A Crowning Achievement in Delinquency

as sad as it may sound, i was up till sunrise trying to get that poopy animation done and have no 2pm post for you. i could've written something before i slept, but it would've been extra ridiculous and likely incoherent.

instead, i thought i'd share with you something written by my friend greg. we've known each other since our teenage years and he recently sent me a story regarding those memories.

for any of you who have heard me mention throwing a formal dance in a literature class, this is greg's telling of the story. sit back and enjoy the chaos of being a fifteen year-old in the silicon valley.

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At first glance, few believe that this story is even true. However, I assure you that the Literature Ball, as described below, actually took place.

I had known Steven Wishnack since seventh grade, where we played on the C volleyball team. This sounds lamer than it is. The C team simply meant you had to be really short to qualify. We had many things in common, the foremost of which being the love of humor, and the willingness to take jokes or pranks further than most would.

A few months before the magical ball was held, Steven spent almost four weeks collecting spare pennies from people around school. When the total reached somewhere near fifteen dollars he took the change to the local Chinese supermarket and bought a live crab, claws and all. In the parking lot he took the purchase from person to person in an attempt to resell the sea-beast. Not surprisingly, a high school student dressed in a cheap suit was unable to find a buyer. Instead the crustacean was taken to the mall and stuck in the indoor fountain, where people toss pennies for good luck. Steven alerted the janitor and then sat back watching the poor man struggle with the fact that there was a live crab in the decorative fountain (poking it with the end of his broom didn’t really help). This was all filmed of course, and was a cult hit at the school.

In tenth grade the two of us shared a World Literature class together, a class that turned out to be the ideal situation for a hellacious amount of fun. On that first day of school we found a petite, very nervous teacher straight out of school. Indeed, if you saw her from behind you would have thought an overdressed junior high student had wondered in amongst the big kids. Usually, those who are short in stature are often fiery or loud by contrast. Miss Chien was neither fiery nor loud. Her quiet, reserved voice had a hard time making it across the classroom.

Poor Miss Chien; out of control underclassmen were something completely beyond her experience. The two of us didn’t seem to be phased by our own vocal awkwardness. We didn’t need permission to comment out loud, we didn’t even need our comments to be relevant or make sense; we just needed to get enjoyment out of the situation. That turned out to be bewildering for the rookie teacher. I guess in her mind there were no worthy deterrents to our madness, and as a result she did not even try. Often, we would just sit back and have conversations with our neighbors instead of listening to lessons. Sticking to the instructions of an assignment was not necessary at all. Once, I turned in a paper titled “What’s Up My Essay” which was preceded by the rough draft “My Essay Got Roughed Up.” Both incarnations were completely off topic.

You could get away with reading cliff-notes to the assigned books openly in class, and napping went undisturbed.

Sometimes I would take things further. Someone had been playing with Lego’s on a side table. Going with the first prank that came to my head, I secretly placed two Lego-men on the top ledge of the chalkboard, having sex. It’s what would have happened when the lone cowboy, after ages of wondering along, met the solo space explorer, with only his air tank for company. I needed a chair to place them there and, due to her extremely short stature, Miss Chien couldn’t even reach them while standing on a table.

Better yet, she couldn’t find anyone to take the men down, and they continued to defile the classroom for at least three more days. Many kids in other Ms. Chien classes saw that offensive use of children’s toys, and word soon got back to me. “Did you see the Lego-men having sex on top of the chalkboard?”

She didn’t always let things go, she did try to stop us once. Steven sat next to another friend of mine, Dennis, in the early days of the class. Each had known the other since kindergarten and had always been close. Their conversations were often loud, spattered with laughter that would bring the lesson to a screeching halt. In an attempt to regain her class – she split the two, sending each to a far corner of the room. The two never stopped talking. They simply made sure they were loud enough so the other could hear them from that far distance. I thought Miss Chien had finally had enough. She took the two outside to discuss how to resolve the problem. Her answer? Put them back next to each other so their conversation would be more private, and the class less disturbed.

Instead of resolving the problem, she had given us the green light.

I cannot stress how liberating it was to have a class like this. Lynbrook High School was as academically driven as public schools get. The sole purpose of each class was to cram as much information and work into you as possible. For the most part, the academic high standards stressed by the school were reinforced by the students. The atmosphere on campus was all about getting the good marks, and I believed that some of the kids were wholly incapable of having fun.

In that class I rarely sat in the same place for long. The best part, and perhaps this fact could explain our behavior, was the high proportion of pretty girls. I found out early that they found me more interesting then world literature. One of those pretty girls was Sarah Sparrow.

A few years back Sarah had underwent a massive growth spurt and towered above most of the sophomores at our unusually short school. She was a quiet girl, which initially gave me the impression that she was shy. The real Sarah was far from it. One night she was going over an account of a date she had. She was taken to the Military Ball, apparently a formal dance for military members. This means her date had to be at least 18 years old, compared to her age of 15. This differential broke the supposedly unbreakable dating age formula; in which you take the age of the older person, divide it by two, and then add seven (X÷2 +7, just to make it more complicated). I found this fact funny, and had to know more about it. As far as the date goes, there wasn’t much to tell, she found everything stuffy and a little boring – but it gave me an idea.

Mockingly jealous, or perhaps actually jealous, I proposed that she accompany me to the Literature Ball, the imitation of her Military Ball. I certainly wasn’t expecting an enthusiastic yes. There were many layers to this proposal, many of which were not flattering – in middle school she had a crush on me and I never let her forget it. Her reaction was better than I expected. Sarah’s anger laden refusal let me know that she understood many of the points behind this question. I quickly informed Steven of this.

Independent of my suggestion, Steven asked Sarah to accompany him to the Literature Ball. She was livid.

It became a daily event. Each of us would think of some over-elaborate way to ask Sarah to the newly created, fictional, Literature Ball. And each time she responded with a firm and vehement no. Eventually, in an attempt to spurn jealousy, we each asked different girls in the class to the ball, and had each found a date. The whole matter had come to a point. We could drop everything or . . .

Actually go through with the Literature Ball, a formal dance to be held during and in Miss Chien’s class – without her permission or prior knowledge. Even today I find the fact that we decided to go through with it hilarious. At the time, Steven and I both knew it was ridiculous but that wasn’t a deterrent – it was an incentive.

The day before the ball was to be held; we had to inform the rest of the class. Up to that point only a few were notified of the dance and the knowledge needed to be spread throughout the class.

“Ms. Chien you need to leave.”

“Huh!?!”

“We need to discuss something and you can’t be here for that.”

“But what about my lesson plan?” We shooed her out the door.

Many of our classmates had already gotten wind of the fact that some kind of crazy escapade was about to take place, but in order for full participation the details needed to be unveiled. I asked for everyone to wear their very best clothes, to bring some kind of food or drink, and to bring any bit of writing they would like to read out loud. The Literature Ball was on.

I felt that the most important part of this prank was the way we dressed. Steven and I collaborated for our outfits in this way: dress slacks (which I referred to as kick-me-in-the-pants), a nice belt, a long-sleeved dress shirt which was tucked in, and some sort of tie – mine was an olive green. Wearing overly fancy clothes to school that day was an enjoyable experience, which in and of itself made this entire ordeal worthwhile. I had no idea how varied the responses would be. They ranged from “Wow! You’re looking sexy,” to “Boys are so stupid!” to “What the hell is that?”

At lunch, right before class, we put on the crowning touch to our attire, a snazzy sports jacket. We then scrambled to find our dates and prepare for our grand entrance. A small parade of people had gathered in front of the classroom door. Many did dress up nicer than usual; even Sarah wore a nice dress.

Arms linked with our dates we came strolling into class right after the final bell, accompanied by some fancy music coming from a boom box someone was holding. Miss Chien never recovered control of the classroom that day; she simply sat at her corner desk with her face in her hands. We danced in the middle of the classroom, and socialized along the makeshift buffet table off to the side. Out of respect for our teacher (we weren’t entirely heartless,) we also sat and read poetry along with other snatches of literature, to offbeat tunes.

I like to think that this whole experience made Miss Chien a better teacher. From the start she had all of qualities necessary to make a very good English teacher, aside from crowd control. She eventually became the head of the speech and debate team, and an influential teacher in special endeavors. At the very least our actions helped her develop a firmer hand in dealing with disobedient students. In later classes, actions like ours actually received punishment; grade docking, principal reporting, and even parental notification – the third of which would have stopped Steven and I from even getting started.

Years later, my younger sister had Miss Chien as an advisory teacher. During role call on the first day, among the full names of normal students, my sister simply heard her first name called: Holly. A shadow passed over the teachers face as her fear driven eyes came in contact with the embarrassed expression of my sister. “I am not like my brother,” she exclaimed.

So, am I sorry? Stories of this kind usually come with some moral or personal revelation. I am not sorry. Oh I know – I’m a horrible person, so I’ll try some kind of personal defense. My actions were those of a hyper and exited high school sophomore, who took an opportunity to have an extraordinary amount of fun and establish an enjoyable memory that will last a lifetime. What else is life about really? Would I do it again today? Probably not. But how many of you have done something a bit crazy when you were younger? The fact that the Literature Ball will remain a story to tell forever makes it all worth it.

intoxicated poop segment: part ci

it didn't hit me that i was about to publish my one hundredth intoxicated poop segment when i posted guess poo? and that's mostly on part of my lack of roman numeral knowledge. but, for my one hundred and first segment-- and second segment in a row-- i bring you the very first animated intoxicated poop segment.

it's at the bottom, and you are welcome to just skip to it now.

this wasn't exactly a new year's resolution-- actually, that was to poop my pants at least once this year-- but i do plan to force myself to learn animation during my spare time. it's one of the few things i wrote about in my 20 years of being o.k. at a lot of stuff that i never actually tried. so here's me trying.

and, to be honest, i'm without the correct tools. everyone has suggested Flash, Onion Skin, iStop Motion, and plenty others-- but i'm doing this on a mixture of Illustrator and Final Cut Pro. generally i learn best with what i call the duct tape method-- or, in other words, the method which allows me to get started without any new supplies even if the new supplies will drastically save me time-- but i'll sort that part out later on.

in the mean time, leave me lots of comments and enjoy my second attempt at animation. it's mostly based on a true story.

sorry if my poop noises got any of you in trouble at work.

intoxicated poop segment: part c

i had always thought it would be amazing to remake monopoly expect base it off the streets of san francisco. there would be entire sides to the board that had "no parking" signs and the rent would practically do you under before you ever reached "go" again.

maybe everyone would hate it and no one would play it. but that's not a whole lot different than actual monopoly anyway.

recently, though, i stumbled across a much better version of a semi-popular board game.


shoot, the name alone makes me smile. guess poo? but knowing this was made by a professional artist, for his nephew's 9th birthday just makes me beam.

and i especially enjoy the fact he left the playing ages at 7-adult-- meaning adults can still enjoy a good game of poop-related detective work, too. part of me worried he would've changed it to something like ages 7-13.

now i'd like to see a goatse-esque version of operation.

Paging Al Gore

during the days of extensive marijuana-smoking and porch-dwelling, a few of us had read an article in which a man had declared ownership of the moon and most of the planets in our solar system.

it's articles like that one that kept weed-induced debates entertaining. there's also a good chance that the new moon-owner was high when he made his discovery-- it was too brilliant and overlooked to be done by a sober, straight-minded man.

anyway, he had realized that the only law regarding stellar objects was that no country could claim ownership. but this man was not a country. this man was a man. boom. now he owns the moon and sells lunar property to the likes of john travolta.

so, up came the question, "why don't we own the sun, then?"

"you can't own the sun," i explained, "that's different."

"but we thought you couldn't own the moon," wes responded, "how is it different?"

"i don't know," i admitted, "but i would think if it could be done the moon-man would've gotten that, too."

"maybe he just didn't want the sun."

and then we all realized an important fact: the sun is quite a bit of responsibility. no one should ever want to own that ridiculous star.

i don't remember where the conversation went from there, but we all agreed that we should never consider claiming ownership of the sun because it would open the doors to millions of lawsuits and would involve a certain kind of maintenance that none of us could be expected to uphold.

sorry about the solar flares, i'll get on that first thing monday morning!

while i was home for christmas, my uncle told me that someone has since declared themselves the owner of the sun. apparently, this lady had heard the same story about the man and the moon and decided there was nothing stopping her from the sun.


i looked it up, and it's true. the lady's name is angeles duran and she lives in spain. you can read more here. or you can just read my summarized version by not leaving this blog.

in ms. duran's mind, "it is time to start doing things the right way, if there is an idea for how to generate income and improve the economy and people's wellbeing, why not do it?

oh, you saint!

what she meant by that was that she plans to slap a fee on the sun-- anyone using it will have to start paying for it like they pay for the internet. half of the proceeds will go toward the spanish government and 20% to the nation's pension funds-- or a total of 70% of the sun-money to spain. with the remaining money, 10% will be put toward ambiguous research, 10% toward ending world hunger, and 10% to herself-- because why not?

firstly, i am not paying to use the sun and i would like to see you try and make me. if you can find a way to turn the sun off maybe i'll change my mind. but i would be curious how you might manage to turn off the sun only for those who didn't pay, while keeping it shining for those who did.

secondly, there is no legal way to own property that you've just stumbled across unless you can prove that you've been using it for a very long time. and she has. she stated that being alive for 49 years gives her nearly fifty years of relationship with the sun-- thus allowing her to declare it yours. however, she failed to realize that using her 49 years of life as a loophole has also inadvertently deemed all sun-related mishaps her responsibility so long as they happened in the last 49 years.

...i move that anyone with skin cancer, sun-burns, or car accidents related to glares, sues angeles duran.

she should've properly labeled the sun so that we were all aware of what it could do to our bodies and overall safety.

and in not-funny court-related news: Court OKs searches of cell phones without warrant

100 Feet of Awkward: Part One

on may 4, 2007, a particularly hot day, i set out to shoot my first black and white sixteen millimeter film. or short film-- 100 feet of it, actually.


the first day we went out happened after a lengthy debate with jim namba, of the caltrain's marketing team. his initial goal was to have me informed that all caltrain stations require $500/hr payment for any form of filming. and my goal was to be sure he was aware i had spent over $1,500 on caltrain rides and swore my life by the locomotive beast.

and that my crew would only consist of four people.

ultimately, he let me film for free on the grounds that i was in an out in an hour and really did come with no more than three others.

we all did manage to wake up and arrive on time, and i did manage to construct a pretty realistic booger out of some dried elmer's glue, but the camera refused to work.

there are some wonderfully magic moments in an amateur director's life and explaining to your favorite actress that she woke up at 7am to watch you make fake boogers and stare angrily at a camera is definitely not one of them.


the next day we shot with a different camera-- one that was made by russians and looked quite a bit more like a gun-- we did it without permission and we did it fast.

but because of some form of confusion, i never did receive the footage. my professor promised it never came before throwing threats at me in his tiny joe pesci voice. and i debated how i would explain to travis and kate that they'd acted in a disappearing film-- that they'd been awake in the rigid a.m.s for nothing more than artificial boogers and lies.

the following year, i took a class on color 16mm and shot a semi-decent short about relationships amongst mimes and when i went to grab the processed footage, i came across a brilliant truth: my black and white 16mm had shown up and had been waiting for me for over a year. and, more importantly, my joe pesci professor had been lying to me.

grades changed and shots were drank.

but i was never able to digitize that black and white 16mm film, never able to edit it, and never able to put it online.

till now. sort of.

i'm trying to teach myself animation-- and perhaps with the wrong tools-- so i figured it may be nice to finish that 16mm film one way or another. and, actually, in a lot of ways i think it plays better animated than it would've filmed.

so here it is: part one of five studies of awkward moments.

and you will notice that travis, kate, and my friend ben still received credit for this. because, god dammit, it was 94645767534524 degrees the morning we shot.

Dear Greenland

my visitor count has been low. i was away from the internet for over a month and it's been rough trying to pick it all back up during the most holiday-filled holiday season of the year. but, in returning, i took a look at how i was doing and made a startling discovery.

you see, there are parts of the world that are completely unaware of my blog. obviously parts of asia are never going to find this delicious corner of the internet because their world wide web isn't quite world wide and is mostly censored. but africa, south america, and mexico also seem to be unaware of this educational blog.

though, upon closer look, i found that 22 mexican citizens had read my page, 46 south americans, and 17 africans. there were even visitors from guam, bangladesh, french polynesia, and nepal.

i've even gotten visitors from hong kong-- looking for jackie chan!

but zero from greenland. i've had 1 from iceland, but none from greenland. not a single visitor.

out of 56,000 greenlanders, no one has ever found this blog.

naturally, i wanted to fix this problem and began researching various things like what people in greenland do for fun or what they like to eat. and-- according to wikipedia and answers.com-- greenlanders are just like regular human beings. they play soccer and video games and stuff.

but, while researching methods that might help me attract visitors, i discovered a more important fact:

greenland's flag.


you see, i am what is known as japolish: a combination of japanese and polish-- half n' half. and i have no home. i also have no flag.

but, oddly enough, your flag seems to be the exact combination of japan's and poland's-- with a slight off-centered rising sun. and this cannot be an accident.

i write to you today asking your price; what will it cost to buy greenland? how much do i need to pay to rename your country and declare my motherland? currently, your danish krone is worth 17.8 american pennies. if i were to give you two dimes, you would say, "whoa are you sure you don't want change?!"

i would like to live to see japoland and i hope you and i can come to some form of agreement.

diplomatically,
president wishnack

Bieber Pants Head Drunk