There is no date in history

I've posted "on this date" posts since the very earliest days of RNJ (at least after one full cycle around the sun), and I feel like they are a vital part of this blog project.  I have often returned in this blog to the theme of nostalgia, and made a few contradictory arguments about it, I think...

 As I looked back on my March 2nd posts, I found one that has now got me quite flummoxed... It's a post from March 2, 2009, and it reviews the "new" Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  It also includes a brief comments conversation, also dated in early March 2009.  As I was re-reading the post, I thought to myself, "wow, I can't believe Fallon has been hosting this show for 12 years already," and then I really pressed myself and thought that no, it simply wasn't possible that it has been that long... 6 or 7 years, maybe, but not more than 10.

[side note: I have now reached an age where these sorts of things occur to me frequently, and I think to myself things like, wait, this or that event in history (personal or writ large) cannot be as far away in time as it appears to be, and yet it usually is.  Time has gotten tricky, but this time, I felt like I must be in the right.]

joel is baffled

And, it turns out that I was -  Fallon took over the show in 2014 (specifically 17 February 2014, so I could have been writing on March 2nd of that year, but the tone of the post is as if it's happening presently, not looking back a couple weeks).  In 2009, Conan O'Brien did take over The Tonight Show, but not until June of that year (and the post is all about Fallon, not O'Brien).

So now, I am baffled, and feel like I can't trust any dates ever again, and wtf is going on?  I enjoy calendrics and synchronicities and rhyming history, but now I'm not sure of anything anymore.  

In the end, it's okay, as I'm not actually typing this post (at least this part of it) on March 2nd anymore anyway, but I did originally have the thought to post this then, so there it will be forever classified.  I hope this warns us all to not let time slip away from us any more than we can help it.  It's a funning thing about time - you can spend it or you can pass it, you can definitely waste it (see Roman Numeral J).  I am hoping "Having Enough Time" wins the inaugural Tournament of Greatness (although it would be quite the upset as a 10-Seed).  

I remember the time that Tim sang the Hootie & the Blowfish song "Time" at karaoke, and it quickly became clear that it is the worst of the Hootie songs generally available to choose as your karaoke number.

This or That

On this date in History - 13 years ago Today (frack i am old...) - I was That Guy (or possible This Guy, the record seems not entirely clear).

It's approaching high summer, and in any other year Milwaukee would be looking at the SummerFest lineup each evening and choosing which nights to dive in to the crowds and see some cool new (and old) bands.

Instead, today, i googled (and learned) the definition of comorbidity.  Which sucks.

I have no wisdom or insight for us today, but only that we are breaking, my friends.  Our whole civilization.  And I think it's easy to blame Republicans (or leftists, if you're of a certain persuasion) or anyone else, really.  And there are plenty of people who are on the right track, but our problem is all of it.  

Those of us who are good liberals, but have some nice stuff, we want to keep having it - eating out and having nice cocktails and gym memberships (or spin classes; i think i mentioned earlier that i am so old) and cars and frequent flyer miles and dogs... all good stuff for the dogs.

We are the next #okBoomers and we like to pretend that we aren't.  Our refusal to be radical and rail against (and ultimately give up what we have) is kind of the problem.  I do not mean that middle class folks are the real problem in the face of billionaires (and multi-millionaires), but we are enablers.  No matter how much we don't want to be...

Pre-prequel

Anticipatory plagiarism is a concept I used to struggle with - coming up with a brilliant idea only to come to realize that someone else had thought of it and published it decades or even centuries earlier than you had the opportunity to get it down.

This also happens in literature when a writer unwittingly writes a similar story to something they had never come across. In general, this happens by some sort of collective osmosis (perhaps it’s a Jungian phenomenon) by which these thoughts and ideas are in the ether - part of the existing background. It’s in the groundwater. 

This morning I read a short story in the Bradbury-edited collection that I’ve been making my way through.  It’s called “Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman”, by Helen Eustis. It is an unintentional prequel to Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (by which I mean of course, Anthony unintentionally wrote a whole series of novels {of which I’ve read the first few but not all} as a follow up to Eustis’s very fine story).

I've been getting back into Wikipedia as of late, particularly as I've been reading Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, edited and with an introduction by Ray Bradbury.  As I started digging into the stories, I was struck first by the sense of time - of being tales from a different (but not entirely unfamiliar) era.  Much like when I read The Thin Man last year, one of the most enjoyable parts of every story, is a real insight into how folks lived 'in the before'.

The stories have also been enjoyable in their own right, but because they are primarily speculative as opposed to pure fantasy, they each have been deeply and fundamentally rooted in the time they are written (or when they are portraying in the rare case it's not meant to be "present day").  Bradbury finished the introduction on 1 July 1951, which means the collection is made up of stories all from before that time (and likely mostly well before, given that they're mostly being re-produced and collected here in this book).

As I read the first couple stories, I wondered who the collection of writers were that Bradbury had collected.  I've heard of many of them, but the first two at least were completely unfamiliar to me.  Henry Kuttner's story, particularly, excited me as he had worked within the Cthulhu Mythos (and had corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft).  Kuttner also worked closely in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore and the authorship of much of his work and her work were intermingled (so much so that the story in this collection could likely have been in good part her work).

 I plodded forward, and for each story resolved to read the Wikipedia entry for each author in concert with the story.  Which brought me to Christine Govan's story, where I found no corresponding wiki-entry (though she was mentioned in a few other articles, often as a family member to someone else).  A writer in her own right, I created her article and have now noticed that Helen Eustis also has one missing.

Govan and Eustis were the second and third woman authors collected in this book, and the first two authors in the book without their own wiki-entries.  It's a problem and I am working on solving in a small way.  I created a stub for Govan, in the same way that I had Faustin E. Wirkus years ago.  I don't have the time or inclination to go in depth and create a full article, but a sourced stub about someone who definitely deserves a wiki-page will grow on its own.  It takes time, but eventually the world will help do the work (as long as it doesn't get deleted!).

The Bird Contract

Odd Side-Note: This post was actually written (but evidently not published) in April 2010, but when I went to post it it changed to yesterday's date.  Not sure why this is as typically when I've done this, it posts on the date the post was originally written.  Just an FYI if blogger has changed something and there start appearing oddly timed posts... [Solution Solved!]

Yesterday as i was walking from my parking spot to campus, i watched two male cardinals having a mid-air fight. They were frolicking, swooping, diving - seemed to be having an all-round good spring time together (or at least as much fun as I assume any wild animals have on a given day in an urban environment).

Then, as I watched, the one cardinal (who I've come to think of as 'evil cardinal') chased the other (innocent cardinal) toward the road and he was summarily hit by the windshield of a Toyota Camry.  The erstwhile bird came to rest not 10 feet in front of me.  A few of you may recall that this is not even my first run in with a bird dying at my feet.  Needless to say i was taken aback and the rest of the day had a heavy quality to it, but nothing else really took place, but I am on notice.  One bird tragedy is nothing to get worked up about and a second may just be a coincidence, but were i to find myself present at a third bird massacre I would feel compelled to take action.

unBecoming Animals

I'm interested in a distinction that i don't actually see Steve Baker making very often in his book, The Postmodern Animal, namely between representations of animals and actual animals used in representations of animals (what i might call representative animals). My initial interest in this question stems from looking at Gunther von Hagens' Bodyworlds exhibition and wondering to what extent the bodies (animal and human) presented there in fact are 'real', that is, are we seeing dead bodies when we look at the pieces or representations of bodies (the assumption of the question being, of course, that the answer matters).

It seems to me that the lack of this distinction in Baker's book might be the very definition of 'the postmodern animal'. Baker lays out the progression of animality from the 19th Century 'symbolic animal' to the 'modern animal' (which for him doesn't exist, but i would like to think of as the industrialized animal), through to the postmodern animal (p. 20), where the distinction between representative animals and representations of animals breaks down to some extent. For Baker, this eroded distinction gets most interestingly questioned in works like Olly and Susi's in which representations of animals are placed 'on the border' where they will (hopefully) be interacted with by the animals depicted. Sharks bite pictures of sharks and deer urinate on their own image… which reminds me of this one time… in Copenhagen…

But in a case like Olly and Susi's (or Mark Dion's Library for the Birds of Antwerp as another example) the answer to the distinction seems obvious, at least until you start thinking about zoo theory in which even the living animals become representative (and perhaps representations). Far more challenging, I think, are works like Damien Hirst's This Little Piggy and The Physical Impossibility of Death in which actual dead animals are preserved in formaldehyde and presented in glass casing. And this is where the connection to von Hagens' work comes into play. The most common question asked by critics of the Bodyworlds exhibit is 'why not just use platic molding to recreate the human interior'. In other words, if we, as good little postmodernists, are going to dissolve the barrier between actual animals and representations of animals (see zoo theory as a starting place for this), why then does Damien Hirst need to cut an actual pig in half for his artwork, when a realistic molding would accomplish the same thing (and essentially, be the same thing). (Plus, such a rendering by Hirst would demonstrate much more 'artistic expertise' than cutting an animal in half and dunking it in preservatives - and therein lies the answer to my own question, methinks).

Exploring Masculinity

This morning i went to Menards to purchase a snow blower (the one i got is in fact called a 'snow thrower'). I'd been there yesterday as well (i'm becoming a regular regular) without much luck, but the associate assured me a shipment would be coming today. I hadn't fully decided whether to get the slightly less expensive wimpy looking blower or the really tough-ass gigantic blower that was only somewhat more expensive.

After 'talking shop' a bit with the sales associate, he assured me that i would be a complete fool to buy the little one. So, complete fool that i am, i bought the giant one, and attempted to put it in my car (which of course completely failed - i'm convinced that most of the R&D done for the Ford Taurus goes toward creating the appearance of as much space as possible, while absolutely minimizing the room through which to access said space).

So, i went back in and rented a pickup. Another associate & i loaded up the fairly heavy implement into the pickup bed, and i was driving around town in a truck, with a snowblower sliding around the back. On the ride home i realized i would be unloading the snowblower myself and i pictured myself alternately pulling it down and being crushed by it (in this scenario, i always imagined it somehow turning on by itself and slicing & dicing as it fell on top of me), or i saw myself standing in the truck bed, lowering the machine down with a great feat of strength (do i need to make a roll for that?), while throwing out my back.

I backed into the drive, still with no working plan and opened the garage. There was the answer, the extra door that i wasn't quite sure why i hadn't thrown away yet. I constructed a crude ramp (that's right, man use simple machine) and got the snowblower down & into the garage. I drove home, exceedingly happy with myself, but couldn't tell the story to anyone. I present it here as a chapter in my exploration of masculinity...

the Global Village

I remember when i was younger, i drove, with my brother & dad (can't remember if andy was there or not), to the middle of illinois, grabbded hands with piles of strangers...

I have no recollection what this blog post initially may have been intended for, but man... Hands Across America... what an idea. Line up hundreds of thousands of people... then hold hands with them. and eventually make a big line of people. for Africa?



Now, i'm all for Africa. But lining up piles of white people does not seem a solution for anyone... How did this thing make money? Was it a sort of pledging thing? ("betcha can't get 1,000, i'll give you 10 dollars...")...

Anyway, it must have been quite a success...

Another look at the

SPOILER ALERT! Warning: If you have not seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, first of all, welcome back & secondly, there may be some plot elements revealed here…

In preparation for yesterday's release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls I’ve been re-watching the Indy films and am coming around to the idea that I’ve never really given Temple of Doom enough credit.

During our quixotic endeavor to catalog and rank every film in my VHS collection in college, joel miron & I had a discussion regarding which Indy movie was the best of the (then) trilogy. We debated the relative merits of Raiders of the Lost Ark & The Last Crusade and pretty much assumed that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom wasn’t a part of that discussion. I remember miron even watching both ends of the trilogy & making a list of pros & cons for each to settle the issue (miron, if you can produce it, i would love to see that list... otherwise, get to work on another one).

While often read as the weakest, perhaps primarily because of it’s non-Christian centric story, in re-watching the film it stands up pretty well among the four. One of the differences that make the film stand out, i think, is that Indy isn’t ‘driven’ by dreams of fortune and glory as he is in the other films, rather he’s called. The film explores questions of fate even though its framed most explicitly as a story about seeking fortune & glory, but really its the least so. Take, for instance, the shot after revealing the children were stolen from the village, Indy is presented as ‘hero’, low angle shot, panning in. While this 'hero' shot is present in all the films, the narrative moment that this shot presents Indy as 'an only hope' rather than 'a hero'.


The film is, clearly, darker than the other Indy films, allowing Harrison Ford to play 'bad Indy' & exploring a variety of sadistic scenes, but it isn't this darkness that inherently makes the film superior (and i'm not ready to say that it's the best of the Indy films, though i'm no longer ready to say anymore that it's not the best of them, either)... The exploration of darkness & 'light' in the structuring of this film as one about fate & calling, rather than about treasure hunting and personal gain makes it more intriguing than at first glance. I think the film's setting & it's non Christian-centric center also make it interesting in the sense of questioning convention. Officially, Temple of Doom is a prequel, because the events happen 2 years before Raiders of the Lost Ark, and with the success of that first film, going to a previous time & to an unknown setting (India was at least an 'unconsidered locale in the mid 80's) was a huge gamble that actually didn't pay off... Relatively hated by critics & at the box office this makes the film, in some circles, even more worth a closer look...

Yesterday.

Yesterday started like this:


...and ended like this:


it's good to be home... We got home from Orlando late Monday evening. Today wasn't actually that much colder here than it was at Cocoa Beach yesterday, but ... i had my feet in the ocean yesterday. And a seemingly endless supply of Rum Runners (and fine academic thinking, too, really). The paper went ok. Peter Straub said he wished i'd talked more about the funeral home and, frankly, so do i, but (Norton, looking for a good zombie theory book?) i'll do more in the rewrite.

The spectacle of Universal was a bit disappointing, as was the cultural promise of Kennedy Space Center, but the Hulk was worth the wait... Overall, it was a fine attempt at amateur tourist art...

Jim Carey has totally stolen my life...

or at least much of my philosophy.

I'm flipping around as i read student papers ("the horror, the horror") after Colbert & Jim Carey was on Letterman...

but first, a bit of background. I totally had the idea for The Truman Show when i was, like 9, and then the movie came out... and nothing. Suddenly, he doesn't return my calls, it's like nobody's ever heard of me...

...anyway, tonight Jim Carey tells this story about knowing Frank Sinatra and asking him to come up to a table he's at with some beautiful woman to impress her... point is, it's a Don Rickles story... what this has to do with me, you may be asking, well, i have this dream... it's what i call continuing the oral tradition... here's how it works.
I love stories, good stories, person(al) stories, anecdotes, if you will... stories about something that's happened to you, well, in the interest of continuing the telling of great stories, i think we should be able to tell other people's stories as if they're our own... The reason being, is that nobody cares about a story of what happened to your college roommate's high school friend, so you turn that friend into your friend, suddenly (if it's a good story) that story lives on...

Anyway, just wanted to let you know who was stealing from me today...

This Guy goes to Summerfest

Last night we made the foray to Summerfest, via the East Side drunk bus. After some Happy Hour cocktails and crab cakes at Yield a large yellow school bus pulled up and took us in the direction of the Fest.

First, though, we made a stop at Vittuci's, a bar we'd visited just the day before for happy hour. At Vittuci's, several bus rider's (who were enjoying the Summerfest spirit already) jumped out to "do some shots" at the bar. I rushed past them to use the loo and thought i'd pick up a couple "freshener" cocktails on my way out (our last bar had been kind enough to provide us with 'to go cups' for our previous drinks). At the bar, i ran into a couple of my busMates who were preparing to do shots. I'd payed for my drinks and made to leave, but i was halted and given a chilled lemon-vodka shot. It would've been rude to say no, so i downed the drink and we scuttled back to the bus.

My new friend yelled to his friends on the bus, "This guy did a shot with us," and then asked me what my name actually was.

I cleverly* said, "Actually, my name is This Guy, how did you know?"

For the remainder of the bus ride, everyone called me That Guy, "That Guy, get up and dance" - "That Guy, are you going to see Def Leppard?" (my response that, no, in fact, we're going to see Sugarland greatly confused him) - "That Guy, why are you still not dancing."

The fest itself was fairly typical (which means pretty damn cool). Eggplant fries, Lakefront beer, and meeting the Leinenkugel's owners. We watched Pat McCurdy as we floated by on the sky-glider, then wandered back to the 102.1 stage to catch part of Silversun Pickup's set. After a couple less than hip songs, we wandered down to the Harley Davidson Stage, where Sugarland was headlining. The crowd was enormous and packed in tight. We stuck around for a few songs and either bought a guy a beer or were bought a beer (in an odd exchange, the guy said he was "in" with the bartender. Brooke handed him our money and asked for two MGDs. He procured for us, rather pokily, two Miller Lites and handed us less money back than we'd handed him. Still not quite sure what happened).

We swung down to Blue Oyster Cult's set, but they were pretty dull, so we left SummerFest, immediately found the correct bus and boarded.

I think my favorite thing about living in Wisconsin again, is that i totally do not feel like an alcoholic here. Most times, i get the feeling that i'm a big drinker, that my 'noon rule' (often more of a guideline) is bordering on obscene, but since we've been in Milwaukee, we've found that we are generally considered borderline fuddy-duddies. We're usually the most sober and in-control people in any given room, which is... refreshing.


*Cleverness is relative to the amount of alcohol consumed

Kid Rock ain't got nothin' on me

except perhaps that short-lived marriage to PamAnderson.

Friday night Brooke and i were as far out west (the wiki-wiki-wildwildWest) as you can get in Omaha (except for the remaining 40 or so blocks that Omaha recently annexed) to hit an Irish Pub she'd heard about and was having living music that night. Sadly, the Irish pub was sadly un-Irish (a large Irish flag was draped from the roof, alongside Old Glory). Disappointed in the scene (and the cider selection) we headed (a little bit) back into town. On the way out we'd passed a bar called The Shamble Inn. Fantastic name... we had to go. As we pulled up, however, we noticed the American Flag curtains and were hesitant.

Nevertheless, we ventured forth and were rewarded with (yep, you guessed it) an electric bull. I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to ride an electric animal (or publicly embarrass myself) so i volunteered (to pay $5). Most of the people who'd been riding the bull up until this point had been women wearing tube tops. While i was wearing my new tight t-shirt, i didn't feel as though i measured up. Boy, was i wrong.

In fact, this wasn't my encounter with a raging, headless, automated bull. Back in '99 i attended Münster's annual Stadtfest and though we regrettably failed to find the Jägermeister-Coke guy we'd met in Soest (he had a jet pack type contraption strapped to his back and roamed Soest's city festival handing out drinks. One chamber contained Jägermeister, the other Coca-Cola) we did happen upon an electric bull. Because i was the only American in our group, cries of "come on, cowboy" started up and i was compelled to climb aboard the bull. Though my performance in Germany was disappointing, i managed to stay on for a good 13 seconds before being tossed aside (i blame my poor performance that time on my lack of shoes, owing to the fact i'd been wandering around most of the summer in Birkenstocks).

This time, i swore it would be different. I climbed aboard my first of two rides (2 rides for 5 bucks, what a deal) and set what i believe is a new record for the establishment. In order to clock the exact amount of time remained on the bull you'd need a team of scientists and some of those speed-of-light measuring type devices. I can't even estimate, but it was long enough for the photos bouncing off of me to reach the camera, so some evidence exists, but man, it was embarrassing. I'd like to blame drunkenness for my poor showing (my second ride lasted twice as long), but i don't actually remember being that drunk... (hey, memory loss is a sign of inebriation, isn't it?.. so, yeah, i'll say i was zonked).

Anyway, what i really wanted to say, before i got distracted in storytelling, was that these electric bulls are a menace... truly quite dangerous... and i urge all of my readers to never Ever try one. Don't be tempted to get on, just to see if you can "beat joel's time" because more likely than not, you will die, so let's just agree to have a non-competition for this event... we'll call it a tie, ok... just don't get on for ... your sake.

Rex Grossman is HOME!!! and seems to be doing smashingly. He’s still hobbled, to be sure, but everything we heard from the doctor was good news, he seems in a lot less pain, and isn’t on as many pain meds and has lost his glassy-eyed sadness he’s had the last several times we’ve saw him. He also came home from the vet with one of those E-Collars, because he's tempted by his bandages & stitches...

His limp is pronounced (but he’s moving around!), and he won’t be able to do stairs or jump off the couch for several weeks, but he’s back home with us, sleeping soundly at the moment. Every puppy expert we’ve talked to since getting Rex has told us that the most important thing is to introduce him to as many stimuli as possible as early as possible. So we take him in the car running errands, we've taken him to puppy class, introduced him to big dogs, little dogs, un-dogs (cats), and though his injury was hard to take and scary, he’ll likely be stronger for it in the long run. The wild, drug-addled experiences of youth are growing experiences for many of us and his time away from home, hard as it was on us, will likely make him even more comfortable with strangers than he already is. This event may not have cured Rex of his obsession with pant legs, but by the time he's fully recovered he will still be in the throes of his prime puppy years and more than ready to bounce off the walls again...

In the meantime, holding him in check, trying to yank back his desire to run and jump, his kitty wrestling have been hard to hold back.

Membership Drive

A new feature on Roman Numeral J, where i attempt to recruit new readership by telling stories about people using their full names, thereby making them "find themselves" when they randomly google themselves. Today's subject: Ryan Gjerde.

As a side note for this new feature, the stories told are not necessarily "true", but they are accurately retold from my memory of the occurance. It was the fall of 1998 & my roommate miron & i were throwing another really quite terrible party. In attendance, besides miron & myself were my girlfriend Brooke (i think), Ryan Gjerde & possibly Sandy (or maybe Toni {or maybe & Toni}). The party was so bad that conversation had turned to Ryan Gjerde's middle school journals he had made for a grade in 7th or 8th grade. He'd been describing something he'd done in them, and then said suddenly, "Want to see?"

We all did, of course, and he ran accross the hall. Only years later does the question really occur to me, why had Ryan Gjerde brought his middle school journal to college with him, particularly, because this was his senior year... I mean, i can sort of see it as a freshman thing, with the thinking that it might be "an interesting conversation piece" and helping to "get to know people", but three years into college, it seemed an odd thing to have along...

[please permit a short aside about Ryan Gjerde - this may be the part where things i say are not entirely "true", but at least they're "truthy". - Ryan told a family history story, about how in the 1800s (or earlier... or later) when his family were living around in Iowa, they were being discriminated against because of their foreign heritage & Norsky sounding name, so they decided to change it. Their family officially changed their name, in an effort to seem less ethnic, from Gjerde to Knudson, no joke (though possibly a lie). After a few years of seeing this hadn't worked, they went back to their original name, Gjerde]

So, Ryan returned to the party with his middle school journal and read out two very memorable pages, the first words that almost rhyme with silver (pilfer, sliver, gold), followed by words that almost rhyme with orange (door hinge, cringe, gold). Both of these lists were incredibly long, very funny, and well constructed (particularly for a middle schooler). Shortly thereafter some more people showed up and the party rose from totally lame to kinda crappy.

And so, faithful readers, we come to the end of the membership drive, with the hopes that Ryan Gjerde has found us and will continue to enjoy the blog about once every 6 weeks, thus tripling readership. Also, this feature reminds me of two separate blogs i'd considered starting, but never got around to. One would be a blog called "After Further Review" (or some similarly terrible punny name) and would be reviews from everything from coke blak to plastic corpses to Hollywood blockbusters. The other would be called "This One Time..." and people would tell stories about other people they know. Both would ideally be open enrollment sort of blogs where lots of people would submit, but i only want to start them if anyone is interested in writing at least occasionally.

Weeks in Review

It has embarrassingly been a month since my last post on Roman Numeral J, and while i want to apologize to my faithful readers who've been reading the same mildy-drunken post of july the 4th for 4 weeks (sorry rssl, sorry Ci), i say in my own defense... it's been a slow last couple of weeks, so i've had trouble finding topics to talk about. Nonetheless, that's what blogging's for, right? writing about meaningless daily occurrences.

My Ulyssian epic begins just two short days after you last heard from me. On July 6th, andy, daveT & i cruised down to the Rockford airport for an Allegiant Air flight to Las Vegas, Nevada. After a couple gin & tonics on the morning flight i was ready to hit the Strip at a full sprint. We met tim at our hotel, The Imperial Palace, and wandered the nearby casinos. The Minneapolis foursome arrived late that night & i continued wandering with them until 4:30 in the morning. From $1 Margaritas at the Casino Royale to $2 drinks of any kind at Barbary Coast, we found our section of the Strip very accomodating. It was a Bachelor Party, so i forwent sleep in favor of good times & woke up with the early room that had retired before holliday, davewake, gilkerson & JP had arrived. Around 9 or so we hit the mediocre ImpPalace pool and then were off to the races again, cruising the strip, winning money, losing money, losing money. All in all, the weekend in Vegas was a pretty damn good trip. I drove a Hummer, saw the lovely American spectacle that is Las Vegas, and met some good life-long friends (shout out to Kylie!). Sadly, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so details necessarily must be few and far between. So, after a late-saturday night (3:30 am or so) which almost culminated in a fist fight with a drunk guy we got on a plane at 6am and headed home...

...arriving just in time to watch the World Cup final at home with my parents & andy. While the outcome was immensely disappointing, and Zidane's head-butt inexplicable, i am glad i got home to see the game.

The next week began lazily enough, making a few last minute plans, and Thursday night hoardes of people began arriving in the small hamlet of Clinton along with a lovely large RV from Finnegan's in Beloit. The RV Extravaganza was about to begin. We toured several local bars, karaoke'd at Rockin' Roger's (especially Grant), peed in an enormous urinal at the Boar's Nest (in a confederate flag-themed bathroom). Then i almost left my credit card at Sud's in Beloit & we ended up in the loft at the Hog Cabin. The evening was a blast, fun had by all, and afterwards i slept in the RV.

The next night was another extravaganza of sorts. The Rehearsal on the Green started out with Pastor Tom talking... a lot. First we talked through what the ceremony would be like. Then we walked through what the ceremony would be like (with continued talking about what it would be like), then we talked some more about what it would be like. Tom continually referred to the Miron's reading of a dialogue from Posession as a "dramatic reading," which we thought wasn't entirely accurate, but turned out to be right on. After the actual rehearsal we went out to Turtle Greens golf course for dinner & golfing. I hit what might be my best golf shot of all time teeing off on hole number one, a long straight hole with the road directly off to the right (behind a thin tree-line). My tee shot floated to within maybe 20 yards of the green. On the trip down to my ball, everyone took a few more shots (jackie taking one at the photographer, nearly nailing him in "his childhood"). My second shot, which was meant to be a lofting chip instead line-drived directly to the right, through the tree-line and perhaps over the road. The ball was lost, but i found another one, chipped over the green then picked up my ball and called it quits. I should have ended with my drive, but i got greedy. After a lovely dinner we headed to the Beloit Inn & i put the "finishing touches" on my slide show for the next evening.

The next day was kind of exciting. On Saturday, July 15th, i got married. And that was pretty cool. The entire day is in something of a blur, partially due to the excitement, and partially due to the heat-stroke induced by outdoor photography in july. Brooke & i both agree that it was fun, but that it might have been more fun if it had been somebody else's wedding. We constantly felt like we were missing out on lots of good times because we had 'obligations'. We did manage to get a fair amount of dancing in, both took part in the limbo competition & had a chance to harass the DJ for playing crappy music a few times each. I hope everyone had as good a time as i did (or better). In the end, there was little wine left over, seemingly no beer, and suit-coats were recovered from Club Impulse.


We bolted the next day & headed to Chicago before flying early Monday morning to Cancun Mexico for a weeklong honeymoon in Puerta Aventuras. We had a blast exploring Mayan ruins, swimming in the ocean, drinking, eating, and eating at our 'All-Inclusive' resort. The resort actually got a bit old after about a day. There is only so much swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and laying on a beach you can do in one place, but the food was excellent, the booze was free & our massuese Ernest had magical fingers. In the end we owned 1 hammock, 1 sea-shell lamp, 5 bottles of tequilla and some postcards of mexican art more than we arrived with. It was a great week, but we were happy to be home & now i've landed myself back in Omaha and am currently looking for gainful employment.

So, that's what went on while i was away. Now i am returned, hopefully with abandon. Looking for work, pining for school, and doing ok as long as i stay in the AC as often as possible...

It's a bird, it's a plane..."that's an omen."

Today, i was biking to my soccer game - sadly my last soccer game of the season, Sparkle Motion's over-achieving reign of mediocrity came to a crashing end today with a 2-0 playoff loss. As i approached the fields, through a parking lot, i was going over a speed bump when a bird dropped from the sky, dead not 10 feet in front of me. I looked around for a confused hunter, stalking the alleys of Chicago for pigeons, but saw no one. Then there arose what seemed to be a bird scuffle, in mid-air. A pigeon (looked related to the recently fallen dirty dove) was chasing a larger black bird around, squawking at him. So, i assume the black bird was the guilty party (unless the pigeons are equivalent to the Hyde Park police in bird world & every time a crime is committed they go around harrassing any nearby black birds).

Anyway, i took the fallen bird at my tires as a bad sign, but i'm hoping it was an omen pointing to our playoff loss, rather than my final 36 hours until the thesis is due. I think if it was supposed to be an omen for my thesis, the bird would have gotten back up after a couple moments & begun awkwardly, but persistently trying to eat up all the other birds in the world. Though, now that i think of it, i haven't seen a bird for a couple hours.

beis-buru

Last night, i went to a really spectacular baseball game. The trip started, boringly enough, in Clinton, and felt a little like a middle school flash-back with our carload being just myself, Shane & my parents (shane even spiked his hair up & wore his Rude Dog t-shirt), but instead of shane & me in the back seat, being all punk-kid-y, we tossed my parents back there and cruised up (a good 3-hours before game time) to Milwaukee. I am slowly acclimating myself to the fact that things happen a whole lot slower, but with a great deal more production, nowadays when they involve my parents than they used to. So, our early arrival was fortuitous, not only since we got to see a little BP, but also because a food/beer run became quite the ordeal, changing levels, fretting over bobble-heads & convincing my parents that indeed there are condiment stations on the next level up... But, i think i've come to the point where i can relax & enjoy what a big show seemingly small events become when involving my parents...

The game itself was fantastic. Though the Brewers lost, it came down to the last batter & about 3" (the distance by which Corey Koskie missed a game-tying double). The 8th inning, when the Brewers were down by 4 runs, featured back to back home runs by Koskie & (i wanna say) Damian Miller, tying the game & leading to a lot of strangers slapping hi-fives, me jumping up & down and screaming. And the Brewers aren't even my team... We were way up in the upper deck, with the plebs, and the crowd was riled up something fierce. In the 9th, though, Turnbow (the Brewer's superb closer), who was also the guy who's bobble-head was being given away, gave up a home run to the first batter & the Brewers lost by 1. Heartbreaking, but a damn good game. Even though i love baseball, so often, you go to a game and you know who's going to win by like the 3rd inning, and you stick around, sort of getting your money's worth & hoping it gets interesting, but the game stays as you expect & you walk away unsatisfied... Here, though the game did end on a called strike three, it was all up in the air until the very last pitch. Good stuff.