Fayd's Favorite Songs of the Season

Since today is December 25th, here is my list of songs that I enjoy hearing this time of the year, in no particular order:

















If you've made it down this far, I wonder if you've figured out the common thread among all these songs.

If you haven't, I'll go ahead and tell you. In all of these songs, there is not a single mention of Christmas, Santa Claus, Jesus or even the holidays. However, if you still want to hear something a little more traditional, I do have this to offer:



The photographs featured in the video actually show my entire face. Those of you who are friends of mine on Facebook will probably be shocked at its inclusion.

Anyway, I hope you all have a really great weekend and the rest of the year. I'll be taking another break from the blog for the time being, but I'll be back on January 2nd, 2015 with a Friday video. I hope you're looking forward to it.

Christmas now comes later

There was one thing that would frequently irritate me around Christmastime when I was growing up. I would watch the news and see stories about Christmas coming early for some local poor kids. (And by local, I mean Roswell because we didn't really have a TV station in Artesia.) These kids GOT TOYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS DAY! And they got great ones. Some were things that I desired, but never received myself. Mom and Dad kept saying we were poor, but I guess we weren't poor enough. All I could think was, "Those kids are so lucky to be poor. How do I get in on this?" And I didn't know this at the time, but there was no way Mom and Dad would even think about us taking advantage of the program. They were very proud people and would not accept charity. I think they would have rather starved to death before accepting a handout that they couldn't repay later.

All I could think was, "Those kids are so lucky to be poor. How do I get in on this?" And I didn't know this at the time, but there was no way Mom and Dad would even think about us taking advantage of the program. They were very proud people and would not accept charity.

Personally, I didn't care about getting stuff for free. What I wanted was to be able to get the toys before December 25th. It was agony having to be tempted by the gifts under the tree every year. However, Loyd and I were better about it than some other children. I remember in 1976, our family went out with another family to get a tree. We were actually going to go into the forest and cut down our trees as opposed to buying one at a lot. This was the first weekend in December and up to that point, it was the earliest we had ever gotten a Christmas tree. First, we had to stop by the house of the father's friend to pick up the permits. We got there, but no one was home. The person had left the permits out along with gifts for the family. The father put the gifts in the back seat, where we kids were sitting. The other kids kept picking up and examining the wrapped gifts.

We chopped the trees down, loaded them on the car and headed back. By the time we had gotten home, the girl had torn the corner off one of the gifts. She REALLY couldn't wait. I couldn't blame her. We normally didn't start seeing the gifts under the tree until about two weeks before Christmas. To have a gift in your hands that early would have been agonizing. I couldn't imagine having to wait three weeks to open a gift.

As I've mentioned before, I enjoyed being a single adult around Christmastime because it meant I didn't have to wait until December 25th to open my gifts. Mom would counter this by post-dating the checks she sent me. This really hurt me on Christmas Eve of 1993 when I had a flat tire and couldn't go anywhere until I got the money to buy a new one. Christmas fell on a Saturday that year, so I had to wait the whole weekend before I could get the money. But I still had enough money on Christmas Day to see "Schindler's List." Everyone else in the theatre was Jewish.

So now that I have a family, that means I have to wait until Christmas again to open up any packages. Mom told me ahead of time that she and her husband had bought my son a gift this year and that it would be arriving soon. She told us not to open it until Christmas. However, she was not aware that the box would not be wrapped prior to shipping, so when it arrived, we knew exactly what was inside it. It's nice when there are outside forces that allow you to avoid the traditions of the holiday season.

Christmas Metaphors

I get so caught up in writing this blog, I sometimes forget that the holidays are here. I completely forgot to post something about Thanksgiving last month. These next few days will be some thoughts about the season.

Around this time of year, people like to resort to name-calling when someone they know just isn't in the right mood for Christmas. The most common names are "Scrooge" and "Grinch." These come from classic Christmas tales that have long outlived their authors.

However, people don't always use the right metaphor when referring to someone who's being a real downer when everyone else is expecting lots of good cheer around this time of year. To be certain, Ebenezer Scrooge had a lot of really bad stuff happen to him during Christmas. He wanted to make everyone else feel his misery during the holidays. And going only by the book, the Grinch didn't like all the noise that took place and just wanted everyone to be quiet that day.

After I became an adult and had to work during holidays, I wasn't able to go home to see my family. My Mom once called me a "Grinch" because of this. I said, "Mom, the Grinch went out of his way to wreck Christmas for everyone. I'm not acting like the Grinch." "Well, then you're Scrooge." "No, Scrooge was hesitant to give his employee the day off. If anything, my boss is being Scrooge, but I know he enjoys Christmas, so that's not really the case."

Of course, the inevitable "You ruined Christmas, you Scrooge!" will be drummed up. Well, Scrooge didn't really ruin Christmas. He snapped at everybody, but they just went about their business and didn't let him get in the way of having a good time. And of course, Scrooge changed his ways in time for the big day. Come to think of it, the Grinch had a change of heart as well.

I think it's time we came up with a new metaphor that can be more aptly applied to people who just never get in the holiday spirit. We need a classic story about somebody who completely hates Christmas and never changes their mind about it. The only problem is that a story about someone who goes to their grave without celebrating the spirit of Christmas really won't become popular like "A Christmas Carol" or "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas."

It's interesting to note that Charles Dickens, one of literature's most important writers ever and Dr. Seuss, one of the most important children's authors, came up with these two characters who are as closely associated with Christmas as Jesus and Santa Claus. Not even William Shakespeare was able to do that. It's too bad he didn't center "Hamlet" around the holidays. That would give us a whole new Christmas metaphor to describe people who go bonkers and kill their relatives at Christmas.

A crush I owe an apology to: Terz

I first became aware of Terz when I was a senior in high school. In 1982, my Drama club had gone to the Drama Festival at Eastern New Mexico University. We got there in time for the first play, which was "The Tea Cup Tree," presented by Clovis High School. She played the lead role of a woman who was being forced to take down her tree, from which she hung a collection of tea cups. It was pretty terrible, probably worse than the play we were originally set to put on, but cancelled at the last minute.

I would see Terz again when I was a sophomore at ENMU. She was a freshman. She was very skinny with light brown skin and thick black hair. Her hair was done in such a fashion that it made her appear about four inches taller. She was from Panama, but I never got the full story about how she got from Panama to the United States. Chances are that she was born in Panama to US citizens who were working at the canal. This would have been 1965. I never met her parents, so I don't know if she was maybe adopted from there or the whole family came up. Her last name is European and she speaks perfect English.

She was very cute and clever. I became smitten with her. However, I never got up the courage to ask her out because I would usually start out by asking her what she was up to over the weekend. She always had distinct plans, which mostly involved going home to Clovis. I just wasn't going to be able to catch a break with her, so I stopped trying to start something up. We often had lunch together with other students from the Theatre Department and in all that time, I never got any indication that she was the least bit attracted to me.

We appeared onstage in minor roles in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The King and I." But we had larger roles together in "Deathtrap." In that play, I portrayed Porter Milgrim and she was Helga ten Dorp. We were in the last scene together. I gave an understated performance and she stole the show.

The next year, her parents offered to help her move into an apartment off-campus. It was their idea. She was shocked, but did have her own apartment that year. I never got invited over.

It was around this time that I started suspecting that she might be a lesbian. As I've written earlier, I found I was somewhat pre-disposed to find some lesbians attractive. At the same time, I also felt like I never got an opportunity to let her know how crazy I was about her and regretted that I had never let her know soon after we had met. By the end of my third year in college, it felt like it was too late for me to express this and get her to like me. I figured that the only way I could get my message across was by working somewhat suggestive things into our conversation as a form of flirting.

I honestly don't remember any of the things I said. I know that they were relatively mild, but still clear enough to indicate what I had on my mind. I know it got so bad that once, I asked her what she was going to do after rehearsal one night and she said she was going to go home and go to bed. And then she added, "And NO, you can't join me!" I actually was going to ask if I could join her. I stopped the flirting after that because it was rather apparent it wasn't getting me anywhere. At the time, I thought it was all innocent fun. But now that I'm older and have learned more about the subject, I realize that I was indeed sexually harassing her. I feel terrible. I shouldn't have done that. I understand why I did it, but it's not really an excuse. However, it does give me a little insight into why some other guys sexually harass women, but I can't say I sympathize with them. I was able to figure out when to quit.

The strange thing is that I have never done that with any other woman that I wasn't dating. I guess it was pretty clear that was just not the way to get a woman to like me. But I have seen that approach work for some guys, but they were always a whole lot better looking than me.

The last time I saw Terz was in 1987 when she was performing her Senior Recital. I know she pursued some sort of career in acting, but probably was not able to make a living at it. I saw a mutual friend about seven years later and she had been to ENMU to see the new Theatre building that had been constructed after we left. She saw rehearsals for one of the productions and thought to herself that one of the actresses looked like Terz. It turned out it was Terz, who had come by invitation to take part in a production as a visiting artist.

Around 2008, I started looking up Terz on the Internet. I found that she had become the Unit Assistant Director at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo. She works in the library and research department. She has a profile at imdb.com, but didn't to a lot of work in film or television and probably did more stuff on stage. She recently had the lead role in a play produced by Amarillo Little Theatre.

In recent photographs, she has put on a little weight (maybe 30 pounds) and has a few strands of grey hair. I would recognize her today if I ran into her.

And if I ever did, the first words out of my mouth would be an apology. I don't know if I'll ever get to do that.

Part 2 for Tod and Daz

In the last two posts, I detailed my experiences with one of my college friends and a woman I tried to hook up with. They hooked up with each other. This is the colliding conclusion.

After Tod and Daz moved to Roswell, NM, I made frequent attempts to stop by and see them. I knew their address, but every single time I came by on my way to and from Artesia. They were never home. Once, I stopped by and the apartment appeared to be empty. They had moved up to Albuquerque, NM. He had gotten a job at KIVA-FM and worked the overnight shift. Before he went on the air, he was told by the Program Director that he would be going by the on-air handle of "Truckin' Tod."

After awhile, Tod started hanging around after his shift and contributing to the station's morning show. This allowed him to graduate into the morning slot after the host left. He worked that for awhile and then moved to Findlay, OH. I was living in Denver at the time. He encouraged me to try to get a job there, although he admitted that Toledo was the closest large city and there really wasn't a lot going on. I sent in a resume and an air check, but no one responded.

I lost track of them for awhile and moved to San Diego. Then, I reconnected with a friend from college who lived in Santa Fe. When I tried to call that friend, I got a recording that the line had been disconnected and it gave a different number to call. I called that number. The woman who answered was not the person I was looking for. I identified myself and went into this long spiel about trying to find my friend from Santa Fe. The woman identified herself as Daz. She told me that another mutual friend had listed her number as someone to contact and that's how I wound up getting her number.

She was living in Cincinnati and working radio there. She told me she and Tod had gotten divorced some time ago and that he had remarried. She gave me his phone number. I called him and reconnected. At one point, he stopped doing radio and started driving a truck, so he did indeed become "Truckin' Tod." He told me that one of the hard things about being divorced from Daz was that she did voiceovers for Sears commercials in Ohio, so he would frequently have to hear her voice while he was watching TV.

I got both their addresses and sent them my music releases. (More on that phase of my life MUCH later.) For a couple of years, Daz sent me Christmas cards, but she always sent them after I had done all my cards for the year, so I kept forgetting to reciprocate. I never heard from her again. I also lost contact with Tod.

A few years later, I moved to San Jose and got a job with a newsradio station. The station's sister FM is a country station and has a morning host named Gard. Gard and I were in the break room together one morning and he asked me about my past radio experience. I told him I had worked in New Mexico and Denver. He told me he used to work in Albuquerque at KIVA. I asked him when he was there. He said it was the late 1980s. I asked him if he knew a DJ who went by the name of "Truckin' Tod." His eyes widened. "THAT WAS OUR OVERNIGHT GUY!" Yes, he remembered Tod. He added, "Yeah, his wife was a real psycho. I mean, I never met her, but just the stuff he told me about her."

I caught back up with Tod on Facebook and we became "friends." He currently lives in Bowling Green, OH and works as a nurse. He remarried again and recently had another child. Daz still lives in Cincinnati. Judging by the parts of her profile that I can see on Facebook, she may have remarried and had a couple of kids. She's worked at several radio stations over the years there, but doesn't now. She works as a Director of Development with a disabled services organization.

I probably won't hear from her again, unless Tod tells her about these posts. I'll let you know if I get a response about that.

Lostop #2: Daz, Part 1

(What's a Lostop? Click here!)

I first became aware of Daz during my freshman year at Eastern New Mexico University. She had blonde hair and striking green eyes and came from Chicago. I know I had seen her on campus from time to time, but I really didn't start taking notice of her until the Spring semester. I had a Theatrical Lighting class that began at 10am, but no other classes before that. I decided to check our Dr. R's Beginning Acting class to see what happened on the first day and what I missed out on. Daz and Scod were in that class with some other students. (Pad took the class during the Fall semester.) Daz was a Radio/TV major, but I did not find that out until later.

During that class, Dr. R asked for volunteers to come up and do prepared monologues. Scod offered to go up on stage first and show off his best stuff. He did Snoopy's WWI Flying Ace monologue from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." Scod performed it with a lot of energy and jumping around on the stage, but Dr. R was quick to point out that it wasn't acting. Dr. R had him do the entire monologue again, but this time, he had to act like he was telling a regular story while he was sitting down and drinking a cup of coffee. Dr. R spent 20 minutes of class time getting him to actually act the monologue. After he was done, class time was almost over. Dr. R asked for another volunteer. Daz went up and performed a piece I was not familiar with, but it involved a lot of anger. After she was done, Dr. R praised her and said that was more like what the class would be working toward.

During sophomore year, she auditioned for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." She was cast as a member of the entourage. We were only on stage together for the end, when the mechanicals present their play. We didn't really hang out much together during the production. It almost appeared as if she had started up something with Toilethead, but I couldn't really tell for certain if they were a couple or if she was just draping her arms around him while he was doing make-up as a kind of fooling around manuver. It didn't really matter to me. I thought she was out of my league.

The next semester, if I was around the lobby when she finished a class she had there, she would ask me if I wanted to walk her back to her dorm. The first couple of times, I didn't think much of it. But once, when she was leaving, she looked at me in disbelief and asked, "Fayd, aren't you coming with me?" This was when I started to think maybe she liked me somewhat.

I started sitting down and having lunch with her from time to time. She introduced me to all of her friends, so it looked like she really did feel something for me. So yes, I got up the nerve to ask her out. However, every single time I asked her if she wanted to go do something, she would say, "Oh, I'm doing something with the sorority that weekend," or "Oh, I promised my friend I would hang out with her Saturday night" and any other number of excuses. It made me wonder if she really did like me. After awhile, I gave up.

The first time I mentioned Daz in this blog, she was hoping to get a job from our Announcing Techniques instructor, who was one of the owners of KTQM-FM/KDKA-AM in Clovis. She managed to get that job. And somewhere along the way, she got a local reputation as a country music singer. I don't know how that happened. I never did see her perform.

We graduated the same year. She was hired to temporarily run the promotions for the ENMU Arts Departments for the summer of 1986. Afterward, she got a part-time position working at my radio station, KZZO-FM. I was a little upset at first because she told the Program Director that she wasn't going to work the overnight shift for more than a month. I thought that if I was the Program Director and a potential part-timer made that demand before I even hired her, I'd be saying, "That's okay. I'll hire someone else." I'm sorry, but with all the overnight shifts I had to put up with, and knowing I couldn't have made that demand and gotten away with it, I sure the heck wasn't going to let someone else think they were better than the rest of the staff.

I went to visit her on one of her overnight shifts. Tod (from yesterday's post) was there when I arrived. Daz made some comment about how she liked having two cute guys keep her company during the shift. I was still smarting from her putting me off three years earlier, so I decided not to take the bait this time. Tod wound up dating her and after awhile, they started living together.

Eventually, Daz started working full time as our morning newsperson and graduated into the role of the co-host of the station's morning program. Tod was the Program Director and afternoon drive guy. By this time, I was working the 6pm to midnight shift. One Monday, I came to the station a couple of hours before my shift and saw that Tod was playing a song that was not part of the normal roster. He was breaking format. (When I go into more detail about working at the station, you'll realize what a big deal that is.) I asked Tod why he was playing that song. He said it was his last day to work at the station, so it didn't matter what he played. The comment about this being his last day was rather shocking, but not as much as his format-breaking.

Tod told me that the station's co-owner yelled at Daz about something literally minutes before she did the news. She was in tears when she was on the air. Tod and Daz decided to put in their two weeks' notice. After submitting the notices, the co-owner told them not to bother with the two weeks and that would be their last day of work.

Prior to their departure from the station, Tod and Daz had made plans to get married at the Clovis Zoo. They still went through with the ceremony, even though they didn't have any jobs. Her parents actually came down to see them get married. I was not there.

A couple of weeks later, I got a call from Daz telling me that they needed my help at their apartment. Something went wrong with Tod's back and he couldn't get off the floor. I came and helped pick up Tod and drive them to the doctor's office. While talking to the staff, Daz mentioned that they had just gotten back from their honeymoon and the women started giggling. After the visit, Tod was able to walk again and I guess he was okay after that.

A couple of weeks later, I saw in the trade publication "The Gavin Report" that KBIM-AM in Roswell was hiring for two positions, one full time and the other part-time. I saw this at midnight and immediately called Tod. I don't think he liked me waking him up, but he was appreciative of the information. The next day, they drove down to Roswell and landed those jobs. Tod got the full-time slot.

And that turned out to be the last time I saw them. But I still kept in contact with them after that. I'll have the rest of the story tomorrow.

College Friend: Tod, Part 1

I first met Tod during the Eastern New Mexico University summer session in 1983. He was in my Introduction to Communications class. Tod swears he saw me during Freshman Orientation in the Fall of 1982. He says I was sitting right in front of him and my big hair was blocking his view. I told him time and again that it wasn't me because I went to the orientation during the summer pre-registration. To this day, I'm pretty certain he still thinks that was me.

Tod was from Florida was pretty much like me. He had blond hair and wore glasses. He also wore t-shirts most of the time that summer. Two main differences were he had short hair and he came from a large family with five brothers and sisters. Judging by his class presentations, we were at about the same intelligence level. I didn't encounter him much during my freshman year. I guess he spent his first year focusing on his General Education requirements before getting full swing into broadcasting.

I encountered Tod in several broadcasting classes over the next couple of years, but I really didn't start becoming friends with him until around January of 1985. I was working at KZZO-FM in Clovis, NM. The Program Manager often left his office door open and employment applications from prospective DJs were on his desk. I saw one submitted by Tod. At the time, I didn't think we were hiring, so I didn't read too much into its presence. The next day, I came into the station and he was there getting trained by one of the other part-timers. (When I go more into detail about working at the radio station, you'll understand why I was suddenly concerned he was there.) I assisted in the training. I was actually rather thankful to have a friendly face at the station.

Several months passed and the station's afternoon drive time guy left to work at a station in Abilene, TX. Tod was asked to become a full-timer and he worked the mid-day shift. This didn't really bug me because I knew the Program Director didn't like me and I was trying to concentrate on getting my degree. However, I still didn't like that I was working the overnight shift on the weekends. Tod dropped out of college because work interfered with his class schedule. In fact, he left one of his classes in a lurch. His partner on a project in a class we were taking together wrote on the handout that he couldn't get a hold of Tod to finish the project and had to do everything himself. He wrote this in a pre-Internet ALL CAPS RAGE so that the entire class would see it.

A few months later, the Program Director quit and the station hired that afternoon drive guy to come back from Abilene to take his place. But he knew he was destined for larger things than working a small market radio station and in January of 1986, he got a job at a station in Lubbock. Tod was then named Program Director. The good news about this was that I was asked to work full-time at the station. I don't know for certain that Tod helped me to attain that position, but it's nice to think that he did.

Very soon, I believe Tod found out that one of the bad things about being the Program Director was that he wasn't really in charge of anything. The station owner was really kind of a puppet master and micromanaged everything from staffing to programming to the music that we played. After a few months, Tod decided he wanted to go back to college and get his degree. He went home to Florida for a brief period of time. He said he was going to be working as a DJ at a strip club, but that didn't happen. He came back for the Summer 1986 session. He was in for a shock when he returned to the airport in Albuquerque and found out he had parked in the short-term lot instead of the long-term and had to pay a lot of money to get his back. In addition to school, he was able to come back and work part-time at the station.

We then went through two more program directors: The one who replaced Tod and the one who replaced him. They both wound up working at the same station in Lubbock. Tod regained the Program Director position again and stopped going back to school.

Under normal circumstances, this would go into Part 2 tomorrow. However, he will be entwined with the person I am writing about next. Tod's Part 2 will be on Thursday.

Learning something new about myself

By the time I was 19, I thought I knew everything about myself. I thought there was nothing about me that anyone else would know that I wouldn't. But to this day, I often find out things that other people might have been aware of, but came as news to me.

This was certainly the case when I was a sophomore in college. As I've explained before, I didn't get much information on sex from my parents. This made me naive in many ways. My roommate Sind showed me a little book he had gotten with information about sexual issues. He said there was some stuff in there that was kind of funny. Reading through it, I saw that it was rather straight-forward about sex and not really humorous. Much of it I had already knew because of years of reading Ann Landers.

However, I found one of the sections a little confusing at first. An illustration showed the difference between a circumcised and an uncircumcised penis. At that point, all I knew about circumcision is that it was something they did to Jewish baby boys. I was not Jewish, so I thought I was not circumcised. The more I looked at the drawings, the more I realized that the uncircumcised penis had the foreskin that covered the head. The head was exposed on the circumcised illustration. I suddenly realized that I AM CIRCUMCISED!

This had made my head swirl. I remember that during Athletics classes in sixth and seventh grade, I did see boys with uncircumcised penises. However, I thought THEY were circumcised because it looked like the heads of the penises had been lopped off. That didn't make sense to me at the time. Why would anyone want to cut that part off? I honestly did not realize that the head was hidden underneath and would come out during an erection.

This discovery was bewildering because many years earlier, my Dad told my brother Loyd and me a joke that involved circumcision. We had to ask, "What's circumcision?" He said, "It's when they cut the foreskin off of the penis." Please note that he did NOT add, "You boys are circumcised." That was the perfect opportunity to let us know a little bit more about our bodies and he completely failed to recognize that it was something we definitely needed to know.

I am certainly glad I found out before I ever started discussing my penis with anyone. That would have terrible if I'd fallen in love with a Jewish girl and wanted to marry her. "Oh, I can only marry you if you are circumcised." "I'm not circumcised." "Well, if you were willing to have the foreskin removed..." "Oh, there is no way THAT is going to happen!" And of course, I would have eventually found out I was circumcised, but only after she'd married someone else.

Another funny thing is that I was familiar with the term "smegma" just a few months before I discovered my circumcision status. A friend had a button on his jacket that said, "Eat Smegma." I had to ask was it was. The friend said it was that cheesy material that collects under the foreskin and is also known as "headcheese." I thought, "I'm glad I don't have that problem." Now, I know why!

There's been an ongoing movement among men who are angry at their parents for having them circumcised. I am certainly not angry at mine for having me undergo the procedure. I'm just mad that neither one said anything about it. To me, that was much worse than having me mutilated against my will.

Sometimes, I'm not able to come up with a good idea for my Friday video

I've been very busy this past week and didn't get to put any effort into making a new video, so I thought I'd upload one from my smartphone that I didn't intend to shoot.



Hopefully, I won't have to resort to doing this very often.

Friend Zone #3: Loz

I first became aware of Loz in 1982 when I went to the Drama Festival at Eastern New Mexico University during my senior year in high school. She was from Alamogordo High School and was a year behind me. She appeared in her class' production of a one-act play called "The Keep." She played a Rod Serling-type narrator and appeared before, between and at the end of the segments. She was notable because when she walked off the stage into the audience, she ran into the front row seats. There was a spotlight on her and she was blinded. However, she received one of the acting awards that were given out by the adjudicators.

Loz was overweight, but had a cute face, brown eyes and long, dark hair. The second time I saw her was during the Drama Festival my freshman year. She played the part of a desirable blond woman who had one line. When they colored her hair, they only did the front half with some sort of temporary dye. It didn't look good, but she wasn't really on stage long enough for anyone to care.

When she started attending ENMU the next year, she had planned on some involvement in the Theatre Department, but mostly focused her efforts on her major, computer science. I got to know her better because she frequently hung around a couple of her Alamogordo classmates, who were Theatre majors. During one conversation at the Theatre building, she told me about how she planned to design computer "bubbles" that would improve processing, or something like that.

She was very smart, the kind of person I had always been interested in having for a girlfriend. In addition to the Drama Department at her school, she was involved in Choir. She told me that while she was one of the top students in her class, her rank at graduation was #11. This wouldn't have been a problem, but she prided herself on being really smart and the top students had their gowns decorated with these indicators that they were among the top 10, and there she was at #11 with none of the glitter to show for it.

One strange thing she told me about herself was that she liked to drink vinegar straight out of the bottle. I can't even stand the smell of the stuff. To this day, I don't know why there are potato chips flavored like that.

One Thursday early in the semester, I was eating lunch with her classmates. She came and joined us. She was reading the student newspaper, which had an advertisement for the local movie theatre. "Strange Brew" was one of the films that would start the next day. She said out loud, "I would like to go see that." I then said, "I would like to see that, too. Would you like to go with me Saturday night?" I didn't mean to put her on the spot in front of her friends. I just saw an opportunity and decided to grab it. I think she was rather stunned that I asked her. She agreed to the date. I asked for her dorm phone number and she gave it to me. I told her I could call her later.

I called and we arranged that I would come get her around 6pm at her dorm and go to the movie theatre. The day before the big date, I had gone to my Marriage and the Family class (which was the most popular class on campus). Before class ended, the professor said something to the effect that we didn't know if that person we were going to date was going to end up being the person we spend the rest of our lives with. This was running through my mind on Saturday when I was getting ready. Right before I was about to head out the door, my Mom called. I told her I was about to go out on a date. She got WAY too excited about it. I shouldn't have told her because I was nervous enough as it was.

About 5:45pm, I started driving from my dorm at Lincoln Hall to hers at De Baca Hall. It's a straight drive about a quarter-mile down. When I got close to the dorm, I saw these two female students walking toward De Baca. It was Loz and her roommate. I hit the brakes and slapped the side of my car out my open window. I felt like I had arrived too early. She told me to park the car and come in the dorm lobby to wait for her. She just needed to change her clothes and she would be right down. I'm glad we didn't plan on eating a meal before the movie. We simply would have been late.

We arrived at the theatre and I saw one of the other Theatre students there. He was in the lobby playing the video game. He was making some comment about having wasted a quarter on the machine. He was also there to see the same movie. We went into the auditorium and he sat directly in front of us. I thought this was odd because this particular student (whom I had known since my first trip to Muncie, IN in 1980) was always complaining about how he didn't have any money. I wondered to myself why he would come alone on a Saturday night and pay full price for a ticket when the movie theatre had bargain matinees on the weekend and dollar night on Tuesdays.

I've since wondered if Loz was anxious about me and asked him to come "chaperone" in the event I started getting all grabby-feely with her. I wasn't planning on doing that. This was a first date.

Afterwards, we went to Tastee-Freez to get some sodas and talk some more. We had a really good conversation about our expectations for the future. I drove her back to her dorm and dropped her off. We met up for lunch a few times during the week with her friends. We did not make any immediate plans for a future date. A lot of my free time was taken up by rehearsals for "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

The next Saturday morning, I was at the game room at the Campus Union Building, playing a few video games. Her friends were there. Suddenly, she came in and she had hickeys all over her neck. She was smiling and excitedly talking to her friends. While I couldn't hear the conversation, it was obvious she was talking about how she got the hickeys. My first thought was, "Oh, we're not really boyfriend/girlfriend yet. I should try to not let this bother me." But it did bother me. I felt my heart sink inside because she had let some guy do that to her. I had nothing but respect for her and she just let this other guy do all that.

Apparently, she went out with this guy the night before and he brought her to his room at Lincoln Hall. Right away, he started making moves on her. He started sucking on her neck and trying to get her in the mood. She left, but not before getting at least four or five hickeys on her neck. I guess she forgot to get the chaperone to come with her on that date.

After that, we actually started spending more time together. She invited me to come join her for services at the Baptist Student Union. Technically, this was not a date. I don't care what you say, going to church is not a date. Afterwards, we went to a nearby video arcade. (Still not a date, we were just hanging out.) We played a few games and there was one she really liked a lot. I thought we were finished playing at one point, but she grabbed and pinched my arm to indicate that she wanted to play some more. I pulled some more quarters out of my pocket.

I walked her back to her dorm. I made no moves. Over the next couple of weeks, we spent more time together eating lunch and dinner together. After dinner, I would walk her back to her dorm.

Once, this other guy (not the hickey guy, but a geek like me) asked her out for a date before she sat down for lunch. I guess they had hung out at the school's football game the previous week. She politely turned him down. After he left, she gripped my shoulder.

We had pleasant conversations, but things were not progressing at a rate I preferred. I knew I had to do something to step up the game.

I wrote her a letter to let her know how I felt, that I really liked her and enjoyed being around her. However, I was afraid it may seem like I was pressuring her for something she wasn't ready for, so I found a "form letter" in which I filled in the blanks with multiple choice answers. I thought she would enjoy the surprise when it wound up in her mailbox. Because I wanted her to get it right away, I watched her do the combination on her mailbox (the post office didn't have locked boxes back then). I memorized the combination, came back to the Post Office, opened her box and inserted the letter.

The letter sat there over the weekend. I was hoping she would stop by at some point to pick it up and be surprised, but the Post Office didn't deliver on Saturdays. After lunch on Monday, I went with her to the Post Office. She opened up her box and was pleasantly surprised to find the letter. She thought it was rather humorous.

The next day, we went into the Post Office with her friends. I went up, checked her mailbox, came back and told her she didn't have any mail. Her eyes widened. "How do you know I don't have any mail?" "I looked inside your mailbox." "How did you get inside my mailbox?" "I learned your combination. How do you think I got that letter in there without a stamp?"

At the time, I didn't really think I did anything wrong. I thought what I did was sweet and romantic, but I now realize I was exhibiting stalker tendencies. But honestly, I'd only had one girlfriend up to this point and had never dated anyone as smart as her, so I really didn't know what was unacceptable behavior. (Yes, someone less intelligent would not have considered it an invasion of their privacy.)

While she tolerated my presence at lunch and dinner with her friends, it was clear we weren't going to go out anytime soon. She didn't really talk to me much after that. Looking back, I can't really blame her.

She came back the next year. I called her room. She had the same room, but got a new roommate in someone who had just graduated from the same high school. She was still rather chilly. I did some small talk, hung up the phone and figured it was completely hopeless. I never called her again.

The next year, she was in the chorus of the production "HMS Pinafore." During the rehearsals, she struck up a friendship with one of the crew members. She started dating him. He was actually in the same attractiveness league that I was.

I didn't talk to her any more after that, but she married that guy before she graduated from college. If I hadn't pulled that "fatal" maneuver, I probably would have wound up marrying her. I really liked her that much that I could have seen that in our future.

She has remained married to that same guy for almost 30 years. It looks like they had some children. She now works at a software company in Grand Prairie, TX. She doesn't appear to be any more overweight than she was in college, even after having kids.

Honestly, I still feel like she treated me a lot worse than that guy who gave her the hickeys.

College Roomate #4: Sind

With this post, I'm officially in my sophomore year of college at Eastern New Mexico University. I'd mentioned before that during the summer of 1983, my roommate was Chud. Since I've already gone into major detail about him, I didn't need to write about him and our experience as roommates. We know where we stand on this. I'll also add that Kird was roommate #5. It seems like all the friends I had as roommates were odd numbers.

Sind graduated from Belen High School in 1983. This was his freshman year. He appeared to be Hispanic (but could have been Native American or a mix of both) and very good-looking. He was also able to grow a full mustache, which was something I still couldn't do even though I was 19 years old.

Sind and I got along pretty well, but we were not friends. It was the same as my roommate situation with Jad. Once, I was eating lunch with a couple of freshman girls from the Theatre Department. Sind came by my table and made some comment. I told the girls he was my roommate. One of them said, "That's your roommate? Would you like to trade roommates?" The other girl, who was her roommate at the time said, "NO!" Yeah, that made me feel good.

He was still dating the same girl he went to high school with. However, she was attending college at ENMU's Roswell campus. I don't know why she decided to go there instead of coming to Portales. She came up almost every weekend. Sind had a classmate from Belen who had a private room on our floor. He went home every weekend. So when his girlfriend came up, they would spend time in his classmate's room.

One day, I came back to the dorm room on a weeknight. Sind appeared to be in bed and the TV was on. I started taking off my clothes. I suddenly heard her voice, "Hi, Fayd!" I put my shirt back on. I was not expecting her to be there. Sind was not there. He was out somewhere else.

I remember coming home one Saturday night on a weekend in which the girlfriend didn't come down. Sind and one of his friends were there. He had drunk too much alcohol that night and continued to have dry heaves. Once every five minutes, he would have to "throw up" in our trash can. That went on for an hour after I got there. He never drank that much again. (Or if he did, he didn't come back to the dorm room.)

Sind and I were roommates for just that one semester. I think he became roommates with his former Belen classmate for the Spring session. The next year, his girlfriend started attending ENMU in Portales. A friend of mine from the Theatre Department (the Dungeonmaster from that epic Dungeons and Dragons game) had become the manager of the local Kentucky Fried Chicken and Sind was one of his employees. He said that Sind was stringing his girlfriend along, telling her that he wouldn't marry her until she got back to her high school weight. Now, when I knew her, she was pretty skinny, so I don't know how she would be capable of losing more weight. I was surprised that he would act that way toward her.

I didn't deal much with Sind the year after that. I graduated and never saw him again. I was able to find him. He currently works as an AllState agent in Albuquerue, which he has been doing for almost 20 years. His photograph is on the website. He has gained a lot of weight. Apparently, his wife (who is not the same girlfriend he had in college) is also an agent and they run their own office. I assume they have children, but their Facebook pages are really scarce with any personal details.

But I would have I would have even less contact with the majority of my other roommates.

Job #4: KENM-AM/KNIT-FM Era, 1983

I have gotten the main issues of my college experience out of the way, but I still have a lot more ground to cover before I get into my full-fledged adulthood. I'll be getting into more chronologically correct stories for the time being.

I'll start with the first job I got in radio. At Eastern New Mexico University's Broadcast Center, a notice was posted that the local station in Portales, KENM-AM/KNIT-FM, was looking to hire a part-timer. This was the same station I had gone to with Carz. It was automated and primarily a country music format. I called the number and spoke to the owner, who was also the general manager. He asked me to come in and interview. I told him about my experience with the college AM station. He seemed to like how I sounded and hired me on the spot. I would be working the evening shift every night from 6pm to 10pm and making minimum wage.

At the time I worked there, it was one of very few stations in the country that broadcast the same programming on both its AM and FM signals. Many stations at the time were AM/FM combos and usually required separate staffs to operate. After awhile, other stations in larger markets started doing this so that they could cut back on the number of employees they had to pay.

I was trained by the person I was replacing. I came in and found that the job was relatively easy. I didn't have to cue up any records as everything was on tape. Cassette tapes actually. The owner said that the station had the same system as the college FM station. The only difference at the college station was that all the music was on reel-to-reel.

The owner's son also worked at the station and he actually remembered me from that night I brought Carz by. I didn't really recall him there because it was the other guy doing all the talking. (I previously knew the other guy because he trained me at the college AM station.)

Because of the automation, I didn't really have to do anything. I just had to switch the signal to the evening setting, record some special programs for the next day from the satellite feed, turn off the lights, lock the door and leave. I didn't even really get to announce very much. Every once in awhile, I had to read some sponsor cards, but that was it. Sometimes, I brought homework to complete at the station.

At the station, they had a soda machine. I was able to buy a bottle of Coke for a quarter. When I first started working there, I would buy one soda in the middle of my shift. About a week later, I started drinking two bottles a shift. Pretty soon, I started drinking four bottles every shift. One day, I noticed my urine was coming out brown. I decided to stop drinking so much soda.

Also, I found that I would get a little hungry toward the end of my shift and get in the mood for pizza. I tried ordering from my favorite pizza place in town, which was The Pizza Mill and Sub Factory close to the campus. However, they closed at 10pm every night and wouldn't make any more pizza. I had to resort to getting my pizza from Pizza Hut (which was more expensive, but I could actually afford it now). I had pizza at least twice a week.

As I mentioned earlier, it was a country music station. I was never a country music fan, but I could tolerate it. At the time, the song "Jose Cuervo" by Shelly West was a big hit. I enjoyed that song and looked forward to it coming on every night. However, the rest of the music was really questionable, like the Hank Williams, Jr. song, "Gonna Go Huntin' Tonight (But I Won't Need a Gun)." That got on my nerves real quick. I also remember hating "Swingin'" by John Anderson. I thought that was a stupid song. A REALLY stupid song. And the thing was that it was the #1 song on the Billboard Country Chart! I felt like everyone who liked that song was stupid, and if I had been announcing on the air, I probably would have made some statement to that effect.

We also had a problem with programming music sometimes. While we played almost all of the country hits, there was one song we didn't start playing until after it hit #1 on the Country Charts, and it had already entered the Top 10 on the pop charts. That was "We've Got Tonight," by Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton. I think the General Manager didn't like putting Sheena Easton on our station, but when it hit #1, we had no other choice.

While I was working there, I felt like no one was listening to us. It seemed like we had fewer listeners than the college AM station (which really only ever played in the cafeteria). The phone almost never rang. And when it did, it was the owner calling to comment on some mistake I made on the air. HE was listening.

There were a couple of weird things that happened while I was working. Once, this guy was pounding on the front door. He asked to use our phone because he had been stabbed. It appeared to be a rather superficial wound because there wasn't blood gushing out all over the place. He called someone to pick him up and the ride got there after a short while. The cops weren't called. Another unusual thing was that the owner once called me up and chewed me out for leaving the front door unlocked. I told him I was pretty certain I had locked the front door when I left. He said the morning guy found it unlocked when he got in. He just told me to be more careful, but I'm pretty certain I locked that door. But that's one of those things I'll never know for certain.

I was actually making pretty good money, considering that I didn't have to pay for rent or my regular meals at the cafeteria in college. I could actually see myself continuing to work at the station over the summer, go to school then and be able to pay for it out of my own pocket. I would even be able to pay for all my expenses for my sophomore year and maybe even beyond (although this would have affected my ability to appear in Theatre Department productions). My parents were very excited about the prospect because they had also been able to work their way through college.

But there was a sudden change in command. The owner decided he didn't want to be the General Manager any more and hired someone to come in and take over. I was asked to come in and meet him. He seemed pretty optimistic about the prospects at the station. It didn't look like the transition was going to be such a bad thing.

As usual, I was wrong. About a week later, he called me to come see him. He told me that the guy I replaced wanted to come back to work at the station and he was going to have to let me go. I was flabbergasted. (I'll note that right before the new General Manager came in, there was this jerk Theatre student I knew who had managed to muscle his way into a job at the station. He's not worth writing an article on, but I have to mention him here. When the General Manager said he had to let me go because I was the last one hired, it never occurred to me to bring up the fact that the jerk was hired on after me. But the jerk managed to become the General Manager's buddy first, so I doubt that bringing up that information would have done any good.)

About six months later, I heard that the General Manager who laid me off left the station to run KBCQ in Roswell and he took the morning guy with him. He then found out that the morning guy was illiterate. I was shocked by that. I have no idea how he was able to read sponsor cards on the air. I guess he had someone read them to him first and he just memorized on the spot or something like that. That morning guy had to come back to Portales and get his old job back. I, however, had no interest in working there again. I actually saw that morning guy at the station in the summer of 1985 when I needed to go there to get some circus sound effects for our production of "Carnival!" Even though he watched me choose some materials, I never spoke to him. That was the last time I set foot inside the station.

This experience introduced me to the all-too-real world of radio. As radio personality Rollye James once said, "All radio stations are toilets. Some of them just flush differently." I found this to be true at every radio station I ever worked at. They will all be the subjects of future blog posts.

Things people said behind my back

College is a time in which you learn a lot about yourself by the reaction of the people you deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's a time when others are trying to figure out whether or not they want to be friends with you. Some people figure that out pretty early. Other take a little longer so they can gather information and not judge.

I used to think of myself as an open book as far as other people were concerned. I figured I talked enough to give people a good indication of the type of person I was. Actually, it turns out I didn't really talk about myself very much and kept quiet most of the time. This made everyone just wonder about what was going on in my head.

I found out later people made all kinds of assumptions based not on what I said, but my appearance. I had very long hair and normally only wore T-shirts and blue jeans. If I came up as a topic of discussion when I wasn't around, the other students would come up with theories about me. Some thought I smoked pot, drank beer or was a drug addict. Some thought I was really poor, and that's why I only wore T-shirts and blue jeans. I found this an odd observation, because the students making it also only wore T-shirts and blue jeans.

The funny thing is that it wasn't until the middle of the Spring 1983 semester that anyone knew that I had a car. I was in the Theatre lobby when one of the students said she needed to go into town and wished she knew someone who had a car. I told her I had a car. "You have a car?" Since everything on campus was within a half mile of my dorm room, I really didn't need it to get to classes. But I had to walk back to the dorm to get my car to give her a ride. (And I remember something odd that happened when we started to leave. At the stop light next to the Theatre, a semi screeched on its brakes and it took about 15 seconds to come to a complete stop. It was really noisy. We went on our way to town. When we came back to the Theatre about an hour later, that truck was still there at the stop light. Apparently, it had done some major damage to its tire tread when it came to that sudden stop. I didn't stick around to see how they resolved that situation.)

Because I didn't have a girlfriend, people also assumed I was gay. I should point out, however, that it was only the straight people who thought I was gay. I never had any of the real gay people on campus pester me while I was in college. Even my friend Kird asked me if I was gay. The next day, I landed my first college date (Loz, coming up soon). I told him about it and he still thought I was somewhat gay. The funny thing is that Kird would often kind of roughhouse with the other guys, including me. Chud had been on the receiving end of this treatment as well and he told me he thought Kird was gay. I told him I didn't think that was the case. (Chud later denied ever having said that, but I remember it clearly.)

I found that this air of mystery has surrounded me my entire life. Even in my most recent position at work, my supervisor had to go and ask a fellow employee I was "pals" with about me. It's amusing because no one ever comes right up and asks me about myself. I remember another job in which my supervisor was surprised to find out I was married. (To be fair, medication I had been taking caused me to gain some weight, including in my fingers. I had to stop wearing my wedding ring for awhile. There's a photo of me on Facebook with me holding my left hand in front of my face and smiling. That was the day I was able to wear the ring again.)

I have to admit that it's fun to find out what people think of you, especially when they are so wrong that they realize their mistake and apologize. I'm also glad that I've been able to maintain a shroud of secrecy about myself. That's the reason I don't use my real name for this blog.

This is the last Caltrain-related vlog post

I still have one more beef to get off my chest about this subject.



Now, the only thing I have to gripe about is the traffic I have to deal with in coming home from my new position.

A crush who had her spirit crushed: Sanz

I should start by saying that while I did have a crush on Sanz, it was not an all-consuming, can't think of anyone else-type of crush (as I've had in the past). She was just someone I liked who was very friendly toward me. I was fully aware the entire time I knew her that there was nothing that was ever going to happen between us. Although, once she asked me to give her a massage. That was kind of weird.

I first became aware of Sanz when I was a sophomore in high school. When my school's Theatre club went to the Drama Festival at Eastern New Mexico University, I had brought my movie camera. I saw this attractive young woman headed my direction. I started rolling. She walked past me and went into the Theatre office. While she was going into the office, I got a shot of her butt.

A few weeks later, ENMU had a touring production of "The Fantasticks" come to perform at our high school. Sanz was a member of the crew. This was when I first learned her name, and I was kind of embarrassed because I knew I had filmed her, something she was never aware of. (On a side note, I may have met Dr. R's first wife with this group as she appeared to be the one in charge. By the time I'd gotten to ENMU, they had split up and Dr. R had started dating another woman, whom he eventually married.)

The next time I saw Sanz was the summer of 1980. During the time I had gone to Portales with my Mom and hang out with Dayz, I was walking around the ENMU campus. I was in the vicinity of the Theatre building. I suddenly ran into Sanz. She recognized me, quietly said hi and continued walking.

I continued to see Sanz at the next two ENMU Drama Festivals. When I was a freshman at the college, she was a senior. She was going to graduate at the end of the fall semester. During her time at ENMU, she had become one of the "big fish." I had seen her in leading roles in the productions we saw my junior and senior years in high school. The summer before I started college, she had landed the role of Princess Fred in a summer stock production of "Once Upon a Mattress" in Texas. She definitely looked like she was going places.

Sanz was a friend to everyone, including us freshmen. When I came to her and presented my submission of "Allergies" for the Evening of One Acts, her face brightened up when I told her I had written it. Later, when we were casting, I told her about how someone I wanted in my cast had said beforehand that he didn't want to work with a freshman director. She got very upset, even more than I was.

Her plan was to graduate with her degree at the end of the Fall 1982 semester and go on to New York City. Her somewhat-boyfriend had graduated six months earlier and went up there with another fellow graduate. This was very inspiring to all of us. The idea someone we knew was actually going to go out and make a career out in the theatrical industry made us all feel like we could accomplish those same goals, that the Theatre Department was preparing us for that.

In April, I saw her come to the Theatre building. I just thought she was in town for a quick visit, but she never went back to New York City. I never got the full story about what happened to her there (even though I actually saw her somewhat-boyfriend when I went there for spring break a year later). The rumors going around was that all she got was rejection in NYC. She was cast in ENMU's summer 1983 production of "Stop the World! I Want to Get Off!" as the lead character's oldest daughter. Dr. R directed that show.

In the Fall 1983 semester, she returned and auditioned for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Dr. R did not cast her. However, he did permit her to come in and lead the cast in vocal and body warms ups prior to the rehearsals. She auditioned for "The Elephant Man." Again, Dr. R did not cast her. It was clear he was sending her a message. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, it would have been nice if he had done this for other people who had overstayed their welcome. Why he did it to her and not anyone else is still a mystery to me.

Sanz never auditioned for any more productions. She went to nursing school, became a psychiatric nurse, met some guy and got married. She was in Clovis for awhile. I can't tell for a fact that she had any children. I do know that she ended up being a nursing professor at university schools of nursing in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But I was not able to find any activity in theatre all these years. She really must have been dealt a crushing blow from her theatre experience.

I have no idea if she was aware of the impact she had on the morale of the Theatre Department when she came back. Because no one seemed to have all the details, all we knew was that we had no idea what to expect once we left college to try to become actors. If no one wanted to cast her, what would that mean for the rest of us?

It was a question that we all eventually got the answer to when we went out into the real world. It appears that almost everyone I knew back then faced the same treachery.

"Nothing" and the hoax that is method acting

Today, I'm going to be doing a little more editorializing rather than detailing my life story. Since I mostly finished with my Eastern New Mexico University Theatre Department experience yesterday, I thought I would take this opportunity to address something that I take closely to heart.

Contrary to the title of this piece, I don't really think that method acting on the whole is a hoax. I know there are several actors, like Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, who actually use method acting in their performances. My issue is with lesser actors, like the ones I went to school with.

I'll start with my first introduction to the concept of method acting. I owned the Original Cast recording of "A Chorus Line" about four years before I actually saw it on Broadway in New York. One of the songs that caught my attention the most was "Nothing," which was performed by Priscilla Lopez in the role of Morales.

In the song, she tells about getting to go to the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. She takes an acting class from Mr. Karp, who has everyone pretend that they are on a bobsled. Afterwards, he asks the students what they are feeling. Some say they can feel the snow, the air and the cold. He asks Morales what she feels. She replies, "Nothing." He responds by saying, "'Nothing' will get a girl transferred," presumedly out of the Performing Arts school and into a regular public school. She initially thinks the project is absurd, but soon determines that the problem was probably that she had never been on a bobsled before.

In future class sessions, Mr. Karp has the students taking on the roles of inanimate objects. For Morales, this is even more difficult than the snowsled. The class shouts out Karp's refrain "Nothing!" when it's her turn. She gets angry because Karp didn't try to put a stop to the torment. He then tells her she'll never be an actress. Eventually, she comes to the realization that the acting class and Mr. Karp are "nothing" and she sets out to find another class that will help her become an actress. A few months later, she hears that Karp had died and she feels "nothing" for him.

My first problem is that this is really not the best way to indoctrinate young actors into the concept of method acting. Playing inanimate objects appeared to serve no purpose other than to give the instructor an opportunity to kick kids out of what was probably an overcrowded classroom. I can see him saying, "I can teach 20 students at one time how to act, but I can't teach 40." Chances are very good that most incoming students were aware of his reputation, so everyone had to "fake" feeling something during the exercises in order to appease him and not get transferred out of school. In other words, they were "acting" like method actors. This makes me wonder if the students I attended college with were in the same bind with Dr. R and had to figure out a way to appear like they were using method acting, when in fact, they actually weren't. They were probably just doing regular acting, but affecting their speech patterns to look like they were doing something different. This is the heart of the "hoax."

It's not made absolutely clear that Morales left the school, but according to Wikipedia, Priscilla Lopez, on whom the character was based, did graduate from the High School of the Performing Arts. This brings me to my next problem: At her peak in the 1970s, Priscilla Lopez was really cute. I can only imagine that she was also very attractive in high school. I find it hard to believe that there was not one boy in the class who wanted to get into her pants, to the point that he would say, "Mr. Karp? I have to admit that I also feel nothing. I was just going along with the rest of the class." There is the possiblity that all the boys in her class were gay, but I doubt it. Once this person admitted the lie, others would certainly be encouraged to chime in. But again, this is all speculation.

So I don't know if I could have become a method actor under Dr. R's instruction. I certainly couldn't do it under Ms. C, whom I had for Beginning Acting, and while Ms. F had some grasp of the concept, I don't think she was very good at actually teaching it. I guess I would have also had to "fake" being a method actor. I just never learned how.

ENMU Theatre Department, Part 6: The Bad

Yesterday, I covered several positive aspects to the Theatre Department at Eastern New Mexico University that I and most other students didn't really avail ourselves to. But there were a few things that the department could have brought under control. This is a list of my actual grievances.

1. There were too many people trying to be the big fish

As I mentioned before with Bid and Toilethead, these were two students who already had the skills needed to make livings as actors and they knew it. But they still came to our little college because they were aware that they wouldn't be facing much competition from the other students who came from their piddly little high school drama departments. There was also a guy who came in the same year as them who went to the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. The thing about this guy is that he was there the year "Fame" came out. He should have been able to parlay that into a big career, but he decided he wanted to stick a few things on his resume. He also got in the way of me getting a larger role in "Anything Goes," but I'll go into more detail about that later in this article. Now, I didn't have a problem if someone worked their way to being the big fish. A junior student I knew my freshman year got off on the wrong foot when he was a freshman. He got called back to audition for the first production of the year, but he wasn't aware the callbacks were on Saturday and he figured the Theatre building was closed that day. He didn't get cast. During his junior year, he got cast in the larger roles in all four mainstage productions. His senior year, he played Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the title role in "The Elephant Man." That's the way you're supposed to become the big fish. You grow your way into that role. You don't try to take over by just plopping yourself in the middle of the pond.

2. There were not enough acting classes

This was one of the biggest gripes of the students. There were only three actual acting classes: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. The Advanced class was either never offered or canceled before registration. By the time I was able to take it (my senior year), it was not being taught by Dr. R. He let Ms. F teach it. (He also had her teach the Intermediate class the previous semester.) While I did sign up for it, I had to drop it because I was working full time at a radio station. If Dr. R had been teaching it, I would have stayed in the class. (But I still probably would have wound up with Ms. F teaching the class because that was the same semester Dr. R had his heart attack.) Because there were only three classes, those of us who did not get Dr. R in Beginning were WAY behind the other students in terms of improving our artistry. A few extra levels of acting classes would have gotten us all up to speed before we graduated. There were some performance-enhancing classes like Stage Combat, Literary Interpretation, Beginning and Advanced Directing and Production Techniques, but not a lot of focus on acting. Mr. H once went on a rant regarding the complaints about the lack of acting classes. "IF YOU WANT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL ACTOR, YOU DON'T NEED TO BE HERE! THERE ARE PEOPLE IN L.A. AND NEW YORK RIGHT NOW WHO ARE AHEAD OF YOU! WE ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU TO BE ABLE TO SUPPORT YOURSELVES ONCE YOU'RE OUT OF HERE!" They were very accurate words, but he shouted them so loudly, no one wanted to listen.

3. Some of the students in the Dance Department were twerps

The Dance Department was a subsidiary of the Theatre Department, and during the time I was there, it was not offered as a major. Theatre students were invited to take the Dance classes because we did musicals every year. But this brought on a whole new level of ridicule. "Oh, I can dance. That means I'm a better actor than you." No, it doesn't. It just means that you're going to get cast more often as a dancer. I was very uncoordinated. Taking dance classes would not have made me more coordinated. I would have just always been out of step. If you've ever seen the opening sequence from "All that Jazz" with the dance auditions, there's one guy who clearly doesn't belong as he's constantly trying to keep up. That would have been me. Because of that superiority attitude, I had no inclination of getting that inserted into my brain.

4. The Theatre Department should have put an "eligibility" system in place

The period of time in which I started college was on the cusp of when it was becoming more common for students to take more than four years to complete their degree plans. In the sports departments, there is something called "eligibility" in which students are only allowed to play on a collegiate level for four years. If they stick around another year, they are not eligible to play on the teams. The lack of this concept in the Theatre Department created a problem when I was a senior and I was competing against other students who should have graduated the year before. In "Anything Goes," I was beaten out for the role of Moonface Martin by the guy who went to the High School of the Performing Arts. The issue was that he was black and the student cast to play his girlfriend was also black. She was also in her fifth year in the department.(Our Theatre Department had a few issues with portraying interracial relationships on stage to the point that in the summer 1984 production of "The Boyfriend," Bid and this same girl were the romantic leads, but both of them had white parents.) If he had gone out into the real world after four years, I would have gotten that role. Even worse that that even though that guy was in my college graduating class, he came back the next year and got cast as the Pharoah in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." That put him in his SIXTH year. And even though he was a graduate student, eligibility should have been put into effect for him. The real puzzling thing is that Dr. R actually pushed away a student who was a graduating senior when I was a freshman. Why didn't he do that to anyone else? (I will go into more details about that student, whose name is Sanz, on Thursday.)

5. The "Rehearsal and Production" class was really slave labor

I mentioned the Rehearsal and Performance class that was newly available my senior year. With that, students were allowed to get college credit for being in the mainstage productions. However, in the three years prior, there was a class called "Rehearsal and Production." All the Theatre majors were required to take five sessions of the class over four years. Rehearsal and Production was originally set up like Rehearsal and Performance as a means of getting college credit for productions. However, by the time I got to college, it had evolved into everyone having to show up a few hours every week to help build the sets and do other technical aspects for the productions. While the professors would never fully explain how the class transformed, I have a good idea how it happened:

First, you had a student who registered for the course, but did not get cast in either of the mainstage productions that semester. He was in a quandry about how he was going to get a grade as the drop/add period had closed. The Technical Director stepped in and said, "No problem. We'll have him come in and work on the sets and I'll be able to give him a grade." So that student starts doing a lot of work on the sets, but he notices that a few of the people in the production don't have any lines are still getting credit without having to work as hard. He complains and the Theatre faculty determines that they will also have to come and work on the sets. The people with no lines see a few people with only one line not really doing anything productive and the parameters are changed again. Then it moves up to the minor roles and the lead roles. Everyone is required to work on the sets. I can guarantee this all happened over the course of one year, if not the same semester.

So when they implemented "Rehearsal and Performance," they did not get rid of the slave labor. They changed that class to "Technical Production" and students were still required to take it over five semesters. The students complained that this was not what they wanted, but as usual, they didn't get their way.

So while there were other issues that kept me from having a successful collegiate experience in the Theatre Department, these were the main things that someone could have done something about. Usually, if action were taken, it almost always came up short of our expectations.

Tomorrow, I'll go into detail about a specific complaint that doesn't just pertain to ENMU.

ENMU Theatre Department, Part 5: The Good

Last week, I did a summary of my four years of involvement with Eastern New Mexico University's Theatre program. As I previously did with my Radio/TV experience, I will now offer the more positive aspects of the department as a means of explaining how I did not fully comprehend the tools that I was being given during college that would have helped actually have a career in the theatrical industry.

I realize now that the point of getting the degree was not to become a better actor, but to become a well-equipped member of a theatrical organization. If you do more than act, that is, if you are able to do lighting design, costume design, set design, set construction and have an understanding of theatrical history, you become more valuable as a member of the team. I can recall Dr. R, Dr. W and Mr. H telling us time and time again that we were not going to become very well-known as actors. When a group of actors was auditioning for the Southwest Theatre Conference, Dr. R was so disappointed with what the actors were giving him, he went into this rant that they all needed to learn how to really audition, because when they got in the real world, they would be auditioning so much, they would start thinking that "auditioning IS acting." Dr. R also encouraged us to take some basic business classes because Theatre is a business. If you know the basics about business, you become even more valuable to an organization. If you have these skills, you should always be able to get work in the larger metropolitan areas.

The department's main asset was Dr. R. Dr. R was able to make our young minds see Theatre in a whole different light. He encouraged us to think outside the lines that were written on the page. He inspired us to become better performers and technicians. I once heard Toilethead tell someone, "Yeah, Dr. R's actually too good for this school, but don't ever tell him that because he'll want to leave." Dr W was also an excellent professor and made the theatre history classes very lively, but it didn't really seem like much of a challenge to impress him.

A somewhat positive aspect of the department was that none of the professors would ever tell anyone that they couldn't act. Dr. R and Dr. W would say something like, "You're not giving me what I want," or "You're just doing plastic acting." But never, "You are not an actor. Get off of my stage!" I guess the thinking was that if they ever told anyone that, that person would go on to win an Oscar, a Tony or an Emmy and the acceptance speech would be something like, "The professors at Eastern New Mexico University told me I couldn't act. IN YOUR FACE!" Something like that would permanently damage the reputation of the department, so they would be as diplomatic as possible. Although, I do remember one time when Dr. R dicated his rehearsal notes into a tape recorder and criticized an actor's performance by saying, "You have the emotional capacity of a fish!" Dr. R apologized for the remark and said that when he writes the notes, he's more able to determine whether or not they be read.

I have to admit that the Scenic Design class actually helped me out a little later in life. In that class, I had learned to account for the width of any wood that would be used in building the sets. At one job (not theatrical), a co-worker and I were told by the boss, "Here's the wood, here's the hand saw, the hammer and the nails. Make shelves." With my knowledge of how to account for the width of the planks, we made really good shelves and impressed the boss, who was actually expecting a cruddy job from us.

So they did warn us time what to expect in our goals to become artists. I think the main issue was that ENMU's most famous graduate was Ronny Cox. Everybody thought they could be the next Ronny Cox. That didn't happen to anyone.

And for good reason. I'll write about that in tomorrow's post.

ENMU Theatre Department, Part 4: Senior Year

So this would be my final year to accomplish anything of note before going off into the real world. I had the same high expectations that I had when I was a senior in high school and I wound up with the same results: Utter disappointment and there wasn't a darn thing I could do about it.

One thing that was different for the department this year was that they implemented the Rehearsal and Performance class, which would allow students to get credit for being in the productions. In order for students to know if they were going to get credit, they would have to be cast first. This meant that the two mainstage shows would have to be cast at the beginning of the semester. The two shows we were doing were "Wait Until Dark," directed by Dr. W and "The Beaux' Stratagem," directed by Dr. R. As it turned out, the initial casts of the two shows did not share actors.

I was the only actual senior present at the cattle call. (Chud was still at his summer internship.) Dr. R put me in charge of having those who were auditioning sign in. This was a good opportunity to meet the new people. Some were freshmen and some were juniors who had come from community college. Everyone was required to perform a monologue for the directors. No one else was permitted to sit in the auditorium. I was able to peek in from time to time because I was the guy in charge and I had to see when the actor was finished before sending in the next one. None of the new people did really terrible during their auditions. That worried me.

Both directors posted their callbacks. I did not make the callback for "Dark," but I was on the list for "Stratagem." The weird thing is that I don't remember what happened during the callback. I did get cast as Hounslow, but my role only had two lines. They were actually one and a half lines, because I had to speak a line in unison with the peer character Bagshot. Bagshot was played by a freshman. Again, my character did not appear until Act Two.

However, one challenging thing about the role is that it involved me and Bagshot to get into a swordfight with the two main characters. When we started practicing the combat techniques for the scene, Dr. R told me that if he had been aware that my character was going to do swordfighting, he wouldn't have cast me. That stunned me. I felt so unworthy as an actor at that point. As it turned out, I was able to perform the swordfighting very well and Dr. R never complained.

Early in the rehearsals, I noticed that there was a non-speaking role that had not been cast. The character was supposed to move some luggage around during the first act. I started trying to fill in that slot when the scene was being rehearsed. I had hoped that Dr. R was going to have me do that role. But he never asked me and I just figured he wasn't going to utilize that character. But when we started rehearsing the entire show, I noticed that the actor playing Bagshot was playing that part. I now felt completely worthless and that I had just wasted my college education. And the thing that really got me is that, this time, I had made efforts to get that part by putting myself in there during rehearsals, like I should have done during "Mother Courage" the year before.

I just sat there and contemplated all the work that I had put into the department during the last three years. I realized that no one respected my abilities as an artist. I was almost never asked to be a part of directing projects or senior recitals. But everyone wanted me to do the tech on their stuff. I truly felt like a loser, and I couldn't do anything to change it.

I was so frustrated that when I was filling out my bio for the show, I wrote, "MY INVOLVEMENT IN THIS DEPARTMENT FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS HAS BEEN COMPLETELY WASTED!" I was actually expecting someone to come up and talk to me about that, but no one ever did. They really didn't care how I felt.

For the Evening of One Acts that year, we presented "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You" and "The Actor's Nightmare." They were directed by the dance instructor and I was cast as Henry in the second play. I did a bit as Horatio in "Hamlet" during the play. However, the last line I still had to memorize was this short speech. I had the line cut out on a piece of paper and pulled it out during rehearsal. The director thought it looked so funny that she had me do that in the performance. I really didn't want to do that because it made me look like I was unable to learn my lines, but I had to go along with it.

For the spring semester, we did the musical "Anything Goes," directed by Dr. R and an adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland," directed by Ms. F. Again, we auditioned for both directors. I got called back for "Anything Goes." We did readings from the script. I already knew I was not getting any of the lead roles. However, Dr. R had me read for the role of Moonface Martin. As it turned out, he didn't ask anyone else to read for that part. Other actors had to request to read that scene. I actually felt pretty good about that. Unfortunately, I did not get cast in that part. I was assigned to be the Steward. I was somewhat let down, but when I got the script, I noticed I had 35 lines! This was my largest role since "Deathtrap!"

And then I was also cast in "Alice." (I guess Ms. F didn't hold anything against me from "Earnest" the year before.) Ms. F only actually cast one role, the part of Alice. The other members would be playing other various roles and she would determine who would play what throughout the rehearsal process. This was discussed during our first get together. It wasn't an actual rehearsal or readthrough. She just wanted to meet with the cast before the actual rehearsals started after "Anything Goes" was finished.

This all took place during the first couple of weeks of the semester. During that time, the Program Director at the radio station I was working at quit and I was asked to work the overnight shift full time. I immediately pulled out of a bunch of classes I was taking and kept only the ones needed for my degree plan. I went to Ms. F and told her I needed to withdraw from the "Alice" cast. Since I still had my recital to perform, I knew I couldn't spend very much time on the production. She understood. I felt bad about it, but I did stay with "Anything Goes."

And quitting "Alice" turned out to be a good thing. When I watched a dress rehearsal, it came out like a disorganized mess. If it was just Alice and one other character on the stage, it was really enjoyable. But when the entire ensemble was present, everybody acted all at once like they were trying to steal the show. I'd also heard about some actual physical abuse that took place during rehearsals, and they were planned to look like accidents. I was glad I ended my college mainstage experience with "Anything Goes."

So the last actual thing to do was my recital. I've mentioned earlier that Chud and I combined our recitals and would alternate pieces with us doing a couple of segments together. But there was a strange occurence that happened. Chud and I needed to discuss the recital with Dr. R one day. We went up to him in his office. He GROWLED at us that we needed to make an appointment and that he didn't have any time that day. It's scary when Dr. R growls. We scheduled a slot for the next day. Later that night, Chud came to my dorm room and told me that Dr. R had a heart attack and he had to drive him to the hospital. Chud went on to say that when we had seen him earlier that day, he was experiencing the heart attack right then and there and was trying to ignore it.

Dr. R did not do any more teaching for the rest of the semester. The next time we saw him was at our recital. We were both glad to see him there. He said there was no way he was going to miss it. I got to meet with both Dr. R and Dr. W separately for a post mortem of the recital. The funny thing was that they each liked different parts of the recital. Chud and I had done this skit that was a put-down of some of the students in the Theatre Department. Dr. W thought it was clever. Dr. R disliked it because he thought it was mean. As for the final scene Chud and I did from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Dr. R said it was the closest to real acting he had ever seen me do. (I'm not certain if that was a real compliment.) Dr. W wasn't very impressed with it.

Any time I look back at my college theatre experience and start feeling bitter, I have to remember that there was someone who actually got it worse than me. You may remember me mentioning the black girl I had approached to be my scene partner during the first audition my freshman year. Her artistry was actually well-respected by the other students. But for whatever reason, she was rarely ever cast in Dr. R's and Dr. W's productions. Her sophomore year, she was cast in "Blithe Spirit," but that was directed by Mr. H. She was cast the next year as a fairy in "Midsummer Night's Dream" and a dancer in "The King and I." The only mainstage production she did her senior year was the Dance Department's production of "A Soldier's Tale." I remember when she was talking about people griping about being in "Mother Courage." She said, "I wasn't even cast in that! Do you know how much I wanted to be in that show and you're complaining about it?"

She was cast in the Evening of One Acts that year, doing the role of the Oscar-nominated actress from "California Suite." Later, Dr. W remarked on how good her performance was. He said, "I really wish we had done more with her." But I have a feeling he never said that about me.

I felt very empty at the end of college and had no idea how real life was going to be any kind of improvement. I did manage to find a few of my niches and capitalize on them. Looking back, I see that I had no real direction in college. When I wrote my article about "Things I Wish I'd Known before Starting College," I could have added, "If you lack any actual direction in college, that flaw will likely follow you throughout your life." That's true, but I've found that not having a solid sense of where I need to be all the time allowed me to improvise when it was needed.

But I guess I should be thankful for how it prepared me for disappointment later on in life. I can take some solace knowing that all those people who were given more favor in the Theatre Department were probably shocked at how much rejection they would face when they went out into the real world. I know it's true in one case and I will write about her later.

ENMU Theatre Department, Part 3: Junior Year

After my sophomore year turned out better than expected in the Theatre Department at Eastern New Mexico University, I hoped that would mean more involvement in getting cast in the productions. I especially thought this was possible because a lot of the students who came in my freshman year were no longer around to stand in my way.

The first production was "Charley's Aunt." Dr. W directed it. For the first time ever, I got called back for a show he was directing. I thought my chances of being cast were really good. But I didn't make the cut. I didn't think much of it at the time as there were still three other shows I could get cast in. I got to design the lights for the show.

Next up was "Mother Courage and Her Children," directed by Dr. R. This was an epic show with a huge cast. I was going to play one of the soldiers. My character was supposedly in a position of command, but I only had ten lines and appeared in only two scenes, but it was still good to be in the cast. At the read-through, we came upon my first scene. Dr. R announced that he had cut the scene. I thought, "No! That's half my lines!" AND THERE WERE NO OTHER SCENES THAT WERE CUT! As a result, my character only appeared at the beginning of the second act and I was killed offstage after saying my lines. I really felt like I was being punished for some reason. (I did get to appear in the rest of the show as a soldier for those scenes in which we needed more military bodies on the stage, but I didn't have any additional lines.)

I could have gotten a larger role if I'd known to step up. The actor playing Mother Courage's oldest son got sick and missed rehearsals. One of the freshmen actors who played a non-speaking soldier filled in while we were waiting for him to get better. When it became apparent that the original actor was not coming back, they just let the new guy keep the part for the performances. If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have started reading those lines because he was not in that scene I was in. That freshman actor would have just gotten my role.

Then we had the Evening of One Acts. I was cast in a play directed by the same guy who had directed "Asylum" the year before. There were also a lot of cast members from that play in this one. It was a play written by one of the students that was based on the game "Clue." I said in my previous post that "Asylum" was the most perfect performance I had ever been a part of. This presentation was the exact opposite. Actors were dropping lines and forgetting the blocking. Props were constantly out of place. At one point, an actor forgot to change into this jacket that was central to the plot and someone had to throw it at him from offstage. He put it on while saying his lines. And just when we thought it was over, where an actor said, "I want to be Miss Scarlett," the stage lights did not go down. We were just stuck up there. The actor with the last line said, "Let's play!" and we all started putting pieces on the game board and mumbled amongst ourselves while waiting for the lights to go down, which they eventually did. However, we all felt like we were going to be stuck ad-libbing on that stage forever. This was truly an actor's nightmare.

The spring semester brought our musical for the season, "HMS Pinafore," directed by Dr. R. I knew that the material called for people who could really sing. We wound up getting most of the cast from the music department. I did get to be in the choir, which had actual lines to say in unison. However, everybody kept forgetting to come in on cue, so I was often the only person reciting the lines. In addressing the cast, Dr. R was getting fed up with the blown cues and said, "I feel like just giving all the lines to Fayd and having him say, 'What they're supposed to say is...'"

This was not planned, but the operetta had been the first production staged by ENMU 50 years earlier. We actually had some surviving members of that cast come to one of the performances. They still lived in the area. I don't know of anyone from our cast who will easily be able to get there when they mount the next production in 2035.

The final production was "The Importance of Being Earnest." Ms. C was originally supposed to direct this, and I was looking forward to it because I thought she would cast all of us who were in her classes. I saw it as REVENGE against the students who had Dr. R. However, her husband accepted a job at another university and they moved away. On top of that, it was just me and Chud left from our original freshman class. That wouldn't have been much of a revenge.

The other graduate student, Ms. F, was called upon to direct. I did not get cast. However, I did get to be the assistant director. The only problem I had with Ms. F as director is that her style consisted of having the cast learn their lines by paraphrasing the words in the script. This wouldn't have been a problem, but getting deeper into rehearsals, the cast only performed the lines that they paraphrased and not the lines that were cleverly written by Oscar Wilde. Once during rehearsal notes, I asked Ms. F if I could say a few words, and I went into this rant about how everybody needed to say their lines correctly. I was really fed up with it. I said that the words in the script were perfect and no one in the cast was able to come anywhere near speaking that well. It didn't go over very well, not even with the director.

I stayed for the summer session. We did two productions that summer: "Carnival" and "Chapter Two." Auditions were held for both plays at the same time. Dr. W was directing "Carnival" and would have first crack at the cast. Our new dance instructor directed "Chapter Two." After we read a few scenes, Dr. W started talking about this one character named Dr. Glass, who could best be described as a nerdy wimp. While he was going on about him, I realized this was the role I was going to be cast in. He called me up first to read for the part. This meant I was not being considered for any of the lead roles. Come to find out, everyone else at the audition had the same thoughts about me playing Dr. Glass.

My experience playing that part will be the subject of a blog post that will be coming up way, way in the future. I will only tell you now that it involved handling live animals on stage. It deserves an article all to itself.

As it was, junior year was a severe letdown for me, but it still did not prepare me for what I would go through my senior year.