The Epic Battle of Grant and the Spider (in 3 acts)

Preface: As a kid I used to hunt down spiders/snakes/etc with my friend Craig. We even found a black widow and caught it in a small plastic tupperware container. Somehow something changed and I no longer like spiders. In fact, I absolutely abhor spiders.

Act I

My alarm was blaring and I stumbled out of bed and put on my glasses. I was lazily gazing about my room when in my peripheral vision (I must make note that I have very good peripheral vision) I saw a black dot on my ceiling that I did not remember being there before. On slightly closer inspection, I found it to be a huge black spider about the size of a quarter. There were two problems here: 1) I hate spiders and 2) It was above my bed. I decided to poke at it with a really long bamboo stick -that I have for some reason- in hopes that it would scurry away from my bed so I could kill it. I poked. It fell. Into my bed. I have a black bedspread.

Intermission

That night I literally woke up every hour at least once thinking the spider was crawling on me or to check if it was on my ceiling. I hate spiders that much.

Act II

The next day, after a long day of classes, I came home to relax. I did a quick scan on the ceiling to see if my friend was back. I noticed a black spot on my ceiling, once more close to my bed. Alas, it was my spider nemesis. I couldn't reach him from where I was, but I needed to kill him, so I grabbed the bamboo stick once more and placed a folded sock on the end of the stick in order to have a larger mass to crush his fragile body with. I jabbed at him hard and smushed him into the wall. Then he fell to the floor and scurried under my bed.

Intermission

That night I convinced myself that I had injured him and he went under my bed to die. This was ALMOST believable, but I still scanned my ceiling for him every so often. Then I was attacked by another spider on my desk which I crushed with enough force to crush a walnut.

Act III

This morning I woke up and started to get ready for my day. I KNEW the spider was dead so there was no reason to check, but I did anyway. As I looked above my window...there he was...the bane of my existence...the reason I didn't sleep...the spider. So I grabbed a magazine, climbed up to reach him, and smacked him as hard as I could with the magazine. I sincerely expected to see him fall to the floor and run across the room to hide under my bed again. This spider was mortal however and his splattered remains still adorn my wall in a warning to other spiders who decide to plague me.

No...More...Applications

So in the last two days I have filled out something like 12 applications. All to restaurants. All in hopes of getting a barback/bartending job. If I don't get an offer from ONE of these companies, it will be indisputable evidence that someone up there don't like me too much.

Oh, and if anyone in the Orange County area knows of a good restaurant/bar that needs a tender of bar...or can refer me to their boss or something....I would forever be in your debt. Or at least until I promptly forgot about the debt after getting my first paycheck.

I'm Gonna Have to See Some I.D.

As if I don't already get enough people telling me that I look quite a bit younger than I actually am, I just took a test that is supposed to calculate your real age. Guess how old I REALLY am?

14 years old.

That's right...I've regressed to a point 7 years ago in my life. Eh...I guess I'll blame all the stupid things I do on being a teenager.

You Know You're a Chapman Film Student When...

So I'm not too sure how film school goes for the attendees of other prestigious film schools, but there's a way of life here at Chapman which all who enter these hallowed halls firstly observe with awe, secondly experience, and thirdly weep in agony over. Here are my observations.

Top 25 Ways You Know You're At Chapman Film School

1. If Nothing works. No...really...nothing works.
2. If the geniuses who designed the school put a pair of classroom speakers into the wall so they stick INTO the "foley room" thereby adding bits of pieces of teacher's lectures into your sound effects
3. If the "foley room" is nothing more than a tiny room full of assorted crap and no acoustical construction
4. If you can answer EVERY problem with, "What do you expect...for it to work?"
5. If the lab assistants are only around when you don't need them
6. If "that bearded guy" ends up in EVERY SINGLE STUDENT FILM
7. If every student film is obsessively cut until the last minute and then ruined by bad sound
8. If you know the title "Tire Change" or "Gunsmoke"
9. If you spend countless hours on a project that is suddenly dropped for no good reason
10. If millions are spent on new equipment...and that new equipment consists of PCs with AvidDV since, you know, nobody uses Macs or Final Cut Pro since it's not the industry standard or anything
11. If you have been taken advantage of because you need to "fill your reel"
12. If you have lost entire projects due to random deletions which take place on every school computer
13. If you hear of how incredible the school is GOING to be...once you're gone
14. If people donate 20-something-million-dollars to the film school, yet the ADR rooms still have mic stands that don't even tighten
15. If your academic advisor merely reads you descriptions from the student handbook as a form of "answering your questions"
16. If it becomes big news that ONE film out of hundreds makes it to ANY film festival
17. If the school STILL uses an editing program called Discreet...since it's just that, so discreat that nobody else uses it
18. If you're an editor who ends up doing makeup, a screenwriter who ends up editing, or a producer who ends up acting
19. If you have spent enough consecutive time in the film school to grow a quarter inch of facial hair
20. If your first film had to do with suicide
21. If ANY of your films had the "look into the mirror and splash water on the face" scene
22. If you are told you WILL have to go to grad school in order to get a good job, even though you just graduated from a film school
23. If half the teachers don't even know how to run an average DVD player
24. If you made more films as a freshman than you did any other year at school
25. If you're still reading this boring piece of crap or if any of this made ANY sense to you

I would like to sincerely apologize for this post. As I hit number 20 I realized that nobody cares. But I couldn't just erase it. So here it is...if you read this, I apologize. If you skipped to this paragraph, I congratulate you for realizing that this wasn't worth reading. It was basically for my own amusement.

Now it's time to sleep.

Lonely Ramblings of a Solitude Junky

My ear started bleeding earlier today. I scratched just inside the pinna and hit a bug bite or something and as I removed my finger and glanced in its general direction....I saw blood. Oh how I love bleeding...especially in areas which I cannot physically see. So I stopped the bleeding and hopped into my car. (Yes...it is possible to "hop" into my car if the top is down, but seeing as how the steering wheel is the size of a bus' steering wheel it's more than likely you will hit some body part on it which makes landing and looking cool kinda difficult)

I have a confession to make. The place I was going in my car....was.....the movie theatre. Yes, yes...I was alone. This is the second time I have been to a movie by myself. I walked up to stand in the long line for Kill Bill Vol. 2 and put in my iPod earphones. I cranked Wish by The Cure and started observing. It's amazing how putting headphones in your ears makes you feel invisible. Kinda like how people in cars will openly pick their noses, sniff their armpits, or do other activities that are deemed "not suitable for public" because you feel safe and alone in your car...surrounded by very see-through windows. So there I was, watching the couples, groups, awkward first dates (to Kill Bill?), and families with very small children (seeing Kill Bill?) Not one other lone person was heading into the theatre. I had this image of me and one other lone person seeing each other from across the room and instantly becoming friends, like the two nerds who always get picked on in middle school who bond together to form The Impenetrable Force of the Two Nerds. No such luck. I sat down in the perfect seat (it's so easy to find one seat, much unlike how difficult it is to find five good seats next to each other) and kept listening to my headphones. Funny how everyone assumed I had someone coming to join me and therefore left 2 seats on either side of me even though 5 rows down and 5 rows up from me there was not one empty seat.

On the way home I found myself with nobody to converse with about the film...so I cranked the techno that KROQ was playing (even though it's "LA's ONLY new rock!" and not "LA's ONLY new techno!") And now the clock reads 1:37am. I have to get up at 7:00am. At the moment I am not even phased by this information, though I will most likely be uttering swear words at myself under my breath and pretending not to hear them to complete the effect.

Oh yeah...the movie was good too.

And Doctors are Getting Smarter

I was filling out a generic medical form for Dr K. the other day and was somewhat surprised by one of the questions on the form:

-Has any blood relative ever had? (circle all the apply)

-blah -blah
-blah -blah
-blah -blah
-blah -suicide

Yes, because, you know, suicide is contagious and all. I can hear it now, "Uncle Jimmy had the suicide real bad like and I think I gots it from him."

Just Like in the Movies

There is something very liberating about cutting your hair off. Today, after a very belated midterm, I walked into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. My hair was being particularly unruly. I have massive quantities of gel/pomade/goo that could have fixed the problem, but I went with the more drastic (and therefore more fun) method. I grabbed Ed's razor and buzzed off a good half inch of hair. Immediately coming to mind is Empire Records when the girl goes in the bathroom and cuts her hair off due to a big change in her life. Or The Royal Tenenbaums when Richie cuts all his hair off. But he tries to kill himself afterwards. Then again he did shave his beard before slicing his wrists. If any of you ever see me trying to shave off my goatee...stop me. Then again, I haven't seen my chin in what, 3 years? I almost want to shave it off just to see how I look.

What am I talking about? I so should not be given access to my own webpage.

Mr. Paige...You Might Want to Sit Down for This....

The brown leather couch is incredibly comfortable and is more than an adequate sleeping spot. After only a few hours sleep, taking a nap sounds like a good idea. There are pictures of little girls on bikes, little girls all dressed up, little girls hugging their daddy. Colorful plastic models of male and female reproductive systems hang on the walls next to generic black and white photography. The air conditioning is blasting, which is too cold for most people, but just fine for me. I'm reading a People magazine and finding out about the not-so-secret lives of famous people the media tells me to care about. After nearly half an hour sitting in the quiet office, a tall, thin, bearded man walks in, shakes my hand, and introduces himself as Dr. K. We sit down and I talk to this stranger about a part of my body that I don't talk to many people about...in person. After a while I am presented with the options ahead of me:

1- Hope that the last cysto-dilation corrected any and all problems (chances are nearly nil)
2- If not...another scope while I'm awake. If scar tissue has built back up, either:
__*cysto-dilation with cold blade while awake
__*cysto-dilation with laser while awake
__*home catheter insertion (applied by me)
3- If those options do not work I am faced with the possibility that I will have to go in to get regular cysto-dilations for the rest of my life
4- If I do not WANT cysto-dilations for the rest of my life there is the possibility of a major surgery in which the part of the urethra with the scar tissue is removed. Think of it this way...take a hose, lay it out flat, cut out a chunk from the middle, sew the remaining pieces together. This can cause major problems if it does not heal correctly.

I then took off my pants to show him a part of my body that I don't show to just anyone. After being fondled and being asked to cough he did a prostate check...which is when...um....you know. Sigh...I didn't even flinch.

I am seriously just completely and utterly beyond hoping right now. I'm past crossing my fingers. I'm over trusting. I'm laughing at luck or karma or fate. I'm so ridiculously afraid of how this is going to turn out that it's beyond funny. Though I don't know why it would be funny in the first place.

Drunken Singing and Bunny Rabbits

Yup...there were both of those today.

Not gonna say whom...but definitely both took place today.

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A Reverse Chronological Inventory of Nicknames

(Nicknames were given TO me and not chosen BY me)

ET: Given to me at the ripe old age of newborn a nurse decided to call me ET since I was prone to stretching my neck up as high as possible and looking around the room...supposedly ET-like. The nickname never stuck.

Pokey: Given to me at something like 2 because I just wouldn't walk. I knew HOW to walk, I just wouldn't do it. I preferred crawling on hands and knees everywhere I went. Seeing as how this was slower than walking, I was deemed Pokey.

Skin: Fast forward to junior high when I was acting in plays. I was the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and that character is also one of the farm hands. The farm hand wore overalls. One day during practice I forgot my undershirt and had to go out on stage wearing just the overalls and no shirt...kinda embarrassing for a scrawny pale kid like me. Later, during an actual performance...as in lots of lots of people in the audience...I was forced to go out not wearing an undershirt. Kinda traumatic. I was called Skin only in the theatre.

Spandex: Same time, same play, same costume. I had to wear silver spandex under my Styrofoam costume and this...being junior high...is a time when kids like to point out to other kids why they are weird or different or stupid. I was called Spandex only in the theatre.

GP: High school now and I had this teacher who I'm pretty sure just didn't know my name...but could remember my initials. To him I was GP. Soon everyone was calling me this.

GPness: Say it out loud. Like right now. Heh. My friend Brad would add "-ness" to the end of everything. ie: let's go get some foodness. One day, while calling me GP (which was normal) he added his semi-famous suffix and said, "Hey GPness" which came out as "Hey G-penis." Let's just say I still get called this today.

Condom Boy: As fun as this nickname sounds...it's really nothing like it sounds. I used to wear this beanie to school that my friend Aaron decided looked like a condom on my head. I was then Condom Boy for a short period of time.

Video Guy: I wasn't so much popular in high school, but I wasn't looked down upon. I was just this entity that did things every now and then. Since I was in the video yearbook class I always had a camera on me and people notice you more when you have a camera on your shoulder. So after some time I was that Video Guy instead of just some passing face in the crowd.

Mac Daddy Nifty-Whip Flapjack Bisquick: This one is kind of an anomoly. I don't really remember EXACTLY where the name came from. I mean, I know it was with Jordan at school during a play when we were trying to come up with our rapper names, but I do not remember what prompted this name to be given to me. It has, however, stuck quite well.

Mo Betta': Another Jordan appointed name. This one comes from one of the best restaurant names I have ever seen. In West Hollywood you will eventually pass by the "Mo Betta Meaty Meat Burgers" restaurant completely surrounded by barbed-wire and bullet-riddled walls. The name was so great that...wait...I'm not sure, once again, how this name turned into a nickname. Once more, though, Jordan gave me a nickname that has stuck like glue.

Sprout: My brother's friend Ky told me that when he doesn't like someone he forgets their name, but if he likes someone, he gives them a nickname. Since I was too young to go into a strip club, which is what HE wanted to do with the rest of the night, I became Sprout. This later morphed into Kid from the same guy.

Slick: Also highschool...also due to a piece of clothing. I got this old, beat up leather jacket from a thrift store and since I was the only guy in high school with a WAY too fancy leather jacket for high school I was nicknamed Slick.

Grunk: College now and I was writing on a white board to tell my roommates that I was "Out taking over the world." I signed it "Supreme ruler of the world....a.k.a...." and then I wrote my name. Or tried to. When I write fast my "a" looks like a "u." That would make my name Grunt which is funny enough, but no...I somehow, in my rushing, put a "k" at the end of my name. That's right...I pretty much wrote "Grunk" instead of "Grant." When I came home Ed and Aaron looked at me and said, "Who's Grunk?" I didn't believe them that I wrote it until I looked at it and indeed I had written this horrible remake of my name. I still get called this today.

Sergeant Penis/Sarge: After my whole urethra dilation ordeal, Rob (the Beatles fan) decided that it would be fun to call me Sergeant Penis as an ode to Sergeant Pepper. This was later shortened to just plain ol' Sarge since yelling, "Hey Sergeant Penis!" in public would cause problems.

Stealth: Also from Rob. Every time I used his tuner, I would do so without him knowing. He would walk to his bag and his tuner would be gone and he'd yell out "Stealth!" The funny thing is I never tried to hide my using of his tuner.

Starch: A play on words from my other nickname: Sarge. After a conversation about steak and potatoes having too much starch, I looked at the people having the conversation and nodded while licking my lips and then spouted out, "I love starch!" Without my knowing, a large group of people were informed that my name was then changed to Starch.

This is not a completely comprehensive list. There are many many more names (ie: That Goth Guy, That Art Guy, That Preppy Guy, That Computer Guy, That Guy, etc.) but most don't need any description and most are too boring to talk about. You know...unlike all the ones I talked about which are so fascinating that I'm sure you won't be able to keep your eyes away from the computer monitor. *laughs slightly at self* I'll have to update this when I think of more.
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I Have Bad News and Badder News

(shhhh.....I'm allowed to invent words)

But before the bad news I have an interesting observation. I was sitting in my history of film class, watching some crappy movie with about 120+ kids when a particular scene's crowd response caught me by surprise. A panning shot showed a crashed car with nobody in it (an earlier shot showed us a man, woman, and dog in the car). The shot continued and we saw the dead body of the man laying twisted on the side of the road. *silence* The shot continues and we see the injured body of the dog laying on the side of the road.....the whole crowd goes "awwww!" Isn't it a little odd that the dead man elicits NO emotional reaction from the crowd, but a dog that isn't even dead but is merely injured gets a loud pitying sound? Yeah, we humans are pretty screwed up.

And now on to my bad news.

Racism is alive and kickin. Ok ok, so nobody ever said that racism was dead, but I realized recently that I have never been witness to a truly racist comment. The closest I get to hearing racism is Ed telling me that I blame everything on him because he's black and then me telling him it's true. But I recently took part in a conversation that went something like this:

x: *sigh* I...that's just so wrong...
me: What is?
x: That. They shouldn't be dating.
me: Why?
x: It's just...you know...white people with white people, mexicans with mexicans, blacks with blacks...
me: What? That's totally racist!
x: Oh I'm not racist...I don't care so much about the other races...just white people should be with white people.
me: But it's just color. Why do you think that?
x: I don't know, I just....it's just wrong.
*later in the evening*
x: I like the Chappelle show.
me: (jokingly) But I thought you didn't like black people.
x: (not jokingly) I don't...but he's funny.

And here's the badder news. (shhhhh...)

This ignorant racism is being spawned by none other than the people who should be looking at themselves as models to children: parents. Guess what mom and dad? Your words actually GO INTO YOUR KIDS HEADS and then those words MAKE AN IMPACT on how the kid thinks! *gasp* I know, big surprise, but you, being the parent, are the first person your kids look to in order to understand the world. One of the parental figures of this misled little girl was later overheard complaining about mexican families with no money and "fat black mommas" (despite his own weight problem) and...and....this is just a sad world. Idiotic racism being spread through the stupid views of people too self-centered to take the time to look at the facts.

And after that somewhat depressing ranting...here's a picture of me in my new Versace glasses:


"Do these make me look fat?"
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Actual Newspaper Headline From Yesterday:

"COLON IS THANKFUL FOR OPPORTUNITY"
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Where Were You When We Were Getting High...

I went in to the eye doctor today to get a checkup and they dilated my eyes. I've never had this done before and it's kinda freaky. So for a good four hours afterwards anyone who looked me in the eye saw this:


(and this was in bright light)

No officer...I haven't been doing anything illegal.
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errrr....

And I'm tired. Like really really tired. Like really really really tired.

And something reminded me of a story. You know how you sometimes get into situations where you lose all control and become totally helpless and scared and in desperate need of help? When I was younger, let's say 12, I was in school. In school I had PE. In PE we had to change into these little blue cotton shorts with a "gold" insignia of a lion head that was actually just yellow. Our shirts were yellow with a blue insignia of a cross and a lion or blue with a yellow insignia. We had one big room where everyone changed...not even a locker room because our school was actually just the extra rooms of a huge church. Now don't get me wrong, it was a real school, just a real school with not much money. I, being the exhibitionist that I am, did not like to change in front of all the rest of the kids. This led me to the bathroom at the oh so coincidental time right before we would change. I would change in the stall and then run out to the field which was further from the bathroom than it was from the "changing room" so I had to change extra quick. One day I was in the stall and was a little behind so I decided to skip a step and not untie my shoes, change, and retie my shoes. So I pulled my early 90's tapered legged jeans over my shoes and got to the bottom and then they were stuck. I pulled harder and they were still stuck. I pulled even harder and they were even more stuck than before. I sighed and tried to pull them back up to untie my shoes and just accept the fact that I would be late. This is where my heart started beating faster. They were stuck so far onto my shoes that they would not come back up just as much as they would not come off. Suddenly all I could think of was how my whole class would find me sitting in the bathroom stall with my pants stuck around my ankles and my tighty whities not seeming like enough coverage and then someone having to cut my pants off of me. I panicked. I started jerking at the legs harder, any way I could, faster and faster. I HAD to get them off. Tears started building in my eyes and I just didn't know what to do. I was sitting there on the ground with a feeling of complete and utter helplessness abounding inside of me and I was crying. This is JUST how a 12-year-old boy wants to be in the middle of the school day. I somehow ended up getting at my shoelaces and then finally prying off my shoes and changing and getting to PE late. I had to run laps for my tardiness. From then on I took my shoes off before changing.
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