Fetch.

I can't help but feel a little sorry for Jerry. His owners are taking him for granted. He wants to play fetch, so they go to the great lengths of creating a robot to ensure they won't be bothered by his desire for love. I bet it's great having a dog as easily amused as Jerry. I have never had a dog that liked playing fetch.

To my first dog, Ralph, fetch meant "wait until I throw the ball, then run as fast as he can in the very general direction that the ball was thrown (like, say, west). Then run back to me. then in a circle in the yard. Then inside. Basically fetch with Ralph meant you got to watch him run aimlessly for about a minute and a half before he ran into the living room to look around and bark at everything he didn't think belonged there, like carpet or shadows. Peewee, the current family dog, will usually actually retrieve the item to be fetched, but then he keeps it. Game over.

Also, Baby tiger woods makes a rare appearance in this video.

-jake

p.s. UPDATE: I went into the tunnels. And yes, there were vampires there. And yes, I killed every last one of the bastards, standing up and screaming the whole time.

Traipsing.

I know it's been a few days since I've written, making my previous statement on the lifespan of this blog seem like a self-fulfilling prophesy. But rest assured, I've thought of some good crap to write about.

Things I am currently enjoying:

Mad Men

This show makes me wish I lived in the fifties (or, at the very least, smoked cigarettes and wore suits all the time). The characters are all interesting and dynamic: there isn't anyone that is flat out hatable , and there isn't anyone that I find admirable either. Well, maybe Don. But he isn't exactly faithful to his wife. It was a different time, so i'll let it slide.

Watch Mad Men, and then let me know how much you love it and how you can't believe you hadn't watched it yet. I know, i read/heard people rant and rave, and thought to myself "Nah, it can't be that cool." How can watching a bunch of guys, who literally smoke all the time, talk about women be interesting? I don't know. But it is the best show on television.

Will Leitch

A few days ago, i had planned on going to a semi-pro basketball game, in which THE GAME would be playing. I was on my way, when my buddy Minkus texted me "bro- game's not coming. don't come, its lame'. I didn't go. I had already left the house, and had two hours to kill, so i went downtown to go to Barnes and Noble, like anyone with time to kill would. I bought "God Save the Fan", by Will Leitch, who's work i was familiar with, and a book about baby animals for my friend brandon for his birthday. I went from there to Starbucks. I like the way that reading in a coffee shop looks, even though i didn't buy something that looked cultured. I thought about it, though. I read God Save The Fan for a solid two hours.

Will Leitch is the founder of a website that i visit pretty regularly called Deadspin. Deadspin is a sports blog, where they either report the news that sites like ESPN don't, or offer a perspective that is a lot more fun and a lot less biased. His book made me realize some stupidly simple things about being a sports fan and about sports that I had over-looked. I'll probably end up regurgitating some of it along with my own theories on this blog shortly. like tomorrow. If you are a sports fan, pick it up. It's great. And if you are friends with a sports fan and want to try and understand what being a fan is, give it a try (you won't get a lot of the jokes, though).

Fallout 3

Yes, this is an xbox game. No, i won't write about video games on here (often). I don't know how it's possible, but i love this game and hate it at the same time. Typically, i play sports games- and in those, i enjoy the offseason and trades/drafting more than actually playing. I cannot put fallout 3 down. I actually dread playing it. Today I literally said "Damnit, i don't want to do this" when i turned on my xbox 360.

Fallout 3 takes place in an alternate future, post-nuclear holocaust. Everything is 50-ish styled: the music, the cartoons, the signs, people using words like "traipsing around" and "oh my word". It isn't like other games though- there is nothing linear about it. I could (and have) spend three hours playing and make little/no progress. For example, a woman asked me to deliver a letter to her family in another "settlement". I had to kill 8 "raiders" and a bunch of giant ants and wild crap like that in order to get there. When i finally got to their house, i find the family lying on the floor dead and decomposing with bite-marks on their necks. Then some old-timer comes in and says:

"Oh my word! I was a-traipsing around, and a-heard a noise! The matthews family is dead? I bet whoever is responsible for this lives in those old, dark abandoned subway tunnels! You really should go into those tunnels and find whoever did this..."

Yeah. Right.

I left the town, the time spent playing now pointless. Why didn't i go into the tunnels? THEY HAD BITE MARKS ON THEIR NECKS. THAT'S WHY.

Play it, so we can share this burden together.

There's a couple more things that i intended to write about, but it's late. It's late, and i want to get this up.

-jake

Colorado.

I just got back from a weekend in Colorado. It was my dad's 80th birthday, so naturally i needed to be there to show people how tall I've gotten... Colorado is great though. Now that I don't live in Vail anymore, i really appreciate a lot about it. It's beautiful. I'm not sure it's a place that I want to live ever again. Probably not. But, I fully intend on going there regularly for the rest of my life. The mountains in Colorado make the mountains in California depressing. I went to big bear this winter. It's the equivalent of eating steak your whole life, and then someone give you a TV dinner meat loaf and expecting you to be satisfied. All it does is depress you, and make you really disappointed in humanity. Everyone that visits Vail or the Rocky Mountains (and everyone should) needs to accomplish the following things, in order to have a complete experience-

Conquer something-
It doesn't necessarily need to be something that's alive. Well, actually yeah. It does. But "alive" is a very open ended term. I mean, rivers are alive. Last summer, Curtis, Levi, and I conquered the Eagle River. I would say that the Eagle river, in the bottom of Glenwood Canyon is very alive. We did a bunch of rapids with wicked names like "cyclone" and "whiplash" and crap like that. You know- the kind of names that rodeo bulls have.

Fire-

It's necessary to have an authentic Colorado experience. Last summer we had bonfires every night. We just talked, smoked, drank, and laughed. It was great, under the big Colorado sky with stars and various birds of prey overhead. Don't bring a watch- let the night decide when it's time to go home. I remember in high school, we tried to sleep outside in my back yard the last night of my senior year. I went inside and slept in my bed after about thirty minutes. Easily one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

When i started writing this, I anticipated having a lot more than two things. But I guess not. I'll probably add more, later.

I listen to this song almost daily. Download it.

Here's another.

-jake

Brando.

I'm taking a film studies class right now, and watched Apocalypse Now. I haven't really gotten Brando's character Kurtz out of my head since. Honestly, he's even been in my dreams a few times. I didn't know a lot about Brando before i saw A.N.- only that he was widely considered the best actor of his generation, and that he hid himself completely from the public, and he got HUGE. So, the last few days I've watched more of him, just out of curiousity. Godfather is probably the role he's most famous for. But I want to encourage all of you to watch "On The Waterfront". I just finished it, and although it's a little long, it's marvelous.

Based on the title, I figured it would be about being 'on the waterfront' in a cabin or something. Like golden pond or something stupid like that, where everyone reminisces about the good old days and getting older and learn to accept each other. But, no no. On the waterfront has got everything a good movie needs- the mob, a badass priest, a pretty blonde girl, and Marlon Brando. Watch it, please. Father Barry has a few monologues that are really on point. I think we like to discredit things that old. Not intentionally- but I never really expect to get something personally significant out of an old movie, particularly from a spiritual perspective. But Father Barry and Terry made me reconsider what it is to be brave and honest.

Marlon Brando is a fascinating guy. I'm not going to write a biography on here- there's a lot I don't know. But here's a few thigns about Marlon Brando that I'm glad I've learned.

• His sister's name was Dodie. I don't know if it's prnounced Dotty or Doody. I certainly perfer the latter. She wore trousers before it was acceptable for women to wear such things.
• He was expelled from Liberty High School in Libertyville (the best name for a town), Illinois for riding his motorcycle through the halls. Talk about every guys dream. And the fact that Brando actually did it makes me feel like a pussy.
• The Triumph Thunderbird 6T he rode in "The Wild One" was his. Not a prop. He brought his own motorcycle for the filming. And Triumph got upset, because Brando made the thing look too rebellious. Only Marlon Brando could make a motorcycle look too edgy.
• When Filming Apocalypse Now, Brando was supposed to show up skinny and having read Apocalypse Now. He did no such thing. Because he weighed upwards of 230 pounds, Kurtz is usually shrouded in darkness. Brando was paid 1 million dollars a week, and most of his lines were improvised during filming. After filming, Coppola wanted him to stay another week to film the last scene in which Kurtz Utters "the horror... the horror..." Brando agreed to do it, for another $75,000.
• Marilyn Monroe reportedly cheated on JFK with Marlon Brando.
• He bought and lived on his own 12 island atoll in Tahiti.

Marlon Brando, everybody.

-jake

Blogging

Well, i surrender. I'm going to blog. I'll probably only do this, like, twice. But maybe not. Barrett blogged and had fun doing it. Matt blogs, and I guess girls he doesn't even know read it, which is cool. And if there's one thing i need, it's a platform to ramble. So here we go- blog time.

I'm going to reflect on here from time to time, i'm sure. And i'm going to talk about a lot of different stuff, simply because i have a lot of different things i like learning about and talking about. So yeah, I'll probably talk about sports a lot. but i plan on doing other stuff too. This isn't a sports blog, or a "no one understands me" blog. this is a "you wanna know what's on my mind?" blog.

right now, this is what i've had on my mind-

(Okay, i wrote that and then looked for an actual kanye music video for about 15 minutes. but "embedding" is disabled on every one. so this will have to do.)

Man, Kanye used to be so cool. I don't know what happened. He went from a an awesome rapper to a lousy... guy. The gal he's dating now looks like she should be in the background of "total recall" or something, too. Not a major character- just sitting at a bar or something, like a prop that's used to show the audience that "wow, the future is really screwed up". She'd probably walk off a futuristic glass elevator and Arnold would say "Wow, the future has breasts" or "see you in hell" or one of those pithy catch phrases.

See? Now, all things considered, Kanye looks pretty good here. He's just walking around with a cyborg. I've had to find new favorite rappers, now. Here are a couple of my current Favorites:

WALE

Wale is from DC, born of Nigerian parents. Nike Boots is his most popular song, and I like it. But his mixtape, called "Mixtape About Nothing" is one of my favorites. The whole thing is Seinfeld themed- even the titles of the songs start with 'the'. Pretty Cool. That's right, download it.

Kid Cudi

Kid Cudi is from Cleveland. He does a lot with Kanye, too. So now i look like a hypocrite. But, it's my blog. You can't touch me.

Tinchy Stryder

Tinchy Stryder ft. Taio Cruz - Take Me Back
Uploaded by martin_c7. -

Tinchy Stryder is british, from east london. His real name is Kwasi Danquah. Taio Cruz, who this song features, is also pretty good.

Now, none of these guys are "undergound" buy any stretch of the imagination. And, after reading this, I'm a little concerned about what everyone is going to think about my music taste. But this is some of what I'm listening to. So i hope you give them a try. Chances are, if they get really popular I'll stop listening to them, anyways.

My Favorite rap song of all time is here for you too.

I think this was a good first post. From here on out, they'll probably be more narrative and stuff. But not all the time. Only some times. Maybe i'll do a music post once a week, and put a bunch of MP3's and crap on here for you? Who knows.

I'm going rafting tomorrow maybe. So maybe i'll blog about that. But, maybe NOT. YOU DON'T KNOW. STAY TUNED.

-jake