Thursday, April 30, 2009

Entertainment

As I approach this weekend I can't help but feel that something is amiss. Last weekend I felt the same thing. Like there was something I missed, forgot to do..... ah, that's it. I didn't work last weekend, and I don't have to this weekend either.

But really, was it work? It occupied my time much like a job does, taking 3 hours out of four nights a week. Plus, I did get paid to do it. However, a part of me can't justify going on stage, acting like a moron, and singing a few songs a real job. But part of me thinks, "it is a talent." It really boils down to quality. 

Entertainment, specifically music and theatre, is a touchy subject when it comes to quality. It's all in the eye, and ear, of the beholder. Personally, I'm a critic. Not that everything has to be perfect, but for me to be entertained a performance needs to encompass real talent, skill and noticeable effort. Though, not every entertainer strives for either of those. 

Not every sloppy strumming, slack jawed "singer/songwriter" you hear in a coffee shop considers themselves a professional player. They are just doing it to do it. I respect that in the highest regard. I, on the other hand, want to be something more.

I'm rambling so let's get down to it. The long and short of it is this: Entertainment is a Release. An audience member pays good money to be taken out of their life for a while. Forget about everything but the show that's in front of them. If a performance doesn't take the audience member on a ride, if it doesn't move them in some way, then the performer did not do his/her job and I believe they have no business calling themselves a quality performer. 

Harsh? Maybe, but I've struggled a lot with this topic recently. Whether or not performing is a viable career path, or whether I should just stick to a community theatre performance every so often. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm perfecting my chops. I just finished two runs with Daddy D productions. The completion of the 80's Show also completes my time with Daddy D's as I begin to look east. But here's a taste for what we did there. I'll let your ears determine the quality:


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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Here's Looking at Trivia

This time last weekend, over 13,000 people were starting to feel intense fatigue. Instead of sleeping Friday night, they locked their ears to the nearest radio attempting to answer the seemingly impossible trivia questions that came out of it. For the past 40 years, the college town of Stevens Point, WI gets swamped one April weekend, as thousands of people gather into basements, hotels, and dorm rooms to play in the world's largest trivia contest. Known simply as Trivia.

90FM is unlike any other college station in the mid-west, dare I say even the nation. Not only do they play the best music you've never been given the chance to hear. They also are responsible for one of the most widespread media events in the world.

The DJ reads a question twice, plays a song, reads the question again, plays another song, and then the answer is given. The moment the question is read you start scrambling, searching every corner of Google, Yahoo, or Goodsearch. The first song nears it's end and the question is read once more. Pressure's on. Only one song to go before you have to call in an answer to one of 18 phone operators. Time is running out. You don't know if your answer is right, but is the best chance you have. You call it in just before the DJ tells everyone to put their phones down. After reading the question a final time, the answer is read. Most likely, you got it wrong. Now, imagine 54 hours of that.

As a staff member at UWSP's radio station, WWSP 90FM, I had the privilege of helping organize this monster of a contest. Every January the staff starts getting ready. From recruiting volunteers, to creating promotional announcements, to organizing a parade, I put more time and preparation into this contest than I did a lot of my studies. During the weekend itself, all of us at the station eat, sleep, and breath Trivia. The best part is interviewing teams and creating a two minute audio package we call a "trivia focus."

Here's a bit of the audio I've produced from Trivia's past:



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As you can hear, these teams are just plain fun. Most of them use some amazing creativity in choosing their team name as well. Since the name is read over the air, they can't be too vulgar. But innuendos are almost encouraged. Such as "The Worst Acronym Team" or last year's "Obama's poll has Hillary on Top." Then there are the random names like "Never Trust a Baby with a Mustache" and "Lactation Nation" . The majority of players are just out there to have a good time.

I never really had the opportunity to see what this contest is like to a player since I was always a facilitator. This past weekend was my chance. I joined up with "Staff Infection," a team made up of past 90FM staff members.

Arriving in Stevens Point around 1am on Sunday, I could tell everyone on the team I was joining had been playing nonstop since Friday. They were running on fumes. But before long, we all got our second (or fourth) wind. We perked up and began pounding out correct answer after correct answer.

Personally though, I could not handle those questions. They are just too hard. You have to play to understand. They questions are written in such a way that you first have to figure out what exactly the question is about, what the question is referencing, then you can go about trying to answer it.

My favorite part is the scavenger hunt. Clues are read over the air every few hours and your goal is to drive around town and attempt to find a person handing out stamps. It's bizarre driving around at 4am and seeing a line of 40 cars all headed in the same direction.

In the end "90FM Staff Infection" took 219th place out of 415 teams. In honesty, we did more drinking than playing. It's a wild and crazy weekend that I will strive to never miss. Many in point use this weekend as an unofficial homecoming. For me and my friends, it's become the official coming home.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Emeril Lagasse meets Daniel Boone

Being relatively unemployed has its downsides. Mostly consisting of not having money for things like bills, health insurance, gas. It's bad enough not having money for the essentials like drinking, going out, and partying. But being the optimist that I am, being unemployed also has its benefits. Mostly consisting of having way too much free time. Which truthfully can be a blessing or a curse. 

In the case of me and my other good buddies, who also happen to not have jobs, we've taken the time that we'd otherwise flitter away and the beautiful weather that we'd otherwise waste in front of an Xbox, and turned ourselves into regular Emeril Lagasses. 

It all started when my friend, Mike, got himself a dutch oven, which for those who don't know is a large cast iron pot for cooking over a fire. We had a cook book. It served well as a start for our recipes, but we decided to take things a little further. 

For example, the Good Old-Fashioned Family Stew. The recipe called for:
  • 1 pound of stew meat, cut to 1" cubes
  • 2 large diced onions
  • 4  cubed potatoes
  • 1 cup of baby carrots
  • 1/2 cup of diced celery
  • 1/2 cup of diced other choice veggies (mushrooms in our case)
  • 2 beef bouillon cubes
  • 2 cans of mushroom soup 
  • Seasonings of choice
That's all great and grand. But we added:
  • 2 can of Miller High Life
  • An extra pound of meat
  • 2 more potatoes
  • Brown Sugar
  • 2 Apples
  • A garlic clove
  • lots of Love
Take that mixture of mouthwatering flavors, let it sit on some hot coals for 3 hours, stir every 20 minutes or so, and you'll be hosting the best party your mouth has ever seen. The meat dissolved before your teeth could do the work. The apple and brown sugar combined with the beer to give a sweet, cider lager flavor. Plus, the garlic and onion added an extra bite that made the love ridiculously palpable. 

The following week consisted of another delicious dish: a dutch oven pot roast. Alex found this one, and I'm quite pleased he did. One huge slab of meat simmers with apple cider and barbecue sauce for about an hour. Then add in preferred veggies and simmer for another hour. Finally, to finish the whole thing off,  15 minutes of simmering with 1/2 pound of okra. Delectable. 

A cast iron pot isn't the only thing we can cook in either. We took a three day journey up to Mike's cabin in Iron Mountain. There we concocted a fantastic Last Supper consisting of Alaskan Pollock, perfectly seasoned potatoes and onions, beans, and of course, a box of Franzia to wash it all down. It made for a great Holy Thursday. 


Our tag-team cooking has us considering a future in the restaurant business. However, then we'd miss out on the best part of all this cooking, having fun. Once the prep work is done and the pot is on the fire, it's all about having a few beers, playing with the dogs, shooting guns, singing along with ukulele strums, and enjoying the life of the unemployed. 

I don't mind this lifestyle. That is, till I run out of money. 


Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Tap that Ash

During the middle weeks of March there was definitely still snow on the ground, yet it warmed up enough to get the sap flowing in Mountain, WI.

In a successful attempt to promote more winter activities, Bear Paw Scout Camp, a summer camp with which I have quite a history, held it's first ever Bear Paw Maple Days: a day camp in which kids come up to camp and learn everything there is to know about maple syrup, from tap to bottle.

I worked on the staff, teaching all the little ones about the history of maple syrup making, how it was made by Native Americans and early European settlers. Trust me, I'm no syrup expert but after this weekend of maple magic, I feel I'm many steps closer.

For example, did you know that the sap that come out of a tree is basically sugar water? That's
right! The sugar content of the sap is only about 2-3%. However, after a lengthy boiling process, in a "sugar shack" like the one at right, the water is boiled off and you are left with the deliciousness we call maple syrup. The contents of which is about 67% sugar.

Here are some other fun facts:
  • Tapping does no permanent damage to the tree
  • It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of syrup
  • 1 tree produces 10 gallons of sap
  • Maple syrup won't actually freeze
  • Maple syrup is the first farm crop to be harvested in Wisconsin each year
  • and in 1905 the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act made alteration of maple syrup with glucose illegal (bet you didn't know that one)

Oh and we showed the kiddies how a gravity taping scheme works. Instead of hanging baskets from taps, a series of tubing is used to filter the sap to a collection at the lowest point in the area. Believe me, after walking around for hours collecting 5 gallon buckets of half frozen sap, a system like this is really sweet (pun intended). But you do have to have the luxury of many maple trees in a valley-like area.





The final product at the end of the day was a delicious little bottle of homemade, fresh, delectable, maple syrup that everyone got to take home and enjoy on their pancakes, waffles, spaghetti, whatever.

Ohh and P.S. We were tapping sugar maple trees as they yield the most sap. Tapping an ash tree is just absurd. I simply couldn't resist the innuendo.

And I was Doing so Good

Since being back from Europe my life has been on the less interesting side. However, I still thought I was doing pretty good on the whole blogging thing throughout January and February. Then these past two months sorta fell to the wayside. 

I have lots of excuses stored up to explain my absence from this digital community, but I think the most plausible one is the fact that the past two cold rainy/sleety days have been the worst weather we've had around here in a while. 

See when you're from Wisconsin, or anywhere in the midwest I guess, you don't take good weather for granted. The majority of the year brings icy road conditions and nipple-hardening temperatures that lend to months of indoor hobbies. Therefore, give any Wisconsinite a little bit of sunshine and temps above 35 degrees Fahrenheit and we'll have cook-outs and start tanning our pasty whiteness.  

That's my biggest excuse. I've actually been doing stuff. Such as back in March, I went to the zoo. Hence that lovely picture of the deer like creatures. It was a splendid day, but I think I enjoyed the zoo more as a kid, when I didn't understand how endangered many of these creatures are and how human beings are the cause of it. But that's a whole other topic for a different post. 

That same day a friend and I visited the bay of Green Bay. Despite the warmth and the pockets of thin ice, I decided it'd be worth walking on. Only feared for my life a couple times.

Anything else I did over the past two months that was exciting you can read about in the following posts!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Project Pink

Ranging from people in their 60's who saw Pink Floyd when their music was just beginning to warp young minds, to high school stoners who wanted something else to do with their Thursday night besides play X-box, the Meyer Theatre in downtown Green Bay, WI was packed for the inaugural performance of the world's newest Pink Floyd tribute band: Project Pink. 

No, they are not a breast cancer benefit band as the clueless woman at the Ticketstar outlet thought. Rather, this tribute band took the audience on a detailed re-living of a Pink Floyd experience. From the helicopter search light scanning the crowd and the general screaming, "Stand Still Laddie!" to the encore of "Run Like Hell," Project Pink nails ever aspect of the show.

 The freakishly accurate solos displayed the incredible musicianship of the performers on stage, such as the guitar in "Brick in the Wall," the toms solo in "Time," and the soulful wailing of the three ladies on "Great Gig in the Sky." The emotion they all poured into numbers such as "Comfortably Numb"demonstrated the song's beautiful simplicity. As if the musicians didn't put on enough of a show on their own, the special effects made for an even grander display. 

A sixteen-foot projection screen showcasing classic Pink Floyd imagery made for entertaining transitions between songs and added the extra tripped-out flare expected of a Floyd show. The light show was quite a display, especially for Green Bay. Most often we don't get light shows like that unless they are from national touring acts. 

With the first set encompassing mostly songs from The Dark Side of the Moon and the second set running into The Wall, this fine production will make Green Bay proud once they get in on the road to show off to the rest of the nation, and maybe even the world. 

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