Anniversaries and Birthdays

Today is me and the wife's 2nd anniversary as stated below.


Today is also Sam's birthday. Though by this point he's probably on his way to black out ville

True Love

I am absolutely head over heels in love with my wife.

She's a force, a power, a pure element raw and unbalanced. She is like a tide, sweeping away sadness and flooding my high ground with happiness...and kelp.

Today is our 2nd anniversary. So Hurrah to us, I suppose.

I feel like we are cheating. Not on each other but rather cheating the world.

Marriage is supposed to be some sort of Gordian's Knot. Overbearing puzzles that are complicated and dense, confused and snarled. After decades you finally pull out a single string and feel rewarded.

Our marriage is like jumping rope. One string that revolves us. Any problem is one short jump and we move on.

I have friends ask me all the time, "Is it hard?" "What is it like giving up stuff?"

Everyday has been such an utter wonder to me. A blissful exercise of love that I haven't noticed that I have given anything up.

Sure some of my Bachelor things have fallen by the wayside: Dirty laundry, empty fridges, Top Ramen every night for 10 years. No more tapeworms.

To sum up. I have been blessed with many things in life. A loving family, great friends, an education at a major university that was pretty much paid for through my god given talent at absolute bullshit. I have two to five wonderful pets, a flat screen tv, musical instruments all over the place, an Xbox, etc.

Everything means nothing.

I have the love of the most substantial and meaningful person I've ever met. I enjoy the smile of the most charming and intelligent person I've ever met. I live for the kisses of the most beautiful woman in the world.

The most amazing thing about her? She makes me feel as I deserve it all.

I love you baby, happy anniversary.

Updates, Get your updates here

The wife and I had a great weekend. Little anticlimactic at the end but through no faults of our own. Something that has been building for over seven years, gasp, came and went like a fart in the wind.

I guess I'm mostly disappointed in my own apathy. I feel like I'm that asshole that sees creation being made from me. The Lord Almighty plucking the threads out of chaos and weaving together a masterwork of breath, flesh, and heart.

I'd be that guy in the back going, "pfftt, crappy cgi."

I've been estranged from particular family members for most of my twenties. I finally ate crow and went to dinner went them all...at one time.

My comments leaving, "meh..."

That's it.

I don't feel as if this burden has left my shoulders. I'm Atlas, bent backed without a globe.

So, good weekend over all, except it turns out I'm an emotionless robot.

In other news, got my ass a new book:One of the most addicting books I've picked up in a long time. A truly fun read, that actually works as pretty deep political commentary.

Laterdayswilliemays,
B







In Pittsburgh, Sam has another dream. One of flying through the ages.

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The Secret Project is Secret No More

I've slowed my posts at this blog because I've been secretly secretly working on something else

Here she goes

Please give it a perusal. It seems small right now but it is tied into my big novel project, this is sort of a setup situation.

More details about the big picture will be here at defconwhiskey.

Please take note that I will be attempting to keep the fiction alive over at the Pitt site.

So any comments referring to me, Brandon or anything else breaking the kayfabe/fourth wall, will be deleted.

A Slowing of Posts

Things are going to get a might lax over here because I'm hard at work on another project.

Keep faith though, I shall return soon.

In other news

Comedy peoople, it's called co mo dy

Best Joke I've Heard in a Long Time

The IRS sends their auditor (a nasty little man) to audit a synagogue. The auditor is doing all the checks, and then turns to the Rabbi and says, "I noticed that you buy a lot of candles."

"Yes," answered the Rabbi.

"Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle drippings?" he asked.

"A good question," noted the Rabbi. "We actually save them up. When we have enough, we send them back to the candle maker and every now and then, they send us a free box of candles."

"Oh," replied the auditor somewhat disappointed that his question actually had a practical answer. So he thought he'd try another question, in his obnoxious way...

"Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases? What do you do with the crumbs from the matzo?

"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi calmly, "we actually collect up the crumbs, we send them in a box back to the manufacturer and every now and then, they send a box of matzo balls."

"Oh," replied the auditor, thinking hard how to fluster the Rabbi.

"Well, Rabbi," he went on, "what do you do with all the foreskins from the circumcisions?"

"Yes, here too, we do not waste," answered the Rabbi. "What we do is save up all the foreskins, and when we have enough we actually send them to the IRS ."

"To the IRS ?" questioned the auditor in disbelief.

"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi, "directly to The IRS ...And about once a year, they send us a little prick like you.."

Secrets remaining secret

I'm hard at work at a new top secret project.

Some details to follow

shhhh....I know a secret

I, Judgmental

A couple of years back I was a Social Worker for the County of Riverside, California.

I was not very good at my job.

One of the reasons I was not very good was because I do not have the capacity to sit in judgement of peoples' lives. My primary job duty was to take away elderly folks' access to medication if they did not follow proper protocol.

I know for a fact that 2 clients have passed after my actions.

It took a long time for me to stop blaming myself. But for I time I had some deep soul searching to be able to face myself in the mirror.

The stress of that job damn near killed me. Thankfully I got fired.

I floated on unemployment for a long time. My wife opened up a Payless Shoe Store in my ass for as much as she was kicking it. I needed to get a job. Three days before unemployment ran out I got a job for a major juvenile product manufacturer as a customer service rep.

I moved up the company ladder and am now working in sales and I run the marketing department.

I don't have any experience in those fields but I make due.

This is all preface to the following:

Accidentally I found myself arguing against my company donating to the Octomom, Nadia Suleman.

And the main thrust of my argument was in very political terms was: She is a scumbag and not only worthy of our product but her status may taint our name.

Who the fuck do I think I am?

In my personal life, I'm not a fan of this lady. I don't, however, believe that she is a monster. She's a victim. Not of any socioeconomic maladies, although she fits the criteria, rather she is a carry of something most of us have in this country: Americanitis.

Americanitis is this chronic belief that we are all snowflakes. A compulsion of individuality that permeates our every waking thought.

Some suffer more than others. And it is only getting worse.

With the rise of Paris Hilton and her ilk, Americanitis has mutated into an ideal that you can be a celebrity without having any discernible talent.

You now can be famous for being pathetic.

I suffer from this condition. I wake up every morning cursing the world for making me have a job when obviously I'm so gifted that people should pay me for my thoughts and/or stories.

American is founded on Hubris.

My company ignored my pleas and could not resist the free publicity of mailing car seats to the Octomom. None of our competiors did. That should tell you something right there.

Oprah denied her.

So here I sit on my golden throne and in my ivory tower, judging this poor woman and everything she does.

I should be ashamed of myself.

Movie Review://Watchmen

Ahh yes...

Watchmen. One of the best and most controversial properties around. "The Citizen Kane of Graphic Novels" state by most, "And completely unfilmable" by others.

Short Review://As fine as a adaptation possible.

Long Review://It is filmable, but damn near inaccessible.

Some things are passed down through history. Beowulf survived near a thousand years to bore high school freshman and become a marginal cartoon. Homer's works weren't written down for years and yet here we are perverting his work so Brad Pitt could look good in a toga.

I have to believe that the recipent of these works through the years before mass consumerism felt special, like part of a clique or a club.

In my years as an English Major, James Joyce was sort of this elitist secret handshake. If you got his work you were considered a higher sophisticate than the other lowly students.

My secret club was Watchmen.

I struck up a casual conversation with an acquaintance. I professed my spotty memories of comics books as a kid/teen. I didn't know much. The only comic book I got with any regularity was GI Joe. All that led to was playground beatings.

The guy I with whom I was speaking just slowly nodded his head and left. He came back with a beat to hell copy of Watchmen. Frayed and discolored.

He said, "This is all you need to know about comics."

I thanked him and went back to my dorm room. By page 10 I had left to buy my own copy. By the next morning I had finished the novel for the second time.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is one of the great catalysts of my life. As a work of narrative fiction it thought me the great skill of concise expansion. Of speculative realism. Of perfect catastrophe.

In short, I loved it.

Over the years I've been able to be the great wizard of knowledge and pass my copy on to a few people, all without fail return it to me the next day having already bought copies for themselves.

I have one friend that had an amazing collection of comics who after reading Watchmen told me that he could never read another book. A little dramatic but speaks to the dividing line this book creates.

So they made a movie of it.

Actually this is the third major attempt at making this movie. Terry Gilliam declared Watchmen, "unfilmable" and ran to the hills to fail at making Man of La Mancha for 20 years.

I never understood Christianity's opposition to Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. But the prospect of some dude destroying Watchmen and perverting, made me sympathetic at least.

I was terrified and excited about this movie for so long that the fact that I've seen it twice already barely registers.

But I did see it. And it was Watchmen. Every single frame of the movie was Dave Gibbons. Rorshach was Rorshach, Nite Owl was Nite Owl, and Dr. Manhattan was in the blue flesh, swinging genatalia and all.

Jackie Earle Haley knocked it out of the park. I haven't been that impressed with a character since Ledger's Joker.

I've written 500 words about how much I love the book before I talked about the movie, just to show that I have a great love for the work. My wife however, never read it.

Correction, she started to read it and I took it back from her. Sort of mean, I know.

So she sat next to me and watched it twice.

She enjoyed the film. She got it. However, I kept feeling the need to explain, to fill in the holes.

One thing we both agreed on was the new ending may have worked better than the original.

So to sum up. The movie did not dissapoint. I loved it. But the movie did not seem to give the impression of a great work. The permanence of the piece, the lasting effect, the legend wasn't there.

I don't see in fifty years in a college dorm somewhere, some kid that smells faintly of hashish passing on the DVD to some other bright eye kid. The book will still remain the legacy.

Check out this comic, man. Oh yeah, they didn't fuck up the movie either.

Delays of the land

A bigger post is coming up soon

I just couldn't get to it today.

On the dockett:

Watchmen Review
Octomom
State of industry
New Projects

Gonna be a big week

Brandon Tries Acupuncture

My back is an asshole.

He is deliberately trying to kill me.

For weeks now I've been losing sleep and good will karma due to this villain knotting me.

It is bad.

Like Teen Wolf Too bad.

Like Karate Kid III bad.

So finally, my wife demands that I go to urgent care because she can't stand my kvetching any longer.

I go in and the doctor lifts up my shirt and barely even looks at me.

"Yeah your back sucks."

"Tell me about it Quackers, what are you going to do about it?"

"I do acupuncture, lay down."

Bam, bam, bam, bam

30 seconds later, I'm dancing around like Gene F'ing Kelly.

Seriously, it might be the greatest thing I've ever done to my buddy. Excluding that time I won five bucks for drinking an entire bottle of Listerine.

Hitfix Must-See

To Begin:

I am a big follower of movie inside baseball. I love watching rumors turn into leads and turn into lies.
That's fun. One of the guys I read the most is Drew "Moriarty" McWeeny.

Yes that is his real name.
Yes that still makes me laugh.

On his site he posted this article. A plan for a sort of primer for building a foundation for cinematic consumption. A reading list.

While one man's list is never exhaustive, I'm too lazy to come up with one on my own.

His first post is the "Duh" list. Movies you should have seen by now. And it really shows the holes in my database. The following is what I haven't seen on that list

"Rebel Without A Cause"
"Freaks"
"Taxi Driver"
"Mean Streets"
"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"
"Cool Hand Luke"
"Suspiria"
"Triumph Of The Will"
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974)
"American Graffiti"
"Annie Hall"
"Manhattan"
"Casablanca"
"Brazil"
"The Deer Hunter"
"Chinatown"
"The Nutty Professor" (1963)
"Forbidden Planet"
"Dog Day Afternoon"
"Grizzly Man"
"Pink Flamingos"
"The Dirty Dozen"
"The Great Escape"
"Steamboat Bill Jr."
"The General"
"The Wild Bunch"
"Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?"
"The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre"
"Raging Bull"
"All The President's Men"
"Easy Rider"
"The Bridge On The River Kwai"
"Point Blank"
"A Streetcar Named Desire"
"Seven Samurai"
"An American Werewolf In London"
"Network"
"Young Frankenstein"
"Dr. Strangelove"
"Ed Wood"
"The Graduate"
"Unforgiven"
"Lawrence Of Arabia"
"Glengarry Glen Ross"
"Duck Soup"
"The Adventures Of Robin Hood" (1938)
"The Thing" (1982)

That's 47/141. A full third of the initial list I've not seen. Guess I have a lot of films to catch up on.

Click here for the full list

A new month a new view

February was a bitter month in the way of posts.

March however is a new start.

More to come.