I was in Walt Disney World for a while, trying to take a vacation from my boring life. It was fun, and I appreciated the time spent with my wife away from Moscow, Idaho. I got home and the seasons changed. It’s no longer as cold as I left it, and I’m appreciating the world around me a little more.
As for serious matters though, I’m having a hard time. I need a new job, or any job, and nothing seems to be going my way at all. There are no legit jobs on craigslist right now, my neighbors are too loud, and I am not sure what to do. I’ve been trying so hard to get a job, and yet my college education has failed me completely. I can’t even land a job at McDonalds, and that saddens me to such a great tone.
Movie reviews, book reviews, and music reviews are forth coming. But first, I need to put up half of my belongings on ebay to try and pay some bills. I’m so broke, it’s hilarious. Other than that, I’ll be posting in the near future, so stay tuned…if anyone is out there still.
I went to see Sherlock Holmes with my family for Christmas, and it wasn’t half bad. While I think that Guy Ritchie’s film making is somewhat stale at times, Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. can act and made for an entertaining film. I don’t like Rachel McAdams. I saw her on late night with Jimmy Kimmel, and I didn’t like her at all. I would’ve preferred Scarlett….nevermind. The film came across like a broader, more in depth “Prestige” which is something I love. I really like Sherlock Holmes in literature, and this latest film is interesting, but not exactly going to be my favorite of the year.
So what was my favorite film of the year? What did I remember most about going to the movies weekly until I got fired from my lackluster job?
None.
2009 wasn’t a good year for movies.
I don’t recall the year in cinema, because it wasn’t that great. In fact, I feel that I’ve wasted my money this year. Don’t believe me? Here are the films that I personally went to this year while in theaters!
The Unborn, My Bloody Valentine 3D, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Donkey Punch, Taken, The Uninvited, Coraline, Push, Fanboys, Friday the 13th, The International, Fired Up, Watchmen, The Last House on the Left, Miss March, Duplicity, I Love you, Man, Knowing, 12 Rounds, Adventureland, Fast & Furious, Bart Got a Room, Observe and Report, Crank: High Voltage, State of Play, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Next Day Air, Star Trek, Management, Drag Me To Hell, UP, The Hangover, Land of the Lost, The Proposal, Year One, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, I Love You, Beth Cooper, 500 Days of Summer, Orphan, The Ugly Truth, The Collector, Funny People, Julie & Julia, The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard, Extract, Jennifer’s Body, Whip It, Saw VI, and Sherlock Holmes.
My 2009 year as a consumer of nationally released films, is a terrible year. My favorites? Wow, I don’t really know if I can even say I had favorites out of all of these. They all just seemed to make me mad. I liked Whip It a lot, the women were sexy. Saw VI was cool. Crank 2 was probably the most fun I had this year at the movies. The rest? I don’t know, they all seem forgettable.
I don’t look forward to a lot of films of 2010. I kind of want to see the new Kevin Smith film, Cop Out, but other than that? I’m not really looking forward to a productive year in film. Nor does anyone care.
On the Job Hunt
I’ve applied to nearly 100 jobs here in Moscow, Idaho. I’ve applied for fast food, walmart, and even part time work, but no one has called me back. I did receive an interesting call from Movie Gallery, but I didn’t get a job interview out of it. I’ve tried really hard to find work, and have even entertained offers from people seeking help with web development, but nothing has really stuck out. I’ve noticed that life is harder than I thought, even with a degree. I went to college and still owe a lot of money, and it never makes me feel better when people tell me I’m not alone in this life.
I’m having a hard time with this.
My mom wants me to join the military. My wife isn’t up for it. If all else fails, I might be able to join the Navy. However, that would end my blogging career for sure. I wouldn’t have a lot of time on my hands.
Friends and Family
I still have no friends here. I have tried to say hello to people, and talked to a few people at churches that I’ve visited, but the fact is, I don’t have any friends. It’s sad to me that everyone I’ve known are gone. I guess that’s what happens, right? Oh well.
My family here is nice. My in-laws are rad. My brother in-law is a jerk, and no one seems to know how to tell him no, or tell him to F-Off. His wife is a saint, that’s for sure.
I guess that brings us up to date. This blog is really depressing to me. Not because of life, but because I remember what I once had with my old site. I had a site with 1800+ posts, traffic, friends, comments, and so much more. Rebuilding that is an impossible task, and I don’t know if I’ll ever regain that popularity or income. It was a nice ride, until I got fired.
I do reflect on my former employer Snowboard Connection, from time to time.
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but sometimes you’re a cyclops amidst the blind. I was the cyclops for so long, and instead of them talking to me or asking me to take a pay cut, they cut me. They cut me deep too. I don’t harbor ill will or anything. I still hate snowboarding, and hope one day that skateboarding brings me an income. But as for my past? It’s done and done. If someone asks me about them, hey, all good things. In fact, I miss them. I miss my time when I first got there. Working with people that genuinely enjoyed their job. It soured fast when a new owner came in and tried to be cool. That guy, we all thought was an idiot, but you know what? Who’s the one fired? Not him. He’s over there enjoying his position.
Moscow, Idaho sucks. I don’t like this city yet. I can’t find a job, I have no friends, and well…it’s a hard city to love. I guess that’s all for this update.
Life is good. It’s just a little boring right now. I’ll get more movie reviews up, whenever I decided to get around to watching film. I’ve been watching The Office a lot, maybe I miss tech a little more than I’m willing to admit.
I don’t put a lot of time or effort into what I want for Christmas. However, I saw these and really fell in love. There is no place near me that sells Dr Martin’s so I have to just wish I could get my grubby hands on these. I really want a pair of white ones too, but that’s neither here nor there. I hope one day I can get a couple pair of these amazing shoes and boots.
The Red Doc Marten’s are only available at select stores, and none of them are near me..but maybe someday I can get my hands on them.
When I was a kid I didn’t really have a lot of fun at Christmas time. I grew up in a poor neighborhood for a long time, and that really made for terrible memories of Christmas. While kids were getting major presents, I was getting some hot chocolate and watching my television. The thing is, my television wasn’t color at all. It was black and white, or as I remember it green and shades of other types of green and/or yellow. I also had no remote control, so whatever I could flip through with a hard turn of a knob, would get me to another station. So my christmas memories are of watching terrible stop motion and puppet specials alongside whatever video I would get to rent from the Chinese guy at the video store down the street.
You see, the video stores in the “hood” were all owned by Asian Immigrants. I used to call my guy “china guy” but he was really from another country. He wouldn’t call me anything but my video store card member number, which was oddly enough only four digits. So between renting vhs tapes, usually horror related ones, and my stupid television I remember a lot of crap on christmas. One of the things that really made things difficult was the fact that my parents worked two jobs each, and my mom went to night school to learn English and more. So I spent a lot of time by myself in a room inside the back of someone’s house. The house was in the hood, and well…it seemed odd that we rented part of their garage to live in.
The Christmas’s got better though. My parents divorced, my mom met a “white guy” and we had a lot of better Christmas’s to get through. The most memorable that I can think of were involved with being a teenager and one Christmas in the suburbs.The first big Christmas that I remember was the one where I finally got not only a boombox/stereo player but a skatedeck. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they hooked me up with a cd player/tape deck in which I spent many hours listening to bad music and good music. The skateboard deck and the musical endeavor given to me that christmas have stuck with me all through my years.
Now the Suburbs were something else. We moved from the hood of Los Angeles, to a nice suburb in Santa Clarita. I had my own room, all the cable channels, and whatever I wanted. I also had a bad knee, and a lot of fun. My parents were fighting, I could sense a divorce was coming sooner than later, but we managed to stay together through a few harder times that year. So the reason I remember this christmas is not because I got a lot of gifts, it was because my mom was working hard to get home before 8pm. That’s right, my mom was working from 7 am to 8 pm and then driving home faster than fast 40 miles away.
Let me break it down a little more. My sister and I were going to a private christian school 40 miles away from our new home in Santa Clarita, California. My mom was working at the Postal Service and she my stepfather was working on his own with his private construction company as a big time guy in the industry. Now that meant that I would have to wake up at 5:30 am to get dropped off at school/church at 6 am for prayer, then get driven to school 5 minutes away for the day. After school I had to go work and then my mom would pick me and my sister up at around 7 pm and we would commute all the way back to the suburbs.
On this particular event, Christmas Eve, my mom and I (and my sister) went all the way from Los Angeles to the burbs to the mall and started to shop for my stepfather, which we had not done at all throughout the month. It was terrible. But the thrill of shopping super last minute was worth it.
Now I’m an adult.
I’m way past just being 18, and I’m married. The last couple of Christmas’s as a married man I’ve blown hundreds of dollars on gifts. We spoil each other I guess. However, since losing my job, moving to Moscow, Idaho and not being able to get back on my feet again, my Christmas this year has been filled with me sitting around doing nothing. My wife has been working a lot, because her Starbucks is located next to/inside a mall. So I’ve been just twiddling my thumbs and hoping for the best.
The tree is small, it’s lit, and I’m just wishing for a new life, or a new career. I have nothing right now. But that’s ok, because I’m enjoying the time to think. It’s hard on me, it’s hard to think about the past, I miss my family so much. My sister and my mother are so far away and aren’t visiting me this christmas. My dad is no where to be found, and this just seems like a crappy year to be me. It started off so well though.
I started this year making serious money. I then got 2 raises that brought that serious money to major money. We paid off all our credit cards and we finally made it to where we had financial semi-freedom until I was laid off.
But now I’m rambling, I’m sorry.
There’s a couple of things that I’d like to share with all 2 of you readers, and that’s in the form of music. Here are a couple of cool things to get you through my rambling and back into the christmas holiday cheering of sorts:
The first two things I present are a pair of music videos.
Mxpx - Gimme Christmas Music Video
The boys in Mxpx have been making me love punk rock since I first heard them on a compilation record called “Seltzer”. They’ve been around a long time and they’re the band I’ve seen most in my short life. Here they are playing a Christmas song called “gimme christmas”:
The second one is my favorite Christmas song done by the Christian rockers: Jars of Clay:
The third thing I wanted to share will be uploaded in a couple of days and put up right in time for the Christmas holiday. I’m going to put up a full one-shot comic book of one of my favorite hero’s in comic book history. I hope you’re ready for The Punisher Christmas 1 Shot from 2007, it’s going to be good!
As for me, and this “adult” christmas. I’m not sweating it. For once I am just enjoying my life and enjoying the goodness of the season. Thank you if you’re still out there reading my junk. I’m trying to get it all back to the way it was, but most likely it will never be the same. I know that from the finances, which have all dried up. I’m also doing another blog “http://thecasketsalesman.blogspot.com” where I lament more than in this site. I have been watching some terrible movies, so I’ll review those sooner than later, but I also have a site for that…well two of them, if anyone is interested.
I’m going to go back to listening to Pandora, via my netflix/roku box. It’s actually doing better than the regular internet version. If you have spare change please buy something from our amazon links, and if not, just enjoy this piece of crap site I call a blog.
The sun finally decided to come out. I’m trying to be thankful in all things, but that’s not something that is satiated by this pushy holiday that is coming up. It’s just that I can’t picture doing anything but trying, maybe I’m trying not to try? I don’t know, it’s something in there.
My wifi service is finally in place. I had been struggling to bring updates because I couldn’t watch any film, nor get on the internet as much because there was no wifi on my cable service. So after some tweaks, and a new netgear router from walmart, I’m back in action.
I’m nowhere near as motivated as I have been in the past, but I’m trying a little harder than usual to push myself. Whether it’s writing more on this site, or simply coming up with things to talk about, I’m working a lot more than usual. It’s just a hard thing to deal with. I’ve spoken before about how I used to get 1,000+ hits a day and now I’m lucky to get about 3 or 4 a day, and that’s usually me writing and reading my own diatribe. I’ve also noticed that the rss feed only has 3 subscribers, that’s way down from my 700 I had previously. I guess this makes for a better, easier to handle world that revolves around my petty commentaries of life and times.
I know, I can’t really get back the three years of work I put into the previous site, but one can dream right?
This morning I watched the documentary “Chasing Ghosts” which is a movie about the 1980’s video game champions and where they are now. It’s a mess of a documentary and the bulk of it ended up in the feature documentary King of Kong, which is quite good. I’m not a big fan of 80’s video games (arcade) simply because I grew up more around the time of the NES 8-Bit. I did play some video games, but it wasn’t as big as staying home and being entertained by a simple unit and thousands of games.
I will be making more frequent stops here on video store blues, so just hang in there.
After nearly a month of applying at different positions, most that I know would suck to work through, I finally got a call. It also started snowing, which has nothing to do with the call, but I would like to mention that. The call came from a national chain of “psuedo-independent” video store chains. The chain is called Movie Gallery, and it is owned by Hollywood Video. I had previously applied to the video store when I first came here to Moscow, Idaho. I didn’t hear back from them, despite the clerk telling me that there were openings. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be at the time. So a month later I get the phone call….
The call was from a human resources person. A general manager of recruitment of sorts and they asked me some heavy hitting questions. Some of them seemed very interesting, for instance they asked me about my experience selling caskets. Caskets and video stores are two very different sales scenarios and I failed to find a synergy between the two. I stumbled and mumbled and got through the whole thing, but it was tough.
At first I was delighted to get a call back because I might get a shot at the second interview, and maybe get the job at the video store as the manager. However, I started to crunch the numbers and really consider my happiness. For the first time in my professional career I have the opportunity to consider whether or not I will be happy. Being the manager of a video store is fun, when the shop is independently owned and operated. When it’s corporate, there’s a high chance that I’ll get the axe before anyone else, simply because of the salary. I’ve been a manager before, and each time I was a manager I was let go before my staff.
In fact, the last time I was let go, the owners told me beforehand (2 weeks prior) that I should not fear about losing my job. Well, thanks for nothing…but I will digress.
The job sounds interesting, managing a video store. However, they started to talk about sales. They need more sales, and you know what? I don’t care about sales. I don’t really care that much about video store politics. In fact, Video stores for me are love and hate. I love working as a clerk, but as soon as you start running numbers asking for better margins and all that sort of cap, I don’t like it. In fact, that’s the one thing I’ve hated about working corporate, the bottom line is always the most important thing, despite people’s feelings, schedules, and family life. They only care about the numbers. I don’t want to be in that world, and I don’t want to start hating what I have a passion for.
Will I take this job?
I’ve decided that if they call me for a second interview, I’ll go in and see what’s up. If not, then I’m not going to chase it. I have a very good position in life right now. I have the option to take months off at a time without having to worry too much. My wife is working and has already been promoted, and I’m not saying that I’m seeking to be a house husband but she’s got me covered and unemployment is helping out a lot too.
I’m not sure that I’ll be happy with a manager’s position. I feel that I’ve worked really hard the last few years and have battled the depression that comes with having other people’s lives in my hands. I don’t want to deal with that. I want a simpler position, a simpler task at hand, maybe not necessarily simplistic but more so something that will let me be happy at the end of the day. It’s an interesting thing to consider, right? Happiness instead of the dread of going to work? I’m going to try that, it’s not easy to find, but I’m going to try.
Plus, it’s not like I’m the #1 choice for these people.
I’m not looking to be one of those people that works all the time and doesn’t have time for much else. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. My last job had me out of the house from 7 am (walking) to 5:30 pm and left me so tired I barely did anything else. I might have gotten out of debt thanks to that job, but it wore me out like no other. I’m not looking to be that guy, the guy that is never around, because he’s so tired or is working.
But if that’s who I become, heck, that’s who I become…I just want to prolong my summer vacation if I could.
I was blessed in a lot of ways up to this point. Even now, I’m reaping a lot of what I sewed a while ago. I’m not making a lot of money, in fact, I’m still unemployed. I’m trying to make it through, and I’m waking up. Seriously, I’m waking up to see that I need to write more on this site.
So here is a quick update before I start to seriously consider writing a marathon of posts to bring my site to a former glory.
I’ve moved to Moscow, Idaho and I don’t have any job prospects right now.
I am finally getting back into watching movies. I have a few sites set up for that, the links are below:
Enjoy those sites for constant reviews and quick hits and misses. This site will have a mixed media feel to it and I’ll not review hardcore like I used to. To be honest with you, no one cared about those reviews and most people abandoned me on the switch.
I went from 150,000 hits a month and more, to about 10 hits a day if I’m lucky. I guess the loyalty I once had from readers is gone. In fact, no one cares anymore, and the less I see in regards to traffic the more complacent I am in regards to making friends.
Oh yeah, “friends”, I have none. I used to have friends, but the further I move away from Los Angeles the less friends I have. Right now I have no one at all. Sure, my wife has family here but it’s not really “MINE”, if you know what that means. I spend a lot of time alone, and in my office, doing nothing. I tried skateboarding this city, but it’s not that skate friendly. There is no core skate shop here either, and the skatepark is flooded with razor scooters.
I feel fat.
I’ve been looking for a church to attend and so far it’s a fruitless endeavor. There’s still a lot of time though…so I think.
I have yet to hear from ANY job. I see “now hiring” signs all over, but after submitting applications to even the most lamest of jobs, I have yet to hear ANY call backs. I hate the feeling of being useless. I have a degree dangit! I am an educated man and I can’t land a simple fast food gig? I suck at life.
That’s it for the moment. I’m on aim a lot….thecorporatehero, that’s about it. Movie reviews are coming sooner than later, and this time it’s no holds barred…well it always was.
I just want to make sure to say that the movie reviews, book reviews, and so much more is coming. I am still getting settled here in Idaho, and I’ve been actively looking for a job. It’s been a sad, depressing, journey through the worst job market I’ve ever seen. You know things are bad when minimum wage jobs don’t call you back because they are completely filled.
Today I even applied at someplace I previously applied at and was ignored.
Hang in there as I make up new content to fill the old set list, as the old has been blown up and created a terrible world view for me. For those of you still reading, Gran Torino and three more other films I have to watch and review.
I’m moving East. It’s the opposite of manifest destiny. I’m moving East! Well, the most Eastward I’ve ever been in my life. I’m going to start a new life in a new city with little to no help.
I’m a little worried.
I’m moving in a couple of days, and with the end of my old site, and getting fired from a skateboarding/snowboarding independent company, there comes a new beginning.
We don’t want the end, we want the beginning
We don’t want destruction, but it comes before the new beginning
We don’t want the end, we want the beginning
We don’t want destruction but we know it comes before a new creation
That’s right, my end of being in Seattle is the start of a new beginning. I didn’t want the end, but it comes before a new creation. Welcome to this new world and site.
Where Am I?
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Video Store Blues.
