CHAPTER SEVEN:
“YouBoob, The Musical”
Christmas 2005
By Christmas of 2005, I had already moved to Halifax to pursue post-secondary knowledge of Applied Arts at NSCC, and was feeling pretty good about the direction of my life. Learning about Photoshop, Illustrator, Photography, Illustration and other ways to make me feel good about myself.
During Christmas break in Lunenburg, my friend Dave Maddox sent me a link to watch the SNL Short “Dick in a Box”. The link lead me to a little website called Youtube; the first website (that I knew of) where you could upload your very own videos! I was absolutely blown away and excited beyond belief. Before the launch of Youtube, the process of getting videos online was incredibly complicated, and me being notorious for my technical laziness had never learned that process.
I locked myself indoors for the remainder of my break and created a short animated music video for the Gorillaz and uploaded it to Youtube…
Vodpod videos no longer available.
…They still haven’t even said thanks.
Instantly, I started brainstorming ideas for short films. I knew that I wanted to act in them, but I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to do so (mostly because I sucked); therefore, when I got back to the city, I signed up for evening Acting Classes at Neptune Theatre.
For those of you who know what I mean when I say “Zip-Zap-Zop”, you understand how weird the theatre classes were. I loved it. It felt very liberating, to be able to run around and play with adults. It was definitely a sexual preference test.
Once the class was over, I signed up for two more, another acting class, and a musical theatre class. The problem with the musical class was that (1) I had zero knowledge on how to read music, or (2) how to sing, because back in elementary school I made fun of Elvis in music class (in Grade 3) and my teacher kicked me out of her class for the next three years. I really don’t think she was allowed to do that.
So after three of the musical theatre classes, I told the teacher that I had to call it quits, because I had no sweet clue what was going on around me. On my way out, one of the other students Kerri Leier asked me to audition for her upcoming musical called Jump! An 80’s Musical! I re-stated the fact that I had no sweet clue what was going on, and she insisted that I come out.
In my first audition, I read my sides, and then at the end, I asked to showcase my ability to “sell” a punch to the face. I did my best impression of the Ric Flair flop and promptly left the room. Later on in the day I learned that I got the part of the Jock villain, who luckily for me, had minimal singing and dancing, but a good amount of dialogue.
The next 4 months were spent watching a VHS of the routines over & over & over and dancing along with them in my tiny bedroom between rehearsals.
June came, I completed my first year of college (with good marks), and it was time for the show. Here’s the poster that I designed for the show…
And here’s a photo of me (on the right) trying too hard…
The show went very well and was deemed a success. Hip hip hooray.
Confidence: +1.
During the rehearsals, the musical director, Matt Amyotte asked a few of us if anyone had wanted to be in his friend’s movie. The way he phrased it made me think it would just be a couple guys in a backyard with a Hi-8 camcorder, so I thought “fuck, I can do that”. He then said it was Jason Eisener‘s next movie. I knew that I had heard the name, but I wasn’t sure until he brought up The Teeth Beneath, a film that Eisener made and I had seen parts of, I loved what I had seen.
A week later I was having a beer with Jason and John Davies and they were filling me in with plans for their epic feature length film Streets of Domination.
PAST BUILDING THE GLENJMPIRE CHAMPTERS:
Chapter 6: Quitter
Chapter 5: VHS FTW
Chapter 4: Two Chapters With One Stone
Chapter 3: Honk If You Happen to be Horny
Chapter 2: Junior Hierarchy
Chapter 1: Prologue
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