Painting A Brighter Image of Life

I make it a habit never to walk out of a bad movie. I paid for my movie so I intend to sit there and see it through to the very end. However, I reserve the right to throw things at the screen. My shoe. My phone case. A flaming lighter. Knives. And, at least on occasion, my little brother. Battlefield Earth probably ranks as the very worst movie I’ve ever seen. The prospect of John Travolta playing a giant alien despot with fangs and living dreadlocks should have been enough to scare me off, but my friend and I made a bet of who would last through an actual screening of that film. It amazes me this is the science fiction opus of L. Ron Hubbard. I like to think that people can believe whatever they choose to, but couldn’t scientologists have chosen a good scifi writer to worship? And Travolta has the gall to play the character straight and not ham it up at all. I suppose to him the screenplay was the word of Ron and absolutely incorruptible and had to be taken 100 percent seriously or the thetans would overwhelm him and Pope Tom Cruise would ex-communicate him.

I once dated this extremely short girl. I’m only about 5’8 or 5’9 myself so when I say short I really mean it. She wasn’t even 5 feet tall. She was really pretty though and could be funny, especially when she laughed at herself. When she drove, she literally sat up on a stack of phone books and a Goldcoast Chicago neighborhood guide. She used a cane to hit the gas and brake. All right, she didn’t do this all the time. She didn’t even do this when we went out drinking. I wouldn’t let her do that then. No, she just did it when she was feeling silly and there was no one driving on the street that she could potentially plow into. Eventually, I realized she laughed at herself so much to cover up the fact that she felt insecure. She always looked really young, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but few people took her seriously. She always got carded at bars and a lot of people literally stopped her in the middle of the sidewalk to ask why she wasn’t at school. It was really her massive feelings of insecurity and her low self-esteem that made me break up with her. I realize that didn’t help her confidence level, but she was just too much for me to take anymore.

In about a month, maybe 6 weeks, my father is going to get his first taste of retirement living. He said he was retiring last year, but then abruptly changed his mind. Now last week he gave his papers in to retire at the end of June. I have no idea what he’s going to do with himself from now on. He has no hobbies or outside interests of any kind. He doesn’t even watch sports or follow any teams. All he does is randomly flip through TV channels and then start watching a movie or a TV show halfway through. There’s some exercise equipment lying around the house, but he long ago gave up using any of it. He doesn’t walk the dog. He doesn’t read any books. I have no idea how he’ll pass the time. He used to talk about getting a part-time job when he retired, but he worked for the city for 20 years. That means high pay for minimal effort. He’s too lazy to bag groceries or stock shelves or do anything like that. He once wanted to work on a casino river boat or one of those gambling boats on lake Michigan as a card dealer, but he hasn’t put in any effort toward that.

When I was growing up, I took a lot of art classes. Instead of wanting to be an astronaut or a baseball player, the dreams of most little boys, I wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was in fifth grade I won a D.A.R.E. poster drawing contest. I even ended up being second in the whole state. I even started college as an art major, though I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I would consider graphic design. The supplies were so expensive. I had to buy cut tools, pencils, pens, all sorts of different kinds of paper, canvases, paints, brushes and all sorts of random things. It really added up, as did the amount of work hours required of each project. Add that to several three-hour studio art classes, and I had enough. I ended up in journalism, because I could still go the graphic design route through there if I decided. I had also always enjoyed writing, so it seemed like an obvious choice. It turned out that journalism was the perfect fit for me. I have poor study habits, so being able to write articles instead of taking tests suited me.

My Greensburg Bankruptcy Attorney was good about the whole thing. He agreed to come to my house so we could talk over the details of my case. Of course he had to go through the media camp out in front of the house in order to see me, but he did. Several times. We discussed the case, but also the media coverage. He agreed that I shouldn’t say anything to the media, as it could effect the outcome of the case. He told me to especially stay away from Sarah, the news anchor at the television station. She would do an interview, he said, and end up changing the entire context of what I said in the editing. I told him I had no intention of talking with her. She was very aggressive, he cautioned. My defenses my come down after several weeks of her badgering. When he went to leave, I opened the door to let him out, and Sarah slipped in a the same time. She had been standing off to the side, and I hadn’t seen her. She jumped inside, then slammed the door behind her. I was just so stunned that I couldn’t say anything. She insisted on an interview. I said I had nothing to say, and to please leave. She refused. I told her I would have her arrested for trespassing. Her boyfriend was the chief of police, so that wouldn’t stick, she said.

So, I have decided to sell my television finally. I am finding it to be too much of a distraction to me and can always think of better ways to use my time after I have let it slip away from me while watching pointless programs that I have either seen before or just do not care about. I am going to replace it with a workout bench. I am hoping this will get my but in gear instead of staying up late and vegging out in front of the tube watching some guy scream about Washington DC Chapter 7 and how he can get you out of debt in only thirty six months. Three years. Yay, but no thanks. It cannot hurt in my search of for a better job and my acting career either. I will have a place to focus and rehearse more, not to mention the space it will free up. I have also found a site that I think will buy my computer, so I can put that money toward getting my car repaired. I am definitely making few changes, for the better I think. I just feel like I need to do something a little drastic in the next few months for my life or else I am going to be stuck. I have even been knocking around the idea of applying to the FBI on my father’s advice. I know my brother is still looking into the fire department and either one pays well so I figure at the very least it will afford me a chance to save a little money.

The story goes like this. I was minding my own business, watching Mork and Mindy. I was thirteen years old and a stubborn teenager whose parents just embarrassed him yet again. I locked myself into my bedroom to avoid them at all cost. I put on the TV show and asked how could they do this to me? Again? I told them a million times, when I am hanging out with Cathy they need to leave me alone. We were in the basement practicing kissing when my mother walked in. At first I think she was shocked and then she started crying, saying that her baby is growing up. How embarrassing. So I obviously tell Cathy to go home and then run up the stairs to my bedroom. Thirty years from this date I am working at a search engine company called Google, reminiscing about my mother and Cathy, then an idea pops into my head. The Internet is still in its launching phase but we think that it’s going to work. I have this fantastic idea that I think will work. What if we have companies pay for people clicking on their sites. We can start a PPC search engine. No one bought me idea, but I think I might suggest it at Yahoo instead.

I almost gave up on trying to be an actor not to long ago. A couple of months ago, I met a lot of people in the business and went on quite a few auditions and I just kept hearing nothing. At one point I put so much money into it I was almost driven to filing Daytona Chapter 13. The headshots and resumes and traveling everywhere were beginning to take a toll on me physically and my wallet. I took a step back for about a month and just focused on work and getting some money together. I finally bought a decent printer that could print headshots and resumes with out needing new ink every third picture or tenth page. Then I took the time to send out as many as I could. I must have mailed out…I do not know how many but I did not get an answer from anyone. I was almost at the point of saying is this for me, am I good enough. I got a call from a pretty big, well known theatre last week though. I guess everything finally paid off because they asked me in for an audition. Unfortunately I am more nervous about wanting to get the part than actually auditioning. I have to try to not have that mess me up because I do not know when I will get another chance at this.

For a while, my girlfriend was yammering on and on about Jersey Boys, some Broadway play she really wanted to see. At first, I was confused since I thought she was talking about the Jerky Boys. Do you remember the Jerky Boys? They were really big when I was younger. Basically, they were the masters of the crank call. They’d make up characters to play and put on false voices and keep people talking on the other end of the line for sometimes up to an hour about the most ridiculous thing. They even made a movie about them. They used to record their crank calls and release them on CDs like music albums. I had no idea what the Jerky Boys looked like before the movie. For one thing, I was never sure how many of them they were. There were only two and both were out-of-shape guys who wore old clothing that looked like they got it from out of a thrift shop’s garbage. But soon after the movie came out, I stopped hearing about them. I don’t think the movie made a lot of money so I’m thinking that hurt their fame. Or maybe they just had their 15 minutes and then it was over. I’d love to know what they’re doing now. What kind of careers could they have picked up after all that?

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