bjciii: My twisted thoughts

Yup. Over it. Seriously now, Jack Frost… stick it up your ass!

When I was a kid, I prayed for snow days; hell, any day that I could stay home and play with my Transformers or G.I. Joes and watch cartoons? Awesome. I didn’t care about mom & dad having “child-care issues” or whatever… all I knew was that I wasn’t forced to go to school and I could play all day. If I was lucky, I’d sled or suicide-drag (you remember that: we as brilliant kids would hide in the bushes, wait for a car to stop at a red-light / stop sign, and then grab on to the bumper, letting it drag us along the ice and snow? It’s a fucking wonder we’re not all dead) or have snowball fights so epic that roving musicians wrote ballads about them.

Yes, as a child, it was a blast to have a snow day. Eventually (read that: AFTER COLLEGE) snow days became “Oh, shit… you mean I still have to go to work?” Yes, folks… at that point, it was no fun to have snow because A) you had to dig out your car; and, B) you had to drive your ass to work across ice, black ice, snow, and idiot drivers. Not a fun time, people.

Of course, now that I’m a teacher, I sort of hope for snow days, but only when it doesn’t screw up my schedule. Yup… I’m anal. Since I teach 2 different classes on 2 different days, I want even-handed instruction! There can’t be one class ahead of the other or else I get pissy. Not a good idea in my life! So, what is there to do? Well… it sucks to say it, but the best snow days are the ones that happen on Thursday night into Saturday night – Monday is all cleared up with no missed class-time.

Yes, I’m that guy.

So what do we do tomorrow? The snow will start at noon (approximately) and last through Saturday afternoon, possibly dumping almost 2 feet in my area. That means a lot of digging and grunting, BUT I have already taken steps to ensure a fun weekend with The Super Bowl coming up and possible beer plans in place for the weekend otherwise.

That’s right, people: Alcohol for the win.

So maybe snow ISN’T so bad… but if it snows and I can’t get anywhere… AND I’m snowed in alone? Okay… that sucks hardcore.

If you’re not from around Delaware, I don’t think you get the half-joking / half-serious animosity we have towards our neighbors from “The Garden State.” To be fair, I’m pretty sure they feel the same way about us… but I know Pennsylvania people hate Jersey too, so I think we’re on the winning side here.

I’ve dated girls from New Jersey and I’ve had friends from New Jersey, so I know that there are exceptions to the rule, but the stereotypes are being blown up into the biggest damned media events ever: Jersey Shore on MTV.

I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t watch MTV anymore… like, at all. I was bored one night when the MTV Music Awards were on, so I logged into Twitter and saw everyone railing on Kanye West for something he did. I flipped it on, found out what happened, watched Pink dangle from the ceiling, and then switched on a movie. Seriously… I don’t watch MTV since the “M” went from “music” to “mindless” about 15 years ago.

If I were to ever turn that channel on again, it would be to see what this Jersey Shore show is all about. I mean, I can’t escape these walking stereotypes of Italian douchebags who hang out at “tha shoah” (and, for the record, “Italian” in this sense is merely an adjective modifying the noun “douchebag”; “Italian” is not part of a compound word dictating that anyone Italian is a douchebag. Just wanted to clear that up…). Growing up in Delaware, I’ve been to The Jersey Shore a bunch of times and I have encountered many of these people (although, if I ever met anyone with the name of “The Situation,” I think I’d laugh so hard, I’d break a blood-vessel), but why in God’s name would you show off your douchebaggery for the world? There’s no surprise that the Italian-American Defamation League (or some similarly-named organization) is freaking out about the way these idiots are behaving. It’s not bad enough they have to deal with people who watch The Sopranos so much they feel that Italian automatically means you’re “in the family”, but now Italians have to put up with these idiots too?

Wow. Talk about your all-time sucks.

In any case, it really makes you wonder why America is embracing this trainwreck as much as they are. And, yes, folks… I haven’t heard one positive thing ABOUT this show; it sounds like everyone is watching it as an unintentional comedy! Maybe that’s it… maybe the viewers think that Dago/Guido/Wop stereotypes are the new blackface? I don’t know, but it should tell you something about the idiots who are in the show. Either they are fully taking control and saying “Yeah, we’re jokes, but we’re getting our 15 minutes” or they are blissfully ignorant and they think people actually look up to them; no matter what, the zeitgeist is all about them right now.

Hell… even Jay Leno is going to welcome them to his old/new Tonight Show on his first night back. It’s old home week for douchebags, I guess! Unreal. I think I’m gonna ignore the TV for a while and just read a book.

I remember that my mom wanted to call me “Tray” or some other play on being the third, but I remember that my father basically shot that down and also “Willy”. Dad was adamant that I would be “Bill” or “Billy” and I can live with that. I know a few guys named “Will” and they’re all great guys, but if you call me by that nickname, I get a little crawly feeling up my back: it just doesn’t fit me.

On my mom’s side of the family, I have an uncle who is a mere 14 years older than me, so we sorta grew up together. I remember he used to call me “Weird Willard” as I was young; hell, I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t care: I got to hang out with him and his delinquent (but incredibly big-hearted) friends. They treated me like gold, so they could have called me “shithead” and I would have followed them around. On occasion, he still breaks out the “Willard” nickname, but I think he dumped the “weird” part years ago. It took me many years to figure out where he got this from, but then I stumbled upon a movie from 1971 called Willard which featured Bruce Davison as a, yes, weird guy who controlled rats. In case you were wondering, it was remade in 2003 and starred Crispin Glover.

After that, I was basically “Billy” or “Bill” to everyone. At this point in my life, scant few people call me “Billy”. To me, if you’re adding the “-y” ending, you’ve either known me for my entire life or you’re very close to me. If you’re just going to randomly call me “Billy” and you don’t fit in those categories, I will correct you.

There was, however, a dark period for about a year when I worked at a gas station that some guy from Virginia moved up and started to call me “Bucky.” God… I hated that damned nickname. It came from him calling me “Young Buck” and one of the mechanics started clucking like a chicken (“Buck-buck-buck… buck-EE!!! buck-EE!!”). Unfortunately, it stuck. I really fucking hated that nickname!

So, share… anyone have any good or bad nicknames? I spilled… it’s your turn.

Upon further reflection, I don’t think I’m going to have the time to do a movie a day over the 28 days of February, but I’ll do my best to get it done! I think I have 8 unwatched flicks in my collection, so I promise to get to them all this month (including the one I’m most scared to watch as I’ve never heard anything good about it: The Godfather, Part III). If you’re fuzzy on my rules, I ask you to read my previous opener on the whole idea of “a movie-a-day”.

In any case, I’m gonna remind you that these entries won’t be reviews of the movie, necessarily… they’ll actually be more to the point of jumping off points. Maybe, in the case of Godfather III, I’ll talk about trilogies as a whole or something equally as germane. I dunno… we’ll see when it gets there.

So, the first movie is actually a TV movie originally shown on SyFy, but with added footage: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Hey… like I said, it’s any DVD that I’ve got that I haven’t seen the movie for yet. Sweat not… I’ll get to theatrical releases soon enough. I figure, if I have 7 or 8, you should expect a new one every 4 days or so.

Deal?

There were times I didn’t think I could do it, but I managed to survive for 31 straight days (and 32 entries)! To put that into perspective, in the calendar year 2009, I had 36 TOTAL entries. At this rate, I will tie that on February 4th and surpass my entire year’s previous year’s total on February 5th if I keep this up. Sad? Maybe. Dedicated? Absolutely. Insane? Almost there, thanks for asking.

I did this because Chris wanted to read more. I did this because Kim loves to read these things and, once upon a time, Amy, Katie, and Karen all followed suit. I don’t blame a lot of you for fading away over the past couple of years. I stopped BLOGging for a while only because there was so much I had to get out, but I felt this wasn’t a safe-enough place to talk anymore. See… you need balls to BLOG; not literal testicles, people… but guts to say what you need to say. I lost those guts when confronted by a few people who continuously read into my ramblings and replied with venom, bile, and unmitigated pissiness. I’m not saying that I’ve got all that fortitude back, but I can tell you that thanks to Chris and Kim and Jackie (in principle, but the rest helped too), I’m getting there.

Also, in a BLOG like mine, there is really only so much I can write without repeating myself. That’s why I’m giving you a sneak-peek of February in bjciii: My twisted thoughts: I’m bringing back the “Movie-a-Day” idea I did 2 years ago. I’ve gotten a lot more movies since then and some I have watched, but a lot I have not. So, I will introduce the topic tomorrow (February 1st) and, hopefully, get enough movies together to last 28 days. Maybe, by the end of February, I’ll be able to come up with a 31-day topic to go through in March.

To end today, however, I do want to say “Thank you” to a lot of you (and I’m not going to embarrass those who DID help me and I’m not going to guilt those who didn’t by naming names) who got me back on track. I’m feeling like myself after a long time away! Wow. The new-old me is a terrible housekeeper! I gots some work ta do!

When I was a lot younger, I read like it was my job. I picked up every book that my parents had bought for me and begged for more. When I got older, I started going through their books to see what was good (best choice? Silence of the Lambs; a book that my mother didn’t even bother finishing, but I devoured and loved). Somewhere along the way, I didn’t exactly lose my love of reading, but I definitely entered into a long relationship with TV and movies. Yes, folks… books became my grade-school girlfriend who was fine for a while, but was replaced for the glitz and glamour of high-school women.

I’m ashamed.

I still go out and buy a ton of books (and I do read some of them), but I don’t read nearly as much as I could be reading. I check out the flashy covers and say “Maybe I’ll get that one.” I look at the “Books” section of “Entertainment Weekly” for stuff I want to read but inevitably don’t. I’m a book-tease.

Tonight I dug out a book I bought, swore I was gonna read, and then buried with the other ones in my room. It’s Fool by Christopher Moore and, if the first few chapters are any indication, I’m gonna love reading his other stuff. Hell, I might start just plowing through these books instead of continuously watching the same shit over and over on TV when I can’t sleep.

Why read instead of watch TV or a movie? Easy… reading allows your mind to paint the pictures whereas the video is produced by someone who thinks the setting should look a certain way. Reading makes the characters come alive in ways that horrible actors can’t do justice with. Reading expands the mind where TV decides to shrink it, using vocabulary that doesn’t exactly make us think.

Yup… reading is awesome. Sorry I forgot.

Scream. Die Hard. The Matrix.

All three of these movies introduced plots or ideas into the Hollywood zeitgeist that people never did before. Scream decided to lampoon scary movies in a way that terrified people; it wasn’t just an Airplane! type stunt (later taken on by Scary Movie and it’s completely sub-par sequels), but an actual well-written script which embraced the absolute fervor that people had for certain genres and how it was dealt with in such a way that both poked fun at and warned the public at large of. Kevin Williamson’s movie introduced a brand-new age of horror movies and we’re seeing the death of that trend now (even to the point that there is a rumored third sequel to Scream in the works… 13 years after the original came out in theatres).

Die Hard took the old action films and turned the genre from muscle-bound supermen with guilty consciences in bad situations to “everyman” who had to do whatever he could to get out of it alive and save the day. Of course THIS movie sparked so many imitators that everything from that point on was described as…

• Die Hard on a plane = Executive Decision
• Die Hard on a boat = Under Seige
• Die Hard on a train = Under Seige 2: Dark Territory (a singularly horrible movie… even by Seagal standards!)
• Die Hard on a bus = Speed

and the list can go on for as long as I can think.

Then, of course, we have The Matrix; a tremendous movie which basically became Blade Runner for this generation. It took all of our ideas of the future and the present and added a lot of cynicism, kung fu, and philosophy, put it in a blender, and we drank the mixture with the red pill. It was amazing, but it also spawned a lot of imitators… but also two sequels (one of which wasn’t tremendously bad… and the other was).

The point is that no matter how original the idea is, there are a list of people a mile long that cannot wait to rip it off. Hell, even though Twilight hit it big as a book, there has been a huge vampire revival. Everything has to be about blood-suckers now. As soon as there’s something that people will mindlessly flock to, there will be a million copycats waiting to cull the stupid from the herd. Unfortunately, as with anything, the original is always the best while the imitators become just absolute shit. Every so often one will rise above the dreck, but that’s few and far between.

Keep your eyes out… you never know when something truly original will hit. Then again, when you see 50 movies right after with the same basic idea? Then you know you already missed it!!

51 weeks ago, my world changed in an awesome way: I had a nephew. No, my sister didn’t have a baby, I had a nephew… don’t distract me.

This little guy is incredible; every time I see him, I’m happy! The best thing about him is that he recognizes me now and always grins when he sees me. I dig that… it’s nice to know someone’s always happy to see me!!

I’ve seen him go from a coned-head to a perfect head. I’ve seen him barely able to support his neck to sitting up. I’ve seen him go from his back to his stomach and reverse. I’ve seen him go from a crawl to a walk, and now to a run. I love being able to follow along with all these milestones!

It’s an amazing journey that I get to share with my family because of this little guy. Soon, he’ll be yammering away in English and I’ll try to correct him (which is scary enough knowing how I deal with my students). It’s a wonderful thing and I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Lights off… television is dark… eyelids getting heavy…

Shit! Forgot my entry for the day!

Let’s hear it for blind panic!

Comfort: It comes in many varieties. It’s that warm, soft blanket that you wrap around you when you want to feel safe and secure. It’s the sigh of relief you make when you look at the balance on your ATM receipt. It’s the mac and cheese that mom used to make… comfort is a song, a show, a pet’s kiss, or a favorite shirt. No matter what you define as comfort, it’s there to relieve the stress, calm the brain, and slow the heart. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable. Sometimes people use the word interchangeably with “complacent”, but the connotations are vastly different. Comfortable is being secure with a station or a location… complacent is not caring or thinking about anything anymore.

I bring this up because, with the different varieties and the different definitions, comfort comes from vastly different places depending on where you need it. I thank my family and friends for my comfort. It can be a text message or an instant message… a phone call or a pop-in; all of the ways we receive comfort speak to is in a single fashion: Everything’s okay.

So whether you’re taking comfort from a cat in your lap or an e-mail in your Inbox… enjoy it. Realize that all around the world there are people much worse off than you. Those people are living in uncertainty and stress. Smile and remember Bono:

Tonight, thank God it’s them… instead of you.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not overly political. I think I’m registered “Democrat”, but I do that to vote in the primaries here. I have a lot of Republican tendencies, but I have a lot of Democratic tendencies as well. I’m basically an independent, only not registered as such. I bring this up because Delaware is trying something now, and Maryland is proposing something else; both seem to introduce a lot brighter spotlight on law-breakers.

First, Delaware. I think by now we’ve all see the digital billboards that can change graphics without having a crew of guys go out with ladders and paste. Okay… they’re really cool. The one I’m talking about, however, is (if I’m not mistaken) on the northbound side of I-95 between Newark and Stanton / Christiana.

Currently, it’s showing wanted criminals and their pictures and information. I guess it’s the 21st century idea of the old West’s “Wanted” posters, but it seems cool nonetheless. Imagine if you were the guy whose mugshot was up there! Driving home from Newark, seeing your ugly mug 20 feet high on the side of the road? Wow. No one can hide there! I bring this up because I’m sure that the ACLU and other institutions like that will rail against the invasion of privacy or some other crap they’ll dig up. Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I say that all criminals should have their pictures on the side of the road with associated phone numbers for tip lines. It’s a fantastic idea! When I was a kid, we had to go to the post office to see wanted posters, but now we can do it while we’re driving home! I love it. I really do.

The next thing is that Maryland (or, more to the point, a Maryland delegate) is trying to introduce a bill into the legislature that states if someone is convicted of “three or more drunken or drugged driving offenses” they should be forced to use a “boldly-colored” license plate.

It would be awesome if this delegate’s last name was Hawthorne (someone PLEASE get this reference so I don’t feel like an idiot), but it’s not. I honestly don’t know how I feel about this though… Truthfully, I think I like “3 strikes and you’re out” as a law since I don’t want someone who is caught AND convicted three or more times to still have a license! What’s to stop them from drinking and driving again? They are also looking into ignition interlocks which are much better, but just because someone’s got a “scarlet letter” doesn’t mean it’s going to stop them from doing what they were doing in the first place.

These are both great ideas, but they need people to let them work. With the culture’s “stop snitching” bullshit, we have an entire subculture dedicated to letting crime run rampant. With our own apathetic ways, we allow things to happen all the time. Regardless of the tools used, there needs to be societal interaction. There needs to be help from the citizenry. “That’s not my job” or “don’t we pay the police for that” are inexcusable anymore. Step up and use the tools that are given to make things better.