People You'd Notice

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There are some pretty intense characters on the ship.  I’ll give a summary of some of them, and possibly some memories with them as well.

 

1.

 

The first person you’d notice is Toby.  His real name is Ben, but he wanted people to call him Toby, so he just told people his name was Toby, and it stuck.  He has long hair, about to his shoulder, and it’s kind of wavy and used to be partially dyed in the front, but he got it all bleached totally blond in Vietnam.  He wears really crazy clothes, including a tunic from Egypt, green pinstriped pants, totally bright white jeans, and glasses kind of like the dude from Star Trek.  It seems like it wouldn’t work but if you saw him, you’d think it was cool.

 

And he is cool.  He’s great with cameras and makes a TON of videos, some for fun, some for school, and they’re all AWESOME.  His Global Studies project is about the sustainability of friendship or something along those lines, and we watched a video of it in class the other day, and it was just awesome.  He had video of him talking to a little kid in Vietnam, two girls on a park bench, a guy playing guitar with him and a bunch of friends on the street, etc.  He did the same thing in Hawaii, but just for fun, not even for a grade.  He’s definitely inspired me to be more serious about making videos… and also to invest in a really high quality camera, now that I see how beautiful one can make things.

 

He writes crazy stories and makes crazy drawings and crazy poems and signs them as “Tobysaurusrex.”  I just read one of his stories, and in it he walks into the ship, then there’s a rabbit behind him, and then it holds up a lobster, and then his key card turns into a sandwich and he goes to bite it and it turns into a computer, and then the ship turns into his room, and there’s a robot there, and he talks to the robot.  It made negative sense.  But that’s just how Toby is.

 

2.

 

There’s a girl named Mackenzie or McKenzie, and then reason you’d notice her is because she’s literally the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen or ever will see.  It’s seriously striking, like to the point that a lot of people did double-takes the day they stepped on the ship.  And the cool part is that it’s not in a Cover Of A Magazine way and I don’t think she wears make-up…?  A picture would be best, of course, but she has a really strong/angular face with a super bright smile and she dresses a lot like Ellen DeGeneris and it just completely works.

 

I’ve only had like three interactions with her, which is kind of sad, because my friends tell me she’s cool and we don’t have a lot of time left.  Once she said something to me while I was playing Regina Spektor on piano, but I thought she was talking to my friend who was sitting beside me on the bench, and then my friend said, “Dude, why’d you ignore her?”  And then I felt like an enormous jerk and I apologized to her a day or two later.  She walked by me playing again tonight and waved and I made sure to say something back instead of just nodding.

 

3.

 

Emerson is a piece of art.  He’s from Thailand but he goes to University of Virginia.  His English is fine but he still has a strong accent.  He’s very very thin with short black and brown hair (dyed) and glasses most of the time.  He dresses pretty well but not nearly as outlandish as Toby.

 

The thing about him is that he is completely Balls To The Wall in everything he does.  He was the first one to organize a coffeehouse, and it was an incredible success.  When it was his turn, he sang My Heart Will Go On on piano with Jay playing behind him.  Before he went he said, “Okay, I’m going to sing you a song now, and I know that my voice is not very good, but I sing a lot when I am at home and I’m missing home a lot now so I’m going to do this to feel a little bit better so I hope you like it.”  And he was right, his voice wasn’t great, although he did hit some of the most important notes.  But no one cared, because the point was that he got up there saying that he wasn’t good and still just WENT FOR IT, which takes like 10x more cajones than anything that anyone else did that night.  And we all went wild for him.

 

At the Talent Show last night, he did two different performances.  The first was a dance to a song with the chorus line “Nobody nobody but you,” but I don’t know the title.  In any case, it was him and four other girls and another guy, but they were all dressed as girls.  Emerson was wearing a blonde wig and a dress.  And he just went for it, again.  And then I performed with him later, doing Paparazzi by Lady Gaga.  He had the most ridiculous outfit I’ve ever seen, with a mask and a red shawl and a black dress and a peacock feather fan and another blue headpiece… just craziness.  And Toby was dressed in a leather tuxedo dancing around with him, and they pretended to make out on stage.  I was playing piano and doing background vocals, and – at Emerson’s direction – I was wearing a long black wig, thick smokey eye make-up with a lightning bolt on my cheek, a gray see-through shawl with a leather belt wrapped around my torso, and tight black leggings that I got from a friend.  I had two “monsters” at my side, played by his friends, who wore surgical masks, black dresses and white bedsheets.

 

Hopefully I can show you a vide sometime, but it was just crazy, and ONLY Emerson would be able to get away with it.

 

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There are some more characters, but some of them I don’t like, and I’m kind of tired, so I’m just going to stop writing this entry for now.

 

Peace out.