Monthly Archive for November, 2005

It’s 11:30pm, Thanksgiving night. I’ve already eaten my delicious meal with the family unit. I synchronize my watch with my Kendall friends to rendezvous at Rey’s house for the night in order to prepare for Black Friday. As I get off the Turnpike I decide to drive perpendicular to Best Buy to see what the situation is like and what I see shocks me. I pull into the parking lot and see a line of about 100 people or so already in place at the front of the store, curving around the southeast corner of the building. This won’t be getting any smaller I think to myself. Time to set up shop.

Skateboard in hand, I approach the line and proceed to sit down on it. I wish I would have prepared better. This is going to be a long night and I am left without a book or a pair of headphones. I look at the young couple in front of me on their lawnchairs, smoking their cigarettes and sipping their Red Bulls and I cringe at the though of how unprepared I am. I also cringe at the thought of their breath. I reflect on that for a few seconds and then move on. I call up Rey and tell him what the situation is like and he tells me he’ll join me in a few. The next group of people get in line behind me and then I don’t feel so bad. They appear to be young cuban twentysomethings who work in the retail business. I’m familiar with the sounds of customer complaints and video game references from my brother’s history of working in the same field. After striking up a conversation with them I discover that I stand corrected. They sell mobile phones. Just like my brother used to. There’s something very beautiful about having your prejudice affirmed. It brings a tear to the eye.

The Retailers offer me a seat on their spare lawnchair and I am ever grateful. We proceed to talk about video games, skating, music and it is apparent that I am in a league of my own. They know more about video games and I know more about the latter. I stay on the video game topic to learn more, but then I realize how nerdy we all sound. I do the math and realize that the more we talk about video games, the less women there are around us. It’s time to stop this.

Eventually Rey joins us, cuban bread, coffee, chips and water in hand. He reflects on the good ol’ days of video gaming and we all get excited again. Remember Golden Eye? Remember Mario Kart? It has become a boy’s night out and we revel in it. The only thing missing is car talk and grunting. Other than that, we’re about as manly as can be.

A few hours pass and we are accompanied by our Brazilian friends Lucas and Silas. They provide some good laughs as the tension begins to build. We have been sitting for 4 hours and we hear a commotion at the front of the line. Best Buy is opening their doors to pass out shopping carts. The crowd is restless and they begin to accuse outsiders of skipping. Racial slurs are exchanged and insults are jabbed left and right. Fortunately there are no physical blows.

30 minutes before the doors open, Best Buy staff begins to walk down the line of people to determine who’s getting which limited items. I pray that my Kodak C360 is still available for grabs and then I hear the manager say it. “There are two Kodaks left.” He looks at me, with my hand raised high and he asks the couple in front of me, “Were these young men behind you?” They nod and he gives me the FINAL Kodak ticket. I give a sigh of relief and the excitement begins. All that is left is to go inside and claim my digital treasure. The doors open and the tension is at it’s peak. People look back with violence in their eyes, waiting for someone to cross their path and attempt to skip. I am one of those people.

We get inside and the smell in the air is a combination of endorphines, plastic, and rubber. I quickly lose sight of my mates and I purchase what I need to purchase. Got my camera, my radio, and my brother’s car stereo. I survive without scars, with the exception of internal damage. Lack of sleep and a system full of cold coffee will do that to you. In the words of Silas, “Black Friday is crazy, man!”

Next year’s checklist for Black Friday: lawnchair, portable dvd player, and flashbangs.

I don’t care what anybody tells ya. Sleeping only one hour is not healthy.

I’m out.

Yesterday was an exhausting and bizarre day. I started my morning off by almost getting into an altercation with a pickpocketting hobo. This young hispanic dude was standing directly behind an old man who was peacefully reading a magazine. Before he could stick his hand in the old guy’s back pocket I stopped and stared at him about 5 feet away. He looked at me and retreated back slowly. The old guy had no clue anything was going on behind him. I started walking down the street, dressed in my longsleeve shirt and tie, illustration project in hand, when I decided to turn around and see if the pickpocket was at it again. He remained where I had left him 5 seconds before. I stopped and gave him the hairy eyeball again. He stared back. This lasted a few seconds before I walked away yet again only to turn around and see if the thief would attempt something on me or the old guy. By now I was about thirty feet away and he felt safe enough to start calling me names and asking me what I was staring at. This startled the old man and he continued to walk across the street. The derelict stood by himself continuing to call me names and act tough. I shrugged him off and walked the remaining two blocks to my school. Upset and concerned about the whole situation, I approached a group of 3 school security guards and told them what happened just down the block and what happened next upsetted me even more. The young hispanic security guard didn’t even look at me and simply said, “call Miami Dade,” and he walked off.

What bothered me the most is that the victim of the whole thing could have been a college student or professor or any other human being and all this jerk of a security guard could find the nerve to say is to call someone else. I had no time to argue or fight or make accusations. My presentation would be in a matter of 10 minutes and I had some cutting and pasting to do.

I rushed upstairs, cut the remainder of my illustrations and mounted them on the boards. I had enough time to practice with my teammate before presenting our concepts and rough sketches to our professor, whom was impressed that we were the only teamed that dressed up professionally. He loved our ideas and gave us the go-ahead to proceed in coloring and developing the illustrations.

So it was definitely an interesting morning. The rest of the day consisted of coloring in more illustrations at work and fighting the narcolepsy creeping over me. I only had about 3 hours of sleep the night before.

It took me an hour longer than usual to get home.Ever since daylight-savings came, traffic has significantly increased and so has my frustration. My mentor and I concluded some 5 years ago that when it begins to get darker an hour more than usual, Miami people tend to panic and they decide to go home earlier. This could be the only explanation, unless the real reason involved the government putting alien micro-organisms in the water of all the uptight hispanics in South Florida. But that wouldn’t do much. They’re already crazy.

Many an event has happened since I last wrote. I survived Hurricane Wilma, attended the SBGI Fall Camp, lived without power for a week, dressed up as a werewolf (or lycanthrope for all you…umm…dweebs) and scared my friends at a Halloween costume party, went to work at my bosses’ house since our office power was out, and got angry due to the cancelled Death Cab for Cutie show. Yeah man, I’m a survivor.

Today I gleefully woke up early again and sat through an hour of traffic before arriving to the school parking lot to nap in my car for half an hour. I had a wonderful breakfast with an old schoolmate of mine and attended my psychology class yet again. I’m eagerly awaiting the evening so I can go to the Yellowcard & Acceptance show at the Culture Room. I can’t wait. Acceptance has become one of my favourite bands as of late. I’ve heard mixed things about Yellowcard, so I’m not too anxious about seeing them. But hey, a show is a show. And two days from now is the Copeland show. Much excitement indeed.

Let me go back for a moment. The SBGI Fall Camp was incredible. I was able to roll with people from all over the world, including Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Massachusetts, New York and I have forgotten where else. What a great group of people. I am continuously surprised at how well-mannered MMA fighters can be. Everyone at the camp had a great attitude and sense of humor. I can already tell my game is going to improve, from groundwork, passing the guard, clinching and striking. I am ever grateful to Coach Luis for allowing me to attend the camp. Hopefully with this training and a few more months of of practicing and working my game some more I will be well prepared for my tournament in January and eventually testing for my blue belt. The training from Matt Thornton was incredibly valuable, so much so that coach Luis reminded me that the drills and skills we were learning equalled up to 10 years of his own training, and we got it all in one weekend. We are definitely a step up from other gyms now.

I hope everyone is doing well after the hurricane. Happy post-Halloween.