C'est Non Un Blog

You know, I’m gone for a whole week, I come back, check my email and I have somewhere up to a hundred emails in my Inbox. The sucker is almost maxed out on space. Guess how many of those emails I actually wanted to read?

Keep guessing…

That’s right, a whole ONE. 1 ONE 1! What kind of bullshit is that? If I ever move or something I’m probably going to need a new email account. Look out for that in the future. SPAM is ruining my life.

And now for my 28 Days Later review:

——28 Days Later——

Man, was it nice to see this after seeing such a crappy movie as Tomb Raider. [To see how much I hated that, scroll down below for my rant of a review] A lot of people have talked about the third act and how they didn’t think it worked. I loved it. A lot of people have talked bad about the digital video. I, again, loved it.

I think the horror genre, more than any other, definitely benefits from grainy film stock. All of the older horror movies used it (mostly because of budget) and I don’t think it hurt those movies at all. It enhances them I think. Watching grainy footage reminds you of watching home videos (back then Super 8, now VHS and digital camcorders). And since it reminds you of home movies it makes the films that much scarier, since because of this it makes the film seem more real and pulls you in more. Grainy picture makes things a little harder to see, and thus lets your imagination do some of the work for them. I thought the DV was used amazingly in 28 Days. Shots were framed perfectly and the movie was just that much more creepy because of it.

I also loved the ending because it was probably one of the most intense things I’ve seen in a very long time. I was on the edge of my seat, mouth wide open, and creeped the fuck out. Those zombies are intense man, but not nearly as intense as something else in the ending that I’m not going to ruin for those of you who haven’t seen it. I will say, however, that it was hard-fucking-core.

I’ve seen a lot of zombie movies recently, and this ranks at the very top of the list for me. These are some of the scariest zombies out there, there is plenty of blood to go around, and the story, although it won’t win any awards, does its job extremely effectively and is better than 99% of all horror movies. The characters are real, the situation feels real, and everything is handled well.

The movie was also extremely scary. I’d put it right after Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the short list of movies that actually succeeded in creeping me out. I loved this movie. I’m going to recommend it to everyone. Best movie of the summer I think. I give this movie an enthusiastic A.

I had one problem with it though. Not with the actual movie, but with the bonus ending after the credits. It blows. The whole thing is a “What if?” that goes nowhere. It shows the what if? part and then goes nowhere with it…the end. That’s it. What the hell? I stayed through the credits for THAT? It’s nothing and not worth staying for if you were considering it.

Did anyone watch the Daily Show this week?

If so then you probably saw the segment with Stephen Colber (I think that’s his name, you know who I’m talking about) where he tries to bring down Habitat for Humanity and then goes to the poverty amusement park. Midway through the tour of “the most depressing amusement park ever made” he starts to clean some clothes in a bucket and finds that fun. Then he does other fun stuff in the poverty amusement park, the whole time saying “Wheeeeeee!” like a little kid on a pony.

Wheeee is now my new favorite word. I use it all the time. So much so that when the Christian Charity commecials come on and they show all of those slums I shout out “Wheeee!” and start giggling like a school girl while these kids live in filth. I should feel really bad about myself…….and yet wheee is just so damn funny.

Day +1 (Saturday, August 2)

(12:55PM)

Well, it’s all done folks. This morning we got up at 7AM and cleaned the house, and we were on the road by 9. It was a damn long ride home. We didn’t get back until after 3PM.

[I know I’m missing a 28 Days Later review for yesterday. I’ll write that tomorrow for all of those curious. Let’s just say for now that I thought it was awesome.]

Did I mention the car ride was long? I don’t know why, but going from NJ to NY is a lot more boring than the other way around. Probably because I’ve seen NY a million times, while NJ I only see once a year and there is more to look at outside the window. There was a lot of traffic in NY for some reason though. I’m not really sure why, but that’s what slowed us down.

Then after we unloaded the car we went to go get our puppies out of the kennel. It was amazing to just see the look of relief on their faces when they saw us for the first time. I’ve never seen those puppies so happy.

The reason why my mom was so unhappy this weekend [which I alluded to in previous posts]:

I mentioned before about how my mom didn’t like how my aunt Tiger had to do all of her meals with us. Anyway, after that day my mom was like “NO MORE BREAKFASTS” at our place, which they kept to for everyday except for Friday (for some reason unknown to us all). They still were there for dinner every night, which really pissed my mom off for several reasons.

One, my mom wanted to have some time with just our family. It’s more relaxed, and she’s not then cooking for 10 people every night. She doesn’t mind eating with my aunt’s family, just not every night.

Also, they are a tad bit slow at EVERYTHING. This annoys everyone, even my aunt Snoup, Matthew, and all of my family (including myself). It takes them like forty minutes to get ready for the beach. Everything is a big surprise to them, and you have to kind of walk baby steps with them if you want to get anything done.

Then there is the fact that they say they don’t want to eat seafood and then come over and eat all of ours. This really pissed my mom off. She didn’t mind making it for them, but if she doesn’t have the right amount of food, that just means less food for those who really wanted it (and said so).

They also eat all of our food and then don’t offer any money in compensation, or offer to make dinner once at our place. My mom said she didn’t know if she would take money from them, but it would be nice if they offered since we didn’t really expect to be buying them dinner every night.

They don’t help making the food, nor do they really help with the clean up.

Why do they have to eat at our place all of the time? Because we have the better porch. Not that their porch is bad or anything, mind you, just that ours overlooks the pond and theirs doesn’t. OK.

They also eat before they come over to our place, and then pick away at our meals. Who does that? Why don’t you just eat dinner at your place and then, perhaps, come over to ours for desert?

And, on top of all of that, it doesn’t seem like Tim was enjoying himself much at Cape May. I mentioned the incident where we biked to Cape May and he almost killed me because he was going so fast. He just makes everyone tense, like he’s all wound up and not relaxing like he should. His “beach reading” was a book on biochemistry (which relates to his job). Why couldn’t he read a trashy novel for pleasure like everyone else? He’s got to learn to keep the work at work. If he doesn’t cool down soon he’s going to flip his lid.

Ok, enough of that. To end the Cape May Journal, I will give you a short review of Gods and Generals, which I just saw on tape because of my sudden interest in the Civil War because of the book Confederates in the Attic.

——Gods and Generals——

–Reasons why this movie sucked:

The North…
–One soldier can’t understand why Lincoln freed the “darkies” (not in the book)
–In one scene the Union army is seen looting a city
–The Union Army doesn’t win a battle (which is partially because this movie takes place before Gettysburg)
–In one battle, the speech beforehand is of how Caesar marched on Rome (hmmm…this isn’t in the book)

The South…
–Not a single black in the movie is treated like a slave, but instead like an equal free person (not in the book)
–Not only that, but Stonewall Jackson befriends a black man, makes him his cook for the Rebel army, talks to him about how the South plans on freeing the slaves almost immediately after the South wins its own independence, and throughout the movie the black man is periodically seen at his side for major events, including standing over him after he gets shot, and over his death bed when he dies (!) (Way, way, way totally NOT in the book)
–In one battle, the speech beforehand is of how the Jews in the Old Testament beat their adversaries (another interesting hmmm…)
–Stonewall Jackson’s best friends are his wife (for probably the only actual male/female affection in the movie), the previously mentioned black cook, and a small little girl he meets after a major battle. (Not in the book, I don’t think) He plays with the little girl for a good half hour before she dies of Scarlet fever, to which he weeps like a baby.

The South frequently explains that the Civil War has nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with States rights (which is almost true, but not quite. I really doubt the South actually considered getting rid of all of their slaves, just because). It’s not hard to see whom Ted Turner’s sympathies fall with. The North gets almost no screen time, unless it is to talk about how much they suck, or to talk about how the Irish are fighting the war for them. Uh, hello, the North won. This movie is so tactless with its political correctness that it isn’t even funny.

What is funny is the really bad acting.

The movie feels a lot like a TV mini-series and nothing like a film. I even thought it might actually be pretty good if they re-edited it and added a narrator to make it into a PBS documentary type thing. The editing in this movie is laughable though. The movie is four hours long, which is way, WAY too long. Why? Not because too much happens, but because every time someone is on screen they don’t talk, they make speeches. Everyone gives multiple several minute long speeches. It’s maddening. It’s like they took direct passages straight from the book and put them to screen without editing them at all. The special effects are also pretty crap-tacular. Where the money went, I’ll never know. Probably to Robert Duvall for his portrayal of the almost non-existent Robert E. Lee.

To put it simply, this movie blows. However, if you have a lot of friends who like history AND like to make fun of bad movies, gather them together for a fun rental. I gave this movie a C-.

Day 7 (Friday, August 1)

(12:50PM)

Ok, I’ve been a little lax in updating the old journal recently. Now I’m going to try to go back in time and reconstruct what happened the second half of this week.

Why have I not been updating? Well, since Tuesday it has been raining off and on here, meaning, more often than not the family has been around. I tend to like to write in solitude, and when your cousins are bouncing around the room, that’s not really conducive to “private time writing”.

That, and I’ve been reading Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz for the past two days. I was reading a Vietnam book that I’ll get back to when I’m done with this one, but this one is so damn interesting I can’t put it down, hence the lack of posting. I guess my dad gave it to my uncle for a birthday or Christmas or something (since they now live “down South” in Virginia) and both he and my aunt read it and really enjoyed it, so they brought it over to our house so that my dad could read it. I noticed it sitting on the coffee table, read the back cover and then became curious, so I started to read the introduction. Since then I’ve barely put it down.

Tony Horwitz is a reporter/writer who goes down South to try to understand why the Civil War and the Confederacy never really left the collective consciousness of them. It’s amazing how many different reasons they have for keeping the memory of the Civil War alive, and it all doesn’t boil down to “These people are just uneducated rednecks”, although you meet plenty of people in the book who do fit that description. And yet no one in the book really fits an easy description, which is a testament to how well written and researched this book was. He always hears everyone out and avoids passing judgment whenever possible. I’m halfway through right now, and I’d already recommend it to everyone to read. It helps you understand a little bit of where the South is coming from. Plus you get to know the difference between a “farb” and something “super hardcore”.

Also yesterday was filled with a little gaming. I pulled out the Trivia Pursuit mid-afternoon and we got a family game going. That almost ended up being a mistake. With every question the family was this close to coming to blows. I’m not entirely sure why. I think we are all a little hyper critical of each other. I mean, I personally almost jumped across the table when my mom and sister couldn’t answer the following question: “Which Beatles album cover shows Paul walking barefoot with a cigarette in his hand.” To me, this is an instant no brainer. I thought it would be to just about everyone else too. I mean, the Abbey Road album cover is one of the most famous ever made. My sister even knew that it had something to do with a “street”. I ended up beating my fists against my temples while they struggled for the answer miles away from where they should be.

The entire time we were playing a soft mist of a rain came down that wasn’t really rain, but at the same time wasn’t really sunny dryness either. For the first half of the game my dad commented about how it was raining and how we should move inside and my mom couldn’t understand what he was talking about, and then for the second half of the game she seemed to suddenly notice the rain and joke about moving in. Let it be known that everyone had been drinking as well, except for myself, who had already started a Pepsi before my cousins came over and drank them all. The Margaritas that my mother and sister were drinking were also apparently a little stronger than usual.

My aunt Snoupy actually came over at one point to hang out and quickly left after sensing the tension in the house. I apologize to all of you who don’t know how many teats a cow has, and had to thus hear me bitch “How could you not know that?” I’ve lived in cow country for most of my life, and so too, obviously, have my parents (my dad even grew up on a semi-farm), and yet neither my mom nor my dad could tell me how many teats a cow had. I mean, cows are everywhere. There are plush toys in stores all over the place. Cartoon cows sell milk on TV. I’ve seen probably at least a dozen movies where someone milked a cow. We are surrounded by dairy farms. How could they not know? Why does no one pay attention when someone milks a cow? Are they just bashful? I can’t even begin to understand.

(The answer, by the way, is four, NOT six.)

My sister and I also played a game called Sequence with my aunt and uncle, and Matthew and Susan last night. I’ve never seen this game before, but it is pretty easy to play. The game board has two of every card in a deck of cards on it, and what you do is when you are dealt a hand you are suppose to try to set up “sequences” of five by using one card at a time to place down a chip, much like you would do in Connect Four. First to two sequences wins.

My sister and I were on a team together. I think our big mistake was to right off from the start jokingly call ourselves the “Forces of Evil”, to which my aunt and uncle started to call themselves the “Forces of Good.” Guess who won all three games? Damn it, even evil wins some of the time!

That day I also took a bike ride with my dad around Cape May Point. My dad is the WORST person to follow on a bike. He slows down and stops at random places. He never signals when he is going to turn until he is actually into the turn. His awareness of where I am, and what my actual skills with a bike are are poor at best. He’s crazy. The bike ride was nice though.

Dinner was good, as usual. (although it is driving my mother mad. More on that in a later post) We had a crab/clam corn chowder (or something), stuffed crab on portabella mushrooms and really tasty mild fish (that I can’t remember the name of—it was pretty crazy) covered with a fresh chopped tomato salsa and guacamole. It was really good. The night before we had had a meal of bacon wrapped scallops, mussels in the shell and shrimp cocktail. This meal was also quite excellent. I probably ate way more than I should have. I probably downed a good quarter of the mussels myself.

I’m going to try to fill in the other days of the week that I missed now. Wherever I have a date with no time, you’ll know I did that after the fact.

(9:45PM)

I finally just went out on my own to see 28 Days Later today. I made a promise that I was going to see it this week, and damn it, I did. I rode down on my bike to the beach side movie theater in Cape May.

Interesting story: While I was watching the movie, which is pretty creepy to begin with, about halfway through it there was this HUGE “ka-BOOOOOM” outside. I think everyone was a little confused about where that came from. It sounded like a car bomb going off or something. Anyway, about a minute later the movie stops and the lights go up. Now everyone is pretty creeped out. There is no explanation from the staff, and then a minute later the movie goes on.

So you could say that by the end of the movie I was really curious as to what happened outside. As I walked out of the door I could see that the streetlight was now out and some cops were directing traffic. All four corners were out, but otherwise everyone else had power. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that lightning had hit the stoplight while I was in the theater. Wow. Groovy.

—–Final dinner: Tuna steaks again, this time with the avacado butter and salsa, lots of bread, and all of the ice cream you could eat [because if you didn’t eat it, it would just be thrown out the next day.]

Day 6 (Thursday, July 31)

I have no idea why I have no post for today. To see what I did, go to the Friday post.

Day 5 (Wednesday, July 30)

(6:08PM)

It started out raining today. I didn’t even go get a paper like I usually do (perhaps because I have no raincoat, or perhaps because I am just that lazy). I just sat around and watched stand up comics on Comedy Central while waiting for my parents to get back from their daily walk down the beach. When my dad gets back he mentions something about movies (since I’ve been talking about how I wanted to see something, all week long) and I show him the movie times that I just happened to have there with me. He noticed that Seabiscuit (which he wanted to see) was playing in about 15 minutes, so without really thinking this through at all, we jumped in the car to the local theater.

Now, as you all probably are already thinking, going to the theater during a rainy day at the beach is not like going to the theater any other time. Since most people here are on vacation and living in either hotels or rented houses, all of these people who don’t have to go to work during the week and can’t go to the beach need to go somewhere, and most of them end up at the movie theater. Not only did we get there five minutes late (my dad had to take the slowest way there, with plenty of left turns where you can only turn on a green arrow, didn’t speed, nor did he pass anyone) but the line to the box office was already to the door. Uh, no dad. Let’s try again at three, but this time, let’s leave early.

So this time we go home, do a little reading, and then get there about fifteen minutes early. But already, since everyone and their mothers are at the movies today, the 3:05 showing of Seabiscuit is sold out.

What to do now? We could wait until tomorrow to go, but I’ve already gotten myself so pumped up for a movie that I don’t want to leave for a second time in one day. So I get my dad to take me to see Tomb Raider. Not really something I really wanted to see (as anyone who knows how much I hated the first one probably knows) but still, I love going to the movies, and I’ll see just about anything. So after walking around for a while waiting for our showing, and then sitting in the theater listening to local radio (for god knows what reason), and then having to watch like twenty commercials before we could even get to the trailers (Ebert pointed out that, “Ads before movies are suppose to be there to keep the cost of ticket prices down. If anyone has been to a theater where the price of a ticket has actually gone down because of ads, please let me know about it, because I’ve never heard of it happening.”) and then having to watch old trailers (Master and Commander is coming out this June 30th, you say?) we finally got to the movie, which I will review for you here:

——Laura Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life——

[Man this movie has a long title]

My dad and I just got back from seeing this steaming pile of dog crap. I have to ask all of the reviewers who gave this “film” (I use the term loosely) a good review what the hell they were thinking. A lot of people have said that this film is better than the first one (which in the most recent trailers, that is the singular point that the movie studio is trying to drill into your brain), and really that is a matter of what annoys you less: a movie in which everyone seems to be having a really good time except for the viewer (the first film), or a movie that is completely inept in all ways but at least you can get into it, even though it sucks (the second film).

Everything about this movie screams bad. Interesting enough, the acting actually seems to be the best part about it. It’s about the only thing in there that can distract your from the paper thin plot filled with clichéd lines stolen from other bad action movies, or from the train-wreck-bad direction. I’ve never seen so many slow-mo shots that looked so god-awful. All they did was take normal footage and then slowed it down (over and over, wherever it wasn’t needed) which looked worse than any herky-jerky hand cranked silent film that I’ve ever seen. Does it really take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you want nice looking slow-mo that you have to shoot the film faster? God, anyone with a Matrix DVD could figure that one out.

The plot is moronic. The dialog is lazy at best, pointless at worst. Every “plot twist” in the movie you’ve already predicted before the movie even starts. This movie contains numerous examples of one of my biggest pet-peeves of the bad action movie—the action sequence that is there only to have more action. For example, Laura meets up with her boat off of the coast of Greece by riding a jetski to it and doing all sorts of crazy stunts as if she were thumbing her nose to the crew before actually getting on the boat. Why do we need this? Can’t she just appear on the boat? The stunts aren’t that amazing and it is just wasting time and confusing the audience. There is another scene, which you’ve probably seen in the trailers, where Laura is racing her ex-boyfriend turned traitor (so many ughs here) near the Great Wall of China. Do they need to race there? Not really. Are they being chased by anyone? No. Why the hell is this in the movie then? Because the filmmakers are too afraid to have someone talking for more than two minutes at a time? Most probably. They’ve read the script.

I was so bored watching this drivel that I felt like walking out; it was that bad. The stuff about Pandora’s Box makes less and less sense when you start to think about it. (When someone talks about the traditional story about how Pandora opened the box and let misery upon the world, Laura responds “Well, that’s the Sunday school version.” [In what Sunday school do they talk about Greek mythology, and why couldn’t I go to that one?] Then she proceeds to make up a completely bogus story about Pandora’s Box that makes little sense. Then she ties that story to Alexander the Great [with no historical precedence] and says that he [or someone in his court] was able to make a ball that when random notes play [that no actual lute player or otherwise could create] a series of 3D images project out of the ball [something no Greek scientist could ever design, or a modern one for that matter] that show not the ancient Greek location of Pandora’s Box, but [Yes!] the modern location of the box. I mean, Jebus, even the mystical parts of the Indiana Jones movies were based on some historical fact.)

I know Laura is rich, but really how much money can this woman actually have? I mean, she has the money to make all of her cool inventions and she has a manor. And not only that but she afford to design a new kind of aircraft, but also can afford to just crash that aircraft into a mountain after using it for five seconds, plus she owns her own NUCLEAR SUBMARINE! Who, other than a government, owns a fucking nuclear sub?

The sound in the theater I went to was amazing. You would hear something behind you really loud and wonder what the hell it was when you would suddenly understand that it IS the movie. However, the sound system did not deserve the awful soundtrack, which was about as cheap and poorly done as it could possibly be. There were loud random noises at scary parts. The heart Thump-THUMP noise. And worst of all at one point a shark comes on screen out of the blue, mouth open as if to roar, but what sound comes out? The thing shrieked like a fucking raptor. It was the most random noise I have ever heard. A shark, shrieked? What the hell?

My favorite part of the movie, and ironically the part that makes the least amount of sense, are the shadow monsters in the cradle of life. Man, they look bitchin’ and they are just all around cool. Too bad their presence in this movie MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE! They would be really cool in a sci-fi/fantasy movie, but here I have no clue what they are doing. Indiana Jones never fought any fucking shadow monsters. What were they thinking?

Again, to reiterate, this movie blows. I would chop off my left nut before watching this again. The one joy of this film is the fact that Angelina Jolie is so fucking hot, but even that isn’t enough to save this mess from total crappiness. I give this a big fat D.

Day 4 (Tuesday, July 29)

I think today I spent most of my time feeling bad for myself because I felt like no one would play with me. Yeah. Pathetic huh? I really need to get a job.

There is something to that “no one plays with me” thing though.

Probably read too. Mmmm…reading.

Day 3 (Monday, July 28)

(2:50PM)

What does a Ben do in a normal day? The first order of the day is to try and figure out the weird dreams I have during the night. The other evening I had a dream where Tamara and I were sitting on a couch watching TV, resting on each other, and then I leaned up over her and kissed her. She was surprised at first, and objected, but soon enough I was smooth talking her into a make out session.

I’ve got no clue what that one means.

There is also some bike riding that is done. I figure that since I don’t go to the beach (more on that a little later) I might as well get some exercise and sun somewhere, so whenever someone says they want to go out on a bike trip I volunteer to tag along. Yesterday Tim needed some new inner tubes for the tires in Susan’s bike so we went to the bike shop in Cape May to get them. Cape May is a little while away though from where we are, which would have been fine except that Tim was keeping a nice brisk pace of like 30MPH or something crazy like that, and although I was doing all right keeping up on the trip in, my ass was dragging on the ride back. The muscles on the tops of my thighs just couldn’t push it any further.

Today my cousins, Tim, and I went to the local general store to get some ice cream, which, with Matthew leading the way, was a much more pleasant trip. Except that when we got there I saw the Snickers brand name in the ice cream box, asked for it, but it wasn’t Snickers ice cream that was in there, but a plain old frozen Snickers bar. That was fun to try to eat. My teeth still hurt.

What else do I do? Well, I do a lot of reading. I also check to see if there is anything good on the TV from time to time, but I’ve had little luck with that since the cable service we have here has like, less than 20 channels. What’s the point in having cable if you are going to have that little variety? Might as well just have an antenna. We do get Comedy Central though, so I watched the stand up comedy marathon yesterday because I love it ever so much.

I’m at the beach though, you say, why not go to the beach? Well, there are three reasons for that:

A) I hate the hot sun.
B) I hate sand.
C) I hate saltwater.

If you take away those three things, what is there really for a man at the beach? I know what you are thinking: What about the bikini babes? At least you can oogle in your misery. Well, where we are there aren’t really any hot chicks to speak of. More of the middle age mom variety visits these beaches. And that just ain’t pretty. Even the few hot ones are married or way under age, and so there is no possibility of getting any, so why even bother?

Why hate the sun? I burn easy, and find no pleasure frying myself up.

Why the sand? It’s so damn gritty and gets everywhere. That, and it tends to be even hotter than the sun above you. Who wants that?

And the saltwater? Have you ever taken in a mouthful of saltwater before? Yuck. Plus then there is all of the dead sea-life floating around you. Yeah, that’s fun.

So I hang out around the house mostly, and no one seems to mind much. There is kind of a rule around here of “It’s my vacation too” so no one has to do anything they don’t want to. Otherwise there would be way too much fighting around here.

I night I usually watch my cousins do cruel and odd things to their Beanie Babies, like slide them down the banister or have them bungie jump to their certain death. At least they aren’t playing hangman though. There is always that.

And dinner is usually around 8, 9 o’clock at night, and consists of different fresh seafood every night. Last night we had some great Tuna steaks. A lot of people who say they don’t like seafood are probably wrong about that, because they just haven’t had it prepared right. Fish from the store is one thing (I generally won’t eat that) but fresh seafood is another thing. It tastes so much better. So don’t knock it until you try it (prepared right).

We get our seafood every morning from the Lobster House, which is pretty much the first big building you see as you cross the bridge over the marina and enter Cape May proper. It’s a huge building with no less than four restaurants (from the four star really classy to the normal bar and restaurant to the pick up window and a café on a docked boat.) And then right in front you can buy all sorts of fresh seafood by the pound fresh off the boat. It’s really nice. They got just about everything.

One problem my mom was telling me about this morning though is the fact that now my relatives want to eat every meal with us. My parents really wanted some time to theirselves every once and a while to do what they want, eat what they want, and relax. The problem is that we want to eat seafood every night, but Tiger and her family, since she has little kids, don’t, and yet Snoupy would like seafood every night too, so she would want to eat with us whenever they were eating meat. Tiger thinks this then means that we are cooler or something, or Snoupy would rather spend time with us, or some other nonsense, so now we have to schedule all of our meals together, much to my mother’s chagrin. Of well, we’ll live.

(5:00PM)

Interestingly enough, after I just got done with my rant about the beach and all of its evils, around 4:30 my dad stated that he was going to join the rest of the family down at the beach, and since by that point the clouds had rolled in and it was getting cool outside, I decided to go down and just say hi to everyone down there since I knew that it would make them ever so happy. So my dad and I walk down, talking about the books that we are reading, and just as we get to my family’s place on the beach it starts to rain. So I help pick up two of the beach chairs and walk right back home. As soon as I get inside, the sprinkling stops. See, it’s not just me; the beach and I have an understanding. We don’t like each other. It’s as simple as that.

(Note: A little while afterwards it did start raining again, but I don’t think my point has been lost.)

Day 2 (Sunday, July 27)

(10:30AM)

It’s a new day, ladies and gentleman. Little did I know, but last night was suppose to be a surprise graduation party for me (although, just now on further recollection I do remember my mom saying way back when that my graduation party would be during vacation. My bad.) [note: I just went back and reread that sentence. It originally read “…last night was suppose to be a HAPPY graduation party for me…” Where the hell did THAT come from?] Between sleep depravation, too much caffeine, and too much beer (about a six packs worth, although I wasn’t really counting all that well) everything is a little fuzzy. I was very alert for all of that though, thank god. I must have gotten a second wind or something after reaching a certain hour of no sleep.

Anyway, what happened last night? Well, first I rode my bike over to my aunts’ place, but as I couldn’t remember exactly where it was, I rode around half of Cape May Point before discovering that their house was indeed like, 50 feet away from our house. People were walking back and forth all night. Whoops. I must have gotten in right after Tiger and her family got in, so my dad and I helped them move in, and then we sat around drinking beers and talking for a while.

What was kind of interesting is that you can tell now that my cousins, Matthew (12) and Susan (14) have hit puberty finally. While they still play with Beanie Babies (although, I must admit, for a while I was joining them in the launching of the beanie babies down the second floor railing) you can tell that their voices are changing and they are a little bigger now. (I never really realized that girls’ voices started to get a little deeper like guys’ do, but I guess thinking back on that I should have realized that.)

Anyway, after a while we brought the party over to our house for food, which was quite good (for dinner my mom had made pork kabobs, grilled potatoes, tomato and mozzarella, and coleslaw, plus some baguette and spreads for while we waited). We all talked more, had some fun. My aunt Tiger gave me a card and check for $100 (score). A good time had by all.

And then at 9:30 I crawled into bed and passed out for 12 hours.

…

My “Job” at Cape May is to get the paper (The Philadelphia Inquirer) every morning. I usually take my bike and ride around for a while, enjoying the cool mornings, before getting the paper either from the machine outside of the Post Office (most mornings, but not Sunday, since by the time I get up it is already long gone there) or the small store off of the park. Every year it seems I forget how to get onto a bike with my backpack filled with a newspaper. I mount the bike and go to sit my ass down, but there is no where to sit down because of the misplaced bag, making me look like a total tool when I’m about to embark home. I got it thought, with little injury to myself or others.

I’ve now completed that task, eaten my Cocoa Puffs, and gotten my journal entry in. On to the day!

Day 1 (Saturday, July 26)

(10:30AM)

Right now I am sitting in our van, every inch of it packed with shit, in the parking lot of the Colliers Liquor Store. My dad and I are chilling in the shade, he reading a newly bought book, I typing on this infernal machine (oh how I love thee). We got into Cape May around 7:15 (actually about 45 minutes ahead of time) this morning, and we’ve been slumming around ever since. As of now I’ve been awake over twenty-four hours, and I should be crashing and burning soon.

The ride was a pretty uneventful one. We left the house a little after 2AM (later than that, because whenever we leave anywhere, for a significant amount of time my dad has to do a voodoo chant or something before locking up the house). I didn’t sleep at all on the way down, which was surprising, although I think when my mix tapes went in I got a fresh jolt of consciousness. (Indeed, around 4:00 I was wide awake with a second wind.) The mix tapes went over for the most part well. Deftones = bad idea. Some of the techno stuff didn’t sound very good in the car, which is to be expected. But otherwise I think everyone was genuinely surprised at the amount of variety in the mixes. (I think my proudest moment was after the third song started to play, my sister said that it was the weirdest mix tape she had ever heard. It does take either a madman or a genius to follow up the Groove Armada with the Rolling Stones.)

As I said, the ride was pretty uneventful. The best ride down to Cape May had to be last year. Instead of going straight down like we usually do, we went to my cousin’s wedding first in the Finger Lakes region, and then after went through Pennsylvania and Philly to get to the Atlantic City Parkway or whatever it is, which dumps you pretty close to Cape May. It was incredibly hazy that night; I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Going through the outskirts of Philly was so beautiful, as the lights played off the haze so that a red light enveloped the city as we drove over bridges overlooking boat yards and stadiums. It was quite cool.

Anyway, when we got in we drove around the area looking at the houses until 8AM when we got out, and almost immediately we saw my aunt driving by so we waved her down and went to breakfast at this nice little omelet place overlooking the ocean. You could see dolphins playing in the surf. The breeze was cool. It was quite nice out. For some reason I had a craving for a Western Omelet, which was pretty good except for the fact that their ham looked sliced instead of cubed, which was just not cool. Otherwise very good.

My dad seems to have a problem with red lights in Cape May. He’s already almost run three, and we haven’t even been here that long. What’s really amusing is that twice (coming and going) he almost ran a red on Howard Street (that being funny because my mom’s pet idiotic name for my father is Howard.)

Then we did the annual book shopping. (We are doing all of this stuff before going to the house because the Realtor doesn’t open its doors till noon for check-ins.) On the Main Street of the shopping district (if there is, in fact, such a thing) there is bank that has since been converted into a discount bookstore. They have a lot of hard-covers that I guess they couldn’t sell other places that they sell real cheap, so every year we go in there and go nuts on beach reading. This year I guess we went really nuts, as my dad told me the total for all of them was over $175 and we came out with three bags jam packed full of books. We have since brought them back (my dad and I) and are waiting in the shade of the Liquor Store while the girls shop till noon. Then we’ll go on over to the house.

(12:50PM)

Ok, I was wrong. We can’t pick up the keys until 1.

Right now I am sitting in the living room of the house that my two aunts and their families will be sharing. They got their key early, since they aren’t going through the same Realtor. Right now it is just me, my cousin Matthew on the porch, and my dad in the dining room, since we were to come open up the house and put the food in the refrigerator while the girls (my mom, sister, and aunt “Snoup”) get more groceries and then get the key when the time comes. My aunt “Tiger” and her family (Tim, Thomas, and Susan) should be getting here around 3 or so.

Since last I wrote I haven’t done much of anything. I’m sooooo tired. I tried to lie down in the van to get some sleep, and did about the best you can do with about two feet of room to work with. Unfortunately there was no quality shut eye there. Then we got to the house and I almost immediately lay myself out on the couch, but even there, though there was temporary relief, there was no sleeping done. I feel woozy. My eyes have a tendency to go off into two different directions and do other weird things. It is difficult to read. Must…get…sleep…soon…

(2:05PM)

Ok, I’m doing a little better now. As long as I stay cool and have plenty of caffeine in my veins I should be fine. Now we are in our house, and have moved everything inside. Damn it’s hot outside. The heat combined with the lack of sleep almost did me in.

I have a little workstation set up for me in the living room now. I got the laptop on the coffee table with summer reading stacked neatly at my left, my optical mouse and pad of paper at my right, and below me the stereo is playing the new Cardigans album. (Which is quite delightful, I might add. You should all pick it up.)

[My sister just yelled at me for already having 6 pages of this journal, although she stopped when I explained that it is mostly track listings.]

Oh, the books that I got: Counter-clock World and Dr. Bloodmoney, both by Philip K. Dick, and an anthology of Arthur C. Clarke short stories. That and I’m sharing with my dad some war books, one on WWI, one on WWII, and one on Vietnam. That, plus this shit I already have packed with me should keep Jack a busy boy for quite some time. And then there is this little journal here. How soon we do forget.