As I wait to go back in to a lecture, I wonder...  Why hasn't someone changed this garbage can yet?  It's overflowing.

The much anticipated blog is finally here!  (As long as I can finish it in 15 minutes.)  So my life lately, 20 hours per week in class and 30 at work.  Welcome to the life of a normal person, Tony.  How are you enjoying your stay?  Fine, thank you.

I went to Virginia Beach last weekend and had a blast!  It's a 20 hour round trip by car, so I got lots of practice driving.  We stayed in a semi-shoddy hotel about 10 miles from the beach and the "strip" which consisted of 10 blocks of identical souvenir shops.  Overall, it was a fantastic trip.  I quite enjoyed myself.

Who's going with me on my next vacation?  I vote this weekend.

Ah! (Screams)

Abandonment can suck for a blog.  Especially mine.  Sorry, loyal followers.

The cause for this rude abandonment is school.  Blame it on college.  My classes are long; the work is superabundant; and the professors are amazing.  I want to impress them so badly that my blogging has taken a hit.  They are really kind so far and I can see myself really enjoying these classes.  But sacrifices were made.  =(

This aside, I turned 19 the other day.  I had a really good birthday this year.  It makes me super grateful for my friends and family.  

Much more grief-inducing, Sylvester, my friend and cactus, died.  The cause of death is unknown although he was really soggy feeling so I think he was over hydrated because of the HUMID Georgia weather.  It was really sad.  I buried him in the kitchen trash can under a banana peel.  And wrote R.I.P. on the pot that had his name on it.  My other friends and cacti are inside now.  This is a huge, much uglier version of Sylvester.  He was the size of a golf ball.

Let's see...  Interesting things...  

I bought some new body wash today.  It smells like oatmeal.  I'm really excited to use it.

OH!!!  I just had an idea.  I think on every entry, I'm going to choose a completely random, yet relevant news story and give you my take on it.  Today's news story.  The FDA is trying to regulate tobacco companies more.  They're trying to add more graphics about the danger of smoking to the packages, more strictly regulate the advertisement of cigarettes, and even the ingredients of cigarettes, such as nicotine and various other cancerous chemicals.  Even as a smoker, I am all for this.  The companies may make the prices higher to account for these changes, but for the benefit of the young people.  I was of legal age when I began smoking, but many children today are as young as 10 and smoking like chimneys.  But, do I believe that less advertisements are going to reduce this?  I don't actually know.  As a kid in school, I was barraged with information about the harms of smoking.  It didn't really stop me, so who knows.  We'll see, I guess.  What do you think?

I registered for classes today and I'm more excited than anyone could ever be excited to go to school.  Or should be, rather.  I have really cool classes too!  English, Political Science and an introductory class to Theatre.  Oh, and a math to counterbalance the awesomeness.  Yuck.

I start on Monday.  I'll be at school from 7:30am-8:00pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.  That's a long time, folks.

I've noticed lately that *a lot* of blogs have themes.  For example:  foods, travel, culture, basically anything that's a section in the newspaper.  It probably helps with keeping a scatter-brained person (me) on one topic as opposed to my posts which ramble on about 28 different things in five or so paragraphs.  I wonder if I should adopt a theme.  I don't really have an expertise in anything except maybe procrastination and Oreos.  I can't cook.  I can't really afford to travel.

My theme is my life.  Comprehensive and liberating.  This post reminds me of my previous post about finding my "walk of life."  Which, by the way, I still walk down way to many paths to choose.  

I bought this really cool suitcase at a thrift store the other day for $5.  It's kick ass.  The lighting is awful; it's actually a really pretty sky blue color. 

"You make me touch your hands for stupid reasons." My new favorite quote.

I'M BAAACKKKK!  So this week has been incredibly eventful.  Monday, I flew up to New York with a good friend of mine, Quent.  We had a meeting for "Exceptional Bicyclists" which went really well.  Quent actually won an award for being able to ride his bicycle while eating at the same time.  Those bicyclists...

Tuesday, Quent stayed in New York to visit family while I explored the streets meeting some very famous people, so I'm basically really in the know now.  It's definitely only a matter of time before I'm making movies with these people I met.  We'll see how these things pan out.  (excitement!)

While I was hanging out with one of these said famous friends, they invited me to a charity dinner out in Boston for Thursday (today) and we just got back from that.  We raised a lot of money for the children and that's what it's all about, right?  We're exhausted, but about to go to the "Voluptuous Volcano" for some dancing with a couple of producers from Australia.  If anyone happens to be in the area...  Leave.  

Tomorrow, I'm headed back home for a few days then going to a show in Berlin for the "We Promise We Care" almost-non-profit organization.  

Okay, so I made this entire post up.  Sue me.  I did it for my readers.  Trust me, it's much more entertaining than what's really going on in my life.  :D

Meaty Okra and China Gourmet

What a long day.  It started at 4:00 a.m.  I've worked, drank coffee, got a tan, drank more coffee, edited and uploaded Melissa's and my video, drank more coffee, and now I'm updating my blog and anxiously awaiting the arrival of tomorrow.  Wow, that's a lot of a's in that sentence. 

Tomorrow, I'm seeing a good friend and also going to Atlanta to hopefully make new friends. I went to a local Chinese restaurant this evening for dinner and I got a fortune that said, "Investigate new possibilities with friends.  Now is the time!"  So, it's obviously a sign.  Speaking of Atlanta, the Art Institute up there is stalking me.  They keep calling me wanting me to interview for their school, but there's nothing there for me.

You can definitely tell it's late by my use of clichés, boring verbs and so many demonstrative pronouns.  Here's the video I just finished editing.

"Young Frankenstein is the shit."

Today is the day of Woden.  "Hump day" to speak colloquially.  Also, the day the Sun and Moon were created as told by an interesting novel, The Bible.  Alright, enough of that nonsense.

More importantly, I now have green hair.  Cool, huh?  A little late to celebrate the St. Patrick's Day celebrations, but what're we gonna do?  Keep our hair yellow?  I think not.  

I had a chat with my former boss today after work.  I didn't know I'd miss her so much, but I really do.  I guess "the Bux" maintains very strong connections between partners without us even realizing it.  I wonder if all places of employment are like that.  

It's days like today (tired and boring days) that makes me wish I still subscribed to Netflix.  Today is such a Young Frankenstein day.  I should buy that movie.  I loved it a little (a lot).  One of my fondest memories of living on my own in my apartment was last Christmas season watching Young Frankenstein, curled up in my bed with snacks and cigarettes.  Sometimes I wonder if with some movies, we enjoy them because of the nostalgia they bring, reminding us of a better time or just a different time, really.  For example, Hocus Pocus was my favorite movie growing up and it may still be, and it always reminds me of the turn of the season from summer to fall.  And boy to I love fall.  After 5 months of Georgia heat, the anticipation of colder weather makes me jitter with excitement everyday.  Is it the movie or the connotations I love.   Then I think, "Wait, Young Frankenstein is the shit."  

I think I just "bull shat" this blog.  Like you do essays in high school.  Hm...  Whoops.  :D

Currently, I'm sitting watching an "America's Next Top Model" marathon on Oxygen.  It's sad that I actually don't mind spending an afternoon this way.  SInce I have to get up early tomorrow, it's kinda perfect.

I wish I had more to say.  I'm happy.

Although, I have been working a lot lately.  Which is a good thing, but it makes me think a lot about what my life is right now.  Work.  And living at home.  A little lonely.  I come home everyday and I'm too tired to do anything, really.  I thought by now my life would be exactly what I want it to be.  I know I'm only 18, but I thought I'd be schoolin' and theatre-in'.  Living somewhere that isn't with my parents.  Oh well.  I've plenty of time.

Let's go!

Deep Dark Secrets - EXPOSED!!!

St. Patrick's Day.  What a joke.  An excuse for drunk people to meet at Waffle House late at night and be really loud and obnoxious while a gay boy and his friend just want a freakin' waffle.  Jeez.

Also, I found an old traffic citation that needs to be taken care of.  Whoops.  My court date was four days ago.  Double whoops.  I sigh.

So, really exciting!  Jeffery Self and Andrew Keenan-Bolger replied to my weirdo questions on Facebook with some really interesting advice/information.  And besides, it makes me feel really cool to actually have traded messages with those two cuties.  :)

I actually love keeping this blog.  It's like a private diary, kind of.  It's private because of the millions and millions of blogs, who'd choose this one to read?  And it so public because billions of people have access to it (if they wanted it).  That's so cool to me.

Deep dark secret time:  2:00 a.m.

Okay, that's enough for this particular St. Patty's Day (and I repeat - What a joke).

EXPOSED!!!

I got the gift, people, no worries.  Thanks for all the comments and ideas.  I got zero.  Yay!  I can't actually say what the gift was in case someone does actually read this blog and tell Melissa Jackson or worse yet, she randomly decides to read it.  So let's just say it's elephant-related by being east-related.  It's like being a friend of a friend.  It's related to something that's related to something else which is related to elephants.

Going back to the zero comments/zero readers.  How does one become an internet semi-celebrity?  Creativity and exposure, I guess.  But how do you get exposure?  I could expose myself.  That strikes me as illegal, so maybe not.  I should ask some of my favorite Internet celebrities.  They may even get back to me.  It certainly doesn't hurt to try, right?

A reply.

Tony:  Jeffery Self is def a Internet celebrity. That's safe to say. I'm curious to know how someone from Rome, Georgia got to be so huge on Youtube. Being from Macon, Georgia (like maybe two hours southeast of Rome) I understand the isolation of being in a small town. Do you think moving to New York affected your "fame?" Was it simply connections, knowing lots of people? Or was it your scope and creativity alone bring you nearly 4,500 Facebook friends and over 5,000 subscribers? 

Jeffery:  Ha. I dunno. 

I've worked really hard on all the stuff I've done here in NYC and from that I've gotten a lot of national interest via the net. I've been lucky. 

Woot Woot Macon. 

:) 
j

Conclusion:  Doing shows in New York City, luck, and using the word "woot."

And MORE!!!!

Tony:  Andrew Keenan-Bolger is definitely an Internet celebrity. I'm just curious, what's your secret? How do you go from making video blogs about High School Musical rehearsals to having almost 5,000 subscribers? Did putting them on a general University of Michigan Youtube-Channel platform help? Or was it the sheer creativity of your video blogs?

Andrew:  haha thanks, yeah the internet's a weird thing i guess. I honestly don't know what exactly got that viewership. I just started out making videos so my friends and family could see what was going on in my life and truly never expected anyone else to think it was all that interesting. you're right, probably having it as a michigan thing helped because there are lots of people out there looking at schools and the internet's an easy way to find out about campus life. Because we were one of the first channels to put stuff up like that it gained a viewership. I also think i'm pretty blessed to have talented and fun friends who want to mess around and make stupid/cool stuff as much as i do. If you're looking to start up a channel, i'd say just make videos that you'd want to watch and have decent production values. our generation's inherently bored so there's always gonna be someone, somewhere wanting to watch it :)

akb

Conclusion:  People are bored; make videos of things you'd want to see yourself; and edit the shit out of every video.  Check!

I've got a little work to do.  

Woot,

Tony

Procrastination

I have to blog today because one day when millions of people are following my blog, they will ask, "Why do you only blog once every month?" And I will say, "Because no one was listening."  Then they will say, "So?  Do you blog purely for the enjoyment of others?"  And I'll ferociously reply, "I guess you're right."  Then they'll say, "Why did you say that ferociously?"

So I've worked early mornings all week.  And I'm totes excited 'cause I'm done for two whole days.  I need some time off.  My Virginia Beach Vacation couldn't come any sooner.  VBV is capital because it's really important.  Duh.

I'm currently sitting in my room procrastinating.  I should be laundering and driving to pick up my friend, Lizard.  Instead, I blog.

Topic?  Elephants.  I need to find a gift that is relative to an elephant.  I was thinking a trunk like a big box, but that takes up a lot of room, and who wants a box, really?  So, maybe a real elephant.  Expensive, but worth it.  Elephants are maternal and wise.    ...    I don't know.  I'll probably just get some replica of an elephant.  Like a metal one or a stuffed one.  IDEAS!?!?!  If anyone reads this blog, post a comment with an idea.  Fo' reals.  Kill two birds with one stone as the old saying goes.  Although, I've never cared for killing birds, so... Don't actually kill any birds, okay?

I actually forgot that I had a blog.

Okay, so no, my life isn't so terribly boring that I didn't have anything to blog about.  I just forgot I had a blog.  And the password until I found my old jump-drive.  Yay!

Okay, in my last post I turned 18.  Yay for me.  I'm still actually 18.  

Important Message:  I'm really excited that someone commented on my last blog.  :)  One day millions of people will be reading my blogs.  Until that day, eat corndogs people.  The warm blanket of bread is delish.

Fame.  Don't you worry, here I come.

Here we go.

I realize that still no one has ever seen my blog, but this is a special event, so it needs to be documented and properly so.

Tomorrow is one of the most important days in the history of the world. Why? I will do something so huge, so dramatic, so immensely important that will change my and possibly others' lives.

I will have been alive eighteen years tomorrow.

I know, right?