The craziest thing happened to me last nite! My parent's house...well not exactly the house...but the grill outside caught on fire. Funniest thing that I have seen in a long, long time. It's a long story, so get comfy. Here's what happened:

I went to my parent's house last nite to eat dinner (and do some laundry - hey..it's free! Gimme a break!)..anyways...we were having grilled pork chops for dinner. I get there and see my dad outside setting up the grill. I go ahead and sort out my laundry on the floor right next to the back door (where the grill is). Next thing i know, I hear cries of "OH MY GOODNESS! OH MY GOODNESS!" coming from outside. I look outside and see flames shooting out from the propane tank underneath the grill.

(Apparently, the hose connecting the tank to the grill got brittle in the wintertime and cracked, leaking gas. When my dad pressed the ignitor button, the gas leaking out of the tank caught fire.) So now we have this full tank of propane with a flame shooting out of the valve. For all you non-scientific types...this is NOT GOOD. Propane is a highly flammable gas, and in its pressurized tank, it's basically like a bomb. So it was only a matter of time before this thing exploded and took part of the house with it.

I see my dad frantically trying to put the fire out by hitting it with a broom. No luck. Next thing I see (and this is the funniest thing i've seen in my life)...is my dad throwing the broom down, and RUNNING off the back porch, across the street. (Those of you who know my dad...can you picture him running? Neither can I! Those of you who don't? My dad is about 6 foot tall and about 300+lbs) I haven't seen him run in all of my 24 years, not to mention running without a shirt on! Funny shit.

He's screaming "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! CALL 911!!!" at the top of his lungs...from ACROSS the street. (so much for women and children first eh? Some MAN of the house he is!) Dude just bounced to save himself. Um HELLO? Your wife and kid are in there. ahahahahaah. Meanwhile the whole grill is engulfed in flames. All the wood on the grill is burning, and so is the plastic.

So my mom calls 911...and shes in a panic...she can't even speak right...and shes like "WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!" - and then she HANDS me the phone! Um okay. I guess it's safer for ME to tell 911 where we are than HER. ahahahaha So she's frantic, and she says "GRAB WHATEVER YOU CAN!" For some reason that will confuse me for the rest of my life, my mom screams, "YOUR CLOTHES! THEY'LL CATCH ON FIRE!" and scoops up my dirty clothes up off the floor, runs to the front door and throws my clothes on the front lawn. Yup. Dirty skid-marked boxers and smelly socks all over the lawn. *shakes head* I'm staring at her in shock like "WTF are you doing!?" WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?

Anyways. First thing *I* grabbed was my laptop...ahahahah! and i ran out of the house. I run across the street and see 2 fire chief cars - sirens and lights going flying down the street to our house. My dad somehow got in touch w/our neighbor and my neighbor comes running from his house, no shoes on, with a fire extinguisher. Dude just runs up to the fire and empties the whole extinguisher on the fire. Man. Lemme tell ya. This guy has some BIG BALLS. To go right up to a flaming tank of propane that could blow up in your face at any second? And put that shit out? DOPE.

By this time, all the people in the neighborhood are looking out of their windows and/or coming out of their houses to see what is all the commotion (please keep in mind that my parents live in an old quiet 'hood, and this is probably the biggest excitement they've seen in 15 yrs)...The fire chiefs use our hose on the fire, and just when I think everything is cool, I hear a big fire truck's siren wailing from down the street. Yep...coming right down to our house.

A big ass fire truck rolls up, and about 6 firemen straight out of the movie "BACKDRAFT" come out, hats/jackets/boots on...looking like they're ready to put out a 10 alarm blaze. They walk to the back porch and see my dad just holding the hose over the wet and smoking grill. Funny shit. My dad is all joking w/them...etc etc...and i'm thinkin..."Oh yeah...you're joking now, arent cha? Ya weren't joking when you were screaming like a girl & running across the street earlier! Mr. BIG man. PSSSSSH." HAHAH!

In conclusion...the tank didn't blow up, the firemen went home dissapointed, my parents' house is still standing, i picked up my boxers off the lawn, and my mom ended up frying the pork chops instead. Yummy. Oh well. At least I don't have to think TOO hard about what to get my dad for father's day. =)

May 31, 2000 | 3:56pm:

movie reviews
I'm a bit of a movie addict. Yep. I'll admit it. I have this weird urge to see every new movie released that looks interesting. Unfortunately, time constraints and the damn prices of movies nowadays ($9.00 in north jersey?! WTF!) makes seeing every new movie kinda hard. So I must pick a select few...(then wait for the dvd to come out at Blockbuster so i can copy it...heheh).

This past weekend I saw 2 movies...Mission Impossible: 2 and Road Trip. Mission Impossible: 2 (MI:2) was pretty dope. It was directed by chinese director John Woo, who does some major kick-ass action movies (Hard Boiled, Face/Off). I must say, though...the plot of MI:2 was kinda weak...but the action more than made up for it...it was total Woo. There was the slo-mo action

sequences...the dual handgun scenes...the long coats flapping in the wind...the spinning arial kicks...motorcycle chase scenes ahhhhh =) gotta love that. Pretty funny watching Tom Cruise do all these actions.... eheheh he pulled them off well though...all in all its a pretty good flick. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5 - if the girl in the movie just got a lil nekked, (you guys who have seen it know who im talkin about, right? GOOD LAWD shes dope!)...it definitely would have gotten 5 stars. =)

Road Trip was pretty funny too...not as funny as American Pie (last year's best comedy movie of the summer)...but pretty funny. All you Tom Green fans will love this movie...he's pretty hilarious in it. Those of you who hate Tom Green will hate the movie cuz he just does his basic dumb stuff in it (Mimi was pretty annoyed by him - i was dying tho!)...I don't want to talk too much about it because i dont want to give the movie away...but like my friend Adobo said...the frat house was a funny part...i thought the snake part was freekin hilarious...but maybe i just love dumb stuff like that. ahahah! 3.5 out of 5 stars...i wouldnt pay $9 to go see it (although i DID)...if you can see it for cheaper then go. Otherwise wait for the rental. (...damn if i only knew in college that cheating DOESN'T count in different area codes!)

May 30, 2000 | 2:21pm:

you damn homophobes!
I apologize for not updating lately...as you can see...i did a whole redesign of my site...that was keeping me busy for a while...and it was also a long weekend...hope you all had a good day off...

Mine was pretty good...hung out with some old friends Friday night...and also on Monday afternoon. It was a really good time, i must say. You don't realize how much you miss someone's company until you hang out with them again after a LONG absence. Well, thats how i feel. I find that with some of my good friends, we can be apart for months at a time, but yet when we see each other again, we pick up right where we left off. Same inside jokes, 100% at ease, no awkwardness, total connection. Nice feeling.

I find that in my life, people come and go...be they acquaintances or co-workers or classmates... at the time you are with them...they can be your closest friends - you eat lunch together, share stories of "how your weekend went", go drinking together, etc. What you dont realize at the time is that some of these people will be gone before you know it.

For example...I don't keep in touch with my friends from high school at all. I kinda wish they were still around, because we had some good times...i think we even made a pact to keep in touch when we all got older...that never happened. For the first couple of months we would keep in touch...say whats up, etc...but as life moved on and I made new friends in college...those old friends tended to fall by the wayside. Same thing happened at my old job. I had some good friends there...we would see each other everyday, go on break together..but once i left for another job...despite the attempts to keep in touch...they too would vanish. Sometimes this would happen not for any particular reason...maybe thats just how life goes.

Now i'm not saying this is ALWAYS the case...because i know some of you out there DO have friends from high school or way back when, and thats great. With me, however...despite all these people passing thru my life, i always have had a core group of my friends that are the best friends anyone could ask for. They are always around when you need them, would do anything for each other, and even though we dont keep in touch everyday, we always find time to catch up, and when we do get together its like there was no time ever lost.

I have done everything with these guys...grown up with them, lived with them, studied with them, traveled with them, seen: happiness, sadness, craziness, drunkeness, druggedness (is that a word?!)...

Okay. enough of all this reminiscing. Bottom line? My boyz mean everything to me, and I don't know how i could get thru life without them. (id say "i love you guys" right now...but since we're all a bunch of homophobes (except ben)...ill just end on that note. haha!)