people still clap when airplanes land.

a month and a half ago i went to portugal.

fuck me for not writing about it sooner. but as i finish purchasing plane tickets for my trip to disney in august, i guess it's a fitting time to bring up my april trip.

the last time i visited my family in p-town was almost 6 years ago. my grandparents had their

50th wedding anniversary, and i had to miss two weeks of football summer practices. i was pissed.

i used to go every summer, so at that point in my life, missing a trip wasn't that huge of a deal... well every summer quickly turned into 6 years. the reason for that being is that i just couldn't make it on the same trips as my parents went. as time went on, those things that happen to grandparents started to happen. people got sick, sons and

daughters needed to visit in short notice. there have been no death, just issues that had to be dealt with. you know how it is.

well now it worked out that my dad was going... but i didn't want to. my grandma has alzheimer's now and i just didn't want to see it. selfish, i know. my sister had gone and she didn't make it sound promising. i was pretty afraid. it was just me and my dad, so my first week off since i started working full-time was shaping up to be depressing and very boring. i know that sounds shallow, and it is a little bit. i just couldn't immagine making that trip and coming back to work so drained afterward. but now i'm really glad i went.

i'm not going to talk about how much i think ilearned or what it was like to see my grandma like that, because too much time has past and i guess it's not really all that important to anyone

other than myself. i can say that i got a lot out of spending that week with my dad, seeing my grandparents and just revisiting so much of where i spent those summers.

i will say that it meant a lot to me. it was exactly what i needed at that time in my life. i left so stressed out and not looking forward to my trip. i got back feeling really refreshed and had an annoyingly positive outlook on life.

don't worry thats calmed down by now.

but i do want to talk about something. anyone who has flown has experienced the "we landed lets clap" thing. this has always pissed me off. we didn't see a live performance, no one just played the 1812 overture for us. it always just felt overly cheesy to me.

well i dunno. i'm slightly inspired here by louis c.k.'s appearance on conan in this one.

but yeah i guess it is a good reason to clap. we just flew in a fucking plane from europe to america in 6 stupid hours. and i realize that it's so easy to get really cynical and not just appreciate what we have for it's amazingness. and yeah this

is a little stupid and cheesy, but suck my balls it's how i freakin felt and it's true.

i'm still gonna get pissed when i get stuck in traffic, or when the yankees lose a game. but it's good to just be reminded of these things sometimes.

but now its almost 2 months later. it's summer, and when it stops raining, it's beautiful. some of my closest friends in the world are getting closer to me. i'm getting more and more excited about improv. i've got some potential choices to make about my life and i feel pretty good about it.

but for now my laptop is making my legs sweaty. so i'm probably going to stop trying to sound enlightened

holding for applause.

i get haircuts like a bitch.

i hate getting haircuts.

i like to believe that i'm a wacky and spontaneous guy who adapts to change very well, and in many instances, i'm sure it's true. i mean, i am a pretty hip guy. but in the end, i'm still just a creature of habit. so when i get used to my dumb head/face looking one way, it's hard to switch.

it could also have something to do with the fact that my barber is a dumb stupid shit head.

i've been going to him since i was in high school... again. creature of habit.

but anyway, my hair was starting to get to the point where i was having trouble making myself look like not an ass hole on a regular basis... so it was time. now, understand that another reason that i push off getting hair cuts is because my mother consistently tells me i need one because i look like osama bin laden. in fact, i do not.

my barber's name is tony. like me, only he is italian, bald, and a little more racist.

i got there and the there were several people waiting. i briefly considered leaving, but my laziness won out as i sat in a chair. then i got to listen to another old italian man sit in a barber chair (just hanging out by the way) talking to my barber- italian- tony- man about why the economy sucks. perhaps i can bullet point his arguments.

- people need to go to restaurants and be served instead of buying their food in supermarkets and cooking at home so they can save their money.

- this generation of young people doesn't know how to respect their money.

this argument came about because barber -italian- tony, on occasion, likes to go out to a restaurant and get calamari. why? oh, i dunno... perhaps because it's fucking delectable?

mind you, big -not good at his job -italian -tony -barber thought this guy was a dumb ass. i would just like to reiterate. the economy is not poor because people are spending their money at restaurants too much. in fact going out and spending your money at small businesses would make the economy thrive. in facty fact, only saving your money would cripple small business and destroy the lively hood of families across america.

but while this economic wizard was going on and on, i couldn't help but notice a man sitting across from me who kept looking at me every now and again. he was sitting next to a slightly older woman. for a brief moment i thought he was retarded.

why would he be sitting with an older woman?

maybe it's his mother?

why does he keep looking at me?

stop it... you're a bad person tony (me not the tragic barber).

after this man got a hair cut, big -italian -called the other italian a cheap jew for not approving of his calamari habit- tony, handed him a lollypop.

i've never gotten a lollypop here... i've only gotten disappointed! but who gets lollypops?

children.

and then he spoke... i won't try to replicate what he said because i've already said the word retarded and i don't want look like more of an ass hole. but he was handicapped yes.

but to be honest, i couldn't make up my mind on how i felt about what just happened. it always feels weird when you try to make yourself not think in negative stereotypical ways, and then the stereo type comes true. but furthermore, i couldn't even focus on that because i couldn't decide if i thought it was ok to give a mentally handy capped adult a lollypop after getting a hair cut! isn't that sort of degrading? i dunno.

anyway, tony- cant help immediately butchering my beard and fucking up my mustache- barber did me up and i paid and left.

i got home and my mother looked at me and said, "you got a hair cut! why did you do it like that! he cut it too much it looks bad!"

i hate everything.

i waste all of my free time wasting my free time

what an exciting time of my life. so many possibilities.

career.

dreams.

connections.

venturing out into the unknown.

everyone says that college is where you really find out who you are and what kind of person you want to be. i agree with that to a certain extent.

lets say 85% extent.

but most grads would agree with me when i say college was the farthest thing from the real world. in fact, it's left me emotionally fragile and ill-prepared for it. surprise surprise. it's fine though, it's sort of important that it is that way so that we can find out who we really are.

but i think another step to finding out who you really are, is when your violently ripped out of what you've become accustomed to, and seeing how you react to that.

i'm tired all of the time. i don't want to go places a lot of times because i wont be able to make it home in time for when i want to go to bed... which is early. so here is the stress test. the most awesomest stuff i want to do isn't as easy to do as it used to be... what do i do now?

surprisingly a lot. this past weekend i was in a short form improv show. it was actually a really great time. a woman who directs the group needed an extra improvisor, and i was suggested to her.

i promise, my life isn't always this exciting. but it was a really great time and i'm glad i got the opportunity to do it.

but that was sort of thrown in my lap... literally. my facebook status read "tony misses improv" and 3 days later i was being asked to be in an show with people i didn't know... thats a gimme.

believe it or not, i'm actually less busy than i was when i was in college. but the difference is that while i'm busy now, all i can think about is what i'm going to do when i'm free. when i was busy in college, a lot of the time i was busy with doing things that brought me joy. now i think and i make all these sorts of plans.

i'll write sketch.

do a blog entry (loser)

study lines (i was asked to be in a play that is half way through its rehearsal process by a friend who knows i have a job and works around me... come one ungrateful tony)

meet a friend i haven't seen since high school

tonight i spent about an hour watching youtube clips of boy meets world...

oh my god... i keep watching the links i'm posting... see what i mean? i can't even waste time effectively.

topanga, stop freaking out.

i guess i just need to relax. there's a lot of time, and all in all i really am excited about things i can do. i love improv and i'm finding ways to do it. so far, my creative urges are finding outlets and thats good... so i guess it's ok that i waste my time a little bit.

oh shit. it's 10:30. i should go to bed.

i promise my next entry wont be as dumb.

the submission

well it wasn't very long before i posted again on this thing... pretty much 24 hours. go me.

thank you to everybody who has already read it and commented on it. anyone with a gmail can, and i appreciate any little note.

one particular message i got was very interesting... it was privately sent, not a comment. i got the anonymous response sometime this morning and i thought it was pretty interesting. i responded myself but it really resonated with me so i thought i should post it.

please feel free to comment on the post as if the author posted it on their own site. maybe he or she will come back and get a chance to see it and reflect on it. i think it could be a pretty interesting thing-o.

without further ado:

"i am so lonely. always with so many people in my face and around me. but always so lonely.

so many god-damned people but none of them actually ever really care about me. they seldom ask me anything or listen to me. they need me for a whole slew of reasons, whether i entertain them, do work for them, provide an outlet for them, act as their "best friends" - none of them know me or care to. the rare ones acknowledge they don't know me and make such a scene of trying to get to know me that it turns me off completely.

i am a grinch. a socially flamboyant grinch who internally is so far from his shell = i deserve to be locked up in a tower with a rapunzel (spelling?).

i see so much and i feel so much and i know so much because everyone tells me everything. sometimes i don't care, but i have to listen - that's what "i" do. i see so much of what people feel and want in life and often this clouds my own feeling and wants. i find myself caring so much for others. i am not trying to make myself sound like a saint, but i get obsessed with other people's lives or things or happiness. everything i do with my life is focused on others and the interests of others, etc.

i want to have time and room to deal with myself. to like myself. to flaunt myself. to express myself. to fuck people because i like them myself. to be rude to people because i don't like them myself. to just be myself without having to always be "me."

"me" isn't myself."

it is pretty difficult do differentiate doing something because you want it from doing something because someone else wants it...

see puppy post.

why are you here?

hello everyone. this is my blog.

having no clue or understanding of how blogs work, i have already spent a half hour on this sentence. heres to good things to come!

ok so inspired by some other close friends who are currently writing, i've decided to try this whole thing out. the only problem is, for the first thing in my life i don't have something to blab on about.

how the hell do you start a blog without sounding like you think what you have to say actually matters.

just to clear things up, what you're currently reading doesn't matter.

you have my permission to move on to bigger and better things... such as tmz.com.

so now i'm trying to figure out how the hell to write a decent introduction.

well i've decided to culminate the past 9 some odd months of my post-graduate life, and give you a sort of summed up report on where i'm currently at.

doing this was much easier than i expected.

it's too soon to get a puppy.

this is the most painful realization i've come to since leaving college... but perhaps i could explain better. here are the things i have had to think about in the past 9 or so months.

where am i going to work?

should i get a car?

where do i want to live?

when do i want to move out?

omg i have to budget.

when am i going to get to see my girlfriend?

now that i have a job, do i finally have to buy my girlfriend a real christmas gift?

what do i have to do to not lose touch with close friends?

how do i get used to not being constantly surrounded by my friends?

how do i get used to being constantly surrounded by my family?

what sacrifices do i need to make in order to continue pursuing the things that i love.

what if i get fat?

this is all i could think of off the top of my head. and at first glance, almost all of your problems go away when you add a puppy to the mix. take these for example.

if thats not enough to convince you... this will.

anyway.

so im 22, i live at home, and have no puppies. however... this is only sort of a half truth. i do have two little poodles which are my moms. they're definitely not puppies any more, but they are more than effective substitutes.

but the fact of the matter is that i can't just puppy away my problems.

it's not healthy.

not to mention that adding a living breathing creature that i need to care for to my life would seriously fuck me. in my butt.

everybody deals with this next stage of life, and there are better ways of coping with the crippling loss of a social life that graduation really is than irrationally buying a puppy. i've really learned that now, in order to do the things i really care about, and see the people i really love, i actually have to work at it and go out of my way...which i believe is the way it's been done since forever. (i wonder if the ancient romans or aztecs got lonely and irrationally bought puppies)

the biggest obstacle is work. i would love to be in boston this weekend seeing and supporting some of my closest friends... but i just couldn't avoid the fact that i work saturdays. working in jersey also doesn't help. the point is to not get discouraged.

so here's my call to arms... for my friends.

laura marie this does not include you.

even if it's just lame ass dinner or coffee, i'll do everything i can to make our lives cross a little easier. it just might take a while to happen haha.

until then this is fine. there's plenty of worse things out there than living at home...

but at any rate... it's too soon to get a puppy.