I'm not sure where I read it last (perhaps in Alexander the Great) but I read somewhere that people that achieve greatness do so by rejecting the commonplace, the routine, the norm. In the same way a truly great scientist dares to believe, any person who achieves greatness has to break free from normal constraints and imagine something, well, greater.
For all I know I am completely romanticizing myself to give reason to past actions, but I feel like there have been several moments, situations and/or opportunities to take the easy/normal route in my life, that I have reacted to with unease and hesitance---maybe even disdain. More often than not I have given in to 'base' desires and taken the easy route but I am thinking that maybe I should not. I have met with many challenges in the past 8 or so years of my life (and by no means do I feel these challenges have been earth-shattering or on a scale remotely close to that which so very many are forced to face daily) and I do not think I am truly happy with how I have handled them. I think I may want to be great. There is a part of me that wonders if I should shake off a lot of the 'nice' things in life and focus on what drives me and moves me, what I have felt I am 'meant' to do---which I know believe is really my feeling I am mean to achieve greatness.
Over the past three years I have wrestled with these thoughts of how to best utilize my time as I am often frustrated with myself for the choices that I make. Whenever I have had a good conversation with someone on this topic the conclusion is agreed on that time is not wasted when it is spent on yourself, that you need 'you time'. Two thoughts come to mind now:
1) maybe a great person does not need 'you time'
2) maybe 'you time' needs a stricter definition
In this moment before I head to bed, I am truly contemplating taking the first thought and putting it to action. There have always been excuses in my past. Maybe I should quit cold-turkey and just make myself accountable until I find out I should adjust and take well-defined 'me time'. Because I am worried if I start with well-defined 'me time' I will end up back with excuses again.
Then again, I could just be completely romanticizing this all and I could be perfectly content with my path if I just accepted it as is. Or, I may forget this all come morning...
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Agents
A Different Spin's agent (for colleges, military and cruise ships) has been extremely disappointing up until this point in time. Many times we have discussed the possibility of actually be relieved if our contract with him expires come the end of March (the only way it does NOT expire is if he secures us a showcase for NACA before the end of March or we out of a fit of temporary insanity ask him to renew the contract).
I spoke with the contact for the New Mexico State Fair yesterday and she was extremely impressed with our website (yep, Tim is awesome) and the way we presented ourselves via phone and the interwebs. A startling issue is that we may not be *big enough for a venue* as she wanted us to increase our playing space of 20' x 20' to reach a larger audience. Having new performers in the 'A Different Spin Performer Stable' (ADSPS...yeah, I doubt the phrase or acronym will live long) makes that actually possible so who knows, it could be grand! But I digress...the relevant piece of information she had for this particular issue I am grumbling about---namely having an agent---was that in her long experience it was best to stay independent as long as possible. Though she had some anecdotes of times it was nice to make a phone call to an agent to tell them to convey to their artist that they were behaving like total asshats, she agreed with me that the *product* you create as an independent artist is by and large a much better one. From personal experience I definitely believe this as I feel we are:
1) better salesmen for the product because we KNOW it inside and out and can paint a pretty picture. We also are therefore much better at 'up-selling' as when you are involved in the booking process you get a sense of the event and/or organizer to find additional ways you can be paid for being awesome
2) more invested in the success of the group as (for some of us) it is our sole source of income
3) able to handle questions of 'can you do this?' because, well, we usually know right away if we can or not
It also gives the organizer a feeling that they are really involved in bringing in our group, which DOES have its downsides (that can never truly be predicated) in that some people prefer to talk to straight-numbers/organization people. But I feel these instances are few and far between and can often be charmed out of issue.
So you got all of that? Cuz here I go turning it on its head. What I just today experienced was the reason that having an agent is actually a good thing: freedom to create. I honestly have had an absolutely AMAZING time running A Different Spin as a business and I look forward to continuing to learn on the job. Hell, it is going to serve me well as I help promote The Boston Circus Guild and embark on some wonderful circus/spinning arts commune endeavors in the future and I can also contribute to the community by offering to teach a class in Spring '10 at WildFire on the process...but it takes so much time to do all of this work. With Jeremy stepping out back in September and knowing Tim will come January I realize that the task is insanely time consuming. Ricky and I maybe overwhelmed and I honestly worry how that will affect the success of A Different Spin. So what happened today? Well, I saw some videos of other performers (more than just the fire-acro for Dream State Circus and promo and an act from The Flash)that reminded me we not only don't have a truly polished show, but we don't have a circus show that is going to be very adaptable to new performers. I am very worried that Joanna and Roger being involved in any combination of a four-person circus performance is going to be a VERY different show. Thinking positively, it could turn out to be a totally rockin show...but it will take a lot of creative time to make it so and past experience has shown that the 'everyone go sit in their respective corners and come back with solo acts to smash together' approach makes for a subpar show. So what an agent *ideally* does is make it so that the performers can focus on polishing great foundational shows and work on making great new ones. I think A Different Spin has a great foundational circus arts show that will only ever be performed if the original four 'east coast boys' perform and will only ever get to be a great show if we all work on it...which we won't because Ricky and I will be overwhelmed with business stuff, Jeremy will be pursuing grad school and independent circus workshops/performances and Tim will eventually be busy working/researching tech theater jobs. Frustrating. And a good agent could make this so much easier by freeing up time. It would be far from ideal (as my experience thus far has shown) to rehearse and create new material piece-meal and with many different combinations of performers, but it would be better.
Realistically, A Different Spin can still succeed even without an agent or with a bad one, it will just take longer to achieve success. Sometimes I'm scared of how much longer.
EDIT: Having slept on it and continued to muse a bit, I wanted to add for the record that I believe the original 'ideal plan' for A Different Spin could still work---pushing really hard for several months with four people doing the 'agent' work to establish the contacts and learn so so much, then having there be a rotating schedule of 'office work' where each member does a limited amount per week to keep the machine running. Not that this is all that positive now that I think about it as I won't ever really know. Bah. But perhaps it will inspire someone else to try it even without our having tried it first.
I spoke with the contact for the New Mexico State Fair yesterday and she was extremely impressed with our website (yep, Tim is awesome) and the way we presented ourselves via phone and the interwebs. A startling issue is that we may not be *big enough for a venue* as she wanted us to increase our playing space of 20' x 20' to reach a larger audience. Having new performers in the 'A Different Spin Performer Stable' (ADSPS...yeah, I doubt the phrase or acronym will live long) makes that actually possible so who knows, it could be grand! But I digress...the relevant piece of information she had for this particular issue I am grumbling about---namely having an agent---was that in her long experience it was best to stay independent as long as possible. Though she had some anecdotes of times it was nice to make a phone call to an agent to tell them to convey to their artist that they were behaving like total asshats, she agreed with me that the *product* you create as an independent artist is by and large a much better one. From personal experience I definitely believe this as I feel we are:
1) better salesmen for the product because we KNOW it inside and out and can paint a pretty picture. We also are therefore much better at 'up-selling' as when you are involved in the booking process you get a sense of the event and/or organizer to find additional ways you can be paid for being awesome
2) more invested in the success of the group as (for some of us) it is our sole source of income
3) able to handle questions of 'can you do this?' because, well, we usually know right away if we can or not
It also gives the organizer a feeling that they are really involved in bringing in our group, which DOES have its downsides (that can never truly be predicated) in that some people prefer to talk to straight-numbers/organization people. But I feel these instances are few and far between and can often be charmed out of issue.
So you got all of that? Cuz here I go turning it on its head. What I just today experienced was the reason that having an agent is actually a good thing: freedom to create. I honestly have had an absolutely AMAZING time running A Different Spin as a business and I look forward to continuing to learn on the job. Hell, it is going to serve me well as I help promote The Boston Circus Guild and embark on some wonderful circus/spinning arts commune endeavors in the future and I can also contribute to the community by offering to teach a class in Spring '10 at WildFire on the process...but it takes so much time to do all of this work. With Jeremy stepping out back in September and knowing Tim will come January I realize that the task is insanely time consuming. Ricky and I maybe overwhelmed and I honestly worry how that will affect the success of A Different Spin. So what happened today? Well, I saw some videos of other performers (more than just the fire-acro for Dream State Circus and promo and an act from The Flash)that reminded me we not only don't have a truly polished show, but we don't have a circus show that is going to be very adaptable to new performers. I am very worried that Joanna and Roger being involved in any combination of a four-person circus performance is going to be a VERY different show. Thinking positively, it could turn out to be a totally rockin show...but it will take a lot of creative time to make it so and past experience has shown that the 'everyone go sit in their respective corners and come back with solo acts to smash together' approach makes for a subpar show. So what an agent *ideally* does is make it so that the performers can focus on polishing great foundational shows and work on making great new ones. I think A Different Spin has a great foundational circus arts show that will only ever be performed if the original four 'east coast boys' perform and will only ever get to be a great show if we all work on it...which we won't because Ricky and I will be overwhelmed with business stuff, Jeremy will be pursuing grad school and independent circus workshops/performances and Tim will eventually be busy working/researching tech theater jobs. Frustrating. And a good agent could make this so much easier by freeing up time. It would be far from ideal (as my experience thus far has shown) to rehearse and create new material piece-meal and with many different combinations of performers, but it would be better.
Realistically, A Different Spin can still succeed even without an agent or with a bad one, it will just take longer to achieve success. Sometimes I'm scared of how much longer.
EDIT: Having slept on it and continued to muse a bit, I wanted to add for the record that I believe the original 'ideal plan' for A Different Spin could still work---pushing really hard for several months with four people doing the 'agent' work to establish the contacts and learn so so much, then having there be a rotating schedule of 'office work' where each member does a limited amount per week to keep the machine running. Not that this is all that positive now that I think about it as I won't ever really know. Bah. But perhaps it will inspire someone else to try it even without our having tried it first.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Time to get moving
My mom's sister finally lost her husband this week. He was a brilliant, talented man who was hit hard by Parkinson's and has been declining for years. I don't know half as much as I should about what he struggled with and am sure that comes from my pattern of wanting to deny the hardships in life. My aunt is one of the sweetest women I've had the pleasure to meet and I am so very glad I can call her family. She suffered greatly when she lost my mom but has the same enviable strength my mom did and she made herself available to my brother and I to fill the void left behind. The same strength has shown over the past year while I've visited with her (she lives just 25 or so minutes away from me) and she has relayed her experience watching the man she loves die for quite a long time. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult that must be but she managed to handle it so well.
I don't really know my dad and I don't really know my brother, but I can say with complete confidence that my extended family is unparalleled in their talent, kindness, perseverance and resilience. I hope I can make them think the same of me. I want to be accountable and I want to be great. To get there I will need to focus and be harder on myself and be accountable to ME first. One of the most truly amazing individuals I have ever met has tried to have me harness the power of positive thinking and I WILL do my best to do so moving forward. Good friends and good family await me this weekend. That seems a good place to start.
I don't really know my dad and I don't really know my brother, but I can say with complete confidence that my extended family is unparalleled in their talent, kindness, perseverance and resilience. I hope I can make them think the same of me. I want to be accountable and I want to be great. To get there I will need to focus and be harder on myself and be accountable to ME first. One of the most truly amazing individuals I have ever met has tried to have me harness the power of positive thinking and I WILL do my best to do so moving forward. Good friends and good family await me this weekend. That seems a good place to start.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
New Direction
Well despite the positive nature of my previous post (and the fact that the next gig after the two written about---which occurred at Drew University---was also totally kickass) things for A Different Spin are headed in a new direction. More to come as Ricky and I piece together plans over the next couple of weeks, but I currently doubt I will continue to post a follow-up to the rest of the shows that we have this semester as it would be a bit bittersweet. I'll do my best to channel the wonderful Margaret and think positively throughout the journey to come and keep the woe to a minimum in here. Then again, I could end up feeling quite emo at 2am and spouting it out here. Who knows?
Saturday, September 5, 2009
A new season begins
So A Different Spin had an up-and-down summer:
-Fantastic weekend in Orangeville, Ontario that included hanging out and performing with one Jordan A. Campbell, awesome accommodations at both a B&B in Orangeville and Zoe's awesome loft apartment place, great pay and phenomenal feedback.
-No performance on 4th of July
-Our first military gig which was in NC at the Coast Guard's base in Elizabeth City. We put on a kickin circus arts show, taught plenty of kids some circus skills, got a great testimonial, were treated to drinks at the bar on the base and the three of us were out-foxed (or out-raccooned as it were) by Jeremy in a game of 'mystery truffle'
-Several well-received community events paid us very very little for the product they booked. Total good-and-bad there.
-Ricky, Tim and I created two-person shows that we can do if the gig is too low-paying!
-A couple of collaborative performances with other Boston circus performers (Draconik and the Boston Circus Guild)
-Even with Orangeville a very very poor showing in terms of total income.
-A great relationship with the Cambridge Arts Council has been forged! Julie Madden has gone to bat for us and is pushing hard to get us permission to perform fire in a large public place in Cambridge. Fingers crossed but within the year I see A Different Spin performing the first large-scale fire show in years (maybe ever) somewhere in Cambridge (would love to do it at Cambridge Common)
We also had a good old fashioned 'business meeting' where we laid out some ground rules/contractual obligations that we did a pretty good job sticking to during the end of the summer. Several pieces still need to be worked out (the biggest one being how to go about requiring a minimum hourly wage for youth workshops. This is especially an issue when they offer such a low rate and throw out the old 'it will help foster a good relationship with our program' line) but if we manage to continue this endeavor past January 1st I think we've made some really important strides. I won't whine and complain about the realistic worries I have about that happening but you, faithful reader, just know I may spout obscenities and insanely emo-tastic posts in the future.
As far as the college season goes, I worked my ass off (and still am) to get us a good lineup of performances. 7 college shows, to be exact, with 3 more actively in the works and another military gig in the initial stages (which, if it falls through, should still occur in the winter at the least). We've already completed two of them immediately following moving into our new apartment. I will give some detail of these forthwith (is that the right use of that word? I may never know...):
Randolph College
First on our docket was a flight to Virginia the same evening as our move-in day! We were driven by Kat to the airport (yay for more friends continuing to drive us to the airport! Janey doesn't have to be begged EVERY time, hehe) and arrived after hours of unpacking that saw Jeremy's knee go from uncomfortable to pretty daw-god awful. He manned-up big time for these two shows and will hopefully use the three days off before the next round to make some progress in healing. Annnnyway, the college was 2.5 hours away from the hotel we were staying at (as it was right next to the airport) so we drove at about 9am to arrive and spread the word from 12-1 in their nice little dining center. This school is 500 kids large and until 2007 was women-only...needless to say, word traveled fast about the show in the evening and our job of informing was mostly done for us. However, we did have a great time interacting with students in the dining center---I did plenty of card magic while Jeremy, Tim and Ricky took turns juggling in different places as well as teaching plate spinning and juggling. The second hour of promotion at 5:30 saw more of the same with several students returning to get some more instruction and many more people for me to be a goofball with...ah, my few abilities in card magic...
After a quick bite to eat we drove down to the absolutely gorgeous amphitheater where we were to perform our fire show. Our partner in crime for this endeavor was one Amanda Denny who was a pleasure to work with---she helped us get started with setting up nice and early, had a good sense of humor and was very flexible with all of our quirks. The performance space was simply amazing. It had two trees of halogen lights that each had a bulb on the stage AND the audience which allowed us to keep the audience visible and have a 'show starting' signal when we cut the stage lights (not to mention a much easier time setting up the fueling station, speakers and tools). So the lighting rocked, but it was nothing compared to the sheer amount of space we had. During my email and phone conversations with Amanda there had been some question as to whether we would have enough space and if the trees near the stone stage were going to be too close to our performance area. In retrospect this was a ridiculously silly set of concerns as we easily had a 40'x40' space clear of EVERYTHING to work with once we gave the audience their buffer, the trees a distance to avoid incineration and space for the fueling station and speakers. This was easily the best performance space we've ever had and probably ever will. I'm proud to report we also kicked some serious ass with our show, only a few torch drops by yours truly and Tim forgetting to get a set of lit torches offstage (he was busy getting the video camera recording and it got lost in the shuffle) were negatives in the fire show. The audience was really responsive, cheering at sections we've never experienced before and they absolutely loved the new changes we made to the three-person juggling routine. Overall the student body was really excited by us and we stayed after our show much longer than expected before we began our 2.5hr drive back to the hotel. A quick bit of sleep later saw us in the Richmond airport to fly back up to Boston...
St. Lawrence University
As soon as our plane touched down we sped back to our new apartment, took far too long packing an extra change of clothes and getting my headlight 'fixed' (read: needed to be refocused as Valvoline apparently skewed it way up. However, the nice mechanic at AAMCO---whom I wrongly had assumed was the culprit in the poor focusing---had a lot of trouble trying to do this and ended up losing one of the bolts which made the entire process take longer...and it didn't end up being focused properly) before attempting a maneuver that is so silly: drive west on the MassPike a few exits (in lovely rush-hour traffic) to get back on going eastbound so we could pick up a FastPass transponder for the trip to NY...which doesn't work in states other than MA for 3 days and didn't work in MA for 30mins. We ended up never having a chance to use it on the way to St. Lawrence and it was still not ready to play when we returned on Saturday. At least we'll have it for next week's trips to New Jersey and Pennsylvania...
Over 7 hours later we arrived at St. Lawrence University where we bumbled our way to the alumni house where we were being shacked up for two nights. We got in at about 1:30am and found pretty darn nice rooms---3 in total, each with its own bathroom. Since I am obviously the sexiest of the group I got the pimp room with the king-size bed, couch, flat-screen TV (tiny) and a desk. The desk came in handy 8 hours later when I set up my computer and played the 'call 15 colleges' game. Alas I made no more headway on more gigs but left several voicemails and messages with receptionists...which I really hate doing now that I've done so for well over a year.
We got ourselves out the door to get 'breakfast' rather late but still managed a quick jaunt to a diner (directed there by a friendly police officer) where we got your standard over-priced diner breakfast food. After speculating on the reasoning behind owner Kurt's decision to keep the name of his business 'Tracy's Used Cars' we paid our bills and wound our way through campus (after I embarrassed myself by slowing down in front of a house full of lesbians...don't ask) to meet up with Amy Saito---the organizer for this gig---and two members of the security staff. We got a quick look at the insanely nice student center we'd be entertaining outside of and proceeded out to a very oddly located area for our fire show: it was in a grassy area right next to a building...but there were several planters full of herbs right near the building as well as a few view-obstructing trees and a multi-piece monument to all the donors in SLU's history across from the building. This all combined to make for a fun time as we determined the best orientation for the show and tried our best to maximize the amount of audience seating that wouldn't push them out onto the stone pathway or force them into the small space below low-hanging tree branches. Oh, did I mention we once again had to have a 'barrier' between us and the audience? Security orders. All these things ended up being ok as the audience was not insanely big and we did a good job tweaking the performance space with speaker placement and adjustments to the rope-barriers. In any case, we passed the security personnel's test of competency and the head security officer and I briefly lamented how frustrating it is to be a Yankee fan in Boston.
Our roving/promotional entertainment for this gig was slated for the first two hours of the college's organization fair. Once again we had an overall successful time doing our own things---this time I did a whole bunch of glass walking while performing card magic---and even had some fun stealing a few students to do our volunteer juggling routines. We even had a chance to practice our choreographed juggling routine from our circus arts show and found we still had it all down but had a lot of trouble answering questions mid-routine. Learn something new every day, hehe. I didn't get any rounds of applause for my card magic as I did at Randolph College but had some of the best reactions to a few tricks I've ever had so another positive for myself. The other boys had a grand old time teaching several students the basics AND advanced tricks in juggling and diabolo. Ah, spreading the circus love...
With our modified performance space we put on a very solid show yet again. Jeremy and I nailed stacks juggling probably better than we ever had and 99% of the choreography was spot-on. The fire swords are getting quite worrisome yet again though for a new reason---wicking is peeling off. It is getting time to commission Chad for a pair of his badass swords. Once again we had great feedback from the students and apparently even inspired one student to incorporate us into his writing (it's some fantasy novel in the Harry Potter vein where magic is split into the elemental schools...guess which part we'd affect :P ). The head of security let us know we performed well and exceeded all of his safety expectations which was a nice bonus.
This time we didn't stick around for an hour after our performance and actually managed to head over to a cafe that was recommended by students. We got in before their 9pm closing time and proceeded to make things interesting for our cute waitress and the very nice cook. I guess I should really admit that it was pretty much all my fault. My garlic 'allergy' proved quite the bitch as all the seasoned meats had a garlic rub/sauce which knocked out my second choice when the first had a garlic sauce...and then the rice ended up having garlic too so I couldn't even get a simple piece of chicken with a bed of rice and some vegetables. Take two included me ordering a salad that the chef found out had garlic in it's dressing. In fact, ALL the dressings had garlic. So salads were out. Fine. Reuben sandwich on Ricky's suggestion was the choice. The cook goes to get that ready, immediately returns and says he has no idea what is in the mustard they usually put on the Reuben. So I ended up having corned beef and sauerkraut on rye bread :) All was ok as I had the waitress get herself a desert on me under the pretense that we needed to balance out the business expense (the other boys got themselves more expensive meal/drink combos and each had a desert) between us all. She's also thinking of heading up to Boston in the coming years and we were glad to promote the city as we are want to do.
After the Great Dinner Debacle of '09 we rolled ourselves back to the alumni house to hit the hay as we decided to leave campus by 7am and avoid any Labor Day traffic. Whether or not we would have run into any in the areas we drove may never be known but we made it back in less time than it took to get there so all is well.
--
I'm now going to fix a late snack, watch the first episode of Mad Men and go to bed early as I need to drive to Cape Cod tomorrow morning for Max's wedding! Hopefully the extra 2 hours I am building into my trip will be enough to deal with any traffic that might exist on the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. I still haven't done nearly enough unpacking and we hit the road again on Tuesday morning so I'll be heading back home Sunday night after what is sure to be a great wedding ceremony and a kickin party. It'll be good to see people I haven't seen in forever and I'm happy to be invited to such an important day for Max. All in all, I'd say the wedding of a friend is a great reason to be overbooked in the beginning of our college season :)
-Fantastic weekend in Orangeville, Ontario that included hanging out and performing with one Jordan A. Campbell, awesome accommodations at both a B&B in Orangeville and Zoe's awesome loft apartment place, great pay and phenomenal feedback.
-No performance on 4th of July
-Our first military gig which was in NC at the Coast Guard's base in Elizabeth City. We put on a kickin circus arts show, taught plenty of kids some circus skills, got a great testimonial, were treated to drinks at the bar on the base and the three of us were out-foxed (or out-raccooned as it were) by Jeremy in a game of 'mystery truffle'
-Several well-received community events paid us very very little for the product they booked. Total good-and-bad there.
-Ricky, Tim and I created two-person shows that we can do if the gig is too low-paying!
-A couple of collaborative performances with other Boston circus performers (Draconik and the Boston Circus Guild)
-Even with Orangeville a very very poor showing in terms of total income.
-A great relationship with the Cambridge Arts Council has been forged! Julie Madden has gone to bat for us and is pushing hard to get us permission to perform fire in a large public place in Cambridge. Fingers crossed but within the year I see A Different Spin performing the first large-scale fire show in years (maybe ever) somewhere in Cambridge (would love to do it at Cambridge Common)
We also had a good old fashioned 'business meeting' where we laid out some ground rules/contractual obligations that we did a pretty good job sticking to during the end of the summer. Several pieces still need to be worked out (the biggest one being how to go about requiring a minimum hourly wage for youth workshops. This is especially an issue when they offer such a low rate and throw out the old 'it will help foster a good relationship with our program' line) but if we manage to continue this endeavor past January 1st I think we've made some really important strides. I won't whine and complain about the realistic worries I have about that happening but you, faithful reader, just know I may spout obscenities and insanely emo-tastic posts in the future.
As far as the college season goes, I worked my ass off (and still am) to get us a good lineup of performances. 7 college shows, to be exact, with 3 more actively in the works and another military gig in the initial stages (which, if it falls through, should still occur in the winter at the least). We've already completed two of them immediately following moving into our new apartment. I will give some detail of these forthwith (is that the right use of that word? I may never know...):
Randolph College
First on our docket was a flight to Virginia the same evening as our move-in day! We were driven by Kat to the airport (yay for more friends continuing to drive us to the airport! Janey doesn't have to be begged EVERY time, hehe) and arrived after hours of unpacking that saw Jeremy's knee go from uncomfortable to pretty daw-god awful. He manned-up big time for these two shows and will hopefully use the three days off before the next round to make some progress in healing. Annnnyway, the college was 2.5 hours away from the hotel we were staying at (as it was right next to the airport) so we drove at about 9am to arrive and spread the word from 12-1 in their nice little dining center. This school is 500 kids large and until 2007 was women-only...needless to say, word traveled fast about the show in the evening and our job of informing was mostly done for us. However, we did have a great time interacting with students in the dining center---I did plenty of card magic while Jeremy, Tim and Ricky took turns juggling in different places as well as teaching plate spinning and juggling. The second hour of promotion at 5:30 saw more of the same with several students returning to get some more instruction and many more people for me to be a goofball with...ah, my few abilities in card magic...
After a quick bite to eat we drove down to the absolutely gorgeous amphitheater where we were to perform our fire show. Our partner in crime for this endeavor was one Amanda Denny who was a pleasure to work with---she helped us get started with setting up nice and early, had a good sense of humor and was very flexible with all of our quirks. The performance space was simply amazing. It had two trees of halogen lights that each had a bulb on the stage AND the audience which allowed us to keep the audience visible and have a 'show starting' signal when we cut the stage lights (not to mention a much easier time setting up the fueling station, speakers and tools). So the lighting rocked, but it was nothing compared to the sheer amount of space we had. During my email and phone conversations with Amanda there had been some question as to whether we would have enough space and if the trees near the stone stage were going to be too close to our performance area. In retrospect this was a ridiculously silly set of concerns as we easily had a 40'x40' space clear of EVERYTHING to work with once we gave the audience their buffer, the trees a distance to avoid incineration and space for the fueling station and speakers. This was easily the best performance space we've ever had and probably ever will. I'm proud to report we also kicked some serious ass with our show, only a few torch drops by yours truly and Tim forgetting to get a set of lit torches offstage (he was busy getting the video camera recording and it got lost in the shuffle) were negatives in the fire show. The audience was really responsive, cheering at sections we've never experienced before and they absolutely loved the new changes we made to the three-person juggling routine. Overall the student body was really excited by us and we stayed after our show much longer than expected before we began our 2.5hr drive back to the hotel. A quick bit of sleep later saw us in the Richmond airport to fly back up to Boston...
St. Lawrence University
As soon as our plane touched down we sped back to our new apartment, took far too long packing an extra change of clothes and getting my headlight 'fixed' (read: needed to be refocused as Valvoline apparently skewed it way up. However, the nice mechanic at AAMCO---whom I wrongly had assumed was the culprit in the poor focusing---had a lot of trouble trying to do this and ended up losing one of the bolts which made the entire process take longer...and it didn't end up being focused properly) before attempting a maneuver that is so silly: drive west on the MassPike a few exits (in lovely rush-hour traffic) to get back on going eastbound so we could pick up a FastPass transponder for the trip to NY...which doesn't work in states other than MA for 3 days and didn't work in MA for 30mins. We ended up never having a chance to use it on the way to St. Lawrence and it was still not ready to play when we returned on Saturday. At least we'll have it for next week's trips to New Jersey and Pennsylvania...
Over 7 hours later we arrived at St. Lawrence University where we bumbled our way to the alumni house where we were being shacked up for two nights. We got in at about 1:30am and found pretty darn nice rooms---3 in total, each with its own bathroom. Since I am obviously the sexiest of the group I got the pimp room with the king-size bed, couch, flat-screen TV (tiny) and a desk. The desk came in handy 8 hours later when I set up my computer and played the 'call 15 colleges' game. Alas I made no more headway on more gigs but left several voicemails and messages with receptionists...which I really hate doing now that I've done so for well over a year.
We got ourselves out the door to get 'breakfast' rather late but still managed a quick jaunt to a diner (directed there by a friendly police officer) where we got your standard over-priced diner breakfast food. After speculating on the reasoning behind owner Kurt's decision to keep the name of his business 'Tracy's Used Cars' we paid our bills and wound our way through campus (after I embarrassed myself by slowing down in front of a house full of lesbians...don't ask) to meet up with Amy Saito---the organizer for this gig---and two members of the security staff. We got a quick look at the insanely nice student center we'd be entertaining outside of and proceeded out to a very oddly located area for our fire show: it was in a grassy area right next to a building...but there were several planters full of herbs right near the building as well as a few view-obstructing trees and a multi-piece monument to all the donors in SLU's history across from the building. This all combined to make for a fun time as we determined the best orientation for the show and tried our best to maximize the amount of audience seating that wouldn't push them out onto the stone pathway or force them into the small space below low-hanging tree branches. Oh, did I mention we once again had to have a 'barrier' between us and the audience? Security orders. All these things ended up being ok as the audience was not insanely big and we did a good job tweaking the performance space with speaker placement and adjustments to the rope-barriers. In any case, we passed the security personnel's test of competency and the head security officer and I briefly lamented how frustrating it is to be a Yankee fan in Boston.
Our roving/promotional entertainment for this gig was slated for the first two hours of the college's organization fair. Once again we had an overall successful time doing our own things---this time I did a whole bunch of glass walking while performing card magic---and even had some fun stealing a few students to do our volunteer juggling routines. We even had a chance to practice our choreographed juggling routine from our circus arts show and found we still had it all down but had a lot of trouble answering questions mid-routine. Learn something new every day, hehe. I didn't get any rounds of applause for my card magic as I did at Randolph College but had some of the best reactions to a few tricks I've ever had so another positive for myself. The other boys had a grand old time teaching several students the basics AND advanced tricks in juggling and diabolo. Ah, spreading the circus love...
With our modified performance space we put on a very solid show yet again. Jeremy and I nailed stacks juggling probably better than we ever had and 99% of the choreography was spot-on. The fire swords are getting quite worrisome yet again though for a new reason---wicking is peeling off. It is getting time to commission Chad for a pair of his badass swords. Once again we had great feedback from the students and apparently even inspired one student to incorporate us into his writing (it's some fantasy novel in the Harry Potter vein where magic is split into the elemental schools...guess which part we'd affect :P ). The head of security let us know we performed well and exceeded all of his safety expectations which was a nice bonus.
This time we didn't stick around for an hour after our performance and actually managed to head over to a cafe that was recommended by students. We got in before their 9pm closing time and proceeded to make things interesting for our cute waitress and the very nice cook. I guess I should really admit that it was pretty much all my fault. My garlic 'allergy' proved quite the bitch as all the seasoned meats had a garlic rub/sauce which knocked out my second choice when the first had a garlic sauce...and then the rice ended up having garlic too so I couldn't even get a simple piece of chicken with a bed of rice and some vegetables. Take two included me ordering a salad that the chef found out had garlic in it's dressing. In fact, ALL the dressings had garlic. So salads were out. Fine. Reuben sandwich on Ricky's suggestion was the choice. The cook goes to get that ready, immediately returns and says he has no idea what is in the mustard they usually put on the Reuben. So I ended up having corned beef and sauerkraut on rye bread :) All was ok as I had the waitress get herself a desert on me under the pretense that we needed to balance out the business expense (the other boys got themselves more expensive meal/drink combos and each had a desert) between us all. She's also thinking of heading up to Boston in the coming years and we were glad to promote the city as we are want to do.
After the Great Dinner Debacle of '09 we rolled ourselves back to the alumni house to hit the hay as we decided to leave campus by 7am and avoid any Labor Day traffic. Whether or not we would have run into any in the areas we drove may never be known but we made it back in less time than it took to get there so all is well.
--
I'm now going to fix a late snack, watch the first episode of Mad Men and go to bed early as I need to drive to Cape Cod tomorrow morning for Max's wedding! Hopefully the extra 2 hours I am building into my trip will be enough to deal with any traffic that might exist on the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. I still haven't done nearly enough unpacking and we hit the road again on Tuesday morning so I'll be heading back home Sunday night after what is sure to be a great wedding ceremony and a kickin party. It'll be good to see people I haven't seen in forever and I'm happy to be invited to such an important day for Max. All in all, I'd say the wedding of a friend is a great reason to be overbooked in the beginning of our college season :)
Monday, May 18, 2009
Hellz yeah!
So I've fallen off the face of the blog-earth. But with reason.
A Different Spin had an INSANE month of April (and a rocking weekend in May, too) as we traveled all around the Northeast + Georgia to kick some ass with our fire show and circus show. Check out this list of schools that saw us:
-Georgia Perimeter College
-Rhode Island College
-Mansfield University
-New York Institute of Technology
-Susquehanna University
-SUNY Delhi
-University of Delhi
Throw in a fun firejam at MassArt for Iron Pour and we had quite the time :)
But that wasn't all that kept us super busy. Remember, dear reader, all of those 'just missed' opportunities to be on America's Got Talent? Well we are flying in less to LA in less than 12 hours to go rock it hardcore. Our act is 100% bitchin'----so much so the 'g' in 'bitching' had to flee in terror---so there is no way we won't make it to round 2 and beyond. There's a possible showdown with Michael and Joanna (local Boston firespinners and friends of ours) in the offing which is a shame as they are fantastic...but we are gonna bring the energy like nobody's business. As exhausted as I am from traveling, rehearsing and apartment hunting (that is an ENTIRE blogpost in itself...5 Bedrooms to 6 to 7 back to 5) I am so ready to have an absolute blast on Wednesday. Those judges really have no idea what they are gonna see. Plus that theater is gonna go nuts when we are done with our act. We have to leave the house at 5am and I'm not sure I can sleep or eat before then, I am so freakin pumped!
My good friend Scott is gonna join my cousin Adam and a few other friends (including the amazing Mitch who we met at APCA and is a potential business-contact for the future---manager? agent? who knows. He's great) in LA to see us rock the house which will be sweeeeeeeet.
Only negative is that Tracy and I tried the relationship thing and I found I'm way too crazed right now to handle that. On the plus side, she is totally awesome and is cool still hanging out and such. Yay for reasonable, amazing individuals! Oh wait, crap, I lied...the other negative in my life is that my health insurance ran out and I was a dumbass who forgot to get on the cheap Massachusetts health insurance before my medication needed to be refilled. I'll be on the hook for $531 if I can't sort it out WHILE IN LA. Sigh...
Next post is gonna be about how much fun we had in LA. As a heads-up, we won't be able to talk about whether or not we moved onto the next round due to the fact the show is supposed to be surprising and all. But I really don't see any way we can fail. We are just too badass.
A Different Spin had an INSANE month of April (and a rocking weekend in May, too) as we traveled all around the Northeast + Georgia to kick some ass with our fire show and circus show. Check out this list of schools that saw us:
-Georgia Perimeter College
-Rhode Island College
-Mansfield University
-New York Institute of Technology
-Susquehanna University
-SUNY Delhi
-University of Delhi
Throw in a fun firejam at MassArt for Iron Pour and we had quite the time :)
But that wasn't all that kept us super busy. Remember, dear reader, all of those 'just missed' opportunities to be on America's Got Talent? Well we are flying in less to LA in less than 12 hours to go rock it hardcore. Our act is 100% bitchin'----so much so the 'g' in 'bitching' had to flee in terror---so there is no way we won't make it to round 2 and beyond. There's a possible showdown with Michael and Joanna (local Boston firespinners and friends of ours) in the offing which is a shame as they are fantastic...but we are gonna bring the energy like nobody's business. As exhausted as I am from traveling, rehearsing and apartment hunting (that is an ENTIRE blogpost in itself...5 Bedrooms to 6 to 7 back to 5) I am so ready to have an absolute blast on Wednesday. Those judges really have no idea what they are gonna see. Plus that theater is gonna go nuts when we are done with our act. We have to leave the house at 5am and I'm not sure I can sleep or eat before then, I am so freakin pumped!
My good friend Scott is gonna join my cousin Adam and a few other friends (including the amazing Mitch who we met at APCA and is a potential business-contact for the future---manager? agent? who knows. He's great) in LA to see us rock the house which will be sweeeeeeeet.
Only negative is that Tracy and I tried the relationship thing and I found I'm way too crazed right now to handle that. On the plus side, she is totally awesome and is cool still hanging out and such. Yay for reasonable, amazing individuals! Oh wait, crap, I lied...the other negative in my life is that my health insurance ran out and I was a dumbass who forgot to get on the cheap Massachusetts health insurance before my medication needed to be refilled. I'll be on the hook for $531 if I can't sort it out WHILE IN LA. Sigh...
Next post is gonna be about how much fun we had in LA. As a heads-up, we won't be able to talk about whether or not we moved onto the next round due to the fact the show is supposed to be surprising and all. But I really don't see any way we can fail. We are just too badass.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
@#!*%
Ok so some more good and bad things...
Bad things:
-I am getting stressed about organizing things and worrying about Tim's health and tracking down the W2s for my taxes and have been having a really rough health week. My Crohns has flared up a couple of times over the past week and a half or so. Not fun.
-As fallout from health concerns, I am not going to see the Barefoot Monkeys fire show nor am I going to attend the rocking show at the Juggle This! conference in NY. I miss juggling conventions and this one is so close by and has an insane lineup of talent at the evening show. Bah.
-*
Good things:
-Tim is doing really well! On Wednesday we got his butt out the door for his first physical activity in like a week and he took part in an intense club juggling session with us. It was rocking. We all agreed we missed the ~10am rehearsals and we wrote some great stuff for our circus show. Then on Thursday he had his first real performance-type test when we did dry runs of our fire show. With some extra work on a couple of the torch routines and the entire show twice it was quite the rehearsal. Tim rocked it and was confident enough to give me the green light for the next good thing...
-We are going to Georgia! The east-coast-boys' first non-Northeast gig is gonna happen in just a few days! Exclamation marks!!! Georgia Perimeter College didn't bat an eye at the high price tag to bring us down so we are gonna enter the wild and crazy world of traveling with fire performance equipment and tracking down fuel and some fueling-station supplies!
-Friends are great! Tracy and I are hanging out a bunch which is grand and who-knows-what-else-may-happen and can-I-not-screw-this-upable which is a ball of fun. But also there are lots of great people here in Boston. Janey, Zoe, Tomio, and company are grand and are a perfect fit for my desire to have witty friends that don't need to booze it up to have a good time (ok, it also helps that playing card games like 'Set' and doing crossword puzzles and playing video games are also quite fun in their minds even when hanging out in a group). And I haven't even gotten to see most of the other great friends I have here in Boston: Katie, Peter, Chad, Chuck, Morgan, Patrick, Roger (who ditched us for a crazy five month cross-country tour), Jaime, Logan, Aaron, Nick, JT, Dio, Laa...see how many awesome people I would love to spend time with? It's an overload of awesome...
-*
* This item kinda belongs in both good and bad. So A Different Spin was once again requested to perform for America's Got Talent. Yes, those fine readers who have read this blog before know that we auditioned in Boston for the preliminaries and were asked to be ACTUALLY part of the show and be filmed in front of the celebrity judges (including The Hoff) in NYC...but we couldn't make it because that was the time we were supposed to be at Atlanta for the APCA conference. Well they decided we were still awesome enough to bring onto the show and invited us to come to LA! We received an email just about two hours ago requesting our names and departure city so they could book us flights...but we can't make the date as it is on our very-recently-booked gig in Georgia! RAWR! So I wrote an email back declining but expressing our interest in being on the show if another date works out. This is insanely frustrating as we passed once and are now passing again so maybe they won't ask us back for a third time. And we may NEVER KNOW what could have happened. Ugh. On the bright side, if we ARE asked back for the Seattle filming or the Texas one or the quick second LA session we would have more time to prepare and Tim will be 100% healthy. Trying to find the positives...
Bad things:
-I am getting stressed about organizing things and worrying about Tim's health and tracking down the W2s for my taxes and have been having a really rough health week. My Crohns has flared up a couple of times over the past week and a half or so. Not fun.
-As fallout from health concerns, I am not going to see the Barefoot Monkeys fire show nor am I going to attend the rocking show at the Juggle This! conference in NY. I miss juggling conventions and this one is so close by and has an insane lineup of talent at the evening show. Bah.
-*
Good things:
-Tim is doing really well! On Wednesday we got his butt out the door for his first physical activity in like a week and he took part in an intense club juggling session with us. It was rocking. We all agreed we missed the ~10am rehearsals and we wrote some great stuff for our circus show. Then on Thursday he had his first real performance-type test when we did dry runs of our fire show. With some extra work on a couple of the torch routines and the entire show twice it was quite the rehearsal. Tim rocked it and was confident enough to give me the green light for the next good thing...
-We are going to Georgia! The east-coast-boys' first non-Northeast gig is gonna happen in just a few days! Exclamation marks!!! Georgia Perimeter College didn't bat an eye at the high price tag to bring us down so we are gonna enter the wild and crazy world of traveling with fire performance equipment and tracking down fuel and some fueling-station supplies!
-Friends are great! Tracy and I are hanging out a bunch which is grand and who-knows-what-else-may-happen and can-I-not-screw-this-upable which is a ball of fun. But also there are lots of great people here in Boston. Janey, Zoe, Tomio, and company are grand and are a perfect fit for my desire to have witty friends that don't need to booze it up to have a good time (ok, it also helps that playing card games like 'Set' and doing crossword puzzles and playing video games are also quite fun in their minds even when hanging out in a group). And I haven't even gotten to see most of the other great friends I have here in Boston: Katie, Peter, Chad, Chuck, Morgan, Patrick, Roger (who ditched us for a crazy five month cross-country tour), Jaime, Logan, Aaron, Nick, JT, Dio, Laa...see how many awesome people I would love to spend time with? It's an overload of awesome...
-*
* This item kinda belongs in both good and bad. So A Different Spin was once again requested to perform for America's Got Talent. Yes, those fine readers who have read this blog before know that we auditioned in Boston for the preliminaries and were asked to be ACTUALLY part of the show and be filmed in front of the celebrity judges (including The Hoff) in NYC...but we couldn't make it because that was the time we were supposed to be at Atlanta for the APCA conference. Well they decided we were still awesome enough to bring onto the show and invited us to come to LA! We received an email just about two hours ago requesting our names and departure city so they could book us flights...but we can't make the date as it is on our very-recently-booked gig in Georgia! RAWR! So I wrote an email back declining but expressing our interest in being on the show if another date works out. This is insanely frustrating as we passed once and are now passing again so maybe they won't ask us back for a third time. And we may NEVER KNOW what could have happened. Ugh. On the bright side, if we ARE asked back for the Seattle filming or the Texas one or the quick second LA session we would have more time to prepare and Tim will be 100% healthy. Trying to find the positives...
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