By Sean Patrick
Before reading this, be forewarned that this is my dweebiest blog to date
The Main Focus is a Video Game
I use the term “gamer”
I use the term “game wizard”
There is a Star Wars Episode III reference
I admit to almost seeing a Disney movie by myself
Please enjoy. And don’t judge.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!
With this sabbatical I made various goals for myself. Some goals were pretty lofty (win the lottery twice) and some not so lofty (wake up at least once a week before the street lights come on). In between those two extremes was a goal I’ve had since I was ten:
Beat Road Rash 2
I loved this video game when I was younger. To sum it up in a few words, it’s a motorcycle racing game for Sega Genesis where you fight other players for five levels, each level having five separate races you must win to advance.
As passionate as I was about this game when I was a kid, I could never get past the third level. As time went on my interest in the game diminished. My family eventually got rid of our Genesis when I was in high school, and I was never able to conquer this beast.
For years it was always at the back of my mind that I never beat this game. So a few Christmas’ ago I bought my little brother a Genesis and this video game, telling him it would be something cool to have when he goes away to college. Who was I kidding? The truth was that I had unfinished business with Road Rash 2 and haven’t been able to sleep for over a decade because of it.
I thought beating this game would be one of my easier sabbatical goals to accomplish. I was wrong. This game is impossible. As an adult (kind of), I still couldn’t get past the third level. Apparently my hand eye coordination and mental capabilities have not improved since the fourth grade.
A few weeks ago my friend Adam suggested finding a cheat code that will take me to the fifth and final level. I’d never thought of doing that. I’ve explored other options in my mind, such as kidnapping a game wizard and forcing him to beat Road Rash 2 at gun point… but I never thought of simply looking up a cheat code. After searching the internet for less than four seconds, Adam found a cheat code that took us to the last level, and we only had to win one race to beat the whole game.
Only one race? No problem.
Problem.
Adam and I spent an entire Saturday afternoon trying to win this one race with absolutely no luck. It was impossible. Even Adam, who is a much better gamer than I, couldn’t do it. I figured Road Rash 2 was my own personal hell, and mentally I gave up trying to escape it.
Last Wednesday I was bored out of my mind. More bored than ever. I was considering going to the movies to see The Princess and the Frog I was so bored. But instead of seeing an animated Disney movie by myself in the middle of the day, a move that would quickly get me on every child predator watch list in the nation, I decided to give beating Road Rash 2 another shot.
I sat down on my bed and began. And let me tell you, the first race I played, I was on fire! It was like I had Savants Syndrome (what Rain Man had). I couldn’t lose. I hadn’t crashed once and I was in first place. Then, a mile away from the finish line, about fifteen seconds away from the promised land, I crashed. And a cop was there. I was arrested. Game over.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
I shouted so loud that the neighbors must have thought that I just found out a family member was murdered… or that I was in the process of murdering a family member. My Savants Syndrome was cured at the most inopportune time. I was crushed.
Luckily, because it was so cold outside, I stopped short of chucking the Sega Genesis out the window. Instead I decided to try again. This time…
I won.
I couldn’t believe it. I beat the game. Granted, I used a cheat code that got me to the last level with the best motorcycle and only one race to go, but so what? The game is still impossible. And I beat it. Now I was ready for the pay off.
A big reason I wanted to win this game was to not only feel like I was a better person than I was in fourth grade, but I also wanted to see what happens when you actually beat it.
In my mind, considering how difficult the game was for me…
This is what I thought would happen:
I get a knock at the door. It’s a high class prostitute sent from EA sports. She tells me that she heard about my win and was paid to do anything I want. I tell her that I want her to fix the engine in my car so I can pass my emissions test. She leaves to do just that. But she’s left behind a lease to a summer share at the Jersey Shore.
While signing all the necessary papers for my summer share, I get a phone call. It’s President Barack Obama calling to congratulate me. He offers to send me another high class prostitute. I tell him that I already got one and she’s fixing my car, but if there is something he can do about getting more Taco Bell locations in Roselle, I would be thrilled. He makes it his highest priority (sorry people without health care).
I get another knock at the door. It’s Steven Speilberg asking if he can hire me as a writer. He’s willing to pay me an enormous amount of money. I tell him no. I’m no sell out.
The high class prostitute comes back and leaves with Steven Spielberg. I regret my decision. Not with Spielberg, but with the prostitute. I should have had her clean the apartment. It’s a pigsty.
But…
This is what actually happened:
A short video is played of your guy hopping onto a truck bed with his motorcycle. Then a helicopter comes down. You grab onto a ladder coming from the helicopter and it flies you away. The end.
………
what…..
the…..
fuck….
It didn’t even say congratulations. In fact, the game doesn’t even end. It just takes you back to the 5th level and gives you the opportunity to play it over. No prostitute, no Jersey Shore lease, no phone call from the president. Just a short four second movie followed by the realization of how much time you’ve wasted in your life.
I sat for a while in shock.
“That was it? Nothing else happens?” It was more disappointing than the ending of The Sopranos.
I considered getting a bottle of champagne and celebrating, but partaking in celebratory drinking by myself on a Wednesday afternoon because I won a video game from the early nineties sounded more depressing than my original Princess and the Frog plan. So I took a nap.
Game over.
By Sean Patrick
With the Oscars coming up, I like to think about Academy Award nominated screenplays and how I would have done things differently had I written them. Granted, they would have probably never been Academy Award nominated screenplays had I gotten my stubby little hands on them… but the plot twists and turns that I would find necessary to put into these scripts would surely transform the movies that many have grown to love.
Slumdog Millionaire
It’s a beautiful moment in the movie: Latika gets off a train and sees Jamal waiting for her. She smiles at him and he smiles back. Soon after she’s taken away by thugs.
Well, lets get rid of the thugs and extend this beautiful moment a few more seconds. Then BOOM! Latika, not realizing that she was standing on the opposite tracks, gets hit by a train going the other way and falls to her demise. Jamal is stunned.
In the end Jamal still wins the million dollars. Only instead of finding true love, Jamal is lonely and decides to use his million dollars to buy a really cool boat. Then he wins a boat race against the town bully. Fade to black.
Brokeback Mountain
I would have kept everything pretty much the same, but instead of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character dying at the end, I would have had Heath Ledger’s character die. It’s more accurate.
Ray
The Ray script was great, but if I were in charge, I would have left out the whole blind thing. It really didn’t make that big of an impact in Ray Charles’ life, so why even mention it? Also, I would have not acknowledged his music career.
Million Dollar Baby
With that kind of title, I would have gone an entirely different direction with the film. Instead of making a movie about a female boxer, I would make a movie about an abandoned baby girl that finds a million dollars in cash in her diaper. Imagine what a baby would spend all that money on! Ba ba’s, boo-pe’s, no no’s… anything she wanted! It’d be adorable, and much more interesting than that shitty Clint Eastwood film.
Saving Private Ryan
When they find private Ryan, instead of saving him in the form of rescue, they save him spiritually by making him join the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It’d be a great propaganda film for the Mormon community.
Silence of the Lambs
The only thing I would have done is extend the part where the guy is dancing in front of the mirror. I think it’s one of the funniest moments in cinematic history.
Dead Poets Society
I would change the ending where the kids stand on their desks and say, “O Captain my Captain!”
After standing there for a moment, I would have the legs go out on the desk that the guy on the far right is standing on, causing him to crash violently to the ground. It would change the once very dramatic film into a typical Robin Williams laugh riot.
Field of Dreams
After Ray Kinsella, Kevin Costner’s character, asks his father’s ghost to play catch, the movie ends. Not good enough for me. I would have the movie continue for a couple more minutes. After throwing the baseball back and forth for a while, Ray and his dad begin to talk. That’s when Ray finds out that he was adopted, and Ray’s actual parents are his in-laws. GOO!
“Is this incest?”
“No… it’s Iowa.”
Braveheart
At the end William Wallace, Mel Gibson’s character, yells “FREEDOOOOOOM!” while getting tortured.
I’d change the script so that Mel Gibson’s character yells “SUGAR TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITS!”
By Sean Patrick
I woke up with a red stain on my new shirt
and it’s all my fault.
I fell asleep with a popsicle in my hand.
I don’t think I’m an adult.
Gonna sit in front of my computer
and do some writing today.
There’s a Little People Big World marathon on
… I’m not going to do any writing today.
I should go to the gym soon
To help get myself thin.
Forget it, I’ll just skip a meal or two.
I worked for that Olsen twin.
My money is starting to run out
Maybe I’ll look for a job today.
There’s a Little People Big World marathon on
… I’m not going to look for a job today.
Before I know it the day is over
And I really haven’t gotten much done.
I realized today that I’m glad I’m not a little person.
It doesn’t look like it’d be fun.
By Sean Patrick
Here are some Yo Momma jokes I came up with today. Use them cautiously.
Yo momma gets nosebleeds!
Yo momma so fat, there’s an Amber Alert out for her belly button!
Yo momma so fat and stupid, she thought running for president meant running to the Jewel to buy President’s Choice cookies! (optional: “And they some nasty cookies!”)
Yo momma gave my dog rabies!
Yo momma’s toenails are so sharp, they were used to kill Nicole Brown Simpson!
Yo momma’s so clueless, she thought 9/11 was 0.818181!
Yo momma so poor and desperate, she brought Monopoly money to the currency exchange!
Yo momma’s eyebrows are so thick, Alan Thicke sued her! (with this one, quickly go into another “yo momma” joke before people realize that it doesn’t make sense)
Yo momma ate the library!
Yo momma’s missing!
Yo momma so dumb, she thought the vacuum cleaner was a device to clean her vacuum!
Yo momma so stupid, she thought she was putting farts into her gas tank!
Yo momma’s head so big, kids hope she gets dandruff so they can get a day off of school!
Yo momma’s a truck driver!
Yo momma’s so manly, she’s Burt Reynolds!
You momma so fat, she went back to the future and got stuck!
Yo momma’s dead!
Yo momma went to DeVry!
Yo momma’s so boring, she’s from Montana!
Yo momma eats so much food, she gonna get diabetes!
Yo momma likes flavors and winter so much, she ate Vanilla Ice!
Yo momma so deaf, she asked me to repeat myself! (optional: “Twice!”)
Yo momma so old, she knew the thirteenth president of the United States! (if the person replies with, “You mean Millard Fillmore?” come back with, “Dang, you’s a nerd!)
Yo momma eats’ bugs! (optional: “That’s nasty!”)
Yo momma has so many seizures… is she ok?
By Sean Patrick
Sven 
Sven will be my first child, and my scariest.
He will be born with a huge scar on his face and will only speak German. His knack for eating the neighbors pets and lighting hospitals on fire will frequently get his name in the paper. Later on in his life he will end up murdering one of his siblings. I will not turn him in because I fear him.
Career wise, he will thrive in the business of interior design and will be a regular on TLC’s Trading Spaces.
Lisa
Named after my favorite rapper, Lisa will be my only daughter.
Early on in her life I will expose her eyes directly to the sun, damaging her vision and making it necessary for her to wear librarian glasses for the rest of her life. Her first word will be “stay” and her first full sentence will be, “You said you caught me cause you want me and one day you’ll let me go; you try to give away a keeper or keep me cause you know you’re just so… scared to lose.”
I will give Lisa a lot of attention for a short period of time and then ignore her for the remainder of her life.
Harold 
Harold will hate me the most out of all my kids. My most misunderstood child, his passions as an adult will be cigarettes and illegal pornography.
At an early age he will show signs of softness, something I never had to worry about with his brother Sven. To toughen him up, I’ll drop him off at a juvenile detention center every summer like it was a boy scout camp. This will backfire and cause him to be severely introverted, overweight, addicted to nicotine, and unable to leave the house.
Even though he lives with me his entire life, his seclusiveness makes it so I only see him about seven times a year. Unfortunately he grows up to look exactly like me, making the memory of the painful summers I put him through impossible to erase.
Eventually he will be murdered by his brother Sven for reasons unknown.
Mistake 
Mistake will be my last kid and the cause for my vasectomy. As a child I will force him to pay me back for the medical procedure with his birthday money.
Wanting to correct the parental errors that I made with Harold, Mistake will unwillingly undergo gastric bypass surgery at the age of nine to avoid future weight problems. The procedure will pay off in abs.
Unfortunately years later it will be revealed that his mother had an affair and I’m not his real father. This will evoke my memory of getting a vasectomy years before Mistake was born. Feeling foolish, I will go back to the hospital to get one of my two vasectomies reversed, a procedure that will be the first of it’s kind and documented in numerous medical journals. This will be the closest I ever come to becoming a published writer.
By Sean Patrick
WARNING: THIS IS MY LONGEST BLOG TO DATE
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Sycamore, Il. My friend Adam and I were in town to celebrate my cousin Scott’s birthday, who was living in Sycamore at the time and had just turned twenty-six.
Like gentlemen, we decided to start drinking at 1 pm. We began at a bar that offered $1 beers and $1 burgers, a food and drink special that has lead to thousands of heart attacks and alcohol addictions.
Before we knew it it was 8pm. We had spent 7 hours at one bar, and since there are several bars around the area we decided that it was time to cash out and explore the exotic Sycamore nightlife. To our surprise, even with dollar burgers and beers, we were able to rack up a $140 bill. It didn’t seem physically possible. In fact, it’s not physically possible. If we drank and ate $140 worth of liquor and hamburgers on dollar beer/burger day, we would all be dead. But we weren’t. We also weren’t in the right state of mind to put up a logical argument. Since it was Scott’s birthday I picked up his tab, and then we headed out on the town.
The first bar we stopped at was a karaoke/biker bar across the street. I’ve never heard of a karaoke/biker bar. It’s like having a Nascar/gay bar. But the concept works. The bar was crowded. We hurried in to get some drinks and to sign up to sing karaoke. Unfortunately, Adam and I hurried in so fast that we didn’t notice that Scott was no longer with us.
After about twenty minutes in the bar, we started to realize that Scott wasn’t around. We didn’t think much of it at first, but after waiting around for another thirty minutes and not reaching him on his cell phone, we figured there was a problem. We decided to leave the bar and see if we could find him.
He was nowhere to be found. We called his cellphone numerous times with no luck. He was gone. After walking around for a while and looking for him, we noticed that there was a charter bus parked in a nearby parking lot.
It was a pretty nice bus, so I jokingly suggested that we should go in, see if there were keys, and if so, drive around and find Scott. Even though we would have never gone through with stealing a charter bus, we enthusiastically headed towards it anyways.
The front door was unlocked, so we opened it up and walked in. There was no one in sight. Giggling, I sat in the drivers seat, looking to see if I could find the keys.
Then from the back of the bus someone yelled, “GET OUT OF HERE!!!”
We turned around to see a fully naked man frantically running towards us.
“OH MY GOD!”
Terrified, we bolted out of the bus and into the parking lot, struggling to run away at a fast pace because of how much we were laughing.
“WHY THE HELL WAS THERE A NAKED GUY ON THAT BUS?!?”
What we had just seen made no absolutely no sense. After laughing for a few minutes, we gained our composure and found ourselves back at square one: drunk and alone in Sycamore without the only guy we knew who was familiar with the area.
As we were walking around trying to figure out our next move, we came upon a cop car with a policeman inside. Adam and I approached him and asked if he’d seen a drunk attractive blonde man walking around. It was the only way we know how to describe Scott. We also gave the cop Scott’s first and last name. He put out an APB, asking all the local policemen if they had seen him. There were no reports of him turning up anywhere.
“However, if we see him, we’ll pick him up.”
…oops…
I had just ratted Scott out for being publicly intoxicated. I hoped to God that they wouldn’t find him and arrest him, and if they did, I sure wasn’t going to tell him that I was the one who informed Sycamore’s finest of his drunken state. I walked away from the cop feeling like Benedict Arnold, and since it was getting cold, Adam and I went into the closest bar for shelter.
After two hours of drinking at the bar it was closing time. We still haden’t gotten a hold of Scott, and because we’d been drinking for another two hours, we were drunker than we’d been all night. We stayed until they kicked us out.
At 2 am we found ourselves in the lonely streets of Sycamore with nowhere to go.
Now what?
We knew that Scott’s house was about two miles away, but we had no idea which direction to go. Plus it was dark and we were drunk. We asked anyone we could find if they knew where the closest hotel was. The best answer we got was that there was a bed and breakfast down the road. That sounded expensive. Typically in a life and death situation, like the one we currently found ourselves in, we would be willing to pay that amount for shelter. But we had already had an expensive night. I dropped almost my entire life savings earlier at a bar where everything cost a dollar, and Adam had done the same. Plus we were buying beers for hours afterwards. We didn’t want to spend another hundred dollars. So we walked.
Eventually we stumbled to the Sycamore Fire Department.
The back door was open, so we entered. At first we couldn’t find anyone. However, because fireman have shifts where they work for three days straight, we knew they were somewhere in the building sleeping. And since fireman are supposed to help people, we figured they would be more than willing to give us a lift back to Elgin, which, if you go fast enough, is only a hour drive round trip.
Luckily, although my judgement was dangerously distorted, it was functional enough for me to immediately realize that breaking into a fire department to wake up a sleeping fireman and request a ride was a ridiculous idea. Adam couldn’t have agreed more. We left.
We were back on the street with nowhere to go. There was a teenager skateboarding around at this ungodly hour, so we talked to him for a while. Part of me hoped that he would become our friend and eventually invite us to his place for a sleep over.
“Great,” I thought to myself. “Sycamore has turned me into a child predator.”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would never want to stay at this kid’s place. The type of parent that allows their son to be out in the streets at 3am is not the type of parent that owns a house that I would want to sleep at. But it was getting cold and I didn’t have a coat, so it was becoming essential that we find a place to stay. That’s when the teenager informed us of a location that would take us in…
The 24 Hour White Hen Pantry up the street!!
We were saved! We’d found a place that we could stay at for free!
We rushed to the White Hen and informed the attendant of our plans to stay there for the next three or four hours. He seemed a little weary of the idea, but we assured him that we would buy stuff and wouldn’t be sleeping there. After he agreed, Adam bought us eight 5-Hour Energy Drinks and a bouncy ball.
After we downed two 5-Hour Energy Drinks each in 10 minutes and got my body temperature stabilized, we headed outside to play with our brand new ball.
Instead of playing the typical game of catch, we decided to play a game where we threw the ball as hard as we could at the pay phone attached to the White Hen. Unfortunately, because of the thirteen hours of drinking that preceded the purchase of the ball, our aim was off. Unwillingly the objective of the game went from throwing the ball as hard as we could at the pay phone to throwing the ball as hard as we could at the window next to the pay phone.
The attendant wasn’t excited about this game.
He informed us that we could play with the ball, but since we almost broke the front window at the White Hen over a dozen times, we could no longer throw the ball at the building. Fair enough. We quit our previous game and started playing monkey in the middle, with the White Hen building acting as the monkey. We were tossing the ball over the roof to each other, and within minutes, while trying to catch the ball, I tripped over a cement block and fell straight backwards, violently hitting my head on the pavement. Thanks to Bud Light I felt no pain, but that fall will most likely cause me some sort of mental disability in the future.
Because my brain had just physically shifted in my head, playing ball no longer seemed fun to me. We sat back inside until it was getting close to 5 am. Since the sun would be coming up soon, Adam and I decided to try and walk to Scott’s house. We drank two more 5-Hour Energy Drinks (making it 40 hours of energy consumed in a two hour period between the both of us) and started heading to Scott’s house.
We walked…
and walked…
and walked…
By 7 am the sun had come up and I was freezing. The worst part is that we were nowhere near a residential area. We were completely lost. We walked past a sign informing us that St. Charles was 24 miles away. This wasn’t good.
Then my phone rang.
It was Scott.
“Dude… I’m so sorry. I just saw that I missed sixty calls from you guys last night. Where are you?”
“We’re near a soccer field. Are we close to your place?”
“…… oh my God… not at all. Wait there. I’ll come and get you guys.”
We had walked in the opposite direction of Scott’s house.
Ten minutes Scott later came and picked us up. It turns out that the biker/karaoke bar wouldn’t let him in because his license had expired two days earlier, and his first instinct was to run back home. Literally, he ran home. Because he had been drinking he fell a few times on the way and had the scrapes to prove it. Then when he got home he went into one of the deepest sleeps ever, rivaled only by Juliet Capulet and Rip Van Winkle. He never heard his phone ring once.
Scott was living with his parents at the time. So when he took us back to his place to get some rest, my aunt, who suggested that I blog about this experience, was awake. We told her the full story, from the naked guy chasing us to Adam and I turning White Hen into a homeless shelter. When we were done telling our tale of survival, she asked…
“Why didn’t you just call the house and have me pick you up?”
……….fuck.
By Sean Patrick
Over the past few weeks my blogs have been few and far between. I apologize. I enjoy blogging immensely, but lately I haven’t been able to get around to it. Why? Well, there’s plenty of reasons.
I belong to a gym. One of my vows during this sabbatical was to get in better shape, so I signed up to work out at Snap Fitness. What I’ve found is that committing yourself to a workout routine takes time. The routine itself takes about an hour and a half, but talking myself into breaking that routine takes much longer. That’s my regular workout regimen. Wake up, think to myself how badly I need to go to the gym, and then talk myself out of it.
“It’s too bright outside. You don’t want to go blind.”
“Just don’t eat today. And maybe try to vomit.”
“Learn to be comfortable in your own body, like a plus sized model.”
I spend hours convincing myself that I don’t need to go to the gym. When it finally works and I decide not to go, it’s 10 pm and I’m tired. No energy to blog.
Sometimes I struggle for material. I try to think of stuff to write daily, but because I’m alone for eight hours a day, not much happens to me. So I have to try and come up with new ideas, and sometimes I’m not able to. Sure, I could always blog about the countless amounts of drunken escapades that I’ve experienced… but there are only so many drunken stories I can post on this website before my friends and family are forced to plan an intervention.
Books about celebrities taking meth. For Christmas I received the Andre Agassi book from my girlfriend, and at the same time my sister let me borrow the Jodie Sweetin book. (For all you jocks that don’t know, that’s Stephanie from Full House (For all you jocks that don’t know what Full House is… well… I just feel sorry for you)). The books are as addicting as the meth that they struggled with, and my preoccupation with them has caused me to spend less time blogging. Just another downfall caused by their drug habits.
Everyone’s Winter breaks. I consider the writing that I do as my job… my job in which the dress code is strictly pajamas and the hours range anywhere between 1 to 4 hours a day. I’m my own boss, and when friends of mine are on vacation for the holidays, I kindly grant myself a vacation as well. Since so many different friends of mine had numerous vacation days during the last couple of weeks, I was forced to give myself a bunch of time off. It was great for the morale of my company, but terrible for the productivity. So if you have any complaints regarding my recent lack of blogs, please take it up with my boss.
Avatar in 3D. I only saw it once, but for those of you who don’t know, the running time for the movie is 43 hours and 16 minutes.
The amount of drinking that I did the last few weeks. I think I may have drank myself into a temporary coma. For days I felt like the reincarnation of Terri Schiavo. Finally my brain is beginning to function regularly and my limbs are operating smoothly, giving me the ability to blog again. It’s a Christmas miracle.
