December 21, 2008

A Torrent of Torrents

Oh my gorgeous cupcakes! This song just came on on the radio. Not FM radio, itunes radio. I was listening to Always Christmas (1.FM) because they normally have a nice selection of songs to play, and then this came on. It hurt my ears and I had to stop it. Their vowels and their consonants! My goodness!

Anyways... Today I decided to jump into the world of torrents. My friend had talked about it and I knew she got most of her songs from there, so I thought, "Heck. Let's give it a try." So I did. And....

OH MY GOD IT IS AMAZING! I found the download of 35 of Eric Whitacre's pieces. 35! I absolutely love his music. It is so amazing. This is my favorite and the singers are amazing too.

Okay. Go ahead. Call me weird and strange and all of that stuff; but this song is so amazingly beautiful. The dissidence in it is stunning. And building 13 part chords? (yes i counted) Who does that? Eric Whitacre does! And the high note at 1:08 just makes me melt. And I am currently downloading his music :-D

You should be jealous of me. Oh! And just thing. Lyrical/Contemporary dances to Whitacre's choral pieces! I must go call Mia Michaels!

Well, I think you've had enough of my being nerdy. I'll leave you be...

But seriously... Listen to his songs. You will die.

December 5, 2008

Stressful Week Ends in Excitement

This past week was so insanely stressful. I think it was mostly because I had auditions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday auditions were for a special that my friend and I wanted to do at our school's Christmas Concert.... I'm sorry.. Holiday Concert (we always have to be politically correct here!) Anyways, we got that. There weren't too many people trying out for it so I was pretty sure we'd get it. Plus our choir director absolutely loves us. We're singing "Grown Up Christmas List" as a duet; it sounds pretty!

The next day, Tuesday, was the day of auditions for my school's production of Chicago. (It is very rare that a high school gets the rights for Chicago. From what I heard, only 5-10% of the schools that apply for the rights actually get them. So this was a big deal.) I was pretty solid on my audition song, but not my monologue. I had chosen my monologue about 2 weeks before but had not memorized it yet. So, all of Tuesday I was memorizing my monologue, which was from the movie Clue. It was a very well written monologue, but I couldn't remember all of it. So during my audition, I just improved it and then acted boisterous and outrageous. (No regrets) When I sang my song, I cracked on my last note. I was pissed at myself, but not worried too much about it. And then we had to do the dancing part of the audition in a group. We had learned a dance 30 minutes before auditions. I felt like I knew it, and I did. In conclusion, my song was decent, monologue - decent, and dancing was strong. (Results of auditions later in blog)

The next day, Wednesday, I had an audition for another special during another concert. I had not rehearsed with my accompanist before auditioning and had not really practiced it sufficiently with my voice teacher. So my audition was definitely not the strongest. Plus, when I went up to sing, my throat got completely strange and I think my nerves got to me because of it. I was so embarrassed when I finished my song. I felt like a complete failure and was tempted to even say I didn't want to do a special anymore. I felt like a fool, but my other director still said I could sing at the concert.

Also, this week, I had a good amount of homework. On Thursday, I had two tests in my two hardest classes - AP Euro & Honors Physics - and a quiz in my math class. That was not fun, especially since it was the day of callbacks for Chicago. Which brings me to my audition results...

I received a callback, which I was very happy about, but not surprised because I was a guy that could sing, dance, and act, and they don't have enough guys. A callback meant that they were considering you for a major role in the show. The callbacks on Thursday were rather nerve racking. At first, I went to the chorus room and received music that they wanted to try me for. I received two pieces: A Little Bit of Good sung by the character Mary Sunshine (yes, a girl) and Mr. Cellophane sung by Amos. The song A Little Bit of Good is extremely high (look towards end for video). It calls for someone that can hit an A above the staff. I was singing the song along with four other girls (all of which were my friends = not fun competition). Anyway, the girls and I quickly learned the song, and when we auditioned, we only had to sing a small bit of the beginning and then we had to sing a measure where you sing a high F to and high A, which is held by a fermata, down to another F, I believe. I sang the beginning fine. I had looked at the directors as I sang the beginning and they were pretty impressed. (Reminder: I had to sing this in front of about 16 other people who were being looked at for lead roles too.) Then came the F-A-F (I hope I'm not scaring you off with my music-ness). The accompanist played the F, I took a super, deep breath and shot out the F and then popped up to the A and held it for a pretty long time and then went back down. The A was so strong, I was surprised. From what I hear, after I hit it so strong, I kind of stood there for a moment with a did-I-really-just-do-that look on my face. And everybody else in the room clapped and the other guys were like "holy crap" and were laughing out of awe. It was awesome; maybe even my proudest moment as a singer. :-P

Moving on. We did a short, little, easy dance for them and then did some acting. And then it was over.

Today, after chorus, during lunch, the cast list was put up. There were about 20 people waiting right by the board to see it. Once I saw the number of people, I just turned around and went to lunch. I didn't want to look in front of all of those people. Two of the people I sat with at lunch were very anxious to see the list, so they left to go see it. They came back smiling. They said, "You got Mary Sunshine."

My response, "No! No! No! Don't tell me!" But it was obviously too late.

I soon after went to the board to look at the list myself. I was so shocked. I couldn't believe that I was going to play a woman in the show (still can't). I was ecstatic. Now, I can't wait until those nights of the show when I just hit those As over and over again and leave the audience with their jaws dropped to the floor! I can't wait!

Here is a video of the song I will be singing:



November 26, 2008

Thank You

Thank you
for being there or not being there for me;
either way, you have helped shape who I am, and I am truly thankful for it.

Have a lovely Thanksgiving.

November 22, 2008

Don't Flatter Me

I really don't respond well to people that tell me I'm good at something. I'll always eventually get red in the face and do this thing where I bring my hand/fingers up by my mouth. I don't know why... I think it's because I feel like I'm covering my face. (It's the sort of thing the "Effed up leprechaun situations" guy from SNL does, just not as extreme)

Anyways, the reason I write this is because it happened to me on yesterday and today.

Yesterday, I was in Spanish class and we were doing a review worksheet. Everyone was working on it and I had finished in less time than everyone else (not by too much, i don't think).
Well, my teacher came up to me because I had started on some math homework and asked "Are you finished".
"Yes," I said.
And then me teacher told me, "I need to find something challenging for you."
I had no idea how to respond, so I just smiled...

I don't know how to respond in those situations, especially when they happen around other people. I don't want to seem like the "oh-he's-some-much-better-than-everyone-else guy" because I'm not, and I don't like people who are like that.

The same type of situation happened again today.

I was at my school's show, and we had incorporated video production into the play for some scene changes where there were voiceovers. I had designed and edited the video by myself, I just had some help with the filming. The whole cast and crew always do a warm-up before the show and our director gives a little speech.

It was a pretty long speech because it was closing night and the show had come a long way. Then he pointed me out and was like, "I'd like to recognize Justin. Because, although I know all of you work hard and are independent, I gave Justin no guidance, I sat him down and told him my crazy ideas for the videos and he went and did it."

This made me so embarrassed/flattered. Everyone was looking at me, and I started to do the little hand thingy, and I just laughed. I wasn't that special; many more people had worked harder on the show than I had. And then everyone clapped for me which was the end of it. One of my friends (pretty much all of them are my friends) gave me hug and I said "I'm going to use you to hide my face."

So.... moral of the story: Don't point me out in front of people and flatter me.

kthxbai

On another note...
I had a freaking awesome time tonight; I love my friends so much. I wouldn't be who I am without them. Here's a little picture of what might have happened at the cast/crew party after the show...

The blonde Sarah Palin?

November 18, 2008

Today=Average


I feel like nothing special happened today. Nothing too memorable. But I'll write some stuff down anyways.

I had 2 tests today, one right after the other. They were both pretty easy; especially my math test because our teacher pretty much gives us a copy of the test two days before as a "review". I think I have a 101% in that class.... just checked... and yes I do. I also just realized that I got a much better grade than I anticipated on my physics test. So I guess I'm happy with that.

I stayed after school today with one of my friends to make up an essay for AP Euro because I was making my television debut the day the class did it. Our teacher is so ridiculous. My friend and I both knew that our teacher doesn't even read the essays. So I completely BS-ed my essay. The question we were supposed to write about was stupid. It asked how Great Britain, France, and Spain benefited from the growth of world trade in the 18th century. Our book did not mention one thing about France benefiting. It more or less declined because of the Peace of Utrecht (white & nerdy? - YES). So, while writing about the French in my essay, I added a little spice. After saying France failed to benefit from world trade I wrote "The French continued to eat their bread, drink their wine, and not shave their legs. They would later grow under Louis XXX." And then later I wrote "Although France was crumbling at this time, there was still some yeast left in the bread and they would soon rise and conquer."

I thought it was funny. :-D

I watched the first episode of Skins today. It's interesting how much the characters change throughout the season.

Oh! And I ran today! First time since August! I think I did pretty well for not running in 3 months. I ran 3 miles. It felt so nice to finally run again!

I must say, I had a pretty eventful day (especially compared to Sunday :-] ).

Queer Ducks FTW

November 17, 2008

Yay Laziness

I kind of like being lazy, but then again I don't. When I am super-busy, I always want to just take a day off and do nothing. But when I have days like today where I only do my homework and lay in bed, I feel like I didn't live the day to its fullest. It's kind of disappointing.

I was very happy/content today. And I know exactly why; I just won't tell you.

Hmmm... Did anything interesting happen today?

Oh! We finished watching Clue in my Mystery & Horror class (what a joke that class is!) and the monologue that Wadsworth has at the end is so crazy and sporadic, that I just might use it for my Chicago audition. Also, I had my voice lesson today (I am still sick! 3 weeks later! and can barely sing!) and my teacher and I picked out a pretty good song with a nice high G, because I ain't afraid of no G! (wow, music nerd ftl!)

Well... uhhhh... yay!

November 16, 2008

Awesomeness

So, today was an awesome day. Well, the ending was. I can't say why, but it was awesome.

At tech today, I pretty much did nothing. I am the Film Designer for the show, and all I did was sit there and help out every 30 minutes for about 10 seconds. It was a waste of time for me. I really enjoyed being the Film Designer though. Everyone tells me my videos are "so good" and that they "look professional". I'm flattered that people think that because I don't think they're that great. I don't think they're bad, but I don't think they're amazing. However, the annoying thing is that the screen that comes down to project the videos on is really slow, and timing it right is a pain in the butt.

And I have been procrastinating doing homework all day. Maybe I should start soon. I guess I should teach myself some European history (considering my teacher knows nothing about it).

Oh, and I found out that I don't have to be at the rehearsals or the shows for the rest of the week. I hope that doesn't change; I have a feeling it will. But, if it doesn't, that means I can go to my cousin's art show! I'm so excited for it. (I'm just hyper in general right now.)

In conclusion, today was an awesome day. I felt feelings I've never felt before, feelings that I doubt many people feel.

Alright, that's enough of that. I might do some more random blogging like this in the future.

November 4, 2008

My Theoretical Analysis of the Universe

So, lately I've been coming up with these AWESOME theories. Like freaking awesome theories! So I decided I would jot them down; and what better place to do it than on the internet?! I will post whatever new theories I conjure up here. My ideas will grow to be accepted by nearly everybody, excluding scientists of any kind, mathematicians, other theorists, and basically anybody that is knowledgeable.




Theory #1 - The Relation of Crystal Spheres, Heaven, and Christianity

In order to understand this theory, you will have to be aware of Aristotle's widely accepted view on the Universe. As Aristotle said, the Universe is made up of an unknown number of Crystal Spheres. Each Crystal Sphere contains a galaxy. For example; the Milky Way is contained in one Crystal Sphere. Outside of these Crystal Spheres is Heaven. This can be illustrated by the following drawing:

Crystal Spheres Theory
God and Jesus are located in the realm of Heaven. However, Jesus has been inside each sphere. He first entered one sphere and spread the word of God. He was not able to exit the Crystal Sphere however, because he had to die first. Therefore he died and exited the Crystal Sphere, returning to Heaven. He then continued his journey into each Crystal Sphere where he spread the word of God, died, and returned to Heaven. After this, he returned to each Sphere in order, where he stayed for varying amounts of time (depending on the Crystal Sphere) and then transcended into Heaven. He was able to transcend because God had gained many followers through his son's travels through each Crystal Sphere. Each follower gave God about 1.2 squabbles of power, equivalent to 59 joules. Because God had gained so much power, he was able to transmit his power to Jesus, giving him the ability to transcend out of each Sphere rather than dying. Because time is relative to each Sphere, Jesus was able to do this in what seemed like 3 days on Earth. It is each of Jesus's followers' duty to spread the word of God throughout their Sphere.


Theory #2 - The Evolution of Anime
Anime, the Japanese style of animation, has a very deep evolution. In the 1990s, a team of secretive, Japanese astronauts set out to explore a planet that never been touched by humans. After secretly building a spaceship, the Japanese traveled to Jupiter. There they found what we have come to know as Pokémon. They landed on the never-explored planet and discovered these creatures. They were so intrigued by these creatures that they set up about 15,000 cameras to track the creatures. They then built a base, along with a satellite, to transmit signals to the satellite and eventually to Earth. 4 scientist that were on the spaceship stayed on Jupiter and began to reproduce. The Japanese returned to Earth where they created another base to receive the signals transmitted from the satellite. In the first generation of Jupiter-born humans, we find Ash, Brock, and Misty. As the Japanese watched the three trek across Jupiter, cataloging every Pokémon, they noticed that they could watch the three's entire lives. They immediately saw this as an opportunity to make money. They quickly sold the rights to Nintendo in an underground trade. Once this documentary portrayed as a cartoon series was seen by many, Japanese artists began to impersonate the look of the series. Due to the atmosphere on Jupiter, that shapes of bodies and faces were construed. This construed view of reality turned into the art called Anime.

September 2, 2008

I'm a Mean, Mean Person!

So I had to write a personal narrative for school. (I know, school has started already... ugh!) And I thought it was pretty funny. So, I'm posting it here...


The wheels rotated faster and faster as we gained speed rolling down the hill. I pressed my hands against the seat in front of me to hold steady. The upper-middle class houses zoomed by as gravity pulled us down the hill. We approached the stop sign where, each day, our bus driver would make a rolling stop. The windows in the bus were all closed because of the fall transition into winter. It was inevitable; bus drivers hated elementary school kids. Therefore they would do anything to put them into danger. Mommy’s “precious, little angels” were no real angels, just devilish demons.

Our bus driver sharply turned the corner after rolling by the clearly visible stop sign. The back of the bus seemed to give you a much better feel of the road. This would come in handy if you were a surveyor, but I was a semi-professional student. Sitting on my knees, chatting with my bus-mates, my inertia refused to cooperate with the sharp turn the bus driver had made. I was thrown forward, toward the aisle. As a carefree eleven year old, I just went with the flow. Being thrown forward probably meant I would be thrown back. I was.

My head and torso quickly flew back as the bus straightened itself out onto Eminem Road. Making no attempt to stop my body, my head hit the side of the bus. Hitting your head on the side of the bus isn’t that bad, unless you hit it right on the edge between the steel, bottom half and the window, upper half. My head clonked against this edge, but I was oblivious.

I shot straight back up as if nothing hurt. (I think I was acting tough in front of my bus-mates.) But I did give some notice to the injury – I brought up a hand to the back of my head. Something was wrong though. My hand was feeling something warm, and maybe wet like I had just showered my head. I brought the hand in front of my chest and looked. I had to take a double-take because I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was blood on my hand. Not just a little blood, but enough to span three fingers.

My pupils dilated as I took in the shock.

“I’m bleeding!” I said, loud enough for the three sitting close by to hear.

This time a little louder, “I’m bleeding!”

I stumbled up and began to make my way up the aisle, as a bus-mate got up, only reigniting the terror in my mind. “He’s bleeding!”

The bus went around two bends in the road as I tried to steady myself with one hand, keeping pressure on my wound with the other. When I finally reached the front, we had arrived at two younger students’ bus stop. I sat down in the front seat while the kids got off. The interrogation was about to begin.

“What happened?” the overweight, curly, brunette bus driver asked me.

“I hit my head on the window.” I hadn’t known that it was actually the window sill.

“How bad is it bleeding?”

I took my hand off of my head and showed her the blood. She quickly brought down the first-aid kit from the compartment above her. She handed me the only pieces of gauze in it and then continued the torture.

“What’s your name?”

“Justin White.” I had ridden the bus for over 50 days now and she didn’t know my name?

The entire bus sat at the bus stop and waited while she called in the injury.

“You hit it on the window?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing that I didn’t stutter the first time I told her, unless I had developed one from this blow to the brain.

I closed my eyes and it felt like eternity was going by as she lazily talked with “board base”. Finally, after what seemed to be hours, we continued the route. Of course there was no urgency shown to get me home quickly. We let the two brothers off at the next street and continued to turn around and go back up Eminem Road, passing the street that led to my demise.

One more stop at ChanningTatum Drive. I knew I would be okay. We came to the bus stop to find my dad waiting out there. I was very relieved to see another adult that would show more compassion than this fat, ugly, almost jobless woman.

“He was on his knees. I always tell them to sit down,” she shouted out the bus door.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” my dad replied.

But I was sitting down! I was sitting on my knees! And it doesn’t help when an eleven ton automobile gets swung around a turn with a stop sign to prevent any problems with inertia!

I wasn’t able to get into the doctor’s office until more than 2 hours after the accident. But that didn’t matter; I was home and I was safe from any potentially intoxicated drivers. At the doctor’s office, the very nice, compassionate, and not-so-fat nurse shaved off some hair around the gash in my head. She then proceeded to jab a needle right into the flesh of the wound to numb any pain. Three stitches were sewn into my head and forever etched into my mind.

I was very bitter for riding the bus home for a good three weeks. I think I am a bit bitter even after five years. That is not the point. I didn’t have any more accidents on the school bus after that because I always sat the semi-right way, just not on my knees. But I also had different bus drivers. (Perhaps they were more experienced.)

*The names of the streets were changed by the wittness protection program.

July 29, 2008

I met Dave!


I decided I would endanger my friends by standing on a street corner at night and talking to a yellow-shoe-wearing, wedding-band-holding, boom-box-carrying "homeless" man.

I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I think it was something along the lines of, "Don't be scared. He's a person too."

In a way, that is a very respectful thought. However, I ignored the fact that I would never see this man again if I just kept on walking. (But now it makes for a good story!)

So, we were walking back from the show (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and a rather tall, slim man walks up to us and explains that he has 60 cents and needs $3.60 to buy some food. (At one point I thought he said he wanted 2 dollar bills for 8 quarters, which was the reason I stuck around.) He tells my friend, Lisa (who he particularly liked ;-) ), that she shouldn't be scared because he is a Christian. (And yes, being a Christian means that you don't do anything wrong... psh) He points his fist at me for one of those fist-to-fist handshake-like things, so I give a nice fist to the fist. He hands me the 60 cents that he has collected for some reason (I proceeded to count it.) And then he goes on to tell us that his name is Dave and starts to say stuff about my other friends. He tells Lisa that she looks like a "bunny". (We have no recollection of what he actually said about the other two.) Now, I have no idea if he was having fantasies in his head about Playboy or what, but it was really weird. I then take out my wallet and give him 2 dollars. By this time, my other two friends had ditched Lisa and I and crossed the street.

That was one terribly odd experience. But it is now rather hilarious looking back on it.

(In the car we were all laughing our heads off because of what Dave said and how stupid I was.)

July 21, 2008

Mary Jane's at Work


So as I was walking to my car from work I could smell some marijuana from somewhere. I thought, "Oh, how delightful! Someone's smoking their Mary Jane right next to the pool entrance!"

The sad thing is this isn't the first time I've smelt marijuana on my way to the car. Another time I was walking to my car with my friend and her sister (who also work there) and my friend goes, "Justin! Stop smoking that stuff! It's bad for you!" (something like that).
I'm sure some of you wonder how I know what marijuana smells like...

Well, for starters, if you don't know what marijuana smells like, consider yourself lucky. It is always unpleasant to smell because you know someone is getting high somewhere.


I remember the first time I smelt marijuana and identified it as marijuana was on my way to the car back from a Major League Baseball game. I think I was about 10 or 11...

My dad... or maybe it was my mom... says, "I don't think they're smoking a cigarette up there."

And of course, me, the little naive 10 year old, says, "Oh, then what is it?"

"It's marijuana."

I began to get curious and asked, "How do you know?"

"Because there were people in my college dorm that used to smoke it and would tell me that I probably didn't want to be around. So I just stayed away from them."

Oh, this made since to me. My mom/dad would never do drugs. They were good people...

That would be the first time I smelt marijuana. And every now and then you get a not-so-nice whiff of it (especially where I live).

P.S. I took this picture at Target of a candy I had never seen before...

January 18, 2008

Fly

This song will make you cry, like it did me. Please listen to this intently, and listen to the words. It is so beautiful.


January 11, 2008

A Conversation of Confessions

My friend Delia and I have created a new blog that might be kept updated more frequently than this one.

Go check it out and leave a comment!

A Conversation of Confessions
http://conversationofconfessions.blogspot.com

January 3, 2008

2008

Happy 2008 to everybody!
I've created a new account with my gmail account.
So I added myself to my own blog!
Exciting.
No body visits this page anyways.
I am thinking about buying myself a Macbook because I am constantly on my mother's laptop and I would also like to make movies on imovie along with music on grageband and itunes and continue my justin.tv site

www.justin.tv/justdpl
www.myspace.com/justdpl
^add me^