Ok, so I'm going to preface this and then here you go. Soo... I'm talking to ma friend Mark (on AIM) and shit.... So what comes up is a simple bit about liking someone (we're talking deeper than the physical) to which I come up with this main point that got me going:
"cuz it's something that i just really haven't experienced in a serious way / but fags are too much into this casual sex thing..... so like.. everything is MEANINGLESS..... fuckinga"
So this goes on and eventually I'm like "really should blog this." Well I ended up just typing it into a note file, and now I'm pasting it in below. I finished this about 10 minutes before authoring this entry.

So it's a total stream of consciousness so it's not necessarily the best logic flow. But it's very raw and emotional I feel. And yeah, I'm going to go back and read it later and like many things, I'll give me some insight on my own thinking. I love the ending. And thanks Mark for listening (technically reading) to me blabbing/chatting away.

---------
Meeting someone.... feeling like you've got a connection...

I'm latching on to it because they rarely happen. in "gay world" it's soo much casual sex.. that when something appears to have the potential to actually MEAN SOMETHING it's like a fucking amazing gold find. I mean it's like you've found the diamond in the rough.... you're like "i want to date you!!! pleeaaaseee?!" but you don't want to do that. cuz they may not share the same, they may not actually be interested in you, or maybe they are. But if you come on with that bit of bullshit.. they sure as hell won't want to go out with you.

There is that inherent problem, with the whole sex thing. it fucks you up. it gets you to detach the feelings part from the sex, so you can enjoy things and not wake up in the morning and be like "oh i love you! be my boyfriend!" Cuz the next thing thru your mind at that point is "What the fuck did I just say?!" So then it's very possible and likely to reach a point where it's hard to talk to someone and meet them and try to handle things like a normal situation. your brain is trained to take this meeting, this interaction and see the sex value in it, and then figure how to reach it if it is so desired.
So then when you get sick of this shit, or perhaps just want to change it up a bit... like actually get to KNOW some people it's a trick. Or perhaps you meet someone, and well let's just say it clicks, you want to take it seriously. There is that risk that they are still in the "sex mode."

Why is this bit of "genius" suddenly upon me, cuz this is what I'm fucking dealing with right now. Yes I want to go out and find some hot guy and fucking hook up, because frankly I could seriously use getting laid. But at the same time, there is someone who I really do want to actually go on legitimate dates, leave the sex outta it, and like.. potentially explore the possibility of a relationship with. I mean I'd never think I'd be in this situation right now but hey, shit happens.

Now you say, "Well why not?" and that's complicated in many ways, some stupid. Namely the whole "getting in contact" part, kinda tricky. Wasn't any number exchange of sorts and stuff... and well I didn't push it at the time cuz it would have seemed odd and very well would have run the risk of coming off as a hook-up interest. So I let it be at just "See you around. perhaps hang out sometime?" Which ended with a good hug and a "Sure. Take care."

I dunno. I think the reality of the end result is I just need to at least make a date offer somehow, and hopefully accomplish at least one. I mean it can fail, but if there is no attempt, I'm going to be forever kicking myself about it.
As one of the few quotes that I've strove to live up to:
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." -Albert Einstein.
And this is EXACTLY one of those cases. I may fuckup, it may go all wrong, hell it might actually work, but either way if I don't try, if I don't do there is no outcome.

Ok, so it's hella late and I'm finally at my parents place. Recap of the weekend and Monday: Sunday woke up early and we all piled in the car to head up to the bay. Dropped off Courtney in Concord, picked up Emily in Berkeley, and headed into SF. Day around there, and then reversed the whole thing. (Didn't pick up Courtney.) Anyway, LONG day, totally tired by the end of it. I was rather tired at the beginning of it actually, feel asleep in the car several times.
Monday got some errands and stuff done, did some laundry and then headed down to Motion Pacific for last class. (More on this later.) Got back and then dealt with packing. I hate packing. I mean I really really do. Between finishing laundry and packing, it put me 2 hours behind a targeted schedule. So I'm finally at my parents place for break. I just realized earlier this evening that we've only got two weeks left to winter break. Given I spent a deal of my break down in Santa Cruz. I'm not complaining, cuz it was fine, I was keeping occupied. How this part will fan out is another question. Given I have virtually no money, I can't do much and I definitely can't afford to go to Tahoe on my own dime. Family trip hopefully... we shall see. knowing how being at home always goes, by the end of it I'll be desperate to get the fuck back to SC.

Ok so onto dance class. Ok yes this past quarter has been VERY dance centric. But then again for a good reason too. I mean I've always considered myself a kinetic person, I just don't think I realized (and still am) how much so. So as I mentioned in an earlier post Tandy told me that I really do have a kinetic presence and such, and I definitely took it to mind.
Anyway so during the dance showcase this past weekend, it was before the dress rehearsal and so we're just standing around and I do one of my "frolics" into the front lobby for whatever reason. Hold that; so the lady who teaches ballet there (Vicki I believe), came into my intro modern dance class to sub for Tandy one day. So I've had a class with her. So anyway as soon as I landed, she was like "Wow! I think we need to see that again!" Given I was wearing my white DVS shoes I opted to do it again without them on (they're not broken in and thus have hard toes.) Of course the other folks in my hip-hop class were impressed and amused. I also got a complement from Vicki on it. She actually made reference to it later when were blocking out the curtain call, if I'd use that as my entrance. Heh.

Ok! SO now getting to the good part... So it's the last day of my hip-hop class, and I noticed that Tandy was there in the ballet class today. (She hadn't been there in weeks) Anyway it was nice to see her again and say hi. She was really happy that I was still doing dance even tho our class had ended weeks ago. But what was interesting was that right we said hi, Vicki commented on how I have an excellent "running leap" (I think that's what she said.) And Tandy responded in mentioning about how I've got great "kinetic energy." I chuckled, to which Vicki responded "you laugh!" and Tandy also added in "you do." Well I had to get going and put my shoes on given that we were about to start warm ups for class.

But everything I've been doing, and hearing about all the dance I've been doing has really had me thinking. It really has necisitated the thought of do I want to really persue doing dance more than just a causal fun item on the side. I mean as it seems to me, I've been able to pick up on dance far faster than many of the other things I've started doing in the last 5 years. Snowboarding was one of the fastest, but that was also because I beat myself into the ground (technically snow, I know) to get good at it. Dance I just have been doing it as I've enjoyed it. It's odd... And like I talked about in the past blog entry, actually performing for an audience, that whole energy that's there.... ah wow. I'm just not sure what to think about it; there's so many things running through my mind about me and dance.

Anyway, this is far longer than I intended (isn't all blogging like that?) and I'm beginning to ramble and I must sleep. I've got a somewhat early of a schedule in the morning. I dunno, I think I'll have to take a stab at this one again when I'm fully rested. This quarter has definitely proved to be a major turning point for me.

Ok, first few things to get thru first. One, finally did major site update. I'd been running a rather old version of my content managment system, which had several security holes in it. I'd been meaning to do it as I've probably mentioned before. Finally got to it, and wow what a process it was. It involved several updates, because I was making such a version jump that the cores of the systems were quite different. Took far longer than I'd have expected, and was rather tedious at some points, epically when the database got totally fucked up. So messed up I had to completely delete it from the server and restore it from the backup. Tho the end result is I'm up to the latest version.
Ok, that was kinda boring... In other news, went to Santa Cruz high again this week, thurs again, much better time. The kids were as a whole much more engaged and asking bunches of questions. I think also as I started off with more energy myself, and also WAY more direction in what I was talking about helped. Starting off with "hey I'm going to talk about how rock concert lighting works!" tends to set a good tone.
So after that, went out to Hart's fabric store. Awesome place in Santa Cruz, they've got LOTS of cloth and whatnot there. Anyway, so we're on to Friday I believe, yes, which was website upgrade as said above.

NOW! On to Saturday, the big day, the final fall dance showcase. For those of you not keeping up, I've been doing hip-hop dance downtown at Motion Pacific dance studios. Come the end of the quarter, big showcase of all the classes. So I was like "hell yeah!" and was going to perform in it. So 'twas a long day, given we had to be there starting at 3pm and from there did a dress rehearsal/tech run-thru. And then we got a break. Not much of one... but a break. Went to Pizza My Heart with a few of other folks from out bit and got some food. And then back to the studio. Chilled backstage and such, and then it was time to get ready. We were the 3rd piece in the show, so right from the top we were on standby.
Now during the dress rehearsal, well, I did a really shitty performance. Many timing fuckups, and other stuff. As one of the other guys who teaches there gave us the note, "it's technically all good, but you need to bring yourselves out more." As in don't stare blankly off into space or the floor and be thinking about the steps in your head, it shows, a lot. The other thing was I walked backstage after the dress run, I wasn't really tired. That's not right... Well come show, I was fucking beaming when we started it and it was sooo freaking awesome. You could really tell (aside from the "wooos!" and shouts) that the audience was totally getting into it. It seemed over so fast, but yet was probably the peak of energy and fun in dancing that whole routine. And for a change, when we walked off stage I was sweating quite a bit and tired. Hurray major energy expenditure!
Anyway so got to chill for the rest of the show, as I wasn't in any other pieces, (next time...) and then the finale/bows. After the whole thingie there was little reception/gathering afterwards with food and some beverages. The whole thing was an absolutely fantastic experience. Granted I've been in the backstage/tech end of showbiz for years now, but after this I could certainly get (back) on stage.

Anyway at that point, Courtney was tugging on my sleeve to get going to say go to the Blue Lagoon. Shout to her for coming to the show. By the way, should you have not been able to (or forgot, or just weren't motivated enough) never fear, I ordered the DVD of the show and I'll have the clip of our bit up on my site in due time.
So after that, gathered all of us up, Albert, David, Courtney, and me. Went to Boardwalk for a bit, and then off to get food. Were planning to go to 99 Bottles but as we ended up going from place to place, virtually all of the places had closed their kitchens' for the night. So off to Denny's. And yeah. Now it's now, and I should've been asleep awhile ago. Courtney's gotta get back to Concord rather early tomorrow, and well the long and the short of it is that we're all going up and probably just going to make it a day in SF while we're at it.
So that's all for now. I'm off to sleep. And yah dance! Check back later next week for the video. Toodles!

So yeah, that whole "will blog more often," yeah just like before it hasn't happened. Someone's gotta be reading this stuff, I'm getting hundreds of hits. Or maybe that's just my site getting attacked. Joy. Anyway so what's been up.

Ok... I'll try to make this a bit more interesting than me just re-hashing my calendar. I really need to start writing stuff when I'm in the moment, granted all I get is a stream of consciousness but at least I've got something to work with later. More on this later. So it's a day shy of being three weeks from my last entry.
So holiday weekend, at home Thanksgiving... Wow I need to jog my memory here... seems so long ago. Ok, so drove up to home that morning and yeah. I have no idea what I did that morning. Wasn't much I know that. We ended up having a very simple dinner that evening. My dad made the turkey as usual, and my aunt took care of everything else from Marie Calendar's and we ate over at my grandparents place down the block. That was that, nothing big. Kinda refreshing for a change in some ways. Tho was odd at the same token.
Next day, Friday, black friday. For a change I actually went out shopping on this INSANE day. I could have spent FAR more than I did, but fortunately I kept myself under control. Ended up making off nicely. Uh... hm, I've kinda forgot what I got. I know I got a 100 pk spindle of CD-R's at Fry's for hella cheap. And also picked up a bunch of shirts/polo's from Abercrombie. Nothing else comes to mind majorly, yeah..
I was intending to go clubbing on saturday and drag my friends Stephen and david (from high school) along just because. That kinda fell flat, we ended up just going to the Vinyl Room in Burlingame, a new "lounge" place that main point was having a live DJ there always. Not a bad place, nice bartender, DJ that night was good. Tho the crowd, could have dealt without. As is the problem with that area, it's a older group, MUCH older crowd. Kinda ended up feeling like a bar later that evening. Anyway, still was a good evening. I ended up buying a lot of drinks for everyone. Stephen was the one drinking half of them while David was, well avoiding them.
And then probably just headed home some time Sunday. And there ya go. Nothing hugely major about the weekend. It was definitely well needed after all the crazy stuff I'd been dealing with shows. I still would have liked to go up to SF for clubbing. I have STILL yet to do that and it's been, well far longer than I'd like to admit since I've been there. There wasn't any more coming out or anything. I'm still not entirely sure how to approach it... It was such a bombshell that I dropped on my mom and I honestly still don't believe it's sunk in, at all.

Anyway! So the only thing left after that was working on Zach's show. That was fairly straightforward. We'd already done the light hang for it on Tuesday of the week of Thanksgiving. Now we were just in the parts of doing tech for it and such. Well anyway, it was a great show and stuff. Looked good and all. Had a great after part at his place, which was fun to just hang out with everyone and such.
Ok, let's see... calendar... Ok so another thing, just toss this in. So I needed to see a professional dance show as part of my requirement for my intro modern dance class. It was recommended my Tandy (the teacher) that I check out this dance show down at CSU Monterey Bay. Well long story short I ended up making the drive down for the evening and checked it out. There was a talkback afterwards which helped to understand the piece more. Was definitely a more abstract show, but not bad. Not a favorite, and not great, but not bad.
Moving along! So yeah, that was the last week of classes, a sad point for me. This past fall quarter had been great. I worked on two shows, and had one class, a dance class. And even tho it was on my own dime another dance class downtown. Freaking awesome quarter. Went to party on Friday at Will's place, one of the guys who plays on the (ultimate) team. Fun times, good party, we had a keg. Now I'm not a beer person, and this was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Oddly, drank a lot of it, quite a bunch. Anyway, good party, chatting with folks. Yay!
Next morning, Random w/ a purpose preview. I finally got to see all of the dance bits in their current forms. That was cool. Thank gowad I took good notes for it's been far to long in my mind, and I don't really remember much of it.

Ok so onto another front, my DJ'ing. Well OH! I totally skipped over this. So as per my last entry, I did a mix the day before Thanksgiving, and such and released it. Well now that's it's had time to proliferate it's been met with a great response, been called my best mix yet. So, now given that'd I'd had a really easy quarter this meant that I'd have no finals. Well several folks told me that my mixes helped them get thru lots of studying and such. So I figured, hey, why not do a live mix session and live broadcast it during finals week for everyone who's studying. Well I ended up doing that and it was recieved well. As typical with my webcasts I do, I was hoping for more people but it wasn't bad. The good thing about it was I ended up doing around 7 hours of mixing between the two sessions, which even in that much time my skills greatly improved. So my plan after that was to get a mix CD done and get it out there. I have yet to do it, maybe that can be my task for this week.
In other news I'm now a manger of Crown/Merrill tech crew as Zach graduated. He's applied and been interviewed by High End Systems, and well at that point it was looking good. I honestly hope it got the job. I need to call him and find out what's up... So yeah, manager now. Granted it's break so nothings happening, but there will be a deal of stuff when I get back. Speaking of next quarter, that's going to suck as I've got three classes that I don't really want to take plus a show Yay for 20 units!

Anyway, other good stuff during finals week. So thursday, end of finals friend of mine, Mira whom I have gotten to know thru the dance shows I've worked on, she was hosting a birthday potluck at her place. Good times, good food, great group of people. Happy I was invited and went. Must comment, guy that was there, Alec, really nice cool guy, and cute. I swear I'd met him at another party, but whatever. Kinda kicking myself over how there was no number exchange, but whatever. It's a small town and we'll run into each other in the future. I'm hopeful/sure of it. Heh. And yes he's gay.

I also finally got to going in and talking at Santa Cruz high school in the drama class. In many ways was what I was expecting to get from a high school class, lotsa blank stares and such. Tho fortunately there was some deal of engagement from certain students. You could tell there were kids there who really wanted to pick my brain, and others who were probably like "oh gowad..." Anyway, going in for another chat session hopefully later this week and I'll have a bit more direction in what I'm talking about.

Now also I've been doing hip-hop dance downtown at Motion Pacific dance studios. Awesome stuff and lots of fun, and the final showcase is coming up so we've all been meeting and rehearsing like nuts. I still need to get some of my costume details squared away and such, but overall it's looking good. I feel rather confident in the dance now that we were doing it with complete spacing and in the space as it will be on monday night. I'm totally psyched about it. i really haven't done any major performance stuff in years, and especially as this is in dance which is actually a new venture for me. But hey, I'm feeling good about it and I can't wait! I'll buy the video of it probably, so I'll have the clip of our bit available once it's all done and such.

I still have to deal with my traffic ticket and trial by mail and shit. I just want it to go away. Ah well...
And lastly in other news, I'm fucking broke. Yep, just getting to paying cell phone bill and credit card bill, and I'm left with virtually nothing. And the only reason I have some money is cuz I've pulled a few out of my savings account. Thank gowad I've got that and I don't touch it. So Tahoe is very much out of the question, but then again the snow is far from impressive currently.
And yeah, it's late despite I made plans to sleep early and not wake up at 3pm like I've been doing. I need to do some more mixing, I miss it and although it's only been a week, that's too long. I also have been meaning to go ice skating, haven't gotten around to it, but dammit all this week I will! Well I think, I'm having second thoughts that it does run the possibility that I hurt myself, cuz that has happened and then I'm fucked for the dance show, in a bad case scenario. Ah whatever...

So, yeah there ya go. I've been meaning to write articles about stuff, but me being stupid I'll not even bother to write it down and then it's basically gone. Hopefully I'll get this shit done, cuz I've got lots of stuff I want to get into writing. Also I WILL, and I mean it this time, get to doing major website overhauls. It's been far too long. Well must turn in for the night.
Cheers.

Alrighteyo, so today is a GREAT day. Well namely the evening. So it's been a LONG time since I'd recorded a mix. The last mix I even bothered to record was the Broken Rock Beats. As you can read on the DJ Eth page I didn't have time or space to setup my stuff over summer. So finally with the addition of my new Denon CD player and my nice layout I've been mixing a lot more and getting a deal of practice in. So finally I was feeling like a mix was more than due to be made. So I just got out some of my newly burned CD's and went to work. Fortunately the mix well well and I produced a good set. The progression and flow of tunes is great. I'm actually less than happy with the technical mixing details of it. I think it's excessively sloppy mixing and such, but hey... I'll let my listeners be the judge of that.

I found the title of the mix ("Thanks For The Mix") more and more ironic as the evening went on. I was planning to drive up home this evening and getting going on the mix delayed me at least a whole two hours, one to make it and probably another hour in mastering and website edits. So I basically totally changed my plans for the evening just to get this mix done and out for folks to listen to it. So you best be saying "thanks for the mix"! So go get it!

Well anyway, in other news I was checking my email when I was uploading the mix to my site. I got an email from iD Tech Camps where I was a instructor/councelor this past summer. I was teaching DV video production on Final Cut Pro. All of the DV projects go into a iD tech video contest to win in one of 7 catagories. (Eg: most original, best cinematography, best action, etc.) Well one thing in the email was that the website had been updated with the new classes for this year and, the DV contest winner. And well, get this shit.
One of my kids films WON! I'm so fucking stoked. Here, go lookie. It's titled "Something Worth Stealing"
I mean it's absolutely amazing, you work with these kids and teach them for a week and at the end of it they a product of their work that is really fantastic. And then to see it go on and win, and be posted on the website for thousands to look at and see as an example of what you can learn to do at iD Tech Camps. In addition that many kids in the '07 summer DV classes will be looking at it, as it's in the (instructor) curriculum; to suggest having your kids look at the DV winners on the site to gain a perspective of what is a "truly great" project. And my kids' work is up there. One of 7, out of hundreds of videos made this summer. I've said it before, and again: it's really rewarding working with people (esp kids) and to see them be inspired by what you teach them and then see them be successful with what they do. And this is by far the biggest accomplishment for me.
That group of kids started that week with such great energy and right from the get-go set their goals to win the best cinematography award. Now while they didn't win that category, they did win an award in the contest and duly deserving of such.
Anyway, here's the link again for ya and the film was called "Something Worth Stealing." Now I must be off to bed as I need to wake up early to drive up home. So much for calling it an early night.

Well I said I'd make more regular entries in my last one... So much for that, three weeks later.
So the major delay was caused as shortly after that entry I had to start to seriously working on media for The Shape of Things as I was the media designer. And from there we went into tech for that show. Now meanwhile I'm finalizing my lighting design for the other show I'm working on down at the barn, Bending Tradacion. So I've got two shows running almost concurrently: one is in tech & dress while the other one is in light hang & dark time. Now once Shape of Things opened I had one night off and then we went straight into tech for Bending Tradacion. Oh also that same weekend of tech for Bending... I had an Ultimate (frisbee) tournament. As much stress as it added for the stage manager and the production manager, it was a much needed break for me. It was a small B-team tournament up at Stanford. There was also the big Sean Ryan tournament that we were hosting (at Santa Cruz.)

So that was all the crazyness that was all of my show stuff. Now my parents 25th anniversary was coming up and so they were having big party at our place, which happend to fall on that coming saturday. So I headed up home for saturday for the party. Long story short, my folks had master chef Patrick Farjas cater the party. We know the guy decently well. Google him, he's very good.
Well I had to get back to SC early the next morning as I had a designer photo shoot for The Shape of Things. Then after that I had somewhat of a break, only to be followed by returning for to strike the show. Then promptly heading down to the barn theater to be there for the evening show to take photos during that run for my portfolio. And of course having two closing shows on the same night strike promptly followed that.

Long crazy set of weeks. Fortunately it's winding down now. Monday sucked, woke up late, left home late, got to class a bit late. Fortunately we were doing presentations that day so I didn't have to worry about actually dancing that morning. Presentations were great as usual. Monday evening was great as usual, lotsa dancing downtown at Motion Pacific. I'm feeling really great about the final showcase, given I've finally got all the pieces (currently) of the dance number down decently well. It'll only get better in the next several weeks.

Today, Tuesday was again a really late start. I was planning on going in to work at theater arts but never did. Instead just woke up later and began work on Zach's show. He's doing a final show/lighting design as his major thesis (so-to-speak.) It's looking good. We had his light hang today and fortunately we got it all done. We've still got one x.Spot that's jacked up. We've got a new sensor ordered for it, hopefully it'll arrive by Monday and we can get it installed quickly. (Although it's quite a job to get at the damn thing.

And yeah, that's that. Still haven't gotten around to dealing with upgrading and cleaning out this site. In other news I did move NeilMG.org over to the same hosting company I use for this site. That was nice finally. But updates, to either site... I don't see anything soon. Classes next quarter, enrolled in those. It's going to SUCK a lot. And I mean a lot. I'm looking at 20 units, and a bunch of classes that won't be light on the classwork and will suck. And sections, I'm back to having sections, again. Blah.

Tahoe, not looking too good. Don't have that much cash to be spending on that. It's really down to a point of what's more necessary that what else. Ah well.... this is really odd, as this quarter has been a lot about dance. I did lighting for (another) dance show, I'm taking modern dance, and also on my own dime taking hip-hop dance downtown. Wow.
OH! Ok this was interesting, so we had to do presentations in modern dance on choreographers and such, show some videos & talk about their aesthetic. Some groups elected to do a bit of dance by/in the style of that person. We were doing Alwin Nikolais and we decided to do a bit from the finale of the piece "Mechanical Organ." Tandy Beal is teaching this class (another well established name in dance) and she was a student of Nikolais and performed in the company back in the day.
When we started playing the music and started dancing the finale piece I mean her face totally lit up. She was absolutely amazed and impressed that we did it. Now after that she came to me and told me, "You have an amazing kinetic presence on stage, you know. You could switch professions, if you wanted to."
It was also rather rewarding that on Monday after hip-hop class one lady who had just dropped in on the class complemented me on my dancing, and mentioned that she was looking to follow me when she got lost. I've found it rather interesting, but then again not entirely. I mean I've always been a kinetic person, one who learns best through doing, by being active.
So that dance comes to me easily and that I enjoy it also makes sense. I mean not trying to fall into the stereotype that all gay guys are good dancers, but that just seems to be the case. :P
Well that's long enough, and I'm tired and it's late. Sleep time, and hopefully more updates more often. And photos! I've got a decent amount of those to post.
Cheers.