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(Darn. Reel Big Fish at The Chance tomorrow, and I have a meeting. Oh well.)
Rocky last weekend was great. I've noticed a shift in my callback style. I'm no longer trying to hit all the callbacks. In fact, I say a lot of the stock callbacks with a good deal of apathy, although I do still say most of them. I also don't mind missing callbacks as much as I used to. Instead, I'm focusing on the more involved callbacks and the visuals. The ones that sound out over dead silence, and the ones which are physical acts, are the ones I'm more interested in now. I've also started getting interested in the meta-callback -- in particular, the negotiation with the rest of the audience as to who is going to perform one of these callbacks which only really work if they're solo. Making eye contact with other people crawling down the aisle toward the stage and agreeing on who's going to do which stunt and the like is particularly interesting. I'm seeing this behavior at convention performances as well, where it's a lot of fun to identify the other people who do spectacles and congratulate one another on a job well done. I guess I've levelled up or something.
I think the party went well. It was my first time bartending (rather than backing for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soulchanger). The initial rush was pretty hellish for the first 5 minutes or so, until I settled into a good rhythm. After that, it felt pretty good. Special thanks to andrianna for her help setting up, dealing with the initial rush, and being another responsible adult; and deverlite for rescuing me by making an emergency trip to the ice maker. It would have been a total mess without you guys.
I learned that I need to memorize more drinks, and also become familiar with the flavors of more drinks, and get a better sense of how drinks cluster in terms of who likes what. The former will help my speed, the latter two will help when confronted with a customer who doesn't really know what they want.
I used a half gallon of light cream at the party! I shouldn't be too surprised, as cream-based drinks are the ones I make best, and they tend to go over well with VC students in my experience. I need to come up with a name for the drink I tentatively (from memory, and inaccurately) referred to as an orgasm; so far I've not found a published recipe which matches it. I guess this makes the second pleasant drink I've invented (the first being the Purple Soda, which may need a bit of standardization).
I need to learn how to make a decent margarita. This may be an issue either of the quality of ingredients I used or the recipe I was working from. Tried to make one last night, and it tasted funny. It had all the right flavors, but they didn't seem to meld properly. I could taste them individually, but it didn't taste like a margarita. More experimentation is required....I'll probably make one a night as my nightcap until I get a sense of what's going on.
I've decided to start a program where I try to have one drink a night between when I get home and when I go to sleep. The goal is to learn the processes and flavors of more drinks through experimentation. I'm finding it enriching so far. Last night was the demonstration of the margarita problem (sorry the one I served you was probably also no good,deverlite), tonight I made myself a dry martini. Very pleasant, and now I'm more confident in my ability to make one for someone else. I should try others (drier, sweeter, perfect, possibly dirty) for comparison, and I'd also like to make a couple more for regular martini drinkers to get comments.
In other news, I finally got my car towed to the shop yesterday. They say she needs a valve job, which isn't going to be cheap (although the estimate they gave isn't atrocious either). I need to figure out if it's going to be worth the money, which means a number of phone calls and discussions. Fun.
It's getting rather cold out to be making a 2+ mile bicycle ride twice a day, at least once in the middle of the night, any time I want to go be social. To say nothing of bicycling in the snow. Plus, I'd like to be able to travel long distances without using mass transit on occasion -- there are many places for which there's no convenient way to get from here to there.
Rocky last weekend was great. I've noticed a shift in my callback style. I'm no longer trying to hit all the callbacks. In fact, I say a lot of the stock callbacks with a good deal of apathy, although I do still say most of them. I also don't mind missing callbacks as much as I used to. Instead, I'm focusing on the more involved callbacks and the visuals. The ones that sound out over dead silence, and the ones which are physical acts, are the ones I'm more interested in now. I've also started getting interested in the meta-callback -- in particular, the negotiation with the rest of the audience as to who is going to perform one of these callbacks which only really work if they're solo. Making eye contact with other people crawling down the aisle toward the stage and agreeing on who's going to do which stunt and the like is particularly interesting. I'm seeing this behavior at convention performances as well, where it's a lot of fun to identify the other people who do spectacles and congratulate one another on a job well done. I guess I've levelled up or something.
I think the party went well. It was my first time bartending (rather than backing for
soulchanger). The initial rush was pretty hellish for the first 5 minutes or so, until I settled into a good rhythm. After that, it felt pretty good. Special thanks to andrianna for her help setting up, dealing with the initial rush, and being another responsible adult; and deverlite for rescuing me by making an emergency trip to the ice maker. It would have been a total mess without you guys.I learned that I need to memorize more drinks, and also become familiar with the flavors of more drinks, and get a better sense of how drinks cluster in terms of who likes what. The former will help my speed, the latter two will help when confronted with a customer who doesn't really know what they want.
I used a half gallon of light cream at the party! I shouldn't be too surprised, as cream-based drinks are the ones I make best, and they tend to go over well with VC students in my experience. I need to come up with a name for the drink I tentatively (from memory, and inaccurately) referred to as an orgasm; so far I've not found a published recipe which matches it. I guess this makes the second pleasant drink I've invented (the first being the Purple Soda, which may need a bit of standardization).
I need to learn how to make a decent margarita. This may be an issue either of the quality of ingredients I used or the recipe I was working from. Tried to make one last night, and it tasted funny. It had all the right flavors, but they didn't seem to meld properly. I could taste them individually, but it didn't taste like a margarita. More experimentation is required....I'll probably make one a night as my nightcap until I get a sense of what's going on.
I've decided to start a program where I try to have one drink a night between when I get home and when I go to sleep. The goal is to learn the processes and flavors of more drinks through experimentation. I'm finding it enriching so far. Last night was the demonstration of the margarita problem (sorry the one I served you was probably also no good,
deverlite), tonight I made myself a dry martini. Very pleasant, and now I'm more confident in my ability to make one for someone else. I should try others (drier, sweeter, perfect, possibly dirty) for comparison, and I'd also like to make a couple more for regular martini drinkers to get comments.In other news, I finally got my car towed to the shop yesterday. They say she needs a valve job, which isn't going to be cheap (although the estimate they gave isn't atrocious either). I need to figure out if it's going to be worth the money, which means a number of phone calls and discussions. Fun.
It's getting rather cold out to be making a 2+ mile bicycle ride twice a day, at least once in the middle of the night, any time I want to go be social. To say nothing of bicycling in the snow. Plus, I'd like to be able to travel long distances without using mass transit on occasion -- there are many places for which there's no convenient way to get from here to there.
no subject
For me, its a matter of resource conservation. If I did all the callbacks that everyone knows, I would blow my voice out on Friday night. Sometimes, for the longer ones, like (If youre horny and you know it...) I will just start the chant and then drop out.
One thing I have always enjoyed about VC Rocky is that there are certain stunts that certain people do, and usually you will not get more than two people trying to do the same one at the same time. (And sometimes two doing the same one makes it funnier to me).
After the comments flying around in my back corner (where we started to explain a lot of the references, because we realized that this generation probably doesnt know that Rush is a band, or even who Kurt Cobain was), I am thinking it may be time to start shopping around for more up to date callbacks, or doing some watching and seeing if I can make up any. After all, one of the wierdest experiences of the past two weekends was hearing the entire audience call out something I invented in my living room in 1994.
no subject
but up-to-date callbacks are always funny (reference: "it was a preemptive strike"; and "show me Mary-Kate Olsen!"). i wish i was better at making that sh*t up, but the only one i think i can take any credit for is "The secret to life is Rainbow Brite's period!"
no subject
which is the one you invented in your living room?
no subject
I was horrified to realize that half the audience didnt get the thundercats callback...