February 2010 Archives

Saturday
This is the start of the last week of rehearsals before West Side Story goes live -- our first run-throughs with microphones on the leads. Later in the week we'd do full dress rehearsals with each cast, and then do one or two shows a day the latter half of the week. In honor of each cast, I drew the symbols for each gang.

My friend Wil turned 18 on Saturday, and noted the duality of being an "adult" in high school; the down side took on importance for him later in the year, when he dated a sophomore. I like Christian's bit of rhyme, too.

Sunday
My friend Mike P. demonstrates how well he could sign his dad's signature -- something many a high schooler practiced. (Need I explain why?) I wonder if he can still do that.

The secret writing:

I had a really weird dream last night. I was visiting a college with a bunch of people I know, including Gaby and Pat Olson among others. We were on a tour of the school. For some reason, we went through a tunnel to a huge pit -- like a quarry. We were on a ten foot wide ledge around the edge. Once we reached the opposite side from where we came in, we stopped and the tour was over. The whole time, Gaby had been holding onto my arm for fear of falling, but at this point she buried herself in my chest. I began to hug her tightly and kissing her on the forehead, and she looked up and we kissed. She suddenly opened her eyes and said "woah!" Hmmmm.....

Uh, yeah.

I thought the little flower sketch was just some doodle, but as I was scanning in the next couple months of 1954, I noticed it pops up again on another page, in April. Not sure who drew it, but apparently it was a bit of a signature.

Thursday
Kirby Smith was the varsity baseball coach, and was retiring at the end of the school year. He loved the varsity baseball field like it was his child -- if he caught you screwing around on the field you were in deep trouble. So the idea of planting a memorial park in the middle of center field struck several of us as really funny.

The quote from Ted came at the end of a story about him falling asleep in the shower, standing up.

I don't know who Solomon is, but I don't think he was a West Side Story character; Riff and Anybodys were, though.

Friday
Adam G. was my best friend growing up in Lake Zurich; we met when we were 18 months old. After I moved to Barrington when we were 10, though, we started to lose touch. By high school his family had moved to Florida and we barely spoke. Oddly, I don't think I wrote his phone number there.

The secret writing says:

Jessica B____ smoked dope with Rob G____ tonight. I hope she doesn't make a habit of it. She's too free to let herself be pulled into a drug addiction. I love her too much. I worry for her.

I heard yesterday a rumor that Gaby and I are going out. I never thought anyone would think of that besides me. Maybe the rumor will become reality someday, someday soon.

Jessica was a dear friend who I initially had a crush on but became friends with. She was (and still is, I think) a talented painter. Rob was a good friend from the Rotators who I became less close to when he started getting into pot. I've never had a lot of respect for people who smoke marijuana, mostly because it's incredibly annoying to be around people who are stoned when you're sober. And while I know most people claim pot isn't addictive, I didn't know many potheads who didn't smoke up every chance they got back then, which seemed pretty similar to addiction to me.

I'm still not terribly fond of marijuana nor being around stoners. The latter is because they remain annoying to be around and I have little patience for people in altered states in general. The former is due to my discovery in college that I'm allergic to pot -- my sinuses close up and I feel like my skull is a couple inches thick, I get really sleepy and then have a hangover for two days afterward. Needless to say, I haven't gotten stoned since college.

Tuesday
Like I said, I was really into The Tao of Pooh. It's funny that Disney never did "Pooh Babies" like they did the Muppets. This sketch is what it might have looked like.

Christian L. introduced everyone to Rage Against the Machine. I think I copied the lyric here straight out of the liner notes from the tape he brought to school. I didn't get very into Rage, but Christian introduced me to a couple of my other favorite bands back then -- Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction. Mother's Milk and Ritual de lo Habitual were on my stereo quite a bit.

Christian wrote the music column in The Roundup, our school newspaper (which was more like a newsletter, since it was printed once a month on white tabloid-size paper). I was on the newspaper staff sophomore year, where I stretched my budding journalistic muscles investigating such hard-hitting subjects as "poseurs" and "black ink vs. blue ink." The newspaper teacher, "Gordo," recommended that I not take newspaper again junior year (it was a class, not a club) and I was OK with that. There were really too many staffers for the number of pages we had, and as it was high school, everyone wanted a column or feature and not enough space for each of them to do so. I didn't want to do the drudge work of reporting on French Club or whatever, so I dicked around a lot of the time with the other under-utilized staffers. Still got my varsity letter, though, silly as it was.

Wednesday
Apparently I was happy today. *shrugs*

The two quotes just under the date are from our Logic and Rhetoric teacher, Mr. Phelan. He was on one of his many digressions, talking about stumbling through the minefield of his children's toys. Apparently Barbies are really dangerous, but sitting on a troll doll doesn't hurt.

It's funny seeing all these quotes throughout 1954. Sometimes I know what their context was, but so often I have no idea. "I killed a monkey," for instance. Pretty sure the CL is Christian L., but who knows what it actually means. And it's a mystery who my friend Wil was talking about in his quote, "It's people like that that make me feel better about who I am." It's lost to time.

Sunday
Ah, parent preview. A high school tradition -- give the parents a sneak peek at the show, and give the cast an opportunity to run through with a live -- and forgiving -- audience.

You might think that I was nervous about the preview, but you'd be wrong. Actually, it has to do with the note in the middle of the page. My friend Katrina (yes, the one I went on what I thought was a date with) had a crush on our mutual friend Kevin, who was one of the other leads in West Side Story, and I was interested in one of the dancers in the show, Anne H., who Katrina knew a little bit. We concocted a plan to ask both of them out on dates at the same time. We did it in the cafeteria, I think after school, before the parent preview. Kevin said yes, Anne said... maybe. And then later, no. Which is probably for the best -- I didn't know much about her, and she was so shy, I never did get to know her very well. And I quickly moved on to other crushes.

I'm not sure who wrote the bit that's scratched out. It says "SEX IS EVIL... EVIL" -- I think whoever wrote the short verse on Monday ("sex is evil... evil is sin/sins are forgiven so sex is in.") started writing it on Sunday and realized there wasn't room.

Monday
Sexual Innuendo Day! Lots of "that's what he/she said" type moments. That last one -- "You came with your pants open!" -- is a line from West Side Story.

Friday
Lots going on here. Mostly just random bits and pieces. The secret writing says:

Gaby is wonderful. I have never known a person who understands how I speak. And what I mean by what I say.

THIS ...beats me.

The quote across the bottom came about from Jill and me reading a note from a friend and hitting these initials. We didn't recognize them immediately as a friend of the note-writer, so our minds started going to Red Hot Chili Peppers at first.

Saturday
This page is pretty much entirely given over to quotes from the play City of Angels. I saw it at Cutting Hall in Palatine, and the production was one a couple of my friends were involved in. The quotes and notes about "the part Andrew didn't see" were written by Lisa S., one of the friends involved (I think she was stage manager or assistant SM).

I enjoyed the cheesy lines, if you couldn't tell.

Wow, lots going on on this spread.

Wednesday
The secret writing says:

I talked to Gaby! I talked to Gaby! We finally got a chance to talk in a serious context. I was right, she's a lot like me. She's afraid of emotion and of talking to people. Hope we start to talk more often.

"I LIKE IT!" —Faust

Oh man. That was a bad scene. West Side Story-related: during rehearsals, things got a bit heated between Faust, our director, and some of the leads or dancers (I don't remember anymore), and the bickering went on for awhile until Faust shouted that line so loud it echoed through the auditorium and silenced everyone. Whatever he wanted, that's how it went.

The unfinished figure on this page and the next were sketches for one of a series of etchings I was working on in printmaking. I didn't end up going with this pose -- it was too static, and hard to get the bent-knee lean to look right.

Thursday
Jeff G. was one of the class outcasts. He was very smart ("bookwise" anyway) but very uptight and pissy. He was a scold, too, and had a whiny, nasal voice, which didn't help. The guy was really unlikable. He claimed to be far smarter than his parents -- he claimed he did their taxes every year -- and the rumor was that he'd killed a puppy when he was a child. (Doubt that was true, but he never denied it very convincingly.)

Underneath it all, he was extremely self-conscious and had been picked on for years, so he'd built this mean persona as a defensive mechanism. When you got him off his defenses, he turned out to be really insecure and seeking of approval. He purposefully didn't have his picture in the yearbook, ever. I felt bad for him, but it was so late in our high school career and, frankly, I saw little up side to befriending him and helping him out of his shell. That was going to take years of intensive therapy.

There was this freshman kid in one of my open periods who we nicknamed "Micropymp." He wore a black leather trenchcoat and fancy black leather boots every day and had sort of greaser styled hair, and was constantly working an angle on a couple of Latina girls at a nearby lunch table, so we openly mocked him. He mostly took it in stride, but occasionally he asked us why we called him that. Here's one of those exchanges. By the way, it's pymp with a "y" for some convoluted reason I no longer remember except that it was somehow related to "womyn." Yep.

Monday
Wow, I totally forgot about "Herman's Head." It wasn't a show I watched, so I have no idea if it was any good, but if that quote is any indication, the writing wasn't all that amazing.

And here I am complaining about being called Andy again. With Joe taunting me below -- and drawing a naked lady (the bikini was drawn in later). Nice.

Faust, in this instance, is not the one of legend but our theater teacher/director, Mr. John Faust. He was a brilliant teacher and director -- one of my mentors through high school -- but he had an awful temper, no doubt from having to put up with dozens of teenagers every day. Rehearsals for West Side Story clearly aren't going well at this point. I'm pretty sure "This is the end of the INNOCENCE!" is also in reference to WSS.

Tuesday
And speaking of Mr. Faust, happy birthday to him! I guess he's 71 today.

B.U.A.D.S. Bob Up And Down Slowly. This was something I idly came up with in math class to keep myself amused -- and to make Juli H., who sat in front of me, go into giggling fits.

"Time together with time to spare" is a line from a West Side Story song, "Somewhere."

There's a place for us, Somewhere a place for us. Peace and quiet and open air Wait for us Somewhere.

There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time spare,
Time to learn, time to care,
Some day!

Chris G. wrote it here, on his birthday (happy birthday, Chris!) I'd forgotten he was in the play; I'm pretty sure it was his first play. Looking in the yearbook, I don't actually see him in the cast photos, but the cast was the largest of any show while I was there, and supposedly since Faust started at BHS, so that doesn't mean he wasn't in it.

I knew Chris from all the way back in middle school, in Madame Sandburg's honors French class. He and I were also members of the "Rotating Intellectuals," a group of guys who got together and did silly stuff like make bad movies and screw around. Bunch of dorks, we were, but we thought we were funny. I didn't hang out with those guys as much senior year -- we were at our closest sophomore year, and sort of fragmented as pot and girls got into the picture (the latter only for me, btw) -- but we stayed friends and still had good times on occasion.

Man, the stories I could tell about the Rotators. Some other time, some other time.

Saturday
The secret writing says:

The perfect romantic scenario: Get a rose and go to girlfriend's house. Put rose in mailbox with a note that says "Look behind you." Then tape another note to the window that says "Check in the mailbox.", knock on the door, and hide. When she comes out to check, sneak back over to the door and wait for her to turn around.

Needless to say, this is not the perfect romantic scenario. I read that to Cinnamon and she said, "That's not very romantic. It's also not very likely to work." She's right of course. I blame my steady diet of John Hughes movies back then for this sounding like a good idea -- it sounds like something straight out of one of his scripts.

Not sure who wrote the other little statement, "Now, of course there is a problem with time. A small package of something complicated is never a full explanation." I don't recognize the handwriting.

I colored in the tape on the other page with an ink pen so that it would print on this page and put a heart around the word "logic," which I'm pretty sure I drew in Logic & Rhetoric, the AP English class I took after RQ ended. Makes for a nice juxtaposition with...

Sunday
The heart is part of a multi-page newspaper ad for the film Untamed Heart. The four parts completed a quote from the commercial (and presumably the movie; I never saw it): "I don't make sense. He doesn't make sense. Together, we make sense." and then the film's title and other details. I thought the image of a heart that says "I don't make sense" was just too perfect not to preserve.

To whoever wrote "Do you have a valentine?", I didn't that year, though probably not for lack of trying. Valentine's Day tends to be fraught with heightened emotions and drama in high school -- and beyond, of course, but never as intense as in the fishbowl of high school. The number of relationships that start or end due to that one holiday is incredible, and those who aren't in a relationship feel it a bit more intensely than at other times of year.

The quote from my parents refers to dinner; I think mom made meatloaf, although I'm not sure because her typical meatloaf didn't include blue cheese. It was pretty funny at the time, though, and one of the few occasions I recall around that period when there wasn't any shouting at the dinner table.

Thursday
Nice that Kraut and Frank Week coincided with Valentine's Day (observed). I'm not sure exactly why Valentine's Day was observed on Thursday the 11th instead of the 14th, as usual; maybe that's when the school district listed it for the grade schools? I apparently didn't do much to observe it, though.

Instead I went to Julie's birthday party, apparently. Not sure why I took inventory of her gifts -- other than it was a pretty odd and awesome list -- nor do I remember what I got her. I don't feel like I was all that close with Julie, but I guess I was close enough for a birthday party. I do remember that it was held in her basement, and that several other not-super-close friends were also in attendance. I thought Julie was nice and pretty, and all our mutual friends were also really nice, and I was happy to be at the party, hanging out with people I wouldn't have normally seen outside school. That happened more than usual senior year, which isn't terribly surprising, I guess. We were all getting ready to head to off to college, so I think we all felt like we should reach out to people we maybe always wanted to get to know better but didn't for some reason, to mark that relationship in some way. And maybe also to try out those people to see if they should be made closer friends, or at least not cut off, after we embarked on the next phase of our lives.

The thing about being in school with people for years and years is, over time you get to know them pretty well even if you're not close. By the time I graduated BHS, I knew the names of nearly my entire class of 512 and probably a couple hundred kids in other grades, and was on friendly terms with most of them. And I had shared experiences with and knew details about nearly all of them at some point. I probably had a larger circle of close friends than a lot of kids, but my innermost circle was probably the same size as most people's. So even though I might not have known a ton about

Brad S. was the guy whose house I went to on Jan. 23 to play pond hockey. Again, not a particularly close friend. A mutual friend of mine and Julie's, though.

Friday
Heh, "who are 'we men'?" indeed. I remember it being Mike, Chad, Bolinger and me, but there may have been a couple other guys along, too. We went bowling at Algonquin Lanes, which was not our typical bowling destination -- I think we went there so we wouldn't run into other friends on our "men's night out."

Bolinger, who we usually called Bol (pronounced like "bowl" or "boll weevil"), got a finger stuck in his bowling ball during one frame, resulting in the ball making it probably three quarters of the way down the lane before landing and knocking down "the asshole," which was our nickname for the seven and ten pins, one of which would often stubbornly stay standing despite our best efforts at a strike. Between Bol's bomb and our other goofball antics, the alley manager came over and yelled at us a couple times. We didn't get kicked out, but we came close.

The drawing at the top is not a boll weevil, nor is it drawn from any lifelike bug. Its anatomy seems to have been based on a cootie. I don't think Mike based "Our Lady of the Holy Prune" on a real person either, but he might claim differently.

Tuesday
I've mentioned before the reverence students had for Mr. Griffith, teacher of RQ. One of the most common things written about a BHS teacher (besides "Mott does bongs") was "Griffin is God." Ted here points out that after all, he is just a man.

This batch of comments were all made during third hour, when I had the first of my four open hours of the semester. You see, I needed just half a credit to graduate my last semester, thanks to two and a half years of not taking a lunch. I had to petition my guidance counselor and get permission from my parents. I did it so I could take the classes I wanted, when I wanted. Worked out fine -- teachers were used to honors kids skipping lunch and bringing food to class. BHS had 150 percent enrollment (compared to the required amount) in English and 300 percent enrollment in arts while I was there; kids skipping lunch helped make that happen. So second semester I had yearbook, English, then third through fifth off, then gym, ...something seventh, and both photography and printmaking eighth hour. Why two classes eighth? Because I had to take five classes to be a full-time student, which was required, but didn't want to give up an open hour. Thanks. Mr. D and Mr. Mueller!

Anyway, it was an odd little group third hour -- Ted, John F., Nick and me, plus often John T. and Erica N., who were a couple years below us. Note that John F.'s question refers back to the LA Story quote from a few pages back. I thought Nick's response was nicely witty and sweet; his girlfriend complied, of course.

Wednesday
Another reference back a few days -- or a full month in this case. "No one will handle your penis as much as you will." Tori is, of course, right about that.

I'm not sure why I have the Spanish translation for suicide written here. As melodramatic as I was back then, I certainly wasn't suicidal. If anything, I was bored. I didn't look up that trivia about the number of times "The United States of America" is written on various denominations of currency -- actually counted them on bills from the till at Baloney's.

Sunday
Heh. I guess the Super Bowl wasn't on the 8th in 1993.

Monday
Happy birthday, Lauren!

On the spot reporting! Fights didn't occur at school very often (at least not that I remember), and this was one of the weirder ones. As I say here, it was almost silent, even as one girl kneed the other one in the face. I don't recall whether the attacker got in trouble, nor do I remember who they were, beyond that they were underclassmen.

Rehearsals for West Side Story had begun by this time, and the sideways writing and the little stick figure relate to that. The stick figure is the choreographer (who was a teacher at the school but I can't find him in my yearbooks -- anyone remember his name? Ah, thanks Christian! It's Mr. Scher.), delivering one of his usual bits of blocking. If you've ever been in a play, you know that there's often a lot of downtime while other actors work with the director. And because there was always a lot of interest in participating in the annual musical, there were usually two sets of leads, who alternated performances. I played Doc in WSS, and was part of both casts. I only tried out for the musical so I could sing and dance -- I actually auditioned for Tony, which was a bit of a stretch for me, but hey, I was a senior. Instead I ended up with one of the only non-singing, non-dancing roles in the play. I was annoyed at first, but with my deep voice I was one of the only students who could pass for an older adult, so I understood why I got the part.

Katrina (yes, that Katrina) and Kevin were Anita and Tony for one of the casts, and were two of the best singers I've personally known. They both have gone on to have successful careers as performers. While I could sort of sing (I'm decent, but have no training so I'm prone to starting in the wrong key or changing keys mid-song) and could keep a beat, I felt pretty out of my league playing along with them. They probably didn't even notice or care, but teenage insecurities know no bounds.

(It's a bit easier to read the sideways stuff here.

Friday
Mostly just a string of random quotes from the evening, although I do feel the need to explain the second one. It and the two below it were from yet another night in a coffeeshop or diner, Mike, Chad and I hanging out -- probably with a rotating cast of characters coming through. Chad blew off meeting his girlfriend somewhere that night, and the teabag comment was because he was playing around with a spent teabag, rubbing it on his lips because it was "so soft and cuddly." You get slap-happy sometimes when you hang out too long in diners.

I never did find Volere Volare. Looks pretty fun from the trailer; maybe I'll track it down one day.

Saturday
This was a truly amazing night, and it started off pretty boring. Suzanne, Jill and I went over the Brandon's house just to hang out and maybe watch a movie. We were getting ready to leave, I think, when Brandon's parents came in and said there was a house on fire in the neighborhood. I happened to have our cameras with us, for some reason (maybe it was just in the car?) so I grabbed it and raced out.

The fire turned out to be on a different cul de sac from his house, and the shortest route to it was across the small lake he lived on. So we crossed the frozen lake in the dark of night (it was around 10pm) to arrive at the backyard of a large suburban home ablaze. We weren't alone -- many neighbors also came out to see the fire, and because it was a fairly remote neighborhood, the fire department took awhile to arrive. We all watched as the fire worsened, and I shot a full roll of black and white photos. As I neared the end of my roll, I spotted a friend, Tuffy, a photographer who worked for the Courier, the local Pioneer Press weekly. He waved me over and said he was running low on film too, and gave me the keys to his car, parked up on the street, and told me to grab some film for the both of us. I think I just grabbed one for myself, but we shot some great pictures. I ended up putting one of the photos on the cover of my next sketchbook, captioned with a diced quote from Michael Stipe from a bumper sticker I got at a record store. It originally said "Arvo Part's music is a house on fire and infinite calm." I changed it to "A house on fire is infinite calm."

Wednesday
My friends and I spent a lot of time at Yvette's, the espresso shop in downtown Barrington, dreaming up grand schemes, gossiping and goofing off, doing homework, whatever. It was the hub of our social scene; five nights out of seven, you could find me there -- in fact, it got to the point where my parents would call there first if they were looking for me. It didn't help that my dad's office was right next door, which meant if I was helping him out after school, I had a convenient excuse to sneak off for a minute. Or more.

I thought about opening up a coffeeshop of my own a number of times during high school, college and a little after (not so much anymore). I really liked the name Java Trench -- still do -- and had a whole look and feel for the place worked out. I even had a logo for it. Maybe one day I'll actually do it.

What most people think of as "Barrington" is actually a confederation of suburbs. Surrounding the village of Barrington are South Barrington, Barrington Hills, Lake Barrington, North Barrington, Lake Barrington Shores -- not to mention Deer Park and Inverness, which shared services with Barrington until recently.

The start of the coded passage is a transcription of the horoscope I taped in below, followed by...

So, I seem to have started a relationship with a girl named ____. She's not exactly stable, but she's nice, very pretty, so we'll see what happens.

"Not very stable" turned out to mean bipolar, and she ran away from home and then was sent off to a hospital shortly thereafter. So I guess that's what happened.

No idea what "Sacoms! Tidlesh! Darsch!" means. Anyone?

Thursday
Happy birthday, Suzanne!

I'm really proud of this turtle. It was one of the best impromptu sketches I ever did. (The hat was a separate sketch.) I started with the sort of lumpy head shape and just let it develop from there. It's not particularly accurate, but I like it anyway.

Not sure who wrote those two quotes, but I have a theory. I think they're inside jokes between a couple theater folk.

Monday
You knew that there's a clean air market, right? It opened for trading on Feb. 1, 1993.

For part of junior year and most of senior year, I worked at Baloney's, a sandwich shop attached to the Catlow Theater in downtown Barrington. Mara was one of my coworkers at the counter, with the owner, Roberta, and another guy whose name I've forgotten making sandwiches in the back. It was an all or nothing kind of job: there was a massive rush around dinnertime and whenever a movie was about to start or just ended -- there was a door from the restaurant into the theater, which was owned by Roberta's husband -- and then was almost completely dead for the rest of the night. It was a fun place to work but could be really boring, too.

Mara was a freshman, and a bit of an airhead at times, but we had a lot of really good talks. She would amuse me with her crazy relationship issues. There was a TV that was on pretty much all the time, usually tuned to either VH1 or HBO, that was embedded in the wall next to the counter. When it was slow, we'd end up watching whatever was on TV reflected in the big picture window; I guess we watched LA Story that night.

Translating the coded passages:

• Along the left edge, "I have a problem. I seem to fall in love with every girl I become friends with."

• Along the bottom: "I hate myself"

Again with the drama.

Tuesday
Aw, poor Danny! He doesn't smell like cafeteria table anymore.