Trilogy

I started this post on Thursday, came back to it Friday, and didn't even bother on Saturday. Here, at last, is the (no-doubt widely anticipated) account of my last 3 days:

Thursday: Somewhere after midnight in my wildest fantasy...

So, in spite of the fact that I can't read (still), the Footloose people are bending over backwards for me. I have no problem with people bending over backwards for me. In fact, by now I just kind of assume that they will. Except when I don't know them. At all. Seriously, Mike (the assistant musical director) is probably the nicest guy I've ever met. He's good enough to be in charge, but I'd hate to have to see him get mean when I couldn't do the important things... again.
Here's what happened today: After last week (the first rehearsal where a) they knew I couldn't read and b) had never seen the charts or heard the songs before), where they let me sit and listen, I figured I'd have to actually play the songs. This week's songs were the opening song "Footloose/Any Given Sunday", "Let's Make Believe We're in Love", and the Finale, also called "Footloose". Both footlooses are the most challenging songs in the production, mainly due to length and their annoying habbit of switching around between 5 or 6 different styles. Let's etc is pathetically easy. Here's the problem: Sean (the musical director) gave me the CD of the Broadway production (I don't know how similar it is to the movie) to help learn the songs, which was good, except that none of the songs match the CD, nor does the CD have all the songs. For example, in the finale there are over 100 bars of music in the score that aren't part of the song. Also, while Let's etc is easy, it's in 3time on the song and 4/4 in the score, making my version of the song to study by basically useless. Also, my entire score is improvised: The first bar of every line just has the symbol for "keep time" and repeat signs after it until the end of the line. Seriously it could be summed up with 1 bar of keeptime and then a "Repeat 87 times" bar.
The opener is a pain in the ass until he gets to beaumont, at which point I am able to cover the chart like a star (this may also have something to do with the fact that my parts in that song tend to be seperated by at least 20 bars of nothing, allowing me to take stock of my surroundings and prepare). Just turning the pages in the first half is a pain in the ass because I have only 2 beats to do so (I suppose I could have no beats, but then I would just cry) and the pages always get caught on my hi-hat. So, having spent all week assuring myself that I was going to spend all of today learning the songs, I actually didn't procrastinate. It was amazing. Trouble was I learned them to the lyrics. I got out my little pencil (which I forgot to bring to the rehearsal along with cymbal mallots and a shaker I was going to let them borrow), and made notes all over the songs about which words cued which parts, etc. The singers won't be practicing with us until mid-February. The main problem is the fills, especially when the drums cue the whole band back in after a full stop for some "witty" line. There was one part where we Sean calmly lead me through it 10 times before I got it: I didn't know where we were starting (the bass was soloing through this part), so I couldn't find my beat to come in, and I wasn't solid at all on the part immediately after. It was ridiculous. In a very bad way. At the end of the rehearsal we all agreed that it would be great if I could show up at 4:30 instead of 6 and work through the material with Sean and Mike, which is, once again, very nice of them. So, I'm being thrown off by this disturbing trend of niceness eminating from all things Footloose. Then, I went home and did something incredible. Well, first I got some junk food and checked my email. Actually that's when I started writing this post. But then I got bored and decided to watch "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", which I had never seen before. I have to say this movie was most triumphant, dudes. It truly made me feel that screaming guitars can change the world, and the soundtrack backed that impression up to the wall. I wish I could find it on DC++...

Friday: "Dude, I've got a full-on evil robot chubby!"

Bill and Ted put me to sleep around 2. Does anyone really think I was going to make it to class for 8:30? I did, for about 10 seconds after I performed my usual "leap out of bed to grab the alarm, and then run back to bed before my testicles implode in the cold" routine. I resumed consciousness at noon and began charging into a Civ3 game that I hadn't been able to finish, on the largest map size with the maximum number of other civilizations: I was Babylon, against 15 others. It was (as always) on the easiest difficulty, and everyone had their own very tiny island. My plan went something like this: Cover my island in cities (not hard given its size) while building the Great Library (with 15 other civs out there it had to be useful); Destroy the Russians (recently found to the North) while building the Great Lighthouse, allowing me to traverse a significantly larger portion of the globe than any other civilization for a thousand year (until the discovery of magnetism); contact every civilization I find and take their maps without giving my own. I very shortly knew the location of almost every civ in the game, while none of them could see more than 2 squares past their own borders. I also found 3 uninhabbited islands and two civilizations (The Japanese and the Romans) who hadn't contacted anyone else, and whom I could therefore smash with all the injustice and cruelty I cared to use (since no one would be the wiser and piss on my during diplomacy about it). After that I simply began multiple invasions. First waves of swordsmen, followed by waves of musketmen, began trickling out of my islands. However, once I got to the Industrial Age I basically stopped all scientific output. By this time my Russian lands had all been fully upgraded and began pumping out riflemen by the literal boatload (they were also pumping out the boats). I was at war wth everyone but Persia and France, and actively fighting on the shores of Rome, Japan, China, Germany, England, and India. There wasn't an attack on my own soil until the 20th century, at which point I sent my armies to deal with the Zulu and Egypt (China, India, Japan, and Rome having fallen, and Germny and England all but done so). My goal was to occupy more than 2/3 of the world's land mass and win the game by conquest. Assuming that my peace with Persia held (they hated me because of my treatment of the Russians, but were in no hurry to fight with anyone) the only remaining civilizations to contend with were the American/Greek/Aztec/Iriquois block (my technological rivals who all had seperate islands practically touching each other) and France. Little France, which I had found guarding its cities with warriors and spearmen and hand-reared to be my military ally, had grown more and more advanced through gifts from me. Also it has begun the annoying habit of following me everywhere there was conflict (including places I hadn't made it sign alliances against) and putting up cities when my armies vanquished those of my enemy. I would have dealt with France if I hadn't been stretched to the limit already. Also, France had happened to start on the largest island in the game, giving it a slight advantage now that I had brought it up to the level of my nearest competitor, America. France started demanding my entire treasury every time I wanted to renew a mutual protection pact, and my world influence began to decline. About this time I had crushed Germany, was still trying to mop up the English, and had emasculated Zululand and moved onto their neighbors the Egyptians. I had also just began to produce Infantry (WWI style). Just as I began to cut into Egypt, the game ended. 2050 and I hadn't even discovered oil...
After that I went back and tried to finish writing Thursday's entry, but it didn't happen. Instead I watched "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey", the actually-pretty-good sequal to the previous night's viewing (and the source for this section's title). The music was just as good, certainly. It had Steve Vai all over the music credits. Actually I only got through the first half-hour before Evan Dubblestyne called me. At least... it sounded like Evan... but wait, maybe it was Justyn on his cell phone, telling me that he was on Westmount making his way to my room and he would be here in about 20 minutes. Did I invite Justyn down this weekend when I was in Stratford last weekend? I said, "Dude, do you even know where I live?". There was silence. "Yeah, I lived beside you, remember?". It was Scott. I told him I'd see him soon and hung up. I went back to the movie for about 20 minutes and the phone rang again. Apparently Scott actually wanted me to let him inside the building, not just to be 50 feet away from me in the cold while I chuckled at Bill and Ted. He had a friend with him by the name of Cam, who was a nice guy but didn't drink and didn't say anything (possibly because he didn't know anyone). He also had a thing about walking behind me and Scott and being the last through a door. By the end of the night this was annoying my slightly inebriated system enough to cause me to threaten him with death if he didn't go through doors ahead of me. But we aren't there yet. They arrived at about 8, and by 8:30 we were at a party in REV hosted by Scott's friend Steve on his 19th birthday. The guy was hammered out of his mind when we got there. I went in, pulled a mickey of Stoly from my coat, and got tow work in a half-assed fashion (mainly because Scott and Cam were still in the doorway and weren't drinking). After about half an hour we left again. Scott said we'd be going back at 11 to see if some of his other friends had arrived. Trouble was, a few minutes before we left, the birthday boy had hit the wall. He could no longer hold his head up or complete sentences. He killed of a mickey of Goldschlager (Blake has never heard of Goldschlager! Yes, I looked it up, and it is real gold), and tried to set it on the fridge. But instead he slammed it down and pushed it across and over the other side onto the floor. If I'd known anyone there a little better I might have just shit my pants. So we left. We went and bugged Jerry in the basment, but then he went to the 3rd floor to drink tequilla with some of his friends. Since I was supposed to be downing some of El Jimador myself with Tyler Vivian on Saturday I didn't press the issue with my two sober friends. We went to the caff and grabbed some eats. On the way back we met Danger and Amy just going into the building. We stood outside and talked until I piped up about the cold. It was Amy's birthday on Friday!!!! Congratulations on missing the election by 4 days! They were going to go see Brokeback Mountain. I figured I'd be happier with my penis on a piece of butcher's paper in the fridge. While I was in the living room. Also there was probably going to be some raunchy theatre sex and I wasn't too interested in that aspect of the movie-going experience. We told them we'd meet up around midnight when they were back from the movie. So we went back to the party around 10:30 to find a bag of vomit in the staircase and Steve catatonic on the floor. There was still a party going on around him, however, and I started talking to a guy named Jeff who is doing co-op at Volvo in Goderich right now. He's a pretty cool guy and we stuck together for the rest of the time at REV. We eventually moved out into the hall because a) Steve was up and puking again and b) the soundtrack for the evening had gone from Fallout Boy to Yellow Card to Dashboard, and I wasn't interested in broadening my emo horizons by sticking aroudnd to see what came next. Out there a moderately attractive girl asked us to wait for someone who lived in the room opposite Steve and get him to come to another party in the building. She told us we could come too, and mentioned without prompting that the music was a lot better. I liked this girl already. Too bad I didn't see her again for the rest of the night. The guy didn't show up (we waited for maybe 10 minutes), and we went to the other party anyway. However, we didn't even go in the door. The music was way better, but I was depending on Scott and Jeff to know people, and they didn't. A girl we'd seen earlier at Steve's took us to her room and we chilled there. I was a little too abrasive and didn't make a good impression on thie drunken horny girl, so she focussed on Jeff. Basically all he had to do was stay in the room until everyone else got bored and left, and he'd be fine. Scott and Cam kept going back to Steve's room to see if Scott's other friends had arrived. I hoped that they had and were drinking. I was almost done my Stoly and my attention wasn't being held any longer. While the girl was bending over Jeff to change the music I sent some covert hand signals. He had expressed concern earlier about leaving Steve's party because his friends were there and he needed them to get into the building he was sleeping at. I attempted to use my sign-language skills to convey that that was no longer an issue. He gave me a "weighing my options" shrug and I left to find Scott and Cam. I never saw Jeff again, and I probably never will. But I wish him good luck back at Volvo. We spent the rest of our time at REV wandering around diferent floors looking for Scott's friends to no avail. We got back to V1 around 12:30, and chatted with Danger and Amy. Amy's only comment on a movie which was all about anal-sex: "I cried, but he liked it, so it was OK". Nuff said. Then I heard my telephone ring, and got to my room just in time for it to be hung up. A quick *69 told me Blake was the culprit. Rather than risking the wrath of Donald, I sent Blake an email telling him to call back. Meanwhile I sat down to check the email. Above me on my monitor the Stoly stared down. Crowned with Apostles shotglass it reminded me, for some reason, of some sort of Aztec temple... I logged in to work on the post but never typed a word. around 1:30, Blake called back and informed me he would be in Waterloo at 8am. I told him I needed sleep and that he should call me when he arrived. Instead of sleeping I finished Bogus Journey and read some more of Fingerprints of the Gods.

Saturday: Bet you've come back for some more of Dr. Neptune's delicious elixirs, is that right?

Saturday started uncomfortably at 9:15 am with the ringing of my telephone. 10 minutes later Blake was in my room. I made him watch Ghost in the Shell and we were partway through Calle 54 when Scott and Cam called. We had lunch. Or rather Blake, Scott, and Cam had lunch. I had a spicy chicken wrap, which is like having sex for lunch. Including the part where ranch sauce spilled out of the wrap all over my beard. After that we went to check on some of the hung-overs from the night before. We did this by standing in the feild and trying to look into their windows. We did this for some girl Scott knows, and her neighbour was watching us like we were crazy for about 5 minutes. Then when we went to get onto her floor the same girl answered the door. Scott found the irony delicious. I'm not sure that that actually was ironic, but it doesn't really matter. We seperated again: Me and Blake heading to the LCBO and Scott and Cam staying with the girl. When Blake and I got to the Sobey's plaza (where the LCBO is) we were most surprised to see a stocky man refueling a brand new Chevvy Cobalt. Yes, it was indeed the J-man himself. He asked me if we were jamming that night and I told him "sure", if he could find me a set of drums and a place to put them. He also informed us that he too has found Blake's blog. Apparently kids in his class were googling his name and they came across it, although I can't find it myself. We bantered for a while longer before he had to get back home. Someday I will get drunk with that man.
So, Blake needed liquor and wanted cigarettes. We decided the best course of action was for me to buy the liquor first (mickey of Stoly for me, mickey of Bacardi for him), and give him the change for smokes to be bought at his own peril. They didn't have Stoly in anything but 40s, so I only got the rum, and Blake ended up pussying out of buying cigarettes and bought 3 packs of gum instead. I'm pretty sure that by this (Sunday) morning two of them were empty. I had had 3 pieces. I asked him what it felt like to be an addict, but he was too strung out to think up a pithy comeback on the fly. Well, we got back to my place and finished Calle 54. We also ordered pizza. I called Vivian, but he wasn't home and I left a message. I put the Ketel 1 in the fridge in anticipation of a drunken evening. He never called back. I spent the evening in my room with Blake. We drank (a little), and he played Civ3 very very badly. So badly that I had to read a book and forcibly not look at the computer in order to keep my cool. It got me through some more of Fingerprints though, so that was alright with me. On that note, I read that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded. Just keep that in mind for the next few years. And maybe invest in some equatorial property that's a couple of thousand feet above sea level. Make sure you get enough to parcell it out for leases.
Back on track, I started playing Civ3 and Blake went to sleep on my bed. I didn't feel like kicking him out as I hadn't exctly given any though to where he would sleep. I took a wool blanket from my closet and used it as a pillow, put on my robe, and went to sleep. I woke at around 7:30 due to a) someone's alarm going off, and b) my legs entering hypothermia. I got up, put on the blanket, and used a sweater from my closet as a pillow. Of all the floors I've slept on, mine is by far one of the least enjoybale.
At 10:15 Blake and I were roused by the alarm I had set. We trudged in the rain over to St. Jerome's University College because the Donald hadn't been able to find any other entrances to the University. He said to be there at 11. I'm pretty sure he wasn't there until quarter after.