Death Ball and other things

It's been a while since I wrote anything here, so I figure it's about time.

A few days ago I finally turned in all the paperwork for my change of major... I had been extremely organized about it and gotten almost all of my signatures, had all sorts of meetings, and then I just let it sit for about a week and a half, even though I was only missing Eve Laramee's signature. I guess I was giving myself time to change my mind. I'm still not sure whether I've done the right thing here, but at least it will shake things up a little for me, which is something I need. I was starting to feel really stale. But now I feel a little scared, and a little excited and not very stale at all.

The only thing is that I still have about 11 photo classes I have to take, and a required internship, (and history of Photo). I have a plan, but if it doesn't work out I will most definitely be graduating late. My two options are: take summer classes, or graduate in August of our senior year. I have only two academic-type classes left, and already 4 of my 3-d classes don't count for anything, but I'm going to try to take either an academic/lit class or a 3-d class or both every semester from now on. It's either that or take 4-5 photo studio classes (and only photo classes) every semester and graduate on time, but I most likely won't live to get my BFA if I do that. So long story short, my plan is this: go to Ireland (if I get in), take 3 photo classes, 1 academic, and a 3-d there, then after that semester ends, go to Spain for the summer, do a photography internship there, and take one or two photo classes at a school near my internship. If Ireland doesn't happen I'll take classes at mica this summer, and if the internship doesn't happen in spain, I'll graduate in August. Whew, sorry if that was boring. But that's my plan.

On to more exciting things...
Instead of going to the Halloween party, Alex, Hamster, Beki and I decided to go to the Great Halloween Lantern Parade. We had some friends who were stilt-walking zombies, so we actually go to walk next to them in the parade to make sure they didn't fall over. Beki ran to the rescue of one extrmely wobbly guy and had to hold onto one of his legs for part of the parade. He eventually fell half way through, practically on Beki, who had tried to ease him down to the ground since he was looking pretty precarious... he ended up wiping out anyway. It was lots of fun.. the zombie stilt walkers were dancing to the beat of a drum group right in front of them, and little kids with their parents were weilding all sorts of lanterns... One looked like a flying owl, there were also some strange ones that hovered above the whole parade... a whole troop of them. It's hard to describe what they looked like, but they were essentially long white poles with a bulb-thing at the top, and right below the bulb was a hoop with long white streamers hanging almost down to the ground. They were bobbing around in the air and looked very much like shredded ghosts.
We made a big circuit through Patterson Park, around the impressive pagoda that stands in the center. Eventually the parade was over and everyone climbed up toward the pagoda and sat down on the hill to watch a shadow puppet animation with a live jazz band.... the music was incredible and so was the animation. It was the story of three brothers who find the moon dangling from a tree branch and decide to take it. Each brother owns a part of the moon, and when they die, they are each buried with their piece. They can't rest peacefully though, and soon they (their ghosts?) try to return the moon to the sky, which they eventually do, with the help of a black crow. It was really very impressive. Everyone sat there in stunned silence. (you can find the animation on youtube.. probably type in Great Baltimore Halloweeen Lantern Parade- Luna). And I found out that anyone can be a stilt walker in the parade. You only have to go to two training sessions and they provide your stilts and costume... anybody want to do that with me next time it comes around?? I've kindof always wanted to learn to walk on stilts...

Okay, and finally the Death Ball..
My sculptural kinetics class meets every wednesday at four and we leave after only about an hour and a half usually (even though it's a 6-hr long studio). This week a girl brought in a Death Ball, for playing a crazy game by the same name. We all left the metal shop after watching a video on power tool racing, and headed over to the little grassy area outside Fox and Brown, where we made a circle of plaster dust in the center. The Death Ball itself is one of those large exercise balls, except that it's attatched to a 20 ft.-long rope, and is covered completely in duct tape. One person stands in the center of the plaster dust circle and whips the Death Ball around them by the rope, like a lasso. The people standing on the perimeter try to get into the circle and tag the person without getting hit by the ball, then they assume the position in the center. Because my class mainly consists of big metal-working guys, the game pretty much turned into a gladiator match. People were leaping over the ball, rolling into the center and slide-tackling the ball thrower, people were getting knocked over by the ball, or falling and flailing, or getting tangled in the rope and falling over over each other. We managed to gather a crowd of about 30 or 40 spectators throughout. All in all, it was positively exhilarating, and we decided to make it a weekly thing... Maybe I'll finally get back in shape!
I think that's about it, so long!