When I dated my first girlfriend, I dated her because she was cute, fun, and because she actually wanted to date me. I’m not trying to say that she didn’t have any attractive or noble qualities, I’m admitting out how shallow and immature I was. We didn’t date for long, we had fun, and then it was over (honestly, there’s not much else to the story, except that thing with the scar, and granted, that was post-break up). Clearly, I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s okay, I was 18 at the time, so my standards, or lack there of, were common among guys. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had friends talk about their “lists” or their “deal breakers” and “red flags”. I don’t exactly have a list of traits that I’m looking for, but that doesn’t mean that I’m back where I was at age 18, where I was just looking for a cute girl that would give me the time of day. While my friends have a list of specifics, I have more of a broad template.
During my sophomore year in college, I met a girl who we’ll name Josie (since I don’t know any Josies). I met her at a club meeting and even though we had some mutual friends, neither of us were aware of this at the time. We talked for about 2 hours and the topics ranged from small talk pleasantries (what’s your name? where are you from?) to literature and jazz. While she and I had different tastes, there was some sort of connection that we had. Even though she had never heard of Pavement, she was intrigued to hear about them. Even though I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the authors and books that she liked, I was more than eager to hear her talk about why she loved them. We were geeking out together and it was an amazing feeling.
We became good friends after that and it lasted throughout college until she moved away for school. We kept in contact for a little while but eventually we drifted. I remember when she came back from an East Coast trip, a few months after we met and everyone asked her how it was. She told most people about the weather and how it was fun, but when I asked her about her trip, she told me how excited she was at how late the museums were open out there. I did eventually fall for her at one point but she never felt the same way. Our boundaries were always good so I never felt like she was stringing me along and I respected that. As we got to know each other better, I realized that we weren’t a good match, which isn’t to say that I discovered things about her that I didn’t like. Though our friendship, I learned a lot about myself and most importantly learned that the “connection” we had provides far more amazing feeling than just some pretty girl laughing at your clumsiest jokes.
I’m glad that I never put her up on a pedestal. I don’t view her as “the one that got away” or as someone that I would drop everything and move for (as a friend, she’s asked me), and I’m careful to not compare girls I’m interested in to her. We are better as friends than we would’ve been as lovers. I just search for a “connection” where I can talk to someone for hours on end without having an agenda of things to talk about. Honestly, I can’t say that every girl I’ve been interested in or dated over the past few years, has offered me that same sort of connection. So while I can’t say that I’ve avoided the meaningless “she’s cute and she likes me” trap that I like to believe I’m too mature for, I know better to settle for a relationship that doesn’t offer me that stimulation. I understand that it might not come right away, but if it doesn’t show up at all, it is time to move on.
I have a bit of a bittersweet view on love. I have a picture in my mind of a muggy afternoon, the air conditioner is broken, there’s nothing good on TV, and there’s nothing particularly exciting going on in life. It’s just you and your significant other and the “No, I love you more, no, you hang up” phase is nothing but a distant memory. There’s no work stories to share of stories about your friends and family. You’re both tired and all you can do is talk and try to connect. All you have is each other and your ability to enjoy each other’s company with nothing else to aide you. I don’t find this as a depressing idea. I’m just a firm believer in the adage of “all you need is love.”
As much as I’d love to have a list of specific traits that my girlfriend/wife will have, I just feel like being able to have “the connection” will trump it all in the end. While I will absolutely admit that I would love to find someone before I hit 30, I know deep down that I’ll be happy to dismiss that silly goal if I know that I’ll be able to feel that connection for the rest of my life, because you can manufacture “having a good time” and I believe you can even manufacture “romance”, but you can’t manufacture effortless conversation and feeling understood.
When I was a kid, I went through a phase where I had friendship bracelets. Sadly, I do not remember what friends I shared those bracelets with. I’m pretty sure we got them at the local arcade (or the equivalent to a Chuck E. Cheese) and wore them until they got faded and never replaced them. As I got older, I started to sport other accessories such as watches and rhinestone rings, but I never returned to bracelets (and never did I sport a WWJD or Lance Armstrong bracelet).
My 28th birthday has been a bit of a bittersweet affair. My birthday was overlooked at work, so I didn’t get the birthday cake in the conference room. While I wouldn’t consider it heart breaking, and I know most work-purchased birthday cakes are subpar, I would like to get a cake, knowing that my co-workers have gotten cakes for their birthdays. I also wouldn’t mind being paid on the clock to eat cake and to chit chat. If I was working at an office that didn’t celebrate anyone’s birthday, I wouldn’t be feeling so weird about it, and I’ll fully admit that I’m being kind of petty about it. If they get cake, I want cake too.
Moving around my 28th birthday has been difficult as well. No matter how close or far a move is, and no matter how much or little you own, moving is never fun, it’s never easy, and you’re never too prepared. I wouldn’t say that the move was dramatic and full or surprises, but it was exhausting both physically and mentally (thank you Time Warner Cable), and throughout the move, I’ve had a lot less friend interaction than I’m used to. Couple that with no internet (for the time being), and all of a sudden I’ve been feeling completely isolated. Couple that with the lack of birthday cake at work and… I’m just kidding… or bitter… or both.
It took a couple of weeks to have an actual birthday party because of my friend’s wedding and the move, but it was actually worth the wait. About 23 of us piled into the a shuttle with a bunch of food and alcohol and headed to the Hollywood Bowl to watch Bugs Bunny and the Symphony. I had friends from the present and a couple of friends from my college days join me in what was a fun filled night that ended with fireworks. This is what I love about birthday parties, it is one of the few occasions that you can different groups of friends together to hang out with you. So, while I was drinking beer with Chris, I was sharing rice crispy treats with Allison and Charis, and and getting passed along food from Allison’s parents. While the Bowl doesn’t really encourage mingling with a large group, it was enjoyable for everyone, except for the people who tried to park at the Bowl (but they had a good time once they got in). I was handed birthday cupcakes (I couldn’t eat them all) and that more than made up for my lack of workplace cake.
Before we got on the shuttle, I was given an envelope from Charis and Allison and they told me that there was a present inside. There was a handwritten card from the two girls. It had an apology for its sloppiness and an explanation for it (they made it in the car). It also contained two friendship bracelets in it. Apparently, there are conflicting sources on the prices of these bracelets. Charis says they’re normally 25 cents, Allison says they’re a dollar, but mine were free. Allison quickly tied them around my wrist and told me that I’m not allowed to take them off (but later told me if the colors get too faded, she’ll make me new ones). It’s the first time I’ve had friendship bracelets since I was probably around their age, and while I’m not going to try tug on the heart strings by saying their friendships is the greatest gift of all or that they went from being my show assistants to being my friends, I will say this: by sacrificing $1.25 our of their own pockets, Allison and Charis made me stop worrying about how stressful and crummy I’ve felt over the last couple of weeks for at least a little while.
I was excited to leave college and felt that I was more than ready to head in to the great unknown. I was sick of school, or at least my breath or “general education” classes, and was ready to test my mettle in the film industry. I was shopping my screenplay to both investors and studios with the hope that I could jump immediately into doing what I wanted, opposed to starting from the bottom of the food chain, or having to work a non-film related job to make ends meet. I failed. Studios passed on my script and nobody wanted to fork over a couple hundred thousand dollars to help me achieve my dream. For a couple more years, I kept on trucking; I tweaked my scripts, I wrote a sitcom pilot, but nothing came to fruition. Eventually, I decided I needed a break from screenwriting and I decided to start a blog. That temporary break has since become sort of indefinite.
I was absolutely over-confident that my writing was going to immediately take me somewhere. I wasn’t thinking about fame and fortune necessarily, but I was definitely hoping to do something I felt I was passionate and skilled to do. It took me a few years to get over the “if I don’t write for a living, my soul is dying” attitude and while I have definitely not given up on writing, I am more willing to enjoy “the ride” opposed to trying to dictate where I’m going. I’ve been humbled, so if I ever get the opportunity to write for film/TV, I’m a lot more willing to work on projects that I might’ve deemed beneath me in the past. To show my commitment to writing, I’m going to give Joel Schumacher some advice for if/when he ever decides to make a reboot of the critical and box office failure, Batman and Robin.
(Disclaimer: I, in no way am advocating that Christopher Nolan relinquish the rights to the Batman franchise.)
Batman and Robin currently holds a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, far below the 84% rating of Batman Begins and the 94% rating of The Dark Knight, so logically it would be foolish to take the franchise away from Christopher Nolan (the director of the latter two) and give the franchise back to Joel Schumacher (who basically burned the franchise down to the ground, his first Batman movie, Batman Forever clocks in at a paltry 42%, Tim Burton’s films are rated at 70% or higher), but Hollywood is not always known for making sound rational decisions, so while we all await whatever Christopher Nolan is cooking up for his 3rd Bataman movie, there is a minute chance that somehow Joel Schumacher will somehow end up with the franchise again. I’m not hoping for it, but if it does happen, let me help the man out.
First of all, lets keep Bruce Wayne/Batman as is. Christian Bale is a fine actor and while he might be a rage-aholic, that fits Bruce Wayne like a glove. Also, I don’t think George Clooney will give it a second shot after all the ridicule he received after the first go around. Second of all, lets simplify things. While there were many things wrong (and many of those things are probably unfixable) with Batman and Robin, lets simplify things story-wise. Introducing 2 new villains and Bat Girl all in one film is too much, and since Nolan hasn’t (and may never) introduce(d) Robin, we have quite a conundrum. In short, my advice is to: allude to the introduction or Barbara Gordon as Bat Girl for a future movie, introduce Robin in some more updated fashion (not the child of circus acrobats who tragically died performing a stunt), and pick two villains that are just around to wreak havoc.
The two villains that would be perfect for this would be The Penguin and Mr. Freeze, and they should be played by the original actors, Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two have a natural chemistry from their time together in the movie Twins (which I’m guessing will eventually be given a reboot, might as well kill 2 birds with one stone with this reboot) and their recent fame could be used to help promote the film. Opposed to making the Penguin into a cartoony villain, DeVito could just reprise his character from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, except he could be more decrepit and sinister (if that’s possible). Arnold, on the other hand, could make his usual set of one liners, but now that he’s just finished a term as governor, he could make his one-liners politically topical such as: “My heart is colder than the hiring freeze for California public schools.”
Once again, I would recommend that there be as little origin story for these two as possible. Mr. Freeze doesn’t need to be pining after his wife. He can just be the product of some botched experiment and there needs to be very little explanation of why he and the Penguin are trying to destroy Gotham. Skip the sentimentality and just let the duo find new ways to enrage Batman. (And rage is Christian Bale’s forte, as I’m sure McG will confirm.) Have the Penguin and Mr. Freeze run around like an evil Dukes of Hazzard and have Batman try to stop them. Heck, you can even have Dennis, Charlie and Mac be the henchmen for the Penguin and they can all plan their capers in a bar for all I care. If you want them to kidnap Rachel Dawes, at some point, so be it, though I don’t think she’s necessary in this film.
I’m sure there will be complaints that the film is too male-centric and pumped full of testosterone and that there’s not enough of a female presence, but since Arnold Schwarzenegger is the film, I’m sure that’s why people have come to expect and love about the guy. I’m sure critics will deride the film for being pointless… and for being made by Joel Schumacher, but I think I’ve proven to myself that I’ll be able to put my ego aside if a writing opportunity came up in the future. While the script may not be very good, at least I’ve had a lot of fun with it, and that’s what’s I’ve been hoping for: not fame or fortune, but being able to do something that I love.
In college, I started to get a lot of offers to film weddings. I took the offers back then since I figured I could use the money, but I never thought about filming weddings as a full-time profession. Even though the money was nice, it was a lot of work and there was a lot of stress to the job. For one, there are no reshoots at a wedding, so that is an unbelievably huge amount of pressure to get things right from the beginning. This is made extremely difficult by poor planning. I don’t mean to rail against wedding planners, but I think they should all have a basic background in how video cameras work (and how wind and dark lighting affect them) so they can take that into account at weddings. Needless to say, it’s not a profession that suits me and the gray hairs on my head can attest to that. It’s also weird to be at a wedding of a couple you don’t know. It ‘s even worse, and extremely lonely, when you’re sitting by yourself or next to a stranger (the photographer) with no friends in sight.
After filming a couple of weddings after college, I got out of the business entirely. It took me awhile to readjust myself to being a guest at wedding. I wasn’t thinking about how I would shoot a wedding when I was invited to one, but I needed to readjust to enjoy weddings again. It was a gradual process and after going to a couple of friend’s weddings, I stopped feeling bad about leaving when I wanted to or having more than enough to drink, and most importantly, I was happy for the couples again, instead of fearing what kind of crazy demands they would have post-honeymoon.
I spent my 28th birthday at my friend’s wedding. Some people asked me if I was bitter that my friend had his wedding on “my day”, but I was fine with it. (I know how much insane planning goes into a wedding, so if my friend had to choose that day, I’m sure it’s because it was the best deal or he didn’t really have much of a choice.) People are always out of town around my birthday anyways because it’s the day before the 4th of July and a lot of the people who were invited to his wedding were people that I would’ve invited to my birthday party, so either way, I would be spending the day with friends. Plus, there’s nothing noble in saying “I’m not going to your wedding because it’s my birthday, and I’m going to fight you for our friends.”
People wished me a happy birthday at the reception and there was good food, cake, and an open wine/beer bar. I spent a part of the night talking to two pastor’s wives about the intellectual value of Sponge Bob Square Pants and why I respected the girl from iCarly (she’s the teacher’s pet in School of Rock) until I found out she wanted a singing career but that she’s still better than Hannah Montana (who is the spawn of the man who wrote “Achy Breaky Heart”). So basically, I acted much like I would have if it was my birthday dinner.
The past couple of years have been very transitional for me, so while I enjoyed the weddings I was invited to, those weddings also brought up a host of issues that I’ve had to deal with either because of the people I ran into or because what was going on in my life in general. Starting last year, with the wedding of my friends Ed and Nicole, I’ve been able to enjoy these special days out of sight, out of mind, and while I’m not advocating that my friends constantly get married on the weekend of my birthday, I don’t harbor any feelings of resentment, because honestly, in my early to mid 20s, there wasn’t a whole lot to celebrate anyways and the fact that I’m enjoying the things I’m supposed to again is hopefully a sign that I’ve survived a lot of the volatility that I’ve had to experience in my 20s. An older friend of mine told me that around 30 is when people really figure themselves out (with exceptions of course). I didn’t really know what that meant and at one point of my life I wanted to be 25 forever. Professional athletes tend to peak around 27-29 and now that I think about that, it makes sense. It’s a time where people are physically, mentally, and emotionally in good shape, and hopefully I’m also at my peak.
Perhaps I’ll never be #1 at anything, but I hope at this point, I can let the game of life come to me and that I can put myself in the best position for success. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a paid writer, or paid to do my show, but at least I can be happy on my own b-day and happy for my friends when they find happiness, and while that sounds petty, I sure feel like I’ve come a long way.
Sandy and I got off on the wrong foot. I can’t put my finger on why it happened like that, but our introduction was awkward and we were out of sync from the beginning. I was really excited to meet her, and maybe that’s what ultimately lead to my disappointment. My hopes were too high and in just a matter of days, reality had sent my dreams spiraling to the ground in a blaze of failure. We eventually were able to salvage our relationship, but it wasn’t until after years of space and maturity before I was able to look at Sandy in a different light.
I remember during my first week of middle school, I felt like everything was a total blur. I started middle school the week after Thanksgiving and I had to transition from being a 6th grader in elementary school to a 6th grader in a middle school in the span of a week and a half. I no longer had recess, I had to maneuver my way from class to class across a campus, and I had to keep track of the names of all these new classmates that I had never seen in my life. I got so confused that I was no longer sure that I was speaking the same language as everyone else. I remember the first time I tried to order food from the cafeteria, I asked for a “pop”, and the lunch lady looked at me like there was something wrong with me. After an awkward moment, I said “a coke?” and then she finally responded to me by telling me that they didn’t sell soda, but I was already humiliated.
I became friends with a guy named Dante, who’s name sounds like he would be on Jersey Shore, but he in fact is very much not like a character on Jersey Shore. We got along pretty well and coincidentally enough, we had the same birthday. He didn’t live in my neighborhood and we weren’t within walking distance, but we decided we should hang out anyways. Since this was 1993, we didn’t have access to Google Maps or a GPS, so we were stuck trying to discuss directions over the phone. He had no idea where I lived and since we were kids, giving him major cross streets didn’t help him much, so we decided it might be best for him to give me directions to his house from our school. Dante had a really strange way of giving me directions, though. He started by telling me to drive down the street our school was on, which seemed reasonable enough, but then he would tell me that “if you keep going down the street, you’ll hit a dead end and you will die, so you’ll have to turn on to this other street instead.” After a few more minutes of trying to direct me to his house, his mom decided to intervene and was able to figure out where I lived. She picked me up, we hung out, we had a good time, and we still keep in contact to this day. The end. Eventually middle school stopped feeling like a blur, but it didn’t get much better after that. I made some good friends, but for the most part, I was uncomfortable, I was bummed out, and I pined for the old days.
It wasn’t until college that I could finally feel comfortable with Sandy. The expectations were gone, and I could see why so many people saw that she was beautiful and chill. I realized that I didn’t need to be in love with her. I tried to force feelings when they didn’t need to be forced and we both suffered because of it. Moving at the age of 11 had really filled me with angst and Sandy was just such an easy target to dump all that angst upon. I wanted her to save me from it all, but it didn’t happen until much later, and it didn’t happen all at once. It was a process, and it was a process that didn’t involve her at all. I didn’t give an apology; there was none needed. San Diego isn’t my true love and it’s neither of our fault, it just was never meant to be.