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methodwriter85

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  1. methodwriter85
    I wrote this story awhile back, but decided to revise it and clean it up a little. Tell me what you guys think!
     
    ****
    I have this friend, Greg. One day, he talked to me about a curious encounter with someone that still gives him the creeps.
    When Greg was a young boy in his teens, he went to high school in the South. Greg had this friend Barry. Barry was this really hot guy, so much so that, "The sidewalks just sizzled under his feet." As a popular guy, Barry would throw parties that all kinds of people went to. This was how Greg got to know David.
     
    David was a cute guy with long blond hair that came just off his shoulders. David seemed nice enough, but was also led pretty easily by other people. He was friends with Barry, so Greg would see him a lot socially at various parties that were being thrown at various houses. Both David and Greg had long hair. According to Greg, having long hair back then meant you were into smoking pot, or you were at least sympathetic to those that did. Greg didn't smoke at that particular time (he had a couple years earlier), but David did, and they both had a few things in common that led to small talk while they partied. Nothing too heavy or serious. Greg just remembers David would bale out of the parties at one point to take care of some business, whatever that was. He never seemed to stay late, and always excused himself to leave for something.
     
    Hanging out with David was always pretty normal and followed that same pattern- small talk about life, David lighting up a joint while Greg drank, and then David leaving for whatever it was that he did. Except one night during a lull in conversation, Greg noticed David staring at him intensely.
     
    You know that instinct thing? Well, Greg described the feeling as being there. He had that feeling once before- Greg was hitching a ride, and the guy who picked him up kept talking about going to a party. The whole thing kept getting weirder and weirder, so he excused himself when they hit a stoplight.
     
    That feeling was back in full force when Greg noticed David staring at him. It gave him the creeps, and that's when Greg decided that it would be for the best that he didn't get too close to David.
     
    Anyway, Greg didn't spend his summers in Houston, where he lived at the time. Instead, he spent them in Portland with his godfather. So late one summer up in Portland, who does Greg see on his t.v. but his casual party buddy, David Owen Brooks. He and another teenager, Elmer Wayne Henley, had assisted a local Houston man named Dean Corll in raping and murdering up to two dozen young boys over the past couple years. Their M.O. was to invite boys over to a "party", overpower them, chain them to a board, and torture them before killing them.
     
    One night in August 1973, Elmer Wayne Henley finally put an end to it and shot Dean Corll, and everything unraveled after that as they helped the police begin to dig up the bodies. It made national news, and every night another detail, another victim was revealed. They mostly buried their victims under a boat shed, or in various beaches around the area. Forty years later, they're still trying to identify victims, and it's believed that the true victim count is much higher than 28.
     
    Before you ask, Barry wasn't a victim, and Greg never met Corll or Henley. Brooks insisted that he only watched the murders but never participated. Didn't help him that much- he's still serving time in jail, likely for the rest of his life.
     
    Greg said of this this period of his life, "In some ways, it's better to not be drop-dead attractive. Any more attention from the guy, I coulda been in that boat shed."
     
    I don't think Greg gives himself enough credit though- I think Greg had strong "instinct", whatever that is, and that David likely knew that about him, which is why he never targeted him.
     
    In any event, Greg was lucky as hell that he was never invited to a private party with that particular trio of people. Thank god David was never more than his casual acquaintance.
  2. methodwriter85
    Awhile back, I wrote a story about a scary occurrence that happened to my friend Jack. You can read about that here.
     
    Anyway, the story has been read by Unit 522, a YouTuber who specializes in reading creepy stories. He did it in a collaboration with HauntingStories. Check it out here: (the story starts at the 5:24 mark)
     


     
    I think he did a great job with it. Such a crazy, creepy tale.
  3. methodwriter85
    I have this close friend, Jack, who relayed to me a pretty terrifying tale of something that happened to his friend a long time ago. My mentor, Jack, is now a retired former HR community college guy in his mid- 60's.
     
    Thirty years ago, however, Jack was working as a bartender in a bar in Portland's gay community. That's how Jack met Randy. Randy was a good-looking, well-spoken customer in his mid-20's...pretty attractive 80's preppy type. Randy lived close to Jack, and the two went on a couple of dates for a few weeks. Randy was relatively new to Portland, having moved there a few years ago after his parents in small-town Connecticut flipped out about him being gay and tried to commit him to an institution.
     
    They were dating casually- just hanging out at Jack's apartment, going to brunch at a local cafe, seeing movies together...that type of deal. About a month into this, Jack was shocked when he discovered that this clean-shaven college graduate was working the streets of Portland as a hustler. You see, while we think of Portland as being a hipster haven now, back in the 1980's, there were a lot of seedy elements to the town, and that included the gay underground prostitution scene.
     
    The revelation about Randy's "career" happened this way- Randy called Jack one night and asked him if he could come over. He showed up at Jack's apartment, pretty distressed.
     
    Randy confessed to Jack that he was a prostitute, and then relayed a wild tale about something that had happened to him the night before with a client. He refused to name who it was, but told Jack that it was a very prominent local businessmen- someone that was very high-profile in mid-1980's Portland. The client was into S&M/bondage stuff, and Randy had seen him about once a month for a year. The previous night, after they concluded their scene, the client said to Randy, "I had a fantasy that I kidnapped you and kept you forever." He asked Randy if he wanted to live here with him.
     
    Of course, Randy said,"No way", and the guy got angry. The chauffeur drove Randy home, which was in hindsight a huge mistake. The client now knew where he lived.
     
    Earlier that evening Randy was headed home, but before he got to his apartment, Randy noticed his client's limo parked down the street from his building. Randy noped the fuck of there and ate dinner elsewhere. But when he went home, the limo was still there with the chauffeur sitting in the car.
     
    That's when he decided to go over to Jack's place and confess everything. Randy was completely terrified now- he tried to laugh it off as some dumb joke, but the fact that the chauffeur had spent hours parked in the same spot a few blocks from his apartment building was scary as hell. Randy begged if he could stay in Jack's place for a few days so this could die down. Even though Jack was totally surprised and pretty confused about all this, he let him stay at his place until a few days later Randy called him at work and told Jack he'd decided to go back to his apartment. Randy said he'd call Jack later in the week about a movie they were planning to see that weekend.
     
    Jack never heard from him again.
     
    When Jack went to his apartment building a few days later to check on Randy, the building manager said that Randy had moved out. After that, there wasn't much Jack could do- Randy didn't tell him who the guy was, and he didn't know much about Randy's background except for some vague idea of where he came from. And this was, again, the 1980's- policemen were not going to make a big deal about some male prostitute that went missing.
     
    Jack kept hoping that he'd get a call from Randy at some exotic locale, but as days turned into weeks turned into years turned into a quarter-century, he's stopped expecting that call.
     
    Hopefully, Randy just skipped town...maybe he ran all the back to Connecticut, found some sympathetic family member who helped get him on his feet, and he's put all of this behind him, and he's just some regular 50-something guy now with a regular career and regular concerns.
     
    Or maybe he's not.
     
    And Jack will never know.
  4. methodwriter85
    So, this Yelp employee named Talia Jane complained about her salary on a blog post. Then she got fired. Stefanie Williams, a writer and fellow Millennial with about 5 extra years of life experience, ripped into her with this invective.
     
    To add on to this dogpile, a Gen Xer with 7 years of extra life experience ripped on Stefanie Williams for her own sense of entitlement and jumping to conclusions about someone's life. Here it is:
     
    36-year Old Gen Xer DESTROYS 29-Year Old Millennial Who "Ripped" A 25-Year Old Former Yelp Employee by Sara Lynn Michener
     
    It's an interesting debate- what is a living wage, and why do so many people who are college-educated and employee with big companies having to struggle with making ends meet?
     
    Should companies have the responsibility to pay their entry-level workers enough money to live in cities that have cost-of-living?
     
    Another question I have- what happens to San Francisco (and other cities like it) if young people can even afford to live there?
  5. methodwriter85
    The trailer for Me Before You just dropped...it's pretty good. If you're not familiar with the story, it's based on a book written by JoJo Moyes. It focuses on a young woman from a small town who becomes a hired caregiver to a recently-disabled man. It stars Emilia Clarke (Games of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games). Here's the trailer:
     


     
    I read the book once for a library book club...it was a pretty engrossing read. The set-up seems like an insipid romantic dramedy, but it manages to be much better than that. Punched me to the gut, I'll say.
  6. methodwriter85
    In a time when high student loans and a shaky economy have made it harder for borrowers to pay them off, some Millennials have found a solution...flee to Europe and never live in the U.S. again! The article below talks about the young Americans who are making their life overseas in the hopes of being free of their student loans.
     
    Meet the Americans Who Moved To Europe to Bail on their Students Loans
     
    Honestly, it's a definite fantasy of mine...escaping my student loans. I have fantasized about faking my own death, and then moving to Canada to live a debt-free life as a bohemian actor named Justin Baroque in Toronto. I also have dreams of traveling back in time to 2005, and convincing Young Jeremy that it's not really worth it to live on campus at a 4-year college, and that he'd be better off going to community college and living at home for two years before transferring to UD.
     
    That part of me finds these people pretty cool, and with a lot of chutzpah to be able to chuck it all and live a new life somewhere else, free of the burdens of their old life. The other part of me thinks it's pretty irresponsible, and that a big part of being a grown-up is living up to your responsibilities. When you took out those loans, you said you'd pay them back.
     
    In my case, I've focused on paying back the private student loans...haven't really touched the federal ones yet. I originally owed about 5k to Wells Fargo, spread over four loans. I'm now down to one loan totaling about $1,883. I mean, 3k is nothing, really, but I'm pretty proud of it regardless, especially given how spotty my employment has been. I'm hoping that I can get my loans forgiven a couple of decades down the line, but I'll definitely try my best to honor my commitment here.
     
    I mean, really, it's the only commitment I have in my life. If I can't handle one, I don't think I'd be able to handle all the other ones that you're supposed to take on as a mark of adulthood (marriage, house, etc etc) so I figure it's character-building.
     
    So, do you think it's okay for people to escape their student loans by fleeing the country? Is it something that you would do, or something you'd encourage your kids to do? Sound off below!
  7. methodwriter85
    So, I'm stuck in this blizzard hitting the East Coast right now. I'm alone in the house, as my mother is staying at the nursing home she works at.
     
    I've got some beef stew roasting, thoughts of brownie-making in the future, and a belief that I will likely chase some shots of rum with hard cider while I watch some movies.
     
    Alone with my thoughts, I thought I'd go over where I'm at right now, as a newly-minted 30-nothing, and where I want to be, and the general confusion I still have.
     
    First of all, I feel closer to myself than I have in a long time. I got hit with such devastatingly depressing things in a very short time period- unable to get a job for all of 2013, my very close friend dying at the end of 2013, the humiliation of my failed internship in summer 2014, the turmoil of the weekend where I went to my friend's memorial in August 2014, and watching a hospice get set up in my house while my mother's elderly live-in boyfriend died of cancer at the beginning of 2015. (And then watching as my mother realized that he left absolutely nothing for her and didn't do anything to help her get past it.)
     
    That took A LOT out of me. I'm still not the happy-go-lucky, cheerful guy thrilled at all the new life experiences that I used to be, but I'm getting a lot closer to him than I was for a solid year and a half of my life. I joke around again. I'm able to be silly again. And though I still get these little grief attacks, when I get sad thinking about lost friends and lost opportunities, I'm able to get past it after a few hours as opposed to just staying in my house refusing to go out or live. I feel so much more like me than I have in a long time- a little wiser, a little more weary- but still me. It's a relief after feeling like Pod Jeremy for the past year or two.
     
    As for my current state of life, working in a movie theater retail job kind of sucks. I'm being bossed around by teenaged managers, and when I'm cleaning up some garbage spill, I just think to myself, "I'm using my 80k education for THIS?" On the other hand, it is steady work, and I'm keeping up with my bills. It's also kind of fun, in some ways, to be around so many young people. I get a kick out of being the "old guy" to a bunch of those whippersnappers who were born in the mid/late 1990's, and I love getting to see so many movies for free. I also think it's been great "social training", because on some days you have to deal with a big mass of people and you need to make pretty quick judgements about reading their mannerisms and facial expressions in case one might be a bit testy.
     
    I'm making some tentative plans for employment that actually fits a grown-up, but eh. I don't know. That's where my confusion is. I still really want to work in a museum, but I know that in order to do that, I need to leave Delaware. And I'm thinking a lot about what alternative plans I might be able to make.
     
    Right now, I'm thinking about two paths- either finally deciding to go for the PhD in history and going on the professor track, or perhaps considering a career in something like urban planning, a topic that has always interested me. I don't think I can bring myself to go for another bachelor's degree- it'll be either a master degree or finally going for that PhD.
     
    I'm just not sure yet. And I feel like I should have this figured out at 30, but I don't. I look at my old high school and college friends who are settled down, with careers and families and houses and mortgages...I don't know. Some ways I envy that, but in other ways, I'm glad that my life path is still kind of a big unknown at this point.
     
    Sometimes I feel like a dried up, old man who is stuck in some dead-end life because of so many things that he screwed up, but other times, I feel like a young man still with a lot of his life ahead of him, even though his 20's are now in his past. A little while back, I had this really great conversation with a random stranger at the bar who basically told me, "You don't know what you want to do with your life yet, but you're young and that's okay. At 45, you won't be, but for now, you're still young and you've got a lot ahead of you."
     
    I do know the life I want for myself- I'd love to live in some efficiency apartment in some city, maybe a microcondo, I actually love the idea of living in something like the Arcade in Providence:
     


     
    Not sure what else...I just know that I'm not really jonsing for some kind of happy suburban existence with a husband and 2 kids and a dog. Not really my bag. I want something difference...just not sure yet.
     
    I think it's okay that I'm not sure yet, despite a lot of people who tell me that I need to have a "real job" and "real life" now that I'm 30. I'll figure it out.
     
    I think, anyway. In the meantime, I just want to enjoy where I'm at and do what I can, in little ways, to prepare for whatever's next. I've got a whole new decade ahead of, you know?
  8. methodwriter85
    Awhile back, a fellow GA member told me the story of a party buddy he used to have, and a curiosity surrounding him late one summer that still gives him chills to this day. Here's the story:
     
    His Casual Acquaintance
     
    When Greg was in his teens, he went to high school in the South. It was the early 1970's, and his hair was long- all the way to the back. Back then, having long hair meant that you smoked pot. At least the old folks thought you did, anyway. It was a sign that you weren't willing to confirm to regular society.
     
    Greg had this friend Barry. Barry was this really hot guy, so effin' hot that as Greg put it, "The sidewalks just sizzled under his feet." As a popular hot guy, Barry would throw parties, and that was how Greg got to know David.
     
    David was a cute guy with long blond hair that came just off his shoulders. Greg described him as someone who was kind of easily led, though. He was friends with Barry, so Greg would see him a lot socially at various parties that were being thrown at various houses. They both had long hair, and back then it was a sign you were into smoking pot, or were sympathetic to those who did. Greg didn't smoke at that particular time (he had a couple years earlier), but David did, and they both had a few things in common that led to small talk while they partied. Mostly, Greg just remembers David would bale out of the parties at one point to take care of some business, whatever that was. Nothing too intense, really- just some regular party buddy talk and then David excusing himself for some reason or another.
     
    Except one night, Greg noticed David staring at him, hard. Like, that eyes-in-the-back-your-head kind of feeling came over Greg.
    You know that instinct thing? Well, Greg described the feeling as being there. He had that feeling once before- Greg was hitching a ride, and the guy who picked him up kept talking about going to a party. The whole thing kept getting weirder and weirder, so he excused himself when they hit a stoplight. So that feeling was back and Greg knew it'd be best if he didn't get too close to David.
     
    Anyway, Greg didn't spend his summers in Houston, where he lived at the time. Instead, he spent them in Portland with his godfather.
    So late one summer up in Portland, who does Greg see on his t.v. but his casual party buddy, David Owen Brooks. He and another teenager, Elmer Wayne Henley, had assisted a local Houston man named Dean Corll in murdering up to two dozen young boys over the past couple years. One night in August 1973, Elmer Wayne Henley finally put an end to it and shot the guy, and everything unraveled after that as they helped the police begin to dig up the bodies. It made national news, and every night another detail, another victim was revealed. They mostly buried their victims under a boat shed, or in various beaches around the area. Forty years later, they're still trying to identify victims, and it's believed that the true victim count is much higher than 28.
     
    Before you ask, Barry wasn't a victim, and Greg never met Corll or Henley. Brooks insisted that he only watched the murders but never participated. Didn't help him that much- he's still serving time in jail, likely for the rest of his life.
     
    Greg said of this this period of his life, "In some ways, it's better to not be drop-dead attractive. Any more attention from the guy, I coulda been in that boat shed."
     
    I don't think Greg gives himself enough credit though- I think Greg had strong "instinct", whatever that is, and that David likely knew that about him, which is why he never targeted him.
     
    In any event, Greg was lucky as hell that he was never invited to a private party with that particular trio of people and that David was never more than his casual acquaintance.
  9. methodwriter85
    So, my movie theater ran the Back to the Future trilogy last night, in celebration of Back To the Future Day. I wasn't able to see the first two, but I did get to see the third movie...and I gotta tell you, after Doc Brown and his wife Clara fly off in their time travel train with a content Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker, I just felt like a happy little 9-year old kid again. I'd never gotten to see the movies in theater because I was either a baby or a toddler, and there was something just magical about seeing the whole thing on the big screen. For a couple of brief minutes, I had a big smile on my face and all my concerns and worries were gone for a moment.
     
     
     
    I also had a similar reaction to see Beauty and the Beast when they ran it in the theaters back in 2012.
     
    So what's that movie for you?
  10. methodwriter85
    Found this feel good story about a male plus size model showing that beauty doesn't have to come in just one size!
     
    Target's Only Male Plus-Size Model Strikes A Bull's Eyes for Body Positivity
     
    Pretty cool story. I mean, I grew up with that whole Abercrombie and Fitch aesthetic being pushed, and it's cool to see guys who don't fit that mold still being held up as being attractive.
     
    I do have to hand it to Zach Miko for refusing to fit into conventional beauty standards and just being like, "This is me, I won't become a gym rat" and still being damned attractive. (In my opinion.)
  11. methodwriter85
    I'm a 29-year old male from the East Coast. Tonight, I went out to my favorite bar to listen to my favorite cover band.
     
    On my way back home, I stopped at a local bank which has a drive through with an ATM. It's located at a blue-collar shopping center in the middle of a very busy highway in the suburbs, although being almost 3 a.m. it was empty. I wanted to deposit some money in my bank account to make an insurance payment.
     
    While I was getting my money together, some lady walked up to the side of the car, making motions for me to role my car window down. She looked to be a rough 35, pale, brown hair pulled up into a scrunchie, white hoodie, jeans, and about 90 pounds soaking wet. Her eyes were big and brown and looked bloodshot as hell. In other words, the lady looked like one of the drug-addicted prostitutes that you see not too far away where I was in the "bad" section of my suburb- the ones who live in the cheap, ancient motels that are still along the route I live on.
     
    So, to the protest of the woman who seemed to think that I was going to roll down my window and talk to her, I booked my car, not even bothering to put my money back into my wallet, which was spread out along the passenger side seat. I just peeled the hell out of there.
     
    I might have over reacted, but all honestly, there are a lot of vagrants that hang out in this area at this particular shopping center that ask people for money, which is suburban but not very well off. Things happen there. Maybe she needed help, but if she really did, she could have gone across the street to the pharmacy. It's a 24/7 place with guards and phones that she could call.
     
    I've been approached in this part of town MORE than once by people claiming to need a ride, or need a few bucks because they have a car and they're stranded without any gas. And I hate to be a cynical ass, but I tend to not believe 90 percent of the stories.
     
    I pretty much thought this woman was going to ask for either of those two things...normally, I would have just said no, but given that it was almost 3 a.m. and my doors had been automatically unlocked because I put my car in park, I just didn't even want to engage in any kind of conversation.
     
    I feel a little ridiculous like I should be more macho instead of running off screaming the way I did (in a sense), but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Too much shit has happened to people that wanted to be good Samaritans.
  12. methodwriter85
    I found this entry on Reddit's OffMyChest sub, and I thought it was a great story.
     
    I Just Went On A Date With A Guy Who Tried to Rob Me
     
    Of course, it could be entirely made up, but sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.
     
    If this ever turns romantic, that'd be one hell of a story for your grandkids.
     
    I do like to believe in the power of redemption and the innate goodness of people, and this story illustrates it well. The guy wanted to rob her, but as soon as she started crying he realized that she was a person, not just a mark.
     
    I feel like a couple's counselor would have a field day with these two if they ever got together, though. LOL. I don't get the feeling it's romantic, though- like they're just two souls, who both met at low points in their lives, and are forging a friendship with some less-than-ideal initial circumstances.
     
    Begs the question though...do you think you could ever strike up a friendship/relationship with someone that tried to rob you, or harm you in some other way?
  13. methodwriter85
    Did anyone else catch the movie The Age of Adaline? (It's a movie where Gossip Girl's Blake Lively is a woman who has been stuck as a 29-year old for almost 80 years after getting struck by lightning.) This newcomer named Anthony Ingruber did a VERY credible portrayal of a young version of Harrison Ford's character, and he looked cute as hell doing it:
     

     
    He runs a YouTube channel where he posted his celebrity impressions, and h
    attracted the interest of the casting directors for the movie.
    I like a cute, funny guy. Also, check out his smile at meeting Harrison Ford during filming: 

     
    Seriously, what is it about meeting childhood icons that turn grown men into goofy little boys for a few seconds? Too frickin' adorable for words.
     
    I'm not sure about the fanboys/girls who are clamoring for him to play a young Han Solo, though. It's one thing to play a small first cameo part while mimicking a famous figure, but it's another thing to be able to lead a movie. I WOULD like to see him in another role somehow related to Harrison Ford, but I don't think an entire movie should be built around someone with that little experience.
    Maybe he could be Leila and Han's grandson or something? Anyway, hope the guy is at the start of a good career. There's just something really neat about the fairytale aspect of it- spending your life idolizing someone, and then getting the chance to actually play a young version of him in a movie? Too cool for words.
     
    But anyway, I have to say this is probably one of the most impressive "younger version" casting I've ever seen that did not use a blood relative. I absolutely believed these two were the same person forty years apart.
  14. methodwriter85
    Over on my friend's facebook, this has been making the rounds amongst us vanguard Millennials. Pretty scary, no?
     

     
    It's a weird thing. I remember back in 2003, I used to tell people I was born in 1985, and they'd go, "Wow, you're so young!"
     
    Now I tell people that I was born in 1985, and I get, "Damn, you're old." It's weird- I think my mind pretty sees the mid/late 2000's as being about yesterday, and that my peers (i.e. those born around 1984-1989) are the "youth peers", and the realization that there's this whole new generation rising (those that were born in the mid/late 1990's) is pretty weird.
     
    Sometimes I really wish I could get those 10 years back. Other times, I'm glad I lived those years, and but I'm also glad I don't need to go back to them. 21 was fun in some ways, absolutely horrible in other ways.
     
    But yeah, it's weird that 80's babies are turning into the 30-something generation. I was so used to us being the teenagers/twenty-sopmethings. Even weirder to me is that the 70's babies are now hitting their 40's. Someone tells me they were born in the late 70's, and I feel like they should be around their late 20's, not pushing 40.
     
    Time just keeps on slipping into the future, doesn't it?
  15. methodwriter85
    Hey guys, I thought I'd point you guys to this rather fascinating expose I read by the New York Times about the corporate culture of the Amazon Workplace.
     
    Amazon: Wrestling Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
     
    It paints a picture of Amazon as this "every man for themselves" environment, where workers are encouraged to work well over 40 hours a week (try more like 80), sabotage each other in secret feedback to their bosses, and hold themselves to unreasonably high standards. People who go through thing like miscarriages or cancer are "managed out" instead of getting sympathy, and all in all it sounds like one big crazy jungle.
     
    So my question is...have you guys ever worked in jobs with bosses who had completely unreasonable expectations? Did you work in a job where you went way beyond the job description? Did you find the experience rewarding, or did it just burn you out? Does the "Amazon Way", as they put it, ring a bell with you in your own experiences?
     
    I just thought this was just such a crazy read, and I want Alan Sorkin/David Fincher to make a movie out of this as soon as possible.
  16. methodwriter85
    Vice President Joe Biden's son, Beau Biden, has died at the age of 46.
     
    Beau Biden Passes Away at the Age of 46
     
    It's weird. I'm pretty shocked by it, although not shocked. His health had seemed sketchy for the past couple of years, but I didn't think it was like life-threatening because he was still so active.
     
    I have a very vivid memory of watching the 2008 Democratic National Convention on the t.v. with the Delaware Young Democrats Club at Kildare's Pub in Newark, DE, and just the beaming amount of pride we all felt as Democrats and Delawareans when we saw Beau Biden give his speech about his father. I still remember the typo they had, where they captioned him as "Bo Biden" instead of "Beau", and our club president basically clutching her peals while they fixed it.
     
    I honestly thought that Beau was going to continue his father's legacy, and the Biden family was going to become its own little mini-political dynasty. He for damn sure was going to be governor of Delaware in 2016. It's such a friggin' shame. Beau really seemed like he was poised for big political greatness.He had the chops and the know-how. And to be honest, I was excited at the thought that maybe, just maybe, Beau could've become president someday and we'd have our first First State president.
     
    I can't imagine what it would be like to have outlived two of your own four children. My condolences to the Biden family.
     
    It does go to show you though- cancer doesn't really care who you are or what your father is. If it wants you, it'll take you. America seems SO divided these days- along class, along race, along political lines- that this is kind of a little reminder that there are some things that are universal and bond us all.
     
    Man though ,what a waste. Forty-six is too damn young to go out.
  17. methodwriter85
    I'm just got off my third shift as a concessions guy at a large movie theater. I can't stand it. I don't feel like I'm particularly good at this and I'm just not feeling it. I also don't really fit in as a guy who's 29 among a bunch of teenagers.
    Should I just up and quit? Or should I just see it through to the end of the probation period, and then quit? I do really need the money but I really don't know if they'll keep me. I'm thinking about asking the managers for advice so they know I'm trying.
    Luckily if they do decide not to keep me at the probation mark I don't need to mark this on my future job applications but eh. This is just not fun. The training has been almost non-existent...you were pretty much just thrown out there, and the first two days were okay, but today just flat-out sucked.
     
    The main idea was to work this job to pay the bills, and hopefully get some money set aside to take some computer classes. But man, I do not know if I can make it. Part of me wants to gut it out, do my hardest, and seek out feedback to see how I can be better, but the other part wants to get out now.
  18. methodwriter85
    The iconic show about advertising ended with the most iconic commercial of the 20th century. In honor of the finale...check out the single version of
    Seriously though, I'm thrilled Mad Men referenced that ad. I think it's such a brilliant piece of advertising with a message that still resonates today- share a Coke with a friend and make a bond for a little while regardless of who they are.
    Here's the real origin story behind the ad- Bill Backer was on a flight layover, and noticed that the people who were irritated by the delayed made the best of the situation by sitting down and sharing stories over Coke. That's why it was the Real Thing- coke presented a common bond for people to relate to one another. Anyway, here's the actual ad:

    I mean really, just brilliant. Who doesn't feel good just by watching all these cheerful happy people of varying nations getting along as they bond over their love of Coke?
    Although I do think it's interesting when you consider the impact of globalization/Westernization, and the people who argue that it has led to the erosion of foreign cultures. The Coke kind of represents the incoming Westernization of the world, and the idea that these native cultures are going to be touched by things like Coke and McDonald's and KFC and other Western thing.
     
    Who here remembers the ad?
  19. methodwriter85
    Hey, I came across this Young Adult book that Adam Phillips recommended to me a year or two ago, called Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg. I was in Barnes and Nobles, and I basically devoured the book in about two hours. I honestly loved the story.
    It's the story of a guy, named Rafe, who after being Mr. Openly Gay Guy, decides to get a new fresh start by going off to boarding school and just being regular. Because of his resemblance to a very former popular student, he's embraced by the jock crowd, and he manages his way around friendships with macho jock types, while dealing with his growing feelings for his new friend who doesn't know he's not straight.
     
    I loved it. Because I was just there, in so many ways. I've grown up in very gay tolerant environments, but at the same time, didn't tell everybody I ran across that I was gay because I knew that if I did I would be expected to be Mr. Fabulous Queer Eye for the Straight Girl...that's what you were expected to be if you were openly gay at my school- a fabulous diva or a cool raver club kid. And plain shirt, cargo shorts wearing me just didn't have it in me. It's kind of funny- I didn't grow up with the fear that I'd be gaybashed for being gay; just that people would expect me to turn into Carson Kressley. It annoyed Teenaged Me when girls would say that they wanted a gay guy for a friend because it was a cool thing to have.
     
    And then I related to the other part of the story- Rafe trying to fit in with macho frat-boys-in-training, and finding in the end it just wasn't really a fit. Freshmen year of college, I tried to hang with them. There was one particular group of guys, with a leader named Kurt, who basically treated me like their mascot and I took it because I thought it was cool to hang out with guys who looked like they belonged to the jock crowds I'd seen on T.V. (Again, my high school didn't have sports, and the school that we could play sports for had guys that were insanely intelligent and not like the dumb jock stereotype on T.V.) And fuck, I'll admit that I was totally lusting after Kurt, who sent all kinds of confusing signals to me such as calling me up randomly over summer '06 and telling me that he missed me. (Who dropped me as a friend as soon as I told him over an AOL chat that I was gay in '07, but whatever.)
     
    I moved on to try and hang out with the hipsters my sophomore year, and then during junior year 1/junior year 2, I kind of realized that it wasn't really me, either. I just kind of became a Goddamned Independent (G.D.I) and met my friends that way, regardless of their labels. And it was a relief to be finally just be myself, and not have to put on any masks or ways of selling myself. It set me up for my Grad School Years, where I was just completely and totally myself, and I made some of my best friends that way.
     
    Another thing that the book touched on, that I ran into during my Grad School Years, were people treating being openly Gay like a brave thing. I didn't think of it a brave thing. It just was who I was. One woman who bartended at this bar I went to actually gave me a hug and told me how great and brave it was that I was openly gay. Of course the context was that this was a very conservative area we were in (Western P.A.), and people had stories that floored me like a guy who told me that his roommate bitched online about how his gay roommate should die, etc etc. But it was like, "Why does this matter? Why can't I just be a guy who happens to be gay?" I've always gone with the mindset that if you don't treat it like a big deal, others won't do so, and it's like people found that my being so casual about being gay made me stand out like a sore thumb in that charged environment.
     
    Anyway, if you like YA novels and happen across the book, give it a read. It really made me think about my Younger Self and His Search for Identity, and also begs an interesting question- what happens if you can pass for something you're not? Do the guys who can fit in really have it easier as opposed to the ones who have been flamboyant since birth? A lot of interesting thoughts and tangents you can go here with this book.
  20. methodwriter85
    So I thought I'd try something a little different than my "music playlist" stuff. I thought it might be interesting to highlight a particular song that brings back a very vivid memory. So first up...
     
    "Sweet Jane" by the Cowboy Junkies
     


     
    It's mid-March, 2012. I'm 26 years old. I'm in some non-descript, beat up car from the 1990's(I think blue, maybe black), traveling with two or three other guys as we were coming back from our Spring Break. We had spent the week in Tennessee, building trails in the Appalachia mountains, while staying at some lodge in some backwater place called Soddy-Daisy, close to Chattanooga.
     
    It was a great week. Probably one of the best weeks in my life- Chattanooga was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful, I was falling in love with the "Hunger Games" book, which was enhanced by actually being kinda isolated in the middle of nowhere, and I was getting over my fear of heights by working on this trail in the mountains. I had even managed to come close to the edge of a cliff to take a group picture with friends. Our lodge was filled of cool, interesting people from all over the country. And we basically flouted the "no drinking" rule, because our particular group was not held as strictly to the rules as the other groups were. (The Boston University kids actually had some 35-year old babysitter/faculty member.) The year previous, someone had crashed a school-owned van during a trip to New Orleans, so our chapter of Alternative Spring Break did not use school vans that year, which meant that we did not have to follow the same rules as we did last year. The girls from our own group got to have their own cabin, which meant that we basically got to throw parties almost every night. It basically felt to me that I was getting the sleepaway summer camp experience, which I had never had. The theme from Salute Your Shorts kept playing in my head.
     
    Not everything was perfect- I had this bad earache the first day or two, some of the kids I didn't get along with, and I didn't really get to do as much as I wanted to because they had too many people working on the trail, but still. It was fantastic. Wednesday night, we were in Chattanooga and walked the pedestrian bridge over the Tennessee river...it was an absolutely beautiful, clear night, and the lights of the city and the sound of the river below was just beautiful. I felt really lucky to be alive and part of the world that night.
     
    Of course, all good things have to come to an end, and this week did.The song came on the radio on our way back up....I had never heard of it before. I asked my driver about it, and he said that it was a tune from the movie Natural Born Killers...I had seen it when I was little, but I didn't really remember the soundtrack.
     
    I loved the tune. It was just the right kind of mellow and reflective...a perfect song to come down to while leaving an amazing vacation and coming back to the grind of school, my job, and my internship. We were flowing along the road close to the Virginia Tech as we went towards West Virginia...which was pretty much open country, strikingly different from the heavily-developed scenery that I'm used to seeing on the East Coast along 95. It matched the general feeling that I had- I felt real, and earthy. I didn't feel like some mallrat from suburbia, which is how I grew up seeing myself. I wasn't surrounded by the airy artificiality and conformity and congestion of where I had grown up. There was just this all this wide open country around me, and this song lulling me to a wistful, reflective state.
     
    I was happy/confused/sad/accomplished/scared etc about what came next...grad school was getting ready to end, and they were the best years of my life. But at that moment, I felt wide open and hopeful, and loved that I had gotten to experience things I had never done before, like standing on a mountain or checking out the coolness that was Chattanooga.
     
    I have never felt more free or full of possibility than I did at that moment. I think that above anything else is why I consider that the best week of my life. I hope I have other, better years/times/weeks than that one, but for now, three years later, this moment still sticks to me.
  21. methodwriter85
    I've now paid off two of the four private student loans I took out from a Lehman's Brothers-based company called Campus Door (which eventually got bought out by Wells Fargo)...many more federal loans to go after that, but it's always a small little victory when I see a loan balance of zero. I made the decision to make postponements on my federal loans so I could focus on the private ones because they often have a higher interest rate and they are able to make rules that federal one can't. Namely, three months before I graduated, I was told I didn't have a grace period because the amount of times I changed school bit into that.
     
    I'm just glad I didn't take out from Sallie Mae. Yeesh.
  22. methodwriter85
    I just got invited to my 10-year high school reunion. Oh my god, I can't believe it went by that fast. 19 just feels a couple of years ago. Does this mean I'll be 39 before I know it?
     
    Anyway, here are four tunes I associate with my senior prom. (We're actually having our reunion at the same place, apparently. That'll be a trip.)
     
    "Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing
     
    Prom theme. 80's nostalgia was riding high in 2005. They played this on the fake red carpet they set up in front of my school for the after-prom, where parents and siblings played fake paparazzi. It was so much fun.
     
    "Forever Young" from Napoleon Dynamite
     
    Everyone was obsessed with Napoleon Dynamite senior year. Also, the faculty bitched about the fact that the prom for 2004 was basically wall-to-wall contemporary hip-hop. so they forced the playlist to include older stuff that they'd like. I remember slow dancing to this to my good friend Kayla...she was a pretty cool chick.
     
    "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani
     
    This was the big hit tune that year...it's got a great beat and you can dance to it.
     
    "True" by Ryan Cabrera
     
    Finally...this was our designated "cheesy slow dance" love song. He was the boyfriend of Ashlee Simpson, who had gotten her own reality show that was running this year.
     
    It's amazing how fast it goes by. Man. 2005 really was ten years ago. It doesn't seem possible.
     
    The cool thing about my school was that you pretty knew every single person that was in your class, and you had at least one class with them. We started out with 94 class members freshmen year, and graduated with 82. It was nearly impossible NOT to know somebody. There are some people I really hope to see again.
  23. methodwriter85
    In honor of SNL's 40th anniversary, I thought I'd post my favorite 10 sketches.
     
    10.) To Love, Honor, and Stalk: The Gillian Woodward Story
     
    Senator John McCain kills it as the "personal space infringer" in this 2002 skit of Lifetime movie parodies.
     
    It is such a dead-on parody of Lifetime movies. I've watched plenty of those.
     
    9.) Schmitt's Gay
     
    Two guys get the best (gay) surprise of their life when they house-sit.
     
    This one made me tingle in ways I didn't quite understand as a young boy. LOL.
     
    8.) "Gap Girls"
     
    "Lay off me, I'm starving!" Farley. God, I wish he was still around.
     
    7.) "Natalie Portman Raps"
     
    6.) "Peyton Manning United Way"
     
    "Spend time with your kids so Peyton Manning doesn't."
     
    5.) "The Sinatra Group"
     
    Phil Hartman was great. And Jan Hooks did such a great Sinead. R.I.P.
     
    4.) "Debbie Downer"
     
    I had a professor who looked like Debbie Downer, but she was actually quite funny and cool.
     
    3.) "George W. Bush Cold Opening"
     
    George W. Bush will always be remembered as a beloved Will Ferrell character.
     
    2.) "Linda Tripp/Monica Lewisky Opening"
     
    "That you're a dirty, dirty girl and you had dirty, dirty sex with that dirty, dirty President!"
     
    And my favorite is...
     
    1.) Palin/Hilary 2008
     
    This sketch was everything that's good about SNL encapsulated. Social and political satire at it's finest. That's the last time I've seen SNL fire on all cylinders like they did during the '08 election.
     
    So what are your favorite sketches?
  24. methodwriter85
    So in honor of Valentine's Day...here's my mix of sappy love tunes...
     
    Love Tunes 2015 Mix List
     
    1.) "Everything I Do" (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams
     
    2.)
    (Yeah, I didn't go for the obvious one here.) 

     
    4.)
     
    5.)
     
    6.)
     
    7.)
     
    8.)
     
    9.)
     
    10.)
     
    11.)
     
    12.)
     
    13.)
     
    14.)
     
    15.)
     
    The bulk of these tunes are from the 80's. They were definitely great at sappy love tunes that decade.
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