sad. And then, a deputy named Andrew who had done some of the pre-class II activity announcements told us we had till 11:00 to "boogie", and he pronounced it phonetically, like bugi. Amusing. And the other deputy who'd done annoncements in Mill Lane 3 (the classII lecture hall Suz and I were in)... well, I guess I'd better explain about him.
He seemed relatively shy, for a person in a position of authority, and was the kind of cute, small-boned quasi-nerd that appealed to the more mothery of the preps, and so at the last announcements-session he got a spontaneous standing ovation, cheers and fanatic screaming and all. Then, after he finally got it to calm down and finished the announcements, a chorus of girls yelled, "Take off your shirt!" This provoked gales of laughter, as he answered "Not gonna happen. I'm too English." Then, the classclowns were encouraged, and some boy yelled "No, take off your pants!" The expression on his face was priceless. He was heckled all the considerably long way out of the lecture hall.
Anyway, so at the talent show, it basically happened again. He got attacked (with genial good nature all around, of course), somebody nearly managed to get his shirt off... it was funny.
Then they turned the music on, and eventually the colored lights. Susan and I planted ourselves firmly by one of the two poles holding up the tent, and watched people's stuff for them as the night ground on. We were only asked to dance once, fortunately. A very solid shirtless boy wiggled up and quasi-accosted us. I fixed him. We were set to watch. It was quite entertaining to watch. Some poeple are definitely better than others, though the dancing ranged from actual ballroom dancing (I only saw two people doing that, for only a couple songs, and one of them was Jorge; he was very good at it) to a grinding excuse for clothed sex. Martha had her own eclectic brand of partnerless gyration that was amazing to watch; I took a lot of pictures.
Near the beginning, Jorge set down his sword and stuff by our pole and asked us, with guilt evident in his face, to watch it. He came back intermittently to talk (or yell over the music) to us; he wondered if Susan was one of my sketchbook people (he'd paged through it at a rehearsal) and I confirmed his thought. He was quite curious about what friend it was that he reminded me so much of, and wasn't fazed a bit when I reassured him that it wasn't the gay part. He has a girlfriend. But his personality, his face, and even a lot of his mannerisms, remind me so much of Afri that it's uncanny. I ended up wearing his hat while he went off and danced some more; he saw I was watching him and smirking, and thought it was a reflection on his dancing. During a lull in the decibels he came over and said "I'm a dork, so?" I replied we were the dorks for not dancing. We agreed that there's nothing wrong with being a dork.
I didn't dance, but I wiggled; Susan was amused to note that I was rocking over Jorge's sword all night. Well, it was eventually 11:30 and they made us go home... back by 11:45 but we had to get up at 3 for the buses, so I figured I wouldn't sleep. So I made up for all my lack of dancing. I danced like a crazy person in the room, with my headphones and Led Zeppelin, and then took it outside where it was cooler and when Susan collapsed on her bed. I even took a couple steps on the forbidden grass. Nobody saw me, though. Well, people saw me, and said hi, but not while I was on the grass. And eventually it was time to put checked luggage in a pile in the plodge (I didn't have any, but Susan did). And then the bus.
I started thinking about it on the bus to the airport and how it was that in all probability I'd never have another rehearsal with these coolest of people, never walk a cobbled street with them having a random conversation or listening to theirs (they had better ones when I didn't talk; it always seems to work out that way)... and my face hadn't stopped leaking but intermittently even by the afternoon I got back home. But I'd been thinking and realizing and bursting (wilting, really) into fresh tears at each thought of how never again... I saw Jorge in the Heathrow check-in line as I zoomed by with a deputy for my 7:55 flight, and decided against yelling a last adieu. Not sure why; we're both dorks, so nobody would have been embarassed... I didn't see Martha anywhere besides the departure from the last dance. I didn't get her ol contact info so hopefully Jorge will answer my email and give it to me.
I arrived home to find my room emptied and putty all over the cracks in the sheetrock. David had come, and fixed it and helped Mama move all the stuff out of there into a pile in her room. It's an impressive pile of boxes. So I'm still living out of my suitcase. Good thing I did laundry reasonably close to the end of the trip. It was int he process of laundering during the dress for the first Comedy, so Susan brought me my costume when she came to see it....
And so we had to go find paint today at Home Depot. It's so weird. All the money is green, and the food is ridiculously cheap (we went to Sam's for batteries and a hot dog after). And it feels like 6:00 in the morning (it's 9:19 at night now, I started this entry even before we left). So I'll crash now. Nighty night. I wish it weren't over. I found a good quiz in Sam's journal.
FIRE is your chinese symbol!
What Chinese Symbol Are You? -- Updated (7/21/03)
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