This is What I Want to do With My Life

Over Spring Break ten fraternity brothers and I watched two seasons of the television show Greek. I got it from my little frat brother Tim Yopp. He's like Rudy - five foot nothing and a hundred and nothing. The past two Thanksgivings he's loaned me his copy of Final Fantasy. He has them all.

The seasons are divided into two chapters each, and Tim gave me three chapters. I thought I would just watch one; it would be a pain just to watch one. Instead, we watched all three then watched the last ten episodes online.

Greek covers the social drama of two fraternities and a sorority. Many things that happen are impossible in real life, but we did get many ideas for new pledge activities. More importantly, we all agreed Rusty could have done better than Jen K. We loved Max and we were sad to watch him leave, and we really want Beaver and Betsy to get into a destructive, black hole type relationship.

I got these DVDs from Tim because one of the principal actors, Jacob Zachar, who plays Rusty, read a script I co-wrote. He liked it and wanted to make it. So I thought I'd do some research. Little did I know I would fall in love. Tale as old as television.

Because of his interest, we're trying to kick up some fairy dust and advertise this project to investors. It's called True Love Sucks; it's basically a hipster Romeo and Juliet. It isn't what I like to write, but that made it fun. And it turned out to sound a lot like myself. Example: I've been asked to run a blog of one of the characters from the script. It's pretty much like this blog except instead of lying about somethings, I lie about everything. It's ultimate freedom. You can read it at stevetbrenner.blogspot.com.

Final plug - we're trying to raise money through a website called Kickstarter, which looks like a pyramid scheme but what the heck I've always wanted to be a part of a pyramid scheme. You can read about our project and, if you so chose, invest in the film. It can be found at here at Kickstarter.

It Is Finished

At my house, we don't have a television, or internet. We're off the grid, just in case the robots come looking for me. Therefore, I don't play video games during the semester. I [SARCASM BEGINS] focus on school work [SARCASM ENDS] instead. This was the original purpose of the Pankration - to provide a video game binge after a semester in rehab. Thus, I spent months (literally, months) of deliberating which game I would play, oscillating between titles like Dragon Age: Origin and Fallout 3. Last week I sat down with my little brother in the fraternity, Tim Yopp, and asked his advice. After a solid half hour, we decided on Final Fantasy VIII, a RPG released in 1999 for the original PlayStation. I had to go back a decade to get the proper Pankration experience. That's why I'm the Laser Wolf (which I just decided is the title of the head of the Pankration. I'm shooting from the hip, but I think it will stick).

Final Fantasy VIII uses Roman numerals instead of Arabic characters to communicate that it is a very serious game. It uses four discs, and Tim told me it took him ninety (90) hours to beat the game. That's like four days. Without ever sleeping.

I fell asleep around 3:30. At that time, I had been playing for ten hours, and I had completed the first disk and turned off the console in order to put in the second. That was my mistake. I should never had given my body a chance to escape. Curse my flesh! It can't even play a video game for ninety hours!

I love Japanese stories. They are entirely too melodramatic; they always involve young people embroiled in strong emotions. There's always an unexplainable, spiritual element circulating. Some nights, I will go to Blockbuster without a specific movie in mind, just with the parameters that it must be anime, because I want to experience emotions so over the top that human actors couldn't pull them off.

Final Fantasy VIII is no different. It's everything I hoped for in my own life, but cannot have, because the leading scientists it the world still can't figure out how to make swords in the shape of eight foot long planks of wood.

My pledges all reported in yesterday. They all saw the sunrise; most fell asleep immediately afterwards, around 5:30. One, David, made it to 7:02 exactly. I'm not sure what's significant about that. I talked to Tim Yopp around lunchtime. He still hadn't slept. He was just starting his third game.