Rock is dead, long live paper.

Tragedy has struck. Last night my best friend and his girlfriend came by and Lang met us here. I had run across to the game store and picked up an extra Xbox 360 guitar and we were going to play some four player Rock Band. Lang was our vocalist, Amy on drums, Eric on bass and yours truly on lead guitar. We had finished a few blazing songs when we heard “the noise:. I was a terrible high pitched wheering sound. Then the game froze. We tried it a few times but every time that the game had to do anything beside is root menu stuff it froze. I buffed the disk of scratches and such, but to no avail. I tried a different game with the same results. My Xbox 360 has died. From what I hear it is the same thing that happens to most Xbox 360s but I never thought it would happen to mine. I’m pretty upset seeing as I spent better than $200 on buying Rock Band and the extra guitar in the last week and now they are just sitting down there collecting dust.

I should take this opportunity to work on my script but I just don’t know if that will happen. Even as I am writing this I am being attacked by my youngest daughter. She wants me to put on her Dora The Explorer movie on my laptop up here. I have to put it on my laptop because last week the dvd player up here in my office quit working. I guess I’m just not having good luck with electronics these days. As long as my Mac holds up I’ll be fine.

This may end up being a long entry, sorry. I’m just going to keep rambling until I feel I’ve said enough. God knows I can’t just go down and play Xbox (well I can play my Xbox, just not the Xbox 360).

In my last entry I talked a little about movie heroes and how they shaped my life. After a comment of interest on the subject I thought I would elaborate. So here we go.

Christopher Reeves as Superman in Superman the Movie: This one may seem obvious, but I’ll talk about it anyway. I know most people see Superman as this invincible hero who doesn’t have a care in the world, but when I was a kid I saw him differently. I saw this man who had the burden of power. Superman could take anything he wanted. No one could stop him. But he used his powers to protect mankind. Big deal right? Well if you look at what he gave up in exchange. Anyone that got close to him would be in great danger so he had to limit his personal contact with everyone. So what did I take from him? Well because of his performance as not only Superman, but Clark Kent as well, I learned to be humble and always see the greater good as being something to strive for. I like to think that most of my life I have done just that. I’ve had a few opportunities to prosper from doing things I saw as less than lawful, but I never have.

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump and as Josh Baskin in Big: You may be asking yourself how a movie about a mentally challenged adult and a movie about a child being an adult shaped how I would approach manhood. Well let me explain. Forrest succeeded in so many different ways just by following the stream of life. He did what he thought was right and never let anyone tell him that he couldn’t make his own way. I think we all feel like the world tells us that we can’t sometimes. I think if more of us just bought a shrimp boat (figuratively speaking of course) every now and then this would be a better place to live. As far as Big goes, we saw this kid thrust into the world of adults and he became a huge success. He did it by being a child. He kept that wonderment that most of us seem to lose as get older. He had the advantage of not being desensitized by the early adult life that causes us to forget how much fun it is to simply play. I think I got a lot of my childish sense of humor and personality from Josh and my drive from Forrest. Here’s a side note. In high school when I played on the football team as the only white kid on the team. Every time I got the ball everyone would shout “Run Forrest, run”.

Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town: Now this movie was remade a few years back staring Adam Sandler and I love Sandler but if you have not seen the original you need to. It is a movie about the depth of character and ones ability to access it when it is needed. Here is my favorite line from that movie: “It’s like I’m out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who’s tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who’s drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar – who’s just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any ten year old child will give you the answer to that.” That says it all. Check it out. Great movie. I have always wanted to be this guy. I try whenever I can to lend a hand to someone having problems making it. For example, almost every weekend I jump on Craigslist and look in the wanted section. There is almost always someone who needs a hand in there. Whether it be with food to feed their children during hard times or just to give their kids an Easter Basket so that their kids don’t lose that little piece of childhood (thanks for helping with that one Lang). I can tell you that Gary Cooper is the reason I do that.

There are so many more but I will call it a day there. I don’t want to put anyone to sleep.

Well have a good day.