“The best things in life aren't things.” - Art Buchwald

On Opening Night - 6 December 2013

Interesting words, and when you consider that you work on a production for months in front of an empty auditorium, it's quite strange to have it suddenly filled with people. To hear people laugh when you say the most ridiculous lines ("General Goethals was very pleased, he says the canal is just the right size! ... Dear me, this'll be a shock to the general!?") is a strange experience.

I've never had a speaking role in any production, so I've been more than able to slip into the background and ignore it all, but it's so different to be a leader with it.

Take, for example, at the beginning of the second act. I get all up in Clay Bodnar (in this production he's Johnathan Brewster). I've known him for years, and have worked with him on so many projects, which should make it easy for us to fight on stage. But it is so hard with his ridiculous makeup and my ridiculous lines and glued on mustache! I sort of understand now how hard it must be for the people on Saturday Night Live to not break character... At the same time, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

This is such a great cast to be a part of, and come time for our bows at the end of the production when we all stand together, hand in hand before whoever shows up, we truly are a family; and truly a great group of friends. I'm writing this to remind myself in the future what it felt like - it was strange, but so much fun.

Thanks to everyone that came last night, to everyone who will be there in roughly four hours for show two, and everyone that will be there tomorrow. And a huge thanks goes to everyone that has helped put this together from Ms. Longo (director) to Al (sound guy) to everyone who has put up with my bugle insanity and especially to my Brewster family:

Cast of Arsenic and Old Lace

How Can You Dream In The Doorway Without Ever Going In?

First I'm going to acknowledge that this is my 200th post since I started the blog nearly 4 years ago.

This week was an interesting one. Tuesday brought with it auditions for this year's Carlynton Winter Play, Arsenic and Old Lace. It's this dark-ish comedy about two aunts who live together with their insane nephew who thinks that he is Teddy Roosevelt, and basically they take boarders in and kill them. When their 'normal' nephew Mortimer discovers this, well, you'll have to come in December to see it live.

Auditions are always the most nerve-wracking part of a production if only for the reason of the big unknown - you don't know how it will go, and your mission is to sell to the panel your acting skills. If they like you, they call you back. And they called me back. 

Callbacks were fun, and I realized that our entire on-air talent with the morning announcements (Aidan, Clay, and I) were all called back, and I knew pretty much the entire callback crew, so that made things fun. They had me try out the Teddy character, and asked me to try an officer character (again, you need to see this thing) which I attempted a Brooklyn/New Jersey accent on.

I said one sentence and the auditorium started cracking up. It wasn't the line, it was the ridiculous accent (which if you've seen BBC 2 1/2, you can picture an accent of that ridiculous scale.... downright overdone and goofy)

They had me try out also for all-too-serious-yet-semi-sarcastic Mortimer character, a role that was sort of hard to pull off after throwing two ridiculous characters out on stage... but whatever. After that we were left to wait.

Thursday brought the announcements that we were asked to record for Open House that night. We never record, or pre-record our announcements. No delays, no nothing, always live, which made this a bit, um, stressful (I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm telling the truth!). It was a trainwreck. So we had to come in and re-record everything on the VHS tape during 6th period, my lunch.

I was first into the studio after our adviser. I told her, that that was my lunch period and she responded "oh, it'll just take like four minutes."

It took a total of five takes (four that period) to get the good copy. And since we were using a VCR and VHS tapes, we had to start over every time something went wrong. Our visual producer put it this way:

@AlexPopichak MOST STRESSFUL THIRTY MINUTES EVER
— Natalie Thomas (@NatCat301) September 20, 2013

So yeah, we got it done, and the broadcast that night was flawless; too bad I didn't get to eat my lunch that period... Oh well.

That night brought open house, which I announced the changing of classes and directed parents, and that night I got the email to check the cast list.

And I got cast as the insane Teddy Brewster. So yeah, this is going be fun considering my character's brothers are the normal Mortimer Brewster (portrayed by my WCHS cohort Aidan Kalimon) and the evil Boris Karloff-esque character Jonathan Brewster (portrayed by... wait for it... my other WCHS on-air cohort Clay Bodnar). This is going to be something else.

And Friday brought with it another Carlynton Football win, this time 42-0 over Serra Catholic. Over half of the cast of the play was with me in the student section, so that was cool....

I hope that was long enough. Thanks for reading, and here's to 200 posts! *raises juicebox*

Speeches

STAT: This blog is fast approaching 3800 pageviews! Amazing! Thanks to everyone!

In English class over the past two days, we presented speeches about what we thought were important to us. I picked three rather cliched topics - My writings (This site, WYEP Stuff, newspaper fails), the outdoors (scouting, the summit, biking), and videography (eugh... you lost me).

I gave my (horrid) speech, and then proceeded to listen to my classmates' speeches. I learned a lot about the people whom I pass in the hallways everyday. Granted, this was a scholars class that had grown close due to the smallness of our class and our school, but still we learned of each other.

There were gamers, dancers, indie music (TALLY HALL) lovers, travelers, cheerleaders, basketball players, baseball players, card trick wizard/relgionesque dude, and there was even an actress/artist/figure skater. It occurred to me that the true meaning to high school is CERTAINLY not learning something academically, but to learn about the people and relationships and interactions with those around us. It is only when one walks 10,000 steps in one's shoes that one can begin to comprehend the complexities behind that individual (and WOW is that cliched).

Anyway, I learned things about my class that quite frankly surprised me. I was told once that you are a person who is either creative or intellectual. There is the very small few who are both. She told me that I was both, but I constantly question how creative I am (Considering I come up with ideas that have already been done) and exactly how smart I am (Umm, I still can't find theme in most written pieces... forget finding one in my own). Regardless of my personal situation, there are definitely people in my class who posses the gift of both. Take the actress/artist/figure skater for example. She is perhaps the best novel interpreter (finds crazy literary stuff I can only hope to catch on to) that I know behind, like, professional novelists (shoutout to JayScribble!) and people who read Greg's comics (No Andrew you CANT Read "Carrot"). She also can draw quite well.

The thing that I indirectly stated in my speech is the fact that I absolutely loathe English Class writing assignments. I am one of those bratty writers who want to be completely freeform. You tell me to write a third person story about a magic toaster or something, and I can do it. Tell me that I need four paragraphs, the toaster is unpersonified, and I must use at least seven vocabulary words, then you take the story and squash it.

Finally, never are we given prompts about alpacas or toasters or anything good. It all must have a tie in to what we are doing, use some mechanism of the mind control that education has been instilling into us (umm, when am I going to be given a list of completely impractical vocabulary words and need to work them into, say, a blog post?) and then it gets sent off to be judged by someone.

I digress. Bottom line, I have learned more from my fellow classmates about life and reality in the short 60 minutes of speechifying than I have doing proofs in Geometry, or finding a specific theme in a short story written hundreds of years before I was born.

Literature only becomes irrelevant when one tries to look at it from a modern perspective and try and find modern aspects to it. If you'll excuse me now I am going to memorize some literary terms revolving around literary techniques for a midterm test.

Mainstreamed.

I guess the point of people being in social media, blogs, YouTube, whatever is popularity. Book authors tour around promoting their newest book so they can gain fame, money, and the surplus money that will allow them to keep touring. Pleasing the public is the twenty-first century average American dream.

People flaunt that they have X amount of followers, or friends or whatever, but why do we do this? Is it purely human nature, but is there an actual psychological reason, a purpose to this madness? For that, I guess the answer is the same as if you wanted to know why people watch Daytime Television or worship celebrities. To this, I turn to fellow Interneteur, MrXibar22 on Youtube.

He tells me that we follow celebrities because in our eyes, they are at the pinnacle of perfection, and that is what we strive to be---perfect.

But in this mess of people attempting to be popular, to be discovered, to be "Mainstreamed" if you will, there are the group of rebels.

So basically there are three types of people:

• The people wanting purely mainstreamed (Close-minded individuals who are exposed to only what society 'likes')
• The anti-mainstreamers who tolerate the pop culture (who prefer the alternative styles) 
• The Rebels who wish nothing but the underground. 

As for me, I am in between the first and second. I like what I like, and not what I don't. It'd be nice to be discovered, but its not what I am looking for. Oh, and here's something new for the sidebar:

Natalie

Natalie is one of those characters that cannot be described. She is a person that, much like me, has a blog (although not that impressive). On this blog, she has started a series called Carlynton Is Crazy which is basically a knock-off of my series: The Chronicles of Jr. High: The Marine, Gym Class and Some Randomness. I take it as a compliment, and at the same time an insult. You see, Natalie is one of the people that. for no apparent reason, everything she says annoys me. It's not that she is a bad person, she just plain old gets on my nerves.

Now onto my blog. I have recently added a new "legal" page to the top bar. This was put in place at the advice of my legal adviser. This is an effort to have further 'incidents' regarding this blog stopped. So, that's admin stuff.


Gym Class:
Ok, much like Ms. Thomas, I wish to also rant about gym class. So, to save me the grief, I will copy-paste her words, and add my own comments. <Source: http://natsrandomsite.blogspot.com/2010/11/first-of-many.html >

So today we had gym. It was Fitness Day! Basically we all get numbers (1-7) and are told to go to different 'Fitness Stations' according to the number. Obviously people get their numbers and then ignore them and go with friends, as with any non-surprise of the teenage world.

Pull Ups: I failed. Hah. This can't come as much of a surprise to my blog readers, for I am much out-of-shape, and a failure to humanity as a whole.

Step Ups: Ok, this is a pointless event. You step up onto a bleacher, and then back onto the floor.

Jump Rope: I once again failed, as Clay made a mockery of me, without a surprise

Planks: You are supposed to lay flat then hold yourself up with your arms in an awkward position. Pointless. Painful.

Push Ups: This might be the only 'normal event' of the whole day.
Wall Sits: I don't know why Ms. Thomas omitted this portion, I guess she just forgot. Anyway, you basically lean on a wall, and keep your feet in a sitting position. Greg made the comment that 'this is the one thing that I could do all day!' which basically means that he mastered the art of weight distribution.

I want to talk next about 'nerd-con' as Natalie called it, but I will call it by its real name (SciTech). Thanks a lot Natalie. We are all reading, and we are a captive audience.

Polio, CarLynTon, Halloween, and other stuff

Please note: this post will be written over a period of time!

I'd like to thank all of you for your continued support with everything. My blog is a mishmash of me ranting abou everyday things. My next question: Why must High School come with some much drama?

I was recently approached by my pretty good friend about a video contest. It is concerning Polio, and how it affected life as we know it. I am going into this as my first real video project. I am going to start over. That DnC Show was a great concept, the JSVH a great temporary success, and Total Randomness: COME ON! I only have so many blooper reels. So, with my good friend, I am going into this. I prefer not to talk about it, but I can give only some information. However, I am going to have people with music, stories, and a not-so-professional writer!

Halloween. One of my least favorite holidays. Sure, I put on that whole, "I love Halloween" act. Honestly, it is the one day out of the year where people are given an excuse to act something that they aren't. So, you are telling me that you want to portray SNOOKIE or something like FREDDY CROUTON! Anyway, people, myself included, act like something that they are not all of the time. I can quite frankly be schizophrenic... angry at one point, and break down laughing the next.

CarLynTon: a story of how things became what they are today. My next great project, and the one that may have any potential this year. Yes, I contemplated going onto the "BBC 2 1/2 Forever" mode, but that is just illogical. Much like Disney, I can only hold onto an audience for long. Well, more details to come.

It Appears That There is a Problem

It turns out that there are people who actually read this blog. There was a recent comment on my Facebook page. It was mentioned that I don't post here, to the naysayer (Natalie), I say, I will post as I feel like and think of stuff!

Interesting Day

Ok, this will be a long post, and most of it boring to the average Joe (I don't care if your name is Steve, or Bob).

Let me start at the beginning. I get to my bus stop and I see among Luke and Jeff, two seventh graders. Both I have known, and both were in/are in scouts. I say hi, and the bus appears like magic.

We get to Raphy's stop, and she passes up my seat. This isn't normal, but I don't think much of it, for she is Raphy.

I eventually get to school, and who do I see first but Adrian. I have had a locker two down from this guy for about two years, but today was the day that I decided to forget his name. We simply say hi, and are on our way to first period.

I am the first into the locker room, and I put my stuff into my locker like normal. Next to walk in was Donovan. I have known Donovan for, well, forever. He decides to hand me his chocolate bars for safe keeping in my locker.

Fast-forward to gym. The teachers inform us that first, you were to have had changed before the bell. He later informs us that we will be jogging a total of three-quarters of a mile. Our target:get it under seven minutes. Again, I say total. Now if there is one class I hate the subject matter, that would be it. I can play dodge ball as well as the next guy, but I can't do track or field worth crap. Anyway, I get to the finish line six seconds after the target time! That ticked me off. Anyway, it goes on, and by the time I finish, I am slapping hands with people yelling FAIL!!!! I liked that part. I didn't like the kid that puked, but I liked that people slapped my hand.

Fast-Forward to HR-PD2 Switch. That was when I saw for the first time in four days Lindsey. Now, with no way to contact her, there was literally nothing I could do... but that is my personal problem... not my valiant readers'.

Fast-Forward to WC-8. I sit down next to Clay, and Natale decides to sit behind me. Then came one of her most interesting comments:
"Alex, why are you nice on Facebook, but mean in real life?"
The simple answer is that I don't know. But I do, and I won't put that here, for it will bore the readers. My teacher then, at the end of class starts to read a sheet of useless trivia. I mean, really useless (his words, not mine). He starts on this 20-minute rant, and can't stop.

Fast-Forward to Lunch. The last periods' teacher decides to hover over our teacher (yes, the Marine). That, in and of itself was creepy, but what can you do? It is interesting to solve the world's (and imaginary world's) problems. Today's topic was my family. I compared and contrasted my aunts, uncles, and cousins with those of Clay's family. I have an uncle that lives in Alaska. He has an uncle that no one is to ever see or enter his house.


Fast-Forward to part of the reason I wrote this post. This evening, I had the privilege to attend a meeting regarding something close to my heart: Campaganza 2010. Together, we unpacked, inventoried, and re-packed the troop trailer. Now if you know anything about Troop 831, you know that is a group of teenagers that try to accomplish simple tasks by "boy leadership." I'll give an example: JUST TO BACK THE SUV TO THE TRAILER, it took six guys three tries to get it to the point where it was able to be lowered onto the trailer hitch. Anyway, I ended up being the one that wrote inventory, organized who was to do what, and how. This shows that something in the leadership program is working for me. It motivates me more.

Now, keep in mind that I am only 13, keep in mind that I am only SECOND CLASS RANK. Finally, keep in mind two things: I am somewhat of a leader, and I have wasted a lot of website space!

I will probably add a second part later!

A Stalker, and Erie.

Panorama of the Sheraton and Bicentennial tower...

Those within my inner circle (and Facebook Friends!) already know that I had the opportunity to visit Erie, Pennsylvania. It was wonderful: Waldameer, The Beach, and the realization that Pittsburgh's News stations are TEN TIMES BETTER THAT ERIE'S (Shout out to Aunt Marie who works at KDKA). Anyway, I had a great time in Erie. See a picture above ^
That Second Part That I put into the Title
I put very little thought into the posts here. Most of the time, I'd write the title, body, and then realize that it is all crap, and deserves no more than to be deleted. This second part is just that.
 Natalie Thomas: Previously noted in the "Spring Queen" portion of the Catchup Article, decided that it would be funny to play a trick on me about this blog. It involved a fake blog and e-mail address, and of course, yours truly. Check it out for yourself...
Thanks!
Alexander Popichak

Post Number 50!!!

To buy myself time, this technically is the 50th post since I began. HOWEVER, I deleted some of the pointless nonsense so I could rant before my real post fifty. So, in reality, this is post 48, again. Confusing, but I think I know what I will have on the REAL 50th post.

Well, It has certainly been a while since I have updated my own blog. Let's see what is new, and what I can elaborate on.


Spring Queen 2010

On May 15th, I went to spring queen with my best friend Clay who escorted his (girl)friend Natalie. As for me, I went with my very good friend Lindsey. One of the more interesting stories is that I was unofficially 30 minutes late. I was in the parking lot 15 minutes or so early, but Lindsey didn't show up. The doors opened, and everyone but I went in. Little did I know that Lindsey was inside the whole time. As ticked off as I was, I was caught off guard by what was to happen later. I had danced with Lindsey (I CANNOT dance), and ended up with at least 5 death threats from my assorted group of friends. I guess I deserved it, but still....


Video Projects and Other Assorted Things Like That
I must have ranted thousands of times about video projects in the past. However, whenever Jeffrey quit, I thought that was the worst I have seen. I was sadly wrong. After at least three tries at another project, I had to pull out of it. I had created a train without brakes, and I couldn't go any further. Soon after, the project (I guess) manager decided to work further on this project. To this date, I have not been able to find common ground with him or his production group.
JSVH: The Second Season
Ok, so about two days after pulling out of the trainwrecked project, I got a call from my other good friend Jeffrey. He wanted to know if we could do the second JSVH season. Something we had been talking about thousands of times before. I happily agreed, and soon after, so did Clay. We plan on meeting about this sometime during next week.

BSA Troop 831 in Carnegie

I have been working tirelessly on working on the troop831carnegie project by means of everything free. I have been using e-mail nonstop. I have been everything from blogger to Google Calendar and Facebook. But That is another story. Anyway, I am FINALLY Second Class, and working on First Class. Once I am First Class, I can do everything scouting has to offer. This is my true goal in life at this point. I attended an Eagle Court Of Honor on Sunday, and I heard nothing but good things about the scouting program, and that already I am one of the 17% of boys in the US that stick with scouts.
Over the next few weeks, I will redesign their website. Just another thing on my list.

The Future of This Blog and Website
Well, I now have a permanent domain at alexpopichak.com. I will have to work on that also. Until then, That's the way it is:
Alexander Popichak