A Long Walk Home

Good Morning One and All,

I'd like to begin this with a shout out to two of my homies, Mr. Dressen and Nate Dog. Mr. Dressen was one of my English teachers way back in the days of my compulsory education at Hastings High School. Through my days in his class watching baseball (Go slow for Slowey), stealing bricks from cemeteries (which I believe is still in the back of the Explorer- ask Danny), and flirting with girls in the back of the room I learned a lot of great things not only about the English language, but about life. I also learned, through our extensive study of Henry David Thorough, Dylan Thomas and a host of other authors, that scribbling a few words down on paper isn't necessarily a lame thing to do. Since then, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski and the fictional character Hank Moody have also driven that point home for me. For that, Mr. Dressen, I thank you. I was happy to hear that you are actively following this blog. I also would like to add that I now feel a little bit more pressure to make this little bit of amateur electronic literature as sound as possible. Hopefully I can meet your standards! As for Nate Dog, well, I never really listened to much of his stuff, but I was recently informed that he passed away a few days ago. Hopefully he and Tupac are livin' it up in the Gangster's Paradise.

My first bloggable experience since my last post came last Wednesday when the men's lacrosse captain cancelled practice so we could all go cheer on the women's team for their last game home game of the season. It was only the 3rd or 4th girls game I had ever been to, and my attention to the game at hand was about the same as it was for the previous few. Minimal. Girls lacrosse doesn't particularly interest me. There is no hitting, no cool shots or fakes, the stick checks are lame, and it's just generally less fun to watch. I could say the same about most female sports to be honest, but I do have to agree with Title IX when it comes to beach volleyball. In fact, I would even say men couldn't play beach volleyball if we could somehow do the same with a women's team in some other sport, but that is a completely different topic.
I can say, the only saving grace for the game was the fact that 3 of the guys from my team were refs- and none of them really knew the rules. They pretty much walked back and forth around the field looking lost and getting yelled at for missed calls by members of both teams. Thank goodness I didn't know the rules! Those girls were fierce- like Tyra!
The act of being at the game was fun though. With all of the guys there most of them brought their sticks and some snacks and stuff so we just hung out on the sidelines playing catch and eating Doritos and salsa. We even had a rugby ball which I attempted to kick and failed horribly at on my first few attempts. I do have pictures of some activities below.

On Friday night at about 12:30 a few friends and I were enjoying a quiet night in having a few beers and playing poker in the kitchen of my house and all of a sudden a strange female began to knock furiously on the window. At the time it looked like she was wearing just a regular red hoodie and she then proceeded to yell, "Hey, let me in!"
I looked around at my friends to see if any of them recognized her. None of them did. I replied, "Who are you?"
To which she simply said, "Just let me in!"
I obliged and nodded towards the door signaling that I would indeed let her in. I just hoped she didn't have some sort of weapon or bludgeoning object she would use on me the moment I opened the door and then steal my wallet and run off. Thankfully, she didn't. I was, however, met with another surprise. When I opened the door I quickly realized she was dressed in a full body, furry, red dragon suit! I couldn't help but laugh a little when I saw this and all I could think was, "only in the U.K."
It turns out that our new dragon friend actually didn't know a single soul that lived in our house, and she didn't even live in the village. She was staying the night at her friend's place and on her walk there she saw us sitting around the table and decided it looked like fun so she wanted to join.
So we sat around the table playing poker and drinking and talking with a very drunk lady dragon. At one point she looked at me and said, "You know, you're a very attractive boy."
"Well thank you" I replied, "you are a very attractive dragon" and the night continued.
She ended up leaving around 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning, and while we were all about ready to go to bed, we had to admit, it was kind of sad to see her go. I don't think any of us ever learned her real name, since we just called her "Dragon Lady" the whole time, but it was one of the greatest surprises we could have ever imagined and it turned what would have been a pretty normal night into a night worth blogging about.

Another topic that has recently come to my attention (that actually has nothing to do with Wales or my life here at all) is the nationwide acceptance of a new song on youtube called "Friday" by one Rebecca Black. It turns out, while I've been away, the increasingly mediocre music tastes of the American public have gotten even worse- a feat I no longer thought possible with the recent achievement of super star status by performers like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. I am responsible for one of the 35,613,780 views, and I am not proud of the fact. Within 40 seconds I was ready to close the tab and go double Van Gogh on myself- you may be happy to hear I refrained. I stayed with it and ended up watching the whole thing and all I could think was, "What the heck America?!" I know our government is probably into some pretty shady shit, but we must have done something pretty bad for God to lay this one on us. Apparently this song is now on iTunes, the girl has been on multiple talk shows, is about to release an acoustic version, and is now about to become a millionaire because of this song, leaving me to ask myself, "Dylan, what kind of song can you make up that can exploit the increasingly poor music taste and judgement of the impressionable people of the greatest country in the world?"
I understand that paragraph was a little bit harsh, but I feel like there has to be a point where people draw the line. Sometimes it seems like we're drowning in a cesspool of "talent" and these new stars are all just taking the batteries out of their clocks when they hit 14 after so they can ride the fame wave a little bit longer. I mean, more power to them for sure, its good business for them. But to be honest, if a club spends ten grand to get a cast member from "The Jersey Shore" to make an appearance, they lost my business hands down. Maybe this is what happens every generation with musicians and single serving celebrities, and this is just my first time realizing it. I suppose that's just the American Dream in action.

Speaking of the American Dream, I must get back to writing an essay due in a couple days on how the story of Jay Gatsby exemplifies the perils and possibilities of said dream. The sun rises and falls fast here in Wales and I'm hoping to not have to keep the midnight oil burning again tonight. I hope you all enjoyed todays post and I'm sorry it kind of trailed off into a rant at the end there. Pics of the lax game below: