The Old Man and the Cards

Before I move on from the Army and get into the horror that was Allison, I thought I ought to step back a minute and hit on a few things that did happen in the military that are worth mentioning. Sure, I said not a lot happened, and when it comes to the band, itself, it stayed pretty consistent. I imagine if I were actively blogging it as it happened, it would be pretty interesting, but as I'm going in arrears here trying to remember what happened, it probably would get old fast, since I'm no good with details.

But you know, I hit on it briefly in the other post, and I figure I should expand on the other love I had in the Army: Magic: The Gathering. The collectible card game from Wizards of the Coast that I've since sworn I would never play again. And I won't. I won't buy any cards; I won't participate in any games. It ate through paycheck after paycheck and I just can't handle it. But at the time, it was fun.

It was me and Hi Speed that played, and we frequented only two places during our time. One was a game shop where people played the game, and I bought cards off some little kid who always seemed to have weird and interesting cards to get rid of. They didn't much like him selling his cards in the shop, so I said once we needed to discuss deer in the woods (as in bucks, haha), and it stuck.

Our other haunt was a shop owned by an old man, hence we called him The Old Man. This guy seemed to enjoy our company, but he was serious about his business (though he did let me get away with trading a mana barbs for a double land -- yeah, no where close in value). We did buy a ton of cards from him, even though he discouraged it from the beginning. Being the kids we were, we didn't listen.

It wasn't long before Magic became our life. We went to local tournaments, but really didn't do any good, because those guys understood the value of having extra cards in their sideboard deck. To give a brief explanation there, tournament Magic decks usually have 60 cards, and they are permitted a sideboard deck of 20 that they can switch out cards for between rounds (of which there are usually three). My "rack deck" (called as such because the artifact known as The Rack did the majority of the damage) was near unbeatable until someone pulls a black protection out...then I was toast. Happened more than once, so I stuck to non-competitive play.

Most of our games happened at this game shop until the Old Man put up a table for play at his, and we went over to his place as well. It was a lot of fun and served to pass the time when we weren't playing gigs, and I wasn't performing on stage.

Another thing I did with my spare time was watching musicals on stage. While I was in the military, I watched all of the following shows: Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Cats, Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Assassins (those three within 24 hours of each other), Grease, Blood Brothers, and I could swear there were a couple more. I performed in Camelot, Oliver!, Amadeus, and City of Angels. I was all about the stage during this time.

Naturally, the performance that The Queen quite enjoyed the tale of was my part in The City of Angels. I was the bass singer of the jazz quartet, and the part was really quite enjoyable. But the part that cracked everyone up with remarkable consistency, and which got laughs every night was the fact that the show contained a street scene in which the quartet chronicled the search of the detective Stone for the girl, and for this scene, I was in a dress, made up, and everything. It really scared people because I apparently looked pretty good. Couldn't say how true that was, but the fact was that I did do eight performances in that getup, which was only for one song. For the rest of the show (before and after), I was dressed as a male, so I had to throw all that mess on between songs, and then strip it back off before my next entrance. It was nuts.

Not to mention the fact that due to my inexperience with make up, I did have to explain to at least one person I worked with (who had not seen the show -- three of them had) why I still had eye liner on the next day. It was pretty whacked.

The reason for this devotion to the craft was due to my continual work on my first musical. I sought out others to write lyrics for me, but in the end, I finally got an old friend from high school to agree to write lyrics, since he'd written some lyrics in high school that I composed some music to. At the time, he was going to OU, pursuing a degree in musical composition (although he may have been in something else at the time). We'd known each other since we were freshmen in high school and were sort of competitors on trombone at times. At present, he works with his parents on their farm, so we'll call him Farmer.

While I was at the SOM, I was driving with my mother and she commented that a local mega-church had ousted some higher ranking people in their church for disagreeing with the beliefs of the main pastor. I don't know about you, but that had all the makings of a delicious story. So I concocted this tale of a church where they sacrificed someone, and someone in the church threatened to go to the police and the high priest killed him right there. A tabloid reporter comes in to report on the town, but meet someone there she knew from when she was younger. She gets wrapped up in the church and almost killed, but her man rescues her, which ticks off the high priest. The priest hires a bounty hunter to bring her in and get her man to come in too. In the end the hero kills the high priest, but not before he shoots the girl. The end.

The story went through a myriad of revisions. I started writing the lyrics myself, and then went through those other people before I got Farmer in on it. He turned in the opening number and I loved it. Several songs were written during this time as well as the majority of the actual spoken parts of the libretto. Trouble with that was that while I had an easy job, he was going to college and quite busy, so he couldn't devote 100% of his time to writing like I could.

By the time I left the military, which is as far as the rest of this narrative goes, we'd written maybe half the show, and it was rather stalled at that point. I was frustrated with the lack of progress, and Farmer was frustrated at my frustrations. Would we finish it? Eventually. But that happens quite a bit later.

My next audition for the theatre was too close to my military departure and was not meant to be. I've never auditioned for anything since. I've wanted to, and maybe when my life settles down a bit, I'll show the locals how to really act, but for now, I'm off the stage and behind the desk. The tale here goes on like so many others, but those are tales for another day.