SUMMER!

Okay so we got out from school for summer last thursday. We recieved our reports, had our end of the year assembly in the theater with awards and musical performances... speaking of which Brianna told me she was going to send me the original song she performed to me via email and still hasn't! Haha, just a side note for myself to remember to remind her. ANYWAY, after all that, and all of the goodbyes everyone parted ways for the summer.

Since then, the weather hasn't been very good... It's been damp, wet, and only the occasional, dry, cloudy day with maybe a hint of sun if we were lucky. On top of that all of my friends have been busy, so I have pretty much been stuck inside not doing much, except for that saturday, when I hung out with the wonderful Kayla!! Quick bit about kayla before I continue... The reason it is so grand to have hung out with her is we are best friends, and I haven't seen her nearly as much this year as I did last year because she graduated last year! We used to hang out everyday almost, but obviously this year is different. We plan on trying to hang out a lot over summer.

Now to continue, I hung out with her that saturday, and other than that have been pretty much not doing anything social... so it really doesn't feel like summer because usually I am out with my friends. However, ever since two days ago, one week after we got our holidays it finally feels like summer!
The past two days have been awesome!! Two days ago, on thursday, I hung out with Melissa and Shirvauna, two friends who I hung out with a lot last summer and had so much fun with them! We are all just wild, crazy fun people, especially myself and Shirvauna! We and created memories last year like me getting in shirvaunas pool with my clothes on because I didn't feel like going back to my house to get swim trunks and it was really warm which was then followed by us getting on her trampoline soken wet! Trampolines are really fun when slippery LOL! Just to give you an idea of how we are, another thing we did was go on huge walks, and make fools of ourselves on the way. We booty shaked our way across a road... We LOVED the reactions of the old ladies in the car that was right in front of us... They just laughed at us!
Anyway, on thursday we went up by signal hill to get melissa's boyfriend... who Shirvauna and I don't really like that much, partially because Melissa tends to be somewhat mopey lately rather than her really happy, fun-loving self since she has been with him. Long story short Melissa decided to take the bust there, even though we had decided to walk so she told us to go on and she would meet us there, so we did. It was so much fun! On the way up there were so many funny things a couple of my favorites being when we walked past a big field of grass that had been mowed recently and Shirvauna said "I kind want to roll around in that grass right now, but I won't because it is probably damp", and when I somehow put the song "pants on the ground" into a sexual connotation. basically through conversation we said that we need to video tape our weird antics, and the times we spend together, and probably put them on youtube because it would be hilarious! Aha
On the way back we saw a fire hydrant with the cap off of it, and myself and shirvauna felt the need to jump through it, even though it was already raining a little bit, so we did!

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Yesterday, IT WAS SO SUNNY, WARM AND BEAUTIFUL!! At about 2:00pm my friend Darcy came over to my house. Before she came over, she said "can I bum some of your music?", meaning she wanted me to put some of the songs I have on her ipod for her, so that's what i did when she first got here. After that we went outside, went to the store and got a 2 liter jug of lemonade which we shared, as always. We started that last summer, when it just kind of happened... Now, almost everytime we hang out we do that. It's quite funny seeing people's reaction to 2 teenagers walking down the road drinking out of a 2 liter container of lemonade they are carrying! We then walked around some more and ended up at a pizza place that had a canada day special where a jumbo pizza was $9.99. I called mom and asked if she had anything planned for supper, she siad no, so I told her I was getting that for supper for everyone, and so I did. On the way home, Darcy had to leave to go to her cousins house, so her dad picked her up.

I got home, ate some pizza, then went outside with my friend Tristen. Tristen, is 2 years younger than I am so when we were first talking he said "I can't believe I'm going to be in high school next year" i had a grand laugh. Along the way he showed some... absent-mindedness I guess you could call it... basically, there were lots of blonde jokes that were made towards him haha!Tristen is a somewhat tall lad with curly, blonde hair and braces. His hair is often poofy which I love! Haha, it amuses me for some reason. While walking along, these two random irls shouted "Hey, Tristen!", so he called back a somewhat awkward-sounded "hey", then turned to me and said "I have no idea who they are". I laughed and asked "but they no you? How?" When he started telling me the answer I realized that should have been obvious. They were grade sevens in his school, and they knew him from the show he was on; A reality show called "In Real Life". It was a competition where kids from ages 12-15 from around canada would do real life jobs, including rock slimbing, spying, stunt person, dolphin trainer; most were pretty exciting jobs.
Anyway after a while Tristen had to go out to dinner with his family, so I went home, played a game of cards with dad, and took a well needed rest! I went out with Tristen again after he got back from dinner. This time we went on his trampoline, then after a while went into his house and played video games. I never left until about 12:30am! It was a full day, but a really fun one. :) Summer looks like it is going to be just as fun as last year!

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I will try to post the second act of Willy Wonka later today, if I can!!

Quick Post

No second act of wonka yet. I will get to it soon though, but right now this is just a quick little post for the time being aha

This is a bit of a really brief update post I guess... Just wanted to let you know I haven't fogotten about the promised post and will try to get it up as soon as possible.

:)

There may also be some random posts to follow, maybe having something to do with the golden voices of the show, Nick and Brianna? I may be able to post some videos of them singing I found on youtube aha, so let me know if you are interested.

ANYWAY, there is a new post at my cartooning blog! Take a look! (:

http://gregscartooningblog.blogspot.com

OR ELSE!!

Haha I would listen to her she's vicious ;)

Our Production of Willy Wonka: Act 1

First I would like to point out that theses photots of JUST THE ACTUAL SHOW itself, aren't even half of the pictures we got of the actual show! That's not even including all the pictures from before and after shows, and backstage during the shows etc.

ANYWAY let's get started!!!!!

First number of the show! Pure imagination. Willy Wonka and the Wonkettes (principle dancers)

Second number! "Golden Age of Chocolate"

The following 3 photos are from that number.

"some bright star I'll be hiring"

"but who? but who? but who?"

happy kids!

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The Bucket shack!

Mr. & Ms Bucket, The grandparents and Charlie

Mr Bucket reads about the golden ticket contest wonka is having!

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"Candy Man"

AWWWWW! Poor Charlie can't afford a wonka bar (so cute)

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First golden ticket winner, Agustus Gloop!

The interview and the song "I Eat more"

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Second golden ticket winner, Veruca Salt!

Interview with the two-faced, bratty veruca. She played her part so well and the guy who played her dad was hilarious! This scene was a laugh and a half! "I want hime FIRED, Daddy! FIRED! FIRED FIRED!" She had the accent down too haha (the character was brazillian and she is Columbian) ;)

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5th song: "Think Positive"

Charlie's dad lost his job, and charlie tells him to "think positive!"

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interview with 3rd golden ticket winner, Violet Beauregard!

hahahahaha!

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4th golden ticket winner, Mike Tv! Interview and song "I See It All on Tv"

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Charlie's birthday!

For his birthday the poor Charlie bucket recieves a wonka bar hoping he will recieve the last golden ticket, only to get his hopes dashed. This leads to the next song "Cheer Up Charlie" which we turned into a duet for Mr and Mrs. Bucket rather than have the grandparents do their line because the voices of nick and brianna (Mr & Mrs Bucket) are amazing! Sooo beautiful! That combined with the brilliant acting of them and Charlie created a beautiful heart-felt family moment. It was amazing to watch and listen to it. Ps I may post a couple of videos I found on youtube. One is of nick singing and the other is of brianna singing a solo with the school's chamber choir.

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"Cheer Up Charlie"

awwwwwwwww :')

Side note: The Name of the girl who played Charlie is jacqueline, and she was absolutely amazing! She played the part sooooo well! Actually everyone was phenomenal!

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Charlie get's a golden ticket!!

The last number of Act 1

meeting with the candy man, who gives him a wonka bar...

"I GOT A GOLDEN TICKET!!!"

End of act 1!!

There you have it! Photos from pretty much every scene in act one!!

Let me know what you think!! :)

Wonka Post 2!

I'm not going to go into great deal of the process because I would be here for ages, writing this if I did. In the post however, I will talk a bit about it, but primarily. I will be talking about the actual show.

First let's start with what we did after the show. Naturally, as I said the whole cast piled in the big dressing room for a post-show talk, and before every show for a preshow talk... Thats not the point of this haha. After the first show which as I stated was a dress rehearsal in front of an audience, everyone went out for a late breakfast as a cast (& crew!).

However Dan (wonka) stayed back with John Rao (the director/theater teacher at the school) and worked on various things. Side note: rather than Mr. Rao, we usually call him John Rao (full name) and often say it as if it's one word because he is just that type of person. Haha.

Dan staying back wasn't so great for the rest of us because we all loved him so much!! He was absolutely hilarious. For example in rehearsal one time, we were talking about getting the nut room scene in order. Rao said "We need really, really, big nuts. Huge nuts!"

Dan who was onstage at the time grinned, swung his cane over his shoulder and said "no problem." with a bit of a wink... We all lost it with laughter!

ANYWAY back to what we did after the first show... After the breakfast, about 11 of us went to a park. By the way, a few of the students drive which is how we got around from place to place. When at the park, we were generally running around, and even playing on the Jungle gym. We were total kids! We were also in our Willy Wonka t-shirts, so it looked quite funny and it was still school hours, so as far as anyone knew, we were supposed to be in school. We then went for ice cream.

The shirt

After that we weren't sure where we were going! There were 3 cars... One driven by John, a stage hand, one driven by one of the oompa loompas, and one driven by Jordan, the girl who played Agustus. John was in front leading us... Turns out we were going to Texas's house. Texas was the nick name given to Mason, another stage hand because he was from Texas. John was intentionally screwing the other two up with their driving, and I was in a car with jordon who was the most timid. It was hilarious! He would contsantly switch lanes, wait until they switched, then switch back.

When we got to Texas's house his mom was a little surprised but absolutely welcoming. She had sweet tea made and told us all to have a glass if we felt like it! Sweet tea is a texas thing i guess. I think it is basically iced tea with sugar or something... but it was delicious! we then got mason to dress up in his cowboy outfit! It was priceless! We were laughing so much, and we even got him to wear it at the show later that night, but his shirt was red so he had to wear something black over it (standard stage hand rule). After that we played this survival board game in which we devided into teams and asked the others questions about survival. If the question was answered correctly that team got to move however many spaces according to the number they rolled on the dice. It was so much fun and so funny! One of the funniest parts was Maria, who played Veruca. She is columbian and her accent is quite wonderful, and she is the cutest! Anyway listening to her try to say diarrhea! Speaking of accents, I loved Mason's mom's accent. She was also really interesting. We went back there the next day as well, and played the game again. Thistime she made cookies and ordered pizza and everything! I spent half the time in the kitchen talking with her about various things! When she first saw me she ask "Now, what do you do in the play?" Being short, I smiled, laughed and said "guess" which cause a few of us to laugh and I continued "I'm an oompa loompa". "The best oompa loompa!" said the student/assistant director. His mom then laughed "I was thinking that... partially because of your height, but I didn't want to offend anyone." I laughed again.

Anyway, after his house on Thursday, we headed back to the theater because we had to be there an hour before the show at least. Then that night I went out for coffee with a few of the actors playing kids, grandma Josephine, and the only male make-up artist aha. I was pretty good friends with him actually, and he was really good at what he did! My parents actually thought Mr. Salt was 30 or something, the same age as Dan! They kept saying he looked way older than he was. I told them it was the make-up and showed a picture of him without it, and they said "holy crap. He really is a high school student" which caused me to laugh. The transformation was amazing.

Mr. Salt.

Anyway you will see all that when I finally start posting pictures. I already said what I did friday, after the morning show... Random story time! Mike who played grandpa Joe got a ride in jordan's car back to the theater Friday, as did I. He randomly started singing agustus's (jordan's) part of the first oompa loompa song "what the fuck do you get when you guzzle down sweets" We all started bursting out laughing. "What?" Jordan said "you just said what the fuck do you get...". "No I never I said 'what'". we all told him he said "what the fuck" then he laughed "did I?" and continued laughing. "You should do that in the show. it would be hilarious!"

Jordan then said "Oh yeah! Rao would storm down the isle, walk up ontage, pick me up and throw me into the pit... Hopefully the band and Etchegary (the band teacher/conductor) would be ready to catch me".

After that Friday night show, Leah who played grandma Josephine, and I went to Brianna's house who played Mrs. Bucket. She has the most angelic beautiful voice ever! Just saying. She is by far the best singer I have ever met. Her and Nick, who played Mr. Bucket. We had the 2 best voices singing a duet together! Talk about a musical orgasm! I will try to find videos of either of singing and post it here so you can just imagine haha. Anyway at brianna's her boyfriend, Noah who is in University (2 years older) came. He is so much fun!

After the Saturday morning show it was basically helping prep for the cast party which included going to stores to buy food and make sure the drinks and things were taken care of. Then Saturday night, the last show was the cast party.

This post has gotten longer than expected, so I will have to do the picture posts seperately. First, I will do show pictures followed by various backstage pictures.

My picture posts of the whole show alone will have to be a two-part post because there are 60-70 photos to post!

Hi Again!

It's been a long time since I've last posted. I decided to get this up and running again. for real this time! haha

The one thing I really want to talk about is my school musical which took place april 7-9. It was a production of Willy Wonka! I played an oompa loompa! I was often referred to as the best oopma loompa by everyone in the cast and a cross over scene which featured me has been called the best and funniest part of the show. It was only giving the audience something to look at while Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Wonka got in the Wonkavator. Myself and another oompa loompa "oompa shuffled" center stage when they went to get into it, standing at attention with arms behind our backs because since we were oompa loompas we were hard workers, often very serious. I then made a gesture as if pushing a button on my suit and techno music started playing, making it look like a turned on music and I started doing the robot. Then the other oompa loompa smacked me really hard and loud, music stopped I jump up, reacting to it, then we shuffle back and open the wonkavator doors.

I will have pictures of the show up eventually

ANYWAY we put together a very professional looking show in only 3 weeks. Granted we practically lived in the theatre, choir room, and band room for those 3 weeks, but it was worth it! It was so much fun!! The people I met and became friends with, and the times we had were just amazing! Such a wonderful experience.

We also had the pleasure of working with professional actor Dan Lasby, who played Willy Wonka and was a wonderful friend and mentor. It was such a talented cast!!!

In the three weeks of non stop rehearsal, if i had an hour or something between school and rehearsal, I spent it in the art room doing set work and set painting.

Our rehearsal's often went from 3:00pm-9:00 pm, then a little later from 3:00 pm to 11:30pm. That's not including rehearsals during school hours, such as specific singing, dancing, or acting rehearsals for certain scenes.

We had so much fun during the whole process.

Two days before the opening show we had to do rehearsal then start cue-to-cue. cue-to-cue was REALLY late, we didn't even get to start it! So we started the next day, right at 9:00am, through the whole day. If we weren't doing anything, Nicole (one of the dancing oompa loompas who was the sweetest and took on the role of mother figure) kept us entertained with riddles and jokes in the girls dressing room (the big one).

Long story short we only finished cue-to-cue at 10:30pm that night! So we never got to have a dress rehearsal!!! So, our dress rehearsal was in front of an audience... We never considered it our first show but a dress rehearsal infront of an audience. So we did the best we could but a lot of things went wrong of course because it was only our dress rehearsal! The wonkavator didn't move!! So they got that and other things sorted out. Later that night (thursday night) we killed it! When we went into the big dressing room like we do after every show our director was there greeting us with applause. Saying how he was thrilled and we were amazing... and I have to say, it truely was amazing! He was especially proud of our wonderful stage manager! who did soooo much! and Also of Violet's mother (in the play) who made the "perfect save". She lost a high hell during a scence, so when she walked off, she kicked it sidestage!

That wasn't the only save made though! Yours truly made a save on the friday morning show. In the scene where Agustus got stuck in the pipe and got sucked into it, I shuffled out, hands behind the back, standing at attention and take direction from Wonka. Dan made many gestures with his Cane when playing wonka. My cue line to come out was "3... 2... 1" Right on "one" his can flew out of his hand near where i was ready to come out, offstage. I quickly grabbed the cane, shuffled out and presented it to him ever so elequently, leaning towards him and everything as if to say "here is your scepter, sire". Every laughed so much and they thought it was planned.

Also after that show, Sarah, the stage manager, made it a point to tell me that I was amazing. "Greg. You are amazing! Really you are! Not just the robot either! Seriously, thank you so much, you are soo great! I was sitting in the booth, hoping and praying 'please make your spikes everyone please get in your light. and both last night and today, you were the one who never failed! Every time, you are right there! You hit every one! It is perfect!"

That was one of the best things anyone said to me during that process... the reason it meant so much is it came from her, and being the stage manager, she was the backbone of the whole show.

Friday night my parents came and everything went awesome again! My parents went with my grandmother, my aunt, and even my brother who i was really surprised to see there! They were all soooo impressed and couldn't have been prouder. My aunt thought I was absolutely amazing and hilarious! My father and my mother mentioned how they were impressed that I excourted Ms. Gloop offstage on one side and then appeared in the line of oompa loompas marching in on the other side all of 10 second later. Everything went awesome at the Saturday shows as well.

I will talk much more about the whole thing soon and as time goes on! I will have photos and everything!

English Class Never Disappoints

Okay so... the last time I posted an update about english class was when we had our foolish, fun class....

The next class after that, the teacher started talking about a cause and effect essay that we have to write as a requirement for the year. Now, most, actually all other classes will be choosing a novel or a piece of literature and be writing a novel on that. Not with our teacher! We watched the movie "Up", one of her FAVORITE movie... and honestly who doesn't like that movie? It is amazing!

Anyway, we watched up and wrote a cause and effect essay on that. We wrote our essays yesterday.

Today, we talked about visuals! Of course I was excited! We had a grand discussion on everything to do with visuals and more. As always, we talked about things that to others would have seemed off topic (in this case it was play dough, wallpaper, and a few others). At one point, when talking about conveying a certain feeling in visuals, she mentioned graphic design and fonts. Needless to say I had a lot of input on that one and she asked "What kind of fonts do graphic designers like Greg?".

There was actually a point to her question and apparently I didn't disappoint when I said "It depends, there are various ones," and continued, "If I wanted to convey elegance I would use a script font, if one wants to convey a certain era, one would use an old style serif" and there were also other things that I said. The teacher then used that to prove/make the point that font can have a certain emotion or feeling.

Also she told us what a student at an old school said to her when she was pregnant, she said it was one of the best lines ever!

She started telling us what he said and started saying it like he did...

"He said 'Miss, what ya want? a boy or a girl?' I said 'I don't know'. Then he said 'ya wants a boy' I said 'Oh?' then he said 'Yes, miss, ya wants a boy 'cause if ya get a boy ya only gotta worry about one ting, but if ya gets a girl, ya gotta worry about every boys ting!'"

We all lost it with laughter!

That was certainly quite the high point of my day!

Graphic Design

I have been putting my graphic designer's book on typography to good use! Here is an example

If anyone would like me to design a logo of any kind for them, such as a blog or anything, please let me know.