Music of the Streets

           We finally finished our documentaries! I worked on the four minute documentary that we were assigned back a long time ago with Samantha, Sarah, and Grace. When we first heard about the project, we all decided that we wanted to make our documentary about street musicians. None of us really knew anything about them, and we thought it would be fun to go into DC and interview people about playing music on the streets of DC.
           Well, it turned out to be a little tougher than we expected. We made multiple trips to DC and although we did find four people who played music, none of them had the time to let us interview them. So, we reshaped our view of our documentary. Instead of focusing on street musicians stories, we gave a super brief history of busking and then moved on to show the different street performers that we found.
           This process really gave me a chance to work on my Final Cut Pro skills. I did a lot of the actual editing while getting direction from Sarah, Grace, and Samantha since I was the person in our group who at least had a basic knowledge of Final Cut. I also really liked being able to go into DC and go up to random people on the street and ask them what they thought of street musicians. Although many people turned me down, I got to talk to several interesting people and become better at talking to strangers.
           I'm really proud of how our documentary came out, and I think Mr. Mayo liked it to. Here it is:

St. Anselm's Abbey v. Avalon (and a little look at my dads high school life)

                    This weekend has been a really lazy weekend for me. I literally sat around and did nothing (not that I'm complaining), but I was kinda bored. So, when my dad asked me if I wanted to go to his old high school's annual basketball tournament, I said sure. My dad went to Saint Anselm's Abbey, a tiny all boys Catholic School in Northeast DC. He graduated in 1980, which was 33 years ago (that's crazy!) This weekend was their 66th Annual Invitational Basketball Tournament. We went to the final game where the Abbey played The Avalon School for the championship game of the tournament.
                  My dad grew up in the DC area and comes from a large family, 4 boys and 4 girls. His dad was in the very first class at the Abbey and graduated in the class of 1946. My dad's three brothers also attended. Two of his brothers live in the area, so we all went to the game. His twin brother happens to be Maddie's dad, so Maddie and her sister were there too along with me and my sister.

                  As soon as we drove up, the first thing that hit me was the size of the school. It is tiny. Definitely smaller than my elementary school. My dad's entire grade was originally 33 people, but only 23 ended up graduating. On the right is a class picture from his graduation. My dad is the dark haired guy directly above and a little to the left of the Father wearing the cross. Maddie's dad is directly above the Father to the right of the Father wearing the cross.
            It was actually pretty amusing to be in the exact same building that my dad went to high school in over thirty years ago. Of course, it was a totally different experience for him. The first thing Maddie and I noticed when we walked into the game and up to the Abbey side of the bleachers was the sheer amount of boys. This shouldn't come as a surprise since it is an all boys school, but it still was. And naturally Maddie immediately commented on the lack of cheerleaders. I asked my uncle Matt (Maddie's dad) what it was like going to an all boys school. His response? "Not only was it all boys, but it was all nerdy boys. I mean, commme on."
            And he was right. It was really tough to make it at the Abbey. Classes were hard. Of the 33 that entered the Abbey in seventh grade, only half of the original class graduated (the other few were transfer students). That means half of the grade either transferred, or flunked out. There was multiple hours of homework a night, every night. My dad was also on the basketball team way back when, and that year (1980) they ended up winning the Abbey tournament championship.
              Anyway, back to the original point of this post, which was about the basketball game. When we arrived, St. Anselm's was trailing by ten, and they never fully came back. The end of the game was super intense, however. They were down by 1 with less than a minute left. They had to foul Avalon in order to stop the clock. The kid missed his first free throw, but made his second, putting us behind by two. Then, we just collapsed defensively and allowed them to pick up the rebound and make a layup, putting Avalon up by four with five seconds left. Devan Abercrombie, an Abbey junior and leading scorer throughout the game, grabbed the ball and raced down the court. With one second left he heaved the ball at the basket just outside the three point arc.
              It swished in, but it didn't matter. St. Anselm's lost  47-46. It was heartbreaking loss, but a really fun game to watch. One particularly hilarious highlight was in the third quarter. An Avalon player shot what should have been an easy basket, but completely missed. The Abbey boys began to chant "airrrrballlll, airrrrrballlll," and Avalon immediately responded with "scoreeeboardd, scoreeeboarddd" (they were up by nine). Then, to the crowd's surprise, the Abbey boys retaliated with "SAT score, SAT score" which perfectly sums up this entirely too long post. Leave it to self proclaimed 'nerdy' Abbey boys to bring a gripping basketball championship game back to the academics.      

Side note: I would include a picture of the game but every single one I took is either way too dark or blurry to even see what is going on.