We were taking our band buses back to Florida from Washington D.C. so everyone was already exhausted and very ready to be home. The girls bus broke down in middle-of-nowhere North Carolina at 2 A.M. in front of a random church. The vibes in there felt like Lord of the Flies because our air conditioner had stopped working and half the girls just wanted to go back to sleep while the other half were freaking out. One girl kept trying to convince everyone that she could fix the bus herself. Had we been in there longer, we may have started eating each other. The boys bus dropped all their passengers at a nearby Denny's and came back to shuttle the rest of us over. This was the morning after the night of St. Patrick's Day, so half the Denny's was full of drunk adults and the other half was a bunch of dejected marching band kids. The waitresses were all wearing shamrock hats, and they danced to Celebration to try to cheer us up. We were sleeping across the booths and pushing chairs together to create makeshift beds, and it looked ridiculous. All of the Snapchat memories I have from this ordeal are absolutely delirious. Our band director could not get ahold of the bus company to send us another bus, and she started crying and had a breakdown. We all wrote her a nice thank-you note on a napkin and signed it for her. That morning/afternoon, we finally got another bus sent to us, which then took us to a Golden Corral buffet for lunch. I promptly got food poisoning from this Golden Corral and I was fighting for my life in that bathroom. Overall an insane experience. My friend had been trying to take polaroid pictures the entire D.C. trip and none of them turned out EXCEPT for the one she took of the Denny's sign. I later turned this whole situation into a comedic script for my playwriting class.
Also on this trip: some 13 year-old boys called us hoes at the Lincoln Memorial. :)
Jul 12, 2024
Related Recs
π
After growing up in the LBC (would have attended a 4000-person / 3 grade high school)
I ended up going to high school in a little rural/farming community in Oregon that didn't even have 4000 people living in it. It's a long story re: how I got there.
It was a little bit like "Footloose" in this town. Kids made their own fun, there wasn't a helluva lot going on there. A lot of students took Shop class and hung out in that (grimy) building.
Senior year, someone had their little import car (Honda, I think?) partially disassembled and then reassembled INSIDE the building. I think it happened over a weekend and we showed up on Monday and.... there was a Honda parked in senior hall. Our graduating class had maybe 150 kids so everyone knew whose it was.
I think they ended up having to tear the doors off the hinges in a few different hallways to get it back out again. We all got a lecture at some senior night thing or another about respecting school and each other's property, with the idea being that if someone would just come forward and admit it, there would be less trouble. I don't remember anyone snitching or actually getting in trouble. The car belonged to someone on rally and I have no idea how they didn't figure out it was missing or if they were in on it somehow.
There were some great photos floating around, all pre-smartphone era.
Pure small-town dumbassery. Someone there has probably dined out on this story for decades now.
Apr 27, 2024
π
I ended up going to high school on a scholarship so there's a lot of rich kid, scions of people who make all their money in tech nonsense I had to put up with, but I spent most of my days listening to obscure music and smoking a ton of weed. There was a girl who was infamously known for not being smart, but she also supplied all the booze at the parties so nobody ever brought it up. She got into USC, somehow, and everyone thought something was up but didn't say anything, since, booze at parties. Later, that Varsity Blues thing happened, and it turned out that her and her sister's parents were one of the highest spenders in gaming the system, so they ended up getting perp walked by the cops in front of the whole school, which really put into perspective the weird little world I happened to be adjacent to.
Oh there was also a white kid (who was also student body president) who tried out a rap career, and the terrible track leaked and it spread all over, to the point of blaring it over the speakers at prom, I don't know if I have a copy but it was hysterical to hear in a fancy hotel ballroom.
Apr 27, 2024
π
The setting is a huge public highschool in Minneapolis. The scene of plenty of viral fight videos (including the infamous hijab snatching)
We bribed a janitor to let us into the school at 1 am. We went from room to room, turning tables and chairs upside down, defacing posters with βSENIOR SZNβ and dumb stuff like that. Before we finished, we decided our final hurrah would be bringing tables and chairs from classrooms to the front entrance to block the main door and the administrative office from entrance. It was like kids in a toy store- free reign over our high school in the dead of night. Ive been chasing the high ever since.
cut to: all parents have to come to an assembly where they sign off on our written apologies to the principal and administrators.
Apr 26, 2024
Top Recs from @gforce2001
I love doing collages, cuz all you really need are magazine cutouts and glue. There's a very low barrier to entry, skill-wise AND supply-wise, unlike painting. Digital collages are fun too, but I try to have less screentime by doing the paper ones. If I want to re-use pieces instead of gluing them down permanently, sometimes I'll just take a picture of the current arrangement to immortalize it, and then start over on a new composition. That way, I don't have to constantly buy new magazines to get new cutouts. This is one of my favorite ones I've done so far:
Aug 22, 2024
π₯
This is the only thing that keeps me sane at work. It's so slow right now. If anyone is wondering why I've posted like 9 times today.
5d ago
β
i always get stuck choosing which stuff to watch/read/get into next when i look at my huge former watchlists & TBR's. a lot of items are things i put on there years ago and never got around to, so usually by the time i check the list again, my tastes have totally changed. i realized it was hard to get myself excited or motivated about half the stuff i put on there anymore, but i felt indebted to knocking it out anyway just because it was on the list. i'd recommend letting your current feelings/impulses take the wheel, and trust that you'll come back around to any of the other options if they're right for you later on.
Apr 18, 2024