I started work today, working from 8am to noon. Susie White, Dean White’s wife, was running the Book Buy Back. It was an absolute pleasure working for her; she is super friendly and funny. Honestly, I could not have asked for better ship service hours.
All I did for the Buy Back was box up books which had been sold back to the UVA Bookstore. And when people weren’t there I played Euchre, which is like a simplified version of spades/hearts. It was fun, and the hours flew buy.
After work I went to lunch. I ate with Perry, the lifelong learner. I’ve already described him, so I’ll refrain from doing so again here. But he’s the man. Anyway, he and I had talked throughout the voyage about our displeasure with the administration. Perry’s dissatisfaction came mostly from the fact that a group of students had been punished for playing poker for no money. The students had previously played for money and had been told they could not gamble, so they continued to play without money. When they again got “caught,” they were told that poker is gambling, regardless as to whether or not money is involved.
So Perry had recently spoken to Dean Laurence, who admitted the poker decision was the wrong one. Perry also brought up my situation, and Perry informed me that Dean Laurence spoke very highly of me. Laurence also explained the immense stress he was under after many students faced health complications drinking, and he admitted that influenced how he handled my situation. In short, Dean Laurence told Perry he overreacted.
It was nice for me to hear that Laurence felt he overacted, but it left me angry. If he recognized that he overreacted, why hasn’t he apologized? I understand he’s human, I even sympathize that he has to deal with morons drinking themselves half to death. Just apologize, that’s all I want. But he never did.
After lunch, I practiced the Ballad of Jedediah with Tolan and Derek. It went great, couldn’t wait to perform that night.
I took a nap after practice and then went to dinner. Once I’d eaten, Tolan and I got together to practice Life as Ballerz. Inexplicably, practice went terribly. We didn’t have a single mistake-free run-through.
Unfortunately, we were out of time to practice, so we got into costume and went to the Union. Earl opened for us with some stand-up. He’s very talented; I hope he pursues it seriously. I’d like to consider myself a pretty funny guy, but I’m nowhere near funny enough to do stand up. Takes special talent.
Then we were up. The second I hit the stage, all my nerves were gone. Obviously, the solitary confinement issue had to be addressed. So Tolan, playing off our running joke of being the ship’s “comedy bad boys,” said I’d one-upped my badass-ness with the solitary confinement. My unrehearsed response, after first noting we’d both one-upped our badass-ness with our costumes, was “It’s true; I was in solitary confinement for two days. I’m gonna be writing my memoirs. It’s called A Longer Walk to Freedom, so you can take that, Nelson Mandela.” Definitely one of the better jokes I made throughout the semester.
But the performances were great. I’ll just go ahead and link the youtube videos. Life as Ballerz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGzzfxaNjgU and Ballad of Jedediah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0rI7f_0YHo&feature=related
I miss being a quasi-celebrity.
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