Closet Case

On Monday I spent a couple hours going through both of my closets. It's really funny looking at my clothes now. They are basically a mash up of two very conflicting styles that I adopted since high school. Well technically my preppy stuff is a hold over from high school but old habits die hard. Basically one half is polos and button downs, sweater vests and and sweater sweaters. The rest is all of the black band t-shirts I've collected over the years. Oh and about a million hoodies. So many hoodies I can't even tell you dear reader. Hoodies with zippers and logos and stains, hoodies that hold in my emotional pains, hoodies with holes for my thumbs, hoodies I stole off of bums in the slums, Oh there's ever so many hoodies to choose, except for the hoodies I lost while on booze!!!!(picture me swinging around a light pole in the rain as I sing this)

Well that was fun, I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. So I know there's been a lot of backlash on the internet lately about that new show Girls. Personally I don't really get the whole race argument that people have been bringing up. I understand that it doesn't show a very diverse picture of New York City but it does reflect a very specific (incredibly specific, seriously) point of view. For the record though I've watched the first two episodes and it isn't very good. Honestly, I'm not even sure who this show is supposed to relate to. Unless you're a 20-something white woman living in Brooklyn it isn't very accessible. Also the lead actress is...not what I wold call traditionally beautiful. She's not super ugly or anything but she isn't cute and she has several bad tattoos. Maybe they should just market this show to ugly, unhappy people, though if that were the case I'd probably relate to it more. Another reason to dislike it, "Of course I've seen RENT, I've seen it 12 times, it's why I moved to New York!"...I'm just going to let that sink in for a little bit. I've never made my disdain for RENT a secret. I've seen the movie before and I was dragged to two productions of it last year. I don't think it's good and I don't understand why so many people relate to it. It's like every theatre kid I've ever met is obsessed with it. The whole thing is about junkies and shitty artists getting AIDS and living in squalor. Why don't they just go to college and get real jobs and move to the suburbs? It totally boggles my mind that so many young kids think that the lifestyle perpetuated by RENT is something to aspire to. Not to be a traitor to my generation or anything but kids are fucking stupid.

Soup for 1, Salad for 1, Wine for 3...

So I've been up all night, no sleep at all. If I was running from Freddy Kreuger it wouldn't be so bad but in actuality I have work all day and I'm going to be one grumpy panda. Regardless, like most nights that I can't sleep my mind drifts to one topic in particular. I don't know what it is about lying in the dark, alone save the presence of my ever looming conscience, growing heavier by the day, that makes me think of my past relationships. The worst part is thinking about the good times because once you do that, there is no going back. Reminiscing leads to old pictures which leads to old Facebook messages which leads to over analyzing that last fight before typing out a frantic text message, your thumb hovering mere molecules above the send button, waiting for a reason, any reason at all, to press it. I've been in that very position more than once but thankfully tonight was not one of those nights...well everything but the text message part, that ship has sailed. Unfortunately this brings me to the topic of this post: will I ever find love?

Sometimes I realize how stupid that question is, I mean I've found love before, more than once, sometimes by accident! However, I have noticed a depressing trend in my relationships: they're getting shorter. This is giving me cause for concern as I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it backwards. I always thought you started out with short flings and then worked your way up to full blown, truly, madly, deeply Savage Garden-esque love (and not just because 1/2 of that band is gay...gayer; they were pretty gay to begin with). I don't want to use this space to analyze my doomed loves of years past, for the morning sun has breached the suffocating blackness of night and I grow weary, barely able to type this sentence...and it would just take too fucking long. Besides, I've done that ad nauseam since my first break up. I don't know why I do it either, it's not like I can get in a time machine and go fix whatever it was that I was going to fuck up not to mention the fact that I would need a cloning machine too because I was always fucking up. Seriously, I made my ex leave a wedding once for no reason...a wedding he had invited me too! I cannot stress how frequently I fuck up as a boyfriend and that wasn't even that bad.

I was reading through Bro-tips the other day, you should check it out BTW, totes more insightful than I would've guessed. Anyway there was this one bro tip that went something like this "It's called first love for a reason bro...". I keep coming back to this one bro tip as much as it pains me too (on a side note you really should check out Bro-tips, they're chock full of life lessons that can really be applied to anyone's life). See my problem is that I don't want to admit that any of my relationships are truly, 100%, the body has been cremated please go home, done. For some reason I've always thought of myself as special, dare I say, one of a kind. I want to believe that I am so unique (and sometimes so batshit crazy) that I leave some kind of indelible mark on each and every person whom I encounter. Perhaps I am such a strong life force that people cannot help but be forever altered for having known me. However, the harshest Bro-tip of all is this: the cemetery is filled with irreplaceable bros, bro. Am I so narcissistic and selfish as to believe that the guys I date will never get over me or find happiness with anyone else? Okay maybe just a little. However, I know that's not right and just a bit on the crazy side. I guess it just hurts to watch someone be happy without you. Having said that it's okay if someone is happy without you as long as they aren't happy because they aren't with you...I think.

Being happy for an ex is really difficult for me. I want so badly to be the bigger person, to let bygones be bygones and to maintain some kind of healthy, mature relationship...but that's just not me. I'm small, petty, and vindictive. Or rather I always have been, up until yesterday actually. As part of my "year of growing up" (and yes I realize that as a 25 year old man I should be ashamed for typing that) I want to change this. Not completely, I think a small amount of pettiness is healthy, but enough so as not to derail this magical year of learning, living, and lurking! (to be continued...)

No Love Lost

I'm lying in bed listening to a podcast. Oh, I'm really into podcasts now, thanks for asking. Well I'm into one podcast, I've been listening to "Jay and Silent Bob Get Old". It's pretty good, the first podcasts document Jason Mewes' long and storied history with drug abuse. He was clean for several years and secretly relapsed. The whole thing is about his recovery and how Jay and Silent Bob are middle-age now. It started in 2010 and I've been playing catch up. A lot of the newer episodes devolve into Kevin and Jason reminiscing about growing up in Jersey but it's usually good for a listen. It's also interesting catching up with them now since I fell out of the View Askew loop once I graduated high school. Also what with my recent birthday and all I enjoy hearing someone a little older talk about what it's like actually getting older.

I'm officially going to Ireland, I'll be spending the entire month of July in Armagh! I'm going to be there with some kids (I don't mean youthful school chums, these people are all younger than me are therefor "kids") from my screenwriting class and our professor Kimberley Lynne. Thank Kabbalah monster that Prof. Lynne is one bad bitch. As far as teachers go she's a hell of a lot of fun. I know a couple of the other students going. Victoria is a very tiny, pixie-ish black girl who is very cool. This other girl Kerrin is going as well. She's a lot more fun than her Skrillex haircut lets on. All three of us are officers in the brand new UB film club. I'm the treasurer even though I told the other members that there's a 99% chance that I will embezzle any and all funds. At least it's something to put on my resume which is discouragingly accomplishment and accolade free.

That raises a new concern that has taken residence in my brain (which is already filled to capacity with Kardashian plot lines and antiquated youth slang). I met with my adviser last week to plan the rest of my college career. It's with a heavy heart that I divulge that my trusted adviser Daniel Page was promoted and will no longer be available to hold my academic hand in an official context. My new adviser is a woman named Karen King-Sheridan. She seems very capable and was able to help me set up my fall schedule. News flash: the only thing standing between me and graduation is 5 classes, an internship, and 5 bullshit participation activities (seriously WTF? UB, what more can I give?!). Now that the end is in sight and I'm officially in my mid-20's the magnitude of my previous indiscretions has finally hit home. I'm not a kid anymore and its terrifying. Very soon I'm going to be thrust into the real world with nary a safety net nor a single idea of how to be a functional adult. I'm really counting on my forthcoming internship to help assuage my fears of entering the work force. At the very least I can live on the fringe of society as some kind of "artist" (insert: drug dealer, prostitute...thespian) if the whole "responsible, career minded adult" doesn't work out.

I've been thinking about writing a lot lately. I've always had this pipe dream that I could make it as a professional writer but it wasn't something that I thought would become a reality. When life gets too hard or dull or real I escape to a fantasy world where I'm essentially me, just a successful writer version of me. That's rich...and famous...and has an amazing body. And yes dear reader I always thought that this was a ridiculous notion as well, however, having spent some time working on a screenplay over the past couple months it hasn't seemed as crazy as usual. Dare I say it's become almost feasible? I don't want to get ahead of myself but I'm learning a lot about writing this year and I'm enjoying writing for the first time in I don't even know how long. I guess that's part of the reason I abandoned my previous blog "The Comeback Kid". I wasn't interested by what I was writing and I certainly didn't like the way I was writing it. I wanted it to be confessional but it came off as detached. I was worried about what the people reading it would think so I tried to be impartial and it's impossible to be compellingly honest while simultaneously revealing nothing of consequence. It didn't help that the closest I could get to raw, emotional honesty were vague posts comprised mostly of song lyrics, mediocre poetry, and fragmented stream of conscious thoughts. The end result was not even close to what I had imagined. Alas, as I know all too well sometimes all you need is a fresh perspective. Well I certainly have one now.

For probably the 666th time I've entered a new phase in my life. Quelle surprise, right? This one feels different though, a little more permanent. Almost like an extension of something that was already there but wasn't quite ready yet. I think that finally, after 25 years and more crazy bullshit and shenanigans than any one person has any right to partake in, I might just be growing up after all.

Birth

So I guess as most people have discovered (by most I mean the 3 people that somewhat regularly read my stuff) I have essentially abandoned The Comeback Kid. I stopped updating it for several reasons that I'm not going to go into here. Most people know why. But I digress, I've decided to start anew. There have been some recent developments in my life and I have a renewed sense of purpose when it comes to documenting my life. Stay tuned.