Highlights of the "Anthony Turns 21" East Coast Tour

Witnessing an effeminate patient give himself a facial with pancake syrup
Making a grand entrance to my birthday dinner by blasting A Flock of Seagulls through the parking lot
Successfully downing my first Irish Car Bomb
Opening my presents and discovering a pattern: Cameron Diaz and Alcohol
Having the waiters at Red Lobster singing with my birthday cake tiramisu... while I'm in the bathroom
Hitting a $50 winner on my third pull of the slot machine
Screwing over disgruntled gamblers by playing foolishly, but successfully, at the blackjack table
Seeing my mom get hammered on one shot of Amarula
Waiting 45 minutes for Mexican food, only to realize we forgot to order
Winning Eddie From Ohio tickets for taking part in a radio sound bit
Pissing off a three-story parking garage
Giving a girl my underwear at her bachelorette party
Fulfilling a dream with a thirty-something-year-old woman, whom I'll affectionately call Miss Robinson

You only turn 21 once, so why not stretch it out for a week?



I'm recovering from all the festivities. I have quite a bit of stories, but they will have to wait for my mind to rest and catch up. In the meantime, click above for some pictures from my first three days as a fully legal.

My life is in the midst of a 360 degree transformation.

Whenever I achieve a set goal, I tend to "reward" myself by slacking off, convincing myself that a job well done merits a break from work. My meeting with my professor Friday left him quite impressed with my efforts; he let me know of his delight at my findings and knowledge gained from serving as his research assistant. I took the bus home and asked myself, why do I need to spend the weekend downloading journal articles and underlining passages if I have done such a good job the past month? So I didn't do any research, and without a job, my calendar was absolutely empty. Instead of doing anything productive, or even social, I spent the weekend downloading and listening to 80s music, reliving the world of crimped hair, synthesized keyboards, and testosterone-free vocals. I also played tennis. It was cool.

I slugged around in my own patheticness this weekend, but when the clock strikes midnight, it will be July 21, my twenty-first birthday! I actually came out at 5:01 pm, but we don't worry about such technicalities during times like these. Who knows what will actually go down on my birthday, but you know what takes place during 21st birthday parties, and it doesn't include twister and suck n' blow... unless there's a killer afterparty. We'll be at Gators Dockside at 7:00, so you should come.

Within 24 hours, my scenery will be much more serene and much less sweaty. How many people are lucky enough to be have a party with great friends one night, and another with their loving, entertaining family the next? The Italarican clan will grow the next day, when we "legals" in the family head out to Biloxi. My aunt sometimes wins thousands of dollars in jackpots, but I may just throw my money in air and watch all the addicted gamblers dogpile over it. I wouldn't lose any more money, plus I'd have one hell of a stroy. A stroy is just like a story, only misspelled.

I'll cap off a weekend celebrating 21 years of Italarican splendor by flying into Baltimore to visit my best bud Ben. Again, we will not be playing twister.

By next Sunday I'll be back in the comfort zone of my family, spending 24 hours between quality family time and sleeping. The next day I'll take the five-hour trek to Gainesville, the official end of my 21st birthday vacation. By the time I get back to my apartment and my summer life, I'll probably want to "reward" myself for having such a bodacious week (too much 80s this weekend) by taking a few days off to rest. It is then that I will return to the calm, chill state that characterizes all that is Anthony.

If I'm not back here before the 360th degree, just keep waiting.

Here's what I did on one of the most bodacious, bitchin Friday nights ever!

Members Only, Disc One
1. "Jump"- Van Halen
2. "Take on Me"- A-ha
3. "Maneater"- Hall and Oates
4. "Careless Whisper"- Wham!
5. "I Want to Know What Love Is"- Foreigner
6. "You Give Love a Bad Name"- Bon Jovi
7. "When I See you Smile"- Bad English
8. "Any Way you Want It"- Journey
9. "Karma Chameleon"- Culture Club
10. "She Drives Me Crazy"- Fine Young Cannibals
11. "Sara"- Starship
12. "Wild Thing"- Tone Loc
13. "867-5309/ Jenny"- Tommy Tutone
14. "Billie Jean"- Michael Jackson
15. "Walk Like an Egyptian"- The Bangles
16. "Rock You Like a Hurricane"- The Scorpions
17. "I Love Rock n Roll"- Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
18. "Right Here Waiting"- Richard Marx
19. "These Dreams"- Heart

Disc Two
1. "Come on Eileen"- Dexy's Midnight Runners
2. "Mickey"- Toni Basil
3. "Need You Tonight"- INXS
4. "Welcome to the Jungle"- Guns n Roses
5. "99 Luftballoons"- Nena
6. "I Ran (So Far Away)"- A Flock of Seagulls
7. "(I Just) Died in your Arms"- Cutting Crew
8. "Girl You Know its True"- Milli Vanilli
9. "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)"- Whitney Houston
10. "My Prerogative"- Bobby Brown
11. "Here I Go Again"- Whitesnake
12. "The Touch"- Stan Bush
13. "Material Girl"- Madonna
14. "Electric Avenue"- Eddy Grant
15. "Pour Some Sugar on Me"- Def Leppard
16. "Another Day in Paradise"- Phil Collins
17. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"- Tears for Fears
18. "Footloose"- Kenny Loggins

Did I miss anything?

Days Inn: A Good Bang for Your Buck

When people say they like all kinds of music, except country, they really mean they have a pop, alternative, and rap station programmed into their car stereo. Whoop-dee-damn-doo!

Back in twelfth grade creative writing, Mr. Ives taught us foreign words we could throw into our stories to expand our creativity or merely impress our readers. Each day of class a new group of words would appear on the blackboard--- which was actually green--- and explain the significance of each funky combination of letters. He put these words on tests as sort of a vocabulary quiz, and though I probably got a 100 on all the quizzes, all the words have escaped me by now... except one. I only remember this one word, but its sound and meaning still ring vividly in my head.

Zwischenraum.

It's a word of German descent, and by descent, I mean it only exists over there. There is no true direct translation of this word into English. Essentially, zwischenraum (ZWISH-en-raum) represents those large, uneventful gaps in time. It's those times when you're sitting alone eating a bowl of cereal in the morning. It's those times when the commercials come on, but you effortlessly sit and watch the ads fly by. It's those seven hours you spend lying motionless, eyes closed, mouth open, in bed. It's you, right now, spending the last sixty seconds staring at the computer screen.

Mr. Ives mentioned how one of the strongest qualities of German film is in its careful use of zwishenraum, a feature ignored in most American film. The primary difference between life and movie is that in life, we face the physical constraints of the real world. This is not the case in movies, where a character can get from Providence to Aspen (name that movie!) within the hour. A fictional character does not stand at a red light for 45 seconds; he gets straight home.

This is why The Sopranos is my favorite set-in-the-real-world television show... ever. Sometimes scenes seem to go on longer than needed, while others seem completely irrelevant. The truth is, these moments of everyday nothingness give the characters a truer quality. In between whackings and screwing his goomah, Tony sits near the edge of the kitchen table, shaking parmesean cheese onto his rigatoni, mixing the cheese with his fork, then loudly chomps on his pasta, flashing a full-second glance outside the window before resetting his eyes on his bowl of food. He is the same as all of us, living through lapses of everyday redundancy that occupy our time before our next point of action.

My roommate set up a video camera a few months ago and aimed it at his computer desk. He set it to tape for one second of every minute. After an hour, he had sixty seconds of footage. He's browsing the internet, he's writing something down, he's scratching his head, he's out of the frame, he's rocking his chair, he's moving his mouse. An hour of his life is crammed into one minute, and this one minute seems insignificant. Nothing monumental or even noteworthy occurs.

I loved this project.

It is life, and therein lies the wonder of zwischenraum! Ninety percent of life is repetitive, normal routine that requires little concious thought. We take it for granted, but these moments are just as precious as the events we lock in our memory. Your seventy-ninth kiss is just as beautiful as your first. Not as memorable, not as special, but, because it is life, just as beauitful.

With all the articles about Britney's worst kept secret, I'm a little disappointed surprised that I have yet to find any with the caption, Oops! She did it.

Sometimes I'll talk about a really good meal, sometimes I'll talk about a beautiful woman, and sometimes you can't tell the difference.

My room in the old house was royal blue, teal, and purple. A border of beach waves streamed across the walls, and a denim-like wallpaper was tucked beneath the border. The colors matched my sheets. It was a big room.

My friendships mostly consist of one-on-one rapports. My friends are not close with one another, only with me. If all my friends were here for my birthday, it would make for an amusing party. Many would be meeting each other for the first time, not many group activities and conversation would take place, and I would be the central figurehead, the guy everyone flocks around because, well, I'm the only guy they know. Like when you had your 10th birthday: you're hot stuff, and everyone wants a piece of you and only you. Hey, open my gift first! Hey, I'm gonna sit by you! Hey, come here and talk to me!

This summer marked the long-term separation of me from many of my friends. They graduated with Hillary and Rebecca, they transferred like Chris and Josh, they got jobs elsewhere like Jason. When one of my friends leaves, it's not as though I'm part of a big group of chums sending off one of our members. It's an entire clique that's leaving, and I'm the last one standing. I am torn away as well. They're not the only ones left with a hole to fill.

When I was 14, my parents sold the house I had been living in for seven years. I remember protesting the move, being quite irritated that my parents did this without my approval. I thought that moving day would be depressing, that I would be uplifted from my comfort zone and thrown into some mystery land to start a new beginning. We sold our house after a few months on the market and had two months until we would say goodbye. In those final months, we were preparing for the next phase, tweaking floor plans to create the perfect house for us. The Dunns--- the family who bought our house--- came over and took apart our tile foyer. They wanted wood. I helped my mom scrape the wallpaper off my bedroom walls. I can't even remember what it looked like, but I doubt little Elizabeth Dunn wanted the room colors and patterns of a teenage boy.

By the time moving day came, the house looked nothing like the one I had called home for seven years. Old residents were leaving, new ones were arriving, and the surroundings evolved with the changing circumstances, not standing still just because I wanted things the way they were. Nothing stands still, no matter how frozen in our situation we appear. If nothing ever changed, it would be much harder to adjust when those times of movement and evolution had to take place. Everything was changing. Our move was the next natural step. It was not as hard to leave the house as I had thought because everything was changing around me.

I'm leaving Gainesville in a year.

Red, White and Blue
by Ali (Third Grade - New York)

The mighty flag stands in the sky
Waving its colors proud with pride
Its colors stand true
Red, white and blue
Showing our gleaming past.
Red is our courage
Blue our justice and
White our liberty.
These are the colors
That beautifully show our country.
Flags fly, people die
Half mast is the way we honor.
Our country needs us
To lead them
In the right direction.
And when we do
Our colors show true
Red, white and blue.

I purchased an internet popup blocker last November. Since November 12, 2002, it has blocked 7,511 popups (and counting). Thirty bucks to pimp slap satellitepop.com and those other popup whores whenever they try to get in my face (as of now, the rate is less than half a penny per block). It goes up there with the $30 scanner as the best bang-for-your-buck purchases in the history of man!

When Guys who Think they are Ultra Comedic Geniuses Beat an Inside Joke to Death and Beyond Death

JaysonKill: I wouldn't steer you wrong.
JaysonKill: But I am angry with you so maybe I WOULD steer you wrong.
JaysonKill: Going to Ale House without me. Sheesh.
JaysonKill: You sell-out.
adpearl: Yes or no... why didn't you go?
JaysonKill: Sold your soul for some chicken wings.
adpearl: And yes or no: I did not have ANYTHING at Alehouse
JaysonKill: hahah
JaysonKill: a
adpearl: except for a cup of water w/ lemon
JaysonKill: Yes or no, you went without me, did you not or yes. NOT!!!
adpearl: Yes or no, where were you?
adpearl: It's a simple question: yes or no?
JaysonKill: yes, I was not not in Atlanta visiting the Paste office for the day.
JaysonKill: And yes or not, it was awesome and I can't wait to catch up with you about it or not yes no!!
adpearl: Yes, yes, oh God yes!!!
JaysonKill: man, calm down, yes or no?
JaysonKill: Your silence indicates guilt.
adpearl: Oh, sorry. Yes.
adpearl: Wait, speaking of sellouts... did you realize that you're leaving town during my birthday?
adpearl: What kind of crap is that?
adpearl: I wrapped you a gift in FOIL on your birthday.
JaysonKill: What do I care yes or no?
JaysonKill: yes?
JaysonKill: no?
JaysonKill: I didn't think so.
adpearl: I can't answer that.
JaysonKill: Of course you can't. How convenient.

I just remembered that when I was really young, I imagined that God looked like Estelle Getty.