Walk the Walk

Ya know, I don't know if it's turning 30 that's getting to me, or if it's something else, but lately I've been feeling a sense of emptiness. I have plenty of friends, and a few close ones who are always and will always be there for me, so it's not that I'm lonely or feeling unloved. What it actually is, is a desire to find happiness, true personal happiness. That may sound stupid, but one of the most important things in life is finding happiness within yourself. This doesn't mean sitting around on the couch everyday, eating truffles, and playing with your belly button. You have to figure out what it is that is going to make you happy, really happy. Dream a little, not about flying on a magic carpet or slaying dragons with your mystical ninja skills, but something that you've always wanted to do or be. Something that fifty years from now you can say you did, instead of saying you wished you did. Pursuing this dream of yours may seem overwhelming at first, I know because mine have always overwhelmed me to the point that I do not act on them. Don't look at it as a mountain that you have to somehow get to the top of. Look at it instead as a series of small steps that you have to take, one by one, that will eventually get you where you want to be. You must be careful not to cut any corners when pursuing your dream, as that just wouldn't be fair to you. So, if you want to be a weather girl (insert whatever dream you had in mind), start reading up on what it takes to be a weather girl, practice being a weather girl in your bathroom window (that's how I learned to dance while watching "The Grind" on MTV) and occasionally for friends, allowing them to give you constructive criticisms, and paying close attention to your role models on the news. You're gonna need to find yourself somehow in or around a news room, probably in an entry level position at first, but with your goals in check and a smile on your face I'm sure I'll be watching you on the weather in no time (and I do not, nor have I ever watched the weather, so this is BIG). The only problem is that normally when someone that determined who also possesses all of the necessary tools (pretty face, bright personality, confidence, and intelligence (both book and street sense), the station's gonna want you to be more of a figure head, so either the weather girl becomes the new host of the news, or you end up an anchor.

Please understand that I, in fact, do not aspire to be a weather girl. I only use this example because I'm done talking about my dreams in '09. Barrack says that the change will begin with us, so I am done talking without walking. I've got a lot of walking to do, I'm gonna be exhausted...

Just Know That You’re Going to “eat it”…a lot.

Crash pads…don’t know what they are? They are pads to protect your buttocks for when you decide to pick up snowboarding. So, I did make my first snowboarding trip this weekend with some friends. We rented a nice little house right across from Wisp Mountain in Maryland; we could walk to the slopes in just a few minutes. We rented a four wheel drive for the trip, turned out to be a great investment. My loving mother picked up snowboarding apparel for me (gotta love a loving mother when you’re preparing for such a pivotal, non-mid-life-crisis related, adventure). I even picked up wrist guards, as this was strongly suggested, as apparently many snowboarding beginners seem to injure their wrists. Guess what else was strongly suggested?? That’s right, Crash Pads… They did preach it (by “they”, I mean my loving friends, Hou and Te who lead me right into the belly of the beast by talking me into snowboarding in the first place…), “get crash pants, Jerry…you’re really gonna want crash pants, Jerry…”, and so on. Well, I do believe I’ve said more than once that there is always a better way to say something when you want the person(s) on the receiving end of whatever you’ve been preaching, to understand to the fullest extent what you’re trying to get across. What they should have been saying was, “Jerry, seriously…you’re going to fall directly on your ass repeatedly throughout the course of just over an hour that it will take you to get down your first pass on a green trail. Every time you lose control of which direction your body is moving, and which opposite direction your ass is moving, you’re going to eat it. Oh yeah, and guess what? It just started freezing raining on the mountain, so your rear end is gonna be connecting with ice covered snow each and every occasion of sudden ass-to-ground impact. Eventually, sometime during your second day ever of learning to snowboard, you’re going to have landed on your butt that you’re going to be afraid of landing on your butt. This will lull you into a state of uncontrollable stupidity where you’ll decide it’s a better idea to take a page from “The Matrix” the next time you take a spill and spin your body while still in mid air, trying to land on your front side. WRONG! You will never make a full rotation in the air, and instead you will twist your ankle in your snowboard binding and slam the side of your head into the ice covered snow. It will hurt. Once you’ve determined that this tactic of “eating it” likely would end in broken limbs and possibly a concussion, you will continue falling towards your ass, but will now attempt using your elbows to brace your falls and protect your ass. WRONG AGAIN! After trying this a few times, you will have such a sharp pain in your elbow that you’ll think you may have shattered it. Get the crash pads, Jerry.” This would have spawned a strong sense of urgency and importance toward procuring crash pads. So, from me to all of you tossing around the idea of learning to snowboard please do learn. Once you start to pick it up it is awesome. It’s exhilarating, good exercise, and it gets you to experience the great outdoors in a way you never have before. But first please get some wrist guards and some crash pads, because the great outdoors in the dead of winter on a mountain is not very forgiving on your ass.  

Just Know That You’re Going to “eat it”…a lot.

Crash pads…don’t know what they are? They are pads to protect your buttocks for when you decide to pick up snowboarding. So, I did make my first snowboarding trip this weekend with some friends. We rented a nice little house right across from Wisp Mountain in Maryland; we could walk to the slopes in just a few minutes. We rented a four wheel drive for the trip, turned out to be a great investment. My loving mother picked up snowboarding apparel for me (gotta love a loving mother when you’re preparing for such a pivotal, non-mid-life-crisis related, adventure). I even picked up wrist guards, as this was strongly suggested, as apparently many snowboarding beginners seem to injure their wrists. Guess what else was strongly suggested?? That’s right, Crash Pads… They did preach it (by “they”, I mean my loving friends, Hou and Te who lead me right into the belly of the beast by talking me into snowboarding in the first place…), “get crash pants, Jerry…you’re really gonna want crash pants, Jerry…”, and so on. Well, I do believe I’ve said more than once that there is always a better way to say something when you want the person(s) on the receiving end of whatever you’ve been preaching, to understand to the fullest extent what you’re trying to get across. What they should have been saying was, “Jerry, seriously…you’re going to fall directly on your ass repeatedly throughout the course of just over an hour that it will take you to get down your first pass on a green trail. Every time you lose control of which direction your body is moving, and which opposite direction your ass is moving, you’re going to eat it. Oh yeah, and guess what? It just started freezing raining on the mountain, so your rear end is gonna be connecting with ice covered snow each and every occasion of sudden ass-to-ground impact. Eventually, sometime during your second day ever of learning to snowboard, you’re going to have landed on your butt that you’re going to be afraid of landing on your butt. This will lull you into a state of uncontrollable stupidity where you’ll decide it’s a better idea to take a page from “The Matrix” the next time you take a spill and spin your body while still in mid air, trying to land on your front side. WRONG! You will never make a full rotation in the air, and instead you will twist your ankle in your snowboard binding and slam the side of your head into the ice covered snow. It will hurt. Once you’ve determined that this tactic of “eating it” likely would end in broken limbs and possibly a concussion, you will continue falling towards your ass, but will now attempt using your elbows to brace your falls and protect your ass. WRONG AGAIN! After trying this a few times, you will have such a sharp pain in your elbow that you’ll think you may have shattered it. Get the crash pads, Jerry.” This would have spawned a strong sense of urgency and importance toward procuring crash pads. So, from me to all of you tossing around the idea of learning to snowboard please do learn. Once you start to pick it up it is awesome. It’s exhilarating, good exercise, and it gets you to experience the great outdoors in a way you never have before. But first please get some wrist guards and some crash pads, because the great outdoors in the dead of winter on a mountain is not very forgiving on your ass.  

Those Filipinos...

Charice Pempengco, remember the name. She is something special, and she’s most likely going to be Diva-Status in the next 6-10 years. She’s only 16 years old, she’s already won every singing competition there is to win in The Philippines (and that’s not easy, ‘cause all Filipinos can sing…), she’s already been on Oprah, Ellen Degeneres, Good Morning America, a tribute to David Foster, and she sang on stage with Celine Dion in during a Celine Dion concert at Madison Square Garden. You know you’re good when Celine Dion wants you to come perform her song at her concert while she sings back-up for you… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tgBQbPop0s&feature=related).
I only hope she is taken care of properly as he grows into her new role, as we wouldn’t want her to be the next Michael Jackson…

And then there was light…

So…I haven’t written in a minute and I finally came to grips with the fact that I miss it. Easy cure…start writing! Whenever I get asked why I haven’t posted in so long, my excuse is always that I’m not motivated anymore, that I’ve lost the drive to write, that I used to be inspired everyday to write about things that happened around me and for some reason the inspirations haven’t been there for me. There’s a perfect term for this kind of excuse…”BULLSHIT”. The inspirations are always there, they’ve always been. I constantly find myself surrounded by interesting people with great ideas and points of view on different topics. At least once a day I find myself intrigued by something that has been said or done around me, so I should write about it, and I will.

I know that first paragraph sounded strange, think of it as a submission to The Gerald, by The Gerald, for The Gerald to put more effort on me. The New Year is upon us. It is a time of self-reflection and plans for self improvement, you infidels call them “New Year’s Resolutions”. Most of you (unless you were hiding under a rock made of ice in the mystical mountains of Mars) heard Barrack Obama echo a message of change. Well, there’s always going to be changes in the universe, it’s just a matter of how you effect the changes that happen within your own life, which will also affect the people closest to you. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you always say how you wanna play softball in the spring, then play softball in the spring. If you always say you wanna get your master’s degree in astrophysics, then go get your damn degree and stop talking about it, and if you want to call Jerry back after he obviously called you at 8:30 in the morning to straighten out some VERY serious information like “is Maureen’s birthday really on New Year’s Eve? I thought it was on New Year’s Day…” before he had to get a phone call from her unexpectedly early at 9:42 in the morning wondering why I had not yet wished her a Happy Birthday, then please do. Phew! So, ring in 2009 like it could be the last. Live for today and do all the things you always say you wanna do, but be conscious of the future (try not to spend your life savings doing it), as I’m sure 2009 won’t actually be the last. Happy New Year everybody.

-The Gerald

A Tribe Called Quest Knows What I Am Talking About

“Stress.” It’s all there…there in that terrible little six letter word. It’s like a little word in black, size 11 Calibri (Body) font text that grows from within you at times that are tough. Times when nothing seems to be going right, instead feeling like a ball of fiery ash, rolling down the side of the side of a volcano, picking up size and momentum as it goes. Pretty overwhelming that little six letter word can get…

Some people let the stress take over their lives, and eventually just give up. Some people will inebriate themselves in continuous glasses of merlot every evening, just to help them forget about those stresses that seem to plague their lives, even if just for a short while. They know and accept that tomorrow will begin a new day, sure to be haunted in a shroud of stress. And then there are those who rise to the occasion, welcoming stress into their arena. An arena built over the years, as family, friends, and experiences instill ideals and values that do not allow for self pity and sulking. These people live to be challenged, they live for the opportunities that life provides to push themselves to new heights of accomplishment. These are the men and women who train to be ninjas in the mountains of Cuba! You still payin’ attention? That was just a joke about the ninjas; I don’t think they really train in Cuba…

I guess my point is that most of us let stress get to us and put us into a funky mood, only having a negative attitude about your day. I know I do it quite a bit, but it seems to help if you step back from your miserable day for a minute and try to picture the day’s challenging events as just that…challenges. Then you just line them up on a mental or written list, and start facing each challenge and knockin’ ‘em down one by one! Preferably with throwing stars or a blowgun…

Well, good luck with your life stresses. Just remember that sometimes your stresses will feel like they’re drowning you and you have to sink or swim. So swim.

Katy Perry vs. Zooey Deschanel

Hi, It's Maureen this time, not Jerry, because it might be slightly weird if he was the one posting this but it needs to be addressed, so i'll be the one to do it. So the topic of conversation amongst lots of our friends has been Katy Perry of the "I Kissed A Girl" fame. Ok not her so much as how much she looks like indie actress Zooey Deschanel. And by "looks like" I mean her super twin that was stolen at birth by wild robot monkeys.

You know you realized it too when you were watching So You Think You Can Dance last week. (Kirby, I'm looking in your general direction).

The first and second pictures are Zooey, the third is Katy Perry, click to enlarge.

For the Love of Football...

Waddup, waddup. Welcome back to a Daily Dose of The Gerald. Today I’d like to touch on a subject in the world of sports, as I recently had a couple of unexpected and somewhat heated conversations with females about it. It is an interesting and somewhat sad topic for me, as Brett Favre has become a legend of football basically right before my own eyes, all of our eyes. His rise to a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback in the NFL has happened in our lifetime, and it has been an awesome growth to witness.

As many of you know, Brett Favre retired after last season, thus ending one of the most storied careers in National Football League history. Now, somebody like that doesn’t just leave the game behind. They can’t, it’s been their life, and especially for someone like him. He’s shattered records, he’s won a Super Bowl, he’s broken wide receivers’ thumbs with his zipline passes, he was in “There’s Something About Mary”, he’s overcome addiction to painkillers, he’s supported his wife through her development of cancer, and he’s mourned the passing of his brother-in-law and his father. And what has helped him get through all of this? That’s right, football. He is and always has been a warrior on the field, who also often looks like a kid playing and laughing out there with referees and opposing players.

He’s not just a football player, not even just a legendary football player. He is football. He optimizes everything that football is; strength, honor, hard work, persistence, motivation, emotion, leadership, sweat, blood, tears, respect, passion, and heart. And when it comes to heart, nobody who’s ever seen Brett Favre play the game could ever deny his heart of pure gold. I’d like to point to a Monday Night Football game between The Green Bay Packers and The Oakland Raiders on December 22, 2003. Brett’s father had just passed away the day before in a car accident, possibly cause by a medical condition. Who plays football after that? Brett Favre does, that’s who. He gave his father what may have been his greatest game ever, the day after losing him, and just days before Christmas. His entire team saw the heart in that, and they all lifted their level of play. He passed for four touchdowns in the first half, finishing the game with 399 yards passing and beating Oakland 41-7 on international TV. In an interview after the game, he said, “I knew that my dad would have wanted me to play. I love him so much and I love this game. It's meant a great deal to me, to my dad, to my family, and I didn't expect this kind of performance. But I know he was watching tonight.” I am blessed to have been able to watch that game live.

Now, some have argued that he should stay off of the playing field, as he ponders a return as an active player. Green Bay has said they would welcome him back…as a backup. Give me a break! Someone like that does not ponder a return to the field in a backup capacity. Are you kidding me? He wants to compete, and compete he will if he decides to come back. And if Green Bay doesn’t want him as their starter, then let him go elsewhere! But I will go on record as saying that the Green Bay Packers organization would be a bunch of idiots to not start Brett Favre at quarterback if he was willing to come back, actually they’d also be dumb to let him play elsewhere because he would crush them when he met them on the battlefield. Those who have expressed he should stay off the field have suggested he get a job with ESPN, sip coladas on the beach, also say that it would not be fair for anyone to pick up Brett Favre as their starting quarterback.

They say that the current starting quarterback’s on these teams have worked hard and earned their starting roles, and for someone like Brett Favre with all of his accolades to come in and strip that starting role from them would be ludicrous. Not so much so. Plain and simple, he is AWESOME. Any quarterback in the league should be happy to have the opportunity to learn some of what makes Brett Favre tick. They could all benefit from it, and some of these starting quarterbacks are not doing their teams any favors. Not to name any names, but Josh McCown (Miami), Kyle Boller (Baltimore), and Tarvaris Jackson (Minnesota), Alex Smith (San Francisco)…

Brett Favre is set to be the first inactive player ever to be on the cover of the John Madden Football video game, but will he be? Only time will tell, but if he says he’s got gas in the tank, please do not doubt him. Let him play, or it won’t just be his loss, it’ll be all of our losses.

I May Never Get Married

Nationwide's motto "When life comes at you fast..." hits home pretty well these days. When I was young I could be pretty much carefree, do whatever, not worry about getting hurt (never got hurt), not worrying about being sore from playing too much, not worrying about working to make income so you can survive and take care of yourself, not have to work as hard at my ninja training, and not have to worry about getting MARRIED!

Well, I'm pushing 30 now (that's the only time you'll hear me say that, for at least the next 4 years I'll be 28), and marriage is definitely something that crosses my mind here and there lately. I've also heard peers of mine express that they are feeling pressured to settle down and get married. I get the pressure once in a while from my grandparents, from my parents, and from my friends who are married and now having children of their own (It's so crazy, it feels like we were just children ourselves just yesterday). So now I'm getting the, "Hey, Jerry just calling to say hi, and sooo... Matt and Angel just had a son last night, and we just had our daughter recently, and so...when are you gonna have one?" And actually I understand completely.

Ever since my two best friends got married and started having children, I feel kinda like I'm being left out of the club. We grew up together and pretty much did everything together, and now they have different priorities than I do, and they want me to be part of the club. It would also be really awesome if all three of us could have children close in age to grow up together like we did, and we would all be going through the same types of things with our kids at around the same times if they were the same age, which would also be cool.

Well...here's the thing. I'm not ready to get married, not because I don't want to be, but the fact is that I'm not where I want to be in my own life, and I feel like I need to get a full grip on my own life before I ask someone else to share a life. I've heard recently that maybe we haven't found "the one" because our egos are too big and we feel like no one has been good enough, or may ever be good enough. I can definitely understand that because I have felt like that before, but usually I think it's probably true.

That's not to necessarily say that many of these girls are not as good as me, but more so that they are not or have not been compatible with who I am or want. If I were to get married tomorrow, there's only really one person that I would even consider, and that's because she grounds me, keeps me honest, and will break me down in a heartbeat if I step out of line.

I think even for us egotistical guys, there's always going to be a girl who will be "good enough", she will ground you, and when you're with her you'll feel completely satisfied, like there's nothing else out there to look for. You'll finally calm down, settle down, and naturally start to build your own family. Maybe I've added a little bit of a dreamer's touch to the whole story, but hey I'm a dreamer!

I guess what I've been trying to say is just be you. Whatever it is that helps you get through the day and be happy, do that. Don't rush into what you're not ready for, or with someone you're not sure about, 'cause chances are that you'll just end up regretting it. Whoever you end up with will accept you for who you are, I mean you shouldn't be frequenting bars and clubs anymore, or getting drunk all of time, but once you've found someone, it's other things that will make you happy. Now go forth and continue with your life, as I continue with my path to Ninja Mountain.

Team Keating Day

Team Keating Day, Team Keating Day, what a wonderful event to have two months after May... A day when family and friends alike will be merry and gay (mostly just Shannon will be gay, Jimmy will be merry, Jessica will be boring and weak, and Jerry will be busy winning...everything).

Team Keating Day is a day that comes to us once a year. It's inception was last July, and it was pretty good then, but looks to reach new heights this year. We will have a plethora of team games, great food, and stories to tell for years. My siblings and I came up with the idea as a way to spend some quality time together. We are all older now, working in the real world, and such, so it's not always easy to get together. Once the idea for a Team Keating Day came up, my sister Shannon just ran with it, planning events that test our ninja skills instilled at birth (some of our ninja skills stronger than others...) as well as our alcohol consumption abilities (Shannon may now be a full-blown alcoholic through her yearlong Team Keating Day training regimen), setting up tents for guests to crash in overnight( as there would be a slight consumption of alcohol involved in the day's activities), and even creating a trophy for the event. It's a great way to bond with each other, and also invite some close friends into the world of Team Keating.

The idea is not a new one, people have been having family reunions for years, but it's a great idea and can really help families get together, let off some steam, and have a good time. In this world of war and hate, high ass gas prices, typhoons and earthquakes, Hillary not getting out of the race when she should, the ninjas still warring with the samurai, Batman coming out of the closet (it will happen, Donny...) it's good to get together, have a good time, and remember what's really important in this world of ours. I may not spend as much time with the family as I should, and I should be better about that, but one thing's for sure, I won't ever miss a Team Keating Day.