It was my birthday

I was worried that after I blogged about getting a bunch of Facebook birthday wishes that I wouldn't actually get any comments...but the comments poured in. Here are a few of the meaningful ones.

Justin W: happy birthday same age brother

Caleb S: happy birthday dude... sorry for breaking the 8 girl streak you can delete this if you want

Dana M: 21? Really? Holy crap! Happy birthday, I guess. Jeez.

Brenda B: Happy 21st birthday Proctor! And, congratulations on the guest blog spot. You rock! I hope you enjoyed lots of your mom's home cooking and all of the parental love while you were home for the weekend.

And the last one is from my brother, an avid reader of my blog.
Walter A: Happy Birthday _____! ______ I can't believe you are finally 21. Have a good B-Day _____.

It was a good birthday.

Going into labor day

In 17 minutes I will be turning 21 years old. I'm excited. It is a big day apparently. But I'm also unexcited. Unexcited about the avalanche of comments I'm about to receive on Facebook. September 7th is the day that a ton of my closest facebook "friends" read that it is my birthday and then leave a stock standard birthday greeting for me. Is that suppose to make me happy? Or gracious. Usually there are about 7 people that are actually wishing me a happy birthday and putting some effort into a unique and meaningful birthday wish. As for the rest of them? Nothing. The clock hasn't even struck 12 and the comments have already started to roll in.

"Happy Birthday _____!"
"______ I can't believe you are finally 21"
"Have a good B-Day _____"

I like my birthday to be low key. Spend time with those closest to me. And eat cake. Tomorrow I'm going to spend time with my family, drive back to Austin with my brother, and go see Inglorious Basterds at the Alamo Drafthouse with my girlfriend. I think it is going to be a pretty good day.

Fast bus

Action movies get a bad wrap, and for good reason. A lot of them are very very bad. And even some of the best action movies still have a little bit of bad in them. Speed is no different. It has all the early 90's action cheese that you would expect from a 1994 Keaneu Reeves movie, but it also has something awesome.

Last night I couldn't sleep and wound up channel surfing on the couch. That's when I decided that I was going to watch Speed. All I really knew about it was the premise...which sounds pretty bad after 15 years. There are people on a bus. There is a bomb on the bus. The bus can't go slower than 50 mph or the the bomb explodes and kills the people.

The cast list is also pretty laughable. Keanu: Guy's just not a very good actor. Sandra Bullock: Meh, just don't like her. Dennis Hopper: Past his prime. The only two actors whose performances I actually enjoyed where Jeff Daniels and Matthew Broderick's best friend from Ferris Bueler.

But despite all this I LOVED this movie. Movie starts with action. Then 15 mintutes of story and the rest is action. Really intense action. I've never seen a movie that filled me with this much suspsense. By the end of the movie my veins where full of adrenline. Thank you HBO on demand.

Home yet

This weekend I'm back in Houston at my parent's house. Monday is my 21st birthday and we're getting together with my aunt, uncle, and grand parents to celebrate. What does being home mean to me? A lot of things.

1. Homemade meals from my mom. Today my little brother and I came home to incredible pot roars, biscuits, and cooked vegetables. No matter how hard I try when I make dinner at my apartment it never tastes like this.

2. PUPPY! My Dad got a little tiny yellow lab puppy on July 2nd and I love her to death. Over the summer the two of us spent a lot of late nights snoozing on the couch. Now she's big but still the best pup ever.

3. DVR. Life with basic cable is rough...well not really but we've got a backlog of Arrested Development episodes on our DVR. Sure, I've got them on DVD at my apartment but watching them on my parents big TV with the whole family around is just so much better.

4. And of course family. Mine specifically. What would I be without my parents. They give me drive, humor, support, love, and many other things. I can't thank them enough for all that they've given me, with out them I would be nothing.

Funny stuff

Tuesday marked the beginning of the "Out of Bounds Comedy Festival" here in Austin. Out of Bounds is a 7 day comedy festival that features some of the countries best improv, sketch comedy, and stand up performers. One of the groups being spotlighted is Scatter, a long form improv group from Houston.

Tonight I was lucky enough to catch Scatter's performance at the Savage Vanguard theater. Scatter wasn't however a group that I just randomly stumbled upon, when I was in high school I did improv with Scatter's Matt Lusk. Lusk is two years older than me and was the guy that influenced me to try out for the group...so I may be a little bit biased in my evaluation of the performance.

After high school I decided to stop doing improv for awhile, and instead worked more on school and getting used to living in Austin. So now, 3 years later, I have trouble remembering the good parts about it. Instead my mind is cluttered with the obnoxious people we used to perform with and the outrageous skits we would end up doing. Improv can very easily slip and become a very silly, and very stupid thing. The guys in Scatter realize this. You can tell when they perform that they are aware of the inherent goofiness of improv and they make light of that. For example half way through their performance one of the 8 members called for a break and all 8 members walked over to the side of the stage and grabbed their water bottles, rested, and discussed their work so far. One member said they needed to work on their environment in scenes and when they started back up two of them intentionally performed a terribly hilarious improv scene where they broke almost every basic rule for making a good scene. In the hour that they performed they covered all sorts of topics and as morally wrong as it sounds made even the most terrible of topics, abusive step fathers, and hilarious subject.

The troupe was incredibly funny, making sure that everyone in the audience had a good time. After talking to the guys after their performance it was obvious that they where good friends, and that contributed a lot to their on stage chemistry. The best part of the performance was that it reminded me of the good times that I had doing improv.

Dolphin free

In talking with people I have realized that most, if not all, of us have unexplainable memories from our childhoods. Strange things. Hazy scenes from movies and TV shows that don't quite make sense after all these years. One memory that never escapes me is playing Ecco the Dolphin for my Sega Genesis.

Yes, some Sega executive thought it would be a good idea to make a game about a Dolphin swimming through the ocean.

Yes, my parents saw the box for the dolphin game...and bought it for their 5 year old son.

What terrible ideas! (Sorry mom, I know you read this)

To top off the weird/uninteresting concept of the game the developers made it brutally difficult. I never got past the second level. But I've been told that the game starts to get really weird strange! The dolphin starts flying into space to fight space jelly fish. Weird stuff. There was even two sequels.

Someday I'd like to give Ecco another shot...not today though.

Saves you money

Things are expensive. I know, pretty obvious statement but it's very true. I do my best not to buy expensive things. Most of the time that means I just don't buy anything but other times it means I find ways to spend less on expensive things. Today I have two examples of things that I bought this weekend for less than the sticker price.

First: Planet Earth on Blu-Ray. On BestBuy.com the collection costs $79.99 but thanks to a special one day deal on WalMart's website I was able to get it for $37.99. Walmart.com had run out of copies by the time I found out but my girlfriend and I printed the screen and took it to Best Buy. At try to avoid going to Best Buy at all costs as I can't stand the way they run their business...but I make exceptions when it comes to price matching. I see it as my opportunity to take a little bit of their money. After searching the store for around 45 minutes we finally found one of two remaining copies. Took it to the customer service and after a little convincing we got it for aroudn 40 dollars. Very happy with our purchase. Looks incredible on my roomate's TV.

Second: Guitar Hero World Tour Bundle for Playstation 3. For the last 3 years I have avoided buying plastic video game instruments. Rock Band and Guitar Hero games have always seemed fun but I could never get over the price. The Guitar Hero World Tour bundle costs around a hundred dollars no matter where you look. On Sunday I was at Target buying some deoderant and I checked out the electronics section out of habit. There wheren't any good markdowns in the game section and nothing good in Dvds so I started to walk to the register. Then tucked away in an end cap where two copies of the game and one guitar for only twenty two dollars. So I snatched one up and took it to the register. On my way home I stopped by a Hollywood video and lucky me they had Guitar Hero drums on sale for only ten dollars. So I got the whole bundle for a third of the price. I'm pretty excited about it.

Feels good buying $180 worth of stuff for only $70.