Erlkönig: Chemistry 101

Okay, So a number of my friends have been harassing me about not reporting back on the goings-on in the filming of me and my co-victims for the next episode (to be shown this Thursday, 2004-03-25 19:00 CST) of Alamo Drafthouse's, Chemistry 101, which is generally described in my earlier post about getting drafted. So here I am, 28 hours later, finally posting my overdue update.

Let me apologize in advance for any crazily misspelled names, as well as the fact that any character summaries herein are based on horribly incomplete information, in a forced situation, under pressure to construct barely-founded opinions on the spot in front of a camera about people who might be dissembling or totally stressed - and so are, in other words, pretty much useless :-)

Allen Boots on South Congress, Sunday at 13: at 1522 South Congress was the designated meeting place and perhaps the first faint bell of the surreal day to come. Cassidy was the first of the victims to arrive, followed by me and somewhat later by Barbie. We wouldn't meet Champe, the surprise fourth for our erstwhile trio, until later. Why do I say surreal? The very first thing to happen is the lot of us were caparisoned with fashion-accessory approved cowboy hats, and then immediately forced to drink cans of Coors beer (that's pronounced kerrz, for those not from that particular section of this beer's fanbase).

The Victims

Barbie getting face-painted later by a computer graphics artist, Jonathon Gilbreath

Me, some of you already know; for those who don't, just see my LiveJournal profile for a broad conceptual sketch. The face paint in this picture is from one of the events. Cassidy is a winningly cute, upbeat, intelligent, petite, English major, for whom the picture above does little justice. Barbie is a busty, drinking bartender, from a club whose name I've forgotten, but that is reportedly right next door to a Bone Daddy's. Champ is a kind of Midwestern, mid-twenties cowboy studying for the bar, with a vague resemblance to the Baldwin brothers and a liking for Halo. Even just going by clothing (other than the hats), most people would have supposed us to be from different subcultures, but that's probably one of the interesting aspects upon which reality shows capitalize.

Here's the agenda as it turned out:

Meet. Absolutely none of the expected truth or dare. Puzzlement.
Everyone who came with us to the last Chemistry 101 knows that the principals had exchanged kisses early due to the whole true or dare thing. Apparently having left their more salacious component at home this time, options such as truth or dare, hottubs, heavy drinking, and so forth were replaced by long car rides (with Champ forced to drive), too-late presentation of the warm bubbly water idea, or the lackluster intoxication abilities of Coors.
Importuned by an opportunistic Canadian band
A purported Canadian band saw us gathered behind Allen Boots, unsurprisingly noticed that the females are both quite attractive, and promptly requested the opportunity to take pictures of them dressed in the band's signature T-shirts. The women accept, the huge shirts are donned and knotted strategically long enough to take pictures, and the band departs happily.
Long, long car ride with the victims attempting to film each other.
Okay, so we might have tried to film each other while the camera was left in standby mode. Were we supposed to be film students? :-) Still, the film-each-other idea wasn't bad, except for becoming bored with trying to fill a long country car ride with it.
Rodeo - heavy petting zoo.
Something furry and teething attempted to champ on Champ. Cassidy clearly adores cute animals. I skipped taking feed for the animals so the females would have more, (I've handfed hundreds of animals, so it wouldn't have been exactly novel for me) yet we all ended up joking about how incredibly fat and handout-underwhelmed the animals were.

The animals apparently had a better idea of what to do in front of the camera, since a couple of them were busily trying to couple, (hence my quip of Heavy Petting Zoo). Now, our editors just need to put that scene in slow motion with some boom-chicky-bowm-bowm music and our movie audience might leave satisfied. :-)
Rodeo - vampiric cow milk sucking automated mechanistae.
Being the front guy who gives the spiel about cow milking machines and other milk-industry propaganda to a totally bored group of folks whose sole interest is the brief moment the machine is one has to be one seriously unfulfilling career. It turns out that Champ is rather amusing to startle with ideas such as other possible uses for the milking hardware.
Rodeo - face painting for the two alphabetically earlier folks.
Our painter was quite good with the brush, doing great designs on both my face and Barbie's. Is it weird to find yourself discussing the trade-offs in the interfaces of Maya, Softimage, and Lightwave with some guy staffing a rodeo who happens to be conversant with what output quality can be expected for various levels of expertise in each?
Rodeo - just how tall is a Budweiser Clydesdale?
Champ and I got into a discussion over how tall a Clydesdale is. He proposed 25 hands or so, I offered 18, and we ended up chatting with the handlers to find out. I thought cowboys knew this kind of thing? Anyway, Champ is definitely a good sport, and the conversation turned to figuring out how tall we are in hands. (Actually horses' heights are measured to the withers, I think, which would probably parallel the shoulder for a human, so basing our height in hands on the height of the tops of our heads is, in retrospect, subtly funny)
Rodeo - amusement park rides.
They're more exciting when you think they'll break.
Rodeo - fretting over that nagging lack of scandal.
While generally feeling frustrated by the lack of something more dramatic to film, my statement that we should probably film ourselves breaking rules lead to me and Cassidy discarding various ideas until she came up with the idea of mullet-hunting - complete with video cameraman in tow.
Another long car trip - to Austin.
The Evil Camera approaches

Here we tape more segments of us opining about each other in a somewhat confessional sense. Unfortunately, since it's still earlyish, there's not a lot of data to go on. By the time we have more though, it'll be late, the final interviews will be skipped, and these will be pretty much all we have, so it'll be interesting to see how it comes out.

We are the low energy bunch on this stage, except perhaps for Champ, who nobly acquires enough Red Bull and Coke to get the rest of us a bit more alive just in time for:
Another long car trip - to... Granger? Something like that.
Grr. Arriving in small country towns like this feels more like being lost. Ooo, a country western bar and restaurant. Who'da thunk.
Cotton Club and Steak House - standard country food.
I'll give them this, the service here was great. These folks were seriously nice to us, set us up where filming was straightforward, and generally made for a nice time. The chicken-fried steak here is reportedly quite good, and the site made for a nice backdrop to the girl-assaulting attack microphone, the crashing of the camera on the floor, and other little dramas.
Cotton Club and Steak House - the sci-fi and thong tetralog.
Dinner finally gave a decent chance for a more involved conversation, all of us victims in the same place, no one having to drive, and no one being distracted by trying to film the others. I, Cassidy, and Champ got into a rather long conversation about filmmakers, sci-fi books, the development of authors' writing styles, and a bunch of other silly stuff, accidentally rather leaving out Barbie, who isn't a fan of dusty tomes.

The outfit I was trying to describe, worn by Gina, who's not far from being Cassidy's size.

While I was trying to draw a connection between drum circles, silly somewhat scandalous parties, and the idea of how who your friends are can broaden the idea of what things you can all do together, Cassidy (I think) trapped me into detailing my attire to the Burlesque for Peace show described in an earlier entry, which had been a leather doublet, knee high moccasin boots, and a thong rather than tights. Although completely appropriate for, and complimented at the Burlesque for Peace show, men in thongs are apparently quite far from Champ's experience, and the merry fallout resulting from it might have produced one of the few halfway scandalous things taped throughout the entire experience. So I feel sure anyone attending Thursday will have a good chance of being able to harass me for one of my rare moments of being embarrassed by someone else's nonplussedness.

Although, I now suspect that, for those women into Midwestern boys as well as the escape of dancing at gay/crossdress clubs, dragging Champ to one some evening could be mighty interesting :-)
Cotton Club and Steak House - hey, I found a classmate from UT Music :-)
I'm amazed that I can get dragged into what feels like the middle of bloody nowhere and still turn out to be connected with someone in the band. In this case, it was a brass player from UT Austin Music College in the 1986 timeframe, who knew Susan Harwood and other notables from our time there as music majors. Being an idiot when it comes to names, now I can't remember his, but he turned out to be playing bass in the live music at the Cotton Club.
Cotton Club and Steak House - two-stepping.
I'd never two-stepped, as far as I know, and was a bit reluctant to risk tromping anyone's feet until getting a chance to suss out the pattern. Our female camera-handling support staffer offered to assist, but before that occurred Cassidy took up the gauntlet, proving to be a deft and positive guide, despite only having limited familiarity with it herself.

I'd tag this as probably being both the most surreal and yet most appealing segment of this whole little adventure, for a number of reasons. For me, few things could be more surreal than being in country music bar by choice, even with a cowboy hat premeditated. Add to that having run into a college peer in the band, seeing lots of happy people instead of the meat market I was used to in Austin, catching zero flack over hair or face paint (Champ vehemently underestimated the patrons here, I was less concerned), and then throw in two-stepping personally to country music, and we are now firmly outside of past experience or expectation. As for the appealing part, that should be obvious. I'll just say that Cassidy is a cool chick, fetching, insightful, and with a nice knack for saying the right thing.
Another long, long car trip
True or dare was brought up, then forgotten. Our filmmaker happily dreamed of abandoning a group of mutual strangers in a town like Granger with only $50 to get by on, like a twisted little stepchild of Survival instead of a dating game.

Barbie reminisces about her ordeal of spending an age marooned with her (girl) friend on the side of I-35, out of gas, with a detailed examination of the amount of beer available during the experience. She also expresses her enjoyment of the constrained relationship she has as a bartender with her regular patrons at the bar, and how many of the regulars tend to spend much of the day simply moving from bar to bar, presumably having the same kind of shallow relationship with each barkeep as a substitute for having no other analogue of friend in their lives.
Diaspora
Tired and worn, even the late, too late offer of hottubbing went by the wayside. Barbie joked about being filmed drinking Coors by herself on a tailgate. The opportunity to record our final impressions of each other was ditched. In the end, we all simply departed.

Erlkönig: Chemistry 101 - After