...even when my mother's chat status message is a quote from Rush Limbaugh, meant to be taken un-ironically, like is the case right now.

Finally got video up from "Pants Required". The best way to watch it is to use a this playlist to watch the whole thing.


You can also jump to any scene or song:

• 1:1 [Morning Radio]
  
• 1:2 Good Day
  
• 1:3 [Who Are You?]
  
• 1:4 The Senator
  
• 1:5 [Write a Killer Tune]
  
• 1:6 Hippie Love Song
  
• 1:7 The Wake
  
• 2:1 The Senator (Reprise)
  
• 2:2 The Whistle and the Drum
  
• 2:3 Semaphore
  
• 2:4 Of Loss
  
• 2:5 [I Got Your Letter]
  
• 2:6 This Night Divine
  
• 2:7 [We’re Too Different]
  
• 2:8 The Mermaid and the Serpent
  
• 2:9 [Kiss Me Already]
  
• 2:10 Such Great Heights
  
• 2:11 [Dave Ex Machina]
  
• 2:12 [Finale]
  

Also, see James get his CD and script in the after show wrap-up.

I currently have my chat status set to:

Cool: President Obama visits my middle school: link
Doh: They remodel that school so often I can't even recognize it any more: link

Which resulted in the following somewhat surreal chat with one of my middle-schoolmates:

 Kam: Oh, it's worse than that.
  They patrol the block now.
  I went there at 7:45am on a school day my last trip to london
  I was stopped halfway down the block by two Russian heavies in black trenchcoats, obviously packing.
  "What are you doing here?"
  "I'm an alum."
  "A what?"
  "I used to go here"
  "Come with us"
  they take me through the only gated entrance, where there is another armed guard
  they swipe in, and leave me in the secure area in the remodelled lobby, which now has CIA-langley style gates
  I am later escorted through the school by an alumni guide
  they take my picture, "for the alum magazine", and then I am escorted back to the door
  never fucking going back there again
  and I'm never sending them money ever again
  MY NAME WAS ON THE FUCKING WALL
  (for being there 13 years)
 me: yeah I was going to say it doesn't seem like a good way to garner alum $s
  all 9/11 hysteria, you think? or just creeping securititis?
 Kam: oh, they mentioned 911
 me: I remember people talking about how locked down the American School in Paris was, and being grateful that we weren't like that
 Kam: in the "of course, this is the way it has to be now"
  sort of tone
 me: do all the kids have swipy cards now or something?
 Kam: EVERYBODY has RFID cards now
  the gates are exactly like those at Langley
 me: even the kindergartners?
 Kam: I looked online
  I didn't see the lower school
  you can't get over there now
  not easily, anyway
  oh, and the commons?
  not there anymore
  it has been replaced with like 4 smaller heavily monitored rooms
  it was weird
  I mean, I got lost as we walked through the school
  I didn't even recognize the center bits
  oh, and everyone was WEARING their IDs on little lanyards
 me: well, it does seem like they were always changing things around at the school gratuitously-- I remember thinking the lower school was a maze, and figuring it was precisely because it was so overremodeled
  and I seem to remember you telling me about a remodel after I left, where they "discovered" a roomlet that had been completely walled in?
 Kam: Yeah...and they've completely rebuilt the back side of the school now
  Where the woodshop used to be? They tore all of that down, built a huge new level with high-tech classrooms in it
  probably 20 new classrooms
 me: is the middle/upper school at least still arranged somewhat sanely? colored staircases in a loop and all that?
 Kam: The staircases are still there
  but the pods have been completely remodeled again
  the library is in the same place
  but it's about twice as large now
  there's a whole new cantilevered overhang at the back
 me: it seems like a doubly bad thing from the point of view of getting alum money-- not only are we going to make everything different, so you have no attachment to the place, but we also show how we spend your money on countless silly remodels of everything every couple of years
  I think I've seen pictures of the overhang, but I didn't know it made things that much bigger
  and by "back" you mean towards the front of the school, right?
 Kam: well
 me: or, towards loudon instead of waverly
  I guess "front" is somewhat ill-defined
 Kam: where you would have logically gone in from St. Johns
  the closest side
  where the busses used to go
  technically that is the back, I think
  but anyway
 me: ok, that's what I think of as the back of the school, but front of the library
 Kam: yeah, there was this very clear "it's time for you to go now" signal at the end of the tour
 me: it seems like it would be very tempting to ask, "so this where we raise the next generation of free-thinking, outside-the-box problem solvers? In this walled-garden police state?"
 Kam: Indeed. And I understand that the school is in a unique position, both in terms of physical location and makeup of the student body. But I just...I don't know. I'm glad I'm not there now.
 me: but that's not different from when we were there
  and now you don't even have to worry about the IRA
 Kam: Well, that's not quite true. After you left, security was quite a bit less stringent. By the time I was about halfway through highschool, they had done away with a great deal of the visible security
  You'd still have ident checks on the way in, but I certainly remember visitors and alums hanging out and talking to students and faculty
 me: what visible security? There were security cameras with motion sensors monitored at the round desk, and a fence around the playground
  we didn't have ident checks!
 Kam: We did during the gulf war
  And armed guards.
  For a while.
 me: I heard about some kids that had their own guards, but I don't remember seeing any from the school itself
  and I never had any sort of ID
  and I was there during the gulf war
 Kam: I have all of my IDs in my desk drawer, middle and high school
  at least 4 of them
  But irrespective of all of this, you are making my point
  which is that security was pretty low-key
 me: yes, I just remember it being even more lax
 Kam: Those fences? Still there. Except now they are the inner layer of fence. There are vehicle-proof fences now with razor wire along the top in front of them
 me: hmm, I don't remember having any ID, but there must have been something to check out library books at least, so I probably just don't remember-- but yeah, at the very least, I never had to show it to anybody
  I wonder where they went, it might help jog my memory
  probably easier to break into the jubilee line and come up through the playground
 Kam: possibly
  from the things I noticed when I was there, though, I imagine that the school has some kind of rapid-response lockdown protocol in place
  you might get in...
  but even under normal circumstances, your points of egress from the building are now restricted essentially to one
  I walked around the front entrance, too
  it isn't even there anymore
 me: Hah-- I have a copy of "Danny, champion of the world" from 5th grade that I never returned--- "easy! I'm just trying to return my books!"
 Kam: hahahah
  There weren't very many stacks left in the main library
  Everyone is issued with a customized Macbook now
  And a lot of the coursework is submitted and tracked online
 me: well, that's the future of everywhere, I imagine
 Kam: certainly

Makes me wonder how things have changed at Cera's school over the past few years.

These pictures probably won't mean much to anyone else, most are taken from a site citing the remodel as a case study:

The fence and guard are new, the building behind is much as I remember it.

The new library Kam mentioned. It appears to me to be on the upper floor now, not on the middle floor as it was when I attended, but in the conversation Kam seemed to think it was in the same place. This is why I thought an addition would have to be on the other side of the building, because the stairs would have been in the way of a middle-floor expansion. When I attended, the upper floor was science labs and art rooms.

The "Fence", much as I remember it. This must be the "inner fence" now, as the student in the foreground would seem to help imply, though the website I cribbed this from seemed it imply that this was the boundary. When I attended, upper school students were allowed off campus, and in fact often had free periods in the day to take advantage of this. I wonder if that's still the case with all the added security.

Not everything's worse. The playground looks pretty sweet now. I have a picture of me (and the rest of the entire student body) out on this playground before the remodel. I'll try and remember to digitize it and post it some time.

The school theatre also looks pretty sweet now, and the overall layout is similar enough to how things were before that it doesn't seem foreign. Not too sure about the huge orange-juicer hanging from the ceiling, though. The seats weren't cushy when I attended, and they were individual seats rather than curved "benches". I used to like to run up-and-down the auditorium taking "giant steps" from one seat to the one in the row above or below. I had a crush on the girl who ran the lights. Ironically, Elise used to run lights at her yuppie private school too. And Michelle? Hmm... Apparently this is my weak spot?

When I first posted the slantsquatch links, it was frustrating to discover that LJ had eaten all the links and they didn't point anywhere.  It took a long time the first time around, and now it took even longer the second time because I was trying to make sure it wasn't my fault somehow that it didn't work the first time.  Now in my second post I added a couple of flavor links and after I post I discover that they too point... nowhere.  So this time around it's not so important and I probably won't bother to fix them up, but seriously, what gives?  Does this seriously only happen to me?  I find it hard to believe that people wouldn't just move elsewhere if everyone had this problem, so what's the secret?

My brother Gary has been in town for the past week.  This is the brother of mine who back in high school, along with a couple of friends, nearly blew their faces off trying to recreate the "Mission Impossible" gunpowder fuse by emptying out the flash powder from a bunch of illegal M-80s into a longish line ending in a big pile of powder.  Their hope was that they'd light the end of the line, and it would slowly go "sssssssssss" until it hit the powder pile at the end, where it would finally go boom.  Instead, the whole thing went up at once.  Gary was luckier than his friends in that he didn't have to stay in the hospital to get his burns treated (Not as lucky as one of his friends who thought the whole thing was a bad idea and stayed in the house.  Note that this "lucky" friend's luck ran out a few months later when he had the bright idea that it would be fun to light these M-80s in his room and then throw them out the window.  Apparently it was great fun until he held onto one for just slightly too long.  Gary was in the room with him and didn't get hurt, but did end up with his friend's blood all over his shirt.)

A few years ago he did end up in the hospital after getting all manly with a barbecue and an excessive amount of lighter fluid to impress his wife-to-be and future in-laws.  I'm pretty sure he made an impression-- maybe not the one he hoped for, but hey, he did end up marrying her, so you can't argue with the results.

When he was little he got bored skiing with the family at Alpental, and decided to go off by himself when the rest of us weren't looking.  Although we couldn't find him, we did see the note at the chairlift at the bottom.  Apparently on his way down he skied off a small cliff and needed some stitching up.

So anyway, this week he's been in town and mostly hanging around down at the lake.  Youngest brother Zach and one of his friends were traipsing around under the lake doing some surface-supplied air diving off the end of the dock and Gary decided it would be fun to dive down and hassle them, and maybe grab some of their air.  He didn't realize they were down as far as they were (maybe 25 feet or so), and he ran out of breath and decided to come back up.  In diving, they always tell you not to rise faster than your bubbles and that the most treacherous water is the water near the surface since that's where the pressure changes the fastest.  Turns out this is just as true when you're wearing nothing but your shorts as it is when you're in full scuba regalia.  On his way up, he burst an eardrum.  This is actually a fairly common diving injury and it's generally not as serious as it might sound.  In fact, at this point, he thought he just had water in his ear that he couldn't get out.  His helpful wife (hereafter "Queen Gertrude") knew an old family remedy and proceeded to pour a capful of hydrogen peroxide down his ear.  Much screaming and a trip to the hospital later, Gary was safely sucking down some vicodins.  The doctors said that the hydrogen peroxide could well have killed him.  At this point though, it looks like he'll be fine, and even his hearing in that ear is starting to come back.

He and his wife have two young twin daughters.  It looks like the score is Gary-6, Darwin-0.

Phew!  59 long video uploads later, Slantsquatch is finally all up on YouTube.  I think my ISP hates me.  If you just wanna watch the whole show, there's a Slantsquatch Playlist to do just that.