Eyeball Soup

At our puppet master's meeting before the GALL school year got officially underway, the GALL elders were discussing various things that the club could do so that we might not run out of ideas like we did last year. One of the ideas presented was to put googly eyes in various locations. It was a good idea, but we decided that the clean-up (since GALL maintains responsibility for clean-up when necessary) would be too tedious to actually undertake such an endeavor. However, Dani would not give up on that idea.

A few weeks ago, she came to me with a new idea. We should paint ping-pong balls like eyeballs and put them in the fountain. She was really adament about eyeballs being somewhere on campus. It was a pretty good idea, so we did it.

Trinkle, our normal meeting place, was taken over by some catering hooplah, so we moved to the lobby of Combs. When the bodies assembled, we got to work.

The process was fairly simple: Paint the eyeball, making sure that there was paint on both sides (if not, the painted side will weigh the ball to face down), and spray them with acrylic sealer.

The theory was grand. The practice was tedious. Severely lacking in eyeball music, we were not as productive as we might have hoped to be with 503 eyeballs to paint. We resolved to save the rest for next week.

When we packed everything up and deposited it in the basement of Westmoreland, we resolved that our new meeting place should be Westmo's creepy basement.

The next meeting, in the basement, with eyeball music and more people, we managed to get a substantial amount done. However, we still had another hundred or so to do by the end of the second week. So, with Halloween looming around the corner (on Friday), we called for an emergency meeting the next day.

On Wednesday, Liz and I finished the remainder of the eyeballs and dropped them in the fountain.

So on that cold October night, we threw the eyeballs into the fountain. It was merry.

Unfortunately, the acrylic sealer didn't work as well as planned and most of the paint had faded by the next day. Oh well, you live and learn.

--Mike Isaacson GALL President

Indoor Air Raid II

This year started off with a bang. At the first G.A.L.L. meeting, Vice President Ben counted 35 people. I don't think we had that many people combined last year, much less at the same time.

This year, we came prepared. G.A.L.L. held a secret meeting of last year's members to prepare for the first public meeting. So I came equipped with six cardboard boxes, 4 packs of construction paper, and the bag of Sharpie Minis that our club holds so very dear.

Remember last year when it took us four meetings to complete 96 airplanes to fill two boxes? Yeah, well these kids are awesome and got through 480 in under an hour. That's more efficient than the spider web project which clocked in at just about an hour.

That Thursday, I met Ben and a few others to help carry boxes of planes to the second floor of Trinkle.

They had already filled their arms, so I was only left with one box. I suppose that shouldn't really make me sad.

The rest was pretty similar to the first indoor air raid, except we were spared the angry PRISM salesfolk, and got the added bonus of people hurriedly rushing by to avoid a shower of multicolored paper.

According to a confidante on the ground, people either had looks of amusement or confusion. So, I suppose it was confusement...or amusion...

Either way, the airplane toss lasted for about 10 minutes, and the mass of airplanes grew.

And grew.

And grew.

I would have been late for my next class, had the professor not been watching the whole thing with a smile on his face.

After all the boxes were empty, we took them down to the first floor (6 people plus boxes divided by elevator equals very cozy) and managed to clean the whole mess up in less than a minute.

I think everyone can agree that this one was a success.

--Mike Isaacson, GALL President

The Duck Hunt

On the same night that we came up with the spider's web, Heather suggested that we put rubber duckies in the fountain. Happy Heather? You got your due credit.

Anyway, I ordered a case of 288 rubber ducks on Wednesday in preparation for Tuesday's ducking.

On Thursday, I found a message left on my cell phone asking me to call back Kites, Tails and Toys.

Apparently, the yellow rubber duckies, which I can only assume are the most popular variety, were on back order and wouldn't get to me until May.

Well, fuck that.

So, we replaced the yellow rubber ducks with pink, blue and yellow plastic ducks.

They got to me the next day. Amazing how much bubble rap comes in a box of ducks.

So, we set out for the duck drop with a box of 132 ducks (they had to cut back to meet the price of the case of 288) and a package of sidewalk chalk.

One by one, we tossed the ducks into the fountain.



We soon realized that these ducks were not very adept swimmers. Despite the fact that the company alleged that the ducks were weighted, most of them floated on their sides. Corporate bastards.

We then began to chalk the fountain. Beforehand, I was asked what I thought it should say. I suggested the standard slogan, "What is GALL?" coupled with the meeting time and place.

Shockingly, I was met with scoffs of disapproval. We settled on various duck references and puns.



Becky wrote "Keeping free art afloat."



Chris wrote "In case of air raid: duck" referencing our previous social experiment.

I wrote "What is GALL?" and the meeting time and place...

After a couple of minutes observing our handy work as we are wont to do (for like a half hour), we noticed two things:

1) Plastic ducks tend to form social cliques
2) There are always a few emo ducks that try to escape



The first observation, I found to be quiant: plastic ducks interact much in the same way that high schoolers and foreign nations do.

The second observation I was more or less fine with. However, Chris was upset by the idea that ducks might tend toward the side of the fountain. So during our half hour of idle observation, Chris assumed the position of a duck herder (duckherd?), mother duck.

When, we returned the next day, we were greeted by orange and maroon balloons sharing fountain space. I completely forgot that the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting was the 16th.



Of course, there would be something in the fountain, because in our post-9/11 world, we Americans like to relive tragedies for as many years as possible. I suppose it's like College Basketball teams striving for consecutive NCAA championship trophies.

I felt that the situation was a visual metaphor for theatre in its representation of comedy and tragedy.

Because it was tragic that the ducks were floating on their sides.



Balloons always struck me as festive...

By night, only two ducks remained in the fountain.

--Mike Isaacson GALL President

The Indoor Air Raid

When we got back to school this semester, Ben (GALL VP) was already brewing with new ideas. As you might remember, it was Ben who came up with The Blanket Experiment, and shaped GALL as a platform for social experiments (pranks) in addition to poetry performance and street theatre.

His first idea (or at least the first idea that I thought was feasible/good) was to throw a whole bunch of paper airplanes on an unsuspecting public. I distinctly remember a mischievious smile creeping over my face when he told me about it.

I decided that we should up the ante with this one by creating a conspiracy theory to go along with it. I hoped that we could drum up some anticipation. I hadn't counted on the lack of resources and people to get the job done. Had it been for children in Honduras, maybe we could have gotten the people power.

After two meetings, we had accrued two boxes of 95 paper airplanes (total, not each).

Even though we had a few fliers, handouts and a website in the works, we decided (I conceded) that the conspiracy theory was a bad idea and that we should just launch the fucking things.

So, we decided to table at the Nest on Friday from 11-1 and launch at 12.

Across the lobby from our table was the table for PRISM's Day of Silence. As we threw them down, they began to get irritated with us. I commented to a GALL comrade that I didn't think they liked us very much. She responded, "Well, I don't like their dating service."

Point taken.

After the first air raid the ground was littered with a multicolor carpet of miniature aviatory machines. As we looked over the balcony, we decided that we should probably do it a second time

So we did.

After the second raid, we packed up the planes back into their two boxes, and finished out the hour.

I think, since Chris made it, I should put the flier for the indoor air raids up here:

--Mike Isaacson, GALL President

The Blanket Experiment

The Set Up: Duct tape a sheet to a high-traffic area of campus walk.

The Hypothesis: Most people will assume that it is something important and walk around it. Eventually, as it begins to show signs of trodding, people will begin to feel more comfortable walking on it.

The Account: After assigning people to take pictures and video in between classes, we assigned Zack to lay down the sheet and duct tape it in the wee hours of the morning.

When I went out at about 8:45, the sheet wasn’t there. My first thought was, “Son of a bitch. Zack got drunk and passed out, didn’t he?” I called him up, and he assured me that, in his drunken stupor, he did manage to tape the sheet down at three in the morning, as planned.

The guy from facilities was parked in his golf cart where the sheet should have been. I went up to him and asked him if there had been a sheet there. He said that there was, but the Athletics Director (what the fuck?) said that ‘it didn’t look right’ and took it up.

I later found out from a woman who worked for facilities that early that morning, when they found the unmarked sheet, they had a two-hour debate regarding what to do with it. Some argued that it was a hazard (I believe that leaves present a greater hazard than a polyester tablecloth duct taped to the ground) while some, remembering the fiasco from Bat Boy last year (apparently, the promo people put bats all over campus the day after Halloween, and were mistaken for leftover decorations) wanted it to stay because students had obviously done it.

The guy from facilities still had the thing balled up on the back of his truck, and offered it to me. I took it and deposited it in my room, and angrily went to Arabic class.

After class, I got the sheet and went to GW to find out where the Athletic Director’s office was. I trudged to Goolrick to give him what’s for, but he wasn’t there. So on my way back, I peeled off the duct tape which had wadded itself around the tablecloth (good thing it was a sturdy cloth).

As I neared Trinkle, I called up Zack. Together at 10:30, we taped the thing back into its rightful place. As we were doing it, a few passers-by asked us what it was for. Our answer was terse and to the point – “Art.”

We stepped back and watched the hilarity ensue. In the interim between classes, there developed an eye-shaped absence of human bodies around the five-by-seven-foot sheet. Groups of four heading for the sheet would split off so as to avoid it.

At 12:58 someone proposed that perhaps a body were hidden beneath the cloth.

Another person asked a friend, “What’s this?” When the friend responded that she didn’t know, he said, “Well, I’ll walk around it just in case.” Others proposed that it was for break dancing or that it was a “free canvas.”

Even some passing trucks swerved to avoid the polyester menace, like this one at 2:56.

Some deeply engrossed in conversation would notice it at the last minute, stop, and turn to avoid the thing.

The Athletic Director did end up calling me, as I had left my number with his secretary. He represented the polar opposite end of the “sheet relic” spectrum, and I laud him for thinking outside the common social mores. He regarded it as trash. It was unmarked and on the ground. Thus, it was trash. As much as I didn’t think he was justified in making judgments on things not regarding Goolrick or sports teams, I must credit him with his rational, concrete value system, even if it did disrupt the experiment for an hour and a half by stepping out of the bound of his jurisdiction in order to enforce them.

When Chris went to take photos at 5, he remarked that he had to turn his flash off because people were changing their behavior when they saw the flash. Sort of a Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle kind of thing, I suppose.

In all, the experiment went well. Eventually, the thing did accrue some footprints and tire tracks in addition to leaves blowing on it.

Toward the end of the day, people got more bold. People began standing in it, dancing on it, jumping on it, jumping over it.

If nothing else, it certainly provided those who understood the experiment copious amounts of entertainment between classes. Perhaps, in a year or so, we’ll do it again on another part of campus.

--Mike Isaacson, GALL President

To view more pictures from the blanket experiment, Click here to see the PhotoBucket album.