Senior Citizen

So the school year ended. I am now a senior in college. I am forced to confront the fact that the utter terror that is the real world is a very concrete and nearby future. And I don't even get a prom to soften the blow this time!

However, to take my mind off that, both theater groups I'm involved with at Rutgers had their annual awards ceremonies!

For those of you that don't know, the Cappies (College Avenue Players) and the Cabaret Ball (Cabaret Theatre) are the annual back-pat-a-thon/circle-jerks that we in the theater community throw to help celebrate how awesome we are by giving out awards. And by drinking and wearing goofy costumes.

And now a run down (with pictures!):

The Cappies

Last year's CAP awards ceremony was kind of lame. The theme sucked ("Mythological creatures"? What the fuck?) and we were stuck in the tiny basement of Tumultis on George Street. This year, however was much better. We were at the local elk's lodge and the theme was "Classy 80s Coke and Whore Party" which was a shit-load more fun. Plus I was 21 this time!

In the end, Wacky Hijinks won Best Show which was pretty damn exciting. It would have been even more exciting had 7/8 of the cast all been on the voting committee. But whatever, we won! Whoo!

The Cast of Hijinks (minus Dave)

Next came the after party which was at Jamie and Holly's house and was a Rubics Cube Party. For those of you that don't know, a RCP is when everyone comes wearing all different colors and keep trading until they are wearing only one. I ended up completing seven damn colors (all of a rubics cube plus black) and I only ruined two girls' shirts in the process.
















Halfway through, someone asked me why I was getting so into the game. I told them it was because I had a girlfriend now so there really wasn't anything else to do at a party.


By the end of the night, things devolved into a pantsless dance party both inside and out. This may have been based on my suggestion and campaigning. At least that's what people tell me. I don't remember.

All in all, a fun night.

The Cabaret Ball

My freshmen year, the Cabaret Ball was absolutely amazing. Then last year, it sucked. I blame that mostly on the fact that the theme was "Dress as a drink". What on earth does that mean? I ended up throwing bunny ears on and carrying a hammer. I was a Harvey Wallbanger.

This year the theme was a little bit more interesting. It was "Guilty Pleasures". It took me forever to come up with something and then finally I had the perfect costume. I went as the movie Love Actually. See:

Basically, I didn't know how to dress up as lesbian porn.
Ha! You think that's gross, try this:


Anyway, my costume was simple and also a big hit with the ladies. I was making hearts melt left and right with my actual love. Here are the pictures:

One with Sam
One with Rachel
One with Maddie
One with Jade

One with Ali

And one with...uh...Bassem
In the end, Hair won Best Show which was pretty damn exciting. It would have been even more exciting had we not had the biggest cast and therefore the biggest voting block. But whatever, we won! Whoo!
Then the after party where, I don't know, we all drank more.

Wrap-Up

Anywho, junior year was a really great year for me. I became much closer with a really great group of people and we worked hard and created some great stuff. And now I have a cute girl whose butt I can grab at any time without getting in trouble. Much love, Sam!

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't want to leave college. Oh God, I don't want to leave college.

Random Comic Fun!

Like many fans of the mediocrity museum that is the newspaper comics page, I was very confused to see a Vampire Weekend reference in today's "Sally Forth".

You see, I had always imagined that SF was drawn by some woman in her forties and I really didn't expect the characters to start mentioning popular indie rock bands.

I got even more confused when I headed over to the A.V. Club and was informed that "Sally Forth" had previously made a reference to ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead.

A bit of investigating led me to the blog of SF writer Francesco Marciulano and a quick perusal of it leads me to believe that he's a much hipper guy than I would have ever believed from actually reading "Sally Forth".

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is to post this pretty cool video he made for his other strip Medium Large.

Back Home Again

Well, I'm back at the old homestead for a bit. So, to celebrate, here's a clip from some trashy show profiling a murder that happened less than a mile from my house!



Ah, the fun. My favorite part is how they made my town sound like some Desperate Housewives bullshit. "Hopewell; a town full of hope and, well, lots of money." Jesus Christ. I guess they can't bother with good writers on a network that changed its name from Court TV to TruTV so they could get away with airing nothing but reality shows.
They do realize that the rich areas of Hopewell are only one part, right? For instance, I was in a local bar this evening called Hillbilly Hall. I really don't think the average patrons of said bar are driving home in S Classes.

Anywho, I was going through my blog posts the other day and I noticed that I haven't posted a song to download recently, so here's a little overdue treat.

Song I'm Currently Obsessed With: Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm


And here's another song too. This one is in this month's playlist and Holly's been begging me to get her an mp3 so here we go: Calvin Harris - Colours

"I Am the Wackiest of the Hijink."

"Live from Scott Hall, it's Wacky Hijinks...night!"



Thus began Wacky Hijinks 2008, some of the most fun I've ever had in college theater.

Well, ok, that's not exactly how it began. The show actually begins with 10 seconds of Andy drinking coffee followed by a sketch about Bear Fights, a secret organization of people who go out into the wilderness to regain their primal instincts (and fight bears), but this video was, I suppose, the official opening. It was edited by Adam and was one of the first signs I had that this show would be pretty darn good.

While I contributed a sketch freelance-style to Wacky Hijinks 2006, last year's show was my first as an official member of CAP's exclusive 8-member sketch troupe. It was a tumultous year with a lot of people butting heads but we came together in the end and ended up with an amazing show (those YouTube videos really don't do it justice).

When it came time to start working on this year's show, I was really worried about failing to live up to Hijinks 2007. We had lost our most senior member (Mena) and most prolific writer (Adam N.) and even our most aesthetically pleasing members (Mike and Nicole), yet people kept telling us that they were more excited for this year's show than they had been in a while. A voice in the back of my mind kept telling me we were gonna blow it. However, I told that voice to shut up and got ready to work.

Then the writer's block hit.

For almost a month, right in the prime writing season, I was incapable of coming up with anything funny. Well, that's not exactly accurate. It was more like I was incapable of finding anything funny. Any idea I came up with I would instantly shoot down. Any idea anyone else came up with I would shoot down. Even ideas I had written down and loved two weeks earlier I now hated. It was as if I had lost my entire sense of humor.

I remember the peak of it, where I was at this writing meeting with Zach, Greg, and Adam and I was just acting like a black hole of comedy, absolutely ripping apart anyone's material including my own. The worst part was that it was Adam's first real writing meeting and I was sure that, because of me, he would quit within the week.

Finally this period ended and I was able to start churning out sketches again and enjoy other people's. And enjoy them I did! We quickly amassed some of my favorite scenes and bits I've ever been involved in. I was sure the show would be great. And I remained sure until tech week where I again developed the same sense of dread that I gotten before every show this year (especially the other one I co-wrote, Zipperface!!?!).

And, just like Zipperface!!?! before it, all my fears turned out to be completely unfounded. The audiences loved the show and it was an absolutely amazing time. But even better than that, I really got close to the people involved. We hung out every day for the past couple of months at rehearsal and then spent hours together every night up in my attic. When we had problems during tech, we never fought or argued. Everything was nice and smooth and I have to say it was one of the best creative experiences I've ever had. It was the pinnacle of this mounting feeling I've had all year that I've surrounded myself with people who are really talented and who really make each other better through proximity.

This is something that will be put to the test soon enough when we try to start our own website. But, more on that when the time comes...

Anyway, back to Hijinks. Here are some more pictures of the show, most of which were taken by Darya on closing night. Once video becomes available, I'll post that here as well.

Cooking More Than Just the Food

Last night I went to the local Houlihan's with my family for Mother's Day.


I've never been to a Houlihan's before, although I've gone to the same restaurant under its other names of Fridays, Chili's, and Applebees. While my food was ok (my steak was a bit burnt) I have a few complaints about my experience.


First, the place was pitch black inside. This is done at all restaurants so you can't get a good look at the food, but it was especially bad here. I half expected are waitress to be an aging Hollywood actress trying to look sexy the way that place was lit.


Secondly, they gave us this little survey sheet to write about our experience. That's nice enough, but the choices for each category ("Food Quality and Presentation", "Service and Hospitality", etc.) were simply "Good", "Very Good", "Excellent", and "Other".


Now, I haven't taken a Statistics class since high school, but something tells me that those choices are going to kinda skew your results. Just a bit.

I Oughta be in Pictures

I still haven't gotten to my Hijinks post (it's gonna take me forever to go through all the pictures that were saved) but here's something cool in the mean time:

Does anyone remember those photo mosaics that used to be everywhere in the 90s? You know, the big picture made up of a ton of little pictures that they used for movie ads and stuff (The Truman Show poster is a good example). Well, for a while now I've been wondering if anyone would put up a program to download and do it yourself and, at some point (I don't know how long it's been around) someone did.

It's a freeware program called AndreaMosaic and it works pretty darn well. I haven't had much time to mess around with it, but here are a couple I made:

Here's Greg and I in Hijinks made from all the pictures I have from CAP shows. The clothes came out well but there wasn't enough pictures or detail to make the faces. A nice first attempt though.


I then tried to test out the program's abilities and just loaded in every picture I had on my computer and made this. The details are much clearer but the colors are kind of diluted.

When I have more time, I'll try to perfect my photo mosaic-ing talents. Until then, and in honor of the new movie which was flawed but still more entertaining than it had any right to be, here's an awesome cover of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" by The Cardigans. I know, remember them?

My May Playlist

Many apologies for not posting for a while. I got ridiculously busy with Hijinks (write-up forthcoming) and was kept away from my indulgent online writing. Anyway, to get back into the swing of things, I've created my May playlist which you can listen to below or on the right of this page.



Some of you (ie. Holly) have noticed and complained about my lack of a new playlist last month. What happened was that, what with my Europe trip, I wasn't able to buy or download enough new music to fill up a whole list (my refusal to have more than one song by a given artist also hurt me). However, that means this time I had two months to amass this music which means a lot of varying styles and moods. It's a good one.
The first track is a cool band I saw over the summer with TV on the Radio called Celebration. Then we go into Frightened Rabbit, a band that sounds like a Scottish Long Winters. And next we have a great song by my friend's band, Glad Hearts. The Rutgers Review put out this fantastic CD of New Brunswick bands a couple of weeks ago and I added a few tracks from that including one from Dave (as Half Brother at track 8).
It's a cool list. Enjoy this and then maybe I'll get back to writing actualy entries with words instead of videos and music some time soon.