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.
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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 :)