2012: The Year of Seconds

It has been quite some time since I've had enough structure in my life to keep up with television shows by watching new episodes on their regular weekly showing time, but there once was a time when I was able to and here's how I remember it.  The first season or two are really exciting because the show is new and you never know how the writers are going to create new situations and how they are going to make the characters change over time.  Everything is fresh and new and surprising, in other words, those intro seasons are the reason people love television.  Around the time of the third season two things can happen, the show creates convoluted situations to keep the show alive and keep people guessing (mostly done by shows on Showtime) or they can settle into their routine and episodes become moderately predictable.  Then at some point during a season you sit down to watch a new episode and you realize that the episode seems oddly familiar, it usually should take no longer than 3 minutes to realize that they are showing a damn rerun during primetime.  Those primetime reruns were probably the most annoying thing when I watched TV rather than Netflix, I wanted a new experience, not to watch an old episode again that I probably remember too well.  Before my 1 faithful reader starts thinking I'm going to explode into a rant about primetime television, I'll bring this point together.  You see, I've reached the point in my life where I am starting to get reruns, and it is a little bit worse than on television.  It is weird because with the rumored apocalypse coming I'm pretty sure that the ratings on my life are waning and the writers are taking a few weeks off to rewrite all the scripts to put a succinct end to the story.  Either that or the writers are completely mailing it in.  Anyways, lets look at some of my reruns in this year of 2012.

Sounds like a plan!

The year started off pretty new, as you can read in some of my past posts I was unemployed and tried to start a sports blog with some friends, it was all new experiences for me even though most of them were terrible experiences.  But the time for new experiences was over when graduate school decisions came to me (yeah, I'm continuing my education, its gonna be sweet) and I had to make my decision on where I was going to spend an arbitrary amount of years depending on my program. If you read my past post about how I chose which college to attend for my undergraduate studies you know that I made a decision and later got a better deal from another school so I switched schools before attending a single class.  Well for some reason (my subconscious being an asshole) those two schools were the only ones that I applied to for graduate school.  Sure as hell when I got into both of them I was only given a financial aid package for one of them, and after a visit I decided that the program and the package was right for me so I sent my confirmation there a few weeks before my decision was needed.  Proud of myself and happy to no have had to make a difficult situation I relaxed and prepared for my new life at a new school.  But since this article is about reruns I'm sure you can guess what happens next!  My Alma Mater sent me a more attractive financial package and I was forced to rethink my decision again.  This time I actually held steady with my initial decision (I couldn't spend any more time out there, just not a nice place to live) and I'm gonna end up questioning that one just as much as with 4 years ago. It seemed at the time like an isolated incident of my life repeating itself, but I was eventually going to learn that was going to become a trend.

I know the feeling yellow ghost...

After that I returned to my apartment at school to have some final fun with my friends before the graduation ceremony, which was the obvious setting of my next rerun.  Over the course of four years I forgot how incredibly boring graduation ceremonies are, you are wearing a silly looking dress with a cardboard square on your head, it's summer and you are probably outside and the only thing you have to listen to is some guy reading names off of a list.  Luckily I knew the people I was sitting with so instead of seeming like I was sitting there for the 4 hours the ceremony lasted it was more like 3 hours and 52 minutes.  Then came the recurring situation of saying goodbye to your friends that you spent the last few years bonding with just in time to likely see them a limited number of times in the future (obviously a lot more true for college than high school but it did happen with some people in high school), which is always full of making fake plans that will never come to fruition because you don't want to get emotional in what could be your last meeting.  I know that this was a planned rerun, but it happened and was kind of a rough day.

Slightly relevant but funny nonetheless.

 The next case was when the year of reruns completely dawned on me, because the next two took place on the same day.  I spent the morning helping one of my best friends move into a new house closer to where they work, which is over an hour away and at that distance that makes visiting slightly burdensome.  This was the second one of my best friends that I had helped move to a spot that fits the slightly burdensome description (granted the first one was December 2011 but this still counts) and since they are both in different  directions I wonder how often I will ever see both of them at the same time.  I have spent most of the last seven years with those two guys, and moving them away is changing my life just as much it is theirs, except they have to become grown-ups now and I'm retaining my youth by staying in school.  Knowing this was a great time to celebrate this change in life, we spent that night having some good old fashioned fun!  Whilst having said "fun" I received a text message that I was warned about that morning.  It was a picture of a ring on what is to be my sister-in-law's finger and thus was the second time one of my brothers had gotten engaged.  The oldest of my brothers was married last summer and was 25 at the time, and the brother who had just gotten engaged and is currently 23 years old.  The "fun" I was describing earlier reflects the fact that I am 21 years old as of this writing and nowhere near a place where I will follow in the footsteps of my brothers in that category.  I've known for a while that I lead a much different life than my brothers so it's not like this happening put me in a state of "what am I doing with my life," I am proud of them all and I can't wait to give another best man speech next summer, maybe I'll have someone there this time to facepalm and ask themselves what they see in me.  

Hey bride, pull my finger!

So there's a few reruns from my life, now that I see this trend coming along this year I can't help but wonder what situations I am going to find myself in again with the half of the year that remains.  A lot of ones that come to mind aren't the most pleasant, but I think I'll enjoy them as they come and go.  I'll be sure to keep my reader up to date on all goings on in my life whether they are new episodes or reruns, until then enjoy Lawrence at his finest.

Things I Hate (That Everyoine Else Seems to Love)

Hooray, I am writing for my own blog again!  After spending a few months doing things that aren't blogging, I am back to make myself seems like an angry asshole!  As the title says I am going to write about some things that I hate that other people love, and the reason for most of these is because I am not a fan of most people. So without any further delay, I'll let my anger go.

Despite all my rage, I'll never be Nicholas Cage

First Person Shooters/ Competitive Online Multiplayer
I am going to lump these together because even though most of my gripes are with the latter of the two, pretty much every online multiplayer game that people play seriously enough to have these behaviors is a FPS.  My first gripe is that I play video games as a type of escapism from the fact that things don't always go my way and I enjoy a little success.  Even though I consider myself a competent video gamer, I am also rather competitive and when I lose (which happens a lot in online games) I tend to get angry.  Anger is not escapism.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy challenging games but I would much rather play a Mega Man game from the NES era where even though it is insanely difficult I can keep playing and eventually triumph over one of these new games where all it takes to lose is slower reflexes and bad luck.  I also hate the behavior of people who play these online games, not only do they claim to have a ridiculous amount of sex with random strangers' mothers (despite the fact most probably couldn't tell a labia from a Labrador) but they are the most ill behaved people I have ever conversed with.  Racial slurs, swears and accusations of cheating everywhere!  I really don't want to bother with that bullshit in my hobby when I could just as easily turn to a Rayman Origins or a Fez to enjoy myself.  Multiplayer was created originally to play video games locally with friends, and playing with total strangers online completely ruins the spirit of multiplayer in my opinion.  My last problem is with the FPS genre, and it is how realism is being so actively pursued.  Mostly in how they use real guns and in some of them they try to actually make the gameplay realistic.  Even though these games aren't meant for children, they play them and that kind of frightens me that they know the difference between an AK-47 and a M16, the most dangerous thing I learned when I was a child from video games was that jumping on a goomba made it flatten.

Pop Music
The reason for me not liking pop music is simple, I am getting older and I am not a girl.  As far as I am concerned the only reason for younger men to like pop music is because girls like it and they want to get into those girls pants.  That sentence does not mean that I would prefer to be in a man's pants, but you misread what I meant by girl.  By girl I mean it as in the dictionary's definition "a female child, from birth to full growth," basically anybody who is not old enough to have yet to receive a high school diploma.  You see my theory on pop music is thus, the college girls like it because they are mostly drunk and want to dance, the high school girls actually like this stuff because the college girls like to dance to it, the high school boys like the music because it is an easy topic of conversation with the high school girl, the soccer mom likes it because they want to feel young again, the college guy needs to tolerate it long enough to dance with the drunk girl, and any man older than that doesn't give a fuck about it because they (hopefully) don't enjoy partaking in statutory rape.  I'm not saying that any pop artists aren't good musicians, but it just isn't something I like to listen to, merely because I am starting my lifelong quest of becoming an angry old man.

This fanbase = Money!  Tons of it!

Apple Products
Screw Apple and their damn trendiness!  I really don't understand why everyone is so animate about getting an iPhone when there are other phones that are just as good (or better) and usually cheaper.  I like to assume that having an iPhone is something of a status symbol that you are hip and trendy.  But the thing is that everyone with an iPhone pretends to be such an individual because of it when like 90% of people have the same goddamn sleek looking white phone.  That is another odd thing, did Apple have exclusive rights to make a white phone?  I am not even going to touch on the potential implications of people's color choices because it really isn't my place to say anything about it.  I am also blown away by the amount of people that have the iPhone and the iPad and the iPod Touch, the only difference between the three is that one can make calls, one is huge and one is completely useless now.  They all do the same thing, they all cost a ton, and they are all so damn trendy.  I really can't wait until Apple makes their next iPhenomenon that does the exact same thing with no real progress other than one small aesthetic difference.  It is like a cult, and I love myself for being an PC, Android and Zune owner.

PUT ON THE GLASSES!

High School and High School Related Activities
This one isn't becoming jaded with high school over the years, I hated it then a lot more than I hate it now, so much so that I really can't remember why I hated it so much.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that television made being popular seem so important that it kept me from being able to accept my semi-popular self for a little while.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that my class rank was being brought down because of the people who cheated on every test and assignment would do better than someone like myself who acted morally and did their own work.  Maybe it was the structure and the time and the fact I was a teenager and hormones were telling me to hate everything about my surroundings.  But I hated high school when it was happening and could never understand the people who had all this school spirit and were like "woo hoo I'm a senior" as if it was something they think will actually be relevant further on in their life.  I also hate prom (excuse me for a second as I dodge dirty looks from every woman on earth), all it is is dressing up for a shitty meal and dancing to shitty music.  What the hell is fun about that?

Reservoir Dogs

I watched this movie last year after many people recommended it to me and said that I would like it.  It is true that I usually don't mind violent movies as long as they have a good plot to justify the violence.  The problem with Reservoir Dogs is that I didn't find it's story too enthralling.  A good indicator of how much I didn't enjoy the story is that I seriously cannot think of a single part of the movie that I didn't like, mainly because I can't remember a single part of the movie at all.  I only watched it about a year ago, and if I can't remember a single part I must have really been disenchanted by the movie that I just zoned out.  It had something to do with a robbery and Steve Buscemi was in it and Quentin Tarantino died in some stupid way I can't quite remember.  I think the main point of the movie was to enjoy and connect to the characters but I hated every single one of them.  I didn't want to see any of the characters get away with the heist and run away to be happily ever after.  Granted I'm pretty sure none of them did, but when things went wrong I didn't have any emotional response to it, I just went through the motions and kept watching.  I'm sure there are plenty of extra layers and intricacies within the movie that make it great, but I really have no intention of watching that movie again.  I'm not going to say it is a bad movie either, but it simply doesn't get my recommendation.  

He was better in Mr. Deeds with the peanut butter and gumballs pizza.

So there is me letting off some steam about things I'm not particularly fond of.  I don't think it really helped me stop hating these things so much but it was kind of fun to write about it.  If you want to tell me to fuck off and you hate my opinion, please feel free to direct your rage to the comment box, where I will respond by crying myself to sleep for the next month.  So long and hopefully I will be able to post some more soon.

Cult Media: A Smorgasbord of Awesome

As I pointed out in my last post, I have been getting really into B-movies.  I may have used the wrong term there,  while the movies I was talking about were both B-movies, they fall better into the genre of cult films.  Since then I have watched enough of these to get Netflix to offer me a whole list of cult films in their never-ending quest to please me.  Throughout my life I have had a taste for cult media and usually (the exception) been very fond of each of the ones I have been exposed to.  So sit back and enjoy as I venture off into my experiences with some of my favorite cult works by medium.

Video Games
I decide to start with video games because seeing a coming remake of an old cult favorite, Jet Set Radio was what inspired me to write this piece in the first place.  The only problem with cult video games is that while what constitutes any piece of cult media is a very fuzzy definition, the criteria for being a cult video game is even less defined, so using my power of claiming what I want without consequence because nobody reads or comments upon my blog, I declare all of the following cult video games.  Now back to Jet Set Radio, this game originally came out on the ill-fated Dreamcast and was one of my favorite titles.  In my younger years I really liked to do inline skating, and I loved the look of cel shading (I believe this was the first game to use cel shading but I'm not completely sure) so when those two are paired with fun gameplay and an infectious soundtrack, I will always like it.  Also on the Dreamcast was another cult favorite of mine, Powerstone 2.  Hectic 3-D fighting with items and an extreme focus on positioning, it should have become a rival to Super Smash Bros. but never did due to the lack of Dreamcast players (and Capcom being an asshole and deciding they would rather make 1,000 more of every other franchise they have).

With characters like this, who needs enemies?

There are also an abundance of cult sports games I loved to play but have since disappeared due to sad reasons.  One of which is NFL 2k5, a game I only owned because my brothers wanted to get me a birthday gift and this game retailed for $20 because it knew it was a great game and wanted to steal sales from Madden.  It was an awesome marketing ploy for a game that did a few things that Madden took years upon years to catch up to (I will argue the hits still look more realistic) and played a lot more like a football simulation than a football game.  Unfortunately the greatness of this game got EA's attention who then bought out the NFL license and now 2K sports can't use real teams and gave up on football.  But that isn't the only old sports game I still play, much like the guys from Swingers I find hockey games a lot of fun even though I'm not a huge fan of the sport itself.  Since their favorite part of the game obviously includes making Wayne Gretzky's head bleed, my favorite hockey game makes hockey look like a warzone, naturally then the game I'm talking about is NHL Hitz (02 and 03 both have equal merit).  It is just a plain fun game and that is all I will say.

Did I mention Zombie team at Wild West Stadium?

A more recent cult favorite of mine is Alan Wake, which I discussed in a previous article, and it's Xbox Live Arcade spin off Alan Wake's American Nightmare.  As far as I know, no other game in my Xbox 360 library has the potential to be a cult classic, except possibly for Crackdown or as many people know it "the game I bought so I could play the Halo 3 beta."  I also can't resist giving a mention to the great but technologically flawed Space Station Silicon Valley on the N64, if only they could have given it more time and love that would have been one of the best.

This game too!

Movies
You can simply scroll down and look at my last post to get my opinion on both They Live and From Dusk Till Dawn, so I will just mention them in passing as I move on.  I also am in the minority of not considering The Shawshank Redemption a cult movie as it is IMDB.com's top rated movie of all time (a well-deserved honor as it is one of my top 3 favorite movies), a movie loses cult status when it is so well-loved by such a large movie.  The first cult movie I had taken a liking to was Donnie Darko, it really never does make sense to you but the whole time it is just so interesting and entertaining and gives off a sense of grandeur that I still do not know is warranted or not.  One of my favorite cult films is The Warriors, a movie that manages to make being a gang member look like great fun (without the need to snap and dance), and even got me to spend the money on buying this shirt for the great liking I had taken to the Baseball Furies gang in the movie.  I would also recommend going on Netflix and making a search for Cult movies, you will find tons of interesting and quirky movies that you might not think of seeing otherwise.  Movies such as the Adam Sandler masterpiece Billy Madison, the first film in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, the so-bad-it's-good masterpiece that is Troll 2 and probably my favorite of the bunch, Beetlejuice.

A screenshot of a Goblin from Troll 2, no Trolls to be found in that film.

TV Shows
This is the one outlet of cult media that I am not very well-versed in but I will try to share a few suggestions on what I believe are cult TV shows.  First is Twin Peaks, which I have also mentioned in my last post as a newfound taste, and also coerced me into buying a Teefury shirt.  It is a very weird show that follows Special Agent Dale Cooper and Twin Peaks Sheriff Harry Truman as they attempt to solve the murder of high school sweetheart Laura Palmer.  The show seemingly takes on two completely different genres based on who is on screen going from supernatural crime show (similar to cult favorite The X-Files) to soap opera spoof, yet it somehow works.  I am also in the midst of watching/re-watching the cult comedy My Name is Earl which follows the chronicles of Earl Hickey as he tries to win over karma by making up for the many bad things he had done in his past.  It has a lot of making fun of white trash, a lot of good feeling moments and most importantly one of my favorite characters of all time (and article on this will come someday).  Speaking of favorite characters I might as well make a comment about good old Steve Holt! from Arrested Development.  Whenever the cancellation of your show causes fans to complain for over 5 years and ultimately lead to the show coming back and possibly a movie, your show takes on super-cult status.      

Would have been just as good (possibly better)

But for the greatest cult television show of all time I won't even say the title but I will point out it still has a fan club "Six of One", has what is considered the greatest intro sequence of all time, and can be unmistakably identified by this picture.

 I hope you read this and found some good recommendations.  Be seeing you.

The Unemployment Chronicles: Part 1 of Hopefully 1

My last blog post was just over a month ago now, back when my time after graduation was no different from a typical college student's winter break.  During that time I didn't really have much to complain about, my friends were around, I was giving myself an intentional reprieve from doing anything constructive, and as far as I was concerned I was succeeding in what I wanted to do.  We found ourselves having some good times, a lot of video games were played, a few football games and there was even a trip to the city to have some drinks with a friend who has moved away!  There are minimal complaints about my pretend vacation, but the thing about vacations is that unless it involves the Titanic, they don't last forever.  And thus a great portion of my friends moved back to their schools and I was left basically home alone to start my new life as a grown-up.

I'm sorry, once you became the 2nd highest grossing movie ever.  You lost the right for any joke to be "too soon."

 Being a grown-up is almost exactly like being a 12 year old again in my situation.  You have no money, you can't go out and hang out with your friends all the time (I don't have a car), you spend most of your days watching TV and playing video games and the only thing you are really looking forward to is baseball season.  I quickly realized that this was going to get old quickly and started shipping my resume around to places that seemed they would be interesting in hiring someone with an extraordinary academic record leading up to receiving their B.S. in Mathematics, which is a smaller subset of companies than you would be led to believe.  For the record, receiving the physical copy of my diploma has probably been one of the most underwhelming moments of my life, my first thought was to make a paper airplane from it, but it eventually found its place in a frame on my wall like everyone else's.  All frustrated hostility aside, my resume started to make its rounds at places all over the country.  In the half-month or so I have received calls, e-mails or some form of interest from places in Massachusetts, Florida and North Carolina, one of which was an on site interview in which at the time it seemed like there was a genuine interest in myself.  So, there is reason to believe I have a nice and desirable education, but I have not quite found an opportunity to take the next step.

Mine never even got to wear a hat!

Meanwhile, to kill time all day I have found myself getting enthralled in such productive endeavors as Batman: Arkham City, FIFA 12, Netflix and playing with my dogs in addition to searching for new and exciting ways to keep in touch with my friends.  Now please excuse me for a minute while I attempt to think of something interesting and new to say about any one of these things.

Despite such a great motivating speech from Special Agent Dale Cooper from the show Twin Peaks, I still am searching for something interesting...

Almost onto something here...

That's it!  I can talk about my new found love for B-movies.  I am pretty sure everyone on earth who sees that clip from John Carpenter's They Live will agree that it is completely awesome, and I would also recommend anybody to watch From Dusk Till Dawn as I found that to be one of the most entertaining movies I have ever seen, and Toninho strongly agrees with my tastes in both movies.  But now lets move on back to slightly more important matters in my life.

I spent last week back at my school apartment (by way of train for all you smart asses who were remembering my admission to not having a car) because Wednesday was the school's career fair.  I think the career fair went well but to tell you the truth it was really nothing worth discussing at this point.  The rest of the week was nice though, after weeks of barely seeing anybody outside of my family it was a very good thing to be around people my age again and maintain my social skills.  Over the course of the week I spent a lot of downtime with my housemates playing video games and watching TV, being a normal college student again (without the classwork of course).  My visit also happened to correspond to my graduating class's "100 Days Party" so not only was I able to find the opportunity to see a lot of the friends I spent a lot of time with over the course of college, I was also able to run into many people I probably would not have seen otherwise.  The party itself was pretty good, but not spectacular.  People drank, people danced, my friend claimed to have found the perfect girl for me but couldn't introduce us because we "both have ADD" and couldn't find the both of us simultaneously, I woke up hung over with half of the house a complete mess.  Typical Friday night.

Pretty much

So now I am back at home after this week trying to kick this job search thing into second gear.  I'll try to write more often about things happening in my life so I don't keep bringing these ridiculously long periodic catch ups, and also because another hobby wouldn't hurt.  I'll see you then, but I guess I also need to give the prerequisite Happy Valentines Day to the blogosphere given the time.

I could have not conjured a more silly image.

Oh yeah, and if you would like to hire me, comment below and we can talk. (Don't pretend shameless self-promotion can't ever work)

Decision Points

Firstly, I would like to point out this is my first ever post written using my fancy new phone so don't be surprised to find some limited vocabulary, incorrect words and grammatical laziness as my fingers tend to be less accurate than I believe.  Now that I have put that matter aside I would like to congratulate myself on finishing my bachelors of science (retrospective on the college experience to come along eventually) which I was able to finish slightly ahead of expectations.  But as I have been known to blog about before, I am a little hesitant about growing up and still don't know what it is I want to be doing for the rest of my life.  But I suppose this is a decision point everybody has to go through.  Yet I have never found myself to be particularly adept at making correct decisions for myself although you could argue that I turned out alright anyways (thanks to all those who would care to argue that). 

As much fancy-schmancy that can be fit in a JPEG

The easiest decision point that comes to mind is when I chose what school I was going to attend my college classes at.  This was a little different from the normal decision most high school students have because I had to make the decision twice.  Finding the first time relatively easy because of financial reasons, I was at one point enrolled at the flagstaff campus for the local state university (I don't know why I still try to maintain anonymity on this blog since I'm sure anybody who cares enough to read it already knows exactly who I am.)  If that was the end of the story I don't think I would have been too disappointed, but it wasn't the end of the story as the one school I was wait-listed at responded back to me with what I considered to be an attractive package.  After a week of deliberation in which I was steadfast on not giving in to the new offer, I talked with my physics teacher who more or less told me I would be stupid to pass on such a good school.  For some reason hearing that was enough so I technically dropped out of the first college but immediately enrolled in the second, which I can technically consider to be my alma mater now. 

I've always wondered how they work.

Over the years since this decision I haven't been able to help but think of how my life would have differed had I not changed my mind at that juncture.  One thing to understand is that my original choice is known well enough as a party school and I would have been attending with one of my best friends while the school I did go to has better academics at the price of being known as an overall unhappy student body.  This does not mean that I was unhappy at school, but I definitely understood why the school had been able to ascertain such infamy.  Would I have gotten as good of an education and been happier if I stuck with my original decision, or would I have given into the party culture and not succeed as I had?  Would I have had more relationship success if I had gone to a school that was not 70% male (which may be gracious with the ratio), or is that just an undeniable part of who I am?  Would a change of scenery have helped me mature more and possibly know what I should do right now? 

What happened to my elbows?

There are thousands of these questions that I could ask myself, but there is no way I could possibly answer any of them.  The answers wouldn't even hold any meaning even if they existed, because I made that decision in my life and I really can't argue with how it turned out.  I met many interesting people and created some great memories with them at school and I suppose I am in a position to succeed in life, so even if I may have made the wrong decision at my last decision point it was a good decision in general.  So I would like to end this post hoping that I can be lucky enough to have my upcoming decision point turn out as well as this last one did, even if I scrutinize it anyways.  I'll be sure to keep my dedicated fan base alerted to what that is and how it turns out.  Enjoy yourselves.

Kinda what its like.  Plus I realized I had never posted a picture of Rover.

Baseball, We Need to Talk... It's Not You, It's Me.

I wanted baseball to be innocent again.  I needed baseball to be innocent again.  I hoped that baseball was innocent again.  And eventually, I believed that baseball was innocent again.  But this week went and showed me that I had been naive and gullible once again.  I felt a small pang of the loss of innocence coming from Pujols leaving the World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals, a franchise he played his entire career with (including minors), to pursue greener (get it?) pastures in Los Angeles with the Angels.  But that wasn't too much pain for me, because I had already come to the conclusion before that players are not fans, their job is to play baseball and make the most money while they are at it, they are human beings and as we all know, everybody has their selling price.  Pujols happened to find an offer that he felt was best for himself and his future, and human nature would not allow him to give up his personal happiness for the happiness of others.  While I don't want to condemn Pujols for being a human, cases like this show us how precious players like Craig Biggio, Chipper Jones and Joe Mauer are playing their entire careers with a single team, and even going as far to giving their career franchises a hometown discount.  That's not what a player would do, its what a fan would do.

Human nature at it's purest.

But once I got over this and maintained a large proportion of my baseball innocence, last night dropped a megaton bomb on everything I wanted to believe, and the irony of No Doubt's song Ex-Girlfriend playing on my shuffle right now is the perfect analogy of what being a modern baseball fan is.  Being a baseball fan is the same as being a single person in the dating world, you try to keep your hopes high that the worst parts are behind you and that only happiness awaits you, but you can never be completely sure.  Let me explain.   I was a child during the steroid era, an eight year old watching what seemed to be one of the greatest baseball seasons in history as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battled for home run dominance over Roger Maris, I remember that summer very well and my naivety believing that the players of my time are truly some of the greatest ever.  I was 14 years old when Barry Bonds broke the home run record once again, once again sitting on the couch praying that I could witness history repeating itself, even though the allegations of PED use were starting to seep to the surface of baseball, and I was well aware of the potential artificiality of what I was seeing.  But there is also one moment of my life that I will remember forever, on my 17th birthday, I sat on my couch watching the San Francisco Giants play, I argued with myself after all my family had gone to bed about how I was going to respond when Barry Bonds broke yet another home run record, his PED use was just about as well documented as it ever would be, yet he hit his 755th home run off of Clay Hensley (who was formerly suspended for PED use in the minors) which made me feel maybe there was a level playing field.  That night I got a birthday present I will never forget, as Barry Bonds hit 756 and my reaction was to run and jump around my living room at 1 A.M.  I woke my parents, I told my father what had just happened, and in the moment it was one of the best things I'd ever seen in baseball (which included the entire 2004 postseason from the perspective of a Red Sox fan).  

Its still a powerful image to me.

When the luster of those moments wore away, I realized that what I had experienced was not completely genuine and I just didn't have enough trust to continue this relationship at the level I was currently at.  This was my first time being alone and without a sport to share my time and life with.  The end of my high school years, I had problems trusting baseball again and while I was able to still like it as a friend, I couldn't find it in my heart to commit myself again, but I was able to dabble around and try all sorts of different things out.  Following soccer for the Euro 2008 tournament was a real good diversion, but it was a hoax, not meant to be real.  I had experienced the equivalent of the first bad breakup through baseball, all the symptoms were there.  But eventually I moved off to college, I was away from home, I was alone, and baseball was there to comfort me. 

I don't want to know which one I was.

I jumped in head first, learning all the new names that I missed the last two years, and remembering all of the good times I had had with baseball in the past.  I couldn't hide it, being a baseball fan is an integral part of who I am.  I was a little hesitant to commit to any specific players again, and was able to get through the PED suspension of Manny Ramirez relatively unhurt.  As the years went on and no notable players were even suspected of PED use anymore, I learned to trust baseball once again, and more importantly the feats of individual players once again.  I was ready to dig as deep into baseball as I ever had before, learning entire team's rosters, tracking standings and league leaders by the day, subscribing to MLB.tvPED use would be regarded for the Hall of Fame as my senior thesis.  Yes, in my mind the Steroid Era was officially over.  

No image could possibly better represent innocence in baseball.

Before this season, I had never been a particularly big fan of Ryan Braun, my best memory of his existence being my disapproval of his being elected 2007 NL Rookie of the Year over Troy Tulowitzki (I really disagreed with the 2007 awards voting).  But I had looked at his statistics over his years and marveled at his consistency, and was starting to be convinced that he was the real deal.  The season went on and Braun continued to show extreme talent and I began to be very impressed with him.  Then came the playoffs, which was the first time I had been able to consistently see Braun play.  He didn't disappoint, in the two series I was able to see him play, he showed me that he had more talent than I had ever imagined, hitting homers that soared distances I would not believe by seeing him, and getting on base at an inhuman rate.  I was completely drawn onto the Ryan Braun bandwagon, I was thinking about buying a t-shirt online, I was researching the periodicity of great Jewish baseball players and I was arguing that he deserved to win NL MVP despite the fact that Matt Kemp's stats were better (but only slightly).  Braun went on to win that MVP award, and I was proud, even though I still had to argue he was deserving a few more times.  Being a baseball fan was great for me, I was identifying talent correctly, I was enjoying the subtle shifts in gameplay since my childhood and the sport was clean.  In other words, I could trust baseball.

I don't understand...

Then, yesterday happened.  It was a textbook time for a breakup to happen, I finally shed my shell protecting me and my feelings to avoid them from being hurt again, I was vulnerable.  Here is how yesterday happened, in play-by-play form.  I received a text message from a friend telling me not to look at anything about baseball on the Internet for a while, so I naturally looked immediately.  Seeing the headline caused me to fall to the ground, stunned.  I didn't know how to respond, so I told all the important people who I felt needed to know so they could soothe me and help me get over it.  I called my brother and told him the news, which was followed by no less than 30 seconds of disbelieving silence, which was then followed by a series of one word sentences.  The next few people who I talked to who had found out on their own brought it up and tried to console me.  The night ended with myself trying to drink it off with some close friends, and myself trying to avoid any analogies to what I had just experienced.  The worst part is that I still don't know how to respond, I'm holding on to hope that it was a false positive, and he will win his appeal and all will be normal again.  I want to defend Braun, I want it to work out and I want this to be a slight speed bump on the road of life.  But in reality, I know I have to acknowledge that it happened and move on with my life.  The part that bothers me the most is how I am having this strong of a reaction to the misfortune of someone I only know of because they are talented at a game.  I guess that is what being a true fan is about, and I wouldn't sell it for all the money the New York Yankees, Miami Marlins or Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are willing to throw at me.  I'll be fine, but I just have to get used to slight distrust of every player in the league again.

If I need to post this picture in a Steroids column again, its over...

My Current State of Affairs

Hello all!  It has been a while since I have last written about almost anything, so I guess now is as good a time as ever to just write about what is going on in my life.  The calendar just turned over to November, and it's becoming that very special time in the college student's life where they start to not care as much about their classes as they probably should.  I can only speculate as to the reasons why I feel like this, one of the reasons is probably the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (which I have already weighed in my opinions on before), but it can also be due to the fact that most students have been at school for around 10 weeks already this semester, and that is a fair amount of time to be burnt out.  In my case this year, it may be due to the dangerous ailment known as senioritis.

I still love Hand Turkeys!

My senioritis is lying itself on especially thick because this is my last semester of college, in a little more than a month I will be a college graduate, and just like every other grown-up out there.  It is actually a little scary in general, I enjoy being a child and I don't feel like a lot of the things I do on a daily basis work very well with the working adult schedule.  But instead of just regurgitating what has been said before, I will just link to my buddy Toninho's article where he basically covers all that needs to be said.  More importantly than my whiny little tangent there is that I have yet to know what I am going to do once I become a so-called adult.  I have never really had a lot of ambitions growing up, and I've rarely had an answer when people asked me what
I wanted to be when I grew up.  In general, I made math my college major because I felt that I wasn't old enough to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and since I was talented at math I would just do that and it is an open enough subject that I would probably be able to jump into anything with it.  Well, four years later I nearly have my math degree, and I was mistaken when I thought that companies would be excited to find someone with a math background, they mostly think that I know how to program.  Having said that I have found myself stumbling upon what seems to be a very exciting path in life, at the career fair at school I happened to talk to a consulting firm that was very interested in hiring math majors and other problem solvers!  It was very exciting and I even had an interview with them last week!  Hopefully I will hear back from them soon and it will be a positive response, but if not I think I'll manage to come out okay.

Aww shit!  I could have just learned math from this picture!

While waiting to hear back about the job I've found that I have come across two new addictions (well, one is just a renewed addiction.)  The first is that I have found myself watching a lot of Spongebob Squarepants again, I love cartoons and some cartoons just transcend age and continue to be funny and entertaining no matter how old you are, among the ranks of these cartoons are Spongebob, Doug (obviously on those two), Hey Arnold, and Rocko's Modern Life, while the middle two are still good because they spread positive messages in fairly well-told stories to children, the latter two are the finest examples I have ever seen of a show for all ages.  Both shows are capable of hiding little pieces of adult humor seamlessly into their episodes and you wouldn't even know the difference as a child.  Take for example, the episode "Karate Choppers" from the first season of Spongebob.  When I watched it a month or two ago I remembered it as being exactly what it seems to be at face value, a story about Spongebob and Sandy doing karate with each other.  But now that I am more mature, I watched the episode and was surprised to find that the entire episode is a slightly veiled euphemism for sex, I won't go into how it is, you can watch the episode yourself.  But for now you can help yourself to seeing how much subtlety Rocko's Modern Life lacked.

As for my other new addiction, it comes to me directly from Toninho.  For a long while he has been urging me to play Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I have never found the time or a copy to play with, but recently I was able to borrow it from another friend of mine, and it is almost life changing.  Up until this point as far as comic book characters go, I have primarily been a Spider-man fan, and have had a moderate respect for the Batman, particularly from his movies (especially the one from the 60s!).  But I have found that not only is Batman: Arkham Asylum (and it's sequel Batman: Arkham City) a great game, but it also does a great job of giving in-depth descriptions of nearly all of Batman's most powerful villains.  I think that is my favorite part of the game, finding all of the information on the villains of Gotham City and being able to learn about the true story of the Batman.  Playing through the game, I have found that although the Joker is the most popular villain and probably is the most interesting, my favorite one is the Scarecrow.  It is likely that my taste for him comes from the parts he is featured in in Arkham
 


Another big thing that has happened in my life was that my second oldest brother (I have two older brothers) just recently bought a house with his girlfriend and they moved in and bought a puppy!  I am very happy for him, but it does do something to point out a lot how much I am different from my brothers.  They have both stayed around the area where we grew up, for school, for work, and now for living, but as I was getting to earlier, I have no idea where in the world I am going to be in a couple months, it is really weird.  They have also both been in long term relationships (one is married) and then you look at me, its not that I am unbearable to look at (on the other hand, maybe it is) but I haven't had a whole lot of luck with women in recent days.  It is probably been for lack of trying, it has been some time since I have really shown an interest in anybody in particular, and I don't know if its my problem or that of everyone else, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on everybody else.  All I have to do is continue to be the great catch that I am and someone will come fishing for it.  Well, I figure that is about enough to talk about for today, hopefully I will be able to blog again more often and maybe even come up with some more good ideas.  So I'll catch you all later.

Get off my property you damn kids!