I had to do it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Joe_Boles

The Obligatory Wrap-Up

So I guess I've gone over the whole weekend now. It only took about six weeks to discuss 48 hours. I hope it doesn't look like all we did was drink and get arrested. It really was the most amazing weekend, and I think that it all came together beautifully. So here's the top fifteen list of what I'll remember from the weekend.

1. Thompson always feels like home.
2. People are still talking about the Den of Sin Makeout Party
3. No matter how many years have passed, we still can't quite grow up.
4. Terri Janney is proud of you.
5. The boys are still really cute.
6. So is Alex Miller.
7. Fred Gorelick will always make one of his characters in his shows gay. And we take comfort in this.
8. Those of you who have started: You guys make good parents.
9. The Armadillo Grill makes the best queso in town.
10. Some people have never heard the porn story, and it should have stayed that way.
11. Thompson really needs money. We need to remember them when we get rich.
12. A lot of people seem to have seen Ben Tedder's balls.
13. We all miss John McIlwee and wish he could have made it.
14. The "Pass the Cheese" story never gets old. At least, that's what I tell myself.
15. There is nothing more delicious than cheese fries at 2am. Except for the Pokey Sticks that we never ordered.

Now that it's all over, we need to ask ourselves, "What is the next step?". I feel like we've all kept in touch fairly well over the past few weeks, and I think that people are in favor of annual regional reunions, perhaps. I think that we all should pester Amy and Diane into throwing the next reunion in 2009, and we can get a wider range of alumni back for the theatre dedication.

What do you all think? And what the hell else do I have to talk about, now that the entire weekend has been covered?

My love to you all, and thanks for coming.

Breuggers.

Everyone headed out on Sunday morning, and the remaining stragglers (Katie, Tracey, Reid, and I) headed to Breuggers for some hangover food. As you can see, we were no longer the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kids who showed up on Friday night.

Yes, indeed. We looked a little rough.











And I don't know if Katie and Tracey were even awake when this picture was taken.









But I still managed to fully embrace big hair while in my stupor.










Although this was how I really felt.







It was a fun, crazy, emotional, validating, important weekend for us all. And we couldn't wait to start making sense of the whole thing.

Things Fall Apart

3:12AM - Sunday, June 25, 2006. My phone rings. Katie picks it up. She hands the phone to me, says that it's Jenny, and she's calling because Joe Boles has been arrested. I need to call Gerald, because he's been left on the side of the road as Joe was whisked off to jail.

I call Gerald, and he picks up his phone, telling me that Joe has been arrested and he's now left on the corner of Pullen and Western Boulevard. We ask him how Joe is doing, and he drops the first of several quotable quotes from the evening: "FORGET ABOUT JOE, I'M WALKING DOWN WESTERN BOULEVARD LIKE A TRICK. COME AND GET ME!" He also informs us that someone sober needs to go to the police station as pose as Joe's girlfriend, and will then be released on his own recognizance. We tell Gerald that we don't know how to get to the police station. He tells us not to worry, he knows where it is. We all should have asked how a 27-year old SCHOOLTEACHER who went to college in GREENVILLE knew where the RALEIGH police station was. However, it was a little too late and we were all a little too stunned to ask.

We then take an informal survey of the room to see which girl was sober and coherent enough to go to the police station at 3:30AM to get Joe out. I had appointed myself the middleman/stenographer of the evening, and I said I needed to be there to field any phone calls. Amber was too bombed to make it, Tracey was making believe that she was asleep, and Katie could only open one eye. So the duty falls to Will's girlfriend (forgive me for not remembering the name), and she bravely marches out to get Gerald off the side of the road to go to the police station. Will stays in the bed with Katie, trying to take a trip to snuggle-town. Pepper looks at the situation, and says in a tone of voice that is just so Pepper, "don't worry [insert Will's girlfriend's name here] I'll go with you." And they were off.

This is the time when Katie gives us the second quotable quote of the night (re: Will): "Did you really send your girlfriend to jail so you could climb in bed with me?" Answer: YES.

This is the time when truly decent people get the coffee started, and prepare for a long night awaiting the release of their wrongly imprisoned friend. Not us. We started talking about how the hardened criminals are going to have a fight over who gets to shower with Joe first. And we kept screaming that the other prisoners couldn’t hurt his face. We kept talking about how he'd return a changed man. After the 15th mention of jail-induced sodomy, we decided to stop discussing his trip to Brokeback Mountain. We were making ourselves upset, and he was probably only sitting in a drunk tank waiting to sober up.

And then we decided to watch the video from Frank's 21st birthday party. Now, contrary to popular belief, this really is one of those things that IS funnier if you were there. If you weren't it's sort of an odd sight to behold. No offense, I'm sure you all had a good time, but I decided to go to bed.

I get to the room, brush my teeth, and pass out almost immediately. (Important note, kids: Never neglect proper oral hygiene. Even at 4:30AM after a day of drinking.) Almost immediately after I fall asleep, several people receive the following text message from Gerald (and henceforth known as quotable quote number 3): "U suck 4ree joe Boles". That's it. That's all there is. No mention where they are or what's going on. I go back to sleep.

5:28AM - Text message from Katie Flaherty: Joe is free.

And the ordeal is over. But I have no idea of any details, and I cannot physically get up to go back to the room I'm so sleepy. I figure that I can get all of the information on the arrest and release after I catch a few zzzzz's.

I am up at 9:00AM, after four and a half hours of blissful sleep. Everyone is still asleep, and I need my information NOW. I go to Katie's room, wake up Katie and Tracey and take coffee orders. This was a nice, simple bribe to keep them awake and in good enough graces to tell me everything. I bring the coffee upstairs, they sit me down and we start discussing:

• Pepper, Gerald and the Girlfriend get to jail to have Joe released.
• Unfortunately, they are looking for Joe BOWLS instead of Joe BOLES. So they can't find the poor guy in the system.
• After a good long time, they find Joe, release him, and turn him over to that motley crew waiting in the jail waiting room.
• They bring Joe back to the hotel (at some point, they picked up Byron along the way, but I don't know how all of that happened).
• They take the customary pictures of the criminal with his release papers. And here they are:
  

• Then, as the sun comes over the horizon, Pepper drove Joe to Winston Salem to sing at church with his family, after the crazy-ass University Theatre reunion.

So there's the fallout. There is the reason for this blog. Everything else I might discuss will now pale in comparison. But I'll still write stuff anyway. Because I like talking about the theatre reunion. More to come later.

The Rest of the Night

Ok, suckers. It's time to start reconstructing the rest of the night. I will do a point-by-point description. Let me know what I'm missing, and we may go over some things in greater detail later. Okay? Okay.


1. We watch Fred's production of Lend Me a Tenor. Curtis, who I referred to as "Little Pepper" when he was a freshman was the lead and was quite funny. I didn't know the other student, but she reminded me of Margaret a little bit. Her costumes were gorgeous. As were all of the costumes, actually. University Theatre will always be number one in costumes due to the McIlwee influence. It was a good performance, but the theatre was damn hot and all of the wine and fatty food didn't sit well with all of us. Katie ran into the theatre after intermission and announced to everyone that she was totally hammered. She had total sex hair, too. I thought she'd attacked someone on the way to the bathroom.


2. We all sit around the theatre and wait to all adjourn to Tir Na Nog. I don't know why it took us so long to leave. Probably because we kept taking pictures.








3. We leave the theatre, Tracey realizes that she has no gas in her car, and passes all of the stations on Hillsborough Street while screaming about how she can't find anywhere to get gas. We finally find some place on Peace Street to fill the car up so we don't end up stranded on the side of the road. All during this time, Katie is banging on the back window trying to get Curtis (who was following behind us) to rescue the group and let us ride in his car.




4. Marc and Kristy get engaged.









5. I get cash and leave my card in the ATM. Thankfully, the car full of strangers behind us returned it.

6. We arrive in downtown Raleigh an hour after we left the theatre. We can't find a place to park, due to a MASSIVE outdoor concert in city market. Katie and I get out of the car and leave Tracey to park on her own. Amber and Frank are better people than we, and they stayed with her until she found a space.





7. They aren't letting any more people into Tir Na Nog, but because I rented the back room they allowed NC State kids in. We are awesome.

8. It is ROUGHLY 8 thousand degrees in that room. People are about to pass out. See, look. Poor Linh caught on fire!








9. Reid Beaver shows up, looking like a fox. Seriously, all of the girls had a big crush on him.








10. Random people in the bar come into our room. We know that they are not UT people because the girls were wearing sparkly halter tops. Those were not our people, no matter what year you graduated.

11. Ben Kraudel shows up, charming as ever. He looks like the heat has kicked him in the balls, though. So, basically he looked like all of us.











12. People start to leave because of the late hour and the heat. I start to get emotional. Our awesome weekend is ending.







13. Alex Miller asks for Katie's number information. He says it's for theatre stuff. We all are hoping it's for an affair and we get to hear all the details.







14. We leave the burning hot Tir Na Nog for The Raleigh Times. Who are those sexy girls leaving the bar?








15. We arrive and no one can get served, because it's packed too. But it's about 75 degrees cooler, so we're totally okay with that.








16. Leah, Katie, Jenny, Pepper and I eat two plates of cheese fries in about 5 minutes. People stare at us like we're the most disgusting people in the world.






17. The bar closes. We don't leave. Scary old men are hitting on the women there. We ask for help in escaping them, and the men think it's too funny to stop anything. We're left to fend for ourselves.






18. The bar is still closed. We are thrown out of the building. We stand on the sidewalk talking about things to do. We come up with a trip to IHOP or hanging out in someone's hotel room. We decide to go to the hotel.



19. The boys get smoochy and amorous. We tell them that we don't like to be treated that way and they are getting creepy.










20. Jenny and I come on to Joe Boles, tell him that he's way hotter than he was in college, and we'd have him baying at the moon by the end of the night if he came back to the hotel room. Ironically, we don't think that we are acting creepy at all.





21. VERY IMPORTANT PLOT POINT ALERT: Joe Boles drives us from the bar to the theatre, as he stopped drinking hours ago, as he had to go to church the next morning to sing with his family. He charges his dead car battery as Jenny and I are shouting disgusting things at him. Gerald is charging the battery wearing only a wife beater and a tie. It's all so very weird.




22. Joe heads back to Byron's house to sleep for a few hours before he SINGS AT CHURCH WITH HIS FAMILY. He takes Gerald with him. Jenny, Eric, and I head to the hotel.













23. Jenny and Eric go to sleep, I go meet up with everyone in Katie's hotel room. It looks like the most bizarre prom after party ever. Tracey and her boyfriend are eating Snoopys, Katie's porn eye is in full effect, Will is in bed with her, Will's girlfriend is in a chair beside the bed, Amber and John are sitting on the floor, and Matt, Ronnie and Pepper are standing up, lording over the whole room. All of the girls want to be left alone, all the boys are looking for smooches, and everyone else just wants to go bed. Things are destined to go to hell.


24. The phone rings. It's Gerald. Everything has just gone to hell. And from there comes the title of this blog. And we will discuss this soon.







Did I miss anything before this happened? Do you think that my obsession with google image search warrants professional help? Is it hot enough for ya? Leave something in the comments section, and I'll add whatever is necessary.

The Tim Aldrich Photo Controversy

So if you a reader of the comments on this blog, you may have read the discussion between Tim and Katie about the conspicuous lack of pictures of Tim on this site. Actually, I am sure that they have been read, as I am pretty sure that the only people still reading freejoeboles.blogspot.com are Tim and Katie. Anywhozille, the comment fight goes as follows:

Katie said...
hmmm...anyone notice that tim is not in ANY of the pictures?! me thinks there is a plot a foot. TIM, did you kill the electicity? set the theater ablaze? phone in a tip to the fuzz that concluded with the infamous arrest? who can account for your whereabouts? J'ACCUSE!!

tealdric said...
You accuse me? I don’t this so, Red. I defy your accusation and counter with my own!You see, not only are there no pictures of me on this blog, but did anyone notice that there were no pictures of me at the reunion. Sure, there were hundreds of photos spanning decades of theatre debauchery...but not one of me. Not one. Yeah, I’m pissed.I’ve already started digitally inserting my pictures into all the old production shots…I was awesome in Stop Kiss, just awesome.

I would heretofore now like to present you with a picture of Timothy Earl Aldrich in NC State Theatre Alumni Reunion glory:

Unfortunately, I still don't have a picture of Tim's baby, but I do have this pic of Tim with "The Baby" a/k/a Leah Charbonneau. If you are dying for pictures of kids, here's one of my neice, Maddie.

I hope you like it. Baby pictures are adorable.

Incidently, I apologize for the spotty blog updating schedule. I wish I could say it was because I was really busy at work, or because I lead a REALLY exciting life, but it's mainly because I've been following the "Lance Bass is gay" story and watching Project Runway marathons.

Keep the faith and keep trying to Free Joe Boles.

Terri Janney makes us cry... but in a good way!

So we finish our food, and casually make our way into the theatre. It's pretty impressively packed with people. It's nice to know that so many people came to the reunion itself.


Director Fred with Bryon, Lauren, and Jenny--> right before we all go into see the show.


Slowly filing in... we're waiting to get in trouble for bringing wine into the show, but the punishment never happens. Incidentally, the real problem comes from drinking wine in a building that has been without air conditioning for hours and then sitting in the dark. Yikes!


But before that happened, we all managed to sit and act like grownups. The room was filled with all of us chatting away and figuring out plans for the rest of the night/weekend.


And then Terri started talking. At first, it was your basic list of thank yous, recognizing those who were involved. She reminded all of us how to find your light on stage. (Walk until your face feels warm, then stop.) And then she started talking about all of us. She told us all how proud she was of all of us... then recognized all the people who had traveled far to be there. She talked about Ronnie Cruz starring in Pirates of the Caribbean, and made all of her New York City Alumni stand up. Then she got choked up and talked about how we were all her children and that she was so happy to have us back again. Well. Not a freaking dry eye in the house. We're all wiping away are tears, and marveling at the fact that after all of these years, Terri can still make us cry. But this time in a different, more poignant way.

She finishes, the show starts, and we settle in for a two hour Gorelick comedy.