November 2010 Archives

Tuesday
Yes, another lost day. My enthusiasm for 1954 was obviously waning, partly because my depression was increasing (or waxing, if you like), but also because I found that my friends had less interest in chronicling college in this fashion. I think if I'd been in Bradley Hall, the honors dorm I transferred to for the rest of the year, from the beginning it would have been more accepted and embraced, but I was definitely alone in the book at the Stadium.

Wednesday
Technically another lost day, but the page was "annexed" by Dec. 28 when Jill, Brandon, Suzanne and I ran out of room. Most of this is just quote-of-the-day type stuff, but I love Suzanne's little cartoon. "Skrudland" was the fictional country of exile that any personas non grata were sent to. It was named after a photography supply store in Palatine whose name we thought sounded like an unpleasant Scandinavian country.

Sunday
Steve, Bootsie and I were walking toward campus this afternoon and came across a golf club someone had broken in three. We picked up the pieces and carried them aways for some reason, but then dropped them again ...well, Steve and Bootsie dropped them. I threw mine, the handle portion, at the chainlink fence we were walking next to. I figured it would hit the fence and drop, but instead it ricocheted back at us. Bootsie and I ducked, but Steve wasn't fast enough and it hit him in the face, cutting him deeply just below his lower lip. It immediately started gushing blood, so we changed whatever plans we had (I think we were meeting some friends for dinner) and headed for OSU Hospital.

I remember not being exactly sure how to get to the emergency room from where we were, and wandering the hospital campus a little bit before finding it. We called our friends and let them know what was up, and Steve got a few stitches. Steve wasn't mad at me, but I felt terrible.

Monday
Nice quote from Thomas Mann: "We artists are like eunuchs; we sing beautifully but we are cut off from life."

Apatheology is a nice portmanteau. I guess it would be a lazy religion?

I almost missed the "up all night" notes at the bottom of both pages here. Insomnia sucks.

Friday
Another lost day.

Saturday
Uh, so there you go. Now you know how you used to be able to get a Touch and Go Records mail order catalog. And actually, that's still their mailing address.

Wednesday
I, uh, don't think "protegy" was intentionally misspelled. That's nearly as embarrassing as the poem itself.

I kind of dig the stylized dollar sign, though.

In high school I worked through my problems while in the car, so I'm not surprised that I talked a lot in the car on the way to my uncle's for Thanksgiving.

Thursday
Thanksgiving. Nice turkey.

Monday
Heh, despite my thinking that I didn't do well with the G-Man call-back audition, I got "G-Man #1." And it turned out that they didn't like anyone's Irish (or Scottish or whatever) accents, so they went with an actor who did a convincing Russian accent.

I was the only freshman in the show -- and one of a very small handful of non-theatre majors. Pretty cool.

Tuesday
I guess it caught up with me.

Saturday
Oh yeah, Tim F. came to visit! I forgot about that. Actually, he came to visit a couple of times over the years, at least once a year. I just didn't remember that he came to visit in the fall; I'm pretty sure he came to visit again in the spring.

I was surprised to get called back to read for Seamus; I was apparently pretty happy with my accent. I can only imagine it was influenced by Monty Python.

Sunday
City Center was a mall in downtown Columbus, a block from the capital. I say was, because it failed a couple years ago and was torn down this past year. I don't recall why we went to the mall, exactly -- it wasn't a place I regularly hung out. Maybe some early Christmas shopping?

Thursday
I was really excited to try out for You Can't Take It With You. I went through several monolog books looking for one to perform, and didn't find any that I liked. So instead I wrote something myself about how I didn't find a monolog to perform, and performed that. It was a risk, but it paid off; I got a call-back.

So after getting to bed at 7am, I got up and went to class (and turned in the paper I was up till 7 working on), and auditioned for You Can't Take It With You. Then I went to call-backs for Griffin's Tale, which went really well. Then, after coming home, a call to Melissa, and a trip to BW3 (now known as Buffalo Wild Wings) for 125 hotwings with friends. (The more wings you ordered, the cheaper they were, and they weren't all that expensive to begin with.) I finally got to bed at 2:30.

Friday
And then I got up and worked at 6am, so I probably got about four hours of sleep, after getting about four and a half the day before. Yeesh.

So, a bunch of dorm folks went ice skating -- and it was only my second time. And like I said, I did OK, but the rental skates rubbed a hole in my leg.

Hound Dog Pizza was a new pizza place on the scene. In a testament to how good it was, it's still there -- which can't be said of all the cheap pizza places around campus. Cinnamon and I ate there earlier this year.

I used to say there were only two things I missed about college: the flexible schedule and the cut-throat competition in pizza pricing. Now that I have the flexible schedule, the incredibly cheap, surprisingly good pizza is the only thing left to miss.

Though, Hound Dog's aside, I have a feeling most of that cheap pizza wasn't actually very good. But who cares when you're getting a large one-topping for $5?

Tuesday
We held the auditions at a mostly disused student center by the north campus dorms (I don't really know why, but the north dorms were considered the least desirable of the three dorm areas). I guess we only had three people try out -- I remember being there for quite awhile, but I guess we must have been pretty lonely.

I don't really remember Angie or Nancy, but John really impressed us. He performed as The Stinky Cheese Man, which we thought he made up on the spot but I later found but was an existing children's book. He was upbeat, engaging and funny, so we definitely wanted him in the troupe.

Wednesday
One of the downsides to living in the stadium dorm (there were many) was that you had to work a few hours each week in the dorm. I worked in the cafeteria, and the shift I got was 6am to 8am. I'm a night owl, and I often didn't get to sleep until really late -- you may have noticed -- so I often just opted to stay up overnight instead of getting just a couple hours sleep. That occasionally backfired when I ended up staying late that night, too.

This night, for instance. After working in the morning, I went to class, then headed to the university theater to volunteer usher for Romeo & Juliet -- it was a popular way to see a show for free, and I was hoping to start getting into the theatre crowd. Then I went home and stayed up till 7am writing a philosophy paper. Not the brightest move.

Sunday
Gold Eagle, a diner in town, changed its name every couple years -- the rumor was that it was owned by Albanian mobsters, who switched ownership regularly as part of some sort of tax dodge. We continued calling it Gold Eagle even when it became Michael's.

Why did I have breakfast with one of my brother's best friends? Well, he looked up to me and considered me a friend, too. He wanted my advice about something -- I think he was moving to live with his mom down in Atlanta soon -- and wanted to catch up before he moved.

I didn't expect to see Chad, but learned that he'd already failed out of Western Illinois, where he and Mike P. were roommates. Mike was still hanging on by a thread, but had an awful GPA by the end of the school year and stuck around for summer school and was done.

Griffin's Tale was a children's theatre troupe that was just getting started. I joined after an impromptu audition in the dorm cafeteria -- the troupe's founder, Amy, lived in the dorm, and was impressed by my improvised tale of chasing a balloon. She made me assistant director. And we had meeting that night to prep for auditions later in the week.

Monday
Another lost day.

Friday
I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure after we went to Second City, we stopped at a forest preserve (prairie reclamation are, actually) in Barrington Hills to frolic in the field.

Saturday
Since it wasn't anywhere near a normal college holiday, none of my college-aged friends were home, so this party was all friends who were still in high school (except Tim, of course). Nearly all of them were from theatre, too.

Wednesday
I don't recall why I went home -- I think it was just because I was depressed and wanted to -- and could afford it. Southwest cost just $40 round trip back then, because they had just started flying between Midway and Columbus. Why I didn't do it more often, I have no idea -- I probably could have been home nearly every other weekend, whether I stayed at my parents' or not.

Thursday
A lost day, apparently. I'm sure plenty happened, even if I never left Yvette's.

You know, it's funny -- I never listened to WBNS, yet I have these stickers...

Monday
I'd say these two quotations sum up how I was feeling right around then: over-extended and insignificant.

Actually, thinking about Melissa's visit a bit more, I remember that we talked about the pressures affecting each of us. Melissa felt a lot of pressure to date someone in Barrington -- one someone in particular, but just in general, her friends and family noticed that she was blue a lot because I wasn't around. They thought she would be happier if she dated someone who was in high school, if she wasn't in a long-distance relationship. I had to admit, it was taking its toll on me, too, and (I think) I acknowledged that fact. But in spite of that, I didn't want to break up.

Oy, if only just agreed to that we should go ahead and date other people right then, I would have saved months of agony. But I was still too in love.

And here was Diana on Monday and Tuesday, there to rub it in my face.

Tuesday
The Violent Femmes were a deeply important band to me in high school, so the opportunity to see them was really exciting. They were touring in support of their newly released greatest hits album, and the Newport was packed. Diana turned out to be a huge fan -- much bigger than me, in fact; I loved their debut and Why Do Birds Sing?, but she stuck with them through their unpopular religious phase, too. It was fun watching the show with her.

Secret writing:

Diana and I got really close tonight. I went home with a purple cheek and a smile on my face.

Saturday
Yep, the Dead Kennedys -- they were in town for a show, and were staying at Melissa's hotel.

I, uh, don't remember what we did all day, but I know a good portion of it was just walking around campus and talking... and more making out. I think we went to Elephant Bar with her dad, and we then just went back to the dorm to hang out with my dorm friends. Including watching The Jerk in Tim's room. I got Melissa back to her hotel by 4am, and...

Sunday
And then she went home. And I went back to being depressed.

Thursday
For most college students, Thursday is the first night of the weekend; there aren't many Friday morning classes, so a lot of kids get an early start partying. I didn't do it that often (I actually did have a Friday morning class), but for whatever reason, I went out on this one. BK Flyers was a fairly cheesy bar, but it was relatively easy for undergrads to get served there, so a bunch of us went there and danced 'til late and had a blast. As evidenced by...

Secret writing:

I also came possibly dangerously close to screwing around with a very drunk, very sexy girl named Cassy. I'm not yet sure what to make of it... maybe she's up for noncommital sex. Who can say but her?

Yes, the night before my girlfriend arrived. Yes, I'm a complete asshole.

Friday
Interesting quotes there -- "If you don't risk life, life will never by won." Nicely inspirational.

And again with religion vs. faith, a recurring theme this year.

Note that I woke up at 6:15am -- so I got three hours of sleep -- and Melissa was at my dorm from midnight till 4am. I honestly don't know how I survived on as little sleep as I got down there. I suppose my anticipation of Melissa arriving helped keep me moving.

We made up for a lot of lost time in those four hours.

Tuesday
Here's an abandoned dog. (As in, I didn't like how the sketch was going, so I quit working on it.)

Wednesday
Jeff probably got smacked after that comment.

Secret writing:

I spent a couple hours with Sam's roommate, Diana, tonight. Tim and Sam are trying to set us up together. She's nice, smart, very pretty, and plays flute and likes math. They're right, our personalties go well together, but it's up to her if anything goes on, and it was hard to tell what she thought. Whatever.

I'm giving myself whiplash here. One day I'm pining for my girlfriend back home, the next I'm letting myself get set up with some flutist.

Diana was interesting and attractive, and we flirted a lot for awhile (oh yeah, this isn't over), but ultimately she was just a flirt, and we became friends. Meanwhile, she added another confusing wrinkle to my love life.