Been at my new place of employment (Valley Morning Star) for about 2 months now… finally got around to taking some pictures of my work area. My desk is situated between two very talented guys in charge of graphics & layout. I don’t exactly have a view to speak of… I sorta face the photo room in the heart of the Editorial department… It’s however a million times better than the cubical I had while up in Detroit.

This here is a picture of my neighbor’s (Shawn) work area. Aside his layout work… he writes a comic book column for the news paper.

.rollie.

While commuting to work this morning… I ran into something I rarely had to contend with while I lived in Detroit, morning fog. Thankfully, my morning commute is around 15 til’ 8 (A.M.) so it wasn’t as bad for me as it was for a few of my co-workers whom had a hard time seeing anything 2 feet in front of their cars.

Prior to being with Kathie, I never had a proper stocking which would be filled with little holiday goodies and stocking stuffer treats. This XMas, my better half surprised me with little Gibson Guitar magnets for the fridge! Like any obsessive music nut, I had to rush over to the fridge and figure out what proper order to place them.

Prior to receiving my geetar magnets… the only things I had up were my Pez magnets.

While trying to figure out which guitars and pez should be on the freezer/fridge doors…. I stopped for a second and thought how cool it would be to adorn the pez figures with guitars across their bodies.


I never admit publicly how much time I spent, trying to figure out what Pez should wear what Gibson, but believe me when I tell you that I spent more time on this project than I did shaving carefully this morning.

If all goes well, I hope to secure these Kiss Magnets to outfit my fridge completely!

Life’s been incredibly hectic for me in recent weeks. Like many around the globe, I spent the weekend celebrating Christmas with loved ones in San Antonio. It was a particulary special for me because I got to spend it with my better half Katheryn & her family. It wasn’t my first Christmas away from home… but it was the first time that I had spent it with another family because of a relationship. Thankfully, I had the pleasure of meeting Katheryn’s Father & Step Mum the previous month… so none of the weirdness that comes with “first impressions” was present.

Wish I could report that the break was without trouble… Prior to my drive up to Kathie’s, took my car in for a last minute inspection to have a noise looked at. The problem wasn’t resolved until last night, so I had to arrange a last minute car rental (PT Cruiser) on Friday afternoon before my drive up to San Antonio.

If that wasn’t bad enough, two gifts I ordered online, in early December, did not arrive at my new home address. I was able to do some last minute sprinting with Kathie to find identical items at brick’n mortar stores on Chrismas Eve (a.k.a. the shittiest day to be at a store) so all crisis were everted….

Things settled down quite a bit after the morning last minute shopping scramble…

After that, Katheryn and I thought it would be a good idea to start a little tradition so we took the little ones to go see the Cronicles of Narnia… much to my surprise, I enjoyed it verily.

All in all Christmas was very good to me and all of my loved ones. I made it a point to make it very special for Kathie this Christmas and the best gift I got was to see her as happy as she was Christmas morning.

I’ve returned back to the Valley and got my car (Margot) back…

If all goes well, I’ll make it a point to blog daily.

best,
Rollie

Last week I put together a short list of must get Holiday/Birthday items for friends/family/and loved ones to check out… in the event they couldn’t figure out what to get me for said occasion.

The list was really helpful for a few and I was asked privately to possibly put together a few more items together for the site.

here goes….

1.) Nintendo DS / MarioKart Bundle : A very special someone is going to ring my hide out for even making this public… but in recent months the DS has begun to churn out incredible titles for the DS. I could honestly see myself quite entertained with the system and packaged game for quite some time… but a few other titles that I think are must haves with this: Nintendogs, Animal Crossing:Wild World and Advance Wars Dual Strike.

2.) DVD’s…. I don’t get around to purchasing to many DVD’s these days because of netflix, but a few films that I would love to own are:

I Heart Huckabees
Shawn of the Dead

Just finished watching the star studded Happy Endings, dug it verily and wanted to give it a quick review…

The film has a few (4 to be exact) story lines that all intertwine when a character(Lisa Kudrow… yes that Lisa) seeks to find out who her son is (after giving it up for abortion 19 years ago), who happens to be gay but wants to try and hide his sexuality from his adoptive parent(Tom Arnold)… Said son has a crush on his Gay employer (Steve Coogan) who happens to be the half brother of Lisa Kudrow.

edit: The gay kid whom I mistook as Kudrow’s kid – is not her son. That turned out to be a red-head who looked alot like Steve…

What Steve Coogan’s character doesn’t know is, is that the employed kid (Kudrow’s son) is HIS SON.

edit: yeah… this too is off. I should really let films finish before I comment on them. oops.

His identity isn’t revealed to her until she swindles the information from a Film student who is doing a independent documentary to try and get an AFI scholarship.

this checks out. there’s a few other storylines that I left out but that was intentional.

I think I got all that right…

Anyhoo… seek it out. It rocks wang.

.Resaca City Rollie.

Today was a bit of a strange day for me… for the first time ever in my relatively short life, I became a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to come through on a gift that a loved one really wanted for the Holidays. The hard to find item this year was a copy of Animal Crossing – Wild World for the Nintendo DS.

The game was released in the US last Tuesday, but many stores (Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Etc.) reported to me that they never received a copy or they had already sold all of their copies. I tried securing the game online… but stocks were reportedly FRESH OUT through the web.

This is where the panic began to set in.

I sorta felt part helpless and a failure all at once. A really shitty feeling to have all at once.

Luckily, I saw an EB Games on my way home… stopped in and was able to secure the LAST copy they had on hand!

.rCr.

By admission, I know very little about pornography. It’s not because I’m morally above it… It just doesn’t particularly do it for me. Over the years, I’ve learned enough about pornography to get me through crude discussions amongst friends/strangers… and while that may be enough for many, I got around to renting the recently released documentary Inside Deep Throat.

I don’t recall what possessed me to put the film into my Netflix que but check out this tag line.

(highly doubt this)

What I learned in the documentary – The government took convicted an actor/artist for the first (and possibly only) time ever in the History of the United States. – Deep Throat the movie had ties with the Mob. – “Deep Throat” had no connection with hidden source nickname in the Watergate scandal.

The documentary surpassed all of my expectations. Highly recommend it to anyone who reads this blog. Be warned: It has footage of Linda Lovelace showcasing her talents…

.Resaca City Rollie.

While driving around today, I think I noticed something rather strange in the new Honda Civic. I’m pretty sure that the car’s stereo volume lowers gently when one brakes to slow the car.

I know this sounds silly… but I’m pretty sure that the volume goes down a little bit. It doesn’t reflect it on the volume level (if its at 10, it will read 10) but I can totally hear it go down in volume!

bizarre.

Noticed another thing… I can’t help but feel like Darth Vader inside a Tie Fighter when driving this car at night. The instrument panels are soooo dope.

.resaca city rollie.

In the past 25 years… a December 8th hasn’t gone by without the mention of the John Lennon’s death. It’s a very strange day that many people commemorate… seeing that a.) John was British and b.) the Beatles had been defunct for almost a decade…

I guess it says a lot about the longevity of the Fab 4. Sharing my birthday with his untimely death has been a little strange over the years… On my 3rd birthday, I remember my mom (only 20 at the time) shedding many tears over the news that Lennon had been murdered in nYc. My introduction to the Beatles came at the heels of his death… strangely, I find myself being more of a George Harrison fan than Lennon.

If all goes as planned, I hope to have lunch at the NY Deli tomorrow in downtown Harlingen, where the owner has a small shrine to 4 mopped toped of Liverpool.

.rCr.