Dancing Giraffes

this photo makes me laugh, and it reminds me of my favorite headset conversation at FoLK (festival of the lion king, for non-disney people), which happened during "be prepared" ...

show control: giraffe?

me: yes, cheryl?

sc: whatcha doin?

me: fire wand routine.

sc: i see that. (pause) why?

me: well, we're down a girl. and i know the routine. and vicky [the giraffe puppet] is a good dancer.

sc: yes, we are. and yes, you do. and yes, she is. (long pause) giraffe?

me: yes, cheryl?

sc: how did Vicky get a raffia wand in her mouth?

me: savannah animals are very nice. and helpful.

sc: I see. (pause) giraffe?

me: yes, cheryl?

sc: don't ever do fire wand routine when i'm not the stage manager.

me: ok, cheryl!

The Impact of an Amazing Teacher

mrs. buchman (pronounced "bookman") was my fifth grade home-room teacher. i also danced at the same studio as her daughter, so i knew who she was before i had her, even though i always viewed her as "teacher" before "friend's mother." mrs. buchman was awesome. she knew how to make boring stuff fun - or at least less boring - knew how to keep us interested, and knew when we needed a break. she loved what she did, and she loved each and every one of us even when we were being difficult. and she "got" us. fifth and sixth grade are extremely tricky years, and i'd never be able to handle teaching those grades full-time. (i know people think i'm crazy for teaching high school, but i think elementary school is way harder to deal with. but i digress. as usual.) anyway, my point here is that mrs. buchman rocked. today, i got a friend request on facebook from "carolyn buchman." it actually took me a second, because of course when you're 11, you don't really think about your teachers having first names. once i realized it was my mrs. buchman i actually got really excited, and flattered that she'd remembered me and found me on facebook and wanted to touch base with me. she's one of the teachers that truly inspired me and made me realize how much a teacher could do for her students - that it wasn't just classwork and bookwork, but that you could teach life lessons and help students learn about themselves. i only hope that a former student of mine will someday feel that way about me.

Life is a Mix Tape, Part 3: The Singles

"there are millions of songs in the world, and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan." -rob sheffield

delving again into my musical memories... this time i'm posting songs that remind me of particular mix tapes/cd's/playlists and what went on around them.

4 "right here, right now" by jesus jones: this was on a random mix tape i made from the radio - you know, where you sat by your radio/tape deck, just waiting for one of your favorite songs to come on so you could hit "record".... and hoping the dj didn't talk over any of the good parts? i rediscovered this tape in college, just before we took arkansas bear on the road. not knowing what was on it (it was only labeled "fun and 80's"), i took it with us on the trip. at some point we popped the tape into the university van we were driving and had a great time singing and laughing and discussing the songs on the tape. this song was on that tape - and not the crappy radio edit either, the actual album version. for some unknown reason, some record label jerk apparently decided that they needed to shave another 15 seconds from an already-barely-three-minute-song and take out a small guitar solo. there are also slight variances in the backing beats - i'm not sure what they are exactly, but i can recognize the difference. i caught this particular version one late night (or early morning) when i was sick and couldn't sleep. i was downstairs in the rocking chair listening to the radio when this came on and i hit "record". it was the first time i'd heard this version, and it was somehow better than the normally-heard-on-the-radio version.

4 "tell me lies" by fleetwood mac: this song was actually not on the tape, but the radio dj had put this on immediately following "right here, right now." so although i pressed stop before the song really started, i still got the first 4 notes of this song - and apparently i listened to this tape enough that this transition is indelibly inscribed on my brain; i didn't even realize this until just now, when i played jesus jones, and the opening notes to "tell me lies" immediately popped up in my head.

4"unchained melody" by the righteous brothers: this song was also on that mix tape, though i'm not really sure what possessed me to tape this, but i'm guessing it probably has something to do with the movie ghost and its soundtrack. (that's my story, anyway, and i'm sticking to it.) i reached to ff through this song (we're still on that theatre trip, remember?) because i didn't really like it, when my hand was slapped away by craig - who then, along with the rest of the boys in our van, proceeded to sing the worst, off-key, caterwauling rendition of this song ever. on purpose. i was crying with laughter (and probably a burst ear drum) by the time they finished.

4 "it's a sunshine day" by the brady bunch: the next couple of songs were on a tape labeled "for drama" - it was just a tape i kept a bunch of songs on that i was using for drama class. this one was for a group pantomime: me, amanda, amber, mistey, paul, mike i think, and there had to be another boy, but i don't remember (someone help me out here?) decided to be the brady kids and alice going out for a picnic. we packed up a station wagon, ate and played games, then drove back home. it was a pretty awesome pantomime, if i remember correctly. (and i think i do.)

4 "summer breeze" by seals & croft: this actually wasn't my song - i think it was amanda's for her solo pantomime, because i associate it with her for some reason. i must have enjoyed the song enough to put it on a tape. or maybe we all rehearsed together or something, it's hard to tell...

4 "thirteen o'clock" from the labyrinth soundtrack: i used this one for my solo pantomime - i was a magician putting on a show. i wish i could have found it to add to the playlist, because it really is an excellent piece of music, but alas, instrumental music seems hard to find on the interwebs. anyway, the piece is now imbedded in my brain with the music... i could probably still do (most) of the 3 minute routine i made up for that assignment...

4"land of make believe" from the blast! soundtrack: this (and the next one) was from a cd i made while at disney titled "happy stuff". this is probably my favorite piece from the show, because it's just pure fun. plus steve was entertaining, and it was hysterical to watch kit making fun of him behind his back and then not tell him what he was doing. (the version in the playlist below isn't from blast - so it's not quite as good, and shorter - but this way you get the idea.)

4"hit me with your best shot" by pat benetar: this reminds me of candace (well, clearly - it's pat benetar) and also of that same summer. cristi and i, along with candace, rhonda, or whoever else we could drag with us, would often head over to epcot after work. i'm not sure why this particular song - maybe we started singing it randomly or something?

4"walk like an egyptian" by the bangles: this is from a mix tape made from the radio when i was in elementary school(ish). i remember - i'm thinking third grade, but i'm not sure - either amber or dawn bringing their portable boombox (and yes, they were called boomboxes, shush) and we would listen to it at recess. we were obsessed with this song for awhile, creating our own dances and music videos until we had to go back to class.

4 "kokomo" by the beach boys: same tape - i remember discovering the cocktail soundtrack... not such a great movie, but it's a kick-ass soundtrack. we even sang this in music class in the sixth grade, and i remember being confused about the words not being quite right. turns out the school board thought (probably correctly) that elementary school students shouldn't be singing about a "tropical contact high."

4"lollipop" by the chordettes: yep, still on the elementary-era tape. i have no idea why, but for some reason, this reminds me of being over at amy's house. did we sing this? dunno, but that's what pops in my head.

4 "the addams family theme" : in what? sixth grade? maybe fifth? somewhere in there, we did a jazz dance to this song that included big black boxes, white gloves, fushia sequins, and florescent polka-dotted bike shorts. awww, yeah.

4 "pennsylvania 65000" by the glen miller orchestra: also on the "for dance recitals" tape. this was earlier, i think... maybe fourth or fifth? not sure, but some of the footwork is still in my head, because it goes so well with the music.

4 "i alone" by live: this is from a high school mix tape, and always brings to mind the dreaded "who's on first" conversation when i called home from school to ask mom if i could go to a live concert that night with gretchen, her dad, and her brother. live wasn't very big yet so we went round and round till i finally shouted, "no! the name of the band is live! of course the concert is live, but that's their name!" mom and i still laugh about this.

4 "fat bottomed girls" by queen: i do love the queen, and forced them upon my friends. luckily, they mostly didn't mind. this song particularly reminds me of a gathering up at tricia's. me, trish, sarah, gretchen, possibly fedan, kenny, probably some of the boys - scott, bill, etc. - i don't remember exactly, but i remember having a cook out and a few of us ending up fully clothed in a pool.... clearly a result of said boys...

8 note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and why have you not gone out and bought it yet? go!

more mixed-tape goodness...

(i'm not sure why, but the playlist is not working for some reason... it WAS, but now it is not. so if you'd like to hear the songs, go here.)

Life Is a Mix Tape, Part 2: The Albums

"tonight, i feel like my whole body is made out of memories. i'm a mix tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape."

-rob sheffield

sometimes one song just isn’t enough; sometimes a whole album is tied to a memory. hearing any song from that album will bring me back, but it also works the other way, too. i may randomly think of something that happened and then really want to listen to the album that accompanies it. (the playlist at the bottom has selections from each of the albums.)
8 dark side of the moon – pink floyd: besides being an excellent album on its own, this cd is tied to my freshman year in college. we would often put this on at night, on repeat, to sleep to. funny side note: i recently re-bought this album because it had been lost or stolen long ago. i popped it into the cd player and about two songs in, i found myself getting sleepy. talk about your pavlovian responses.
8 sublime – sublime: college, theatre department parties, jono and greyton’s house. jono and greyton were roommates and theatre students a year ahead of me. they had the best house for parties – two stories, sprawling wrap-around porch, and neighbors who were either not very close to the house, or at every party anyway, so they didn’t mind the noise. it was also at the top of a hill (mountain, really) and though it sucked to get up there in the winter, it was a very zen-like area with woods on two sides of the house. every single party started the same way; once enough party-goers had arrived, the “circle of death” table was set up with a pitcher and a few decks of cards, a few joints were rolled, the keg tapped, and this album put on. usually there were a few discs in the changer that rotated around, but this album we listened to straight through, beginning to end, before switching the music. those were good times – i don’t have a single bad or even boring memories from those parties. (note to my mom, in case you’re reading this: i had nothing to do with the pot – that was all jono and greyton, i promise. i stuck to the drinking games and laughing at the fools that couldn't hold their liquor.)
8 when i woke – rusted root: senior year of high school and freshman year of college. rusted root is a folk-funk-hippie-accoustic-fusion band from pittsburgh. because morgantown was only a hour or so away, they used to play every thursday night at the nyabinghy dance hall. (memo to me: there needs to be an entire blog dedicated to the ‘binghy at some point…) because we knew a few of the bouncers – or, more accurately, because i knew a few people who knew a few bouncers – we were let in even though we were underage. we only ever came to see root, and we didn’t try to drink any alcohol while we were there, so mostly they let us get away with it. new year’s eve 1995 found john, dale, and i at the annual root show in pittsburgh, and then at a party at a friend of dale’s sister’s. it was a fun night, even though i spent large chunks of the party making sure the stoners weren’t feeding marijuana to the friend’s parents’ great dane.
8 discography – pet shop boys: i’m not sure why, but this album played non-stop throughout my sophomore year in college. it seemed like whenever john, dale, melinda, and i were in a car together, this album was playing. it didn’t matter whose car, because we all had a copy. it was the default bgm to our wanderings.
8 greatest hits – bob marley: i would like to preface this by saying i love bob marley – quite a lot, actually. however, since it was one of the very few cd’s we could agree on in adventure ocean (the kids' center) on the serenade, we listened to it a lot. incessantly. over and over and over. rob was the worst offender; he always put it on, and we always seemed to work together. it finally got to the point where i took it out of the cd changer and hid it for a couple of weeks.
8 fear – toad the wet sprocket: sophomore and junior year of college. ferruso and i listened to this all the time. it’s another cd that became default bgm. mostly, though, it reminds me of the puppeteers of america festival in ohio. this and an “awesome eighties” cd were in heavy rotation that weekend. we met famous artists and puppeteers, we got rave reviews for a performance we slapped together for a cabaret night, i sliced open my thumb with a stolen outback steak knife whilst carving a coconut out of a nerf ball, we got through some of the lamer performances by loading our travel mugs with zima and sour candy (we couldn’t find any jolly ranchers on short notice), and we met all kinds of fantastically random people just by playing uno in the downstairs lobby. excellent times.
8 play – moby: for a month and a half, while i worked at disney and lived in clermont, this cd was stuck in the player of my car. i couldn’t fish it out and i couldn’t afford to get it fixed. the player was stuck; i couldn’t turn it off, i couldn’t change the volume or the track, and i couldn’t switch it back to the radio. it’s a really, really good thing that this was the cd that got stuck. (and that it was at a decent volume, come to think of it.) it’s one of the (like 5) albums i have no trouble listening to straight through, and it’s a testament to the quality of this album that i never got sick of it and that it remains one of my all-time favorites.
8 elephunk - black eyed peas:splendour of the seas, the sob (that’s the staff and officer bar, thank you). there are many different types of people working on ships: people of different nationalities, from different walks of life, who speak many different languages. it’s no surprise, then, that there was some dispute over the music to be played in the sob at night. for whatever reason, this album was the one everyone agreed on, so it was played almost every night squished somewhere between the british punk rock, romanian trance, and morroccan pop music (most of which i quite liked, actually…).

8 the lion king soundtrack: this is pretty self-explanatory, unless you don’t know about my stint performing at disney. i did both lolk (legend of the lion king) and folk (festival of the…) from the summer of ‘98 till the summer of ’03. legend closed in 2002 (to make way for a 3-d movie – great planning, eisner; way to take away the most popular attraction in the park), but i continued doing shows at folk till i was (wrongly) fired in ’03. (i got my job back… eventually. that’ll have to be a blog at some point, too.) anyway, due to the fact that i heard the soundtrack on a daily basis (at least 9 shows a day at legend, 4 at festival) it is permanently ingrained in my head, along with all corresponding choreography. everytime i hear the songs, i see the choreography in my head; because i knew 5 tracks (roles) at legend, i participated in every scene at some point. i’m pretty sure, given a stage and the appropriate puppets, i could still do either show pretty well, including things i was never trained in. it’s also my curse; the lion king soundtrack follows me. wherever i go, it’ll pop up to annoy me. true stories: 1. we were in skagway, alaska, and headed into a shopping center to get lunch at one of the cafes. as we walked through, “can you feel the love tonight” by elton john came over the loud speakers. really? alaska? and 2. in vegas, rob and i walked into the first casino to “circle of life”. jeez, people, let me have a vacation! there are many more instances, but i’ve done my best to block them out.
8note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and i'm going to keep bugging you until you go read it.

new mix tape:

Best. Videos. Ever.

this is an audience-participation blog. i know there are lots of awesome videos out there, but as I have had cable only a few years here and there, there are obviously going to be some that i don’t know. so i’m just going to start with three of my favorites, and leave the rest up to you. please leave a comment including the song and artist, a link to the video if you have it, and – most importantly – tell me why it’s so brilliant. i will compile a final list and post it in a later blog.

the first three, in no particular order….

buddy holly – weezer…. this is just brilliant. great concept, great editing... just plain fun.

Watch more MTVM videos on AOL Video

you can call me al – paul simon… such a simple idea, really: two guys, a bunch of musical instruments, and the non-singer lip-syncing. simple, but fantastic.

Watch more MTVM videos on AOL Video

thriller – michael jackson... ok, this is a classic, so i'm sure i don't have to explain to you why it's on here - first of its kind, revolutionized music videos, blah blah blah... plus dancing zombies! and vincent price rapping! i was a young dancer when this video came out, and i remember watching a copy of this over and over (till we wore it out) so that we could learn all the dance moves...

Watch more Thriller videos on AOL Video

so what would you add to this list? comment, let me know, and i'll post them!

Life Is a Mix Tape, Part 1

"the times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. it does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. every mix tape tells a story. put them together, and they add up to the story of a life."

-rob sheffield

music is a huge part of my life and always has been. it’s no surprise, then, that many of my memories have music tied to them. i’ve decided to list some of these, and update as i think of others. also, if you happen to think of a song that reminds you of me or of something we did together, let me know! (p.s. if you’re not sure what a song sounds like, or you’re thinking, “hey! i love that song!” i’ve included a playlist at the bottom for your listening pleasure.)
8 “in your eyes” by peter gabriel: this is one of my favorite songs of all time. and it never fails to make me think – just for a second – about fedan and our obsession with the good morning vietnam soundtrack. i would go over to her house to hang out and we would listen to it nonstop and dance around like fools. and, yes, i realize this song is not actually on the soundtrack; but for whatever reason, our obsessions with peter gabriel and the gmv album are synonymous in my head.

8 “be my lover” by la bouche: we were in italy the first time we heard this song, in a discoteque. the other girls and i quickly found out that italian men come in two varieties – mediteranean god, and sleezy grease ball. we spent the evening dancing in a group, john and jim circling us at intervals to ward off said grease balls (because apparently the god-like men weren’t at our disco).

8 “everything i do (i do it for you)” by brian adams: my junior year in high school, the marching band performed music from the movie robin hood: prince of thieves. i loved the instrumental music, but we also did the popular “love theme”. this was the one piece of choreography that sucked for us in the color guard. our instructor (who is another story in and of himself) gave us difficult, dci-worthy routines, but this unfortunately didn’t continue on to the ballad, during which he decided we should do a dance sans apparatus. it was not particularly good, but what i remember most is my end position; i didn’t have an exact coordinate – i just needed to end up a few yards behind chris bouquot and off to his left. i can’t remember what i ate for lunch yesterday, but i remember a field position from 14 years ago…

8 “the hustle” and “there’s a kind of hush”: when i was little, i was encouraged to listen to any and all of my parents’ record albums. mom and dad didn’t restrict me to “kiddie music” nor did they expect themselves to live on a steady stream of trite educational songs. (also, i suspect that there wasn’t the market on kid songs that there is today.) one of the albums my mom would play fairly regularly was a “workout album.” on one side, there was a selection of six or seven songs with a perky voice calling out the dance/aerobic moves. on the other side were the same songs, sans instructions. both “the hustle” and “there’s a kind of hush” were on this album, so they make me think of dancing around in our awesome black-white-and-chrome living room in huntington with my mom.

8 “my perogative” by bobby brown: we danced to this in a jazz class… there are specific dance moves that go with “i see nothing wrong/ with spreading myself around” and “ev’rybody’s talkin / all this stuff about me”. i feel compelled to do them to this day. maybe if you’re good, i’ll record the moves and upload them…

8 “super trouper” by abba: this was my favorite abba song as a kid. we had a van for long trips, and my dad wisely installed an 8-track player with headphones next to my seat in the back. (that’s right, i said 8-track.) this way both my parents and i could listen to what we wanted. when i was four, my favorite 8-tracks were abba’s the album, a sesame street album, the beach boys’ greatest hits, and hooked on classics. my freshman year in college, i found myself in the cac’s concert theatre during a scenic design class. victor pointed to the back of the house to show us the large professional spotlights. “those are called super troupers,” he told us. “OH!” i exclaimed half a minute later. “THAT’S what they meant in the abba song!” i had always assumed (hey, i was four when i memorized the words) that it meant trouper as in someone who put up with something, like being lonely while on tour – being a trouper. victor glanced over at me, rolled his eyes, and said, “seriously? stop talking, gibson.” this would not be the first OR the last time he said this exact phrase...

8 “don’t stand so close to me” by the police, and “private eyes” by hall and oats: I had a small record player when i was young that played 45’s. these were my first two 45’s ever, and i played them over and over.

8 “satellite” by dmb: i already owned the album, so i’m not entirely sure why this reminds me of sitting around a pool table at a bar in college. i’m not even sure which bar – though i think it was probably the barn, as it was owned by a friend’s brother and we always got in for free. for whatever reason, i remember sitting with john and commenting, “oh, i like this song” as it came on. then we – and the other assorted people with us – starting discussing jam bands. unimportant, really, but i think of it every time.

8 “tootsie roll”: luckily i don’t hear this song very often, as it is a stupid, stupid song. however, it’s burned in my memory because of kenny and jason, two fellow theatre students. i don’t remember why the three of us always traveled together from the evansdale campus to downtown; i lived above the student union (stupid honors program) instead of in evansdale like every other creative arts student, but i can’t remember if jason and kenny did too, or if we had a class together. either way, the three of us often scaled the nine bajillion stairs from the bottom of the mountain, where the prt station was, to the top, where everything else lived. (and i’m not kidding about the stairs. we counted them once, and it came out to three hundred and something. and that was just to the mountainlair – there were several more flights to get up to my dorm. remind me to tell the “alice in wondershit” story at a later date.) one day, for no apparent reason, one of them burst out with the song, the other joined in, and they danced their way up the stairs as they sang about the moves. once they realized how obnoxious this was, they repeated the performance frequently. made me laugh (almost) every time.

8 “the end of the world (as we know it)” by r.e.m.: john and i are singers. we sing along with every song on the radio if we know all the words or even (or sometimes especially) if we don’t. dale, however never joins it. he enjoys the music and will bop along, but he leaves the singing to the rest of us – except on one occasion. we were driving around pittsburgh when this song came on the radio. dale then proceeded to sing every lyric of the song correctly. if you’ve heard the song, you know it contains a lot of random words and phrases sung quickly through the verses. john and i stared at dale for a verse or so and then burst out laughing; it was so out of character for him that it became hysterical. dale looked around at us and kept asking, “what? what’s so funny?”

as i think of others, i'll post them - in the meantime i leave you with an interesting mish-mash of music...

8 note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and you should go read it.

Remember My Name!

theatre majors, by definition, are a bit ridiculous. we have very little shame or fear, and we generally love to see people’s reactions to what we do. we also tend not to care what someone thinks of us, as long as we’re having a good time. also, for the first two years we were basically in all the same classes, so we were always walking to or from somewhere in large groups. take all of these characteristics into consideration, and i’m sure you can guess that we came up with some bizarre things to keep us entertained.

one of these things was “fame day.” fame days consisted of someone unexpectedly breaking into a song we (should) all know, and the rest of us jumping in, adding harmony and choreography as necessary. and it was always necessary. and, yes, this could take place in the cac (creative arts center), but it also could happen, for example, in the mountainlair (our student union); on a prt (“personal rapid transit”: think small 10-person monorails) platform; an actual prt (but only once, because that really didn’t go over so well with the non-fame riders); or the side of the road somewhere. usually, we were well received. well, usually we were stared at blankly, but there were always a few people who enjoyed our diversions.

my favorite fame day memory is of at least ten of us at the evensdale campus prt station. someone burst out into a michael jackson song – “beat it” i think, because i’m pretty sure i remember some west side story choreography – and the rest of us joined in, acting out the story line as necessary. there were the obligatory m.j. impersonations, some successful (and unsuccessful) moon walks, and cheesy back-up-girl dance steps. when we finished, several engineering students burst into cheers while others crowded onto the next prt, clearly desperate to get away from the crazy theatre kids. i miss fame days. they were so, so much fun…

Trick or Treat

i went home last weekend and was promptly dragged to a community dinner in stewartstown. we used to go to these almost every month, and everyone came – although attendance has apparently dwindled quite a bit over the years. after the dinner, there was a town meeting. i was getting uncomfortable from sitting on the hard seats – and it’s not like anything that would be discussed would actually affect me – so i decided to go take a walk outside.

have you ever walked around a place and the memories seem so far away that it feels like a lifetime ago? i walked down the street where i used to trick or treat; past the fields where we would run and play when i visited my cousins; over to the house that used to be the mcgregors’. it really has been a long time since i’ve wandered in this area, but it seems even longer. i don’t know if it’s because the last year felt more like four or five, or what, but i felt kind of disconnected from the area and my memories of the place. i mean, it’s not like i’m eighty and have this vast life time of memories to pour over or anything…

anyway, there’s a house on a hill just down the road from where i was. i didn’t walk over that far, mostly because i didn’t feel like mountain climbing in cool weather and causing an asthma attack, but it was the best house to go to when trick-or-treating. not very many kids ever went up there because it was a hike – the house sat on the crest of the hill, the road in the valley below it. it didn’t matter how good of shape you were in, by the time you were halfway up, you’d be puffing and wheezing and cursing the godforsaken landscape. so why did we bother? the people who lived there understood the ridiculous amounts of effort involved, and made the trek worth our whiles; not only did they give out full-size candy bars, they packaged several of those candy bars together for each trick-or-treater who rang the bell. granted, we often had to stop and rest (and eat one of those bars) before heading back down to continue our candy culling, but it was totally worth it.

Ham!

for a few years in college, my friends dale and annie lived in a house on willie st. this was our central headquarters and crash pad. it was the closest place to walk to after a night downtown, a convenient “rest stop” between classes (when walking all the way back to my house in south park was out of the question), and just generally where we’d gravitate when we couldn’t think of anything else to do. neither john nor i had a key to the place – which, in retrospect was very odd, considering the alternative – so we became adept at breaking in through the window in the spare room. lest you think this illegal or shady, please understand that annie is the one who figured out the best method for breaking in and had us all do “trial runs” to make sure we could do it safely and effectively. (of course, the definitions of “safe” and “effective” varied in direct proportion to how much alcohol we had consumed, but that’s beside the point.)

just behind this house was a street that would occasionally shut down for a block party. this was extremely convenient, and we took advantage of it when we could. the first “official” block party (read: legal) happened sophomore year. several bands were scheduled to play throughout the evening, including kind insight, made up of fellow theatre students. while there was definitely plenty of mind-altering substances about, i only indulged in the alcoholic kind. however, because there was quite a lot of “alternative smoking” going on, i ended up with quite the contact buzz without so much as touching the stuff. so did everyone in a three block radius, probably. it didn’t take long for the munchies to set in, so john, ferruso, tony, and i set off for the dairy mart just down the hill.

okay, two bits of background info: one, wvu is built on the side of a mountain – when i say “down the hill” i’m not talking about a gentle slope on a straight road. i’m talking a winding, mountain road complete with blind turns and a steep grade. the store we were headed to was no more than a block away, but there were a few sharp twists in the road along the way. (trust me, this is imperative to the story, so just do your best to imagine it.) and two, “dairy mart” is a chain of convenience stores in the area, and they sell (or sold, anyway) fresh, warm calzones that were the best drunk food ever. the most popular calzones were the ham and cheese, and the pepperoni. they made three cheese ones too, but not as many as the others; by the end of the day, cheese calzones were hard to find.

the trip down was fairly uneventful. once there, we ordered our calzones and wandered back up to the party. there were no cheese calzones left, so john, being vegetarian, had opted for something else - probably something equally healthy like zingers and more cigarettes. i didn’t eat either ham or pepperoni at the time, so i opted for the ham and cheese; the ham was in four or five large slices and were therefore easy to take out and discard. i began the discard process as we headed back up the hill. now, remember, i’m a little tipsy with a good contact buzz going on. to entertain my friends – and myself – i took out one piece of ham at a time, yelled, “ham!” as a warning, and then tossed the ham into the street. “wouldn’t it be funny if you hit a car with that?” john asked as he laughed at me. and then on cue, as i yelled “ham!” and tossed the pork product street-ward, a small convertible emerged from behind the curve. the ham slice smacked the windshield, dead center. the convertible braked and we heard a “what the hell?” in the near distance. at this point, we were so hysterical with laughter that we had to sit down on someone’s front steps before we fell over. i couldn't hear the car coming over the sounds of mellow music and shouts and catcalls. the sun was only starting to set, so the car didn't have it's lights on for me to see. the timing was just that good. just as we started to be able to breathe again, we heard, “is that HAM? did someone throw HAM at us?” from the guys in the car. fresh laughter broke out and it took us a while to start back up the hill. it took us a lot longer to stop randomly yelling out “ham!” and bursting into giggles…