Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Secret Agent X-9's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, April 19th, 2007
10:27 am	'Bye to my baby. ( ... ) (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
2:23 pm	prologue. PROLOGUE. If asked to point out the precise moment at which everything spun completely out of control, I would say it was when I inadvertently killed an innocent fifty-eight-year-old man by showing him a short film. It was more of a commercial, I guess, but when you've been working on something a few weeks you come to think of it in the most pretentious terms possible. I don't know if that happens to everyone, or just me. All the important information, exposition and such concerning me (and the content of the film) is on the way soon enough, don't worry. But of everything that has happened recently, all the calamities and catastrophes – this is called foreshadowing, by the way – of everything that has happened, the moment I consider to be pivotal was the death of the man in question – the circumstances and manner of his stupid, grotesque death. Were I more prone to cliché I would tell you I see it every time I close my eyes. I don't, of course, but certainly it comes up now and again. I used to see things on the TV that reminded me of it, or him, or him and then it, all the time. I no longer have a TV. Like I say, though: now and again. It went like this. The lights came up on the film I had been showing him and the boardroom was full of faces hanging slack, and this man's mouth was the widest of all. I suddenly discovered an ability I didn't know I had – I can differentiate between people who are stunned, and people who are at the onset of a massive coronary. It's in the eyes. You could probably spot it too. Everyone else in the room (with one exception, which I will get to a little later) was, like him, variations on a visual theme – old, gray or graying hair, jowls, suit and tie. You see them everywhere, they're interchangeable. Some had glasses, there were some combovers and some bald heads, there were maybe one or two smartly-trimmed mustaches, and the odd beard. To make it easy to keep track, I will tell you that the dying man was named Dave. In everyone else's eyes I saw the blankness that happens when all non-essential parts of the conscious mind shut down in a mad dash to find an appropriate reaction to something. In Dave's eyes, I saw terror as naked as any terror has ever been. What you see in the eyes of a man dying unexpectedly can be described, in a curious way, as freedom, because there was so much in his life he thought was vitally important and which was, at that moment, not. There is no concern which takes precedence over your immediate death. Not your taxes, not your daughter's college fund, not your dignity. The world had slowed down for the whole room, and then it seemed to slow down to a complete stop for everyone but poor Dave, for whom time and motion snapped back to normal and made up for lost work. I don't know how it felt to him. I can only say how it looked to me. One of Dave's hands was visibly shaking and he was gaping – mouth and eyes – at nothing. He was one of the combovers, and he was whiter than usual. His breathing became heavier very quickly and then it was the only sound in the room and then he tried to raise his shaking hand and he seemed to be having a little trouble with this and then his whole body was shaking and his ridiculous combed-over hair quavered more dramatically as though it was a Dave's-Terror-Meter letting everyone know exactly how searingly shit-scared Dave happened to be at that moment and no one in the room was looking at each other and no one was looking at Dave at all, it was just a baker's dozen or so of the longest thousand-yard stares you might care to imagine and they were all just looking at nothing and the only person to effect any eye contact was Dave, scared Dave, who seemed to remember how to move his head and tried to catch the eye of everyone around him but either they were beyond paying attention or they were aware of him but unwilling to acknowledge that he was there and he managed to raise his hand, the one that was shaking at first, to his chest and then a thudding noise indicated he had just banged the underside of the table with his knee, I don't know which one, and his mouth was a hanging black O and from that mouth issued a noise like an outraged fat woman but they still would not look at him, still no one would acknowledge this man or his crisis, and his eyes went from focusing on nothing to not focusing at all and he shuddered a few times and finally, at the age of fifty-eight, David Howe died alone in a room full of people he'd known and worked with for years. It was not the worst event that occurred at that company and in light of everything that happened I would say it seems barely significant, but at least to me it is worth noting. Like I say, it was then that all events and actions moved themselves irretrievably out of my control. I realize that they were probably that way anyway, if it had gotten to the point where the above could even have taken place, but that's how it seems to me. What follows is what I have to offer by way of a confession, starting at the beginning. Any sane person would agree that I, of all people, have no place insisting on any principle at all, and to this I happily submit, but for that one point (of no one's contention, to be honest) on which I stand firm: That, up until Dave died in that boardroom, I honestly believed, and believe, that I had some degree of control over what happened around and inside me. That I'd had a plan and that I had worked with this plan more or less carefully, and that the plan was theoretically sound. David's death was one of the last times I felt any flavor of guilt over anything, and though I don't feel it now, I did then, and if I had known what would happen once I rolled that film, I think that the person I was at the time would not have done it. I am not sorry for any of what happened except for Dave, and I can't apologize to him now. I thought about saying that this will be dedicated (ha!) to his memory, but it feels like the least worthwhile detail possible. So fuck it. The immortal spirit of David Howe, wherever it may be, will have to be satisfied with what I've said already. Now that I have indulged myself in the shambling approximation of a moral stand, I think we can begin. (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
10:58 am	Holy shit, I'm back in the studio. Saturday's session was on. I basically nailed the demo, something I have been unable to do for, what, a year? But to be fair I've been too afraid (for no good reason) to try. So I just went in and did it and that was that. Highlights: "You know, it's a well-known fact that Chingy and I don't often see eye-to-eye on things, but the fact of the matter is that I, too, like the way you do that right thurr." "Before that, we had Rooney with 'I'm Shakin,' and that's Rooney doing his part to raise awareness for, uh, you know, that disease where you shake a whole lot." There wasn't a lot of comedy gold in there because I was mostly just trying to show that I can do the sort of thing one does on a demo. I did not hand it in, for a few reasons: one, it wouldn't burn to disc for some reason, and two, I seem to have made a joke about Parkinson's disease on it and maybe that wouldn't fly so well. I'm trying to get back in there on Saturday; we'll see how it goes. (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004
10:44 am	And now, your Community Calendar. (I wrote this in the studio and didn't get a chance to burn it to a usable audio format. But I thought it was worth sharing. There is of course the very good chance that I am wrong. Anyway, here it is.) WCSB Community Calendar, brought to you by Clamwell's Enormous Mosquito Emporium. Never be caught without an enormous mosquito again -- come to Clamwell's. Today is Saturday, November 20th, and tonight there's some classic gridiron action as the Harvard Crimson takes on a series of increasingly larger oncoming vehicles. That's tonight at eight PM, tickets are three dollars. The Allston Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a marathon of pirate movies and zombie films, starting at three in the afternoon today; refreshments will be served. This will be followed by a cuddle party, which will be followed by a bunch of willowy young male Anglophiles, ripped to their pale concave tits on Pabst Blue Ribbon, experimenting with bisexuality. Boston native Regina Hall will be debuting her one-woman show at the Charles Playhouse tonight at ten PM; her show is entitled "Reflections on a Huge Glass of Poison," in which Miss Hall talks at great length about, and then ingests, a huge glass of poison. Seating is limited to theater capacity and this show is set for an extremely limited number of engagements. The Somerville Gravel Society is sponsoring its sixth annual Gravel Rub, Sunday at noon. Men, women, and children of all ages are encouraged to come on down to the VFW in Somerville and rub warm gravel all over their faces and hair. Admission is free. Declan Coldramp, a local philanthropist, will be exhibiting his collection of rare misprinted stamps at the Northeastern University library Monday at four-thirty in the afternoon, followed by a question-and-answer luncheon on the library's terrace at five-thirty and the savage crime of murder at six-seventeen. That's all for the WCSB Community Calendar. This is Frederick Shitheap, for 107.1 WCSB, broadcasting from a small barrel buried hundreds of feet below the Earth's surface. Thank you, and take care. (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 21st, 2004
10:03 am	It was twenty years ago today / Sergeant Pepper taught Lisa Bonet. Those of you who don't read the poe-news forums probably missed this, but I'm proud of it and I don't have 665 to put this on anymore (or I do, but it's not going to be updated) so I figured that livejournal would be a good place for it. The contest was this: You pick one of Sinclair Broadcasting's sponsors and you make a banner for them that is bad. The sort that might drive business away. The sponsor I picked was Wal-Mart. I only had MS Paint to work with but if there's one thing I know how to do, it's squeeze every last trick out of MS Paint. What does this have to do with radio? Not a lot. But studio time hasn't been going well lately; I tend to go in on Saturday mornings, when I would rather do nothing less than be awake and concentrate. This weekend I'm bringing a newspaper into the studio so I'll have material with me. I suspect this will go well, but I'll let you know. Oh yes, the banner: Current Music: Tessie! You are the only only only. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 12th, 2004
4:19 pm	And so on. I have been working on the demo. Studio time every weekend. I am also drunk right now. At any rate, I have nothing useful to present to you, as far as the demo goes, but what I do have is something I made while fucking around with ProTools. I am mostly proud of this because there was only one person in the studio, and because timing responses to yourself is kind of tricky. But I think I did okay with it. So, until I have an actual useful demo, here is something that cracks me up whenever I hear it, even though I did it: Give a listen. I can't promise you won't be disappointed, but I can't promise you will, either. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
10:00 am	THE SHOCKING RETURN Okay, so it's not really a return and it ain't so shocking, but here I am. Updates on the radio thing, you ask? Or you didn't ask, but whatever, here are some. After graduating, I slacked on the demo a little more than I would have liked, and I'm still not done with it. Hell, I've barely started it. Every time I started to work on it, the same thing happened -- I'd have no idea what to say. This bothered me, because it should be easy, right? It's not. It's one of the hardest parts of this whole thing. Imagine it for a moment: Someone hands you a microphone and, with more or less two seconds' notice, tells you to say something entertaining for thirty seconds. Maybe you could do it, but I sure as hell can't, at least not consistently. It's not that I have nothing to say; it's that I have too much to say and I have no clue where to begin. It's rough. So I came to the decision that the next time I'm in the studio (about two weeks from now), I'm bringing in a notebook, and between songs I'm going to jot down a few notes about what to talk about. I think that's all it will take. Otherwise I'm in there with no confidence, and I think that confidence is sort of the hinge this whole thing swings on, at least for me. Meanwhile I'm at work and need a way to kill time. A lot of people on my friends list have been doing this thing, and I figure I'll take a crack at it: "Leave a comment with your name if you want to know what I really think of you, and I’ll reply and tell you. No lies, all honesty. Post it in your journal after I do yours so I can see the reverse." Note that I reserve the right to tell you in private, or in some cases (which aren't likely to occur) not at all. This is probably the first and last time I will ever do a livejournaling "meme" thing, but it should fill up some time, so have at it. (48 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 7th, 2004
10:38 am	Well, shit. I graduated. Here was my speech: "I'd like to thank, uh, me, for being so awesome. This whole thing turned out to be a lot less painful than it could have. Um. REMEMBER TUPAC. Thanks, and goodbye." That was it. I got handed a package of information and in a few days I'll set up some stuff so as to begin the process of eventually getting a hot sexy job. This has had a pretty big impact on my life. I keep a paper journal, which is pretty gay, and in it I wrote some things, and what follows here is a somewhat modified version of that. A little later, I will write some about what radio means to me and why I want to get into it. But for now, here's what I've got... If I could trace back the general path of my life for as far back as is important, it would probably go something like this. After I graduated high school, what basically happened was that I didn't want to accept that I had been a big fish in a little pond, to coin a phrase. For the first time, I had the feeling that I was living in whatever comes after the closing credits of a movie. The characters drive off into the sunset -- and then what? I had a triumphant ending to my high school career -- and then I guess I thought I'd do a quick stint in some job somewhere and then rocket to superstardom, somehow. Meanwhile, I started working meaningless shit jobs that I hated and that offered no real chances for either advancement or fulfillment. I didn't mind; I thought they were stepping stones on the way to being a world-famous artist. I didn't even realize that there's really not much money to be had (with some exceptions) in drawing comics, even if you're particularly good at it, which I'm not. The whole thing came to a low point, I think, around where I was making boxes eight hours a day for a living. It may get a whole lot worse than that, but it probably won't. After that, my life began an incredibly long and ridiculously slow upward arc, which only looks that way in retrospect. But when you find yourself happy to be working at a K-Mart, something is probably very wrong. Along the way, I found a lot of ways for my (by this point) towering insecurity to manifest. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but I developed a habit of trying to be other people. I'd try to emulate some aesthetic or another -- then after a month or so I'd move on to something else. Part of it was that I'd always be hatching some stupid project (like when I wanted to basically be a skater and make the CKY videos, even though, you know, someone else already fucking had) which I would lack the means and/or motivation and/or information to follow through on (probably for the best). It didn't seem to matter who I was trying to be, as long as it wasn't me. I probably don't need to tell you this, but it was all escapism. I hated my life and its complete lack of any decent direction, and I wanted to be someone more successful and interesting. This extended to a lot of things. I began to obsess over my body. I didn't want to be the fat kid I was when I was younger. Unfortunately, nature had not been made aware of my desire to be sleek and athletic, so it was time to sit down to a big old bowl of denial. This became a neurosis before really long, and soon I would actually feel deflated, in whatever way, even when someone jokingly called me fat. I remember the moment I decided I wanted to go through with this school thing already -- I was in this selfsame office building. I think it was a Monday, though I could be wrong. I'd just gotten bitched out for not knowing things I'd have had no way of knowing, and I was tired and didn't want to be there, and I was on the toilet when it hit me that I had said it was time for a change way too many times. It was the birthplace of a new philosophy for me (and also of some poop). Here it is: Do it or don't. Whatever it is -- either get it over with or commit yourself to not doing it. Don't hem and haw and procrastinate. Either fucking do it, or fucking don't. Okay, I thought, I wanted to move on. But how? I'm a pretty bad artist, and I'd never be able to support myself just drawing comics. But one thing I can do, it occurred to me, is: talk. I can talk a fucking blue streak up and down the coastal US, and stop off for scrambled eggs along the way and eat them without shutting up. Get me started, and your grandchildren's grandchildren will be graduating college by the time I run out of things to talk about. Okay, awesome, but how can I use that? Oh right, broadcasting school. I'd requested an info packet from them a year or so prior, but never got it. So this time, I made sure. And there was a quick false start, and then bam! I was off to radio school. This has been a trip for me. I'm a lot more confident now than I can ever remember being -- I found something I'm good at. Sometimes even really, really good at. By about the third class, not only had I realized that I'd made the right decision by going there, but I also barely even noticed that the ridiculous complex web of defense mechanisms and escapist bullshit I'd put around myself was starting to unravel. Pretty soon, a few things hit me. The first is this: I like me. I do. I don't have to be anyone else -- the freedom to be yourself comes with the freedom to be boring. And if that's who you are, it's quite okay to be boring. So this is me. After several years of trying really hard to be someone I'm not, I finally got to know the guy who's living in my skin, and it turns out he was me all along, and he's a pretty cool guy. Another is this: I like my body. It's not perfect, and I'm not skinny, and my lower teeth are fucked up and my mouth is too small to not look weird when I grin. This is okay, though. I still think I'm a pretty good-lookin' fellow. I've been eating more or less well and exercising lately, but I'll still probably never have a rock-hard six-pack or anything. And that's also okay, because I don't feel like that's a vital component to a happy life. I am neither rail-thin nor grossly obese. I am a big hairy Scotsman. Personally, I think that's a good thing to be. Go ahead and give it a try. Apparently, chicks dig it. The things that can happen, I guess, when you suddenly find yourself with any marketable skills at all and a tiny bit of actual, real confidence. I know this sounds like your usual retarded Livejournal post wherein someone announces to the world that things are totally going to be different now and/or drops a lot of "I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING" on you, but these aren't things that only now hit me. I've found that change does not come in flashing bursts of revelation, but rather over time -- change is something best viewed over your shoulder. I am actually and truly happy with myself and with my life. No small feat, that. Even more impressive to me is that I am now at the start of a career which I really think (and I don't seem to be the only one) will go well, if not quite damn well. So I'm happy. That's all for now. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 1st, 2004
10:40 am	GONK* Once again I find myself with not much to say. All my classes these days are finals. Tuesday was a production final. I'm going to ruin the ending by telling you that the spot I worked on for the last few weeks and also the spot I made last night both got a score of 16 out of 20. Production really isn't my strong suit and that's apparently a solid B, so hooray for that. Anyway, for the final we were split up into groups of four and had to make a spot that was between sixty and ninety seconds long, and would advertise a new (fictional) radio station. Those were the only rules. Everything else was up to us. Later on today I'm going to try to stop by the school and put on disc some of the things I've recorded, and that will wind up being one of them, so expect mp3s of the spots soonish. Other than that there really isn't a shitload to say. Tonight is the TV Production final, and I'm not too bad at that so it should be okay. I generally hate when people talk about dreams they had, so feel free to ignore the shit out of the following -- you may find it entertaining but mostly I'm writing it down somewhere so I don't forget it, and also it's slightly relevant to school. Last night I had a dream that radio school was also wrestling school, and my instructors encouraged me to develop the Hollywood JSP persona as a heel. They suggested that, as homework, I feud with someone and do some things that a heel might. So, what I did was this: I arranged to have his children abducted and sold into white slavery, and then I somehow (I guess I pulled some strings somewhere or something) got his name legally changed to Dicklips. I have been giggling about that all day. * I once lived in a place called "The Gonk." True story. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004
1:16 pm	Love me tender, Matthew Sweet / Never Kurtis Blow.* I know I haven't written in this thing in a while, and I am sorry. There hasn't been a shitload of interesting stuff to talk about. All my classes now are finals, which mostly consist of your average performance-based stuff (which I have trouble remembering) or writing stuff down, but at any rate, at this point it's less about learning new and interesting things than it's about showing that I have learned the things in question. Coming up is a News final and I have to write some stories for that. It's tomorrow, so possibly I should get on the stick. Meanwhile, I have a production final coming up, and I did it but then realized I kind of fucked up so I am going to go into the studio on Saturday and re-record the voice-over part of it. Once that's done, I'll burn it to CD and there should be mp3s of it to listen to, if you're interested, shortly after. If nothing else I am proud of what I'd already done with it -- the spot has to be sixty seconds, and I fucked up a lot while recording it and eventually just broke down laughing for no good reason. So it wound up being this three-minute monstrosity which I cut down to sixty seconds and it sounds pretty seamless. The only downside is it came out a little too short, and that's why it needs to be re-recorded. While goofing around, though, I also recorded an example of how not to make a spot, and I'll try to have that available to listen to as well. And now to write news. On the whole I am very happy I decided to go to this school. I suspect good things will happen. Or they won't, you know, whatever. *You have made Amanda Peet / And I love Grant Show. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 11th, 2004
3:56 pm	I got something to say / I killed your Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Last night was a radio performance class. There's not a shitload to say about it other than that I am really a lot more confident behind the controls now, although I still have some way to go. Also there was some ad-libbing and I was kind of proud of the line I came up with: "In a recent Rolling Stone article, Toby Keith said he wishes he'd written 'Look What You've Done to Me' by Boz Scaggs. Hey, maybe Toby Keith and Boz Scaggs can collaborate on an album that twice as many people won't listen to." Haw. Anyway. Before class started, I sat down with the school's director and had a talk with him about my concerns. He felt that there should be no need for me to re-take the class, though I could if I still really wanted to. But he said that the instructors are generally aware of more than they let on, and they are in communication with one another and usually are on top of things. He said they tend to be able to spot the people who've basically wasted their tuition money, and the people who will likely go somewhere. He didn't say how I was doing specifically but I came away from it with the distinct idea that I think I'm doing pretty goddamn great. He said that I had a lot of creativity and it showed, not just during classes but in the halls and such. This seemed to be a good thing. I was pretty jazzed to hear it. This turned into a longer discussion of a lot of different school-related things. We talked about how a lot of the students are dropping f-bombs in the studio and how their rationale is that the studio isn't live, even though they're told to treat it like it is. The director said he does this to get them in the mindset where they won't cuss in the studio. I said it's not just that, to my mind, but also the fact that it's good to be in the habit of DOING WHAT YOUR BOSS TELLS YOU. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to agree with it. But you do have to do it. This shit isn't complicated. A lot of the students seem to think they'll be the next Stern, and they don't even understand what he does on his show. It's like saying "fuck" on stage because Lenny Bruce did, without an understanding of its meaning or context. Ugh. Long story short, I don't think I'll be retaking, and I think everything is going pretty well. Studio time tomorrow. Biking tonight. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 9th, 2004
1:54 pm	Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so Doris Day.* Last night was a TV Performance class. I showed up early, because I had nothing better to do -- like an hour and change early. Mike, one of the students, was also there. I signed up for studio time and then we got to talking about what had happened during the last class. I guess I wasn't alone in thinking that things had gotten a bit ridiculous, as my dad might say, and Mike had this idea that maybe before the class got underway we should all sort of sit down and talk out whatever needed to be discussed, so as to get us all on the same page and such. I also shot the shit with the instructor a little bit. He's been doing this for a really long time and has worked for some huge companies, so he's got some pretty incredible war stories. He talked about how he used to work for Anheuser-Busch and how they used to have all kinds of beer lying around the offices, and would give you a certain amount of money per month with which to go into a bar and buy everyone a beer. Apparently they discontinued this practice when they realized it was turning out a fair number of alcoholics. Then people showed up and class started. A lot of people were out yesterday, but there was a discussion among the people who actually were there. On the whole, it went better than I'd expected. I found that I actually could get a word in edgewise. Pretty cool. After that, it was off to the TV studio. The assignment was pretty simple -- read some news stories. Try to read them well, try to pace them, and then he'd ask you what you thought, and then he'd tell you what he thought. Most people did really well; there's a lot of visible improvement in the class. Eventually, it was my turn. I'd love to tell you what happened but it was nothing that was easy to reproduce in text; I read the copy. I did it pretty well, I thought. Basically I played it straight and more or less mimicked the way newscasters do it. The class clapped, I felt good. He asked me what I thought of it. I said that I flubbed a few words here and there, but other than that I thought I pretty much nailed it. He agreed -- he said that it seemed like I could do pretty much anything I wanted with whatever was in front of me, like I could turn into pretty much anyone. Hearing this felt pretty awesome. That was actually it for class. One other person went, and then we got to go home. Probably due to the amount of people who were out, it ended an hour early. I forget what Thursday is but I am all ready for it. After that is studio time; I have to produce a spot. It'll be a bit of a challenge, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. I did indeed get a new bicycle, by the way, and today I rode it to work. Eight miles one way -- not bad, as exercise goes. I don't know what that has to do with radio school but my point is that bikes rule and bicycling to work also rules. * Now she's gone and all Tim Faraday / Oh I believe / in Spalding Gray. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 4th, 2004
11:11 am	GLIB GLOB The copy final was last night. Some things happened. I will try to remember as many of them as I can. Before class even started, some goofy shit was going down. There's this girl, she's all right but sometimes is a little iffy. In an earlier entry, I mentioned how I had some criticism of her favorite radio station's Web site, and she took it personally and argued about it for a while, even though I've been working at an ISP for something like five years now and probably know a little tiny bit more about this shit than she does. That's not an appeal to authority, mind; she was guessing at things I had actual knowledge of. Anyway, this girl - she was engaged in a spirited discussion with some other people in the class and I had no idea what it was about until Bruce, another student, asked me whether I agreed that thirty-three percent of the world's population is HIV positive. Now, I have no goddamn clue what the actual numbers are like (Note: I looked it up. World Health Organization estimates that there are 40 million cases of it globally, which is a high number but not even kind of anywhere near a third of six [or so] billion), but even so, that sounded not only a little high but also completely fucking insane. One in three people? No. I was then informed that she felt this figure must also reflect the number of people who are HIV positive and don't know it. Can we be done with this sort of thing already? What kind of person gets told about the statistics of HIV positive people who don't know about it and actually believes them? How the fuck do you get numbers like that? A survey? "Excuse me, sir, would you mind answering a couple quick questions? I'm conducting a survey." "Oh yeah, sure." "Good, good. Are you HIV positive?" "Yes, but I'm not aware of it." "Okay, I'll just mark that down here. Thanks for your time." And then she started asking other people what they thought the percentage was, and they came up with "Uh, twenty maybe?" And others said ten. Where were they even pulling these numbers from? Point being, it was here that I realized that critical thinking may not necessarily be dead, but sometimes it really does seem to be on life support. I mostly listened to the argument and didn't really get involved, but I couldn't resist asking her where she got the number from, and her answer was that she'd seen it on a TV show once. Okay. She declared that on break she would use the Internet to find out what the actual numbers were. I wrote down a prediction that even if they got an accurate answer, it still wouldn't stop the argument (SPOILERS: I was right). The argument was loud and chaotic and I know it sounds like it has nothing to do with what I learned last night, but it does. It took a while for the instructor to get everyone to settle down. Class started with a quick brush-up on principles for writing ad copy, and the most important thing about it, which is called the Creative Pyramid (Attention, Interest, Credibility, Desire, Action). After that, we handed in our homework. We'd had to write a sixty-second spot for a band's upcoming show. I read Josh's spot and he read mine. He asked me to give him energy, and so I did. His copy was good enough as it was, so I didn't have to do a lot besides sound kind of brash when I read it. Applause was wild. I felt good. Thankfully that was the last time I was required to have any great amount of energy, because I was running on no great amount of sleep. Josh read my copy after that. Honestly I'd kind of written it for my own voice, so I wouldn't have to tell someone, "Okay, sound concerned here," but he did a good job with it. The approach I took was to play it as a PSA, starting with a woman saying, "I never thought it could happen to me..." She would then explain how she went to a show and all her friends were killed by robots. The rest of the copy was a concerned, reassuring male announcer talking about how the club guarantees there will be no squads of laser death robots at this show. I don't have it with me (I'll get it back in about a month), but I remember it containing the line "The show is all-ages, smoking is allowed and it's general admission, so you have no excuse to go, unless of course you have been killed by robots." The last line was the woman again, saying, "I feel like I can live again. Thank you, Sportsman's Club." Reaction was good, people laughed their heads off and clapped when he came out. Folks laughed harder at other spots, but my demented ego was satisfied because other people had relied on cheap sex jokes (or just outright saying shit you absolutely cannot say on the radio) to get laughs. I'm satisfied with just being funny. I have found that I am getting accolade, respect and positive reaction from an audience, however small in this case, and am largely doing so on my own terms. This is most of what I could really ask for out of life. No, really. We watched a couple of ads. The instructor had worked on them, they were for Trivial Pursuit. They used celebrities. One of them contained Little Richard -- I thought it was a good idea to get him, because everyone knows who he is and he probably didn't cost much to get. But it turned out that they gave all of them a flat fee of $25k. He also said, "Elle Macpherson was so nice -- Rachel Hunter was a bitch. Had a lot of attitude." Then came some ads for wine. The trick here was that we watched them without sound first and then tried to figure out what they would contain (how much copy, what music might be in it, etc), and then we would watch them with sound and see if we were right. The first two, I missed completely. The third one, I said, "I think there's going to be no copy, just dialogue." Unfortunately, he couldn't hear me, because people were talking. They had to talk, see, because the ad contained a woman and a bottle of wine and they were making all kinds of witty jokes about how the bottle contained GHB and she probably liked sucking dick or something. We were then handed a 15-storyboard page and told to write copy or music or dialogue (basically, write audio) for it. Some people wrote a song, some people didn't. One person's copy had nothing to do with anything and contained not only the sentence "Play me a song and I'll suck on your dong" but also the word "shit." Which is good if you're writing a TV spot. What I did was this: It was a generic spot for soda with people being all diverse and living their lives, and fairly demanded an upbeat song. Instead I wrote dialogue, with no music or anything - it was just a guy explaining that the sound guy got into a car accident and they had this awesome rock song with guitars going WHEEOOOEEOWOWWWWOWOWWOWWWW and such, but they unfortunately didn't have it by the deadline. Some lines were, "See this lady with the jukebox? Director's niece, lovely girl," and "There was an awesome drum fill-in here with the old guy, too." It was a weird idea, but I wanted to try something different, I figured it would stick out more in the viewer's head. I asked the instructor if in fact this was a terrible idea and he said no, things like that have been done before. After break was the final, and again no one would shut up. Again with the dick jokes (and I swear to God I am the last person to disapprove of a dick joke, but I was kind of paying to be there and sort of wanted to do things actually relating to class) and the instructor said something like "Class clowns don't make a lot of money in the real world." I kind of figured that would wake some people up. Then the final started. The assignment was to write two spots, one for TV and one for radio, and we could leave when we were done. I started writing down notes for what I wanted to do. Then a bizarre argument started between the instructor and a student. I don't even remember what the context was, other than the student was probably saying something retarded. It was here that the instructor exploded. He didn't raise his voice or anything but he went off on this tear about what had been going on. He said that this class has been voted one of the worst the school has ever had, because everyone has this shitty attitude where they're only there to mess around, "playing grab-ass," as he put it. Apparently other instructors have been bitching about it too. He said we're coming along okay but grades are one thing -- the attitude sucks. It's good to have fun, and the class usually benefits from a relaxed atmosphere, but most of the class is more interested in making the other townies laugh with retarded jokes about sex than they are in actually demonstrating that a fucking word that's been said to them has sunk in. The instructor said that with the attitude this class had, they weren't going to get a job worth anything. A few minutes later, he sort of restated it, but said he wasn't trying to piss anyone off or make it personal, just that the whole attitude thing needed a lot of work. Later on, I moved over to a studio so I would have a clock to watch (important when your copy is being timed and graded for coming within five seconds of 60), and the instructor walked by the door. I called him over, shut the door, and thanked him for saying what he did. A lot of what has been happening has pissed me off to no end. I'm all for having fun but it has been getting in the way of actually learning, which I'm there to do. He and I talked for a while about it, and I told him that I hated it because now my class has this reputation - an instructor who deals with me is automatically going to lump me in with them. Apparently I've been doing pretty all right but you can barely notice. It's not a class in there; it's a fucking zoo. He had to go do something, so that was that. I finished the final out, said good night, and headed home. I'm thinking that maybe I might retake the course after this one ends. On Tuesday I'm going to try to sit down with the school's director and talk with him about it, a bit. Who knows. I have been told I can go home early. I love Fridays. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004
12:50 pm	Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae. Last night was the performance final. The assignment was to read this bit of copy, and then ad-lib for a minute or so about it. We had to actually memorize the copy, so thankfully it was short. I guess I was sort of cramming, so when it was my turn, I kind of sounded way too stilted. Thankfully there was no real audience but the instructor -- the way we did it was that everyone in the class would wait outside in the lobby doing their thing while one student did their final and the instructor watched and listened. Anyway, like I said, I had some problems remembering what the copy was, which sort of precluded my ability to successfully speak. You can't make something sound good if you're not even sure what you're saying. I did three or so takes and it still sucked. Then came the ad-lib. My ad was for Pepsi. "Pepsi is awesome. I'm a political dissident who appreciates a cool refreshing soft drink. If you're like me, you probably resent the fact that Coke is a symbol of gross American consumerism, you know, like McDonald's. So drink Pepsi instead." It went on like that. I don't know, it kind of sucked. When it was replayed later, the class laughed, but not as much as they have at other things I'd done before. I just wasn't on, or whatever, and I kind of beat myself up over it. I mean, I was actually angry, even though it went over well. After class got out, I spent a little while talking to the instructor about that -- about how I get mad at myself when I don't absolutely kill, and how that's probably not healthy. She gave me some good advice. I guess that until last night I didn't even realize that I have this bizarre tendency to want to be the funniest person in the room, or the world, whatever. And if I'm just kind of, you know, humorous -- that's not enough. I know this isn't healthy. Although if it means that I'm often pushing myself to be funnier, it's probably not a completely destructive thing. On the way out, she said that she felt I was a creative person with a lot of talent and that she believed in me, and that a lot of people she saw in the classes she teaches are just kind of blah, they don't care and they're obviously going nowhere. She told me that you have to love what you do, because it's not easy, and you're not going to get good fortune handed to you. Talent will take you so far but you have to put in work, and if you do, it will pay off. It felt pretty okay to be told that by someone who seemed to know what the hell she was talking about. Something else I should probably mention -- remember the class' conservative kid? The one who had some choice things to say about race relations? Yeah, anyway. Many of us chose to do the ad-lib in a character, a different voice or whatever. He decided to do a black voice. This would have been enough, I realize, but it wasn't even timely. It wasn't an attempt at sounding "gangsta," as one might say -- it was some fucking minstrel show shit. "When I be sittin' down wit' a Colt 45 and a bucket o' fried chicken, I likes to hab a Pepsi too. It's de best thing to drink when I's not goin' to work." Something like that. The class laughed. I wanted few things more than to be absofuckinglutely anywhere else besides that class. Humor in questionable taste is just fine by me -- if it's actually funny. There was no cleverness to it, no multiple levels to justify his approach, no context; he was just making fun of black people. At this point it can safely be gathered that he hates minorities like Inga Muscio hates men; he has nothing good to say about them and in fact is always ready with some skewed statistics to cast them in the worst light possible, but if you actually asked him if he hated black folks, he'd act like he didn't know what you were talking about and then ask you to point out exactly when he said he hated them. On the upside, Rush Limbaugh is the number one conservative talk show host in the country and he couldn't get away with the kind of shit this kid's trying to pull. I figure he's one on-air opportunity away from being shitcanned and blacklisted from every market bigger than three people. Tuition well spent. So there's that. The copy final is coming up. This time I'm ready.* *To rock. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 1st, 2004
2:32 pm	LIBERA ME, DOMINE Sorry I didn't update Friday. I left work early on Thursday and on Friday I was supposed to go to Six Flags but then it rained. Total bullshit, if you ask me (which you didn't). Anyway. I had studio time on Saturday. Mostly I noodled around in there and didn't really get much of anything done; I was supposed to complete a sixty-second spot with music bed, but I realized too late that the music bed I decided on was under 60 and would come out like ass. So I'm on the hunt for a music bed and will need to get studio time between now and the end of June. Thursday was a News class and also a ProTools workshop. Or maybe it was Cool Edit -- they kind of blend together for me. I finished the News assignment and read it out loud, as we had to, and already before I finished reading it I knew I had fucked up. He asked what I thought I may have done wrong, and I explained that the word "alleged" and its ilk didn't show up as much as they needed to (very important when reporting a crime). Also the sentences lacked a certain amount of flow and coherence. The sentences themselves made sense; they just needed to be re-ordered. I don't know why I didn't catch that at the time. Maybe because I'm a fuckup. The whole class was kind of antsy, no one was really listening to the instructor. This went for both classes. I kind of blame the weather. Later on today is a performance final. I'm kind of nervous, but we'll see how it goes. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 26th, 2004
3:08 pm	I wish I was a little bit taller/I wish I was Fats Waller. Last night was the sportscasting final. This may seem strange given that "sportscasting" has consisted of more or less half a class for which I was barely paying attention. I did the homework yesterday, and then did the read. I knew the stories were tight but since I am that sort of person I didn't even bother to time it. So, going into it, I had no idea if it was even going to approximate ninety seconds. I read a little fast, but it turned out that it came to about eighty-six seconds. Rock on. The critiques I was given were that I read a bit fast in spots and it made me hard to understand sometimes, I'd slur words a bit. But he said I did a really good job of appearing to give a shit about sports, because I'd told him in advance that I didn't. Apparently the art of bullshitting is an important career skill. After that was a ProTools workshop. We spent most of it goofing around, because by that point everyone wanted to go home and I, in particular, felt like I might vomit for more or less no reason. Which sucks; I liked the instructor a lot, he was a cool guy. He was an overweight white fellow wearing Sean John clothes who talked about strip clubs. That was pretty much all that happened. I have a production piece due at the end of June, and I'm probably going to schedule studio time this weekend to take care of it. I'll let you know how that goes. Between now and then, I'll need to find a music bed for it. I was thinking on maybe just having it be sixty seconds of farting noises over which I'd read copy, but they'd probably mark me down for that. That's why I'm thinking of laying a looped tire-screech over it -- you know, to spice it up a bit. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 21st, 2004
10:46 am	Our love is like Walter. Last night was TV Production. I didn't do anything exceptionally funny, I was kind of bored and fidgety but I absorbed what I was told, I think. Everyone got practice doing everything, I worked an effects board for the first time and I think I did pretty okay. I don't know how interesting I can make a recap of this -- it was all just working the controls of various things. It was interesting to see how everyone kind of worked as a team; everyone did their job at the right time and it was very much a well-oiled machine, to use a cliche. For the most part, it all went off pretty well. The most personal insight I got out of it was that seeing myself on camera made me realize I should probably get a haircut. I'm sorry, I don't really feel like writing much about TV production. This morning, I woke up with a hangover and then drank a glass of milk that turned out to have been sour, which played hell with my stomach. Then I went outside to bike back to my apartment and drive to work, and found out that my bike had been stolen. I locked it up and everything. I guess I'm not even sure why I am putting this here; it has nothing to do with the radio. I'd rather you didn't take this as a request for an outpouring of sympathy - I'm pretty sad that my bike is gone, because I loved it and it was a very good friend to me, but if you're reading this then I can safely assume you're not thrilled about it either. Besides, my bike was getting kind of beat-up anyway, as I used it a fair amount, and the cogs were all worn and the chain jumped and it was real slow. So I prefer to think that it was not stolen but rather died and ascended overnight to Bicycle Heaven and now it's bathing happily in oil and smiling down on me. Anyway, bike is gone and I'm sad about that. I don't really believe in anger as a reaction to things, so I'm going to be kind of proactive about it. My tax return came in and I've been meaning to buy a digital camera for some time. I may do this tonight. Here are things I plan to do as soon as convenience allows: 1. I will buy a digital camera. 2. I will buy a new bicycle. It'll probably be a Wal-Mart special this time around, as I paid a lot for the previous bike (its name, by the way, was Bicycules* Bonaparte Power, or Bonaparte for short) and it kept having problems that the cheap-ass mountain bikes of my younger days would never have. Sure, cheapass bikes have their own problems too, but they work, they're not complicated and I'm not out a shitload of money if they should be subject to Bicycle Rapture like my old friend was. The new bike will likely be named Eucephalus Bonaparte Power, or Bonaparte for short. 3. I will probably watch at least one Friday the 13th movie. 4. With my digital camera, I will photograph fat girls eating good food (seedless grapes, chocolate, Italian food) and being happy. I'm not sure exactly how to orchestrate this but I will try, as it would improve my mood immensely. I suppose that if I do what I'm trying to here, with school and such, and if I do in fact achieve fame and renown, that is probably one of the things for which I will be remembered. Whatever equivalent of Rotten Library will exist after I die will perhaps talk about how I would give fat girls (who were fully clothed) food and then photograph them eating it and smiling and laughing. Possibly in the same way one might describe Tesla's fear of women with dangly earrings, or basically everything Howard Hughes did ever. Or maybe they'll think I was getting off on it, which honestly is even weirder to think about. Point being, happy fat girls eating and being happy fills me with joy the same way that puppies do. I should point out, additionally, that they don't actually have to be fat. Just saying. While writing this, I got an email from home saying that the thing I bought on eBay arrived -- it's the entire (23 episodes) second season of CSI. So everything's looking up. I have just used this journal to talk about myself and not at all about school, and having now done so I am thoroughly disgusted by the whole affair. But I've done too much typing to just trash it, so here it is. * pronounced "by-SICK-you-leez," as if it were Greek (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 19th, 2004
9:58 am	Try to run/try to hide/break on through/Michael Ironside! I appear to have homework due in a week. News to me! I'll figure something out. Last night was another TV Performance class. Prior to it, the instructor talked about how he was up north in some podunk New England town and the local news show was incredibly shitty -- the segments were full of "black holes" (bits with sound but no video). He pointed to this as evidence that we can definitely get jobs in broadcasting, if these people could. This reminded me, for no good reason, of when I was a bit younger and driving through Cohasset, a town in Massachusetts. I stopped into a Friendly's-style restaurant whose name currently escapes me, and in the lobby there was a stack of copies of this newspaper called "The Tiny Town Gazette." The front-page story was about a fat kid whose mom made him a Spider-Man costume (it pointed out how the costume was ill-fitting on his young fat body and was also made out of a bedsheet that only vaguely resembled Spider-Man's actual costume) and who would entertain himself by hiding in a tree with a length of rope and then swinging out into traffic, which apparently was starting to cause accidents. At this point, the cops showed up at the kid's house to tell him to knock it off. I swear to God I am not making this up. Not only was this story in the paper (and therefore, I assume, true), it was the front-page story. We then had to talk on camera for sixty seconds -- the instructor was looking for composure and timing, things like that. He said ahead of time that if the piece was especially interesting, he'd let it go for longer than a minute. I went for something like three. Most people talked about sports and stuff, I did the Hollywood 60 -- a minute of movies and entertainment. Most of the bits were pretty hackneyed and things that you, Dear Internet Reader, will have heard a million times over, but to the crowd at school they were fresh and new. Again, I went last. This is sort of becoming a theme. I went shortly after the conservative kid, who used his time to talk about how much he hates affirmative action. What's funny is that, other than his habit of doing this sort of thing, he's really an okay guy. Fun to talk to. I don't get it. So up I went. The more I do this, the more confident I get. This time, I sort of swaggered. Then I got the go signal. I don't remember everything I said but it was something like this: "Good evening, this is Hollywood JSP with the Hollywood 60. Give me sixty seconds and I'll impregnate your daughter and take a dump in your sock drawer. Upcoming movies! The Wayans Brothers have a new movie coming out called 'White Chicks,' in which they play...white chicks. Some are calling this movie racist, some are defending it. Me personally, every time the Wayans Brothers or Rob Schneider make a movie, I wonder who lost a bet. Speaking of white chicks -- Michael Jackson. He's been the subject of a lot of controversy lately. Hey, does anyone remember that kid who got diddled by him and took a 44 million dollar payout to shut up about it? For 44 million dollars, I'd deep-throat Michael Jackson at halftime on the Super Bowl. Seriously. I'd get on my knees and smile like a donut for that kind of cash. 44 million dollars is gonna buy me a hell of a lot of mouthwash. Speaking of Jacksons and halftime at the Super Bowl -- Janet Jackson recently put out a new album and the country's reaction has been very polarized, very split down the middle -- it's half and half between people who hate it and people who really hate it. (Awkward pause while no one really laughs) See, the joke is, it's, you know, it's half the people...Moving on! Reality TV is big right now, especially shows with celebrities -- Anna Nicole, Jessica Simpson and what's-his-face. But the one that started it all was the Osbournes. I caught up with Ozzy recently and asked him what he thought of this, and he said: (here I do an Ozzy impression by muttering incoherently). This just handed to me! Breaking news on Notorious BIG: He's still dead. Hey, remember Afroman? That 'Because I Got High' song? Did you know that guy was signed to a five-record deal? I'd love to meet the brain who heard that song and thought, 'This is a joke that could easily be stretched out to five albums.' Think maybe it's the same guy who keeps making movies out of Saturday Night Live skits? Hey, if we have The Sopornos and Edward Penis Hands and Pulp Friction, how long is it gonna be before someone makes a porno movie out of The Passion of the Christ? I mean, come on, it's a gimme with a title like that. Anyway, that's gonna do it for me and this report. See you next time, same Hollywood time, same Hollywood channel. Til then, this is Hollywood JSP, reminding you that I'm from Hollywood and you're not. Take care." Applause. The only criticism he had to offer was that he wanted to see if I could be more serious, although the delivery was actually pretty straightforward, it was just the material that was funny. Sometimes I had to ham it up a bit to save a spot that wasn't getting laughs -- the idea being that if you fuck up, you can make a bit out of it. The instructor said something about how if, for example, I were working at MTV, I'd have to do a serious spot sometimes. At this, a fellow student said (in all seriousness), "What, you think he's going to lower himself to settling for working at MTV?" Many performance-based classes contain moments when I feel as though I should do backflips to express my exuberance, and this was one of those times. That's pretty much it. Class got out a half hour early. I am pretty happy with basically everything in the whole world. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 12th, 2004
12:13 pm	QUEEFER MADNESS Last night was another TV performance class, this time with the social dynamo who taught sportscasting last time, the guy who came up with "dry as a clam." It's not that he's a bad guy or anything, he really means well, it's just that he's kind of square in a lot of ways. Here are some quotes from the man. "What a lot of people are is intimidated in job interviews." "You need to have some arrogance in this business, but it needs to be tempered by confidence." A personal favorite of mine. ON CONFIDENCE: "When you're confident, when he -- he opens you, uh, an open-ended question, and you're going to run with it." He also taught us that you can get the attention of a large group of people by talking real loud. Then he handed us a news script. Someone asked him if the story in it was true, and he said, and I quote: "No, it came from the sick imagination of my mind." The English language could be a closer friend to this man. After that, we went to the TV studio to practice dealing with a teleprompter (or TelePrompTer, more correctly, although I've no clue why) and such. There we read off the news script. Most of it was bland, although the middle story was a thing of beauty. Try to imagine someone reading this on the news. I realize it was for practice, but seriously, the man could have at least tried. I reproduce it here: MEANWHILE YESTERDAY WAS APRIL 1ST. AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. THAT'S RIGHT APRIL FOOLS(sic) DAY. EVERYONE PLAYS LITTLE JOKES ON FRIENDS. BUT ONE FRIEND WENT A BIT TO(sic) FAR... BOB SMITH THOUGHT HE COULD GET A GOOD LAUGH OUT OF HIS FRIEND BILL JOHNSON, PROBLEM WAS THE LAUGHS TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE.* BOB HAD THE AIR IN BILL'S CAR TIRE'S(sic) LET OUT JUST ENOUGH TO STRAND HIM AT HIS JOB, SO HE THOUGHT... BILL DIDN'T NOTICE THE TIRES AND DROVE AWAY FULL SPEED... WHEN HE GOT ON THE HIGHWAY ALL FOUR OF HIS TIRES BLEW AND BILL WENT OFF THE ROAD AND SMASHED INTO A BRIDGE KILLING HIM INSTANTLY... NOW BOB IS GOING TO SPEND THE REST OF HIS LIFE IN JAIL... SO THE NEXT TIME YOUR(sic) THINKING OF A CRAZY APRIL FOOL'S DAY JOKE, THINK AGAIN... Yeah I had to read that with a straight face. People in my class may not be able to relate to me so well, but they know my style, and the instructor said he wanted people to be really "Over the top." At this, Dave nudged me and said, "Give him over the top." I replied that I would lay it down like it needed to be laid. Someone else said the same, but told me to go last. So everyone went up and did their thing, and I acted all shy, saying I wanted to go last because I'm kind of nervous about performing. And the guy actually bought it. It was amazing. Sitting at the desk as I was getting ready, he leaned in close and told me to picture everyone naked. At that point, I started to feel kind of bad for him. Another fellow student, knowing what was about to happen, asked me if I was an only child. I said no, and they couldn't believe it, for some reason. I told them that some people are just loud. So then it was go time, and I went. The whole joke was that I acted all shy and then busted into a game-show host voice, it's basically the voice that English people do when they're faking an American accent (unless they try to sound Texan). It was loud and irritating and really funny. It pleases me to know that even if the class can't understand or doesn't even particularly like me a hell of a lot, they still know I rule. It's a good feeling. Anyway, I totally UNLEASHED THE FURY with the most ridiculous voice I could muster, breaking into faux newscaster seriousness for the report about the guy getting killed, and hamming it up like I was made of whole roast pigs. We were also allowed a little bit of ad-lib at the end when we discussed upcoming news of "a giant discovery in space." A lot of us used that as a springboard to joke about what the discovery was. So this is what I did. "That will do it for this WCSB News Break, I'm Jeff Power. We'll see you again tonight with news of a giant discovery in space -- that discovery being (at this point I leap to my feet, slam a fist on the desk and make the devil-horns sign with my face right in the camera) A METEOR MADE OF PURE CONCENTRATED HEAVY METAL!! YEAH WOO I AM GOING TO EAT YOUR ASS IN HELL!!</i>" Game, set, match. The instructor was like, "Are you really shy?" I shook my head. Amid the laughter and whatnot, someone used the words "Andy Kaufman" at least twice. Who rules? I rule. *I really cannot sing highly enough the praises of "Problem was the laughs turned into a nightmare." (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 10th, 2004
2:32 pm	Day after day, they take some brain away. I know I didn't do the customary writeup on Friday. I didn't really have time and I didn't really want to. I was kind of disgusted with how class went but I guess it's worth talking about. It was Marketing class and I had forgotten my homework. It wasn't a big deal; I finished it just now and I'll hand it in late, not a problem. Other assignments, I will be faster about doing. Early into it, we discussed the Web sites of various stations, we were told to go to some and check out what they were doing. One of the things I offered up was the fact that the sites of a lot of modern-rock stations seem to have been coded by people who didn't really know what they were doing, because it's next to impossible to browse them. They push a lot of information to your browser, and a lot of it is stuff you don't need -- little Flash movies, java crap, applets, animated gifs, noises, moving text, things like that. So even after you download the data, your browser still might take a second to figure out what's going on. I mentioned some specific examples, and one of the stations I mentioned was that of a station beloved by one of my fellow students. I had no idea she was going to take this personally. But she did. She got defensive and actually at least a tiny bit pissed off that I had called a spade a spade, even though other people in the class backed up my findings. She started to offer all different kinds of excuses for why the site may have been slow to load (traffic was her big one), and when I tried to explain that the issue wasn't really even how much data was being downloaded, it just bounced off her head. The instructor seemed to want to end the discussion, which was fine by me, but every time I was ready to shut up, someone had something else to say. We studied some ads and whatnot after that, and then there was a break. During the break, Dave came up to me and was like, "Dude...chill out." I had no idea what he was talking about. Though he either couldn't or wouldn't go into specifics, I apparently was getting on the nerves of unspecified people by doing unspecified things. Basically, I was being me, and that was bothering folks. Dave's take on it was, "These people, they don't get how your mind works, they don't see where you're coming from. I do, and it's cool, but -- they're townies, you know?" As soon as he used the word, I kind of figured everything out. Not in terms of what I may have been doing wrong but more in the sense that I understood why I didn't fit in so well. I liked these people, but I am at that school to learn and it seems, too often, that they are townies who are mostly interested in making off-color jokes to entertain their townie friends. When we were writing ad copy, I was actually trying to write things that might make someone want to buy something, whereas most folks in the class were content to just write crap that was funny to the limited audience of two dozen (or so) people. Later that night, we were assigned to write ad copy for a Japanese restaurant, and one kid wrote an ad that involved a forty-five minute wait for a table and a waiter who didn't speak any English. Would this drive you to go eat somewhere? What irritated me, I guess, was that I have never really made a whole lot of sense to the people around me (if you'll pardon me talking about myself for a while). This is fine; though I often feel like a freak, I don't wear it as a badge of pride and I have long since accepted that this is how it is. It's fine, it's okay. It just hasn't happened in a long time, and it wasn't a feeling I had really missed. As I don't live in anyone else's head, I can't tell you whether or not I think like other people, but over the years I have been led to think I don't. Whether I do or don't isn't really important to me; what matters mostly is results, which in this case is feeling like I don't belong around people whom, to be honest, I had kind of been growing to like. After break, I spent the rest of the night not really talking, I didn't say a word if someone didn't talk to me first. I was irritated -- some weird, cliquey favor had turned against me and I didn't even know why. Finally, I decided, screw it. I didn't care anymore. If someone doesn't like me, they can go fuck themselves. I'm not there to become BFF with anyone, I'm there to learn. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to learn and become really, really fucking good at this whole radio thing. Even Dave, who's been doing this for a while, said I clearly had something (in the sense of "You're gonna go far, kid"). I guess that's all. Student aid thing is mailed out, so internships are up next, I guess. (3 Comments |Comment on this)