Reports of My Demise were Greatly Exaggerated

Okay, so obviously it’s been over two months since I’ve updated, and probably you’re all thinking, “Has the Death Star finally been destroyed? Has the Luke Skywalker of an actual life fired the proton torpedoes of face-to-face communication into the exhaust port of indirect virtual correspondence? Has the Rebel Alliance of Mark’s extroverted tendencies finally gotten the best of him and become the New Republic, or at least the Alliance of Free Planets?” Or maybe you’ve just been asking yourself, “Has Mark’s Star Wars obsession finally gotten out of control to the point where he’s ceaselessly using metaphors from it to describe the current state of his existence?”

The answer to those questions is sometimes, “yes,” and sometimes, “no.” Which of course is completely unhelpful and reveals absolutely no information.

Obviously, the Death Star hasn’t been destroyed . . . for one thing, if you tried to look at the site, it was still here. There was nothing new on it, of course, but it was here. And now you can see that there IS something new . . . this post. So the Death Star has not been destroyed.

As for the other questions . . . Not really. I still don’t have a life, I’m pleased to report. The answer to the last question, however, was clearly “yes.”

Anyway, the reason I haven’t updated in so long is because, despite nothing changing on the “getting a life” front, I’ve been crazily busy lately. School has been insane, and Scrooge was insane for quite a while, and then even fencing was a little crazy at times. Basically meaning that certain things had to fall by the wayside for a while, and this blog was one of them. I’m sure that you’ve all been disappointed beyond all possible measure that it’s been so long, and for that I apologize. I hate to cause suffering.

But in any case, things are (hopefully) slowing down at the moment, so we’ll be able to get back on track, at least for the time being.

I’m not even really going to try too hard to get everything that’s happened in my life during the past two months . . . although I suppose I should give an overview, at least . . .

In case you didn’t know, Marley is dead. And since this comment has caused some confusion in the past, this is referring to Jacob, not Bob. Although I believe it’s equally true for both of them, I can’t honestly say that Bob’s death had much of an impact on my life.

Jacob’s did because there’s a song about it in Scrooge, in the form of a barbershop quartet. Since there’s a shortage of talented basses in the cast (and by “shortage” I mean “complete absence”), Rebecca (our music director) decided to make me the bass of said quartet.

Since I include myself in the untalented mass of basses, she also threw in John to help me out. In the end, he didn’t turn out to be terribly helpful . . . No offense to him, I like the man a lot, but he doesn’t know the part at all. *sigh* Oh, well.

In the end, though, I think it came off pretty well for all this . . . AJ might disagree with me on this, I’m not sure . . . but I’ll let Mr. University Singers speak for himself and enlighten us all with his opinion. But I know that I was happy with it, and I think Wayne and Rebecca were quite happy with it, as well.

Speaking of singing, I was also tossed into the Carolers as a bass . . . actually, no, I was originally cast as a Caroler, but originally Vince was also supposed to be one, so we would have an actual strong bass there. But, of course, Vince dropped, so that left me. I convinced Rebecca to add John (not Nowak . . . the other one . . .) to help me out, and I think that that’s worked out pretty well, all things considered. I mean, we’re not the greatest bass section ever, but we could be a lot worse (and would be, if it was just me).

But enough about acapella singing, although I could go on and talk about all the joyous drama that it’s caused . . . but I’m sure you all get enough drama without me adding to it.

Let’s see, what else . . . oh yes. On Monday of Tech Week, I was walking towards the office (to retrieve my coat, I believe) when Adam stopped me. “Hey Mark,” he said, “Could you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” I replied, expecting his next words to be something along the lines of, “Could you grab me a water while you’re in the lobby?”

“Want to play Fred and Young Scrooge the nights I’m not here?”

For those of you who may one day be in Adam’s situation, do people like me a favor . . . DON’T start a question like that matter-of-factly. It’s not nice. Making us do a double-take and say, “Wait, what??” is just plain cruel.

In any case . . . yeah. I became Adam’s understudy that night, and have successfully played Fred Hollywell and Young Ebenezer Scrooge twice. Hooray! *confetti*

So yes . . . Scrooge has been eating up my weekends recently.

“Get your lazy butt on the dance floor!” (Credit to Megan for that quote.) December 9th, 2006: It is Saturday. Two shows have been completed. At one of them, I performed in the roles of Young Scrooge and Fred Hollywell. It was the first time that I had ever done such things, and I was greatly stressed out. Lots of running around, lots of raising my hands above my head and screaming silently, lots of desperately hoping to get on stage, in costume, on time. (The height of irony . . . a quote from Taylor: “Mark! RELAX!!”)

There was also a female backstage who was not a member of the cast. This is, of course, frowned upon by the authorities, and of course I would NEVER abide by any breaking of any rule set out by any of the powers that be at Lifehouse, but in perfect honesty no one really cares. So there was this female, and she was wearing a very pretty dress, and curling her hair (which for some reason took her the entire show).

Her name was Andrea. Her reason for being there? The other reason that December 9th, 2006 was special: the Kimberly Juniors’ Christmas Dance.

Miss Andrea had found herself previously without an escort to said dance, and she had to go. She also had to have a male escort. In lieu of a more suitable partner, I was chosen to accompany her.

Upon the completion of the show, I went backstage and tried to change quickly into my suit (it was, regrettably but not unexpectedly, a semi-formal dance). I say “tried” because it sounds better than “miserably failed.” The dance had started at 9:00, and obviously the show wasn’t over yet at that point, so we were rushing over after the show (carpooling with Taylor and Daniel, who were also going). I had my suit and everything with me, but I also had to take my makeup off, hang my costume up, and get that STUPID button that’s under the tie buttoned . . . the one that you can’t button until the tie is already on, but which the tie being on makes it nearly impossible to successfully button.

I then discovered, much to my dismay, that I’d forgotten my comb. Obviously, since I’d just performed in a show in which I wore a hat, my hair was a complete mess. I didn’t have a terrible problem with this (I rarely do), but I figured that probably Andrea would prefer to show up with a guy who looked like he’d made SOME effort to look nice. In the end, I was able to borrow a hairbrush from Austin the Elder, so it turned out okay (I think).

As I quickly scurried out of the dressing room (several minutes after I had hoped to), I got several comments from the other guys on my appearance (most of them positive but confused). I reached the lobby, where everyone was standing around waiting for me. We quickly took pictures, then ran out to the car and drove to the place. I can’t remember what it was called . . . it was near Smiley Library, but that’s about all I figured out.

When we got inside, we had to go down this thing that was called (I think) the Receiving Line, where Andrea had to present me, her escort, to all the powers that be in KJ’s (yes, I’ve used the phrase “powers that be” twice now). Then we were allowed to go into the actual room where the dance was being held.

And so, here it is. My first impression of the first dance I was ever present at (and the last, to this point): “Dang . . . it’s freakin’ LOUD in here.” And when I say loud, I mean LOUD. Like, instant headache loud. I suppose all dances are like that, and I should’ve known this, but . . . yeesh.

We stood awkwardly in the doorway for a few minutes (and were waved at by a number of people), then went and sat down at the nearest table. We sat there for a while, then figured we should stand around awkwardly some more, so we went out on the dance floor and stood around awkwardly, and then went and sat back down.

We tried to have meaningful conversation, I think, but we failed because of the aforementioned ridiculous volume level. Daniel said he was very tempted to go and mess with the soundboard a little bit, but he refrained (much to my disappointment).

It was around this time, I believe, when Megan came over, grabbed the back of my coat, and roughly heaved me out of my chair. She then went over to Andrea and told her to get up, and then said what I have immortalized as the heading of this section.

And so we did. And we remained on the dance floor for the next hour and a half or so, and really, what’s there to tell? Depending on how you define “dancing,” we either did very little or quite a bit . . . several people came over and joined us at times (usually Megan and/or John, who, I’m discovering, has a name that’s way too common), and at other times we were just there ourselves.

After that we went and sat back down with Taylor and Daniel for a while, then got up again to dance the last song.

The most exciting thing that happened was towards the end of the night, when Taylor actually managed to drag Daniel out onto the dance floor for one song . . . but then, since almost none of you know Daniel, that won’t mean anything to you.

After the dance, Andrea (well, her father, technically speaking) took me home, and that was that.

If ever a wever a wiz there was . . . On Thursday, December 14th, auditions were held for The Wizard of Oz, and I chose to participate. After waiting a year between Lifehouse shows before (Cinderella-Scrooge), I shall now wait only a single show (Shadowlands) before I once again grace the stage at 1135 N. Church Street.

Anyway, this audition actually went well, as far as auditions go . . . wasn’t a miserable audition like my Scrooge audition was, or my Oliver audition . . . I sang “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof . . .

And then on Tuesday I learned that I’d made it in . . . as did Rachel and Taylor. Sarah also auditioned, but for mysterious reasons (meaning, reasons I don’t feel like explaining) she’s not in it.

So yeah . . . fun times there.

Roadtrip!! On December 21st, as I was putting the ornaments on our Christmas tree and drinking eggnog (non-alcoholic eggnog), we heard a car door slam shut on the street outside. We heard a muffled thumping, as though some large animal had jumped out of a truck.

We heard another car door slam. We all looked at each other, knowing what was coming. Jersey was placed in confinement in the office. I took another sip of eggnog, put another ornament on the tree.

Then the front door opened, and in walked the closers of the two car doors and the large animal: Uncle Ted, Bev, and Achilles. They moved out here from Indiana, and are currently living with us while they try to get back on their feet financially.

So for the rest of the night, we were sitting around talking with them and petting Achilles (who made a great first impression by destroying my glass of eggnog with his tail). And that, as they say, is that.

Bring us the dang figgy pudding already! On December 24th, it was Christmas Eve. The day wasn’t terribly exciting . . . we had church as usual, then watched football as usual.

That night, we followed through with our typical Christmas Eve tradition of a buffet of hors d’oeuvres (pronounced “horsey dor vers”) while watching some Christmas movie or other (despite complaints that several “House” episodes would be better).

This year, AJ and I spent a while searching to try to find the movies we watched every year when we were little, which consisted of a bunch of recorded TV specials. We watched “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and “Eureeka’s Castle Christmas.”

They were all, of course, pretty lame, but they all had their charms, and of course they brought back countless memories. I don’t think Mom and Dad enjoyed them very much, but AJ and I did.

Just before that, we’d celebrated AJ’s birthday and given him his presents, of which there were only two (one from me and one from Mom and Dad, because his big present is money for the roadtrip).

After we’d finished watching everything, Uncle Ted and Bev came back (they’d been off at a party with Bev’s children), and we hung around and talked for a while. Uncle Ted also showed us the not-really-famous “Ping Pong Ball Routine,” in which he makes three ping pong balls disappear (wow!) and then reappear. He also showed us that if you stick a ping pong ball in fire, it’ll flare up and then *poof*, be gone forever. And ALSO that they’re filled (essentially) with Vicks’ Vapor Rub.

All in all, an interesting night.

The gateway to . . . adulthood? Christmas Day. 2:29 AM. Welcome to the adult world, brother. AJ turns 21.

Later, everyone gets up and we have the traditional present-opening time . . . this was the year of the CD. AJ got 9, I got 6 (and I bought another one with giftcards). Four U2, one Weird Al, one Switchfoot, and I bought Coldplay.

My two biggest presents, however, were not CDs. The first one, which I was somewhat expecting, was a black fedora, which joins my trench coat (and the scarf that Moe made me) in my “uncool-guy-trying-to-be-cool” look.

The second one I didn’t expect to get in a million years, because I’d wanted it terribly for a long time and Mom was always telling me what a horrible waste of money it was (and I won’t deny that it is, much as I love it). I am now, however, the proud owner of a Master Replicas Force FX Episode V Darth Vader Lightsaber. Hoo-ah.

The main part of the day didn’t start until early evening, however: AJ’s official 21st birthday party. The details of this party were captured on video, and I can never hope to do it justice with words.

AJ will soon be in possession of a DVD of this video, as will I, so at some point you all should watch it. But suffice it to say that it was a fun night, filled with Uncle Ted’s crazy antics and lots of alcohol for everyone but me.

It’s over!! On December 31st, 2006, Scrooge ended. Despite a LOT of frustration during rehearsals, it was a good run and I enjoyed it a lot. As always, there are parts that I’ll miss (mostly people) and parts that I REALLY won’t miss. And . . . what else is there to say?

Happy New Year! It’s 2007! Yay!

Wizard rehearsals also started on Thursday . . . as you can tell, I’ve somewhat run out of gas in terms of writing this and just want to get it up. So we’ll leave off there with that.

Get ready for a 2007 filled with (hopefully) more consistent blogging here at the Death Star, which is, by the way, fully operational once again.

Comments:
Mrs. Perry: Did I say “old?” My bad, I meant to say “young and beautiful” . . . what the heck was I thinking? And yes, Sarah definitely did look amazingly beautiful. My apologies if my description seemed less than outstanding.

Stephen: You’ve seen UHF?? Awesome!! I wasn’t expecting that anyone I knew would’ve seen it . . .

AJ: I feel like the majority of responses to your comment would be outdated now . . .

Amy: Amy! Hello!! Thank you! I always wanted to be a Gravedigger, too . . . I was really happy when Rebecca upgraded me. Kelly was one because there was a show or two when we had a serious lack of Tenor, so she learned the part and sang it for us.

As for the completely pointless award that no one cares about . . . it’s a toughie. I’m inclined to give it to Mrs. Perry or Amy just because they are Mrs. Perry and Amy, who are not regular commentees here. But on the other hand, Stephen commented about UHF, which gives him major points. And then there’s AJ’s 11-part comment . . . in the end, though, AJ disqualified himself by claiming that he won before I even started thinking about it, and Stephen outclasses Mrs. Perry and Amy by being in contention AND being a consistent supporter of my work here at the Death Star.

Congratulations to Stephen, winner of the second Best Commenter Award!