The Version 3 blog of Richard [Reeses2150] Kohut
About Me
I've got ADHD, and I am an artist. You do the math... Linksarchives
Old Blogs |
Monday, April 27, 2009OW, OW, OW, OW, OW.....
Listen Up!
BIG NEWS! I JUST GOT A SECOND DEGREE BURN ON MY THUMB BY SPILLING BOILING WATER FROM RAMEN ONTO IT! lol note to self, two ramen packages will NOT fit into one bowl. :: Bit of bad news I'm afraid, Shoprite finally got back to me and said they can't hire me again because I was fired. Oh well, BUT good news, I've got another lead on a new job with Home Depot, who one of my friends works at, so that's another opening. I've still got to check back with AMC Theater first though. That and call back the US Census department to see where that stands from long time ago. :: College is almost done, yay! All my classes seem to be doing just fine, including the craptastic ones, and it looks like for once I may get higher than a C on everything! But who knows right now, I don't want to jinx it. Overall though, I'm just happy to be almost done so I can FINALLY concentrate on getting a job so I can go to the IJA in July. :: Oh, did I not mention that? I'M GOING TO THE IJA! Finally, right? I'll be heading down with a good friend of mine who I haven't seen since elementary school, Zach. He doesn't know how to juggle, but he's coming up from Florida to hang out with me for a week and maybe even learn to juggle himself. :: Tech.MCC News! We've got a meeting left to go and we're FINALLY going to be using the robotics kit we ordered. other than that, we'll also be helping out with the end of the semester party at MCC this year, seeing as how there is no all college night thanks to the douchebag that brought a GUN to the last one.... :: Sorry about the missing post last week, I really have been busy trying to get a damned job in this economy and making sure that I'm up with all my college assignments. Daily Life: So while I wait to get a job, it's warm enough for me to START MOWING LAWNS AGAIN! Something I haven't done for 2 full years, but the second I started I INSTANTLY remembered why I hadn't. But that actually wasn't the first thing that happened on Saturday of this week. First of all, last week I found someone in Sewaren throwing away a massive rear-projection TV that was completely intact and still worked. I knocked on the door, asked if I could have it, and scooped it up into the truck myself. That was an amazing feat in itself because the thing weighted about a hundred pounds and was bigger than I am, but I just man handled it up somehow, and then the guy came out of the house and started a conversation with me, and from there, he invited me to a job interview at where he worked. So Saturday I had to get up at 8 AM in order to get picked up and follow him all the way to Tinton Falls to sit in a "join our company" pitch. I saw through it around 30 minutes in. It's a pyramid scheme, so I sat until it ended, and I won't be going there. So now I arrive back home around 10:00, and I immediately am off to mow lawns. Now, I've ranted before about how much I hate mowing the lawn, and now I'm stuck here in the 80+ degree weather with two lawns to mow, running on no breakfast and about 4 hours of sleep, trying to make 25 bucks. Granted the 25 bucks is nice, but to refresh you on why I hate the lawns, I think it's too much effort for not enough payback, the result of an hours work only lasts a few days, it's time spent working outside sweating in the heat with mosquitoes biting at your limbs, and all that grass has to go somewhere. I just hate doing it, and I hated doing it the entire hour I was out there with a crappy mower and a hefty bag. Well I finally got done with THEM and now I was on my way home to eat and take a well earned nap. So after munching on some Pizza Bagels, I traveled upstairs, took a nice shower to cool off, and slipped into bed, only to have my mom suddenly yell at me about the rest of the family going off to a baseball game and leaving me with a list of stuff to do, most notably was to MOW OUR GOD DAMNED LAWN. I made mental notes and fell asleep for a while. Well guess what happened, I woke up around 6:00, and it was too late for me to do the lawn before it was gonna get dark, and I was lying to her about it on the phone when she called. I hurriedly vaccumed the downstairs and put my clothes in the wash lie she asked, but I figured I'd wait to do the lawn tomorrow anyways, seeing as how it was too late, and it really isn't critical. Well she and dad apparently didn't think so, barging in and just yelling at me in general about it, not asking for an excuse or even willing to hear one, just yelling more meanly than I've heard in a long time, with me sitting there puzzled as to what the hell the big deal was. Eventually they left me alone and mom later came in to apologize, but I still had to more the lawn the next day..... Juggle This: Well I haven't really been pushing my abilities as of late in terms of high numbers, BUT! I have been working on a lot of simpler tough moves I've as of yet been unable to do. I started off by trying to get 3 ring shoulder slides, and I managed to get a full flash to a cascade on camera! Woo! But I didn't stop there, a few days later I was practicing my 2 box stuff because I hadn't in months, and all of the sudden I found myself with the idea to do a face-on one-handed stack flip, where instead of both boxes rotating sideways in opposite directions, they rotate face forward in opposite directions, and I managed to get THAT on camera as well! Then right after doing that I made a reverse side-on version where the top box made a full spin and the bottom box a half spin. Talk about technical box tricks! Oh but the fun didn't stop there, I then came up with a short while later, 3 ring full reverse penguin catches! I made a video, posted it online, and then proceeded to try it out some more, and I've gotten the move down completely, I can run it to a qualify in a full reverse pattern, and I've run it to a qwualify doing inward flat-fronts as well! Thay look so good on camera, I can't wait to complete my latest video with them. Oh yeah, you heard right.... My next video is coming out soon! I'm almost done gathering footage for it, and it's going to be AMAZING. All the tricks I've done are awesome, all the footage looks great, and I'm now goign to have the video released in 720x480 resolution, aka WIDE! So yeah, keep an eye out for that somtime in early summer! A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150 Wednesday, April 15, 2009DAMNIT! My Schedule!
Listen Up!
Sorry again that I'm late with this post, it's just been so busy recently I haven't had the time to do anything like new art or whatever, much less keep up with this. I will be able to in about two weeks when classes are finally over, but for now, argh! :: Well college is nearing the end, and it appears that I'm going to pass all my classes. But I still need to do the final assignments for each, and they all suck. In photo class we need to do a series of pictures to tell a story, but at least we can finally use digital! Applications in Business (AKA most useless class ever) I've still got 2 nice juicy assignments to do, that are simply "Copy the typed stuff into the program one bit at a time", easy as hell, but time consuming, that and I've got the final powerpoint presentation to do. 2D Design luckily we've just got one more project to do and it's done in class, and my last engineering class seems to just have quizzes and tests left which I'm totally ready for. But the bottom line is, I've got so much busy work it sucks.... :: The job search? Ugh.... I'm still waiting for responses from AMC and Shoprite, and I'm also looking at what other jobs I know people that work there. AMC I can't keep calling because they said the next round of hiring is done at the end of the month when the movie season begins, and Shoprite my uncle just said he's talking to the manager on Saturday when she gets back. A bit frustrating.... :: Now as for the talk I made last week about possibly doing a video for Juggle This, I still want to, but the footage kind of sucks the more i watch it, and I don't have the time to edit it anyways, so I'll probably still do it, just not until a week or two from now. :: Daily Life: Well I guess yesterday was a good enough example of how busy my life is that I can go through it and you can see what's going on with me. So Monday I stayed up to around 4:00 or so doing the usual stuff I do at night and catching up on all my forums and internet sites. I stayed up that late because I had class from 6-10PM that day, so it was really just 6 hours of free time I had, which is just enough to catch up on the TV shows I want to watch, check all the websites and forums I visit, and manage my daily needs. I had to wake up at 10:30 in order to get to my first class of the day at 11:00. So basically I'm running off of 5 hours of sleep to start, which has been a BIG trend recently seeing as how I have class at 11:00 two days of the week and one day where it begins at 1:00 PM. So I've just been tired all the damned time this semester, even falling asleep in some classes, which has never happened before since high school. But I digress, moving on.... That class ends, and it's now 1:00. I set up a to-do list of things to go do before I got home and so I went to it. While I was still on campus, I went to the student activities office to keep up on a thing for Tech.MCC, and then after that happened I went to my advisor to talk about my fall semester courses. This all took a little time up, so it's now 1:40 as I'm starting the engine to the truck and heading off to do the other things I need to. I went to the bank, the post office to mail something, the gas station to fill up, and finally to Subway to eat for the first time of the day. This all took about an hour and a half, so it's 3:00 now. On my way home, I pass by someone's house a few blocks from mine, and I see a big rear-projection TV that was on the curb, perfectly undamaged. I pass it and then decide to circle around and stop. I go up to the door and ask if it was being thrown away, if it still worked, and if I could take it. Yes, yes, and yes I got in response, and so I took the ten minutes to pick it up and heave it into the truck. When I got home I spent another 20 minutes or so wheeling it into the backyard and covering it with a tarp on all sides, including underneath. Why'd I pick it up? Well it's a free big screen TV for if/when I move, and even if not, inside is a wonderful parabola that can be used as a juggling device. Besides, a free working TV! So after all that was done it was about 4:00 or so, and I've got to leave at 5:30 for class at 6. So I basically have only an hour and a half to relax and take a shower while helping grandma and doing stuff around the house. Well needless to say the two hours go like butter and I haven't gotten anything done, and now it's suddenly time for my last class of the day, which afterwards I was going to head out for dinner with friends. So class goes until around 9:30, and now I'm off to Houlihans to hang out and keep up my actual social life, because recently I've been feeling the need to keep my friends closer. It's not a bad time, and there's not really much to talk about other than that I ordered a burger and hung out until midnight when we disbanded. And now I'm on my way back home, and I arrive at around 1AM, with 3 hours left to catch up on all the stuff I'd missed today before I need to go to sleep and do it all again..... Juggle This: As you can see from the aove section, I really haven't had much time to practice, and Jacob I haven't seen since Juggle This because he's been absent from class, but I did find the time on Monday to practice and get an awesome trick on tape. I made my first qualify of a 5 ring half shower! I'd been struggling with the move for SO LONG and recently I just clicked about how high the over throws should go over the straight throws, and I managed to get a run of 16 catches in 6 minutes of trying! Yay! I'm so happy to know that even with hardly any practice, I'm still improving. RANTING TIME: Well I figured I've made the last few posts a little short, and I've got a few nice rants I've made to other sites recently, so here goes nothing... So this discussion went around on the central Jersey craigslist Rant and Raves section for the past day, and I thought it'd be goo to share. Here's the first post that kicked it off: Person 1's original post
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Person 2's response
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Person 3's response, aka THA ASSHOLE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY first response
Now that post actually got me about 2 responses on the boards saying that I'd made their day, and one woman who actually emailed me and said thank you for being so clear headed and stuff! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Person's 3's bold attempt at insulting me....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And my final respone to him, posted but 30 minutes ago
A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150 Friday, April 03, 2009Double Juggle
Listen Up!
First off, sorry about missing last week's post, I was pretty low on sleep all week and I just didn't have the energy after midterms. And as for why this post is late, again, same thing, a mixture of no enough sleep, job hunting, and college. :: Well my job search has gone down to focusing on two final candidates. Lowes Cinema in New Brunswick, because it's a job I'm qualified for and my uncle Jerry works there. Then I could also go and try to work back at Shoprite again, because I was a good worker and my uncle Pete still works there as a manager. I've just sent in the application to Shoprite, and I've already talked to the hiring manager at Lowes. I really hope I get the job at Lowes, it's a job I think I'll really like. :: College seems to be running smoothly. My grades are good, and I haven't missed many classes. Of course now is the time to register for Fall courses, and wouldn't you know it, they hate me. They schedule the classes I need right on top of each other, and they say I need to finish the prerequisite course in order to register, and the prerequisite courses are what I'm in right now! How much sense does that make?! I'm gonna go talk to the supervisors tomorrow or sometime about that, cuz it's crap. :: Now, with my podcast, well, if I'm having trouble finding time for my BLOG, I have absolutely NO time to do JoJ. Season 3 is over anyways, and I met my promise to put out a half dozen episodes, so I'm happy with season 3. Even though I don't have the time to plan out season 4 yet, I'm still thinking about it, and for this upcoming season my idea is to do it over the summer and have it be a debate show. Basically take a classic juggling related debate, or whatever isn't being talked about, and go between myself and another co-host in a debate format where we explore the topic and just try to generally provoke thought. I think that'd be great, who knows if it'll work though... :: Juggle This: So you all remember Jacob right? Youtube user "TheRisingIris"? Well, I told him that there was this juggling convention in Brooklyn coming up and he instantly wanted to go with me. So we ended up running around with all these different plans and eventually it turned out that he'd drive us in his car on Friday and Saturday and stay over my place which is right next to Staten Island Friday night. So that was the plan, we'd go to the class we had together at Middlesex County College on Friday and then as soon as it ended head back to my place to swap cars and barge ahead to Brooklyn. We managed to drive in really easily and as we walked in, I couldn't help but say to him "Welcome to my world", like an absolute dork. But alas, I dropped off my equipment at the bleachers along with him, and quickly introduced him to Adam, whose place I had stayed at last year and who is also a novice juggler. While tI let the two of them get to know each other and practice a bit, I went around and looked for the familiar faces I know and love seeing, faces like Michael Karas, Emmanuel, Paris, Jacob (from Canada), Jake Ledermen (there really are a lot of jugglers name Jake aren't there), and others. I then proceeded to juggle my ass off and socialize with the lot of them before Jacob and I decided to go get ourselves Pizza. So as we got pizza with Jacob from Canada coming with us, we discussed some of the finer details of what it's like to be absolutely addicted to juggling and loving it with the young juggler. It's a conversation I don't get to have very often, and it's one I love giving because I love giving advice from experience. After we finished pizza the rest of the day was pretty uneventful, the two of us went from trying to get the other to push their limits (me trying to get Jacob to get 6 catches of 5 balls and him trying to get me to do a 5 up 360), to socializing with other jugglers, to just having a good time there, and then finally it was 10:30 or so and time to leave. Now, this was the interesting bit, is we had two routes we could take to get back to my place, the first was go back through Staten Island, which was a much simpler and easier route, but we'd have to pay a big toll going back into Staten Island from Long Island. The second option was to go across the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel to Rt 1/9, which was much more complex, but completely free. We decided to go the free route, and found our way to the Manhattan bridge fairly easily, but then had to loop around a block or two because Canal St was blocked off coming straight from the Manhattan Bridge for some reason. We made it back though, and the next day we did the same thing with no prob at all. So day two, the real day I'd been looking forward to. We got up around noon and made our way into NYC to get to the Club Passing workshop, because if I wanted Jacob to learn one thing, it'd be club passing, because there is no greater joy in juggling than passing, especially clubs. So we spent time at the workshop and he managed to get 3 passes in 6 count before we went back and hung out more. The rest of the day until 7 was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, going around juggling and mingling, and for me I spent an hour hanging out and throwing around ring ideas with Michael Karas and Emmanuel, which was an absolute dream for me. I managed to learn from them a backcross pulldown and pulled off a 3 ring pancake pulldown (where I throw all three rings up as cakes as a flash and catch them all on the head.) It was all just great. So then 7:00 came by and it was time for the Gym to close and the show to start, we split a pizza pie between my Jacob and a random New Yorker to save money, and then made our way to the theater. The first half of the show was gfood, but nothing overly spectacular, until the dance act. Holy Crap was that act absolutely incredible, Kenichi Ebina is a genius, if you don't believe me, just watch the frickin trailers! Then came intermission, and me and Jacob spent some time passing in the waiting area until the lights flickered and we went back in for what I knew would be a most insane closer. Karas and Paris, holy crap guys, I knew it was going to be awesome, but I had no idea it would be as incredible as it was! I really wish I could share pictures or video, because it was so much better than anything the both of them have done solo. But we need to move on, there were more acts, like Lin Junming doing a ten ring flash onstage! Holy, wow! I mean, the rest of his act before then was ok, doing 3 ring tricks and such, but that ten ring flash, god damn. I looked over at Jacob after it sunk in for me and he was still sitting there with a blank expression of awe. Then it was finally time for Get The Shoe! I'd been waiting to see them live since I first saw their trailer, and they only had one drop in the entire performance. Everyone, as I expected, was blown away by the performance, me, Jacob, everyone. Just can't stop talking about it for the next 20 minutes after the show ended! Insane! Then came the time waiting for the Renegade show to start, where I would debut my "Muffin Clutches", but that comes later, they opened up the cafeteria right next door, but failed to mention the ice cream, smoothies, and drinks were not being served, so I stood in line for about ten minutes before hearing from Paris that they weren't selling any of what I wanted. Oh well. The renegade show started and I got up on sage and did the most humiliating trick ever, I picked up each of my man boobs and stuck a juggling ball under each one, I the n juggled 3 more, threw them up, took out the other two, and continued a 5 ball cascade. And that is how to do Muffin Clutches. The rest of Renegade was pretty good, of course nowhere near as good as last years I think, but still good. I spent half of the show though helping Jacob find his cell phone as it fell out of his pocket. So once the show ended, I said my goodbye's to everyone and me and Jacob headed out, still raving about Get The Shoe. A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150 |