Bee-Dub-Dub

Okay, so I've been scratching up this piece of paper since 6AM and I came to a conclusion.

Well, actually two conclusions, but you get them both for the astonishingly low price of just one! You my friend, have been blessed. It's like getting a box of soup, Heath Ledger poster, Zippo lighter, or a "Troy & Abed In The Morning Mug" as a gift (well, at least I know two of those four were seen as awesome..."We don't have cameras." "Yeah, who would watch this?" a few of you might get that quote session...1615).

Okay, got a little off topic, back to the two conclusions. Conclusion number one, I don't need to write everything I write in my marble notebook (I'm taking this shit back to the third grade). That writing is mostly just dumped straight from my mind, through the pen, onto the paper.

Conclusion number two, instead of trying to find some funny way to write this post, I decided to pour it right from my heart into your brains, which is really uncharted territory for me so we'll see how it goes. Probably poorly.

I love Buffalo Wild Wings. I'd take a trip to "B-Dubs" over any other restaurant. I'd take six wings from College Park's location over a week's worth of free wings from WingZone (You use too much sauce and your blue cheese is nasty).

I'd take "B-Dubs" over a lot of things actually, baptisms, weddings (I'll see you at the reception though), movies, doctors appointments, birthdays, confirmations, cruises, a Hooter's sponsored car wash, hospital stays, going to work, and going to meet some friends at Chipotle.

Fun story about the meeting friends at Chipotle. I was supposed to meet some people from the old job at Chipotle in College Park, then Dave called and said "Hey, we're going to wings, etc etc" as I was on the way to Chipotle, so I changed lanes and went to BWW. Without telling those other friends I wasn't going to Chipotle and for some odd reason, they're still upset.

That. Happened.

Now, I wanted to talk about the waiters and waitresses who I love and all, but that doesn't seem important.

What does seem important is the people I go with every week. I'm talking to you Dave, Wes, Matt, Julia, Mike, Mikey, Leah, James, Tim, Sari, Nick, Ben, Chris, Kris, Chris, Alise, Stephanie, Kelly, Hina, Goose, and all those other people I forgot or just didn't remember their names. Now, not all of those people come each week. It's usually just me, Dave, Wes, Julia, and some of her friends but occasionally the other names make an appearance but their not really regulars.

Those people are the reason I go each week. Sure the food is flawless and the sports are amazing but I love being with those people, my extended family.

Me and Dave talk about who's working, me and Wes talk about what sauce to get and study the artwork, me and Julia talk about side bangs versus front bangs ("See! Look at her, side bangs look retarded!"), me and Kelly discuss why she's not gonna hit me with that block of wood under the table, me and Julia's friends discuss two things; how awesome I am and then I make sure they're not from places I don't like (I'm looking at you Miami), me and Matt, Mike, and Tim talk about sports, and me and Mikey Dubbs talk about, well, everything. What I'm trying to say is that I love everyone who walks in and sits with us to eat and talk and hopefully they enjoy it as well.

There is one story I want to tell before I wrap this up. It happened last week when we went to BWW to "surprise" Dave for his birthday.

So Wes, Kelly and I went out to get a cake to bring with us to give to Dave. Mission accomplished (as usual). Julia, Mr. Bonanno, and Mrs. Bonanno went to get Dave and bring him there.

When they showed up, me and Wes were at a table waiting. Dave shook his head and "smiled" and then we ate and all that good stuff. When we were done, the waitress brought out the cake and someone announced it was Dave's birthday, people clapped, cheered, etc and we cut the cake.

So after a few minutes, the waitress comes back and stands between me and Dave. Dave's father then says "Hey David, you know what you could do with that cake? You could use it to lure young girls," pause to point at the waitress, "back to the apartment."

He said it as a joke, and we all laughed. Except Julia, who in my head was just extremely embarrassed and I wish Dave was too. It was just hilarious, the perfect BWW moment from a first time visitor.

So that's all I got.

I apologize if this post means nothing to you cuz you don't go with the group I go with, but hopefully it reminds you of the good times you had going out with your friends or family.

And if this one sucked, I'll have a new one hopefully tomorrow or Friday that will let you all laugh at me. A sleepwalking post is long overdue friends and neighbours.

Also, hi Lauren! There, hope you're happy haha.

Food.

Have you ever thought what your last meal would be? You know, you've been sitting around a prison cell (whenever I think of prison I think of Eddie Griffin sayin "You looking at my Janet?") and they come open the door on your last day and bring in a tray full of _________. I mean, I guess they still do last meals, I hope they do cuz when "The Man" finally catches me I've got some explaining to do if ya know what I mean...

I think about my last meal alot. I know exactly what it would be and exactly how long it would take me to eat eighteen wings from Buffalo Wild Wings (six Honey BBQ, six Asain Zing, and six Spicy Garlic), onion rings from Dune Burger, medium ham and pineapple pizza from Ledo's (handmade by the one and only Mikey Dubbs), milk shake from Z-Burger, and a bag of Communion wafers to snack on before I go out (via firing squad, like a boss).

So yeah, that's my last meal, I'll probably never get to eat it and if I did I'd wind up clogging the plumbing at the joint for weeks. But I'm here to talk about food. And how much I love it. And how awesome it is. And my favorite food. And maybe even drinks, or that can be another post.

I think that the question "Hey, do you like music?" is stupid. I think the question "Hey, do you like food?" is stupider ("Hey, you're in the pool? Catch this toaster." Unrelated but it's also a stupid question). So yeah, everyone likes food. Only morons don't eat and sure, you might not like brussel sprouts, corn, tomatoes, pizza, tacos, or fish but you still eat other crap and love it. And to all those people (girls) that have eating disorders, you might look hot and skinny but I'm gonna give you a fork before I give you a ring, ya dig?

So what else to talk about food based?

Meat. As a man, I love meat. Chicken, pork, steak, pig, bacon, bacon strips, bacon bits, ham, ostrich, kangaroo, sasauge, lion, fish, ground beef, and one of my personal favorites, scrapple. Oh man scrapple, the gift from the food gods that drops from the sky after you used all the "edible" parts of a pig. I mean, if brains, testicles, stomachs, bones, and eyeballs taste that good slopped into a brick, holy damn. Also, I just Google Imaged "scrapple" and found a picture of a cake...made of scrapple. I'd put the picture up, but it made me kinda sick.

I like chicken wings. I like chicken wings so much that in the past two years I've probably spent somewhere around 1,500 dollars on wings. I like them fired or baked. "Naked" or drowing in sauce. Dry rubs or sauces. Warm or cold. Fresh or left-over. Legs or thighs. Blondes or brunettes. Shirts or skins. Paper or plastic. Heads or tails. This got off topic. Basically, I love wings. I own many a sauce-stained shirt, and even my "We Want Wings!" shirt is slightly stained (but entirely awesome).

I hope you all learned something from this, what you should have learned is that the way to my heart is chicken wings. Or blondes. Actually, blondes is the better way. Or a blonde girl that brings me wings, she gets my heart and a wedding ring.

I also love tacos. Fish tacos, beef tacos, chicken tacos, taco tacos (taco in a taco), and my personal invention, chili tacos. That's chili, in a taco shell, covered in jalepenos. I love Taco Bell and the "BTB" (Better Than Beef) squeeze on them from that giant bag of beef. I love that bag of stuff, I love it so much if it were in a blonde wig and carrying wings, I'd marry it.

Pizza. Mike Birbiglia (world's greatest comedian) made me love pizza more. "Pizza and sex are very similar, when it's good it's good, and when it's bad you get stains on your shirt." That's just the one quote I know word for word, but the man has written full bits about pizza and it's hilarious and off topic for this blog post or else I'd tell you more about how great Mike Birbiglia is (he went to G-Town for god's sake).

So I guess those are my three favorite foods. I also like mac-n-cheese and corn. I love corn. And tomatoes. And peaches, which I'm allergic too but still eat from time to time just to prove I live on the edge. How am I allergic to peaches? Well, as far as I know it's the fuzzy skin. I try to eat a whole one and my throat closes up like a thing that often closes up.

So that's all I really have to say about food for now. There will probably be a drinks post and a Buffalo Wild Wings post coming up soon and when I get back from my "research" trip to the Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, New York (September 3rd and 4th) I'll have some awesome stories.

Credit for the idea of this post goes to my favorite student at Cornell, my friend Italy, who is a nutrition major (I think) and my future "Drinking at SPX" buddy.

And just as a teaser, my next post will be about my sleep problems, dreams, and who I want to blame. Pax.

Look Ma! I'm on the TV!

A giant nosed thrity-one year old co-worker of mine once told me "Hey Sam, you should have your own talk show." I had no clever response, I still don't. I want my own talk show and I'm gonna talk about what I wanna do on it and why I wanna do it. This introduction paragraph was alot longer in the draft but it was pointless and rambled on (like this sentence) so I cut it (unlike this sentence).

Picture it man, every night at _ _ : _ _ PM on _______, America's #1 Network, beaming into your living room, me, The Real SamWow. Well, don't picture it. I know what you're thinking, "We took Howard Stern off the TV ," you say "We need to keep these uggos off the TV, put them on the radio!" If you didn't know, Howard Stern is really ugly. Also, the word "uggos" means ugly. There we go, I taught you guys something. Mission accomplished.

So why do I want to do a talk show? That's easy. I love making people laugh, smile, and feel good. It's why I like waking up in the morning and it's probably something I try to hard at sometimes, but I need it to survive.

I'd love to be able to run out onto stage every night, wait for the que, then dive into my monolouge, joking about the current whatever, doing some stupid gesture ("POP, POP!"), do a bad impression, and my personal favorite, doing a really white, really stupid dance.

Another reason is I love pop culture for some reason. I love television, movies, magazines, all of it. I want to meet people from my favorite movies like Will Smith, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhall, Jeff Bridges, Bill Murray, Jessica Biel, and Matt Damon.

I want to do interviews with some football player or coach who just won the Super Bowl and brings the Lombardi trohpy to the set, I want to meet Tiger Woods and thank him for getting me to like golf, and I want to talk to Rick Reilly (former Sports Illustrated writer) and thank him for driving my love of writing.

I'd want to meet and talk to the "average" person that has to became extraordinary in an unusual circumstance. The Sully Sullenbergers of the world, the Major Dick Winters, the Chad Urmstoms. The people who have a story or message that doesn't get the recognition they deserve.


We all have seem when the host says "Well (Celebrity Name), thanks for stopping by." Then the show cuts to commercial. If you watch the talk shows, just before commercial, the host leans in and talks to the guest. What do they say? I have an idea...

Me - "Hey Will (Smith), thanks for coming by, really means alot. Love the suit."
Will Smith - "Thanks man, I've been reading your blog since the "Potty Talk" post, good shit Brah, good shit."
Me - "Really? (I'm super excited so I lie to him and say) Thanks man, I really enjoyed you in that movie 'Hancock'".
Will Smith - "Haha, thanks but you don't need to lie. I'm sorry for 'Hancock' I didn't like it either but I needed the money, shoulda let Nicholas Cage do that one."

I have that talk in my head alot, that Will Smith is just such a nice guy.

Now onto the guests and what not. I already made a promise to a good friend of mine that he could be first up. He hails from the five-oh-eight, also known as Massachusets. And his name is Mike, but to some(just me) he's known "Milford Swagger" (or he doesn't and hates that nickname).

You all have seen his work. He was in all the viral hits from a few years back like "Glove Hero", "Anti-Thesis", and "Free Running Rock Out Style Parts One & Two". He's just your usual "Dude" who loves sports, Goldfish, and Buffalo Wild Wings (Aww hell yeah, I should just host the show from there).

Now I don't know who my second guest would be. Maybe my Grandmommy. I don't think many talk shows have rolled into existence with two unknown guests. "And tonight, on The SamWow Show, Mike and Grandmommy with musical guests the people I know that were in Severna Parks band!" That's not going to get the pull we need to keep the show going, even though that would be an epic show for me, but I know those people.

Ok, so that's all I got. This post was kinda made from thirteen different paragraphs on six different pages so I hope people like it but the truth is I'm low on ideas for new posts. If you have any ideas for me, let me know and I'll get back to writing.

Also, hopefully, this post doesn't suck.

April Fools.

Close you eyes and picture something for me. Well, keep your eyes open cuz I'm not there to read you this post. Unless you ask, then I'll probably come by and read it to you cuz then you'll give a glowing review about my blog to your friends and they'll start reading. Or if they can't read I'll come read it to them and start the cycle of me having to quit my job to read you all my blog posts.

Off topic like a MoFo, and now we're back.

You're down in Washington, DC seeing the Cherry Blossom Festival for the first time. You have your girlfriend, fiance, or wife with you (or maybe one of each with you, you sly dog). You walking hand in hand enjoying a spring day in the Nation's Capital, the Jefferson Memorial providing an amazing back drop when all the sudden you stop.

What do you see? A cop beatdown, College Park riot style? A kitten? Heaven? Girls in bikinis? Will Smith? All of those are wrong believe it or not. You see a young man, about twenty one years of age, down on one knee proposing to a young lady. If you're with your girlfriend, steer clear guys, next thing you know she's gonna want a ring. If you're with the fiance, she'll be all like "Aww." and she'll do that weird thing where they hug your arm instead of your body. If you're with your wife, you'll look back to a happier time when you didn't have all those damn kids (I know I do).

Now open your eyes again. Hi! It's me! I know I'm not what you wanna see when you come out of a dream/coma/trance/day dreaming session but here I am, sorry (really sorry). I have a story to tell, and as of right now I'm not sure if it will happen but by the end of the post we'll know seeing how I'm writing this a few days ahead of time. It may be pointless to tell you a story about what didn't happen but I like painting pictures with words. Now I'm done going off topic, I also want to apologive to Mrs. Gamble (my 7th grade english teacher) for my paragraphs not flowing cohesively.

That guy who was proposing, you know him. He's me (pause for dramatic effect). Minds. Blown.

Now ladies, ladies, please, I need you to keep your chin up. I'm off the market, it's just sad but true. My heart has been taken, my soul given up, my testicles removed, and my freedom crushed. But she's worth it. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Sam's getting married and we didn't know? What an asshole. We should have atleast met her once, we're his family/close friends." Ha, I lied to you. I'm not really getting married, what I tried to pull off at the Cherry Blossom Festival on Saturday April 2nd.

So I have a friend named Kelly (that seems like a really dumb lead runner for a paragraph, sounds dumber knowing this is longer than the sentence, man I suck). Kelly couldn't be around for my 21st birthday party but she told me to send some drunk texts and phone calls her way which I happily did. I don't think it took me more than ten seconds to decide what I was gonna do.

"Hey Kelly, will you marry me?" I sent as Wes nodded in approval, and from that emerged this crazy scheme which I'm writing about three weeks later.

So now fast forward. So it's eight in the morning or "Prank Day", the day I've been waiting for. There's just one problem, Kelly doesn't want to do it at all (now everyone quietly dislike Kelly. I'm just joking, don't dislike Kelly. She's awesome.) It's a tough thing to pull off and really sell it to the standards I wanted it to be at so I guess you could say we got cold feet over a fake wedding. Plus Kelly hates me. So yeah, even though the joke/prank didn't go through I still want to tell you guys how the joke would have gone down. There's two real reasons I want to, (A) I enjoyed thinking of the ideas and (B) it's only eight eleven in the morning and no one else will be awake for a few hours.

Okay, "Operation Fake Happy Ending" is what we will call scenario number one. It's simple, I get down on my knee, pop the question, and Kelly says "Yes!" and we'll stop it here for a second.

A friend of mine who I first told about the prank asked me "Well are you gonna kiss her?" (Kelly, I just heard you scream "Aww hell naw!" from here, and by the way, ouch.) So I don't know what we would have done but I don't think it really matters. I just wanted tourists to go home with a fun story and for people who didn't know it was a joke to wonder why there are pictures of me proposing to a random girl on Facebook.

So now onto scenario number two, "Operation Public Humiliation, Public Pity, Crippling Depression, Alcohol Abuse, Blinding Rage, Acceptance" It's a multiple step procedure that starts with all of "Operation Fake Happy Ending" up until the word "Yes."This time she says "No." Or "Hell no." Or laughs in my face. Or slaps me in my face. Or a awesome combination of all of them. "No! *Laughter* Hell no! *Slapping*" followed by a storm off.

Scenario two would have been the fun one (I got up to pee and forgot what I was going to put in here). There would be roughly a Tidal Basin full of people thinking a bunch of crazy things while they watched Kelly walk off and me sit on the ground and cry (I can get myself crying in about thirty seconds).

So yeah, the plan didn't happen. Oh well, I'm over it. It gives me a full year to plan a prank for next April Fool's (I already have some ideas that a certain duo of friends can help me with). I wish I could end this blog post better cuz I feel like it's weak but the reason I'm doing this blog is to let you guys step inside my brain and lets face it, not alot goes on in here and if it does go on, it does't really end like everyone wants it too.

Okay, that's it for this one. Maybe it's kind of a pointless post but I'm about to swallow my pride and just hit "Publish Post". I already regret it.

What Photography is to Me.

Yesterday, I told my friend Dave that photography lets you block out the good or bad around something and let's you focus on one part, let's you paint a picture that's prettier than the surroundings and what you want to be seen. Does that make sense? I can't really remember how I worded it but I understand what I meant and that's what's most important, ya dig?

Looking back in my life, I know when I got really into football, really into girls, and really into cars and stuff but I can't pin point when I got into photography, all I know is that I'm neck deep innit. I took "Introduction to Photography" sophmore year of high school where we used film. What the hell right? Film, it was a dying art then (6ish years ago) and it's just about dead today. After that I went back farther into photography's past, "Darkroom Basics". Holy shit, if film was dead, doing the work your own was died with those cavemen they keep diggin out of ice. All joking aside, those classes were fun, it was cool learning and seeing something go from a tiny piece of film and then watching it almost magically appear on a piece of paper after about two minutes and you can say "Oh that, I made that.". I still have all my proof sheets (what you get after you devlop the film but before you make pictures) in a folder on my shelf.

While film was a great way to learn, you had only twenty four chances to get "the shot" and if you screwed one up, you wouldn't know about it until you devloped the film. The camera I'm looking at right in front of me (the "cheap" Nikon D3100 DSLR, my baby) can take 2,000 pictures (on a 4gb memory card), see at them in the screen, delete what didn't work, and try again. I went from taking maybe two shots of a subject from a film camera and praying they came out okay to taking ten pictures until you got the right one. Technology is beautiful thing.

In the few months I've had my Nikon, I've taken about 4,000 shots. That equals out to about 350 shots each time I've taken the camera on a "trip". Most of those pictures are in Washignton, DC which is where I work and also home to about one million of my favorite things to photograph. It's the home of old, beautiful row homes, giant monuments, shrines, tourists, and statues - all city scape and "live action"(maybe that's not the right catagory) shots, never a dull moment if you play it with some creativity. When it comes to the momuments it's giant white landmarks striking into a blue sky. The buildings are half old throwbacks colored like the monuments or new ones with glass faces. The people that pour in all have different looks and a look of wonder and amazement in their eyes and there's enough statues with differing styles to satisfy for a long time. I'd love to get to Boston, Annapolis, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, and New York to take a ton of pictures but Washington will always be my favorite cuz home is home.

What else could this post be about? I guess I can tell you that I think Jim Vance (NBC4 here in DC) is my favorite news reporter of all time, Will Smith is my favorite actor (Jason Segel is in 2nd), my favorite actress if Natalie Portman, my favorite singer is Sara Bareilles, favorite band is probably The Young Dubliners. There's what, two verbs in that sentence? Yeah, maybe just two, I onlt looked back through up until my first parenthese. And how great is Jim Vance? I

You can tell I walked away from the typing, got hyper, and came back. I blame (I say blame but mostly I thank) Milford Swagger and K. Trags (shout out, if they read these...) for reminding me Fun Dip still exists.

What else can I blog about? My friends? My adventures with those friends in Apartment 1615? The dumb stuff I've done? Working in a hardware store for two years? My high school? My family? My idea to get Sara Bareilles to marry me? How much I love watching Community on NBC? The Chive (if you don't know, Google "The Chive")? My ever lasting love for the Redskins? Movies? My deadly peach/fuzzed fruit allergy? "Cross-The-Line Wednesday? My attention span? (By the way, this is more a list for me so I can go through and find stuff to write about when the tank is empty)

I'll leave you with a picture - Happy Friday, now get walking.

Haha, uranus.