The way-too-long entry
Jul. 25th, 2004 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyThis will be another multipart entry, probably with some LJ-cuts.
First, Fergie's story. Fergie's already written about it for you, as makes sense, so I'm not going to say any more about it.
Oh, the door handle came off the stairway door on the elevator side on the 5th floor.
Illuminati last night... hm... not really a lot to write about it. Except that we reshuffled the deck after a bit because *everyone kept on drawing specials*. Well, Josh and I were against reshuffling, but everyone else wanted to... I'll put up the final power structures later.
Mafia last night... due to the extreme length of the Illuminati game, I only ended up playing 2 games, and in the second one I got killed on the first day.
As for the first one...
Anton, Billy, Xiao, Funto, Tan Dan, Me, Etienne, Svetlana, Long, Mung, Lucas, in that order around the circle. Yes, I actually remember that.
11 people, 3 Mafia - 2 mistakes. Specifically, Long, Tan Dan, and me. Day kill first.
First day. 11, 3, 2 mistakes. As soon as we start off Lucas *insists* Anton is Mafia. Why should we kill him? "Because he's Mafia." He keeps this up the whole time giving no explanation. Several people, including me, say Anton is not really a good random kill, are we really going to trust Lucas on this? Well, it comes to a vote, and Anton is killed. Hm.
First night. Both Long and Tan Dan want to kill Mung. I have no idea why. After a lot of delaying, I finally agree. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect...
Second day. 9, 3, 1 mistake. Mung is dead. Etienne announces that he's inspector, he inspected Tan Dan, he's Mafia, and that while he didn't inspect Xiao, he's certain Xiao's not Mafia, as he can really read Xiao. Tan Dan is killed rather quickly.
Second night. Long and I quickly agree to kill Etienne, not thinking about the fact that were he inspector he would not have come forth so quickly, or about what the fact that he's giving us the finger with both hands might mean. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect...
Third day. 7, 2, 1 mistake. Etienne is dead and *not* inspector. Funto wonders why I was not as glad at this as the others. I say I was just surprised. The question becomes who to kill now. I decide to go after Billy, as it's not hard to get people to agree to kill him, and I think I can get people to believe that I can actually read his face when asking him "Are you Mafia?", and that I can argue that he's going after everyone who accuses him - but of course he always does that. There is also some talk of killing Svetlana. One thing that comes up is, who is the inspector? It is thought that the inspector is probably someone next to Etienne, i.e., either me or Ebay[0], who propped up Etienne as the fake inspector. Hm... then I realize and point out, wait, that makes no sense. The inspector could only have inspected once by that time. He couldn't have inspected both Etienne *and* Tan Dan. So the idea that the inspector would do that doesn't work... there's no reason to asssume it's me or Svetlana. Funto later notes that this has convinced him that I'm not Mafia. Anyway, after asking Billy "Are you Mafia?" and seeing that he is suppressing a smile, I formally accuse him. However, just before it can get to a vote, Funto announces that *he's* Mafia and Billy's innocent! He says he inspected Etienne first (because he always does) and Billy next (who also is not next to him, but who he thought was suspicious.) He also goes on to list other people who he didn't inspect and what he thinks of them. So, accusation withdrawn. Eventually Ebay is killed, not for much of a good reason.
Third night. Now we kill Funto. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect... no, wait, actually don't.
Fourth day. 5, 2, no mistakes. Funto was, in fact, inspector. Not sure why he spoke up right then... maybe because we had but 1 mistake left? Anyway, it's now down to me, Billy, Long, Lucas, and Xiao. We agree that Billy's not Mafia because Funto inspected him, and Xiao's not Mafia because Etienne really can read him. So it's two of Lucas, Long, and me. After a lot of pointless discussion, Long notes that he actually thinks that Xiao *is* Mafia, and that I'm the other one. After a lot more pointless discussion, I end up accusing Long. I also end up being the only one voting for him. At this point it is noted that therefore Long *must* be Mafia, as were he townsperson, both Mafia would have voted and won. Wait, what if he's townsperson and *I'm* Mafia? Then Lucas is Mafia, and... um... wait, that's perfectly logically consistent. However, in our sleep-deprived states, we do not notice this, we all agree that Long logically must be Mafia. As he was. Everybody sleep.
Fourth night. I kill Billy, as he is known to be innocent.
Fifth day. Final 3. Lucas, Xiao, and me. First Xiao accuses Lucas. Lucas does not cross-accuse, for obvious reasons. After a while, it is dropped. Lucas accuses me. I cross-accuse. After all, we each "know" the other is Mafia. Now there is lots of long pointless discussion in which I recall my voting record but on the whole can't seem to come up with any good reason why I'm not Mafia. I point to the random-kill Anton thing, even though I know that it's horribly weak. Lucas can do little more; he says "I'm not Mafia, I'm not Mafia" a lot. In the end, Xiao picks Lucas. MAFIA WIN!
...wow. And now I plan to go on and describe the talent show in the same entry? Wow this will be long. I really ought to be doing my geometry... (Although, yay for easy group theory problems on the geometry pset! I already have a quarter of the thing done!)
OK. I'll write about the talent show, as otherwise I'll never get it done. Here goes...
Before I talk about the talent show I should talk about the posters. Above a picture of Glenn: "Lecturer by Day... leader of the PROMYS boy band by night!" A picture of its 5 "members", with the names given to them:
100% Swiss
Bernie
Josh
The Tall Ugly Canadian[3]
The Man with the Plan[4]
Other stuff, other stuff, the name of the band - "N THYNK". Ow. Anyway, on to the show itself.
We were up first. "We" being... um... in total, that would be me, Chris, Matt, Steve, Eric, Mung, Ian, Tom, and Anton. We were performing something we called "Monty Python does the Integers". First Steve and I clicked our tongues to the Monty Python theme. First after that was the WOP sketch - the Spam sketch, but instead of Spam, it was WOP. We didn't have Viking hats, so we had the Vikings just wear signs on their heads that said "VIKING". Well, 3 of them did. Despite the fact that we printed out 6. Anyway, everyone seemed to like it, everyone could *hear* us ( :P ), and it ended with Steve (the waiter) banging a copy of Hardy and Wright on the table and saying about he never wanted to do this job in the first place... he wanted to be... a NUMBER THEORIST! And so began the Number Theorist song, in which it turned out that Steve *actually* secretly wanted to be a statistician. After that was the Rigorous Inquisition. "I just came here to show you my work", says Eric, "I wasn't expecting any sort of rigorous inquisition." DAAAAAH! "NOBODY expects the Rigorous Inquisition!" shouts Chris (Cauchy), jumping out from the closet, and truly surprising everyone. He had been hiding there since before the show began, which is why we made sure to go early. Oh, and instead of cardinals, we had "cardinalities". Yes, ow. They were named Cauchy, Hilbert, and Cantor, although I objected to the third one, as he was not exactly known for his rigor, IINM...
Anyway. Now I'll just go down the list Jon Chu gave me.
Jennie and Tan Dan performing "Heart and Soul" (is that its proper name? They called it something else) on piano. Nothing especially interesting there.
The Great Annual Rubik's Cube Race. Sam got stuck using a 4x4x4 emulating a 3x3x3. From what he said later, though, he didn't actually know how to solve it anyway, he was just doing that to get out of the default act. :P Matt won, Lucas came in second, I forget third.
Monty Python does Z. Hm, already talked about that.
Clara, Ila, and Seohyung doing some sort of Step thing. Thankfully much shorter than the one our school Step team does.
Evan and his famous Corn Syrup Chugging. Well, not actually chugging; you can't really chug corn syrup, it's too viscous. So, corn syrup drinking, then. He also only drank about a quarter of the bottle. Apparently most years he's drunk about half, but his grandma's been telling him, you know, diabetes runs in the family... it really wasn't that disgusting, in truth.
Neal - whoever that is - reciting digits of pi. Ah yes, I remember that. Then Liz got up and recited even more. Yeah, this talent show had a lot of "Hah, I can do that too!" impromptu acts.
Tan Dan, John Cass, and Savinien - "Spinning". That's what they did. John and Savinien spun while Tan Dan spun a cup on the table. Most. Pointless. Act. Ever.
Josh Feng, attempting to sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." And failing miserably. Everyone seemed to think he was a pretty good singer, but...
Malcolm (on piano (electric keyboard, rather)), Mike D (Xiao's roommate) (on saxophone) and Seohyung (singing)playing "Summertime". Yes, Malcolm is great at piano, but you could barely hear Seohyung, and anyway, that song is *boring*. Nearly put me to sleep.
Hm. This next one it says "Sam", no act listed. No idea what that was, or was supposed to be.
Abandon Dan, singing his 12 Days of PROMYS song. Awful. Several people actually left the room right before this act in anticipation of it. When he got to 10, he decided he no longer wanted to sing the entirety of each verse. We made him do it anyway.
Hannah and two names I can't read - OK, change what I said above; this was considerably more pointless than "Spinning". Hannah made an origami swan while one of the other 2 attempted to blow a bubble inside a bubble. The third did nothing. "The red-shirted one must go in the default act!", I shouted. She didn't end up in it.
Eric, Connie, and Li-Mei - Some song, whose name, honestly, I forgot. At first it was supposed to be Connie and Li-Mei singing while Eric played guitar. Now, Eric played very well for someone who'd only learn to play the guitar at all the day before, that is, on the whole, it was pretty bad. Eventually Connie and Li-Mei figured they'd just sing after he finished, but the audience never really let him finish. They did sing afterwards.
So, it seems most of the acts thus far (despite the fact that I'm not going chronologically) save ours have been pretty bad, or at least not very good. "Wow," I note to Chris, "We're probably actually going to win. That's pretty sad."
Continuing...
Next we have Brian Lee, holding a burping contest. Who dares challenge him? Bryce does! Despite the fact that Brian Lee can burp the alphabet, Bryce gets one very good burp, and the audience declares him winner.
This one says "JC's, Tom, Bilow, David - Song". Not sure what this one is referring to, honestly. I don't recall any other song with the JCs.
"Amanda - R11". I don't recall this one either. Next.
"N Thynk - Song". Haha. Well the "N Thynk" thing wasn't actually real, but apparently Bernie, Dustin, and Thanos had actually planned to sing something anyway. However, they wouldn't sing it. The JCs had lyrics sheets with them, and asked, "Does anyone know a song that begins...?" John Cass goes, "Oh! That's a great song!" and comes down, along with two other people, I forget who. At first I don't know what's going on, but as soon as they get to the chorus, the whole audience cracks up. It's the "enormous penis" song. Really. I'm amazed they actually sang that.
"Thanos - Drumming". I don't believe this ever happened.
Billy and his rubberband ball is next on the list. He almost did some pretty dangerous things with it, but didn't actually.
Hm. It seems the "Origami/Bubbles" one is listed twice.
"Sway - Piano." Another very good one. Something by one of the Bachs, I don't remember what it was in the slightest, it was really cool though. Dan Rubin, in typical style, insists that's an easy piece.
Aaron did some juggling. Nothing especially remarkable.
Rebbecca singing the second half of "New Math" as well as something else by Tom Lehrer. Really, this has got to stop. Tom Lehrer is a great songwriter, it's awful to have to listen to someone like Rebbecca sing it. Truly, she is the single worst singer I've ever heard. Yes, much worse than me.
"Xiao - Interpretive Dance." Xiao originally planned to play it on the violin, but he couldn't get it right, so he settled for just doing his Xiao dance. (Where the "interpretive" came from, I don't know.) Unfortunately for him that led right into the next act on this list, Anton poking Xiao.
Andy and Thanos, singing Barbie Girl, Andy being Barbie and his hair looking rather strange. It was great, even though they couldn't get through it without a lot of laughing.
Next act here says Xiao/Dan, Bach Double. This must be the violin thing that fell through.
Bryce, singing The Elements. It took him quite a while to get started - not just because he was so nervous, but also because, as he noted, "I have trouble doing some things without ritualizing them". Poor kid. But he sang it eventually. Certainly much better than having Rebbecca sing it. :-/
"Avi - ?ar moving". The '?' is a letter I can't read. Whatever it was, I don't think he did it.
"Issao, Seohyung, Aaron - Bubble singing." Actually it was Malcolm, Seohyung, Bernie (who is, technically, Aaron), and Issao playing some song, Seohyung singing again and messing up a lot. Eventually they had to sort of cut out the saxophone as Bernie, who was playing it, decided he had better take over the singing. The whole thing was additionally kind of marred by Bernie's loud "Fuck!" halfway through. Issao did at one point actually try to sing with bubbles in his mouth... it didn't really work.
Somebody signed up Josh for "A perfect # of perfect #s". So he did in fact recite the first 6 perfect numbers. After that he noted about his other idea for an act, the "give me two groups and I'll connect them" thing, which he did only once. I don't remember what it was.
"Matt and Kevin - Acting." Don't recall this. I do, however, remember Kevin getting up on stage in a toga and doing his impression of Thanos. Then Dustin got up and did *his* impression of Thanos, including his retelling of a dream Thanos actually had (then *Thanos* proceeded to go and retell it again afterward). Apparently after he first learned about algebraically closed fields, Thanos had a dream about furry pink puppies with green specks on them. The specks were roots of polynomials. They were trying to escape, but the puppies wouldn't let them, since they were algebraically closed. And apparently for a while after that he always thought of algebraically closed fields as furry pink puppies.
Still, at this point, though there had in fact been several very good acts, it was still kind of creepy that still none of them seemed like they could beat ours.
Tan Dan recited "The End of the World" - yes, the Flash animation.
The "Matt and Kevin" thing appears again on the list.
Dan Le playing the violin. Don't recall this, but it probably happened.
John Cass, Tan Dan, and Maddie performing... I forget its name. Meh. It was really funny. Finally, I said, something that will actually at least put us in second. I think it was by the same guy who wrote "Words, Words, Words". Actually I saw them looking at that last week or so and thought they were going to perform that.
"Willie - Hand Stand." Dunno about this, but this probably led to the one-upping of various contortionistic things until finally Travis did a truly sickening thing that seemed possible only topologically.
"Derick - Piano." Probably happened, I don't remember it.
The Tan Dan/John/Maddie thing appears again.
Hm, I definitely recall some things not on this list.
Somebody had signed me up on Jon Chu's door for some sort of bizarre interpretive dance thing. I crossed it out and noted I was in the Monty Python group. Still everyone insisted I do it. What was I to do? I couldn't do that! So I ended up not doing it, to everyone's disappointment. I suppose really I should have gotten up and done something else entirely, but I didn't.
Willie wrestling Issao. T-shirt quote, by Issao: "Wait, what are the rules? I've never wrestled before." You can guess what happened... :-/
EDIT: That should be all that was not included, as the wrestling thing was apparently unplanned.
Now then. THE DEFAULT ACT!
Fergie entered wearing a skirt and badly-applied lipstick. They called off the names of the people who had not signed up for anything... 15 in total, all first-years, and not all boys. While they were doing this, Teja entered the room. "Teja must be in the default act!" And so he was.
Questions included: "Which is your favorite inequality?" (Choices being Trivial, AM-GM, and Cauchy.)
"Who is the greatest Dan?" (Only Teja stepped forward on this one, being the only one there who knew who ODan was.)
...plenty more that I really don't want to bother to remember right now.
I didn't think it was as good as last year - Fergie actually wrote the questions, and most questions had 3 choices, not 2. (The question about the Dans had 7.) It kind of took some of the fun out of it, that Fergie already knew his answers beforehand.
Jeff was the, well, I suppose you have to call him the winner... unlike Max, Fergie actually plans to follow through with this. :P
Then prizes were awarded. There are *3* head counselors this year, remember, so that meant *3* people offering slave time. We actually did end up in first. We took... Etienne's watergun! The watergun is OURS now! Haha! Second was Dan, John, and Maddie, third was Barbie Girl.
I don't remember the other winners or their prizes. I do remember Dustin's prize was a surprise, and it turned out being having chalk thrown at you. Then midterms were handed back (unless your counselor was Bernie or Justin; I still haven't gotten mine back), and it was announced "Stay after the talent show for a light show!".
Turns out, they forgot to do Matt's act.
Now, it's pretty clear that he would have won a prize had they remembered. He did this dance with glowy things which was really neat and... they forgot it, and he didn't think to complain. So they did it afterwards, and he got a special extra prize from the JCs. Well, he didn't get it right then, but now he has, or maybe he hasn't yet, I don't know.
...and then we went back and played Mafia. And that ends it.
...that was way, way, too long. Wow. It's about 20:00 now. I really need to get back to work.
...oh yeah, and I missed the Frisbee game.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Sara, not sure how far back in the archives you've scanned, so I'll just remind you, "Ebay" is the same person as Svetlana.
[3]Dustin, that is.
[4]Thanos, that is. I don't know either.
--
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
-George W. Bush
First, Fergie's story. Fergie's already written about it for you, as makes sense, so I'm not going to say any more about it.
Oh, the door handle came off the stairway door on the elevator side on the 5th floor.
Illuminati last night... hm... not really a lot to write about it. Except that we reshuffled the deck after a bit because *everyone kept on drawing specials*. Well, Josh and I were against reshuffling, but everyone else wanted to... I'll put up the final power structures later.
Mafia last night... due to the extreme length of the Illuminati game, I only ended up playing 2 games, and in the second one I got killed on the first day.
As for the first one...
Anton, Billy, Xiao, Funto, Tan Dan, Me, Etienne, Svetlana, Long, Mung, Lucas, in that order around the circle. Yes, I actually remember that.
11 people, 3 Mafia - 2 mistakes. Specifically, Long, Tan Dan, and me. Day kill first.
First day. 11, 3, 2 mistakes. As soon as we start off Lucas *insists* Anton is Mafia. Why should we kill him? "Because he's Mafia." He keeps this up the whole time giving no explanation. Several people, including me, say Anton is not really a good random kill, are we really going to trust Lucas on this? Well, it comes to a vote, and Anton is killed. Hm.
First night. Both Long and Tan Dan want to kill Mung. I have no idea why. After a lot of delaying, I finally agree. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect...
Second day. 9, 3, 1 mistake. Mung is dead. Etienne announces that he's inspector, he inspected Tan Dan, he's Mafia, and that while he didn't inspect Xiao, he's certain Xiao's not Mafia, as he can really read Xiao. Tan Dan is killed rather quickly.
Second night. Long and I quickly agree to kill Etienne, not thinking about the fact that were he inspector he would not have come forth so quickly, or about what the fact that he's giving us the finger with both hands might mean. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect...
Third day. 7, 2, 1 mistake. Etienne is dead and *not* inspector. Funto wonders why I was not as glad at this as the others. I say I was just surprised. The question becomes who to kill now. I decide to go after Billy, as it's not hard to get people to agree to kill him, and I think I can get people to believe that I can actually read his face when asking him "Are you Mafia?", and that I can argue that he's going after everyone who accuses him - but of course he always does that. There is also some talk of killing Svetlana. One thing that comes up is, who is the inspector? It is thought that the inspector is probably someone next to Etienne, i.e., either me or Ebay[0], who propped up Etienne as the fake inspector. Hm... then I realize and point out, wait, that makes no sense. The inspector could only have inspected once by that time. He couldn't have inspected both Etienne *and* Tan Dan. So the idea that the inspector would do that doesn't work... there's no reason to asssume it's me or Svetlana. Funto later notes that this has convinced him that I'm not Mafia. Anyway, after asking Billy "Are you Mafia?" and seeing that he is suppressing a smile, I formally accuse him. However, just before it can get to a vote, Funto announces that *he's* Mafia and Billy's innocent! He says he inspected Etienne first (because he always does) and Billy next (who also is not next to him, but who he thought was suspicious.) He also goes on to list other people who he didn't inspect and what he thinks of them. So, accusation withdrawn. Eventually Ebay is killed, not for much of a good reason.
Third night. Now we kill Funto. Inspector wake up, inspector inspect... no, wait, actually don't.
Fourth day. 5, 2, no mistakes. Funto was, in fact, inspector. Not sure why he spoke up right then... maybe because we had but 1 mistake left? Anyway, it's now down to me, Billy, Long, Lucas, and Xiao. We agree that Billy's not Mafia because Funto inspected him, and Xiao's not Mafia because Etienne really can read him. So it's two of Lucas, Long, and me. After a lot of pointless discussion, Long notes that he actually thinks that Xiao *is* Mafia, and that I'm the other one. After a lot more pointless discussion, I end up accusing Long. I also end up being the only one voting for him. At this point it is noted that therefore Long *must* be Mafia, as were he townsperson, both Mafia would have voted and won. Wait, what if he's townsperson and *I'm* Mafia? Then Lucas is Mafia, and... um... wait, that's perfectly logically consistent. However, in our sleep-deprived states, we do not notice this, we all agree that Long logically must be Mafia. As he was. Everybody sleep.
Fourth night. I kill Billy, as he is known to be innocent.
Fifth day. Final 3. Lucas, Xiao, and me. First Xiao accuses Lucas. Lucas does not cross-accuse, for obvious reasons. After a while, it is dropped. Lucas accuses me. I cross-accuse. After all, we each "know" the other is Mafia. Now there is lots of long pointless discussion in which I recall my voting record but on the whole can't seem to come up with any good reason why I'm not Mafia. I point to the random-kill Anton thing, even though I know that it's horribly weak. Lucas can do little more; he says "I'm not Mafia, I'm not Mafia" a lot. In the end, Xiao picks Lucas. MAFIA WIN!
...wow. And now I plan to go on and describe the talent show in the same entry? Wow this will be long. I really ought to be doing my geometry... (Although, yay for easy group theory problems on the geometry pset! I already have a quarter of the thing done!)
OK. I'll write about the talent show, as otherwise I'll never get it done. Here goes...
Before I talk about the talent show I should talk about the posters. Above a picture of Glenn: "Lecturer by Day... leader of the PROMYS boy band by night!" A picture of its 5 "members", with the names given to them:
100% Swiss
Bernie
Josh
The Tall Ugly Canadian[3]
The Man with the Plan[4]
Other stuff, other stuff, the name of the band - "N THYNK". Ow. Anyway, on to the show itself.
We were up first. "We" being... um... in total, that would be me, Chris, Matt, Steve, Eric, Mung, Ian, Tom, and Anton. We were performing something we called "Monty Python does the Integers". First Steve and I clicked our tongues to the Monty Python theme. First after that was the WOP sketch - the Spam sketch, but instead of Spam, it was WOP. We didn't have Viking hats, so we had the Vikings just wear signs on their heads that said "VIKING". Well, 3 of them did. Despite the fact that we printed out 6. Anyway, everyone seemed to like it, everyone could *hear* us ( :P ), and it ended with Steve (the waiter) banging a copy of Hardy and Wright on the table and saying about he never wanted to do this job in the first place... he wanted to be... a NUMBER THEORIST! And so began the Number Theorist song, in which it turned out that Steve *actually* secretly wanted to be a statistician. After that was the Rigorous Inquisition. "I just came here to show you my work", says Eric, "I wasn't expecting any sort of rigorous inquisition." DAAAAAH! "NOBODY expects the Rigorous Inquisition!" shouts Chris (Cauchy), jumping out from the closet, and truly surprising everyone. He had been hiding there since before the show began, which is why we made sure to go early. Oh, and instead of cardinals, we had "cardinalities". Yes, ow. They were named Cauchy, Hilbert, and Cantor, although I objected to the third one, as he was not exactly known for his rigor, IINM...
Anyway. Now I'll just go down the list Jon Chu gave me.
Jennie and Tan Dan performing "Heart and Soul" (is that its proper name? They called it something else) on piano. Nothing especially interesting there.
The Great Annual Rubik's Cube Race. Sam got stuck using a 4x4x4 emulating a 3x3x3. From what he said later, though, he didn't actually know how to solve it anyway, he was just doing that to get out of the default act. :P Matt won, Lucas came in second, I forget third.
Monty Python does Z. Hm, already talked about that.
Clara, Ila, and Seohyung doing some sort of Step thing. Thankfully much shorter than the one our school Step team does.
Evan and his famous Corn Syrup Chugging. Well, not actually chugging; you can't really chug corn syrup, it's too viscous. So, corn syrup drinking, then. He also only drank about a quarter of the bottle. Apparently most years he's drunk about half, but his grandma's been telling him, you know, diabetes runs in the family... it really wasn't that disgusting, in truth.
Neal - whoever that is - reciting digits of pi. Ah yes, I remember that. Then Liz got up and recited even more. Yeah, this talent show had a lot of "Hah, I can do that too!" impromptu acts.
Tan Dan, John Cass, and Savinien - "Spinning". That's what they did. John and Savinien spun while Tan Dan spun a cup on the table. Most. Pointless. Act. Ever.
Josh Feng, attempting to sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." And failing miserably. Everyone seemed to think he was a pretty good singer, but...
Malcolm (on piano (electric keyboard, rather)), Mike D (Xiao's roommate) (on saxophone) and Seohyung (singing)playing "Summertime". Yes, Malcolm is great at piano, but you could barely hear Seohyung, and anyway, that song is *boring*. Nearly put me to sleep.
Hm. This next one it says "Sam", no act listed. No idea what that was, or was supposed to be.
Abandon Dan, singing his 12 Days of PROMYS song. Awful. Several people actually left the room right before this act in anticipation of it. When he got to 10, he decided he no longer wanted to sing the entirety of each verse. We made him do it anyway.
Hannah and two names I can't read - OK, change what I said above; this was considerably more pointless than "Spinning". Hannah made an origami swan while one of the other 2 attempted to blow a bubble inside a bubble. The third did nothing. "The red-shirted one must go in the default act!", I shouted. She didn't end up in it.
Eric, Connie, and Li-Mei - Some song, whose name, honestly, I forgot. At first it was supposed to be Connie and Li-Mei singing while Eric played guitar. Now, Eric played very well for someone who'd only learn to play the guitar at all the day before, that is, on the whole, it was pretty bad. Eventually Connie and Li-Mei figured they'd just sing after he finished, but the audience never really let him finish. They did sing afterwards.
So, it seems most of the acts thus far (despite the fact that I'm not going chronologically) save ours have been pretty bad, or at least not very good. "Wow," I note to Chris, "We're probably actually going to win. That's pretty sad."
Continuing...
Next we have Brian Lee, holding a burping contest. Who dares challenge him? Bryce does! Despite the fact that Brian Lee can burp the alphabet, Bryce gets one very good burp, and the audience declares him winner.
This one says "JC's, Tom, Bilow, David - Song". Not sure what this one is referring to, honestly. I don't recall any other song with the JCs.
"Amanda - R11". I don't recall this one either. Next.
"N Thynk - Song". Haha. Well the "N Thynk" thing wasn't actually real, but apparently Bernie, Dustin, and Thanos had actually planned to sing something anyway. However, they wouldn't sing it. The JCs had lyrics sheets with them, and asked, "Does anyone know a song that begins...?" John Cass goes, "Oh! That's a great song!" and comes down, along with two other people, I forget who. At first I don't know what's going on, but as soon as they get to the chorus, the whole audience cracks up. It's the "enormous penis" song. Really. I'm amazed they actually sang that.
"Thanos - Drumming". I don't believe this ever happened.
Billy and his rubberband ball is next on the list. He almost did some pretty dangerous things with it, but didn't actually.
Hm. It seems the "Origami/Bubbles" one is listed twice.
"Sway - Piano." Another very good one. Something by one of the Bachs, I don't remember what it was in the slightest, it was really cool though. Dan Rubin, in typical style, insists that's an easy piece.
Aaron did some juggling. Nothing especially remarkable.
Rebbecca singing the second half of "New Math" as well as something else by Tom Lehrer. Really, this has got to stop. Tom Lehrer is a great songwriter, it's awful to have to listen to someone like Rebbecca sing it. Truly, she is the single worst singer I've ever heard. Yes, much worse than me.
"Xiao - Interpretive Dance." Xiao originally planned to play it on the violin, but he couldn't get it right, so he settled for just doing his Xiao dance. (Where the "interpretive" came from, I don't know.) Unfortunately for him that led right into the next act on this list, Anton poking Xiao.
Andy and Thanos, singing Barbie Girl, Andy being Barbie and his hair looking rather strange. It was great, even though they couldn't get through it without a lot of laughing.
Next act here says Xiao/Dan, Bach Double. This must be the violin thing that fell through.
Bryce, singing The Elements. It took him quite a while to get started - not just because he was so nervous, but also because, as he noted, "I have trouble doing some things without ritualizing them". Poor kid. But he sang it eventually. Certainly much better than having Rebbecca sing it. :-/
"Avi - ?ar moving". The '?' is a letter I can't read. Whatever it was, I don't think he did it.
"Issao, Seohyung, Aaron - Bubble singing." Actually it was Malcolm, Seohyung, Bernie (who is, technically, Aaron), and Issao playing some song, Seohyung singing again and messing up a lot. Eventually they had to sort of cut out the saxophone as Bernie, who was playing it, decided he had better take over the singing. The whole thing was additionally kind of marred by Bernie's loud "Fuck!" halfway through. Issao did at one point actually try to sing with bubbles in his mouth... it didn't really work.
Somebody signed up Josh for "A perfect # of perfect #s". So he did in fact recite the first 6 perfect numbers. After that he noted about his other idea for an act, the "give me two groups and I'll connect them" thing, which he did only once. I don't remember what it was.
"Matt and Kevin - Acting." Don't recall this. I do, however, remember Kevin getting up on stage in a toga and doing his impression of Thanos. Then Dustin got up and did *his* impression of Thanos, including his retelling of a dream Thanos actually had (then *Thanos* proceeded to go and retell it again afterward). Apparently after he first learned about algebraically closed fields, Thanos had a dream about furry pink puppies with green specks on them. The specks were roots of polynomials. They were trying to escape, but the puppies wouldn't let them, since they were algebraically closed. And apparently for a while after that he always thought of algebraically closed fields as furry pink puppies.
Still, at this point, though there had in fact been several very good acts, it was still kind of creepy that still none of them seemed like they could beat ours.
Tan Dan recited "The End of the World" - yes, the Flash animation.
The "Matt and Kevin" thing appears again on the list.
Dan Le playing the violin. Don't recall this, but it probably happened.
John Cass, Tan Dan, and Maddie performing... I forget its name. Meh. It was really funny. Finally, I said, something that will actually at least put us in second. I think it was by the same guy who wrote "Words, Words, Words". Actually I saw them looking at that last week or so and thought they were going to perform that.
"Willie - Hand Stand." Dunno about this, but this probably led to the one-upping of various contortionistic things until finally Travis did a truly sickening thing that seemed possible only topologically.
"Derick - Piano." Probably happened, I don't remember it.
The Tan Dan/John/Maddie thing appears again.
Hm, I definitely recall some things not on this list.
Somebody had signed me up on Jon Chu's door for some sort of bizarre interpretive dance thing. I crossed it out and noted I was in the Monty Python group. Still everyone insisted I do it. What was I to do? I couldn't do that! So I ended up not doing it, to everyone's disappointment. I suppose really I should have gotten up and done something else entirely, but I didn't.
Willie wrestling Issao. T-shirt quote, by Issao: "Wait, what are the rules? I've never wrestled before." You can guess what happened... :-/
EDIT: That should be all that was not included, as the wrestling thing was apparently unplanned.
Now then. THE DEFAULT ACT!
Fergie entered wearing a skirt and badly-applied lipstick. They called off the names of the people who had not signed up for anything... 15 in total, all first-years, and not all boys. While they were doing this, Teja entered the room. "Teja must be in the default act!" And so he was.
Questions included: "Which is your favorite inequality?" (Choices being Trivial, AM-GM, and Cauchy.)
"Who is the greatest Dan?" (Only Teja stepped forward on this one, being the only one there who knew who ODan was.)
...plenty more that I really don't want to bother to remember right now.
I didn't think it was as good as last year - Fergie actually wrote the questions, and most questions had 3 choices, not 2. (The question about the Dans had 7.) It kind of took some of the fun out of it, that Fergie already knew his answers beforehand.
Jeff was the, well, I suppose you have to call him the winner... unlike Max, Fergie actually plans to follow through with this. :P
Then prizes were awarded. There are *3* head counselors this year, remember, so that meant *3* people offering slave time. We actually did end up in first. We took... Etienne's watergun! The watergun is OURS now! Haha! Second was Dan, John, and Maddie, third was Barbie Girl.
I don't remember the other winners or their prizes. I do remember Dustin's prize was a surprise, and it turned out being having chalk thrown at you. Then midterms were handed back (unless your counselor was Bernie or Justin; I still haven't gotten mine back), and it was announced "Stay after the talent show for a light show!".
Turns out, they forgot to do Matt's act.
Now, it's pretty clear that he would have won a prize had they remembered. He did this dance with glowy things which was really neat and... they forgot it, and he didn't think to complain. So they did it afterwards, and he got a special extra prize from the JCs. Well, he didn't get it right then, but now he has, or maybe he hasn't yet, I don't know.
...and then we went back and played Mafia. And that ends it.
...that was way, way, too long. Wow. It's about 20:00 now. I really need to get back to work.
...oh yeah, and I missed the Frisbee game.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Sara, not sure how far back in the archives you've scanned, so I'll just remind you, "Ebay" is the same person as Svetlana.
[3]Dustin, that is.
[4]Thanos, that is. I don't know either.
--
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
-George W. Bush
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 05:15 pm (UTC)DAMN THEM ALL FOR NOT LETTING ME IN
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 09:32 pm (UTC)