It's Over Now, The Music of the Night

   At long last, we've reached the end of Phantom.

   Our Saturday and Sunday performances were absolutely stunning. But let's start with Friday, seeing as I posted before and it was a fun performance.
   There are a few jokes that I'm going to have to omit from this blog. It's not that I feel the need to censor myself, but this is the Internet, and certain things just shouldn't be said. If you're curious and not too sensitive, contact me at the About page at www.nerdsunderfire.com
   Moving on, Friday. We actually started out fairly well, but several minutes before they were supposed to, the stage crew dropped the hanged dummy from the ceiling. Needless to say, the pit orchestra collectively lost their shit laughing, and it was a solid minute before they finally pulled it back up. Really just so they could drop it again.
   Saturday and Sunday went remarkably more smoothly (read: boring). Don't get me wrong, Phantom is one of, if not my favorite musical of all time, but after seeing it so many times, you start to rely on the little slip ups to entertain you. Regardless, they were still fantastic shows to watch. Carlotta, as always my favorite character was absolutely fabulous.
   I should clarify by saying Carlotta is not my favorite character because of her personality (though who doesn't love a good antagonist?), rather because of her solos, particularly her rendition of Think of Me. During that song was one of the rare times when I found myself fully enraptured during every rehearsal, and show. It is absolutely gorgeous,and Christine really pales in comparison at that point. Our Carlotta was particularly talented, at it was incredible to watch her work.
   The only other time in the show I experienced this was Christine's song to her father in the graveyard. Particularly the line "Why can't the past just die." Both on and off Broadway, this is easily the most powerful moment in the show.
   Anyway, now that it's over, I'm rather sad. Back to regular life. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Even in the pit, four shows back to back is exhausting. Particularly for someone who isn't used to playing that much. While I do make sure to practice every day, I don't perform every day.

   Of course this week, I basically do. Tomorrow I have a concert with the high school orchestra, followed by the NYSSMA solo competition (I'll be performing Vivaldi's Spring, if anyone was curious), after which is a wind ensemble concert. So basically what I'm saying, is that I'm not going to have a lot of time for my usual hobbies.
   In the mean time, however I have a little free time. I'm still plowing my way through Pokemon Y, and I'm awaiting eagerly the launch of ranked season 1 in Hearthstone. I'm hoping to at least make it into the single digit ranks this time around, but what I'd really like is that Legendary card back. I know it's just a silly cosmetic, but still-it's a cool silly cosmetic.

Pictured: an awesome waste of time

   I'm also watching Pokemon Black and White at the moment' having depleted Netflix's Indigo League collection. I'm really just doing it to put off watching Breaking Bad, though. I don't really enjoy it, but people keep telling me to watch it.
   That's about all that's going on in my life at the moment, I'll see you all on Wednesday!

As always, tacos.
Gladdstone

He's Here! The Phantom of the Opera!

   Show day, at long last!
   Well, actually opening night was yesterday, and we'll get to that in a minute, but still I'm super pumped. This is one of the few performances where I've ever sat as concert master (for those who don't know, that's the first chair violinist) which means I've gotten to play the solos, and boy are there a lot of them. The hardest has got to be the graveyard solo. Not technically hard, but it's tough to follow Christine at that speed.
   While I'm thinking of it, those of you who don't care about Phantom may want to skip the a bit down the page to where I get into my games and the like.
   Back to opening night, boy was that interesting. Let me just say that, with any musical, you're bound to get at least one night where everything that can go wrong does. At least we got it out of the way early, right?
   Everything started out pretty okay, and we were all really excited. It's been pretty rare for us to make it through a run without a major slip up. Things were really looking up right up until the labyrinth scene during the song Phantom. Mr. Bill (our band director at the high school, and organ player for our pit) started organ/misc track for the song a bar too early. In case you weren't aware, when playing Phantom of the Opera, the music comes with some prerecorded spots for the organist, simply because they are just too insanely hard. Even on Broadway they'll use these at times. If you've heard the music, you'll know why. So like I was saying, now we have the recording a measure ahead of the pit orchestra and the vocalists. Thankfully, Mr. Bill was able to fade out the track and, here's the amazing part, actually make up for the slack. I was totally floored. I always knew he was an excellent pianist, but wow.
   After this, we figured we must be in the clear because, come on, what could top that? Well, the boat could, apparently. Later in that same scene, after the Phantom and Christine had disembarked, the remote control boat built by the director, Mr. Brainard (also the former marching band director, and current co-director) decided to start spiraling out of control. They hastily moved downstage so the crew could close the curtain, but they for some reason left the chandelier on, so you could still see the shadow of it twirling. If that wasn't bad enough, it kept banging into the stairs, which on top of making tons of noise, caused them to have to tape the stairs back together. Yes. The ones the entire chorus later has to sit on, that were already pretty rickety to begin with. This, of course led to a hold during intermission so they could repair it for the second act.
   Long story short, I'm really hoping tonight goes better.
   On to the world of gaming. Hearthstone went live a few weeks ago, and it must have been one of the

quietest game launches I've ever seen. Granted, basically everyone who cared already had a beta key, but still very quiet. There was a slight increase in players for a short while as WoW players came for their Hearthsteed (which was awesome, because I just ran over three newbs then hopped back into ranked play), but I don't think we'll see any real player influx until the tablet and phone launches. The tablet version is set to come out in the next few weeks, but even the iPhone version isn't due out until the second half of 2014. As for the Android version, I haven't a clue.Luckily, I'm an Apple fanboy which means I don't have long to wait until I never look up from my iPad again.
   A lot of my PC gaming has taken a backseat to Phantom, but as often happens during times like this, my handheld gaming has picked up. Mainly because I'm never home and it's my only option, but also because there's very little I love more than my Nintendo 3DS.

   This week I finished off Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds, and started up Pokemon Y. I must say, Link Between Worlds is without a doubt my absolute favorite of the handheld versions in this series. At first, I was skeptical about the item system, but that weird rabbit fella' really grew on me quickly. I won't spoil anything (although there isn't a lot to spoil), so I'll leave it there. Suffice it to say, that was easily my favorite game to come out in 2013.
   As for Pokemon Y, it's more just because. I've already beaten Pokemon X (I pre-ordered it mere hours after it went up), but I like to collect the games. I haven't been playing competitively this generation, which is weird given how easy it is to EV train, but I haven't been feeling it. Maybe next generation. I qualified for the North American finals with my Black 2, so I guess I'll take a hiatus.
   It's here I'll have to take my leave. I need to finish my dinner and head over for our next performance. Fingers crossed it's a good one!

Tacos.
Gladdstone

Social Me-Dia

   So recently my lovely study hall (read: locked in a practice room working on the music for Phantom) was interrupted by a wonderful thing called OLWEUS. For those who don't know, this is a sort of anti-bullying campaign being spearheaded by some New York public schools from elementary to the high school level. 

   Anyway, today's topic was social media, or rather, the over saturation of it in our modern society. Essentially this boils down to thirty minutes of teachers describing the horror that is social media and its destructive tendencies towards the younger generation's societal interactions.

   As fellow denizens of the inter-webs, I'm sure you can sympathize as to why this thoroughly infuriated me. Now, of course, don't get me wrong and think that I am attached at the hip to my phone, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm attached at the hip to my 3DS. Regardless, I feel as though many of the older generation have a sort of misunderstanding with this new form of technology.

   Whenever society undergoes a major paradigm shift,the older generations disagree, this is and always will be the case. For now, the best we can do, really is wait it out, unfortunately. 

   Now, that isn't to say that we should be gluing ourselves to our devices. Far from it. It is imperative that we are aware of our dependence on our electronics and that we do our best to minimize it. However, in this day and age, it is quickly becoming the social norm to check your phone frequently, even whenever it goes off. 

   I believe that what we are seeing now is the extreme limit of dependence, that is to say that many people are finding that their entire lives revolve around this (discounting those who make their living through the Internet and social media, of course). This will certainly level out with time, much in the way the Internet is beginning to. Unspoken rules must be established through experimentation, which comes with time.

   A heavy subject to start off the new location of my personal blog with, and not a lot for you gamers, but regardless, this is my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comments, or you can find me and my many social media accounts to which I am fairly attached at:

www.nerdunderfire.com

which hopefully should be updated with a new blog post from the NuF team soon.

Until then, tacos.

Gladdstone