I saw Pearl Harbor today, and I would recommend that movie to anyone. I'm not big on PG-13 movies, but for war movies, there is always an exception. Pearl Harbor sacrificed sexual scenes and heavy visual violence to make the PG-13 rating. This movie is very emotional, and the special effects make it more real. It is like the movie "Torra, Torra, Torra" in that it shows the Japanese side. The movie also goes on to show the Tokyo Bombing at the end, but I won't reveal anymore, go see it yourself =]

I am reading a book by Pat Conroy called “The Great Santini,” a book about a family growing up with a hardened career marine as a father. The only and oldest son of the family, Ben, is forced by his Dad to go on a date unless “he wants his nose broken in 8 directions.” The girl he is a daughter of Ben’s Father’s best friend, Colonel Matthews, so the two fathers set the date up. The girl hated the idea and didn’t want to go on the date, either. Ben’s almost 18 and a half and still hasn’t dated. So he goes to avoid trouble. At this point, I can totally relate with Ben and his first date experience. This is a great explanation of why I won’t date, even though this date scene is set in the 1960s.. If you want, read the 2 ½ pages I typed up from the book:

“He picked up Ansley Matthews at her house on Command Circle, charming her parents with a pleasant volubility that marked him as a blood member of the tribe. The child of the Marine office was a prodigy of the first impression. The old courtesies poured out of him at the approach of an adult. So often had Ben been drilled in the proper manner in which to greet Marines and their wives that his act was no longer an act but an intrinsic manifestation of his personality. Obsequiousness came easy to him. In fact, he enjoyed the worm’s-eye view that servility offered to him. Sitting in the living room, Ben had shone brightly in the companionship of Colonel and Mrs. Matthews, overpowering them with the heavy artillery fire of impeccable manners. He wished he could sit in that living room decorated heavily with the dreck of Okinawa, and hold forth with the adults all night, but Ansley entered the room with a look on her face that articulated a strong desire to leave the house immediately.
As he saw her, two thoughts occurred to Ben. One was that Ansley was far too pretty for him to date or consider dating, especially on his first excursion. He felt toadish beneath her gaze. The second was that Ansley wanted to on this date even less than he did. Her face was flushed with anger and resignation. She did not speak to either of her parents as they left the house, Ben filling in for her hostile silences by exuberantly bidding the Matthews farewell again and again.
Standing before the glowing decal of the 367 and staring with horror at the dripping fangs of the Werewolf mascot, Ansley put her hands on her hips and shrieked, “I’m not going anywhere with this silly, horrid thing on the side of the car. Do you want to make me the laughingstock of Calhoun? It’s going to be embarrassing enough for me tonight without riding around in this disgusting car.”
Ben opened the door to the car, his knees so weak that he seemed likely to collapse in the driveway. “This is the only car I could get tonight, Ansley,” he said.
She shook her head, clicked her teeth, and slid into the car. Rounding the car, Ben was trembling so hard he wondered if he would be able to drive.
For five minutes, Ansley refused to speak, ignoring every question he asked. Finally, Ben said, “Look, Ansley. I can take you back home if you want. My father and your father set this date up, you know.”
“My father forced me to go,” Ansley said. “I have a steady boyfriend.”
“I know you have a boyfriend. My father made me go tonight, too. Do you have any particular place you want to go?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere in this car. I’d rather die.”
“Do you like being a cheerleader?” Ben said, changing the subject and grateful that at least she had begun answering his questions.
“I’d rather cheer than anything in the world,” she said, and then looking at Ben asked, “Why don’t you play football? You’re big enough.”
“I don’t like football.”
“You’re nothing at this school if you don’t play football.”
“You don’t play football.”
“I guess that’s supposed to be funny.”
“I play basketball.”
“Basketball’s nothing. An absolute zero. Jim Don plays basketball and that’s the only reason I even like to cheer at the games. He’s captain of the football team, you know. I never saw you at any of the football games. Where’d your normally sit?”
“I never went to any games.”
“Boy, you sure are eaten up with school spirit, aren’t you, Ben? My daddy’s trying to break me and Jim Don up. But he’ll never be able to do it. I just hope Jim Don doesn’t see us tonight. He beat up one boy that dated me.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Ben said, instinctively checking the rearview mirror.
“He’s insanely jealous. But he’s so sweet. I just hope he doesn’t see us tonight. He told me he’d be out cruising looking for us.”
“We won’t go anywhere where he can see us.”
“Oh, we have to. We just have to. We have to make the scene at the Shack. My daddy told me to show you where all the gang hangs out. Jim Don has a new Impala. He packed tomatoes last summer and made enough money for a big down payment. Are those Weejuns you’re wearing?” she asked Ben.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Weejuns. Loafers. Everyone at the school wears Weejuns.”
“No, they’re just loafers. I don’t know what kind they are.”
“That’s a Gant shirt, isn’t it?”
“It might be. Mom bought it at the PX yesterday.”
“No, it’s not Gant,” she said impatiently. “The PX doesn’t sell them and there’s no loop at the back.”
“It’s Ivy League, though,” Ben offered. “It’s got buttons on the collar.”
“That’s no big deal.”
“I’ve never been to the Shack,” Ben said.
“It’s real close to the colored high school. The cutest colored boys in the whole universe work there. They’ll just die if they see me with you.”
Ansley turned the dial until she heard the Ape bellow from WAPE in Jacksonville. “Every car in the Shack will be tuned to the big APE,” she said, singing along with the music.
Ben turned into the parking lot of the Shack as Ansley slid down in the front seat until her head was not visible to anyone looking in through the driver’s side of the car. Choosing the loneliest, most desolate spot he could find, he backed under an overhanging tree in the far corner of the lot. Only then did Ansley’s eyes rise to window level and make a peremptory examination of the other cars.
“You don’t mind if I say ‘hi’ to a few of my friends, Ben. I see some cheerleaders and their boyfriends parked over there under the light. Order me a cheeseburger without onions, a Coca-Cola, medium, and a large order of fries if Lewis comes while I’m gone,” she said, blowing him a kiss through the window. She seemed shamelessly gratified to be escaping Ben’s presence.
Ben rolled down the window and leaned his elbow on the door. He tried to tighten up his face into a mask of insouciance, worldliness, and control. His stomach, though, felt like a ship breaking up on invisible shoals. As Ansley went from car to car, Ben watched he secretly, watching her leaning her breast into other boy’s arms, flirting with a self-indulgent expertise that seemed vilely calculating from Ben’s observation point. Her perfume lingered in the car and attacked him in the soft places of his boyhood. He saw her point his car out to a crowd of faces he half recognized, then he heard her high-pitched giggle and the laughter of her companions; he turned the radio up louder. He stole another look and saw how achingly pretty she was, this curving, mindless, nymphet who had perfected the insensate cruelties and the small meannesses of adolescence and sent them marching in snickering battalions toward Ben. Sitting there in the half-darkness, Ben felt cheapened, irreparably damaged by this girl he had known most of his life. But he was not surprised. He knew intuitively that girls like Ansley would elude him always, dance away from him, mocking him, whispering about him in the savagely thoughtless clusters of children living in the pure oxygen of their ordained season. Ansley was part of an aristocracy that brooked no intrusion, at least not now Ben thought.
Ben ordered two cheeseburgers without onions, two medium Coca-Colas, and two large orders of fries when Lewis, a tall, expressionless black man came to take his order. He was grateful to Lewis just for coming to his car. When the cheeseburgers came, Ben glanced toward Ansley to see if she would return to the car when the order arrived. But she remained where she was in the middle of several football players. Her fingers were traveling secretly to their necks, running along their collars.
Then he saw Jim Don Cooper’s car pull up beside her. He watched as Ansley entered the car, rushed across the seat, and kissed him long and passionately on the lips. They talked, made out some more, then talked again. He saw Jim Don turn complete around in his seat and stare belligerently at Ben. “Oh, great,” Ben thought, “now he comes over and beats the shit out of me while I’m sitting in the Werewolf Squadron car.” But Jim Don did not leave his car; Ansley did. With her girlish, provocative gait, she ran over to Ben’s side of the car and began eating French fries as she whispered to Ben.
“Ben, I want you to be the sweetest boy in the world and let me spent the rest of my night with my steady. We’re going to a party one of the cheerleaders is giving out at the beach. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, Ansley, I don’t mind at all,” Ben said.
“You’re so sweet. I told Jim Don you’d be glad to help us out. Now you won’t mention this to your parents, will you, Ben?”
“No. I won’t say a word?”
“O.K. Bye-bye. And I really had a great time with you tonight. I meant that seriously. You have a wonderful personality. And thanks a ton for being so understanding,” she said, leaving the car.
“Do you want your cheeseburger?” Ben asked.
“No, you eat mine too. Jim Don just ordered me one,” she said, turning and running back toward the Impala.
No one seemed to notice the car after its abandonment by Ansley Matthews; no one seemed to notice the modest solitaire of Ben in his fall from grandeur of courting cheerleaders. He was skewered by the eyes of strangers no longer. Thank God for the Big APE radio in Jacksonville that sang to Ben with the same dispassion it sang to every other car in the Shack. Ben ate his cheeseburger slowly, thinking about what he could do for the rest of the evening, knowing he could not return home early to face interrogation of his parents of the teasing of Mary Anne.
He started up the car, his eyes burning. Good-bye, my cheerleader, my first date. Good-bye my colonel’s daughter, my dark-lashed duchess, my beauty, my brown-eyed queen. Good-bye my one-hour bride, my sixty-minute love, my red-lipped empress, my Weejun-sod inamorata. Why do I love you and girls like you? Ben thought. Why do I love you in secret? Then, coldly, as he looked at her again, one final time, as he drove his car past her boyfriend’s Impala. As he saw her laugh at the decal and point, it was then that he knew her for the first time and he had an urge to lean out of his window and cavalierly shout au revoir to his enemy.

Allright, I've posted my SCHOOL PICTURE FUN DAY! Go check it out to see a day in my life!

I am taking my digital camera to school tomorrow to bust out my photography skillz (or not) and get some pictures. I'll probably post them on my site, so keep your eyes open =]

Ok, I know you can't comment on my site right now because the script is being all hoo-ha gay. I am probably going to switch hosts soon (aaronv.gamesurge.com) where I have unlimited space and lots of cool things I can do, plus I won't have gay .8k.com script errors! >:(

5 more days of school left! =]

The Pictorial of the Week is now up. This weeks' chick is Veronica Varekova. Check it out here.

The first day at Winn-Dixie went well. I learned how the computer system works, it's really cool, too. I'd hate to be the person that has to catalog all the bar codes on the products, though. =] I work from 1-5 today, it's time to make some moolah.