aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Monday.

Monday night rehearsal.

oh my GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDD

Here's the deal. I am a cynical person. We all know this, yes? Yes. I do not like people. However, part of my philosophy of teaching is that a teacher has to be a safe person, which to me means a positive person. I do not mind being a positive person when I am at school, in a rehearsal, whatever. Doesn't bother me at all.

Additionally, in the triumvirate that is our band directing staff, I am the least tightly-wound. I know, mind blowing. I have observed that I absolutely need to be the Zen guy who says "oh, fourteen people don't have horns? Let me fix that." instead of getting mad and yelling. Again, I have no problem with this.

How does this relate to rehearsal? Well, we just had a not-so-great Monday night rehearsal. The things that made it not-so-great were as follows:

1) No lights in the football stadium. Starlight, starbright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, please don't let the tubas run over me, all right?

2) Learning new drill is always slow, especially when half of our band is freshmen. They have not built the skills of learning new drill. THIS IS NOT THEIR FAULT.

3) Building on 2, there was an asston of negativity coming from both the staff and the student leadership. Our band president is one of those super special hardcore band geeks that just make me snort with disbelief. I wasn't that fucking hardcore, and I'm a band director. We've got our head director from the press box saying "this is awful, this isn't even new drill and you look like you have no idea what's going on, no one is running, everyone is talking all the time". Please note that these things need to be said, and the head director needs to be the person that says them. However, student leadership does not need to be screaming "RUN BACK TO YOUR SPOT, YOU PUSSIES". Student leadership is about positoovity. It is not about threatening your peers with other bands ("THIS LOOKS LIKE PECOS").

At basically all times tonight, I felt like I was the only person giving positive feedback. Do I mind being the good cop? No. Does there need to be a bad cop? Absolutely. I just feel so overwhelmed with bad karma sometimes.

/rant

A Dream Achieved

So, when I moved into my new house, one of the new additions I got was my mom's piano. This thing has been in my mom's family for who knows how long. It's mostly in tune, should probably get it checked out one of these days, and the A right below middle C likes to stick, but it's a good little upright, probably better quality than most of the pianos in ACU practice rooms. It's a Baldwin, if you're curious.

So anyway, now that I have a piano, I've been making sure I spend some time (almost) every day playing and singing with it. I practice scales on the piano and do vocalise, and I always spend some time with fun, Broadway music (although I CAN'T FIND MY RENT BOOK, YOU GUYS, WHERE IS MY RENT MUSIC).

I noticed a few days ago that I was having what I call a "high C day". Usually, these days are few and far between for me, and once I realize I'm having one, it pretty consistently ends once I start some heavy singing (by heavy I mean in terms of duration, not in terms of pushing. I'm not dumb, y'all.) So, in a true nerd fashion, my very first instinct was to bust out my Seasons of Love music (I've got that ONE SONG in another of my B'way anthologies) and sing that awesome descant line, and I nailed it. Was wonderful. I ended my practice for that day, in the best mood ever and went about my business.

Then the next day was a high C day. And the next. And today.

I can't even really describe how I'm feeling right now. I've always been kind of a "fake tenor". In choir, I love to sing tenor II because the harmonies are usually much more challenging and rewarding. In my voice lessons, I would sing out of a "book of tenor solos" but none of them go above a G (maybe one A, but I can't think of an example). In vocalise, I could arpeggiate pretty high, but I always considered those "private" notes, not ones I'd want the public to hear.

In the musicals I've been in, I've never had to sing higher than an Ab. Every once in awhile I could pull off an ornament or a turn with a Bb or B in it, but it was never something I could do consistently.

So what I mean by a "fake tenor" is, I can sing these high notes, but only when I'm really working. I had to use a huge amount of air, and I couldn't really control them very well dynamically.

But now that I'm doing serious work on my voice every day, I'm building real technique and ability. This is a milestone I never ever thought I would achieve in my life, let alone this soon after college. I'm happy and excited and deeply joyful that this has finally occurred.

This how I imagine people who talk about having transcendent experiences with God feel. I'm still about an inch away from straight up agnosticism, but I am absolutely putting the credit here in the fact that I was designed to have this potential. It was my work that achieved it, but my work wouldn't make a difference if I didn't have that starting point.

Christ in a crepe I'm talking about religion. Someone shoot this blog before it goes bananas.

CPR Training

Herein ye shall find a record of the notes taken by Myself, as I bent my head to the learning of CPR.

Please note: these do not replace taking an actual CPR course. Do not attempt this at home.

These notes have been reproduced faithfully and entirely.

CPR video: hilariously melodramatic.

OH GOD IT'S AN EPISODE OF LAW AND ORDER

how the fuck did you break your arm you were nowhere near the car

For realsies: check a scene before running in, could be dangerous. if a person declines help, sucks to be them. biohazard bags are red. good to know.

Emergency action steps: check (the scene for safety) call (911 or your local emergency number) care (for the injured person).

Call first for a cardiac emergency, unconscious adult, collapsed child/adult.

Care first for a breathing emergency, after 2 minutes of CPR or treatment call 911.

if a person can talk, they have a pulse. Thanks, video!

Did you have to check your head with your hands to know if it's hurting?

OF COURSE SKATER CHILDREN ARE AT RISK, THE HOODLUMS

There is an extremely high incidence of sexy Asian men in this video.

For realsies: Airway Breathing Circulation (except we're just kidding about circulation)

I'm smugly stroking my birthday balloon while a heart attack strikes!

SLOWLY TAKE THE ORANGE JUICE OF INFARCTION

I hope all heart attacks involve dramatic string crescendos and heartbeats.

MAGICAL LATINA GLOVES

heart attacks are apparently purveyors of sexism.

Moved!! also, drunken rage spirals.

So the epic moving saga has drawn to a close. Got in Andrews about a week and a half ago, slept on a coworker's couch for five days, then moved into my new house on Monday. However, I had no stuff except a bed and clothes until today, so I've been getting to know my carpet quite well.

FORTUNATELY now I have furniture! Hurrah! My living room is almost completely set up (I'm still not happy with the chair-end table-chair-coffee table situation) with a few boxes lying around either mewling "unpack me" or demanding to be thrown away. Eventually, dear boxes. Eventually.

So last night, the guard coach at Andrews texted me and was like "a bunch of us are going to a bar in Odessa, you wanna come?" and I was like "Sure, bars are fun!" I happen to know that said guard instructor is totally gay although he's, like, 38 and as far from my type as possible. But I thought that it'd be a cool hanging out bonding type of deal.

FALSE. BLACK BEAR.

I get to this bar, which is part of an MCM Elegante and so quite emphatically not a gay bar, and I see the guard coach and wave and go in with him. He brings me to this table. Seated at the table are the following:

1) 65ish Filipino named Primo. If you imagine the Asian guy from the Hangover movies, you're basically spot on. I did not realize such people existed in real life.

2) A thirty-ish, stocky white guy who had two modes of operation: telling the Asian girl next to him that if she had a penis they'd be fucking right now or bumping and grinding on anything that did have a penis. In his defense, he only tried it on me once and when I asked him to stop he did and never tried again.

3) An uncountable horde of screaming Filipino women. Seriously. Constant screaming. The entire bar was glaring at them the whole time.

4) The stocky white guy's partner. I know this only because I was told, since said white guy exerted approximately equal effort in touching/talking/dancing/humping him as everyone else in the bar. He was also Filipino and apparently the crazy old man's nephew?

5) SWG's partner's twin.

6) A stocky MEXICAN guy, approximately the same age. However, he was clearly just as horrified because he and I kind of hid at the same table all night.

Throughout the three hours I was there, the guy that brought me spoke to me maybe three times, max. One of those times went like this:

"Do you follow baseball?"

"No. I don't really care for sports much."

"Me neither."

He had full and complete knowledge that I knew literally one other person in the bar (him). Now, I don't expect someone who brings me to a bar to be in a group of people to babysit me, but a little conversational lifeguarding would have been nice, rather than just leaving me to the wolves. Excuse me, the GAY WOLVES.

To compound this whole problem, my body apparently decided to react to its long-awaited reunion with alcohol by going into weepy drunk mode, so I spent the entire night trying to avert a rage/hate/shame/depression spiral. I didn't drink enough to lose sight of the fact that I was doing that stupid make-yourself-angry thing, but I did drink enough to be unable to stop. So eventually I ducked out (after the old asian guy started hollering "SUCK A DICK, HECTOR! SUCK A DICK" at the top of his lungs) and drove home. It had been two hours since I had anything to drink, don't worry, I'm not stupid. But I sure as hell wasn't going to sleep on anyone's couch that night.

Now, let's be clear: I love gay people. OBVIOUSLY. I think I would really, really like Stocky White Guy if he weren't smashed and horny as fuck. When he wasn't trying to fuck the guy closest to him he and I had fifteen seconds of a good conversation. And the Stocky Mexican Guy and I appear to share some social phobias, so that's cool. I just happened to hit that awful confluence of factors that ruin a Friday night. I do not blame anyone (except for guard coach, a little bit. He did abandon me) for the bad night I had. That includes myself: my feelings are valid and legitimate, no matter how much alcohol I have consumed (one margarita and one beer, so...). Hopefully next time I go out it'll end slightly less painfully.