Talent Show

Hello there everybody. It's a wonderful 104 degrees here in Oklahoma. It was so hot that me and my sister just spent an hour out finding a place to get a snow cone. Well we found one, I give the snow cone a B- but that's not why am writing this. But I will say that a healthy part of any person's summer should be used finding a place to get the perfect snow cone.

Now on to more important business. I was at a bar about a month ago, I know what you're thinking out there, you're always at a bar. And to that I say nay and bite me.

So back to my story, I'm at a bar and I'm watching these people sing karaoke which was pretty bad, which made it pretty awesome, and out of nowhere I had this memory flash, I'm mean it just came in this wave and hit me right in the face. It really was quite overwhelming at the time, and I know almost immediately that I wanted to write about it. So I took out my phone and put it in the note section so that the next day or whenever I stumbled upon it I would remember that I needed to write about this. So the story that I wanted to tell you goes a little like this....

It was my Sixth Grade year at Sooner Rose Elementary, suck it all of those that read this and went somewhere else. And suck it all those who don't read it. So it was my sixth grade year and we all know how important that year is the year that sets you on the path to what you're going to be for the rest of your life. Now contrary to popular belief I was not always this confident manly man full of sexual magnetism, no at one point in my life I was this very shy very to himself kind of guy.

Now the one thing that I never did, the one thing that I just didn't have the guts to do the whole time that I was in grade school was preform in the talent show. I just didn't have it in me to get in front of a crowd and preform. Now look at me, I've been naked god knows how many times at a party, If you're reading this you probably already know what I'm talking about.

So we were having a talent show and I decided that this was the year that I was going to be in it. And for my great talent I was going to rap a sound from the ever popular Space Jam soundtrack, and the song was a rap that Bugs Bunny did. Probably the most ridiculous song ever but if I don't still love it I would be lying to you.

So I'm going to perform this song, and just when I'm about to go on I almost completely freeze like I figured that I would, but It was something that I always wanted to do, so this was my last chance. So I get up there and I do my thang, just doin' my thang. And as I'm on the stage I see a group of my friends come down to the front and start cheering me on. And I get through the entire song and man did I feel like a rock star. I had finally performed in a talent show, and all my friends come down to cheer me on, I have finally arrived.

So fast forward until maybe the summer or so I'm out with my best friend Brad and we are talking about old times and shooting the ship and all that jazz and somehow the talent show comes up, and I just go on and on about how good I was and how everybody was down there cheering me on when leave it to Brad to totally bust my bubble.....

"Are you kidding me bro? You were terrible, Kerri just had us all go up to the front and cheer you on because you were bombing." Well he said something to that effect, and let me tell you if I wasn't black I'm sure my face would have been completely bright red. Now, I'm the kind of guy that has tripped and fell and embarrassed myself in every way imaginable but right then and there was one of those moments above all the others that I wish I could take back.

So now that I'm all these many years older and none the wiser I have come to a very really and somewhat disturbing conclusion. A. I have and have always had some of the greatest friends a guy could probably ever ask for. B. Man my friends are really full of shit. I mean is it so great to make a guy feel like he's really doing something when he really sucks. I mean come on there is something to be said for letting a guy fail miserably and then picking himself back up. Believe me I know.

I don't know why I told you all of this, it really is pretty insignificant when it all comes down to it. But for some reason it all came rushing back to me, and you know I thought it all was pretty funny. Me rapping to the Space Jam soundtrack, one of my top 10 memories.

The Art of Nostalgia

So yesterday after a long but really great fourth of July I passed out, and I do mean passed out. I'm talking ready to walk out the door to another cook out fully dressed and then waking up like what in the world just happened. And of course after all that I could not for the life of me get back to sleep and so what do I do when I can't sleep? I contemplate the vas-ness of the universe. And on this particular night, after thinking about the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS(I recommend that you see it, but it is a movie more for the grown up in you not the kid.) and I just couldn't help but start to think about NOSTALGIA.

I mean in the movie Owen Wilson's character is nostalgic about living in a time other than the present, that time being the 1920's in Paris. And for good reason I mean F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein wow, what a time to be alive right? Well maybe not for you but if I had the chance to be around that bunch I really have no words.

So then I began to think about what time am I nostalgic for? And as I thought about it Randall Pink came to mind because it definitely would not be high school(if these are the best days of my life, remind me to kill myself.) but the more I thought about it the harder it really was for me. And that kind of upset me. Because I know in my heart that I would love to live in so many eras.

I mean besides my current situation, which I happen to think pretty much sucks there just isn't anything that interests me about this era that we are living in outside of my friends and family. I almost have this feeling that we might be living in the Forgotten Age. I mean there seems to be nothing great coming out of this portion of our history and nobody really even cares about it. I mean really to the best of my knowledge the thing that will be best known from this Era is social networking, and I don't really think that is the best thing.

What happened to us? I mean really what happened, we put a man on the moon for god's sake? Why is it that nobody cares that we aren't doing anything more meaningful in this "golden age" we seem to be living in. 50 or 60 years ago this country struggle so terribly with civil rights and people stood up and did something about it, and now we live in a time to see the first black president, but it really doesn't mean that much to people, at least it doesn't feel like it.

I mean I could totally be off base but I don't think that I am. I heard the other day that the NASA program is about to implode because of the state of the economy. And in the moment I just felt depressed. We have become a nation or a people that only cares about money. And it seems like we only want money just so we can have it. We don't want it to have power or influence, to affect change. We just want it so that we can have things, and more things than the guy that lives down the street.

What are we going to leave behind. Social networks, the twilight and harry potter series, and Michael Bay films. I'm not saying that any of these are just the worse things in the world, but where as one Era of people brought us the great pyramids, or the works of Shakespeare, or even people landing on the moon. These are the things we have?

I am Nostalgic for a place in history where things matter and people really cared about the mark they were going to live on this world. That it wasn't even to just make a lot of money, it was more important to be true to yourself, it was more important to be extraordinary. When is that time going to happen again?

One Book

What in the world is this feeling that I am feeling right now. I woke up this morning and for what felt like no reason at all I felt very very sad. And sure this week has been a complete roller coaster for me, full of realization of just exactly who some people are in my life. There has also been quiet a bit of disappointment and a since of overwhelming weight that feels as if it is on top of me. There are those of you out there that probably had no idea about any of this and that my friend is very good, because it is not in me to burden anybody else with what I am feeling at any particular time. I feel the way that I do and really it is my problem, I never want to become other people's problem. But anyway, that's not what this is about, not at all actually. That feeling that I had when I woke up had nothing to do with me at all and more to do with a book that I just recently read.

I needed to read a book. Early last week I felt myself slipping into the abyss and I tried to go out and get a book that might very well be able to pull me out of that void. Now let me just say that when I first got into the book it had a bit of the opposite effect on me. As I read I felt even more isolated and I started to realize just how far into the rabbit hole I had gone. Because the character that I felt the closet to in the book was the failed comedian who is madly in love with the main character only to realize that she never really loved him anyway. He is nothing more than a substitute person. And unfortunately I felt very much like that, well maybe it's not unfortunate, I mean I guess someone has to feel like that.

Anyway, this book that I was reading is called, ONE DAY, and wow, what a great book. I mean something really great that I think everybody should read. You might be wondering why in fact I decided to read this book, and the reason for that is much like most things in my life, there is a movie based on the book coming out in one month and I had this urge to see what it was all about, because quiet frankly the story just seemed to fascinating for me not to. And the reason that I felt so bad this morning was at the fact that I'm not going to be reading about these characters anymore, and after reading about all the trials that these characters went through it almost feels as if these characters are a part of me.

I don't know I think that it's important to know things like this, that it's important to realize that at this point in my life 26, that one book, one movie, one person can change my life. Or at least change my perspective on things. Anyway, this probably feels a bit like rambling so if you don't read any of this, I completely understand.