What a girl wants, what a girl needs

I passed my board, and played very well by my own standards for the Disney audition. Keep in mind I had to pump myself full of beta blockers for both events.
Their use for performers is controversial, but I have mild anxiety issues to begin with, and they become almost unmanageable when I have to play for people. My performance anxiety completely impairs my ability to even breathe, much less play with any sort of expression. I've only put up with it for this long because I never knew anything else. I thought it was ok for my knees to knock together as I was trying to play a solo for judges. Beta blockers have been a life changing discovery for me.
Now I just cross my fingers and hope I played better than everyone else.

Falling behind on my next big band chart, as well as an impending history paper. I blame it on the fact that I am finally getting gigs. I knew it would happen eventually.

Story: I subbed for the Dayton Jazz Orchestra back in January, and the lead trombonist, Vaughn, made fun of me a lot. Apparently he is notorious for this. In a twist of ill fate, he has come down with Bell's palsy. I feel very bad for him, but I got his gig until he recovers, which could be an indefinite amount of time(Vaughn says, "What?! A girl jazz musician? What is this? Arts and crafts?"). Steady gig, pays a little bit, good band. I can't help but smile, as my facial muscles are working (sorry that was mean!).

Gig with Dan and Jake at Kaldi's on Wednesday, March 1st. Baby steps, I'm winning the small battles.

Still studying with Jaime on the weekends, on a fairly regular basis now. He says, "You are getting much better. I don't yell at you because you are sucky player, I yell at you because I expect more of you than this."

Last night Cha and I went to a mexican restaurant in Colerain where I had very good chips and salsa and a very watery taco salad. Cha tried flan and didn't like it, so I ate her flan. Then we went back to her place to watch "Guys Gone Wild". It was more amusing than anything else. I'm not interested in seeing guys who are only tan from the waist down shake their pale, flabby butts or itty bitty boy parts around. I wanna see cowboys and fireman. We got bored and watched a documentary on a county coroner, followed by the Nutty Professer. Mmmmmm... 90's goodness.

A bitch, a burrito, a big band and a bum.

I've been very busy getting ready for my board, which is wednesday, and the Disney audition (again....) which is Friday. Being cranky, crying over dumb things. Thank goodness beau Trent is incredibly patient with me.

My big band chart was played last sunday by the Jazz Lab Band. Honestly, it lacked that "oomph", you know, that thing, that makes the chart, and all music for that matter, what it is. It sounded as if the band had gone to Chipotle together and eaten big burritos, and were then too tired to play. Oh well.

Apparently I am guilty of lacking the same intensity in my own playing. When playing a quiet piece for Jaime in my lesson saturday, he said, "Shhhhhh! Piano is not dynamic, piano is state of mind!" and started tiptoeing around. What a nut, but he's right. Bringing me a little closer to understanding what this is all about. I didn't get yelled at as much this weekend though, so I must have played well.

There was a man sleeping oustide the door to my apartment this morning. I've never seen him before in my life. He could be a bum or a friend of my next door neighbor (who is crazy like a fox and looks like jack nicholson). Regardless, Rachel and I were a little freaked out. Rachel just told me that he left right before she left for class, and the police got there too late to do anything. Things like that make me want to move out of clifton.

Our apartment also smells like gasoline.

ATTACK OF THE DUMB WHITE COLLEGE GIRL!!! RAAAAH!!!

So, this quarter I am taking a once-a-week night class called "Issues in Contemporary Society". I would much rather be taking the next German sequence, or maybe a literature class or picking up some Spanish, but I don't need humanities credit, I need social and ethical issues credit. Which is why I am in this class.

Most of the people in the class aren't the brightest crayons in the box, and neither is the teacher, if you ask me. For starters, I don't put too much faith in someone who mispells "AIDS" or "sociology". Secondly, this teacher is supposed to facilitate discussions of modern issues, and help people think critically based on facts, but I feel he has a clear agenda: invalidate the opinions of the dumb white college girl.

Now I hate to make this an issue, but he made it an issue, not me. Tonight in class he seperated us into four groups: black women, white women, black men and white men. The indians, asians and pacific islanders in the class were lumped into the "black men" group. Then he gave us an issue to talk about: "should the legal drinking age be raised to 25?" First of all, this is kind of a dumb subject. A good teacher would have remained unbiased and listened to all opinions, but he had an obvious agenda: nothing good comes from alcohol, and you shouldn't have it anyway, so why not?

All of the working moms over the age of 30, along with all the men were allowed to speak without rebuttal from this teacher (don't get me wrong, props to all the nontraditional students out to better themselves!). But when I pointed out the fact that making something illegal, unavailable and taboo creates alternative markets like drug rings and gangs (further perpetuating the violence and social problems he was complaining about), he compared me to a woman who said her fourteen year old daughter was going to have sex anyway, so she taught her daughter about it and gave her condoms (saying this while angrily pointing his finger at me). He said that I wanted to eliminate problems by accomodating youth's wants and whims. Well first of all, don't they give out condoms in high school sex ed? And secondly, I'm rather offended that he attacked my opinion, which is based on reading the newspaper and listening to NPR, and let other people spout off complete BS about how a 25 year old is not mature enough to go out and have a beer in America (although Germany, with a drinking age of 14, does not have a problem with binge drinking in college). He also spewed off rebuttals to the other traditional, non-black female students in the class, although none were as harsh as what he said to me.

The only saving grace for this class is that it seems that my classmates like me. When I raise my hand, a lot of the people around me are like, "oh ask her, she has something to say!" They laugh at my dry comments, and most came to my defense when the teacher so rudely attacked me.