It had been pretty quiet around here for the last few days and when I got back in from Charleston the crazy guy's apartment had its lights turned off. Since he never ever leaves the place, I decided to call the landlord to see if by some long shot he had actually left already.
Turns out not only has he left, he was dragged away. Literally. The landlord told me that he got a mental health warrant on the guy (I believe that’s what he called it) and so some guys came over to evaluate him. They deemed him crazy enough to get screened at a mental institution, so they took him there to get checked out again. The mental institution sent him to court to be declared legally insane, which he was, and then they locked him up.
So there it is, the dude that was living 10 feet from me for a year, who I slept under the same roof with and who I spent many a day alone with in a secluded basement is now locked up in the looney bin.
And even weirder, it was pretty much me who put him there.
My landlord had to testify at his court hearing, and all of that stuff I just listed--from the mental health warrant to him getting locked up--all happened in just one day. How fast our local court system seems to work.
The landlord also said that for some reason all this legal stuff somehow negated the guys eviction, and that it's possible that they’ll give him some medication and send him back out into the world, but of course only under the pretense that he was once again sane (if he ever was to begin with.) But he promised me that he was changing the locks and that the guy wouldn’t live here again. The people from the guys church are coming to get all of his things and are trying to see to it that he stays in the institution permanently, which I think means they’re trying to find the proper funding for it since everyone seems to be in agreement it’s where he belongs.
I knew he was nuts but I honestly didn’t think it would wrap up quite so quickly and evenly. I do feel sorry for him because it appears he doesn't have anyone to take care of him, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm exstatic to be feeling sorry for him from miles away. You don’t realize how casually you throw around the word insane until you really run into somebody like that.
A long break wherein I didn’t do much of anything. For the first time since I started college I’m actually not excited to go back. Mainly because I was so busy last semester and therefore somewhat burnt out, but also because this is my last semester, and overall I really don’t want college to be over. But, I guess that’s how I’ve felt about every other phase of my life except high school.
Really all I did over the break was read, play Wii, and go out with friends occasionally, which was always a good time. Jones soda taste testing, virtual bowling tournaments, coloring activity sheets at McDonalds and pushing a car out of the mud as the sun comes up on new year’s day.
Now that I’m back to Huntington I’ll get to see all my friends here again, but the early semester annoyances have started right on schedule. My big Christmas present this year is high speed internet for this last semester, so as soon as I get it hooked up I’ll be out of the dark ages and be able to retire the crank on the side of my computer. The service is on, but the modem that Verizon sent is still at the UPS place, undelivered, which should be no surprise to those of you who read my UPS rants. This time they have started doing something entirely different to piss me off though.
Now not only will they not leave the packages at my place, they apparently have given up on even trying to deliver them at all. The last two packages I’ve ordered, as I tracked them online, have received the error message of: “correct address needed, unable to deliver.” Yet when I go there to pick the package up, it has my entire correct address on it. So this time, not only do they say they don’t have my correct address, they send me a letter telling me so.
Now think about that for a second… they don’t have my correct address, so they send a letter…to my CORRECT ADDRESS…to tell me this. W..what?! I…I’m at a loss for words. Needless to say I’m going to inquire when I go to pick up the modem later today.
The other new annoyance is something I’ve never had to deal with before. The guy in the apartment next to me, an older gentleman, has gone completely insane. I don’t mean that in an exaggerating, funny way. I mean he has actually become very mentally ill, and quite frankly I’m very scared when I go home now. He sits over there and blares his TV, screams randomly and angrily, leaves the water running non-stop, and bangs around all night making noises that sound very much like he’s violently ripping his toilet out of the ground. The night before last I spent at Kyle’s, but I guess I’m just going to have to suffer through it. The good news is that he has been evicted. The bad news is, he has the whole rest of this month before he has to leave, and something tells me he’s going to use every last minute of that time up until the police have to drag him out. I’ve called the land lord quite a few times, but he says that evicting him is all he can do and he has to give him time to find a new place, he can’t just throw him out on the street. Which I understand. But. I called him back today saying that I really think the guy is a danger to himself, the building, and god forbid the other people in the building. I told him that I really think a relative needs to be called, or if he didn’t list any, social services. I know the landlord doesn’t want to deal with it anymore than I do but I’m going to keep calling him until something gets done, or failing that call the police if I have to. Until then, anyone need a roommate for about a month?
I just sat down at a computer in the library and there are little signs on all the monitors that say:
"We currently have new printers. Drinko BW is still the old HP printer. Drinko BW (.10) OR color (.25) is the new printer. Please try out the DELL printer's today (located on all three floors)"
Try out the new printer's? Misuse of apostrophe much?
This is friggin LIBRARY. You'd think they could get that right, hahah.
Destructoid used the artwork I did for their t-shirt as a small design element on the navigation of their site, so it managed to show up on tv yesterday when Attack of the Show did a small feature on Destructoid (Which I should mention is really great for them because as awesome/professional as their site is it's still fairly new, and though they have a ton of readership more never hurts.)
Okay, okay, so my headline was misleading, but it's not a lie! On the left is a screen grab from the report, and on the right is a screen grab from Destructoid for clarity. So maybe it is a indistinguishable small red blob, but it's MY indistinguishable, nationally televised small red blob!
And if your curious, the blurred image you see in the screen grab is from a story Dtoid did about a supposed va-jayjay slip in a promotional image for dead or alive volleyball. If they modeled her with one they must have had some reason, right?
Just got home from hanging out after the show, and since I decided to catch up on much needed sleep this morning I have nothing better to do at 2:30 AM but update. I should note that I’m importing entries from Livejournal to Facebook now, which so far seems to work okay, and the geek police have yet to arrive and haul me in. But then I guess if they hadn’t already…
The show was great, lots of good art and absolutely packed. I was glad to see so many people from all different aspects of my life in one night and in the same place, as there were quite a few people I either didn’t expect to see or didn’t realize had pieces in the show. I’m really glad I decided to put something in, it’s cool to watch people you don’t know really lean in and analyze your stuff. I was honored that everybody came up to me and commented, and that people came just to check out my work. The comment I seemed to hear the most was “I liked your piece because it’s the only one I understood,” heh. But everything there was really good. Maybe it’s just because I know most of the people who had stuff up, but I would rather view things in small galleries like this than large museums any day. The work is just so much more interesting and presented in a more informal, approachable way. Paul told me as I was leaving that some guy was walking around with a notebook and that only when he got to my piece did he write something down. More than likely I'll never find out what it was about, I just hope it wasn’t the “incinerate after show” list or something.
At this point I need to let Kelsey and Mike know that afterwards I ended up going to Max & Erma’s for free food and then to Staci’s, thus why I wasn’t at the hall of fame café or able to participate in llama night.
Hah, as I'm writing this I just saw Kyle's shot of my piece on Channel 3 news.
This time next week I’ll be on my way back to the hotel in New York after standing in the cold all day outside of the times square Toys R Us. Here’s hoping I’ll have something to show for it.
Oh, and am I the only one who thought Jack Palance was already dead?
When your night ends with driving down a dark road at 2 a.m. and you look out your window to see a guy dressed as satan dragging a girl dressed as Alice in wonderland down the street seemigly against her will, you know you've had a crazy night.
After 4 in the morning, running on 4 hours sleep from the night before having worked on various things for about 13 hours straight, having to get up at the crack of dawn and go to class all day, come home and can’t seem to take a nap, and I'm still awake.
I'm going to be in bed all day tomorrow.
Before I tell you WHY I'm still awake, check out http://www.destructoid.com where they have posted my t-shirt sketches (and the one I have finished.) They said they were going to post the images in the forum, but slapped them right there on the front page instead. As of my last look all the comments were positive, mostly saying that they would buy any of the designs and that they like the old feel of the finished one. I am particularly happy with that because, though constructive, some of the staff wasn't sure where I was coming from with that one, so I'm glad to see people picked up on the retro ad mascot feel.
It's odd how vulnerable you feel when your sketches are up right on the front page like that, ready for hardcore gamers to pick apart at their will.
So, onto the other stuff, the zombie walk and zombie night at the Rocky Horror Picture Show were tonight, and my face is burning red from scrubbing off zombie makeup.
And I have to say, I had an awesome time.
The Java Joint served as the start point and makeup station for the zombie walk, which ended at the Cinema theater where the movie was being shown. Dave, Carrie, and Caitlin worked for a couple hours non-stop applying makeup to people. Dave put my makeup on while Kyle interviewed him for Channel 3 and just got some general footage. I ripped up some old clothes I had and threw on my leather jacket to be kind of a thriller zombie. Once the makeup was done, fake blood was literally doused on people outside, which must have been pretty cold. The walk began at about 10:30 and started off pretty slow, but it wasn’t long before a lot of the zombies really started to get into character. And I mean really get into character, moaning, biting, the whole bit…but this was where the fun truly began. Now we all know that the streets of Huntington aren’t exactly swarming with people, so as we walked down 4th ave, most people actually dragging a leg or limping, a few of the more adventurous zombies decided to go right up on the glass of the businesses we passed, including Rocco’s and Chilli Willi’s. The people in Rocco’s loved it, laughing hard, but most other people in businesses and passing cars alike had a look of complete confusion on their faces, making it very hard to keep a straight face. Also at this point Kyle had returned to take some more footage, sprinting ahead of the mob every so often and then pausing to let the zombies flow around him, some faux-attacking the camera.
Did I mention that some of the people walking weren’t zombies at all but just in their full Rocky gear? This included, of course, cross dressers and a guy wearing only tiny gold short shorts.
We got to the theater and the pre-show started, and the atmosphere in there was crazy. Imagine being in the Cinema with tons of dancing zombies/transvestites, a fog machine, a giant blood red screen, and Halloween remix music blasting. It is very much what I imagine a gay night club to be like, hahah. In the course of the night I was completely covered in toilet paper, had a stocking covered leg across my lap (a females) and saw plenty of attractive women in little clothing, including one girl who wore nothing but the electrical tape X’s over her nipples. The pre-show consisted of a few contests and razzing of audience members. I sat between Ian Nolte and Ashlee Black, the latter of which I hadn’t seen for probably a year since she moved to go to Shepherd. In case you don’t know (I didn’t) first timers to the Rocky Horror Show are called virgins, and usually the object of much fun and/or abuse. For one contest the guy called out “I want five virgins over the age of 18!” (for legal reasons) to which Ian responded with the quote of the night, “Me too!”
I enjoyed the show a lot more than I thought I would. It wasn’t just all willy-nilly and crazy like I thought, there was a real organization to the audience participation (what I expected to be just random yelling.) Also incase you don’t know, what goes down at these things is that a group of people dressed as characters from the movie act the movie out in the front of the theater and in the aisles as it plays on the screen. The cast included Dave and Carrie, who did a great job. What I didn’t realize about these shows, though, is that there are set things that the audience yells out or does. Kind of in the vane of everybody yelling out “Like a light bulb!” in Rudolph, for lack of a better comparison. For example, everyone would yell out something like “Do you want to screw the audience?” to which a character in the movie would reply “Yes!” Or everyone would yell out “Nipple! Show me Nipple!” and you would then see a nipple shot in the movie and everyone would cheer. It was all about timing, and these guys had it down, everybody knew just what to say and exactly when to say it, it was really pretty amazing. I mean you’d think people would start at slightly different times and it would just come out as a room full of unintelligible yelling. They would also do things like turn on flashlights at exactly the same time and create a disco-ball like effect for a song. My favorite was the toilet paper though. When the wheelchair guy (played by Dave) crashes through the wall, everyone throws toilet paper at once. It looked so cool, all those streams infront of the screen light like that, it was very otherworldly. I know it seems strange to describe throwing toilet paper as awe inspiring but it really was. It also lasted for like 5 minutes, rolls being thrown back and forth until they were gone. Needless to say the place was trashed at the end.
But I’m sure everybody and their mother already knows what goes on at these things.
So yeah, it was definitely different and strange, but a whole lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I’m just not a fan of the movie, and I can’t say that I think this night really changed that, but it definitely gave me a great time.
I read a couple of interesting things in the Herald Dispatch today.
First, Carmike Cinemas at the mall is closing! I mean it makes sense, I've said for years now that I don't get how that place can stay open with much better theaters just a stones throw away. But I've come to accumulate some good memories of that place. And I have no idea what Mike and Adrian and everyone else works there is going to do now.
Second, the tickets for the Marshall movie premier are $250 at their CHEAPEST. They go up as high as $1000 for an individual ticket.
Wha?
And the people who have commented on the article so far are fine with it. They're leaving comments like this one: "Way to go Marshall. Shame on anyone who thinks Marshall is taking advantage of the situation. Get out from under your rock once in a while."
Whaaa?
So, you bring the movie premier into town, presumably so the students of the college can go, then charge them that much? I mean even if you assume this won't eliminate some people from going, which it will, isn't that just rude? God, the movie is already exploiting the death of all the people who died in the crash (all apparently saints,) which nobody seems to get, and then they charge us this much to go see it, more than the rest of the country will pay so we can squint down the isle and think we see the back of Mathew Mcaughghughoo's head, and were like "Yeah! Way to exploit those dead people! want my watch too? Or should I just bend over now?"
Jesus Christ you morons.
I think they need to make a move about the death of the common-sense enabled human.
I just posted this in the NintendoPower community and I thought I'd put it here too inacse anybody wanted to read it:
I found a link to this and thought it was interesting.
It is a 9 chapter "story" I guess, supposedly by the guy who came up with the idea for Captain N the Game Master (or Captain Nintendo as he was supposed to be called.) It is about his time working for Nintendo in the 80's and early 90's as a video game counselor, how he came up with the idea of Captain Nintendo, what eventualy came of it, how he more or less was the driving force behind Nintedo Power and a few other video game landmarks, and plenty of other random things that have some connection with his experience of working in the video game industry.
I really can't decide if I think it's true though. Mainly because it's an incredible read. It may sound kind of uninteresting if you're not fascinated by Nintendo history and back stories like I am, but this thing reads like a novel. Also adding to my doubt is that the guy is very hero-like, accomplishing many semi-surreal things, always doing the right thing but never being recognized for it, etc. The site that it's posted on claims it was written just for them, too. The site has a lot of great info on it, I don't know if it's all that well known or not, http://www.nesplayer.com but seems somewhat amateurish in its design and organization, making me wonder why the guy would write something just for them instead of a bigger named website.
The one thing that makes me think it is real is that the guy is totally full of himself, as you will see if you read it. There is just something confirming in a story where the author tries to make himself look good at every opportunity.
Anyway, it is very entertaining at the very least, and if accurate gives great insight into the workings of Nintendo at the time of the NES.
* You can enter a contest where you type in a line of dialouge on the Transformers website and the one that wins will actually be spoken by Optimus Prime in the movie. The guy over at iwatchstuff.com thinks that everyone should rally behind one line so that it has a better chance of winning. That line:
"I guess I'll transformer into a truck now."
* We have a guy running around town known as the "Huntington Fondler." I'm serious. I just heard a news anchor say it.
Things I think are good:
* Nintendo answers their email really fast
* I'm going to New York in November for the launch of the Wii
* T-shirt sketches were very well recieved by the guys at Destructoid
Things I think are ultimately cool but also kinda sad:
* for $1.99 you can buy mp3s of Mike Nelson of MST3K making fun of a movie, which you then play along with your copy of the movie so it's like watching MST3K.
I read today that next Thursday to kick of the film festival at the Keith Albee they'll be playing a silent Laurel and Hardy movie and have a guy playing the actual intended music on the in-house organ. This is so cool it hurts my head. I don't care what I'll be busy with that night, I'm going. Its at 7:30, if anybody wants to come with me just let me know.
Update: So the silent movie thing is actually tomorrow, I found out after digging online for a while. Both the Parthenon and the Herald Dispatch make it seem like it's next week, They have it worded like "The silent movie is Thursday, which kicks off the film festival that begins Friday." And the film festival begins next Friday, so naturally the confusion.
I swear it is impossible to figure out when anything is happening in this town, no wonder I used to miss so many events. You would think that since they go through all the trouble of putting on the events they wouldn't do such a half-assed job of advertising and informing. And then they scratch their heads when nobody shows up and get mad at us heathen college kids for not taking advantage of the local culture. Yeesh.
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