Half Past Awesome

The Writing Kind Of Groove

And I quote…..“This week for Take It and Blog Friday we’re asking you to drum your five most popular blog posts and share them with the rest of us. And because we don’t get a peek at your blog’s statistics, you get to decide what your most popular blog posts are: Maybe they get statistically the most hits, maybe they get the most comments, maybe you just like them and want to share them with the rest of the Springfield blogosphere. Whatever the case, we want to read your five most popular posts. Now, it would be good form if, instead of just posting a list of titles, you gave a little description of each one or explained why these posts are so popular.” -SGF BLOGS most recent mandate to its members.

Nothing I’ve written could ever be described as “so popular”. After all, I’m writing a blog; it’s not as though the pro scouts are banging down my door with offers to go up to the big leagues. That being said, here are the five posts that have gotten some decent feedback be it in person or in the form of little old ladies flipping me the bird at busy intersections. I hope they make you at least chuckle out loud…..cause we all know that no one is really “laughing out loud” or, for Gods’ sake “rolling on the floor, laughing (my) ass off.” That’s just weird.

5. A Love Letter To Santa Barbara. This was my very first blog post, and I was capturing the vile and bittersweet emotions I harbor towards my hometown on the coast. It’s hard to go home when you can’t afford it anymore, and I think more than one person can relate to this one. It took me 10 minutes to write it up and 2 hours to work up the nerve to hit the “publish” button. I was shaking like a dog shitting peach pits as I awaited any feedback at all. The first phone call came 5 minutes later.

4. 911 Cliff Notes. People seem to love stories about the fire service, and what may seem mundane and routine to firehouse life is often somewhat hilarious when taken into proper perspective. I always get more hits when it’s about station shenanigans, so there’s yet another reason I shouldn’t quit my day job.

3. Diary Of Insanity. I wrote this one as my love affair with CrossFit was in the honeymoon phase. Plus, it highlights the Short Attention Span Theatre that is my thought process. It firmly cemented my place as the least sane member of the cult. Now, who wants waffles?

2. 343 Reasons To Mourn. Once in a dog’s age there is a shred of seriousness in my writing. The events of September 11th will always be a somber bookmark in my career as a fireman. Perhaps because I was a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, it struck me in a way is rare in my life; few people in my eyes are actual heroes. These firefighters had to have known the odds were not good for them coming back out of those towers. That’s the kind of courage I’d never witnessed in my lifetime, especially in an era that worships celebrity above all.

1.) Smokers, Jokers and The Dog. This post was the result of my first effort of actually getting off my ass for an “assignment” that started out as a joke between myself and Chad Harris of Fair City News. I spent hours in line waiting for a shot at the hillbilly hero of Hawaii and his loud-mouthed, unhinged wife (upon whom I have a raging hate-crush). I met some really funny people and actually had more fun than I would have anticipated. As it turns out, the readers of Half Past Awesome are delighted to hear tales of me making an even more substantial ass of myself in public than usual. And you know what? For them, I’d do just about anything. Except spend time in Arkansas. That never ends well.

There you have it. If people keep coming back to the site, then I’ll consider that a twisted sliver of victory. I hope it keeps you amused in that five minute segment where you can’t remember the next website you’re supposed to be looking at….somewhere a little more respectable, no doubt.

Two Of My Facebook Friends From Russia. We Don't Talk Much Anymore

Facebook Security & Skankiness | Take It and Blog Friday

Been a while since I’ve posted, so I thought I’d tackle this issue as posed by the Springfield Bloggers Association:

“So there’s been some discussion on Twitter this week about Facebook and its security issues. Some of us have even touted that Facebook is more skanky than MySpace. Many of us, for one reason or another, are considering shutting down our Facebook accounts, but none of us have bit the bullet quite yet…. tell us what side of the fence you’re sitting on. Why are (or why aren’t) you concerned about Facebook’s security? Or are you contemplating a leap from Facebook for other reasons? What are the pros for leaving? The cons? It’s a personal decision for each of us, but it’s definitely good to hear from a variety of perspectives.”

I never had a MySpace account, because I felt it was the realm of teen girls and bands trying to make it onto MTV, neither of which fit my demographic. When Facebook came out and it was revealed to be developed for teen girls and “causes” such as hurling insults at people perceived to be not patriotic enough, I figured why not? I was born and raised out in California, so it was reasonably awesome to catch up with all the people I’d written off this Earth from the early days, and for that Facebook is an effective tool, if not a horrendous time sink.

Privacy? I have two small kids, I gave up on privacy when they started walking in on me in the bathroom with a surprising regularity. I’ve supposedly locked up all the pics on Facebook, but really, how paranoid is that? Most of my behavior, while smart-ass in nature, isn’t really that scandalous. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to do Jell-O shots off of my body, so I don’t need to worry about it. And if my behavior truly WAS scandalous? There’d be no cameras involved. It’s sort of like my stance on identity theft – if anyone stole my identity, all they would inherit is a bunch of debt and a name they couldn’t pronounce.

The topic is relevant, though, since I’ve had my finger on the trigger for a while now, contemplating popping a cap in Facebook’s ass. Why? Besides aforementioned time-sink, it just seems to have run its course for me. I enjoy the voyeuristic capability of catching up with people by simply lurking onto their pages (c’mon, EVERYone does this. Yes you do, don’t start lying to me now) and I like seeing if my high school classmates have aged as horridly as I have, but it’s mostly just not that interesting anymore. I’m always on the lookout for witty and sharp updates, and like a junkie, I’ve learned to filter out all the people who announce tragic/cryptic life events on FB,  and focus on the funny people. And truth be told, even though I have 536 friends on there, I might have a hard time conjuring up a conversation with a good portion of these people in real life, should we find ourselves in a broken elevator with some time to kill. I’ve been known, in a booze-fueled stupor, to begin deleting friends that I just don’t communicate with, only to sober up sometime later with my finger on the delete key thinking “now why in the hell did I do that?” There’s rarely a soul confident enough to truly “clean house” and limit it to family and a dozen friends, because few have the stones to be THAT GUY, the one who unfriended 98.4% people for no apparent reason. It’s almost like a trap. You either gotta go all out and quit (like my brother Barbara did, only to come on again and curse the entire FB universe, dropping f-bombs like he was at war with the internet) or just accept that it’s a continually updating Rolodex of people who are in your life, real or perceived.

And lastly, I like Facebook as a means for getting this blog out there. The page (here) allows people with whom I’m not friends, or even know, to catch up with the posts on Half Past Awesome and a way for us to interact with each other. I’m on Twitter too, which I like in terms of finding the funny in people who make me laugh in 140 characters, but which often turns into a forum for groups of people watching the same television show (allowing for play by play, which I guess is either funny or annoying, depending on the person). That or they are forever announcing their arrival at PetSmart or The Dancing Mule Coffee Shop or being crowned mayor of Kinkos (I’m not so crazy as to wonder where exactly people are right this very second. I want to know generalities, people, not your bowel movement trending tendencies.)

I’m sure the relentless drain on my time will continue for a while, and I don’t really hate Facebook for causing such bouts of procrastination; I save that kind of loathing for myself, and there’s no shortage there….it makes for good material.

The Wife & My Replacement

Every week on the Springfield Bloggers site they have a Take It & Blog subject that we’re invited to write about. Since my mind is currently more of a muddled mess than usual, I think this is a great opportunity to have someone else come up with the theme and I’ll just fill in the answers. The question this week was “how did you meet your significant other?” Sit back my friends, while I weave a tale of lust, deceit, scandal and the most heavily exercised triceps in three counties.

Back when I hired on the fire department, we were offered a membership at a brand new, city-owned fitness center as an incentive for keeping in decent shape. The year was 2001, I was emerging from a reasonably amicable divorce, lonely as hell and living in a place with no family, no roots and no money. Taco Bell on a Friday night was considered my extravagance.

Being as the membership to Chesterfield Fitness Center was free and thus fit into my budget, I began to devote a considerable amount of time to hanging out there. Having never lifted weights nor ever belonged to a gym, I had no idea under the sun what I was doing, so I just followed other firefighters and moseyed around the machines and flapped my jaws. Somehow in the process I lost 30 pounds, a mystery diet that seems heavily influenced by aforementioned divorce.

Then one day she came in. I’m too cynical to believe in such asinine concepts as “love at first sight”, but I remember well thinking, the very first time I saw her, “man, if I could date someone as beautiful as her…….”. Surrounded by a posse of her friends, she was intimidating, laughing all the time, looking confident and self-assured while I resembled slack-jawed hairy troll, getting all knotted up in the weight machines. I dated quite a bit after becoming single, but nothing of significance. I had to meet her, but I lack any sort of confidence in this arena; I realized that I’d need to plot out this meeting like a good soap opera, coincidentally meeting her, faking a pregnancy and then forcing her to fall in love with me.

I enlisted the help of Shane, a trainer there at the gym. He told me that yes, he knew her, that surprisingly enough she might be single, that yes, she’s very funny, I should just go up and introduce myself. Stupid Shane…you can’t just do such a thing. Clearly he didn’t watch enough soaps. I began trying to catch her eye from the machine closest to where she was working out – the triceps rack. I would work that machine like a man possessed, arching eyebrows, casting glares, anything to snag her attention. She blissfully ignored me, laughing with all the meat-heads who tried talking to her, the rat-bastards. Despite developing some freaky triceps strength, it didn’t take long before I realized I needed to engage Plan B…..actually talking to her. This was going to be painful.

Do you remember those old cartoons where the dumb crow would shake his head and mumble “oh, no,no,no,no, duhhhh, nope” while his mother-crow harangues him in a thick German accent? Do you? Because that is the closest approximation to my attempts to strike up any conversation. She laughed at me. My friends and co-workers laughed at me. And, when no one was looking I laughed at me. Utilizing such brilliant lines as “so……it’s almost tax time, right?”(my brilliant line in April) and “Vegas, huh? Yeah…..Vegas is cool. Yeah….I LOVE Sigfried and Roy, yeah” (another attempt at ironic humor), it was no wonder she regarded me as some sort of illiterate moron with an inability to converse with anything smarter than a concrete curb.

Never mind that she was recently divorced and vigorously ogled by men for miles. Never mind that she had a boyfriend. Never mind that I’m clearly incapable of anything in the neighborhood of “smooth”. Akin to the big cats of the African veldt or the protagonists of daytime television, once something is in my sights, it’s nearly impossible for me to let go of it. I shucked whatever sense of dignity and self-respect I might have been holding on to and jumped headfirst towards the pavement of rejection. Finally, after screwing up the courage to ask her if she’d like to get lunch with me one day, she answered in the affirmative, completely throwing me off my game. I was so taken aback I just said “Great!” and walked away, no number, no plans no nothing but an idiotic grin and probably a stumble over a weight plate and on to my ass. Smooth.

That was nine years and two kids ago. To this day she still tolerates me, much to everyone’s surprise. Mostly mine. I never let her forget that, when done right, you can stalk someone into loving you. Then they panic and marry you out of fear, bear you children and love flourishes. It’s the classic American love story.

And yes…..we got married in Vegas.