"Oh my God, it's December"
Friday night, three of the cast members of the Assistant Director's Cut and I went to Los Pinatas, a Mexican restaurant on Wells. During the natural course of the conversation, a few things came up that made me feel really young. They mentioned music and movies and events that were not completely unfamiliar to me, but I couldn't speak about them with any authority. There were even a few times when they excluded me because I was "too young to remember" or whatever. Granted... the youngest of the three of them is 29, so they all have at least 6 years on me... but at least give me a chance to contribute. Whatever... they're all nice people, don't get me wrong. I think a little part of it is that they're all almost thirty or older, sitting there wishing they had started this improv loot when they were my age. So what someone immature like that Jeremiah kid might see as jealousy of talent is, in fact, actually just an envy of situation.
Hey! That kind of reminds me... all the fun has been sapped out of my Writing Five class. I'm the AD, and we're to a point where the actors are trying to be memorized, so I get to sit there with the script and watch them struggle while I wait for them to call for line. Wow is it phenomenally boring. And I'm kind of a dick about it. I'm not going to give them the line unless they call 'line'. I'll just sit there and watch them struggle. Like a dick. I want the actor to admit that they don't know the line... and that they're trying to get the line right. And not improv through it... which is common in scripted work at SC (from what I've seen in my limited experience). I'm a dick.
But my writing five class has been good for me for one reason. It's really showed me how hard it is for me to sit and watch other people perform. This isn't a foreign or new concept to me, as I used to feel the same way in Albion whenever I wasn't in one of the plays. The difference is that, in Albion, I could still watch my friends perform, and root for them to do well and I wasn't fixated on how much better I could do it (some of the time I wasn't fixated... let's not talk about "Lie of the Mind", shall we?). But now, I sit in that class and I watch the actors and I think "God, I could do this better." Don't get me wrong, there are times when I'm not thinking I could do it better... but I am thinking that I wish it was me doing whatever they're doing. I experience this a lot when Keith is showing me a song he wrote... I know I couldn't do it better, but I wish I was singing it.

Monday night I watched the last hour of 28 Days Later. I'd never seen it, and what made me watch it was the grocery store scene. I don't know if this makes me a freak or not (go ahead and tell me) but I used to imagine what I would do if I got locked in a grocery store overnight. Or even like a KMart or something... actually I frequently day-dreamed about getting locked in stores overnight (THAT makes me a freak). It was probably the fact that everything in the store would then be "free" to me... because it was their fault for locking me in. Anyway, in the movie, almost everyone in England comes down with this freakish infection and so there are four main characters in a grocery store taking whatever they want. And watching that scene unlocked a whole bunch of my childhood visions and thoughts. So I started wondering: what would I do if, for some weird reason, I found myself to be the only one alive in Chicago one day?
I guess it depends why I'm the only one alive. Let's go along with the 28 Days Later movie, and say it was some weird infection that turns people into crazy zombie-people. I suppose I would start in the grocery store... making sure I have enough food to last me a while. Taking canned goods and everything that will last for a long time... anything I could stock-pile. And I'd do like the older dude did and take some REALLY expensive booze. The kinda shit that normal people don't drink because it's too expensive.
Then I'd head to someplace where I could get some guns and ammo (read: Ken's house. Zing! j/k). If there were crazy zombie-people who might come after me, I would totally get a shotgun because everyone knows shotguns kill zombies.
Then I'd feel safe enough to go to Best Buy. And I would clean that shit OUT. Dizzamn! I would take every CD I've even thought about owning... and all the movies I've ever seen and remotely liked. And I'd take a TV... flat screen, plasma... that sort of thing.
And I'd go to the BMW place down the street. They have a Dodge Viper in the showroom... and I've always wanted one. So I'd take it (I know I don't know how to drive stick, but no traffic makes for a very forgiving learning curve)... and I'd load it up with all my new CDs, lock all my other new loot in my apartment, and head to Michigan to see if my family was still around.
If, for some reason, I seemed to be the only person alive in the great lakes region, I'd take my new car and head west; see America again. In the movie, the four main characters aren't the only people still alive in England... so I'm assuming I wouldn't be the only person alive in all of the United States. I'd probably try to find everyone else who survived. I don't know how I'd do that... maybe see if there's anything on TV or any of the radio stations.
That, plus I'd totally break some stuff. I don't know why... but I would totally find a building with lots of windows and just break the poop out of the windows.

I just learned Tuesday night at rehearsal that Adam didn't make it into the Conservatory either. There was also this dude, Alan, who was in my class who wasn't really all that good, and he didn't make it either. That makes four out of the five people from my class that auditioned that didn't make it (that I know about). I know of two other people from my class who auditioned, but I don't know what happened to them (Update: I just got word back from Katy that she DID make it. That's two out of six). I suppose I'll find out in January. We're all supposed to go to the 'orientation' on January 2nd... and I'll know then. It's so weird, though, that I would make it and these other talented people wouldn't. I'm still at a loss to figure out what it is about me that is... well... good at any of this. I'm hoping to get some real one-on-one time with my teachers in the Conservatory... to figure this all out. Happy December, everyone.