Happy Friday: Episode V

THE COLORING BOOK... v

^ that's the first hit on an image search for "happy friday". how awesome is that?

also, if there's a sentence/paragraph that doens't make sense.. comment about it. the paste kept fucking up for some reason. i think i sorted it all out but im not positive.

THE BOXING RING THAT MOVED

Last Friday (like a week ago Friday) – I volunteered to help this guy named Phil Moore move a boxing ring because he’s a really cool guy and he was coordinating the only “golden gloves” in this part of the world. He told me to meet him at the gym I always work out at – it’s called SBGI (Straight Blast Gym International) as soon as I was done at my job. So I did.. or I tried to. He’d said that he would definitely be there because they had to load up the boxing ring, which is no small feat. I got to SBGI at about 1:30 – which was well within the time frame that he gave me, but when I went inside, there was no Phil. What’s more, there was no ring. I guess it just decided to walk out on its own or something? I dunno, so I was asked one of the other guys that works at SBGI where Phil was and he started laughing, like

“Dude you missed him, he already took it over to the Outlaw Inn, you could probably still help him unload it though.”

-- Okay, where is that place? I’ve never heard of it before

"oh, it's by Rosaurs"

-- um.. where is Rosaurs?

“it’s sorta over that way, you can’t miss it” *and he gestured here something between a point and a wave*

Thanks man, super helpful. Especially since main street spits into two different streets – North and South. And of course I managed to forget the name of the place I was going to while I was running *that way* -- so there I am, running in sorta the right way, with no idea what the place was called, looking off both sides for a place that I couldn’t miss. Eventually I realized that I was not going to find it. And that if I kept running I would definitely just miss it and have to turn around. So I was like “shit, what the hell do I do now, I can’t go back to SBGI, they would just tell me the same thing they said last time, and it wouldn’t really help at all. I surveyed my surroundings and decided to try a gas station because I remembered seeing a guy borrow a phone from a gas station on TV once. Sure enough, they had a phone that they didn’t mind me using – so I called and found out that I was literally across the street from where I needed to be. Figures. Oh, and the best part is that after I’d hung up the cashier lady was like “oh, are you going to the golden gloves?” and I was like yeah.. and she was like “oh well I could have told you where that was.

THE REGS (REVOLUTION EVER GROWING STRONGER)

So I thought I’d throw some links in here and ask anyone reading this (as a favor) to check it out. If you don’t like it, so be it. But if you do, then tell everyone you know about it. Can you do that? Please? Like actually, think about it – how often is it that you have the chance to actively help someone else pursue their dreams? You’d probably get on santa’s nice list.Okay, so I thought I’d do a bit of a special section this week because one of my friends got together with another couple of my friends and made a band. The crazy thing is that they’re actually good. They just made a demo with 17 tracks on it and threw it up on youtube and are trying to get a label.

Here’re some links to my favorite songs. check ‘em out:

Animosity – far and away my favorite track – it’s about his ex http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DA4envdCkg

It’s evil if you make it (why we fight) – my other favorite track.. the beat is ill, and his lyrics are awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3knr7OqRVA

The Riot Act – Raymond, I love it when you play piano. What is love but genuine lust? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIGqvvxywgE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Worriless man – kind of a jazz/blues feel to this track, but still good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4yQ_r8N8bI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Hip Hop Apocalypse Remix – gotta say, molly has a great voice. I think this track needs to be reworked a little bit though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iYpiS4pN8M&feature=BF&list=ULJaZV4riERW8&index=5

HOW TO EXPAND YOUR MUSIC TASTES

While I’m on the subject of music that’s awesome – I thought I’d throw in a little section on how to expand your music tastes so that you can listen to all that awesome stuff in your itunes that you’ve never listened to before. (and that you really can’t remember how the hell it even got into your itunes). Anyway, I developed this technique recently, and it’s worked pretty well for me. Step 1: delete everything on your ipod. It’s not that bad, just throw all your playlists onto itunes so that you can resync it later. Step II: fill your ipod up with music that you have never gotten around to listening to (like all that awesome reggae you got from somebody last year) Step III: take the time to go through and slowly listen to all the albums that you just threw on your ipod, or just put your ipod on shuffle. And yeah, you’ll find a bunch of songs that you fall in love with that you didn’t know existed.

Or, there is an alternative option if that doesn’t sound like you’re style. You can always just listen to the REGS and tell your friends about them. That would certainly help expand your music taste.

GLOVE SAMPLES

I’m slowly starting to realize a couple of things about life. First of all, I’m learning that I need to learn discretion sometimes. I was walking through the grocery store with a friend of mine this past week explaining the irony to him that everyone who attends FVCC is stupid. It’s ironic because the school is called flathead valley community college. Like they all have flat heads because they’re stupid. (credits to Andrew Best for noticing that irony by the way – he pointed it out to me and I promptly told all of my friends about it). Anyway, I was explaining this irony to him when a girl who looked to be 19 walked by carrying a child. Kalispell is quite renowned for 3 things: its quirky, granola, telemark skiers, its meth-heads, and its underage, pregnant girls. I swear that something on the order of 60% of girls over the age of 18 have children. It’s honestly depressing, most of the girls my age already have kids. We actually play a people-watching game sometimes called “mom or sister?” the gameplay is pretty intuitive. So that night in the store, I turned to my friend and was like “hey man, you know why I hate Kalispell? Because that’s her kid” and he thinks that she heard me.. she gave us a look and walked away. She probably heard me.

That same night at the grocery store taught me another life lesson – what you put out to people determines what you get back. For example, if you are very open about how much you enjoy the free samples in grocery stores and joke with the people working the sample booths about how you’re going to trade clothes with your friend and then come back for more so that they don’t recognize you, sometimes you get extra samples. This one old lady, bless her soul, actually told me to take all of her samples. She was like “go ahead, fill up your pockets” then, when I came back around later she gave me a plastic glove (not the gross latex ones) to use as a little baggy and pack full of samples to take home with me. Then, and this is the best part, she asked me to put the baggies in my pocket and keep them out of sight. Somehow, I think I actually may have managed to get a worker to help me shoplift. And all I was doing was being honest about how awesome free food is. Since adopting this mentality of openly scavenging food, I’ve been tipped off about free cake, free popcorn, more free cake, and free scones. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes food, but doesn’t like paying for it.

THE COLORING BOOK THAT YOU ANTICIPATED LAST WEEK

Maybe you noticed last week that I titled the note “in anticipation of the coloring book” that’s because I knew I was going to be writing about the coloring book this week, and that it was going to be fucking awesome. And I am. And it was. My roommate and I have been contemplating/developing a new style of beard for approximately 2 months now. We dubbed it the “coloring book” because you shave the inside part of your beard but leave the outside lines – it ends up framing your face like lines that you’re supposed to color in. it also ends up looking absolutely repulsive. Like heinously so. The best part is that I kept it for a day and went out in public.. nobody said anything to me about it, although one guy did start a conversation with me at the thrift store about clothes. I guess I looked gross enough to be one of his kind. Anyway, we took some pictures of it and a video of people’s reactions. i’ll put the pictures up, but the video is not legit to post.. somehow there was nudity. Like it definitely wasn’t my intent, but I guess my face blew their fucking clothes off? Or maybe one of my friends just doesn’t know how to close the door when he goes to the bathroom.

profile picture status. but not really.

METH. NOT EVEN ONCE.

Across the street from us there are these apartments. We collectively call them “Meth Row” because everyone in Montana does meth, especially the kind of people who live in Meth Row. Well, last week after dinner, I was standing in the kitchen when I noticed some grizzled old man come out of his meth den and walk across the street to stand on our sidewalk. He stayed there for about 30 seconds.. or maybe a minute before walking back into his house. Then he came back out another minute later with two shovels (clue I that he’s a tweaker), walked back across the street and started shoveling the snow berms next to our sidewalk. Berms are giant mound-build-ups that are created on the side of the road (but not on the sidewalk) by the snow-plow machine. Nobody ever shovels them. Ever. It’s a complete waste of time because they only ever occur in space that’s not used for anything. Moreover, even if you were to shovel them because you’re a crazy meth head with nothing better to do, the plow would just build them back up the next day. It’s the Houston equivalent of taking a bucket and trying to get all the water out of the gutters on the side of the street in the middle of a rain-storm. Normal people just don’t do that kind of stuff. Anyway, I told everyone in my house about the crazy guy shoveling our berms for us and we all stood around watching him until he looked up and noticed us. Then Hunter (being the southern gentleman he is) saw it fit to go talk to the guy. Well he seemed nice enough like “yeah, I dunno man, I just get bored sometimes so I thought I’d shovel your walk.” ß clue II. Then I went outside and was like “well that’s awful nice of you, wanna come over for dinner on Wednesday at 6 PM?” and said sure. 6 o’clock Wednesday came and went but the guy didn’t show and we haven’t seen him since.

3-WAY STOPS

To anyone who reads this on a regular basis.. do you remember the section I did on how I caused a traffic jam? Yeah? Well, I did some more investigating, and it turns out that it wasn’t really my fault. Kalispell just simply does not understand the way that traffic works. 3 way stops on a 4-way street do not work. They make this happen:

That thing in the middle is an accident. I didn’t know how else to draw it. Anyway, the intersection that I caused a traffic jam at always seems to be jammed up. So I decided to do some casual snooping in order to determine the real cause of the perpetual gridlock. Turns out that it is only has 3 stop signs. Every time I go past the intersection, I always double check.. thinking that I must have missed something.. that maybe one of the streets is one way. Or even that one of the streets gets significantly more traffic than the other three combined. But none of those things are ever true.

PARTY AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE

Last Friday, a bunch of the kids from my house went to some kind of dance/performance at a local coffee shop with over 100 people at it. (that’s a LOT of people in a small town.. like its actually about 1% of the entire population for miles around)anyway, one of the kids from my house that went decided to invite over a couple girls that we’ve been hanging out with lately.. and somehow the word got out that there was a party at our house. Which is weird because it’s a halfway house… So at 10:45, 15 people show up on our doorstep. We can’t have people over after 11, so any partying was going to be a bit short-lived. Eventually, we got rid of them, but no sooner do they walk out the door than some other guy that we’ve never even met before shows up like “heyyy, I heard there was a little ‘get together’ here” we told him there wasn’t really anything, but he persisted like “oh, well can I just come in for a second” and we were like “dude everybody else is gone already. Get outta here” he left after that. I guess word gets around in a small town. Parties are big news, even when they’re at the halfway house.

THE WEB