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I have always been a Phillies fan. My biggest regret in life is having never played on an organized baseball team, and since I am obsessed with the past, this is one regret I will never live down. When I was younger, I was really annoyed with people sitting next to me who would buy beer. It smelled like shit, and the bastards always spilled it all over the place. Well, last night I had my first beer at a Phillies game (and second ... and third) and it was great. It definitely made the a game a lot more interesting. Yes, each beer was a whopping $5.50 for 16 oz., but it was worth it, especially since some guy gave my friend and me some free tickets before we went inside. Jeff and I had already been drinking in the parking lot when a dad and his son asked us if we had tickets. Assuming he was scalping, we said no and that we would just buy them inside. But he said, "I have some," and he just gave them to us and walked away. Frankly, if I had some extra tickets, I wouldn't have given them to two punk kids drinking Heinys outside an Acura Integra with Audioslave blaring from the windows in a Vet stadium parking lot, but hey ... he was a nice guy. During the game, I spilled one of my beers. Damn it.  I know I'm home when: Oh...speaking of NYC... I went to see Dave Letterman about 4 years ago. I remember getting off the train at Penn Station and going to the bathroom. While I was using the urinal, a guy walked up and began using the one next to mine. Nothing particularly strange about this except that he was standing on my foot, and he didn't seem to care. I tried to lightly pull away, but it wouldn't budge. He was a big man...in a Hulk Hogan type of way, and most of his body weight was on top of my toes. At the same time, I wasn't about to let some guy just step on my feet while while I was taking a piss. I gave a good yank and finally my foot was free. Whether or not the man had realized my foot was underneath him in the first place, I am not sure, but I do know that he was not happy when I jerked it out from under him. I kept my eyes forward, but I was able to see him immediately turn his head toward me, his face only a few inches from my own. Yes, Virginia, I was a bit scared at that point. I could hear his breathing. He was still looking at me when I zipped up and walked away. Alive. 9:21 PM Since my interviewer was talking when the high-picthed beeping began, I thought it was very kind of him to disregard his cell phone or pager, or whatever was making the infernal noise. He and I continued to talk despite the noise, but then I found it strange that he never made one remark about it, nor did he reach his pockets to stop the thing from beeping. When I left the interview a half-hour later, I reached to turn on my own cell phone, but when I took it out of my pocket, the screen was already lit, and it read "1 NEW MESSAGE." Damn. Anyway...this is kind of cool. By the way... Perhaps not surprisingly, I found myself on a mission to get a cheesesteak today. It had been months. What I hadn't expected were closed stores on Memorial Day. (People still take off work for dead people? Come on, this is the 21st century! Work while you can before the robots take over!) I drove 10 minutes into Hatboro to find that United Steaks (supposedly run by a guy who used to work at Pat's in philly) was closed for the day. By then, my tongue was hanging out of my mouth. I drove to Slack's Hogie Shack in Huntingdon Valley (5-10 min away)...and it too was closed. From there I drove back to the Slack's in my own town, which I was elated to find open and serving plenty of customers. I ordered for my girlfriend first: I was practically in tears as Amie pulled me out of the store. We then drove to Wings To Go, which is actually only a few blocks from my house, and it was also open. And thank GOD, they had what I needed. I ordered a Chicken Pizza Steak, as Amie did. The sauce had a lot of garlic in it, which I can still taste after 10 hours and 3 teeth-brushings later. It's good to be home. 12:30 AM What the hell just happened? I woke up today and realized that the last four years of my life were indeed not a dream (that is, assuming I am not still sleeping, dreaming about writing these words). For all I know, I went to college yesterday and graduated the same day, meeting hundreds of new people, making some amazing friends and experiencing all kinds of shit in the space in between. There is a part of my brain that tells me all those things happened during my life, but if I were to describe how long those events lasted, I'd have to say about...62 seconds. My college life is already fading blur...and I'm starting to wonder whether or not it really ever happened. Coming soon: before and after pics! I should say something else about yesterday. For those of you who knew me in the days before college, you know that May 22 is a fairly significant date. The one. The only. Black Cat Day. Back in those days, people called me "Black Cat." Not just friends, but acquaintances and people I barely knew. It was who I was. I had a giant poster of a black panther above my bed at home. I wore a silver ring in the shape of a cat's head on my pinky finger. My car was the "Black Cat Mobile" and it had a suction-cup cat hanging in the rear window and a black front license plate with yellow eyes and whiskers. My Pennsylvania plate read "BLAK AT." (It took me nine attempts to get it, hence the awkwardness of the spelling. Apparently there are many black cats in PA.) I had carved "BLACK CAT" into my arm with a thumbtack and "BC" onto the ankles of some of my friends. As most of you know, my AOL name is mmjrCAT. And, most of all, people wore black on May 22, because they knew it was Black Cat Day (although most people didn't know why.) It all sounds ridiculous now, to the point of utter geekhood, but back then, that was just the way it was. It was me. It's hard to believe almost eight years have passed since that nickname was made (story for another day, folks). I like to believe I still have a bit of that cat inside me, but I'm not so sure. Yesterday I was drunk off 6 million gallons of wine and I stole someone's bike to raid boxes of free clothes around campus. By the end of the night I had a new hat, a troll in my pocket, and some purple UMBRO shorts overtop of my pants. Throughout my life, I've had two of my bikes stolen. I made sure to return the one I used last night...wherever and whenever that was. Happy belated Black Cat Day. (And Happy Birthday, Mara!)  I'm quarantined in my dorm right now, waiting for my residents to bring me their keys and get the hell out of here. So join me for a little fireside chat, won't you? For those of you following my job search, I have another interview set up with the peeps at Loan Princing. Since my main interviewer will be on vacation for a week, she asked me to come in and meet some of the other editors. One of them, she said, "'spent some time at Bard.'" She quoted the guy just like that, so I'm hoping that doesn't mean anything bad. The people who transfer from Bard are often much different from those who are brave enough to stay. (I tried to transfer my freshman year... I was rejected from both Northwestern and Boston U.) Anyway...the interview is next Wednesday, by which time I will be at home, living a post-college life, whatever the hell that is. My favorite food was once mashed potatoes with gravy. Now, it's pizza. I saw a girl pee in a guy's urinal for the first time yesterday. She had to go in backwards and almost sit in it. I don't know exactly why she was doing it. If I were a girl, I'd probably just use a toilet in the girls' room. People like to make things difficult around here. When I'm in certain moods, music tends to play the tune of my life. Right now, Lhasa is in control:  "Would you like to come in for an interview?" Hells yeah I would. This is where I would be working if I get the job. Yes...it's a bit finance-oriented, and perhaps a bit over my head...but if I got the editing job, it would be a huge step into the job market that I hadn't expected at all. Tonight: perhaps the last social time that I will get to spend with some of my friends at Bard. Graduation this Saturday. 10:39 AM Phone interview today at 1pm. If my stomach weren't making all kinds of strange noises, I'd think it had surely died and imploded beneath my skin.  1:45 PM YAY. It works. www.lyricalmunchies.com So I bought a domain today. Shit ain't working. Anytime I try something new online that involves money, I get the overwhelming sense that I've just fallen victim to some scam. I will always be a prey. 5:06 PM I've been an editor at one of my school's (albeit poorly written) newspapers for the past 3 years. A couple nights ago, two of the other editors and I met in our dingy office for one last time. Our idea was to print one more issue for the semester, one last silly publication under our editorial reign that would be a complete celebration of ourselves. We had even planned on putting our pictures on the cover. What started as some pseudo-diligent work that night soon turned to Olde English 40s and utter intoxication, which turned to blaring White Stripes songs and throwing darts at the concrete wall, which turned to the mass destruction of giant wooden painting canvases (no one knows why there were in the office anyway) by means of pool table balls, golf clubs, staplers, anything we could find, which turned to carrying the destroyed canvases upstairs and trying to sneak them into dormrooms of unsuspecting freshmen. By the end of the night, I know that I hadn't gotten anything productive accomplished, but somehow I felt a lot better about life in general. I don't think the last issue will come out, and there is a great possibility that the Bard Observer will die out completely by next year. Who knows...it may disappear for a few years and return again, as it has in the past...but if it does die, I'm happy that I was one of select few to see it go, and I'm glad that I wasn't part of the machine that will ultimately replace it. Although I don't particularly want to believe it, I feel that my life has already gotten off the exit and is headed down some backstreets that will soon lead to a completely new highway, in a completely different direction. If you can imagine what that is doing to my nerves right now, then you understand that I am a complete mess. I've been talking a lot less recently, which is my best defense against the oncoming breakdown that I never thought myself capable of having. You know what I just realized! I've been trying to figure out for a while now what the difference was between my blog and every other that I've ever read. And now it finally hit me. Even though a lot of these people sit in front of their computers all day, their lives are infitinely more interesting than mine! Last night, more crazy Bard shit. I can't even describe what I saw...and those of you who weren't there can't possibly fathom it. Lots of fire (one person lit his clothes, unintentionally, i think), clowns, scary voices coming through loudspeakers, giant yellow bird (twice the size of big bird, and believe me, MUCH more frightening), little creatures running around, and a Bard administator acting a scene from Die Hard 2. Fucked up. Today...if all goes well...picnic at the Vanderbilt mansion in good ol' Hyde Park, New York. What is really stopping me from ever getting out of bed again? All I need is a place to go to the bathroom, and I'm set. It's a shame it took me 23 years to realize how overrated legs truly are. In other news, there are millions of weblogs out there these days that have far more interesting things to say than I do at this point. Here's one of them. I stumbled across this the other day after finding the link on another blog. I get the sense that the writer is much younger than I am, but she seems to have a more firm grasp on life than I ever will. The blur of last night. Two shots of tequila got me to the soccer field, where I remember eventually climbing on top of a goal and getting caught in a net. There was something about a roast beef running down the road, and what that has to do with a Spanish man in a poncho, I'm not sure, but he was there too. This was all before we saw Colin's car drive by and we shouted into the darkness, not expecting to hear him call back, which he did just before telling us to fuck ourselves. The security gaurd looked like he wanted to have some words with us, but really that was just Colin in shorts. I had forgotten that it was cold. The walk back to jess's suite never happened in my memory, but in reality it must have because that's where we ended up, and that's when we walked into hell. We were reminded by jess's suitemate that I had left a strange message on her friend's voicemail. Oh yeah. Apparently killing a puppy with my teeth wouldn't have been as bad as calling that number, because now we were in trouble and Mrs. Rachet was out to take away our meds and call our mothers. Hours later I had been transported back to my own room where I was writing an email to that kid, apologizing for have made the call in first place. There's a lot of awkward tension between a lot of people right now, and the blur isn't giving me any answers. 
Well thank GOD for that. I've done a lot of complaining about Bard over the past few years, but I can't deny that this is an amazing place that truly changed the way I look at the world, nor that I have met some of the best friends of my life while here. Last night the Peer Counselors had their last party of the year in the school's admissions building. That alone reminded me of the many things about this crazyass place that you just can't do at other schools. It's a place where the admissions workers sit on big bouncy balls instead of regular seats, and conduct their interviews on the floor. It's a place where the security gaurds won't stop a party, but will instead come inside to have a drink and dance to the music (as our pal Cliff did for a half-hour before returning back to his duties). It's a place where a PC can successfully grow $600 worth of marijuana in his closet and sell it all to his residents. We had about 20 bottles of various hard alcohol last night, all of which ended up in my cup at one point or another. I noticed a hand-written letter tacked to the wall in admissions. It was from a sixth-grader from Arizona who was inquiring about the school. He was interested in "activities like Baseball and wrighting" and he requested a t-shirt and some more information because "Bard looks fun." Well, he's right about that. Among a million other things, Bard is fun. Things got weird at the party when one of the new PCs for next year sat in the woods and began to get sick. She was my resident last year, and she'll be taking over that same spot that I filled in Tewksbury, argubably the worst dorm on this side of the Mississippi, so naturally I felt somehow at fault for her puking. She was fine, in the end, but things got even weirder when one of the other PCs became bossy because she had EMS training and so she started yelling at people to get away. I lost about 70% of my respect for her last night. She lost her glasses. (I wish I could say I had something to do with that, but I suppose we can only blame Karma.) We closed down the building at around 3:30am and 7 of us drove to Michael's diner in Kingston (another Bard tradition). I ordered two eggs, fries, and toast for 2 bucks, and I became sentimental about everything. By 6am this morning we were back at Bard and my last PC party was officially over. For lack of some contrived, overly-dramatic ending statement ... It was a good time. The peer counselors (Bard's version of RA's, of which I am one) have been partying a bit much this year, perhaps to quell the stress and anxiety caused by our obnoxious, unruly residents. Whatever the case, we're really not hiding our abuse any longer.  12:07 AM My girlfriend hates this new weblog for two reasons: Then again, she probably has the right to be mad because:  isn't she wonderful! "Everyone knows that [Chad] is the best looking guy at Bard." "Well, what about me?" the guy across from him asked, and I felt his pain even before his friend opened his mouth. "Oh, well you're the ugliest...You just look like an alien." 7:20 PM this is the start of something wonderful. |
Late night snacks. Bite-sized ramblings. Old-fashioned eats, served fresh daily. Open 24-7.  Other blogs Fireballs and Tsunami JeffreyDavis.net Mismatched Parentheses NimbleSixpence One Tortured Soul Palpably Inadequate Picnic, Lightning Pony Legs, Temporarily Supernouveau Wander Lust In my DVD player Archives June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 Other stuff Homestarrunner One Slime DeepDiscountDVD Olde English Sketch Comedy Live Music Archive Copy Army Copywriting Service Love & Radio This One Time Email me mmjunior / at / hotmail   
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