Versatile Blog Award!

A few weeks ago, Green Onion nominated me for this award.  However, it’s taken me so long to put this post up for two reasons.  First, I was being thoughtful about who I wanted to pass this along to.  Second, right after his nomination I got waaaaay into reading, writing, and talking about Ghostbusters (as you can see here, here, here, and here) and when that dust settled, I’d forgotten I never did this post!  But I always feel special when nominated/tagged and I enjoy the fun of passing these awards/tags along so here we are.  Thank you Green Onion for sharing the love!  Now let’s get down to business.

First, if you are yet to familiarize yourself with the wonderful world of Green Onion, do yourself a favor and use one of the handy hyperlinks in these first two paragraphs and let the reading commence!  He’s a brilliant book enthusiast with a tendency to discuss everything from comics to classics to children’s books.  Second, the rules of the award are pretty straightforward:  1) Thank the blogger who nominated you (again, thanks Green Onion!),  2) List seven fun facts about yourself, and 3) nominate up to fifteen other blogs you’d like to share this award with.  (Spoiler Alert: I always (and weirdly) start to get a little anxious when nominating so I never do the eleven or fifteen or whatever; I’m a three-to-five nominations sort of guy.)

Are you ready to learn some fun facts about yours truly??  Okay, here we go!

1)  The most valued and important app on my phone is my Auntie Anne’s app.  Not only does it keep track of all the money I spend there eating delicious, perfect, heavenly hot pretzels which then results in my earning coupons for free pretzels which it also keeps ordered BUT it has a GPS function to always let me know where the closest Auntie Anne’s is to me at any given time.  That, good friends, is called livin’ the good life.

Ahhh…wherever you see this sign, know that you are HOME.  I kid you not, many of the regular employees at my local Auntie Anne’s just have my “usual” order ready for me when I come up to the counter.  THAT is a life well lived!

2)  For a particularly committed April Fool’s Day, I once went to work (back when I was still a Youth Minister and worked with a bunch of elementary and middle school students every day) and pretended I had a twin brother.  I took two separate sets of clothes that I constantly changed throughout the day, even wearing my glasses (over my contacts) when I was “PJ.”  However, a good prank doesn’t end with one day.  In the days that followed, my brother David confirmed his existence to all the kids.  My closest friends kept it alive too.  A friend made a brilliantly doctored photo where David and I were with PJ annnnnd I even changed Jeff’s contact in my phone to PJ in for a time.  When students were skeptical, I’d let them call “PJ” on my phone.  Jeff was waiting on the other side with a family fact sheet and the San Diego Zoo site up (the back story I created was that PJ lived in San Diego running the cheetah and panda exhibits and this is why the kids never met him) to answer all their questions.

PJ, David, and myself (Michael John, hence the MJ and PJ (Patrick James) angle)…how great is this picture?!?  Can you spot where it was edited together??  I bet you can’t!  I still have this framed in my house.

3)  On a similar prank note, I once had a friend record my voicemail.  The idea/joke was for her to be as normal as possible making callers think they dialed the wrong number.  She said, “Hey this is Penny.  Sorry I’m not here, leave a message and I’ll call you back.”  Then, because you can’t rush a prank, I waited – always answering the phone if I legitimately could.  A few days later I was chaperoning a middle school trip to see a play.  I came out to about seventeen missed calls and a voicemail from Mom.  Mom told me someone had apparently hacked my phone so they had AT&T wipe and reset everything and I had to go back in to reprogram the messages and pass-codes.  Ahahahaha!!  This still makes me laugh :).  It was my friend Mike who called Mom, alerting her to the presumed problem.  Only Dad saw through it, saying, “Michael would do something stupid like this as a joke.”  Dad was right!

Okay, so there’s no real way to have a picture for a voicemail prank so I figured I’d include a fun family photo to help with visuals for the stories.  Here’s Dad, Mom, Kalie, Aunt Judy, me, Grandma, and David.  Note, everyone was fooled by the joke save Dad (and technically Kalie since I didn’t know her yet but I bet she would have been totally fooled too).

4)  During a particularly epic day of teaching, I once engaged in a lightsaber duel with my friend, co-worker, and fellow Star Wars fanatic Hannah.  I was in the middle of a lesson when she appeared at my door, lightsaber at the ready.  I pulled my second lightsaber (Obi-Wan’s) from my desk (because Hannah had stolen one (Anakin’s) for dueling purposes and obviously I have two lightsabers in my desk don’t you???  What would you do if a wayward Sith wandered by?!?) and the duel began.  It was intense.  There was the flourishing weapons and bounding on desks.  At the end, I won because I managed to get the high ground and…you know…that’s how it works with Jedi (thanks Revenge Of The Sith).  My only regret was not thinking to call her Hannakin while we were fighting.

The Force was strong with us that day.  And yes, the desks and chairs are all over the front of the room because we were using them in the fight.  Jedi have to be ready for anything!

5)  I’m an avid movie-goer.  What can I say?  Even with ticket prices rising I love going to the movies!!!  There’s just something magical about settling into a darkened theatre and taking a trip to another world for a few hours.  Whether it’s pure escapist fun, a thoughtful and emotional drama, or a comedy (where I will absolutely laugh the loudest in the theatre), I love it all.  I love opening nights!  I love the early bird matinees!  I love the Classic Series!  Honestly, writing this makes me tempted to stop the post right now, go to the movies, and come back to finish this later.  Anyway, David and I often enjoy some air hockey before a show.  One year we had an epic (and ultimately expensive!) run, playing at least three times each trip.  Well one night we put our money into the table and played our game.  I beat David and, in faux frustration, he slammed the table…and the puck fell out again.  What?!?  The table reset!!!  So we played and we played and we played and we played and…we played.  Neither of us kept track of the time but I can say I was actually sweating from physical exertion by the end of the most EPIC of all air hockey tournaments.  We stopped not because the table stopped giving us free games but because we were scared my blood sugar might drop to a dangerous level from playing so long (oh, I have Type One Diabetes in case you were unaware…that’s important for this part of the story).  It was crazy!!!  It never happened before or since but what a legendary night.

Here is the actual table where David and I had our legendary experience.  Note, this isn’t the night it happened nor do I have an action shot from the happening because David and I were too buys LIVING LIFE’S AWESOMENESS to take a picture.

6)  I’m presently growing my hair back out (it used to be down past my shoulders and I buzzed it all off over a year ago) to go full on Wolverine for Hugh Jackman’s last turn as the character in March of next year.  My brother’s been asking me since the fist X-Men came out in 2000 to commit to the mutton chops for opening night.  I’ve never done it either because I didn’t want to or I’d honestly forgot to start growing  them out in time.  But David’s waited sixteen years so he deserves this.  And Hugh Jackman deserves this sort of tribute too!  So I figured, as amazing and easy as rocking the buzz cut has been (not to mention the ability to shave things like the Rebel Alliance symbol or Iron Man’s face into the back of my head for the opening night/weekend of important movies), if I’m going to do Wolvie, I want to do it right.  I’ve never been one to dress up for opening night (although I love the people who do!) but I’m committing.  The mutton chops will be there, in full glory.  The hair will be long again and gelled up to Logan-levels of awesomeness.  I’ll have the dog tags, the nehru jacket, the claws, and all of it.

This’ll take SOOOO MUCH hair gel but it will 100% totally be WORTH IT for a wonderful Wolverine III opening night.

7)  Lastly, there will be no post on the new Suicide Squad movie until next week at the earliest.  I know, I know…you’re sad.  Why the delay??  “You’re a comic blogger Michael, shouldn’t you be on top of this?!?”  Well a certain Jeffrey (of The Imperial Talker fame) is getting married this weekend!!!  Aaaaahh!!  Jeff and I have been best friends since our college days, sharing many a nerdy deconstruction and academic analysis.  From scholarly exploits to Star Wars intricacies, we’ve done it all (and continue to do so!).  So I’ll be enjoying some brilliant wedding festivities and handling some best man duties.  Yay!!  Please keep Jeff and Jen in your thoughts and prayers this week as they begin their new life together.  Aww…and woo hoo!!

What’s this?  Ah nothin’…except TWO GUYS WHO WERE FIRST IN LINE FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS LAST DECEMBER!!!  We had tickets to the first 2D showing (of course I bought the first tickets in town too!).  Our show started at 7:50 that night and we got to the theatre around 7:30 that morning.  Huzzah!

Alright, so there you have it.  I hope you’ve appreciated this fun little trip down memory lane.  Now we can turn to the extra fun part – my nominations!  As I’ve said before, one of the most exciting things about being a part of the blogging community is how supportive it is.  It’s so much fun to write and, in so doing, meet a bunch of other people who are equally passionate about their writing!  So that’s why I always love doing these tags and/or awards.  I like the chance to nominate others.

That being said, if you’re in my little nomination list below and don’t feel like doing the post, please don’t feel you have to.  I’m not trying to share guilt or anxiety!  I’m only interested in sharing the love.  Just know, whether you do the post or not, I think you’re blog’s pretty versatile and I really enjoy reading it!  Okay, now here are my three nominations for the Versatile Blog Award!

1)  Heather and her blog Heather Hobbs’ a Book Blog

2)  Chantale and her blog Cupcakes & Horror

3)  Angelica and her blog Write On

4) Kalie’s (non horror, eclectic side blog project) A Thousand In a Decade

If you don’t already read the blogs above, I encourage you to check them out.  They’re fun, fresh, and I always look forward to their new posts.  Best of all, whenever I read their posts they always leave me with a smile on my face.