As all of you readers may know I'm attending college again (new reader? please check out the blog entry "Third-First Day of School"). We were given the task of impromptu speeches to do in my oral comm class, as an exercise of readiness and swiftness. As I'm sure you've guessed I go up in front of the class, dazzled everyone away with my charm and poise and return to my seat to the applause I well deserved. I owned that speech--and funny thing is, I honestly don't remember anything I said, due to my nerves. Good for me, Steven Shyne.
Other students face the gambit but their nerves get the best of them and they suffer through the whole speech. Well, another student approaches the front of the class and gave his impromptu speech on "if he were a rockstar" or something nutty like that. This kid is still in high school and attending City College at night to get a jump start on his college career. Anyway, he blows my speech out of the water and receives more whistling and clapping than I thought possible from a improv college speech class audience. He now is forever known as "Rockstar" due to the nature of his speech.
The next day he walks into class and everyone student, as well as the instructor, greets him as "Rockstar." He is smug with victory and basks in his impromptu glory. However I have an ace up my sleeve--it's called "current event speech." The assignment we previously had was an impromptu speech--a spilling of words off the cuff. Today we are exercising a more decided and planned approach to public speaking. I've been practicing and know my topic like the back of my hand. I waltz to the front of the room, deliver a mind-blowing account on China's inevitable acquisition of power and (after q+a) return to my chair satisfied and victorious. Rockstar--I'm sure--is shaking in his dirty little shoes at this point. Defeat is racing towards him like an impregnable, bony greyhound rounding the corner of it's last lap. He readies himself, presents his current event and to my delicious prediction, fails to meet such standards as the ones I set. He had some HPV bleeding-heart story and was unable to capture it's severity. He returns to his chair sulkily and to a splatter of hand clapping--I dare not even say applause.
He is completely unaware of our silent quarrel; he knows nothing of my wishes toward his constant defeat. You got me the first time around, but all I can say now is "in your face, Rockstar!"
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Weekend Number 6
Firstly I'd like to explain the title of this entry: I've decided that weekends can be a large contribution to the blog as they are a great source of activity, inspiration, and all around bad taste. Therefore I'll be categorizing weekends by it's sequential number (out of 52 weekends in a year). Last weekend was the 6th weekend of 2007--and what a weekend it was.
My roommate's birthday is actually today, but Saturday night we had a small gathering of people over at the apartment--some of Mike's coworkers, some relatives, but mostly close friends of his (and some of mine). Anyway, Mike's boyfriend David lives in Cleavland, Ohio (by his own masochistic choice) but thankfully is moving out here in a few weeks (and not soon enough, right Mike?). So the party went off without a hitch--I presume--as I was only there for the very beginning and the very end.
John (my lovely bf) and I had tickets to the symphony. How high-brow of us, I know. Actually John's a nerd in disguise and what we really had were tickets to John Williams, movie score and composer extraordinaire, direct the symphony, to such riveting classics as "The Indiana Jones Theme" and heart-renchers like "The Jaws Theme." Worry not, I wasn't in complete boredom. It was actually fun. I had a really great time--it was pretty much a combination of a Star Wars convention and a Four Seasons. There was this one guy I can remember who I'm guessing was killed off in his Dungeons & Dragons marathon or he wouldn't have been able to make it to the concert. Damn hippie. He had long, long coarse black hair, like a buffalo; a big dark suit jacket from his dad's closet (and this gentleman must have been in his late 30s; and jean cut-off shorts which, may I ask, do they still even make such a thing? Damn hippie indeed.
My bitching aside, John Williams really was amazing; he did a couple theme song I would actually know, like three Star Wars songs (bum-bum-bum bom be-bum bom be-bum) and (ba-buh ba, ba-ba-ba beee ba). What really blew me away was when he did the theme to Harry Potter and it was AMAZING. truly amazing. worth every cent I didn't spend. He also did a song from Memoires of a Geisha and that was fantastic. The nerd-audience could have cared less but I was a fat kid with cake for that song, and it was really really great.
Anyway, so then we go back to the party, grab a cocktail and start shooting the shit. Fun. a lot of people had left by this point and it was just the hardcore friends in for the long hall. It was awesome. (you hear that adam? Awesome.) So we were drinking and all of a sudden we chose to go out. Where to go, where to go... Well, as drunk as we were and as crazy as we needed to be we went to Montage. Let's see, how do I describe Montage to those in the dark. Umm... on one side it's a very large, very cool nightclub. It's three stories, with several different rooms that play different genres of music, and the top floor is an open patio and a sushi bar that's open all hours of the night. And on the other hand when I say all hours of the night, I mean all hours of the morning. I leave around two am typically, but that's because I don't do crack and can't stay up all night long. excuse me, morning long. I think it closes around 5am. No thank you. The gays love their dance music and they just want to party. Good for them, I'll keep my heart lub-dubbing the pace it's supposed to--Oh and no judgement--unless you're an obvious cooky boot and your dilated eyes about to spring out from their sockets while you're waving your glow sticks in the air. Silly gays.
So that was nice. we drank, danced, conversed, made jokes about the crazies and went home. All in all a 9.5 out of 10. Thank you weekend number 6. You wont be soon forgotten.
My roommate's birthday is actually today, but Saturday night we had a small gathering of people over at the apartment--some of Mike's coworkers, some relatives, but mostly close friends of his (and some of mine). Anyway, Mike's boyfriend David lives in Cleavland, Ohio (by his own masochistic choice) but thankfully is moving out here in a few weeks (and not soon enough, right Mike?). So the party went off without a hitch--I presume--as I was only there for the very beginning and the very end.
John (my lovely bf) and I had tickets to the symphony. How high-brow of us, I know. Actually John's a nerd in disguise and what we really had were tickets to John Williams, movie score and composer extraordinaire, direct the symphony, to such riveting classics as "The Indiana Jones Theme" and heart-renchers like "The Jaws Theme." Worry not, I wasn't in complete boredom. It was actually fun. I had a really great time--it was pretty much a combination of a Star Wars convention and a Four Seasons. There was this one guy I can remember who I'm guessing was killed off in his Dungeons & Dragons marathon or he wouldn't have been able to make it to the concert. Damn hippie. He had long, long coarse black hair, like a buffalo; a big dark suit jacket from his dad's closet (and this gentleman must have been in his late 30s; and jean cut-off shorts which, may I ask, do they still even make such a thing? Damn hippie indeed.
My bitching aside, John Williams really was amazing; he did a couple theme song I would actually know, like three Star Wars songs (bum-bum-bum bom be-bum bom be-bum) and (ba-buh ba, ba-ba-ba beee ba). What really blew me away was when he did the theme to Harry Potter and it was AMAZING. truly amazing. worth every cent I didn't spend. He also did a song from Memoires of a Geisha and that was fantastic. The nerd-audience could have cared less but I was a fat kid with cake for that song, and it was really really great.
Anyway, so then we go back to the party, grab a cocktail and start shooting the shit. Fun. a lot of people had left by this point and it was just the hardcore friends in for the long hall. It was awesome. (you hear that adam? Awesome.) So we were drinking and all of a sudden we chose to go out. Where to go, where to go... Well, as drunk as we were and as crazy as we needed to be we went to Montage. Let's see, how do I describe Montage to those in the dark. Umm... on one side it's a very large, very cool nightclub. It's three stories, with several different rooms that play different genres of music, and the top floor is an open patio and a sushi bar that's open all hours of the night. And on the other hand when I say all hours of the night, I mean all hours of the morning. I leave around two am typically, but that's because I don't do crack and can't stay up all night long. excuse me, morning long. I think it closes around 5am. No thank you. The gays love their dance music and they just want to party. Good for them, I'll keep my heart lub-dubbing the pace it's supposed to--Oh and no judgement--unless you're an obvious cooky boot and your dilated eyes about to spring out from their sockets while you're waving your glow sticks in the air. Silly gays.
So that was nice. we drank, danced, conversed, made jokes about the crazies and went home. All in all a 9.5 out of 10. Thank you weekend number 6. You wont be soon forgotten.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
The Better You Do...
Some of you know what I do for work, other may not have the foggiest. I'll just break it down for ya'll anyway:
I work for a company called TBA Global Events, LLC. It's not just an "event" company, it's considered a Business Communications and Connective Marketing company (so, well, okay that means event company still). Anyway, the company as a whole has produced such events (on their client's behalf) as the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the Lance Armstrong Tour of Hope, and the Ben & Jerry's marketing campaign of "Random Acts of Cone-ness" (where street-marketing teams would go into offices or places of public service (fire departments, police stations, hospitals) and they would give out Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone products). We also did the open ceremonies for the Olympics in Italy and many other cool corporate events all around the nation and the world.
The piece of the pie that I work in is called "Destination Services" where once a Meeting Planner has planned their meetings and booked a hotel room block and reserved hotel ballroom space and contracted with a production agency (we do this too) to execute the meeting (A/V, speakers, staging, branded materials, etc.)--once they do all that they call a DMC (Destination Management Company) to produce all the other services and components AROUND the meeting such as tours, activities, airport coordination (arrivals/departures), receptions, award ceremonies, and a butt-load of other fun stuff. Pretty much we'll never say no. Holiday parties? sure. Trasnfering people A-to-B? Bring it on. Beach parties (how original)? Do it all the time.
Continuing on: yesterday I wrote a proposal for a small communications company, you may not have heard of them, AT&T, for their convention in 2008. They are going to have 4 waves of people over a course of a few days and need a large event space for this group. When I say (and by "say", I mean "type") "waves" of people, I mean 1,100 people come in all at once and are here for a short time, then the same day they leave, 500 people come in replacing them. When those people leave another group (the same day) of 435 replaces them, and when they leave the last group of 200 comes in and replaces those people. It will probably be 3 days each wave, totalling in 12 days straight of non-stop madness. A kind of madness a Meeting Planner (or a me) would love to witness (or make a commission on). So we had to find several options of event spaces that could work for 1,100 people all the way scaling down to 200 (and the 2 other tiers in between) PLUS 10 tours/activity options for this group. Think that's enough? No. We had to propose--not only San Diego--by Las Vegas, San Francisco and Phoenix as well. It was the largest proposal I've ever seen this office do and I got to be a part of it. Final product was 90-some pages in length, and it was down-right amazing and I'm sure you are all dying of boredom but I think it's freaking awesome.
So that's what I do all day long, I plan parties and make up tours and so on. It's fun and great and good for me but every job has it's dark side and future blogs I'm sure will reveal the darker side of party planners--mwah-ha-ha-ha!! (that's a cackle--fyi.) Thanks for reading--I leave you with a saying that I have in my cubicle which pretty much sums up the corporate world (and Adam Nordost): "Remember: The Better You Do, The More They Expect."
I work for a company called TBA Global Events, LLC. It's not just an "event" company, it's considered a Business Communications and Connective Marketing company (so, well, okay that means event company still). Anyway, the company as a whole has produced such events (on their client's behalf) as the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the Lance Armstrong Tour of Hope, and the Ben & Jerry's marketing campaign of "Random Acts of Cone-ness" (where street-marketing teams would go into offices or places of public service (fire departments, police stations, hospitals) and they would give out Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone products). We also did the open ceremonies for the Olympics in Italy and many other cool corporate events all around the nation and the world.
The piece of the pie that I work in is called "Destination Services" where once a Meeting Planner has planned their meetings and booked a hotel room block and reserved hotel ballroom space and contracted with a production agency (we do this too) to execute the meeting (A/V, speakers, staging, branded materials, etc.)--once they do all that they call a DMC (Destination Management Company) to produce all the other services and components AROUND the meeting such as tours, activities, airport coordination (arrivals/departures), receptions, award ceremonies, and a butt-load of other fun stuff. Pretty much we'll never say no. Holiday parties? sure. Trasnfering people A-to-B? Bring it on. Beach parties (how original)? Do it all the time.
Continuing on: yesterday I wrote a proposal for a small communications company, you may not have heard of them, AT&T, for their convention in 2008. They are going to have 4 waves of people over a course of a few days and need a large event space for this group. When I say (and by "say", I mean "type") "waves" of people, I mean 1,100 people come in all at once and are here for a short time, then the same day they leave, 500 people come in replacing them. When those people leave another group (the same day) of 435 replaces them, and when they leave the last group of 200 comes in and replaces those people. It will probably be 3 days each wave, totalling in 12 days straight of non-stop madness. A kind of madness a Meeting Planner (or a me) would love to witness (or make a commission on). So we had to find several options of event spaces that could work for 1,100 people all the way scaling down to 200 (and the 2 other tiers in between) PLUS 10 tours/activity options for this group. Think that's enough? No. We had to propose--not only San Diego--by Las Vegas, San Francisco and Phoenix as well. It was the largest proposal I've ever seen this office do and I got to be a part of it. Final product was 90-some pages in length, and it was down-right amazing and I'm sure you are all dying of boredom but I think it's freaking awesome.
So that's what I do all day long, I plan parties and make up tours and so on. It's fun and great and good for me but every job has it's dark side and future blogs I'm sure will reveal the darker side of party planners--mwah-ha-ha-ha!! (that's a cackle--fyi.) Thanks for reading--I leave you with a saying that I have in my cubicle which pretty much sums up the corporate world (and Adam Nordost): "Remember: The Better You Do, The More They Expect."
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Third First Day of School
Firstly, starting a blog was my New Years resolution and, well it's February 6th so not really a good start on a New Years resolution, but what the hell, better late than never.
This is my first blog you are reading. Ever. I thought I'd like to start a blog, not just to keep people in the loop of every intricately detailed inner workings of my psyche, but so I could hear myself talk--well not hear, but read; read myself talk. You know what I mean.
Okay, let's start things off right: I had a good day today; bad things happened, too, but it was a good day. Here's the good: Have you ever been thinking about someone and then they call? Have you ever had that happen 3 times in a day? Rachael Williams (from High School), Terri London (a client), and Jay White (a best friend). Crazy. Next a coworker gave me a coupon for a free sandwich--you may be thinking "who gives a shit" well, I do, thanks. I love sandwiches. I could most likely eat them every day for the rest of my life. I've dreamt of opening my own sandwich shop. Oohh... that's a good blog (later, Steven, later).
Let's get down to business with the bad--today was my third first day of school. (That's not the bad part just keep reading) It was my first day at San Diego City College, the third University system I'll be attending. I printed my schedule and showed up 5-minutes early and good for me and felt so prepared and then, all of a sudden, I couldn't find the classroom. So I'm running around and asking people left and right and finally I go to the Admissions office and ask them where my class is, "Oh, yeah, this is at ECC." "Okay, where's ECC?", "It's on Ocean View Boulevard." "Well, okay, where's that?" "Oh it's easy, just get on the 54, then the 805 then..." (Okay by this time I'm already thinking, "If someone says 'oh it's easy' and follows with a highway interchange, it ain't easy, bitch"). Needless to say I missed my class. I missed my third first day of class. So I feel like a booger for not like, finding out what campus the plugged this class into and--oh but let me just say this, I've heard from several sources that this place, this ECC, is like GHETTO, (for you Portlanders) it's like San Diego's Gresham. Nay, Washugal--except with more Mexicans and no Tanya Harting. Eww she's nasty.
And on that note... so that's my day people, I hope you enjoyed my blog about my third first day of school, you know I did. Anytime I can talk about myself endlessly and not feel guilty about it is a good thing for me. Until next time.
This is my first blog you are reading. Ever. I thought I'd like to start a blog, not just to keep people in the loop of every intricately detailed inner workings of my psyche, but so I could hear myself talk--well not hear, but read; read myself talk. You know what I mean.
Okay, let's start things off right: I had a good day today; bad things happened, too, but it was a good day. Here's the good: Have you ever been thinking about someone and then they call? Have you ever had that happen 3 times in a day? Rachael Williams (from High School), Terri London (a client), and Jay White (a best friend). Crazy. Next a coworker gave me a coupon for a free sandwich--you may be thinking "who gives a shit" well, I do, thanks. I love sandwiches. I could most likely eat them every day for the rest of my life. I've dreamt of opening my own sandwich shop. Oohh... that's a good blog (later, Steven, later).
Let's get down to business with the bad--today was my third first day of school. (That's not the bad part just keep reading) It was my first day at San Diego City College, the third University system I'll be attending. I printed my schedule and showed up 5-minutes early and good for me and felt so prepared and then, all of a sudden, I couldn't find the classroom. So I'm running around and asking people left and right and finally I go to the Admissions office and ask them where my class is, "Oh, yeah, this is at ECC." "Okay, where's ECC?", "It's on Ocean View Boulevard." "Well, okay, where's that?" "Oh it's easy, just get on the 54, then the 805 then..." (Okay by this time I'm already thinking, "If someone says 'oh it's easy' and follows with a highway interchange, it ain't easy, bitch"). Needless to say I missed my class. I missed my third first day of class. So I feel like a booger for not like, finding out what campus the plugged this class into and--oh but let me just say this, I've heard from several sources that this place, this ECC, is like GHETTO, (for you Portlanders) it's like San Diego's Gresham. Nay, Washugal--except with more Mexicans and no Tanya Harting. Eww she's nasty.
And on that note... so that's my day people, I hope you enjoyed my blog about my third first day of school, you know I did. Anytime I can talk about myself endlessly and not feel guilty about it is a good thing for me. Until next time.
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