Halloween
The last week of October was upon me. Fuck. Only DAYS separate me from one of the best holidays of the year... and I have not a clue in the land what my costume will be. For the previous 3 consecutive Halloweens I had participated in group costumes (2 out of 3 of which were pretty damn awesome.) Tetris... brilliant idea. Party in the USA... aka gay sailors... kind of a fail. Ms. Pacman and the Ghosts... simple idea, brilliant execution. But this year I didn't have a group. I was gonna be flyin' solo. I was kicking around ideas in my head.. should I just repeat a costume I had done in the past? ..should I try to come up with something new? My time was dwindling. I liked the idea of being original and making my own costume, preferably out of cheap cardboard, but WHAT?! And then... like a stroke of sheer genius... like a bolt of lightning PIERCING through a cloudy sky... it hit me. What's the one thing I love more than anything else in this world? What's the one thing I would drop everything for at this instant just to have in my grasp? OBVIOUSLY... a Weggo's Sub. BOOM! I'm the smartest man alive.
And thus I spent pretty much the entire day on October the 29th creating the costume that I would wear for one night and one night only before it would be retired into my Halloween Costume Hall of Fame:
I recreated the Wegman's sub bag as closely as I could using several less than ideal images that I found on the internet. I assumed that the actual words printed on the bag had something to do with the history of Wegman's so I paraphrased the story on my costume as follows:
The story of the Weggo’s Sub:
A long time ago a man by the name of Alexander Cornelius Jebediah Wegman (Weggo for short) found himself crossing the barren deserts of upstate NY. Without food or water for 70 days, Weggo was on the brink of death. Just as he was about to give up all hope and accept his fate, Weggo tripped over a small lamp sticking out of the sand. Figuring he had nothing to lose he picked it up and gave it a rub. A genie appeared before him and offered him 3 wishes.
Weggo’s said to the genie, “God Damn. I’m thirsty as shit. Can a brotha get some h20?” With a snap of his fingers the genie produced a 5 gallon jug of water which Weggo immediatey dumped over his head and drank his fill.
Weggo turned to the genie and said, “Well fuck. I’m hungry as a mother fucker… can a brotha get a sangwich? But don’t make it like a subway sandwich… those things suck balls. Make it like 10390443 times better.” With the snap of his fingers the genie produced the perfect sandwich. 14 inches long. Bread as fluffy as a fresh pillow. Meat piled to the sky. It was magical.
Weggo took one bite of the sub and then turned to the genie. “Holy monkey tits this is awesome! Aight, for my third wish I want to open a store and sell these son bitches so that everyone can enjoy.” With a snap of his fingers the genie created the first Wegmans in what is now Ra-Cha-Cha, NY. To this day the weggo's sub remains the best damn sandwich in the entire world.
True Story!
Tough Mudder
One of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. Definitely up there with the full length marathon that I ran (and I'm using the term 'ran' very loosely) 2 years before. Fist of all, the course was 12 miles in length. Meaning regardless of any obstacles put in your way, you still had to move your body 12 long miles. Then the obstacles... and holy FUCK were there obstacles. I won't go into crazy detail about each one but let me just say that many of the obstacles included a water element. Some of them you could avoid the water if you were skilled enough and completed the obstacle correctly (monkeybars that spanned over water, balance beam over water, ropes over water). Others you had no choice but to get in the water. There's really only one thing I can say about the water... now I know how Jack from 'Titanic' felt. Literally the coldest water I've EVER been in in my life. They dump buttloads of ice into all the water to make it literally freezing cold. Couldn't have been more than 40 degrees. I'm talkin' you get in the water and all other thoughts are just wiped from your brain. You dunk your head under and instantly your head is pounding and when you come up your gasping for air. The second you jump in your entire body is numb. Basically... cold as a mother fucker. A lot of the other obstacles were difficult but not quite as harsh as the water. There was the mud mile in which you had to trudge your way through a mud trench about 100 meters long. The mud was about knee deep but every now and then you'd step into a hidden pothole and lose your balance and just fall into the mud. I remember walking out of the mud mile literally covered from head to toe in mud. It was caked on my glasses, packed into my shoes, and even in my eyes. The worst part was that I couldn't even wipe it out of my eyes because every other part of your body was also covered with mud. Here's a couple shots of the mud mile:
BUT... we got a free t-shirt AND a free beer, thus making it all completely worth it.
Jersey
Spent the rest of that day and the next 4 days in the Jerz. That night I stayed at Alex's house and got a pleasant surprise when Sticky-dick, The Lord and Nate showed up. The next day I hung out at my dad's and spent the night with him and my step mom in MoTown. Then I traveled up to Wildtown and spent the next couple days with my mom and my friends from home. Overall a pretty relaxing couple of days.
NYC
On Thursday I headed into the city to meet up with Doug. Dropped my stuff at his place and went up to brooklyn to visit with my cousin and her 6 month old daughter. After a couple hours I headed back down to dougs and the drinking began. Met up with Aly Lee (and her dad) at some bar and got tanked. I tried to steal a shot from some waitress who was walking around selling them and she caught me. She made me fork over the money for one and threatened to call security on my and then she didn't even give me the shot. Whore. After we were sufficiently hammered Doug and I decided to go occupy Wall Street. I don't really remember leaving the bar but I remember being in the cab trying to find the occupiers when all of a sudden I felt like I was going to throw up. I was doing my best to hold it down for several minutes but eventually there was no stopping it. While we were cruising at about 40 or 50 mph down one of the highways along side the city I proceeded to open the door to the cab and just let it rip. Needless to say, the cab driver was not too thrilled about me opening the door while he was moving at such a high speed. We never ended up making it to occupy Wall Street. Instead we occupied another cab, then occupied the laundry room while my clothes were being cleaned, then I occupied a couch. Solid night.
Bean TownThe next day I hopped on the Bolt Bus from NYC up to Boston. I felt like shit the entire time. It was me and another black guy all the way in the back row of the bus. It's like.. can a brotha get some civil rights? Arrived in the Bean and was greeted by none other than Jason SibLid. Headed to his apt and chilled until the rest of the clan gathered (Holly, the Lord and Tot). We tried to go to Howl at the Moon but the line was quite long. While we waited Tot, the Lord and I decided to go visit a bar down the road to have a beer. Of course the bar was not quite as close as we had thought and by the time we got there and got a beer Jason and Holly were going into the other bar. Couldn't catch us standing in that entire line (which at this point was probably twice as long) all over again. So we chilled at that bar for a beer and a shot and then bounced to another bar to get a fishy bowl. As soon as we arrived i knew it was going to be trouble. There was a cover to get in which we not so successfully tried to bargain down to nothing. It wasn't even called a fish bowl it was called a dragon bowl (is that what it was?), it was overpriced as could be, and it wasn't even very good. As soon as we finished it we bounced. We got pizza on the way home but we had a small issue. None of us had a key to Jason's apt. Tom and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to make our way behind his building and scale the fire escapes/roofs and break into his apt. Well it WAS a brilliant idea until some dude saw us and yelled at us and then called the cops on us. Woops. "Hey, weh you tha guys climbin' up the fiyah escape? We don't even keh we just wanna know who it was." Umm yea that was us. Our b.
The next day Tom and I took a journey to the outskirts of boston to get a weggo's sub. It was the most heavenly thing on the planet. PS this was by far the largest weggo's I had ever been in. Case and point... the alcohol emporium (that word is spelled with an 'e' in case you were wondering). After weggo's tom and I went over to Lull's house to see if she was home. Her car was parked in the driveway but there was no sign of her. Again, we thought it would be a great idea to try and break in to the house, and once again we failed, but at least this time we didn't get the cops called on us. Eventually we gave up and bounced. We headed half way across the state to Nate's house where we would spend the rest of the evening drinking. Drinking games were played, vinyl was listened to, and skinny dipping in the atlantic ocean as a consequence of drinking the orange keystone took place. Went out to the bars for a bit and then came back at which point taylor got annoyed at tom and i for talking loudly on the phone and went upstairs to sleep on a hardwood floor in the hallway.
The next day was the final day of my trip. Tom and I strolled around the boston area for a while killing the time before I had to head to the airport. We stopped at BK before the airport and I got 5 sandwiches which i stuffed in my bag for the trip. Hottest girl ever sat two seats to my right on the plane but i couldn't really strike up conversation with her cuz there was a large lady in between us.
Thanksgiving
Went down to Alex's cousins Justin and Natalie's house in Huntington Beach for Thanksgiving. Meal was divine. We spend the evening traveling around the glove via the different beers we were drinking. We video chatted with the rest of the glowatz family and extended family on the east coast and took multiple vid chat shots (obviously). Then Justin and I continued drinking and played several games of halo before this happened:
San Fran
For the first weekend in December I headed up to Oakland to meet up with Jeff, Ally G and Liam for Jeff's Bday and the North Face Marathon Relay Endurance Challenge. Left LA around 7:30pm Friday night and got to Oakland around 12:15am. Less than 5 hours... hellz yes. Saturday morning we arose bright and early to head to the endurance challenge. The relay order was going to be Byard, Ally G, Me and then Jeff to close it out. 6.5ish miles each... no big deal. Except that 2 of the miles in the middle of the run were completely uphill. Yeah I was struggling... big time. I finished my leg in one hour exactly. Byard came in around 54min, Ally G was about an hour and 20min and Jeff was a blistering 49 minutes and 48 seconds... the second fastest time out of everyone who ran and the only other person to break 50 minutes. Impressive. Overall our team finished 9th out of 44 teams. Steamdogs!That night we partook in ye oldest of traditions... the mustachio bashio. Everyone was looking stunning rockin' their respective upper lip adornments... even the females. Two things of notable value over the course of the night... 1. Jeff and I ran train on the beer pong table... for like 10 straight games. and 2. Some guy who was WAY to old to be at the party showed up (had to be 50+ years old)... BUT, he was rockin' a mustache, which means he was immediately deemed acceptable and stayed the whole night.
Fight Night(s)
The following weekend I met up w/ Jeff's girl, EO, in LA to go out Friday night. We went out to an architecture party at some girl's apartment. I brought a slew of beers which I threw in the refrigerator upon arrival. At the end of the night when it was time to leave I still had a couple of the beers still in the fridge. As the other people I was with headed out the front door of the apartment and I went into the kitchen to grab my beers. As I was reaching into the fridge I accidentally knocked an empty glass bottle off the counter behind me. SMASH. I turn around and several people are looking at me doing the classic 'OOOOOO'. So I do the only respectable thing a person can do in that situation... I panic, abandon my beers, and run out the front door of the apartment. I found out the next day that a fight had broken out between some peeps later in the night and that the other people still at the apartment totally thought that the broken bottle was a result of the fight. Score.
The very next night I was out with some people in Santa Monica. The evening was winding down and some of the people I was with decided to leave. It was just Andrew Kalicki, another guy named Jamie and myself left at the bar. Jamie was kinda drunk and was looking to land a girl... perhaps looking a little TOO hard and his tactics may have been a bit sketchy. Anyway, he decided to slap some girls ass as she was walking by. Well, this girl happened to be with a very large gentleman... and this gentleman didn't particularly like the fact that some dude slapped his girls ass... so this large gentleman decided to do something about it. Before I knew it Jamie was getting choked out by this dude and was thrown to the ground and then out of nowhere like 8 other dudes swarmed in and shit got out of control. It was like some sort of mexican gang. Kalicki grabbed one guy and pushed him away. Some other dudes were kicking Jamie while he was on the ground. I tried to get over him and run some interference and stop the dudes from kicking him but some guy grabbed me from behind and threw me up against the bar. He was about to wail on me but some other people in the area intervened and stopped him. Soon after, the bouncers stepped in and everything was stopped. Jamie got up and was fine. The mexican gang was kicked out and were waiting out front for us to come out. We decided it would probably be best to go out the back haha. In the end no one was severely hurt and it made for a funny story.
Christmas weekend I literally did nothing. I may have left my apartment a total of 1 or 2 times from friday night to tuesday morning. Thus is the life of a Jew on Christmas.
Last night was NYE. Went out with my roomate (Tatenda), Rob Bowman, Marcus Poon and some of Poon's friends to do a little bar crawl in downtown LA. Poon's friends were quite bizarre. One of them would NOT stop talking about New Orleans for the entire cab ride to the bar. He also dropped the 'N' word several times and made more than one derogatory statements about black people while sitting right behind Tatenda. He asked me at least 5 times if I've ever been to any raves. So weird. Glad he never made it past the first bar and we didn't see him again for the rest of the night. Happy 2012 everyone.
In other news I recently got a promotion at work. I'm going to be doing 'Ink and Paint' for a couple projects that for the next month or two.
The pros:
-I get paid more money... fuck yeah.
-I get actual experience working on real world projects
-I no longer have to make coffee and deal with the micromanagement of the owner of the studio (probably most pumped about this one)
The cons:
I become completely freelance-based, which means that once the projects that i'm going to be working on are over and/or whenever the work slows down I could be out of a job. Hopefully at that point I can transition to another department at the studio. We'll see.
Either way, 2012 is already bringing me into a new phase of my life and is gearing up to unleash a slew of new experiences and hopefully new opportunities.
My New Years resolutions (in no particular order):
-Go to the gym/exercise more
-Blog more than I have in the past several months
-Learn more animation and continue to move forward career-wise
-Make more of an effort to stay connected with family and friends
-Compete in at least 3 running/endurance events
-Budget my money better/save more
-Be even more awesome than I already am (that one could be tough)
Bring it on 2012!
