The Weekend That Was

This past weekend found me once again in Gainesville. I was there because...well, because I needed to get the hell out of Jacksonville. I don't know if you know this, but Jacksonville blows. I was talking to Rachel this weekend about not moving to Greenville, SC because its a crappy town. My clinching argument: I live in Jacksonville, I know crappy towns.

Jacksonville...God how I loathe thee.

So what did I do while in the great city of Titletown? I drank, I helped paint Amos' and Christina's apartment, but there were a few things that stood out:

1. The fight. I know its sad when I say that I've been going to parties in Gainesville for six years, but its true. And in that entire time, I've seen maybe one fight, and even that, from what I remember, was pretty tame. The fight on Saturday, not so much. From what I gathered, someone spit on one of the hosts, and work was done. I was playing beer pong on the patio when the tussle spilled out into the patio, knocking over the table. I was stuck in the corner, so there was no place for me to go except through the screen. Sorry about that, whoever's house that was.

The parts of the fight I saw where hilarious and intense. Intense because the participants in the fight kept going at it about every 20 seconds. Hilarious because by 'going at it', I mean 'ineffectively slapping at each other faces until they got pulled away from each other.' That actually kinda killed the mood of the party, which was eventually broken up by the cops, who immediately demanded that all the drunk people get the hell out of there. Good job, GPD. Very smart of you.

2. The Search. Cush showed up drunk at Amo's while we were painting and watching Heroes. He needed one thing for his costume for the party that night: a cowbell. And we could not find one. Anywhere. We got to the Western Wear place about 3 minutes after it closed, Cracker Barrel had a very helpful and very cute girl who helped us look around the store, but still nothing. We eventually went to the costume store, where we found a tiny fake one which Cush never actually used. But I do have to say that Center Stage was still a great experience, as they sold us the cowbell 40 minutes after they had closed. Very nice of them.

This is all we wanted. Is that so hard?

3. The Game. I watched a quarter at the PSP watching party, a quarter at Jess's, where my cheering kept scaring her cats, and the last half at the Dojo. Watching games at the Dojo is fun. If we aren't doing well, Cush has to immediately run out and get victory chicken from Publix. This always works. As soon as he gave Publix money, Tony Joiner intercepted a pass. It went well. Also, the shotgunning a beer every time Tebow scores leads to drunkenness. Not on my part, cause I'm horrible at shottgunning, but Cush was really drunk, Michael was feeling and good, and Dave I'm pretty sure was buzzing.

Other features of the weekend was actually motherfucking going out, something I haven't done in a while, with Christina, seeing Erin and getting in on old job drama (apparently everything went to hell when I left) and the best game of volleyball I've played (this does not mean much).

Until next time, I remain,
Matt McKenzie

Still reading Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton.

Books This Year

The year is only 19 days old, and already I've devoured quite a few books. I thought it would probably be a good idea to write down the books I'm reading and a few thoughts about them.

1. The Blind Side by Michael Lewis*
If you like football, especially of the college variety, read this book. It is simply stunning. The book is basically about the evolution of football and how the left tackle became the second highest paid position in football, while also requiring a physical freak to play it correctly. But really, it's the story of Michael Oher, a poor uneducated boy from inner city Memphis, who came out of nowhere to become the most highly recruited player in the country. Along the way, Lewis touches on the horrible conditions of living in the inner city, White Flight, the kindness and bizarreness of white Evangelicals, Coach Ogereon, the double standard of college education when it comes to athletes, and the West Coast Offense. All of it is well written, engrossing, and fun.


2. Moneyball by Michael Lewis



I loved The Blind Side so much that I went out and immediately bought this. Its about the Oakland A's, one of the poorest teams in professional baseball, and how even though they are constantly outspent, they manage to win consistently. This is because, and this is the part I love, they're run by a bunch of nerds. Nerds who love statistics. Baseball is a game of traditions, and according to scouts, players should look a certain way. If they don't meet the profile, they'll never make it to the pros. For the A's, how they look is not important at all. Rather, its about what they actually do. And it works. I know very little about baseball, but while I learned about the sport in this book, what I really learned is that someone with a bit of extra knowledge and the courage to exploit it can make a killing. Also: Statistics are cool.




3. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama


Obama may be the current political it-boy right now, but don't let that dissuade you from reading his new book. It is, quite simply, amazing. In a country divided by religion and partisanship, he preaches a middle road, one that has the potential to bring a lot of the country together. He makes no apologies for being a Democrat and fairly liberal, but he is willing to understand and compromise with the other side. Will he make a good president? I don't know, I need to hear some specifics about his policies. His book lays out some, and they sound good, but I'd probably need to know more. And he could probably use more experience, having been in Washington for only two years. But having spent years of his childhood in Indonesia, having a multicultural and multiethnic background, being obviously very intelligent and well spoken, and being able to listen to the demands of others, he may be just what this country needs.




4. Ringworld by Larry Niven



This was one of those impulse buys, made while looking through the Science Fiction rack at Books-A-Million. I had heard of the book, but had never really heard anything about it. But I love reading about world creation, and basically, that's what this book is all about. Niven created a world that is literally a ring, encircling a star (think of the place Halo takes place on). Its approximately 600 million times the area of Earth, making it absolutely massive, and would be nearly impossible to ever overcrowd. The story itself was OK, and it definitely shows its age (having been published in 1970), thought not nearly as much as say, Asimov's Foundation Series, where everything is based on nuclear technology. An enjoyable book, and I'll probably read its sequel, which goes more into how the Ring was built, but it doesn't really crack my consciousness in the way the last three books did.


Currently I'm reading State of Denial by Bob Woodward. It's good, though slightly dry. But after only getting a third of the way through it, it's stunning how completely inept the Bush administration, and especially Donald Rumsfield, was at planning this war. I'll have more to say once I'm through.


*I did not actually read this after the start of the New Year, but I loved it so much that I wanted to include it.