We're going back to New Jersey

Celeb Sightings in C-Ville

I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of sirens.

My house is quite removed from the road, and even in the confusion of just-having-woken-up-ness, I realized that something big had happened close by; I kept hearing sirens approach but stay close. Wandering over to my brother's (vacant at the moment) room and looking out of the window towards where my driveway winds down to the road, I saw huge plumes of dark smoke and flames rising just above the tree tops just over the crest of the hill on the property adjacent to ours (about half a mile away). At first, I thought there was a car crash on 250 (my road, wooooh), but the headline in the paper this morning proved me wrong:

Dave Matthew's Band's Bassist's House Burns Down

Fuck!

Poor guy.

I had no idea I lived next to the DMB bassist.

Oh, and that's not the end of my recent celeb run-ins (the story above counts, btw). After a quick lift at the gym, the parents and I had a nice little dinner out. At the table next to mine sat Howie Long. Howie Fucking Long.



And for giggles:


Pretty sweet, eh? Fun story: when I was about 12 I helped teach his son Chris how to snowboard. Worth noting: we weren't friends or anything, he was dating a family friend's daughter.

So yeah, we made eye contact pretty much throughout the entire dinner. I'm pretty sure he wanted me.

All in all, this has been a pretty eventful little break... or at least past 48 hours. I think the blog should be more celeb oriented.

In other Colin news, I get my wisdom teeth out on Monday. I'm planning on posting when I'm as drugged up as possible.

Oh, and while you're all enraptured with the details of my life, my new glasses finally came in today and I'm wearing them right now. It's pretty intense.

Xoxo,
Colin

our mother was the referee

I feel truly honored. (Mansha works too, right? Too bad bro doesn't really work for any of our names. The closest I suppose is Alex Sciubro. No?)

I went to a hockey game last night with my stepdad. SO MANLY. Checking is great, the crowd absolutely went wild. Oh, that booming sound of the players getting pushed into the plexiglass. Fantastic. Also, fights are ridiculous, I wish I could hear what the players were saying to each other. It was probably about their moms.

Minnesota Wild 3, Phoenix Coyotes 1. YESSSSS.

We sang a song, called the MN Wild Anthem. So intense. Minnesotans are crazy. There were 18,500 people in that arena.

MINNESOTA WILD ANTHEM

We were raised
With the stick
And a pair of blades
On the ice we cut our teeth
We took our knocks
In the penalty box
Our mother was the referee

This sport was here
Before we came
It will be here when we're gone
The game's in our blood
And our blood's in the game
Lay us down under
A frozen pond

We will fight to the end
We will stand and defend
Our flag flying high and free
We were born the child
Of the strong and Wild
In the State, the State of Hockey

A big blue line runs around our state
A line that can't be crossed
The day they try to take this game
Is the day the gloves come off

We will fight to the end
We will stand and defend
Our flag flying high and free
We were born the child
Of the strong and Wild
In the State, the State of Hockey.



I say we revise it and use it for the All-Stars.

How did I get this privilege?

Yes! The nickname "Mannah" has finally paid off!

WARNING: PICTURE OF MY ASS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST

It's quarter after 11, I still have an entire art history presentation to plan for tomorrow, but whatever. I'm so done with school. Honestly, I'm pretty done with Rome. It's a pretty dirty place, it's a ridiculous place. For example: tomorrow all transportation is on strike so that they can have a 3-day weekend. They have no other real goal in mind. They have strikes like this every few weeks -- but of course I still have to be across town by 9am. Fuck you, Italy. This kind of thing would never happen in America. It just wouldn't be put up with.

I don't really have anything to say, I miss you though!

I'm so jealous that you are all home right now. I had a pretty miserable day yesterday -- I was EXHAUSTED and couldn't even hold a proper conversation. After we looked at Augustus of Prima Porta for our field trip to the Vatican Museum, I booked through it alone, listening to Orange Juice as I wandered through the Sistine Chapel, and then could barely drag my legs through the streets to catch the bus back to the centro for lunch. "I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!" was all I could say to myself. I felt better after a nap... but that feeling didn't quite leave. I am in love with my friends here... but I want to be friends with them in AMERICA.

BUT today I transferred 330 euro into my bank account and I plan on coming home with NONE.

Can anyone say FLIFF??!

ALL THE WORLD IS MY STAGE

I was trundling up Missouri highway 40 (or I-64 for you non-Missourians), with my sister and her friend/roommate. We were heading towards Kirksville, MO where I was going to drop them off at Truman State University, then continue heading up to Carleton through Des Moines. We weren't even outside the metro area of St. Louis yet, and I had just cracked open my Cherry Coke Zero, my mother's favorite 'healthy' flavor of soda.

As I was popping open the can and starting to bring it towards my mouth, the car started rocking. Much like F(x)=x*sin(x), the rocking started out with quick shifts from left to right, but soon spiraled out of control. The steering wheel twisted beneath my hands trying to maintain control, but it was no use. By this time I had taken my foot off the gas, had momentarily experimented with the break pedal, but remembered that in the case of blow-outs, the smartest thing to do is just decelerate.

But decelerating just wasn't coming quickly enough. We swerved to the right and the cement guard rail (we were on the viaduct over Woods Mill Road) came fully into view. I thought we were going to hit, but as quickly as it slid into view, it spun out again, and now we were looking at three lanes of oncoming traffic. We had turned 180 degrees.

That was the last thing I could focus on. We spun another two times, but we moved so quickly it just made me a little dizzy, and the we stopped. Except for the blown out rear tire (Alicia, my sister's friend who was sitting right above the tire, said she just felt the car drop half a foot and knew something was wrong) and the fact that I was now facing stopped traffic instead going in the correct direction, everything was the same. I was still within the middle lane and we didn't hit anything.

A police officer raced to us and blocked off all three lanes just long enough for me to turn the car around and limp it to the shoulder. That back tire made a lot of noise. It sounded like an empty tin can was supporting the entire back of the car, which doesn't seem too far off of a simile.

So. That's about the most exciting thing to happen to me in a car.

Thanksgiving in Ohio – The Recap

I haven’t been to Toledo in over 5 years. Every other member of my family made it out to my grandpa’s funeral last Winter except me; the one flight arriving on the evening before the funeral was cancelled. I’m not sure if I’ve told that to many of you. It was awful to keep hearing, “Sorry you couldn’t make it to Rex’s funeral, it would have been great to hear you speak. The service was lovely.”

Seeing my family was kind of nice, in spite of the setting being one of the more depressing cities you can imagine. Everyone who didn’t see me at Ryan’s wedding in June commented on how much I’ve grown. Besides that, I was pretty much left out of conversations, which was okay with me.

We stayed at my grandma’s house (my dad’s mom) in South Toledo. Everything is exactly as it was when my dad’s family moved there when he was in high school. On our first night in town we looked through slides dating back to the early 1970’s and recognized, in some of them, the TV that was still sitting next to the projector screen. The card table we played on in the living room has a drawer that houses the deck of cards we use next to a score card that has my late grandpa’s hand writing on it (he passed away in 1988). While talking to my brother on the phone, he asked if the clock in the dining room was still stopped at 12:00. It was.

When I visited Ohio as a kid, I didn’t quite understand what was going on. My brother and I would go off exploring somewhere, or hang out with cousins of the relatively same age, and leave the grown ups to converse. For most of this trip however, I was left to be an adult among adults and I really didn’t enjoy it.

When was it okay for me to be let in on conversations about the financial wreck most of my family is in? I don’t remember talk of foreclosures and ruined credit during any previous trips. As a kid, I remember being amused by things like the obesity of my extended family, the deafness of my grandma, or the out of control spending habits of my aunt. Not as funny now. None of my cousins of the relatively same age have gone to college, although two of them could have graduated by now. The brightest one, a year younger than I, had the opportunity to go, but turned it down and is now living with his older brother who has an ongoing battle with drug addiction. This living situation could either result in a moment of realization and resilience or another child my aunt and uncle will try to send through rehab. Everyone in that side of the family seems to be looking positively towards the future in spite of their hardships. Each cousin talked of enrolling in various educational programs in the near future. I hope dearly for their success.

Most of my visit and frustration was with my grandma. From what I experienced, her racism has gotten better, but her hearing has gotten worse. She actually let a black waiter take her plate during one lunch out and only privately complained to the manager later instead of making a scene of it like what happened last time I visited. Her inability to hear has gotten completely ridiculous. When we dare take her in public, she still points and laughs at anyone she sees with hearing aids or glasses. “Look at those stupid things in her ears,” she’ll say in what she thinks is a whisper, but is actually at a level that turns heads. Every single time the phone rang while we were visiting, even if she was next to it, someone would have to yell to her that the phone was ringing, give up, get up, and answer it themselves. A typical conversation between her and my dad would be as follows (I tried to remember this word for word to bring back as an example):

Dad: [Telling a story in the front seat of the car]

Grandma: [Accidentally interrupting from the back seat because she had no idea that dad was talking] Do you remember Phil Garrett?

Dad: Yea. [Uncle] Jeff’s friend from school?

Grandma: You know him?

Dad: [Louder] Jeff’s friend?

Grandma: Jeff’s friend from St. John’s?

Dad: Yes I remember him.

Grandma: From St. John’s, remember?

Dad: [Practically yelling] Yes, I remember.

Grandma: You don’t?

Dad: I do, I do remember.

Grandma: Oh, well, I sat behind his mom at church on Sunday. I think she moved into those new apartments down by Swan Creek. [The story continues for a much longer time with specific details about the life of a woman we don’t know or care about].

I should feel sorry for someone who has lost an entire sense, but it is really hard, especially when she refuses to get correction out of vanity. It’s impossible to interact socially with her at all. She won’t hear you. She won’t get it.

It’s difficult to express the simultaneous pity and anger I feel. Grandma is horribly, horribly lonely, and yet she is the most selfish woman I have ever met. She told my mom that she wished my Aunt Jennie would never have married her husband or would leave him and come back home to live with her forever. The amount of psychological damage she has actually done to Jennie is horrifying and impossible to really explain without seeing the two of them interact.

I was the only one drinking fairly heavily on Thanksgiving Day (due, I suppose, in part to three family members being recovering alcoholics [who thankfully remained sober]). One of my parents would pour me a glass of wine and say, “Thanks for coming, sorry about this.”

Fucking Ohio. I tell ya. I’m glad my family got out. I don’t enjoy seeing my family's roots withering like this.

On the plus side, it’s raining here in Virginia. The drought may be over.

Xoxo,
Colin