Origins Story
Almost all of me wants to say that this post isn’t necessary. That it’s totally fine having a blog called “The Danielle Show” without any singular explanation to the name. But it also is an interesting story, so I thought I’d tell it.
First, you should know that I live in a 60-person co-op. We're vegetarian themed, but other than that there is nothing intentional about the entire situation. I was friends with a couple of different people before they moved into the house, but in general, every semester I start living with anywhere from 20-50 people I've never met. I don't want to get too much into this now...but I promise that there will be more on that in the future.
For now, the only other thing you need to know is that a year ago, I was also the "Social Coordinator", which is a fancy way of saying I planned parties.
The entire position gave me a lot of anxiety. People liked my parties, but I was always so nervous about what people would do, what problems would come up, and then when there are 60+ people, it's certain that it's impossible to please everyone.
At the end of the semester, we do "VOCs" or votes of confidence. The purpose of this is to decide if the compensated coordinators (like the ones who organize workshift or food ordering) are going to receive their whole comp, or if they don't deserve it.
Social coord is not a comped position, so it's generally a disaster to have it on there in the first place.
Also, this whole process is anonymous. So it's like a hellish formspring flashback for anyone who was in high school in 2009.
Anyway, one person gave me a 1 on a scale of 1-5, so they gave me the worst rating. And they left the following comment on me:
“never had security at parties. wasn't organized; parties came together at the last minute because of other people winging it while she was getting drunk. often used social in a pretty narcissistic way, for example at special dinner was extremely overbearing. parties often felt like the "danielle show". was extremely defensive when criticized. unilaterally cancelled art party, m&s2”
This shook me.
I'm generally a sensitive person... but this brought it to a new level for me. I started feeling paranoid about which one of my 60 housemates could hate me so much that they would write this about me.
The VOCs came out the weekend before finals... so obviously one night before I had a morning final, I did not study and stayed up for hours doing a discourse analysis of the listserv trying to figure out who wrote it.
My research told me what I wanted it to... but that didn't really matter, my upsetness started to become obsolete. People that I was friends with in the house, who were obviously more mature than I was, were able to laugh about it. They told me that they love watching the Danielle Show, and that the Danielle Show is really fun.
It's all a little ridiculous... but we reclaimed the Danielle Show. And we often talked about the whole thing in front of the person everyone is certain wrote the comment. He was super fucked up, so us torturing him and slapping him in the face with his own comment was warranted.
As time went on, the Danielle Show grew.
In February, I produced, assistant directed, and acted in a show, Brecht Now, that we put on in the living room of my co-op. We turned the whole room into a theater, it was actually really amazing, but again, another story.
My house kept calling this the Danielle Show too.
And then for my birthday, my friend made a bumper sticker that he put on the door to our house, and it says "You're Watching the #danielleshow". You can see it on the banner of this blog.
Then this fall, when all of the new little elves moved into the house, some of them started asking me if I was Danielle from the Danielle Show. Hahaha.
Oh how far the Danielle Show has come.