Dear Blog 3: Blog Harder

Dear Blog,

Not 15 minutes ago I started writing a blog post about how I shouldn't need to wear a shirt, because it's summer. I started it on a whim after looking at myself in the mirror. But then I got to writing it and realized that while I would love to live in a society while I don't have to wear a shirt if it's hot and sunny out, I would hate to live in a society where fat sweaty old guys don't have to wear a shirt. Thus the blog post was deleted. First time too! All part of the creative process I suppose. Could it possibly be that I am learning to keep my nonsense to myself? The thought boggles the mind.

Anyway, thought I'd let you know that there's a chance that I am learning something from this whacked out internet process called blogging. Cool beans.

Later!
Jim

Dear Reader(s),

Dear Reader(s),

To the small number of ye who do pay attention to yonder blog every so often, first I would like to say thank you. Mainly for indulging my oddities, but also because I like the small feeling of assuredness that at least someone or ones, likes or at least doesn't completely dislike my writing. So Thanks for that. But now, like your coked out druggie ex-friend, I have a favor to ask you. No, no, it's not for 50 bucks that I promise to have back to you tomorrow but you'll never see again; Instead I was just wondering if you guy(s) and/or gal(s) would do me a solid, and leave me some feedback. I mean, I know a few of you guys have said to me that you've read good ole Nerdventures, and thought it was good, but good is kinda vague. It's like saying the ocean is big. So next time you're reading a blog post, or if you're perusing the archives for kicks, after you've finished reading, just drop a comment. If you read via my Facebook notes, it's easy, and if you do it on the blog, that's really helpful cause I can keep better track of it. Just make up a name, doesn't have to be your real one, and let me know what you thought. Your feedback will hopefully make my writing a little more entertaining. You help me, I help you. Kinda. But not really. No you cannot have 50 bucks!

Thanks,

Jim

Hitchhiking circa 2009

So last night I get a text to head over to a friend's house. I'm like, okay whatever. Grab the keys, say bye to Mom, hop in the car and I'm off.

Now before I go any further, when I drive, from the beginning of April till the end of October, I drive with my windows down, and my music bumping. Even if it's a little Bubbly. I'm not ashamed. So I'm driving, windows down, listening to some CD my sister had on, (Milkman? Apparently he's "the next Girl Talk." I don't know about that but I like what I heard,) and I'm not even to the end of my street when I see these girls walking in the middle of the road. I get a little closer, they part, and as I stop for the stop sign one girl yells out, "Hey! Wanna give us a ride?" I have never met these girls before in my life. They asked a random stranger to give them a ride somewhere. A moment's hesitation.

"Where're ya heading?"
"Over by the old high school."
"Sure, hop in."

Next thing I know, I've got 4 girls in my car, and I'm off again. They asked me my name, for safety reasons, to which I replied, "I'm Jim." To which they all replied in unison, "I'm ------." I didn't catch one of their names, as they all said them at the same time. So making conversation, I ask if they're at the high school, they said yes. I told them I'm at UMass Amherst to which one happily replied "Ooh! I'm applying there!" I do not envy her. I got in right before everyone else decided to go. They liked the music, so they couldn't have been that bad. But the funniest part, in my opinion, was when the girl riding shotgun asked, "Do you smoke?" "No, no I don't." "Oh, okay." Then not 30 seconds later the girl riding right behind me said, "Oh! Do you smoke?" "Nope. Sorry." "Oh , okay, cause we were gonna give you weed."

I laughed. By then, we had just gotten to the place they wanted to get dropped off. I pulled up, stopped the car, and they just hopped out chattering a chorus of "Thanks!" and "Bye!" Then I put on my blinker and off I went.

Hitchhiking is awesome. I've heard stories of guys who whenever they needed to get anywhere they'd just hitchhike. People'd see the thumb, pull over, and take 'em as far as was convenient. But in today's day and age, people get scared because of "the law" and because movies about hitchhiking axe murderers. But you know what? I think we should bring hitchhiking back. Axe murders won't pick up on people hitchhiking again for a little bit. Plus, people normally driving solo can pick someone up and hop in the carpool lane. I mean, it's definitely under the subject of "Going Green," right? Let's do it. Power to the People.

Tweetcast : Being an Extra

I know about zero of you guys out there follow my Twitter. But from time to time, I do tend to tweet whilst I am out on my various escapades. So I decided that instead of writing a huge blog post detailing every experience, I'll just use my tweets as jumping points and go from there. And even though these didn't actually show up on Twitter cause Twitters still broken from the other day, it still counts. Enjoy.

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5:48 - Just got to Essex with Beckett, who by the way is the worst Navigator ever. Getting shuttled over to the set now. Whooo!
So I asked Beckett to map out where we were going and print it out so I could find my way there. He looked at a map, but decided not to print it out. He's a dumbass. I got lost a few times, but eventually found the right way under my own power. They don't call me Prince Jim the Navigator for nothing. :D

7:21 - Just got a maroon collared shirt from wardrobe. Still haven't gotten anywhere near set. Whatevs I'm getting paid.
Upon arriving and checking in, we filled out a form, checked in with hair and makeup (who said we didn't need anything, because we were beautiful the way we looked (no they didn't)) and then went over to Wardrobe. Apparently my white shirt with a logo on it was a double no-no. Like a no-no Squared. So they gave me a shirt, and then I went back to my table with Beckett and we hung out.

8:06 - Drinking some jungle juice with strangers. Awesome.
While we were out checking in and stuff, some people had moved onto the other side of our table. Turned out they were like professional Extras, and one of 'em was an up an coming rapper named Kahdiak, and we talked for a bit, he showed us his music video on Youtube, and after he offered us some jungle juice. It was awesome.

9:15 - Been talking about movies and being an extra for the last hour. I am confident I could be a union extra in a high budget movie. Sweet.
After talking with him, we talked to his mom who was like a super extra. She'd been a cop, a criminal justice teacher, and now a professional extra. She told us all about how she got into being an extra, projects she's worked on, all sorts of cool shit. It was probably the most interesting point of the night.

10:01 - Finally going up to set.
After being there for almost 5 hours, they decided to let us move up to the beach where they were going to shoot the scene. It was a cool place, nice scenery, but by the time we got up there it was night, so the nice view over the lake was more, darkness lit up by giant ass spotlights. So Beckett, this kid we met Doug, and I picked a spot a bit back behind the camera and just chilled out for the night. They shot off some fireworks to entertain us, and filmed the cast watching it.


10:56 - David Spade, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler, Norm MacDonald, Maya Rudolph, Selma Hayek and Jim Redding. Awesome.
Yeah. It is an all-star cast. The director of the movie is the guy who played the head of the PGA in Happy Gilmore if you can remember back. Anywho, he was really funny and kept us entertained. Norm MacDonald took tons of pictures with people. Adam Sandler stood up and thanked us all for having us there at Essex (it was the last day of their shooting there), Rob Schneider and David Spade cracked some jokes, and Chris Rock kept running back and forth to watch the Red Sox - Yankee's game. They filmed us behind the cast cheering for the fireworks, now being represented by the director raising a flag on a pole, with flashing lights behind it. Then after that they had us pantomime cheering for fireworks while Adam and Selma Hayek recorded some dialog. All this lasted around two hours, and got really, really tiring after a while. We did get to sneak away a couple of times for free burgers though. That was awesome.

1:24 - Finally done shooting. Waiting in a nice long line then a nice trip home. Is Dunks open at 2AM?
Around 1 AM, they wrapped, and we all peaced back to the tent to check out. I had to turn in my maroon shirt before I could go though, so after waiting in that line, I had to wait in the other line. Bundles of fun. And we were just about asleep at that point, so we were weighing the possibility of there being an open Dunkin' Donuts. We couldn't find one, but we made it back from Essex to Marblehead in a mere 27 minutes. I went the Speed Limit the whole way. Promise.

Conclusion: I had a good time. I got paid 88 bucks, and I might be in the back of a scene in a movie. I was really tired by the end of it all, but I'd say it was definitely worth it. Next time I think I'll bring a book and my iPod though.

My Thoughts: Alcohol

First things first, I will not be talking about alcohol and myself, or anything related to that. Perhaps I'll cover that someday down the road.

Moving on, what I want to talk about is the Drinking Age. You hear it everywhere. "21 means 21." Well over in most parts of Europe "21 means you've been drinking for a while now." I personally believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. Or if I'm really hoping on hopes, lower.

Reason 1: You can vote, why can't you drink? Would somebody be able to guide me through the logic that an 18 Year Old has enough sense, reason, and maturity to be able to vote for the President of the United States along with other elected officials, as well as serve in the Armed Services, but isn't smart or reasonable enough to handle and willingly imbibe alcohol? I would have to say that's kind of messed up, wouldn't you?

Reason 2: College. Most people either went to college, visited a friend at college, heard about college from a friend, or just sat down and watched Animal House. The point being that everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what goes down at colleges in terms of parties and the like. Kids go off to college, and they become immersed in this subculture of a drinking hierarchy. Everyone goes to school during the week, then Friday night comes along, and everyone goes out to party. (Okay, not everybody, but enough that I make a valid point.) I know at UMass there's some crap statistic floating around on different posters around Campus saying "3 out of 4 UMass Students know how to have fun without Alcohol. Do you?" First of all; Yeah I do. Second, I also know that all four of those students probably know how to have fun with Alcohol too. Plus, that they get this statistics from mandatory classes that have to be taken after students get busted for Alcohol tends to make these statistics invalid or at the very least heavily skewed.

Back to my point though, Parents send their kids off to College knowing that they're going to be all around drinking, and that they're not going to be there to watch over their shoulder. So it's best to let them just drop into this new setting, not knowing how to drink, and let those Frat Boys show them how to do a keg stand, right? Were the drinking age to be dropped to 18, most students tend to turn 18 their senior year of High School, when they still live under their parents Sauron-like gaze, which would allow parents to set a good example. That couple of months should be long enough for parents to give their kids some idea of how to drink responsibly. And if you don't think so, what's wrong with you that you can't sit down for maybe 1 night and tell your kid that drinking too much alcohol is bad for them? All I'm saying is that kids are going to school and most likely will be drinking before the age of 21. If you'd like them to learn how to drink from Frat Boys and other excess drinkers and party goers, keep 21 21. But I think it'd be a lot more reasonable to have kids learn how to drink under their parents than under Brother Buster at Beta Tau Omega.

Reason 3: Not every kid is as dumb as you give them credit for. Lots of people tend to have a big argument about lowering the age as 18 year olds simply aren't smart enough to handle this huge responsibility. Well maybe if you treated it more like a responsibility and less like a privilege, less people would take it for granted. I'll put it like this. Hypothetically, if the age were lowered, maybe even lower than 18, and younger kids were taught that alcohol wasn't to be abused, but used in moderation, and were allowed to experience this in little steps as they got older, they wouldn't just have this idea of alcohol as the forbidden fruit that the American School and Police system make it out to be. I remember back in the day sitting in my 5th grade classroom with the D.A.R.E. officer coming in to tell us all about how drugs and alcohol are bad. He was basically like, "Well Alcohol is horrible and you should never use it ever, but when adults drink it, because we're old and mature and can handle it, it allows us to relax, and have a better time hanging out with friends." Or at least that's what I remember. Given that description, kids would be dumb to not try it to prove how mature they were. If you were to ease kids into it instead of making it out as this Golden Apple, I am positive that it would definitely lose most of the allure that young kids see in it nowadays. It's only a big deal because some jackhole decided to make it a big deal. If you treat your kid like he or she is adult enough to handle it, they'll do everything they can to prove to you that they are in my opinion.

I could go on, but I know that some people have their minds all made up, and will disagree with what I said, as I am set in my way about this. So if anyone cares to write back and explain how flawed I am in my thinking, I would thoroughly enjoy getting into a heated debate about it, but otherwise I've said my thoughts. Jim out.