Coolest RA ever!

I often question how I got to be an RA. Oh yeah, I didn't have my piercing or hair colored crazy. Oops. But I am really good at what I do and I take pride in the fact that I can be off the wall but still do good things for the people around me.

A resident showed up at my door because she lost her nose stud and she didn't know who else could help her. I did!

Movie Review

Burn After Reading

With an all stare cast that includes John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney a moviegoer would expect an award-winning plot and script. Burn After Reading wasn't nominated for any Oscars awards.

I'm a huge fan of total messed up movies, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine, and Closer all fall into that category. All are movies that involve either heart break, death, and/or sleeping around with other peoples spouses. Burn after reading has all of my favorite aspects for a movie but fell short on any true meaning.

There is meaning in American Beauty. Everyone is looking for something beautiful in there lives where decay has replaced beauty. One boy in the movie manages to find beauty in everything, including garbage. The line at the end, when Lester is talking about how it feels to have died, he says “but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...” That is meaningful, some times you just need to breath.

Eternal Sunshine is another movie that had deep meaning. The big question brought on by this movie is “Would you erase your past memories?” This movie shows us what would happen if we did and the life lesson is – we need our past. Our past makes us who we are today and if erase it we are doomed to repeat it.

I don't believe in movies with happy endings because real life is in high demand yet short supply of happy endings. I want movies that give me the real life pain that is floating around other people’s lives. I can either sympathize with movies like that or fell good that my own life isn't like that. Burn After Reading has no happy ending but falls short on being a movie one can relate to.

People are sleeping around with each other and everyone is within 6 degrees of one another and this can be related to. Innocent people getting killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and this can be related to. There was a group of men that belonged to some government group who held no reliance to the plot of the movie and that could not be related to.

The opening scene that had the men in suits added to the movie but the rest of the scenes with them in it didn't. The movie would have made more sense and been easier for me to follow if they had cut the men in suits out of it completely.

This could have been a great movie. It held all the elements that I enjoy. It also held those men in suits that didn’t add to the plot of the movie at all. Burn After Reading had the ability to have some great and profound meaning but it choose not to. A movie that is as serious as this should have some poetic meaning or it should have been a comedy.


The movie trailer for this movie made it seem like it would be funny. But all of the funny scenes were in the trailer. This is something of a problem in the movie industry.

This is how we do it

One thing I love and will miss about Nebraska is that we are people who get to the point. I ask a question, I get a direct answer that should be under 3 sentences long, any longer then that and a person is putting way to much detail into the answer and the point is lost.

Remember it was the blue number 8 that was important. Details about the cage were not, hence there were no details about the cage. Two weeks later and I still want to know why there was a blue number 8 on a white rabbit. I don't even know if I was told the rabbit was white or if the detail about the color of the rabbit was left out. It doesn't matter because it was all about a blue number 8 on the back of a rabbit. All other details can be omitted because they don't matter.

We know a lot about wind here in Nebraska and have had it with the wind. Windbags beware! We have had enough.

We are a culture that, even us big city boys and girls, work hard and get to the point. The mentality of people here in the breadbasket is of a hard working life. We are a culture based on getting up before dawn to grab some breakfast so we can be out working the fields by dawn because you never know when the weather will change and a whole day of work will be lost.

We need to get to the point because there isn't time to waste. There might be a freak snow storm in the middle of June in the next hour and a Nebraskan can get much done in an hour. Ok, so we are not all like that but that is our culture. West coast culture is laid back, and Seattle is the most laid back city in all of America, Miami is the heart of the party, New York never sleeps, LA is full of phonies, Texas is the home of the cowboy, and in the midwest we get to the point.

When I start dealing with people who are not from the midwest I become very confused and disorientated because they just keep talking and talking and talking and I can't remember what they are talking about or even the question I asked because I asked a question then they started talking and it had nothing to do with the question I asked, Oh I remember the question, but yeah they haven't said anything that has to do with the information I was looking for. Don't get me wrong, I have issues articulating myself sometimes, but if that was the case then most people ask me to clarify. They don't just start talking.

Not sure how I'm going to survive when I move out west. It will be rough.

VH1 to mush my mind

Thank god I have VH1 to warp my mind in the hours before sunrise. The one's where I'm not yet awake, runny on a treadmill, and primed for mind control.

First though, I saw a PC commercial this morning, yes on VH1, where the guy's opinion, "Mac's are about the aesthetics, I don't think of them for computing power." WTF!? this guy has obviously never tried to run InDesign and PhotoShop at the same time on PC. News Flash - runs as fast as a dead dog.

"Love me, hate me, say what you want about me
But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to
if you seek Amy"

I hate Britney Spears. She is a white trash ho bag. But god damn it if her songs aren't catchy. That song has now been in my mind for 3 hours. I'll be singing it when I go to bed.

Fade in - "I don't care just what you think as long as it's about me."

At 6am it all flows into without falling out again. VH1 also brings about most of the men on my top 10 list of hotties. Thank you VH1; Eminem just made the list. Ha! Love him or hate him, he is a genius. Scary, right? But true. Go, go rockstar!

VH1 pop culture, TV induced ADD, everybody dance now!

I would also like to point out in my ADD ramblings that in the movie Seven Pounds, Will Smith is not an IRS agent. Without giving it away anything important, he steals his brothers identity as an IRS agent. Had to get that out there.

At the Drive-in

I love working at movie theaters but my favorite was the drive in. When I started there were only two rows of poles with speakers left. But the mike I used to make the pizza announcement was strait out of the 50's. The theater opened in the 50's and I bet it was the original mike. It also opened 10 days late because of bad weather, go figure.

I hate going to bed after 10pm and this job would keep me out until 2am some days, but I loved it. I would set my alarm and go to sleep after the other employees had gone. If anything happened to the film the alarm was loud enough to wake me up. I had the fun job of being the projectionist, everyone else gets to leave after the first movie and I'm there by myself the rest of the night. My boss's back yard was adjacent to the lot and he would stay up until I had left.

If I didn't feel like putting up with customers I would wonder around the lot, if it was hot I would go inside. Along with being the projectionist I was also called a "lot manager". I would get to kick people off the lot if they were doing things they were pissing me off.

The joys of any job, where to start. How about with the stupid phone calls.
Person: What time does the movie start?
Me: As soon as it starts getting dark.
Person: What time is that?

First I'll point out that the screens for a drive-in are always on the West side of the lot. Durf, lets think about this. Sun sets in the west, if sun is setting while screen is on west side of lot then - shadow is cast on side that is being watched and movie can start at dusk instead of after full sun set. No way! I have had to spell this out for many a people. This really should be common sense.

Now lets factor in time of sun set, is it cloudy, how cloudy is it (sometimes clouds would cause the movie to start later, no I won't explain it), how dark is the movie being shown (dark movies have to start later, no I won't explain this either), and this leads to there being a 20-30 minute range of when I could start a movie. All of this is common sense for me before I started!

So when people call and ask what time the movie starts, I'm sorry but it's really hard to tell. Ok that was a complete lie because by the end of my first summer I had the art of knowing when a movie would start perfected. I would know at least 30 minutes in advance when it would start. But if someone wants to ask what time does it get dark, I'm not releasing any more information.

Yes we play movies in the rain, we only stop if the power goes out. I get to pull the giant metal poll off the roof even when the sky is full of lighting. Yeah!

Creapy stuff happens too.

There was the night that I had to ask a man to leave because we were closed. He was high on something and I was alone. He just said, "oh, ok" and left, but really, I'm not that big of a person. What if he had been crazy?

Then one night, just last year, I was working at the other theater, the 8 plex, and got a call, "the drive in was blow away by a tornado, you don't need to come to work." Hellz yeah! I get the night off! I wouldn't have been excited if I would have known that they weren't going to fix it. I thought I was getting one or two nights off at the most, turned out to be the whole summer. Sad days. About 6 weeks later I drove by and it was nothing but an empty lot, except the box office which is steel polled and cemented into the ground, I still don't think they figured out how to get it out. I drove by and one lone tear rolled down my face.

My boss's wife whom I get along with great, most people don't, her back yard is attached and I know it affected her greatly when it was taken away. It affected all of us here in Kearney that actually attended it. The stories I heard from people who use to tell us about how their first date was at the drive-in, and I won't get to hear those stories anymore.

It's like losing a friend that I actually liked.

Losing the Magick

I remember the last time Satan handed me a glass of ice water. It all started when I went out to get the mail and found my mailbox on fire. Although it happens from time to time, it is shocking none the less. After getting my mailbox put out, I find the singed red envelope. On the front it only says: To Jenny. I already know what's inside; however, I open it anyway, it's an invitation to one of Lucifer's dinner parties. Since he knows I always show up, there is no need to RSVP.

The moment I step on his front porch he swings open the door. He never says a word to me; he doesn't have to, because we can read each other like a book. I know he is looking over my attire, inspecting it. He seems to approve of my choice for the evening, for it is a red halter dress, knee length, with a scooping neck. He kisses my cheek as I walk through the door. He even holds my hand all the way to the table where he seats me between Gandhi and John F. Kennedy. Though they are interesting men, it is the Man in Black, brother of Jeordie White, who has captured my attention. He is right across the table from me; consequently, when we hold up our goblets of dragon blood wine, our eyes meet and hold a second to long.

Dinner seems to drag on, for on one side of me JFK tries to hold my attention with politics and on the other Gandhi tries with religion. Although I have been invited as Lucifer's concubine, all I want to do is talk to the Man in Black. Not only does he carry a sheaf of arrows but he also has a long samurai sword at his side. On his left arm he wears a gauntlet made of black leather with silver pyramid studs on it. Although his skin is pale, you can see the fatigued look in his eyes from travel. As I watch his long black hair shining in the light, Satan walks up and hands me a glass of ice water. Lucifer pays no attention to my wandering eyes.

After dinner I find myself sitting on a red velvet couch talking to the Man in Black. He is talking about the magic held in his gauntlet and how he uses it as his shield. He has been fighting demons in the outer-boundaries and he has come here tonight to find his replacement. At this point in the conversation he looks at me. Somehow I know what is coming as he hands me his sword and gauntlet, I am to replace him. I slip on the gauntlet; it fits perfectly as if made for me. My other hand finds the sword and starts swinging it as if I have been doing it my whole life. I can feel the magic that runs through the items I am holding and it starts to penetrate my veins.

My phone starts to ring. I wake up and look around my shoe box of an apartment with its 1970's ghetto fabulous wood paneled walls. At that moment I realize that magic no longer exist in this world. The fairytales of Merlin, pixies, and Rapunzel are lies. I can feel a part of myself die as this thought takes hold of my mind. I feel silly as a tear rolls down my cheek but I know deep down inside that this is a realization that would cripple the strongest of minds.

Throw away age

The age of the throw away culture. My lease on my car was up so what did I do, I leased a new car. Damn it is a nice car. Push button start, sunroof, Bluetooth for my phone, Bose speakers, plays MP3’s, quite inside and out. Graduating, new guy, new car, new city, new hair cut, does this give way to a new life?

This is not the first time I have up and relocated, leaving everything behind. I believe in reinventing myself everyday, break up the monotony. When you spend 16+ hours a day with yourself it can get relatively boring if you don’t mix it up. Those who don’t get board with themselves are too simple or drama addicts.

It has now been five years in the same town, with the same people, the same job, the same old shit day in and day out. I don’t understand how people do this for 20 years at a time. Going to the same job, living in the same house, raising kids, dropping them off at school everyday for 12 years.

Betzy. She is my best friend but completely opposite of me. No matter what, I’ll keep her in my life. How we ever ended up as friends is beyond me. Her number one goal in life was to be mom. I was floored. I would never. I only found this out when the kid was three. She got her associates degree in something or another, worked at a dead end job at an insurance claims place, only left because she got laid off, now works at a hospital in the insurance department. She will never leave this job.

She bought a house, which means she will never leave Grand Island. Betzy is rooted down, happy as a clam. This leads to some crazy conversations. I’ll call her and ask for advice. She is good with advice, will tell me how she sees it, and she is right even when I don’t want to hear it. But she put down roots and my bohemian/gypsy blood cause me to spread my wings and fly away. Betzy keeps me grounded, that’s why I love her, even if we don’t see eye to eye. We never do.

Others have stated that they wish they could have my gypsy nature but they don’t know the sacrifice that it takes. Being able to move to a new town and start a new life is amazing but finding another whose wings fly the same path is virtually impossible. The probability of finding that person who I can fall asleep with every night and still get to kiss them good morning is boarding on nonexistent. Betzy promises me it will happen when I settle down. But I can’t settle down and the crushing weight that truth is loneliness.

This ability to throw it all away and live the gypsy life comes from the deep seeded need to not end up like my parents. They were from the age of collecting, from a time where you didn’t waste anything. I refuse to collect junk that I don’t use. This includes people, places, and things. Remember that if you don’t use it, throw it away. Embrace the throw away age!

So off to San Francisco to my new school, new apartment, new roommate, with my new car, new hair, to start a whole new life. And I get to do it all by myself. The choices I make will determine where my path leads but when I jump into my car and start driving westward that path will be as foggy as a San Francisco morning.