...home?

We were the last house at the end of the culdesac, but aside from our family and the two on either side of us, everyone in our little circle mostly kept to themselves.

That was the last neighborhood I lived in where the grass was really green, which was weird because you never really saw anyone outside taking care of their lawns. For most of the folks living in the six or seven houses down there, you never really even saw them. My neighbor Jonathan and I were really the only people who frequented the world outside. Scott and his brother Adam at the end of the street would occasionally join us riding our bikes around the culdesac. Adam mainly came around to show off how awesome his bike was, and beat up anyone ballsy enough to touch it. I was ballsy enough.

We were all younguns, so the stop sign at the end of the street was as far as we were allowed to go. Anywhere past that was a mystery.

Another mystery (to me, at least) was the fact that I never saw anybody's parents. It seemed like Scott and Adam, both of which weren't much older than I, lived on their own. The same goes for Allison, the girl right across the street from us. The only exception really was the couple next door, who didn't even have any kids.

That being said, the little box that was our world, going from our house to the stop sign, pretty much felt like a community of children living on their own. We all "knew" each other (purely a first name basis), but you didn't really KNOW more than one or two folks. Jonathan was my exception. There was that one time I kissed Julia, the girl a few houses down, but that was just weird.

It was a strange neighborhood, but a good one. Eventually we moved away, but ten years later, Jonathan is still one of my best friends in the world. The weirdest thing is how the that was the last time I actually had the sense of a neighborhood community, even though I didn't really "know" most of the other kids in the neighborhood, I still knew them. We had that sense of community, which is something I've never felt just by living in proximity to people ever since.

#Atlantis2013

You know how whenever you go on vacation, you get back and you're even more tired than you were before? That's exactly what I'm experiencing right now, even though I didn't even go anywhere outside my city.

UC just had its spring break, and I had no plans. Nearly all of my friends were going to great places, whether it be Gatlinburg or Florida or somewhere completely out of the country, and I was going to be staying at my apartment in Clifton. I wasn't too happy about it, but I ended up having one of the greatest spring breaks, somehow almost without even leaving about a mile radius from my apartment. We had epic battles, ate good food, had some of the funniest moments of our lives, watched movies, and even went new places.

It all started with an innocent invitation for the few remaining (maybe five or six of us) friends in Cincinnati to head over to my apartment to play some cards or watch some movies. From that point on, there were mere hours between times that we were all hanging out. A little card game called Cards Against Humanity was a real catalyst in the whole week. It's a game very similar to Apples to Apples, but this one really pushes the envelope in a lot of ways. It forces you to break boundaries on what you would normally joke about in terms of inappropriateness, the battle of the sexes, religiousness, and so many other things.

This was one of the things that I felt like made our week feel like an actual vacation that friends would go on during spring break. In all the vacations I've gone on with whatever friends tagged along with me, we always returned home with our friendship changed and deepened so much. The combination of how often we were together with the level of closeness it required to be able to play that game together (and not think worse of/be disgusted with each other and the offensiveness it brought, as well as ourselves) really created a whole new level of closeness in our group. Sure, I knew these people beforehand, but spending the whole week with them in that kind of setting, whether it was across the country or in my living room created the very same effect.

Not only did we hang out and goof off together, but we cooked and ate together. Eating together has always been something of vital importance to me and getting to know someone, almost like it's the last supper with Jesus and the disciples or something. I'm pretty sure there's a reason he chose the dinner table for the last time he would eat with his bros. I feel like the "breaking of bread" together just creates a whole sense of community that you really can't find anywhere else. Especially when the folks you're eating with chew with their mouths open or talk with their mouths full, but that's a whole other level of closeness (and one that's not really very desirable.)

Along with the eating together, we fought together. It was quite possibly the battle of the century, all starting from the baking of a cake. It was the first cake cooked in my kitchen, and holy schnikes was it good. But all that flavor came at a great cost. That cost was the cleanliness of our faces, our bodies, our hearts.
We had a cake icing fight.
Maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but it sure felt dramatic. It all started when Emily smashed some white icing onto Mikeyy's face. Mikeyy retaliated with the brown icing. Brooks felt left out, so he pasted icing onto his own face. Mikeyy put some icing on Grace's nose. Logan and I were the only ones left. Yes, we had a katana and a BB gun, but they were no use against the power of the icing. We retreated to my room, him hiding in the corner, while I buried myself in the mess in my closet. Nothing could stop the onslaught of the icing though, and in the end, there were no survivors. There was nothing left but desolation and chocolate cake. Many shirts and coats were ruined that night. Chocolate entered into eyes that it didn't belong. Trust was wounded, friendships were broken. Well, in this instance, not broken, but strengthened.
So yes, we fought together. Afterwards, we rebuilt together as well. We rebuilt with the common interest of cake.

We did a lot more than that too. We hung out at coffee shops, went to new pizza places, watched a couple movies together, went to an art museum, really got to know each other. We even shared worst fears (like vacuum cleaners...and that information was promptly abused.) All of our friends were going on about Gatlinburg and Florida and wherever else they ended up, so we even came up with our own little name for our--#Atlantis2013. I thought my spring break was about to be boring on so many different levels, but it turned out to be one of the best ones yet, and I didn't even have to leave my city. I guess it's nice to know that it's not the location that makes the vacation, but the people you take it with.

The Kicked-in Fence (or reinforcing Europe's stereotypes against American children)

Europe. My siblings and I didn't get a very good look at it before we got in trouble. I guess our immature, preteen minds couldn't handle the fact that we were on a whole different continent for the first time. In the weeks leading up to the trip, we had heard a lot from mom about how we were such good kids and how, apparently, there were a lot of stereotypes in Europe about how American kids were nasty little buggers. According to mom, we were the kids that would break that stereotype and prove them wrong. Unfortunately for mom, we proved them right within our first hour being on British soil.

It was a pretty rainy day when our flight landed, but I guess Europe is like that a lot. Dad had a seven week long business trip over there, and he took the rest of us along for the ride. We had a rental car waiting at the airport, and were living in a small flat for the duration of the trip. This required us to head over to the landlord's place to pick up the key. Mom and dad went into the building to get the keys and left the my brother, sister, and me in the car. That's where and when things went down.

To be fair, on a normal day, the three of us really were pretty good kids. None of us really got into much trouble or caused problems, no drinking or smoking or drugs, most of the time we didn't even really talk back to our parents. Like I said, usually pretty good kids. I guess something in the European air got into our heads and made a mess or something, because what happened next was just so out of left field and out of character.

The rain had mostly stopped, but it was still a really dreary, cloudy day. Mom and dad were taking forever to get the keys, and we were getting bored waiting in the car. Eventually, we all got out and were just standing around next to the car, looking around at what we could of this new world called Englad, which was simply this fence enclosed parking lot. It wasn't very impressive. Even the fence was grimy and run-down.

"You know what? We should kick down that fence." Amanda is the oldest sibling. Her fiery, red hair came with an matching attitude. As I said, none of us were really "bad" per se, but she definitely came the closest.

Mikeyy, the youngest, was just as confused with that idea as I was. Fortunately for us, we both were still in our right minds. Unfortunately for us, Amanda can be very convincing. For the longest time, Amanda has called Mikeyy her "mini me," because, while his personality is a lot more calm and mild, he does take after her a lot. Because of that, he was the first to go.

"Come on! It'll be doing them a favor. The fence is falling over anyway, we may as well help them out."

After Mikeyy was convinced and the kicking started, it was only a matter of time before the peer pressure became too much and the final domino fell. It was only after there was a fairly good sized hole in the fence that mom and dad came back outside with the keys.

We never got busted by the owner, and mom and dad never told, but we definitely took some heat from the both of them when we finally made it to the flat. For the rest of our time in England, we were pretty good--we were polite, drank our tea, held doors open for other people, etc, etc. I'm not saying they're always true, but I guess sometimes, there might be a little something to stereotypes.

Hey Cheapo!

Ajijic is one of my favorite places I've ever visited. It's a small city in Mexico. My family went there to visit my grandma and grandpa back in 2006. My grandpa was having some health issues, and the warmer climate in Ajijic was supposed to help fix some of that, due to the combination of the tropical latitude and its elevation.

We left Cincinnati fairly early in the day, and arrived bright and early in the morning, which was unfortunate because the first thing my grandpa wanted to do was climb one of the mountains that surrounds the city. We were exhausted, but since they were basically our guides to the city, our only option was to tag along. Never in my life have I been so glad that I didn't stay at our apartment and sleep. In our hike up the mountain we ran into all sorts of small, abandoned religious buildings and statues, and even had to navigate our way around a bull hanging out in a pasture. On top of that, the view was amazing.

Past that, we spent basically the rest of our two weeks there walking around the city, buying souvenirs, and eating actual authentic Mexican food (American "authentic" Mexican food is very different than Mexican authentic Mexican food.) The only rough part was how careful you had to be with where/what you ate, so as to avoid getting the dreaded Montezuma's Revenge, which we were all lucky enough to avoid, except for my dad.

It's not a wealthy city by any means, but they definitely know how to live life well. One day there was this huge party in the circle outside our apartment with costumes and colors and food and dancing and singing. Each of the apartments in our complex was basically its own building and you could go up the stairs outside and hang out on the roof to watch the festivities or the sunset or just relax. It's crazy how little they focus on what time it is over there. The difference between the time orientation here in the states and over in Mexico was absolutely mind blowing.

Ajijic was my first introduction to the idea of bartering as well. This was probably the biggest culture shock for me. We spent many of our days wandering from tiengas to tiengas. These were basically these large markets where people would just sell food, handmade gifts, and other random junk for however much they could. No set prices. And they weren't all just sitting down on the ground or at tables selling their goods either--they would follow you around like sharks being drawn to blood in the water. Somehow (probably because we looked like tourists) they could tell that we weren't accustomed to this kind of thing, and the moment you walked into the market or got off your bus, you would be swarmed by folks trying to get you to buy their stuff. Even our first day there, we ran into this guy carrying a box of watches and a bunch of his own handmade guitars on his back. "Sorry, we don't have enough money for that," wasn't an appropriate or remotely helpful response. Most of the time, they would just knock the price down a bit. In this guy's instance, he resorted to being a little punk. His English wasn't very good, but he knew how to dabble a bit with the language.

"Oh, okay! You cheapo then? Okay, Cheapo!"

Eventually we got away, but only for about a day or two. I swear, this guy must have put some sort of tracker on us or something because we ran into him almost every day for the rest of our trip. We would get off our bus, and would suddenly hear, "Hey! Cheapo!" Or we would be walking out of a restaurant after lunch and, sure enough, "Cheapo!" Like I said, a shark drawn to blood, and apparently, we were bleeding.

Eventually, my dad's watch broke for some reason or other, and this guy found us again and dad took a look at his watched and bought one of those calculator watches, which I guess is something an engineer like dad would enjoy. After that the guy's interest in us pretty much fizzled out. He saw us a few times past that, but aside from yelling out his nickname for dad, he didn't really make much contact with us.

That was about the height of the culture shock we experienced. Walking through the streets, there were dogs everywhere, even on the roofs of some of the houses, kind of the way squirrels are in Cincinnati. Their plumbing was so bad that you couldn't flush toilet paper, which was pretty gross. The days were longer because it times and schedules weren't important. It reminded me of the glimpse of the life of a hobbit that we get in Tolkien's books, except that the people were taller.

A Spider-man's-eye View

I'm a Spider-man obsessed 20 year old. I have well over a hundred comics on my bookshelf. I have a ton of action figures and coloring books. Whenever I'm in for the night at my apartment, you can bet you'll find me chilling in my Spider-man bathrobe. Above all else though, one of my favorite Spider-man things I have are my video games. I've spent countless hours swinging around Manhattan, beating up baddies and rescuing damsels in distress.

That being said, one of the times my family went to New York, I was shocked when I came to the realization that I had already seen a lot of the places we were walking around, all because of the time that I had spent swinging around the city. And that gave me an idea.

One night at our hotel room, I got online and found a list of filming locations for Sam Raimi's Spider-man trilogy. Then we set out on our adventure.

Our first stop was Doctor Octopus's laboratory in Spider-man 2 where he first tested out his fusion device. We only got to stand outside, so it wasn't too entirely thrilling. We also ran into this problem with Peter Parkers apartment, where we only got to stand outside and look at the fire escape.

One of the highlights of our little adventure was heading over to Joe's Pizza for lunch. In Spider-man 2, Parker worked there at the beginning of the movie, eventually getting fired. My dad decided to spice up the adventure a bit, and before we got our pizza, he walked in yelling "Why did you fire Peter Parker?!" Thankfully, the guy at the cash register had a good sense of humor, responding only with, "He was a really bad worker!" The pizza was pretty dang good too. If you're ever there, make sure to stop by Joe's Pizza at 233 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village and snag a slice.

On our way to our next destination, we had a fun run-in with a different movie--Ghostbusters. We happened to walk by the firehouse that their station was located in.

One of the last places we stopped at was the Flatiron building at 175 Fifth Avenue-the filming location of the New Yorks finest Newspaper--the Daily Bugle. Once again, we only got to look at it from the outside, but it's still a pretty awesome building, and definitely a hard one to miss.

Our final destination (which is more of a usual New York touristy move) was to climb the Empire State Building. I had done this many times in my games, so I was pretty excited to finally get my real life Spider-man's eye view of New York City, and boy oh boy was it a view. I could see almost the entire island from just that one point-the Flatiron building, Central Park, you name it.

We ended the day back at our hotel, just relaxing, talking about what movie we would go through next. I had (somewhat) gotten to experience New York city from the eyes of my favorite superhero, and I was still pretty excited. On our way back, we even stopped at one of those silly souvenir shops and I bought a fake Peter Parker I.D. card. I think the only thing that would've made the day better was my own set of web shooters.

(I'll add pictures as soon as I get them from my parents' house)
Also, if you ever get the urge to go on your own movie adventure, make sure to check out http://www.movie-locations.com/index.html

You better watch out, you better not pout, you better not buy weapons from ComicCon (or New York Cops Suck)

In 2010 my dad took me to New York for ComicCon a few days before my birthday. ComicCon is easily one of the most ridiculous places I've been. I've seen pictures online of all the ridiculous cosplayers, but until I actually witnessed some of them, I don't really think I believed that people actually did that. I saw people dressed up as super heroes, Star Wars characters, weird anime stuff, RoboCop, characters from that Avatar movie, and so much more.

The booths there had some of the weird stuff too, ranging from weapons and steampunk clothing to action figures and random memorabilia to movies, TV shows, and weird pornos based off of Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-man, and other TV shows or movies.

I was 17 going on 18 in a few days. Every year, my siblings and I all get one bigger gift for our birthdays, and this was mine. My dad and I spent two days wandering around from booth to booth, picking up random souvenirs, talking to artists, and taking in all the people in weird costumes running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the two of us were following suit. Something important to know about me and my dad is that we're both huge dorks. We have the same personality, and often, it you leave us on our own, you can bet that we'll get ourselves into some sort of trouble.

This time was probably the worst trouble we've ever gotten into. Or at least that he got into.

It was our last day at the convention center. We stopped by for a couple short hours just to squeeze in the last bit of excitement and buy any other last minute gifts that we wanted to get. I was at some random booth with a myriad of miscellaneous action figures and comics and steampunk stuff. There was nothing in particular of interest there. As I turned around to leave, I realized that Dad was no longer standing next to me. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. It was so cram packed that people were shoulder to shoulder in every direction. Even though he's my dad, I felt a little bit like a mother who had lost her small child at a department store. For some reason, with the combination of a huge comic convention with a bunch of weirdos running around selling all sorts or random junk plus my dad wandering around on his own seemed like a really bad idea. In this instance, I was right.

When I eventually found him, he walks up to me with this excited look on his face. "Check out what I found!" he says to me. He proceeded to whip out one of those telescoping police batons and swing it around. "It's the thing he uses in "Kickass!" Cool. I liked it. After he played around with it for a while, he pushed it into the ground to close it and put it back into his pocket.

After that, we only spent a little bit more time at the convention center, and headed back to the airport to catch out flight home. I went through the metal detector. All clear. Then Dad did. He wasn't so lucky. He probably forgot to take off his belt or something silly like that. The security guy had Dad empty his pockets, and that's when the police baton came out, which we both had completely forgotten about somehow.

After a brief explanation of where we had just come from, what it was, and what it was from, the security guy thought we were pretty cool, and that our souvenir was even cooler. Even so, he had to go get his supervisors to make sure everything was all clear.

Dad and I stood there in silence for a few minutes, when we saw the security guy come back, flanked by two big, angry looking police officers.
Uh oh.
They proceeded to ask us all these questions, like what we were doing in New York, where we bought the baton, and let us know it was illegal for civilians to own them in that state. Oops. Naturally, we apologized, and explained we had just bought it at the convention, and that we were bound for Cincinnati where it's okay for civilians to own these, but that if they needed to take it away, that was completely fine, and once again that we were sorry about the confusion.

Rather than doing anything reasonable, like exactly what we offered, they proceeded to get really angry about how people at the conventions sell a ton of illegal stuff, and went on for a good while on how "This is a REALLY big problem." They sounded like a broken record after about the fifteenth time they restated that phrase.

Before I move further, I feel it's important to give you a better idea of what my dad is like. He's not a big guy by any means, and he's struggling to keep what little hair he has left. In terms of looks, he looks like a much more domestic version of Walter White from Breaking Bad. I've only ever seen him angry a few times in my life, and he's usually pretty easy going and jokes around most of the time. He's also a computer engineer who does top secret defense programming for the government. I grew up my whole life never really knowing what exactly he does and always getting that line, "If I told you, I would have to kill you." This is also his wild card that he pulls in jams occasionally, and he pulled it in this one.
"Well, I actually work for the government, doing defense programming. My security clearance is actually probably higher than both of yours! Would that help at all in this situation?"

They didn't take it very well, and after about an hour of deliberation, they established that they were going to take him to jail, and that I could either go with him, or go ahead and head off to my flight home. Obviously, I was going to stick through this adventure to the end.
"I'll go with him."
"No. You can't. We don't have anywhere to keep you."
Even though they were taking my dad to jail for the stupidest reasons, this small part of the conversation really ticked me off.

They put him in handcuffs and took him away. Everything else went fairly smoothly. The flight attendant at the desk was freaked out that a teenage boy whose dad had just been arrested in the airport was getting on the flight. There was also the really fun 45 minute long phone call with my mom trying to convince her that Dad was in fact locked up in jail in New York and that I really did need her to come pick me up from the airport. I guess we're a little too sarcastic sometimes, and it seems a little too similar to the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Dad got home later the following evening. They had him in jail overnight waiting for his turn in night court. He went around talking to and praying for the inmates in the cell with him, earning his jail cell nickname, "the Preach." Apparently one guy had his face slashed open at a gas station and the cops arrested him for carrying a 6 inch pocket knife. After he got out and finished up in court, they kept his jacket as "evidence."
Apparently sometimes things are just such a "big problem" that there's just no way it can be handles in a reasonable manner.