The best name in the class of '11, without a doubt:

Granger Titcomb.

I defy you all to find a better one.

Colin's Life Update of Life (4 lyf)

Oh, hello! I didn't see you come in.

It sure has been a while since I poured into the brog all of my thoughts and feelings. This particular evening, I had a hankering to let you (faithful readers) in on what exactly I've been up to, and I'll give you a hint right now... a fucking wedding.

1. The Bachelor Party

So I was going to do an entire post about the bachelor party I attended the weekend prior to the wedding... but... I dunno. I just felt like there would be too much explaining, too many characters to try and run by you quickly, and the overall hilarity of the situation would be lost.

Anyhoo, the super-duper bachelor party my brother's best friend (Mark) initially had planned was supposed to take place at another groomsman's little beach house on the Chesapeake Bay. A couple weeks before it went down, said groomsman's parents decided that they were retracting their invitation for us to stay there (which they had OK'd a year in advance), and instead, visit the house themselves on that weekend. Boo. At the last second, Mark was a hero and found a bitchin' house for us all to stay in way up in the mountains, miles from anyone, on 125 acres. Responsibility for finding a place like that makes me glad I wasn't the best man.

So, yeah. 10 dudes and 1 gal (who had proved herself to be a dude in a variety of ways leading up to the event including [but not limited to] peeing standing up while on a camping trip with bro and his friends) ended up at this cool little log cabin in bum-fuck Virginia. Every other person there was a really good friend of my brother with whom I had interacted over the years, but never really gotten to know. Things began kind of awkwardly for me, being thrown into a total bro hang without bros of my own, but once the alcohol started flowing, I actually found myself hanging out with these guys, and it was pretty all right.

Speaking of alcohol flowing, these guys put us to shame. Bros take note... I have seen a new standard for drinking and I am now holding you all to it. Highlights include having two people get so drunk they hallucinated. I had never even heard of that happening. Another highlight was finding one of the aforementioned two passed out (for real passed out, shallowly breathing, thought he was dead kind of passed out), face down in the gravel about 100 yard down our long-ass driveway. He had to be carried into the house. He actually got up and started hanging out with everyone else around 2 p.m., but doesn't even remember anything until 4 p.m. when he suddenly said, "how long have I been sleeping?"

"Wait, seriously? You've been sitting here for about 2 hours talking to us."

"Pf, shut up, I have not. I just woke up. Is breakfast ready? What happened last night?"

Wow.

2. The Week Between the Bachelor Party and the Wedding

Shit. I don't think anything really happened. I went to work. I found out that I had been getting paid $10 an hour and decided I should probably be spending more time at work. Remember all of those words I wrote down in my first post? I totally know those now. My job is like school, but a class for which I didn't take the pre-reqs and for which only I have to turn in a class worth of work. Hooray!

But actually it's awesome. The people are surprisingly chill. One chick is my age and went to VT but is transferring to USC. Another dude is an MD/PhD student who is actually really funny and laid back. The other two are quiet nice Asian dudes (maybe Erinrose knows them) who are probably pretty old but I haven't asked.

3. The Wedding

I've been to two weddings in my life. The first one I only vaguely remember. My cousin (but who I call my aunt because she's older, or something) married her current husband when I was only 6 or 7. My brother was the ring bearer and everything was adorable. About 6 or 7 years ago my aunt (a real aunt, my dad's sis) got married. I had to hang out with family. It was a chore. I didn't drink. It was an OK time.

Something I've learned recently is that weddings are fucking awesome.

The day of the wedding all the groomsmen came to our house dressed entirely in white for some champagne croquet. I wore some cute white khakis and wife beater. The best man wore a toga. Another groomsman wore tighty-whities and a white cotton bathrobe. It was pretty awesome. A good time was had by all.

So yeah, after croquet, we all got dressed and headed to the chapel right by UVa for the wedding. We had to sit in a hot room in the back, decked out in full suit garb, for about 50 minutes before the ceremony. The ceremony itself was nice. I got to hear my mob sobbing from two rows back, so that was pretty cool.

And then there was the reception. I have a fun new drinking game, fyi, for when there is a bottle of wine that needs to be finished quickly. Actually, it's not so much a game as a song and chug, but it's good. After a couple of those between the groomsmen, we arrived at the reception and had cute little introductions. The entire evening is pretty hazy, but I do remember talking for a while to my fundamentalist Christian family members before grinding up on some bridesmaids. Yuh-oh.

One highlight from the wedding includes seeing one of Ali's crazy drunk uncles trying to take off his pants in front of the previously mentioned uber-conservative members of my family. I suddenly remembered why all 7 kids are home schooled and no one leaves the house.

After the reception, the groomsmen, bridesmaids, and ushers went over to one of my brother's friend's house for an after party and we drank some more and stayed up late. Fantastic.

4. Since the Wedding

So that was all... Saturday. And what day is it today, Thursday? Shit. I haven't done much.

On Sunday all of the people who came in from out of town came over for brunch and stuff. I was pretty hung over for the beginning of it, but it was nice to see that all of these old family members and friends were too. I'm beginning to understand adult parties way more than I did as a child. The brunch was nice. One family (my parents' best friends from when they lived in Houston), and my mom's best friend ended up staying until around after 10 p.m. I was all tuckered out, but it was all worth it.

By Monday, everyone was gone. Every day this week I've gone to work for a few hours before coming home and lounging around, watching a movie, and going to bed. This has probably been one of the least eventful weeks ever.

Actually, one interesting thing did happen that I just remembered:

On the way home from work this afternoon I was stopped at a red light on the border of UVa. A 40-something jogger in full jogger gear (short shorts, cute tank top) strode by at a brisk pace. Upon pacing a tall magnolia tree with big white flowers, he came to a sudden stop. Turning around, he got up really close to the tree. He pressed his face into one of the flowers and appeared to inhale deeply. He took a step back and then brought his hands close to his chest, clutched them into tight fists, and shook them briskly in what I could only interpret as jubilee. The light turned green and I started driving by him just as he was starting to jog again.

5. Other

I hope everyone is doing well. Tom, it was good talking to you this afternoon. I'm super pumped about Pitchfork in a few weeks. Chicago is going to be the bees knees. Did everyone check out the schedule? I for one was happy to see that none of my fav bands were playing at the same time. It isn't too hard to go back and forth between stages is it?

Also, question, when is our next rent check due? Are they always due on the 14th or 15th or whatever?



So there was my thorough life update. I think from now on I'll post more frequently with fewer words because I can't imagine anyone actually going through and reading this rambling shit. I just have so little to do every evening, things like this really don't intrude in any way on what I should be doing. Fuck. Man. Summer is pretty boring. At least... now it is. Shit.

Xoxo,
Colin

An Epitaph of J. Alex Sciuto

It was a voucher number that killed him. Not any of the thousands he saw every day, though. Not a 275345 or a 194874. In fact, he never actually saw the number that killed him. Maybe it doesn't exist, I don't know, but I know Alex waited and waited for the moment he could type into OnBase three three three three three three. The strokes would have been effortless and the position of the three, so close to the enter button, was perfect. Voucher number 333333 never came. 333323 came and so did 333366 attached to a long bill for bottled water. He will be missed.

J. Alex Sciuto
January 30, 1987 - June 28, 2007
Finally at Peace

Fuck Aaron Kaufman

He put me on the Aeropostalé mailing list.

Fuck Aaron Kaufman

He put me on the Aeropostalé mailing list.

The Critical Buzz

Evan Almighty runs out of comic invention early, and the filmmakers fall back on what real politicians do when they exhaust their small stash of ideas: brainless piety. Also- shitty extras. Like Colin Steers.

-David Edelstein, New York Magazine

I live to consume all media!

I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. He might not write perfect novels, but a) no one does, and I can't figure out why he gets so much grief for not doing so, and b) I could care less if this book is perfect or not, because it got me somewhere deep.


Also, the episode of Freaks & Geeks about the homecoming dance is pretty damn close to perfect. One of the best endings to anything I've ever seen.


Also also, Sciuto and Anne and I watched 49UP last night (it's an ongoing British documentary. You can read about it here), and were depressed. It was one of those things that I heard about and thought "oh, that's gotta be really interesting," and didn't want anything else to do with once it was finished. Not that anyone shouldn't be interested in it; it's just that it's depressing. Not much else is depressing, though. Score.

If you guys are watching/reading/listening to cool stuff, I wanna read about it. Put it UP!

Colin, where have you gone? Do they have the internet there?

This post is mainly an apology, I suppose, because I haven't really said anything about Ireland and may not for a while. Between the journal we're required to do for class, the journal I'm failing to keep for myself, my attempt to minimize time spent online, and, trying to keep pretention to a minimum, the bigness of all of this, the time spend outdoors especially, one more attempt to make a coherent whole out of this seems...you get it. Hope everybody's good. Also, there is no way I'm calling it the Brocastle.

The House Is alright

Tom Fry is so right. Knocked Up was awesome. Undeclared we decided was a very close facsimile to real college life, as close as a network comedy could come. While it may have been wildly off in the particulars (the dudes never go to class and they are way too articulate and I think Adam Sandler comes to hang out with them. Which doesn't sound fun.), it had the feel of dorm living down. Knocked Up was the real thing. There were so many times where I could picture myself saying what they said, except a lot less funnily and creepily. But that's why my life isn't a movie... and because I haven't gotten any beautiful career minded (in the E! comedy sense) women pregnant. But I'm guessing it's the former that keeps me from the silver screen.

My parents did come up this weekend, and we had a blast. We went swimming in the hotel pool, took naps, and my mom and I spent a lot of time reading. I am the child of my parents. Very boring, very sleepy, and rather be reading. But they got the house so much stuff. Like a vacuum and a microwave, two machines we sorely needed. And I bought a DVD player. We needed that more.

But there's really only one reason I wanted to write this post:

Jason Pipkin::Boggle
Lindsey::Text Twist
Alex::Lady Bug Mating

the pantheon grows...

A few small weekend vignettes...

~I cleaned the castle all day yesterday. Okay, I cleaned the house for four hours yesterday, but close enough. Issac paced around the house trying to look busy for a while, then took a nap.

~Also yesterday, one of our pseudo-redneck across the street neighbors stood outside for, no kidding, ten minutes, screaming at the top of her lungs at a stray dog, "GO HOME."

~I went to see Knocked Up with the Sciutos, and it is the best comedy since Wedding Crashers. I think it's actually a little better. The dialogue between Bros is perfect. Alex and I laughed uproariously.

~I hugged it out with Sciuto's dad before he left. I hugged it out with his mom, too, but the hug paled in comparison to the sex we had on Friday night. Plus, hugging out out with friends' dads happens rather seldomly.

~Oh yeah, on Friday night, Sciuto's mom and I had sex. It was her idea. [Question: Do any of our parents read this?

~Juan and I went undefeated in Beirut last night. He threw up right after we quit.

hey i lived

i made it to puno. sometimes i can´t feel my fingers because of the altitude, but other than that, shit´s hilarious. except for my roommate who has only taken herself off oxygen to puke... what a baby.

i waited in the cusco terminal for 3 or 4 hours for my bus. i had a lot of conversations with peruvians, most of them asking why i would ever leave cusco the night before the sun festival, the best day of the year. i said i was busy in puno today. i think my favorite line´(in english) was, ´hey, add me to the msn hotmail, and i will teach you lessons in spanish, german, japanese, french, and italian. no? what is your sign? i am the balance. i am the libra.´

oh yeah, speaking of the sun festival in cusco, guess who was there! cameron diaz. i´m reading the news, and i guess she is an idiot (though there are a lot of articles about her ´diazzling smile´ and cuban heritage). anyway, she wore a mao ´serve the people´bag in the streets, and no one here is much a fan of the shining path guerillas. busted!

WTF

WTF??