A while ago, I got it into my head that I wanted to watch Hatching Pete, a recent Disney Channel original movie, namely because Tiffany Thornton is beautiful. A week or so ago, I acquired a copy of this movie and settled in to watch it, and when it was over, I came to a revolutionary conclusion: Hatching Pete is the best Disney Channel original movie ever. I know, I know, you're all scratching your collective head, saying "Huh? How can a movie about a boy in a chicken suit possibly be better than the masterpiece that is High School Musical?" Well you're in luck, because I'm about to tell you just how that's possible.
Just to clear this up, it's not because of Tiffany Thornton (she actually had a rather small part in it overall, and even then I wasn't a fan of her stuck-up cheer captain character, although I wasn't supposed to be, so she did her job adequately). It's actually because of the movie's two largely unknown stars, Jason Dolley and Josie Loren. It's a shame Hatching Pete didn't become the phenomenon that High School Musical did, because I'd love to see more of these two actors in the future. Jason Dolley is more charming as Pete Ivey than Zac Efron is as Troy Bolton (even if Pete Ivey doesn't grow up to become an awesome pastor in central Virginia), and Josie Loren is much more adorable as Pete's initially distant love interest, Angela Morrissey, than Vanessa Hudgens is as Gabriella Montez. There's a natural chemistry between Pete and the Angela, and the progression of their relationship seems a lot less forced than the "love-at-first-sight-that-encounters-a-brief-rocky-patch-three-movies-in-a-row" formula between Troy and Gabriella. Granted, High School Musical had better music (duh), but the character development in Hatching Pete was vastly superior, the story much more compelling, and, to say it again, Jason Dolley put out a great performance.
So what do Zac Efron and Josie Loren have in common, aside from starring in Disney Channel movies? 17 Again! This particular film was recommended to me by none other than our very own Danny Latin... it surprised me that he would actually even want to see it in the first place, since he's not a big Zac Efron fan, but he saw it and told me it was very good. It interested me since I first heard about it, because I do in fact like Zac Efron, but this unexpected endorsement made me want to see it even more. If you've never seen it, think of it as a sort of cross between Freaky Friday, It's A Wonderful Life, and Mrs. Doubtfire. On the surface it looks like your average, fun, body-switching high school flick, but it actually deals with themes deeper than "being yourself" and the other sorts of things that normally drive the plots of films centered around high school. After watching Hatching Pete and learning that Josie Loren plays a good female lead (and is also extraordinarily pretty), I found out that she was also in 17 Again, which bumped it to the top of my "movies to watch" list. Alas, she only had a very small part as the muse of Zac Efron's character's son (played by Sterling Knight), and it didn't do much to show off her acting abilities, but she is basically the epitome of what you'd call "my type," so every scene she was in was a good one anyway. The movie itself was indeed very good, even hilarious at times (the interactions between Zac Efron and Thomas Lennon are a riot, and the latter is just plain funny in his own right throughout the duration of the movie). I'd highly recommend it... and you know if a movie gets an endorsement from both myself AND Danny Latin, it must be pretty friggin good. Incidentally, 17 Again features, as I mentioned earlier, Sterling Knight, who stars on Sonny With A Chance with Tiffany Thornton, who was in Hatching Pete with Josie Loren, which completes the Disney circle by bringing us back to 17 Again (even though it's not a Disney movie). File that under "F" for "Fun Fact".
Last week whilst in the car on the first ever Fast Food World Tour, Chris and I were discussing the nonsensical song "Fireflies" (by Owl City) and its unwarranted popularity. Sure, it's reasonably catchy, but the lyrics may as well be gibberish, and in my opinion, that vastly diminishes a song's overall value. I wondered aloud just what he meant by "a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs." To me, that could mean one of three things: he's getting one hug apiece from one thousand individual lightning bugs out of a group of 10,000; he's getting a combination of any number of hugs adding up to one thousand from any number of lightning bugs, again out of a pool of 10,000 total bugs; or he's getting a thousand hugs apiece from 10,000 lightning bugs, resulting in a net total of ten million distinct insect hugs. I'm inclined to believe it's the second choice (which actually inherently allows for the first choice, making it the most versatile and efficient), because getting ten million hugs in the form of one thousand hugs being doled out one after another would just take too long, especially considering you couldn't fit all 10,000 bugs on your person at one time. At any rate people, please, PLEASE stop liking this song, the novelty of hearing about this guy's looney dreams has long since worn off.
And speaking of lyrics, I still don't know what Martin of Boys Like Girls says at the end of the second verse of "Love Drunk." As best I can tell, it sounds like "Oh girl, you make me such a larsh..." What the heck is a larsh, anyway? Sure, I could look up what the actual word is and find out for you, but for my part, I prefer speculation. Based on the context of the rest of the song, I'd have to extrapolate the meaning of the word "larsh" as one who is angry, disappointed, and confused, most likely because the girl he loves suddenly wants nothing to do with him and he can't figure out just exactly why, nor can he get her to even talk to him, despite his best and repeated efforts. I guess a "larsh" is a good term for a guy in the early stages of a broken heart, which is to say that his denial of that fact is exemplified by his rage at the situation, which really is only there to cover up the fact that he's hurt. I think, then, that this song is a great example of a male speaking from that point of view; boldly offering a big fat "eff you" to the girl in whom he invested so much time only to have her yank the rug right out from under his feet, because that's simply the best (or at least easiest) way to deal with it right after the fact. You can tell how much a guy really cared about a girl by how much he hates her after she breaks up with him, and I think this song expresses that perfectly.
In addition to being a great breakup song, "Love Drunk" was Boys Like Girls' opening number when I saw them play live at Northern Lights last night. My review of that show (which also featured Cobra Starship, Versa Emerge, A Rocket to the Moon, and The Maine) will be the first featured review on the blog Danny Latin and I have started, and will be posted next Thursday, so keep your eyes peeled. What's better than one genius level blog-weaver giving his take on pop culture? That's right, TWO brilliant minds combining their powers into one solidified effort to do a mighty service for all the media hungry folks in internet land. If you like movies, TV, music, sports, or any other facet of modern entertainment, or if you just can't get enough of either of our timely insights, then you'll probably want to check billyanddanny.blogspot.com daily, because starting Monday, November 23rd, that's how often new content will be published. You heard me kids, we will be posting new stuff every single buckin day, so for those of you dissatisfied with the wait time in between posts on this blog, your cries have been heard, and you shall want no more. And while you're at it, tell your friends too, you wouldn't want them to miss out on the experience.
Alright, that's all for now. I'll see all of you on Monday at billyanddanny.blogspot.com.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
This Post Dedicated To Matt Swain
Well fine citizens of the Interwebs, here I am, returned to the world of bloggery after a brief hiatus. My impromptu sabbatical was brought about not only by how busy I've been over the last two months or so, but also by the way all my thoughts have been jumbled up inside my head like a big freakin ball of Christmas lights that I, despite my best efforts, cannot seem to untangle. Many times I've come across ideas, shining brightly like the aforementioned lights, but I can't pick them out of the mess of cords and wires in order to make anything worthwhile out of them, so tonight I'm gonna try something different than usual. Instead of trying to showcase the individual bulbs on the string, I'm just gonna start at the beginning, follow the cord until I untangle a knot, and work my way down the rest of it until I get to the end. Hopefully by the time I plug it in, it'll look a lot better than it did before, and I think if I squeeze that metaphor any more, I'll be venturing into Coms 550 territory, and we all know that's where metaphors go if they haven't accepted Jesus.
I just turned 23, celebrating my first birthday at home since I turned 17, and I've realized something about birthdays: they're kind of frivolous, at least by this age. Sure, when you're younger, everyone gets excited about you turning another year older, and you feel "bigger," and every birthday leads up to another important milestone in your life. 21, however, is the last true milestone, and most people would consider it the biggest, as you're legal to drink alcohol at that age. The irony, though, is that all the people excited about being able to legally drink have no doubt already been drunk countless times, and the people who haven't don't really care about drinking anyway. But now, there's nothing super special about birthdays, I'm just getting older and older, and the numbers are steadily increasing, like an odometer ticking away as the miles roll on. And speaking of odometers, do you stop and give your car a gift every time it reaches another thousand miles? I think the concept of birthday presents is a little misguided. Don't get me wrong, I love getting gifts on my birthday (or any other time of year, for that matter), but let's bear in mind people, they are just that: gifts. It annoys me any time I hear somebody say "you deserve it" in regards to a birthday present or party or any other such trapping that goes along with the celebration of the event. Why, exactly, do you deserve that present? Because you lived to see the passing of another year? You don't deserve any presents, you get them from people that love you for precisely that reason, they love you and they're happy to see that you've stuck around for as long as you have. I suppose I've answered my own question (which I never formally stated, but it was "why do people get presents on their birthdays?"), so I guess this blog is a success already.
As I was saying though, I turned 23, and there wasn't anything terribly exciting about it. It was similar last year when I reached the nebulous age of 22... it's enough to make me question why we even bother celebrating it anymore. On the other hand, the age of 23 has the distinct honor of being mentioned in no less than three punk songs that I can think of right off the top of my head:
Nobody likes you when you're 23 (Blink 182 - What's My Age Again?)
We're almost 23 and you're still mad at me (Yellowcard - Twenty Three)
17, 18, 19 routine and here at 23 it's the same old me (Relient K - Maintain Consciousness)
Maybe there's something to being 23 that's gained it so much infamy in the punk music scene (don't even start with all the associations implied in that Jim Carrey movie, that's nothing but a novel bit of bollocks; furthermore, don't dissect my definition of "punk," just roll with it)... or maybe it's just the fact that it's the only age relevant to the genre that rhymes with "me." I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the next year offers up.
I mentioned drinking earlier, and incidentally, I got to experience interaction with a real live drunk person for the first time just recently. I had always heard that drunk people are funny, and to be honest, it's true, they are, but I also noticed something striking the other day. Once this particular fellow had had enough to drink to render him inebriated, everyone was constantly laughing at everything he did or said. While he is naturally a funny guy, I noted that his words and actions weren't really all that much funnier than normal. Everyone was treating him as though he had reached some transcendent state of humorous enlightenment, but it was pretty standard fare, so I didn't quite get what the big deal was. Like I said, the stuff he was doing was funny anyway, and would have gotten laughs if he had done it sober... and he would have done most of those same things sober, which is why the flag went up in my head. He was just being himself (albeit a slightly drunker version), only the laughs were heartier and more plentiful than usual. And then it hit me. The reason it was so funny wasn't because he was being funny, it was because his state of mind was altered by the alcohol, causing him to, in everyone else's view, do things that were funnier than usual. Apparently if you're not entirely in control of what you're doing, everything you do is that much more hilarious (whether you'd be doing it normally or not), and at that point, it stopped seeming funny and started seeming patronizing. Something to think about, folks: what are you laughing at, the person, or how the person is affected by a controlled substance?
To be honest, I really don't understand drinking as an activity. For one thing, it tastes disgusting, and for another thing, it inhibits your cognitive and physical processes. I suppose the latter would generally considered a benefit by the majority of Americans in my age group, but I don't need to get drunk to have a good time; I'm off-the-wall enough as it is, so why should I pump a bunch of potentially harmful chemicals into my body? On Saturday night, Chris and I went to a Halloween party the other night at a frat house on RPI's campus. I had a general inclination as to what it would be like (nothing to really do but drink, and I don't drink), but I figured, what the heck, I'd never experienced one before, so it might at least be interesting to see what goes on at one of those things. Plus, it was Halloween, and our plans for trick-or-treating had been dashed by the rain, so I wanted more people to see my costume and to see some other costumes as well, and a party seemed just as good a place as any for that. Well, I did see some costumes, including a sweet Rorschach costume, but otherwise it was a total waste of time (I doubt anyone even recognized who I was dressed as). It was dark and sweltering, with wall-to-wall bodies cramming the whole building, and music so loud I could barely hear myself think over the thumping bass beat. And, as I had predicted, the primary attraction was the alcohol, so basically my only option was to hang back around the wall and watch a bunch of sweaty drunk college students grind each other while other sweaty drunk college students pushed and shoved their way through the crowd. That got old real fast, and Chris and I left as soon as we had put in a requisite amount of time hanging around with a couple of his friends. The conclusion I drew from this experience was that secular campuses must be pretty boring, since it seems like the only thing there is to do is drink. Sure, there's not a whole lot to "do" at Liberty, but when everyone's just getting trashed, that's not "doing" anything either. It's not a social activity, because you're not interacting with people, you're interacting with intoxicated, alternate reality versions of those people, and there's a good chance they won't remember what happened anyway. I don't know how that passes for a good time.
Switching gears, earlier today I went to the mall by myself, and I was walking in the direction of Barnes & Noble. I was lost in thought, totally in the zone, when suddenly I heard "Young man, would you like to open an account?" I stopped, momentarily bewildered, and looked at the source of this intrusion to my thought processes. It was a middle aged lady standing outside a jewelry store with a clipboard. I didn't know what kind of account she was pestering me about, and I didn't care, so I just said "No thanks, I'm good," and kept right on walking. The occurrence was odd enough, since I wasn't even looking in her direction and she had called out to me for seemingly no reason other than that I was alone (and presumably vulnerable), but I shook it off and reached my destination without further incident. On my way back from Barnes & Noble, after looking at some sweet Green Lantern books (Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War, for anyone who's interested), I walked down the other side of the mall, and again I was completely zoned when, from out of nowhere, I'm blasted with "How are you doing?" Again, it's a chick out in front of a jewelry store, but this time it's a different jewelry store, and the girl is younger and actually fairly attractive. I was still annoyed at the interruption, but in the vein of politeness I said "Good, how are you?" to which she replied "Good, thanks," but by that time I was already several steps away, having escaped the pitch for the account she wanted me to open or whatever other kind of nonsense in which she was trying to get me to partake. Same as last time, I was walking at a steady pace, not looking at this girl in the slightest and certainly not making eye contact, yet she picked me off anyway. I wonder what it is about a twenty-something male alone in the mall that makes him a prime target for harassment of this kind outside a jewelry store; do I really fit their target demographic? If so, I can't imagine why.
If you've kept with me this long and you're wondering why this post was dedicated to Matt Swain, it's because he's been a faithful follower of my blog since its inception (as far as I can tell) and he recently admonished me to keep them coming. Not wanting to fail my public (especially my former prayer leader), I decided to sit down and plunk one out, regardless of how disjointed it may have been, and this post is the fruit of my labor. I'm glad I did, because I feel like I've worked out a few of my mental kinks, and from now on I'm gonna try to write these at more regular intervals. Matt, I hope you (and any other readers) found this enjoyable; it's no substitute for a small yellow placard, but this is the best offering of Joy I can give you right now. Hopefully it's adequate.
I just turned 23, celebrating my first birthday at home since I turned 17, and I've realized something about birthdays: they're kind of frivolous, at least by this age. Sure, when you're younger, everyone gets excited about you turning another year older, and you feel "bigger," and every birthday leads up to another important milestone in your life. 21, however, is the last true milestone, and most people would consider it the biggest, as you're legal to drink alcohol at that age. The irony, though, is that all the people excited about being able to legally drink have no doubt already been drunk countless times, and the people who haven't don't really care about drinking anyway. But now, there's nothing super special about birthdays, I'm just getting older and older, and the numbers are steadily increasing, like an odometer ticking away as the miles roll on. And speaking of odometers, do you stop and give your car a gift every time it reaches another thousand miles? I think the concept of birthday presents is a little misguided. Don't get me wrong, I love getting gifts on my birthday (or any other time of year, for that matter), but let's bear in mind people, they are just that: gifts. It annoys me any time I hear somebody say "you deserve it" in regards to a birthday present or party or any other such trapping that goes along with the celebration of the event. Why, exactly, do you deserve that present? Because you lived to see the passing of another year? You don't deserve any presents, you get them from people that love you for precisely that reason, they love you and they're happy to see that you've stuck around for as long as you have. I suppose I've answered my own question (which I never formally stated, but it was "why do people get presents on their birthdays?"), so I guess this blog is a success already.
As I was saying though, I turned 23, and there wasn't anything terribly exciting about it. It was similar last year when I reached the nebulous age of 22... it's enough to make me question why we even bother celebrating it anymore. On the other hand, the age of 23 has the distinct honor of being mentioned in no less than three punk songs that I can think of right off the top of my head:
Nobody likes you when you're 23 (Blink 182 - What's My Age Again?)
We're almost 23 and you're still mad at me (Yellowcard - Twenty Three)
17, 18, 19 routine and here at 23 it's the same old me (Relient K - Maintain Consciousness)
Maybe there's something to being 23 that's gained it so much infamy in the punk music scene (don't even start with all the associations implied in that Jim Carrey movie, that's nothing but a novel bit of bollocks; furthermore, don't dissect my definition of "punk," just roll with it)... or maybe it's just the fact that it's the only age relevant to the genre that rhymes with "me." I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the next year offers up.
I mentioned drinking earlier, and incidentally, I got to experience interaction with a real live drunk person for the first time just recently. I had always heard that drunk people are funny, and to be honest, it's true, they are, but I also noticed something striking the other day. Once this particular fellow had had enough to drink to render him inebriated, everyone was constantly laughing at everything he did or said. While he is naturally a funny guy, I noted that his words and actions weren't really all that much funnier than normal. Everyone was treating him as though he had reached some transcendent state of humorous enlightenment, but it was pretty standard fare, so I didn't quite get what the big deal was. Like I said, the stuff he was doing was funny anyway, and would have gotten laughs if he had done it sober... and he would have done most of those same things sober, which is why the flag went up in my head. He was just being himself (albeit a slightly drunker version), only the laughs were heartier and more plentiful than usual. And then it hit me. The reason it was so funny wasn't because he was being funny, it was because his state of mind was altered by the alcohol, causing him to, in everyone else's view, do things that were funnier than usual. Apparently if you're not entirely in control of what you're doing, everything you do is that much more hilarious (whether you'd be doing it normally or not), and at that point, it stopped seeming funny and started seeming patronizing. Something to think about, folks: what are you laughing at, the person, or how the person is affected by a controlled substance?
To be honest, I really don't understand drinking as an activity. For one thing, it tastes disgusting, and for another thing, it inhibits your cognitive and physical processes. I suppose the latter would generally considered a benefit by the majority of Americans in my age group, but I don't need to get drunk to have a good time; I'm off-the-wall enough as it is, so why should I pump a bunch of potentially harmful chemicals into my body? On Saturday night, Chris and I went to a Halloween party the other night at a frat house on RPI's campus. I had a general inclination as to what it would be like (nothing to really do but drink, and I don't drink), but I figured, what the heck, I'd never experienced one before, so it might at least be interesting to see what goes on at one of those things. Plus, it was Halloween, and our plans for trick-or-treating had been dashed by the rain, so I wanted more people to see my costume and to see some other costumes as well, and a party seemed just as good a place as any for that. Well, I did see some costumes, including a sweet Rorschach costume, but otherwise it was a total waste of time (I doubt anyone even recognized who I was dressed as). It was dark and sweltering, with wall-to-wall bodies cramming the whole building, and music so loud I could barely hear myself think over the thumping bass beat. And, as I had predicted, the primary attraction was the alcohol, so basically my only option was to hang back around the wall and watch a bunch of sweaty drunk college students grind each other while other sweaty drunk college students pushed and shoved their way through the crowd. That got old real fast, and Chris and I left as soon as we had put in a requisite amount of time hanging around with a couple of his friends. The conclusion I drew from this experience was that secular campuses must be pretty boring, since it seems like the only thing there is to do is drink. Sure, there's not a whole lot to "do" at Liberty, but when everyone's just getting trashed, that's not "doing" anything either. It's not a social activity, because you're not interacting with people, you're interacting with intoxicated, alternate reality versions of those people, and there's a good chance they won't remember what happened anyway. I don't know how that passes for a good time.
Switching gears, earlier today I went to the mall by myself, and I was walking in the direction of Barnes & Noble. I was lost in thought, totally in the zone, when suddenly I heard "Young man, would you like to open an account?" I stopped, momentarily bewildered, and looked at the source of this intrusion to my thought processes. It was a middle aged lady standing outside a jewelry store with a clipboard. I didn't know what kind of account she was pestering me about, and I didn't care, so I just said "No thanks, I'm good," and kept right on walking. The occurrence was odd enough, since I wasn't even looking in her direction and she had called out to me for seemingly no reason other than that I was alone (and presumably vulnerable), but I shook it off and reached my destination without further incident. On my way back from Barnes & Noble, after looking at some sweet Green Lantern books (Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War, for anyone who's interested), I walked down the other side of the mall, and again I was completely zoned when, from out of nowhere, I'm blasted with "How are you doing?" Again, it's a chick out in front of a jewelry store, but this time it's a different jewelry store, and the girl is younger and actually fairly attractive. I was still annoyed at the interruption, but in the vein of politeness I said "Good, how are you?" to which she replied "Good, thanks," but by that time I was already several steps away, having escaped the pitch for the account she wanted me to open or whatever other kind of nonsense in which she was trying to get me to partake. Same as last time, I was walking at a steady pace, not looking at this girl in the slightest and certainly not making eye contact, yet she picked me off anyway. I wonder what it is about a twenty-something male alone in the mall that makes him a prime target for harassment of this kind outside a jewelry store; do I really fit their target demographic? If so, I can't imagine why.
If you've kept with me this long and you're wondering why this post was dedicated to Matt Swain, it's because he's been a faithful follower of my blog since its inception (as far as I can tell) and he recently admonished me to keep them coming. Not wanting to fail my public (especially my former prayer leader), I decided to sit down and plunk one out, regardless of how disjointed it may have been, and this post is the fruit of my labor. I'm glad I did, because I feel like I've worked out a few of my mental kinks, and from now on I'm gonna try to write these at more regular intervals. Matt, I hope you (and any other readers) found this enjoyable; it's no substitute for a small yellow placard, but this is the best offering of Joy I can give you right now. Hopefully it's adequate.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Out Of The Trap And After The Carrot
Well kids, we all know that nothing ever turns out the way we plan it; prime examples include Nick Donato's broken arm, my own higher education career, and who could forget the escape to the islands in Dawn of the Dead? You could cull countless examples from movies, literature, television shows, and certainly your own personal experiences, but dwelling on them would be needless. We've already been over the ramifications of the Cosmic Mouse Trap; the question, then, is: what do you do once you've gotten yourself out of the trap? The answer lies in following what I like to call the Cosmic Carrot.
What is the Cosmic Carrot, you ask? Well, in a word, happiness. You see, after a lot of thinking and one epiphanous shower (the greatest revelations are always given through interaction with water somehow) I realized something about happiness. Happiness is not, as people commonly think, a state of being, but rather a goal to be achieved, with one minor caveat: it is largely unachievable. Thus, happiness is like the carrot laid out before us, enticing us to trot along the path of life like a horse in hopes of one day devouring that carrot. It's not about reaching the carrot; realistically, that's everyone's objective, and that's as it should be. But the main purpose of the carrot itself is not to be eaten. It exists simply to motivate us to keep going.
So why is happiness a virtually unattainable goal? In order to answer that question, we have to look at what happiness is and where it comes from. Bear in mind, I'm not saying that you can never be happy. People are often happy at any given point in time, just as people are often warm at any given point in time. The problem is that happiness, like warmness, fluctuates with the temperature of the times. I'm willing to bet that most people never experience a longstanding sense of happiness, for one simple reason. Happiness is achieved through obtaining what you want, whether that comes from circumstances, people, objects, accomplishments, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side." If you don't have it, you want it, simply because you don't have it. My boy Teddy Geiger once said "you always want what you can't have," which is an apt way of putting it. I'd actually take that one step further, and say you only want what you can't have (which, in fact, is why I think the most sought-after girls seem to be single more often than not, but that's a whole separate issue). To extrapolate, not only do you want it if you don't have it, but you don't want it if you do have it. Want, by definition, is a state of pursuit, so once you've acquired whatever it is you're trying to obtain, how can you "want" it any longer? It's already yours. Thus, you can never be in possession of what it is you want, and if whatever you want is always out of reach, happiness really is never completely achievable.
Now that we've established that happiness is essentially an illusory bribe designed to propel us forward, what's to stop us from being completely miserable all the time? Well, the answer here is actually based on the premise of wanting. The way I see it, to want is a good thing, as long as the possibility of getting what you want is plausible. But like I said, once you get it, it's no longer an issue of "wanting" but an issue of "having." And soon, once you have that thing, it either passes away or you no longer want it, leaving you to move on to something else... and that's precisely the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the paragraph. It's not having the things you want, or even necessarily getting them that makes you happy. What makes you happy is knowing that you will or might have them in the future. Happiness is all about having something to look forward to, something that you can look to and say "things aren't great right now, but whenever this happens/I get that thing, things will be better." It's about having something to hope for, whether that hope is unfounded or not (which is why I've come to believe that false hope is better than none at all). Just like the horse and his carrot, it's about what's in front of you, not what you've currently got. If you get the carrot, you don't need to chase it anymore, so you stop moving. If there is no carrot, what's the motivation for moving at all?
As an application to my own personal experience, I always looked forward to going back to school at the end of summer, and I realized a while back that I would no longer be able to look forward to that anymore, which was quite a downer, I must admit. I figured I would take solace in the fact that I'd probably have a lot more free time in the near future, not realizing that I was doing exactly what I'm describing in this paragraph. And then, the other day it hit me. For the last week or two, since I finished working on those dance DVDs that had been occupying a lot of my time, I hadn't been doing much of anything. I would get up, eat, watch TV, sit on my bed and beebop around the internet, watch a movie, etc. But to be honest, I wasn't really having all that great of a time, which didn't make much sense to me, because I had the opportunity that I've always wanted... lots of free time and no real responsibility. I felt stuck, and I lacked the motivation to really do anything about it. I was a horse with no carrot. Then, the other day, whilst participating in an activity I would normally hate, I found myself feeling more alive than I have in a while. I was helping my dad move boxes from our shed to our driveway for a garage sale we're having this weekend, and though it wasn't much fun, I thought about how I wanted to be finished so I could go play the computer game I've been absorbed in for the past few days. And then it struck me like a 2x4 to the forehead. I wasn't exactly happy while I was working, but I had something to look forward to at the end of the work, which is what made it bearable. That's how you keep yourself from being miserable, even in the face of adverse circumstances... by having a light at the end of the tunnel, or a carrot that you can chase after.
The bigger epiphany hit me, like I said, while I was in the shower the other day. For a while now, I've been wondering what to do with my life. Up till now, school is the only thing I've ever known, and I wasn't ready to get a job, exactly. I was too hung up on getting a job that would make me "happy," doing something that I would enjoy, finding my purpose in life, that kind of thing. My parents have, for quite some time, wanted me to take a job that I don't think I would enjoy very much, and I've been fighting it every step of the way, not wanting to consign my life to going to work every day at a job that I can't stand. But in the shower, I finally put everything that I've discussed already in this blog together for myself, and realized that, for lack of any better idea, I should just take that job. If I sit around waiting forever, I'll just be in the same place I am right now: nowhere, with nothing to look forward to. But if I take that job, even if it doesn't ever really amount to anything, and even if I hate it (in fact, especially if I hate it), I will, at the very least, be able to look forward to being done for the day. Sure, things aren't turning out how I'd really like them to, but that small consolation is all I really need to maintain day-to-day happiness. Suffice it to say I find it very clever that the founding fathers included the "pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right. You can't guarantee that everyone has what they want, but you can guarantee them something to want in the first place.
The bottom line is it's really all about is playing with the hand you're dealt, as they say. If you find yourself in the Cosmic Mouse Trap, take it from me: stop dwelling on how the trap has stunted your progress, take a good hard look at your surroundings, and start looking for the carrot again, in whatever form it may come, even if it's pointing you in a different direction than you originally intended to go. Just catching sight of the Cosmic Carrot may be enough to get you out of the trap.
What is the Cosmic Carrot, you ask? Well, in a word, happiness. You see, after a lot of thinking and one epiphanous shower (the greatest revelations are always given through interaction with water somehow) I realized something about happiness. Happiness is not, as people commonly think, a state of being, but rather a goal to be achieved, with one minor caveat: it is largely unachievable. Thus, happiness is like the carrot laid out before us, enticing us to trot along the path of life like a horse in hopes of one day devouring that carrot. It's not about reaching the carrot; realistically, that's everyone's objective, and that's as it should be. But the main purpose of the carrot itself is not to be eaten. It exists simply to motivate us to keep going.
So why is happiness a virtually unattainable goal? In order to answer that question, we have to look at what happiness is and where it comes from. Bear in mind, I'm not saying that you can never be happy. People are often happy at any given point in time, just as people are often warm at any given point in time. The problem is that happiness, like warmness, fluctuates with the temperature of the times. I'm willing to bet that most people never experience a longstanding sense of happiness, for one simple reason. Happiness is achieved through obtaining what you want, whether that comes from circumstances, people, objects, accomplishments, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side." If you don't have it, you want it, simply because you don't have it. My boy Teddy Geiger once said "you always want what you can't have," which is an apt way of putting it. I'd actually take that one step further, and say you only want what you can't have (which, in fact, is why I think the most sought-after girls seem to be single more often than not, but that's a whole separate issue). To extrapolate, not only do you want it if you don't have it, but you don't want it if you do have it. Want, by definition, is a state of pursuit, so once you've acquired whatever it is you're trying to obtain, how can you "want" it any longer? It's already yours. Thus, you can never be in possession of what it is you want, and if whatever you want is always out of reach, happiness really is never completely achievable.
Now that we've established that happiness is essentially an illusory bribe designed to propel us forward, what's to stop us from being completely miserable all the time? Well, the answer here is actually based on the premise of wanting. The way I see it, to want is a good thing, as long as the possibility of getting what you want is plausible. But like I said, once you get it, it's no longer an issue of "wanting" but an issue of "having." And soon, once you have that thing, it either passes away or you no longer want it, leaving you to move on to something else... and that's precisely the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the paragraph. It's not having the things you want, or even necessarily getting them that makes you happy. What makes you happy is knowing that you will or might have them in the future. Happiness is all about having something to look forward to, something that you can look to and say "things aren't great right now, but whenever this happens/I get that thing, things will be better." It's about having something to hope for, whether that hope is unfounded or not (which is why I've come to believe that false hope is better than none at all). Just like the horse and his carrot, it's about what's in front of you, not what you've currently got. If you get the carrot, you don't need to chase it anymore, so you stop moving. If there is no carrot, what's the motivation for moving at all?
As an application to my own personal experience, I always looked forward to going back to school at the end of summer, and I realized a while back that I would no longer be able to look forward to that anymore, which was quite a downer, I must admit. I figured I would take solace in the fact that I'd probably have a lot more free time in the near future, not realizing that I was doing exactly what I'm describing in this paragraph. And then, the other day it hit me. For the last week or two, since I finished working on those dance DVDs that had been occupying a lot of my time, I hadn't been doing much of anything. I would get up, eat, watch TV, sit on my bed and beebop around the internet, watch a movie, etc. But to be honest, I wasn't really having all that great of a time, which didn't make much sense to me, because I had the opportunity that I've always wanted... lots of free time and no real responsibility. I felt stuck, and I lacked the motivation to really do anything about it. I was a horse with no carrot. Then, the other day, whilst participating in an activity I would normally hate, I found myself feeling more alive than I have in a while. I was helping my dad move boxes from our shed to our driveway for a garage sale we're having this weekend, and though it wasn't much fun, I thought about how I wanted to be finished so I could go play the computer game I've been absorbed in for the past few days. And then it struck me like a 2x4 to the forehead. I wasn't exactly happy while I was working, but I had something to look forward to at the end of the work, which is what made it bearable. That's how you keep yourself from being miserable, even in the face of adverse circumstances... by having a light at the end of the tunnel, or a carrot that you can chase after.
The bigger epiphany hit me, like I said, while I was in the shower the other day. For a while now, I've been wondering what to do with my life. Up till now, school is the only thing I've ever known, and I wasn't ready to get a job, exactly. I was too hung up on getting a job that would make me "happy," doing something that I would enjoy, finding my purpose in life, that kind of thing. My parents have, for quite some time, wanted me to take a job that I don't think I would enjoy very much, and I've been fighting it every step of the way, not wanting to consign my life to going to work every day at a job that I can't stand. But in the shower, I finally put everything that I've discussed already in this blog together for myself, and realized that, for lack of any better idea, I should just take that job. If I sit around waiting forever, I'll just be in the same place I am right now: nowhere, with nothing to look forward to. But if I take that job, even if it doesn't ever really amount to anything, and even if I hate it (in fact, especially if I hate it), I will, at the very least, be able to look forward to being done for the day. Sure, things aren't turning out how I'd really like them to, but that small consolation is all I really need to maintain day-to-day happiness. Suffice it to say I find it very clever that the founding fathers included the "pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right. You can't guarantee that everyone has what they want, but you can guarantee them something to want in the first place.
The bottom line is it's really all about is playing with the hand you're dealt, as they say. If you find yourself in the Cosmic Mouse Trap, take it from me: stop dwelling on how the trap has stunted your progress, take a good hard look at your surroundings, and start looking for the carrot again, in whatever form it may come, even if it's pointing you in a different direction than you originally intended to go. Just catching sight of the Cosmic Carrot may be enough to get you out of the trap.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Bonus Features On A Blog? Innovative!
Every time I log into the Blogger dashboard, it tells me how many posts I have, but it also includes unpublished drafts in that number, so I know that I don't actually have that many posts available for viewing on my blog. Today, I decided to check and see how many unpublished drafts I actually have, and upon inspection, I concluded that the total is four. I was about to delete these drafts so the post count upon login would no longer be lying to me, but I started going through them to see what I had written. I then realized that it would be a terrible shame to throw away all that work just because each draft belonged to an overarching idea or theme that I ultimately decided against using for whatever reason, and thus, today's blog idea was born. The following is a collection of the material that I opted not to use, the "deleted scenes," if you will, and frankly, I don't even remember what I was talking about when I initially wrote most of it, so if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, that's why. This isn't going to be a terribly well thought-out blog, just a collection of some of the unwritten things that I was thinking during the Spring 2009 semester at Liberty. For my small contingency of readers, hopefully you'll enjoy it.
The first entry in my deleted scenes blog came from a draft entitled "If You Give A Grad Student A Cookie..." that I had written on April 21, 2009:
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,
Profound. I can't imagine why I didn't follow this up with anything else at all. I believe I was about to go on a rant about how I hate hearing that breakfast "jump-starts your metabolism," because that phrase is so dang hackneyed, but I guess I didn't have the heart. Also, I believe this was written the day after one of my graduate work-induced meltdowns, during which the cookies I had procured from the Clubhouse on the previous night basically preserved my sanity, so I think that's the connection to the cookie mentioned in the title. This nice girl who worked at the grill had given the cookies to me... I wish I could remember her name... oh well. I'm sure she's doing just fine for herself these days.
The next entry comes from a draft titled "Reflections on an Easter Weekend." If you take note, this phrase is properly capitalized in accordance with the rules for such things, so this must have been written before I adopted the practice of disregarding English rules and capitalizing every word of my titles no matter what. I don't know when I started doing that, but it must have been before April 13, 2009:
You may have noticed that every Wednesday for the last three weeks, I've posted a new blog. Well, this week I'll probably be too busy on Wednesday night to get around to that (ah grad school, how I love thee), so I figured I'd put this up tonight to tide my regular readers over for the week. I don't have anything very insightful or even of real significance to say; if you haven't noticed, usually my inspiration comes from frustrating interactions with females, and most of the girls I hang out with on a regular basis have been out of town for Easter, so I haven't really seen them since Thursday. At any rate, even though I don't have any kind of grandiose overarching point, I do have an urge to just sit and throw down some of the stuff that's been swimming around in my head the past few days.
Let's start with the Easter holiday that has erroneously been dubbed "Easter Break" at Liberty University. First of all, it's not a "break." It's a day off. One freaking day off. We get Monday off (and, for the record, this was a tradition enacted in 2007; prior to that year we Liberty students got no days off for Easter), and people commonly wonder why we get the Monday after Easter off as opposed to Good Friday. The answer is simple: having Monday off, everyone who went home for Easter can stay through the entirety of Easter Sunday and then leave on Monday. This brings me to my second point, which is actually a question: why would you want to leave Liberty at Easter time? I understand that Easter is an important holiday for Christians and that people like to spend it with their families (I too enjoy Easter with my family, when I'm already home), but in all honesty, Easter weekend is traditionally one of the best weekends of the year at Liberty. It makes absolutely no sense to me to spend money to go home so you can miss out on the experience. Maybe the experience isn't the same for everyone, maybe it's just my particular group of friends and the way we celebrate that makes it so awesome. I don't know, I suppose this particular dead horse has already received a sound beating, so I will go no further, I guess I just feel sorry for everyone who misses out on the Easter festivities held by those of us carrying on the 22-3 Legacy.
Speaking of Easter festivities, this year was no exception to the general rule of awesomeness. For starters, Ryan came up from Florida, and I haven't seen Ryan since early December, so it's been over four months. Andrew Clark has been back from Ohio for the last two weeks, so he was here to join in the fun. Danny Latin, Aaron Crawford, and I are all still students at Liberty, so the only people missing from the Golden Age of 22-3 were Jamie and Sean, both of whom are fully entrenched in the working world now.
As you can see, even then I acknowledged the tribulations of dealing with women as the lifeblood of my blogging career, and I recall being very annoyed that they all bailed on us for Easter, but I think just the sheer enormity of the task of describing what happened that weekend deterred me from finishing; either that or something Ian and Milton were doing in the room distracted me and I never got back to it.
The next excerpt truly is a bit off the cutting room floor, as it's part of an early version of the post I ended up writing about the differences between the worldviews of the Watchmen characters Rorschach and The Comedian. While I ultimately took a different approach to the post as a whole than the one I had chosen upon starting it, this small bit, written on March 29, 09, is still applicable:
On the ride back from lunch today, after considering the number of cars the average American family has (which, in my estimation, is roughly one per person and, in my mind, is also absolutely ridiculous), I noted an exchange from Watchmen, wherein Nite Owl wonders aloud what happened to the American Dream, and The Comedian responds, in the face of a chaotic New York cityscape, "It came true. You're looking at it." Following this seemingly random (but actually calculated) excerpt, one of the females in the car asked who spoke that particular line, and after I told her, the other female (who had seen the movie) said "Ooh, he was AWFUL! I didn't like him!" I briefly described The Comedian's worldview, and after hearing my description, the first girl said "That's a sad way to look at life. It sounds a lot like the way Bill looks at it."
My original introduction for this post felt clunky and much too direct for my liking, which is why I decided to postpone the idea until I had something better to go on, and I'm glad I did.
Speaking of directness though, I must have been following the same line of thinking that I espoused in this draft, the last of the deleted scenes:
A brief note on subtlety: if you want to get a message across, don't use it. I've found that people often don't want to think too much (which, I believe, is why some people don't like masterpieces like Watchmen or the Matrix Trilogy). As a result, they may hear exactly what it is you're saying, but won't understand precisely what you mean. I'm a big fan of ambiguity and double entendres used in such a manner that your words may mean more than just what they say. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to make people understand what you're getting at is to bash them over the skull with it.
Interestingly, that short paragraph serves as a surprisingly appropriate appetizer for the main course du jour. Since I just stated that subtlety is generally lost on the masses, I'm gonna throw this out there for everyone to read, plain and simple: what I initially meant in that first paragraph was that sometimes I make statements, comments, remarks, references, etc., and the real meaning goes unnoticed by most people. Then I realized that I've got a perfect case of dual meaning going on here,
And I guess I just stopped mid-thought right there, but the draft continues for one more line after that, probably because I wanted to throw down a thought that I didn't want to forget (I do this often while I'm composing blogs):
Speaking of oblivious people, I've got another subject to address:
My guess is that I was gonna go off on the general lack of perception that girls seem to show, although that generality was more than likely inspired by a singular source. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the specifics, nor do I remember exactly why I titled it "Hey Kid, You'll Never Live This Down." What I do know is that the title is taken from a line in the Fall Out Boy song "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me." I think the significance of the title was meant to be discovered upon examination of the song; I do know the line that follows that particular one had special significance, and that the reason I chose this line for the title was multifaceted, a common habit of mine. But like I said, I can't remember exactly what I meant when I wrote it. I think I mentioned dual meanings at the end of the second paragraph for that precise reason. Apparently, I also wrote this draft on March 29, although it was probably some time after midnight the night before I wrote the other draft.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my unpublished material from Spring 09, foisted upon the world of the internet for all to see and probably for two or three to read. But that's okay, at the very least a few people will (hopefully) get something out of this, and my dashboard will henceforth reflect an accurate post count.
The first entry in my deleted scenes blog came from a draft entitled "If You Give A Grad Student A Cookie..." that I had written on April 21, 2009:
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,
Profound. I can't imagine why I didn't follow this up with anything else at all. I believe I was about to go on a rant about how I hate hearing that breakfast "jump-starts your metabolism," because that phrase is so dang hackneyed, but I guess I didn't have the heart. Also, I believe this was written the day after one of my graduate work-induced meltdowns, during which the cookies I had procured from the Clubhouse on the previous night basically preserved my sanity, so I think that's the connection to the cookie mentioned in the title. This nice girl who worked at the grill had given the cookies to me... I wish I could remember her name... oh well. I'm sure she's doing just fine for herself these days.
The next entry comes from a draft titled "Reflections on an Easter Weekend." If you take note, this phrase is properly capitalized in accordance with the rules for such things, so this must have been written before I adopted the practice of disregarding English rules and capitalizing every word of my titles no matter what. I don't know when I started doing that, but it must have been before April 13, 2009:
You may have noticed that every Wednesday for the last three weeks, I've posted a new blog. Well, this week I'll probably be too busy on Wednesday night to get around to that (ah grad school, how I love thee), so I figured I'd put this up tonight to tide my regular readers over for the week. I don't have anything very insightful or even of real significance to say; if you haven't noticed, usually my inspiration comes from frustrating interactions with females, and most of the girls I hang out with on a regular basis have been out of town for Easter, so I haven't really seen them since Thursday. At any rate, even though I don't have any kind of grandiose overarching point, I do have an urge to just sit and throw down some of the stuff that's been swimming around in my head the past few days.
Let's start with the Easter holiday that has erroneously been dubbed "Easter Break" at Liberty University. First of all, it's not a "break." It's a day off. One freaking day off. We get Monday off (and, for the record, this was a tradition enacted in 2007; prior to that year we Liberty students got no days off for Easter), and people commonly wonder why we get the Monday after Easter off as opposed to Good Friday. The answer is simple: having Monday off, everyone who went home for Easter can stay through the entirety of Easter Sunday and then leave on Monday. This brings me to my second point, which is actually a question: why would you want to leave Liberty at Easter time? I understand that Easter is an important holiday for Christians and that people like to spend it with their families (I too enjoy Easter with my family, when I'm already home), but in all honesty, Easter weekend is traditionally one of the best weekends of the year at Liberty. It makes absolutely no sense to me to spend money to go home so you can miss out on the experience. Maybe the experience isn't the same for everyone, maybe it's just my particular group of friends and the way we celebrate that makes it so awesome. I don't know, I suppose this particular dead horse has already received a sound beating, so I will go no further, I guess I just feel sorry for everyone who misses out on the Easter festivities held by those of us carrying on the 22-3 Legacy.
Speaking of Easter festivities, this year was no exception to the general rule of awesomeness. For starters, Ryan came up from Florida, and I haven't seen Ryan since early December, so it's been over four months. Andrew Clark has been back from Ohio for the last two weeks, so he was here to join in the fun. Danny Latin, Aaron Crawford, and I are all still students at Liberty, so the only people missing from the Golden Age of 22-3 were Jamie and Sean, both of whom are fully entrenched in the working world now.
As you can see, even then I acknowledged the tribulations of dealing with women as the lifeblood of my blogging career, and I recall being very annoyed that they all bailed on us for Easter, but I think just the sheer enormity of the task of describing what happened that weekend deterred me from finishing; either that or something Ian and Milton were doing in the room distracted me and I never got back to it.
The next excerpt truly is a bit off the cutting room floor, as it's part of an early version of the post I ended up writing about the differences between the worldviews of the Watchmen characters Rorschach and The Comedian. While I ultimately took a different approach to the post as a whole than the one I had chosen upon starting it, this small bit, written on March 29, 09, is still applicable:
On the ride back from lunch today, after considering the number of cars the average American family has (which, in my estimation, is roughly one per person and, in my mind, is also absolutely ridiculous), I noted an exchange from Watchmen, wherein Nite Owl wonders aloud what happened to the American Dream, and The Comedian responds, in the face of a chaotic New York cityscape, "It came true. You're looking at it." Following this seemingly random (but actually calculated) excerpt, one of the females in the car asked who spoke that particular line, and after I told her, the other female (who had seen the movie) said "Ooh, he was AWFUL! I didn't like him!" I briefly described The Comedian's worldview, and after hearing my description, the first girl said "That's a sad way to look at life. It sounds a lot like the way Bill looks at it."
My original introduction for this post felt clunky and much too direct for my liking, which is why I decided to postpone the idea until I had something better to go on, and I'm glad I did.
Speaking of directness though, I must have been following the same line of thinking that I espoused in this draft, the last of the deleted scenes:
A brief note on subtlety: if you want to get a message across, don't use it. I've found that people often don't want to think too much (which, I believe, is why some people don't like masterpieces like Watchmen or the Matrix Trilogy). As a result, they may hear exactly what it is you're saying, but won't understand precisely what you mean. I'm a big fan of ambiguity and double entendres used in such a manner that your words may mean more than just what they say. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to make people understand what you're getting at is to bash them over the skull with it.
Interestingly, that short paragraph serves as a surprisingly appropriate appetizer for the main course du jour. Since I just stated that subtlety is generally lost on the masses, I'm gonna throw this out there for everyone to read, plain and simple: what I initially meant in that first paragraph was that sometimes I make statements, comments, remarks, references, etc., and the real meaning goes unnoticed by most people. Then I realized that I've got a perfect case of dual meaning going on here,
And I guess I just stopped mid-thought right there, but the draft continues for one more line after that, probably because I wanted to throw down a thought that I didn't want to forget (I do this often while I'm composing blogs):
Speaking of oblivious people, I've got another subject to address:
My guess is that I was gonna go off on the general lack of perception that girls seem to show, although that generality was more than likely inspired by a singular source. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the specifics, nor do I remember exactly why I titled it "Hey Kid, You'll Never Live This Down." What I do know is that the title is taken from a line in the Fall Out Boy song "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me." I think the significance of the title was meant to be discovered upon examination of the song; I do know the line that follows that particular one had special significance, and that the reason I chose this line for the title was multifaceted, a common habit of mine. But like I said, I can't remember exactly what I meant when I wrote it. I think I mentioned dual meanings at the end of the second paragraph for that precise reason. Apparently, I also wrote this draft on March 29, although it was probably some time after midnight the night before I wrote the other draft.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my unpublished material from Spring 09, foisted upon the world of the internet for all to see and probably for two or three to read. But that's okay, at the very least a few people will (hopefully) get something out of this, and my dashboard will henceforth reflect an accurate post count.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
This Is What Dreams Are Made Of
Okay, so last night I had one of the weirdest dreams I've had in a while. Of course, weird dreams are commonplace, and the events in the dreams were plenty bizarre, but one of the strangest things about it was that it was one of the most linear dreams I've had in recent memory. Thus, tonight, instead of my usual blogging fare, I'm going to transcribe the events of this dream for you, and hopefully you'll find it at least marginally entertaining.
At the start of the dream, I was on my way to Williamsport, PA for the Little League World Series with my brothers Chris and Ned and the rest of the Colonie Little League crew. We stopped about halfway through our journey and got out of our cars and ventured off into the woods to stretch our legs a bit. I was wandering around, and I got separated from everyone else and ultimately lost in the woods. When I finally met up with some other people (they were nameless and faceless and didn't play much of a part in the rest of the dream), they told me that while I had been lost, the world had been taken over by an evil European noble of sorts, and that he was building concentration camps all over the country in which to torture and kill people. I looked around and saw that a large fence had been erected around the forest in which I had found myself, and knew that I was trapped.
Some time passed (I don't know how much, but it seemed to be several days, at least), and after a while a new group of people that had been rounded up by the evil noble's forces were dumped off in my little area of the camp. These people were a group of five Asian midgets, all of whom were female, except for one male who looked just like the puppet version of Kim Jong-il from Team America: World Police. At first they tore wildly around the camp, acting much like ill-behaved five year olds on sugar highs (or Gremlins) and basically getting on everyone's nerves, so I took it upon myself to get them to calm down. This was no small feat, but eventually, over the course of a week or so, I got them to calm down and I became friends with the little Asians.
Another member in the camp who I found to be a surprisingly nice person was the Grinch. Not the cartoon Grinch, but Jim Carrey's Grinch. Unfortunately, though we got along very well, one day his number was up, and he was taken off by the guards to be tortured and executed. At that point, I knew we had to try to escape. I didn't just want to wait around until it was my time to be killed. It was then that Miley Cyrus and I realized that a contraption that the guards had been using as a snow plow was actually an old medieval style catapult. The two of us found a portion of the fence that was covered in plastic wrap at the bottom and tore a small hole in it. The hole was maybe five inches in diameter, but we both somehow managed to squeeze through it anyway, and when we got through the bottom of the fence, we each got on one side of the plow/catapult and began to push it along the ground, scraping the bottom of the fence along its length in such a manner that it caused the fence to become uprooted. We were somehow doing this very stealthily, and destroying large portions of the fence without the guards noticing.
We worked our way, slowly, toward the bad guy's headquarters, and once we got to the very edge of the wall there, we stopped. We saw Revolutionary War-era British soldiers, and knew that these were the bad guy's personal guards, and we didn't want to alert their attention, so we just kind of snuck around a little bit, finding out as much as we could about the place. We noted that the bad guy had a female sidekick, and I can only describe her as looking like the picture on the "Blood Cultist" Magic card (which you can see here). The two of them were designing a new type of torturous execution device. It was a giant wooden chair, the kind with vertical slats on the back, that was wide enough to seat three people, except it was made out of metal and had a long handle protruding from the back. It worked like this: three people would be tied up and seated on the chair, while the chair was pushed ever so slowly toward a giant fire, until all the people on the chair were eventually in the fire burning to death. This contraption was called the "Butter Burner." I heard them discussing plans to put us in it, so we hastily left that place.
Before we left the complex, however, I managed to find a book that had background information on the five Asian midgets that had been placed in our sector of the camp. As it turned out, they were all criminals of some sort. One of the females was a cannibal, and the male was a pedophile, but those are the only two I remember. At any rate, I figured their criminal history could be useful in staging an uprising at the camp, so I was delighted to find this information out. Once we got back to our area of the camp, I was surprised to find the Grinch waiting for us. He was in rough shape, and his entire body had been shaven, so instead of his signature pyramidal hairdo, all he had was a fuzzy green buzz cut. He also had stitches on his face. I asked him what had happened, how he had survived, and he told me that they beat him up, sewed a pineapple to his face, and then left him for dead. He pretended to die, and then once the guards left, he ripped the pineapple off his face and made his way back to the camp proper. I told him of our plans to basically riot and escape, and he said that since they thought he was dead, he could use the element of surprise to help us out.
At that point, I went over to Miley and told her it was time to really start destroying the place. We grabbed the plow/catapult, and started crashing around with it, tearing down as much of the fences as we could and not worrying about whether or not we were making too much noise. I had hoped that we would be able to get to the main complex and destroy it before we were caught, but the guards captured us just outside of it and took us into the inner chamber. The bad guy then made some kind of speech about how it was our turn to die, and they began preparing to strap us into the Butter Burner. I was terrified. Then, from behind a pillar, the Grinch suddenly sprang out, grabbed the bad guy by the head, and bashed his skull repeatedly against the pillar until he was dead. The guards were startled, and ran toward the Grinch without thinking about us. I immediately jumped up, grabbed the Blood Cultist Lady's head, and bashed it violently against another pillar until she was dead as well. Meanwhile, the Grinch and Miley Cyrus were disposing of the guards in the same fashion. Soon, we were all killing the guards and everyone in the place was making a break for it, and then I woke up.
So that's it. If anyone out there can interpret dreams, I'd be interested to hear theories, because that was just too bizarre. I hope you enjoyed this little slice of my subconscious.
At the start of the dream, I was on my way to Williamsport, PA for the Little League World Series with my brothers Chris and Ned and the rest of the Colonie Little League crew. We stopped about halfway through our journey and got out of our cars and ventured off into the woods to stretch our legs a bit. I was wandering around, and I got separated from everyone else and ultimately lost in the woods. When I finally met up with some other people (they were nameless and faceless and didn't play much of a part in the rest of the dream), they told me that while I had been lost, the world had been taken over by an evil European noble of sorts, and that he was building concentration camps all over the country in which to torture and kill people. I looked around and saw that a large fence had been erected around the forest in which I had found myself, and knew that I was trapped.
Some time passed (I don't know how much, but it seemed to be several days, at least), and after a while a new group of people that had been rounded up by the evil noble's forces were dumped off in my little area of the camp. These people were a group of five Asian midgets, all of whom were female, except for one male who looked just like the puppet version of Kim Jong-il from Team America: World Police. At first they tore wildly around the camp, acting much like ill-behaved five year olds on sugar highs (or Gremlins) and basically getting on everyone's nerves, so I took it upon myself to get them to calm down. This was no small feat, but eventually, over the course of a week or so, I got them to calm down and I became friends with the little Asians.
Another member in the camp who I found to be a surprisingly nice person was the Grinch. Not the cartoon Grinch, but Jim Carrey's Grinch. Unfortunately, though we got along very well, one day his number was up, and he was taken off by the guards to be tortured and executed. At that point, I knew we had to try to escape. I didn't just want to wait around until it was my time to be killed. It was then that Miley Cyrus and I realized that a contraption that the guards had been using as a snow plow was actually an old medieval style catapult. The two of us found a portion of the fence that was covered in plastic wrap at the bottom and tore a small hole in it. The hole was maybe five inches in diameter, but we both somehow managed to squeeze through it anyway, and when we got through the bottom of the fence, we each got on one side of the plow/catapult and began to push it along the ground, scraping the bottom of the fence along its length in such a manner that it caused the fence to become uprooted. We were somehow doing this very stealthily, and destroying large portions of the fence without the guards noticing.
We worked our way, slowly, toward the bad guy's headquarters, and once we got to the very edge of the wall there, we stopped. We saw Revolutionary War-era British soldiers, and knew that these were the bad guy's personal guards, and we didn't want to alert their attention, so we just kind of snuck around a little bit, finding out as much as we could about the place. We noted that the bad guy had a female sidekick, and I can only describe her as looking like the picture on the "Blood Cultist" Magic card (which you can see here). The two of them were designing a new type of torturous execution device. It was a giant wooden chair, the kind with vertical slats on the back, that was wide enough to seat three people, except it was made out of metal and had a long handle protruding from the back. It worked like this: three people would be tied up and seated on the chair, while the chair was pushed ever so slowly toward a giant fire, until all the people on the chair were eventually in the fire burning to death. This contraption was called the "Butter Burner." I heard them discussing plans to put us in it, so we hastily left that place.
Before we left the complex, however, I managed to find a book that had background information on the five Asian midgets that had been placed in our sector of the camp. As it turned out, they were all criminals of some sort. One of the females was a cannibal, and the male was a pedophile, but those are the only two I remember. At any rate, I figured their criminal history could be useful in staging an uprising at the camp, so I was delighted to find this information out. Once we got back to our area of the camp, I was surprised to find the Grinch waiting for us. He was in rough shape, and his entire body had been shaven, so instead of his signature pyramidal hairdo, all he had was a fuzzy green buzz cut. He also had stitches on his face. I asked him what had happened, how he had survived, and he told me that they beat him up, sewed a pineapple to his face, and then left him for dead. He pretended to die, and then once the guards left, he ripped the pineapple off his face and made his way back to the camp proper. I told him of our plans to basically riot and escape, and he said that since they thought he was dead, he could use the element of surprise to help us out.
At that point, I went over to Miley and told her it was time to really start destroying the place. We grabbed the plow/catapult, and started crashing around with it, tearing down as much of the fences as we could and not worrying about whether or not we were making too much noise. I had hoped that we would be able to get to the main complex and destroy it before we were caught, but the guards captured us just outside of it and took us into the inner chamber. The bad guy then made some kind of speech about how it was our turn to die, and they began preparing to strap us into the Butter Burner. I was terrified. Then, from behind a pillar, the Grinch suddenly sprang out, grabbed the bad guy by the head, and bashed his skull repeatedly against the pillar until he was dead. The guards were startled, and ran toward the Grinch without thinking about us. I immediately jumped up, grabbed the Blood Cultist Lady's head, and bashed it violently against another pillar until she was dead as well. Meanwhile, the Grinch and Miley Cyrus were disposing of the guards in the same fashion. Soon, we were all killing the guards and everyone in the place was making a break for it, and then I woke up.
So that's it. If anyone out there can interpret dreams, I'd be interested to hear theories, because that was just too bizarre. I hope you enjoyed this little slice of my subconscious.
Monday, August 24, 2009
A Great Defeat And A Small Triumph
Let's start today's blog off with a brief history lesson.
In the summer of 2007, the Colonie Little League 10 year old All-Stars took the postseason by storm. They went undefeated through District 13, then through Section 2, and finally, they won the New York State Championship without suffering a single loss. The following year, 2008, the same group of kids now comprised the 11 year old All-Stars. There was some speculation as to whether or not they would be able to recapture the state championship; after all, winning back-to-back state championships is a feat that doesn't happen often, and usually, winning a championship in the first place involves some degree of luck. But, when all was said and done, the 2008 11 year olds did exactly what they did the year before: they went undefeated through the state tournament to take the championship for the second consecutive year. As it turned out, they were just that good. The 2009 season was rife with anticipation for what was to come during the All-Star season, because, as you may know, the 12 year old year of Little League is when it really counts and you can finally advance past the state tournament, into the regionals, and ultimately to the World Series. Having won the state championship for two years running with a record of 21-0, it was basically expected that this team, which had twice proven itself to be the best New York State had to offer, would once again capture the state title and go on to the regionals in Bristol, CT. There, they would play teams representing the other states in the Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., for a chance to compete in the World Series in Williamsport, PA. No team in recent history had a better chance of making it to Williamsport than the 2009 12 year old All-Stars, and after the roster was posted in June, things were shaping up very nicely.
July 6th, 2009, The Crack Heard Round The World: Nick Donato, the 12 year olds' most dominant pitcher, hitter, and all-around star player, was pitching in the City-County semi-final for Vellano Brothers, the Colonie Little League regular season champions. On his third pitch, there was an audible cracking noise, and he fell to the ground. After the wild rumors were done circulating, I heard what happened straight from the source. A spiral fracture, which had started roughly a year before and had gone unnoticed for that duration, had finally opened up, and split his humerus clean in two. He would be unable to play ball for three months, and the All-Star season started in just one week. Basically, at that point, everyone's dreams of going to the World Series were crushed. Sure, a team that good doesn't achieve what they had on the merits of one player alone, and they hadn't; they truly were a great team. But when you take the best player right off the top, you're crippled. They did dominate the district tournament, and went undefeated all the way to the sectional championship, but they lost that game, the first loss they had ever incurred, and their amazing journey was finally over.
I can say with confidence that with Nick on the team, they would not have lost that sectional championship. The team that ended up winning the state, South Shore Little League from Staten Island, would have given them a run for their money, and it would have been a very tough game, but they would not have been an insurmountable challenge. And had they won the state, there is no doubt in my mind that they'd be playing in Williamsport now, because I watched the regional tournament, and the teams that South Shore played there were nothing really special; our 12s would have beaten them with relative ease. All of that, however, was wiped away with one broken arm, the greatest tragedy I've witnessed in my 18 year involvement with Colonie Little League.
Where am I going with all this, you ask? To Williamsport, naturally, which is where I spent this past weekend with this very group of kids (and the rest of the 12 year olds who played for Colonie this year). Going to the Little League World Series was an amazing experience, but at the same time, a bittersweet one. For a time, while watching the South Shore team that represented not only New York but the Mid-Atlantic region, I couldn't shake the feeling that that should be our team down there on the field. Those should be our families cheering for them. Those should be our kids signing autographs for other star struck Little Leaguers and being treated like Major League Baseball players. Angelo Navetta shouldn't have been the most sought-out autograph from the New York team, it should have been Nick Donato. And when Chris pointed out how cool it would be to see Nick as a World Series celebrity, I couldn't stop thinking about that either. I was watching the star players from the World Series teams, and how they acted when they were approached by other kids for autographs. They were quiet, aloof, unenthusiastic, almost like they were sick of signing autographs, like they had already gotten used to the fame and adoration they were receiving. In a word, they came off as arrogant. Now, Nick Donato is a character, that's for sure, but he's the same character everywhere he goes. It's kind of hard to describe, and you really have to know him, but he would have been a ton of fun to be around at the World Series if he had been on one of the teams playing in it. On the field, he's all business, but off the field, he's a total goof, and he would have made the most of that whole scene without being arrogant, because that is one thing he is not and has never been. I think, if for no other reason than the way he carries himself, he deserved that kind of status more than any of these other kids.
On the other hand, while it was a crushing blow to watch players from another team get to do what our team should have been doing, I did take some consolation in the fact that if they were playing, I wouldn't get to experience the World Series with them. And yes, they were a great team, but they're also a really great group of kids too. Part of what made the World Series experience so amazing was getting to spend that whole weekend with these kids. For the most part, they weren't even fazed by the fact that there was another team playing in their place; it seemed like it bothered me more than it bothered them, and I respect them for being able to take it all in stride. Although, as an aside, I was remarking to Chris that every time one of them saw a member of the South Shore team, they should have said "Nick broke his arm. You're welcome."
Another really cool aspect of the weekend was the exhibition game at Original Field, the Birthplace of Little League. If you know me, or if you've been paying attention to anything you've been reading for the last few paragraphs, then you know how much I love Little League Baseball, so to get to go see the very field on which it was first played, and see some of the guys who played on the very first World Series championship team, was just incredible. All the 12 year olds on the trip (24, to be exact, which included kids who weren't on the 12 year old All-Stars) played a 3 inning exhibition game on the field, and during this game, I got to announce for half an inning. I was the first full-time Voice of Colonie Little League, from 2003-2004, so to be able to announce at Original Field was a tremendous honor (Chris, as the current Voice of Colonie Little League, announced the other two and a half innings while I ran around taking pictures and video).
Another thing that amazed me was the sleeper hit activity of the weekend: Mao. In case you're unfamiliar, Mao is a card game (named after the Chinese dictator) in which the rules are not told, only enforced through penalties doled out by the Mao Master, so you have to figure them out as you play, basically by trial and error. It's unbelievably frustrating when you first start playing, but once you figure out the game, it's a great deal of fun. After we were done playing poker for M&Ms, I suggested on a whim that we play Mao, figuring that these antsy 12 year old kids amped up on a sugar high wouldn't have the attention span to sit through one game before they got sick of it and left for something less ambiguous and more frantic. I was surprised when they not only sat through the first game, but kept insisting on playing until they learned all the rules. And THEN, they kept wanting to play it at virtually every free moment back at the campground for the rest of the trip. They demonstrated a shocking degree of patience and self-control, which is odd, considering the fact that most college age individuals I've played with don't conduct themselves the way these kids did. In fact, the only time I ever played Mao with people my age in the capital region, most of them quit angrily after Chris figured out what was going on and they didn't. So I have to give props to the Colonie 12s for their keen observations, (mostly) cool heads, and the overall astute manner in which they played.
On a more personal level, I think this past weekend was just what I needed; circumstances haven't come to pass the way I would have liked in recent history, and I figured a few days away from home would take my mind off things. They did, and then some. The first day, when all we did was arrive at the campground, go swimming, eat dinner and then hang out a little before bed, I spent most of the night trying to convince myself that I was having a good time. Granted, I was having a good time, especially during those two crazy games of Pooltimate Frisbee, but I was preoccupied with trying to shake the feeling that I should be in Lynchburg. On day two, that all changed. I didn't need to shake it anymore, because I became completely absorbed in the World Series. As I said before, I love baseball, and Little League is my favorite form of baseball, so having the opportunity to watch the 16 best Little League teams in the world play against each other was a great treat. I could have done it for hours on end, and in fact, I did. When one game ended, another began, and for two days, we went back and forth between Volunteer Stadium and Lamade Stadium watching the teams face off against each other, and it never got old. The night games in particular were filled with an incredible energy, electrifying the atmosphere. My favorite spot from which to watch the games was basically anywhere behind the outfield fence at Lamade, the main field. Whenever a player hit a home run, there was a mad rush to get the ball, as those World Series balls become prized souvenirs for anyone fortunate enough to get their hands on one (alas, I didn't). I did, however, have a brief stint on ESPN during a commercial break, along with my cohorts (including Chris and Nick) as the crane camera took a shot of us behind the right field fence at Lamade during the Georgia/New York game on Saturday afternoon. We spent basically all of Friday and Saturday at the Little League Complex, and after our time was done, I didn't want to leave. I was enjoying the experience so much that I would have stayed out the week to watch the rest of the series if I could have.
So to recap: the trip spanned four days, Thursday-Sunday, with the meat of the adventures occurring at the Little League Complex on Friday and Saturday. We had two awesome, non-stop days filled with nothing but baseball, and I haven't had such a great time all summer. Now obviously, the primary reason for the immense amount of enjoyment I got out of this trip was that it was structured around one of my favorite pastimes, but there was another reason for its greatness that I didn't realize until the second day we were there: there were no women on the trip whatsoever. None. There were 30 some odd kids, probably a little more than half that many adults, and not a one of them was female. This hit me like a glorious epiphany from the heavens as I was coming out of the shower at the start of day 2. A self-sufficient group of men planned a four day trip, made the journey, supplied themselves with food (this includes cooking, for the record), cleaned up after themselves, made sure they were at the right places at the right times, and had an awesome time doing it. There was no complaining, no nagging, no excess worrying, no lapses in rationality, no impractical uses of time, no whining, and, most importantly (and this also sums up everything I've just listed), no distractions from our purpose for being there. The trip had a few extremely minor hitches - some kids failed to check in with their chaperones at times, and one kid got briefly sick - but other than that, it was a wild success. It was, as we realized, the ultimate Manventure; in fact, it was a Manventure of such epic proportions that it was dubbed a Pilgrimange. I've long said that women are the cause of all the world's problems, and this trip, which had no noteworthy problems, is just more evidence to further that theory.
And look, it even restored my convictions and got me railing against women again. If that's not a great trip, I don't know what is.
In the summer of 2007, the Colonie Little League 10 year old All-Stars took the postseason by storm. They went undefeated through District 13, then through Section 2, and finally, they won the New York State Championship without suffering a single loss. The following year, 2008, the same group of kids now comprised the 11 year old All-Stars. There was some speculation as to whether or not they would be able to recapture the state championship; after all, winning back-to-back state championships is a feat that doesn't happen often, and usually, winning a championship in the first place involves some degree of luck. But, when all was said and done, the 2008 11 year olds did exactly what they did the year before: they went undefeated through the state tournament to take the championship for the second consecutive year. As it turned out, they were just that good. The 2009 season was rife with anticipation for what was to come during the All-Star season, because, as you may know, the 12 year old year of Little League is when it really counts and you can finally advance past the state tournament, into the regionals, and ultimately to the World Series. Having won the state championship for two years running with a record of 21-0, it was basically expected that this team, which had twice proven itself to be the best New York State had to offer, would once again capture the state title and go on to the regionals in Bristol, CT. There, they would play teams representing the other states in the Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., for a chance to compete in the World Series in Williamsport, PA. No team in recent history had a better chance of making it to Williamsport than the 2009 12 year old All-Stars, and after the roster was posted in June, things were shaping up very nicely.
July 6th, 2009, The Crack Heard Round The World: Nick Donato, the 12 year olds' most dominant pitcher, hitter, and all-around star player, was pitching in the City-County semi-final for Vellano Brothers, the Colonie Little League regular season champions. On his third pitch, there was an audible cracking noise, and he fell to the ground. After the wild rumors were done circulating, I heard what happened straight from the source. A spiral fracture, which had started roughly a year before and had gone unnoticed for that duration, had finally opened up, and split his humerus clean in two. He would be unable to play ball for three months, and the All-Star season started in just one week. Basically, at that point, everyone's dreams of going to the World Series were crushed. Sure, a team that good doesn't achieve what they had on the merits of one player alone, and they hadn't; they truly were a great team. But when you take the best player right off the top, you're crippled. They did dominate the district tournament, and went undefeated all the way to the sectional championship, but they lost that game, the first loss they had ever incurred, and their amazing journey was finally over.
I can say with confidence that with Nick on the team, they would not have lost that sectional championship. The team that ended up winning the state, South Shore Little League from Staten Island, would have given them a run for their money, and it would have been a very tough game, but they would not have been an insurmountable challenge. And had they won the state, there is no doubt in my mind that they'd be playing in Williamsport now, because I watched the regional tournament, and the teams that South Shore played there were nothing really special; our 12s would have beaten them with relative ease. All of that, however, was wiped away with one broken arm, the greatest tragedy I've witnessed in my 18 year involvement with Colonie Little League.
Where am I going with all this, you ask? To Williamsport, naturally, which is where I spent this past weekend with this very group of kids (and the rest of the 12 year olds who played for Colonie this year). Going to the Little League World Series was an amazing experience, but at the same time, a bittersweet one. For a time, while watching the South Shore team that represented not only New York but the Mid-Atlantic region, I couldn't shake the feeling that that should be our team down there on the field. Those should be our families cheering for them. Those should be our kids signing autographs for other star struck Little Leaguers and being treated like Major League Baseball players. Angelo Navetta shouldn't have been the most sought-out autograph from the New York team, it should have been Nick Donato. And when Chris pointed out how cool it would be to see Nick as a World Series celebrity, I couldn't stop thinking about that either. I was watching the star players from the World Series teams, and how they acted when they were approached by other kids for autographs. They were quiet, aloof, unenthusiastic, almost like they were sick of signing autographs, like they had already gotten used to the fame and adoration they were receiving. In a word, they came off as arrogant. Now, Nick Donato is a character, that's for sure, but he's the same character everywhere he goes. It's kind of hard to describe, and you really have to know him, but he would have been a ton of fun to be around at the World Series if he had been on one of the teams playing in it. On the field, he's all business, but off the field, he's a total goof, and he would have made the most of that whole scene without being arrogant, because that is one thing he is not and has never been. I think, if for no other reason than the way he carries himself, he deserved that kind of status more than any of these other kids.
On the other hand, while it was a crushing blow to watch players from another team get to do what our team should have been doing, I did take some consolation in the fact that if they were playing, I wouldn't get to experience the World Series with them. And yes, they were a great team, but they're also a really great group of kids too. Part of what made the World Series experience so amazing was getting to spend that whole weekend with these kids. For the most part, they weren't even fazed by the fact that there was another team playing in their place; it seemed like it bothered me more than it bothered them, and I respect them for being able to take it all in stride. Although, as an aside, I was remarking to Chris that every time one of them saw a member of the South Shore team, they should have said "Nick broke his arm. You're welcome."
Another really cool aspect of the weekend was the exhibition game at Original Field, the Birthplace of Little League. If you know me, or if you've been paying attention to anything you've been reading for the last few paragraphs, then you know how much I love Little League Baseball, so to get to go see the very field on which it was first played, and see some of the guys who played on the very first World Series championship team, was just incredible. All the 12 year olds on the trip (24, to be exact, which included kids who weren't on the 12 year old All-Stars) played a 3 inning exhibition game on the field, and during this game, I got to announce for half an inning. I was the first full-time Voice of Colonie Little League, from 2003-2004, so to be able to announce at Original Field was a tremendous honor (Chris, as the current Voice of Colonie Little League, announced the other two and a half innings while I ran around taking pictures and video).
Another thing that amazed me was the sleeper hit activity of the weekend: Mao. In case you're unfamiliar, Mao is a card game (named after the Chinese dictator) in which the rules are not told, only enforced through penalties doled out by the Mao Master, so you have to figure them out as you play, basically by trial and error. It's unbelievably frustrating when you first start playing, but once you figure out the game, it's a great deal of fun. After we were done playing poker for M&Ms, I suggested on a whim that we play Mao, figuring that these antsy 12 year old kids amped up on a sugar high wouldn't have the attention span to sit through one game before they got sick of it and left for something less ambiguous and more frantic. I was surprised when they not only sat through the first game, but kept insisting on playing until they learned all the rules. And THEN, they kept wanting to play it at virtually every free moment back at the campground for the rest of the trip. They demonstrated a shocking degree of patience and self-control, which is odd, considering the fact that most college age individuals I've played with don't conduct themselves the way these kids did. In fact, the only time I ever played Mao with people my age in the capital region, most of them quit angrily after Chris figured out what was going on and they didn't. So I have to give props to the Colonie 12s for their keen observations, (mostly) cool heads, and the overall astute manner in which they played.
On a more personal level, I think this past weekend was just what I needed; circumstances haven't come to pass the way I would have liked in recent history, and I figured a few days away from home would take my mind off things. They did, and then some. The first day, when all we did was arrive at the campground, go swimming, eat dinner and then hang out a little before bed, I spent most of the night trying to convince myself that I was having a good time. Granted, I was having a good time, especially during those two crazy games of Pooltimate Frisbee, but I was preoccupied with trying to shake the feeling that I should be in Lynchburg. On day two, that all changed. I didn't need to shake it anymore, because I became completely absorbed in the World Series. As I said before, I love baseball, and Little League is my favorite form of baseball, so having the opportunity to watch the 16 best Little League teams in the world play against each other was a great treat. I could have done it for hours on end, and in fact, I did. When one game ended, another began, and for two days, we went back and forth between Volunteer Stadium and Lamade Stadium watching the teams face off against each other, and it never got old. The night games in particular were filled with an incredible energy, electrifying the atmosphere. My favorite spot from which to watch the games was basically anywhere behind the outfield fence at Lamade, the main field. Whenever a player hit a home run, there was a mad rush to get the ball, as those World Series balls become prized souvenirs for anyone fortunate enough to get their hands on one (alas, I didn't). I did, however, have a brief stint on ESPN during a commercial break, along with my cohorts (including Chris and Nick) as the crane camera took a shot of us behind the right field fence at Lamade during the Georgia/New York game on Saturday afternoon. We spent basically all of Friday and Saturday at the Little League Complex, and after our time was done, I didn't want to leave. I was enjoying the experience so much that I would have stayed out the week to watch the rest of the series if I could have.
So to recap: the trip spanned four days, Thursday-Sunday, with the meat of the adventures occurring at the Little League Complex on Friday and Saturday. We had two awesome, non-stop days filled with nothing but baseball, and I haven't had such a great time all summer. Now obviously, the primary reason for the immense amount of enjoyment I got out of this trip was that it was structured around one of my favorite pastimes, but there was another reason for its greatness that I didn't realize until the second day we were there: there were no women on the trip whatsoever. None. There were 30 some odd kids, probably a little more than half that many adults, and not a one of them was female. This hit me like a glorious epiphany from the heavens as I was coming out of the shower at the start of day 2. A self-sufficient group of men planned a four day trip, made the journey, supplied themselves with food (this includes cooking, for the record), cleaned up after themselves, made sure they were at the right places at the right times, and had an awesome time doing it. There was no complaining, no nagging, no excess worrying, no lapses in rationality, no impractical uses of time, no whining, and, most importantly (and this also sums up everything I've just listed), no distractions from our purpose for being there. The trip had a few extremely minor hitches - some kids failed to check in with their chaperones at times, and one kid got briefly sick - but other than that, it was a wild success. It was, as we realized, the ultimate Manventure; in fact, it was a Manventure of such epic proportions that it was dubbed a Pilgrimange. I've long said that women are the cause of all the world's problems, and this trip, which had no noteworthy problems, is just more evidence to further that theory.
And look, it even restored my convictions and got me railing against women again. If that's not a great trip, I don't know what is.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Flood Behind Me
I'm not feeling particularly inspired tonight, but for lack of anything else that really interests me at the moment, I turn my fingers once more to the Keys of Truth (as they've just now been designated) to pound out what is sure to be another enlightening glimpse into the world of my wacky noodle. I've found that, if nothing else, this blog serves as a way for me to vent a little every so often, and I've also been told that it's a somewhat regular dose of the Billcast, which makes me feel like it's that much more worthwhile. For the unfortunate souls who never got to experience the Golden Age of 22-3, the Billcast, as it was dubbed by Andrew Clark, the One True Prayer Leader and fellow blogging aficionado (click this blue text here to read his blog), was what occurred whenever I would burst into 305 ranting emphatically about whatever happened to be on my mind at the time. I guess I did it so often that it warranted its own title.
I don't know if anyone else out there noticed this, but it occurred to me that the entity which antagonizes me the most and incites me to the point of fervent bloggery, my bread and butter, if you will, has gone completely unaddressed in the last two posts, and that entity is the people group known, as I tastefully decline to use a more offensive term, as "females." That's right folks, I haven't complained a lick about anything girls have done to bother me in over a month, which, if you know me, is quite the feat. I'm sure this is mostly due to the fact that my interactions with members of the opposite sex have been, for the last three months and counting, limited those that I have with members of my immediate family and those I have by means of interstate instant message conversations. This, of course, puts a cap on the number of things women can do to really irk me, and it's begun to show, but that leads to a more interesting conclusion that I've drawn about myself.
If I've not made it clear already, a large portion of my inspiration, at least for this blog, has come from witnessing females take courses of action that challenge my notions of what rational thought really is, or in laymen's terms, from watching them do things that bug the crap out of me. But that got me thinking, especially last night, when I went to write a new blog and initially had nothing to say, about what it is that gets me going on a more basic level. When I sat down to start writing, I was in a rather indifferent mood; not a pleasant one, necessarily, but I wasn't particularly upset about anything. As I geared myself up to write the blog, I realized that the method by which I was preparing myself mentally was to try and irritate myself to the point of having something to say... basically mental stimulation through situational frustration. It then occurred to me that if I wasn't really irritated about anything at the moment, it would be stupid of me to irritate myself and put myself in a bad mood just so I could write something down, so I decided to just watch a movie instead. But it dawned on me at that point: my inspiration comes mainly through irritation. If I'm not up in arms about something, I don't really have much to say. This, of course, is not always the case, but most of the time it's true.
And that brings me to the here and now. Again, tonight, I feel largely indifferent toward virtually everything; indeed, I feel almost consumed by apathy. Maybe it's just a temporary inclination brought about by a dull routine into which I've fallen over the past week or two, but maybe it's something more. When an exchange that I'm sure going in will get me fired up (or at least remotely concerned) just fizzles out and dies without leaving any real impression on me, it makes me pause to wonder: what's wrong with me? I'm not used to this, it's very strange, but I can't seem to shake it. Maybe it's a good thing that I'm not so concerned about certain things, but I basically feel that way about everything right now.
Yesterday Chris, the younger siblings, and I went to the Imagination Station, which is the coolest playground in all the land. It's tough to describe to somebody who's never been there, but it's got these big wooden structures that are connected via bouncy bridges and monkey bars and winding, maze-like platforms. If I were a little kid, I would have a blast playing there, and it almost makes me wish I had gone to Shaker Elementary, just so I could have experienced recess at the Imagination Station. When we got out of the car, however, we saw that one of the big wooden structures near the entrance had been replaced with a shiny new piece of playground equipment, made of metal and plastic and boasting a rather tall twisty slide. On its own, this piece was impressive, of course, a marvel of modern playground engineering and demonstrative of the latest in playground safety measures (shredded pieces of tire provided a squishy cushion at the base of the structure, in stark contrast to the wood chips that litter the rest of the playground). But it's just not the same. While it may not have been as visually stunning, the old wooden piece that formerly resided there had a great deal of character, and I was sad to see it gone in favor of what I can only describe as "change" with a twinge of "hope." I was extremely disappointed when I saw that one of my favorite things, the little talky boxes connected by underground pipes at opposing ends of the playground, had been removed to make way for this monstrosity. I was even more dismayed when I went over to the swing set. The swing set I had discovered three years ago, my favorite swing set in the whole world, was gone, replaced by a new one of the same breed as the structure that took the place of our old wooden friend. All sentimentality aside, even in its practical application, this new swing set is inferior, as the supports are not as high as the old set's, and the swing's radius from the top of the support is decreased, allowing you to only dream wistfully of how high you had once been able to soar on those old swings. One thing that was left unchanged, however, was the Low Rider Swings way off in the distance, and thank goodness for that. At least there I could sit and ponder my existence without feeling like I was a visitor on some strange alien playground.
My point is this: the past is gone and the future is bleak, so you can't look to either for comfort. Maybe the notion that I'm just stuck exactly where I am is what's causing me to be so apathetic. I feel like deviation from what I'm already familiar with will bring nothing but trouble, but at the same time, I'm forced to stray from the beaten path that I love so much. I'm in a situation that I'm not exactly fond of, but at least it's safe, so I can't really complain either. Maybe a few days in Williamsport will put things in a better perspective, or at least distract me a little.
I don't know if anyone else out there noticed this, but it occurred to me that the entity which antagonizes me the most and incites me to the point of fervent bloggery, my bread and butter, if you will, has gone completely unaddressed in the last two posts, and that entity is the people group known, as I tastefully decline to use a more offensive term, as "females." That's right folks, I haven't complained a lick about anything girls have done to bother me in over a month, which, if you know me, is quite the feat. I'm sure this is mostly due to the fact that my interactions with members of the opposite sex have been, for the last three months and counting, limited those that I have with members of my immediate family and those I have by means of interstate instant message conversations. This, of course, puts a cap on the number of things women can do to really irk me, and it's begun to show, but that leads to a more interesting conclusion that I've drawn about myself.
If I've not made it clear already, a large portion of my inspiration, at least for this blog, has come from witnessing females take courses of action that challenge my notions of what rational thought really is, or in laymen's terms, from watching them do things that bug the crap out of me. But that got me thinking, especially last night, when I went to write a new blog and initially had nothing to say, about what it is that gets me going on a more basic level. When I sat down to start writing, I was in a rather indifferent mood; not a pleasant one, necessarily, but I wasn't particularly upset about anything. As I geared myself up to write the blog, I realized that the method by which I was preparing myself mentally was to try and irritate myself to the point of having something to say... basically mental stimulation through situational frustration. It then occurred to me that if I wasn't really irritated about anything at the moment, it would be stupid of me to irritate myself and put myself in a bad mood just so I could write something down, so I decided to just watch a movie instead. But it dawned on me at that point: my inspiration comes mainly through irritation. If I'm not up in arms about something, I don't really have much to say. This, of course, is not always the case, but most of the time it's true.
And that brings me to the here and now. Again, tonight, I feel largely indifferent toward virtually everything; indeed, I feel almost consumed by apathy. Maybe it's just a temporary inclination brought about by a dull routine into which I've fallen over the past week or two, but maybe it's something more. When an exchange that I'm sure going in will get me fired up (or at least remotely concerned) just fizzles out and dies without leaving any real impression on me, it makes me pause to wonder: what's wrong with me? I'm not used to this, it's very strange, but I can't seem to shake it. Maybe it's a good thing that I'm not so concerned about certain things, but I basically feel that way about everything right now.
Yesterday Chris, the younger siblings, and I went to the Imagination Station, which is the coolest playground in all the land. It's tough to describe to somebody who's never been there, but it's got these big wooden structures that are connected via bouncy bridges and monkey bars and winding, maze-like platforms. If I were a little kid, I would have a blast playing there, and it almost makes me wish I had gone to Shaker Elementary, just so I could have experienced recess at the Imagination Station. When we got out of the car, however, we saw that one of the big wooden structures near the entrance had been replaced with a shiny new piece of playground equipment, made of metal and plastic and boasting a rather tall twisty slide. On its own, this piece was impressive, of course, a marvel of modern playground engineering and demonstrative of the latest in playground safety measures (shredded pieces of tire provided a squishy cushion at the base of the structure, in stark contrast to the wood chips that litter the rest of the playground). But it's just not the same. While it may not have been as visually stunning, the old wooden piece that formerly resided there had a great deal of character, and I was sad to see it gone in favor of what I can only describe as "change" with a twinge of "hope." I was extremely disappointed when I saw that one of my favorite things, the little talky boxes connected by underground pipes at opposing ends of the playground, had been removed to make way for this monstrosity. I was even more dismayed when I went over to the swing set. The swing set I had discovered three years ago, my favorite swing set in the whole world, was gone, replaced by a new one of the same breed as the structure that took the place of our old wooden friend. All sentimentality aside, even in its practical application, this new swing set is inferior, as the supports are not as high as the old set's, and the swing's radius from the top of the support is decreased, allowing you to only dream wistfully of how high you had once been able to soar on those old swings. One thing that was left unchanged, however, was the Low Rider Swings way off in the distance, and thank goodness for that. At least there I could sit and ponder my existence without feeling like I was a visitor on some strange alien playground.
My point is this: the past is gone and the future is bleak, so you can't look to either for comfort. Maybe the notion that I'm just stuck exactly where I am is what's causing me to be so apathetic. I feel like deviation from what I'm already familiar with will bring nothing but trouble, but at the same time, I'm forced to stray from the beaten path that I love so much. I'm in a situation that I'm not exactly fond of, but at least it's safe, so I can't really complain either. Maybe a few days in Williamsport will put things in a better perspective, or at least distract me a little.
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