3:00 AM: Count your change

I have been having quite the week.

As a matter of fact, if I had to gauge such matters, it's probably been the most notable-in-a-good-way week since Half-Past. Not that everything's been all magical and sparkly, but then again, nor was Half-Past. Indeed, in some respects, Half-Past was agonizing not because it was a lot o effort on my part (the wonderful thing about being a writer is that you never have to do the heavy lifting.) But the fact was that despite all the signs to the contrary, self-doubt is a tough dragon to slay. So after every awesome successful show I'd come back the next day worried tonight's audience might not feel the same. I'm weird, okay.

So that was tough but in every way rewarding. This week has had its difficulties but it truly feels like I came out on top of this one. And of course I've still got them shreds of self-doubt in me. But more on that later. For the first two days it was a patently ordinary week.

Wednesday was when things got a tad shuffled, due to Wacky Wednesday/Virtual Monday/Wednesday Monday/What The Fuck Week. It's not that hard a concept to grasp and honestly once I wrapped my brain around it, it seemed eminently practical. Because of the deficit of Mondays during the school year, this past Wednesday was a Monday, and then no Thursday or Friday classes. Reasonable enough. This was easy for me to cope with, because my first Wednesday class is my Monday class doubled in length. So I went to the same place at the same time as I would on Wednesday, and was talked at for half as long (well ,there was no presentation, such as it is.)

The talk was about blackface; well, race as representation. But really, about white people painting their faces black, as the last two plays we studied (actually movies) were Showboat (1936) and The Jazz Singer (1927, the first talking picture, famously.) I had seen neither, although the screening of Jazz Singer was later that night. So after class, I went and watched Showboat in Media Commons. All the salient points occurred in the first hour and the second hour was kind of a bore and fell apart narratively. It has some pretty keen songs though, mostly Old Man River, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man Of Mine (apparently about how loyal negro women of the early 20th century were to their apparently no good lazy husbands,) and The Room Above Her. By the time the official couple got together and had a kid, I lost interest in both the story and characters.

After a quick dinner I came back to watch the Jazz Singer with four other students. The scheduling of the screenings is ridiculous because he did not consult anyone, and it seems most of us have class on Wednesday evenings at 6, when they are set. I know I do. And many seem to have it on Monday at 6, which this was, ostensibly. So yeah, 5 20-somethings made to sit (unsupervised) high in the turret of Robarts, watching this dredge of a picture. I actually don't mean to slag it that much, and in cultural context it's pretty decent. They couldn't synchronize sound the whole way, so they mainly had Jolson do a bunch of songs with a bit of banter surrounding them, then back to intertitles. Anyway.

The plot of the movie, you'd probably remember from the episode of the Simpsons with Krusty's father. The original play was based on Jolson's life although oddly enough Jolson didn't originate the role based on him on stage. The son of a Jewish Cantor (guy who sings in the Synagogue) is more interested in singing Jazz numbers. Dad, understandably disappointed, whips him with a belt, prompting him to run away to LA and seek his fortunes as a singer. By the time we get to grown-up Jolson (the character is Jakie Rabinowitz, or Jack Robin) we've had some musical numbers. Jolson makes his debut in the picture with the somewhat overwrought Dirty Hands, Dirty Faces. It is after this song he utters the first synchronized dialogue in history, "Wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet." Fitting. Then the launches into what I felt was the one musical number worth thinking about 80 years later, "Toot, Toot, Tootsie," which actually kinda rocks. Well, it swings and swings hard.

Anyway, what I mainly objected to in the film was the extremity of the pressure Robin was under to please his family -- his dad, on his death bed, begs to see Jakie perform the Cantoring. He's booked in a Broadway show set to open. Cantor Rabinowitz has denied his son's existence for years and refuses to acknowledge his career choice. The character basically does not lend himself to compromise. Rabinowitz has to give up his ambition to embrace the religion that shunned him. The punishment for this decision is supposedly that his Broadway career will be ruined, but the very next scene has him back on Broadway singing Mammy for, well, his Mammy. So there's your Hollywood ending. He makes a tough decision and suffers no setback. Then I guess it wasn't really a tough decision.

Oh, and the Blackface. I also object to the Blackface. Although Jolson performed in the first half of the movie repeatedly as himself, by the time he got to Broadway, his schtick was shown as being Blackface. Not that he performed a minstrel show (as in Showboat, which was the most offensive in that it had absolutely nothing to do with anything, see Big Lipped Alligator Moment. Which is saying something for a musical.) Anyway. It seems pretty clear that Jolson dug black folk and was a friend to them, and in my view if it's not malicious it doesn't really count on the same level of racism (this is of course the white person's standard view of racism.)

Anyway. Apart from the kid playing young Rabinowitz and the Cantor stuff, it was basically Jolson's show. So it's not any more of a musical than that play I once conceived of where Joe would be onstage playing his songs.

Anyway, that all was a drag of sorts. I lighted out for Vasa's to watch Glee with the usual gang. I'm getting better acquainted and all, especially given my drunken buffoonery at the Halloween party. So we hung out, I argued some hard geek topics with the resident pundit. I have a habit of contradicting/deflating people who think they know something, as I like to remind everybody that everybody knows nothing anyway, myself included. It's kind of a mean trick but also a bonding measure, when you can be half a dick to someone but in a jovial way, you get in with them, and that's mainly how I operate. And also because yes, I genuinely dislike people spouting their unannounced opinions to the whole room.

The other big bit from Wednesday was that I got my marks back for my drama project. Well I got my Film marks back the day before, and it was a low 70's like I thought. Drama was considerably kinder and considering the improvement in those two figures over my dismal midterm performance I am happy about it. I think at least one of my groupmates will be disappointed but I am not keen on aligning my opinions with anyone else's anyhow. I have no delusions, for starters, and am prone to blaming myself. As far as the paper goes, it was the usual note of "Good point poorly arranged." I guess that's just my lot. I often think I am overcoming it but I guess I just haven't got the knack. I ought to use writing centers sometimes. He also said I paid too little attention to the actual text (I'll cop to it) and that when I quoted it, I misquoted it (questionable, but possible.)

He took issue with the way we set the audience up, which was fair enough to me, questioning how it may have damaged the play's message, as did the exaggerated performances of certain male characters (Clara as Peters, most likely.)

SO it seems like I may have regained some footing, although the mark's still up in the air you know. I think I'm really living up to this perception I have/cultivate about myself that I'm a fairly smart guy who is a bad student. Which of course I'd rather be than a dumb guy who was a good student. Of course, there are times I think I'm a dumb guy is is a bad student, so there's your self-doubt back for more.

I've got a couple short papers due this week. I ought to be more attentive. No work until Saturday, after tomorrow. It bothers me only slightly that I'm now getting fewer hours; I'm happy just to do the job when I can, and the fact is there's less time I can now, and I've got other concerns, so the less time it eats up the better. It's still fairly likely I'll get called in at some point in the week anyway. Probably Friday.

And it's been a fairly hectic few days at work, getting some good customer service done lately. Doing a decent job not losing my top, and actually coming through for people when I can. Despite certain asinine inquiries. Please note, if you ever order something from HMV, we WILL call you if it comes in, you don't need to call us (except for that one guy I helped who had no phone.) After work today I had to have fake christmas, which was a debacle of its own kind, since I was super late and fairly worn and as always the kids were clamoring for me. The price of being the favourite.

Anyway, I've been rambling all this time and I haven't even really explained or alluded to why this week was really all that great. I mentioned in my last entry, Sunday night, that I had just started communicating with a girl who seemed cool. Tuesday night, after having viewed Jaws for film class (belatedly) I was talking to her about it, and she suggested we ought to go to Big Al's Aquarium supplies and see sharks. So we did! We met up at the mall, walked down to Kerr St, and hung out there a while, then moved further down to places like the Salvation Army (where she bought a wicker bag and a creepy yarn clown) and the comic store (where I bought comics and she bought a gumball and asked me why I didn't shop at Conspiracy) and further down the line. Ultimately we circled back around Trafalgar and I walked her home.

I won't say too much about it more than that I really enjoyed her company. Lord knows I've had enough starts and stops with women that to get really caught up in it would make me feel lame if it goes nowhere, but at the same time, she's really cool so I've got to put in an effort, and she seems to enjoy my company and after hanging out for like 4 hours we didn't run out of conversation, so... yeah.

I sometimes find it very hard to believe people enjoy spending time with me.

Anyway. Considering my crazy ass schedule and her own, who knows when we'll see one another again, but when we do...... it could be good.

That's me, for ya. Even the victories are in some sense defeat. Everything I write is consciously along those lines. Whenever it seems like a character is getting everything, I have to bring him down to Earth somehow, because I'm obsessed with the idea people are reading/viewing with thoughts like "The writer just wanted a happy ending for everyone" or "The writer just wanted a sappy, overdramatic ending for everyone." You know what's surprisingly tough? Ambiguity. Nobody criticizes you much when you leave things ambiguous, if you do it properly. People like being left to consider the ending on their own. That's what I've learned through Short Story anyhow.

Enough of my grousing though, whatever that means. Keep on rockin'
-Scotto