Bittersweet beauty

Last night I went to see The Phantom of the Opera with (in alphabetical order) Egle, Kyle, Mills, Sarah, and Vince. You wouldn’t expect any guy, much less a sans-strawin’, tree-choppin’ guy like myself, to enjoy a musical. However, upon the end of the film I was actually quite impressed at how beautiful the production was.

And trust me when I say that I know beautiful isn’t the most masculine of adjectives. Really, though, the music was eloquent, the acting was superb, and the general aura of the movie struck me as one of bittersweet magnificence.

When I say bittersweet, though, I mean it. After leaving the theater, I didn’t have much to say to anyone; I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad luck that all the characters had to face.

First of all, there were two new owners of this opera house. All they wanted, like any entrepreneurs, was to turn a profit. They didn’t, however, know the complexity of the situation they were buying into, and inevitably faced disaster through no real fault of their own.

Next, there’s old Christine. I don’t pity her much, primarily because she had two guys after her. But she was tricked, I guess, by that Phantom fellow, so she earns a bit of my sentiment.

But what gets me the most is the fact that in the end, the one fellow who wanted a little compassion – a little love – in an otherwise dismal world loses out and succumbs to the reality that he has made for himself. I imagine that most folks view it as his realization of contentment in happiness of that person whom he loved. But I see it as a loss for him. The one emotion for which he has striven for during his entire lifetime was denied to him. I guess his misfortune stuck with me the most, as I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how I never, ever want to end up facing either his circumstances, or the depressing culmination to a life of heartbreak.

So, I return to my main assertion: the cinematic version of The Phantom of the Opera was a beautiful interpretation of a sad, sad story. Thus ends my girliest blog entry to date.

19,898 words later

It’s been exactly one year since I started to type my musings, and to this day the first entry into this blog is by far the funniest.

Tubular, dude

People give hot dogs a bad rap. I mean, they can’t help what they are; tubes of assorted meaty goodness are by their nature unable to alter their state of being.

Sure, they’re made of a bunch of different animals and wrapped into a tubular shape with some sort of edible and fleshy material. And some people may find fault in this scheme. Not I, however. I view the hot dog as one of God’s gifts to man: an unrelenting source of nourishment and disposal in one compact, easy to handle package of delight.

In thinking about it, the hot dog is actually an efficient form of disposal. What should we do with excess animal parts? If not pack them into commercially marketed tubes for public consumption, what other alternative is there? If anything, the Oscar Meyers and Hebrew Nationals of the world are saving the world from the sticky situation of not having anywhere to put its excess cow tongues.

Plus, hot dogs are really, really tasty. I feel bad for the two poor birds that were hit by the deli folk’s rock.

The last straw

What classifies being a man? Is it chopping down trees with one swift swing of an axe? Or could it have something to do with killing a man with your bare hands? Or should it be mandated that in order for you to be considered a real man, you slap one of those bumper stickers on the back of your pickup telling the whole world of your prayer habits?

While all of these qualities are indeed conducive to existing as a man, the evolution into that state of being is wholly different.

Here’s a tip from the manliest of them all: Don’t use straws.

Yeah, I said it. Radical, is it not? Picture this: You sit down at a table, order your drink (which, at this point in my life cannot be legally alcoholic), and in a few minutes the servestress (or whomever) returns with a mug of frosty Coca Cola and a little plastic tube wrapped oh-so-sanitarily in paper. By tossing the straw to the side and swigging from the glass with your bare lips, you are exposing yourself to a world of potential infection from prior uses. But in essence by merely chugging from that glass you’ve said to that viral disease, “I’m not afraid of you, because a real man shouldn’t be.”

Because exams are over, this is all I have to think of.

Beads!

Last night I walked alongside a float full of kids from my church in the Clearwater Fun n Sun Holiday Parade. As we trudged through downtown among the bourgeois huddled alongside Cleveland Avenue, I realized that I never again want to be a spectator at a parade.

Starting at Crest Lake Park and moving west toward the heart of Downtown, the types of people along the parade route were clearly discernible. First we started with a high population of Mexicans to either side. This minority gradient soon developed into a large African-American crowd screaming for the candies and beads we were so graciously tossing to the side. When our float approached the true bounds of downtown, most people were Caucasians who had reached their Mecca of candy and plastic jewelry from the ground following their long pilgrimage from the local trailer park. Please make note that I’ve nothing major against any of the aforementioned minorities, it’s just that their division clearly denotes the division in the parade route.

One aspect of parading that is a commonality between all areas of Clearwater is the hostility that everyone holds for stupid strings with little plastic balls on them. After greeting ninety-nine percent of the folks whom we passed with a holly jolly “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” we were assaulted with the same rude, one-word response: “Beads!”

I don’t fault most kids for this; they’re young and don’t know better. But when 30 year old Juanita or Shaprice can only eek out one word in response to our generosity, I take it personally. You’re not getting my beads.

That is, of course, unless you’re a hot chick.

Hello Sweetheart

Today at lunch as I walked to the office to pick up my exam exemption sheet, I passed a couple of girls who were sitting on a bench outside the teacher’s auditorium. Then, some fellow passed and one of these young ladies gave him a fond, “Hello sweetheart.” I’m assuming they were friends – who says that to strangers?

Anyway, the guy who walked past merely retorted with, “Hi.” I guess when guys aren’t as intimate as girls would like, they go into a tizzy. At least, this one did. The girl who gave the initial greeting yelled angrily at this poor boy as I walked by, “What?! I’m not good enough for a ‘Hello, sweetheart?!’”

In an attempt to calm this young lady’s reservations about her relationship with others (read: to shut her up), as I passed our eyes met and with a smirk about my face, I greeted her with a simple, yet refined, “Hello sweetheart,” and kept walking.

What’s sad is the fact that that’s about the most intimate I’ve ever been with a girl. Perhaps we will meet again, whereupon I can propose to her – I think I have an outside shot with this one.

Hiding behind a wall of illusion

Determined to read a book at least once in my life, I ordered from Amazon.com a piece about the possibility of John Lennon’s murderer being a “Manchurian candidate.” A strange possibility, indeed, but it seemed interesting enough to choose to do for a TOK presentation. Evidently, there are just too many coincidences surrounding the assassination and there were too little questions raised after the act to constitute a “lone nut” theory. Daily, I read this book with as much diligence as I had ever put toward reading. So, after about a month of reading (note that I read at about the rate of a mildly retarded sock puppet), I finished Bresler’s Who Killed John Lennon? – just in time to present to Dr. Yarborough the chilling facts surrounding John’s Death.

Ian, upon realizing that I had, against all odds, actually read 200 pages straight, gave to me R. Gary Patterson’s The Walrus Was Paul, a book that investigates all the legendary clues pointing to McCartney’s alleged death. Looking not only at album covers (i.e. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), but also at backward masking and lyrics with double meanings, this volume ever so delicately suggests that the Beatles pulled off the greatest practical joke in history, even if it wasn’t so obvious. Underneath the exquisite musical stylings of the pre-breakup Fab Four lies a whole other artistic realm that is really, really cool to read about. After two days on the interstate between Clearwater and Dillard, Georgia, I am proud to say that I successfully read this book too; that’s two books (which I highly recommend) within a year, a new personal record.

Presently, I am reading The Catcher in the Rye, the piece that Mark David Chapman’s controllers used to allegedly brainwash him into killing John Lennon – this may take a while.

Edit 2/13/2011: I just ran across this post while restoring my database. I remember when I wrote this over six years ago, I took great pride in the fact that if you take the first letter of each sentence backwards, it spells a secret message. I was a tricky kid.

I’m not dead

I’m currently writing from the toasty second bedroom of my grandparent’s house in Clayton, Georgia. Right now, it’s a balmy 42 degrees Fahrenheit outside and I couldn’t be happier to be indoors for once. My return to civilization as we know it in the smaller latitudes won’t come too soon.

The one thing that’s made this endeavor into the frigid recesses of the boonies is my long-awaited 40 gigabyte Apple iPod. I had been storing my meager funds ever since my car insurance had been payed off for the year. The “iPod Fund’s” initial contribution was my final paycheck from my job at the daycare this summer, but not much was added since, due primarily to a lack of resources.

My parents, being the divinely wonderful people they are, went ahead and satisfied my two-year longing with the arrival of the twenty fourth of November (my brother, Ian, was also instrumental in the planting of the iPod seed within their minds); twenty three hours of song transfer later, I had roughly twenty days of music to entertain myself with during this arduous pilgrimage to the north. It is the most fun you can have with your pants on and your blender off.

Even so, I can’t wait to be home tomorrow.

Repetitive inanity

Sure, it was funny the first time. But if I see that silly thing about the Republicans changing their symbol to the condom one more time, I’m liable to scream a shrill shriek so loud that every eardrum on God’s green earth will shatter in its wake.

Without purpose or direction

Not having work to do thoroughly baffles me. Every day, I’m assaulted with endless harassment from six teachers, not including the quazi-professing entity in Dr. Yarborough, Theory of Knowledge “teacher” extraordinaire.

So tonight, with no homework to do for the day following, I was lost; never before on a week night of this school year had I been blessed with this glorious confusion. What was I supposed to do with my time? I am a creature of habit that demands a mandate for any action taken.

So, I took advantage of my incurable boredom by wandering aimlessly around this twelve-by-twelve room in hopes of finding something worthwhile. And that’s what I surmise I’ll be doing for the next week.

What a beautiful, beautiful, set of circumstances.