32 min
2011
2011
2010-11 Season Two of the Harper Junior High News
Coming out of the first year, which was riddled with technical issues and a lot of testing, year two would feature a little more structure. While still experimenting with new ideas, and the every two week thing wasn’t set in stone, but the pattern that would define the main structure of the program would all get developed this year.
Two first half the year notes. One Matt who had helped out the year before during his cross age time, wanted to be a part of the program enough he signed up for leadership itself. Oddly he wasn’t included until the second quarter “committee” which had become the official way one participated in the news broadcasts. I think missing out on quarter one was a source of slight drama with him since I don’t recall if he cared much for other committees, which I only mention because he will not be the first student we have that specifically takes leadership to only do the video bulletin and causes issues from there.
The second was a new student, Dilara. As it happened when she was finding her footing in a new school I asked her to help out with some odd video project early on in the year, from there she catapulted into who she was going to be that year and she became heavily involved in the media program. So much so and to note that she got her father to donate a much newer iMac to the media room so I could setup a editing station that used Final Cut pro, which was a professional level editing program that Apple refused to make available for the PC.
That computer being newer and with modern versions of software on it instantly became the focus for the editing of videos for the program and allowed for a pretty quick upgrade in presentation for year two. While still kids in their early teens just learning the software, having nicer tools did give them a nicer looking end product.
It also gave the kids access to the photobooth application which also filled up hard drive space on the new iMac with pictures taking from the editing station.
The next major change for this year from the previous was right before Christmas break in 2010. Through exploration of the rooms we were in in the back of the library, and the current library technician coming from the school our junior high had been blue printed from, we found the spot in the “command” room that should have been setup to allow communication between it and the stage.
Once again, Marque willing to go with an idea was almost instantly after I mentioned how easy it might be to just finish the job from the other room got to work on poking a hole in the wall so we could run cables from one room to the other.
This comically took place during the PTO, Parent Teacher Organization, Christmas Lunch. In which parents were setting up the adjacent staff room for a lunchtime feast for the staff. Unfortunately like not connecting the studio rooms like the original school had, instead of having closed access from the library, our studio and control rooms instead could only be accessed by coming through the staff lounge. This would be a weird issue to deal with for years, since sending kids back and forth required them going through normally “restricted” areas.
Anyway, for this though, we had to have the kids run some sort of interference while this DIY electrical job got finished between fourth and fifth periods that day.
That work let us move all the PCs and boards into the designed control room, giving us a larger stage area in the studio and just making for a better organized system. The iMac was big enough it had its own editing station in the back of the studio for now, but everything else was setup to go away from where the recording was going on.
That larger stage area began the long process of getting a better chroma stage. Initially we had a green cloth that came with one of the software packages marque ordered:
As seen here with the same cast from quarter two, that also right before break helped with the “blue” screen that was setup by simply using large cuts of blue butcher paper and reconfiguring the cheap spotlights in the room in order to get a bigger and better chroma stage than we had with that little blanket on the wall.
This would then lead up to next years big decision to paint the entire wall on that side of the studio green:
These next three years, season two, three and four would probably be the most intense and productive. Not because the kids that came after did worse, but while season two figured out the operation, the next two years would get it down pat, while still having two separate leadership classes to pull talent and laborers from before the class was scaled down to once a day and those committees being expected to output the same amount of work with half the humans working on it.
Fall 2011
So, time at the Parkside Apartments would have ended in August of 2011. I don’t remember a lot of the details about that, but I do remember finding out they sort of snuck by the “opportunity” to resign the lease in March and rushed us out. Parkside was getting ready soon to do a façade upgrade to the buildings, probably to be able to raise rent from internet advertising to students who wouldn’t be able to come and explore the half century old apartments.
This left me once again without a room. Offered before, but desperate enough to take, one of my mother’s friends, Claudine, offered to house me until I could figure out finances and a place to live again. With prospects by September always being bad, and money being low as it always was, I went and began a weird school year.
A couple major things would go on this fall. One, I got Karl and Chris R. to start up a Monday Night Football, well night. Harkening back to the few times I went with Tom in the 90s to The Graduate for Monday Night Football on their big screen TVs and nachos, I got the two of them involved in, burgers, fries, beers and 3 hours of been in armor trying to hurt each other.
The second was, with this spark in watching football, I started watching the Sunday 49er games with Claudine. Although we didn’t know it when we started and through the first couple weeks, but the Niners were about to have a resurgence making this kind of a fun year to get back into seeing all the morning games on Sunday. Without consistent access to FOX and CBS over the past few years I had sort of let football be a once in a while thing. Now with MNF and Sunday mornings and the right team being exciting to watch it was a fun time to start up again.
Later on, during the fall I would also get pulled over for letting my registration lapse. Honestly when poor and without a decent way to do this online, this would become a issue for years to come. With this current case the main issue was money and that was from getting ransacked again by the city of Glendale to pay for another copy of their parking ticket I got back in 2007. When all was said and done with them, they managed to work their system to have me pay for the ticket at least three times plus penalties. Including cashing a check for the ticket, and then saying they couldn’t read the ticket number perfectly and saying I had to pay again. This isn’t slander, but somewhere in that cities bureaucracy they are okay with actual corruption.
For what might have been about a month then, I borrowed Jackie’s bike, or walked everywhere to make sure I didn’t get a follow up ticket while raising the extra money. This allowed for one funny day after work when Marque didn’t have his own bike and like kids I set him up on the handle bars and pedaled down the road. For a short moment Marque and I were no older than the kids we worked with.
This development though slowed down my finances available to find a new place and before I knew it we were into November with no plan. Claudine also recently had knee surgery, so I had been doing some cooking around the house, which sort of helped my stay seem not so inconvenient and before long it was the holidays as well. During this jumble of things, Dad had a weird moment of clarity and decided he wanted to donate all his toys, some of which he stole from me, to an orphanage.
This was an odd day for Mom and I, since at this point Dad was pretty much like a kid, and having this kind of foresight of his own situation didn’t seem possible anymore. We didn’t know if we should be proud he was doing such a nice thing during the holidays, or be worried that this was a forbearer of a worsening of his state.
Because of this among the other struggles I decided instead of using my savings this year to find a new domicile, We would talk to Claudine about sticking around and then I would come down in the summer to hang out and help out with Dad. That story though is for 2012.
Here is a weird thing about ones mind. Seems that during my stay with Claudine, Mom got me flown out to Texas for Thanksgiving. I vaguely remember this because of waking up in the morning and finding;
That gentleman in among Dad’s stuff. I was amazed one of my transformers from the 80s had survived, and mistakenly left him there for safe keeping. Spoiler alert who knows where he is now. Back to the matter at hand though, seems I somewhat forgot about this trip. Not that it happened just that it happened in 2011.
The more I think about it the more it makes sense though. For one I went on the trip with Aunt Dorothy. I remember that a week prior to the day I needed to come up and get her and take us both to the airport she called me up on my phone while I was at Claudine’s to ask me where I was and why I hadn’t picked her up yet. Foreshadowing I guess that Aunt Dorothy was starting to not be as quick anymore, I guess. I had to explain to her that she was a week early. But this memory does remind me that I was working out of Claudine’s house for this trip.
The plan was for me to drive up to Dorothy in Shingle Springs, swap to her car, then drive her and myself back to the airport, park her car in long term parking then we were to fly out to Dallas/Fort Worth. I don’t think I had seen Dorothy for a few years at that point, so it was stunning to see she was getting older. The famed pepper spray incident had just recently happened at UC Davis, so she had quite a lot of opinions to say on that which I remember fact checking heavily for her.
Once we got the Texas, I do remember that between her regression and Dad’s, Mom and I had to endure some pretty petty little kid style name calling in the kitchen a few times. It made for a weird trip. Mom and I discussed the issues and other things quite a bit, at least once late at night once the two had gone to bed.
Thanksgiving was done over at Cindy’s house, and I remember it also feeling oddly uncomfortable. Luckily, we didn’t stick around too long, came home and watched the evening football game between the 49ers and Ravens. A close game that didn’t quite go the way we wanted, it was nice to sit down with Mom and Dad to watch a 49er game with implications. This was a serious throw back the 80s and 90s, I think Mom even had pre-made cinnamon rolls for the occasion. Of course, the big reason to bring that all up is that this was also the last time we would all sit down like this for a San Fransisco game. It’s sad it went out on a loss, but at least we got one last evening of football and rolls.
This was also during the time Steve was driving trucks. I think he did this for a couple of years around this time. As luck would have it he came through North Texas the day after Thanksgiving, so oddly I saw Steve, who lived 10 minutes away this holiday by travelling half way across the country.
Slightly forgotten in time when this holiday took place, in retrospect this must have been when the decision was at least brought up to come back for the summer. Like I said I had some late-night talks with Mom during the visit and I have a feeling the plan to do so was hatched during this trip.
With the weekend over I brought Dorothy and her car back to Shingle Springs and then would set about the last two weeks of the school year before winter break.
That time was working on episode four for that year, which gets covered soon. Since it is episode 4, there must have been some reason we were behind the normal pace at this point. But I don’t remember what it was.
December 18th was then the first of two yearly trips Jim would be able to make for tailgating at an Oakland Raiders game. This contest, between the Raiders and the surprisingly competitive Lions ended in a Detroit win.
To be fair though most of the game was spent cooking, exploring the setups of other large vehicles in the parking lot area they were all assigned to and playing the age-old drinking game of wisest wizard, in which one was to drink cheap beers, and had to duct tape each new beer can on top of the last completed one in order to construct a wizard’s staff. The winner, or wisest, was the one who drank the most.
Seems though the outlets at this event we passed on this game to other venues around the country oddly enough. So, if anyone played a game like this before a sporting event in 2011/12, this is it’s nerdy origin.
As these weeks seem to rapid fire through, as the holidays can tend to do, suddenly I find myself at Christmas time. I remember Claudine being open to egg nogg and ginger snaps, so I probably gained some weight during Winter break that year.
I don’t remember what the plan was Christmas day though, I have a picture of me and the side of Karl’s head from Jim’s mother’s birthday party the day after in Sacramento at here favorite Chinese restaurant. And then some collected photos of a game of Illuminati that night. But where I spent Christmas day is currently a mystery.
Seeing that we played Illuminati during Thanksgiving in 2008 when the appendix blew out. I am thinking the resurgence to play a late-night game came from Jim and Jackie getting me one of the expansion sets for the game that Christmas. I also think they gave me a book about competitive eating, don’t know why that lingers through the fog of war.