You will not believe this...

State drama finals.... and I thought things could not be better for the Fourth Wall Players. Life has yet again thrown me another curveball the likes of which i will never forget.

Just wait. This one's a good one.

OK, so my school builds a whole new set, packs up the bus, and gets ready to head into Boston. The Real Inspector Hound cast and crew is getting ready for its final performance. Ready to travel into, for the most of us, the unknown. We haven't been to the state finals in four years, so no one basically knows what is going on.

But personally, I could care less. I'm just thinking about being reunited with my dance floor princess, the girl whom I met at semi-finals. I had a surprise for her, a collection of four CD's, three mixes and one copy of my favorite album: Everything In Transit by Jack's Mannequin. Cute, right? Well, music is my thing, and I really wanted to give her something to remember me by.

At any rate, we get there, I meet with her, we spend some time together, and the festival starts. To be honest, all of the plays soon became a torrent of averageness. I don't mean to offend any of the other schools, they all deserved to make it to finals, it's just they all seemed just OK to me. Play after play goes on, and I don't know what to think. "Oh, well, that one was OK, and that one was alright." It was all I could think about at the time while watching. Sorry, but nothing blew me away.

So it comes our time to go on. And I'm doing fine. One of our cast members goes to the hospital after getting sick and fainting, and now we're in a panic. We start changing the cast around, rehearsing trying to get things right, and then, out of the blue, our fallen angel returns from Beth Israel, all set and ready to go.

We take the stage and we did pretty well. The audience, I apologise again, wasn't that great. But no matter, we pressed on, and the performance turned out very well.

The last day of the Festival we loose another cast member. His condition is still unknown to me, but he's got this heart condition and diabetes, so God bless him. He's doing great now, and thank the Lord, he is... We're going to need him again. Keep reading...

By the end of the three days of play after play after play, it's finally over, for both the good and the bad. I'll be parted once again from my new found friend, but thanks to AIM and cellular phones, we won't be totally disconnected. The best part about everything is we don't need to do the show ever again.

Well, that's what we thought at the time at least...

We're all on the bus that'll take us home. I'm boxing the stars, reaching for Mars, "Dark Blue" pounding in my head. My director comes on the bus after we're all on and tells us the results:

The two schools that win have the chance to go to the New England Drama Festival in Vermont three weeks from now. The school that came in first declined the offer, as did the second place school. The runner up third place school also couldn't make it.

We're in fourth place.

We're going to Vermont.

We left Boston with half the group excited out of their minds, the other half wanting to commit suicide right there and then. Though we had never made it this far before, we still were sick of the play and just wanted it to end so we could move on with our lives, myself included.

Then again, I couldn't wait. I wanted to go, see other states plays, have fun. And most of all, I just wanted to be Inspector Hound again.

Sorry I haven't written in a while. The NE festival is over by now, but I'll write about it later. Way too tired. I'll be back soon.

Peace love and granola,

~Andrew