Grown up Chuck E Cheese

Last night was my “friend” Jim’s “birthday party” in the city. Now I use quotes around friend because we all tolerate him at best (totally semi-kidding. He’s awesome). And I say birthday party in quotes because I hardly saw him and totally forgot that was the reason they were there. Let me describe to you what I walked into when we went to the Headquarters Beercade.

We park and walk up to a bar with the windows thrown open. My first glimpse of the place is Lights. Lots and lots of pinging lights. Holy shit is this…is…this…a FREE ARCADE???

Yes it is my friends.

John and I played Donkey King, Ninja Turtles, Avengers Fighting Mortal Kombat Style, Ms. Pac-Man, and a ton of Pinball.  The fact that I kicked ass and am nursing a bad case of carpal tunnel is no worry. Amazing stuff like this exists people! Sometimes the city blows my mind. Coming from the suburbs, the best we have is Woodfield Mall, and that hardly has any games. 

Chubby legs

I'm in no way ready to have a baby (emotionally or financially) but god damn it if pictures like this don't make my ovaries perk up just a little. The cute innocence of a fricken baby is sometimes all it takes for me to laugh at my silly adult problems. I mean, who needs to worry about their next meal or if rent will be paid, when there are tiny children wearing overalls! If this was my kid, he would be eating a Happy Meal and watching whatever Disney movie he was obsessed with. 

Romantic Comedies and the Nice Guy

I was watching Playing for Keeps, starring Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel, last night as I lay in bed sick. It was not a great movie, not that I had high hopes for it, but one can try to maintain high expectations.

Maybe it was my weakened state, but I started to get really sad for the guy Jessica Biel’s character was engaged to. As soon as you know Gerard’s character is still in love with Biel, it’s game over for the nice guy. Which got me to thinking…

Why is it that the nice guy who helps the girl over a horrible broken heart, always gets dumped for the dude who broke the girl’s heart? It’s like, why bother? Guys, if you know there’s someone out there who got dumped by the love of their life and for some reason that dude is not out of the picture RUN. Not worth it. She will go back to him. 

It’s almost like all romantic comedies have the same structure: Hot guy messes up and he and the girl break up. Ample time passes. Girl is with new, nice guy. Hot guy reappears, doing everything he can to “change” his old ways. Hot Guy say all the things girl has wanted to hear. Intense make out session, followed by girl’s guilt and confusion of feelings. Nice guy confronts girl in a calm and respectful manner on the subject. Girl dumps Nice guy. Girl gets back with Hot guy.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NICE GUY?!

Example: Liar Liar

Fletcher is a cheating jerk. His ex-wife Audrey starts dating a NICE GUY named Jerry (played by the NICE guy himself Cary Elwes). Fletcher’s son Max makes a birthday wish that prohibits him from lying for 24 hours. In that short amount of time he ends up pissing off Audrey even more, yet redeems himself in the final hour, making Audrey want him back. Jerry leaves for Boston sans his should-be family and is semi-heartbroken. 

COME ON! I MEAN SERIOUSLY!

The choices we make. No. Not like Sophie's Choice

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. – J.P. Morgan

I’ve been struggling lately with the reality of my culminated choices. If you use the analogy of Life being like a choose-your-own-adventure book, you understand that every choice opens up a new path. But every choice also eliminates more than one journey.

Every job, every experience, every person you choose to interact with is an opportunity to change your adventure. Some are good choices. Some you wish you could immediately take back. And some are necessary to lead you somewhere you never thought to imagine.

Choices happen every second of your day. We make thousands of decisions a weeks, some conscious with deliberate effort. Some are involuntary, like eating a donut if presented with one. The fact of the matter is, when you stop and think about what you’re really doing and continuing to do, are you happy with where you are?

The beauty of it is, if you’re not happy, you can CHOOSE a different outcome. So what’s it going to be? The same way you always took or an unknown twist in the road?

I wreckin’ it’s time for some updates

Yes I know I misspelled reckon, but I swear it’s for good reasons! Unless you hate the internet, you’ve probably seen the Miley Cyrus music video where she disturbingly is nude on a wrecking ball. If you haven’t seen it (count yourself lucky), you at least know the mishap.

Enter in my awesome Alma mater.

At Grand Valley, we have this huge pendulum metal ball. It’s a fricken blast to ride because it's a HUGE ASS SWINGING BALL. At freshman orientation they gave out packets of information. One of the sheets had 50 Things to do before you graduate. Swinging on the effing ball was like number 7. 

I guess some students (see: brilliant) decided to reenact the music video using the GVSU metal ball. Lemme just say, if I didn’t already miss every square inch of that school, this was the breaking point. So perfect. So wonderful. So ridiculously proud to be a Laker. Here’s the link to theBuzzfeed article on the issue. The school actually took the ball down. I guess that was to ward off more Miley fans from showing their love. What else can Miley ruin, beside the Disney Channel, music and my eyes. #BringTheBallBack 

Circa 2006. This is me on the infamous ball. happy days.