I went to the last on-campus SoCal VoCals concert of the school year last night.

I have to say, the concert was surprisingly emotional for me — not that I cried or anything, but I felt quite sad to be at my last VoCal concert. It was the sort of I’ll-really-miss-this feeling that I often experienced at milestones during my senior year of high school, but that I haven’t been feeling nearly as much in recent weeks as my undergrad years wind down. Then again, aside from academic stuff, I think the two most constant things in my life through my four years at USC have been Becky and the SoCal VoCals. :)

Funny thing was, as they introduced each of the graduating VoCals (Adam Blain, Emily Parry, Jessica Bolger, James Snyder, Barry O’Neil and Julie Moffitt), I felt a pang of “Oh, I’ll miss him” or “Oh, I’ll miss her” for each one… as if it makes any difference who’s graduating and who’s not. I’m graduating!!! I’ll miss them all!!!

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of seniors’ farewell performances:

Emily and Barry did a wonderful rendition of “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge


Julie with one last heart-stopping performance of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

In addition to being a great concert musically, the show also had some emotional moments, like Amy Thomas’s tearful tribute to Emily…

…and plenty of funny moments, like the hilarious bit of choreography during the “Footloose” medley when, while singing “I Need a Hero,” the female VoCals fawn over the not-exactly-hunky Ryan Alvarez:

Lisa Townsend’s virtual on-stage confession to having a crush on Adam was also quite memorable. :)

And James’s performance of “Fire in Your Hand” (for which he was named runner-up for Best Soloist in the western U.S. at the ICCAs) was sensational. I still have that song running through my head at this very moment, actually, hours after the concert ended.

Adam also had a couple of great solos, including “Motorcycle Driveby,” an old Bryce Ryness number (Bryce graduated last year) that was always one of my favorites. It was nice to hear the VoCals sing it again, and Adam really put his all into it. And the new song, “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge, was great, with a wonderful (and wonderfully cute) duet by Emily and Barry.

The highlight for me, though, was Julie’s performance of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I have loved her rendition of that song ever since the first time I heard it. To give you an idea of just how much I love it, during my freshman year when they had yet to release a recording of Julie singing the song, I actually created a low-quality bootleg MP3 from my videotape of her singing it at a nearby dorm. Then, during sophomore year, when a recording of it was released on the Best of College A Capella CD a few weeks ahead of the release of the new VoCals’ CD, I bought the BOCA CD the very first day it was available online, and had it shipped via, like, two-day mail or something, so that I could get my hands on it ASAP. :)

Well anyway, Julie hasn’t been with the group for most of this school year, so I hadn’t gotten to hear her sing “Total Eclipse” in quite a while. (Lisa does a great rendition, too, but Julie is the original, and you can’t top the original.) Well anyway, last night, she was back with a vengeance. Her performance was as powerful and sultry as ever. I personally gave her a standing ovation afterward. I’ll definitely miss Julie and that song. :)

Well, I’d better stop fawning before Becky gets mad at me. (It’s the song I have a crush on, Becky, not the girl, I swear!)

Thanks for the memories, VoCals!!!

It seems even the heavens are celebrating my graduation from college. :)

On the night before graduation, May 15, there will be a total lunar eclipse, visible from Los Angeles in the mid-evening hours after sunset and moonrise.

At 7:41 PM, the moon will rise over Los Angeles’s eastern horizon with a substantial portion of its surface already darkened by the earth’s shadow. But sunset is around the same time, 7:48, so it will take a while for the sky to get dark.

The portion of the eclipse when the entire moon is covered by the earth’s central shadow (”totality”) will begin at 8:13, with the moon’s darkest/reddest point (”mid-totality”) coming at 8:40. The best time to watch from L.A. will be toward the end of totality, around 9:00, because the sky will be dark by then, according to this writeup.

Totality ends at 9:06, and the last little piece of earth’s central shadow (the “umbra”) moves off of the moon at 10:17. (Check out this chart for the detailed timeline.)

Pretty cool!

Now that I have almost all of my graduation regalia, why not try it on?

Meanwhile, I think we’ve found someone who really likes those Honor Cords:

Here are a couple more cute Toby pics:

Becky and I picked up our “Honor Cords” from the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences this afternoon, then went to the University Bookstore and rented our Commencement caps and gowns.

Becky takes a look at her Honor Cords.


Becky gets silly with her Honor Cords.


I try on my cap outside Carl’s Junior. Becky correctly noted that I desperately need to get a haircut before graduation. :)


Becky tries on her cap, also outside Carl’s Jr.


Becky checks out her second tassel.

I will actually get two sets of Honor Cords because my two majors, Political Science and Print Journalism, are in two different schools (LAS and Annenberg), whereas Becky’s two majors, Political Science and History, are in the same school (LAS), and the cords are given out by school, not by major. So, nyah, nyah. :) I can pick up my Annenberg cords on Monday. (You get the Honor Cords for having a GPA of over 3.5.)

As for the cap and gown, you pay $30 for the rental, and then you have to return them or else pay like $100 more… but they throw in a tassel and let you keep it. (How generous.) Becky actually got two tassels by accident, so I suggested getting a miniature cap for Toby and giving her the extra tassel. Now that would be a cute picture.

Two weeks from this very moment, 9:44 AM, we’ll be about midway through main commencement ceremony.

Woohoo!

It’s 5/03.

Yeah, it’s 5/1/03, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. The truly significant thing is that the month is 5/03.

Why? For the last four years, on virtually every piece of remotely academic-related paperwork I’ve had to fill out, I’ve been asked my “expected graduation date.” Usually, they only want the month — and I didn’t know the exact date anyway. So, invariably, I wrote the shorthand: “5/03.”

Well, 5/03 begins today.

In other news, I took some more campus-in-springtime shots yesterday. I particularly like this one:

And here are a couple from the Daily Trojan office on the fourth floor of the Student Union building. Note the Tommy Trojan statue, USC’s central campus landmark, at the bottom of the first image.

Speaking of pretty spring pictures, they say springtime is for lovers, right? Well, here are a couple shots of me and Becky being cute yesterday. (Note Becky’s new “Lois Lane” glasses. I love ‘em.)

And here’s a picture of Becky pretending to be a Connecticut Boys State alumnus. I’m not sure anyone bought it. :)

Becky and I both have our final Daily Trojan articles of all time in tomorrow’s paper, which is the last issue of the semester.

Becky’s is a farewell column in the Opinions section. After a tongue-in-cheek tribute to herself, she leaves her readers with “loads of hard-won, but entirely useless, pearls of wisdom and otherwise random observations.” Among my favorites:

Even if you discover the cure for cancer, Carson Palmer will still make more money at quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals than you ever will.

Insurance companies employ only heartless bastards who sell spoiled milk to school children and club baby fur seals.

And, finally:

If you don’t know what blogging is by now, you’re out of the loop.

Heh.

My final article, meanwhile, is a bit less dramatic. It’s just a shortened, newsified version of the multi-thousand word magazine story I wrote for my journalism class about the alleged Troy Hall burglar, Roosevelt Carmichael.

It’s a decent story, but unfortunately, the DT editors once again demonstrated their remarkable ability to introduce ridiculous errors into otherwise spotless articles. For instance, where on earth did this comma come from?

The man who allegedly burglarized dozens of Troy Hall and Troy East apartments in fall 2001, was sentenced in March to more than six years behind bars.

That’s my lead sentence, folks. The incredible thing is, someone who is supposed to be an “editor” actually had to look at that sentence in its original form (without the comma), read it over, and actively make the decision to add a comma where it clearly did not belong.

Remarkable.

Ah, well, it’s an appropriate end to a frustrating career at the Daily Trojan — fighting in vain, to the very bitter end, against bad judgment and utter incompetence.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the DT “editors” also apparently don’t know the difference between parole and probation.

I used the word “probation” six times in the article, because that’s the proper term, but the deck (underneath the headline) stated, “Arrested in 2002 for violating parole, Roosevelt Carmichael faces six years in jail.”

Dumbasses.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic, check out this gem from a photo caption in the Sports section:

USC recruit Whitney Lewis is now eligible to join the football to join the team in fall after receiving a qualifying SAT score on TUesday.

Still no word from Georgetown Law School — or, at least, still no word that I’m aware of. It’s possible that something came in the mail after I came to campus earlier today, and I just haven’t seen it yet.

To review: Georgetown has already made its decision on whether or not to admit me — but I don’t know yet what that decision is. They mailed me either an acceptance letter or a rejection letter on Friday evening. They told me it’s on the way, but they won’t tell me which kind of letter it is, because they have a policy of not revealing admissions decisions over the phone or e-mail.

What this means, aside from the fact that Georgetown’s admissions office is run by a bunch of sadistic bastards, is that, according to the quantum-physics theory best expressed through the analogy of Schroedinger’s Cat, at present I have been both rejected AND accepted by Georgetown.

This paradoxical reality will remain true until I open the envelope and see what the letter says (or, more accurately, until I see the envelope and determine whether it’s a “big envelope,” meaning I got in, or a “small envelope,” meaning I didn’t).

When I finally determine the letter’s contents, I will be “popping the quiff.” No, that’s not some sort of crude sexual slang. It’s another quantum physics term.

Oh, nevermind.

Where’s my letter?!?!?

:)

I’m sitting in my final undergraduate class right now. Professor Shah says it will be a “short class.” Right now she’s talking about her career, and what she hopes we got out of this class.

UPDATE, 2:17 PM: She’s going over each person’s final article. She just said I did “an incredible job” with my story. That compliment sounds like it might translate into a good grade. :)

UPDATE, 2:21 PM: She’s about to give us back our corrected papers, and then class will be dismissed.

UPDATE, 2:24 PM: I got an A on my paper. She wrote, “Terrific reporting job and very well written. Not a wasted word yet it flowed beautifully.” Well, that’s certainly rather nice for my last reporting assignment at USC.

UPDATE, 2:26 PM: “You’re free to talk to me, or, if you wish, you’re excused.” Class dismissed!

UPDATE, 4/1/03: Here’s a picture of me with Becky’s laptop, which I used to post the lines above:

And here’s a shot of Professor Shah talking to the class:

I have just added a graduation countdown clock to my homepage, constantly updating the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds left until 9:00 AM on Friday, May 16 when the main commencement ceremony begins:

Click here for a whole bunch of graduation countdown clocks.

This is the final week of regular classes (exams begin next Tuesday), so today marked the final session of the Journalism Honors Seminar. Each member of the class was given an honors sash as a reward for completing the seminar.

After all the sashes were given out, we took a group picture.

The instructor, at center, is Jay Harris, who is a member of the Pulitzer committee and the former chairman and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News.

We get to wear our sashes on Commencement Day, of course. Here are pictures of a few of my classmates getting their sashes:

For space reasons, I didn’t include larger versions of those pictures, but if you are one of the people pictured and you want a copy of the full-size image, please e-mail me and I’ll be happy to send it your way. (To save me the potential embarrassment of not being able to match a name to a face, please tell me in the e-mail which picture is yours.)

So yeah, we had our last Honors Seminar today, and then at 6:30, we had our last regular session of my last political science class, American Political Thought. As usual, Dr. Wallis — who is rather radical politically — made several interesting comments during his lecture, including the assertion that Sesame Street “is the absolute most destructive program ever created.” (That is apparently part of Neil Postman’s thesis in Amusing Ourselves to Death, which Dr. Wallis discussed at length.)

My last regular undergraduate class is on Wednesday, the final session of my Magazine Journalism class, at 2:00 PM. Then I have my term paper for the Journalism Honors Seminar, due May 5 at noon, followed by the American Thought final exam on May 12. And that’s it. Otherwise, I’m done.

In other news, the pre-commencement beautification of the campus continues, and today was another gorgeous day. A couple of scenes:

I guess I’m appreciating the natural beauty of the campus more and more now that I’m about to leave it. Not that USC has the most gorgeous campus on earth, but it can be very pretty, especially in the spring.

Well, that’s enough blogging for now. I plan to write something soon about my future plans, which I’ve been rather quiet about to this point. But not right now. I’m thirsty.

USC is now advertising its website’s Commencement section on its homepage:

Yesterday afternoon, I finally had the chance to take some of those “spring has sprung” pictures that I wanted to take on Thursday, but couldn’t because I didn’t have a camera.

After taking the pictures, I retreated to the somewhat-less-beautiful basement computer lab in Waite Phillips Hall, where I worked on my journalism project (due today) and Becky worked on her final history paper.

Here’s one more picture from the zoo — a lovely shot (taken by the lovely Becky) showing me, standing in front of a large group of flamingos, wearing my USC Class of 2003 shirt.

Less than three weeks till graduation!

It’s a beautiful day at USC, with crystal-clear skies and temperatures in the upper 60s. A bunch of trees with purple flowers are in bloom on campus, and lots of other flowers are popping up as well, as the university’s groundskeepers get the campus ready for graduation.

The only thing disrupting the beauty is the persistent smell of fertilizer, which is also part and parcel of the graduation preparations. (USC was in the midst of one of its occasional fertilizing sprees during the week when Becky and I first got together, so we sometimes joke that nothing makes us more nostalgic for those bygone days than the smell of sh*t.)

Visually, though, it’s simply gorgeous. I would take some pictures, as Glenn Reynolds sometimes does when his U. of Tennessee campus is looking particularly pretty… but unfortunately, my digital camera is missing. Or, perhaps I should say, at this point, lost.

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