500th Post

Hey gang, sorry for the lack of posts this week, but the missus and I traveled to New Hampshire for the holidays. Hopefully you all got the perfect amount of pumpkin pie over the holiday, I had to settle for this tiny one I picked up at Building 19, but on the plus side, I did read through a bunch of trades of which I will have reviews up soon and even live blogged a movie called Night of the Demons, which will be going up right after this (I brought my laptop, but her folks don't have wireless, and their computer chair isn't the most comfortable, so forget it).

Anyway, to celebrate this 500th post, which I'm sure no one but me really cares about I wanted to share my brief blogging history with you. UnitedMonkee was launched back in March of this year with a post called Why Hello There, but it wasn't my first foray into the world of blogging. In fact, a good chunk of the posts on this blog were actually copied over from a blog I had while working at Wizard called Kickin' It Old School (you can read all the KIOS posts under the label of the same name to the left). I was actually walking with former Wizard internet czar Jim Gibbons. We were walking towards the New York Comic Con and I asked if I could do a blog for the Wizard site. He said sure, but asked me what it would be about, so I told him I'd think about it. A little while later I came at him with the idea of a blog that looks at older material as opposed to the up-to-date stuff most of the other blogs zeroed in on. The scope would of course open up, but that was the original idea. That first post went up May 9th, 2008.

For the longest time I was actually very anti-blog. Who cares what I have to say about anything? Well, not too many people at the moment, about 50-100 each day, but that's a whole hell of a lot more people who would listen to me ranting in my house every day. It really grew on me and I've become a huge fan of the medium. As you can maybe see if you go through the older posts (from either KIOS or UM), I've gone back and forth trying to figure out the best way to actually write something and present it. I'm basically learning as I go and I hope you guys are enjoying it.

So, what does the future of UnitedMonkee hold? I've got a crack design team (Rickey) working a new logo that combines the awesomeness of monkeys, beer and his art. I'm also slowly working on a sight redesign through WordPress, but it's slow going as my patience is running low. Any designers out there want to give a hand? Drop me a line. Also, like my October-wide Halloween Scene posts, I want to do the same with Christmas this year. I'm sure that won't bring in as many younger readers, but I'm hoping my reviews of White Christmas and Holiday Inn might bring in that ever-present elderly readership I'm trying to nail down.

Well, that about sums it up, hopefully this was interesting to a few of you. If not, give it a second and the Night of the Demons live blog will be up. Followed soon after by my review of the Justice books. I'm just waiting to see if the Steelers break my heart or not tonight. I'm thinking they might, but hoping the rag tag group of scrubs they've got in there can pull it off. Dixon just ran it in for a touchdown!!! They're up! Okay, gotta finish watching this, have a good one!

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Happy Turkey Day

Hey everyone, hope you had a good Thanksgiving, ate plenty of mashed potatoes and stuffing and enjoyed watching some pretty one-sided football games (I hate the Lions for sucking so bad, damn them for making me root for them with my eyes closed so tight). If you get the reference, bonus points for you. Posts will probably be pretty few and far between this weekend, though I do feel a creeping urge to write a bit about my history with Black Friday shopping (or as we used to call it, Day After Thanksgiving shopping). Maybe tomorrow after getting up early for breakfast and then coming back while the ladies go shopping. Also, that'll be my 500th post! Crazy, right?

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Happy Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day to all of my family, friends, friends of friends, family of friends and everyone else out there who has ever served their country. Thanks from the rest of us.

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Super Podcast Fun Time

As I'm sure I mentioned before, my fellow Twisted ToyFare Theatre writers and I were interviewed by the War Rocket Ajax guys and I'm excited even though they spelled my last name wrong in the write up. Hit the above link to check it out. I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but I hear we're on around minute 17, but I'm sure the whole thing's enjoyable. Also, get a load of this awesome poster they made. I don't think I've ever seen Mego Spidey drawn so well, he looks sick. I will be saving this image!

In other podcast news, my buddy Ben Morse got interviewed over on the Robot Sweatshop podcast in regards to his epic Werewolf By Night Christmas story. Make sure to check that one out too.

Happy listening!

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This Is The Coolest Couch Ever

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I hate hyperbole. If you're saying something is the best or it's your favorite, then it should be that and every time you use those words, you diminish them. That's my grammar pet peeve of the day. That being said, this is absolutely the coolest couch ever. I saw a commercial for this thing called the Super Bob from Bob's Discount Furniture and just had to share it with the world.

Not only is it a full couch (or sofa as they call it on the website), which I appreciate considering I've been making due with a freakin' love seat for three years, but it sports dueling recliners and a fold-up middle console which offers up reading lights and a drink cooler! Also, it looks kind of like a Transformer, which I'm all for.

So here's what it looks like normally, kind of ugly, but it doesn't bother me.


Here's the recliners in action.


This is the top part of the middle section that flips back to offer up the lights.


And finally, here's the beverage holder.


There's also a loveseat with recliners and a center console.


And here's the center console.


You can pick up the loveseat for $699, the couch for $799 and both together for $1498. That seems like a helluva deal to me.

Anyone wanna buy me one?

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There's Gonna Be a Cocktail Musical!!!!

I say this with absolutely no irony, but I am crazy excited for the Cocktail musical I just read about on /Film. They don't share the affinity I do for the movie, which I could have sworn I talked about on the blog before, but my search is returning nothing more than brief praise. I love this movie and have since I was a kid. Well before I understood what happened to the Australian guy or why they had their falling out and Tom Cruise moved away, I loved all the drink flipping. In fact, I've always wanted to be a bartender and I'm pretty sure it's because of all the flipping. Love that stuff. This might be the first musical I drag Emily to. I've gone with her to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Producers and Mary Poppins. Meanwhile Evil Dead, High Fidelity and Toxic Avenger have come and gone since I moved out here. I will not let this one pass me by!

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Another Quick Note

Sooo, sometimes things just don't work out. I mentioned an upcoming mystery project last week that ended up falling through. Fear not, I'll be turning my attentions back to the blog and trying to find a full time gig and hopefully some creative writing as well.

Holla!

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Quick Note

Hey Gang, you might notice a little slow down in the blog posts here, but I'm going to try and do at least one Halloween Scene per day moving forward through October. I've got something in the works that you'll know about soon enough. Maybe by the end of the week.

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Casting Internets

After going to Wal-Mart to buy printer ink, which they didn't have, I figured I'd send you some excellent links that I found around the net so far today. By the way, why the hell is the Wal-Mart parking lot ALWAYS full? It was 11:30AM on a Friday and I could barely find a parking space.

My buddy Kiel tackles the Jack Kirby's-family-suing-Marvel case. I'm not quite sure I understand it, or how exactly I fall on this case (it's called "work for hire" for a reason and I don't want to see these characters ripped from there homes, but they should also be compensated fairly). Read and form your own opinions.

Check out Jim's Enemy of Peanuts to see a video interview he did with the Panels On Pages guys. Kinda makes me wish I would have made a slightly bigger splash on the Wizard message boards. Which is a roundabout way to say I will do an interview with anyone about anything. Holla atcha boy. Or whatever.

/Film got an exclusive look at Disney's poster for its first animated musical in years The Princess And The Frog. Good for them! I'm not a huge fan of the animated musicals, but Em is and I'm sure we'll be seeing this bad boy in the theatres. Plus, that's a rad poster.


Ben posted this picture of him, Rickey, Dave and I literally laughing in the face of danger. Em and I have a version of this picture where I don't look like a complete weirdo hanging in our hallway. Check out The Cool Kids Table for more pics.


And finally, Rob over at Topless Robot posted this video of the dude from the zombie game Dead Rising facing off against guys from Gatchaman and Power Rangers in the upcoming Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom game. Not sure what all those words mean, but you can THROW ZOMBIES AS A FIGHTING MOVE. So, it's gonna be pretty amazing.



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Demolition Derby

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I had a very redneck weekend (literally in fact, as I got a little color on the back of my neck thanks to walking around the flea market), which included a demolition derby at the Orange County Fair Speedway. I had never been to something like this before, but, hearing that there would be a bus race, I was in (well, kinda, I probably wouldn't have gone on my own, but Em and her parents and Amy were all going, so what the hell?).

And you know what? I was a little disappointed. The bus race had three short buses and then two longer ones, so it wasn't a big surprise who would win that one. There was a funny moment where one of the dudes near me turned to his buddies and said "How do you think they get the buses here?" Probably zeppelin. Then there was a trailer race, but two of the cars were just pulling two wheel trailers with nothing on it. The rest were vans pulling campers. I proudly admit that I totally called the winner of that race (yeah green van!). There was also a stuntman of sorts who drove a semi truck into a bus that was standing straight up on the emergency exit sticking in the air. Oh, there was also this race where the cars had their hoods and trunks tied up so they couldn't see shit. Craziness. Then, the demolition derby started and I gotta say, I was highly disappointed. See, it wasn't a figure eight or anything like that, because they had people in the center with their trucks and whatever, so what they did was they cordoned off a section of one of the long parts of the track and just had these dudes smash into each other. There was hardly any carnage, very little fire and no one hit with a tire. Ah well, here's the slide show, I figured this would be easier than showing each picture individually. Oh, also, the pictures clearly suck, but it's hard to get a good shot of a slow moving bus apparently.

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Flea Market Shenanigans

Boy, did I have a red neck weekend. Em's parents were in town and they're always down for some yard sailing and flea market attending so we attended two separate ones AND a demolition derby. Stay tuned for tons of demo derby pics tomorrow, but right now, I want to share some experiences and pictures with you from the flea market we went to on Saturday morning at the Stormville Airport. Technically it was a giant garage sell, which means it's just regular people selling their junk and boy was there a lot of junk. Since I've recently found myself sans full time job, Em and I decided to spend little to know money and I think we only spent about $5, but it was a ton of fun and I even got some rad stuff.

As always we got there pretty early, but I think that was a benefit because you never know who might buy the Michael Jackson bust. Anyway, more on that later. Right now, check out these really weird celebrity paintings. You can see Alias' Jennifer Garner in this particular photo and there were about a dozen others, some I actually recognized, others, now way, even though they had the actor's name on some of them. Scarlett Johansson's was pretty terrible.

It was a good show for paintings actually as you can see in these next two pics. Right after passing the table with the above weird celebrity paintings we got near this van with several larger painting leaning up against it. You can see a painting on the far left which I think is called Little Boy Blue or some such. As a side note, this is what a lot of the various lots look like, with a van, car, table or blanket holding all of the junk people want to get rid of. But what really caught my attention was that painting to the right, can you see it?

How about a better look? Yeah, there you go. It just looks like an old ass lady crawling towards a creepy sunset in a desert with a rock or two and one flower. I really like the sparseness of it. You can tell the artist was really reaching into his inner depths. Oh, wait, actually I love the bat shit craziness of this thing. If I had my way, it would be hanging in my place right now, but, well I don't and it's not, so hopefully someone else picked it up or I can grab it when I finally get my man cave.

I took this picture because I thought this guy who was wearing orange crocs and riding around on a Razor scooter looked lame. But, I also captured a pretty awesome moment in the background where the old woman who had just finished demonstrating how to play the accordion her and her husband were selling. It was a pretty rad performance, which is what stopped me at their table in the first place. Oh and that bass amp in the bottom right hand corner that I was too chicken to ask about. I couldn't find the damn booth again to ask later, so I suck. I currently don't have a bass amp in NY because the one I have back in Ohio is way too big.

Well, here's my favorite thing from the whole day (and that includes the demolition derby). As you can see it's a Michael Jackson bust with a bunch of chips taken out of it and a Pee Wee Herman doll next to it. I think they were charging $30 or 40 for MJ. That's another thing I would have purchased, you know, if it was just $5, but whatever. I'm sure someone made off with it and I envy them. It kind of looks like MJ is whispering sweet nothings or kill lists into Pee Wee's ears, doesn't it?

As you know, I'm a big horror fan. As a kid, I remember going into different stores and seeing these really intricate and disgusting rubber Halloween masks that would scare the crap out of me (like, WAY scarier than the ones in AWESOME Halloween 3). As a result I still get pretty jazzed anytime I see masks. The ones at this space weren't that cool, but they look pretty creepy all laid out on a blanket like this, don't they?

This is just a shot of one of the aisles. There's basically two really long aisles with rows on each side, a few food booths (carny food, mostly), porta potties and tons of people bumping into each other with their carts. The place used to be an old airfield, so there's a lot of space. If you're in the not-upstate New York area, you should definitely check it out. Also, of note, I tried to take most of these pics on the sly, but this one was clearly seen by the lady who looks like she's trying to dodge my picture like it's a bullet being fired at Neo in the Matrix.

Here you have a Daewoo VCR. I took this picture solely for Rickey, who drives a car made by Daewoo, a company that makes just about everything else in the world. As you can see they do VCRs, my inlaws' microwave and a back hoe I used to see tearing scrap metal apart on my train ride into the city. I don't think I've ever seen another Daewoo automobile, but I'm sure when it starts breaking down, my inlaws will be happy to scrap their microwave to help him out.

Here's one of those pictures that I didn't really get all that well because I didn't want it to be super obvious that I was taking a picture of this guy's creepy stuffed polar bear. I'm REALLY hoping it's just a toy or something, but decide for yourself, that's it on the far right of the image. I'm still not completely unconvinced this little dude wasn't in the background of Cliffhanger.

Like I said in the beginning I did spend some money at the flea market, $3 to be exact. I spent $1 on these three original Masters of the Universe figures (that's He-Man to you less nerdy folks). I was pretty jazzed to see them. Here you've got Grizzlor, Hordak and Jitsu. I was especially excited because these figures are complete except for their weapons, which is no big deal. And yeah, Grizz is actually furry, like a troll doll, but radder. He also looks like he's ready to bust a move at any point and there's nothing you can do about it.

And here's my final purchase, Critters 1, 2, and 4 on tape. I was always fascinated by the boxes to 1 and 2 when I was a kid wandering through the video store. I love the art and will probably be drawing my version of the cover to 1 in the next couple days. I'm also hoping that I might find my elusive mini monster movie. Oh, and also, the fourth one is in SPACE! It worked for leprechaun, why not Critters?

Lastly, I want to let you fine readers know that a woman with a booth is the reason you won't be hearing the hot beats that have been pounding in my skull lately. I went to buy a Yamaha drum machine that would have probably driven me crazy because it sounded old and tin-y, but whatever, I pulled out my $5 to hand to her and the woman said no and put the drum machine back behind the table. Bullshit, right? I think so. So, what I'm really asking is if anyone has a drum machine or keyboard I can have. Holla!

Oh, DO go on.

New England's A Weird Place

As I alluded to in the past few days, I was gone on a mini trip last weekend with Em to visit her parents and grandma in a Massachusetts coastal town called Ipswitch. Em's grandma used to live there and now she rents a cabin (or camp as she calls it) every year towards the end of the summer for a month and we try and make it out every year. This year's trip was pretty interesting as it rained for most of the 4 hour drive there and was generally miserable as far as the weather goes for Friday and Saturday (luckily it got really nice on Sunday and we were able to enjoy the sun while Em's aunt, uncle and cousins came to visit).

Have I mentioned that I love having a phone that takes pretty good pictures that I can easily put on my computer? If not I do. And thanks to it, I can share these pics with you. Make it through the house and beach ones and I promise you a picture of an epic T-Rex image unlike anything you've seen before!

Here's a few pics of the camp itself, the surroundings and the incredible view of the ocean. It's not the most pleasant place to be when it's pouring rain and cold, but when it's nice, it's amazing. As a side note, I apparently can't sleep in a wooden cabin with the wind and rain banging against a house. Good to know.





To keep ourselves busy on Saturday we went to a little town I don't remember the name of, but they had this amazing store called Enchanted Forest.


EC had some amazingly weird stuff including Life Is Crap shirts, I like this one about whiskey.


Then, I turned to my right and saw this EPIC T-shirt featuring two T-Rexes fighting on a mountain with lightning in the background! Too bad they only had kid sizes.


Not wanting to solely focus on dinosaurs, EC also has plenty of things starring dragons, like this statue and snowglobe.




While walking through town I also saw a TON of these posters hanging around.


In case you can't read it, here's the various text boxes from top down and left to right. "I Fall For You." "Modern couples/Used to be gay...going straight?" "Time Traveling Lesbian!/Her Amazon Adventure." "Sexy parlor games/Turn tables on cheating hubby!" "Woman finds her gynecologist in a singles bar!" "Missing member turns up...in church!" "Mr. Happy's shocking leap of death!" And finally, at the bottom "A few short plays about sex and romance." Yes, that all does sound very romantical.

We also got a glimpse of these pop culture rubber duckies, gotta love that someone thought it'd be a good idea to turn one of the most revered comedians of his day who died far too young thanks to drugs and alcohol into a rubber ducky. Oh, plus a slasher.



And on the way home I saw these mints at TJ Maxx, and because I'm truly 14 at heart, took a picture and giggled like a school girl.


Oh, DO go on.

RIP Patrick Swayze

Though his IMDb pages hasn't even been updated with the information as of this writing (8:47PM EST), I've heard the news about Patrick Swayze passing away and am definitely bummed out. These kinds of things don't usually bother me too much because it's hard to mourn for someone you don't really know. But, thanks to movies like Road House (one of my all time favorite movies, movie watching experiences and movie to turn others onto), The Outsiders, Donnie Darko, Red Dawn and Point Break (and even Dirty Dancing which I saw for the firs time a few years ago with Em because it's one of her favorite movies), I do feel like Swayze gave me so many hours of entertainment that I can legitimately mourn the man. Hell, Road House was the highlight of the very first Many Movie Night we had.

In honor of the man, here's a look at my favorite posters and images from his movies.













So, pour one out for your homey Swayze and remember. "All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice."
Oh, DO go on.

An Epic Journey

This weekend Em and I went to Columbus, Ohio for the wedding of a friend I've known since my freshman year of high school and his lovely new bride. In a weird twist, we have three weddings this year, and for all three the bride's name is Megan. Crazy right? Anyway, that turned out to be one of the more normal aspects of this trip as it slowly descended into whatever can go wrong, will go wrong territory.

The plan was to fly out Friday afternoon from the airport right down the street from our house, connect in Detroit, have an hour layover and then fly to C-bus where my buddy Randy and his wife Lindsey would pick us up and we'd head downtown to hang out with almost all of my friends from high school. It was supposed to be fairly easy and end with some drunken revelry. That's not quite how it went down.

At the airport, we actually ran into Justin who was off to Cali for work. They boarded his plane really quickly because this storm was rolling in and then they got stuck on the runway for 45 minutes to an hour. The storm pushed our flight back about 50 minutes, but things cleared up and we headed out with enough time to not miss our connector in the D.

The flight itself was fine. I dozed off after reading some House of Seven Gables (I'm trying to get some culture). Once we landed we ran down the terminal and made it with time to spare (it's not easy to run in boat shoes with a big ass back pack on your back). We made it with time to spare and had a seat at the gate. It was then that I realized I had left my copy of House of Seven Gables on the previous plane. Since we didn't have much time and it was just a Barnes & Noble version of the book, I wasn't too worried about it. Soon after, they started boarding the plane, which was supposed to take off around 7:15PM. Em and I got on and got situated. Then, about five minutes later an airline guy came on the plane and told as that the airline had changed this plane and it was now going to Cincinnati. And we had to get off the plane.

Between the two of us Em and I have done a good bit of traveling, but neither of us had ever heard of something like this. So, after getting off the plane, the new departure time was 8:00PM. After that I grabbed a beer at an Irish pub right across from our gate, which was nice and calmed me down a bit. Then the departure time changed to 8:30. Then 9:00. Then 10:00. Around 9:30 or so, one of our fellow travelers got a call saying that, according to the internet, the flight was cancelled and it had disappeared from the board in the airport. The woman at the gate started making calls and it turned out it was cancelled due to weather. Here's the crazy thing, even if there was bad weather, which I'm doubtful of, there was another flight for Columbus leaving at 9:30. I'm not sure how that adds up, or how bad the weather could get in a half hour, but there was definitely some shadiness going on (this was a Delta/Northwest flight for the record).

I actually felt really bad for the woman at the gate, because, it's obviously not her fault, she's just the one giving a bunch of pissed off people the bad news. And the news got worse as we stood there waiting. First, her computer stopped working so she couldn't tell us what other flights there were and we were waiting for her supervisor to show up and tell us if they would be providing accommodations. We were sure what we were gonna do. The wedding wasn't until 5:30 or so on Saturday, but it turned out that the first flight to C-bus on Saturday was 11:45AM and they wouldn't pay for hotels because they blamed the cancellation on weather. I call total bullshit. Maybe if they hadn't pulled us off of a plane and continuously bumped us back, it would have been different, but it's not okay to keep yanking people around like that and I don't think we'll be flying Delta or NWA again.

So, we decided to rent a car and just drive the 3-4 hours to the hotel and just make it work. At the baggage desk they told us that our luggage had already gone through to C-bus on that 9:30 flight. Meanwhile this woman who wasn't very nice at all walked behind the desk and told all the people helping us that they would not be getting bags because they didn't have the manpower. Now, I don't know if that was true or not, but she was a total asshole the way she said it loud enough for all of us to hear it.

Now, before we actually went to baggage an older gentleman offered to give us a ride. I told him I'd talk to my wife and let him know. After trying to talk about it while passing through the color-changing German techno tunnel:



we decided to just get our own car, but after finding out our bags we actually ran into the guy again right outside the car rental place and he offered again, so we took it. He seemed like a nice enough guy and then he went to find this other guy who he talked to.

The four of us waited for the bus to take us to the rental car place and made small talk, something we made a LOT of during the long drive down to C-bus. But, before we could get going there was one more snag: the car's tail lights were out. A guy pulled up next to us and told us. Both of them. Have you ever heard of that happening? The brake lights were fine, it was just the running lights. So, we headed back to the rental place (we were only about 5 minutes away, so it wasn't a huge deal), got another car and left around 11.

The drive was fine and both of the guys were really nice, but it was hard to stay awake. On paper, it might not have been the smartest thing to do in the world, but he seemed like a nice guy and he turned out to be an incredibly nice man, as he wouldn't let us pay for any portion of the car or even for gas.

We ended up getting to C-bus (he actually dropped us off right at the hotel) after driving through the town we went to school in and our old stomping grounds, which was kind of surreal. I think it was around 2:30? My sense of timing is all off because I was so exhausted. But it was great seeing Randy, Lindsey, Chad Yates and meeting his new lady Kristen. Toth and Matt Hartmann showed up later (they were hanging out with the rest of our friends, including Matt Bond, the groom, near OSU). I was bummed to miss out on that, but I grabbed a whiskey and Coke and relaxed. Meanwhile, Chad had a Pomegranate Passion Fruit Cooler (this from the dude who I invented Sweet Tart whiskey with):



I had a beer before/in bed and then fell asleep but didn't sweep too well. The next day we met up with Heather, who was in our wedding, and everyone else in our hotel (Erica showed up after we did actually, but we were asleep) and got Mexican food. We came back and it turned out that Chad and Randy were wearing the same shirt:



We then went to the wedding and it was amazing. I remember the first time I met Megan. Geoff and I went down to visit Bond and she refused to hang out with us on a Friday because she had to study for a test on Tuesday. I always thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, the ceremony was great and it's always fun to see my friends in the same spot I was in a few years back. I've made it a point to watch the groom when the bride shows up. Sorry brides :)

The reception was equally awesome and it was great to see everyone who we missed hanging out with the night before. Charlie was in from Texas, the Suttons were there, Jen, Geoff, his fiance Eileen, Chad Mikrut in from Japan and of course Bond and Megan. Did I miss anyone? If so, I suck and am sorry. Everyone seemed to be in a really good mood which was awesome and I got to have some great conversations with everyone. We were a pretty tight group throughout high school and it's nice to know that we can pick right up where we left off after all this time.

The best part of the whole reception, though, was when Matt got up and played "When I Think About You I Touch Myself" with the dueling pianos guy. It was amazing and luckily I took some video with my new phone. Excuse the weird angle, I'm still getting used to this thing.

Everything was great and we ended up heading back to our hotel where we hung out before going to sleep. Well, I was sleeping in theory. I was paranoid about not waking up on time (we were getting a cab to the airport at 6:15AM). Plus, there was quite the commotion going on out in the hallway as there were almost several fights and then some dude kept coming back to a room and banging on the door trying to get inside. It was not optimal sleeping conditions to say the least.

Luckily, the trip home went off without a hitch, somewhat renewing my faith in the airline industry, but not 100%. We even got to go out onto the tarmac and get right on the plane:



So, the journey was long and crazy and not optimal, but it was absolutely worth it to see the Bonds get married and to see all my friends again. I hope they enjoy their honeymoon in Mexico, hopefully we took away all the bad travel karma and theirs was a nice and easy flight. Congrats again you guys!

Oh, DO go on.