The 1999 New England NACA Conference

What follows is something akin to a diary for this years' New England National Association of Campus Activities Conference(NACA). While it has NOTHING to do with comics, it is a GREAT time which always manages to leave me refreshed and energized. This years' attendees were myself, Eric Anctil and Russ Dougherty.

DAY ONE:

To minimize the packing time, Eric crashed at my house on Wednesday night, which meant it was around midnight before we got to bed. First thing Thursday morning, we started loading up the van with all the essentials: power bars, loads of green tea, munchies, portable refrigerator. Oh yeah, we packed clothing and the camera gear too. After all, that was this was all about: go to Manchester, New Hampshire and document the three days which make up the NACA conference. I mean, that WAS what we were being paid for-not just the bands and the people.

We left my house about 10 and made really good time, hitting the Center of Manchester (that's the name of the Holiday Inn there) just in time for the noon load in for students. Realize that, before all is done, there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or more college students, plus performers and vendors and administrators and us. We were told that this massive crush of people sold out four hotels in the Manchester area. Pretty impressive for a weekend gig in a little New England town.

First things first: we proceed to check in. Since Russ hasn't arrived yet(he took separate wheels because he had a wedding to shoot on the drive home Sunday night), we figured we would be gentleman and handle all the paperwork for him. That and the fact the both Eric and I wanted to unload out gear, set up the room for editing and make our way back to the gathering crowd of students. What should have been a five minute job soon turned into a 20 minute joke as the hotel couldn't find the reservation. Not only did they have Russ' name spelled wrong, but we were chided that we were late arrivals and no shows for Wednesday check-in. First we knew about it! If they had told us our rooms were booked in for Wednesday, we would have made the drive up that evening instead of waiting until the morning. Apparently, the technical crew was due in on Wednesday and, since we were the official video producers of the event, we were considered part of the technical crew. No big deal.

The big deal soon became getting our hands on one of those wonderful luggage carts that hold so much. After about 10 minutes of asking and some pleading, we secured one from some students who had just finished setting up their room. Eric and I began to load up and haul the gear upstairs, which took us a lot less time than it had to check in. No sooner had we finished when Russ arrived and we loaded up all the computer gear we would need to put this tape together. That too, including the actual hooking up of the equipment and running a test took us about 15 minutes. So here it was: a little before 1 PM on Veteran's Day and we were ready to rock!

Off we went: three cameras ready to capture all the fun and excitement of the long weekend. Starting with students checking in at registration desks, moving through Hilby the skinny German Juggle Boy, Big Chair, Lazer Tag and the other opening day festivities, we continuously filmed anything and everything which looked like it would make cool video. And of course, we featured many of our friends from past years including the students and administrators from Johnson & Wales, Teikyo Post University, Greenfield Community College, Emmanuel College, Wheelock, Roger Williams College and the ever enthusiastic Sacred Heart University team, heretofore referred to as the SHU Crew. Suffice it to say, it is always great for me to see the SHU crew. They meant so much to me last year because of the way the warmly accepted us into their small circle of friends.

Of course, chants of JOE JOE HE'S OUR MAN always help too!

Following the afternoon festivities and a picnic meets cafeteria style dinner with music by this very cool jazz band called the Unified Jazz Ensemble. Then they opened the marketplace. The marketplace is where the deals are made, products are shown and the fun begins. Hundreds of cool things from guys doing bad sight gags to wax hands to fortune telling and just about everything in between. We did what we always do best-press the flesh, shoot some video and watch the antics. Like I said, cool stuff.

This was followed by the first of five showcases where a hand-picked group of entertainers tries their best over the three days to impress the crowd enough into hiring them to perform at their school. Like I said: it's all about the art of the deal. This first day featured Taylor Mason(funny comedian with some cool puppetry), On e World tribe(a band which looks like it was put together just to showcase the ethnicity of the members. Either way, I had seen worse performers), Tina Giorgi(decent female comedienne with a couple of good disgusting jokes), Robert Kelly(a Boston bred comedian with a couple of good bits including one dealing with pant wetting), and Craig Karges(a mentalist who I had seen before. Nice to see his tricks still work out the same).

The first day ends with what is known as School Swap. Basically, all the schools involved bring their coolest stuff to trade with other schools. Eric scored a calendar book from somewhere and I got a yo-yo from the SHU crew. Meanwhile, Russ is upstairs cutting tape and trying to stay on schedule.

It's close to 1 AM when Eric and I get back to the room, after shooting what we had to and hanging out with the folks. But it's close to 3 AM by the time we get settled and into bed. The video is about 1/3 done and a long way to go yet.

DAY TWO:

8 AM and we're up and at it again. Russ is already out shooting some of the educational sessions and Eric and I are trying to figure which way is up. Not one to drink hot coffee as a rule, I wolf down a carbohydrate bar and a bottle of green tea(one of almost a dozen which I drained that weekend) and it's a jump in the shower and off for another day of fun. Most of this morning is spent cutting tape and reviewing footage. Lunch consists of a boxed deal with a ham sandwich, chips, a cookie and a can of soda. We get that down just in time to be in the hall waiting for the showcase to begin. In a nutshell, that means thousands of screaming teenagers chanting school songs and our names. VERY COOL!

When the doors open, you had BEST be out of the way or you will, not unlike the old Led Zeppelin song, be trampled underfoot. Funny costumes, raw energy, smiling faces and the wildest wave you ever saw-THAT makes up a NACA crowd!

The show opened with Master of Ceremonies Bernadette Pauley who did her best whining act to the continued dismay of the crowd. What started off with a bang sure ended with a whimper. Other acts this afternoon included The Jim Show(a maniacal juggler), Kobi(a blonde songstress with electric keyboard), and Major Healy(a high energy ska band that not only rocked the enthusiastic crowd but brought one lovely from the crowd on-stage with them).

But by far, the highlight of the afternoon was the Acoustic Girl Circle. This high energy folk rock band from New York City absolutely blew the room away.

NOTE-to anyone reading this: if these three want a music video cut, call me. I'll cut you a deal you won't believe. As they say in the business...the first one is FREE!

Following the showcase, it was off, at breakneck speed, to check out the new Kevin Smith film DOGMA. Don't expect typical Kevin Smith comedics here, folks. It's a dark comedy...REALLY DARK. It takes a while to get into and will most certainly put a lot of people off. But enter with an open mind and you'll be fine.

A quick bite to eat at the fast food home of POKEMON and it was back to the show. The evenings' entertainment included MC's Ward & Wheeler(who had one or two interesting bits, but a few which were WAY to long), Break(four amazing break dancers who lit up the place with pure adrenaline), Blink(two jugglers with New Age music...YAWN), Sundra Croonquist(a comedienne with a very sarcastic edge) and The Pleasure Bombs(an interesting mix of mod styles and soul, once you got past the clothing they were cool).

Following the showcase, Eric and I hung out with the folks for a bit, including Chryssa and Christina from Wheelock(who we discovered were actually much closer to us geographically than we first had imagined) before heading upstairs to cut more tape. And cut we did. Between trips downstairs for air and general conversation with the attendees(including an hour plus with Matt Parker of BSC, talking music, wrestling and everything in between), and cutting tape, it was 4 AM before the three of is finally collapsed and went to sleep.

DAY THREE:

8 AM came real early on four hours sleep and luckily the coffee was hot and black. We had about 4 hours to get ourselves together, work on the project and basically wake the f' up before we had to shoot the next showcase. And we utilized all we could, leaving the video finished except for about 30 seconds worth, which would allow us to drop in the highlights of the afternoon showcase.

With lunch under our belt, the three of us chilled outside for a bit, taking in the cool air of Manchester and the sights. That was when I had my first of many lengthy discussions with Sarah. Sarah is this totally intriguing redhead from GCC who plans on graduating, heading to Arizona and getting a degree in Fire Science. That means she wants to fight fires in the brush as a career. Very cool to have someone so young know exactly what they want to do with their life. Not that she was the only person that weekend who had their head screwed on tight, but she stood out. And the absolutely killer tattoo helped!

I insisted that I needed to get that ink on tape for the project we've been working on for over two years(honest...and some day we'll actually get to finish it...some day sooner than you think!) and she agreed. Cool! Now it was showcase time!

With Mike Denicola acting as MC, we were treated to the musical styling of John Akers(John is a tremendously talented singer/songwriter who has developed long lasting relationships with such schools as SHU and Assumption...and, by the time you read this, will be the proud father of twins! Congrats John!), Merrie Armsterburg(a country styled singer who had a guitarist who decided, mid-way through the performance to jump off the stage...right where I was standing. Great footage for me...he pulled the axe out of his amp and suffered through the sounds of silence!), Kicked in the Head(a Boston based Ska band with Sex Pistols attitudes. They rocked the house big time. And it was nice to see the GCC girls shaking it in the front row!), Fran Snyder(a cool and non-offensive signer songwriter who mellowed the crowd nicely) and Eric Nieves(a New York comedian whose takes on sanitary products and other things in life were too funny to list here).

Time was running short so, despite wanting to take time to shoot that tat and to hang out with the SHU and BSC crews, I jetted upstairs with footage. At this point, Russ was severely swearing at the system which refused to read a computer disk we received from the NACA organization that they needed translated into video.

Nearly two hours, several frantic phone calls to Jon Doughtie(our technical maven) in Virginia and a new disk later(delivered after a full hotel, four flight building jaunt), THAT portion of our job was done and we could actually make an attempt at finishing the video, which was due to run in less than two hours.

Eric went to dinner, Russ and I ran dubs and scavenged food from the leftovers of a private reception(they had better eats anyway) and it was time to ring in the new year NACA style, complete with a Dick Clark countdown which had been slightly modified to fit the bill. They cleared the room, swept up the confetti, opened the floodgates again and let in the masses.

Now it was our turn.

There is truly nothing like hearing a large crowd of people cheer your work and themselves in the process. And that's what happened. THIS is part of why we do this gig-the adulation. Let's be honest-it is for the adulation and the pure fun.

The MC for the weekend's final showcase was Teresa: a country singer whose main claim to fame is letting Linda Ronstadt produce her album. I saw her two years ago in Marlboro. Wasn't impressed then...not impressed now. Although it was FUN watching Barry, this truly insane guy from TPU, make funny shadow shapes on her body via the ever popular spotlight technique!

Pinay is a Filipina-American singing group that I never got to see, as I was running video errands for the NACA crew(it was a LONG story) All I know is I arrived to see Steve from TPU, a very homosexual gentleman, remark, after performing on-stage with these lovelies that they could "make a gay man turn straight". Well, that sure got a rise from the crowd! Dr. Steve Taubman's Hypnosis Extravaganza was next and, besides putting a bunch of folks into a trance, he managed to let TPU's Barry and some other guy undress each other during an imagined romantic movie(it was SCARY STUFF!).

This was all only to be topped by yours' truly being attacked my a hypnotized love starved maiden who mistook me for the OTHER cameraman. Suffice it to say it took several of the NACA stage crew to pull her off of me to shouts and cheers from my various collegiate friends.

After that, the truly bizarre comedy of Mark Eddie(complete with parody versions of BROWN EYED GIRL and others) and the hot salsa sounds of Sabor Latino(despite the manic audience participation), paled in comparison. And after that, it was over. Time for swing dancing lessons and final good-byes.

Eric came down and hung out at swing for a while. Russ stayed in the room and ran more dubs. Me, I finally got to see Sarah's tattoo and hear the back story on that and her various piercings. But we never got around to shooting it. Instead, we hung out and talked for a while about stuff in general. And I also got an invite to go to GCC(thanks a million, Merryl!) and shoot EVERYONE'S tats and piercings. At last-the film I have wanted to do for so long WILL get done!

After some tearful good-byes(and the head of BSC's alumni association treating me like rock royalty), it was upstairs to crash and burn. It was 3 AM.

DAY FOUR:

With Russ on his way to Northboro to shoot a wedding, we hurriedly packed and starting hauling gear to our respective vehicles. This gave me once last chance, as the hotel music system played DO THEY KNOW ITS CHRISTMAS, to say good-bye to my friends, many of whom I would never seen again as they were poised to graduate and move on with their lives. Although I never got to see it, Russ tossed up his hands and left, having a tight time schedule to maintain. Me, I was lost in the wonderful feeling that I had survived yet another NACA conference and, besides renewing some old and important friendships, had made some new ones in the process.

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