(Fun Thread) Bad performances gone good (or the inverse)

[tgjdlc]

I've noticed in my ten years of being involved with forensics (as a competitor and coach) that there are moments that will forever stand out in my mind. Some great, some bad, some ugly, and some just straight up weird. I want us to share the latter of these with each other, just because I think it'll add to the amusement and wonder that is Forensics.
I'll start off with an example.

Setting: My So. year of high school. La Costa Canyon Christmas Classic (SD, CA). Final round of HI (was first speaker because I had to get to my other final round). Had just memorized my HI the day before the tournament (2002). Packed with an audience of competitors, 3 judges, and coaches/parents.

Piece: The Bible (abridged)<--- keep in mind, this piece was fairly fresh game around this time.

My teaser starts off marvelously, I'm getting into the groove of the performance and getting the best reaction I'd had all day... then... I get to the Moses and the Top Ten Rejected Commandments.

10- gets a laugh. -pause for laughter-
9- Bigger laugh -pause for laughter-
8- mediocre laugh -pause for laughter-
7- -pause for remembering- -pause I can't remember- -turn bright red- -silent room- -embarrassment-
"Crap, I forgot my commandments" (acting as Moses throwing the tablets away)
"which leads me to my number 1 rejected commandment" :nervous laughter:
"S-h-i-t happens" :uproar: :1 judge falls to the ground in laughing fit: :students giving an applause break:

Finish the rest of the piece with no problem. I walk out of the room after excusing myself and I cry. (I was a sophomore, it was embarrassing) I'm on my way to my final in DI and my coach is trying to tell me that I did just fine, it wasn't going to hurt me (blah blah) I get to my DI round completely flushed, but perform the best I can.

Awards. I go up when they call HI finalists expecting 6th place.

In 6th- not me. "huh, maybe my earlier scores helped me"
In 5th- not me. "Ok, I'm for sure in 4th"
4th-- not me. "wtf"
3rd- not me. "this can't be right"
2nd. "holy (expletive)".From Foothill, Juan ... "this can't be right"

I got 2nd in DI. however, I'm most shocked by HI.
I get on the bus bound for home, my coach comes to my seat, hands me HI ballots and says "go to the final round ballots"

One of them was "This was hilarious... and honestly, you messing up and keeping in character and applying the 's-h-i-t happens' was the funniest **** thing I've ever seen"

The other ballots remarked on it as well. I will forever keep those ballots.

I hope you get the point. Share your story (of any round- of any event) I'd like to read these.

[JJCrameraahs]

Ohhhh gosh...

Last year, there was a duo team cutting The Lord of the Rings over the course of the year (they used all three books inside of an anthology, it was legitimate). They didn't actually make a semi-workable cutting until state-qualifiers, which was the second to last meet of the year in my area. I was doubling in duo with a friend of mine. We just wanted to have some extra fun and maybe see some awesome duo pieces, but...

Oh, sweet maple flapjacks... That Lord of the Rings duo was the most tragically hilarious thing I have ever had the pleasure to behold.

They only had one script between the two of them. Not only that, but neither of them had memorized it. This led to a constant stream of awkward hand-offs between lines where one person would read a line and then try to give it to the other as quickly as possible without making physical contact. The peak to this absurdity occurred during their "Gollum" scene.

If you have not seen the LOTR movies, Gollum has conversations between his good and evil personalities. The way the duo team blocked it out, though, they had one person in front to do the happy voice and one person in back to do the evil voice. And whenever the evil voice was on, the person in front waved their arms around spastically and made a demonic face. What happened for half of the time, though, was that the person in front would start waving their arms around before the person in back could get the script and start reading lines, or vice versa.

The way they cut the piece was perverted and full of internet memes. Let me tell you that I will never think of Frodo's ring or the Eye of Sauron in the same way ever again... And during a scene involving Rohan one of them shouted "It's over 10,000!" as loud as they could. Loved it. Their delivery was also brilliantly horrible. They had a sort of "We know we're bad, so we're going to have fun being bad" delivery that kept everyone in the room laughing. They both narrated at parts with a stoicism that could only be matched by a brick wall.

Long story short, me and my duo partner were crying with laughter during the whole performance. We even gave them a standing ovation.

[tgjdlc]

Ohhhh gosh...

Last year, there was a duo team cutting The Lord of the Rings over the course of the year (they used all three books inside of an anthology, it was legitimate). They didn't actually make a semi-workable cutting until state-qualifiers, which was the second to last meet of the year in my area. I was doubling in duo with a friend of mine. We just wanted to have some extra fun and maybe see some awesome duo pieces, but...

Oh, sweet maple flapjacks... That Lord of the Rings duo was the most tragically hilarious thing I have ever had the pleasure to behold.

They only had one script between the two of them. Not only that, but neither of them had memorized it. This led to a constant stream of awkward hand-offs between lines where one person would read a line and then try to give it to the other as quickly as possible without making physical contact. The peak to this absurdity occurred during their "Gollum" scene.

If you have not seen the LOTR movies, Gollum has conversations between his good and evil personalities. The way the duo team blocked it out, though, they had one person in front to do the happy voice and one person in back to do the evil voice. And whenever the evil voice was on, the person in front waved their arms around spastically and made a demonic face. What happened for half of the time, though, was that the person in front would start waving their arms around before the person in back could get the script and start reading lines, or vice versa.

The way they cut the piece was perverted and full of internet memes. Let me tell you that I will never think of Frodo's ring or the Eye of Sauron in the same way ever again... And during a scene involving Rohan one of them shouted "It's over 10,000!" as loud as they could. Loved it. Their delivery was also brilliantly horrible. They had a sort of "We know we're bad, so we're going to have fun being bad" delivery that kept everyone in the room laughing. They both narrated at parts with a stoicism that could only be matched by a brick wall.

Long story short, me and my duo partner were crying with laughter during the whole performance. We even gave them a standing ovation.

awesome story.

[iluvrascalflatts]

Last year I cut "The Book Thief" and forced one of the novices on my team (the only one who was gullible enough to work with me ) do it with me. For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, it's about a girl, Liesl, and her best friend, Rudy. We went to a gigantic college tournament and went to the first round. We did the teaser fine, but during the introduction, he said, "Liesl's best friend, Diesel" instead of "Liesl's best friend, Rudy." Now, I was absolutely mortified. I NEVER messed up like that. But then, to my horror, I began cracking up. It would have been unnoticable if I hadn't laughed at him, and we could've gone on with the piece, but for some reason the rhyming names sent me over the edge and I ended up guffawing and turning bright red in front of the State champions in DI and HI. I had a really good reputation as a DIer that year and ended up qualifying for Nats and finaling at state, but duo... was a different story. We had my biggest competition, an amazing DIer, in our duo round and he had never seen me mess up like this and when he started laughing at me, I about died. I couldn't keep a straight face as, later in the piece, I bent over Rudy's "dead body" and said goodbye to my Diesel.

[thusgirl]

WOW! Lol Im doing that as a prose now.

[Gabrielle]

he said, "Liesl's best friend, Diesel"

I literally am stilling laughing out loud at that. SO funny.


In my DI, my character is a ballerina and I have a dance sequence where I do a grand battement (fancy ballet term for a high kick, haha) and a pirouette and stuff and last Saturday in my first round, when I lifted my leg for the grand battement... my shoe fell off. It flew into the first round and I had to dance over to it and slide my foot back into it as gracefully as possible. It was terribly embarrassing, but somehow I managed to not receive anything about it on my ballot...

[rawrCooper]

AH! All of these mess ups in rounds reminds me of last year:

It was my first time doing Duet Acting, my partner and I were running "Scooter Thomas Makes It To The Top Of The World". There was a scene where we were on top of the cliff and I was supposed to lean over the edge, but my chair flipped over from under me and I fell. My partner (as funny as he could be) said, "Oh my gosh! Scooter are you okay?!" and rushed down to help me up. The rest of the time I was just laughing from how stupid I looked.

[2Fitzgerald7]

National Qualifier last year I was in a round with two warm bodies, team just filling in spots to reach a certain number of Qualifiers. The way the round went it was the two warm body duos, then my partner and I. The first warm body was ten second Fight Club. It was hilarious piece. Then the piece I lovingly call the bear piece. It was a boy and a girl. The boy told a story of how bear killed his mother by entering his town and finding his mother and eating her. The bear then continue to torment the town. While the boy tells the story, the girl is acting everything out. Then about 7 minutes in the boy stops and say "F**k the bear, F**k my mother" then points at his duo partner and screams "F**k you". She slaps him across the face. Then they hug and make up. Remember this is Duo and out of no where. The room went up in an uproar and then my partner and I had to go. We had to ask for 2 minutes to stop laughing.

[3rdround]

My senior year of high school, I made HI finals at the first tournament I took my HI to. In finals, the third speaker gets up to perform. I happen to be friends with this guy, so I already think that almost everything he does is funny. He then starts performing his piece: "James Cameron's Avatar, narrated by James Cameron (trying to pitch his own movie)". At this point, he runs up to someone in the front row (happened to be me) from the center of the room and shouts, while waving his arms, "IN 3-D!", and then goes back to the center of the room and continues the piece. I swear, I laughed for a good 3 minutes after the piece was done.