Sorry about Something Blue. I don't think I'll be able to finish it. I started high school last month and I literally have zero time on weeknights, and on weekends I'm braindead from lack of sleep. I used to groan when I had two hours of homework. Now I rejoice that they let me off easy. I've already had a couple of nights where I'll start my homework on Tuesday and finish on Wednesday, without taking a break. It got so bad that I had to miss the Jam wedding to do a history assignment – an action would have considered blasphemy before I saw my current history average and realized how much I needed that grade. (I did see it later, and it was brilliant. I cried. I literally cried.)
Other than that, things are okay. In case anyone cares, I'm recovering, slowly, and it's tough, but I'm getting there. Thanks to everyone who's offered their support. You guys rock.
I wrote this for an application to the Features section of my school newspaper. We had to write a mock article using the characters and setting of our favorite T.V. show. This got me on the paper and I hope you like it.
"A one, a two, a one two three four!"
Andy Bernard, a tall, brown-haired man of about thirty in a blue and yellow sweater leads. Behind him stand a group of no fewer than ten similarly dressed men, a guitar player, a keyboardist, and a drummer. Most days, they are salesmen, accountants, businessmen, and podiatrists. But today, they are more than that. Today, they are artists.
"Wait, I'm confused," says the drummer, Kevin Malone, a stout, balding man in his late thirties. "Do we start on four, or after four?"
"Well duh," says Bernard. "We start on…no, we start after…just, one two three four!" And, timing thus being declared irrelevant, the out-of-synch group plays a mash-up of "Roxanne" and "Rockin' Robin."
The group is Treble Comes To Scrantonicity II, a cross between the a Capella group Here Comes Treble, led by Bernard, and the Police cover-band Scrantonicity II, led by Kevin Malone. Both Bernard and Malone work in the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, a paper company. But for Bernard and Malone, the band is another life, separate from the pressures of the workday.
"At Dunder Mifflin, people think I'm slacking off. But I'm working a fifteen hour week!" said Malone. "It's brutal. But when I'm with the band, I don't have to think. My mind is just…blank. It's awesome."
The bands merged after both faced years of failure. Bernard and Here Comes Treble were initially successful, but faded into obscurity soon after leaving college.
"Back in college, we were the coolest guys around," said Bernard. "Wherever we went, people were whispering about us. And when we left, they started imitating us, trying to be just like us…but it's weird. No one outside of Cornell seems to want to hear a Cornell a Capella group."
"It was the same deal with my first band, Scrantonicity," said Malone of his band's failure. "People loved these songs when the Police did them, but now we come and do the exact same thing and everyone's just bored. I thought it would be different with Scrantonicity II," Malone reflected. "I thought wrong."
Despite the unpopularity of the individual bands, together, they are a force to be reckoned with. Their first gig, the annual branch Halloween party, was wildly successful.
"They're definitely…interesting," said Pam Beesly, co-worker of Bernard and Malone. "I've never heard the Monster Mash with ten vocal parts and an electric guitar before."
"I do not care for music," said Dwight Shrute, another coworker, "and therefore have no opinion."
When Shrute's review was read to Bernard, the number four salesman at the Scranton branch started to tear up.
"That," he said, "was the nicest review I have ever gotten."
The band dreams of one day selling out a venue, but their current goal is to sell ten tickets to their upcoming concert.
"If we sell ten tickets, we can afford to fix the distortion pedal," said Malone. "That would be awesome."