I know what you're thinking

You’re thinking “Ha-ha, Mark and his broken promises . . . ‘I’ll update every Sunday’ . . . Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

Well I’ll have you know that I fully intended to update on Sunday. But I was busy, and didn’t have a chance. So I’m making up for it by updating today instead.

And so we come to the age-old question: what happened this week?

Well, Monday was, all-around, a pretty normal day. I can’t even remember what was due in school on Tuesday, so I’m not entirely sure what I did for school that day. I could, of course, go check, but that would require my getting up, and that’s boring. And requires physical effort. Which I don’t like.

But we DID have rehearsal. I remember because I remember standing outside waiting for rides with Sarah afterwards and saying to her, “I don’t want tomorrow to be Tuesday.” And we choreographed what will undoubtedly be the coolest number in the show (okay, maybe not, but it’s the most fun one that I do so far): The Fight.

I’ve never been involved in a dance fight before . . . obviously, I’ve done stage combat before (even some to music . . . which you’ll hear ALL about), but never a fight that was actually a dance in disguise. It’s awesome. Dustin is a genius.

And one thing I never thought I’d hear from someone choreographing a fight: “We’re can-can dancers, people!!” But yes. Y’all must come see Beauty and the Beast at the Bowl this summer . . . it will rock. Because you’ll get to see me getting beaten up by a napkin.

After learning the fight, we reviewed Belle . . . which pretty much all of us pretty much completely forgot. Which kinda sucks. But we relearned it and I think it’ll be okay . . . Dustin never ceases to amaze me . . . even when he’s extremely frustrated, he’s still a lot more amiable than some people I know are when they’re perfectly happy (NOTE: this is not referring to anyone who reads this [as far as I know]).

Then came Tuesday, which I did not want to come. Why didn’t I want it to come? Because I hate Tuesdays. Why do I hate Tuesdays? Because they suck. Why do they suck? Because they have both Torrey class AND Algebra class. Torrey class really isn’t bad at all . . . but the assignments usually due on Tuesdays are. As the TA blogring on Xanga says: “Our nightmares are filled with précis.”

But it really wasn’t THAT bad . . . because at Algebra, Mr. Burton actually admitted that one of the chapters in the math book was completely useless! This is a big deal, because he’s a math teacher, and a strong advocate of algebra’s practicality. Not only that, but he also revealed that we only had one more class before it’s over (not that this was a big secret . . . Jenna’s been counting down how many we have left for months now).

And then I’m thinkin’ we had rehearsal, but I can’t think of what we did . . . unless I somehow got my weeks mixed up and that rehearsal that I thought was on Monday was actually on Tuesday, and the time that I told Sarah I didn’t want the next day to be Tuesday was some other week. I think that’s the case.

So yes. Just transplant everything that I said about rehearsal to here.

Ahhhh!!!! I remember! It WASN’T rehearsal on Monday! It was fencing! HA!

Okay. So the Broadway Expressions Dance Recital was on Satuday, right? Right. And Josh wanted us to do a fight for it, right? Right. So we had extra fencings to make sure we were ready. One of these was on Monday.

Right. Okay. And also something else out of the ordinary happened on Monday, and for some reason I was under the impression it had happened on Thursday. But now the mist is clearing, and I can see again.

So yes. On Monday my aunt arrived from Indiana. My aunt’s name is Bev, and I can never bring myself to call her “Aunt Bev.” I have no idea why this is. It’s not because I don’t like her or anything . . . on the contrary, I like her very much. It’s just that somehow the term “Aunt Bev” doesn’t seem to fit her. So she shall be called Bev from here on out.

So I got home from fencing on Monday night and she was here, and I was talking with her and Mom for a while. She had noticed earlier that my room was clean, and was inquiring as to how this had come to be. Her first thought upon seeing my clean room: “Did he get a girlfriend or something?”

Now, jumping back to where we were: it is Wednesday. Wednesday was a big day. Because it was on this day that Josh, David and I were to show Brenda our fight routine and see if she thought it was okay for the dance recital. So we went to Broadway Expressions and practiced it for a little while (David liked landing the floor . . . it was a very nice floor). Gabe (er, pardon me, Chipper the Moose) also showed us his mad falling skillz. And called me David about ten times.

So then we showed it to Brenda, and she said “You’re gonna scare all the little kids . . . good job, boys.” So we got to do it for the recital. Yay.

And actually, I think the recital is the next significant thing that happened . . . yeah, it was. So we’ll skip ahead to Saturday.

I got up far too early for a Saturday, and went over to REV. Distressingly, I got there before David, which meant that I was pretty much the only person there who had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Thankfully Emilie got there the same time I did, so I was able to follow her to know where I was going, but then I was completely lost for a few minutes until Josh came out from the depths of backstage.

He then proceeded to show me around, then told me to drop off my stuff in the dressing room and warm up with him. These things I did. Then finally, right as Brenda started talking (giving the standard director’s pre-last-rehearsal spiel), David walked in. Josh showed him around (with me in tow), then we all went out and sat down behind everyone else and listened to Brenda explain the rules (including “[the swords and knives] belong to Josh Milligan, and if you touch them I will give him permission to beat you up”).

Then they started re-spacing the dance numbers (since the REV stage is gargantuan), and David, Josh, and I stretched and all that fun crap. In the aisle. With people stepping over us constantly. It was quite annoying . . . so then we moved, and people changed their courses to step over us.

Then the rehearsal finally started. I watched a fair amount of stuff from the wings, and was wandering around and such when Josh summoned me to help warm David up by flipping him a few times. Then it was our turn to rehearse the fight.

My GOSH, it sucked. The tone was set by the sound guy forgetting to turn the music on, and so we walked out and were standing there looking menacing for about three minutes only to hear an “Oh, sorry, my bad.” So then we went back and started again. This time the beginning went pretty well . . . but when I disarmed David of his knife, it flew straight under the curtain and was lost forever. The flip was horrendous. Then I died, and Josh and David had to skip the entire beginning of their fight because the knife was gone. And part of their fight wasn’t so great, either.

So then we went backstage and collapsed in the dressing room, telling one another how terrible we’d done. Josh went out for a little while, then came back and told us we’d made a little girl cry. David and I high-fived each other.

For most of the rest of the rehearsal, I stood in the hallway talking to Katrina and Josh. Then came the Great Bowing Fiasco . . . initially, none of us had considered the idea of David and I bowing. Then, as the music of the final number began to fade into oblivion, Josh turned to us and said “hey, you want to bow?” I didn’t, but David decided we might as well. So we went out and totally messed up the entire group’s bow because neither one of us knew what was happening.

So we did it again, and it went a little bit better. Except that as we were walking backwards after bowing (where the curtain would be closing in the actual show), Megan told me to dance, and grabbed my arm to make me do so. In grabbing my arm, she accidentally pushed me into someone else . . . someone else who happened to be the one person in the entire group that I didn’t know. Sigh.

Then there was a fair deal of waiting, and a little bit of warming up the wrists with the rapiers, and a bit of complaining that the sun was too bright, and a LOT of watching two younger folks battling each other to the death. It was amusing for about five minutes, then it got mildly annoying, then it got fairly annoying, then it got quite annoying, then it got REALLY annoying and I left the room.

Then the show began to happen. I watched most of the first act from the wings, up until the song right before the fight, at which time I went to find Josh and David and get into position.

To be honest, I was quite nervous . . . probably the most nervous I’ve been performing something on stage in a long, long time. Just because it was the first fight I’d ever performed, I suppose . . . but in any case, the fight went MUCH better this time. The knife still went beneath the curtain (all the powers of fate be cursed), but we had Katrina at the ready to kick it back onstage.

The only real problem came after the fight was over. Before Josh was killed, he took note of where the swords were so we could take them off in the blackout. But when the lights went away and he leaned over to pick them up, horror of horrors . . . they weren’t there.

Then the lights started coming up again, so he just booked it offstage. The next song, of course, had to be a soulful ballet solo. My parents got great amusement out of seeing two swords slowly disappear behind a curtain during this song. SIIIIIGH.

For the second act, David and I secretly went and joined the audience until near the end, when we came down to bow. The second act was quite good indeed . . . although the fight had apparently gone SO well that the dancers felt that they had to steal from it. Michael did two shoulder rolls, and Hanni did a little punch-kick combination. But everything was pretty good . . . except the music for Michael’s song. Because all I could think of through the whole thing was “all this music is is a cheap imitation of U2.” They used the same musical style, a lot of the same musical effects that U2 uses frequently, the same vocal technique . . . everything. Except that it was all quite inferior. But the dance was good.

One of the things even had some magic tricks in it. ‘Cause the younger Team Broadway was doing sections from Seussical, and Aaron played the Cat in the Hat, and he turned a silk into a cane. It made me happy.

Then we left to go back and bow, which actually didn’t go too horribly. After standing around for a bit, I went home and took a shower and changed into more comfortable clothes (“more comfortable” meaning “not long pants”).

I had discovered during the recital that the older BE crew (like Brenda and Jay and them) were performing You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown that night, so I decided to go to that since I had nothing better to do with my life.

I’m running out of time, so I won’t make a full review, but it rocked. Jay was awesome (I was trying to talk to him for like literally ten minutes after the show, but he was constantly swamped by other, more female adoring fans). He was Snoopy, by the way.

So then I went home and to sleep. The next day just happened to be Sunday, so we had church as usual, then Seth stayed for the afternoon and we hung out. Then we went to Lifehouse for the Season Celebration, in which the 13th season was announced and Wayne was put on trial by Lifehouse villains (no one really cared about what the season was).

It was very clever and very well done, and very funny. Although the end portrayed Wayne as the almighty ruler over Lifehouse, which (while I suppose is true) was kind of cheesy and annoying. But there were thunder and lightning effects and Dr. Mr. was actually the one who saved the day, so it was all good.

Then they talked about where Lifehouse might be going in the future, and different things they might like to try (Bethlehem Marketplace took a prominent role in this section). Then they awarded the first ever Lifehouse Scholarship to Josh Lomeli, and then they announced the season, which is to be the first season ever with nine shows.

They are:
Pinocchio
Love and Laughter
Scrooge!
Shadow Lands
The Wizard of Oz
The Story of Ruth
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Noah and the Ark

So that’s exciting. You can expect to hear about my horrendous auditions for several of those.

Then we came home and watched an episode of an old TV show called Moonlighting, starring Bruce Willis, which I had never seen before. If you’ve never seen it, and you happen to have the opportunity to watch it, don’t pass it up. It’s hilarious. It’s a detective show, but it’s a comedy, and it rocks.

Nothing really significant happened on Monday . . . well, technically it did, but not for me. The Alias series finale was on, but Mom and Dad were both working so we taped it and haven’t watched it yet. You can expect to hear me wailing about that in the next update, most likely.

Which brings us to today. Today was a day of great joy. Why? Because IT’S OVER!!! IT’S FINALLY OVER!!!!!!! Yes. We took our Algebra Final today. *does happy-happy dance*

Rejoice with me! Rejoice with me! For the tyranny is over! WE’RE FREE!!!! (“We’re ointment!”)

And on that happy note, we shall end. On to comments:

AJ: I think you took that comment a little bit too seriously. I wasn’t referring to Shakespearian tragedy . . . just to a general sense of sorrow underlying the otherwise happy ending. Because Hollywood likes to give us happy Disney-style endings, and that’s annoying to me. When you have a character die, why can’t you just leave him dead? That’s all I was saying . . . not that I wanted War of the Worlds to be like Hamlet.

Stephen: Which is precisely why I just used the Star Wars curse I felt like using. If there isn’t one that works, use whichever of the non-working ones is the most fun. Or something like that.