10. Jason Mraz at SummerFest. Just a fun day. The concert? Not so much, but we definitely had fun this day.

9. Last week with Nolan. He’s just been killing it lately.

8. Costa Rica~

7. Nolan’s first time fishing.

6. BEAST MODE! Best time I’ve ever had watching a football game.

5. CHIKARA

4. SNOWMAGEDDON. Probably the best day I ever had with my old girlfriend.

3. WWE Money in the Bank. SUMMER OF PUNK.

2. PJ20. Alpine Valley. BOTH NIGHTS.

1. Milwaukee Brewers NLCS Game 5 at Miller Park.
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As becoming older takes over my mind so do a lot of thoughts about my life. I think the whole idea of “what if?” is kind of stupid because (as Morpheus said) whatever happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about them. In all honesty, I am not living the life I envisioned for myself. I like myself, I have fun times and no man is a failure who has friends, but to say this life is ideal would be a lie. I could do better. I should be doing better and because of that I am thinking of what ifs. These are the big ones.

1. What if I never moved to Hawaii?

Really all the signs in my life pointed to this being a bad idea. I didn’t have a lot of money, I didn’t have a job and the only person I knew there was a girl that I wasn’t 100% convinced even wanted me to come. Actually, let’s be honest and say that she didn’t. She wasn’t mad when I did and things worked out that I did, but when I told her that I was doing it she said it was a bad idea. So I canceled my plane ticket. Then I bought another one a month later and didn’t tell her this time. It was irrational and when I got to my layover in Phoenix and they were overbooked I was the first one to put my name in. They didn’t use me and I ended up going. Things worked out. I had fun and I got a son of out of it, but holy crap would my life be different and I really don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t moved there. Would I have moved somewhere else? Would I have ever seen Jenny again? Would I have stayed in LG all this time? A crazy what if that ultimately doesn’t matter because of Nolan.

2. What if I had stayed in Tacoma?

I moved to Tacoma with my girlfriend at the time and when we broke up my first thought was to GTFO. I headed back to Alabama and ended up living there longer than I ever intended and getting into some shit I didn’t want to get into. It was dumb times and that whole Alabama phase has always felt like a big waste of time to me. So, what if I stayed? I don’t think we would have worked it out because, you know, I’m still me, but I loved it there and I could have found somewhere to live. Would it have worked out? I would have probably had to find all new friends, found another a new job and everything else, but maybe it’d have worked. I could be a Seattle Seahawks season ticket holder right now! I could say I was from Seattle and it actually have been true, but alas there would be no Nolan in this scenario so I don’t really care.

3. What if I had went to college for.. something?

I think about this a lot. I never know exactly what I would have went for (which is why I’ve never went), but I know that if I had went I would be down by now. If I had went when I left Tacoma, I’d be done by now. If I had went when I left Alabama, I’d be done by now. If I had went when I left Hawaii, I’d be done by now. Maybe if I had stayed with Jenny when Nolan was born I’d have been like “I NEED TO SUPPORT MY FAMILY” and went then, I’d be done by now and who knows. This isn’t so much a what if as a coulda/woulda/shoulda. I should have, but I didn’t and if I had I wouldn’t be me right now so who cares. I’ve never felt that college was my path to success and I still don’t. Stupid? Possibly, but that’s just me.

4. What if I had went to Milwaukee?

My entire goal of summer 2010 was to make enough money to move to Milwaukee. Then I fell in love with a girl from Illinois who told me she didn’t want to live in Milwaukee and bla bla bla. I probably should have called her bluff and just done it. If a girl doesn’t want to live where you want to live then it’s probably not going to work out. There’s no f’n way I’d live in Illinois either, but that was her home. Just not a good recipe for success. What if I moved though? Would it have helped or killed that relationship? Would I have found some success? Would my life be different? I can’t really regret this one too much because if I didn’t date that girl I never would have gotten over her and staying was the only way to date her.

Ultimately, I have no regrets about the decisions I’ve made in my life. My only true regrets are not doing the things I wanted to do for whatever reason. Twelve years I’ve wanted to write a screenplay and still they sit unwritten. It’s probably too late now, but I could have gone to wrestling school at any point during that time. I could have done a lot of things and I just procrastinated them all this time. Regretful, but like I said before 30 is the new 20. I got plenty of time to do things I want to do.Similar Posts:

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Let’s think about this for a second. It was probably kids, right? I mean, only kids would be that douchey. It’s one thing to steal stuff, but that’s just messing with my stuff for no reason. Also, it had to be kids because I had my old (broken) laptop in the backseat and they didn’t take it. Only kids are that fucking stupid to go into a car with the intent to steal something and not steal the potentially most valuable thing in there. I hate kids. Honestly, I’m not even that upset that someone went into my truck. They might have took some change or some other stuff I don’t care about, but that’s it. The car seat thing really annoys the shit out of me though because now it’s all dirty and I have to clean it. It’s not even my car seat really, it’s my son’s car seat and what the hell do you want to mess with a four year old’s stuff for? Again, it’s just completely unnecessary and such a douche thing to do. Fuck off, kids who did this.

And now, I’m over it.Similar Posts:

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You know, stuff like that. One might question my desire to have a tumblr, blog, baseball blog, twitter, facebook and google reader as well as my business websites, screenwriting(?) and freelance writing; and that would be a good thing to question. On the surface it seems insane, but someone once told me that writer’s block is when there is something that you need to express/write about and can’t for whatever reason. This is my attempt to get everything I want to say out there in one way or another and thus never suffer from this disease. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Here’s a quick update on how to follow me properly:

• vintown: What’s going on with me in my life, book reviews, TV and movie reviews, random musings I don’t know where else to put and my general philosophy on life.
• vintown tumblr: Quick thoughts, memories, music, jokes and Community gifs.
• vintown twitter: Even quicker thoughts. Gambling, football and wrestling talk.
• Facebook: Not really using this much anymore for status updates, but I throw a few random ones up and usually check-in when I do cool stuff/am drunk.
• Miller Park Drunk: Best Brewers baseball blog in the world. All the funny stuff is usually here and most of the crazy stuff.
• Miller Park Drunk twitter: In-game Brewer analysis, random Brewers related jokes/photoshops, flirting with followers and arguing with negative fans.
• Google Reader: Follow me to be share bros. I usually share 3-4 links a day and they are always cool.
• Ezine: Only for the hardest of hardcores. This is something I am going to be using to write a lot of articles for marketing. Boring stuff.

I think that’s enough for now.

(Although I am thinking of adding a MPD-centric tumblr. Just straight photoshops/screencaps with jokes.)

- QUEST FOR 180 UPDATE: 192.

Seriously, is bread the worst thing ever or what? Don’t get me wrong I love bread like it paid me to, but I lost about twenty pounds in a month by basically skipping bread and potatoes while eating more fruit and veggies. This isn’t rocket science people. Jimmy Johns made me fat and I know it. Down a pants size almost two actually. (Extra skinny jeans here I come.) Just imagine what I’ll look like if I ever start running.

(Editors note: I will never start running.)

- Let’s see, what else… hey, did I mention I am in Costa Rica right now? I am. It’s nice. I’ll talk about it later.

- The New Girl is the shit. Watch it. You will fall in love with Zooey. (I was already, but still.)

- I want to end this one with a quick story that I remembered this morning for some reason.

When I first moved to Tacoma way back when (ten years in August) I wanted to get a really good job so that I could support my girlfriend and I. She was in college and she had a rich dad who hated my fucking guts and I did not want to take a thing from him. In my mind, I didn’t even want him to pay half of the rent. I thought I would have no trouble getting a good job because I’d spent the past year managing a furniture store in Alabama. Unfortunately, that didn’t end up meaning shit out there (and really, why would it have?) and I had a little trouble finding a good job. The first job I settled on was selling stuff door to door. Coupon books for $20. Stuff like Pizza Hut coupons where if you bought one you got a free pizza right off the bat and then like 20 half off coupons or a pack of three free oil changes. Stuff that was a deal, but stuff that nobody really needed. You needed to be a good salesman to do this and be able to deal with assholes and people who slammed doors in your face and everything else. At first, I thought this job was awesome as I made $100 in one of my first days. It was straight commission so if I didn’t sell anything, I didn’t get anything. This happened more than once and I got pretty bummed out about. I didn’t like the job, but I didn’t know what to do. In a last ditch effort to make some money I went to Walla Walla, Washington on a road trip to try and make some coin. Walla Walla didn’t have full-time solicitors like Seattle and the thought was we’d have a better chance there.

As the first few days went on I began to realize that I fucking hated this job. It was the worst. It was me trying to be something that I wasn’t, but I needed the money and kept on moving on. The second to last day I knocked on a door and a girl answered. She was nice and told me that she wasn’t interested, but asked me if I wanted to come in for a beer. I said yes and ended up spending the next several hours with her. Now, I was with Katy at the time and I loved her so it wasn’t anything like that. This girl’s name was Katie Bueller (I remember because my girlfriend’s name was Katie and she had never seen Ferris Bueller) and she was a total hippie chick. We talked a lot about deep stuff, stuff that I don’t seem to ever talk about anymore (except with myself) and she let me in on her philosophy of life. It is very similar to how I am/want to be now actually. Very relaxed, very “take things as they come”, very “don’t get mad about things you can’t change”. I remember her telling me a thing about how she believed that colors would tell her what was happening. Like orange signified change (like the seasons) or red signified love. I didn’t really but what she was saying, but I listened. We exchanged addresses (she didn’t have a phone and cellphones/facebook were not yet a thing). I ended up leaving her house, a little drunk, and went back to the hotel. I got in a little bit of trouble for the drinking, but it was all good.

I went to work the next day and was making my door-to-door rounds and all I could see was orange. Orange houses, orange doors, orange cats and everything else. Later that day I quit my job.

I kept her address in my wallet for another three or four years after that, but I never wrote and it wasn’t until today that I thought about Katie Bueller again. The question I was asking myself when I thought of this story was “did this one chance meeting change my entire life?” Maybe my philosophy on life didn’t change in that one instance, but it’s been very similar to Katie’s as time went on and that sort of philosophy on life is definitely something I am always striving for.

However, now that I’ve written about it that question isn’t coming to mind at all because I realize now that the reason I thought of Katie has nothing to do with life philosophy at all. It’s all about change.Similar Posts:

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I haven’t been reading enough lately, but now that summer is over it’s time to get going. It’s time for Vince Reads Books.

I love Batman. Sometimes I forget how much I love Batman, but every once in awhile it sneaks up on me and I remember how much I really do. As a kid I remember my parents taking me to the midnight show of the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman and probably another 10-15 times after that. I had all the action figures, t-shirts, posters, some comic books, McDonalds cups and everything else. I loved Batman so much I even watched the stupid 60s show. (I recently tried to watch the movie based on this show on Netflix and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life. Just awful.) If it had Batman on it, I wanted it. As a boy I was Batman-crazy.

The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir is about another boy who was Batman-crazy, producer Michael Uslan. Michael grew up reading comic books in the golden age and fell in love. While someone like myself read comics for awhile and then stopped reading them for awhile, Michael never stopped reading them and has a collection worth millions. Michael stayed into comics so much so that in college he started the first accredit college course on comic books in the country and got a lot of publicity for it. That alone is a pretty great accomplishment, but Michael had a far bigger goal in mind. Ever since he was a little kid he wanted to make people forget the aforementioned 60′s TV show Batman and he wanted to bring a dark, mature vision of Batman to the big screen. Or THE Batman as he calls it throughout the book. 

This description alone is what sold me on the book. I like Batman, I love Batman movies (at least the last two and some of the first two) and I want to know how they got made. The first announcement they made about a Batman came in 1980 and the first Batman movie wasn’t released until 1989. How did that happen? How were they able to hang on to the rights for so long? How did they finally close the deal? These questions were answered, but it wasn’t the inside baseball I was looking for. The first Batman film is covered the most, but the rest of them are mostly lacking. Which is a shame. I wanted to know about the decision to reboot the series with Christopher Nolan and everything that went into the series after that, this is arguably what I wanted to know most about, but this is barely touched on at all. Michael has a lot of pride in the success of these films, but you get the feeling he didn’t have much to do with them. If you are looking for a book about the Batman movies this isn’t that book. If I were smarter I’d have probably realized this, the book is called The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir after all.

That being said Uslan’s story is a good one. He tells a story about never giving up on your dreams and always fighting for what you believe in. He talks throughout about how so many doors were slammed in his face and he just got up and kept on knocking. It’s a really good story for inspiration, the results of hard work and for the power of believing in yourself. For that I recommend it (although the price is a bit high), but for a book about producing Batman films it’s lacking in all the wrong places.

NEXT BOOK: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceSimilar Posts:

None Found

Here’s what I did:

• Saw Martin Lawrence. That was in May, does that count? He so crazy!
• Went to Ring of Honor. It was okay.
• Took my girlfriend to SummerFest for the first time and saw Jason Mraz. The show was “meh”, but the day we had was awesome.
• Went to CHIKARA in Chicago with my dad and nephew. The most fun I’ve ever had at a wrestling show in my life.
• Met Colt Cabana and Mike Quackenbush at that show. Didn’t take my picture with them or anything because be for real, but it was cool meeting them and just saying what’s up since I spend about two hours with them every week. (Art of Wrestling/Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe podcasts.)
• Went to WWE’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view, the greatest WWE pay-per-view of all-time and watched CM Punk walk out with the title in one a crazy moment in front of an INSANE crowd. (Since this show I’ve not been able to keep myself interested in wrestling. It’s like I reached the apex of my fandom and there is no point of continuing.)
• Saw almost every movie I wanted to see this summer (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Tree of Life and Bridesmaids being the ones I wanted to see but missed). Saw Harry Potter 7p2 surrounded by people dressed up at midnight. Another good time.
  (SUMMER MOVIE RANKINGS: Thor, Super 8, Captain America, HP7p2)
• Took Nolan fishing for the first time. Took Nolan camping for the first time. Went on bike rides with Nolan. Took Nolan swimming for the 10,000th time.
• Reconnected with some old friends and realized that I’d been being stupid keeping myself locked up all the time.
• Met some new friends who made me realize how awesome I can be to hang out with when I want to be.
• Two Brewers games. Not an ideal number of games for a guy like me, but you have to make some sacrifices when you don’t have a lot of money. Really enjoyed the two games I did go to.
• Went and saw Pearl Jam both nights of their 20th anniversary show which is something I wanted to do since the day the concert was announced and I’m glad I got to do it.
• Also saw The Strokes at the show which was awesome because they are one of my favorite bands. Julian Casablancas acted like kind of a douche between songs, but they were still good.
• Ran a restaurant. Working a 70 hour week is not exactly what I’d call fun, but it was a good experience.
• Got a new iPhone. Got a new laptop.
• Started eating right and losing weight. Feeling good about myself.

Maybe I didn’t do everything I wanted to do and maybe everything didn’t go how I planned, but I do some fun stuff and I had some good times. It wasn’t a great summer, but it was a good summer and sometimes that’s enough.Similar Posts:

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And then there is this:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

That’s from a Robert Frost poem and I read it in this book I read recently and how those words changed the author’s life. About how he always tried to heed those words whenever making a major life decision and it’s how I want to live my life. I don’t bend to popular opinion and I don’t always do what everyone thinks is right for me. I make decisions based off of what I think is right. So, what’s the play here? Do I stay or do I go? What is the road less traveled?

I know that right now there is less reason than ever for me to stay here and somehow, that makes staying here feel right. At least for today.Similar Posts:

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I could tell you a story about two people who lived together in a space they didn’t want to be in, but stayed in it because they wanted to be together and ended up unhappy for it. I know that story very well and I have told that story way too many times before, but that’s not the story I want to tell anymore. It’s not my story anymore and I am just not interested in it anymore. I am interested in the story of getting better every day of your life and becoming the person that everyone thinks you can be and the person that you want to be. The people who fill in the supporting roles in that story are important to it, but they aren’t the story. The characters can change because the story is me.

(Is this coming across emotional? Because I don’t mean it to be. I have done the emotions thing and I am done with it. This is about positivity and new experiences. This is about saying goodbye to the life that I knew. It’s a happy time. It’s time to walk on through.)

I haven’t weighed myself in a few days so I can’t give the update on the quest for 180, but I imagine I’ve dropped a few more. Just been eating so right lately. Grilled chicken or salmon with veggies, every meal. No bread, no butter, no potatoes, no sugar. Smaller portions and salads with oil and vinegar (which is awful, btw). I am doing my best to not care about taste or feeling full and just eating what I need to eat. I definitely miss garlic bread. Drinking lots of water and no sugar drinks. I’ve drank a few beers (a few too many actually), but every time I’ve done so I’ve skipped dinner. I think that is the right thing to do, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll just switch to vodka full-time when I go out. (And I probably shouldn’t be doing shots, but hey it’s a work in progress.) Not being able to work out as much as I’d like to though. Just hindu squats whenever I get the chance. Once I get my job situation better figured out, as in only having one, I think I’ll be able to actually get to the gym. I hope so at least. That said, I can definitely feel a difference in my life now that I have adopted eating better/positive thinking/exercise and it’s only going to get better.

I’m off for now. Going to only my second Brewers game of the year tonight and I couldn’t be more excited. WORLD SERIES.Similar Posts:

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Last year was supposed to be the year that it all ended. The year I was supposed to move and stop working as a server and everything would be different and better and awesome. Then I got caught up with being in love and I didn’t do that. I don’t regret it, but that’s what happened. So I stayed at Popeyes and I stayed in Lake Geneva and I didn’t do some things I wanted to do because I was so happy I didn’t want anything to change.

Working as a server in a resort town in the winter is hell. You don’t make any money, but your bills are all more because you’re home all the time and you’re cranking the heat. You can’t do anything because you don’t have any money and it’s so cold you don’t want to. There are a lot of great things about winter, for example sleeping next to someone is so much better in the winter and the holidays are fun, but most of it sucks. I didn’t really like this winter. My bad times at work just amplified how much I didn’t want to do this anymore. My roommate stopped paying his bills which necessitated a move and then when the seasons changed I decided to tell my boss “fuck you” and got myself fired. (I regret this now less than ever.) It took me a couple months to figure it out after that, both because I didn’t really have a plan and it was hard to find a job, and it was a hard time for me. No job. No money. Living at my girlfriend’s mom’s house. Some friends stopped calling. My laptop died. It felt like the world was against me. It felt like the Year of Not Vince, like some karmic retribution for how happy I’d been the summer before. I was like Buffy after she came back from Heaven and it felt like the worst time of my life.  (In retrospect it probably wasn’t and I should have spent more time appreciating what I did have going for me and less time depressed about what I didn’t, but that’s easy to say now.) I let it get to me and I stopped being me which led to me ending up single.

It’s been a bad year, but it’s over now. I realize now that it was the worst year because I let it be. Like I said before, I stopped being me. I got depressed and I wouldn’t let anyone get me out of it. I pushed away anyone who tried. I hid from the world. I wasn’t making things happen. I stopped feeling like I was in control of my own life and that’s not me. I’m Harvey Dent. I make my own luck.

It’s only been a couple weeks of adopting this mindset and already things are starting to look up for me. I got some potentially capital-g Great news about my website business, I might be doing a children’s book with an artist I met just for kicks, getting some job interviews, basically managing a restaurant for now, figured out a strategy for some website ideas that have been bugging me for a couple months, getting back in a writing groove,  and I FINALLY have a screenplay idea that I believe in. It’s all going to be fine. Things are going to work out and I am going to be better than ever. The key phrase being “going to”, but it will happen. Sometimes you just need to believe in yourself. No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.

Also, there is this thing down here which I will try and keep updated on the site (I plan to write more) to track my progress.

7 down. 27 to go. THE QUEST FOR 180.

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I probably scanned about 400 or 500 comic books a day for 6 days.  There were lots of old school Superman comics where every cover had shock headlines (“Supergirl kicks Superman out of his house!”), weird 60s ones with boobs and lots of TV adaptations. At first I was like “oh cool look at this,” but the more I did the more I just kind of scanned them without even glancing at them. Still, there were some that grabbed me that I wanted to remember for whatever reason and I took pictures of them with my iphone. These are those pictures.

Click any of these for full size.

Tons of these in the 70s comics. Half naked chicks inserted at random.

This guy was on the back of 50% of the comics I scanned. His face haunts my dreams.

I liked the way this fake King Kong looked.

Sound advice

This is one of the more PG Vampirella covers.

Seriously.

Check out the sweet toy van designs.

Couldn't tell if this had any relation to George Orwell's novel, but the bondage is fantastic.

This is clearly a photo from the movie. I wonder how unlike Yoda the real masks looked.

Pretty sure that's a white supremacist villian right there.

A DOLL THAT SAYS HER PRAYERS

Classic New York

Notable for being the worst drawing of the Incredible Hulk I've ever seen.

Superman: He's just like us!

Is that Don Draper?

Supersize Superman *drumroll*

Oh, you know, just Thor in Vietnam.

Oh, you know, just Thor in the Holocaust.

(Superhero) kills Hitler is my favorite comic book story ever since "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay".

OJ. Advertising. Seems so strange now.

RICK BARRY AND DR J!

It took them awhile to find their footing with the whole "Don't Do Drugs" thing.

Apparently John Lennon and Jimmy Carter were in some sort of cosmic Illuminati.

Not a comic, but this was one of the few things they had for sale that I wanted very badly. Even if I have no idea what I would do with it.

Apparenly this isn't the first Luke, C3PO and Chewbecca have wrestled.

GERMAN HULK~

Took this because in my mind Paul Hornung = super old.

I would have ordered this.

Maybe this too.

The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man!

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