"People Listen to Jazz for Fun, Dance to Jazz for Fun, Play Jazz... for Fun" OR What Will I do With my Thursdays Now?

So, Footloose has been put into its grave. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Binkle for actually putting me on the trail of the damn thing, otherwise I would never have even known it existed. Also I'd like to thank personally all the friends who came out to see it:

(not bitter at all. In the words of Nora "My St. Paddy's day was good. So go fuck yourself" or something)

The Friday show ended up being the worst one I played, although whether or not that's because I was busy marinading in self-pity is debateable. The Conrad Grebel Student Council were the ones who actually fronted the cash for this little enterprise, and they also organized a pizza-party for Friday night. We trudged over, weary from our exertions, and found that the pizza hadn't arrived yet. We pulled together some couches and took a load off. A few minutes later I got my first experience with "money talks" attitude, which is a specialized form of snarky bullshit useable only by people who get to be in charge of things due to monetary contribution. Here's what happened: We were sitting on our couches, minding our own business, being too tired to do too much of anything (it's midnight again). There was a line forming away from us in anticipation of the pizza's arrival. At this point, a Grebel Student Council person came over and told us that we weren't doing enough mingling. This was a Grebel Student Council event and we needed to mingle more. We were being too cliquey. I came to eat free pizza and go to bed, not mingle with my gracious fucking benefactors (and the cast and band... who I've known for months and just spent5 hours with) and their ugly boy/girlfriends. So whatever. All we did was get up and stand by the big throng of people waiting for pizza. It was retarded. I came to a pizza party, not a PR event for Grebel.
(And just while we're here, I laugh every time I type "pizza-party". Could I seriously say somethig like, "Hey dude, I came for the fuckin pizza-party, alright?" and keep a straight face? I don't know. The term "pizza-party" holds connotations of funny hats and public-school portable classrooms for me. This was just a bunch of people in a caffeteria, but the event was billed as a pizza party, so that's what I'm calling it)
When the pizza arrived, the same bitch got back on her horse and explained the preferential rules for Grebel students in eating the pizza. Out of 11 members of the stage band, only 2 are Grebel students. I could only shake my head in the manner which I am right now as I reminisce. I ended up grabbing 2 slices instead of 1 and then, after some non-mingling with Ricardo (our 2nd guitar) I went back to see if I could get more. I found Student Council Girl interrogating some guy about how much he'd had already and calmly sidestepped them both and grabbed 2 more pieces.
Fuck authority.

The pizza was real real greasy. Perhaps that was the Student Council's secret weapon against cheaters like me. It had me feeling sick, a condition which was only exacerbated by everyone in the cast singing Seasons of Love at the top of their lungs. They had been doing this since we arrived. When it was finally over I realized that the Rent soundtrack was playing somewhere in the caff and that someone was resetting it to Seasons of Love every time it got more than 2 or 3 songs away (and they knew all the words to those songs too). At this point I was ready for bed. Another possible factor in this decision was my beard. I am reasonably sure (especially after the events of Saturday, which I will get to soon) that the stuff I put in it, Color Shots "Punk Pink", has had 2 effects on me:
1) I am a solvent abuser. The instructions on the can say that I should hold it 8-12 inches from the hair I'm spraying it in. Which would work if I was also trying to spray in on my mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and shirt as well. So I have to hold it closer. I'm lucky if I hold it an inch from my face. And what are the top 4 ingredients in this stuff? Denatured alcohol (not a big deal), butane, iso-butane, and propane. Yes, the 2nd and 3rd biggest ingredients are both butane. Iso-butane is just a specific kind of butane. And they're followed by propane, another abuseable solvent. Awsome. So yeah, I'm not really worried about that. I didn't feel stoned when I did it or anything, but I'm sure it was technically solvent abuse. I mean, I had to breathe when I was doing it, it took me like 15 minutes to put on 3 coats of the stuff so that it would actually show up.
2) There's a good chance I didn't feel stoned because that stuff made me feel like shit instead. Breathing the fumes from whatever else is in there (Benzoguanamine/Formaldehyde/Melamine Crosspolymer, etc) was terrible. I'm getting a headache thinking about it. Also it irritated my throat and nose which made me cough more during the shows.
So, thanks in part to that stuff, I took my leave of the pizza party. When I got home I washed out the beard (so that it wouldn't get in my pillow, but looking back on it I am damn happy that I washed it out all 3 nights) and hit the sack. I didn't sleep too well, but I was rested enough when I awoke at 8 the next morning.

The first memorable event of Saturday was a phonecall from Toronto. It's one thing for almost all of my friends to have a party without me instead of coming to my show, it's another to call and gloat about it the next morning. But since no one involved has deigned to comment on the post below this one I think that that's where I'll stop this.

So, on to Saturday. The call for the matinee was 12:15 and was ready and waiting in time. My family came out to that show and they liked it. I also played much better than on Friday night, but that might have had more to do with the fact that I tried to put on less beard paint. After the show I met up with the fam and we went for dinner. When I got in the van I noticed that the twins had managed to work in a trip to Value Village. Calder had picked up a couple of keyboards for $3 each. So, yes, we're talking about children's keyboards. The first one came with batteries but didn't really have any cool features. It had a switch that was supposed to alternate it between organ and piano, but it was broken. At this point we arrived at a William's and got out to have dinner. When we got back in Calder, after some mishaps putting in the batteries, resumed his melodic doodling on the larger keyboard. This one was much cooler. It had a drum machine built into the top of it as well as several prefab beats (of varying complexity), volume and tempo control, and around 20 different instruments to choose from. Whilst we were discovering the wonders of this keyboard in the back seat, my mother was deciding that she needed me to help carry things while she shopped at Michael's, The Arts & Tawdry Homeware Store. So, the five of us entered the store, Calder with the keyboard firmly clasped in his hand.

From the moment we entered I could tell it was hostile territory. My mother instructed me to find a table, and I took Calder and broke off on my search. We traversed the store: Me in my faded T-shirt, frayed jeans, worn-out boots, and pink beard; Calder in his grey winter coat, tight jeans, poofy hair, and a RAMS shirt which he'd added "tein" to with marker; and all around us the sweet melodies of all your Calder favourites coming from this little keyboard. It was awesome. We walked all over the store and eventually discovered 3 things: 1) There were no suitable tables. 2) My mother had decided to instead have my carry around an urn. 3) The ketboard had five preloaded songs. The fist of these songs, "Ten Little Indians", became our new theme for pacing the store. However, after a complete circuit of the premises we discovered that my mother was still nowhere near ready to leave. So I had a brilliant idea, which was this: Calder and I would retraverse the store, me with the urn over my shoulder "boom-box" style, Calder with the keyboard, busting "Ten Little Indians", in the same position, and find a good location for a secret base. We would operate out of this secret base until such as time as the rest of the fam were ready to leave, at which point they would be forced to discover our base in order to take us away. We walked. Past the paper and stationary section with the incredibly ditry waterfountain hidden at the back, past the children's play centre where 3 and 4 year-old children were hitting each other with safety scissors, past the same kid and his mom six times as our different paths through the store intertwined. Finally we came upon the fake forest and saw our opportunity: There was a corner where two shelf units met and formed an acute angle. Attendants had stored trees there which were too tall to sit on the shelf units. People had tended to buy trees from the middle of this section instead of the edges and a little glen had formed. Calder and I pounced. I entered first and set the urn down, he came in after me and laid the keyboard atop it. From there we lit a campfire, sipped our whiskey, and Calder serenaded the night while I dreamed. Of days gone by and days yet to come...

And then my parents and Siobhan came by and got us. They dropped me back at the theatre for the closing show. Which was also awesome. At the end there was a huge onstage backslapping session. It was nice. I got a blue rose. It stained my hands. After that we started the load-out. It was gruelling. I thought playmakers! ones were bad, but I never really appreciated the ammount of planning and coordination that goes into them... until all of it was absent. There were too many people acting independantly with too much stuff. Here's a case in point: By the time I had finished packing up the drum kit I used in the show, I realized that I had my own drums to worry about. I had a bass, snare, and hi-hat all without cases to worry about. But in the time I'd spent cleaning up the first kit someone had already taken my bass drum. I made sure the rest of it got into a van, and the piccolo snare rode in my lap. But when I got back to Grebel the bass drum was nowhere to be found. And that's how it stayed. Someone walked my unsheilded bass drum home in the snow, and I have no idea where the fuckin thing is. After the load-out there was a cast party at one of the actors' house. I told a couple of the actors who live in the same residence with me that I would share a cab with them after we'd all gone home and showered. Too bad the actors were done loading out in half an hour and it took us in the band significantly longer. I was feeling really really sick by the time I'd managed to stumble home from the load-out. I got back at around 20 to 1 and sat in my chair until 1 trying to muster the strength to undress and shower my beard off so I could go to bed. In that time I also tried twice to call Ricardo (of the false mingling above) and tell him that I couldn't go (because he'd also said we could go together after I'd mentioned that I had probably missed my ride with the actors). But he didn't answer his phone. So all was dejection and despair as I entered the shower.

And then I washed my beard off.

And I felt like a new man. I'm not even joking. I have no idea what that shit was doing to me, but once it was gone I absolutely had a new strength. I walked back to my room and began pulling out all my extreme winter clothes in order to walk over to this place: I was thinking rugby socks with sweat pants tucked into my boots; regular jeans over those so I didn't look retarded at the party; my "I like girls who like girls" shirt and my scarf wrapped around my neck and most of my face and a hoodie over those; My fur hat topped off the arangement along with my winter coat. I had followed that plan to waits level (socks and sweatpants) when Ricardo called. He too said that the shower had made a new man of him, and he had been showering when I tried to call him. He picked me up along with my mickey of stoly and we went to the party which turned out to be at........................... Barbara Murray's house! It was random, but still awsome. Apparently she rooms with the actor who was hosting the party. The party kicked ass. The music was terrible, but there were enough people, and enough alcohol, to keep my happy. I got really really trashed in the span of about 2 hours. I basically showed up, said some hellos, and cracked the Stoly open. Then I managed to probably make myself look like a complete redneck by drinking drinks others couldn't rather than have them poured down the drain. One of the cast members was getting drunk for the first time. I told him he was missing out and that I'd been doing it for 6 years. He looked at me like I said I'd been abused as a child. A while after that I performed the chivalrous act of picking a girl up off the floor and getting her to a bathroom. She was the stage manager and I know her from my program. When she was done vomiting she said she wanted to go home. I immediately volunteered to walk her, althought I belatedly realized that I a) didn't know the way too well and b) hadn't brought all of my extreme winter walking gear. Luckily I had some money and got her a cab.

And then it was 4 and Ricardo was driving home. I was stil severely drunk and got really worried and started yelling when he took a different way back. Luckily he decided not to kick me out of the car right there. I got home, took off my shoes and laid half sitting-up in my bed. I drifted off to sleep until I felt the urge to vomit. I went to the bathroom, but then sat on the john instead. I fell asleep there too. But was once again awoken by the urge to throw up. So I switched positions and let fly in a businesslike manner. I speculated casually for a few seconds about how easily and mechanical my work with the less enjoyable parts of getting drunk (the drinking part and the [not always necessary] vomiting part) has become. I wonder if that means I'm a good drinker or a budding alcoholic. I don't drink enough so I assume its just my mad skillz.

Then I slept until noon and started trying to write this. It's quarter to 12, school is tomorrow. Goodnight all.