LAWD GIMME DA STRENGF

  In any case holee FUCK last night what a shit show.

You ain't even ready for this level of bullshit and frippery, i'm gonna tell you that right now, but if you want your mind blown with how weird my friends are then by all means:

  So, like...christ, like a year ago? Jake texts me and goes "lol, so, i'm takin the saugerties thruway exit and the fuckin toll booth guy goes 'this is gonna sound weird but you look JUST LIKE the main character of my comic book'. i'm like 'your character is a fat neckbeard?' dude goes 'yeah kinda' lmfao anyway he wants me to do a photoshoot? for the cover? or trailer? or something? i gave him my email address, lol this is bound to be totally fucked and awesome."

 MONTHS AND MONTHS GO BY

Get another text from Jake

"You ain't even gonna believe this but fat neckbeard comic book photoshoot ain't dead"
"Noooo?!"
"Yup ran into him again, said the book is just about done he's gonna contact me with details"
"Holy shit to be a fly on the wall"
"ACTUALLY i was gonna ask if you wanted to come along and do my hair or something for this."
"YAAAS"

Fast foward another couple months to last night. Jake meets me at work, I've got a bag packed with my cosmetology shit because I have no idea what i'm walking into but i'm also just about positive i'm not gonna need a blow dryer. Like in my head this shit is Z-quality with a .0001% chance of being like...B-quality. Anyway yeah, Jake meets me at work, we get in my car because his passenger side door of his Kia Rio has been caved in for like 6 months and he refuses to fix it because "this car is made of recycled plastic bottles and explosives if i gave a shit about it i wouldn't have bought it to begin with." 

Me: So where is this place?

Jake: Modena, past the library out there apparently.

Me: Ah for the love of Jehova i thought this was like....Port Ewen, or Rosendale, i'm going all the way out to Modena for this!?

Jake: TOO LATE NOW SAM YOU'VE ALREADY BEEN SOLD

Me: Ugh. Whatever, it's BOUND to be worth the experience, at least, and if it's not you owe me dinner...

  We drive there, the email Jake got from the guy says they're the last house on their street and inside a "suburb type" housing community called like Bird Nest or Fox Den or something like that. In MY HEAD i'm pulling into someplace like the little slice of suburb i grew up in, full of mid century modern houses on decent sized lots and quiet paved streets and basketball hoops at the end of paved driveways etc etc. NOPE. TRAILER PARK, AND NOT A NICE ONE. Dirt road littered with potholes, dogs chained to trees, creepy children way too old to be wearing diapers still wearing diapers and running barefoot among a collapsed shed, like....fuckin WOWWWW. WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Me: Jake?

Jake: Yeah?

Me: Fuck you.

Jake: *explodes cackling* this is pretty bad..yeah..

Me: If i get murdered i'm gonna use the last of my dying energy to write 'FUCK YOU JAKE' on the wall in my own blood, you understand me? WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN ME INTO

Jake: (as we're passing a woman wearing a bra and yoga pants smoking a cigarette on her porch) We might wanna text this address to someone.

Me: Oh trust me if i pull into this driveway and he even LOOKS like he plays a banjo we're burnin' the rubber on this Chrysler OFF we're gonna peel outta here so fast. 

Jake: Fair enough. Heres to hoping we don't get serial killed.

Me: If i get serial killed i'm haunting your whole family. Kim Jong Un style, no forgiveness, entire generations of C********'s will feel my ghostly wrath.

  We pull up, it's certainly not the worst trailer but it's definitely not the best. Dude is nice, so is his wife, they have a cat that's friendly, so, we're actually off to a pretty good start. Jake is gabby as hell, so he's chatting their ears off about video games and comic books and shit and i'm just sitting on the sectional with the cat, making sure to notice my surroundings. I heard the wife mention Superman and noticed a large corner of the room dedicated to Superman memorobilia and above that a large shadowbox frame with...is that...knitted..oh. OH. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GOOD LORD THEY LOST A BABY. I wouldn't have noticed it if i hadn't been looking directly at it but among all the superman stuff was a superman onesie. Inside the frame was another onesie, a little hat, a print of footprints that couldn't have been larger than the diameter of a half-dollar, some ultrasound photos, a hospital wrist band, a pregnancy test, like....allllllllllllllllll of the things that make you super pumped and excited to have a baby, framed. And now i'm PANICKING because I KNOW JAKE and it's not unlike him to make an abortion joke so i have to find the right time, FAST, to be like "DON'T TALK ABOUT BABIES DON'T BRING UP BABIES DON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ANY BABIES EVER." because, you know....i mean, firstly, obviously, who wants to stir up that heartbreak!? Ugh, no, i would sincerely rather not watch the light behind both these people's eyes die immediately upon asking, "Oh is that a superman onesie?" But secondly........whhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy put it in your living room? Of all the rooms? It could go in? Why there? Where people come? And sit down? And will see it? And when they do it gets awkward? I'm not saying hide it! I'm not saying that AT ALL, you hang that frame WHEREVER YOU DAMN PLEASE hang it in the picture window for all i care, but i'm just saying.......if one were want to avoid this conversation one might consider placing it elsewhere. Is all. Anyway back to the matter at hand.

   While theyr'e chatting comic books and i'm waiting for this shit to get started (we're like an hour in already, nothing has happened except talking about comic books from the 90's) I'm READING the comic book that these people wrote. And, of course, it's terrible. That's a lie. I mean it's not TERRIBLE, but it's....been done. And the last time it was done, it was done very well, it was very well received, and there's no reason to try to do it again. They essentially saw Clerks and said "That was great! we should do something just like that!" and then they did and here we are. 

  FAST FORWARD FOUR HOURS AND WE'RE FINALLY FILMING. Which, btw, yeah, FILMING. They story boarded a short "teaser trailer" that was....lol. I mean it could have been worse! It could have been really, really terrible, but it was...just kinda terrible. jafkgnkjadfjm lmfao 

  It made no sense...and like, teaser trailers aren't supposed to necessarily make sense? But they should be, at least, cohesive. This was not that. lmfao. But i mean...there was editing. Like there was a front shot, a back shot, and a front shot again, and it went together nicely. The most basic of basic movie magic was present, if barely. 

  Now like i said, these people were super nice, but they were still strangers, and I'm not gonna just turn off the part of me that analyzes people because they're nice. So this dude...when he talks, he speaks softly, and you can tell it's a deliberate softness. Like if he got drunk, he'd be LOUD AS HELL and probably grossly inappropriate. He had a tendency to make eye contact that i noticed came across a little forced as well and i could tell he had a, possibly learned, instinct that he was suppressing to try to reach out and touch someone's shoulder while he talked to them. She, however, was just naturally on the quieter side, but had a good sense of humor. She seemed normal, basically, she mostly fidgeted with the camera while smoking a  marlboro lite and drinking mike's hard lemonade. I couldn't put my finger on him though, somehting was....not off, but like i'd seen it before, i'd encountered people like him before with these same ticks and there was a reason they were like this but i couldn't remember it. 

  Then she made mention of, "When he used to do weddings..." THERE IT IS, HE'S A REVEREND!!!! Or, WAS a Reverend, more accurately. Determined Reverend, specifically, because while I meandered around them while they filmed I noticed a photo of him presiding over a wedding and the name of a protestant church on the bottom of the photo. Also he was married, so that rules out Priest. See, i could totally be a detective. So, he USED to be a Reverend, how interesting, I wonder why he left the church? Crisis of faith mayb--OH SHIT I WONDER IF IT'S TIED TO THE BABY I WASN'T READY FOR THIS DEEP A LOOK INTO STRANGERS LIVES AAAGGHH i'm literally screaming all of this in my head while the cat sits on my lap purring. For good measure i texted the address to Kim and Eric and told them the people's names and that they had a cat who meows when you tickle it's ears if the police ask. Kim god love her was like "Okay! don't get human centipeded!" Eric was like "pet the kitty for me." turd. 

  All of this is happening, mind you, over the course of HOURS i'm not some kind of prodigy that can instantly figure out peoples entire lives. I anticipated being home with 6 hours to spare to crank out my final paper for my Principles of Managment Class and didn't walk in the fucking door till 11:30pm. 

 Anyway the night wore on, this farce of a "Teaser Trailer" got filmed, Jake and I made jokes all the way home about how the entire situation could have gone SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH WORSE, i.e. serial killed. Then we started joking like "how flabbergasted do you think they would have been if you were totally normal Jake for like the whole night, EXCEPT when the cameras were rolling and you insisted on talking like Christopher Walken?" which, maybe it's because it was 11:30 at night and we were both really tired but i nearly killed us both and drove off the road he and i got laughing so hard at the very idea. Like "Alright and..ACTION" "All. I'm asking you, is for YOU. Tuh Believe. In ME." "Jake why are you talking like Christopher Walken?" "What? what are you talking about?" "you just did a christopher walken voice" "no i didnt" gjafkbjklfsdghafjkvbsjrjkds shit kills me. I told Jake he owed me Taco Bell and that was that.