I made this last summer, so I suppose I should post it.

Oh, Christmas. For me, this meant that I’m no longer in debt up to my eyeballs - now it’s just to about my upper-chest. Adobe, why must you be so expensive? Ah yes, because your products rock… Anyway - this was a nice week, quite relaxing. I think this is the first time I actually haven’t had any homework over the winter break (minus the three books due a week after I get back, of course).

After filming an interview over the weekend for some Richmond-Architectural-Development-Conference-thing, I started to miss the screenplay I’d written over the summer. Background: I wrote a parody of The Ring designed to be amusing to anime fans [and about no one else], about 60 pages/minutes long. I was planning on filming it this fall, but I ran into some trouble with actors’ parents not letting their children participate (heh, like I had time, anyway)… But now that the panic that is the first semester of Junior year is over (and now that certain actors have dropped out of certain AP classes) I’m going to give shooting this another try. It’ll have to wait until after this semester’s officially over, anyway (in about three weeks), since I still have Governor’s School auditions to worry about. I just really want to be able to finish this by the summer, since I was planning on premiering it at either Otakon or Anime Expo this summer (essentially my only chance to get 1,000+ of my target audience members to sit down and watch my movie at once) - both of which are in July. Let’s hope… Heh, if any of you are interested in the screenplay itself, feel free to read it. It’s quite possible the school would frown upon me using their server space for this, but it is technically related to theatre…

Eh, First Night Virginia’s coming up this Monday - I don’t know if I’ll go yet; I’m still trying to decide whether or not to shoot a segment on it (I could probably work it into CHS News Live on Wednesday…). Ah yes - I got a video light for my camera for Christmas as well, so know I don’t have to worry about filming interviews at night.

We got PSAT results back a few weeks ago - 221! Yay. Yet another example of how varied the different forms of assessment are in this country. I got one of the top 1% of PSAT scores in the country, yet I believe I’m still somewhere around the top 20 or 15% of my class at CHS. Ladies and Gentleman, GPAs are utterly pointless. This has forced me to start thinking about colleges as well - I’m signed up to take the SAT exactly a month from now. Guh, don’t get me started about the problems with standardized testing…

I’ve got a college list, though. In no particular order:

Carnegie Mellon
UNC: Chapel Hill (Colin Campbell goes there…)
UCLA
NYU
UVA

Carnegie Mellon has great film and computer science programs, and so does Chapel Hill; NYU, on the other hand, has the Tisch School for film, which would pretty much be my dream program. *sigh* Welcome to the next year of my life…

My first week of driving by myself has made me learn a few things:

1. Don’t leave your lights on
2. Lock your car when you have a camera in it worth more than you make in two years
3. Learn how to take the key out of the ignition
4. The layout of Charlottesville is the most messed up thing in existence

But yeah, I managed to deplete my battery while making gingerbread houses yesterday. It was raining, and I had to get Savanna’s dad to jump start the car [it took me a while to figure out how to open the hood]. And today I was filming an interview with Maurice Cox, which had me running all over the city - I got my key stuck in the car so much, a few times I ended up just leaving it in there while Laura and I went inside (smart, I know).

Want to call Santa!?!? Well, just call the WNRN studio line (979-0919) tomorrow between 11AM and noon, and you can! Yeah, on the Wake-Up Call tomorrow, we’re doing the Christmas show. Essentially, I’ll be the WNRN Elf - sweet. Speaking of which: wow, Christmas is in two days… I need to get a grip on time.

And while I’m at it, let me just say how furious I am over Allen’s comment about the Muslim Representative in Minnesota. For those of you than don’t know, he warned that (I’m paraphrasing, here) “Unless we tighten our immigration laws, we’ll end up with more Muslims in the Senate and House.” Now, that’s a horribly racist comment by itself. But what I find completely idiotic about it is that, “The Muslim” was born in the US, and converted to Islam in college. So uh, how does immigration fit into that, exactly? To me, him saying that higher education will cause more Muslims to be in Congress makes more sense…

Midterms for this year have come and gone, and I must say I’m quite happy about that. Our acting class is going out tomorrow to perform Silver Packages at local retirement homes and elementary schools, which should be fun. We’re also singing holiday songs, and I have the solo for Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer. Problem: I don’t know the reindeer names… I know, I know - I was born a Christian and I don’t know if Dasher comes before Blitzen. Shame on me.

Unfortunately, the end of the first half of Junior years mean I have to start getting serious about college. Now, I know I don’t really have to be worried; my involvement in theatre alone gives me more extracurriculars than most other people, not to mention my volunteer work… But looking through collegeboard.com, I realized that the five or so colleges I’m seriously thinking of applying to are all in the top 25 in the nation. Ha. Hahaha. Haha. See, this is why it would be great to be nominated for the American Cinema Editors Student Competition I’m in. That = pretty much the best thing anyone can have on an application for film school. But let’s be realistic here - I’m an 11th grader who’s editing experience constitutes a few music videos and the random scene or two; I’m most likely going up against graduate students at the American Film Institute. Cue nervous laugher a second time.

I need to learn how to park…

Yes, I post in clumps. Whatever.

A few weeks ago, the CHS Testostetones opened for the Sirens in the Black Box [we’re a male a cappella group]. For those tragic few that missed the performance, someone was kind enough to film it for us, and it’s now on YouTube (*sigh*, when will people be smart and start using Google Video…). Please ignore the horrible filming technique the cameraman used; still not sure how the camera managed to get turned upside-down so many times…

Center of Attention - Guster

Lonely - Akon

Yes, that’s me doing the solo in Lonely…
Thank goodness I didn’t have to do the rap part at the beginning of the song…