My Final Push

December is probably my favorite month. No other twelfth of the year can quite compare. But until the a cappella concert is over with, finals are done, and my mentorship program is finished, I won't be able to really enjoy it.

I took a break from the books while I was back home. Mostly because I occupied myself with cooking for Thanksgiving and with a cappella. After a few hours of coaching the group my brother started at our high school, I delved straight into the six-man project that my brother also leads outside of school. They were prepping for a gig at the Stanford Shopping Center, and had a little more than an hour of performance-ready material. I'm very proud of those boys. This is their second year under my brother's leadership, and I have to say that he's done a great job of carrying my legacy. My ex-codirector and I were still able to give a few pointers... and scare the shit out of them too. That was mostly him, actually. He's big and tall and glares daggers.

After all that was said and done, I watched them perform, drove my brother to orchestra, and sped off to sift through seventy or so talented young women wishing to partake in an all-girls group.

Auditions were really difficult. But I guess it's better to be overwhelmed by talent than to be stuck picking the less mediocre singers of the bunch. And I'm very happy with my decisions. In order for rehearsals to run well, I've asked my old conductor to oversee them while I'm still in San Diego. But the girls are going to learn their own music without the help of Dr. Chang. I've delegated section leaders, and I've held video conferences with them after each rehearsal.

I wish I had an a cappella mentor when I was in high school. Because realizing just how select my old choir is was a pretty nasty shock. UCSD's music scene is a kiddie pool to the Bay Area's ocean of elite organizations catering to Silicon Valley millionaires' style of highly cultured child-rearing. SFYS, CYS, CCC, SFGC, the list could go on forever. I wish for a lot of stuff. I crossed my fingers like crazy last year during admissions season, hoping for some of my a cappella babies to scoot their asses to UCSD to replace shitty singers. Only one of them actually came: Carlin. He got called back but had problems with the webpage, so he didn't know it. I almost murdered him. He hasn't got the best range in the world as far as basses go, but he's solid and his tone is perfect. I gotta say it... it's so much more important to not sound like your nose is plugged than to belt out low Cs.

This is turning out to be a really long post about nothing in particular except that I'm super duper busy and that I'm actually just sac-ing my sleep to write this shit. Whoops.

But I'll be home again on December 9th, and that's when FUN crunch time hits. I'll be able to dedicate more time to mentoring, and start running rehearsals myself. Then there's the Christmas concert series. And then my baby boys have a another shopping center gig, this time at the ever-bougey Santana Row. Since that gig is considerably longer than the last one and they're all going to be on Winter break soon, John and I will be temporarily assuming directorship again in order to help them learn another hour or so of material for the show. So I'm also in a TTTBtBsBS(or VP) arranging binge. All the guys are too. Fifteen songs within the next 19 days is not going to be an easy feat. Thank goodness they're not musical retards like so many people in my woebegone a cappella disaster. They're The Ritards.

Shit. I need to study for finals sometime soon...