Monday, September 27, 2010

The Invention Cycle

James Lipton: "IMPROV!"

So I'm set to start off improv next week. I'll try not to verbally castrate anyone; I'm not a fan of such tomfoolery!

Anyways, I've been tasked with creating a makeshift to-do list to clear through the Mac. Yes, I see the oxymoron in a to-do list for improv, but it's better to go in there organized than a complete mess!

Here's what I came up with so far:

  • Create a Horcrux (or multiple ones) in the unfortunate event that I am obliterated by a phaser.
  • Capture the MSN butterfly in order to use it as our mascot.
  • Feed some 'delicious' durian to Bex.
  • I MUST FIND THE ALLSPARK!
  • Survive Order 66. Period.
  • Get myself my own Garchomp.

Wow. I'm retarded.

Cynthia's Garchomp seems like a good lover.

Well, some ideas that are floating in the air include actual cuts this year. I don't necessarily feel that having people come and go would be good for the team. This is mainly geared towards grade 11's and 12's, as Mac plans on introducing grade 10's as she finds them. However, I'm a lenient guy, and awesome improvisers might show up part-way through the year. Besides, having a concise team makes it better.

Another thing I'll need to do is talk more grade 11's back into the team this year. We had some epically awesome people last year, but the scheduling often conflicted with their interests. I'll need to personally approach them, because who can't resist my charm? ;)

Honestly though, maybe some reasoning with them will help! I'm fairly diplomatic, after all!

Diplomacy achieves results!

Most importantly, though, I want us to be good enough to have frequent shows! More shows equals more publicity! Considering we're just starting off, I would like to have a show up for Halloween (speaking of which, I need to get my Jedi costume)! It was pretty darn spectacular last year, but I'll take a look into whether or not choir is doing something again. If so, that's alright. If not, more improv!

So that's my preliminary to-do list for improv. I also need to get that elusive Director's binder, but I don't want to seem overbearing :P

Monday, September 20, 2010

Tour Guides

It's a Shinx!

So what do scissors, cousins, cutting, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Shinx and Egypt have in common? For a lot of people, it may have no connection whatsoever.

However, those were the ingredients for one of the funniest hour-and-a-halves (is that correct?) I have ever experienced in my school life!

Firstly, my dear drama teacher was having a discussion with us, when an adorable slip of the tongue turned the word "cut" into a similar word that adds "n" in between the "u" and "t". Probably the most offensive word in the English language. In other words, it 'cuts' deep (HAHAHA MAC!)

 If you're an innocent-minded individual, congratulations! I envy you! Don't look up that word on any computer other than your own, or God help you, the scourge of Gloria Allred and a female Jesse Jackson will bellow at you with the all-familiar "That is our word"! I hope you know the social ramifications of the word, so keep your mouth zipped!

If you're a tainted, corrupted person like myself, I send you my condolences. Dante, Virgil and I will greet you for your own personal tour of hell. Hitler will be doing his Charlie Chaplin impersonation routine every week at 10 pm at the Hell branch of Best Western.

So yeah, that made me laugh a lot! Honestly, I'm retarded like that! I laugh at the simplest mistakes, and I stretch it out like no one's business! I will probably be cracking jokes about it during tomorrow's class!

The next thirty or so minutes of class after the discussion caused my diaphragm to practically disintegrate from all the laughter that I would endure!

One of the most funny and unique individuals on this earth, who we will call Medic, was doing a presentation for Egypt with his group. Yes, a generic talk about history and culture of a country we have all heard about. Documentaries about Egypt are like the alarm clocks of our TV world, waking us up from our favorite shows and giving us the big F-U. It's almost like a pest. Almost! The real pests are reality shows. Anyways...

Beautiful, but I also infect the Discovery Network when anything is unearthed!

If you don't know Medic, he is one of the funniest - if not the funniest - people to grace us! I get a major kick from everything he says, even if most of it does not make sense!

I would love to recite the entire presentation, but I feel that it wouldn't do the humour any justice. You just had to be there, though I would like to mention some highlights of the 'routine':
  • The Nile River is pretty much all of Egypt. Egypt is just a sandbar.
  • The Scorpion King is the king of scorpions. He is also The Rock.
  • The Shinx of Giza evolves into a bigger Shinx with a pyramid on its head (Pokemon reference)
  • That Pharaoh-beard thing is basically a phallus on the face.
  • The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities calls 'dibs' on everything.
  • Hat-shet-sup? Hat-chet-zup? Hat-cha-cha? Ketchup?
But yes, it may not seem funny in writing, but only Medic could pull it off! I was literally laughing the entire time! Mind you, when I laugh, I go into some kind of primal mode where I start to sound like a cross between a human and a banshee.

I am actually laughing just typing this up! We'll take advantage of this when improv starts up!

I also laughed at some other issue concerning "You can't", but that's for another day and another blog post!

So for now, I'll send you off by telling you to go to Egypt. Oh, and take Medic along as your tour guide. It'll practically be like Disneyland on crack, but in Egypt and with a crap-load of graves.


Oh, and just for kicks. Shinx (and it's evolutionary line) are one of my favorite Electric Pokemon. Except Pikachu. Pikachu is absolutely sick.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

All That's Known


So I realize I actually haven't had a very serious blog post as of late; maybe I'll do just that!

I'm sort of debating whether or not I should learn (or practice) a new ability, language, or skill. I'm assuming that this sudden change is coming from the fact that I haven't had much mental stimulation as of late, so I need something to fill that void.

My first option would be for me to learn a new, preferably French. I've had French classes before, and I've done pretty well in them. A new language would be a lot of work, but it would also be incredibly helpful in the future! More languages equals more opportunities, I'd say! My procrastination could get the best of me if I choose this route.

One of my awesome friends told me to practice singing, though I'm not a singer! Yes, I do love my music, and I've had a musical past, but singing would be a whole 'nother dimension! Oh, I'm one of those people who recoil at the idea of singing in public, but maybe I should get rid of that impulse, eh? Everyone's gotta take risks eventually, right? And my singing voice is nothing to marvel at, either! But it could probably get better with practice.

It's been a long time since I've written any kind of poetry or prose, but I'd say I'm fairly decent at it. I know it's a great way to get my mind going, even though it's not a new skill, so to say. If I do that, I'd just be refining the ability to write.

There's also one of my favorite - but time consuming - choices: impersonations! I used to be quite good at some of them, but then I just stopped out of the blue. I lost some skill, but I would like to start building it up again. My end goal is to master the voices of most of the Muppets! Watch out, Kermit!

Oh skills, skills, skills. Would I be better with a repertoire of new skills, or with a sharply-honed set of abilities?

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Charging Head-first

So club day at school appeared to be successful; some new faces and some pretty unique things happening. 


Unique being an understatement!


Firstly, I was the representative for my school's improv club (of which I am now it's czar), so I had the awesome chance to meet the people who would want to join. Some of the people were other folks in drama but surprisingly, there was quite a number of grade tens who signed up. Of course, its possible that they won't even show up, signing the sheet because they simply wanted me to shut up. That, or my inescapable charm caught hold of them and shook their bodies like a maraca-playing Michael J. Fox in a mariachi band (I know, cruel! Too soon?).


The set-up was a tad bit hectic, though. Being oh-so-true to improv, we came in unprepared! I went ahead and ran into the drama change rooms to grab anything that could lure any simple-minded, childish individual to my booth: Elton John glasses, felt hats, pilons, bullhorns, handcuffs, etc. Weirdly enough, the only simple-minded, childish individual who had a ball with my hastily-put-together collection of things was a curly haired, loud, university-teaching, coffee-loving, Polish math teacher. I wanted to check her Starbuck's cup to see if she was drinking coffee, baby formula, or whiskey.


But the most memorable moment came when a fellow student (and improv club member), who I call "Blueboy", got up to make a short, 30-second statement advertising the club. He had already done this before, sharing a fairly tame explanation of the club and it's 'mission', so to say. The second time around the block was insane, and I should have saw it coming!


Basically, he got up and grabbed the mic. Suddenly, he belted a Lord of the Rings Gondorian call to arms, sounding like Braveheart (had Braveheart been castrated alive while giving his famous speech). Right then, everything went mute and I remember laughter and my face being cemented in the following position:



Taylor Swift - Kanye West, anyone?

While I looked like I was about to suffer a grand mal, perhaps brought on by the assortment of colourful hats that I surrounded myself with, this is what I saw while Blueboy was talking:


Yes, he was breathing fire and his arm turned into a blade forged from obsidian by a team of migrant Filipino workers. Yes, his eyes were bloodshot and he breathed out dragon fire. Yes, his shirt was a hue of blue that would horrify Death itself.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Actually, it's a BIG exaggeration. Even the blue shirt isn't true!

I was just shocked from the sheer randomness of the situation that I could not respond in any way! Honestly, I found it to be absolutely hilarious after a while, but I never expected for that to happen (neither did anyone else, I'm sure). It got people's attention, and I bet it will be remembered!

So thanks, Blueboy, for being ever-so shameless in your pitch for improv!

Hey Mac, see what happens when you miss school for a bit?



Today's blog post is inspired by Allie Brosh. Check out Hyperbole and a Half for her awesomely funny work!


EDIT: Blueboy revealed that the speech he recited was the famous Black Gate speech. Tons of fun!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Sea Breeze



So my drama teacher asked what kind of tree I would be if I was one. I'll take the abstract way out of this one:

A CHRISTMAS TREE!!! YAY!

No, the image above is not a Christmas tree. See below.

Besides Christmas being my favorite time of the year, people like to pay attention to me approximately once a year, green is my favorite colour, I have many trinkets like a tree, I can catch on fire, I need something to cover up a less-than-stellar skull and, of course, I'd always have a gift below me that everyone just loves go for - no one is ever patient about the plenty that I have to offer! They just grab and grab at my packages, hoping for a wonderful surprise full of ecstasy and joy. Being the tree, I will deliver; their faces flushed after a day of merriment and Christmas pudding!

Oh wait. That doesn't sound right. SCRATCH THAT! I would not want this man to show up in my kitchen:

Have a seat, sir.

Back to the question: if I was a tree, what species would I be?

I'd have to be a palm tree! I'm very lax and lazy - images that spring to mind when you think of palm tree. I'm also from the tropics, so it makes sense to be that tree. Palm trees are also synonymous with the ocean, and I LOVE the ocean and everything about it. Marine life is awesome! I also tend to drop some weird things onto people's heads, akin to a palm tree dropping its fruit into the ocean and the seed maturing elsewhere! Almost parasitic, but who wouldn't mind a parasite like that!


Oh, and I get mistaken as a Hawaiian at times. (Thanks for the suggestion, Pumpkin Lover!)


I hope that clears up any misconceptions about me and my yearning to be a giant, immobile organism, continuously urinated upon by drunk party-goers!


Life, how sweet it is ;)

Monday, September 13, 2010

Your Junk

So apparently, some classmates unleashed the Pandora's box that is my twitter and blog to my drama teacher! I'm assuming she read the previous post about her junk issue. Rather, my issue with her hoarding!


ROAR!

Here's something to soothe you!


I'd bet a top dollar that considering her trinkets as junk was less than flattering (yet, I'm not exactly a very flattering guy!).This is what Oxford Dictionary classifies as 'junk':


junk
noun
* informal old or discarded articles that are considered useless or of little value
* informal heroin
* the lump of oily fibrous tissue in a sperm whale's head, containing spermaceti


Don't worry Mac! I don't consider your collection of memorabilia as "useless or of little value." On the contrary, I have as much junk as you! Besides, by 'junk' I was referring to your collection of sperm whale tissue! Any adventurer can have heroin, but the best have sperm whale tissue!


Good thing you cleaned your office! I was going to do it for you sooner or later! Nicely done! Now, so you don't return to that horrendous habit, I will share a video with you:




Oh, I assume Little Korea or Bex showed you my awesome blog without showing you theirs. It's only appropriate that I do it for them! Click the following to see them:

Little Korea's Blog
Bex's Blog

To Little Korea and Bex: suck on that, bitches! ;)

I can't think of a good closing line, so I'll quote a line from Spring Awakening:


"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah"