Half Moon Bay High School

[Cassius]

One of the two high schools between Pacifica and Santa Cruz, HMBHS serves a large and diverse base of students. It has a large art department, complete with a yearly gallery of the student's work and art show.

Notable faculty includes one Vangelis Cassius Gerasimopoulos, a student art teacher.

[Monzo]

Monzo's pranks on the high school have included the following:

1. Flyers for the biweekly "Nudist Student Union" meetings ("This Week's Topic: Why are we all so unattractive? Have your T-shirt designs in by Friday!")

2. A stealthily reconfigured essay portion of a certain English final ("Question one: In a universe with hover engines, what kind of moron gives the title of "all terrain armored transport" to a slow-moving legged vehicle that is easily tripped up by a loose tangle of slender tow cable that isn't even attached to anything at one end? And how do those things turn? Explain. Question two: Were there any AT-ATs in Catcher in the Rye? I didn't read it.")

3. Snuck into the yearbook office and gave everybody nicknames ("Vangelis 'It's Supposed to Be a Moo-Cow' Gerasimopolous").

4. Found out what the senior prank was going to be, instructed the freshman to preempt it.

5. Installed a scarecrow in one of the showers, hung a sign around its neck that read "Spirit Scarecrow!", shrugged, and went home and tried to think of something better.

[Anna-Sophia]

Anna-Sophia Stafford attended HMBHS from Fall 2002-Spring 2006. She was an honors student, B-average, into theatre and yearbook. She was pretty and popular, with a bright smile and a willing spirit; she never lacked a date for the big dances, and in fact went with a different guy each time. And she was nice besides! She did get in trouble for ditching classes and participating in reckless stunts, but was often able to talk angry administrators down if not completely out of stiff consequences. In her senior year she was nominated for "Best Smile" and "Most Likely to Succeed on Broadway".

Since graduation Anna-Sophia has been known to periodically come back and help work on student shows, assisting with everything from choreography to costumes to scenery.

[Julian]

Julian Irwitch (sometimes called -- but never EVER to her face) as 'Julian the Bitch', teaches wood and metal shop at the highschool, and has been doing so for three years. She's well respected in the school because of the programs that she has started or helped with, which have been of great benefit to her star students. She has connections with mechanics in the area, and has gotten students good jobs working for them after graduation -- and in an area where a lot of people don't go to college, this kind of job training is extremely useful. Some of her woods students have gone on to win ribbons at the state fair, and one of them is building a career as an artist selling handcrafted jewelry boxes through local boutiques.

Julian is an absolute zealot for safety. All classes, even advanced classes, begin with teaching and/or refreshers about how to safely use all of the machines. These lectures are extremely graphic. Students who screw around are either used as slave labor to clean the shop, or banished to a far part of the shop and forced to work entirely with hand tools. She's also known for being rough with complaining parents, especially parents who complain about her disciplining their children when they start ignoring safety procedures. There's a rumor that she physically threw a mother out of her classroom.

She tends to ignore students who obviously aren't interested in applying themselves to the class, giving them only as much attention as they need to complete their projects, in favor of those students who she feels have a shot at greatness. This can lead to a cliqueish atmosphere, especially in the advanced classes, but even when pointed out to her, she doesn't give a crap about it.

The classes she teaches are as follows:

FALL SEMESTER:

Woods I
Shop I (two units)

SPRING SEMESTER:

Woods II
Shop II (two units)

FULL YEAR CLASS:

Shop III/Mechanics (Julian has veto power on allowing students into the class)
Set Design (a club, not a class)

During the mechanics class, Julian acquires a broken classic car, and the class spends the year restoring it to pristine condition. At the end of the year, she sells off the car, and gives a percentage of the proceeds to her students, setting the rest aside for the car project the next year. This year, her class is larger than usual, so she's managed to her her hands on both an old Bentley and a motorcycle -- if there's time, she's promised to help the students trick out the motorcycle with all kinds of crazy James Bond stuff.

The set design club works in conjunction with the English teacher, who also doubles as the drama teacher, and the costume club. It designs and builds an advanced, mechanical set for the spring play. The first year of the club was last year, and the production of Peter Pan -- and the bust of glamour that it produced -- is still being talked about. There was a pirate ship (well, the bow of it, anyway) that sailed onstage, and an amazing gymnastic Peter Pan hideout that folded down from the ceiling. The flying rigs were mechanized, allowing for amazing aerial choreography without a risk of someone who doesn't know what they're doing dropping someone. This year, the show is going to be an adaptation of the radio show Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The meetings for the club in the fall cover the basics of set design, working with directors, and a close reading of the script. (They also cover some of Julian's sometimes bawdy stories about her previous set design experience.) In the spring, the designs for the set are finalized and the building begins.

Julian keeps a lot of Dreamers among her students, and doesn't use Freeholds. She's of the opinion that part of the reason that autumn is descending is because changelings have abandoned inspiring Dreamers in favor of leeching off of Freeholds.

[Julian]

For those who are up on what goes on at the highschool, the word might have reached you:

Apparently, Tom Fritzhauser was screwing around with some equipment in the machine shop and nearly got himself squished by a couple of heavy metal beams. Julian managed to save his ass, but caught some of the weight of the beams on her hip. She didn't come into class the next day, and has since been seen with a limp.

IOW, I've managed to, I kid you not, injure myself by spinning -- as in, at a spinning wheel, making yarn. I think I might hold a record somewhere for most injuries sustained in really stupid ways. I'll still be at game, but I might not be staying as long, and I won't be doing very much walking around. :P