Fortunately, Friday night was much better. Just in case someone reading this has not already been introduced to Arrested Development by me, or at least hasn't heard me talk about the show, then I will tell you now; it is the greatest thing ever grace a television screen. It's a television show that was, unfortunately, aired on Fox for three seasons (2003 - 2006). It's hard to provide a satisfactory description of the show because it has so much going on in it, but essentially it's about the perfectly dysfunctional Bluth family. If you have never seen it then you should find a way to watch it. I cannot recommend it highly enough. You can even legally watch episodes online here. Anyway, I have every intention of eventually writing a (probably rather lengthy) article about the show, so I'll save that for a later time. The reason I mentioned it is because there are a couple independent filmmakers that are also huge fans of the show and decided to make a documentary about the show. Basically they've been travelling the country interviewing fans of the show and any cast and crew they've been able to get in contact with about the show. Well, they've been doing that since mid-October 2007, and they just finally arrived in Michigan to interview fans here. They got here Friday evening and I had scheduled to interview with them that night. Mikey and Scott, two friends of mine that I got addicted to the show, went with me to interview as well. We met them at their hotel room in Southfield a bit after 10 o'clock. The two guys running this whole operation are Neil and Jeff who are just good friends and fanatics of the show like my friends and I. As soon as we met them we all got along very well, which is a bit strange for us. I am usually very shy, as are my friends, and we don't often interact with outsiders, which we usually refer to as "the normals." But going into the situation acknowledging the common ground made things much easier. After we had completed our formal introductions, he began explaining how things were going to work, gave us the release form to look over and sign, and gave us each a business card.
"It wasn’t really the pronunciation that bothered me."
Their actual business information was on the reverse side, but for those of you unaware, that is a joke from the show. After he explains how things are going to work and tells us a few of the questions he'll be asking we found out that they can only interview two people at a time which meant that one of us would have to go alone. We all kind of awkwardly stood around staring at each other trying to decide which of us it would be until finally Scott decided to suck it and take a chubby (that line is also a joke from the show) and offered to be the one to go on his own.
Mikey and I were up first. Neil asked us questions while Jeff ran the cameras. He asked us our favorite character, favorite episode, why we thought the show was unique, and several other questions. It went pretty well, but there were a few questions that we kind of blanked on since we didn't know we would be asked about them. After that Scott went and was asked pretty much the same questions. But, ironically, the discussion about the show really picked up after the cameras stopped rolling. Perhaps it was just because there was no pressure since we knew we weren't being taped anymore, but we started quoting a plethora of memorable lines from the show and talking about all the subtle jokes. It was a pretty typical conversation since that happens quite often when I'm hanging out with Mikey and Scott, but it was weird having other people around that actually knew what we were talking about. Usually when there is a person with us who isn't part of our usual group, we get some strange looks for some of the things we say, e.g. "Watch out for hop-ons," "To the nuts! No, the bridge mix!" and "I just blue myself." They also told us about some of the more interesting interviews they'd done and some cool stuff they had learned from other fans about the show that they were unaware of before starting the documentary. We all had a great time talking to them and it was just nice to see other fanatics of the show since they are quite rare, as we've found. Although it seems that it's hard not to be a huge fan of it after seeing it, with very few exceptions. Overall, it was a good night that was much needed after Thursday.
Saturday night was a bit more uneventful than the previous two had been, but it was still a deviation from the norm for me, since I rarely do anything. As usual, I slept in much later than I should have, and then watched the Red Wings game in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we lost to Dallas again, which is now forcing a game 6 tomorrow. Then I got a call from Jasmine inviting me to go play Mario Kart Wii at her friend Ashley's house. She also informed me that we'd be playing it on Ashley's home theater. Needless to say, I was in. I ate dinner and then picked up Jasmine and then we headed over to Ashley's. Once we went inside I was introduced to her parents and then we went downstairs. That is where I saw this.
Just off to the right is the furnace room where I intend to start living soon.
What is not displayed in this picture were the three recliners which were directly in front of me and below the camera where we would all be sitting. After I could function again after the initial happiness shock, I went and sat down in order to test if the recliners were as comfortable as they appeared to be. My hopes were confirmed. Jasmine and Ashley began setting up the Wii and syncing the remotes while I took a couple pictures that I intended to have some special alone time with later. Then we started playing Mario Kart, which was pretty great because before then I had only played it on a very small television. To give you an idea of the difference in size, each individual split screen was probably around three times larger than the entire tv that I had used before. I was happy.
After we had played quite a bit of Mario Kart and had some good times bashing the computer players, Ashley inadvertently revealed to Jasmine and me that she owned Super Smash Bros. I started chanting "Tank rape!" and Jazz quickly joined in, and then it was decided that we needed to play that for a bit. "Tank rape" is an inside joke of ours in reference to Fox's Final Smash. If you're familiar with the game, you may know what I'm talking about, if not, then basically what happens is he gets to go in gigantic tank and destroy everyone with it. We left around 11pm since I had plans around 11:30, so I dropped Jasmine off at her place and then went home.
After I got home I hung out for a few minutes and then headed over to Steve's. He was having a few people over for a bonfire and hang out with Kent. Our friend, Kent, got a job out of state for the summer so it was kind of a small going-away party. I got there, Steve and I went outside, and then he started on the bonfire. Kent got there not too long after and we sat around talking for a bit. Then I called Mikey to see if he was back from his sister's wedding to see if he wanted to stop by. I eventually got ahold of him and he came over. Then Kyle showed up and we just chatted for a bit and Mikey told us about the wedding and I made quite a few s'mores. Kent had been drinking a bottle of beer, and after he finished it Steve devised the genius plan of filling the empty bottle with gasoline and then throwing some into the fire.
After laughing about that for a bit, everyone except Mikey and I went inside. We stayed outside and he told me a bit more about the wedding until it started to rain a little bit, at which point we headed in with everyone else. When we went inside we told everyone it was starting to rain so we went out to grab some of the stuff and put the chair away, which is when this happened.
After that everyone went inside and we talked and joked around for a bit about a variety of topics, including, but not limited to, school, work, rectal examinations, drinking games, food coloring, testicle ultrasounds and Kent's car catching fire. Mikey and I left shortly after that, and then I came home and stayed awake far too late, as I've had the tendency of doing lately.
The last few days have been a bit different for me, but now it seems that things are returning to their normal and mundane ways. With the exception of the catastrophe that was Thursday night, it was a pretty welcome change, but I don't really mind the shift back to monotony. At least it's summer and I've got a few great friends to share it with.
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