1.31.09

Wow. Today was an absolutely nice day weather-wise. Or so I hear. I was inside writing stories.

Anyways, yet another night, another new bar. This one was The Muny. A very typical townie dive bar. It was Diana's (left) birthday. That's her boyfriend Andrew (Good name, right). Both part of the Monday night small group and both good people.

1.30.09

Went to, by far, the best bar in St. Joe - The Tap Room. It's classy (it has it's own shoe shiner!), smoke-free (very, very rare here where there's no smoke-free ordinances) and they make a mean White Russian.

So me and News-Press folk played some shuffleboard like we were 65. I was dreadful. Didn't score a point.

1.29.09

This is something I had to do for a story. The local fire department just got this robotic dog to teach kids about fire safety. It's alot like Teddy Ruxpin with the dead-behind-the-eyes stare and mouth that doesn't quite move in motion with the person talking. And when he's not talking, its mouth still keeps moving like a raver on E. Still, it gets the kids' attention.

And yes, the gym we were in really was soaked in the yellowest flourescent lights I've ever seen. It hurt my eyes walking in there, I half suspected it to be a mosquito light convention.

Oh and here's a video I took. I swear the kids were alot more interested once my camera stopped rolling.

1.28.09

Today, I had to make a ton of calls to prospective sources for some stories I'm doing. As always, I'm always nervous doing that type of nonsense, so when I'm not squeezing my Chipotle stress reliever, I draw those crappy 3-D squares and triangles everyone thought was so sweet when they first did them in third grade.

So once again, vital information for your life.

1.27.09

I hate slow days, meaningless posts and stupid pictures of pets (unless it's lolcats, of course). This is all three. The family cat/hellion Jack has found a new place to sleep - my room. Fantastic.

1.26.09

OK. I haven't been keeping up with this for the past few days. I have my excuses.

Anyways, this is a terribly blurry picture of some of the folks in my Monday night small group. We gather, eat, talk about life, our beliefs and whatnot. It's really good just to kind of hang out and talk with other people about that kind of stuff. This week, and in the coming weeks, we're just talking about our journey and how we ended up in this ridiculous city. Interesting stuff.

1.25.08

Standard day off. Watched "Arrested Development" with Mom. Had a good dinner. Went over Sam's and we watched "In Bruges" (Great movie) and just sat around watching a ton of Youtube videos. Sometimes, days like these are needed.

1.24.09

Nothing happened today. I ran out of stuff to take pictures of on slow days. I won't bore you with anything to make up for it.

1.23.09

Tonight, went to one of Sam's friend's birthday parties. She can be seen with her friend Jessie doing "the trashbag."

It was good fun. Met new people. Had some laughs. Sat in a chair when the drinks started catching up with me. Hence, this picture.

1.22.09

So my friend Sam likes to go to the bars some nights. As said before, I'm not a bar person. But I go cause what else is there to do in the Joe? Anywho, Sam doesn't seem to like crowded bars and getting hit on by a ton of guy. So where do we go? The gay bar.

Now the bar is appropriately (?) called The Shaft. Yes, The Shaft. Anywho, it was a Thursday night, which apparently is drag queen night. So there's lots of lady man ladies dancing to ridiculous club tracks and lip-syncing. This one in particular caught my eye as it was clearly an older fella and the picture makes him/her look particularly frightening. I guess even moreso because my flash caught some dudes forehead and not my intended subject (Damn you, Canon!). Fun fact - he lip-synced "It Takes Balls To Be A Woman." Who says tastefulness is dead?

But back to the subject at hand, it was fun. The emcee, a black man-lady who really, really likes being a woman, referred to me and Sam as well as the people next to us, one of whom was Sam's ex (which wasn't as awkward as it might seem), as the straight people. He encouraged us to dance. I encouraged myself to stay seated.

So, to answer your question, gay bars can actually be fun for straight folk. Especially in cities where you wouldn't expect that kind of stuff to be tolerated.

1.21.09

Once again, another uneventful day. But here's the Copy Desk. These people are my heroes. They talk to me when there's nothing going on and help me out when I don't know what I'm doing.

1.20.09

Nothing happened today. I read this book. It's great. Makes me wish even more that I was born and raised in England.

1.19.09

Some may look down on it, but my family have a history of memories watching TV (and, obviously, other things but this is not the topic for Put-In-Bay and family vacations).

One of them is every Monday, gathering at 11:30 (or 10:30 now) and watching Jay Leno doing his only good bit - "Headlines."

It's perfect viewing for us because it has obvious humor that Dad likes while it has to do with idiots that only my Mom and I can appreciate.

Soon, Leno will be gone (or at least will be on earlier), so it's kind of sad that one family tradition will be retired. What are we gonna do now? Talk?

1.18.09

Today I went and saw arguably one of the best worst movies ever - "My Bloody Valentine in 3-D." It was gory, sick, ridiculous, dumb and a whole lot of fun.

But I went with my good friend Sam (for the record, a lady, so I do interact with the opposite sex on occasion.) and we have those usual lulls on the hour-long ride to Kansas City where you just kinda think about life or how awkward the silence is. And then she pulls out flashcards and says "Want to expand your vocabulary?" This is surprising for two reasons - A) Who carries around flash cards when not studying hours before an exam? B) Who breaks them out for leisure?

Regardless, we went through the cards twice. Once to see if she knew what the words meant and second, the mnemonic devices behind how she memorized them. I wish I could remember the words because some of them were pretty funny (One of them looked unfinished and it's meaning was something along the line of "unfinished," so it worked.) So although I did burn a few brain cells watching mindless horror, my vocabulary was expanded, if only for a few words I can remember.

1.17.09

Okay, with this I tried to capture what a bar looks like when it's so full it has to turn a ton of people away. I failed miserably.

But I do want to say, I went out for my friend's birthday party to a local bar. It's arguably one of St. Joe's more popular bars. And there can be no argument that it's by far the most uncomfortable.

I don't know what it is about some bars, the same went for Kent (so, yes, Ohio is not off the hook), the most popular bars are usually the "bro bars." Which means lots of popped collars and crooked, straight-billed hats, which means I'll be staying home. I'm not much of a bar person and the fact that there's not a smoking ban here means if you don't smoke, you're still going home smelling like the cast of "Mad Men" minus looking dapper as hell.

So why do I complain? I don't know. But happy birthday Mary!

1.16.08

Okay, I missed a day. I left my camera out in my van (Yes, van) and unless you don't live in the East/Midwest, you know that a killer chill took over yesterday and froze everything in its path. So, no picture.

Today, (and this will probably happen alot when my days are uneventful), is kind of something that reminded me of the past. Jolly Time "Healthy Pop?" You say. What's so interesting about that?

Wellll, omniscient, non-existent voice, it kind of is.

A good five or so years ago, my friends and I took a trip to Myrtle Beach in the summer. So about 8 guys and two girls basically stayed in a room meant for three or four people. The homoeroticism was maxed out and we haven't seen the ladies that came with us since.

But I digress. One of the guys, who we'll call Chung because that's what we called him, had an eye-opening experience. Besides exposing himself to all of us after getting out of the shower (He says all the guys had communal showers at his college and he was comfortable with male nudity, so why wouldn't we also be the same?), he decided it was a good time to get royally stoned.

I'm pretty sure this was his first and last experience with pot as he basically became that "debut stoner" that finds everything funny and interesting (there's a bit with his genitals that I won't write).

To time warp a bit, my friend that supplied the marijuana was unpacking when we first arrived. His mother, the lovely lady she is, gave him a ton of food. So in between the junk food and all this unhealthy stuff was Jolly Time - Healthy Pop. It's like the person that orders a Diet Coke with the Big Mac Value Meal - once you cross that point of no return, why not go for the gusto? Probably a better explanation would be that we received all the leftovers from the "Cleaning out of the pantry" and that was the bottom barrel casualty.

Either way, we hadn't rationed out our food very well and when it came time for Chung to indulge in his stoner hunger, there wasn't much left. So I threw the Jolly Time in the microwave (I had to do it as he wouldn't get up) and ended up burning it slightly.

A few friends and I tried to make sure of its quality and confirmed, it was terrible and even without being burnt, we're pretty sure it would have been bad. So we gave it to Chung.

His only reply was "THIS IS SOO GOOD!"

And he ate all the bags.

Then he fell asleep.

He assured that was the last time he'd ever smoke pot.

He then married a girl out of high school and I never saw him again.

1.13.09

Not much happened today, so here is my desk. Yes, it's a mess, but I had research to do. So, that justifies it, in my mind.

1.12.09

So here's an odd situation, I meet a fellow St. Joseph person via the Internets, we become good friends and, in turn, I also become friends with her friend. Now, he's moving to South Carolina early the next morning. So, we play "Killer Bunnies." It makes no sense, but neither does anything that happens to me.

1.11.09

This is my Dad. He likes to sleep and does it alot, especially on Sundays. Today, we were sitting down to watch my pirated copy of Slumdog Millionaire (Great movie, by the way). He sits down ready to watch it, popsicle in mouth .... and falls asleep. This is my family.