David!! (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hawaiianshirts) wrote,@ 2008-05-25 17:53:00 |
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On Birdie, Baseball, Biology, Broadway, Brothers and Beatdowns
Hang on folks, it's a doozy.
So it's been quite awhile since I last posted. What's happened since then? I've flown to New York on two separate occasions, finished up classes, played in my first pit since high school, and got involved in a vampire fight.
I guess this is the story of things I've waited too long for, but finally realized. For instance, I played in the pit for the WashU Med School production of Bye Bye Birdie, featuring Elise as Deborah Sue. This gave me many flashbacks to the production of Bye Bye Birdie that I was in, gasp...in the year 2000. I also thought about the last pit I played in back in my senior year for the 90 Miles production of Nine. I remember thinking how fun it was to play in pits then (because trombones generally get decent parts), but hadn't had the opportunity to do so again until this last production. It was quite a bit of fun, and I was definitely glad to be playing trombone again. Hell-week was interesting (as they always are), mainly because it was just so much playing. I played something in practically every song and scene change. By the time the show started, having played so much actually made it easier to play, with the high notes coming easier than they ever had before. However, by the end up the run, it was actually harder to play because I'd played so much.
The one thing that UR didn't have that I wanted when I was applying to undergrad was an intramural softball league. I tried a couple times during internships, but each time had their own problems (being too late, bringing down the team, being a soccer team). However, I'm now the proud right-center fielder for the WashU First Year Med Student Team WITH my beloved fiancee. As it turns out, she's really enjoying playing softball, despite never having played much before. One of the nicest things about the past month has been going to Forest Park with her and throwing the ball around. In the first game, I went 1-2, and in the second game I was 1-3 (with a beautiful bloop right behind third base). Although the team hasn't been winning much, its exactly what I wanted in a league, because its fun, and I don't feel like the worst person on the team!
The month of May also brought my first academic conference ever. It was hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Genetics Laboratory on Long Island. It was called the Biology of Genomes. I was secretly hoping that it was really the Computer Science of Genomes, but that turned out not to be the case. It was an interesting experience. I'm sure with whatever conference I went to, I would have been in over my head as far as knowing what was going on. However, with such a large biological emphasis, it seemed near unsurmountable in this case. However, I was able to absorb a fair amount of material, and I even was able to latch onto a few interesting algorithms. I even presented a poster with my research from the past semester, which a lot people took interest in, but made my voice hurt tremendously afterwards. The whole week (Tuesday night to Saturday morning) was incredibly exhausting, if for no other reason than talks went from 9am to 11pm (if they were on time) and then afterwards, we were advised to stick around a socialize in the Cold Spring Harbor pub to make important business connections.
So at the end of the conference, Zeke, my lab mate and travel companion for the week, hit New York City for the weekend. I had been out of New York City for far too long ("when it comes down to reality, it's fine with me because I let it slide"). Zeke had never been further east than Pittsburgh, so it was fun to show him the sites (Grand Central, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, The Village, my old apartment, Washington Square Park, and Shake Shack). Saturday night we split up, and I went to go see Curtains, on Broadway. I was glad that it still had a bunch of the original cast, including David Hyde Pierce. Although it was not the best show ever, it was a pretty enjoyable show. I think I liked it so much for the same reason I liked A Chorus Line, in that it was a show about show people. People who enjoy being on the stage more than anything else. I was a little sad during one number "Coffee Shop Nights" which is the song DHP sings about how he has a good job/life, but is only truly happy on the few occasions when he gets to do theatre. The most touching song however was "I Miss the Music" which John Kander wrote after Fred Ebb had passed away. In the play, the composer is writing a song without his estranged wife, the lyricist. So he sings of how much he misses writing with his partner.
Zeke and I also took in a game at Shea where my Mets played his Reds. The Mets won, in a rare feat. We also hung out for an evening with the one and only Emily Pye. And then it was back to Missouri. I went to work for 3.5 days, and then it was back to New York. This time, I was going back for my brother's graduation. It was very nice to get the family back together for the event, although Elise was stuck back at Med School. (Stupid med school). Anyway, I got to have some quite nice conversations with my Rob over some packing boxes. He's like me, in that he's sticking around Binghamton for an extra year to get his Masters. Rob is one of a growing number of people in my life who are getting to do what they've always wanted to do. He went into mechanical engineering with the expressed goal of designing bikes or snowboards. Now, he's getting paid to go to grad school for a year to write his thesis on snowboard design, with prototypes built at Burton. My brother is awesome.
After another crazy 6am flight, I found myself back in Missouri. The summer is looking awesome. As far as work goes, it's quite nice because I don't have any classes, so most of my day is spent programming stuff for my research, which is a welcome change. I had kinda made the decision to limit my commitments other than work/softball, so I could have more free time to do what I wanted. This meant no acting, but I was okay with that, since I wanted to have a bit more relaxation time.
...but....
I've subscribed to this blog I found called St. Louis Auditions for several months now. There hadn't been anything for awhile that appealed to me so much that I actually auditioned, although there were auditions for both Rumors and Harvey. But recently there was a post advertising a 24 Hour Play Festival, which I've been known to be involved in before. I was pretty intimidated, since I had no idea how "professional" this company was, but it turned out to be a pretty cool lax group of people. I auditioned with a monologue I worked on from Frost/Nixon. I really liked it because it's a speech Nixon gave (in the play, not in real life) about always feeling like the little guy and needing to fight for everything, which is coincidentally, how I feel about acting. So I auditioned Friday night for this 24 hour play festival, and after a fitful night of sleep, I woke up and found out I was cast in a play. It turned out to not be the best play ever written. It involved vampires in a shitty diner and a goth waitress. We added some funny lines to the play, and ultimately got it to be something we thought was funny. Oh, and we added a choreographed vampire fight between myself and the other vampire, which ended up being tremendously fun and exciting.
The whole company seemed to be filled with nice people, but the most random thing was the identity of the guy cast as the other vampire. As it turned out, he was also a grad student. At Wash U. In the computer science department. Since I spend most my time on the Med School campus, I don't know everyone in the department as well as I would like, which is why it was so funny when I realized who he was. His Masters thesis is actually on "Robots on the Stage", and he actually used a robot from the lab in a 24 Hour Play Festival that he had started at WashU as an undergrad. It's a small world after all.
The other plays were interesting as well. They included
So yeah, that was the month of May.
Other B-Things:
Books - I went to the Midwest's largest book fair and bought (among other things) a copy of Catcher in the Rye and A Brief History of Time, which I intend to read this summer.
Bums - I hereby proclaim the Mets to be inconsistent bums.
Babes - I've been with Elise for 4.5 years now.
Bread - I like bread! I've got knees! I'm seeing Eddie Izzard on Friday!
Hang on folks, it's a doozy.
So it's been quite awhile since I last posted. What's happened since then? I've flown to New York on two separate occasions, finished up classes, played in my first pit since high school, and got involved in a vampire fight.
I guess this is the story of things I've waited too long for, but finally realized. For instance, I played in the pit for the WashU Med School production of Bye Bye Birdie, featuring Elise as Deborah Sue. This gave me many flashbacks to the production of Bye Bye Birdie that I was in, gasp...in the year 2000. I also thought about the last pit I played in back in my senior year for the 90 Miles production of Nine. I remember thinking how fun it was to play in pits then (because trombones generally get decent parts), but hadn't had the opportunity to do so again until this last production. It was quite a bit of fun, and I was definitely glad to be playing trombone again. Hell-week was interesting (as they always are), mainly because it was just so much playing. I played something in practically every song and scene change. By the time the show started, having played so much actually made it easier to play, with the high notes coming easier than they ever had before. However, by the end up the run, it was actually harder to play because I'd played so much.
The one thing that UR didn't have that I wanted when I was applying to undergrad was an intramural softball league. I tried a couple times during internships, but each time had their own problems (being too late, bringing down the team, being a soccer team). However, I'm now the proud right-center fielder for the WashU First Year Med Student Team WITH my beloved fiancee. As it turns out, she's really enjoying playing softball, despite never having played much before. One of the nicest things about the past month has been going to Forest Park with her and throwing the ball around. In the first game, I went 1-2, and in the second game I was 1-3 (with a beautiful bloop right behind third base). Although the team hasn't been winning much, its exactly what I wanted in a league, because its fun, and I don't feel like the worst person on the team!
The month of May also brought my first academic conference ever. It was hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Genetics Laboratory on Long Island. It was called the Biology of Genomes. I was secretly hoping that it was really the Computer Science of Genomes, but that turned out not to be the case. It was an interesting experience. I'm sure with whatever conference I went to, I would have been in over my head as far as knowing what was going on. However, with such a large biological emphasis, it seemed near unsurmountable in this case. However, I was able to absorb a fair amount of material, and I even was able to latch onto a few interesting algorithms. I even presented a poster with my research from the past semester, which a lot people took interest in, but made my voice hurt tremendously afterwards. The whole week (Tuesday night to Saturday morning) was incredibly exhausting, if for no other reason than talks went from 9am to 11pm (if they were on time) and then afterwards, we were advised to stick around a socialize in the Cold Spring Harbor pub to make important business connections.
So at the end of the conference, Zeke, my lab mate and travel companion for the week, hit New York City for the weekend. I had been out of New York City for far too long ("when it comes down to reality, it's fine with me because I let it slide"). Zeke had never been further east than Pittsburgh, so it was fun to show him the sites (Grand Central, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, The Village, my old apartment, Washington Square Park, and Shake Shack). Saturday night we split up, and I went to go see Curtains, on Broadway. I was glad that it still had a bunch of the original cast, including David Hyde Pierce. Although it was not the best show ever, it was a pretty enjoyable show. I think I liked it so much for the same reason I liked A Chorus Line, in that it was a show about show people. People who enjoy being on the stage more than anything else. I was a little sad during one number "Coffee Shop Nights" which is the song DHP sings about how he has a good job/life, but is only truly happy on the few occasions when he gets to do theatre. The most touching song however was "I Miss the Music" which John Kander wrote after Fred Ebb had passed away. In the play, the composer is writing a song without his estranged wife, the lyricist. So he sings of how much he misses writing with his partner.
Zeke and I also took in a game at Shea where my Mets played his Reds. The Mets won, in a rare feat. We also hung out for an evening with the one and only Emily Pye. And then it was back to Missouri. I went to work for 3.5 days, and then it was back to New York. This time, I was going back for my brother's graduation. It was very nice to get the family back together for the event, although Elise was stuck back at Med School. (Stupid med school). Anyway, I got to have some quite nice conversations with my Rob over some packing boxes. He's like me, in that he's sticking around Binghamton for an extra year to get his Masters. Rob is one of a growing number of people in my life who are getting to do what they've always wanted to do. He went into mechanical engineering with the expressed goal of designing bikes or snowboards. Now, he's getting paid to go to grad school for a year to write his thesis on snowboard design, with prototypes built at Burton. My brother is awesome.
After another crazy 6am flight, I found myself back in Missouri. The summer is looking awesome. As far as work goes, it's quite nice because I don't have any classes, so most of my day is spent programming stuff for my research, which is a welcome change. I had kinda made the decision to limit my commitments other than work/softball, so I could have more free time to do what I wanted. This meant no acting, but I was okay with that, since I wanted to have a bit more relaxation time.
...but....
I've subscribed to this blog I found called St. Louis Auditions for several months now. There hadn't been anything for awhile that appealed to me so much that I actually auditioned, although there were auditions for both Rumors and Harvey. But recently there was a post advertising a 24 Hour Play Festival, which I've been known to be involved in before. I was pretty intimidated, since I had no idea how "professional" this company was, but it turned out to be a pretty cool lax group of people. I auditioned with a monologue I worked on from Frost/Nixon. I really liked it because it's a speech Nixon gave (in the play, not in real life) about always feeling like the little guy and needing to fight for everything, which is coincidentally, how I feel about acting. So I auditioned Friday night for this 24 hour play festival, and after a fitful night of sleep, I woke up and found out I was cast in a play. It turned out to not be the best play ever written. It involved vampires in a shitty diner and a goth waitress. We added some funny lines to the play, and ultimately got it to be something we thought was funny. Oh, and we added a choreographed vampire fight between myself and the other vampire, which ended up being tremendously fun and exciting.
The whole company seemed to be filled with nice people, but the most random thing was the identity of the guy cast as the other vampire. As it turned out, he was also a grad student. At Wash U. In the computer science department. Since I spend most my time on the Med School campus, I don't know everyone in the department as well as I would like, which is why it was so funny when I realized who he was. His Masters thesis is actually on "Robots on the Stage", and he actually used a robot from the lab in a 24 Hour Play Festival that he had started at WashU as an undergrad. It's a small world after all.
The other plays were interesting as well. They included
- A murder mystery, that ended not with revealing the killer's name, but with a Rick Roll
- A montage of different break-up scenes at different points in a relationship
- Two Star Wars obsessed brothers seeking revenge on the dead brother's behalf
- Life in a pet store fish bowl (personal and crowd favorite)
- Dead hookers and Gambling in Vegas
- and finally, two space mechanics get a creepy repair job
So yeah, that was the month of May.
Other B-Things:
Books - I went to the Midwest's largest book fair and bought (among other things) a copy of Catcher in the Rye and A Brief History of Time, which I intend to read this summer.
Bums - I hereby proclaim the Mets to be inconsistent bums.
Babes - I've been with Elise for 4.5 years now.
Bread - I like bread! I've got knees! I'm seeing Eddie Izzard on Friday!
