Love On The Big Screen

Love On The Big Screen is a novel, written by William J. Torgerson.  This book is about a guy, named Zuke, who is trying to find love. 
In many ways, I can relate to Zuke.  Throughout my formative years, many people would tell me that I was trying too hard to fall in love or find the right girl.  At times, I would say that Zuke is obsessed.  It seems like he has a whole business plan for how to capture the heart of Abby. 
To show you how the story is layed out, I had forgotten Abby's name.  For some reason, I kept wanting to call her Amy.  I looked through summaries of the book and reviews and could not find her name anywhere.  That's because this isn't about her.  She is any girl in Anytown USA.  It could have been any female.  The story was more about Zuke game planning to win her heart and we saw the journey through his eyes, which I found to be unique.  You're not usually privy to the guy's point of view. 
I found the story to be well organized.  I could clearly see the Rising Action, Climax, then the Falling Action.  I was sucked in during the Rising Action because I wanted to see how Zuke's pursuit of Abby was going to turn out.  I really need to go back and read the book again because I was so interested in this aspect that I glossed over so many of the character building details that could help me to put together the entire picture of who Zuke is.

The Bottom Line

I loved this book, because it made me think of my college life.  I have to admit though, I never had a friend that was nicknamed Flabby, although I could have easily inserted Big Red.  The point is that we all have a group of friends in college that we do weird things with, or have unusual rituals that we share amongst each other.  Reading this book took me back to a place where I could recall these activities. This book will take you on the journey that you once took in high school or college with a great group of friends that you did everything with.  What you won't get in Love on The Big Screen is the predictable journey.  Life isn't predictable, so I feel like that is the one thing that Torgerson did that most people can embrace.  He stayed true to himself by taking us on a voyage that made me think he was waiting to see how it was going to turn out himself.  Life is not something that you can map out and come out with the canned response.  Whenever you think things are lining up, there is always an unusual circumstance that comes up that is unforeseen.  That's what I like most about Torgerson's writing style. 

What I didn't like is that the book ended where it did.  I would love for there to be a sequel or epilogue that picks up right where this book ends.  It wasn't exactly a cliffhanger ending, but it left me wanting more.  I suppose that's the gift of a good writer.  They leave you wanting more.

The Birth of Dorm Ball

One day, my friends and I were hanging out in my dorm room and someone began throwing a basketball up in the air, as if they were taking the game winning shot in the NBA Finals or something.  As we continued to talk, the ball continued to go up towards the ceiling and fall back into their outstretched arms.  As this went on, we collectively wondered how close he could get the ball to the ceiling without the ball hitting.  From there, Dorm Ball was invented.

How to play Dorm Ball

1.  There are 10 rounds

2.  There are 2 players

3.  Each player sits at the far corner of the room so that they are at the furthest point, diagonally, away from each other.

4.  Each player gets one throw per round.  During this throw, they have to throw the ball to the person on the opposite side of the room.  The object is to arc the ball as close to the ceiling as possible without having the ball hitting it.  Also, the ball must go to the other player without the partner having to move from their seat to catch the ball.

5.  There is a third person, who sits in the middle and scores the entire competition for both sides.

6.  Scoring is from 0-10.  A 10 is in the "I can't believe that didn't hit the ceiling category".  Anything less than 5 is a completely pathetic throw.  If the ball hits the ceiling or if the opposing player is unable to catch the ball because it's a bad throw, then a score of 0 is awarded for that round.  If the ball lands short of the opposing player as a catchable throw, but that player drops or doesn't try for it, then there is no penalty to the thrower.

7.  After each player has completed 10 rounds, the scores are tallied and whoever has more points is the champion.  If the players are tied, then there is a 3-round overtime period.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

This is a little delayed, but in the category of "Better Late Than Never", here is my recap of the St. Patrick's Day Parade held in Uptown.  It's remarkable to me that the only college to be represented in the parade was good old St. Bonaventure, even though our school is a good 10-12 hours away.  It was an early start to the day at Town Tavern, where a good amount of St. Bonaventure graduates met up for some fellowship and laughs.  By this blogger's estimate, there were about 45-60 alumni packing into this bar. 
There was a lot of laughing and reminiscing about the good times at school and updates about our current situations.  There were 3 people at Town Tavern who actually lived on my floor during Freshman year at Bonas.  Small world!  We spent the wee hours of the morning catching up before heading into the position for the parade.  Armed with our St. Patrick's Day T-Shirts and Bojangles cups, we all marched to the float that you can see above and below.  You probably could have fit about 20-30 people on the float but, for some reason, the person driving the float only wanted about 8 people on the float.  Truth be told, our float wasn't exactly designed by the Acme Float Company.  With every step you took on the float it rocked one way or the other.  We probably could have done a great Hawaii 5-0 skit by using the float as a surf board that was going over some waves.  A great idea, that obviously went unconsidered is that if you don't want the float to hold more than 8 people, than build things onto the float that prevent people from standing on there.  As it was our float was just a series of platforms just inviting people to ride on the float.  I'm pretty sure Miss America never had to endure this.  In any event, we went through the parade with about 15-20 people on the float, and most of us were bouncing up and down to the music. 

You can get a better view of the float from the picture above.  As you can see, there is a significant amount of real estate for people to go on the parade route from the float. 

I've been to several parades as a child and it never occurred to me that the people in the parade could be "Average Joe's" like my classmates and I.  It was truly amazing how many people came out just to see the floats go by.  There were several people who recognized our school and "Cat-Called" to us from the crowd.  It was so exciting to hear so many people cheering for our university.
The actual parade route was probably about 30-45 minutes, but we had such a great time!  There were easily thousands of people in attendance.  At any particular junction, you could see that the crowd was about 10 people deep and it seemed to go on forever.

This is my view from the float.  You can see the impressive crowd along one side of the float.  This was easily rivaled on the opposite side of the street.  Again, you can see how amazed these kids are by our float.  You would have thought Chris Rock was on the float or something.  I seriously spent at least half of the parade thinking to myself, "I wonder what these kids are finding so enthralling about our float.  Did someone fall off the float or something?"  The good news is that no one fell off, it's just us and our green shirted unity that the masses had their attention sucked into.  My friend, Joe, is seen walking along the float in an effort to calm the float driver's nerves after asking, several times, for people to get off of the float.  For some reason, I don't recall hearing the driver asking.  Perhaps it was the girl next to me who was yelling and bouncing up and down like she was on a trampoline.  Let's just say that stability was not a big selling point of this particular float.  A large gust of wind...who am I kidding....any wind at all would have been problematic for this float as it was teetering and tottering as it was under perfectly ideal conditions.  I'm pretty sure it's parade float days are in the rear view.

Once the parade route was over, we all went our separate ways.  There was a cool Irish festival that was located at the end of the parade route and there were so many things to see.  There were Irish knick-knacks to buy.  Against my better judgment, I bought one.  There was food and drinks that could have satisfied even the pickiest individual, and to top it all off, there were singers and dancers.  It was a lot of fun!  I can't wait until next year so that I can relive the entire experience!

LLEGANDO A...BOO-BOO-DINI IN FLORIDA!

What is a dog to do if she can't take a vacation once in awhile?  Poor Sammie!  She has the daily grind of laying in bed, eating breakfast, taking 2-3 walks, and then sleeping around the house all day with a swizzle or two in the mix to break things up. 
Last weekend, she got to go on a much needed vacation to see Grandma in Florida.

Here we are in the car on the way down to see Grandma!  As you can see, Sammie is very excited!  She loves going for car rides and by the looks of this, you would think that we do also.

She loves staring down other drivers as they pass by.  I'm pretty sure that they always blink first.  She's a tenacious little one when it comes to her mind tricks.

The sun and paparazzi were bothering her eyes.  Of course, we had to protect her privacy!

Photo time with her favorite Great-Grandpa, Bop!   Just as we said "Cheese", she saw a cookie out of the corner of her eye.

Picture time with Sammie and Grandma!  Again, distracted by dreams of cookies that might be slightly off-camera.  Alas, it was not to be.

Relaxing in the pool!  Sammie's wondering "Where in the world did my sunglasses get away to?"

Swimming lessons for Sammie!  Here she is, learning how to float.  Look at her paws.  They are screaming, "This is the life!"

The end of a tiring day.  Sammie is like "Daddy, I can't swim one more lap, carry me out please!"

Leardini is like Smith

When I was growing up, I had many people tell me that my name was unusual.  Well, you can only listen to this so many times until you conduct some informal research to see exactly how unusual it really is.  Well, come to find out, if you research the name Leardini in Italy, it turns out that's it's much more common.  It's almost like looking in a phone book in the United States for the name Smith.  Ok, well, it's probably not that common, but there are several people with the last name "Leardini" in Italy and the surrounding region. 


There are even a lot of Leardini's in California that I have never even met or talked to.  So, the Leardini name is much more prevalent than even I knew when I was growing up. 

When I was growing up, I thought that everyone in the world was Italian and Catholic.  When I go back to look at my high school yearbook, about 85% of the people had a name that ended in a vowel.  I'm sure there were all different denominations of churches where I grew up, but I thought they were all Catholic.  Even when I went to college, almost everyone was Catholic.  In fact, there were even masses held on campus.  Come to think of it, though, not too many of my friends were interested in attending.  It was a huge surprise when I moved down south to see that there weren't very many Catholic churches.  In my area, there are 4-5 that are within reasonable driving distance, but there are a lot of other denominations that I am aware of.  To get to our church, we pass at least 2-3 different denominations, maybe more.  Growing up, we passed 2-3 Catholic churches to get to ours.  It's funny to think about how different things are and how my perception of things changed. 

Interesting little tid-bit.  One of our favorite news anchors/reporters was Ben Thompson, who was with our ABC affiliate.  Ben was the late night reporter during the week and on the weekend, he was on the anchor desk.  Then one weekend, he wasn't there anymore.  It's almost like some of these anchors become part of your family.  You see them every so often and trust them to bring you the latest news.  Then, one day, they're gone.  I spent moments over the next several months wondering where Ben went to and why he wasn't on the news any longer.  Then, this past weekend, there was a rain storm in our area and they reported on the NBC affiliate that Ben Thompson was reporting at the scene!  So, now I have a decision to make because, I really don't enjoy watching the NBC channel because I think there news broadcast is mostly fluff.  Also, there are quite a few "family members" that I enjoy watching on the ABC channel.  Let's face it, I'm a creature of habit, so it's going to be a rare day that I switch the channel, but I like Ben, so I just might check him out.  Who knows, maybe he'll bring some credibility to the news.

Boo-Boo Mania!