curtis' blog

Okay.  So we have a new room setup.  We will likely still film the majority of the show in the room.  However, there will be some major with all-super-caps changes.  Firstly, it will be mostly scripted.  We cannot guarantee that our propensity to ad lib will not affect the show, but we can guarantee that there will be fewer “dead spots” in the program.  Also, we may add other sections with other people, and we will most likely need to come up with a name for Stephen Barry.  I still like Stephen Nehpets (a palindrome, because I love palindromes).  And we’ll work on an alter ego for him.  Also, I will try to write a new intro.  If we can’t all agree on a new intro song, we’ll take what I’ve come up with and let you, the people, vote.  And then we’ll look at the results, throw them out, and pick one we like.

With our schedules even more busy than ever, we may end up making the show once every two weeks.  We’ll try our best to push one out a week, but no promises.  We now have two cameras with which to work (thus angles and more video editing) and script writing to do.

Two weeks.  Our season premiere will happen within two weeks.  I hope.  It should be one you can sink your teeth into.  …into which you can sink your teeth.  Prepositions.  Fragments.  Hints.

was awesome.  I got a lot done.  I moved in the dorm, got ready for classes, began classes, etc.  I also had to take an exam.  A placement test, to be more precise.  For more precision, it was for Music Theory I.  If you fail the test, you have to concurrently enroll in Basic Musicianship.  If you get between 60 and 70 percent, they “strongly recommend” that you concurrently enroll.  If you score above 70, they figure you’re good to go.

Well, I really didn’t know there were that many kinds of 7th chords.  Or clefs.  What’s an alto clef?  Or tenor clef?  I had to guess on questions concerning things like that.  Anyway, I got somewhere between 60 and 70.  And I’m not going to take an extra 3-credit-hour class.

I also figured out there was a 28% pass rate.  Seriously.  I guess years of choir paid off for yet one more thing.

One more thing… why would they test you on what you are not expected to know, but are expected to learn in the course?  It’s like saying “to get into Beginner’s Algebra Class, you must answer the following questions:  y=x+34*3(x^2)……..if you can’t, you must take Supplement to Beginner’s Algebra Class……..”

I also got a nice bonus from the radio station for working all summer.  Yeah, buddy!

This week is not going too poorly, either.  So far I’ve played 4.5 hours of volleyball (soon to be 5.5 if this evening goes as planned), rearranged the dorm room so that we can keep the futon AND couch (we can now comfortably seat all the occupants of our wing and the next one over in our room), and salvaged a Pentium IV computer (minus most of the parts) from Hickman Science Center’s free box.  And it’s only Monday evening.

I’m 19 years old.  I’m turning 20 in October.  I can’t move out of the dorm during the school year until next October.  Boo.

In the meantime, I’ll be living back in the grand ‘ole room 2593.

Does anybody know of an inexpensive futon anywhere around the Collegedale area?

I’ve almost finished moving.  I am finishing up my laundry while it still takes no quarters.  One more load in the SUV.  Then I’ll be officially moved.

Sooo…..  Robby is going to be manning the Writers’ Club (Writer’s Club, Writers Club, whatever) booth at the organizational showcase tomorrow.  I will be manning the WSMC radio station booth.  Robby will get the satisfaction of a job well done.  I will get the satisfaction and the money of a job well done.

Existentially.  Interminably.  Fivesyllablewords.  Isthisannoying?  Iwillstopitthen.

On a totally related note, we went bowling last night (me, Brooke, Robby, Christen, Tyler).  Brooke won the first game and I won the second.  Brooke and Robby were the only two that broke 100 on the first game.  I was the only one that broke 100 on the second.  That’s pretty sad.  I wonder how much a membership at Holiday Bowl costs.  We need to work on that.  As we all know, “practice makes [you slightly less horrible]“.

I downloaded fifty-something episodes of MST3K over the last two days.  Oh, yeah.  That’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 for those of you less fortunate people.  It’s awesome.  These guys keep running comedic commentary on the worst movies ever made.  It’s hilarious.  And we’ll be good for the next year or two of Saturday nights.  I also downloaded a couple seasons of A Bit of Fry and Laurie.  I love cable internet!

On the subject of TV (yes, I watched too much this summer), I’m looking forward to the new show White Collar on USA.  Go look it up.

Sorry for the seemingly random rambling.  I’m a little bit tired.  Volleyball tonight will make it go away.

Fun stuff, let me tell you….  The School of Education and Psychology is implementing a new online portfolio system (LiveText) that all the faculty and Rob and I have to train for.  It looks great to me, but it involves a long day.  A very long day.  Ah, well.

Wooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooo!  I will finally have other (especially non-freshmen and non-cohabitant [no offense to the freshmen and my apartment/roommates (well, maybe offense to the freshmen [no offense to the freshmen I didn't mean to offend, though])]) people with whom to hang out!  And I shall soon reoccupy room 2593 in that dormitory called Talge Hall.  As will Robby.  And Stephen.  Yes, Stephen.  As soon as they email the dean (get on that, guys, will ya?!).  We are three-man-roominizing 2593.  It used to be a three-man room, so it won’t be too difficult to change it back.  We will also be changing the picture on the front of our website.  Although I really like the current one, we need to include SBTETO2.0 in the main picture.

Just for your edification, ye that be unedified, Stephen and I roomed together in 2592 (not 2593, but across the hall) the second semester of our freshman year (2008).  He took off a year (2008-2009), and is coming back for 2009-2010.  Robby and I roomed together last year (2008-2009) in 2593.  I picked 2593 because it’s massive compared to the other rooms, it’s at the end of the hallway, has two windows, and no neighbors.  It’s awesome!

Anyway, now you guys know that room 2593 will be even more awesome to visit this year.

I know, I know.  Finally.

So, we got to our destination near the Argentina border.  We got there around 1 or 2 a.m., but the families with which we were staying were ready for us.  Most of them had jobs to go to in the morning, and we had just cancelled their concert.  They were still happy to have us.

I stayed with Jesse (a tenor, in case that’s important to you) at a family’s home.  Jesse speaks Spanish, which was helpful because our host family spoke not a word of English.  Or French.  Jesse managed to have slow conversation in Spaniguese with the family.  The parents of the family stayed up until we were completely situated, and the mother (who happened to be pregnant with a second child) kept offering us food, which we could not refuse.

Their home was rather small compared to an American home.  There was much missing from the stereotypical middle class idea of a house.  The people of Brazil tend to live more simply than we, the more fortunate.

When we awoke early the next morning, we had a delicious breakfast (Brazilians bake some amazing bread!) and rode to Analyse’s house.  Analyse is a Brazil native, former I Cantori member and SAU graduate.  She and her husband then accompanied us to a sort of mission project of theirs, a school for children in the area.  We put on a mini concert for the kids, and they even sang a song for us!  It was pretty grand.

After the concert for the kids, we stayed for a meal, which included some of the most delicious rice and beans EVER, and heard a bit about the school.  We decided to sponsor a child at the school.

Later in the week (don’t ask me to remember specific days–I’ve forgotten all of that) we went to an Adventist camp near Iguassu Falls.  Iguacu Falls.  However it’s spelled today.  Anyway, that was a pretty cool place.  We had our meals there.  THE BREAKFAST WAS SPECTACULAR!  I wish I could type in super-all-caps-squared.  The fruit in Brazil is interesting.  Some of it is delicious, while others are disgustingly sweet.  Like, more than pure cane sugar kind of sweet.  I don’t get it.  Anyway, we also learned quickly that with Brazil, it’s all about cake.  Cake is a staple breakfast food.  Not kidding.  Throughout our trip, everybody offered us cake for breakfast.  And lunch.  And supper.  Cake there is like whole wheat bread here.  And it’s not simply white cake.  This stuff has something to it.  It isn’t too sweet, and it is quite filling.  It’s good stuff.

One of the days we were in Iguacu territory, we actually went to the falls.  We spent the first half of the day on the Brazil side, then drove to Argentina for the more spectacular side the second half.

Later on that week…

What?  Seriously?  You want to hear more about the falls?  Okay.

A M A Z I N G.  We could see why when Eleanor Roosevelt visited the falls as First Lady that she exclaimed, “Poor Niagra!”  No kidding.  The Iguacu falls span about two miles of winding waterfall edge.  The river is REALLY wide and shallow.  So shallow that you could probably wade around two feet from the edge and not get sucked over.  So shallow that builders had made a boardwalk above the water for about one or two kilometers from the Argentine edge of the river to the middle of the falls.  We could stare down over the edge and see nothing but mist.  We could look ahead and see the rumbling awesomeness that was “Garganta del Diablo”, or “Devil’s Throat”, what they call the most powerful section of the falls.  At that point, the water pours in from around 270 degrees of a circle at a rate unmatched by another set of falls.  It was hard to believe that we were there in the dry season.

For pictures, visit images.saunetwork.com.  I’ve uploaded some there.  I don’t want to “pollute” my blog with a bajillion pictures and keep you scrolling for days.

Now that I’ve bored you with incredible detail about unimportant things, I’ll tell you some more!

Our best concert came early.  It was also our worst, but I’ll get to that in a moment.  First, let me relate the good part of the tale.

We got to the concert really late (well, about 5 minutes before we were to go on).  We parked the bus and ran into the church as quickly as we could, making quite a scene (not many people have seen people in tuxes and formal dresses running through the streets of Brazil cities).  We practiced for a few minutes, then got on stage.  We only had an hour to sing, then we had to rush ourselves to our next concert.  We did our hours’ worth of pieces, holding the audience in rapt attention (something quite lacking on our “home court”).  By the end, we were receiving applause and ovations, and they wanted to hear more.  Dr. Kibble looked back at our tour guide, and he said that we could stay as long as we wanted, because our other concert had been cancelled.  We were happy to sing a few more songs, especially since we enjoyed our audience so much.  There was also a song where we almost require clapping.  Let me tell you, Brazillians can keep time like none other.  White people can’t clap worth anything if they aren’t musically geared (why do you think white people are generally not into hip-hop?  they can’t understand the beat).  Every Brazillian seems to have a larger “rhythm section” of the brain than your average American.  We couldn’t hear a single person clapping out of perfect time.  It was amazing.

Well, it was awesome until we finished our concert and Peter (our tour director) took us out of the church quickly to explain something urgent.  Well, he wasn’t the urgent-explanation kind of guy, so we thought something must be up, which it was.  Somebody had gotten on the bus while we were in the concert and stolen some things.  Katy’s MacBook, a couple peoples’ iPods, Misael’s camera (a very nice one that we were using for all of our “good” photo shoots), Elvira’s camera and video camera, a lot of cash, etc.  We could tell by how the bus looked that the thieves had gone from the back of the bus near the door to the front, all the way to Jonathan and me (third row or so from the front).  They even rummaged through our stuff, Jonathan’s camera was taken apart (lens from camera, etc.) but still there on the seat, and my bag was open with my mp3 player on top of everything.  I don’t know why they didn’t take it, but they didn’t.  Jonathan and I were some of the few unaffected.

Well, that incident tarnished an otherwise perfect night.  We still remembered how wonderful the concert was, though.

On a side note to whatever you happened to be thinking (unless you weren’t, which would explain your visit to my blog), the world seems to be collapsing.  Everybody is screaming.  All the scientists tell us that we’re doomed, and that this whole thing is horrible.  Why?  Because apparently the end of the world would be catastrophic to life.  How do scientists know this?  They must use some sort of math.  They also believe that living things are causing this catastrophic event.  So.  Life is killing us.  Go figure.

And, for those of you that think a title ought to have some bearing on the post,  “funambulist” was a vocab word I had in grade 9.  It means tight-rope walker.  I still haven’t forgotten it.

I don’t really hate freshmen.  Yes, they can be weird and annoying, but freshmen orientation is much worse.  I like love am obsesed with volleyball.  I play every chance I get.  I play Sunday mornings.  And Monday evenings.  And Tuesday evenings.  And….  So when freshmen orientation rolls around every other day, all the freshmen desert the gym and rush to the meetings.  Since when do people need dozens of meetings to get used to school?  Especially when they have homework?  And VOLLEYBALL?  I must have skipped half of the meetings when I was a freshman, because I definitely don’t remember there being that many.  Maybe I’m just blocking out the memory.  At least I didn’t have the stupid “Southern Connections” class.  Yes, SAU has a class for EVERY incoming freshman.  It is supposed to help them get used to college life.  I think it’s just a way to make money and dump more work on students.  And keep them from playing volleyball with me.