The Power of Friendship

I wanted to do a website like this for a long time ( I no it doesn’t seem like much but it will expand in the next few months.) In fact I came up with a similar idea about a year ago. I wanted to do it with my friends as a way for ME to work on my writing and for us to make money (honestly.) I was so excited about the idea that I called one of my friends and told him about it, asking him if he wanted to help. But that may have been my mistake. When he heard my “business plan”, he did nothing short of shooting it right down, reminding me that a lot of people are already doing websites like this. Instead of saying, “but No one has our opinions!” or “but we could at least try and see what happens.” (I wish I said that. Maybe you all would be visiting a full -on website by now and not just the framework.) I forgot about it. That’s the power friendships can have. Well, at least the negative power because I never second guessed it. Now of course that could be a reflection of me. The kinda person I was and everything. And it is in a way because I’ve grown up a lot of the year and as you can see NO ONE is telling me what to do. The thing is we value our friendships and when we are in need of advice or recommendation or acceptance we hope they will be truthful. That particular friend wasn’t thinking outside the box and in his eyes, his response was him being truthful. And I let that make the decision for me which was stupid.
It happened again earlier this year when I came up with another idea. A close friend of mine (he knows who he is) speaks Spanish and I wanted to use that and my writing for another “business idea”. I remember coming up with the idea from top to bottom. I even had the money and marketing etched out. And when I told him, not only did he think it was a good idea, he was willing to help. So we spent the time (we work together) hashing out ideas of how it would work out. Now just to let you know, this idea had been done many times before but there was and still is room for more. The problem: my friend isn’t the most motivated person I no and needless to say a couple of days later his interest in it seemed to be circling the zero percentile margin. Instead of saying your loss, I scrapped the idea completely.
A couple months later I was watching The Montel Williams Show. He had a special about young millionaires or inventors or something like that. And he had a girl on there who basically had done exactly what I wanted to do. And not only was she on a nationally syndication talk show promoting her product but she was in talks with a major retailer to distribute them. Which one? Wal-mart. When I saw this, I wasn’t to happy. I mean I was happy for her. I’m glad she stuck to something and was successful. But I was mad at myself and mad at my friend (who doesn’t know it until now when he reads this) for not being more eager to better himself. I know it comes from fear. Taking a risk is hard to do. I just wish he was willing because it would have helped. Because of that episode, I started working on my novel again. My step father recently told me that while your coming up with ideas someone else is actually doing it and he’s right. And now I am!
My point is that sometimes friends are wrong. Sometimes its all about the risk. The risk of succeeding or failing has better results than the risk of not trying at all. I know that now as I said. I just had to listen to the right voice (my heart) and not the wrong one.

Zombie Love! (Your love for my life)

This blog entry starts with the feeling i had for a girl. All blogs start with a girl in some kinda way. Well, at least all the Blogs that I’m interested in does. Blogs that start that way are easier to swallow I think. It doesn’t matter how dumb the person or the narrator is, if it’s done for a girl, expect the best judgment to get thrown out the window. Hollywood movies to romance novels to real life are filled with idiot guys that fall for too hot girls. But only a fraction of them in real life get their way. What’s next after that is up to the people involved. They either move on after the first date or the first year or the first time or go for the long haul. Others think it’s the long haul, until it falls apart like a 4th of July firework into a million pieces after a big boom.
My favorite example (and equally my weirdest) is in the remake zombie flick Dawn of the Dead. It starred Ving Rhames as a no nonsense cop, indie star Sarah Polley as a semi-grieving widow (her husband was bitten by a little girl who was a zombie) and Mekhi Phifer as a black man protecting his pregnant wife. This is still one of my favorite zombie movies although I know there are people out there completely disagree. Anyway, Mekhi wife or girlfriend (I forget) gets bitten and she is doomed to change. He knows this but he doesn’t tell any of the other people around, who are hiding in the mall (guy in love mistake #1.) In the deleted scenes on the DVD, it is shown that he is secretly tending to her wound giving her hope that life is going to be okay. What is seen is when his character has tied her up to a bed in a babies clothes shop. She has fully changed to a zombie and is desperately trying to escape so she can have crème a la black man or maybe she wants to bite him so they can live the rest of their lives as zombies and have zombie kids and live in a deserted zombie apartment with the rest of the undead. He clearly doesn’t want this. In fact, it’s not known what he wants at all at first. He attempts to cover her mouth with a belt my guess to stop her from screaming and growling at him (guy in love mistake # 2) but she’s not having it. She spits at him, growls some more. She is no longer a reflection of beauty that he fell for. Her skin is oozing and green and looks like she needs a lot more than antibiotics. Suddenly, her stomach is pulsing and she starts to give birth. When a nice southern old white lady wielding a gun (as you should when zombies are attacking) walks in, he is holding the fresh born baby, cradling it close to him (guy in love mistake # 3.) The old lady sees the mother tied up to the bed and like a smart non in love person would do, she points her gun at her in defense. Mekhi character babbles on about the old lady wanting to kill his family, the one thing he has left and they proceed to shoot each other. I know, sounds corny and that’s evident by all the people in the theater that were sucking their teeth as he talked. The white folks inside sucked their teeth because it was stupid from the moment she was bitten to tag along with a future zombie. The black folks sucked their teeth because it was bad enough there were only two black people in the movie, did they really have to kill off one of them? I smiled because it’s just a movie and I don’t take those kind of things serious. Silly me.
Something I thought about, though, was the fact that I’m sure two days ago, before the zombie plague, these two people were living a normal life. I’m also sure that if there was a movie made (a prequel, if you will) detailing how they met and how they fell in love and they ended the movie a day before they were on the run from hungry, hungry dead people, we’d have something to rival When Harry met Sally. People would leave the theater thinking they’ll live long lives together, grow old and watch reruns of Jeopardy as small children run around them like crazy. Little would they no about tomorrow. All that mattered was today. All that mattered was that moment. When I broke up with my ex (or the other way around, does it really matter) I had an epiphany that I no longer liked happy endings in love stories. This was because of the word tomorrow. When you’re in a relationship, you usually can’t predict tomorrow. No horoscope can tell you, Sylvia Brown can’t tell you, even God (for those who believe) can’t. There are clues, of course, like if tomorrow is the day you have decided to tell your love that you cheated on her or tomorrow you decided to point out that your love continues to leave the fridge open using up the energy and raising the bills that you have to pay. You know all this will lead to is arguing. The only thing is that you could chicken out at the last minute. What you were once going to bring up is no longer important and it would be best to wait until tomorrow. At the time when I was in a relationship with my ex, we had our ups and downs. But on any given day -or just the good ones I suppose- I wished I could stop the movie of my life. Right there, that moment that I walked her home and kissed her goodbye and said I love you, that’s when the movie ends. That’s when the credits roll. I’d even settle for when I make it home and call her to just say I’m safe. Bam! A Babyface song starts playing and you could finally stretch out of your seat. But we constantly argued leading to our official break up. The happy ending wasn’t happy at all. What happened? Tomorrow.
I once said I’d never air my dirty laundry. I’m to shy honestly. I don’t want my friends and family - who are not in the know- or my ex’s to give me a look or disown me or to hunt me down. I don’t need that. It’s not about airing laundry. My life is pretty tame compared to others, okay? I need you all to remember that as you read mine and the other writers blogs. I’m not Colin Farrell or Denzel Washington or LL Cool J . I’m not a porn star. I’m not a pimp or a player or gigolo. The amount of girlfriends I’ve had can be counted with my fingers, not my fingers and my toes. I’m me, a writer who has been praised for being the funniest guy one of my ex’s knew or having nice hands or being a good kisser for an amateur. Why bother with this website you ask? Why put it all in a blog(s)? Because there are women who have no idea the power they have. They don’t realize yet that when the right guy says you’re the love of my life, they are really saying your love for my life. The guys on the other hand, they may agree with me when they’re by themselves but when their friends show up, there is no way they ever would admit to it. Don’t worry guys out there, I got ya back!