How can somebody with so much free time find so little time to blog?

Well, I'm back yet again. The past couple weeks have been a tour de force of pure ridiculousness the likes of which I have not experienced in maybe 2 or 3 years. As is always the custom of this blog, I am not 100% sure that I can even begin to express why that is. My friend Casey suggested that my blogs would be more exciting if I left them unedited and just used code names to identify the main characters in any stories that would be unsavory for those involved to have to see in a public forum. I agree that this would indeed cause some more interest in the blog, but I assume that I would have to meet all new friends to do any of the things that I blog about as a result. My ultimate response to this dilemma however is simply that I eventually plan to release all my deepest thoughts and juiciest details to the world - except you'd have to be purchasing my first novel to ever become privy to such information.

I once told my good friend Willy that I would like to write a novel loosely based on his long (he's 72) and adventurous (he's been a gang member, pimp, drug dealer, alcoholic, etc) life, but he told me I couldn't till his wife was dead because despite all their differences he still loves her and couldn't imagine hurting her with some of the content I had suggested. Hearing somebody describe their viewpoint like that has helped me to realize that sometimes it's best to leave private events private until you're certain that nobody could get hurt, and unfortunately in many cases that time never arrives. As much as I have adopted this policy to my writing, I am disappointed to admit that I may not have remained as discreet in discussing my personal life lately. For this I apologize to everybody. Touching on a topic that I wrote about not all that long ago, real life in no way resembles anything that you see on television or in the movies. Whereas the dramatic actor somehow finds a way to say just the perfect thing in the most difficult of situations, I have decided that there is a very common response that is much more effective when dealing with a touchy subject - just say nothing at all. To many people, at many times, there is not one single right thing to say. It is when we all realize that actions, not words, are the means by which others are motivated to respond to us that we will have a little bit less of a messy world.

Alright, moving on to another topic...You know what? Now that I mention it, I'm going to try and promise everybody on here that I will at some point write a blog giving a little more information on the aforementioned Willy's life. It's quite fascinating and has many important lessons that I believe that anyone could benefit from - but the time is not right now for such a blog. I guess something I could mention really quickly is that I have seen quite a few movies of significance the past couple weeks and would like to say a few quick things about them.

First off, I finally went and saw Brokeback Mountain, and while I am not going to go and say it was a bad movie, it was not however worthy of all of the hype surrounding it. I guess when the topic of your movie is so unique and controversial the hype is easier to take hold, but it just wasn't that amazing to me. To be perfectly honest, I read one viewer's review on Yahoo movies once and was pretty convinced that it was just some insensitive homophobe's opinion of the movie, but as I watched it I began to think that maybe there was some truth to what he had to say. You see, the review claimed that the one character was nothing more than an obsessed sexual predator who wouldn't leave the other character alone, and at times during the movie I had great difficulty seeing the "love" in their relationship, as they often came off more as camping booty calls for each other rather than true loving partners (I'm not saying all the time, but quite often). The other baffling thing about the movie was how Heath Ledger was considered a lead actor and jake Gyllenhaal only a supporting role, as they seem to at worst have a discrepancy of air time of a few minutes, with some of the more important dialogue actually coming from Gyllenhaal. Weird to say the least. Anyway, it wasn't a bad movie, just a bizarre one.

Next up was yet another Jake Gyllenhaal movie, this time to laborously slow Jar Head, which despite its lack of pace was an interesting character study nonetheless. As many reviews warned, as will mine, the movie features very little action for a "war movie." In fact, that's pretty much the whole point of the film, how so many soldiers were sent out to patrol around always hoping for an inkling of excitement in a war fought not in the trenches but with missle strikes and continuous air support. The movie focuses on what it's like to be a marine, complete with training, hazing, comraderie, and a scene in which a soldier receives a tape from his jaded wife in which she's fucking the next door neighbor, a "Jodie" as the film educates us, to get back at him for something. If you go into the film expecting more of the kinds of events I just mentioned, you will most likely respect it more than if you're expecting Black Hawk Down-esque continuous action. Overall, a quality film with yet another fine performance from its star, not to mention co-star Jamie Fox as the commanding officer.

Lastly, I didn't even catch the entire film, but I saw the last 45 minutes of the Oscar winner for best foreign language film from 1998, Life is Beautiful, starring Roberto Benigni, and I was unquestionably touched. Without spoiling the film for anyone who chooses to see it, which you should if you never have, the basic plot is that Benigni's character and his son are lodged together in a concentration camp during WWII. When his son comes to him to report that he heard a rumor that everybody there was being roasted in an oven to be made into buttons and soap, the father decides on the spot to protect his son from the horrors by making up an elaborate scheme in which he convinces his son that the camp is really nothing more than a giant game for children, and if he simply does what his father says they will come out the winners of the game with a tank as their prize. Again, avoiding spoilers, the sacrifices made by the father to protect his child are heart warming, and the eventual conclusion is as emotional as any film I've seen since Big Fish. I guess what really attracted me to the movie was the relationship between the father and son (or any adult/child relationship in film), an aspect that when done properly in any movie admittedly gives me a little bit of hope for our species. Please watch this film!

Alright, Tasos and I are going to go see yet another movie tonight, V for Vendetta, so maybe I'll have a little something to say about that soon. The movie is apparently about a world in which the Nazis won, and how the aftermath played out. Actually, oddly enough, another film I have on the docket is Munich, yet another movie about people who didn't seem to like Jews that much. Also, I just read an amazing article in Rolling Stone about the strangest and most laughably fake religion of all time, Scientology. Unless most actors are in fact stupid robots programmed merely to make movies, it is almost unfathomable to imagine that any actual person could buy into this nonsense of their own free will. I hope to find the time to talk all about this phenomenon as well. Alright, enough promises for future blogs for now, I hope to get back to you all with some more interesting content as soon as possible. Have a great day.

What are the odds?

I was thinking about it a little bit earlier today and I came to two conclusions - one, I really need to post another blog, and two, quite a few very random events have occurred in the past couple weeks. One of these events was very tragic, another very stressful, and the third almost unbelievable (to me at least). Here they all are, brief as can be and hopefully interesting to my readers.

Second Suicide Witnessed in 2 Week Span

Many of you that talk to me with any regularity or read this blog at all have obviously heard about how a young man leapt to his death off of the parking structure located directly behind where I work. What some of you may not have heard was that a second suicide occurred just about 2 weeks later, and once again I was witness to the aftermath. In respect to my readers who do not wish to read of such things, let me avoid the details of the crime scene. It turns out that the victim was a sophomore at the University that suffered from extreme depression and some form of condition that caused him continual pain. The only aspect of the victim that I will elaborate on was his choice of clothes. While the first chose to dress rather nicely, the second was wearing what appeared to be red and blue flip flops. What a strange choice - hence a detail I am sure I will never forget.

Seeing as to how this entry was introduced for its randomness, I must comment on how truly rare it must be not only for two people to jump from the same building in such a short span (no doubt the second was influenced by reports of the first), but how much stranger it is to myself and my fellow employees to have witnessed something like that twice in a lifetime, let alone in a fortnight. Many people have asked me if it was strange to have experienced death in such close quarters (and for those questions I feel stupid as I'm sure there are many soldiers out there who would find this situation to be a walk in the park), but I must answer honestly that it has not been at all hard or strange. Once you realize that people make their own decisions and the pastis behind you, you can only look at such an occurrence for what it is - a suicide by somebody I've surely never met.

Random Gymnastics Party Breaks Out at Seaman House

Without entering into the confusing details, an old friend of mine who competes for the Eastern Michigan Club Gymnastics team (Cara, as previously mentioned in some much older blogs) asked me to host a party at my house this past Saturday as there was apparently nowhere else for it to be held. I reluctantly agreed, and before I knew it I was in way over my head trying to arrange the whole ordeal in a span of about 5 hours. At this juncture I must make a sincere shoutout to my dear friends Brynne and Julie, who not only assisted in the cleaning chores, but offered insightful ideas both before and during the party. In the end members of club teams from Penn State, Michigan, and EMU were there representing.

Nobody partied harder than the PSU girls though, who not only showed up wasted, but were so enthusiastic in their drinking that they beer bonged out of a funnel and hose so dirty I swear to God there were literally dust-bunnies laying in it. With my roommate Jesse's wonderfully hand-crafted Michigan Basketball court themed beer pong table (lots of adverbs and adjectives strung together there) on hand, myself and friend Mario managed to hold home field advantage for about 4-5 rounds, leaving me completely obliterated. I had some interesting exchanges with some PSU fans (often involving the last play of a certain game), but everybody came together for a pretty damn good time. In the end though I managed to meet some new girls from the UofM, and even got a phone number out of the exchange. One last tidbit - roughly 5 girls came up to me to tell me that they assumed girls lived in the house prior to meeting me as they thought it was so clean and well organized. You may read this and call me a fag, but I gotta admit that that may have made my night, cause I worked pretty fucking hard to clean the son of a bitch.

Hometown of Lyons, OH Makes National News With 267 Million Lotto Ticket

I walked into work this morning and made a comment about our office pool not winning the lottery. Somebody else chimed in with how somebody from my home town did though, and I certainly didn't believe it. I called my dad and sure enough it was true - the same place I filled my gas tank every friday after school and also where I bought my very first lotto ticket had sold one of the biggest jackpots ever. My dad said that the town was swarming with reporters and it ended up being the top story on the news.

For anyone out there who doesn't know anything about my home town, it's home to only about 550-600 people, making it most likely one of the most remote locations to ever pay out such a large sum as well. This is without question the first time Lyons has ever been mentioned in the national news also. Some of you out there may not find the whole thing to be so amazing, but believe me, if you grew up in a place like Lyons, you probably would, especially if you consider the fact that between my dad and I there's a better chance than not that the winner was somebody we knew. How crazy would that be? Will I have to become some deadbeat friend who returns to the guy/girl he hasn't talked to in years to get a piece of the pie? Of course I'd never do that, but there are a couple people I would definately try to contact if they had won for sure...