Category Archives: pop culture

I’m Searching for a River…

My dear friend VerNonica Dorothy Penny Andersen would instantly know what I’m talking about. But having seen the name I just typed for her, she would also instantly dropkick me to the ground too.

So yes, the “I’m Searching for a River” story. It’s an oldie from my high school days. Back in those golden days of yore, Roni and I would hang out quite a bit, especially with her family, who were just very cool people that exposed me to a lot of interesting Southern California stuff, mainly the awesomeness of the Sunset Strip, Hollywood, UCLA (I can’t deny that Roni’s mom’s absolute love of UCLA was a huge factor in my desire to go there), Malibu, Palm Springs, Tower Records, seeing movies properly, LaserDiscs (and ultimately to DVD)… it was a great time to be alive. That sounds silly, I know, but my last two years of high school were a LOT of fun. Anyways, that was just setup to this story – one day we were driving around when this groovy song came on over the radio, with a really nice beat and this great female voice singing about true love, and she kept singing that “Rivvveehhhh, I’m searchin’ for a Rivvvvehhhh, someone to set my heart free…..Riveh! IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII am searchin’ for a Rivvehhhhhh…..” Yes, I was totally in tune with this great R&B-flavored song and totally understood the metaphor of looking for a river and how that could be interpreted as love….. and Yes, I was a total retard who apparently needed to get his hearing checked! Because of course I’m referring to the song called “Real Love” by Mary J. Blige. And the song suddenly made so much more sense when Roni explained what the actual lyrics were…of course after she finally stopped laughing at me.

Why am I telling you this? Because the last few weeks have made me realize that I am certainly looking for more than just flings and such. If you can’t deal with these things, then feel free to go to the next paragraph. I’m obviously not going to get into graphic detail here, but I’ve just realized that I really do want to be in a relationship. Dating gets old and I really don’t think I have the patience to keep going on first dates. There have been a few things that have happened in the past month that have made me really think about who I am and what I am looking for and what I am expecting from others. There’s one guy who doesn’t have the time of day for me and is pretty much way more horrible than I am at communicating yet for some stupid reason I can’t get over him. Then there’s another who is just a great guy but I really just want to have him as a good friend as I really need those as well as a relationship, and frankly, having good friends is almost more important to me than the other stuff. I don’t know, just writing this still makes me realize how confused in the head I am about things. I’m worse than a girl I think. I think I know what I want but let’s be honest, I think I’m also quite clueless still when it comes to this stuff. I’ve obviously omitted a lot of the details here, especially with regards to the guy who is worse at communicating than I am. That whole experience has left me seriously messed in the head as I have no idea what is going on with him. Okay, I’m rambling. But this has been some of the stuff that has taken up quite a bit of my free time (the little I have) and has left me feeling kinda apathetic about the whole dating thing.

As promised, no more talk about my personal life. How about some pictures from my iPhone?

Jan 08 / Dec 07 – Random pics from my iPhone

Random thoughts on other things that have been going on in the past two weeks:

  • I saw Cloverfield this past weekend with Greg. AWESOME. I definitely enjoyed it more knowing where all that stuff actually was and having been to most of those places myself. Great disaster/monster movie that ended just as it should have. Lily Lives!
  • I also got drunk this past weekend after Cloverfield and after getting home. Ugh. Not a good idea to start with Beer and completely ignore the sage advice: “Liquor before Beer never Fear; Beer Before Liquor Never Sicker” I tend to get goofy, horny, and stupid all rolled up in one obnoxious package and I say and do things I really have no business doing. It’s certainly fun to be drunk but not fun to pay the price the next morning. Luckily no puking, just discomfort and realization.
  • Watched the movie ‘Once’ on DVD. Great boy-meets-girl-he-can’t-have-but-they-have-an-incredible-connection movie with amazing songs sung by the two main characters. It’s termed a musical but it’s definitely a different take on a musical. The songs (not ‘musical’-y, very much a folk/rock feel to them) are so beautiful and the final scene of the movie brings tears to your eyes due to a combination of the song that is playing (Falling Slowly, a genius song I must say) and the last lingering gaze we have of one of the stars. Go rent it.
  • Also saw ‘Million Dollar Baby’ a few weeks back and man that was depressing.
  • Work has been cool. I’m definitely doing pretty well there and am known as the King of Reports. Well, maybe not, but that’s the title I’ve given myself so I’m cool with it.
  • Shelly has returned and it’s so nice to have her back. Just having someone to talk to at the end of the day is such a nice thing. Especially after the month before with having no one to talk to!
  • I went to Mohegan Sun this past weekend because I could no longer keep away from the tables. It’s an amazingly huge casino and while I of course didn’t win money at craps, I was glad to have at least gotten to play. Next time though I need to spend the night as going up and back in the same day is 5 hours of driving and I was frickin’ exhausted by the time I got back.

Other than that, just a lot of me me me in terms of what’s been occupying my time. Hope you’re all doing well and I will probably not be updating till I get back from COLORADO!!!!!! Yay – I’m going back to go to SnoFest and to see all my wonderful friends!!!! I can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!

101 Critical Days of Hobie (T-101)

The Air Force has the 101 Critical Days of Summer – I myself, well, I have the 101 Critical Days of Hobie!

This is it people – I am almost a double digit midget, meaning I am almost down to less than ONE HUNDRED days until I become a Mister. That’s ridiculous, I tell you. You can go back to when I was doing this green countdown from 365 days! And now I’m nearly 100 days out. It’s almost…nervewracking.

Okay, so I didn’t have much to write, but I thought the 101 Days thing was catchy. I can’t believe that all my primetime shows are ending for the summer: Ugly Betty, Survivor, 24 (fortunately on that one), How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs….and my beloved Veronica Mars is actually ending, for good. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I do have some pretty ‘exciting’ projects in store for this weekend – which is actually going to be a FIVE DAY weekend, since I am taking Thursday off in addition to getting Friday off as an AFSPC family day and of course, Memorial Day. What projects you ask? Well, I’m finally going to plunge in and redo my bathroom: I’ve picked up half of the items (the new faucet, light fixture, vinyl tiles, toilet paper holder and hand towel holder – also replaced my towel bar this past weekend when the old one fell off) and will get the rest tomorrow (new vanity and sink combo, paint, molding for the baseboards and a chair rail, a mirror and destruction tools – can you say CROWBAR?). My other project: installing a new car stereo that will seriously kick ass, as it’s fully iPod functional and that is going to rock my world. It will be a busy weekend!

Combine that with seeing Shrek the Third on Thursday night (after going to the Royal Gorge with my folks during the day) and then seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End on Saturday night, and you can’t say I’ll be bored!

I don’t know if you’ve been following Jenny’s blog lately, but that girl has been having some serious bad luck in May – yet while I’m feeling bad for her, she has a way of telling her stories that makes you laugh out loud. Her car literally got run over yesterday. How does that happen? My crazy story for the day: lately, every afternoon Colorado Springs gets a crazy storm in; this week, the storms have gotten ridiculously crazy, with loads of rain and starting yesterday and continuing today, hail. Oh joy. Yesterday afternoon, I actually had to wait inside the building until the hail had died down and the lightning had moved on – since we’re a thousand feet higher than the city, we are basically in the clouds. And with that fact, the lightning is MUCH closer and MUCH scarier. Today I thought there was a lull, so I walked my happy ass down to the lower parking lot super fast. As I got down to that lot though, I started hearing a strange tapping noise on the ground. I look around and see a white gumball hit the ground. That’s strange. Then there’s another….and another, and suddenly I realize I’m getting PELTED by white gumballs which AREN’T white gumballs – they’re perfectly round bullets of ice! Hailstorms are crazy. I run to my car and listen to the POUNDING noise of my car being pelted with ice; then as I’m trying to drive down to the city level, the rain gets so heavy and loud to a point I’ve not witnessed in a LONG time. And about 10 minutes later, the storm is over. Crazy Colorado weather.

Got Myself a Nintendo Wii (T-180)

It was one of those very rare right-place right-time things!

So there I was on Saturday afternoon – we (Susan, Jeff, Jeremy and I) had just finished going to Lowe’s to buy some paint and we were now at the fun part of the day: going to Best Buy to look around! I didn’t see any DVDs I wanted, so I headed to music – nothing there struck my fancy either! I was starting to get the panic sweats….what if there was NOTHING I wanted at Best Buy???? Preposterous. So I headed over to Video Games and saw that again, the Wii section had games and accessories, but no console. Kyle had scored a Wii this past week (lucky bastard), and while I was jealous, I also realized I could wait…unless opportunity struck. I then walked over to the home electronics section and I saw the under-the-counter kitchen DVD player I’ve been coveting for nearly 2 years – and while I saw that they had it in stock, I was about to pass on it until I saw that it was $50 off! A quick mental debate erupted and just as quickly ended as I grabbed the box and said, dammit, this bitch is mine. Happily walking over to the computer games section, I then saw the new RTS game “Supreme Commander” which has been getting uber-raves, so I picked that up too. I then walked over to the digital cameras – I am toying with the idea of replacing my 3-year-old digital camera with something a bit newer – and perused all the models they had in stock. I’m sort of interested in the Nikon Coolpix S4 (I think that’s the right name for it), but whatever – one of the Best Buy salesmen comes up to me and starts chatting me up about the Supreme Commander game I had. This led to a video game discussion, from PCs to Xbox 360s to Wiis (oh my!). I then casually mentioned that I’d love to get a Wii but had resigned myself to the fact that I’ll have to wait for a while until they become commonplace. The guy gets a gleam in his eye and he says to wait right there as he would go check around. I kill time waiting at the cameras, chatting with Jeremy, etc. About 10 minutes later, the guy strolls up to me with a brand-spanking new box o’ Wii. SWEET! I was totally a Best Buy junkie before, but this has utterly sealed the deal for me. And that guy is my total new best friend. Anyways, now that I’ve actually got one of these babies in my hot little hands, I have to go back to the Nintendo Wii section so I can pick up Zelda and any extra accessories that strike my fancy. I put the Wii box on top of my DVD player while standing over on that section, and literally like within 1 minute, a guy says ‘excuse me’ to me and reaches down to take my Wii – HOLD UP! I’m immediately like “Uh, that’s mine – you’ll have to get your own!” I let him know he should probably ask the salespeople for one, as apparently they have them in back. Amazingly, this word gets around the entire store – I kid you not. People come over to where we’re standing and look at me (or the Wii, can’t tell for sure) like a celebrity – one that they are enormously jealous of. So to boost up my ego some more, I start walking around the store completely holding the Wii box so it’s displayed for all to see. I got so many stares and glares – it was awesome! Finally I go to pay for it, and get the same reaction from the cashier (more of a surprised expression from her than a glare) and the security guy on the way out (“You got a Wii? Woah!”). I find out that basically that shipment had just come in (6 Wiis total) while we had been in the store and that before they could even put the Wiis on the shelf, 3 had been purchased (mine included). Like I said, lucky timing was the name of the game. And it was an opportunity I wasn’t going to pass up. Unfortunately, Nintendo has not produced nearly enough extra controllers/nunchuk combos (you get one set in the box) and so once you are lucky enough to get a Wii, the next real challenge lies in getting those. Apparently they’re likely to be in wider distribution starting in April!

So anyways, that was my exciting story from Saturday – after that, we all played the Wii Sports, which is freakin’ ridiculous fun. You can bowl (awesome!), play tennis (tiring!), box (stress-relieving!), play golf (somewhat interesting), and baseball (apparently I am too weak to hit a home run very consistently). Zelda was also fun to play. Also, you can pay for and download old legacy Nintendo games from the NES, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64. Awesome. And the fact that it’s motion-sensing and very accurate is incredible.

Then today I tried to be a little productive – I made my theater room/basement a bit bigger by pushing the couch further back, which truly makes that room spacier. After looking at the latest Home Electronics Ideas magazine, I have some good ideas for how to finish that room off. In some truly special-ed news though, I also installed my under-the-counter DVD player in the kitchen. You can see it in the picture below – I obviously got it installed fine and it works great. But the installation itself was hindered by a major obstacle: Me. You see, I bought a drill set so now I’m quite dangerous. And retarded. Because while I got the first hole drilled fairly easily, the drill bit was a little stuck in the cabinetry, so I reverse the drill’s direction to get the bit out easier. And FORGET TO CHANGE THE DRILL DIRECTION BACK TO ‘DRILL’. So I ‘drill’ two more holes in the cabinetry….which is now basically akin to me pushing really hard on a drill against a sheet of wood and trying to make a hole. It’s not easy…at all. But through sheer willpower, I make it happen… only to realize after finishing that third hole that for-the-love-of-God, I’m not actually using the drill function and am killing myself for the sheer fun of it. And of course, when I change the direction of the drill, that fourth hole is like a warm knife through butter. I truly am a stupid boy.

070304---1mod---Me-and-my-c

And the weekend is nearly over – and I return to work tomorrow. Funny news from last week – the deputy commander isn’t having his surgery after all (postponed till September) and will be returning in a week. So while I’m relieved (I am definitely not a suitable substitute for the amount of knowledge this man has), …. wait, there is no bad side to this. After last week, I can not wait to get the heck out of there. I don’t care where I go as long as I’m not there anymore. I’d love to write the rants I have in my mind, but I can’t quite do that just yet. Come back September – perhaps by that time I’ll still care enough to write about it (doubt it though).

OH Yeah, the Europe trip has also changed a little bit – we’ve removed Rome from the equation. Now it’s a London – Paris – Normandy – Paris – London trip, which I am totally cool with. Adding Rome to the mix was moving things much too fast – not enough time really to do anything without rushing through it. And really, and this is what I told Jeff as well, Italy is basically by itself an entire trip. Not only can you go to Rome, but you then visit Florence, Pisa, Venice, Milan, Naples and any other assorted locales. And that would be one hell of a trip by itself. So now can we take more time in Paris and London, and it will be AWESOME! One of the cool things that Rick Steves suggests to do in Paris is a Nighttime Taxi Ride through Paris’ excellent locations. We are TOTALLY doing this. Anyways, I just can’t wait to go!

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!