YOUNG HOOS aka the attentionseeker: lol high school

I also did what I asshattedly called "experiments in truth" (ludicrously jacked from Gandhi) where I'd do shit like not speak for a week, or wear my glasses upside down.

I also did magic tricks and wrote the left-wing column for the school newspaper.

I was an insufferable attention-whore geek in retrospect, but I had fun.

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, June 9, 2008 8:55 PM

cf fedora quotes, hot sauce holsters quote

hoos did u meet your gf in h.s.?

too meta

I'd do shit like not speak for a week

lol so that's why you were wearing that erase board around your neck?

i would've sat in my corner with my book in high school, thinking you were cool

but thank heavens we're not all in high school right?

(xpost hahaha)

<3 this guy

i experimented with some precocious / pretentious affectations in high school, too

feel you, dawg

There's a high school picture of me floating around on the Internet of me dressed like a Degrassi High reject striking a Breakfast Club pose. ugh wtf high-school me

Dan, dude, you gotta linkspank that pic!

ya hoos i would've had a big crush on you, i think! =P

(Did I just use linkspank as a verb in a comment? WOE IS CYBER ME.)

No that is awesome! The dude who owns that site would be PSYCHED

i typed up a MANIFESTO for a GUERILLA ART COLLECTIVE made up of my drama geek / social exile clique

i posted the manifesto and it was promptly defaced

oh man

also i definitely experimented with "interesting" hats

i thought i was cool and funny for causing big yearbook controversy and helping the seniors (my class) lose the school spirit assembly. now i just realize i was an asshole. at least wearing a dry erase board with quotes is likeable.

i was obsessed with dada and tried to write dada poetry...only the whole "shyness" thing made it a silent hobby

oh man i'm not even gonna start

just start

xxxpost ahaha dude, you obv are still an asshole if you think that's likeable. i kid i kid.

oh man, the troubled memories are surfacing now

slam poetry, people. i did it.

lol manifesto is there a copy of that still?

adventures in linux tshirts

slightly less embarrassed by the lol a capella group

please start, i find this stuff so funny

haha so did hoos right??

i think i took myself too seriously to ever be wacky :-/

'so did hoos' = slam poetry

http://www.marvel.com/universe3zx/images/thumb/d/dd/Awesome_andy.jpg/440px-Awesome_andy.jpg

fuck i'm gonna say nothing here but...oh man

haha and in the creation of suspense i fulfil the first rule of attention-seeking :D

One of my friends used to greet girls with his penis. He once humped a girl into her locker.

...

Well that's far from charming.

He's now a youth minister.

WOW ok i'm not gonna top that, no point saying anything really ;-)

i think i took myself too seriously to ever be wacky :-/

-- deej, Monday, June 9, 2008 2:32 PM (Monday, June 9, 2008 2:32 PM) Bookmark Link

Same here. I think the most pretentious thing I did in hs was pretend I enjoyed Blackalicious more than Nelly. : |

oh wau @ dan's dude

i wore basketball sneakers, a tux top, baggy black shorts and a cat-in-the-hat hat to my prom, so i try to remind myself to be more patient of the hot topic kids.

good thread

the slam poetry thing was probably really good for me, actually, considering it let me interact with a whole lot of people outside any organized school environment -- i was pretty sheltered up til that point; having a group of strangers support & affirm my self-expression and my decision to write was pretty big turning point for me.

i brought one kid from my high-school to his first live poetry reading -- he's now a pro slam poet or something? (carl0s andres g0mez) so i guess that's to my credit or detriment, depending on how you look at it

oh snap yall i just saw this loll

hoos did u meet your gf in h.s.?

-- deej, Monday, June 9, 2008 9:20 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yse

This thread is just begging for me to repost this photo:

http://static.flickr.com/53/132751375_b16ba5676c.jpg?v=0

xp: ysi?

YES

omgosh i want to be your friend jaym

i had a crushed velvet shirt at one point w/ silver buttons

around the same time i had a weird androgynous cambodian boyfriend who smoked menthols and liked to dress up in fairy wings

omg are you in that photo?

The guy who wore the funny tuxedo to junior prom brought two dates to senior prom (both friends). As I'd gone with a few dateless friends, I really didn't get why they wanted to be duplicate dates.

We're all just scrambling around, waiting for another Big Hoos reveal.

Everything at lol All Girls Boarding School was scandalous, but I had to keep it as mild as possible since my mother was a faculty member AND a dorm director.
Getting expelled was not an option. kinda sad, I guess. My potential for getting expelled was nipped in the bud!
I did manage to spend most of senior year stoned - while living in my mom's dorm -and as a member of the student leaders/advisory board.

yall my peoples! no apologies necessary!

:D :D

Gotta admit the reservoir is starting to wane (mixed lolaphors) though I was reminded today that I was twenty minutes late to the second half of the AP English Literature exam because I was outside the building dancing in the rain. My friends were like "Wait don't start yet there's someone missing!" and then I came in soaking wet and barefoot and grinning and proceeded to drip on my Tolstoy essay.

haha dancing in the rain k-lassik "free spirit" behavior

I was once ten minutes late to work because I was dancing in the snow on the walk up. The real light and fluffy kind with huge flakes falling everywhere. I think I had Taj Mahal on the headphones.

I hate when "free spirits" look down on people who don't like dancing in the rain! I don't enjoy cold showers with my clothes on particularly, sorry.

What if it's one of those hot summer rains?

^ that it was

It was the end of May in Texas, shit was like 89 degrees.

I think I had Taj Mahal on the headphones.

-- RabiesAngentleman, Thursday, June 12, 2008 1:28 PM

awwwwwwwwwwwesome

I hate when "free spirits" look down on people who don't like dancing in the rain! I don't enjoy cold showers with my clothes on particularly, sorry.

-- Maria, Thursday, June 12, 2008 1:28 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yeah no one else ever danced w/me, which was no big thing. i was refreshed.

It was a 6:00 am shift, no idea where I had all that energy. Had to be the Taj.

Dancing by yourself kinda rules!

slam daze

http://lh6.ggpht.com/JustinSmith1986/SFHvWGWkklI/AAAAAAAAAEM/asEC74TXeuQ/00002.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/JustinSmith1986/SFHvWAfugZI/AAAAAAAAAEU/wzQGfUQUGlo/00003.jpg

damn you internets

once more w/feeling

http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08245/00002692.jpg
http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08245/00003844.jpg

ok that bottom photo is fantastic

i would like to hear stories about them

the 2000 nat'l poetry slam championship took place in providence, and i had just graduated high school -- i knew several of the members of the providence team and was pretty entrenched in the scene at the time. i volunteered to assist at events, handling venue admission, merch tables, etc.

the result was that i ended up hearing hour after hour after hour of really awful confessional poems, political poems, poems about being abused, raped, discriminated, and victimized, poems about sexy erotic sex or poems that were basically memoirs or stand-up routines passed of as poetry -- the huge majority of which were mediocre at best -- only a few poets were actually interesting, none of whom, i believe, made it to the final event. the worst were the teams that had figured out the formula for the most positive audience reaction and played it out ad nauseam.

really turned me off to the whole idea of slam.

also s@ge fr@nc1s afterparty snorefest amirite

oh god i forgot abt that

but even in the most awkward depths of my freshman, my attention seeking behavior was never as ball-out wacky as HOOS'. my style was to read weird esoteric shit or precociously advanced lit all by my lonesome and hope someone would strike notice how unique and deep i was.

this sounds depressingly familiar...

the result was that i ended up hearing hour after hour after hour of really awful confessional poems, political poems, poems about being abused, raped, discriminated, and victimized, poems about sexy erotic sex or poems that were basically memoirs or stand-up routines passed of as poetry -- the huge majority of which were mediocre at best -- only a few poets were actually interesting, none of whom, i believe, made it to the final event.

Yep. I saw a half dozen poets who really moved me and a whole lot of the Worst of Slam Stereotypes. I came home not really wanting to do it anymore.

We were really pleased with ourselves because one of our major group pieces was (we thought) interesting meta. Basic message was "yeah, we all kinda fit stereotypes" (I was the angry political poet fwiw), "but these slam archetypes wouldn't exist without the genuine sentiment on which they're based: there wouldn't be 3307023587 angry political poets if shit wasn't really, really fucked up etc"

We also had a "Large Singing Black Woman Poet" and "Latin Sex God" and "Angry Black Feminist" in that piece, all 4 of us doing some self-parody. Total lolz in rehearsals.

lol in addition to being "Angry Political Poet" i was also "musician name-dropper poet" making non-sequiter refs to Hendrix and Miles Davis

"a half dozen poets" IS a very good band name.

re: photos

Top photo is me & (self-described) "the entourage gay" Randy. His shirt says "PINCHE SHHHHH," which was the name of our slam's newsletter. I am wearing a mesh trucker hat that says "POET" on it jesus christ hoos what the hell

Bottom photo is me & Anthony Flores doing a piece called "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" about showing gratitude to our progenitors. Anthony talked about his grandparents' lessons in humility and understanding the use of literary mysticism through Blake. Sample line: "I took diction from Whitman/stole rhythms from Miles/and learned verbal friction from Cummings"

It got us to the finals stage cause it was novel choreography and not especially poorly written, if I may say so.

lock thread.

hoos, u are the best for your contributions to this thread

<3 everybody for suffering through all these stories

fwiw in the morning before school i also used to lay on my back in the middle of the school courtyard w/a blindfold on, trying to work my way into a trance by listening to didgeridoo techno

i wore a sharkskin blue suit+tie to school every friday for most of my junior year

I said lock thread because I thought it couldn't possibly keep getting better - so much pressure on the Hoos - but I guess I was VERY WRONG! Digeridoo techno, blindfold, etc.!

There's something about the way you reveal the details that just makes it so easy to mentally conjure an image. That's probably why we're all demanding pics. It's almost better just left to the imagination, tho.

But the pics are also very great. Were you at an Improv for that poetry slam thing?

That was at a comedy club. Our other venue was a rock club, which was cool but weird. I wasn't 21 yet, so they only let me in to perform. I came in, did my 3 minute poem 'Stop for No One (The Mighty Ducks)' about the day I scored a touchdown in gym class in 7th grade (oh my god oh my god please ignore the numerous paragraphs about anarcho-syndicalism and "reading marx from the left" that is so much more embarassing than the fucking trucker hat "solidarity & love" oh my fucking god), and then I had to stand outside the club.

more slam photos, at home @ puro slam! in san anto. possibly my favorite photos of me in existence:

http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08246/haircutpoem870.jpg
http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08246/yearr658.jpg

enter neckbeard:

http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08246/photos025539.jpg
shirt says "pop culture whore"

yep.

surely these two are further evidence for those of you who think i am actually a different guy in every photo

oh yeah three image limit

here's last one again

http://xs128.xs.to/xs128/08246/funtimez002596.jpg

whats the story behind the garbage bag

i wish it was some hilarious shit but rly it was raining and i had a persuasive speech to give

some rain was not gonna stop me from using my patented dean scream attention-getter

Hoos Improv =comedy club. The brick wall is sort of a cultural signifier.

I like the transparency of the trash bag - seeing the yellow tie underneath adds layers of meaning.

But I can't even think because those cabinets are making me feel dizzy.

lol 4 billion cabinets

When I was 17 I, completely sincerely, recorded my own audio version of "La Jetee" onto the PC in a cod-French accent... it sounded more like a mixture of American/Jamaican/Russian/Swedish and the disillusioned coldness of the original narration was considerably lost upon playback.

No-one except me has heard it.

ysi

thats a given

big hoos: fuckin with magic in 2008

-- Mr. Que, Monday, June 9, 2008 10:56 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

for real

i'm sittin here at work realizing i have an embarassment of riches to fuck around with

producing cards from cookie bags
using our matchbooks for fire tricks at the bar
using room keys for coin matrices

sooooo many opportunities i'm geekin the fuck out

The idea that the quarterback/cheerleader types peak in high school is a lie to make everyone else feel better.

quarterbacks don't peak in high school. offensive linemen might, though.

i was an offensive lineman so ^^^ this is obviously false

Premiership officals to thread.

I'm not getting married, but when I do I'm having the Hoos there with the card tricks - at the old peoples tables!

friend emailed this to me today

blue jeans & white t shirts........................& hawaiian shirts

http://i51.tinypic.com/2wc4750.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/V9bVvTY.jpg

cool guy